Chapter Text
Streaming through the clouds, bits of white light bathe the world a sickly gray.
Aang’s no firebender, and he needs no control to his breath, he needs nothing but the affirmation, the voice of safety calling back.
“Ming?” he asks around. “Ming, where are you?!”
Wet floorboards reflect the dim violet sky, as clouds hide away the blooming sunrise.
The rope is gone from its spot, and so are some of the supply crates.
The deck is empty.
Aang’s heart thunders in his chest, as he lashes about, calls out for Ming.
The nightmare’s yet to fade away fully, his hands tremble in front of him.
A part of him misses the safety of unconsciousness, of fading minds blended together.
He wonders who kept what he once was.
He wonders if it’s retribution, that he’s now all alone.
Dawn is breaking through the clouds, tinting the gray-blue sky a bloodied orange.
The eye of the sun dares not shine through, the tears of rain dare not fall upon them.
Aang’s searches for the friendly cold shoulder prove fruitless.
No sweetly apathetic eyes found, as the angry sea lashes against the wood, propels the boat away.
Are the hands reaching for him?
Hands reaching up at him, hands from underneath.
The drowned ones, coming to get him.
Aang shudders, reminds himself of what he is.
He is the Avatar.
And nothing bad is going to happen in his sight, right?
He smiles through the wrench in his gut, through the dizziness in his head.
There is no way that is not a prank, there is no way his friend really has gone away like that.
(Like someone else?
Like him, perhaps?
You went away, you came back, screamed the mass.
You will save us, you will bring us, you will destroy us.)
But his footsteps are weak, his heart is set in an answer that isn’t there.
And the deck is all empty around him. His lips are dry and his heart beats out the rhythm, wrong wrong wrong.
His eyes are wide, the realization is coming all too strong.
Because the boat is missing.
-
Their breaths are drowned, their punctured lungs fused together.
There is no bridge, nothing to give them a solid direction, nothing to truly bind them.
The emulsion is regaining its consciousness.
Blubber and shredded muscle, ligaments attached at the wrong places.
Broken bones jut from the angry sea, exposed organs and wounds alike splashed by the saltwater that once protected them.
Their cause is only a dimmed-down anger, their guide as blind as they are.
His fury propels them nonetheless, makes them swim and keeps them moving. Opens their cuts into gills, ties bones to teeth and eyes to feet.
Their goal slowly turns into an obligatory obsession.
But it is still reachable.
It’s the only thing they can hang onto.
For, as far as any of them can feel, pulsating in their agony, their screams blocked by newfound limbs and masses, there is nothing but the ocean.
Nothing but La, their once-revered spirit.
La, and the hollow husk of the moon.
-
They drift through an eerie, empty escape.
The sea is not something Azula will ever grow quite used to.
She breathes in the smell.
Salt and sickness, something wrong. Gone off. Like rotting fish.
Sea and sky alike are a dead gray, all too still.
The movement of their raft is hardly noticeable.
An absurdly stagnant sea, still somehow pushing them forward. Agonizing slowness, both deliberate and weak-willed.
Something guides them, pulls them closer.
They do not trust it.
Sleep comes in turns, when exhaustion grows too much.
Right at that moment, Ming’s chest rises and falls, ribs protruding clearly through her thin shirt.
Bones begging to be broken.
Dark skin clamoring for the claim of time, for the destruction under fire’s steady hand.
The dark skin, begging to be marked by time, to be destroyed below her hand.
The trust of her back, facing Azula.
And the eerie golden eyes of the bird, watching her.
Its too-wide mouth, its too-large eyes.
Golden yellow, unnaturally reflecting her face. One of them squints at her, marked with a hand of dishonor.
Azula doesn’t pay much mind to the familiarity.
She watches it back, lets the world pass them by.
Driving them deeper and deeper into the nothing.
The nowhere where her ship once sunk, the nowhere beyond which her crown lies, awaiting patiently for her.
Time hasn’t changed them much, she tells herself.
It hasn’t.
She is just doing what must be done, in times such as those.
Breaths, in and out.
Salt mixes with sweat.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
She has known control since her first gasp of air, since the first time she’s opened her eyes to hazel-brown coldness.
There is not an ounce of movement.
Just the way the sea steadily guides the raft.
But, in the eye of the empty hurricane, it’s not difficult to notice bits of change.
It comes with the figure in the distance, less and less blurry.
Her face is expressionless, neutral until the smell comes to them.
Nauseating.
Rotting flesh, eaten away. Wounds doomed to never close, dried copper and a twinge of sick sweetness.
And with it, the recognition, coming before she can even really recognize the thing.
The sea has left them an offering.
A dilacerated mass of hands and torsos, eyes and teeth.
A beaten-in pulp of something that was once not one, but many human beings.
The bird screeches, before she can rouse Ming from her sleep.
The lump beside her- soft warmth and the smell of filth, pepper-and-salt hair - stirs up, and then jumps.
“Azula, what-”
“Look.” she says, her voice far too confident for the situation.
The dead mass’ face is tilted up by a gentle wave.
It’s overtaken by a still-pulsating hole, filled with milk teeth and writhing maggots.
An offering.
A threat, more than anything else.
( Or maybe a gift, whispers the back of her mind. )
-
The decision is not quick, is not swift.
It’s made as the sun rises up high in the sky, as everyone surrounds his hyperventilating form, dissipate one by one at his nonresponse.
Aang wants to run.
Aang has to run.
But when he bends and doesn’t break, the sea moves with him.
And when he breathes in deep, his breaths come as puffs of wind.
There is no earth and there is no fire anywhere he can see, anywhere he can reach.
There is just his hollow bones and the muscle memories of someone who once mastered the greatest art.
There is just the trails of a hand that had rested on his shoulder, of a strict, mean instructor and a bird that would always try to force food down his throat.
And Aang couldn’t do anything but drift away, create a raft of ice, warmed through by his heart, and sail off.
Against all his instincts.
Against all that tells him to run, all who tell him to come back.
Because Aang did that.
And it’s his destiny to stop it.
To go back to the only place he remembers, to the pulsating masses of his people, his little survivors.
They’d left him a living metaphor, as the sea disintegrated all of them, re-built their bodies and minds into something they were never supposed to be.
He remembers the tales, woven deep into the back of his mind. Of how spirits would break through people’s bodies, melt and fuse them together like dysfunctioning tools.
He doesn’t want to go back. A part of him wants to cry at the thought, at the no-longer-intact people.
But he knows he’s ready.
He knows what he has to do.
His role to play, his deed to do.
If he can’t, he will rest knowing someone else will be able to.
Deep breaths, puffs of wind.
The sea dares not go against him.
He just beckons him closer.
-
What is the word she looks for?
Katara isn’t even sure of how she feels.
Is it melancholy? Is it some brand of agony?
Some kind of nostalgia, for a time that never truly was?
The moon shines high in the sky, her grayish shape obscured by the clouds.
The air is all too warm and stuffy.
A part of her wants to ignore the lingering wrongness, the smell of something gone off.
The eerie silence is filled by the laughing sea, his waves lapping against rocks and shipwrecks under them.
It tries to reach the bison, the all-encompassing waves.
If she closes her eyes, she can pretend that there isn’t the certainty of failure, if she lets down the knife in her hands, she can pretend that peace’s still a possible answer.
The push and pull is not how it should be.
Tui slowly comes full, rises up to become a dead thing’s open eye.
Katara’s breath catches on her throat, before she reminds herself of the way the moon shines gray but not red.
Of how no screaming fills the air, no smell of crumbled concrete and corpses.
She reaches out a hand, feels the comforting warmth of Sokka, his soft snores and dry hair.
A reminder that she isn’t all alone, on her own against the world.
They are cut down, weakened but not all gone.
Tui is coming full, slowly rising up into the open eye of a dead creature.
She shakes her head, as he babbles barely-formed words.
“Shut up, Yue. Stop being silly.” he says, barely clear enough to be heard.
She resists the urge to do something to shut him up.
Katara shakes her head, turns to play with the sewing needles.
The blessing of a waterbender extends for more than just the control of their element.
It also allows her to see in the dark, to do untidy stitches and shoddy embroidery.
She isn’t sure of what she’s supposed to make out of the world, out of its sudden bizarre nature.
Under her, the beckoning chant of the sea.
Come closer, come closer to the tribe long gone, she imagines it saying.
Bend for me, it asks and commands at the same time.
The world is enticing, tempting.
The exhaustion drives her mad, turns her head into a dizzy, spinning mass.
Katara can’t help the twinge of jealousy, for her brother can still sleep.
His slumber is interrupted by nightmares more often than not, but he still has a chance.
He doesn’t have the sea, screaming in his ears.
The moon’s too-long silence, the hollow feeling of disharmony.
She shakes her head, pretends her mouth doesn’t pull into a grimace.
Katara looks up at the sky.
The clear skin of the clouds, the blind eye of the moon-mother.
Her head shakes, her mouth begs to pull into a grimace.
The sea sings under her.
Katara can’t bother to sing back.
-
The masses writhe.
Their rebellion kills them one by one, as their deformed bodies twist and turn, pull away from the mass just enough to become unable to continue.
They bite at pieces of themselves, they rip away limbs and torsos.
The anger united them, for a time.
But to some, as consciousness returns, the cause now rings hollow.
Their minds awaken to the agonizing pain, one by one.
La was never lost, La was never able to leave the feeling away.
He pushes grief away, chases the wicked sun’s people, but slows down.
The moon-child approaches.
She is a walking memory, she is anger and grief and love.
Her slow breaths, the false-softness of her words.
Despicable and beautiful, adored and destructible.
Bringing along her offering, cradled close to her chest.
A slave of the sun, a vermin who thinks itself to be greater than life, riddled with blue warmth, guides them along.
But there shall not be a single sign, a bit of rebellion.
There shall not be anything but La’s hands, guiding them. He is a spirit and he is more, he is both lesser and greater than any evil.
Any other evil, they whisper, tied to him.
Awareness returns, rebelion surges.
They are a tragedy waiting to happen.
That, they know.
There are no mouths to say it, there is no time for tears to fall.
But even as they agonize, they are coming back.
-
Katara’s world drifts by.
The sea and the rocks under her, pillars of stone, bird nests alp empty.
“Katara, you have to eat something.” Sokka nudges her side, pokes her nose when she faces him.
Forced gestures, a rehearsed dance she joins in, begging for the comforting illusion of normalcy.
“That’s my line.” she faintly complains.
It sounds off, even to her own half-deaf, half-dead ears.
It all sounds unnatural.
But something is coming.
The end is near, and that reassures her, in a bizarre, futile way.
Even when they are held by daylight, Katara can feel the pull.
It guides them.
It wants them.
And she can't find a way to push it away, rip it off of her.
“I can’t fight an ocean spirit on an empty stomach. Not even a master waterbender can.” her brother justifies, eats another little piece of sun-dried meat.
It is not appetizing to her.
Nothing is.
Nothing but the goal, so close and so far.
It makes her heart thunder, it makes her hands quiver and her throat lock up.
The world is beautiful and despicable, deformed and twisted and blooming more and more every night.
In the daylight, she can still feel it.
A building headache, pressing down on her temples, more and more at each passing sunrise.
Her stomach does not rumble, her body does not ache.
The moon heals you.
The moon despises you.
Don't you desire her love?
She shakes her head, turns to the side.
“I’m going to sleep.” she says, simply.
“Katara-”
“Goodnight.” comes off curt, short and horrible.
She does not apologize.
The sea sings under her, beckons her closer and closer.
Katara shuts her eyes.
-
“Spirits have a way of both threatening and offering, Ming.” she says, knowing fully well that there is no mystery to be explained.
She recognizes the face.
Something in its deformed, twisted shapes.
“It was deliberate.” Azula says. “What are we doing about it?”
Something swallowed down in her throat.
“We’re sailing along.” she says. “I don’t know what you think we should do, but that’s the obvious answer.”
Azula smiles through hot-white disgust.
“I am giving this poor soul a way to rest.” she says.
Reaches out a hand.
A part of Azula, childish and stupid, can’t help but think that it might grab her back, deny itself the mercy.
But there is no fight, there is no warmth, even as she drags it closer, even as it falls half into the water.
Sets it ablaze.
Blue lights up the world, fiendfyre uncaring of how wet the corpse is, even atop the stone it lays in.
“May your ashes find their way.” she says.
It’s the honourable thing to do.
The thought is enough to nearly make her laugh.
That would be socially inadequate, though, so she keeps it to herself.
She was never as attached to her honor as he was, but it was Azula’s duty nonetheless.
Duty doesn’t care whether she is the only heir or a second-born.
-
He can vaguely register that a rainstorm is approaching, even amidst his contemplation, his shaky vision and his shakier belief that nobody will miss him much.
The waves are his guide.
Following with just the slightest delay, not quite bothering to give him the illusion that he’s in full control.
The smell of salt and rot, the pressing ache in his temples.
His only company is the feeling that makes him choke up, the something in his throat, down in the deepest pit of his stomach.
He lays down on the boat of ice, breathes in.
Breathes out, looks up at the sky.
It’s all empty.
Even though there is the ice-cold warmth on his back, he still feels like he is sinking.
“We’ll be fine.” he reassures his trembling hands.
The promise rings hollow in his ears, makes him shake his head, go back to rehearsing his speech.
Aang smiles to the lonely expanse around him.
The peaceful sea that guides him nonetheless, through the eye of the hurricane.
The pure grayness, the rocks peeking from the water, narrowly dodged.
Things that were once islands, now deep down, all greenery and life forgotten and fossilized.
Aang thinks of lion-turtles and their nests, of their corpses sinking to the bottom of the ocean, as they let themselves go, no longer needed.
How long will it take, for the delirium of a fulfilled purpose to set in?
Through his mind, drifts the detached knowledge, no memories attached, of monks who meditated to their deaths.
His head tilts to the side.
Maybe, if he dares not find his way, that will be his fate.
He spreads his arms, dares not shiver as he summons up saltwater, freezes it into icy snow.
Airbending protects him, keeps him both so warm and so cold he can’t feel anything, anyone.
It’s just lonely.
He misses them.
( Blue eyes.
Big and wide, crazed with amazement as they- she? - bent the rain away from their group.
Laughter, congratulations.
A warm body, too large to be human, behind the three of them.
Three?)
His head tilts.
Maybe.
Aang doesn’t want to dwell on the thought that he was someone before.
He just closes his eyes, pretends he can will his heart to stop its rocking.
-
“I think we’re close.” Ming says.
Azula can see her hand, the trembling grasp as she holds weakly onto their raft.
She can see it in her eyes, something unspoken.
A thing that Azula can’t catch onto, some kind of fascinating sixth sense, glinting in her eyes, showing in the way her mouth twists.
She can’t help but try to study it closer, gaze into her face, try to decipher her in every little question.
She wonders what is so array, to provoke that level of fear into the girl.
The tribal peoples have been researched extensively. They’d revered the sea and the moon, they’d been enamoured with the spirits.
Yet, her Ming gazes at the moon with pure hatred, talks not of her people and of their beliefs.
In another world, she would contemplate bringing the girl back with her. Their few interactions, growing into a list of longer and longer length, had proven fruitful, entertaining.
Either way, thinking of home brings something to her chest.
A gift from her mind, the doubt that of wheter she is ready to leave behind herself in the name of her nation.
If there is another way, one that doesn’t waste a resource as precious as her.
A wasted prodigy, who will die wondering if she was the heir her Fire Lord had sought so dearly.
She shakes her head, looks away.
A sunken island stares back.
Maybe it was once part of their empire?
The thought taunts her, makes her crave for an outlet.
Her fingertips heat up.
She wants to boil the sea, she wants to make it matter.
But she is in control, and she needs nothing but herself and her mind.
She must not fall victim to her own stupidity, to the mistakes of youth.
She must not be like him.
Azula drives away the thought of his face, of the way he’d leaned into Father’s hand, almost unconsciously, that day.
Of the comforting voice, lulling the spectacle to a stop, lulling the boy to safety.
Of how the sun shone his blessing so bright and wild, of how Father’s hand caught on fire.
But she is not alone, even if she doesn’t have to smile.
The other girl’s back against hers, the soft warmth of someone who has not an use to their name, is enough to drive away the thoughts.
Azula stares up at the bird, flying in circles around the boat.
Wide and close, almost like there’s a pattern.
It will dive down once in a while, skitter close to the water, taunting the peaceful sea to grab at it like it knows it just might.
Something about the moon-mother acts as a reminder.
The moon-mother dives down some more.
Its dark, plain feathers wet with the dirty saltwater.
Ming sighs, reaches out a hand, as if she’d never gone dark and numb, as if snapping out of trances had long since become second nature.
“Junior, come down here, dumb bird!” she shouts out, rolls her head. There’s a smile in her voice.
She can’t see it, but it dares not sound genuine.
All gestures seem forced, wrong.
“When we get there, you plan to… Talk down the spirit.” She says, bringing up the plan again.
In her voice, the disbelief rings clear.
“Spirits are fickle things, Azula.” she says, as the bird lands on her shoulder.
“May I distrust you on that.” she says. “I doubt you can change its mind.”
Soft bird croons, a beak grooming Azula’s hair.
She has priorities greater than to bat it off, push it away.
“You can help.” Ming says. “Plus, I was once blessed by the moon. Her spirit lives on in me.”
Euthanasia.
The word comes to her head, a way to take the spirituality away from a sacrifice.
It means the same to her, in that moment.
She agrees, fire tingling in her fingertips even after the bird flies away, breaks the pattern.
-
In Appa’s back, breathing in the salty air.
The blocked throat, the numbed mind.
Katara runs through the motions, time and time again.
Freezes spikes of steam onto her hands, carves daggers out of thin air.
Sharp and icy, nicking at her skin like little teeth.
Melting away easily, recoiling from her fever.
She shakes away droplets, falls down to the floor.
In her mind, there is roaming.
Plans run over, none solid enough for her to go with.
Katara can’t help but flinch, when she hears the scream that breaks through the barriers of the nightmare.
Her mind roams, runs through plans, tries to find it in her to go through with at least one of them.
However, her meaninglessly meaningful nightmare is ended by something.
A sharp screech, almost human.
But she can recognize the sound.
Temple gardens and plays in front of the fire.
She shakes her head, for there is no way, there is no possibility.
But she isn’t alone, she isn’t the only soul awake in that place.
A moon-mother screeches again, dives down towards Appa and the rest of them.
She shakes Sokka awake, points to the silhouette, backlit by the gray, hollowed-out moon.
Its movements aren’t quite agile, its flying isn’t quite natural.
Familiarity frozen over with a wave of her hand, dropped down to the leathery saddle.
“Sokka, wake up!” she shakes him again, tries to pry him away from sleep’s hands. “Sokka, look!”
His head turns, his eyes open.
Close, all lazy and not quite catching on.
“It- It’s familiar.” he says, mid-yawn, reaching out for the thing. “Get rid of it.”
He tries to turn back, his efforts stopped with a heavy, cold hand.
“It’s same moon mother from the siege.” she mutters.
The ice around it is melting all too fast.
Katara is enraptured by the familiarity.
Puffed-up feathers, plain brown giving way to the scar, taking up most of the left side of its face.
Shaped like fingers, just around edges.
The thing snaps, tries to lunge at them.
Hissing high, screaming out.
“Katara, shut it up-” her brother whines, closes his eyes. “I don’t care, all birds look the same-”
“It’s the moon-mother we’d found beside Aang.” she says.
His eyes truly open.
Bright blue, wide lightning-strike.
Mouth opens, mouth closes.
“Oh, fuck.” Sokka lays down, places a hand over his face.
“How?” she asks, half to the bird, half to her brother.
The thing stops.
Wide eyes focused on her, not quite animalistic enough to not be all there.
Squinted gold, disproportionate stare.
She lifts her hand.
Melts the ice into a puddle, ignores how it soaks into the saddle.
“You can go.” she tells it.
The superstitious part of her objects, thinks of spirit-animals and legends of blessings in disguise.
Katara bats her hand at both the ideas and the thing itself.
It does not move an inch.
Instead, it side-eyes her.
“Go away!” Sokka says.
Its wide eyes lid over a bit, as it suddenly runs up close to them.
“Shoo!” she tries to nudge off the bird.
Gets her hand just enough for it to hop onto it.
Surprisingly warm and heavy, as its claws dig into her palm.
It doesn’t stop staring at her.
“Get out. Go away.” she tells the bird, shakes her hand.
It dares not budge.
Instead, she swears she can see its too-wide mouth smile.
-
His eyes open to darkness.
The purest night.
Not a glimmer of the moon.
Panic comes in a sudden wave, jolts Aang up.
But-
The moon is back.
Something passed by it, he realizes.
The light returns, and he can see it-
Large and fluffy, a tail wagging as it glides through the air.
“W- Wha’?” Aang rubs at his eyes.
The figure is still there, faintly lit.
Going away.
“Hey, don’t go!” he screams.
There is no glider, but the air gives way easily.
Airbending is a skill, engraved into the memory of his muscles, carved into his too-light bones.
He leaps into the air, twists and turns.
Falls and rises, gives chase.
“HEY, HEY!” he screams.
The wind whips against his face, comforting caresses as he hunts after the thing.
The dim moonlight, the laughter of the sea.
It looks so soft and fluffy, and Aang knows he shouldn’t act so childish, but it feels familiar.
The creature stops.
“You’re not alone!” he realizes, floats in the air for a second.
There is someone in the saddle.
Someone screaming his name.
-
Heartbeat heartbeat.
Katara holds him close, his heartbeat thundering through ribs she can feel too much.
“Aang, sit down and eat something, you’re a skeleton!” she blurts out.
“No- no, ma’am, I’ve got a-” he interrupts her, pulls away and points at himself. “Skin!”
Katara's friend is back.
Tears pool, fall down as the moon shines bright behind a film of clouds.
“Holly shit, buddy, you’re back!” Sokka takes his turn, hugs the boy from behind.
Aang wheezes out, wide-eyed and grimacing:
"Who are you?"
And Katara stops.
Breaths swallowed down, the world suddenly all too loud, despite the perfect quietude.
"Do you... Not remember us?"
"Can't say I do." he says.
And then, he hugs the two of them close.
“But you seem trustworthy enough!” his smile is audible, even as the world goes dark, even as she shuts her eyes.
Heartbeat tears, heartbeat break.
A wobbly smile, Sokka’s sad laugh.
“I don’t know what happened to you, but I’m glad to know you’re still Aang.”
(She wonders, what if someone found him before.)
-
The night sky is still a bit red when they find their way to the stench.
Nothing of the smell, nothing of the blur in the distance could’ve prepared them for what the-
The mass.
It’s nothing if not that-
For what it had become.
No training could’ve prepared Azula for the sight of it.
She was raised in a language that beast does not understand.
There is no burning in the sea, there is no banishing in a land that belongs to no man.
That thing-
It’s much worse than any punishment that threatened to befall her.
Back at home, prayers were said at sunfall. Now, even well into the night, they rung on her ears, memories like handprints on her skin.
( Chalices raised high, bathed in the red temple light.
The revered-yet-hunted dragons stared down at them, blinding gold eyes sightlessly glaring at Azula.
The fading sun was blinding, but she knew better than to look away.
Therefore, she stood, fascinated with a bored face, as the drums rung out, as the bells sang and as a cacophony filled the air.
“May we be united as one in the land of spirits!” screamed the sages, a chorus of old, raspy voices. )
And united they were.
Flesh bound together, glued by skin like melted wax. Dead fish eyes, blindly staring down on her face.
Encrusted by saltwater and seaweed, exposed organs and wounds like gills.
Exposed organs, wounds encrusted by saltwater.
Leathery skin opening up into mouths of a thousand baby teeth, no screams ever coming out.
It pulsates, an emulsion of soon-to-be cadavers that dares not move more than that.
Control and forced fascination give up to the bile that rises in her throat, to the reflexive twitching of her hands, to the way they beg to light up, to burn Agni’s light into those blind eyes.
They must destroy, they must make that thing go away.
All doubt is gone, when there can be the restoration of harmony to that world.
That creature is what remains of the so-called La, is what remains of a tribe.
The plans to elliminate that unworthy abomination suddenly seem worth it.
It stares through her, but Azula knows she is anything but unseen.
Ming falls to the ground, clutches her head.
The moon shines brighter in the sky, through the clouds and down on them.
A part of her almost wants to join in on the whimpering. A fact just brutal enough to motivate Azula into the good decision.
A firebender’s purpose.
Destruction.
In the sea, it comes not through her force - nothing but a phoenix’s dying flame would be enough to burn with no fuel - but through her voice.
There is no rehearsal.
There is no preparation other than her bow.
Honouring the wretched thing, the thing that pretends it isn’t all there.
Wet floorboards against her forehead, as she forces her body down.
Disharmed hands extended in front of her.
Respect to the creature, that makes her hands tremble, that makes her mouth quiver and her throat well up, her stomach churn from the bile that rises up.
Suddenly, a sound breaks through.
The laughter of a hundred people, no semblance of synchrony, ringing through the night, stretching on, louder and louder at each of her rapid heartbeats.
She waits until it dies down.
Respect for the dead, right before they’re gone.
“You shall listen, for I am your devoted follower. I have chased you, and I shall speak to you.” Her voice dares not tremble.
She doesn’t dare to let anything happen.
Ming whimpers beside her.
She would’ve made a good peasant.
Maybe a noble, even if not one very good at it.
This is still the end.
The sea does not answer, the waves do not lash, the waves do not dare throw them down.
The sea does not answer, but it wants her to speak.
“You have made a grave mistake.” she says, her voice calm, her face expressionless, facing a creature worse than Koh himself. “Your anger may burn, but when it cools down, there will be nothing left.”
And then, the trembling voice comes out, the accent louder and more notable than ever.
“Maybe that’s what you want.” Ming says, her overly-emotional words cold. “But when anger burns out, nobody will quell your tears, nobody will sooth your woes, Lá.”
They have two different ways of going about that, it seems.
“You-” Azula starts, resists the urge to set her hands ablaze, to grip onto whatever she can find and make a tribute out of it.
“You have destroyed not my tribe, but yours too.” Ming says. “You have taken down your home, you have been made blind by your fury.”
The sea laughs.
The storm clouds roar.
As Azula breathes in one last time, shuts her eyes, the waves turn into a spirit’s hands, black water lashing against their raft.
-
An arrival made to the screaming.
In Appa’s back, the wind is a whip, the night is a blur.
The moon shines bright, visible through the clouds.
With the sound, the bird - Junior, Aang had called him - digs further into Katara’s arm.
His eyes go wide, and suddenly, the grip is gone.
The sharp flapping of unsteady wings, as he flies off to the sea.
He screams.
He screams after the people down there.
She looks at Sokka, realization clear over disgust and disturb.
For they are not alone against La’s wrath.
In the night, down in the waves, people drown, dragged not away but in, by the hands of the sea.
For once, the answer to the world’s question seems almost clear.
-
They cling to the beast’s wet wool.
It breathes, fast and tense, loud rumbling growls coming off of it as Azula and Ming are helped up, into the leathery saddle.
Few words, not much but the gasp of recognition.
“I’ll explain later, now shut up!” Ming’s hoarse voice hisses through bared teeth.
More important than that, though, is the moon, a shining white halo on the Avatar’s peach-fuzz head.
His large gray eyes filled with tears.
“I’ll try to fix this.” he says.
A voice childish and broken, vulnerable and despicably human.
With the next blink, the world is filled by blue light.
Pure, through the arrows carved into his skin, as he drifts.
No answer, no words.
Nothing but the fact that the mass-
It stops.
-
The mass wants to laugh.
The mass wants to cry and sob and hold.
Unity has long since been broken.
They stand conjointed but conscious, all around La.
They are a barrier, but they block no words.
“I- I allowed this to happen.” the Avatar says.
The voice of a child, the voice of one of them.
“Didn’t I?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry it came to this.”
Some of them want to take him onto the mass, back into the comfort of arms coming undone.
They are no longer safe, and they haven’t been human in so long.
La’s anger screams at the backs of their minds, he is claw and finger, he is the seal and the koi and the dragon that surrounds the world.
But some of them are coming along.
“I- I don’t know any of you. I don’t think you know me.” he says, a wisp of light and peace, a voice soft and weepy.
Then come with us, La whispers, resisting the urge to scream.
Come with us, my dear, and we will know eachother like foot and nail, like fin and scale.
“It’s not right.” he says. “Why can’t you come with me?”
La laughs.
The chorus is dwindling.
“I want you all free.” he says. “The- someone? - they used to tell me that there is no freedom, when something ends up like this.”
You know not what you talk about.
Hands reach out, bits of corrupted, cracked pottery.
Washed over, washed away.
La cares not for them, for he still has enough to keep them close, to hold them tight and keep them from getting away.
“Then teach me.” the boy says, a smile of sunlight and a breath of summer wind.
They reach out.
Some of them are clinging to hope, to their previous students now long gone.
Shards of memory, sassy children and quips followed by laughter.
“Why can’t you?” the Avatar asks, a tilt to the side, a pull and a nudge.
“Don’t you know?”
In that place, that escapade of dreams and minds, there are no waves to drown the boy with.
There are no hands close enough to snuff his fire, to blow away his breeze.
“You should live. All of you.” the boy’s words ring out, hopeful and hopeless-inducing.
“You can leave, you know?”
Oh, nobody here can.
Not for long, at least, La says, his voice calm as he swims, a gentle rainfall, a fish whose fins have been bit off.
But that is something they all know.
There isn’t much to be said or done, between them.
“You can, though.” Avatar Aang says. “You can leave. You can grieve and let us all grieve, too.”
What is the purpose in that, my friend?, La asks.
“Not being angry.” he says. “It hurts, but with time comes peace.”
Pain never fades.
“Why?” the boy asks, sadness and smiles.
I am the saltwater in your wounds, i am the sea of your rainfall.
“You don’t have to be.” he says. “Anger can’t keep you running forever.”
But it can keep me alive for long enough to avenge her.
“Why vengeance?”
Hands try to slap at him.
They have all felt La’s pain.
They are insulted.
Good.
Because the fire snuffed her out, La says. The people you defend burned her, the people you protect killed her.
“She’s restored, in a way. The moon still shines, just as the ocean still-” a hand is waved around, wisps and raindrops. “Well, her spirit lives on in those she’s blessed, just as yours lives on in those you’ve cursed.”
The sea-that’s-come-alive makes a mistake, in all his impotent glory.
They won’t live for long.
And out there, something breaks, not let out by La, but all on its own.
An icicle falls down, a cascade of flesh and bone.
“Would you like them to keep suffering?”
It’s not suffering. It’s justice, La says. You are too young to know.
“You are too old to consider.” the boy says.
La’s laughter rings out, loud and clear and all alone.
But the mass had been dying for so very long.
And an Avatar is just what they'd needed to let go, to fade back and away.
“It’s alright.” the boy says. “You don’t have to laugh. You are the tears. Didn’t you say that?”
“You are the tears, you can cry.”
Weak laughter that stops soon enough.
“Because, afterall, you’re all alone.”
-
As Aang’s eyes open, the sea is turning brown.
He’d always imagined blood tinting all lenses red, driving men mad with power they should’ve never had.
But the water turns brown with rot, foams with floating blubber.
The mass is still stuck together.
Not conscious, not anymore.
Just suffering, he thinks.
“They’re hurt.” he says. “But not dead. Katara, we can save-”
“How long do you think they would live, Aang?” Ming interrupts, her voice as warm as the icy hand on his shoulder.
Some of them try to fight back.
Waves come towards the bison with little push, little strength.
The people of the mass aren't all there.
Maybe they're not there at all, a part of him thinks.
The bird in her shoulders - his name rings out as wrong as hers does - screeches.
Ming looks at it, breathes in and shakes her head, her face hidden from Aang.
“I can’t understand you.” she says, lifts a hand to her shoulder.
Lets him perch atop of it, one last time.
Neither of them know how he will come back from that.
She remembers, words she'd muttered under the deck.
(You can use your firebending, as a last resort.)
(There is no going back.)
The bird lifts off.
Did Yue whisper that?
Either way, their story ends like it had begun.
Once more, Zuko bursts into flames.