Darshi had been kneeling for hours.

Her legs were numb, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. After reading the offer she had given it to the elders to decide, coming to the surface to wait their judgement. She didn’t trust herself to make the right choice, fearing bias on her part because of the bargain being about her.

Give herself up and the tribe would be left alone for fifty years.

Her people had all the tools needed to survive without her. She had already been willing to sacrifice herself once. It would not be as difficult a second time around. Fifty years with no Fire Nation soldiers was a long time. Children could grow up without knowing their burn, the only problems being food and shelter.

But if Darshi left would that hinder or hurt them in the long run?

She wasn’t sure. If Darshi left she wondered if fifty years from now there might not be someone strong enough to fight the Fire Nation again. She already knew no other realm would take them in. Her people would be on their own and rusty on fighting with no conflict to keep them in shape.

Jungkook came out the tunnel and sat next to her, staring out at the mountains of snow solemn. He hadn’t shaved the sides of his hair in the typical male fashion of the Southern Water Tribe in a few days, coupling that with the haphazard way he had done up his jacket it gave him an overall messy appearance. She found it almost cruel to use him as a messenger. He was her blood, the last living family she had.

“The elders gave me their decision. They wanted me to be the one to tell you.”

It was time to hear her fate.

Prince Seokjin smirked when he saw the water bender girl exactly where the note told him she’d be. She was no longer using a pole to lean on, so he surmised she had to be in better health. He wasn’t clear how well though.

A bruise was on the side of her face, and based on how textured her skin was he bet she had been hit with a fire ball there during battle. She was staring out at the ocean, the part where none of his ships sat drifting. The waves could be seen for miles, the snow not obscuring the vision it like it had been for the past few weeks. He had been told her eyes were brown, but with the light hitting her face like that he could make out a much fainter, lighter color. Perhaps blue. She was a water bender, after all.

He stopped five feet in front of her, fists clenched at his sides. A group of soldiers stopped a foot behind him, waiting for any sign of conflict.

“I can trust you?”

It was the first thing she had ever said to him. She had a lower voice than he expected, more husky that sweet. Asking about trust was a good place to start as any, he supposed.

Seokjin gave a quick nodded. “When I have all the money in the world the only thing that means anything to me is my word. I give it to you that I will never go back on our agreement.”

He couldn’t say his father would do the same. It was why he was careful merely to mention himself and not the Fire Nation as a whole. It would probably irritate his father, but getting rid of the rest of the Southern Water Tribe would be easy work with her gone. More like taking out the trash than anything.

For a moment he thought she caught onto that, but then the shadows left her face and she sighed. “So I am a slave now?”

“Yes.”

She looked as if she expected that. “Will you kill me once I’m delivered to the Fire Nation?”

“It is up to my father what he does once you're given to him.”

His father had a thing for collecting strong benders. He’d most likely jail her with the rest of them so he could visit when he pleased and feel pride upon seeing the men and women he had felled. He was lucky his father allowed him to keep Yoongi.

He held a pair of shackles out and she gave a bitter smile. “No freedom like the Prince of the Northern Water Tribe?”

“After trying to escape once he learned his lesson well,” he shrugged. “But you, I’m not sure if you ever would.”

Amusement tugged at her lips, a confirmation to his initial gut feeling. She was a warrior through and through unlike the Prince of the North. She would never give up unless it was part of some battle strategy of hers. Part of him admired her for it, could relate to her. Seokjin was similar. He had to be in order to survive this long in the cut-throat politics of the nobles. Any amount of prestige or honor came with consequences.

He wondered what she would have been like if born a fire bender.

She would have rose in the ranks no matter her birth. He was sure of that. Seokjin could see that sharp edge in her, the ruthlessness she kept a tight reign on. He didn’t know if she was aware of it, but it was there.

In a swift movement she was standing and fire was in his palms, an immediate reaction to a possible threat. Her lips quirked, but she held her arms out offering her hands to be shackled. He was almost disappointed by the easy win. She would have been a worthy opponent in battle. The Prince reached to put the chains around her, gesturing for a soldier to get the ones for her legs.

The moment they touched her wrist he began to fall down, completely air born. He couldn’t figure out what was going on, but managed to push fire out of his hands to cushion his decline. He let off a blast, melting the ice above him before it could smother him.

She had sunk him fifteen feet deep in the snow.

She leered at him from above, giving him a wave before disappearing out of view. He growled beneath his breath, ignoring his men and bursting through the snow before she could bury him alive.

When his feet hit the ice he took in the situation with clarity. Chief Adarshini looked surprised to see him, two teenage boys in water tribe garb inching towards her protectively. Two young water benders were packing the ice above his soldiers to keep them from coming back up and a bunch of shabby, half-starved teen boys with boomerangs and other water nation weapons were closing in on him.

He let off a burst of fire spanning all directions. It would stop them from surrounding him. When he stopped he had melted a circle into the snow at least twenty feet in diameter. Water surrounded him, above him and to all sides, floating in stasis. Their response to protecting themselves from him, he surmised. The water turned into deadly looking icicles, heading straight for him.

Seokjin melted them with ease, noticing a few of his soldiers managing to dig themselves out and join the fray. The boy warriors went to them, leaving him only with the Chief and the water benders.

“You’ve made your decision, I see,” Seokjin commented.

Her eyes narrowed. “Despite our poverty we have not lost our minds. Giving myself to you will only ruin us. We know the present does not last forever, and if we are to have any future I need to be here.”

She was smarter than he realized. She was the key to the Southern Water Tribe. If they managed to take her the war would be over. He could overwhelm them with force, but it would be an embarrassment on his part to admit a single girl was stopping him from victory. Seokjin refused to have her besmear his good name.

If she was only using water bending against him he was certain he could have won by now, but she was using technique’s he’d never seen before. Disappearing from sight under the ice, having the children pair off and work together. They weren’t properly trained, but where one had good control of movement, another was good at changing the temperatures of the water. Together they were almost as good as a full blooded water bender. He didn’t know what else he could do to break their spirit. They had no home, their men dead and gone. The only thing he could take of worth was Adarshini.

A boy with the blue eyes of the water tribe let off a war cry, coming at him with a makeshift sword of what looked to be made from a small whale jaw of some sort. Seokjin’s foot lifted in an arc, careless as he let off flames into the boy’s face.

The boy ran straight through them.

It shouldn’t be possible. Only fire benders could take heat like that without being scathed. The warrior brought his sword down and Seokjin’s training kicked in, bringing up his own to meet and twisting to the side out of his reach.

It sent Seokjin reeling when