Chapter Text
In the year 146 AG
Smoke invaded her lungs, forcing her to cough, which only made matters worse. She pressed her lips firmly together in an attempt to stop the reflex. Tears now welled up in her burning eyes, which she impatiently wiped away with the hem of her sleeve. Next she checked if the blanket she had wrapped around her chest and waist was still securely in place, holding what was most valuable to her firmly in place.
The floor was shaking dangerously, telling her that she had to go and that she had to go now. On her left she saw one of the guards unconsciously lying on the floor - flames already rounding the corner and licking at the metal of his boots.
She winced. For months she has been plotting how to get her revenge on people like him, but the thought of this man’s fate did not bring her any joy now. Besides, it remained to be seen whether she wouldn’t soon join him in that fate or not.
Desperate times…called for bending the upper part of the man’s uniform off of him with a flick of her wrist, before wrapping the harness around herself. The metal wrapped easily around her shoulders but was a little too big. If she would start bending the cables, she would have to hope that she wouldn’t shift too much in it and lose control.
Over the roaring fire she could hardly hear herself think and the wooden floor rendered her bending useless as well. No way to check heartbeats. She just had to hope she would be alright. At least she would quite literally rather die trying than give up right now.
It was with that thought that she climbed into the window sill, the double glass had been blasted out of it earlier. She didn’t notice the chaos outside or below her. Didn’t see the modern Satomobiles on one side of the wall, trying to help whoever they could reach, nor did she fully register the Dai Li lined up on the other side, trying to arrest whoever had the bad luck of ending up in their midst.
All she saw was the now empty watchtower in front of her and many many meters below.
Her only chance was jumping, free falling, then shooting the cable towards the watchtower and hope she would be strong enough to carry her own weight as soon as she would lose momentum. And then…then she would hope that there would be safety. That she would land on the right side and that strong arms would catch her and wrap around her and lift some of the weight off her that she had been carrying all by herself for so long now.
There was no way that this entire debacle of an operation had gone unnoticed, was there? Surely he would be there. Standing there, watching, and hopefully then seeing her.
Another low threatening rumbling sounded behind her. It was time.
Checking the blanket wrapped around her one more time as well as the harness she then bit on her lower lip in concentration and then…she jumped.
One year ago - 145 AG
“What do you think?”
His mother hummed absentmindedly, eyes not leaving the newspaper she was reading.
“About the unrest at the border.” He clarified, leaning against the kitchen counter while grabbing a piece of fruit from the bowl on his left.
Now she tore her eyes away from the paper, turning it over to the front page to scan the article again that her son was referring to.
“I don’t know, Tenzin.” She sighed. “We’ve had this situation for so long now, and unrest like this has happened so many times… Maybe in the past I would have given it a chance. If the situation would become unstable enough and spill over, that would give us a legitimate reason to interfere and with your father there we could have a chance at a peaceful solution. But now that he is gone…” her eyes took on a sadness that was more familiar to him now than he would like, she continued her train of thought “Who’s to say what will be worse? A continuation of the status quo or a conflict? Especially now, while there is no Avatar to keep things in balance...”
Tenzin’s face fell. “Sorry, mom. I didn’t mean to make you sad.” He apologised. The passing of his father was fresh, the Free Nations were all still in mourning.
He hadn’t meant to remind his mother of the loss they all felt - but she on more levels than he would be able to understand. But lately, anything he said seemed to lead back to his father. A sign of how influential he had been. The great Avatar Aang.
When the first hints of a brooding international conflict showed up, twenty years after the Great War, people had all turned to his father. He had heard the stories countless of times. He hadn’t been there of course, was only three years old at the time, but as the years progressed people seemed to like recounting how it had all started.
At the beginning people hadn’t thought too much of it. Surely, everyone remembered how things had been during the war? And any instability would surely be put to rest by the Avatar. And so, no one thought much of the increasing unrest in the Earth Kingdom and the increased lack of freedom that the Earth Queen, new on the throne and with her twenty years of age belonging to one of the first generations that did in fact not remember the invasion by the Fire Nation, had started to role out.
And indeed, his father had traveled to the Earth Palace on numerous occasions in those first two years. First alone, later together with the Fire Lord and the Leader of the Southern Watertribe, trying to convince the Earth Kingdom to change its ways. The reign of the Queen affected all of them by now, increasing the number of Earth citizens that were migrating to the other Nations to a level that was higher than any of them, not even newly created Republic City, could provide shelter for all at once.
But the Queen proved insensitive to their pleas and even found an ally in the Northern Water Tribe. The latter had come about after a heated discussion in the newly created Republic City Council- for the North too much consultation of the people seemed a recipe for disaster rather than for peace. The Northern leader declared them all to be crazy and instead turned the Earth Kingdom as its new closest ally.
As more and more people fled the Earth Kingdom, the atmosphere in international meetings where the Five Nations would meet deteriorated. Instability in the Earth Kingdom meant not only misery for its citizens, but also interrupted trade routes, lack of resources, and a breeding ground for all sorts of crime.
And while the world expected this meant war, one war to free the people in the Earth Kingdom from their oppressor, that war did not come. Not by the hand of the other Nations at least - the Southern Watertribe too limited in power, the Fire Nation not having fully come to terms with its past yet to engage in a war, no matter how noble its objectives. And certainly not by the hand of the Avatar. The Avatar would never be the instigator of violence.
So instead, ever so slowly, the Earth Kingdom turned its back to the other nations while it increased its hold over the territories that it had in its possession and did not let any public occasion go by without pointing out how it felt that the territory of Republic City was rightfully theirs too.
So the world watched on as a new kind of dictatorship was born over the span of two years, bringing a stop to the idea of peace and prosperity as self-evident factors in the world and closing borders that once no one had even remembered existed. Borders within which resistance was slammed down and which more and more people tried to cross, with a withering hope of returning as months turned into years.
Meanwhile, in the Free Nations criticism grew. Wasn’t the Avatar there to restore and keep balance in the world? And wasn’t a world in which half of the people lived in oppression and poverty whereas the other half was enjoying prosperity and modernisation the furthest thing away from that balance?
In those years - Tenzin had been five years old by then- he remembered how his father and mother would always walk around with serious expressions, alternating between angry, sad or frustrated. He was too young to understand then, but later he learned that the conversations he would overhear would be about his parents firmly opposing any act of violence while trying desperately to find any diplomatic channel they could find to improve the situation.
Around that same time the conflict had gotten a personal dimension for his family as well, increasing pressure on Aang to act, but still he refused. The Avatar state would not bring peace, it would only bring more pain, Aang insisted.
“It wasn't just about my oath of non-violence as an airbender,” his father would later explain him many times. “By then, my position as Avatar meant absolutely nothing to the Earth Queen. She knew I wouldn’t attack her. Any attack or interference from my side would be interpreted as the instigation of war. The Queen would waste no time in that case to invade Republic City and despite our industrial advances, the Earth Kingdom is much bigger and has a much larger army. This was nothing like the war with the Fire Nation, where Ozai had already invaded the other nations. If I would be the first to act, then I would be the one further tipping the scales out of balance. It wouldn’t just be foolish, it would be very selfish too if I did that, just because our family now too, like so many others was impacted directly by the conflict.”
Negotiation was the only way out.
They used the fact that so many people fled the kingdom as proof that contrary to what the Queen stated, her way of governing was not at all beneficial to her people or supported by them. They had thought it would give them the upper hand, but instead it drove the power mad Queen only further away from them.
Within a year, a titanium wall of four meters high arose across the land border of the entire Kingdom, effectively rendering it impossible for any Earth citizen to cross the border anymore without permission. Those who tried regardless were arrested or met their fate as theor attempts to secretly cross the border became more and more dangerous.
Behind her wall, the Queen could now do whatever she wished away from prying eyes. The perfect recipe to poison her people against the Free Nations, or the ‘Treacherous Nations’ as the Queen liked to call them.
Again, calls to act increased. But the leaders of the Free Nations agreed: Coexistence was the only way forward. Change had to come from within the Earth Kingdom itself. And as long as there were a handful occasions a year during which all five nations would come together, they had to try to talk some sense into the Monarch. Time would tell what would become of the world and when the time was right, then Aang would act.
That is what Tenzin had been told practically all his life. But then his father had fallen ill, the borrowed years in the ice finally catching up with him. It had been a slow process, one that Earth Kingdom spies had ample opportunity for to learn about and report back about to their leader. And as his father grew weaker, so grew the fear in the Nations that this had been what the Earth Queen had been waiting for.
His father passed away on a cold winter night early in the Year 145 AG, surrounded by his oldest friends and his family. And while the world held its breath, awaiting the final battle that would surely start any moment now; Tenzin didn’t know where to even find the air to hold any breath at all. His airbending father who let out his last breath of air felt wrong on so many more levels than Tenzin could ever have prepared himself for.
And in the days that had followed he and his siblings had ignored their own grief as they tried to get their mother to pull through. And he stayed by her side until the acolytes practically forced him to go to the Council of the Free Nations where he now had to represent the Air Nation.
The news from their intelligence units that the Earth Queen had decided to lay low until it was known where the next Avatar had been born - the northern or the southern water tribe, it all made a huge difference now - washed over him without bringing the relief it brought the others.
At 28 years old Tenzin had become head of the Air Nation and expected to do what was best for his people in a conflict with a country in which he had never even set foot and without his father to guide him. How did any of that make sense?
…..
Earth Kingdom - 145 AG
Bored. If there was one word that described Lin Beifong, it was that. She was bored from the moment she opened her eyes until she closed them again. Even in her dreams she was bored.
It was terrible. Especially considering how privileged she was. Although many within the palace were unaware or pretended to be, Lin knew all too well how dire the living conditions in most of the Earth Kingdom were. Poverty, criminality, repression, corruption - not in the last place contributed to by the very people she shared a roof with here in the palace - they were the normal way of things. Everywhere that is, but not in the palace, with its golden adorned doorframes, marble floors, fountains with bright clean water - who cared about the lack of clean drinking water for the citizens? - and gardens with green grass and flowers - again, what did it matter that the palace was surrounded by desert and water was scarce? In the palace wealth was the norm, with its extravagant meals three times a day, its over the top balls for the happy few, and its displays of military strength every month. And all of it paid for by impossibly high taxes that the citizens of Ba Sing Se, Omashu and beyond could hardly cough up anymore.
Whoever dared to publicly display as much as a disapproving look upon it all was rounded up by the Dai Li within the hour. Ruling by fear was the motto of the Earth Kingdom. And it worked. No one dared to protest, no one even wanted to protest - if the citizens would unite their numbers would overpower any number of Dai Li. So why didn’t they rise up?
Because the Earth Queen protected them. Because she may be ruling with authoritarian repressive force, but at least she kept war out. No foreign meddling. Well, except for the Northern Watertribe of course, but they were allies, United in their conviction that the southern Water tribe, the Fire Nation and the Air Nomads needed to be kept out at all costs.
The origin of the threat they posed dated so far back that most didn’t even remember what had brought it all about. The Treacherous Nations were just that: treacherous and occupiers of land that was rightful territory of the Earth Kingdom but which now carried that hellish place called Republic City. The Treacherous Nations were nations where people had done away with social control, brainwashed by industrialised modernisation that made them lose their connection to the spirits and their bending and which caused their skies to turn black from polluting smoke. Where there was no respect for their Leaders anymore and the people thought they were equipped enough to take part in the decision making about the governing of the land by electing who represented them. Where freedom had led to anarchy.
Oh, what Lin wouldn’t give to live there.