#firebender!levi

*Third Person POV*

After the raid on the village, life slowly started to fade from the village little at a time.  After the firebenders came to eradicate the waterbenders of the colony, the irrigation system that had been so integral for the village saw less and less use.  Fields of crops shrank in size and output, efficiency in the town declined, and the local goods the village had to trade was drastically reduced.  Because it became one of the Fire Nation’s many conquered points in the world, travel to the village from northern and southern Water Tribe residents halted, likely for their own safety.  With the lack of visits from the Water Tribes, trade began to sharply decline, the village no longer a midway point between the two tribes at opposite sides of the world.  One by one, businesses started to close down throughout the village.  Houses were abandoned and fell into disrepair as plants began to overtake the structures.  Entire channels of the irrigation system were blocked or contaminated.  The village was dying, everyone knew it, but some people still remained and tried to make their small village work.

Messages were by foot or on ostrich horses, like normal people.  Water was carried from clean sources into the fields and sent through the fields in downhill irrigation channels little at a time for individual fields.  The vast fields outside town had all disappeared because it was too far to carry so much water--only the fields close to town and the main water source it all came from remained.  There was still some trade happening--fish, what crops they had to spare that the small fields yielded, and there was more of a lean towards livestock for the farmers that remained than crops since there were no longer waterbenders to help the land be more agreeable to the fields, and no earthbenders came this way since the firebenders had came, conquered, and colonized nearby.

If the villagers wanted to do major business, they had to go to the Fire Nation colony several miles away, because hardly anyone came to this village anymore.  There was still the occasional regular from other towns, but their visits were mainly out of pity or an inability to go further to the Fire Nation colony to do business.  The village was still a midway point of trade for some people, but not enough to keep the village afloat forever.

There were still jobs to keep the village running, but it was harder and harder to do what needed to be done every day as there grew less and less people to do jobs that usually were done by multiple people.  If it was something to do with the town, some kind of maintenance, tending the fields, carrying water, it could be an all day job, possibly into the night.

As one young woman drew water from the well, she carried it deeper into town, delivered it to the house that had given her the bucket in the first place, and then moved to the next house to retrieve the next bucket, and headed back to retrieve water for the next house.  The well was in the middle of what used to be a bustling market.  Now there were the fish stalls that the fishermen would set up, mainly selling to the locals and occasional travelers.  The few produce stands that the remaining farmers rotated using depending on when their crop yielded were empty today.  Then, of course, there were a couple stands that saw various products based on what the locals could scrounge up for sale when there was the monthly trickle of traders heading to the Fire Nation colony for trading day.  Clay pots, clothes, wickerwork, food, anything along those lines that the traders might be willing to purchase as they passed through, on the way there or back.  Any business to keep the village alive.

The young woman didn’t go to every house--some people didn’t need much, and they had family members go and draw water for them.  The young woman mostly gathered water for families who needed the assistance or extra hands like the farms around town, working families whose time would be better spent elsewhere or focused on their trades, or residents who couldn’t make the journey because of age or disability.  It was still a job, and it helped the community, and a little pay for her family was better than nothing.  Many residents had that kind of mindset and approach to village life, doing what they could to help each other and keep the village and its residents going.

Her task of drawing and delivering water went until past noon, though it was a task that she started just before dawn as the workers were getting up to tend fields and shops.  Starting with the fields, she worked her way back in, starting with the longer trips when she had all her energy and finishing with the shorter trips as she grew tired.  When she was done with the water, she started making other rounds, using the money to buy goods in the marketplace--fish, bread, some produce, a small basket, and two pots that she filled with clean water.  The remaining money she pocketed to give to her family, but she continued with her small basket beyond the outskirts of the town, beyond the fields, and into the nearby forest.

She weaved through the trees with the knowledge of someone who knew exactly where she wanted to go, stopping occasionally along the edge of the forest near the village to pick herbs that only grew there and wrap them in a cloth atop the bread, doing her best to keep the herbs separated instead of mixed all together.

Deep into the woods, close enough to town that a trip for supplies wouldn’t be inconvenient, but far enough away to be isolated, there was a simple hut, smoke rising from the hole in the top of the hut with a tarp positioned to pull back over the hole with ropes in case of rain.  A small, humble and kind of sad garden could be seen behind the hut just in front of and among the trees, and there was a select few trees a few spaces away that had ropes for hunting kills to be strung up from and a tanning rack far enough away the smell wouldn’t be a plague upon the hut.  Over in the opposite direction there was a makeshift rain catcher for a bit more water, but that couldn’t always be depended upon for water, which was why the young woman still made this trip to deliver the first clay pot of water, just in case the catcher hadn’t collected nearly enough to provide for the hut’s resident.

There was no knocking on the structure beside the curtain covering the doorway, no calling out to gain the attention of the one inside the hut.  She simply walked forward, set the basket with its humble collection of supplies by the door, then took one of the two pots into the back to water the garden plants in the back that needed a bit more water.  Once she’d done that, she went back to the doorway and picked up the empty basket that had been sitting there waiting when she arrived, adding the now empty pot of water still in her other hand before she turned and headed back into the forest.  After her delivery and brief watering of the small garden, she made her way back to the village and her home to stash the empty basket for tomorrow and deliver the money to her family to use for whatever basic supplies they were running low on and needed to replenish--whatever the young woman couldn’t fill herself by the end of the day without spending money, anyway.

*Levi’s POV*

The best place Levi could think to hide was in the very village he’d been by when he deserted.  The Fire Nation would expect him to run as far and as fast as possible, to try and put distance between himself and the Fire Nation Army, maybe flee to Ba Sing Se.  They wouldn’t think that he would travel such a short distance and put down roots.  Though he wasn’t stupid--he was ready to leave at a moment’s notice if he was discovered, and he made sure he didn’t have a fancy setup he could grow attached to.  He needed to be mobile, just in case.

He didn’t get too close to the villagers, either--he stayed fairly far away, lived off the land as much as he could, and very rarely went into town to gather supplies.  He tried to keep it to once a month so that he could blend in with travelers and traders coming through town to get to the nearby Fire Nation colony.  It was better if he didn’t risk any of the locals possibly recognizing him while he was out and about, so he stayed away as much as possible to lessen the chance.  It was difficult, but he’d managed to get by for the past few years, and he had yet to be discovered.

Not that he was going to be foolish enough to fall into complacency, either.  He was still on guard after all these years, still found the time to practice his firebending and keep his skills sharp out here far away from the village--and he had quite a bit of practice with his precision and control having to practice in a forest without causing a wildfire to burn down the entire forest and village.

Some might suggest it would be wiser for him to move on frequently, find a new place to live for a while before moving on again.  But the traveling could get tiresome, and he risked moving from a place that was still safe to one that was dangerous.  He’d stay as long as it was safe--when there were signs his presence was known or bringing danger to the village, he’d leave.

Another reason he chose to stay here...was to try and make sure at least the girl he’d spared during the raid wouldn’t be caught by the Fire Nation anyway years later after he’d deserted.  He could keep an eye on her from here--or rather, he could keep an eye on the dwindling town and make sure soldiers didn’t come back seeking waterbenders that slipped through the gaps during the raid.  Some might consider it pessimistic, but it was always possible someone might rat the girl out to any Fire Nation official in exchange for some hefty cash to get them through a rough winter, or to another town that wasn’t slowly dying.  It didn’t matter if the girl was still bending or not, whether someone caught her bending recently or someone remembered she was one of the benders before the raid, it didn’t matter, someone could still turn her in.  Still, if he was here, if he caught the warning sign it was about to happen, or that kind of trouble was on the way, he might be able to intervene.

It was stupidly sentimental of him, but after making sure the girl had survived the raid, he was invested, and he didn’t want to see those efforts be for nothing in the end.  So far, she’d made it, hadn’t drawn further attention to herself, hadn’t been outed.  But the village was falling further and further into disrepair and ruin.  There was an unease over the village that the girl, in her young and still mostly-preserved naïve trust, had not yet picked up on.  The more desperate to survive people became, the more likely someone who knew she was a bender might turn her in.  Desperate people were dangerous, especially to someone who didn’t know they were a possible victim to their desperation.

But he hadn’t seen signs of such a thing happening, not yet.  Right now he was quietly watching the village, watching the girl from a distance, keeping an eye on things while he minded his own business and went about securing a modest living.  A garden for some basics, game he hunted in the forest, water from the occasional rain in the area and the well...though in the past couple years, he’d had a bit of unexpected help in the getting by area.

He didn’t know why she started doing it--if she stumbled across his abode on one of her forest walks she used to do before picking up so many odd jobs to help support the family, or if there were whispers in town about the hermit outside town she happened to hear.  What he knew was that eventually, she started including him in her daily rounds.  She found where he lived, and she would bring him basic necessities.  It started with just some water and bread--the cheap stuff that she could afford to get a little extra of.  Thankfully she seemed to have enough tact to realize someone living on the edge of town and never really coming in to visit didn’t want to be disturbed, didn’t want company and socialization--just some peace and quiet.  So she didn’t come up and bother him, and didn't impose on his solitude.  She usually left the supplies and disappeared until the next day when she would switch the empty out for fresh and full without a word.

There was once or twice when she’d run into him as he was coming back from a hunt or his own scavenge through the woods.  Though she usually heard him coming and would make a not-so-quiet flight through the woods to avoid the awkward face to face run in.  They had some kind of silent arrangement not to run into each other, to stay out of the other’s way and just let them exist and do their own thing uninterrupted.  And gradually, what had started as just bread and water turned into bread, water, and fish.  Sometimes there was dairy if she had a really good week and there was money to spare.  Soon she started including fresh picked herbs.  That last one made him suspicious she might have kept a closer eye on him than he’d thought, since some of the herbs were for tea specifically, not just medicinal or used in cooking.  But, since it was a variety of herbs, maybe it was just a general assortment of herbs she’d decided to give him and had nothing to do with close observations.  She was around often enough she could, though--she’d even taken to watering the garden he tried to keep alive.  It wasn’t his forte--obviously, as if the state of the garden wasn’t obvious enough--but as long as he got it to work well enough to give him something, it was a little more food to live off.  Apparently she’d noticed his sorry attempts and decided to try and help keep the sad collection alive.  Not with bending, she was far more sensible than that.  She brought extra water in a pot to water the plants like a normal person.

Then again, if she was around him often enough to see something--which he sincerely hoped she hadn’t--it would just be like returning the favor.  It was dangerous for anyone to find out he was a firebender, just like it was dangerous for anyone else to find out she was a waterbender.  He’d kept a close enough eye on her to catch the occasional waterbending, though--she didn’t stop bending completely, doing a little something here and there to keep her bending abilities from going entirely stagnant, careful to do it when no one was looking.  Or rather, when she thought no one was looking.  Levi was, and he’d caught it here and there.  Not all of it, he’d bet, but some.  Then again, if he was watching her, around her enough to catch her waterbending here and there, it was possible she might have caught him firebending here and there.

Not a comfortable thought.  Then again, considering what happened in that raid, all the people taken and killed, he doubted she’d still be bringing him supplies and taking care of his garden if she knew he was part of the Fire Nation.

Today seemed to be just another day, though.  Thankfully.  He waited until he couldn’t hear her footsteps disappearing into the woods anymore before he stuck his head out of the hut to confirm visually that she was gone.  Pushing back the curtain, he knelt down to see what was being delivered today, looking over the contents of the basket before bringing it into his humble abode.  Every now and then there would be something other than food--cooking utensils, fishing nets, hunting supplies, flint, woven baskets and clay pots for storage, even the occasional humble cup or something like that.  There was just the basic foodstuffs today, though.  He had some hunting to do today, but at least with the fish he wouldn’t have to push for time to hunt and prepare something--whatever he caught would be food for tomorrow, the fish could be for tonight.

Levi took the pot of water, using a ladle in the hut to take a small sip of water from the pot before putting it and the rest of the daily supplies away.

She was a young woman with a good heart.  For her sake, he hoped she was never caught, and that he would be around long enough to make sure that didn’t happen.

However, if he wanted to be useful in that regard, he needed to keep in shape, keep up his forms, keep his eyes open and his senses sharp.  Which meant after he hunted for the next few days of food, he might do a slightly longer training session to try and advance in his firebending, not just keep it up to an average standard.

He needed to work a little harder if he wanted to get better and not just get by with his abilities, which meant he’d have to find more time to push himself a little harder.  He’d have to be careful not to get caught, of course, as always, and doing longer training sessions meant that would get a little harder to do, but he could still do it.

He had to be ready.  Always ready.  Especially since the village he stayed outside, the people in it, were sleepy and stagnant, and the girl was naïve with her prevailing innocence staying in this sleepy town.

Someone had to be alert, especially him.  Because he would know, with all the raids he was unfortunately a part of, and who he was, how easily a fire could ignite and spread.  And this little dying village wouldn’t survive another wildfire.

*Reader’s POV*

This was your favorite part of the day.  When the chores and errands of the day were finished with a little bid of daylight left to spare.  Free time was depressingly rare when the town was in that state that it was in and you picked up any and every odd job you could find in order to help make ends meet in your family.  But when it did happen, when he had these rare moments that there was enough time for you to slip away into a quiet corner no one else would interrupt you in and do whatever you wanted...right now, those were the moments you were really living for.

It took you some time and practice, but you’d managed to get one of the irrigation channels for one of the old farms working again with some coaxing.  There was also some disguising on your part, since you didn’t want anyone to find out about your secret place to practice, or to discover this irrigation channel was working and try to set up shop on the other side of the channel.  This was your private place, a place just outside the edge of town that no one lived anymore, amongst grass that had grown tall and wild enough you could hide in it, with trees slowly starting to sprout up and threatening to make the once-farm more of the forest.  You followed what seemed to be a trickle among the shadows deep into the overgrowing foliage, until the groove in the earth widened and eventually led to a small pool in a flattened area in the middle of what once had been a field.  The pool was one of your own making, one that you had dug with your own tools and then drawn water to the surface to create a small, natural source you could practice with.

Sure, you couldn’t openly be a waterbender, that was obvious, but that didn’t mean you had to stop bending entirely.  It meant you had to be careful, you had to watch your back and make sure if you were bending, that no one was around to see, for your sake as well as your family’s sake.  But it was such a part of who you were, you weren’t going to try and cut it away from you, either.  Which only left you the option of practicing little by little in private as a way to advance, even if you didn’t have a teacher, even if you couldn’t always practice.  At the very least, you could keep what meager abilities you did have from going stagnant.

Calling what you had abilities was a bit of a stretch, though.  You didn’t have a teacher, not anymore, and you didn’t exactly have a font of knowledge about waterbending locked away somewhere in your head.  You knew you couldn’t teach yourself any kind of forms or mapped out skills, but you could learn how to familiarize yourself with the water and how it moved, how to keep in touch with it, how to reach out and feel it in the world around you and then pull it along with your movements, emotions, and will.  Learning to be fluid like what you were trying to move, so that you became a part of it and moved with it instead of the water crashing across you like a rock and scattering uselessly against a stubborn will.  You needed to adapt, to move with it, to change on the spot to whatever you needed to be.

While you were getting better at feeling the water, and understanding what you needed to be like in order to move it, actually moving it and getting it to do what you wanted it to was an entirely other matter.  Water was a slippery thing to try and control, and while trying to keep a tight control on it only made it slip through your fingers faster, you couldn’t relinquish all control, either, or nothing would happen.  There was a balance somewhere in there, and you were still trying to find it.

Sitting down cross legged in front of your little pool of water, you took a deep breath, staring at the currently calm water in front of you and preparing yourself for a much-needed practice session.  It had been a while since you got to practice, and you were giddy to be doing it again, even if this would be a short session with how low the sun was in the sky.

You reached a hand out, attempting to sooth yourself as you reached out to feel the cool rippling water in front of you--not physically, but in...some part of your soul.  That was the best way you could describe it.  Something in you felt connected to the water around you, called for it and pulled at it, and you were all too happy to let it connect to the element.  Doing so after going without for so long felt like running burned skin under cool water, except it was inside you that the relief came from.

When you felt like every ripple caused by an insect was something you could feel, you tried to move the water, attempting to move the ripples from outwards to upwards, to coax the water up towards your outstretched palm.  It did so slowly and shakily, random trails of water falling back down into the pool as you slowly reached the water higher and higher, watching the water dance lazily back and forth in the air between your hand and the pool like a string blown by a lazy wind.  Once you felt you had enough, you allowed yourself a bit of ambition, bringing up your other hand and attempting to feel the flow of water and alter the direction of energy once more, this time from the upwards direction into a more rudimentary, small sphere of water in front of you.  This was something you had been practicing for a while, and even though you usually had a shaky start after a long hiatus between practices, you still managed to get the important parts down.  It wasn’t as easy and second nature as breathing, like you would want to be, and it wasn’t a smooth, spherical shape, but you got the general concept and brought it into being.  In front of you, the sphere rippled and morphed into many different three dimensional shapes, though you kept the water moving in the same directions, hands moving through now-familiar motions as you formed your collected water into a ball and worked on smoothing the edges so to speak.

At first, globs of water kept falling back down into the pool, and the shape was rough, but as you worked at it little by little, the water stopped falling back into the pool and stayed up in the air.  Not only that, but you were able to keep it moving in a generally spherical shape instead of constantly morphing through all these different shapes.  After you got that working, you attempted to compact it into a tighter and tighter space, trying to make the movements fluid and sharp like they were supposed to be.  You never could get this part right, but you could get it close, at least, and right now that was what mattered.  You were just trying to do the basic tasks right now.

Once you had your smoothly functioning and moving ball of water in the air, you attempted the part where it tended to go crazy on you.  Shifting it on purpose into other shapes for different uses.  This was where you tended to lose control of the water, where you lost sense of the fluidity as it shifted and changed under your control, and losing that grip even for a moment was enough to make you lose control of the water, entirely.

Trying to relax, you let out a slow breath and let your hands push out in front of you and then slowly off to the sides, willing the water to move with your intentions, for the water to go through the sustained shift without issue into a line in front of you that you could remold and use to your whims.

Moments of emotion and raw instinct, random bursts of wild activity, like when you were younger, was one thing.  Trying to do these things on purpose with precision and control was another thing entirely.

The water started to form the line, a few drops falling back into the pool, which you tried to ignore, even as the water shook in place.  That’s what you called it, anyway, when it was starting to flow outside what you were trying to control, when it moved more than you’d intended to let it.  You ignored the nerves and just tried to stretch it further and thinner, trying to let go of control even though instinctually you were holding on like it was a lifeline.  Just a little further, and you could try making it dance.  You’d only gotten that far a few times, it was tricky moving it through the air like that, but if you could start, maybe you could find the rhythm this time and--

A bird took off from the grass, startling you and making you instantly drop the water, head whipping around and heart pounding as you got up in a crouch, ready to take off in an instant.  Was someone coming?  Had a person startled that bird and made it fly off?  Had someone followed you, witnessed you?  What the hell would someone be doing out here, anyway?

You stood crouched and ready to flee for several long moments, listening hard for any more signs of life.  Nothing came.  However, you were already spooked, and you couldn’t calm down your racing heart to settle back down and continue practicing.  No...no, that was enough for one day.  You already technically went through your whole exercise.  It was time to head home, before it got too close to dark and people would start wondering where you disappeared to.

You wished you could do this properly.  You wished you could stand at your full height and run through the old forms you still remembered, that you walked through in your room without bending as a way to relax.  That you could actually put some effort into your sad excuse for ‘training’ instead of having to run every time you heard a bird startled.  You wished your mother didn’t give you a heartbreaking lecture every time she suspected you had been waterbending.  You wished you didn’t have to bury your head in the sand and hide even from the people in your own town.

At least you knew you weren’t the only one hiding who they were around here.  Even if it had never been said, never been spoken into a confirmed existence, you found some solidarity and peace in the knowledge that you weren’t the only one trying to keep a huge piece of who you were secret from everyone around you.

*Levi’s POV*

When looking for a place to practice firebending, normally the practitioner wanted to look for a place that was clear of any burnable objects, or as clear as you could get.  However, given his situation and the area he was in, the last thing he wanted to do was go to a clearing where he could be easily found and spotted to practice the firebending that would send up a red flag for anyone looking for deserters.  So, he did the one thing you wouldn’t expect of a firebender who was actually conscious of the destruction they could cause and actively tried to minimize it.

He practiced his firebending deep in the dense woods, surrounded by grass and foliage and trees.

It was the only place he could practice that he would have enough of a heads up if someone was coming, where they would have to get pretty damn close to see him firebending--practically right on top of him, which guaranteed that he’d catch them, first.  As risky as it was, and how he risked a wildfire every day if he lost control even for a second, it was actually an excellent way to hone an important aspect of his firebending that far too many firebenders ignored.

Control.

Control was a necessity when he was practicing in the forest, every flame having to be just right for him to have the right amount of power in his attacks but not catch anything else ablaze, every living flame held in perfect check, the precision that he built up with the practice in the trees allowing him a dangerously surgical accuracy in his every move.  Practicing amongst the trees had allowed him to reach the point he knew how to command the flame to only burn exactly where he wanted it, and go out immediately after without much thought.  As a way of making sure he didn’t do harm to the surrounding forest, he was even expanding his precision and control to extend to fires he didn’t make.  He couldn’t dissipate external fires entirely like he could with fire he’d made, he could only dim and lessen them temporarily, which was still far more than most of the firebending foot soldiers he’d known could do.  How many actually had the control to contain a fire, not just fuel it into a raging inferno?  And he’d learned it through rigorous discipline and practice out of necessity so he didn’t accidentally burn down his new home and give himself away if an accident happened during training.

He might not have a wide range of skills and techniques taught to him for firebending, being a lower officer in the Fire Nation several years ago, but what he did know, he could use to levels of deadly accuracy, with impressive heat.  Who knew what else he could do given time, and maybe a bit of training or scrolls.

Not that any of that was on the table while he was hiding out here.  Right now, it was the limits of his own imagination.

Just like a certain waterbender who thought an old field was a good place to practice her waterbending.  Though, at least Levi had a couple years of actual training, as rudimentary as the Fire Nation military training had been, and the years he’d practiced and practiced it to survive on the streets before the military snatched him up.

Not thoughts he should be having right now while he was practicing.  The last thing he wanted was to get distracted and lose control, or for a spike of anger to make a flame burn larger or hotter than he’d intended.

His usual training routine included breathing exercises, as always, and some physical exercise warm ups, both to get him warm, limber, and moving as well as to keep him in shape.  After the warm up, he went through his basic forms, tried some variations, worked on control exercises, and if he was feeling ambitious, experimented with a few more advanced forms he’d witnessed from a distance either in the field or while passing by someone else’s training.

He’d spend hours out here doing this if he could, but he didn’t have that luxury.  Like his mirror image waterbender, he couldn’t risk getting caught by some random stranger, so he couldn’t stay out here doing this as long as he would like and risk someone stumbling across him.  He had to do things in moderation.  He wasn’t as flighty as his waterbending counterimage, and he knew he didn’t have to run at every rustle, but he knew what sounds he did need to listen for.  When he needed to bolt and hide until the danger had passed, when to linger to make sure they hadn’t seen anything, and when it was best just to straight up leave.  He was far less concerned when he was doing his physical exercises to stay in shape, because that was easily explained and not suspicious at all--the most suspicious part would be his reclusiveness, which was easily explained with his antisocialness.  It was when the firebending started that he was on high alert, waiting for any kind of warning that he was not alone.

Unfortunately, today was one of those days.

Midway through some of his more advanced learned forms, Levi heard the tell-tale sound of twigs and leaves repeatedly crunching and snapping underfoot, headed in his direction.  Instantly, Levi cut off and snuffed out any flames that were produced by him, rushing towards the nearest tree and nimbly disappearing up into its leaves with well-practiced acrobatics and strong grips.

With his routine, he had plenty of exercise to stay in shape, and of course there was a lot of exercising control over himself to make sure his firebending stayed under control and didn’t start a fire.  Somehow that had eventually combined into some interesting dexterity exercises with the trees, and he’d turned into quite the acrobat in the forests.  It was good aerobics, but also a good lesson in physical control over himself, not just mental.

Pushing the reflections on his routine out of his mind, Levi kneeled down on the thicker branch he was perched on, gazing down and waiting patiently as the noise grew closer and closer.  Soon, a pair of men from the village passed directly underneath his tree.  They were dressed like they were going on a several day hunting trip, but clearly neither of them were putting much effort into silence and stealth right now.  They must have been headed for their hunting spot, then.

As they passed underneath him, he paused to listen to their conversation, wanting to make sure that they hadn’t seen anything they weren’t supposed to.  It was idle chatter, mostly about how they needed to consider moving elsewhere--which was a common topic amongst the residents these days--and how even the game seemed to be leaving the area if they had to go so far out in order to get some good meat.  They were right, of course.  Levi had been having a hard time scrounging up meat of his own, recently, which made him all the more grateful for the waterbending girl’s daily care packages.  Sometimes the meat she brought was the only meat Levi had to live on until some poor animal wandered into his hunting range again.

Levi continued to listen to the two hunters as they discussed logistics, where they might go, how it was a shame the town had died after the raid, the usual topics, until their voices eventually started to fade.  Once that happened, Levi scaled down the tree with even more ease than he’d climbed it, gaze lingering in the direction the two hunters had disappeared before he picked an entirely different direction to start trekking.

He wasn’t done practicing, and this place wasn’t an option anymore today.  He needed to find another secure place to finish his practices before it got dark and flames in the woods became much more obvious.  He would waste valuable time trying to find a new place, but it was better than not getting in any more practice at all, and better than risking getting caught by the hunters when they inevitably returned.

Whatever.  He would make do.  He always had, and he would continue to do so.  He was used to having to adapt by now.

(Strikethroughs Couldn’t Be Tagged)

Everything Tags:  @antistellxr​ @mochicheeks-world

The scene wasn’t one of ice and water, of snow turned to ash falling from the sky.  This wasn’t the north or the south pole--it was a colony, located on the banks of the ocean, a prosperous trading town of people with lineages from both the northern and southern Water Tribes.  A water network spiderwebbed through the town strategically for message and parcel sending as well as ease of access to water, and further still in order to help irrigate the fields outside of and around the town.  At the moment, those channels weren’t being used to help in daily tasks--they were being used to feed into the defense of the villagers against the Fire Nation raid.

If the Fire Nation had their way today, those channels would probably disappear from a sudden lack of use.  If there were no waterbenders to utilize the channels to their fullest capacity, and to keep the channels clean, the town would most likely switch to other means that didn’t depend on waterbending.

Amidst the sudden waves and swirls of water and ice through the air, there were blasts of fire, screams from the normal citizens and chaos all around.  Buildings were on fire--occasional put out by a waterbender that could spend a split second to do so, which wasn’t often.  Any waterbender that appeared in the open was quickly surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers to subdue and capture, or to execute, the individual.  It was almost systematic how they flushed out the waterbenders, forcing them to step out into the open to defend themselves or the people around them, just to descend upon them in a concentrated show of force and drag them away.

Of course, that’s how it normally was supposed to go.  Something had changed recently, though he didn’t know what caused it, and there were far more executions than captures, like they were trying to carry out another genocide.  As if the extinction of the Air Nomads wasn’t enough, they were going after waterbenders now, too?

His task was not to burn down the village, or to necessarily fight against the waterbenders.  He did when he was faced with one, but for the most part he kept moving, going from house to house to carry out the task he’d actually been given.  His job was to round up any water benders or potential water benders that weren’t blatantly fighting, to catch any of the water benders that might slip through the cracks.  Normally they had him at the front and fighting in the worst of it, but recently, it seemed even his commanding officers could feel how close to his breaking point he was.

Levi had been on a few of these raids by now, and each time they left a sour taste in his mouth.  When he’d joined the military, as was expected of firebending boys in the Fire Nation, especially ones they’d picked off the street that didn’t have a wealthy family of any kind of position to protect their autonomy, this was not what he’d expected to be doing, even with his already low standards and reluctance to even be here.  His bitterness towards the Fire Nation and especially its military was growing, the pure indoctrination of the people around him disturbing.

And now, witnessing what was being done to the waterbenders was sickening.  He couldn’t imagine this happening to his own people, yet here they were, wiping out an entire integral part of their culture.  He wasn’t fond of where he came from, but that didn’t mean he wanted it wiped out, or an entire part of the culture that he belonged to eradicate so brutally like this.  Seeing it done to the waterbenders…

Again, even his commanders seemed to know he was just about at his breaking point.  Much more of this, and he’d be trying to desert.  He’d already come up with a few escape planes, all he needed was an opportunity...and the final push to take the risk.

Tuning out the chaos around him, Levi continued his check from door to door of the houses, looking for people that were hiding, particularly for anyone that ended up waterbending at him, or someone that held themselves like a bender.  If he found a bender, he would drag them out and hand them off to one of his superiors that was trailing not far behind keeping any fleeing benders from slipping past to the town’s outskirts.  If there was no bender inside the house, he’d mark the door with a fire blast and keep going.

The routine continued, as grueling and sickening as ever, Levi feeling like every step brought him closer to claiming he saw a bender dash off to the fields and taking off by himself, only to keep running until it was all behind him.  He opened the door to another house, stepped inside…

...and was immediately accosted by a splash of water to the face, knocking his helmet off but hardly doing much else.  He went on the defensive for a split second off a reflex, ready for a brawl in case it had been a warning shot, before he took in the full picture in front of him.

It was a girl, a couple years younger than him.  Old enough to have started training, but too young to have accomplished much unless she was a prodigy or forced by circumstance like he had been.  She was coming out of the ending stance of the move she’d just used to splash him, moving like she was getting ready to attack again if she needed to.  Her eyes were full of fear, but they were determined, and that wasn’t stopping her from attacking with what little she knew.

Behind the girl, there was an older woman, the mother most likely, reaching out with a hand on the girl’s arm as if to try and stop her, far more unbridled fear in the woman’s eyes as she realized the weight of what her daughter had just done, revealing herself like that.  In the woman’s other arm was a young boy, his head turned inwards into her chest so he couldn’t see what was happening.  Despite the mother’s insistence, the girl was standing squarely in front of them, trying to protect her family with the few waterbending moves she must have been taught.

Levi locked eyes with the girl, staring intently at her and feeling everything stop for a single moment, felt himself staring down at the edge he’d just about fallen over, felt like everything was holding its breath to see what he would do.

“Lieutenant!  What’s going on in there?  Is there anyone inside?” came the impatient voice of his superior from outside.

If he acted right now, he could brush off the delay as searching the hiding places before he left.

Still holding the little girl’s eyes, Levi picked up his helmet, seeing her tense and the puddle of water that was on the floor now from her first attack start to rise.

“It’s empty!” he called back, and the water fell back to the ground, mother and daughter looking at him with shocked, wide eyes as he quickly dried off his helmet, put it back on to hide the water on his face, and pointed towards the baskets in the back corner that would be much better hiding places, especially if they put cloth or something similar over their heads.

He turned and left the house without even looking to see if they’d accepted his suggestion of a better hiding place, walking out the front door at a brisk pace and shutting it firmly behind him.  With a strong punch towards the wooden surface, he left a blackened scorch mark on the door before he moved on to the next one.

He couldn’t do that for everyone, his superiors would catch on if he didn’t find anyone, but...he had reached his breaking point.

No more.

“Lieutenant, aren’t you supposed to be on watch next?  What are you still doing here?”

Levi straightened from where he’d been enjoying the last of his tea, setting the saucer and cup aside with a cool look towards the one who’d shouted at him.

“Finishing up.  I’ll be there before the shift change,” Levi returned flatly, watching the one who’d called him out slink away under his gaze.

He wasn’t in a hurry to get to his post for the watch around camp.  The last thing he should be, tonight of all nights, was clearly in a hurry or in any way eager to get to his watch along the perimeter of the camp.

His tea finished, and the man who’d called him out sulking away, Levi put his helmet and face mask back into place, heading towards the section of the camp perimeter he was supposed to be stationed at tonight for the watch.  His pace was casual and relaxed, and when he reached the point he was to be watching, he did in fact stand there, staring off into the trees around them, eyes narrowed, looking for danger…

...watching people slowly trickle into their tents to sleep...glancing around to see less and less people paying attention to him, sucked into their own watches or trying to hurriedly finish their tasks for the night so that they could turn in…

He waited a few more minutes, listening to the natural sounds of the forest around them...and when he was certain no one was looking at him, he simply walked right into the trees.

He didn’t run, he didn’t want to draw attention.  He just slowly and quietly slipped into the cover of the trees.  As soon as he knew he would be hidden by the brush and the darkness of the forest, he started peeling off the uniform in swaths, dropping the face mask, the helmet, the exaggerated pauldrons, all of it came off him piece by piece until he was in casual fire nation clothes he wore underneath.

Able to move much stealthier in the dark now, and aware that it wouldn’t take long for someone to notice one of their watchmen was missing, and even less time to realize it had been the one they were already watching for some kind of act of defiance, Levi moved quickly to get what he needed and start putting distance between himself and the camp.

Back along the main road they’d traveled to find this clearing that would fit their camp, Levi had tossed a pack with supplies he’d been carrying and had mixed in with the other supplies he’d been in charge of so it wouldn’t look out of place.  Tossing it into the woods gave him the chance to come back to that same place and re-find the bag, grabbing it and then simply running, now that he was far enough from camp he felt he could afford the little bit of extra noise in favor of putting more distance between himself and the Fire Nation Army.

He had his plan, he knew what he needed to do in order to blend in, and he already had the best place to lie low once the army moved on from this particular area.

And not once did he look back.

Next Chapter---->