Eclipse (Avatar the Last Airbender)

Chapter 2: First Contact

He stood, opened a chest by the wall for her, and sat down abruptly on his bed, his back towards her once again. "These are all I have."

Undeterred by his curt attitude, Miyuki made her way over to the sturdy wooden chest and glanced inside. As he said, it was a meager collection, but he did have books. She took out the three that he had in his possession and looked them over one by one. "This is quite the assortment." An atlas, a book on war strategies, and a book on plays. She couldn't help but smile faintly.

"If you're going to judge it, then just leave!"

"No judgment here." She cradled the books in her arms. "These were just the sort of books I was looking for, actually."

He turned just a hint to cast her a curious glance. "Why?"

"This is the sort of thing that most middle to upper-class Fire Nation children would have come across in their lifetimes." His brows furrowed in confusion, but she merely smiled back in return. If he wasn't going to ask, she hardly felt compelled to provide an answer.

Even if her next set of questions failed, she was content with just the chance to read these books. "Speaking of, I meant to ask," she began as she took a seat on the edge of his bed and stacked the books neatly by her side. "Why are you looking for the Avatar? Even just a handful of weeks ago, this would have been a wild goose chase, and yet, you've been on this hunt for over a year."

As he hesitated, his expression seemed to darken, and she added quickly, "Of course, I'm not asking you to tell me for nothing. I'd happily trade for any story you'd like in return."

He considered it for another moment, but she wasn't willing to offer up much else in return, so she waited. Finally, he nodded. "Alright. It was a while ago. I tried to get into a war council that my father was holding, but two guards stopped me from entering the room. My uncle happened to be passing by and he stopped to put a hand on my shoulder and ask what was wrong. So I told him, 'I want to go into the war chamber, but the guards won't let me pass!'"

The prince shifted a little. "My uncle pulled me aside and whispered back that I wasn't missing anything. That those meetings were boring. But I was insistent. I felt that if I was going to rule the nation one day, that I needed to start learning as much as I could. My uncle agreed then and helped me get into the meeting. He warned me that I shouldn't speak. I should have listened."

Now into the story telling, the prince's voice was steady as he kept his eyes gaze towards the hands he had folded in his lap, eyes seeming to watch something far into the distance. "A general suggested using a division of entirely new recruits to fight against a battalion of the Earth Kingdom's strongest earthbenders as a distraction. 'Bait,' he called them. I stood up and spoke out against him then. I couldn't let something like that happen. It was wrong."

Miyuki could see that he was morally correct, but clearly, things didn't work out as planned. She looked up at him, expecting to see anger or frustration on his face, but found only the expression of someone lost in thought.

"It wasn't my place to speak up," he continued, his voice somber, "My father became angry and said that my challenge of the general was an act of complete disrespect and that there was only one way to resolve it. Agni kai."

"Agni kai?" She echoed the unfamiliar phrase with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

He nodded and clarified, "A fire duel."

That alone was enough to connect the dots.

"I was stupid. I looked at the old general and said that I wasn't afraid, but when I turned to face my opponent, it was my father that stood on the other side. I'd spoken out against the general's plan, but since I did it in my father's war room, I'd disrespected my father. I begged for forgiveness, but... he didn't accept. I refused to fight him and he said that I will learn respect." The exiled prince touched the scar over his eye, still lost in thought, and Miyuki's gaze flickered to her lap as she collected her thoughts.