“It’s such a waste, he was a real talent like his mother.”
“A shame, we could use another strong waterbender.”
“What a time for it to happen too, right before the war.”
The whispers from the next room travel to Haruk’s ears. The stillness of the hut allowing him to hear each word. He doesn’t move, just remains horribly still as he wills his body to be accepted deeper into his bed. They talk as if he’s no longer talented, that all of his potential had gone away as much as his leg. Did his leg store all of his ability? He doesn’t think so, but everyone around him when they see him seem to get this same look on their face. Poor Haruk, their faces say, abandoned by his parents and now a helpless and hopeless boy.
He hates that look, which is saying something. He’s not a fan of the emotion of hate, but this...he hates this.
“They’re wrong,” Toaka says from their bed. Their voice is quiet but sharp and defiant. “You’re going to be a great waterbender.”
He wants to believe them, but he can’t even really stand without crutches right now, let alone take a proper bending stance.
“I’ll take you to my lesson with Lowa tomorrow, she can teach you.” They seem so certain of themselves, stubborn, but they’ve always been like that. Hard and unyielding while Haruk is softer. Their parents liked to joke that Toa should have been born an earth bender, they have the tenacity for it.
Haruk sighs and wills himself to sleep. It’s restless and he wakes up multiple times because of the phantom pain, and by morning, he doesn’t feel so rested. But he dresses, tying his pant leg up to keep his stub of a leg warm. Toa offers to help and like usual, he refuses it. He’s so tired of help, he just wants to be able to do things again.
It’s still early enough that the sun has yet to rise in the sky. The moon is on the descent, but her beautiful light is still visible, even in the lightening blue sky. He enjoys her waning light even as he has to use his crutches to follow Toa to Lowa’s hut. She lives on the outskirts of Hatta, close to the water’s edge but far enough from the docks that her students won’t potentially destroy a ship.
Lowa is already out and going through some of the techniques. Seawater rises up and around her, moving with her in perfect synchrony. His mom used to do the same thing in the wee hours of the morning. The water rose from below the bow and joined her as she went through her movements. In the last few years, he had taken to joining her.
Then he lost his leg, he was dropped off in Hatta and well...no one thinks the one-legged kid can waterbend. He can’t assume the stances or do the movements like everyone else. Not bending, though, feels wrong.
It’s been two months since his parents left him here. In that time, he’s had daily sessions in the healing hut and the head healer, Uko, has made sure his leg is healed as much as it can be. Haruk still has the phantom limb pain, but the leg itself is fine. Uko had been very pleased and a little shocked at how quickly the leg had healed and how infection never appeared to threaten it. She told him the spirits must favor him. He wants to believe that, especially since a spirit saved him. But...he is alone, and that hurts and it doesn’t feel exactly favorable. Regardless if he is favored or not, the leg is healed and he is ready to do more than hobble around and withstand the pitying looks of everyone in the village.
There’s been some talk of getting him a proper peg-leg, but nothing has come of it yet. He’d prefer an actual leg fabrication, but who knows how doable that is. He’s seen them before, but in other lands like the Earth Kingdom and once in the Fire Nation. With the new war, though, he doubts one can just be imported. Most of the ships out there are war ships, not mercantile vessels like his family’s. As of now, he’s stuck in his crutches for long distances and hopping around the home when he doesn’t feel like bothering with the crutches.
He can move and his arms have gotten stronger since he’s had to rely on them more and more. The thing is, bending is all about the stance. Waterbending specifically is about being able to move freely like water, and he’s admittedly disadvantaged in that aspect. But he can try and he will work hard to compensate and learn. Toa is confident in his ability, he just wishes he was just as confident.
Toaka steps forward and bows to greet Lowa.
“Master, I brought another student to learn,” they say, voice strong. Lowa pauses and turns, with all the grace and quickness of a true waterbending master. Her face is lined with age and wisdom and it crinkles as she takes in Haruk’s appearance. She’s seen him in the village, of course, but only in passing. Now she looks at him with careful scrutiny, walking around him.
“You are now fifteen, yes?” She asks and he nods.
“Come to the water, boy,” she commands and he does as she asks, moving swiftly to the edge of the water. She comes up to him and takes hold of his crutches and setting them carefully aside.
“Bend.” It’s a simple command but a daunting one. Haruk looks at the water and takes a deep breath. He can do this, he absolutely can do this. The water has always called to him, the Moon Spirit has guided him, a spirit of a sea-storm saved his life - he can do this.
He shifts his foot out and lets himself reach out to the water. His shorter leg is set out from him, trying to counter balance him even as all of his weight is centered on one point - his right foot. Waterbending is about weight moving, the flow of movement. He has...little to no flow below the waist. He’ll have to compensate with his torso and arms.
He invites the water up to his hand and holds it there.
“Good, now transfer it to your other hand and assume penguin pose.”
Taking a steadying breath, Haruk does as instructed. He flows the water into his left hand, then brings his right hand up to stretch the water out as he squats slightly lower to the ground. He teeters a bit, and the water drips three times before he controls it once more.
“Iceberg pose.”
He straightens his leg and reaches up, crossing his hands so that each palm holds a small sphere of water. It’s hard to maintain his pose and breathe at the same time, he is having to focus so much. It’s like he’s seven again and every little movement requires so much focus.
“Crescent moon pose.”
Haruk blinks. She wants...crescent moon pose. A pose that requires a step. Crescent moon pose is a more advanced pose, past beginner and resting firmly in intermediate. It is a pose that he, as a fifteen-year-old, should know and have mastered by now. And he did have it mastered, before the storm.
The pose, when done with two full functioning legs, is actually three poses together. First is penguin pose, which he regresses into. Then he goes into open penguin pose, which is similar to penguin pose, except that he opens up his arms so that the spread water flows to his right hand. With a flick, he sends it to his left hand and back, completing the pose. The final pose is crescent pose where the bender is to step so that the left leg crosses in front of the right one while the torso turns so that the bender makes a turn. The left leg is to plant in front of the right one as the right arm curves up and the left arm down, forming the shape of a crescent moon. The water is then caught in the middle of the body.
Crescent moon pose, like all the other poses, are meant to teach discipline rather than actual combative, healing, or performative waterbending. It is supposed to be about the relationship between the bender and the element.
Haruk takes a steadying breath and spreads his arms, flowing the water back and forth. Now, the step. He swings his half-left leg forward...and overshoots it. He loses his balance and falls back, the water splashes over him as he slams into the snow covered ground.
Lowa waits a few heartbeats before walking to him, She stares down at him and him up at her.
“I can get it, it just takes a little more -
“I can’t teach you,” she says before he can finish.
“But I can do it, I just have to learn -
“I don’t know how to teach you, and therefore I can’t. Toaka, help your cousin home then come back to resume your lesson.”
“Master Lowa, I know Haruk can do it, he’s a talented waterbender -
“I said no.”
“That isn’t fair!” They fight, sticking their chin out even as they move closer to Haruk with his crutches.
Lowa stops and turns to them, her eyes blazing, “What isn’t fair is that I am teaching children to fight. He should be happy he doesn’t have to go out and fight in a war that will very likely get him killed! Now take him home and get back here. If my son has to go out and fight this war, so do you.” She turns away from them both and snaps her fingers at the other students now waiting farther back, pretending not to watch.
Toa doesn’t move until Lowa is farther away, their face set in a defiant, angry expression. They grab his crutches and help him up, their anger set in them.
“It’s not right, she should teach you.”
Haruk doesn’t know if he agrees with them. He can’t do the poses like he used to, he can’t bend like everyone else.
He has to lean heavily on Toa for a second before getting situated with his crutches. They’ve gotten strong in these last months too, helping him move about in the tight space of their shared home.
“You deserve to learn just like the rest of us. Who cares if you have one leg. I don’t think Eti has a brain cell and yet he’s taught!”
Haruk snorts, “Eti is already performing the octopus, I’m sure he has a brain cell.”
“Fine, but he stole it from his twin, Ena.”
They’re adamant about it and continue on about how his body shouldn’t limit the minds of other people. It’s tiring, and while the day has barely started, Haruk is already tired as well.
“Toa, I just want to sleep for awhile,” he says when they reach the hut. Toa stops and their expression softens.
“Okay, sleep. I’ll get this figured out.” They help him into the house and into bed before running back out to join Lowa.
Haruk stays in bed for a long time, but he doesn’t sleep. He stares up at the ceiling as all of the whispers from his tribesmen run through his head. He feels himself sink further into an emotional pit when his aunt throws the door open.
“Come on, boy, you’ve got chores,” she says not too different from when she drags Toa out to work. Though with Toa, there’s usually more coercing involved. They hate chores. Haruk just sighs, grabs his crutches, and swings himself after her.
“Sit,” she says, gesturing to a table piled high with clothes. Auntie Tatana is his father’s sister and she makes clothes for the tribe, as well as many of the ceremonial outfits. She’s one of the most talented people he’s encountered, skilled in putting the various hides together to make beautiful and sturdy garments that stand up to even the harsh weather of the South Pole.
Haruk knows a bit of sewing, it’s kind of important to know a bit of most skills aboard a ship. Though he is more familiar with fabric than hide and most of what he sees here is actual hide from wolverine-bears and penguin-seals.
“I’m going to show you how to stitch these,” Auntie Tatana announces, pulling out her kit.
“Won’t it take longer if you’re teaching me?” He asks and she smiles.
“It will take longer today, but shorter tomorrow or the day after that when I have a helper.” With that, she begins to show him the ropes of how the clothes come together and to fix the holes and wear. A coat needs new trim and she pulls out a weasel-fox skin that has already been prepared, but not cut to fit the coat.
The first and second days of teaching are more observation. She talks to him as she goes, occasionally allowing him to try his hand at it. When he messes up, she tsks her tongue and taps his hand, indicating he has to hand over the needle.
They break to clean around the hut and make dinner for Toa and their siblings and when their father returns from his fishing excursion. They all sit together, some of the other cousins and their families joining in too until the huts are full of intermingling family, divvied up by age. Toa and Haruk sit with their fellow teenaged cousins and talk about what they’re doing.
Toa tries not to talk about bending but Heski goes on and on about her bending and how it’s going until Toa barks at her to stop it. But Haruk just smiles.
“It’s okay, Toa, auntie Tatana is showing me how to make all the clothes. She says I have good hands.” He eats another spoonful of soup as everyone goes quiet.
“Whoa, really? I asked Auntie to show me once and she just about bit my head off!” Cousin Inyu says. Haruk feels himself bolster under the incredulousness and some weight sheds from him.
The others start talking more and sometimes they talk about bending, but it doesn’t bother Haruk like it would have. It occurs to him that Auntie Tatana may have taken pity on him initially, but she has been praising his work and how quickly he’s learning. No matter the reason, he’s becoming adept at it.
Two more weeks pass. Toa’s father is out on another fishing expedition and it’s the first night of the full moon. Haruk awakens feeling strong and vibrant. The Moon Spirit is strong and vital and so is he and every other waterbender in the south pole right now.
He’s made great progress with Auntie’s teachings and he’s even started walking around outside more, interacting with people. He travels to the market frequently to trade materials necessary for all the stitching and he strikes up conversations with the fisher-folk who are selling their excess fish.
It’s taken nearly three months, but he’s finally starting to feel like himself, even if he’s lost part of himself.
Haruk returns to the hut later in the day with his loot from the market. There was a rare earth kingdom trader based out of the south and Haruk was able to do some great trading with him. He was able to get some giant llama wool and beads that will make a nice under-sweater.
The trader’s son was also very nice and some part of Haruk felt like he should blush at some of the things he said. But he was so caught up with what he could make, he didn’t stay overly long. Tomorrow, though, he may stop by again and not for trading. He was handsome, if old enough to make his parents frown.
He spends the rest of the day planning what to do with the wool and fixing some of the fisherman’s coats. The summer months are turning quickly into fall that will disappear rapidly into winter.
The day passes well enough, he feels great but other than that, it’s a regular day. He helps his aunt with the clothes, he eats dinner with his family, and then night falls. Normally, he would retire and fall asleep but his body is practically vibrating with the need to be near water.
Haruk opens his eyes and looks around the small room he shares with Toa. They’re out with Lowa and the other students, enjoying a full moon lesson. He of course, was not invited to partake in the lesson. He feels...angry about that. He is a waterbender, just as much as any of them. Really, what differs so much from him and say Toa? He lost a leg, that’s it.
With a burst of energy, Haruk throws off his blankets and pulls on his thick coat. He grabs his crutches and leaves the hut as quietly as possible. The night is cold and sharp and it prickles at his face, reminding him of the cold nights on the ship where he stayed up with his mother at the bow.
“Do you feel that, Haruk? It’s our Moon Spirit.”
He does, he feels her, guiding him to a small dock on the outskirts of the village. It’s high-tide and the pull of the moon is so strong he sways like the water. He drops his crutches and reaches forward to the water, it pulls up closer to him for a moment before receding back into the waves.
Ah, he is a waterbender and he can do this. With a steadying breath, sways, just slightly, not enough to make him lose his balance. His arms stretch out, slightly bent at the elbow and he moves, pulling his arms back then pushing forward. Push and pull. Pull and push. He does this until the water crests into a wave that breaks around the dock. He pauses to breathe, relishing how good it is to be reunited with this part of himself.
He stops. Part of himself?
Haruk blinks and looks down at the space between the wood and his knee. The water...is part of himself. What if he just…. He holds out his hand, reaching for water that slips into his grasp. He directs it down to his knee, but when he releases the water from his grasp, it falls to the wood and doesn’t respond to the knee. Except for maybe a few drops that remain suspended for a moment.
It’ll work, he’ll make it work.
Haruk spends most of the night working to get the water to respond to his knee just right. It’s slow going at first but then, he breaks through and it is like the water feels right within all of him, not just his upper body. The water suspends then freezes just right around his leg down to the wood of the dock. With labored breathing, he cautiously tests the weight support of the new icy leg. Amazingly, it supports him.
It worked. It works! He...did it. His chest aches for a moment before he feels water on his face that isn’t from the sea. He’s crying and for once it’s because he’s happy. He is a waterbender.
He takes a step, wobbling on this new leg. His knee sends up a flare of pain at this new sensation. It’ll be more work, but work he is more than willing to do. He takes another step, and he grits his teeth. He’ll be a great waterbender yet.
He takes a total of ten steps that night - ten! - before he is forced to stop and pick up his crutches. The moon is beginning her descent by the time he leaves the dock, the sky lightening when he reaches the hut. He is wonderfully exhausted by the time he collapses into bed.
“Where have you been?” Toa whispers from their bed. Haruk shifts to smile at them.
I wrote a thing for the ATLA homebrew campaign run by @justanartsysideblog and played with @selenelavellan @lycheemilkart and @theladypirate!
This is Haruk, a waterbender. :)
________________
Whenever someone asks, “What happened to the leg?”, he rattles off the typical explanation of losing it in a storm aboard his parents’ ship. It’s true, he lost it in a storm and he was on his parents’ ship, the Midnight Moon, but it is not the whole truth.
As with most things, the truth is more complicated and often not what people want to hear. When people ask what happened to his leg, they want some long drawn out horror story of how the loss changed him, the incredible insurmountable odds he conquered. Haruk has no issue in not providing that, and he has no issue keeping the entire personal story exactly that - personal.
It’s not that he is a particularly secretive or private person, but there are things that he keeps to himself. Privacy is a wonderful, novel thing for someone who grew up on a ship surrounded by people at all times.
So how did he lose the leg? That’s the question, isn’t it? Or perhaps the question is how he keeps his beautiful hair so luscious and flowy. That’s an easy answer - sacrifices to the incomparable Moon Spirit, of course.
He never has missed the leg. Even with all the phantom limb pain in the months and years following the loss, he hasn’t missed it. Whenever he feels he is coming close to missing the limb, he reaches into his pocket and runs a thumb over the seal-shaped whistle instead.
It started like many stories, he supposes, with a family on a ship, looking up at the sky.
“A storm is coming,” Mom said, tone serious and eyes narrowed at the horizon.
“I don’t see anything,” Haruk said back, squinting in the same direction. There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky!
Yuna arched a brow at him and smiled before ruffling his hair.
“Mom!” He shrieked, reaching up to smooth his hair back into the carefully crafted wolf-tail he had put in earlier.
“It is not always about seeing, but about feeling. What does the water tell you? What do the clouds say?”
Haruk looked at his mom as he did whenever she got all guru-y with him. It wasn’t enough that she was his mother, but his waterbending teacher as well. Sure, there had been other waterbenders on the Midnight Moon over the years, but she had been his constant teacher. Sometimes it was hard to differentiate between mother and teacher moments, many of those times, she had combined the roles into a super person with lots and lots of authority. She wasn’t mean about it, save anyone who accused Yuna of ever being mean, but a bit overbearing...yes.
He did as she instructed, though. Closed his eyes and reached out like she had taught him to do, feeling the water with that connection deep inside his soul. He had no clue how to feel the clouds that weren’t even there, but he felt the currents in the sea, felt the stillness and then a strength underneath that.
“I feel a current?”
She nodded, “Yes, and when you’re old like me, you’ll be able to feel where that current goes. It goes to a strong storm forming, the like we rarely see. We should try to make port.” With that, she left the bow, tucking her spyglass into her coat.
“Make port? Mom, where are we going to do that? We left a week ago!” Haruk worried, chasing after her as she strode to the wheel where Dad stood.
“We need to make port, we’ve got a nasty storm coming,” she said, completely ignoring Haruk’s question. Thankfully, Korik’s brow furrowed and he shook his head.
“We are at least three days from any port. We are out here and staying here whether we want to or not. Have the crew make preparations.”
“Korik, this storm -
“Will be weathered like all the others. I can try to get the ship to port, but I am telling you now, we won’t make it.”
Mom put her hands on her hips as if she was going to argue before shaking her head and cursing, “Fine, I will tell them to make preparations. Get us to port.”
“Aye-aye, captain,” Dad said, saluting her as she walked off. She stopped short and turned, bowing her head.
“Captain,” she replied, then went about getting the crew ready for the storm. It of course involved Haruk’s help. As the youngest and spryest member of the Midnight Moon, he was taken full advantage of - climbing and swinging and dangling in places to get everything set.
It was the last time he climbed the mast, last time he ran across the deck without a care in the world. A storm was coming, they had gone through storms before and this wouldn’t be so different.
How wrong he was, how confident he was.
Storms on the sea start with the wind. It picked up, gusting towards the Midnight Moon with an increasing amount of force. Haruk stood with the crew, holding down the main sail to continue to blow them in the correct direction. The wind battered the ship and it was largely fine until the currents joined the wind in swaying the ship. The wind and currents acted like a hand swiping out from the center of the storm to pull them into its deadly embrace. The crew of the Midnight Moon resisted for as long as they could until it was too much.
The wind picked up, thunder and lightning began to roll across a rapidly darkening sky. A day that started without a cloud in the sky was now blackened with them. Next came the rain. It wasn’t the light sort of rain but the hard, pelting kind of rain that felt like mini-slaps all across the body.
They were all soaked in no-time, fighting a storm that had developed a mind of its own.
Dad was shouting from the helm while mom was at the bow, her arms moving as she tried to control the waves around them. It was a losing battle, all of it.
Haruk stood in the middle of the deck, just below the mast, and felt it. A deep, deep strong current rippling through him and the water. The strength built and he felt it billow up in the water, propelling it just as the wind pushed toward them.
“Mom! Watch out!” He called, running forward to help her. She turned to face him just as the wave reached high above the ship.
“Help me!” She shouted and assumed a stance he recognized immediately. How would they manage this? They had attempted it during a full moon and had barely succeeded. There was no full moon and this was much more difficult -
There was no time for doubt. He copied her stance and together they reached out to guide the crest of the wave. Miraculously, the wave...followed them. He felt the strain in his back and arms and he yelled with the effort, but the wave followed their wish and reached over the ship to fall back into the sea on the other side.
He dropped to his knees as the water receded, marveling at the feat.
“We did it!” Mom cried happily before running to the side of the ship. He felt it again, that strong current, but this one was faster.
“Mom!” He ran for her, pushed her out of the way just as the ship was slammed by this smaller, but deadlier wave. It crests into the deck and into Haruk. There is no stance or bending technique that can stop it as he careens into the other side of the boat - leg first.
A sickening SNAP vibrates through his leg and then the rest of his body. Agonizing pain that barely registers with Haruk as he is flung overboard.
Into the churning sea.
Yuna always said that waterbenders are natural swimmers. They thrive in the water and swimming to them is more natural than walking. Walking, according to his mother, is how everyone else moves (except for the airbenders, who fly). Swimming is the truest movement for waterbenders.
He could not swim with a leg snapped in two, blood gushing from the wound, agony filling him to the brim. The current was strong and sucking, pulling him down, and no amount of bending or fight in him could resist it.
It sucked him down into inky depths, the currents swirling around him in a tight inescapable cyclone. The blood rushed from his leg and he felt himself grow faint, which was why when he saw the faint light, he didn’t question it. The light grew and grew until it was before him. It was about the size of a koi fish, but black and lit with glowing splotches, a third eye opening on its eye to peer at him.
A spirit. Was this the ocean spirit? Come to him? To bless him? Or to take him beyond to live with his ancestors? Was this what death was for those in the Water Tribe?
A thousand questions, and none were answered.
Instead, the spirit swam to his leg and a great relief filled Haruk even as loss also claimed him. He knew that his leg was gone, taken by the depths. Perhaps taken as tribute.
The spirit swam up to him and looked at him with its three wide glowing eyes. The currents abated and he was no longer sinking but rather floating with this spirit. He had the vaguest sense of moving upward. He dared not look away from the spirit, though, not while it considered him so heavily.
He reached for the spirit, drawn to its beauty. This was a koi fish spirit of some sort, living in the sea, he was curious. He was only fourteen and wanted so much, so badly to know exactly what had saved him. The vague sense of moving upward was more evident now that he felt the chaos of the surface and less pressure surrounding him.
It blinked at him then turned towards his outstretched hand. Was it as curious about him as he was it? Spirits were said to be curious creatures, fascinated by those bound by flesh bodies. It moved to his hand and pressed its head carefully to it. When it removed its head, he felt a small something linger, his hand closing around it instinctively.
The koi spirit glowed brilliantly for a moment and then Haruk was sent shooting through the water, breaking with the surface with great sputtering gulps of air.
The sky had lightened to a grey, clouds swirled outward in a way that signified they had reached the eye of the storm. Some calm in the midst of the chaos on the outer arms and bands.
“Haruk!” His mother shouted over the gale winds. He turned and saw his ship, his beautiful home of a ship. He saw leap over the side and into the waves and he felt her current pull him to her. Her arms secured around him before launching them out of the water and onto the deck.
They slammed into the deck, but he doesn’t even feel it because his mother is running her hands and bending over him, healing him as best she can as she notices pains and aches.
Then she saw that his leg....everything below his left knee is gone.
“Your...your leg!” She cried, concentrating her gift for spirit healing over the stub that was now where his leg ended.
While she fussed and fretted over the loss of his leg, Haruk opened his hand to stare at what the spirit had left. A small, seal-shaped whistle rested in his palm. It vibrated for a moment before settling and he knew that he was meant to have this, he could not part with it.
In the weeks that followed the storm, the crew fretted over Haruk’s leg. Mom worried it would become infected and she rarely left his side. She healed it as frequently as she could to ward off infection, though sometimes he wondered if she was trying to make him grow the limb back.
He supposed he should have been more upset about the whole ordeal. But the leg was the least of his concerns. Why did the spirit pick him? Why was he given this little whistle? The “why” of it all plagued him more than the loss of the leg. Yes, it hurt, it was agonizing to not be able to be the Haruk he was before. Though that was more than just the loss of the leg, it was everything.
Dad made him a set of crutches that he used to get around, though with the tilt of the ship, it was hard to find purchase. He fell, a lot. He woke up in the middle of the night sobbing at the phantom limb pain. It was there but it also wasn’t. He stared at the nub of a leg he used to have and it helped only a little. Finally, he gave in and just started...hitting the space where his shin would have been, his foot. He hit and stabbed it and focused on the pain that wasn’t there.
Four months after the storm and he heard whispers from his parents’ room, the captains’ quarters. He grabbed a crutch and stumbled toward the door, but didn’t make it far. He only heard one word before he was forced to return to his bed.
“Comet.”
The next day, Korik reset their course for the South Pole. A week passed and then they were at Korik’s home village of Hatta, a medium sized coastal village comprised of mostly fishermen and traders. His cousins and grandparents ran out to great them all with hugs and astonished, pitying looks at his leg.
“I will learn how to walk in no time!” Haruk assured them, even as he hobbled along on his crutches, “all this means is I have a budding career as a pirate!”
They didn’t like that joke.
They made trips to the South and North poles fairly frequently. They were major parts of their trade routes and both of his parents wanted Haruk to know where he came from, even if he didn’t consider either place home. The Midnight Moon would always be his home. Even so, he knew his grandparents on both sides and all of his cousins - and Haruk had many, many cousins.
His father had been one of six, his mother one of three. Haruk had a total of fifteen cousins, and a few of those cousins even had children of their own. While Yuna was older than both of her brothers, Korik was the youngest of his family. He had three older brothers and two older sisters who embraced the good family life.
He loved his large family, even if he didn’t see them year round. He was halfway between North and South and neither society quite fit him, but he liked visiting. He didn’t think anything of this visit until his parents came into the small room he was sharing with his closest aged cousin, Toaka. They asked Toaka to leave, and while they arched a brow at them, they left.
“Haruk…” Mom began in a soft voice that always meant bad news. But this news was...it wasn’t bad, it was horrible.
“You’re leaving me here?” He asked, betrayal filling up his still growing body in bitter waves. “How?! The Midnight Moon is just as much my home as it is yours! This isn’t fair!”
“Haruk, little one, please listen -
“To what?” He asked, eyes wide. This couldn’t be right, it couldn’t! They couldn’t just...abandon him because of the leg could they?
“It is safer for you here, son,” Korik said and Haruk shook his head, scowling.
“It’s wrong. You can’t give up on me, I didn’t choose this,” he said softly, still unbelieving. Who did this? Who abandoned their kid because they lost a leg? Or any other body part for that matter.
“Something is coming, and it is safer for you here -
“I can learn how to live with it! I am learning! I-I fall a lot less now and I can get a fake leg, I will learn to walk and run and I can help out on the ship again, I swear!”
“It’s not about the leg,” Mom said and he shook his head.
“Then what it is?!”
Silence. Just...silence. But it spoke far louder than any stupid lie they could manufacture for his benefit.
He turned from them. When they decided on a course of action, that’s what they did. They were people who had to stick their course, even if it was a hard one.
“Just get out and go,” he gruffed, not bothering to turn around when he heard them shift and stand.
“We love you, little one,” Mom said but he didn’t turn around, didn’t show her the tears falling down his face. She didn’t get those anymore, not now and not ever.
“Haruk,” Dad said but he didn’t say anything else before he left with Mom. They walked out and closed the door. In his upset, Haruk turned and threw a crystallized ice globe at the door, shattering it. They had gotten it for him for his last birthday from a tradesman at the Northern Water Tribe and he had loved it. But it was worthless now, shattered and broken.
How could they do this to him? Just...leave him like this? His leg was gone and apparently so was their love for him. He couldn’t pull his weight around on the ship anymore, so he wasn’t worth the trouble.
They left that day and he refused to see the ship off. There were no goodbyes, not hugs, nothing. They didn’t deserve it from him. He hated them so much it hurt. He tried to use the hate to extinguish the love that still sat in him, unwilling to budge. Every time he thought he could just hate them, he would remember standing on the ship with them, laughing at something or eating together. He’d remember how careful Mom was to teach him how to waterbend.
He couldn’t just hate them and that infuriated him more than anything. They didn’t deserve his love. They abandoned him because he lost his leg! He is the one who went through the trauma and they thought it fitting to just drop him off when he wasn’t the same old Haruk anymore. Like he could ever be the same person he was before that storm.
💔 What was my muse’s first heartbreak?💑 What are my muse’s requirements for a potential partner? for Haruk!
Ok so I try to SAVE and it posts. Tumblr mobile is a garbage fire.
Haruk's first heartbreak. I'm actually going to write about it...at some point. Anyways, after he loses his leg and is dropped off in Hatta, he struggles a lot. Many people see him as useless or a waste of potential, but he keeps with it and proves that he can still water bend and Be Good Southern Water Tribe Man. It takes him longer to go through rites of passage though, and he's seen as...delayed.
After one of the rites, a girl kisses him and he just...falls head over heels for her. He starts "seeing" her, but it's really him just doing stuff for her. She downplays his bending abilities and is overall....not nice. He later learns that she only kissed him on a dare. He was making a proposal necklace for her by this point and it broke his soft boi heart.
Don't worry, Toaka "The Undertow" avenged his heart!
I only answered half of this 🤦♀️ struggle busing it
For a partner, Haruk theoretically likes naughty people. I say theoretically because he really just wants a nice person like himself. The naughtiness is less sexual and more...he just wants to help. And he wants to help in a way that is not healthy for him. He has a bad picker, and goes for people that quite frankly don't deserve him. The ideal person for him is someone who is kind, emotionally intuitive, and probably likes some mischief but isn't a terrible person.
