Chapter 2: The Prisoner's Awakening
Consciousness returned as a dull, throbbing ache behind her eyes, followed swiftly by the cold. A deep, bone-aching cold that had nothing to do with the weather. It lived in the stone beneath her, in the air that she dragged into her lungs. It was the cold of being buried alive.
Lisa opened her eyes. Darkness, then shapes. A rough-hewn ceiling of rock, glistening. The light was gray and sickly, falling from a single source high above—a metal grate, a window to a world she could no longer reach. The shadows it cast were long and twisted.
She tried to move. A rattle of heavy links, a bite of frozen metal into her wrists. Her arms were wrenched behind her, bound at the elbows and wrists. The chains were thick, crude, and etched with dull, repetitive grooves that seemed to swallow the warmth of her own skin. Anti-bending manacles. She’d only ever seen diagrams.
A violent shiver racked her body, and fire lanced across her ribs. She hissed, the sound too loud in the stagnant quiet. Her uniform tunic was gone, leaving her in a thin, ash-stained undershirt. The gash from the water-tribe blade was a angry, clotted line along her side. It hadn’t been cleaned. Dried blood cracked on her skin.
Her feet were bare on the stone. Scattered around her, like the shed skin of a dead thing, were the ripped and scorched remnants of her red armor. Someone had stripped her, tossed the pieces here like trash. The message was clear: you are no longer a soldier. You are refuse.
Voices echoed, distorted by the cavernous space beyond her cell. A low, heated discussion.
“—string her up at the tide line. Let the gulls have her. A message.” That voice was gruff, older, frayed with anger.
“A message to who? The Fire Nation doesn’t care about one lost grunt.” This voice was calmer, tactical. “She’s leverage. A trade for our people taken from the southern whaling camp.”
“Leverage?” A third voice, sharp and female, cut in. “You think the Fire Lord barters for pigs in uniform? She’s a whetstone. Nothing more. Let the warriors who lost kin today have their due. Let them remember what it feels like to strike back.”
Lisa closed her eyes, trying to breathe through the panic that clawed up her throat. Fire Lord. Her father. They had no idea who she was. To them, she was just another faceless monster in red. The thought was strangely liberating, and utterly terrifying.
The scrape of a wooden door. Footsteps, light and sure, approached her cell.
Lisa forced her eyes open, lifting her head with an effort that made her neck scream.
She stood silhouetted in the doorway, a waterskin and a cloth bundle in her hands. The weak light caught the platinum streaks in her long black hair, making them gleam like ice. Her face was all sharp, elegant lines—high cheekbones, a pointed chin, eyes the colour of dark peat. She was beautiful in a way that was utterly severe, like a knife balanced on its point.
Her eyes, those cat-like brown eyes, found Lisa’s. There was no curiosity in them. Only a flat, settled hatred. It was a wall. It was a glacier.
She entered the cell without a word, setting the waterskin down with a soft thud. She knelt, her movements efficient, and uncorked it. The smell of fermented seaweed and faint herbs hit the air. Healing spirits. A battlefield kit.
Jennie soaked the cloth, her gaze never leaving Lisa’s face. “Try to burn me,” she said, her voice quiet and low, “and I’ll freeze the water in your lungs.”
Lisa said nothing. Her throat was too dry.
The cloth was cold, not warm, as Jennie began to dab at the crusted blood on Lisa’s side. The touch was clinical, impersonal. It hurt. Lisa sucked in a sharp breath, her muscles tensing against the chains.
“Your people burned a healing hut today,” Jennie said conversationally, as if commenting on the weather. “With three children inside. Your commander, the scarred one, he laughed.”
“He’s not my—” Lisa’s voice was a raspy croak. She swallowed, tried again. “I didn’t. I tried to stop it.”
Jennie’s hands paused for a fraction of a second. Then she pressed the cloth harder into the wound. Lisa jerked, a groan escaping her.
“Stop it,” Jennie repeated, the words dripping with acid. “A Fire Nation soldier. A noble defender of the weak. Do you think we’re stupid? Or do you just enjoy the lie?”
“I’m not lying.” Anger, hot and desperate, cut through some of the fog. “I broke rank. I shielded a child. I tried to hold a burning beam so two women could get out. That’s how I got caught.”
Jennie’s eyes flicked down to Lisa’s hands, still bound behind her. She reached down and, with a grip that was not gentle, pulled one of Lisa’s arms forward as far as the chains would allow. She examined the palm, the fingers.
Lisa saw what she was looking for. The skin there was red, blistered in a distinct, sweeping pattern. A burn, but not from launching fire. From deflecting it. From intercepting a fellow soldier’s blast aimed at civilians. It was a defender’s wound, not an aggressor’s.
Jennie stared at the burn. Her expression didn’t change, but something in the air between them did. The flat hatred gained a crack, a hairline fracture of doubt. She dropped Lisa’s hand as if it were poison.
“My brother,” Jennie said, the words falling like stones into the silence. “His ship was boarded three years ago. He was a trader. He surrendered. They burned him anyway. Just… lit him up like a signal fire. For fun.”
She looked back at Lisa, and the crack was gone, sealed over by a fresh layer of permafrost. “So you had a moment of weakness. You flinched. It doesn’t matter. You wore the uniform. You marched with them. Your fire is the same fire that cooked his bones.”
She stood up, wiping her hands on her parka. The cloth bundle, the healing supplies, she left on the floor. “The elders will decide if you’re more useful dead or alive. Either way, you’re here until you rot.”
She turned to leave.
“I’m sorry,” Lisa whispered. It was a stupid thing to say. It was nothing. Less than nothing.
Jennie stopped in the doorway. Her back was rigid. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet Lisa almost missed it. “Your apology is a hole in the ice. It means nothing, and it will not bear your weight.”
The door shut. The bar slid home with a final, resonant thud.
Lisa was alone again with the creeping cold, the chains, and the ghost of a burn on her hands that told a truth no one here would ever believe. The voices outside had faded. The debate was over, for now. She let her head fall back against the stone, staring up at the grate. The sky beyond was the color of a fresh bruise.
She focused on the pain in her side, in her head, in her wrists. It was a map of her choices. It was the only thing she had left that was real.