Violent Delights, ATLA

chapter two, love many things

02
LOVE MANY THINGS

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO HAVE bravery and kindness when it came to her father. She was only four and he worked her to the bone since she showed incredible firebending capabilities. No matter how many times her mother pleaded for him to go easy on her, he never listened and only did the opposite. San hated how her mother would cry herself to sleep on most nights. She hated her father. She hated.

He was not husband nor father first and foremost, he was a patriot first and foremost and he made that clear enough. The love he had for his nation was far larger than the love for his family. The loyalty he had for his Fire Lord ran deeper than the bonds he was meant to have with his wife and daughter. To put it simply, his ambition was far greater than his care for his loved ones. As soon as he found out San was (practically) the sun, he saw an opportunity. There was no genuine soft love in his eyes like the ones in her mother's. Just raw eagerness to turn her into something she wasn't. But San was too young and unsure of how to rebel so she followed whatever her father ordered her to do and worked to the bone — even if her lungs were on fire and her muscles ached for weeks.

Before she was to be the nation's weapon, he made sure she was his secret weapon first. He decided her education to be better done home-schooled than have her attend the famous Royal Fire Academy for Girls. San didn't show it but she was disappointed. She wanted to make friends her age but she was rarely let outside and barely had free time to spare. Honestly, she'd do anything to stop hearing her father rant about how she was lucky to have been 'chosen' again. He made it sound like fate spun the wheel and the arrow landed on her during her birth. San believed in fate but her father made her wish she hadn't.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt. If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." Was the saying her father drilled into her head ever since she was six. Now she was eight and she could recite it by heart.

Her father was drawn to violence like moths to a flame. San was repulsed by it like two same poles of a magnet. Although during this Hundred Year War, she knew it had to be inevitable — she'd only resort to bringing death upon another's life if deemed absolutely necessary. That being said, she knew better than to say such a belief in her father's face.

Sometimes, San wondered what goes on inside his head. Perhaps he's being fed by the decadent delicacies dear to his demons on a long pine table with Satan crooning in his ear, wrapped around his neck drenched in the sweat of sinners. She wanted to believe there is some better version of himself deep down, a quality her mother had seen before he succumbed to his greed, but she could never see it.

"The Fire Nation is the greatest nation and to wield the element of fire is of the utmost blessing," he'd say. "It's even more of a blessing that you hold the sun spirit's heart within you and you'd do well to make the Fire Nation proud one day. To make me proud. Fire is destruction, unforgiving, and you must treat it as such. Revel in the disastrous power you have in the palm of your hands and don't be afraid to use it by giving it your all. Don't hold back."

But San was afraid of burning the things she loved and being unable to stop it from spreading.

"No! You cannot be afraid of fire! You must relish it! Burn. Burn your soul and your heart and emit such power the fauna will tremble before you."

San had enough of her father's voice echoing in her ears like the insides of a conch. She yelled angrily and produced a devouring white flame from her palms, a titanium white glow staining her surroundings chasing away payne's grey shadows and when she opened her eyes, the flames vanished, but the fauna nearby appeared dazed and acted sloshed with shut eyes, temporarily blinded by the light. She inhaled.