Switcheroo!
meme: closed!
Hanataro’s kind nature goes hand in hand with the waterbending the Northern Water Tribe discouraged him from pursuing, and instead he was pressed to take an offensive stance on the training grounds. In failing that, he discovered and honed the art of healing privately, catching glimpses of young female waterbenders casting glowing pools of water over injured tribesmen when he wasn’t trying his hand at flailing about with a feeble water whip. If only the healer had spoken up, he may not have joined the navy of which his brother was lieutenant. He may not have had to partake in a civil war, quietly “fighting” from the back lines as he healed the friends who had laughed and jeered when he lost during sparring, but they could say little more about how cowardly he might have once been. Displaying a sudden streak of bravery when his captain falls prone to what would have their finishing blow, the gentle water at his fingertips hardens as Hanataro lashes out in a fearful moment of instinct. Even he can appreciate how difficult it would be to heal the wound split open from the jagged chunk of ice he had hurled at the enemy.
Upon return, there is no reward for his valiant act. Any soldier or friend would have done the same, he believes. Still, being tasked with repairing underground tunnels isn’t his idea of what a proficient healer - although less proficient warrior - ought to be doing. Plenty fighters were still no doubt writhing in pain from the battle, the few he hadn’t reached out there in the chaos and snow. There was a job he’d be good at. But no. He had to fix collapsed tunnels.
Lifting snow up and out of the way, Hanataro rediscovered memories he had thought buried with his childhood. Old passages became known to him once more; a small hole in the wall was his infamous hide’n’seek location, and that tunnel was barely wide enough for even he to crawl under into a secret hideaway his friends had made for themselves. It puts a smile on his face as he works the job of men building paths to hold their city high, healing a different sort of wound left on their tribe.
