The Prisoners: Chapter Twelve
Title: The Prisoners
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Mai, Ty Lee, Huu Pairings: Mai/Zuko; references to Sokka/Suki
Word Count: ~26,000; fourteen chapters. Chapter Twelve: ~1,800
Summary: Mai and Ty Lee are trying to adjust to life in the Boiling Rock when they learn they're being transferred to the prison near the Fire Nation capital. Mai's uncle has rivals among his fellow wardens who demand that they be removed from his custody to avoid a conflict of interest. At Warden Poon's prison, Ty Lee finds new, unexpected friends in the Kyoshi Warriors and is comforted by being closer to her family. Meanwhile, Mai meets some of the oddest people she's ever seen: water benders from a swamp in the Earth Kingdom. She even becomes friends with one of them in particular, who challenges her pessimistic view of life.
Twelve
The next morning, Mai met Huu at the greenhouse as usual. She was surprised to see how much the place had already been cleaned up. Flowerpots and planters were set back in their places; vines were re-wrapped around the unbroken stakes. All of the damaged orchids were lined up on a table, many of them propped up with carefully placed sticks.
Huu said, indicating the orchids with his thumb, “I hear the Warden was in here all night.”
An image of Poon hovering over his orchids like a father with a sick child popped into Mai's head. The inmates responsible for this were going to be in solitary confinement for a very long time.
Huu tended to the plants while Mai cleaned up debris. She tried to forget yesterday, to tell herself it had been just another fight, but honestly it hadn’t been.
The people who wanted to hurt her and Ty Lee wouldn’t stop. The next attack might be tomorrow or six months from now, but it would come. She thought of the men with the triangular burn scars. This gang had so far restricted themselves to small humiliations, but who knew what they were planning? And some of the guards would be happy to help. The few allies she and Ty Lee had wouldn’t always be around.
She picked stray objects up from the ground and piled them on a table. There was no way out of this situation, until her uncle got them back-if he got them back. Izo was one of very few people she had ever had any faith in, but she knew he was not all-powerful. He was in a precarious position, and if he wasn’t careful he could end up hurting himself as well as failing her. She sighed. Every time she got her hopes up about anything-Omashu being interesting, Zuko coming back home against all odds-everything turned out worse than she could have imagined.
The only thing she had to look forward to now was being moved to a different prison. It was pathetic.
Huu said, “Mai, if you keep bangin' everythin' so hard you’re gonna break somethin’.”
She stopped, a trowel in her hands, and looked at him. He regarded her for a moment, then asked, “You upset by what happened yesterday?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Nothing happened.” She silently placed the trowel on the table.
He gestured around the greenhouse. “Well, somethin' happened.”
She picked up a pair of heavy, slightly scorched gloves and said casually, “I’ve been in plenty of fights before. And we expected someone to try something.”
Huu frowned slightly, although the expression did not change his general air of bone-deep, unshakable calm. He said mildly, “Even when you expect somethin' bad, it can still be a shock when it actually happens.”
“I’m shocked when good things happen.”
He rummaged through the storage shelves, pulling out empty pots. “Why?”
Mai made an exasperated sound. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in prison, and we’re never getting out. Good things generally don’t happen to people in prison.”
He held up a pot, comparing its size to a broken one that held a pale purple orchid with dark gray tipped stigma. He stopped and looked at her, curious. “You don’t think you’ll get out after the Avatar defeats the Fire Lord?”
She looked incredulous. “Do you seriously still think that’s going to happen?”
As she had gotten to know him better, she’d realized that Huu, while a country bumpkin with peculiar ways, was not a fool. Yet he clung to this naive belief in the Avatar.
He said simply, “I do.”
She threw a batch of broken pollinating sticks onto the table and demanded, “Why? The Avatar had his chance during the eclipse. He failed. All that came of the invasion was you and your friends getting captured.”
“The invasion didn’t work,” he replied, with no trace of bitterness or regret, “but the Avatar is still out there. He’ll fight again when the time is right and end the war.”
Mai closed her eyes for a moment, willing her rising temper to cool. She remembered Ty Lee’s words about how far the water benders were from home. Of course Huu would want to believe something that gave him hope of going home someday, no matter how ridiculous. She shouldn’t yell at him for it.
She said, “He doesn’t have much time left. Do you know about Sozin’s Comet?” Huu nodded as he began digging into the purple orchid's soil. “Well, then you know the Fire Nation will have the power to finish this war once and for all. The earth benders won’t be able to hold out. The Avatar won’t be able to beat the Fire Lord.” She sighed. “I know, it’s bad news for you, and now it’s bad news for me too, but it’s reality. There’s no way your side will win. We’re both going to be here until we die.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe I’ll get lucky for once and die young.”
Huu said, like he was noting that it was going to rain, “Time is an illusion. Death, too.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I can understand taking the attitude that time is an illusion, because we are in prison for life. But, death? That’s real. Everybody dies.” She remembered Fire Lord Azulon’s funeral, her grandfather Sanyo’s funeral, her grandmother Anzu’s funeral. She wondered whether prisoners who died would even get a proper funeral.
As he moved the purple orchid to its new pot, he said, “Of course everyone dies. But everyone is reborn as well.”
The old reincarnation myth-it had been a while since she'd heard it. The idea was considered superstition among educated people. Most of the Fire Sages didn’t even really believe in it anymore. She shook her head. “I’d just as well skip doing this all over again.”
Huu chuckled. “I reckon you can’t just decide not to be reborn.”
“Why not?”
“Because everythin’ in the world is connected. Everyone is. Look at us,” he drew a line with his dirt smudged forefinger between the two of them. “You were born in this huge city in the Fire Nation, and I was born in the Foggy Swamp-a long time before you-and our people’ve been at war for a hundred years, and still, here we are." He nodded slowly. "You can’t know exactly what form the connection’ll take, but it always finds a way to take root, no matter what’s in the way. All these connections form a kind of web." He held up his hands and splayed his fingers. "You can’t just cut a piece out without damagin’ the whole thing.”
“So you’re saying we’re all trapped, like ant-moths in a spider-fly’s web? That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”
She figured this would be the comment that made him tell her to stop being so cynical, so critical, so glum, and change the subject. People never bothered telling her why she should stop thinking whatever she was thinking, just that she should stop talking about it.
Instead, he asked, “Why do you see bein' connected to other folks as bein' trapped?”
A flippant reply started to form, but she felt that, since he had helped her yesterday, she should try to answer his question seriously. She sat down on a stool, suddenly weary. “Most of the time, people use their connection to you to control you. You don’t have any freedom to do what you want.”
He inspected the leaves on the battered purple orchid. “I can see what you mean. I’ve noticed a lot of the other prisoners and the guards here doin’ what you describe. But that’s not how it needs to be. That’s not how it is where I’m from.” He scratched his chin and pronounced, “Control is an illusion.”
She countered, “Parents control their children. The Warden controls this prison. The Fire Lord controls most of the world now.”
“Parents care for their children. The Warden controls this prison like he controls this greenhouse: he can keep livin’ things cooped up inside, but he can’t make ‘em do all he wants. If he could, he wouldn’t need all the guards and the locked doors, and he wouldn’t need us takin’ care of the orchids." Huu winked. "And the Fire Lord,” he smiled, “well, no one can control the whole world.”
“Not even the Avatar?”
“Oh, that’s not the Avatar’s job. The Avatar’s supposed to keep the balance between the elements and the nations of the world, not control it.”
She rearranged flowerpots to make more room on the table. “So, no one has any power at all? They can’t change anything?”
And people called her a nihilist.
Huu shook his head. “It’s exactly the opposite." He turned to face her, ignoring the plants. "Everyone affects things, all the time. Most of the time in little ways, sometimes in big ways, and sometimes in ways they can’t imagine. Every once in a while, someone has a chance to change the entire world. Sozin knew he was makin’ a big change when he started the war. But other times, folks don’t realize what they do will change anythin'.”
“Important people can change things," Mai corrected. "Sozin was Fire Lord. Most people don’t have any hope of changing anything, even if we sacrifice a great deal to do it.” Bitterness crept into her voice on her last words.
Huu looked thoughtful. “You know, Ty Lee told us about what happened with you and your feller out at the Boiling Rock. It seems to me that what you chose to do there was significant.”
Mai made an irritated noise. Ty Lee was free to blab her own business to anyone she pleased, but she had no right to spread everyone else's around. “Actually, it’s not. The only good that came of it was my uncle surviving. And, well, you don’t know him, but he’s not sure it was worth what he lost in power and reputation.”
He looked at her steadily and said, “You also saved several of the Avatar’s key allies.”
She rolled her eyes. “And they’re going to help the Avatar end the war, meaning that a decision I made for an entirely different purpose ended up helping bring peace to the world.”
He grinned. “Sure 'nough.”
She stood up and started stacking items back on the shelves at the front of the greenhouse. “I’ll be impressed if any of the Avatar’s friends survive, never mind end the war.”
The gong for lunch sounded. She was disappointed to hear it. As daft as Huu’s ideas could be, talking to him was interesting.
He said, “I think you’re gonna be impressed when this is all over.”
“I’m not holding my breath.”
--end Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Mai, Ty Lee, Huu Pairings: Mai/Zuko; references to Sokka/Suki
Word Count: ~26,000; fourteen chapters. Chapter Twelve: ~1,800
Summary: Mai and Ty Lee are trying to adjust to life in the Boiling Rock when they learn they're being transferred to the prison near the Fire Nation capital. Mai's uncle has rivals among his fellow wardens who demand that they be removed from his custody to avoid a conflict of interest. At Warden Poon's prison, Ty Lee finds new, unexpected friends in the Kyoshi Warriors and is comforted by being closer to her family. Meanwhile, Mai meets some of the oddest people she's ever seen: water benders from a swamp in the Earth Kingdom. She even becomes friends with one of them in particular, who challenges her pessimistic view of life.
Twelve
The next morning, Mai met Huu at the greenhouse as usual. She was surprised to see how much the place had already been cleaned up. Flowerpots and planters were set back in their places; vines were re-wrapped around the unbroken stakes. All of the damaged orchids were lined up on a table, many of them propped up with carefully placed sticks.
Huu said, indicating the orchids with his thumb, “I hear the Warden was in here all night.”
An image of Poon hovering over his orchids like a father with a sick child popped into Mai's head. The inmates responsible for this were going to be in solitary confinement for a very long time.
Huu tended to the plants while Mai cleaned up debris. She tried to forget yesterday, to tell herself it had been just another fight, but honestly it hadn’t been.
The people who wanted to hurt her and Ty Lee wouldn’t stop. The next attack might be tomorrow or six months from now, but it would come. She thought of the men with the triangular burn scars. This gang had so far restricted themselves to small humiliations, but who knew what they were planning? And some of the guards would be happy to help. The few allies she and Ty Lee had wouldn’t always be around.
She picked stray objects up from the ground and piled them on a table. There was no way out of this situation, until her uncle got them back-if he got them back. Izo was one of very few people she had ever had any faith in, but she knew he was not all-powerful. He was in a precarious position, and if he wasn’t careful he could end up hurting himself as well as failing her. She sighed. Every time she got her hopes up about anything-Omashu being interesting, Zuko coming back home against all odds-everything turned out worse than she could have imagined.
The only thing she had to look forward to now was being moved to a different prison. It was pathetic.
Huu said, “Mai, if you keep bangin' everythin' so hard you’re gonna break somethin’.”
She stopped, a trowel in her hands, and looked at him. He regarded her for a moment, then asked, “You upset by what happened yesterday?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Nothing happened.” She silently placed the trowel on the table.
He gestured around the greenhouse. “Well, somethin' happened.”
She picked up a pair of heavy, slightly scorched gloves and said casually, “I’ve been in plenty of fights before. And we expected someone to try something.”
Huu frowned slightly, although the expression did not change his general air of bone-deep, unshakable calm. He said mildly, “Even when you expect somethin' bad, it can still be a shock when it actually happens.”
“I’m shocked when good things happen.”
He rummaged through the storage shelves, pulling out empty pots. “Why?”
Mai made an exasperated sound. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in prison, and we’re never getting out. Good things generally don’t happen to people in prison.”
He held up a pot, comparing its size to a broken one that held a pale purple orchid with dark gray tipped stigma. He stopped and looked at her, curious. “You don’t think you’ll get out after the Avatar defeats the Fire Lord?”
She looked incredulous. “Do you seriously still think that’s going to happen?”
As she had gotten to know him better, she’d realized that Huu, while a country bumpkin with peculiar ways, was not a fool. Yet he clung to this naive belief in the Avatar.
He said simply, “I do.”
She threw a batch of broken pollinating sticks onto the table and demanded, “Why? The Avatar had his chance during the eclipse. He failed. All that came of the invasion was you and your friends getting captured.”
“The invasion didn’t work,” he replied, with no trace of bitterness or regret, “but the Avatar is still out there. He’ll fight again when the time is right and end the war.”
Mai closed her eyes for a moment, willing her rising temper to cool. She remembered Ty Lee’s words about how far the water benders were from home. Of course Huu would want to believe something that gave him hope of going home someday, no matter how ridiculous. She shouldn’t yell at him for it.
She said, “He doesn’t have much time left. Do you know about Sozin’s Comet?” Huu nodded as he began digging into the purple orchid's soil. “Well, then you know the Fire Nation will have the power to finish this war once and for all. The earth benders won’t be able to hold out. The Avatar won’t be able to beat the Fire Lord.” She sighed. “I know, it’s bad news for you, and now it’s bad news for me too, but it’s reality. There’s no way your side will win. We’re both going to be here until we die.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe I’ll get lucky for once and die young.”
Huu said, like he was noting that it was going to rain, “Time is an illusion. Death, too.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I can understand taking the attitude that time is an illusion, because we are in prison for life. But, death? That’s real. Everybody dies.” She remembered Fire Lord Azulon’s funeral, her grandfather Sanyo’s funeral, her grandmother Anzu’s funeral. She wondered whether prisoners who died would even get a proper funeral.
As he moved the purple orchid to its new pot, he said, “Of course everyone dies. But everyone is reborn as well.”
The old reincarnation myth-it had been a while since she'd heard it. The idea was considered superstition among educated people. Most of the Fire Sages didn’t even really believe in it anymore. She shook her head. “I’d just as well skip doing this all over again.”
Huu chuckled. “I reckon you can’t just decide not to be reborn.”
“Why not?”
“Because everythin’ in the world is connected. Everyone is. Look at us,” he drew a line with his dirt smudged forefinger between the two of them. “You were born in this huge city in the Fire Nation, and I was born in the Foggy Swamp-a long time before you-and our people’ve been at war for a hundred years, and still, here we are." He nodded slowly. "You can’t know exactly what form the connection’ll take, but it always finds a way to take root, no matter what’s in the way. All these connections form a kind of web." He held up his hands and splayed his fingers. "You can’t just cut a piece out without damagin’ the whole thing.”
“So you’re saying we’re all trapped, like ant-moths in a spider-fly’s web? That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”
She figured this would be the comment that made him tell her to stop being so cynical, so critical, so glum, and change the subject. People never bothered telling her why she should stop thinking whatever she was thinking, just that she should stop talking about it.
Instead, he asked, “Why do you see bein' connected to other folks as bein' trapped?”
A flippant reply started to form, but she felt that, since he had helped her yesterday, she should try to answer his question seriously. She sat down on a stool, suddenly weary. “Most of the time, people use their connection to you to control you. You don’t have any freedom to do what you want.”
He inspected the leaves on the battered purple orchid. “I can see what you mean. I’ve noticed a lot of the other prisoners and the guards here doin’ what you describe. But that’s not how it needs to be. That’s not how it is where I’m from.” He scratched his chin and pronounced, “Control is an illusion.”
She countered, “Parents control their children. The Warden controls this prison. The Fire Lord controls most of the world now.”
“Parents care for their children. The Warden controls this prison like he controls this greenhouse: he can keep livin’ things cooped up inside, but he can’t make ‘em do all he wants. If he could, he wouldn’t need all the guards and the locked doors, and he wouldn’t need us takin’ care of the orchids." Huu winked. "And the Fire Lord,” he smiled, “well, no one can control the whole world.”
“Not even the Avatar?”
“Oh, that’s not the Avatar’s job. The Avatar’s supposed to keep the balance between the elements and the nations of the world, not control it.”
She rearranged flowerpots to make more room on the table. “So, no one has any power at all? They can’t change anything?”
And people called her a nihilist.
Huu shook his head. “It’s exactly the opposite." He turned to face her, ignoring the plants. "Everyone affects things, all the time. Most of the time in little ways, sometimes in big ways, and sometimes in ways they can’t imagine. Every once in a while, someone has a chance to change the entire world. Sozin knew he was makin’ a big change when he started the war. But other times, folks don’t realize what they do will change anythin'.”
“Important people can change things," Mai corrected. "Sozin was Fire Lord. Most people don’t have any hope of changing anything, even if we sacrifice a great deal to do it.” Bitterness crept into her voice on her last words.
Huu looked thoughtful. “You know, Ty Lee told us about what happened with you and your feller out at the Boiling Rock. It seems to me that what you chose to do there was significant.”
Mai made an irritated noise. Ty Lee was free to blab her own business to anyone she pleased, but she had no right to spread everyone else's around. “Actually, it’s not. The only good that came of it was my uncle surviving. And, well, you don’t know him, but he’s not sure it was worth what he lost in power and reputation.”
He looked at her steadily and said, “You also saved several of the Avatar’s key allies.”
She rolled her eyes. “And they’re going to help the Avatar end the war, meaning that a decision I made for an entirely different purpose ended up helping bring peace to the world.”
He grinned. “Sure 'nough.”
She stood up and started stacking items back on the shelves at the front of the greenhouse. “I’ll be impressed if any of the Avatar’s friends survive, never mind end the war.”
The gong for lunch sounded. She was disappointed to hear it. As daft as Huu’s ideas could be, talking to him was interesting.
He said, “I think you’re gonna be impressed when this is all over.”
“I’m not holding my breath.”
--end Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen