Chapter Text
It begins with a dream. . . .
Foreign, yet sweetly familiar. A comforting dream that just seems so real... Soothing and warm... The sun shines brilliantly overhead and the ocean shimmers in its grace, almost flicking back a sort of gesture of welcome. It expanded for miles upon miles, farther than any eye could ever see. Meanwhile the ice was a pristine white that was as dazzling as the moon during a cold night. It crunched under fur boots but, somehow, any print was covered back up in an instant.
From behind was the slight chatter of a community. Smoke billowed in soft plumes from fires and the smell of fish cooking was enough to make any stomach growl; didn't matter how hungry you were or weren't, that's just what it did to you. Children were laughing throughout the course of their games, women spoke amongst each other in soft tones, and the men laughed as they prepared their tools for a day of hunting. Without looking, it was obvious just where this place was.
It was the Southern Water Tribe - Home, no less - yet at the same time it wasn't. No doubt was this the South Pole, home of a simpler group of people that rivaled the populated city in the north. It just wasn't his home. The Southern Tribe he knew was virtually nonexistent, scarce in its numbers and on the brink of extinction. The sun hardly shined and the people hardly spoke; there wasn't a single child there capable of laughter. By now, they probably were all dead. And the reality was what startled a possibly eighteen year-old prisoner from his slumber.
There was no denying the ache in his body as soon as the dream ended, his throat raw and sore from dehydration... His head was pounding away like a ceremonial drum, but there was nothing to celebrate. The supposed "Avatar", hailing from the South Pole and the Southern Water Tribe, was a near-lifeless heap on the cold, stone ground of his cell. Ren's hands were tightly bound and covered by reinforced steel, a chain link from the wrists connecting to a heavy belt around his waist; his ankles were chained together as well, but it would make no difference whether his legs were limited or not. All he really cared about, at the end of this fifth month of "true" acceptance, was the bland wall across from him and opposite to the bolted door.
Nearly two years locked away in this prison, with no access to anything outside of the dry slop fed to him every so often. Any water? Hydration? Forget about it. Whenever he was given water, there would always be a considerable handful of guards that lined the walls of his cell and watched him gulp down the cool, life-saving liquid. As it grew to be more of a luxury than a means of escape - that tiny cup of water - using it to his advantage had completely left his mind.
But now... Today was a little bit different; today was the day he made progress.
'Avatar Shmavatar..' Ren's thoughts slurred, the corner of his dried, cracked lips twitching up into a thin smile. See, today was the day he got this little chunk of old stone two inches from his nose to move, lifting from its flat face to teeter on its point and then come flopping back over on to its other side. It could've very well been just a chance of his breath, or some small tremor in the floor that caused it to sort of bounce like that, but there was always a chance that it wasn't. That was the bitter, half-hearted illusion Ren chose to cling to in the midst of his own despair.
In the event that it wasn't his breath or a tremor, it would explain the massive, splitting headache he got from concentrating so hard; that, or he was starving and dehydrated. Which wasn't that far off, either. A small shard of stone that was no bigger than the first knuckle of his pinkie, however, no matter the origins of its movement, wasn't going to do anything against an armored Fire Nation soldier, but at that point it was the only thing keeping him occupied. Sane, if you will. Earthbending, he deemed, was borderline impossible for a waterbender. The legends of the Avatar mastering all elements was complete bogus, the scholar that had washed up in an overturned boat at his doorstep was absolutely crazy, and, you know what, maybe Ren had already gone completely bonkers too.
If he was the Avatar, shouldn't he have been able to bust out by now?
That was the thought that came to his mind every other hour, starting from a year ago.
His eyes stared beyond the small shred of stone, looking at something, yet seeing nothing at all. When was the last time they brought him water in the first place? The dryness was almost suffocating and incredibly grueling on his already weathered body; even the pain in his limbs, stiff from constantly being held in the same position for god knows how long, and his pounding headache had dumbed down to a low beat. This was no way to live, and yet he had managed it this far. In fact, he was sure everyone else at that prison was managing somehow.
Ren swallowed thickly, cringing at the way his tongue scratched the roof of his mouth before continuing to stare. Zaken, the scholar from the North, kept coming back to his mind, becoming the one strand of faux hope that part of him clung to so desperately. 'First water, then earth, then fire, then air...' the old man's voice repeated in his head, distant and too soft to make much sense out of. But he had heard it so many times during the year that he didn't need to hear it again; the order that the Avatar from the water tribes had to learn the elements in. He wanted to laugh bitterly, and to him wasting the energy to do it seemed perfectly worth it.
Sudden, and almost like a voice, a sound made its way around the halls, passing by occupied and unoccupied cells. The sound didn't come without a presence to match it either. They were footsteps, heavy with the wait of armor and authority. You could usually tell when it was time for water or food - considering how scarce it tended to be for him - so the sound of a guard might've meant that they were about to alleviate some of his suffering. Some of it.. He whimpered in spite of his best efforts to keep it to himself, all thoughts of Avatars and bending and home completely abolished from his mind. Thank the gods that were out there, because the bolts on his door started to undo.
There were two guards - quite a big difference compared to the usual amount - and with them was a can of water. It was metallic, it was warm, but bless the Moon it was still water. So came the usual process; they mocked him, forced him upright, kept his limbs pinned and his hands covered so that he couldn't move or reach the water himself, but whatever they were saying about him fell on numb ears. He was greedy with his gulps of water the minute the rim of the slightly stained can touched his lips, even going so far as to scold himself for not savoring it. This very desperation had the two guards laughing - admittedly with some obvious hesitance. But it didn't matter by the end of it, because they moved on in mere minutes.
Ren allowed himself to slump against the wall, listening to the steps fade away with their routine checks. No doubt did he feel "pitiful" for his reaction, but he was as content as one could be locked up in a prison like a rabid beast. This was just what his life had become ever since he left the South Pole.
So there was the matter of his story; who was he really? Where did he come from? Why was he there?
Renya, age fifteen at the time and affectionately called Ren by his mother, was taken from his home in the South Pole due to suspicions of him being the Avatar; he was the only waterbender in all of the South, but no one knew until later on after the previous attacks. He was kept imprisoned within the heart of the Fire Nation for nearly two years, unable to escape by any means. They kept him weak, they kept him away from water - the only element they knew he could control - and kept him bound CONSTANTLY. Just as he continued to be now. At one point during the first few months, supposed "experts", sages from temples, came in to confirm whether or not he really was the Avatar. Their tests, speculations and theories were all hazy, to the point where their vists seemed like dreams themselves. Since he was still alive and imprisoned so intently, he could only assume that that was the case. Or they kept him like that to pretend that everything was under control, a ploy to save a little face.
During his time there, however, he heard of all the stories of the Fire Nation's sieges from the mouths of the guards that tended to him, and the destruction and pain they brought. Because of that, he just got angrier and angrier, his new desire being that he wanted nothing more than to escape. If he really was the Avatar, then surely there was something he could do.
Right?
No. That spurt of confidence and resolve felt like an eternity ago, faded like the burn mark on the small of his back. Now, Ren didn't know why he was still alive. Was it a subtle act of defiance? Was there part of him that wanted to live, and some day escape? Funny thing is, the teen had put himself into this very situation - and, in turn, put himself in that very cell. When the Fire Nation came back to his home, still hellbent on finding the "mysterious" and "ellusive" Avatar, Ren had told (well, shown) them that he was there. It was to save his tribe and what little remained of it, but even now... Well, he didn't know if anyone was still alive.
Ren's vision was practically swimming by that point, the cells of his body letting themselves be rejuvenated by the more recent drink. It was enough to keep him alive - that was the intention, of course - but nowhere near enough for it to make much of a difference. He wanted to sleep, to pass through the hours like usual until the day he would rot away and die. Sure, the dreams of an unfamiliar land and an unfamilair voice would come back, but they were much more fuzzy the longer his sentence dragged on; maybe they'll completely stop this time.
As he slipped off the wall and fell over onto his side, chains rattling, he completely missed the sound of stone scraping stone. The block in the wall opposite of the door - one that had been loosened some time before Ren's own arrival - was no longer in its place. He was too disoriented, too quickly swallowed up by the darkness to notice; therefore, the new hole in the wall and the frost bitten arm that came hesitantly through also completely missed his attention.
Ren was out like a light.