Double Bender

If you told Tatiana Melin that she would have been rescued by the smoking hot banished prince of the Fire nation a week before it happened, she would have slapped you in the face and called you crazy. I should know, I've felt it before. But what you don't know is that banished prince was me. I suppose it started-

ZUKO! GIVE ME THE PEN!! Don't mind him, he's crazy. But he is right. If you told me, I would've slapped you and called you crazy. But he would've totally messed up the story, saying how he was the heroic prince who saved the young, abused girl, who left him even thought he did nothing wrong, not true by the way. Okay, so he was the banished prince and maybe I was abused and maybe he did rescue me, but he DID do something wrong. I'm pretty sure you want the real story, so you have to listen to my version, Zuko would've fabricated a whole new tale-I WOULD NOT!- Hand OFF the paper. Yeah, he would've, by the way. You want to hear the story, don't you? Ugh, all right, here we go...

I guess it started a week or so after I'd "given up." If you don't know what I mean, here's how it went: I lived in this town in the middle of nowhere, located in the creepy, boring section of the Earth-Kingdom. So I thought that some brave moron would come save me from my prison, sweep me up onto his horse or ostrich-horse or Komodo-horse or...whatever. Well, about a week before Zuko found me, I gave up. Stopped believing. No one was going to find me. Ever. Yeah, I gave up. So that day started like any other day would. Tollo woke me by pelting stones at my head. If you don't know who Tollo is, he is one of the horrid, horrid monsters that I lived with. Well, the whole family was horrible but the two children were monsters. After the rude awakening from Tollo, I walked down to the breakfast table, and received a rather harsh glare from my father...adoptive father, Toku. "Good morning," I said vacantly. "Freak," sneered Toku. "Well, I thought today we were actually going to be civilized." "I think you should be more grateful. You come to us cold, hungry, and dirty, no parents, not a clue in the world..." Oh boy, here it comes. "...give you a home, food from our table and even overlook the fact that you're a freak! And you repay us by complaining about being civilized?" It's different every time. A few days ago it was about not having enough food, the day before that it was about the house being too hot, heck, even just a week ago it was about having silly dreams about being saved or even the notion of needing to be saved. I guess that was around the time I gave up. So, I guess you'll need a little more back story than what I've given. I used to be happy, the daughter of a Northern Water-Tribe Princess and an Earth-Kingdom official. It was my sixth birthday. I had just blown out the candles on my cake when the whole house started to shake like crazy. My dad yelled to my mom to take me and go. After that there was a lot of shaking, dirt, and fire. My mom and I had just made it out of the house. I looked over my mom's shoulder to see our house being set on fire. Mom was holding onto me tightly, then suddenly, she dropped me and fell to the ground. I asked her to get up but she didn't move. Her eyes were cloudy and blank. There was a knife sticking out of her back. She was dead. I looked up and saw a man standing there. He had long hair and a beard, a sly smirk stretched across his face and evil in his eyes. At his feet was my dead father. He looked at me and I thought he was going to kill me but he simply said, "Run. Run and be thankful of how merciful I was towards you." Being only six, I couldn't think of anything else. So I ran. That was my first lesson in life; nothing is perfect. Okay, okay. No more flashbacks. I promise (I'm probably going to break that promise sooner or later).

So anyway, back at the breakfast table, Toku was staring at me like I was an escaped convict, his wife, Lia, was looking at me with a look of panic like I was going to set the house on fire and kidnap her children. The kids, Tollo and Mira were too busy wrestling each other for the last egg. "The hallway needs cleaning again," said Toku, "As well as the front porch. And the rug in our room needs dusting." I ignored him and kept eating. "Did you hear me?" he asked. I nodded. "Then why are you still here?" "You know," I said, "the last time I checked, I was your 'daughter' and not your servant." His hand, at that moment, came in hard contact with my face. "Now go!" he growled. "I'm going, I'm going," I squeaked. Geez I thought, that's the last time I stand up to him like that. I grabbed the broom and started to sweep the hallway. "Hey, freak," said Mira, holding her tiny basket full of eggs. "Hello, Mira," I said, not taking my eyes off the floor. "What are you doing, freak?" "Sweeping the hallway." "Why?" "So you can make another mess for me to clean up." "That's stupid. You're stupid." "Well believe me, I actually don't want to be here, cleaning up after you monsters, I'd rather be somewhere else, being a bender, not having to worry about being called a freak every two seconds! But no, I'm stuck here, because if I take even one step outside, I'm beaten within an inch of my life and I don't get any dinner." Mira grinned and then whipped up some fake tears. "DADDY! She's being mean to me!" There was some sort of booming noise from downstairs then a mad shaking. "Now you're gonna to get it," said Mira, in her usual snotty tone. Toku came stomping up the stairs and looked me in the eye. "Hiya pal," I joked. He slapped me again and growled, "No dinner, tonight or tomorrow." I glared at Mira, who giggled and waved.