The first thing Yui did on waking up was smell the air.

No brine, so they were inland now.  Interesting.  Had they finally reached whatever destination had been intended?  The teenager lay still where she had been dropped, feigning unconsciousness while she tried to convince her muscles that there was no need to still feel the effects of the drugs that had been used on her initially.

The people holding her seemed to buy her ruse. They’d chained her up, of course, but weren’t paying more than cursory attention to her otherwise.

Carefully, she cracked one eye open to see if she could see the chains.

They were, indeed, in view — heavy iron manacles.

So, they don’t intend I should escape, she thought, closing her eye again.  Whoever they are, they mean business.  Which means I need to fake this as long as I can to see if I can learn what they want and how best to upset that.

The snatches of conversation she managed to hear over the next few days made it clear that she was being held as part of some larger plot, though the plot itself remained unclear to the captive.

Yui found this quite annoying, to be certain, and thus when she pretended to regain consciousness on her own, she immediately began the Frightened Captive Ploy as soon as one of her captors came close.  She quailed against the wall, forcing her eyes wide and whimpering, “Wh-what do you want with me?”

“Not much, little pretty one,” he said, smiling slightly. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll let you go as soon as we can.”

Little pretty one!? she thought, outraged.  I’ll show you who’s little and pretty!  “B-but why me?” she stammered.  “I-I’m nothing, my f-family doesn’t have anything…”  She let tears glimmer in her eyes.

“Just relax, little pretty one. I’m sure you’ll be out of here in a couple weeks.”

She nodded, dropping her eyes and shivering.  “…Here,” he said, and pulled off his coat and draped it around her.

“Th-thank you,” she whispered.  Ha!  I own you now and you don’t even know it.

“No problem, little pretty one,” he said, smiling at her, then went about his other duties.

Yui took care to listen and observe, and to maintain the persona of the frightened, timid, sheltered little teenager that her captors believed they held.  The time for rebuilding her lost dignity would come shortly.

A few days later, one of the guards let slip that her kidnapping was part of an elaborate plot to trap her twin brother.

“Hush, you’ll jinx it,” another soldier snapped.

“We can manage the endgame without him,” the first soldier replied.

“I said hush!”

With that revelation came rage so potent Yui saw red.  Never mind that she hadn’t seen Kouji in five years, he was still her damned twin brother and she wouldn’t let any of these bastards lay so much as a finger on him.  Which meant she’d have to leave as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, that might prove rather difficult. She was never completely unchained — even when she was escorted from her wall by a female soldier to attend to nature’s needs, her hands and feet were chained close together with heavy iron.

Too bad for her captors that Yui loved a challenge — and picked locks for a hobby.  Getting something to use for a pick wasn’t easy; sad puppy eyes and general pleading with the man who had loaned her his coat eventually yielded a pair of hairpins to keep her bangs from her face.

The day she’d set for her escape, her captors let another detail slip — this one in the form of a startled yelp from a guard she wasn’t very familiar with.

“They’re bringing the little boy here?”

“Hush!”

Little boy?  That was interesting.  Another captive, or something else entirely?

Her question was answered a few hours later, when a rather pretty woman, maybe four or five years older than her brother Ichiro, showed up with a small child in tow.

“Why can’t I stay with him?” she asked one of the guards.

The response wasn’t audible.

The child, no longer being closely watched by his mother or even the guards, wandered over to her, curious.

Yui looked him over carefully, hiding the intensity of her gaze behind a friendly, though uncertain, smile.

He grinned up at her. “What’s that?” he asked, poking at one of the chains.

“They’re chains,” she told him, taking care to keep her voice soft and injecting just a trace of fear to it.

“What’s chains?” he asked, staring at her with bright golden eyes.

“They’re meant to bind people.”

“Why?”

“So they won’t escape, I guess.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”  Yui let tears fill her eyes, but not spill over.  “They won’t tell me why they’re keeping me here, and — I’m scared.”

“That’s mean,” he informed her, importantly.

She nodded, sniffling just a little.

He stared at her for a long moment. “What’re you gonna do?”

“I… I don’t know…”

The guards seemed fully occupied with the woman who’d brought the boy, and seemed to be insisting that she should stay with him.

“Can I help?”

You bright, beautiful boy, she thought.  “I… I don’t want you to get in trouble,” Yui hedged.

“No one ever gets mad at me,” he whispered.

“If you brought me the keys, they might…”

In response, he just grinned at her and slipped off, returning about ten minutes later with a ring of keys. “This what you wants?”

She nodded, turning a wary amber eye to the guards.  They were still occupied with the woman — the boy’s mother, apparently, according to her latest argument: “If it weren’t for me and my son, you’d have to work with one of Peacemaker’s half-breed brats instead!”

Now was as good a time as any.  She took the keys from the young boy and, as quietly as she could, tried to unlock her shackles.  He watched her, thumb in his mouth, golden eyes glittering with fascinated interest.  She was free in under a minute; keeping hold of the keys and watching in case she had to run, Yui began to back towards the door.

The little boy followed her.  She dared not shoo him away; if he was to cause a fuss…  Within moments she was out in the hallway and immediately began to search for a way out.  He tugged at her sleeve. “If you want to get away from the chains, there’s a door that way.”

She smiled down at him, the nascent tears in her eyes banished.  “Thank you.”

He grinned up at her. “Wanna see my trick?”

Yui considered.  “As soon as we’re away from here, I’d love to see it,” she promised him.  “But if they catch me now, they might hurt me.”

“That’s mean,” he said, frowning at the ground. “They’re never mean to me…”

Now that was interesting.  “Perhaps you’re special to them in a way that I’m not?” she suggested.  “Why don’t you show me where that door is?”

“Okay!” he said, smiling brightly up at her, and pulling her by the sleeve over to the aforementioned door. It was unlocked.

Yui opened it a crack and peeked outside.  There were no guards in sight.  She slipped through, leaving enough space for the child to follow her if he so chose.  He did choose, trying to copy her careful, quiet movements.  In this manner, both of them made it outside; a good lungful of fresh air untainted by metal and Yui realised where she was.  “Oh, those morons,” she said with a grin.  “Took me right back home…”

“What’s a moron?” the child piped up beside her.

“Someone who doesn’t use the brain they were born with.  Are you going to come with me, or stay here with them?”  She paused, then added, “It might not be very comfortable with me.  You’ll have to walk a lot.”

“…do you like sake?” he asked, suspiciously.

“I don’t drink sake, or any form of alcohol,” she replied.  “I don’t like what it does to my head.”

He looked relieved. “Mommy likes sake,” he whispered. “It makes her throw up. It stinks.”

“She must drink too much of it…”

“She don’t drink anything else,” he said sadly. “‘Cept sometimes lao-zao.”

Yui hugged the little boy tightly.  “Do you want to come with me, then?”

“Can I?” he asked hopefully.

“Of course.  And later tonight you can show me your trick.”  She offered him a hand.

“Okay!” he said, cheered up now, and took her hand.

“I’m Yui.  What’s your name?”

“Mikoto.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mikoto.”  Maliciously, she locked the door leading outside and tucked the keys inside her shirt.

“And you, Yui,” he said, bowing carefully.

She bowed back and took his hand once more, carefully leading him away.  He followed eagerly, again copying the careful, quiet way she moved.  The teenager was careful to keep to a pace he could follow, and when he tired, she gave him a pig-a-back ride.  When they finally stopped for the night, he asked again, eagerly, if tiredly, if he could show her his trick. It had never failed to produce happy reactions in people before.

“Of course you may,” she told him.  It was easier to keep promises made to kids.

He grinned up at her, then held out his hand and frowned in concentration. After a minute, a flame appeared, dancing an inch or two away from his palm. He kept watching it, to make sure it didn’t go out, but he kept sneaking little glances over at her to make sure she liked it.

Yui clapped her hands quietly.  “You’re a firebender!” she exclaimed.

“Yep!” he said, flame and grin growing a little bit brighter under her obvious approval.

“My oldest brother’s a firebender, too,” she confessed to Mikoto.

“Neat! The guards say that firebenders are the bestest people.”

“Well, some of them,” Yui remarked. “Can I tell you a secret, though?”

“Okay,” he whispered, eyes huge.

“My oldest brother is a firebender… but my twin brother is an earthbender.”

He frowned, confused. “But the guards said that earthbenders is enemies…”

“Not for five years,” Yui assured him.  “Before that, my brother had to hide it even though he’s a citizen of the Fire Nation, just like me, Ichiro, and our parents.”

Mikoto looked even more confused, and his flame wavered. “But the guards said…”

“Did they say why?”  Yui took care to remain gentle with him. What had they been filling that poor kid’s head with, anyway?

“‘Cause that’s the way it’s s’posed to be,” he said, still frowning.  “They said all the bad stuff that happens is ‘cause Peacemaker won’t let anyone kill earthbenders anymore.”

“That’s not true at all,” Yui said, gently drawing Mikoto into her lap to hide her sudden rage, and to comfort him.  “We’re actually supposed to live in peace together.  We were never supposed to be killing earthbenders to start with.”

“But the guards said…” he said, his flame dying completely in his confusion.  “Oh, no, it went away!” he said, now sounding more upset than confused.

“It happens sometimes,” she said, grateful for the change.  “Ichiro says it’s because of loss of concentration.  Why don’t you try to bring it back?”

He tried, and tried, staring at his hand, but he was too confused and upset and tired. When it wouldn’t come, he started crying. “It won’t come!”

Yui hugged him, and gently rocked him in her arms.  “Shhh, it’s all right,” she soothed him gently.  “You’ve had a long, exciting day, Mito.”  He clung back, trying to stop crying. Because only babies cried, and he wasn’t a baby anymore.  As she rocked him, she stroked his beautiful dark hair and sang quietly to him.

 

 

After a while, he fell asleep like that, curled up in her lap, face tear-streaked.  Gently, the teenager wrapped him in the coat she’d been loaned and settled in to sleep herself.