Blood of the North (Avatar: TLA Fanfic)

Chapter 2: A Discovery in Gore

**Author's note: Sorry about the tense changes between scenes. Doing edits 7 years late, I'm gonna have to let it slide.**

For days I sat, defeated and lost. What could I do to escape now? With the ratbender locked in with me, I hadn't caught on. Without her, there was nothing left to learn.

I waited for some days pretending that the girl would return with help. Then my hope dwindled and twisted into hate. That witch had power over the guards and only used it to save herself. I swore that I would escape this prison, if only to find her and kill her.

With this rage, I began to plan. Without moving a muscle, I decided, I would learn to bend the water they used to hydrate us. It was my impossible path to escape. I couldn't return to hopelessness.

Whenever the guards entered the cage to water me, after my arms were strapped down, I focused on the water nearest me, in the bucket or the sponge, trying to compel some movement, a ripple. I hardly dared to look, for fear the guards would spot my determination and take away water forever. A couple of days later, I saw a ripple—a ripple so perfect and natural it could have been the guard, but I let it be my hope. I was so determined, days and nights melded together. If I was going to learn how to do this, I could not have one distraction.

Though rarely, new prisoners arrived, some were taken away, many died. Those who had been here longer than I, those too weak and dehydrated to have seen the girl escape, wasted away. Their bodies were usually removed a couple of days after their spirit departed. I could smell them long before the guards checked, but I blocked that from my mind. Children and elders were helpless up until they died of sickness or fatigue. The smell of rotting flesh always reminded me that another was gone, but I did not let sorrow consume me.

Finally! A definite, unnatural quiver in the water. This tiny movement is like a silver string in the darkness which will lead me to freedom. After this victory, it was like the surrounding world ceased to exist. I aimed every thought at moving the water, and how to use the water once I had control.

To maintain my energy I began to eat what scraps I was given, no longer wishing to die. I tried to build my muscles but my frail body could only handle so much. I wished I had kept moving since I had arrived. Despite the frailness of my body, I was soon able to do ten push ups and ten sit ups. Water. Push ups. Water. Sit ups. Water. Food. Water. Sleep. Repeat... This was my new daily routine and the fresh deaths, smells, and changes of guards went by unnoticed.

I can swirl the water around when they are not looking, even make it rise and change temperatures. One day when the guard comes in the door on the far wall and I ready myself for the great escape, waiting with twitching muscles as the guards approach. The guards move down the row, reaching me quickly due to all of the missing inhabitants. I had not noticed they were gone... But the guard is here and I cannot despair. There were two, one to hold the bucket and the other with the sponge stick.

"This kid's angry, eh?" The one with the sponge says, looking at me with a young, smooth face I might have found handsome a year ago. He turned to face his partner. The other, older man does not respond, hands firm on the water bucket.

When the sponge guard faces me, I make the move, the twitch, that I can only hope I've practiced perfectly in my mind—I spur a razor of ice from the bucket, slitting the throat of the bucket man right beneath his beard. Holding his throat, he makes a hacking, choking noise, tipping into the water bucket. The sponge guard looks over his shoulder. When he does, needles of ice crystal whip into his face like a northern wind. I throw my neck into it. He shudders backward, hands rising to his face, but he makes no sound. I aimed deep. Blood runs down to his shoulder, as he almost turns to me, collapsing with a smile still on his face and blood running from his shattered eyes. There is hardly a sheen of water in the bucket, but I manage to sever the ropes that bind me.

I realize I do not have the keys! I spot them dangling from bucket guard's waist. Down the row, another guard sits beyond a doorway that must be the room the water comes from. It is only a matter of time before he wonders what is going on.

With the drips of water I can salvage, I manipulate the water around the keys, and separate them from the leather loop holding them. Bumping them with beads of ice, I bring them near enough to reach. Trying them on the lock to my cell, awkwardly backward I finally one works and the lock clicks. I kick the door open and drop down out of my cage, setting it swinging. The moan of the chain sends a shiver of nerves down my arms and legs.

I run down the hall, bringing all of the water with me and, as I near the end, the guard in the office starts to turn. I jump, spinning through the air, and launch a dart of ice through the barred window and he goes down in a thud. I reach the end of the cell black and turn left, where all of the new prisoners had come from.

"Wait!" I hear, behind me. It is not the rough voice of a guard—it is the hoarse voice of a new prisoner, a girl. I am stopped in my tracks. When I turn, it is a young woman and, bundled in rags, her baby.

"Please! Take my baby with you!" she hisses desperately. I do not know what to do. Tears are streaming down her face. I realize I do not even have the keys. If I had only brought the keys with me, I could have saved him, too! No—I could have released everyone. I'm no better than that witch. I come out of my fog—the woman is holding the baby through the bars, it is small enough to fit, swaddled in a faded blue blanket. Without thinking, I accept the baby. It's what I would have done at home for a tired young woman handing off her baby so she could clean a fish. I am about to run for the keys when I hear a horn blow, bells ring, and see two men emerge from the office.

"Run!" the woman whispers, but I hear it as a scream. My body, conditioned to do whatever it takes, reacts.

I reach the exit that leads to another hall, latticed with iron bars. The two guards have spotted me, joined by two more. I slip the bundled baby under the lowest bar and turn to face my attackers. I raise the slightest handfuls of water in front of me, so I can throw ice at a moment's notice. Blood floats through the water. In fact, it is mostly blood. I bend it back and forth. I am not only moving the blood around with water, I am bending the blood itself!

I am distracted long enough for the men to gather in front of me. They are all about to attack, so I raise blades of ice and blood. It only strike two of the men, but red flows from their wounds. I pull from them, feeling resistance like a big fish on a spear, but the blood comes over to me. I fell the other two guards whose eyes are wide with shock. I pull blood out of the men. I'd never realized how much blood was in a person. I use it to slice the metal locks. I gather the baby and run down the hall. I turn right at the end and find myself facing twelve guards in formation. Seeing where the iron wall provides the slightest shield, I set down the baby gently, gather the blood, and charge.

Even a Fire Nation guard is no match for his own blood.