Luke

Jingping was in flames. To call it still a town would have been a compliment unwarranted. Where fires no longer raged, having burned themselves out, only ruins were left in their wake.

Almost nothing was left.

The Fire Nation was gone. Their raid had concluded, leaving a scattered motley of survivors in their wake, desperately attempting to understand what it was that had just transpired.

The sun was only now rising, though the change was indeed minimal with the numerous flames that still raged across what had been a bustling town a little over a week ago.

And now there is nothing left.

It was hard for me to take it in, watching it as it was now, knowing just who had been responsible.

The Fire Nation. My country.

It had to have been a mistake, a miscommunication. I had tried justifying it to myself for hours now, coming to no satisfying answer, because there was none. There was no excuse, no justification, no reason that any of this had happened. It was a genocide. A genocide ordered by my nation.

I hadn't been part of it, hadn't been the ones to put innocents to the sword, but still, I felt responsible, like this had been my thought. Watching the smoke rising from the town, us on the fringes, having been pushed to the very edges of our defensive line, I couldn't help but believe that I could have done more.

How many are dead?

It snowed that morning. Snow. In the middle of Summer. We could scarce believe it ourselves when we saw the sun reflecting off of the small particles of white that came careening to the earth at a leisurely pace only to find out when they began piling atop one another that it wasn't snow, but ash.

The dead rain down upon us.

I could feel it happening again—my mind drifting, fading, not wishing to face the facts of what was around me, of what my country had done. Of what I had done a year ago.

It's in the past. Things are different now. They have to be.

I wanted to believe it, but convincing myself would prove harder than that.

I'd never seen Gordez look so helpless. The defense of Jingping—it had been all he had been focusing on for the last week. Every waking moment, I knew, he had spent trying to prepare for the invasion they had all known was coming. He had known we would be at a disadvantage. He had known we lacked manpower, equipment, time to prepare, but still, he had done everything in his power to try to save the people of this town.

It had been an impossible task from the beginning.

But that didn't make failure come any easier to him.

He was dazed, out of it, reality having proved so horrifying to him that he would have rather blocked it out. Like my own mind is trying to do now.

Zek on the other hand, I think he was taking it better than many of the rest of us were. Against all odds, he had gotten Ka'lira out alive, and I believe that was enough for him. I wasn't about to blame him, either. Franky, I envied him. He was by no means in a pleasant state, that goes without saying, but at least compared to the rest of us, he seemed not quite as devastated by the carnage around us.

Ka'lira, while she was no doubt affected by the carnage, seemed, somehow, better than before it had began. She was sticking near Zek, the intense animosity towards him seeming to have run its course. I wondered what had happened there, in the city. The last I saw of Zek, he had told us to find the others and that he was off to find Ka'lira. Then, next we had seen him, it had been when the Rhinos had arrived.

Zare, well, she seemed to be dealing with it worse than I had imagined. Then again, who could blame her? What right did I have to be faring worse than her? While it may have been my country, my people responsible for the unspeakable crimes against humanity that had occurred here, it had been her people that they had happened to. Her people whose corpses lined the street.

I'm so sorry.

And what about me, trying to come to terms with the fact that it was my own people who had done this here, who had taken the lives of so many, and for what? I couldn't understand it. They had practically avoided all military personnel and soldiers. Their target hadn't been them, but the civilians, specifically. Why? Why them? What was there to gain? When I watched the other soldiers around me, I saw intense hatred, a lust for revenge, an anger unmistakable. Some were grieving, yes, over the loss of family, friends, entire lives, all in the span of a single night. I was lucky to not be forced to endure the same. I am lucky, yet I still have the gall to feel like this, to be grieving. The others prepare retaliation, and I can only sulk. What the hell is wrong with me?

"You alright?" came her voice to my side. Zare's voice. Why? Why was it her who was asking me if I was the one who was alright?

"What?" I asked.

"Back there. You froze up."

Damnit, don't remind me. People burning to death around me, an entire town going up in flames, and all I was capable of doing being standing there and watching, feeling sorry for myself.

For fuck's sake, Luke.

"Y-yeah," I stuttered, still not capable of understanding how it was that she was the one trying to comfort me. "What about you?"

She took a seat next to me against one of the few intact buildings Jingping had left to offer. "Been better," she admitted. There was no humorous tone to her voice, herself incapable of affording such levity at a time like this. "I just don't get it. Why? They practically ignored us. It's like they only cred about doing as much damage as possible. Not ending the fight. I just don't get it."

"You and me both."

The sun was now up. Morning had come, but none of us had woken up. It was still the same nightmare. As those of the surviving Jingping Defense Force became aware that the reality around them was, in fact, truth, they began to realize that lounging around feeling sorry for themselves would do little good.

We would have gotten straight to the agonizing task of sorting through the dead and burying them to try and avoid an epidemic right away if it hadn't been for an interruption that all of us dreaded at the mere thought of.

"Fire Nation ship!" called a runner as he arrived to where we were posted, out of breath, legs buckling beneath him as he fell to the ground, instantly gaining the attention of everybody within earshot, those of whom were not terrified simply having already given up.

They're back? Here to finish the job?

"How many?" Cholla demanded from the man, already reaching for the spear at his back, ready for the return to hostilities in a manner we could only wish we were capable of emulating.

"Just 1, commander! A skiff!"

Just a skiff?

"The enemy only brought 1 skiff?" a soldier from the crowd that had gathered asked.

"He suicidal?"

"What the hell do they want now?"

"Fuck him. We kill him no matter what he wants. That's what the ash maker fucks get."

No, I realized, as did Gordez, Zek, and Ka'lira to my sides. No, I realized. Not Fire Nation.