300 word drabble: Empty, Closed.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #25, Jail.

Summary: The place can't hurt her anymore, but somehow...
Warnings: War crimes, genocide, and traumatized children

Author's Note: When I was in middle school, one of my teachers showed us a video walk-through of Dachau.  I looked up at it through my little Jewish, disabled, queer eyes, and couldn't figure out what I felt.


Empty, Closed.

The cages were empty, their doors thrown open.  Light poured down yellow and muted from the skylights, and dust swirled on the air, insubstantial in the gloom.  The pumps had ground to a halt a long time ago, and the air inside was as humid as it was anywhere else on the islands, hot, heavy, and unmoving on her skin.

Rust clung to the bars and ate away at the chains hanging down from the ceiling like vines.  Ty Zhi put her hand on the bars, and felt the rust scratch cold against her palm.  Her breath shuddered in her chest.  The place smelled old, felt ancient, like something out of some scroll tucked away in a library corner.

Not like something held over her head since she was born.  Not like someplace that made her father shout at her when he saw her twisting in the air outside the house.  It was the first time her father yelled at her.  It was the first time her mother didn’t soothe her when she cried.  Not like someplace real.

Her mother sat her down and ran her Fire Nation nails through her daughter’s hair, and held her in her Fire Nation arms.  She told Ty Zhi about the Southern waterbenders in their prison, and about the massacre of the Air Nomads, and told her if she was lucky, the Fire Nation would just kill her.

Ty Zhi raised her hand and swirled it in the air.  The air rose up and spun, dragging the dust, rust, and rot around and around.  She grinned wide and wild, hair pulling out of her braid, air whipping his face.  It was beautiful, and she felt so strong and so brave doing it there, bending there.

And then she felt very silly, and very small.