Chapter 2
Lexa did not sleep well that night, even with the fresh air of the night cooling her bedroom. She woke up a few times in the middle of the night, due to nightmares or hearing creepy noises from her house – it’s old and she is used to it by now, but it’s a complete different thing in the middle of the night. She might be 15 years-old, but you’re never too old to have bad dreams, which she doesn’t remember at all once she wakes up. She knows it’s the same nightmare, but she forgets everything when she opens her eyes.
She is tired, but has to gets out of bed somehow to make her way to the stone pit for her training with Anya. The sun starts to make its daily appearance far away, behind the mountains circling Republic City, coloring the sky with shades of pink an orange. It’s a beautiful sight. Lexa might not be a morning person like her parents, but she still likes to get up to watch it; her day is even better if she can take a nap right after eating her breakfast, which doesn’t happen a lot when her parents are around. They usually stay at home until Lexa has to leave for her earth bending trainings. When she doesn’t train, she usually spends time with her cousin anyways.
After washing her parents’ dishes and hers, she goes upstairs to change into training clothes. It’s nothing particular, but it’s mostly loose trousers and a tank top. It’s not very warm outside, therefore she grabs a sweater. She’ll remove it when she starts training.
Lexa tells her parents goodbye and wishes them to have a good day. Indra tells her to train hard and make her proud, to which Lexa answers that she will. Gustus simply drops a kiss to his daughter’s forehead and gives her a warm smile that definitely makes her feel like training with Anya will go well today. She leaves a few minutes later, bag on her shoulder, hitting the road to the stone pits. She walks slowly, knowing that, sooner or later, Anya will catch up with her on the trail. If she doesn’t, there’s a rock where Lexa waits for her.
Today, she has to wait for her cousin at the rock. Lexa knows that Anya is not an early bird and that Tristan probably had to tell her to wake up a few times before she actually got up. She and Lexa look equally tired. At the moment she spots her cousin’s dirty blonde hair, Lexa cracks a smile. “Anya has graced us with her presence.” She greets her, getting up from the rock she was sitting on.
Her cousin lets of a groan of annoyance in return. “You, be quiet. I am not fully awake yet.”
“I can see this.” The young brunette says with a grin. “I think meditation will be good for you this morning... if you don’t fall asleep.”
Anya rolls her eyes at her cousin’s teasing. “I have far more control than that.”
Lexa is calm again, just like the previous evening in front of Avatar Aang’s and Korra’s memorial statues. Anya is even more concentrated in her meditation than her. Lexa takes advantage of her cousin’s concentration to bury her hands into the ground, feeling the sand and dirt underneath her fingers. She doesn’t know why she can’t focus in a traditional meditating pose, but this does it and she enters a trance a few minutes after touching the soil with her hands. She lets the energy flow through her body, marvelling in the way it spreads so easily through her. Everything underneath her fingers is life and being able to touch it, to bend it, is amazing to Lexa. She takes in a deep breath and enjoys the earthy scent of the woods, the flowers, the fresh air…
A snore deconcentrates her and she turns her head towards Anya. She doesn’t know if she should be annoyed or amused by her cousin’s tiredness. Usually, she doesn’t wake up by herself; Lexa has to do it.
The young brunette lets out a sigh, a smirk on her lips even though she had been distracted from her meditating state. She raises her hand and smacks the dirty blond haired teenager. Anya is startled by the hit and she hisses like a snake, getting up to her feet. “Why did you do that? You’re supposed to meditate, Lexa!”
She can’t refrain the chuckle that escapes from her mouth. “I was meditating, but you started snoring and couldn’t stay focused.”
“The whole point of meditation is to not let things distract you.” Anya points out, crossing her arms on her chest. “No wonder you have trouble with your bending if you can’t even focus with this simple task.”
“I’ll have you know that your snores are quite loud.” Lexa counters, getting up. “And I only discovered my abilities two months ago. You’ve practiced for years. I can’t learn at the same pace than you.”
“I learned alone. You have me to help you.”
Lexa scrunches her eyes. “I am no prodigy like you.”
“It’s not true.” Anya continues, taking a step forward to face her younger cousin. “You are talented and you have a chance that most people can’t have. You’re an earth-bender, you have to understand that you possess powers that some people would die to have.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Lexa bares her teeth. “I can’t learn as fast as you did, I can’t concentrate as hard as you do because I can barely –”
Anya frowns as she stops listening to her cousin’s bickering; she heard something coming from a bush near them and immediately started to feel threatened. She shushes Lexa, who gives her an incredulous look in return, offended by her cousin’s lack of empathy and her arrogance.
“We’re not alone.” Anya says before Lexa has time to retort. “Stay quiet.”
It’s not a suggestion, but an order and Lexa does as she’s told, not wanting to get them in trouble. They were just meditating, after all, right? They didn’t even do any earth bending today. Lexa itches to ask Anya something, anything, but no words come out of her mouth. Instead, she watches her cousin remove her footwear and feel the ground underneath her. No way, Lexa thinks. Anya can echolocate people through the ground. She heard somewhere that it’s a very rare form of earth bending, just like metal bending.
Anya closes her eyes and Lexa can see the shadow of a smirk on her lips. “Watch and learn.” She tells Lexa, moving to a fighting stance.
Lexa doubts that her cousin has the greatest of ideas, but she still watches her with attention. Anya breathes out and takes one step forward, then raises her fists in the air in a calculated motion, stopping at her chest. They hear complaints coming from behind the bushes and they look at each other. Anya trapped someone.
“Quick, before they run away from us.” And then Anya takes off, still barefoot.
She is not surprised that Anya’s first reaction is an offensive method, but Lexa doubts it’s the best; maybe they are guards who followed us to discover what they were doing in the stone pits, which is a very likely thing to happen. Anyone suspecting them to practice their bending could have sold them out. Anya risked prison – that’s mainly why Lexa thinks it’s not very wise to use an offensive method about intruders they didn’t even see yet.
Lexa follows her cousin, running at the same pace, in the direction of where they heard the complaints.
Anya trapped the intruders long enough for them to get at close distance. Their feet are stock in the mud and they can barely move, but the girl manages to remove one foot from Anya’s trap. It’s when she looks up at them that Lexa thinks that her face is vaguely familiar. Now that she thinks of it, the boy tells her something too.
“Why are you spying on us?” Anya almost barks, getting in a fighting stance again.
The boy, who seems a little bit older than the girl, puts his hands into fists and glares at Anya. He stays quiet, but not the girl. “I’m sorry, we didn’t want to scare you.”
Lexa almost lets out a chuckle, because Anya getting scared because of harmless teenagers is something that she would do anything to see. It’s not usual for her cousin of being afraid, especially not because of people. Tristan raised his daughter to be strong and fearless.
“You did not frighten me.” She answers, still glaring at them intensely. “I believe you saw what we were doing.”
“We did.” The boy says. “What will you do about it? Torture us to keep us quiet about teaching earth-bending illegally?”
“Only if I have to.” Anya continues.
“Anya, please.” Lexa rolls her eyes at her cousin. Torture, really? She shakes her head negatively, not believing that she seriously thinks of torturing teenagers. It’s not like they really risk anything, right? “Sorry for my cousin’s behaviour, she can be quite… intense sometimes.”
“I can see that.” The younger girl replies. “Look, we’re not going to say anything, okay? We just wanted to watch you earth bending, that’s all.”
Anya continues to look at them suspiciously. “And why is that so?”
“First, can you remove the foot traps?”
Lexa’s cousin sighs, but obliges. After a moment, the other teenagers are free from Anya’s mud traps and they start talking. “We were curious to see other benders.”
“You can earth bend?” Anya asks, clearly not believing that the girl could.
“Not exactly.” She answers. “I am a fire-bender. He is a water-bender.”
Lexa takes a step forward, getting closer to them. They’re definitely the two persons that interrupted her meditation the previous evening. “I know you.” Anya turns her head towards her and frown. “I saw you yesterday, in front of the memorial statues.”
“And we’re also neighbors. Kind of.” As soon as the words leave the girl’s mouth, the boy smacks her shoulder. “Ouch, dumbass!” Anya snorts at the action. Lexa is sure that her cousin thinks that they are funny now – even if she probably still considers them as a threat. “Pardon my brother, he has awful manners.”
“I’ve never seen you before yesterday.” Lexa tells them.
“We recently moved to our aunt’s place.”
“Who are you, anyways?” Anya asks. Lexa thinks that girl’s brother is not the only one who lack of manners.
“I am Octavia and the broody one is Bellamy.” She answers, a smile at the corners of her lips. She crosses her arms on her chest and looks at them. “And you?”
“I’m Lexa.” She tells them. “And this is my cousin Anya.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” Octavia nudges at her brother. “Isn’t that right, Bell?” The teenage boy only rolls his eyes in response. Lexa thinks that they look a bit like her and Anya, though she is more reserved than Octavia. Anya and Bellamy keep staring at each other like they’re going to throw knives to the other. Very nice. Her cousin doesn’t have the social skills to make friends, apparently. “Can we watch your earth bending training?”
Lexa glances at the dirty blonde haired girl. Anya wears a scowls and it looks like she is going to refuse. She is quicker than her cousin to answer. “Of course, we don’t mint. Right, Anya?”
Anya lets out an annoyed sigh. “Fine. But if you say anything about this practice, I’m kicking both of you to South Pole and I promise you it’s going to hurt. Understood?” Octavia gulps down and nods her understanding. Bellamy quirks his eyebrows, but stays silent. “Good.”
An hour later, Bellamy and Octavia are still staring at them in awe. It’s clear that they didn’t get to see people using their bending, because they look amazed by Lexa and Anya’s skills. Having someone other than her cousin watching her makes Lexa far more confident and her earth bending skills are more controlled. She’s exhausted and Anya is relentlessly shoving rocks for her to block. The best part of her training, so far, has been that she didn’t injure herself. Her hand still hurts from the previous day, but the harder she trains, the less she feels pain. Lexa is very glad for that, because now she can show her skills to someone else than Anya and she doesn’t make a total fool of herself.
Sweat is dropping from her forehead and running down her neck. The back of her tank top is soaked and she knows she should take a break before she misses Anya’s attack and takes it right in the face. She doesn’t want this to happen.
“Can we stop, Anya?” She asks her cousin, lowering her hands.
“I don’t know, can we?”
Lexa frowns as Anya attacks her again. She barely has time to move on the side to avoid getting hit by the rock. “I could use some rest.”
“All you do is rest.”
Lexa sighs. “All you do is complain.” She doesn’t want to have an argument with her cousin again, but she can’t help to talk back at her. It’s not even noon yet, but she already thinks of the softness of her mattress and the good sleep she will get after taking a hot shower tonight.
Anya still maintains her fighting stance. “I will let you take a break when I judge that you need one.” Lexa sees, at the corner of her eyes, Octavia and her brother looking at each other, uncomfortable by Anya’s insistence. But her cousin doesn’t care about what they might think of her, she wants to teach Lexa earth bending the hard way – because, according to her, that’s how the greatest earth-bender trained.
Lexa breathes out and shakes her head, silently pleading to take a break. She sees Anya move her hands and reacts before the rocks are in the air; Lexa stomps her foot on the ground and lets out a grunt. She punches in front of her, in the air, then falls on her knees. It’s the last effort she can give for now.
Next thing she knows, Anya is hit by a large rock up, flies up in the air and then falls on the ground with a loud thump. She lets out a groan and, a few seconds later, she sits up, both hands supporting her body. Lexa’s first reaction is to lunge forward to be at her cousin’s sides, looking at her to see if she is injured. She doesn’t care if Anya is mad at her, she only wants to see if she hurt her.
“Oh my god Anya, I’m sorry.” She says, taking her arm to see if her elbow has scratches. She is relieved to see that there is none. She only hopes that she didn’t hit her head. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Her cousin lets out a chuckle and brushes off the dirt off her clothes. “You didn’t.” She says, looking up at her. “You were good, actually. You executed the motion perfectly.” She expected Anya lashing out at her, but certainly not complimenting her. Lexa is speechless for a second. “All those repetitions you did paid, after all.”
“You did that to test me, right?” Lexa doesn’t know if she has to be mad at her cousin or, on the contrary, thankful – because she did hit her cousin and controlled herself, even though she was frustrated. It was a good move.
“Absolutely and it worked.” Anya nods at her. “Now you’ve had enough for today.”
Octavia comes towards them, followed by Bellamy, and she is all smiles towards Lexa. “That was awesome! I was wondering when you’d kick her ass – no offense, Anya, but you totally look like a jerk when you train with Lexa.”
Anya shrugs. “None taken.”
“But seriously, are you hurt? Did you hit your head?” Lexa asks her.
“I’m fine.” She reassures her. “I am satisfied of your training. But now, I think you were only holding back to avoid hurting me.”
“Are you done training for today?” Bellamy asks.
That’s probably the most words Bellamy aligned when speaking to them. Lexa is surprised – and she is not the talkative kind either. “I think so. I really need to shower right now.”
Octavia looks at them, a smile glued to her lips. “What are you doing later?”
Anya speaks first. “I’ll be working at the tea shop.”
“I don’t have anything planned. My parents will probably have a meeting at our place and I don’t like to stick around much when they talk business.” Lexa tells them. “Why?”
“We’re doing this little gathering between friends.” Octavia informs them. “You should join us if you want.”
Lexa represses a grimace. She doesn’t have a lot of friends – it’s mostly Anya, but it doesn’t really count, because she is her cousin. Still, it’s the person she hangs around the most. Then there’s Tris, Anya’s co-worker, who is really nice, but where she only sees at the coffee shop. Ok, Lexa doesn’t have friends. Maybe she lacks of social skills. She looks at Anya, who only shrugs in answer. “I don’t know…” She doesn’t really have an excuse to avoid this. She told them that she usually doesn’t stick around her parents when they are talking business at their house.
“We’re not forcing you. It’s only a few of our friends and they’re pretty funny.” Octavia continues. “It will be better than meditating in front of the memorial statues, for sure.”
“Okay.” Lexa looks at her and nods. “I’ll come, but not for long. I’m exhausted.”
First thing first; shower. As soon as she pushes the front door of her houses, she moves to the bathroom to bathe. She gets rid of her dirt and sweat soaked clothes, discarding them on the ground, and gets in the bathtub. Lexa enjoys the cool water on her skin and, for a moment, she allows herself to relax and think for a bit. For a first time in a while, she is satisfied of her training with Anya. Her cousin might be hard on her with the practice, but she has a point when she tells Lexa that she won’t learn anything if she doesn’t try harder. Being watched by two pairs of eyes was also something different from their usual training.
Lexa starts thinking about Octavia’s friends gathering later in the evening. She said that she would go, but not for long. It is true that she is exhausted – though the shower helps to keep her awake. She doesn’t know if it’s a good thing to hang around people she just met the day before; her parents would probably disapprove of their daughter befriending strangers.
After getting rid of the sweat and dirt on her skin, she finally gets out of the shower, still thinking about her newest acquaintances. Bellamy and Octavia look like they’re genuine and definitely are interesting. Lexa wishes she had seen them doing their fire and water bending routines – if they had one. It always amazed her to see how other benders were doing with their skills, not that she wants to compare herself to them.
She changes herself to get into fresh clothes and goes downstairs to join her parents – who arrived after she got in the shower. Her father winks playfully at her and Lexa smiles warmly at him. She gives a nod to her mother, who gazes at her intensely.
“We were at your uncle’s place earlier.” Indra starts, looking down at the vegetables she was cutting. “I saw Anya. She told us that you did well today in training.” If Lexa had been talking to someone else than her mother, she would have probably said that she only tried her best, but she remains silent. “I trust her word.”
“Thank you.” Lexa says, nodding to her again,
Gustus moves from his chair and puts a warm hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “One day, I’ll have to watch you train, kid.” He tells her. “Maybe we could do a friendly father-daughter fight, what do you say?”
Lexa smiles at him. “I’d like that.” Gustus might be a fire-bender, but she knows that her father would never intentionally hurt her. He has mastered his fire bending a while ago and, though he doesn’t use it as much as he did before, he is still skilled. Lexa’s mother once told her that he was in a friendly pro-bending league for a short time and he never lost a game – which only gives Lexa an idea of how good her father is. “Is uncle Tristan coming over tonight?”
“He is, with a few of our coworkers.” Indra answers to her daughter. “It shouldn’t be very long this time, though.”
She nods at her mother’s words. “I’ll be out, then.” Lexa says. “Some friends invited me to their place, they are doing a get-together or something.”
Gustus quirks his eyebrows. “Friends?” He’s simply curious to know who invited his daughter.
“Yes, they moved in the neighborhood not long ago.” She begins explaining. “They’re living with their aunt. Their names are Octavia and Bellamy.”
“The Blake siblings?”
Lexa nods in approval. “You met them?”
Indra scoffs. “No, but we’ve heard about their mother. She had problems with the authorities, that’s why they needed to move in with their aunt.” Something tells Lexa that her mother doesn’t want her near Octavia nor Bellamy. “Please, be careful with them.”
“They’ve been nice to me since I met them.” Lexa tries to reassure her mother.
“I don’t want you to get in trouble because of them.”
“I won’t.”