thecapitol | My hands are tied, for all I've seen has changed my mind

Entry tags:

My hands are tied, for all I've seen has changed my mind

Who| Aang and YOU
What| Aang's immediate reaction and subsequent aggressive denial to his expose. This means it's time for artwork.
Where| D4 and Roof
When| Immediately post-expose (pre-fourth wall), then post-fourth wall.
Warnings/Notes| Descriptions of illness in option A, possible discussions of violence against children and genocide.

A, immediately after expose, D4

They filmed it. They filmed his people dying. They filmed the destruction of an entire race, and they called it entertainment.

He throws up in his bathroom until there is nothing left, then he curls up on the floor, shaking and sweating and sick. He's not going to leave any time soon. He just wants to curl up and cry, but his eyes are dry.

Is it odd that his tears now seem self-indulgent? What right does he have to cry when they're all dead and gone? He will sit here and be sick, but then he will clean himself up and he will continue doing what he was doing before. He will wait until a time comes where he can fix his mistakes.

B, post-fourth wall, D4 and the Roof

Aang is in a state of what others may call 'aggressive denial'.

Hariti climbs all over his back, squeaking in concern as he sits on the D4 floor and makes things. He paints. He arranges mosaics on paper. He whittles. Everything he creates hearkens to the airbenders. Images of people flying without wings, of people reaching enlightenment, of air bison and flying lemurs and temples that grow out of mountains. Things that everyone else, even in his own world, have forgotten.

From an outsider's perspective, he's just eager to make things, which is good because they go for a good price in the Capitol.

Sometimes, he can be found on the roof. The roof isn't the place he makes things. The roof is where he sits down on the edge of the building and tries to meditate, but a lot of the time, he just ends up staring out at the Capitol skyline blankly for hours on end.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It would be hard not to notice the flurry of activity Aang's been putting himself into. Roland hasn't been sleeping well since all those dreams - him and, of course, the entire rest of the prisoners of this tower. But everyone brought different troubles to the whole affair, and here and there it's easy enough to see how now, afterward, certain of those troubles have been magnified. Roland, of course, has been dreaming again of his own world's war, that last Capitol-dreamworld echoing too well the gunslingers and their last, desperate battle.

This isn't even the first thing in Panem that's had him dreaming of Jericho Hill. Hadn't thought of it for a long time, before. Panem has a way of bringing those things up.

Where Aang's dreamworlds took him Roland doesn't know, and hasn't asked. He doesn't know either whether those dreamworlds made better or worse the fallout from that business with the expose, but he suspects.

It's still light, barely, when Roland makes his way back toward his rooms. Aang's work, though, is worth a detour. "All your people flew that way?" Roland starts to sit on his heels beside Aang but thinks better of it after a moment, sitting instead and slipping off a shoe to rub at his foot. He's still studying Aang's latest work, though he's careful not to touch. "You may've told me before, cry pardon. It's been a long day."

Aang has observed that others haven't been sleeping well, but he's at a loss of how to help, or even if he should. It seems like no one really wants the help of a little boy, and perhaps he doesn't have the resources to give it right now when he feels so worn down.

"No, we didn't. The stories say one guru learned to fly, but we don't know if he really did. To fly means you don't have any worldly attachments anymore. We glided. But we always showed ourselves flying in art." For many reasons. It symbolized enlightenment, it was less clunky than drawing everyone on gliders, and so on.

It had been helpful to talk to his own past life in his dream. He's struggling to come to terms with his mistakes and cutting himself slack for it, but that doesn't change the pain he feels having seen his people die on television.

"No worldly attachments," he repeats, thoughtful. That sounds less like Aang's own words and more like a learned phrase. He's got no context to say for sure, but living as a tribute in Panem has given Roland a great deal more experience in guessing at those sorts of things. "Suppose I don't know as much about your people as I'd like to. That was considered a... worthy goal?"

He knows what he thinks of the concept of no worldly attachments, but sharing his own opinions isn't the point of this exercise. The point is that Roland remembers the boy's reaction after that expose very well, and Roland also knows how it'd felt for himself, to begin speaking of his home again after so many years distant from it. Whether Aang's gotten much chance to share his own memories yet Roland can't say, but the more images he sees Aang create of them the more he thinks the boy'd like to.

"Very. Air is the element of freedom."

He keeps his eyes on his work, but he's obviously paying attention to the conversation. He will mention his people and his world, but he doesn't have a chance to talk about them with too much depth because he didn't want to admit they were all dead until now. But so much for that.

"Freedom means being free from want. It means being free from the world. That's how you become enlightened. That's what all the monks who raised me were working towards, and that was what all us kids were expected to work towards too."

That's what he thought his life would be. That's what he wanted his life to be. But then it wasn't.

Roland thinks about this while he finishes rubbing his tired feet, shoving his ridiculous shoes over to the side and out of his sight, where they belong. "Free from the world. Does that mean your enlightened ones might go to some different world? Or does enlightened mean something else, to your people?"

"It's... complicated. Monks write a lot about what enlightenment means."

He pauses in his work, his hand hovering over it. "For me, enlightenment is being happy and balanced. You're happy because you don't want anything anymore, and because you understand the world and are at peace with it. You're in perfect balance with the energy around you. Some people say that when you're enlightened, you break away from the cycle of reincarnation and move on to the spirit world when you die."

It's frustratingly simplified, but enlightenment hadn't been a concept he was expected to be able to fully articulate at the age of twelve, and the monks aren't around to give him the words he can't find on his own. "The monks would be able to explain it better."

"That's a fine explanation for one such as me. Being at peace with the world, that's quite a goal. How would your people go about it?"

"We do it by meditating and separating ourselves from material wants and pleasures. Lots of monks fast. The kids weren't supposed to do that, though. Not until we were all grown up."

After all, fasting wasn't good for growing children. They were only expected to partake after they were developed.

Roland nods. "And your art?" he asks, nodding toward what Aang has been working on. "Did you learn to do those things there, too?"

"Yeah. I've only been away from the monks for--well, I've only been away and awake from the monks for less than two years. Most of what I know comes from them."

Including the art. Including his philosophies and attitudes towards life. However, he wonders if the monks would really recognize him now after he's traveled the world, mastered four elements, and fought in the Hunger Games.

Two years. Roland thinks on that. "Two years after losing my own homeland, I was - hm." He pauses, thinking over it. What had he been doing, in those days? "It was a very long time before I began to speak of them at all. You're doing very well, to share them so soon."

He studies Aang's work a second, then continues. "Any time you'd like to share a little more of them, I'd like to hear. Any time." Roland turns his look to the boy himself now, wanting to make sure he understands the offer.

Aang listens, even if he keeps working. He aches to think that someone else has gone through a pain like his. It's not fair. It's not fair for anyone to feel so lonely.

He looks up at Roland's face, then nods solemnly. "Thank you." He looks down at his work, pausing so he can observe it. "When I woke up, most people had already forgotten us. They knew that there were four elements, but not that there were supposed to be four people. I owe it to them to talk about them, so their memory doesn't die with me."

He looks at Roland again and rests his cheek on his chin. "If you ever want to talk about your people... I'm a good listener too.

Now this this Roland wasn't expecting. Expression isn't quite plain on his face but it's there; eyes a little wider, mouth a little opened. Then, quietly as it'd come, that surprise softens and he moves closer to Aang, puts an arm around his shoulders. "I'd like that," Roland says, voice quiet and plain and deeply genuine. "I'd like that very much."

"I wouldn't share how it was at the end," he murmurs, thoughtful, and his gaze is very far. He wouldn't tell this boy of the war, of those last increasingly desperate years and the utter refusal to admit they were losing all they'd fought for in the first place. That last day. "But the rest- how it was. Those long green fields. The endless blosswood forests, all gold in the sun. The ladies who'd play their morning games on the green, dressed in only their shifts. The beekeepers who weren't quite alert enough to keep a few mischievous boys from putting their bees to sleep and stealing a bit of honey."

Roland looks down at Aang and this time, a little, he is smiling. "We'd've been around your age, too, about then. Maybe a little younger. But for now, help me remember your people. Tell me something of them. Anything. Help me remember how it was."

Aang leans against Roland, savoring the closeness as he works and listens. He tries to imagine what Roland's people were like. It sounds lovely. It makes him think on his home too, and he imagines being one of those boys to quietly sneak past the adults to get a bit of honey to lick off his fingers later when he was sitting with his friends and laughing about their mischief.

He finds himself smiling at Roland, too. "They were wonderful. I grew up in the Southern Air Temple, where all the monks would take care of us boys until we were old enough to wander the world with our bison. We only got our arrow tattoos if we earned our mastery or if we invented a new airbending technique." He moves so Roland can see one of the arrowheads on the back of his hand, smiling at it wistfully. "I was the youngest one to ever get mine. All these monks and nuns came together and tattooed me with needles made of hollow bones while I was supposed to meditate. I was too proud to admit how much it hurt, but they all gave me ointment to put on it anyway. I think they thought my pride was funny, and they talked about the times they got their tattoos. It made me feel better when they admitted that theirs had hurt a lot too." He pauses in his work so he can trace the head of the arrow. "All the monks and nuns were always so wise and graceful, but they were really good at cheering me and the other little airbenders up when we were upset."

The more Roland listens to this the more thoughtful his expression turns. It's interesting to hear for its own merits, communal life in Aang's temple with his monks and nuns, but this part of it makes Roland think on his own home and it's that which he's got in mind when he asks his question. "Your mastery," he murmurs. "I was the youngest to earn mine, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself - what you're saying may not be what I'm thinking of. Was there some test to prove that mastery, and were you still considered a boy thereafter?"

"You're supposed to master all twelve principles of airbending, but they gave me my mastery when I invented a new airbending technique. I was still working on the final principle when they gave me my tattoos."

He's interested in hearing about Roland's mastery, but he doesn't want to force him to talk about it when it seems like his people are still a sore spot.

"I could have left if I wanted, but even with the tattoos, I was still little, you know? I still had so much to learn. The monks might have tried to stop me if I really wanted to go anyway, since I'm the Avatar. Not that I knew that then."

"They never told you?" No judgement, of course, in Roland's voice. As he asks he rubs at the boy's arm a little, because though the quarters here keep people as close to one another as anywhere he's ever lived there's almost no opportunity to be truly close to anyone. Roland is long used to that but that doesn't mean he likes it, and he treasures the contact now. To be comforting a boy like this almost stirs a memory in Roland, perhaps of a boy who'd needed his comfort once, too. Of a boy, perhaps, who might like Aang, and like him very well. But Roland knows it's best not to let his mind wander too far in that direction, so he doesn't.

"I know very little of your Avatar still. There were no rituals to prepare you for it, at least, not when you were young?"

"They weren't supposed to tell me until I turned sixteen. It's a lot of pressure for a little kid, you know? And the Avatar is supposed to protect the world, so they need to think they're just a regular person for a while, so they know what that's like. But a war was coming, so they told me early."

He gives a little shrug, but not so much of a shrug to give the indication that he doesn't like the affection. He does like it. He likes it a lot. Maybe he's being babied a little, but he needs some babying right now.

"We all knew that the Avatar was an Airbender around my age, but the monks kept who I was a secret from everyone. That's why the Fire Nation attacked them. The Fire Lord didn't know who I was, so to kill me... he had to kill all the children."

Roland takes this in a second. The movement of his hand on Aang's arm does not stop, in fact gets slower and steadier as Aang reaches the end of that statement.

"And they missed you," he notes, because there becomes a point at which I'm sorry, even if that were a phrase he used more often, becomes an insult. It is a sorry thing, and very much so. Aang already knows that.

"There always is a war, isn't there? And children always do get caught up in it. Some like to pretend a war keeps to its soldiers, but that isn't the way of men."

"Hey kiddo." Bucky walks into District 4's suite without knocking, thinking the people here should be more than used to him coming and going at this point. Just as much as the people he nominally lived with in District 1 were probably used to Aang's invasions at this point.

He almost pulls a face at the sight of the bat, resisting the instinctual urge to reach and crush the thing; it obviously wasn't harmful now but he remembered the damage the others like it had done in the arena. It was fine, it was safe or Aang wouldn't have it. "Should've known you'd keep the bat."

It's almost accurate to say Bucky's legs almost collapse under him as he folds himself down next to the kid on the floor. He's had a lot of sleep but little of it that can be called restful.

"Hey, Bucky," Aang says as he works on a whittling project. He is carving a woman with her legs crossed and her eyes closed. Usually, this woman is supposed to be a representation of Avatar Yangchen, but he chooses not to carve her. Instead, it's just a generic Air Nomad woman, smiling as if she can see something beautiful behind her eyelids.

As if sensing what Bucky's thinking, Hariti bares her teeth at the man before crawling up Aang's back and settling on his shoulder.

"Of course I kept her. She was sick. And now she's my friend. Her name's Hariti. How are you doing?"

"They were dangerous in the arena." he says, knowing it's a needless reminder. He and Aang had gotten attacked by the bats together at one point, right after Aang survived being struck by lightning to try and help fix Bucky up.

He wishes he hadn't died again because of that. The memories he'd recovered during the arena had stayed with him but everything else... his friends tried so hard and inside Bucky can't help but feel he let them down.

"Fine, better." Steve is alive, the knowledge of that has helped him a lot. Bucky just has to make sure he doesn't look like he's getting over his grief too quick to the Capitol and those around him. "What are you doing?"

"She's not dangerous. She doesn't bite as long as she's fed." And she doesn't need much to stay fed. Aang just had a Capitolite nurse draw a few vials of blood from him, mix it with a little anti-coagulant, and Hariti is still working on it.

Aang wishes that Bucky had won too, if only so that his friend could stay with a healed brain for good, but he won't say so. He's sure that no matter how much he had wanted Bucky to get better, Bucky wants it a thousand times more.

"That's good." He won't question Bucky's progress. He wants Bucky to feel better so badly that he'll accept it even if it's a little odd. Yet despite the progress, he can't do much more than give a small forced smile. "I'm making an airbender woman," he says as he carves in the curves of her closed eyes. "I felt like whittling."

"Okay, kid." Bucky believes him. Aang's got a natural repertoire with animals, if he feels safe with the bat then Bucky won't say anything else, even if he'll be keeping an eye on her in the future just in case.

The forced grin on Aang's face made his gut twist, it just looked wrong. He shifts closer until he's almost pressed to Aang's side, trying to offer comfort as he works his way around to asking about the cause, "She looks really good. You've got a lot of talent, you know."

"Thanks."

Aang keeps his eyes on the figure, but he instinctively leans against Bucky. No matter how he tries to shut himself down, he needs affection and touch. He talks, forcing a cheerful note in his voice that doesn't belong there, trying to be happy when he's not. "When I was first learning how to meditate, I had trouble sitting still. My teacher let me work on art so I could learn how to focus. I got really good at it, so I learned how to meditate."

Monk Gyatso was good at that. He could always see what Aang needed and teach him like that, even when the other monks wanted to just push the traditional way harder with him.

He moves his arm then, draping it carefully over Aang's shoulder. His adopted little brother needs him now, Bucky tells himself, he can be what he has to be for him, whether that's a willing ear or an oversized pillow.

"A smart man." he smiles a little. Bucky had first hand experience at how hard it was for Aang to stay still, yet had noticed how curiously easy the kid found it to fall into meditation. "He taught you two skills at once."

"Yeah. Monk Gyatso taught me everything. He is the wisest--" Aang cuts himself off, his knife pausing over his work. "He was the wisest monk there."

He remembers the dreams they had. He remembers the conversation he had with his very first life and the one he had with Bucky over a child's corpse. He doesn't know how much Bucky remembers, but he remembers, and he knows that he can't keep doing this. He has to accept what he lost and move on, and that won't happen if he tries to pretend Monk Gyatso is waiting for him back home.

"He was one of my best friends in my past life. I think that's how he knew how to deal with me. He taught me everything about what being an airbender means. He would teach philosophy with stories and meditation with art and--" Aang gives a little laugh, but it's a gasping, painful laugh, "--and he used to teach me how to cook and aim air blasts by making fruit pies and throwing them on other monks' heads with me."

He turns the wooden woman around in his hands slowly, examining her face. "He didn't want the monks to tell me I was the Avatar until I was sixteen. I think he felt guilty that they told me so early, and that it made the other boys not want to play with me anymore, so he made sure to keep playing games with me. The other monks were upset because they could feel the Fire Nation preparing for war and the world needed the Avatar, so they decided to send me away to another Temple where I would have more intense training. They wanted to take Gyatso away from me."

His throat is tight, but there aren't tears yet. His eyes are completely dry. "So I ran away. I didn't want to be the Avatar. I just wanted my life back. I wanted to be with the people I loved. It didn't matter." His hands shake, blurring the airbender woman's face. "Everyone was killed because the Fire Lord couldn't kill me. When I went back home, I found Gyatso's bones. He was surrounded by dead soldiers. I..."

His voice cracks. The dam breaks. He curls up, letting out a low pained sound before beginning to cry in earnest with his forehead pressed to the wooden woman.

"Hey kiddo..." Bucky listens, his heart aching in his chest. Every day he mourns what he's forgotten, a feeling of loss that is it's own kind of pain, but Aang, Aang knows what it is he lost. He remembers every face, every voice...

He slides his legs down in front of him, stretching them out so that he has more room to lift Aang up and against him, pushing his head in against Bucky's chest as he wraps his arms around that small body, "You didn't know," he said softly, "You couldn't possibly have known."

Aang was just a kid, held to too high standards both by himself and those around him. It was cruel destiny that had landed him in the position, and cruel destiny that ensured he had to live with the guilt of events he never could have predicted.

Aang curls up in Bucky's lap and snuggles against his chest, allowing the man to envelop him in warmth and safety while he cries. Even the metal arm, unyielding even under cloth compared to the flesh and blood one, makes him feel more secure. He's not one to indulge in fantasies of being protected very often since he's good at protecting himself, but right now, it feels like he can just burrow here and be safe from the world because Bucky won't let anyone hurt him.

It's a childish and unsustainable fantasy, but he'll cling to it for now while he mourns.

"When I found him... I got so mad. Everything started glowing and I made the wind blow so hard that my friends were almost blown off the mountain." It was frightening, looking back on it. In that moment, he didn't care if they fell off the mountain or not. He could only think about how angry and sad and lonely he was, and he lost his sense of self with the Avatar State. "But after that... I decided to forgive the people who did it. Airbenders never believed in holding a grudge, and I owe it to them to be the best Air Nomad I can be. I'm not angry anymore. I'm just sad."

He buries his face into Bucky's shirt and tries to breathe between the crying. He forgives not just because he owes it to the airbenders, but because he's a forgiving person. Even so, for this, he has to forgive every day, because he misses his people and he'll never get them back. That's something he has to live with, whether he blames himself or not.

"It's not your fault." Aang might not believe it, the same way Bucky struggles to believe when he's told the same, but that doesn't mean he still doesn't need to be told so. "They wouldn't blame you."

Not if, as Aang said, the Airbenders didn't believe in holding grudges. He cups the back of Aang's head with his flesh hand, holding him closer to his chest. "It's okay to be sad."

Bucky let's him cry, it's all he can do, all he can offer. His presence as a stabilising element to all the grief that Aang carries inside him. It's not fair for the Capitol to trot out someone's intimate pain without their approval and he actually admires Aang for handling it as well as he is. If they'd done this to Bucky he would have ended up destroying something, or someone.

Hariti makes distressed squeaking noises as she noses Aang's cheek, as if that could soothe his pain, and when he doesn't stop crying, she digs her thumbs into the cloth covering Bucky's shoulder and hoists herself onto him, kneading his shirt with an expectation that he will be able to make Aang stop being so sad.

Aang keeps crying. He curls up against Bucky, clinging tight to him as his shoulders shake with wracking sobs he hasn't allowed himself to really cry. It's felt like he's had a hole in his chest for the past two years, and he's only now just started to dare take a peek at it.

Eventually, his sobbing subsides into hiccups. He collapses like a marionette without strings, slumping on Bucky's chest and allowing him to support his full weight. He doesn't have any energy left.

"You would have liked Gyatso," he says softly, his voice raw. And Gyatso would have liked Bucky. He's certain of that much. Gyatso had a way of seeing the best in people even when they couldn't see it themselves. Aang nuzzles the hollow of Bucky's throat, just breathing in his scent. He smells like safety.

"I'm glad I found you." And he hopes that he never has to say goodbye for good.

"I'm sure I would have, if he raised someone like you." Bucky nods, though Aang can't see it. His chin brushes the top of his head, while his metal hand passes gently up and down Aang's back. With the safety of fabric between it and the boys skin, Bucky feels safe using it in that manner.

There's so much of their past, their home lives, that they are unable to share with each other here; yet if they weren't, Bucky reflects, he and Aang would never have met at all. And meeting him has done Bucky a world of good, that's for sure.

Sometimes he tries to imagine where he'd be and what he'd be doing if the Capitol had never brought him back here. He probably wouldn't have the friends and family he did now, or be as close to healed as he's become.

"Me too, kid. Me too. Glad you decided to try and hug me that day."

Aang never had parents or siblings. He's never really felt the absences, since he's had monks like Gyatso and the other little Airbenders filling up the void for him, but he'd lie if he said he's never wondered what it'd be like. He imagines it must be like this. Wrapped up in the arms of someone who loves you and who will keep you safe.

He clings to Bucky's shirt, keeping his eyes closed and focusing on the feeling of Bucky's hand on his back and his heart beating against his ear.

He thinks about the first time they met. How he had thoroughly misunderstood why everyone was hugging each other on the ice rink and decided to hug one of the most dangerous-looking men there. It was the kind of stunt that would give Bucky a fit if he heard about him doing it now.

Despite his grief and exhaustion, he feels laughter bubbling in his chest. When it escapes his mouth, it's wet and mixed with a sob, but it's still laughter. "You didn't like that." For some reason, the memory of Bucky's scowl as he pried Aang off is hilarious right now. "Then you got mad when you caught me meditating on top of a car." So mad that he threatened him. Aang knew at the time that it was probably an empty threat, but now, feeling as safe with Bucky as he does, that incident seems hilarious too. So he keeps laughing, wet and hiccup-y, as he buries his face.

Clint watches the entire thing. It's not the first time he's seen such horrors, but he can't -- he can't turn it off. It's splashed across the entire city, it seems like, genocide repurposed for amusement. It makes him sick, and if that's how he's feeling, then hell, Aang must be ruined.

It's this thought that makes him move, purpose in his stride, steely eyed and determined as Clint cuts through halls and takes the elevator up to District Four. Someone tries to talk to him, to stop him, but Clint ignores them, knocking at Aang's door and sliding it open when he hears -- faintly, almost out of his hearing -- the sound of someone being sick.

"Aang, hey kiddo." He murmurs, kneeling by Aang's side, reaching out carefully to touch fingertips to shoulder, ready to pull back if that's what he wants. Ready to draw him into his arms if otherwise.

Aang had avoided telling anyone that all his people were dead. It hadn't been intentional at first, but then it was, because it was easier to act like they were waiting for him back home than let everyone know that he was alone. Now everyone knows, and there's no reason to pretend anymore.

There's nothing left in his stomach by the time someone comes inside the bathroom, but he's still dry heaving. His eyes water and his muscles shake, and he doesn't remember the last time he's been this sick. Despite how sick he is, he immediately recognizes the voice, and he leans into the touch because no matter what happens, Aang is a tactile person who needs people.

"They filmed it," he gasps softly, breathing heavily as he waits for the next heaving fit. "They filmed it."

Clint is a spy, and a very good one if he does say so himself. You don't get to Level 7 on just sheer luck and being a good shot. But for all that, he never called this. Maybe Aang was better at hiding than he thought, maybe he was rusty, whatever the case, this took him by surprise. But that doesn't matter, what does matter is the kid who got sidelined watching his people get slaughtered, mercilessly, paraded as sport.

This, Clint can try to help with. Aang leans into the touch and Clint moves easily, rubbing circles soothingly over the span of shoulderblades. Ready, in case Aang needs to throw up again, ready in case he needs anything else.

"I know." Softly, softly. He doesn't bother saying it's alright, because it's not. He won't sugar coat this, Aang's old enough to have fought through Arenas and died in them, he's lived with the burden of his people's deaths upon his thin shoulders. He is a child, but he hasn't truly been one in a long time. "I know they did."

Aang rests his sweaty head against the bathroom cabinet, focusing on his heavy breathing. It feels like he should still be heaving, but he just feels too weak for it. "I don't understand." He doesn't understand how anyone, let along an entire society, can have so little regard for life that the ruthless slaughter of an entire race is light entertainment.

He doesn't understand, and he's struggling to not allow the anger to overwhelm him. There's so much anger and hurt inside, and he knows that the only person he will hurt will be himself. It's hard, though. It's very hard not to get angry.

"I tried to go back after I woke up again. It was too late." His breathing shakes, and it's not because of heaving. "I didn't know they were dead. I didn't know until I found the bones. No one even remembers them anymore. I was so mad, I almost blew everything off the mountain." His chest heaves, but it's a sob, not anything else. "But it wouldn't help anything. They were already dead, and nothing would bring them back. So I decided to forgive Fire Lord Sozin and the Fire Nation for what they did." He scrubs tears with the heel of his hands, but it doesn't stop them from coming. "I forgave them. I forgive them every day."

And now he needs to forgive this too. He needs to forgive the Capitol for what it's done, and fight to keep it from continuing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

My hands are tied, for all I've seen has changed my mind

B

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

B

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

a.

no subject

no subject

no subject