Chapter Text
Book 1: Autumn (Unbowed) (These Aren’t The Field Trips You’re Looking For)
秋
Getting angry didn’t help. Thinking of escape—or worse, rescue—didn’t help. Months at the Boiling Rock had taught Suki to take her pleasures from the petty victories in life.
It was too damn hot here, even for the Fire Nation prisoners. She smirked whenever one got hauled to medical with heat stroke, while she was still standing.
There was a rust spot just outside the warden’s office. She watered it with her mop, and watched it grow. Maybe one day the man would fall right through the floor. She had time.
Her favorite, of course, the one that gave her bone-deep satisfaction, was that she could measure her time here in Fire Lords. Fire Lord Ozai, smacked down from the sky at the height of his power by her friends (they were still alive, they were still fighting, they were winning). Fire Lord Azula, the one who’d thrown her in here, was only mentioned for a day; then the guards uneasily avoided her name (and gossiped ruthlessly about her downfall, the rumors out of the palace, how she’d lost her mind under the pressure and they didn’t mean that figuratively). Fire Lord Zuko, the anger case who’d burned her village down, had been overthrown by his own uncle just last week. Factoring in Uncle Backstabber’s political experience… she gave him a year. Then it was goodbye to Sozin’s line on the throne, and she’d outlasted them all. Would there be a civil war? Suki hoped there would be a civil war. Let the Fire Nation’s military class tear each other apart.
She’d found other things at the Boiling Rock, too. Things that were… unexpectedly good.
She was the youngest prisoner here, and the smallest, and a girl on an isolated island where most people were men and criminals, the guards included. This wasn’t a desirable job posting. She’d been ready to fight since the moment she was brought here. Been ready to lose, eventually, because she was alone and the strength of the Kyoshi warriors was in their teamwork. Waiting for someone to try it had kept her awake in the night, kept her bristling during the day. It took her two weeks to realize that the patrols going past her room were always the same handful of guards, and this wasn’t their regular route.
“My daughter’s a little younger than you,” one of the men told her, when he’d caught her wary stare. Which was everything she needed to hear on the subject— more than she needed to hear. She wasn’t ready, in that first month, to start thinking of them as people. It was easier to keep them all together as enemies. One ethnicity, one nation, one box, separate from herself.
And then, suddenly, they weren’t. There were political dissenters who’d spoken out against the war, deserters who’d had enough, criminals who were just as commonplace-awful as in any nation. There were intense mealtime debates over what each new Fire Lord meant for their country, and learning which guards would let them talk treason about royalty—which would even join in—and which would throw everyone in the cooler for even a disrespectful glance towards the current ruler’s portrait.
Then there was Sokka’s father. She saw him in the yard the day the new political prisoners arrived and knew he couldn’t be anyone else, and it hurt to see what Sokka would grow into (tall and defiant, and the sense of humor did not improve with age) because she was in here, growing in different ways. They’d only kissed twice, but it was war, and she didn’t know when she’d kiss a boy again. He’d told his father about her. Hakoda swore he’d have her back in here, and she swore the same. They had to stick together, he’d said, and it took her longer than it should to realize he meant against all the Fire Nation scum around us.
The other prisoners were out of their box, and she couldn’t put them back. For his first lunch under the Boiling Rock’s hospitality, Suki led Hakoda to sit between a man who’d been imprisoned for subversive poetry pamphlets and a woman who’d crippled her commanding officer when she caught him burning an Earth Kingdom child. Hakoda looked thoroughly uncomfortable. Suki realized she wasn’t. Not anymore.
And then the Fire Princess’ lackeys showed up, in prison uniforms.
The bouncy one dumped extra bleach into the laundry, and everyone was wearing pink for a month, and there went any hope Suki’d ever had of keeping them in the box.
“So, what are you in for?” Suki asked, sitting next to the one that wouldn’t mentally exhaust her in a conversation.
“Poor taste in men,” the knife girl droned.
“Same,” Suki replied. “Also, I almost kicked your princess’ ass.”
“Same.”
“Suki.”
“Mai.”
“Ty Lee! Oh gosh, did I startle you? I’m so sorry—”
Mai didn’t get special treatment for being the warden’s niece. He made that point very clear, with the feverish military rigidness of a man obeying rules to the letter. Same cells, same food, same work, same clothes. And if he avoided talking to her at all rather than debasing her like the other prisoners, well, there wasn’t a law about how often he had to personally make each inmate miserable.
“I’m sure my parents have disowned me by now, too,” the girl said. “I’m no longer politically viable.”
“Oh, Mai,” Ty Lee hugged her friend, who took great pains to not acknowledge said hug. “I’m sure as soon as Azula forgives us, your family will talk to you again!”
“Thanks, Ty Lee,” the girl said. Suki was beginning to admire how one-voice-fits-all her monotone was.
Her new allies were cautiously, fearfully optimistic when Azula’s portrait took its place on the prison wall.
They were confused but heart-breakingly hopeful when Zuko’s replaced it.
They’d already stopped glancing at it when, two months later, he was replaced.
A week into his reign, Fire Lord Iroh sent a hawk, suggesting that the warden take very good care of certain prisoners. Suki and Hakoda found themselves awaiting prisoner transfer. The Dragon of the West had taken a special interest in them, for reasons unknown to either her or her new friends. But when they glanced at the old man’s portrait, it was nervously.
“We’re going to break you out,” Ty Lee whispered through the slit on Suki’s cell, because in the day and a half since that hawk had come Suki hadn’t been allowed out once. “We could start a riot and take Mai’s uncle hostage and ride the gondola to freedom! Mai’s already made a ton of shanks, and you and I don’t even need weapons! We’ll just bam-bam and—”
“How will we get off the island?” Suki asked, her back against the warm steel wall of her cell. She’d learned weeks ago that it was best to humor the girl (whose uniform was still pink, as if the guards had finally admitted defeat so long as she didn’t ruin everyone else’s clothes.)
“When they come for you they’ll bring a balloon! Or a boat! We’ll take it and ride to freedom! Mai and I will come with you, and we can bring along that old Chief guy so your boyfriend will be happy, and maybe we can go break out your Kyoshi warriors, and I’d love to see your home and, oh, wear one of those pretty dresses you’re always talking about! I’m sure there’s a resistance we can join and we’ll be best friends even after we’re out because all us non-bending girls have to stick together—”
“Sounds great, Ty Lee,” Suki said, still humoring. Hoping was too dangerous.
The next morning, a war balloon landed outside the volcano.
Things began to go exactly as planned. This was a problem.