Chapter Text
The sun was beginning to set. (Y/N) had been walking for hours now without stop for food or water. She was used to this from all her intensive training to be the best weapon for the Fire Nation. But now she wandered aimlessly with no home and no family to return to. Firelord Ozai was careless in his supervision. (Y/N) took pride in herself for slipping away. The rest of the assassins that worked alongside her were not so lucky. She stayed away from paths to avoid detection, steps as sure and silent as the shadows that fell over her frame. The only thing that stopped her was someone yelling in the distance. Startled, (Y/N) followed the sound, her hearing much better than most. When she got close to the sound, she finally registered that the yelling wasn't from a girl in distress. It was actually cusses and annoyed commentary. (Y/N) dropped to the ground, hidden behind the thicket of brush to observe.
"COME ON, YOU SMELLY OLD SOCKS! YOU CALL YOURSELF SOLDIERS?" the girl in the middle shouted tauntingly with a smile. Her eyes were glazed over, though she stood with the pride of a hundred Fire Nation troops. She must've been no older than seventeen, around my age.
Three of the ten soldiers advanced on her, arms ready to send out waves of all-consuming fire. But the girl remained where she was, composure not anymore changed than if a bug flew past her. Just as the firebenders raised their hands, the girl slid her foot out, displacing the earth and sending the soldiers flying with rocks jutting out the ground. In one smooth succession, the girl pulled rocks off the ground and smashed them into the rest of the soldiers, crushing them with a thick cloud in their wake.
"That's what I thought! Losers!" She rested her hands on her hips and stuck her tongue out, though it wasn't exactly in the direction of the crushed men.
Intrigued, (Y/N) jumped out from her hiding place. The moment her foot hit the ground, a rock was sent flying at her. She ducked, dodging it narrowly. It whizzed past her hair and smashed into the ground behind her.
"More of you? Really?" She crossed her arms, clearly ready to destroy her.
(Y/N) shook her head, though that was useless because the girl couldn't see, obviously. (Y/N) looked around quickly to see what she could use to communicate, but there was only the forest and nothing else.
"Alright, let's get this over with!" She raised a fist, bringing a heavy boulder up from the earth.
(Y/N) panicked, making useless puffs of air with her throat. She hissed in frustration and sat on the ground, plopping in a defeated position.
The girl made a bewildered expression. "What the--? What's wrong with you? Did you die out of fear?" She dropped her boulder, making the earth tremble a little.
Out of the corner of her eye, (Y/N) saw a soldier getting up. He brandished a sword from his belt. (Y/N) jumped to her feet and spewed fire at him, singeing his hair and burning away his uniform. He screamed in fright and pain, stumbling away and running.
"Hey!" the girl cried, pointing at a rock that she thought was her. "You just bent fire! You're a soldier! Why did you help me?!"
(Y/N) tried to tell her that she couldn't speak, but her throat only yielded to more puffs of air.
"Why do you keep blowing air at me!" she said, turning towards her.
"TOPH! TOPH!" a voice shouted with its owner running towards the girl from the distance, along with a few others.
(Y/N) startled, running off. But the earth swallowed her feet. She hissed more air out through her teeth, trying to beat the rocks open with her fists. The group stopped when they got close enough to see her. She tilted her head up, surprised to see Prince Zuko and the Avatar.
"A Fire Nation soldier!" the man who called out the girls name cried, pulling out a boomerang.
(Y/N) struggled against the rocks holding her feet down, but they were sealed firmly shut. She was trapped and helpless.
"Not just any Fire Nation soldier," Prince Zuko said, examining her tattered uniform. "She's an elite assassin."
"Then why would she attack her own allies?" Toph asked. "She burned one of them. I heard it. And smelled it. The soldier ran off."
"Did you see which way he went?" the boomerang guy asked.
"Yeah, over there!" Toph said enthusiastically, pointing upwards.
"That's not possible."
"Well, to me, it would have been entirely possible because I can't see!" She waved her hand frantically in front of her own face. "I can't tell, Sokka!"
"Alright," the one other girl said, putting her hands up in a disarming motion. "He's sorry, Toph. Now let's try not to get into anymore arguments. We're wasting time."
"What are you doing here?" Prince Zuko asked me, skeptical.
(Y/N) shook her head, tapping at her throat. She opened her mouth and let out useless huffs of air.
"Right. You're mute. Just like the rest of the assassins."
"All your assassins are mute?" the Avatar asked, circling her curiously.
"Not all of them. Just the elite. They're trained under harsh conditions. My father made sure they couldn't speak when they're done, to ensure that if one of them got captured, the enemy wouldn't know anything." Zuko's eyes shone with pity for a second, then he seemed to brush it away, leaning away from me. "But they're still deadly. The most lethal of all ranking soldiers. Even I've only really heard stories of them, of how they're heartless weapons, commanded directly by Father himself."
(Y/N) shook her head frantically in protest, scowling.
Zuko looked surprised by that. "Well, I guess they could've also just been stories to scare kids."
Toph approached me, touching my face. I froze, letting her hands map out what I looked like. She felt along my hair, making me blush. I wasn't exactly in the best conditions, considering I had been wandering around the middle of nowhere for weeks, living off of hunted animals and weeds. She stepped back away from me and shrugged.
"Seems alright, I guess," she said.
"What? You just touched her face! Don't tell me you have a hidden, mystical, rare bending for the moral compass!" Sokka shouted.
"She did attack a Fire Nation soldier," Toph said, releasing my feet. "I think she's alright! Besides, at least I won't be the only one now."
"But how would you communicate?" the girl asked.
(Y/N) smiled and made a tapping gesture on her own arm.
"I've been told they have their own way of communicating with each other," Zuko said. "I think it was two taps on the arm for disagreement and one tap for agreement. Right?"
(Y/N)'s grin grew wider and she tapped once on Zuko's arm, just above his elbow, while nodding.
"Cool," the Avatar said. "Anything else?"
"Alright, wait," the other girl said, pulling the Avatar back a bit. "How do we know we can trust her? What if the Firelord sent her to find us and kill Aang?"
That was a very valid concern, (Y/N) thought. She deflated, unable to know how to answer in a way that would get them to trust her. She spent weeks out on her own with no purpose. She didn't want to wander aimlessly in the woods for an eternity. Her frown deepened at the thought.
"Why are you here?" Prince Zuko asked, pooling everyone's attention back onto (Y/N).
"How's she going to answer that one, genius?" Toph asked sarcastically.
"Could she write it out?" Aang suggested with a shrug.
(Y/N) nodded, gesturing her hands for ink and paper. Aang scratched his head, looking sheepish.
"We don't have any," Sokka said.
(Y/N) frowned, hopeless.