[Fanfic] The Old Ways
Apr. 23rd, 2010 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
giefuTitle: The Old Ways
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Ahna (Southern Water Tribe), Lee (Fire Nation)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Sort of a companion to Kesuk's piece. Ahna Kicks Ass.
Ahna's first memory is of her brother. They rest together with the wolf spirit that protects the Water Tribe, at the very beginning of the world. The wolf spirit is large and warm and she takes care of them until, hand in hand, they walk into a land of ice and know that the people it shelters are theirs. Because like water they cannot help but chatter and argue they each take a pole: Kesuk the North and Ahna the South. Above and below, they are like water and sky, moon and ocean. Ahna was charged to protect: to be fierce as the storm and gentle as the rain. Kesuk was given the duty to expand, to cultivate, as water nourishes all life. To aid them, the moon spirit taught them and some of their people to push and pull the water as she did. And that is how the Water Tribes came to be.
Although Ahna has related this story many times to wide-eyed children, she does not know if this is true or that the legends of her people have possessed her so completely that they have replaced any real memory she had of the old days. All she knows is that she is the eldest, in a bone-memory deeper than words, deeper than blood. She remembers that the separation from Kesuk hurt, even though it was necessary. Though the other nations are in an academic sense her brothers and sisters too, only the Northern Water Tribe shares her blood, her culture. The worst part of this whole war has been losing him. She doesn't know if he's alive or dead or somewhere in between, a prisoner of the Fire Nation like so many of her people. For all his palaces and diplomacy, he never saw the threat until it was too late. None of them did.
Another memory: Of black snow and iron ships, huts burning against a stark white sky. She was among the first of the nations to be attacked. Lee had gone after the Southern tribes as quickly and as brutally as he had attacked the Air Nomads, only this time he had warriors waiting for him, not monks. All this did was prolong the inevitable. Over the course of one hundred years the Fire Nation reduced her culture to the ashes of what it once was. But fire can harden as well as destroy, and when the rest is burned away, the old ways remain.
Which is why, when the Fire Nation returns after the Avatar is found, he finds that the outposts have rumours of a witch living among the ice. A shaking lieutenant tells him that every time they approach the remaining village they pay a price the next night as men vanish from the camp. It is as if the spirits are taking their revenge.
Lee travels out to the ice alone, and finds Ahna waiting for him. She's smaller: her people are dying, slowly but surely, and she is too. But her eyes are bright, and she has a club in each hand. He moves to attack, but before he can summon a flame she encases his hands in ice, the extra weight causing him to stumble and cradle the frozen limbs to his chest.
"Savage." It's a statement as well as a name. She laughs wildly, though there's no humour in it.
"There's nothing for you here, little conqueror. The last child of the moon went with the Avatar."
"If her village is threatened she would come back." The Fire Nation squints into the distance: it's further up the coast. "I can spare the men."
"I won't let you."
"Really? Weak as you are?" Madness meets madness as their eyes lock. "I broke you, Southern savage. Look at you, you're back where you were a thousand years ago. Before first contact, even. I doubt there's anything civilised left."
Ahna smiles, slow and wolfish. "You do not know who we were, before the palaces of ice, when we rested in the teeth of the Great Wolf. You do not know the ways of battle, of the ice that never melts, of the cold so sharp it kills. You took me back to that, and I found strength in it." She takes one step forward, and the sheer force of her aggression- her hate- causes Lee to step back. "The child of the moon is out there, commander. She's out there with the Avatar, and you can't stop her. Your little island can't hold back the tide for much longer."
He almost attacks her again. His anger, his pride want to, but his sense of self-preservation kicks in before they win. He's surrounded by ice, and it's nearly night-time. Instead Lee insults her in the best way he can: by turning his back and walking away. The ice is slowly melting, but he still can't feel his hands. Later, the fingers on his left hand bloom black. The men stationed on the South Pole call it the bite of the wolf.
It's the first thing that Lee has felt for quite some time.
Next time it's the big one: Dynasty, in which we attend royal Fire Nation births, deaths and coronations and Lee goes slowly bonkers.
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Ahna (Southern Water Tribe), Lee (Fire Nation)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Sort of a companion to Kesuk's piece. Ahna Kicks Ass.
Ahna's first memory is of her brother. They rest together with the wolf spirit that protects the Water Tribe, at the very beginning of the world. The wolf spirit is large and warm and she takes care of them until, hand in hand, they walk into a land of ice and know that the people it shelters are theirs. Because like water they cannot help but chatter and argue they each take a pole: Kesuk the North and Ahna the South. Above and below, they are like water and sky, moon and ocean. Ahna was charged to protect: to be fierce as the storm and gentle as the rain. Kesuk was given the duty to expand, to cultivate, as water nourishes all life. To aid them, the moon spirit taught them and some of their people to push and pull the water as she did. And that is how the Water Tribes came to be.
Although Ahna has related this story many times to wide-eyed children, she does not know if this is true or that the legends of her people have possessed her so completely that they have replaced any real memory she had of the old days. All she knows is that she is the eldest, in a bone-memory deeper than words, deeper than blood. She remembers that the separation from Kesuk hurt, even though it was necessary. Though the other nations are in an academic sense her brothers and sisters too, only the Northern Water Tribe shares her blood, her culture. The worst part of this whole war has been losing him. She doesn't know if he's alive or dead or somewhere in between, a prisoner of the Fire Nation like so many of her people. For all his palaces and diplomacy, he never saw the threat until it was too late. None of them did.
Another memory: Of black snow and iron ships, huts burning against a stark white sky. She was among the first of the nations to be attacked. Lee had gone after the Southern tribes as quickly and as brutally as he had attacked the Air Nomads, only this time he had warriors waiting for him, not monks. All this did was prolong the inevitable. Over the course of one hundred years the Fire Nation reduced her culture to the ashes of what it once was. But fire can harden as well as destroy, and when the rest is burned away, the old ways remain.
Which is why, when the Fire Nation returns after the Avatar is found, he finds that the outposts have rumours of a witch living among the ice. A shaking lieutenant tells him that every time they approach the remaining village they pay a price the next night as men vanish from the camp. It is as if the spirits are taking their revenge.
Lee travels out to the ice alone, and finds Ahna waiting for him. She's smaller: her people are dying, slowly but surely, and she is too. But her eyes are bright, and she has a club in each hand. He moves to attack, but before he can summon a flame she encases his hands in ice, the extra weight causing him to stumble and cradle the frozen limbs to his chest.
"Savage." It's a statement as well as a name. She laughs wildly, though there's no humour in it.
"There's nothing for you here, little conqueror. The last child of the moon went with the Avatar."
"If her village is threatened she would come back." The Fire Nation squints into the distance: it's further up the coast. "I can spare the men."
"I won't let you."
"Really? Weak as you are?" Madness meets madness as their eyes lock. "I broke you, Southern savage. Look at you, you're back where you were a thousand years ago. Before first contact, even. I doubt there's anything civilised left."
Ahna smiles, slow and wolfish. "You do not know who we were, before the palaces of ice, when we rested in the teeth of the Great Wolf. You do not know the ways of battle, of the ice that never melts, of the cold so sharp it kills. You took me back to that, and I found strength in it." She takes one step forward, and the sheer force of her aggression- her hate- causes Lee to step back. "The child of the moon is out there, commander. She's out there with the Avatar, and you can't stop her. Your little island can't hold back the tide for much longer."
He almost attacks her again. His anger, his pride want to, but his sense of self-preservation kicks in before they win. He's surrounded by ice, and it's nearly night-time. Instead Lee insults her in the best way he can: by turning his back and walking away. The ice is slowly melting, but he still can't feel his hands. Later, the fingers on his left hand bloom black. The men stationed on the South Pole call it the bite of the wolf.
It's the first thing that Lee has felt for quite some time.
Next time it's the big one: Dynasty, in which we attend royal Fire Nation births, deaths and coronations and Lee goes slowly bonkers.
