Chapter Text
i.
Kya hadn't lied, that day when the Southern Raiders came.
She had been lying to her children, every day of their lives. She'd done it to protect them. When the foreign soldiers came that day and saw her stream the water, took her instead of her daughter, Kya knew she'd done the right thing.
In prison, she didn't.
There was no choice, she didn't have anything left, anyone left, and if she tugged just so on their blood their screams couldn't haunt her any more.
Still, she changed her name because she'd changed. She didn't seek them out, her children.
Everything she'd done, she'd done to protect them.
---
"Hello, children."
---
"Mom?"
---
This is a dream, this isn't real, oh, Tui and La, please let it be real.
Katara was so young when she saw them drag away her mother's still body, but she'd always remembered her mother's eyes.
There were oceans in those eyes.
---
This is a nightmare. Sokka should feel happy, looking at her, but he only feels sad.
She looks nothing like he remembers. She's aged through hardship and pain.
He was a warrior, even as a child; he should have been able to save her, protect her. His failure stares at him through her eyes.
---
"You're Sokka and Katara's mom? It's great to meet you! Wow, they always said you were dead but, heh, that must not have been true. This is amazing, you guys must be so happy --"
"Twinkletoes, they're having a moment. Stop bouncing or I'll bury you up to your neck."
---
She owns an inn and a closet full of colorful puppets. Spiced tea and warm beds after weeks on the road are waiting for the weary children.
"You'll all be completely safe here," she assures them.
---
"It's been five years, Mom. We missed you so much, Sokka and I." There's only a little accusation in Katara's voice.
"I'm sorry," Kya wails, and Katara's heart melts. It hurts, to see her mother's face twisted in pain. "They took me," she whispers now. "They took me because …"
Water follows another's pull.
---
"You're a waterbender? Why did you never tell us?"
"It wasn't safe, years without raids were becoming fewer and fewer … you were both so young, children talk when they're threatened."
"Mom, I grew up the only one. I was so alone."
---
"Katara, sweet child, I never meant for that to happen. But it kept you safe, in the end. They took me, instead of you. It was … it was …"
"You don't have to say it, Mom. I understand."
"I only escaped a year ago. I had nothing but the clothes on my back, I'm lucky to have the inn now, a way to save for passage South …"
Hama tells the children what they need to hear.
---
"We're here now, Mom. We're not going to leave you."
Sokka nods too, resolute. How could they, after letting her suffer so?
---
Deep water hides dark currents. The women of the South are oceans.
The reflections off the surface are blinding.
ii.
Katara has a mother again. And she's a waterbender.
She doesn't remember a time when she was this happy.
"To learn about my heritage, it would mean everything to me," she confesses.
---
Her daughter is so, so strong. She sculpts towers of ice, melts them with a thought and pulls it around her like a cloak.
"That's very resourceful, Katara. You're thinking like a true master. But did you know you could even pull water out of thin air?"
Water comes from the air at Kya's call. Claws of ice coat once-nurturing hands.
---
Sokka shows his mother Space Sword, tells her of his schemes and ice dodging and father.
"That's wonderful, Sokka."
He wonders why she doesn't ask about Dad. Probably she's just excited to teach Katara. Benders were like that, sometimes.
It's easier to explain away, than to think if it's yet another thing that hurts his mother too much.
---
A fire-lily dies.
"When you're a waterbender in a strange land, you do what you must to survive. Tonight I'll teach you the ultimate technique of waterbending. It can only be done during the full moon, when your bending is at its peak."
Katara is fierce, and underneath it all, in pain.
Her daughter is ready.
---
The moon is intoxicating. Katara isn't the only one who can feel it, this time.
"Can you feel the power the full moon brings? For generations it has blessed waterbenders with its glow, allowing us to do incredible things!"
"Yes, yes!" Katara laughs in ecstasy.
---
"You have got to keep an open mind, Katara. There's water in places you never think about."
What kind of mind does her daughter have, now that she's grown? What fuels her passion?
How can that passion be used?
---
Where there is life, there is water.
---
"Bloodbending. Controlling the water in another body, enforcing your own will over theirs."
Her mother's voice is dark, and Katara is frightened of the power it holds.
"Once you perfect this technique, you can control anything or anyone."
Of the power she herself holds.
---
"But ... to reach inside someone and control them?" Her daughter looks away, unsure. "I don't know if I want that kind of power."
"The choice is not yours." Kya is gentle, but she won't let her daughter forsake her birthright.
"The power exists. And it's your duty to use the gifts you've been given to win this war. Katara, they tried to wipe us out, our entire culture, your family!"
---
She's right, of course Mother is right. Aang has to learn all the elements. Even Sokka and Toph are constantly training. Katara has a duty to her family, her people.
"We have years together to learn, my dear," her mother comforts her with an embrace. "You'll do it right. I trust you."
Katara feels her back straighten. She will do whatever it takes.
---
"The rendezvous is in two days," Sokka says.
Decision time.
"Sokka, we can't just leave Mom!"
"Come with us?" he asks, hopeful. "You can see Dad again!"
We can be a family again.
iii.
Ah yes, their father.
He'd run off to fight the battle in front of him, never looking behind. He'd left the children, just like he'd left her.
And now a chance for him to make that choice all over again.
Small wonder she can't do it.
---
"Sokka, if she's staying -- then so am I."
---
His sister is headstrong.
It's never really worried him, before.
---
"But Katara, you have to come with me! I love you!" A distraught confession.
Don't you love me?
---
"Aang, I -- you don't understand. This is my mother. This is my family, my tribe, my culture."
Katara is more, far more, than the Avatar's girl.
She has a place in her tribe once again.
---
"But you said I was your family!"
What about hope?
"You'll always be my family, Aang." There are oceans in her eyes.
---
Lie, say Toph's feet.
---
"You'll defeat the Fire Lord and save the world, Aang. I know it."
And if she leaves him first, he can't leave her behind, in the end.
"You've mastered waterbending. You don't need me anymore."
---
Her voice is so gentle, as she breaks his heart.
"It's for the best, Aang."
---
"And you, Snoozles?"
"I've got to see the invasion plan through." He's resolute, a warrior.
---
Hama's smile is bitter. "Such a man of the tribe," she says. "So much like your father."
---
Abandoning us, just like your father did, to play at war. The accusation is clear, in his mother and sister's eyes. It hurts, to walk away from them.
It's family first, then tribe. Sokka hasn't chosen either of those, since Aang.
---
"The men of our tribe have always craved glory, a contrived honor that they can't find from protecting their families. They seek out war, sacrifice us to it," Kya says to her daughter, but it's Sokka these words are for.
---
They'd turned away once before, when they had a chance to find their father. Can he turn away their mother, for a chance to fight and die as they win the war?
Sokka isn't stupid. He's skilled, but his body count is far, far lower than that of the benders.
---
Katara wonders if it's selfishness, pride or sorrow that swells in her when her brother steps away from the saddle.
"I can't be like the other men in my tribe. I can't leave my mother and sister behind and sail off to war."
---
Hama is the puppetmaster. She knows which strings to pull.
---
"I'm so sorry, Aang, Toph. I wish there was another way. I wish there was more that I could offer."
I wish I was more.
---
Truth, as he sees it. It hurts Toph almost as much as his leaving.
iv.
The full moon comes a week before the sun goes dark. Katara starts with a squirrel-mouse.
Its blood pulls back at her, just a little. She laughs, enamored.
Her mother hugs her. "Congratulations, Katara! You're a bloodbender!"
---
Sokka trains with his sword, and gets to know his mother again. He doesn't ask, yet, what it was like for her. She can't speak of the Fire Nation without her face twisting into ugly knots.
He doesn't like it, but he supposes that's fair, although he doesn't remember his mother being so vindictive, before.
She'd been a healer, before.
---
The invasion plan is ready, and they don't need Sokka to lead it but it feels wrong, somehow, to be doing it without him. Without them.
Aang flies off, backed by an army yet so alone.
---
Hakoda is gravely wounded. His second-in-command takes charge.
---
The Fire Lord isn't home. Aang flies back to the plaza, nothing to show for it.
---
Lightning courses through Zuko's body, in, down, up, out, and he's free he's free he's free.
So is Uncle.
---
Aang is twelve, and he's not a leader. But now he has to be. He takes them to the Western Air Temple, to grieve.
---
Oddly enough, it's Zuko who brings them hope again, offering fire and focus in return for forgiveness.
---
The next full moon, Katara has already progressed to pygmy-pumas. She is, after all, a prodigy.
Her mother is proud of her.
---
The assassin is Zuko's first kill. He's been careful up till now, good enough up till now, had other choices up till now.
He trembles in the dark and the hand of a twelve year old who drowned a fleet comes to rest tentatively on his back.
"I think you were meant to be my firebending teacher."
---
Aang isn't afraid of burning Katara anymore. But while his flames burn hot with anger, Zuko's are only stunted licks of warmth.
---
The dragons live. This is a better way, Aang thinks, and feels like himself for the first time in a very long time.
He still can't let Katara go. She's his forever girl.
---
Toph sees her parents again, visits them with the traitor prince in tow. He's worth a lot of money, so they don't turn her away.
She tells them, this is me, it's always been me, I still love you. Don't you love me?
They do, but they want her safe.
---
This is my brother, now, Toph says. He'll keep me safe. I'll keep him safe, too. Together, we'll protect the Avatar. He's going to save the world.
The scar he takes for her is the first one Zuko wears with pride.
---
Aang's water glows. A tear falls down his face, but it doesn't glow. This should be her, not him.
---
Sokka tries not to think about Aang and Toph, two kids against the world.
His family is here, now.
Is this why the men all left, he asks himself bitterly. That feeling that they were meant for more?
---
They need a plan; the comet is approaching. They find the Old Masters, and Zuko begs his uncle for forgiveness.
Iroh takes him in his arms like he'll never let go again.
---
Kya is a mother; she'll shelter her children from the trials of adults as long as she can.
"It's not your place to carry the weight of the world, my children. Let your elders do it for you."
"There's got to be something we can do to fight the Fire Nation!" Her daughter, full of storms.
There is, in fact. There always is, here in the heart of the Fire Islands.
---
"It has to be you, Prince Zuko."
It's a heavy burden, but no heavier than the destiny written for Aang. Zuko will take it, and bear it with pride, until the very end.
v.
They're out of time. Children march to war.
---
Katara can bend a man's limbs to her will by the coming of the Comet. The pull of human blood is intoxicating, begging for Katara to move it.
Her mother is right. The dance of revenge is so beautiful.
---
The airship fleet burns. Jeong Jeong and Toph make sure of that.
---
Zuko faces Azula, and she's different, already defeated, but still unapologetic.
He holds her, although she screams and cries, as the comet-enhanced lightning leaves him shaken to the core by its passing.
He's Fire Lord now, in the eyes of Agni, but there are no witnesses besides his sister.
Azula laughs and tells him of unspeakable things, the traitor's death that awaits him.
Zuko strokes her hair and tells her that's not going to happen.
He can feel it, inside him, tearing at the walls of his cells. They won't need to torture him to kill him.
Zuko hopes against hope.
---
Aang's seventh chakra is locked.
The Avatar falls.
Earth catches him.
---
Appa cries out, a sound of desperation.
---
A last request: Keep our people safe, 'Zula. Don't let the inferno take them.
---
"Go, Dum-Dum."
---
Under the comet-red sky, Kya finally tells them what happened to her to make her Hama.
Sokka begs her to stop, and is sick.
Katara weeps and vows revenge.
Her daughter is so fiercely beautiful that Kya wants to cry. She embraces her and threads a whalebone comb through her thick hair.
Her son... doesn't have that same spark.
---
Ba Sing Se has been re-taken.
---
Ba Sing Se has fallen (again).
---
Master Pakku of the Northern Water Tribe has fallen.
---
Master Piandao of Shu Jing has fallen.
---
King Bumi of Omashu has fallen.
---
Jeong Jeong the Deserter has fallen.
---
The last great Dragon has fallen.
---
Phoenix King Ozai styles himself dragonslayer.
It hides 'fratricide' little better than his other title hides 'genocide'.
---
Zuko can't breathe. He's forgotten how. He'll lie on the sky bison's back and let himself be carried to oblivion.
He'll leave his name, his crown, his birthright, in the urn with his uncle's ashes.
---
Katara's hand slips, and a heart stops. She cries out, reaches for her waterskin and doesn't understand why the water won't glow.
Blood and water don't mix. Besides, the ashmakers don't deserve it, her mother tells her.
---
Appa finds Aang, small, defeated, clinging to Toph in hiding and they're both so very young.
---
The Avatar heals the rightful Fire Lord, sorrow and guilt chasing the last remnants of cold fire from the young man's body.
Only banked embers are left.
vi.
Momo doesn't come back.
---
The red light of Sozin's Comet takes a long time to burn out.
vii.
Zuko learns to breathe again, from an airbender this time. (Basics, Prince Zuko)
His fire is different, now. He has more will, more pain, more power than his father or sister. His flames could be blue if he wanted them to be. He could harness the lightning now, if he wanted to.
He never does.
---
They train because it's better to call it training than survival, on the run and only ever resting a few days at a time, in the White Lotus hideouts that haven't been discovered, or in remote piles of earth or ice.
Aang misses his waterbending master.
---
"We have to find them," Aang pleads. "We could stop running for a while. Katara wouldn't turn me away."
It's not Aang that Toph is worried about, but the former prince. Sugar Queen has never been good at forgiveness.
---
They learn that to stop running is death.
They bury Haru.
They've already buried so many.
---
Katara can harness a bender's chi through the movements of their blood. The firebender she is working with has burned his own arm. Curious, Katara tries again.
---
Fire Lord Azula doesn't tolerate imperfection.
And if these incompetents end up banished to the continent, recruitment fodder for her father's armies, then so be it. Let them serve the Fire Nation.
Just not her Fire Islands.
---
They hide their faces in dark hoods. Aang grows his hair out, but still wears a headband in case a flash of blue should peek through the black strands. Toph wears brown, and buys tinted spectacles. Zuko only ventures out at night, masked with dao at his back.
---
Sokka stops trimming the hair below his wolf-tail. He's sixteen now and angry, old enough to grow out the dreadlocks and bind them by his face with beads, but he can't bring himself to do so.
It's a warrior's look, and warriors have honor.
Sokka laughs at the irony.
---
Azula wears her hair half in a topknot where rests her crown, the other half flowing free, the fashion of Fire Lords since time immemorial.
She will be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history.
---
Winters, they wander in the desert, wishing for water.
"Can we try again?" asks Aang, all sad grey eyes.
"They're deep in the Fire Islands," Zuko says. "It's too dangerous."
"What about the White Lotus? Won't they help us?" Toph is thirteen and sometimes it still shows. Zuko agrees to try, anyway. For Aang's sake.
---
The Earth Kingdom is no more. When the last stronghold falls, Katara walks a squadron of ashmakers into the sea.
Her mother is right. Blood is the superior element.
---
The remnants of the White Lotus work with resistance cells in the former Earth Kingdom. The Avatar, they agree, is only a liability until he can access the Avatar State.
The scarred young man on the other hand … with his face they could launch a rebellion.
They want his name too, but he can't give what he doesn't have.
---
They're on their own, again. Zuko doesn't know why he'd ever expected anything different.
---
There are rumors of wolves and witches, of firebenders gone missing. Toph keeps her brothers away, keeps them safe. They move on.
She explains to Aang, softly, why he shouldn't ask again. When that doesn't work, she buries him up to his neck in the earth and yells.
---
The Southern Water Tribe is no more, barely a footnote to the body count of the Phoenix King.
When the news reaches them, even Sokka (her soft-hearted older brother with no stomach for blood) goes berserk and takes scalps, one red-bound topknot for each child in their village.
Katara and her mother make the river run red, the next full moon.
They leave in the morning, and seek out another town.
---
Zuko collects scars for them all, paying for past mistakes in blood.
Aang tells him that's not how forgiveness works.
Atonement is different.
---
Aang lets her go, his first heartbreak. Cosmic energy flows. It's a poor substitute for the sun-speckled surface of her eyes.
---
The screams of the firebenders are satisfying, but their faces are all wrong.
Katara tugs on a hand, brings it over the left eye, sparks chi with a careful twist and push of breath into red flame.
There. That's better.
---
Sokka brings her another one. After all, there are plenty of Fire Nation soldiers to spare.
The craters are bottomless, on the dark side of the moon.
---
Hama smiles, watching her children. Training them.
She's heard their father is dead, in the war.
Good. She'd loved him, once, but the person he'd loved died in a Fire Nation prison.
Love has no place in this new world.
viii.
Four years have passed. The Comet has left its imprint on the world, a raw red scar across its face.
---
Airships are problematic in polar air. The rebuilding of the Fire Navy is almost complete for the last Siege of the North.
The Night of Blood Moon approaches.
Phoenix King Ozai himself will lead the strike.
---
Fire Lord Azula laughs from her throne. Father never had a head for tactics, not like Uncle did.
But he's leading a massacre, not a battle. He doesn't need to be smart.
Ozai never did have a heart.
---
Aang is truly a master of all four elements. He's only sixteen. The world thinks he's dead (still) (again).
Avatar Aang was a cheerful, hopeful child, so the story goes.
Yes, he was.
---
Toph is the main reason they're still alive. She's the greatest earthbender in the world, after all.
---
Fire Prince Zuko, traitor to the Dragon Throne, is dead, by official witness of Fire Lord Azula.
Azula always lies.
The Blue Spirit has quietly become a legend.
---
Fire Lord Azula takes a small interest in folktales concerning the water demon. They amuse her, she says.
Servants shudder to hear that phrase.
---
Katara is the most talented waterbender of her generation, and the strongest bloodbender ever born. Only on the new moon is she truly powerless.
The face of the enemy still haunts her.
---
Sokka is the last great hunter of the South, the Lone Wolf. He brings in prey from the Fire Nation for his sister to play with.
He tries to tell himself that he did the right thing, for his family, that he's doing the right thing, for the world.
The ashmakers need to pay for what they did to Mom. To Dad. To Aang.
Funny thing is, their screams sound the same as the ones inside his own mind.
---
Even though they give its territory a wide berth, Zuko has heard of the Wolf-without-a-pack. He's never heard about any bodies though, and he wonders. Sokka had seemed … honorable.
Honor was the first thing to disappear in the fight for survival.
It is the last piece of his old life he still clings to.
ix.
One night, out hunting, Sokka sees the moon catch on a blue and white mask. He draws his meteor blade in silence, adjusts his wolf-head helmet, and waits.
---
A thin trail of black smoke rises from red embers.
Notes:
The four hardest words I've ever written? "Momo doesn't come back." just… fuck. Why. Did no one stop me.
Also, little known fact, but lightning is often accompanied by gamma ray bursts. Hello, radiation poisoning.
If you're in need of immediate therapy following this, I'm also posting my Sokka & Zuko co-parenting AU, which might not be up by the time you finish reading this, but should be up by the time you finish processing ;)
Chapter Text
i.
Zuko isn't used to being hunted. Perks of being dead.
Not many come after the Blue Spirit these days. The reward has lessened substantially since the conquest.
Like most of Azula's gifts, it could be considered an insult, had he any pride left to speak of.
---
Sokka likes this better, a spirit-quest. It moves like a man, but part of him wishes that it's truly spirit.
His sister can't bend blood that isn't there.
---
The Blue Spirit is nimble, silent. He's trained with an airbender for the last four years.
Sokka might be stronger now, have the muscle mass that years of running have kept from settling on Zuko's lithe frame. But can he fly?
---
He's painted it dark blue and black to better blend with the night, but it's still good ol' Boomerang. Sokka lets fly.
---
…. Fuck. How could he have forgotten about the boomerang?
---
First blood. It's a man after all, underneath black cloth, a thin slice revealing pale skin traced with red. The Wolf grins.
Sokka doesn't smile.
---
Zuko knows better than to play games, at his age.
He'll see how Sokka likes it, when the tables are turned. The hunter will become the hunted.
---
The Blue Spirit vanishes.
Sokka will resume the chase, later.
---
"I found them. They've moved," Zuko says softly.
A sharp inhale, from the blind earthbender. "Aang will want to know."
"They're dangerous. You've heard the stories, of the Wolf and the Witches."
"Katara and Sokka -- I want to believe they're better than that. They were, once."
He bows his head. "People change, Pebbles. A lot, sometimes."
"I didn't mean they're better than you, Lee. They still left us, in the end."
---
Aang doesn't ask, anymore. Toph is tempted not to tell him. It's up to her. It's always been up to her, to keep this family safe.
Her brothers are idiots, she thinks fondly.
Still, Toph can't decide.
---
"What will you do?" Toph asks Zuko.
"I want to know for sure, and we won't get a better chance, now that they're on the Continent and not the Islands."
"Why? You always said no, before."
He's silent for a while. Then: "We should at least tell Aang, this time." They owe him so much more than that.
Toph nods.
---
"Aang. Lee saw Sokka, last night."
---
"They're here?" Aang's eyes grow wide, and he can't stop the smile. "They're alive?"
"You know why we told you not to ask."
He know the rumors his brother and sister have tried to shield him from. Still, he can't help but feel hope spark in his chest.
"I know. But you know I can't believe that, of them."
"Be careful, Aang. He's already hurt Sunshine." She's already hurt you, he hears, unsaid.
ii.
Zuko shouldn't be doing this. They should be moving on.
But Aang hasn't hoped for anything, since the Comet.
---
A rustle above him. Sokka sees a grin in blue-and-white.
---
Sokka is curious, Zuko knows that much from the stories.
Will curiosity kill the owl-cat before it kills him?
Damn, but this is fun.
---
Wolves don't play with their food. That isn't to say Sokka isn't sometimes tempted.
Or that he never gives into the urge.
---
It's a merry chase. Zuko moves well in the trees and shadows, but he's no match for the Wolf's power on the flat plains.
---
"Where are you taking me," Sokka growls. "Little spirit."
Silence is his only answer.
---
He hasn't attacked, since that first time. Why hasn't he attacked?
Zuko needs to know.
---
It happens again the next night, and the next.
"Are you my spirit guide?" Sokka wonders.
It's a more realistic possibility than friend.
---
"Hey, Lee, guess what Aang taught me today." Toph's tone is sing-song. "The mating ritual of the arctic wolf often replicates a hunt. The two engage in a merry chase across the tundra, which culminates with either rejection or the pair bond being consummated."
Aang laughs.
Zuko doesn't. "The Blue Spirit's not a wolf."
"Yeah, but I think you are."
"I'm not doing a mating dance with Sokka. He doesn't even know what's behind the mask. We're hunting. Each other, until we decide what to do about all this."
Toph coughs, and it sounds like the Dancing Dragon.
Aang's not usually the one to break up their too-infrequent bouts of levity, but he has to ask: "What are we going to do?"
---
Toph's not wrong, about Zuko.
His smile is sharp as he answers. "Bait a trap, Avatar."
---
"Zuko," Toph speaks the name of the dead prince. "I hope you know what you're doing."
---
"What about," Aang's voice is small, hesitant. "What about her?"
---
"Not yet." Zuko is gentle, fangs hidden.
"We don't know -- the rumors. They're not good, Aang. We need to be careful, with her."
Toph so rarely counsels caution.
---
"Yeah," Aang breathes, feeling that tiny spark come to life again. "Careful."
---
There's another thing Aang knows about wolves, but something kept him from telling Toph.
Wolf pair-bonds last a lifetime.
iii.
The next night, Sokka chases the Blue Spirit to a rocky knoll.
Two figures are outlined in the moonlight.
Sokka almost drops his sword as he recognizes them.
"Toph? Aang?!"
He doesn't notice when the Blue Spirit vanishes.
---
"Hey, Sokka."
They're almost of a height now, Aang notices. So much has changed.
---
"You're alive! What -- what happened, that day. At the invasion?"
Sokka needs to know. What might-have-been.
---
It's almost too easy, telling stories like they used to. Toph is glad that Zuko is watching from the shadows. Someone needs to beware the danger.
---
Sokka can't believe they're here. Mom had told him and Katara that they'd made the right choice, after word came of the Day of Black Sun, and he'd agreed.
Why had he given up on himself, so long ago?
---
Sokka's here and Katara's near and it's good, it feels so good, reminiscing like this. Aang doesn't want to speak of the present. Not yet.
---
Toph holds out the black armband. "Do you remember this?"
---
He'd been good to her, Sokka knows. He still wants to be, even though she's not Pack, not Tribe.
Mom would say that it's wrong, but …
Sokka had found family once, in Air and Earth. Elements that remain, when the flood recedes.
Sokka knows better than to hope.
---
They're happy, and Zuko won't take that from them. But it's the Wolf he knows, not the man.
He keeps his swords a finger's twitch away.
---
It becomes a little routine of theirs. The Blue Spirit lures the wolf to the rendezvous point of the night, then disappears, sometimes reappearing after to guide the Wolf back to its territory.
---
They talk, and Sokka yearns. He feels it from them, too. But he'd set his feet on a different path, and it's one not so easily turned back from.
---
"He's not safe," Zuko reminds them.
"Are any of us?" the Avatar counters, mildly.
"That's not what I meant."
---
They're still hesitant to mention Katara. Afraid to shatter their brittle shell.
---
Sokka takes to talking to his spirit guide, on their little journeys. When he's not casually trying to capture him.
---
"You're not Haru, are you? If so, he was seriously holding out on us with all the ninja skills."
---
"Can you even talk?" Sokka's sure that he's got some way or relaying information about their little jaunts back to Toph and Aang, whether it's verbal or not.
---
"I'd say you're a Kyoshi Warrior, except for the lack of makeup. And fans. And boobs."
---
"Does Toph have a boyfriend?"
Sokka feels a distinct shudder from his guide. No, then. Or at least, if she did have one, the Blue Spirit wasn't him.
His eyes bulge. "Does Aang?!"
---
"Tui and La, you'd better not be Jet."
Sokka thinks he hears a snort of derision, this time.
iv.
Something's different, tonight, Zuko notes. More introspection and less wild guesses at his identity.
---
"If I could do it over," Sokka sighs. "I would have gone with Aang, you know. I had a chance, and I wasted it. Too trapped in my father's guilt about abandoning our family to have the courage to act. I have everything I should want, here, and yet -- I'm not happy. Aang could have made a difference. He still can, I think. This -- what I'm doing now -- it's not helping anyone. It's not going to end anything. Not even Katara's nightmares, although I know that's why she still tries."
It's nice, in a way, confessing to his mute guide.
---
Zuko lifts the mask.
---
"Holy shit, Zuko?!"
The smirk remains, although the mask is off.
"Since when do you use swords?"
"Since when do you?" Zuko has the gall to sound affronted.
"Since forever. Because unlike you, I'm not dead." He's not supposed to be bantering with the enemy, Sokka reminds himself.
"Did you mourn?" Morbidly curious, almost playful.
"No." He hadn't celebrated, either, though he should have. "I should probably try to kill you now."
Sokka sits down, instead.
---
"You're right, you know. About Aang. He can make a difference."
"Even now, after so much was lost? "
"He was the difference for me."
---
"What changed?"
"Everything." Eyes narrow in suspicion. "Why do you want to know?"
To see if he can change, too. But the answer is sitting right across from him.
"No reason. Just curious."
---
"They miss you, Aang and Toph. Who you were."
Who are you now?
---
"They miss who I was," Sokka echoes, forlorn.
Who I want to be, again.
---
"I've done things," says the Wolf, no longer wearing koala-sheep's clothing. "To your people. To … innocent people."
"We all have a past," Zuko allows, although it's difficult. "How hard are you willing to work in the present to fix your mistakes?"
---
What price is Sokka willing to pay?
---
Sokka hasn't tried to harm him, hasn't followed up on any of his threats.
Part of Zuko wonders if it's because Sokka doesn't need to. His sister casts a long shadow.
---
It starts with his pride.
He's the last surviving man of the Southern Water Tribe, but this is not the legacy he wants to leave.
---
Zuko has stayed too long. The moon will rise soon. It will be too dangerous, soon.
---
"I know … I know what I'm doing is wrong, " Sokka says, and it's a confession. "I know you're right about Aang."
A confession of hope.
---
Sokka's voice is halting, the words captivating.
Zuko hears something else, and calls on his muscles to spring up, to make for the trees and fly.
They answer someone else's pull.
---
"Hello, boys."
"Mom! Katara! I --"
"What have you brought us tonight, my son?"
Sokka watches as Zuko's face is turned into the first ray of dim moonlight.
---
"You!"
Katara hasn't seen that face in four years. Katara hasn't seen that face since her last nightmare.
---
"Who's this, my dear? What did the bad man do to you?"
---
"This is Zuko," Sokka says, and the words are lead on his lips. "Son of Phoenix King Ozai, brother of Fire Lord Azula. Once-heir to the Dragon Throne."
My spirit guide, he doesn't add.
My friend, he doesn't dare presume.
Because Sokka's a coward, and he doesn’t stop her from taking him.
v.
He knows how she felt now, in Ba Sing Se so long ago. Zuko had been beginning to trust.
---
His face has haunted her for so long.
Payback time.
Something Katara has become an expert at, over the years.
---
She was a healer, Aang had told him. So she knows best how to hurt.
---
Katara needs to hear him scream.
Why won't he scream?
---
Zuko knows what she wants. Azula was scarier than you when she was nine, he wants to say.
Doesn't. He won't give her the satisfaction.
There's nothing she can do to him that hasn't been done already.
---
He does talk, eventually. "Aang is alive."
He doesn't scream, yet.
This is worse.
---
"He still thinks about you, you know. The Avatar. Aang."
Her vitriol is a distraction from the pain. "You kept chasing him after all these years, Prince Zuko?"
"No. I joined him. Taught him firebending. Fought with him, under the Comet's light. Stayed with him, after. Protected him, guided him."
Zuko is unarmed but not without weapons.
"I did everything you should have done."
---
"Liar!"
He won't stop lying.
Pain turns lies to truths.
So why is Katara the one hurting instead?
---
She can open him up with a hundred cuts and not spill a single drop of his blood. She is a master like no other.
But he has four years of truths for her. Fire, to hide the scent of blood in smoke.
---
She could flood or rip the small blood vessels in his throat to stop his voice, but a part of her likes the pain that it brings.
---
Her power in the thin moonlight spilling through the narrow entrance of the cave is unparalleled.
Zuko knows he's outmatched, but it's not him who she's fighting tonight.
---
It's a bloody ballet although not a drop is spilled.
Katara remembers her last dance partner, in a cave much like this one.
How could she forget, those innocent, happy times?
---
Katara never turns her back on the people who need her, Aang had told him. It's true, Zuko realizes, despite her new skin.
The problem is, there's only two of them anymore, one long gone grey and watching vindictively, the other with his expression hidden in the shadows of the wolf's head.
---
He screams, eventually. But she does first.
---
Zuko breathes through the pain. He's had a lot of practice, and this is better, far better, than the torment of a soul at war with itself.
---
His fire is different, a scorching golden river that forbids her touch.
---
She tries to freeze his fire to unfeeling ice with her frigid control, but a thousand splendid suns spread their strength through his veins.
Fire is life, and where there is life there is hope.
This, Zuko knows finally, she has forgotten.
---
She uses the blood to twist the muscle into cracking the very bone that supports it, grinds the sharp edges together.
She's found his limit. His eyes roll back in his head.
He looks at peace, in oblivion.
Zuko did always know how to infuriate her.
---
He awakens but the night terrors persist.
So does the hatred, a slow poison, but its flavor has changed since the beginning.
Zuko feels a single drop of blood roll down his side.
She's slipping.
---
She'd thought it would be a comfort, his suffering. A balm on the hurts he and his father inflicted on her family.
The darkness only looms larger.
When will it end? She wants to beg.
---
When will it end? He refuses to beg.
---
Sokka never watches. Maybe he finds absolution in the aloofness.
Everyone has lies that they tell themselves, Katara knows.
He watches now, blue eyes buried in the black pits of the wolf-mask.
vi.
Sokka runs through the woods, tapping a rhythm on every boulder he passes. They've got to be close by, there's only so many spots that hide a sky bison…
---
Toph detects the vibrations to "The Girls of Ba Sing Se", and frowns.
"What is it?" asks Aang.
"Trouble."
---
"Toph!"
Her arms are crossed. She can bury Sokka with a twitch of a toe.
He swallows, and chokes out the words. "She has him."
Sokka doesn't need to name names. He bows his head. They've heard what she does with firebenders. "It's my fault. I'm sorry. I couldn't --- I didn't stop her."
---
"Is it true?" Toph demands, even though she can feel it through the earth. Her voice is rough rock. "Is it true, what they say, about her?"
About you?
---
"It is true. And it's your worst nightmare."
Katara's, too, he doesn't add.
There's no justifying their crimes, not anymore.
---
Aang blows the whistle, forms a pack of concealing clouds.
---
Toph barely moves but her element jumps to her bidding, burying him up to his neck in cold ground.
This is the truth of them, after all. He's hurt and been hurt but his choices and actions were his own.
No more masks.
Still.
---
"It's in the fingers. Bloodbending. You'll need to immobilize their hands."
Avatar Aang looks down in ancient fury.
"You've done enough."
---
"No, I haven't." A sorrowful voice speaks from the stones. "I haven't even begun to atone."
Toph fingers her armband, cold and black. It speaks of another era, another world.
The grounds shifts. Meteor binds his hands.
"We'll take him back to the witches, where he belongs." Toph speaks to Aang, but neither of them, they know, are due the final say in this matter.
vii.
A cloud passes over the moon. Zuko smiles.
Katara scowls. "What is it?"
"Family visit."
---
Fury alights in a high-pressure system. The ground shakes and settles into a new form.
---
The cave is no more. Katara and her mother stand on flat ground flooded with moonlight.
He wasn't lying.
Avatar Aang had risen with Black Sun, fallen with the Comet, and is resurrected here tonight. He'd left her, but not before she'd abandoned him.
A boy and a girl who don't know Katara anymore raise up their elements in aggression, become a man and a woman.
Katara's grip slips on Fire Nation blood as she hesitates to strike at all she'd once held dear.
---
One moment is enough. He's had to do more with less, in the past.
Zuko is bleeding freely now, and he kindles a golden web that's more chi than flame to entrap her.
---
It hurts, to see with his own eyes. What Katara, sweet Katara, gentle Katara's once-healing hands have wrought on his brother's body.
Moonlight glints off a whalebone comb confining her thick tresses, reminds him of her power.
Aang knows he was right to let her go. What he doesn't understand is why she did, too.
---
Stone rises to grasp at hands that had once plaited Toph's hair with sisterly affection.
Falls again, from an unwilling form.
---
Meteor-stone drops away, too. Sokka acts on instinct.
He trusts them to do the right thing, once more.
---
The firebender's blood is easy to pull into her control, even for Hama in the light of the quarter moon.
Her daughter raises her fingers, halting the earthbender.
---
Aang sees the unnatural stillness of his siblings, and suddenly he's twelve again and the swirl of emotions threatens a white-out in like ashes on the hurricane…
The power of the cosmos whispers to him on the wind.
He gathers the gales and lashes out, unbalanced, control tenuous.
---
Air whips earth to powder with an imprecision Toph hasn't seen for years, but she's not complaining.
Dust re-forms to stone at her command, encasing hands threatening violence.
---
The winds abate for a moment, and Sokka throws.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he thinks, I'm sorry that for you the pain could only turn to bitterness and cruelty.
I'm not the son you wanted.
For that, he's glad.
---
Her son can't even strike at her with the intent to kill, in his treachery. But the boomerang flies close enough that she's forced to move, allowing the Prince to break free.
Hama is disappointed, again.
At least she still has the stronger sibling.
---
Her.
Aang thought he'd left them safe with their mother, not in the hands of a monster.
His final chakra is clouded by the events of the night, but he can still push past and let the energies flow --
It's not a soft hand that restrains the angry Avatar this time, so many years later, but a voice hoarse from horrors. "What's done is done, brother. Leave this place."
---
It's the healer they need right now, not the Avatar, Toph begs him to understand.
---
Aang looks back. Her eyes are black in the night, no sun-speckled ocean surface to distract from the truth.
How cold are those depths, how deep the scar-like trenches carved by the years?
---
Katara meets the tempest in young grey eyes, sees the elements in all their unfeeling justice.
They're all admiration and adoration in her memory, and their judgement now shakes her foundations.
viii.
"Please. I want to help. I can't -- you know I was good once. I can be, again! Don't leave me here --"
---
"You! What are you doing here?"
The words are torment over a torn throat. Zuko stares down his betrayer with bloodshot eyes, reaches for a knife that isn't there.
He feels naked, vulnerable.
---
"Zuko, I'm so sorry, I didn't -- I was wrong. Spirits, Zuko, I'm so sorry."
Sokka is good with words, normally.
---
Zuko knows the sound of guilt. How it differs from true repentance.
Still, he's tempted to stretch out his ruined body, let the Wolf wallow in every inch of what was done to him.
---
"I have to get my honor back."
---
Blue eyes haven't left his skin the whole time. Sokka knows exactly what suffering he enabled.
Zuko slumps in the saddle, lets Aang's healing water move over him.
"I understand."
He'd been a Hunter, too, before.
---
Black smoke turns to white ash in his mouth. Sokka repents.
Notes:
I hope you enjoyed this unholy conglomeration of humor and horror. Fight scenes are surprisingly difficult to write in this style.
I kind of want to re-write this fic in the mishmash of languages it deserves - English is pretty versatile but Spanish is just so lyrical for things like this and I love the feel of some of the dialogue in German (for this chapter I'd probably have Zuko's conversations with Sokka in English but with Katara in German, but change more of the description to Spanish). The supposed quote of Charles V is particularly applicable to this fic: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to friends and German to my enemies."
Chapter Text
i.
He'd left them, her big brother, like he'd always wanted to.
Gone off to fight in a war that was already lost, with a tribe he deemed better than his own.
Sokka had always been jealous that he wasn't Mother's favorite. How could he carry the burden of their sacred heritage, without bending?
Still, Katara misses him. Mourns that, perhaps, she didn't know him.
---
It's a loss, yes, and it hurts but it doesn't devastate. He didn't matter, in the end.
Hama has her heir.
---
"I hope he's happy," Katara says bitterly, to her mother.
It echoes softly in her head, in the early morning hours.
When was the last time you were happy, asks a ghost, unbidden.
---
It's not an easy path, the one set before him. Sokka sees it in the bandages on Zuko's torso, the coldness of Toph's demeanor, wariness in once too-innocent grey eyes.
If hunting has taught him one thing, it's patience in persistence.
---
The wounds are shallow but mistrust is laid deep. Healing will take time, recovery effort.
It's always worth it, Aang tells Zuko now, as he has so many times before. But this time, his eyes are on another man as he speaks.
---
They've never been apart for so long before.
Katara shouldn't need him. She's stronger, has more talent, more vision, more responsibility to her Tribe.
It's her mother's voice talking.
---
Toph can't forget what Sokka's done. But she will admit that he's an asset.
His power and speed complement Zuko's agility and stealth, and he thinks through obstacles in ways that don't occur to the rest of them.
They'll need to rely on that, soon enough.
The Night of the Blood Moon approaches.
---
They're push and pull, Katara and Sokka, always orbiting close to each other, inseparable.
Usually it's Katara who's pushing them towards one goal or another. Maybe this time, it was her too, pushing him away slowly, day after day.
In the end, Katara leaves because she must.
---
Sokka knows the sound of his sister's footsteps better than he knows his own.
He refuses to approach her.
She does the same. Sokka wonders why.
---
"She followed us. Me."
"Why?"
Sokka shrugs. "She's my sister."
That says it all, really.
---
"What do you want?"
It's daylight, on a hill that's high and dry, and Katara doesn't have her waterskins with her. She doesn't have an answer for her brother, either.
"Are you happy, with your choice?" she asks instead.
Something flashes across his face that Katara can't understand, and he walks away without a word.
---
"Go home," he says next time, just as she says: "Come home."
The siblings stare in silence. They're both proud.
"You know I can't," Sokka says, eventually.
"Of course you can. We'll always be your family. Mom will forgive you."
Sokka laughs, a hollow sound. "Does Mom strike you as the forgiving type? Have you forgotten what she's taught us, all these years?"
"You clearly have."
"That's because it was wrong! It was cruel, and it was wrong, Katara. Why are you acting like you don't know that?"
---
"Why does he still talk to her?" Toph is worried.
"They're … connected, deeply," Aang says. He'd never before known one without the other.
"Not all siblings are like that," Zuko remarks.
"Well, it'd be better if she could just leave us alone, like your sister does," Toph proclaims. "We've got a fleet to destroy. We need to know if we can trust Sokka."
"We already know," Aang says wisely. "We just haven't been willing to act on it yet."
---
When the time comes, Zuko acts.
---
"She won't listen to me," Sokka admits with a trace of bitterness. "Mother -- Hama -- she's the elder, the head of all that's left of the Tribe. Only she commands that authority."
"What if… there was another?" Zuko asks.
---
"Dad's alive?"
"Unconfirmed, but likely. The Fire Lord doesn't waste resources."
---
"We could never attempt it before," Zuko explains, and it's true. Toph and Aang stand out physically even more than he, and infiltrating a high-security prison is not a solo mission. "But you and I, we might have a chance. Together."
---
We're giving you a chance, Sokka hears. Now prove yourself.
Sokka squares his shoulders. He'll earn his redemption, and perhaps even their trust, one small step at a time.
ii.
The Boiling Rock is the highest security prison in the Fire Nation.
Zuko has been the Blue Spirit since he was a boy.
Sokka hasn't missed his prey for three years now.
---
Hakoda is grey but his blue eyes are still warm when they fall on his son.
Suki is hard and sharp. She's not a girl anymore, just a warrior.
---
Dad's alive? He's here?
Katara is overjoyed, at first. Maybe we can be a family again.
She wonders, though. If her mother will be able to forgive him. If Kya will do that for her, for Sokka, so that they can all go South and start over.
Somehow, she doesn't think so.
---
"Sokka, please. I need to see him. Please, I'll do anything."
"I'll talk to him, for you. To the others, too."
She's still Sokka's little sister. She can still break his heart.
---
"My daughter? You saw Katara?"
"Dad… she's not what you remember."
"Neither were you, my son."
---
The sun is at its zenith as she walks forward, hands clasped in front of her, fingers still.
Katara sees them clearly, for the first time.
---
Aang avoids her eyes. They'd trapped him before. "Hi, Katara," he says to her shoulders.
---
"Sugar Queen," Toph growls, no other threat necessary. Behave.
---
Suki's eyes narrow. She nods at the barely-remembered waterbender. She'd learned chi-blocking from an acrobat in prison.
A little something Katara wouldn't know.
---
A firebender steps between Katara and her first glimpse of her father.
"On one condition." Zuko's eyes are hard and his words bore into her soul.
"Tell him -- everything you did. To me, to the others. Tell him, or else I will."
---
Hakoda steps out from the shadows. And waits.
---
Katara lowers her head, and confesses.
---
Hakoda was a war prisoner. He knows how they're treated. This … this is torture.
He listens to his sweet baby daughter list her crimes, proof of their horror written into the skin of the man standing beside him.
She's grown up all wrong.
---
Aang can't bear to listen, but he knows he has to. He has to know the full extent of what she became.
Is it possible to wipe out that much red?
---
The earth rumbles. This is how Toph weeps.
---
Zuko is the first to walk away, wordless, expressionless.
---
"Katara…"
"Father. Please. Have mercy."
---
Hakoda sighs. Love for his family hasn't faded over the years. It only makes this harder, more painful.
"You'll always be my daughter," he says. "And as your father, I'll love you no matter what. However."
This is his duty to his people, even if the only ones left are of his blood.
"What you and -- and your mother have done," and his voice breaks as he can't bear to say her name, "these are crimes that I, as your Chief, cannot forgive. You are no longer a woman of the Tribe, Katara. I cast you out."
"Father, no!"
---
"Forgive me," she whispers, weeping, to the mute stone beneath her.
Katara knows she's asking for something she doesn't deserve.
She tears the whalebone comb from her hair.
iii.
They don't take her prisoner but she doesn't leave either. None of them are willing to take her life for the sake of convenience.
"Where's a well-timed morality coma when you need one," Zuko complains.
No one understands him, but that's hardly unusual.
---
They know of the gathering fleet near the channel. There's only one military target left in the world that requires a force of that size.
It's a ragtag resistance, the few of them and some allies gathered over the years. But they have a chance, and a plan, and some of the most powerful benders of their generation. It may even be enough.
Just one minor detail left to take care of.
---
"I need to see my sister."
"Your sister. Fire Lord Azula. Your sister, the Fire Lord."
"Saying it again won't make it any less true, Sokka."
"I was hoping it would make you less of a dumbass."
---
"We're strong enough to defeat Ozai's fleet," Zuko stresses. "Not Azula's. Nor Azula and Ozai together."
His little sister is a fully armed military genius. Zuko knows a killing field when he sees one.
---
"So, what, you're just going to waltz your way into the palace and sit down to tea with your sister? May I remind you, you're dead?"
Zuko's sharp grin reminds Sokka of one other thing. "Spirits don't leave footprints," the firebender says.
"Well, they don't bleed either," Sokka counters, then drops the playful tone. "You need someone to watch your back."
"I know."
---
Aang's out; there's no way Zuko will risk him at a time like this. The world needs him too much.
Sokka and Hakoda can't fight against Azula, and although Suki might even the playing field, what Zuko needs is an advantage.
That could be Toph, but Azula's had the Dai Li at her beck and call for four years. She's learned enough about earthbenders to fight them well.
Which leaves...
Well. Fuck.
Zuko still asks Toph instead.
---
Even Toph doesn't think she's the right person for the job, although she offers to go if no one else will. "You know who you need," she chides without her usual brashness.
---
"Here's the thing about Katara," Sokka says, and it's clear that it's not easy for him. "She'll never turn her back on people who need her. Even after … everything that's happened, everything we've done. So show her you need her."
Now that, Zuko thinks, would be actual torture.
"She needs this, too," Sokka adds. "The Northern Tribe … it's her last chance of a place to belong, now that Father …"
Sokka doesn't finish the sentence. Zuko wishes that he didn't understand exactly how that felt, to have home so close yet impossibly out of reach.
---
"We need to know what my sister wants from the attack on the North." Zuko doesn't want to talk to her, doesn't want anything to do with her.
He hates that he needs her.
---
"If she really, truly wants the Water Tribe razed to the ground, it will be useless going against her. But Azula has always had different motives than King Ozai."
"You want me to come with you," Katara realizes. "It's too dangerous for Aang, and I --"
---
"My sister is flesh and blood like the rest of us."
She's silent for a long moment. Zuko forces himself to look at her, trying to see past the witch from the cave. It's unsettling, a glance back in time, perhaps, the scarred corner of his reflection from a darkened mirror.
"I'll come with you," Katara says, her voice hollow; an acknowledgement of defeat, that she's completely lost and has nowhere to turn.
---
"If you lift one finger against me, Aang will destroy you. If Toph doesn't get there first."
There's little he can do against her, and she knows that.
Trust lies heavy in her hands, and as tenuous as it is, it's a greater gift than she'd ever expected, from him.
---
"A second chance," Aang says, face tight, voice small.
"You did the same for me, long ago," Zuko reminds him, gentle.
"That was different," Toph protests.
"Was it?"
Toph frowns, harder. "I still don't have to like this."
"Neither do I."
iv.
The boat is small, but there's a master waterbender aboard. They'll make the journey under cover of darkness.
---
Katara won't touch him again. She's done enough.
It's a hard habit to break, with a firebender standing right in front of her.
---
What does she see, looking at him, Zuko wonders. Her face is set, determined. Without the cruel hatred of the cave, blank of the guilt he himself had carried, in his first days with Aang.
What is she searching for?
---
She's adrift on the ocean, even though she has complete control over their boat. Those of Water aren't meant to be alone; small streams will always find their way out to sea, somehow. Yet here she is, winding her way across a parched plain, no southern star to guide her.
---
"Why did you choose this?" he finally asks. Zuko's not quite sure what, exactly, he's referring to, but he'll let her decide.
"I don't know," she replies. "Maybe I just wanted … a chance."
---
To find out what this means, Katara alone. It was never like this, before.
Before it was Mother training her up in their heritage, or Aang and his quest for the balance, and at the very beginning her family, whole.
She has none of that now.
Nothing, and yet… strangely … everything.
---
"A choice," she echoes, after another heartbeat.
"Of what?"
"Destiny."
Zuko turns his face away.
---
"You've made your choices." His voice is harsh, speaks of smoke. "They were wrong."
"Like you're one to talk," Katara is quick to bite back. "Or have you already forgotten Ba Sing Se?"
"I was never on your side, back then. And I've paid for my mistakes, seven times over."
---
"Do you remember what I said, down there?" Katara asks, then quotes: "For so long, yours was the face of the enemy."
It hurts less, now. Zuko supposes he ought to be grateful for small favors.
"Still true, after so many years," but her voice is introspective now, wondering why as much as he is. "The face of the enemy."
"No one ever handed you a mirror?"
---
It burns, a shock to the system.
That's how they saw her, the puppetmaster under the moonlight. See her, still.
Now, cut off from her tribe, her moral compass, Katara can acknowledge that, finally.
She swallows her pride. "What will it take for you to forgive me?"
---
Zuko shakes his head, an echo of pain. "I can't forgive you."
"But that doesn't mean I won't try to save you. For the sake of what once was." For Aang.
---
"It's hopeless, isn't it." Katara's felt that, for some time now. "Even Aang … I don't think he can forgive me, either. And he was always what was supposed to bring hope to the world."
"A wise man once told me," Zuko starts, voice catching on past sorrow, "That hope is something you give yourself. And true destiny can only be written by you."
---
"For what it's worth. I'm sorry, Zuko."
It's worth next to nothing right now, and he doesn't need to say it.
But it's a start.
v.
The Blue Spirit has been sighted in the Caldera.
Azula smirks. Time to renovate the gardens.
---
There are scaffolding and tarps casting deep shadows over his mother's landscaping. The turtleduck pond is the only surface reflecting the faint moonlight.
Azula still loves him, then.
Zuko hums a lullaby.
---
It's not a mask that she sees buried in the shifting shadows, but a scar. And beside it...blue eyes.
"Took you long enough, Zuzu. Who's she?"
"I heard you've taken an interest in spirit tales lately. What have you heard of the Witches of the West?"
---
So. Bloodbender.
A witch and a ghost against her Imperial Guard -- Azula wished she had time for that kind of fun.
Zuzu did always like the dangerous ones.
---
"Four years and a grave between us, brother. Why now?"
He's desperate, that much is obvious.
---
"The Avatar is alive. Avatar Aang."
Azula had suspected.
"What honor is there in another pointless genocide? Is this how Fire Lord Azula shares the greatness of her nation?"
---
"Fire Lord Azula's nation is starving to support the occupation of a continent ten times its size," his sister replies, and Zuko can see that it hurts her underneath her wooden mask.
He's taken his off today. Will she do the same?
---
"What would you have me do?"
Zuzu always did serve up the very best treason.
---
"Nothing."
---
Now she is intrigued. He'd come all this way, for nothing?
Oh, how she'd missed a good game. Azula had never thought her brother much of a player, but he was one of the few people still capable of surprising her.
---
"You're planning an attack."
Zuko frowns. He knew the risk of coming here. He raises his eyebrow, in challenge.
"Too bad Father doesn't believe in spirits," Azula says, examining her manicure.
Zuko lets out a breath.
Azula's eyes flash. "Of course, I could always convince him."
Convince me, he hears.
---
She knows, even before he starts talking, painfully earnest and comically ineloquent as always, that this is the opportunity she's been waiting for.
Azula refuses to rule the refuse of a great civilization.
---
This is the challenge, then. To prove to his sister that Zuko still knows her, after all these years and all their fighting. Trusts her to be the same person she's always been, at the core of her -- the fiercely protective, brilliant and gifted, ruthlessly logical young woman who cares deeply but never can show it, not in conventional ways.
Zuko doesn't bother to hide his smile as he speaks. He's so, so proud of her.
---
"Father's become impatient," Azula offers, every phrase and pose thoroughly calculated. All Zuko has to do is pay attention. "There will be another eclipse next year, and again after that. Fleet construction has been rushed, and I'm afraid the engineers and the raw materials they're working with aren't up to previous Imperial standards. Even basic fire safety regulations have become lax of late."
Azula sniffs, disdainfully and pointed in her derision. "Trusting in idiots not to immolate themselves with a stray spark. Honestly, I'd be surprised if half the transports didn't fall apart on their way to the Pole."
---
"Thank you," he breathes, stunned into sudden elation. So she hadn't forgotten, either, who she was.
---
"Don't look so surprised, Zuzu. I've always been too good for Father."
So have you.
---
They're twin suns, binary stars, Katara realizes. No steady, rippling orbit like herself and Sokka; theirs is a violent dance destined to come crashing together, until one is engulfed in the other's flame, sending out shockwaves that will write the fates of the nations.
They'd split the world asunder, the last time they collided. For the first time tonight, fear settles in the pit of Katara's stomach. What would they do, this time around?
---
One last thing Azula needs to hear. She turns to the bloodbender. "What's in it for you?"
---
Katara could kill the Fire Lord, here and now. The fourteen-year-old girl in her is tempted.
The eighteen-year-old woman craves the blood of the kings and monsters that stand between her and those she would claim as her own, even if they didn't claim her in return.
Azula can relate.
---
He's almost as tall as their father now, face hard and lean, but from suffering cruelty rather than inflicting it.
He's more of a king than Ozai's self-stylings ever made him.
Azula almost wishes this future had come to pass differently.
---
It's goodbye.
Zuko embraces his sister. She's stiff in his arms, and that makes him sad; no one's touched her like that for a long time. He knows how it is. Was.
"Promise me, Azula. Don't get involved. You're the Fire Lord. You can't show your hand against Ozai, not yet. Our people need you."
---
"Get out of here, Dum-dum," she says, again without venom, an echo of embers.
I promise.
---
"Your sister's crazy."
Zuko laughs softly. "It probably looks that way, doesn't it?"
vi.
Everything is in place for a day four years in the making.
Phoenix King Ozai's fleet is gathered, ready to sail out and strike at the Water Tribe on the night the lunar eclipse will render them weakest.
Avatar Aang stands with his allies, the last defenders of the balance.
---
No one smiles, today.
They're not children, any more than the last time.
---
A royal summons, from the Phoenix King himself. Azula readies her airship.
The Fire Lord's knees hurt from bending to her father.
She has a promise to keep, to her brother.
---
Infiltration is easy, with a master waterbender, a metalbender, and elite warriors. The distracted, overworked sailors can't be blamed for not noticing.
---
Alone in the sky, Aang meditates, watching and waiting as the storm begins to brew.
---
A strong headwind whips down from the North. The Fire Lord's Admiral advises her that they face a delay of three hours. She acknowledges with a nod; she may command the ship but not the winds.
Azula was born lucky.
---
Suki blends in seamlessly with the Fire Nation soldiers. After all, she's spent years at the Boiling Rock observing their behavior.
She'd learned quite a bit about their machinery, too.
---
Hakoda and Sokka wear the full-face masks of boiler-room specialists, weapons hidden under the heavy heat-protective gear. Sokka, Hakoda recalls fondly, had always been insatiable when picking apart mechanisms to see how they worked. A very useful trait, this evening.
---
The White Lotus has a half-dozen members already aboard, slowly placed during the years since the Comet, although there's five times that many ships in the fleet's vanguard.
They're all waiting for the signal.
---
Zuko wears black as usual, but his face is bare tonight. He's Toph's shadow tonight, keeping her safe for as long as she must stay hidden.
Not much longer, now.
---
The world has forgotten metalbending, written it off as a hallucination of dying soldiers.
Toph cracks her knuckles and grins.
She'll make sure the Fire Navy remembers the Blind Bandit.
---
Sea anchors rise, rudders jam on collision courses and engines cough and die. A catapult misfires, followed by a second, this one ignited with many-colored flame.
Frantic messages are relayed back to the flagship.
---
Unexplained mechanical failures, traitors in their midst, a brief mention of a scarred young man all in black.
Phoenix King Ozai sips his tea as he receives the reports.
So. His reject son has grown strong in his exile. Ozai should have finished the job the first time. Or the second.
Third time's the charm.
---
It's time.
Avatar Aang lets out a meditative breath, and inhales, inviting in the World Spirit.
Water, Earth, Fire, Air surround him, elevate him, announce him to a world bereft of hope.
---
A hurricane swirls around his fingertips as seamounts rise and spew forth flame. The Avatar, no longer a boy of incredible power possessed by a spirit, but a man with the knowledge of a hundred lives, a spirit unto himself, protects the North once again.
---
The fleet is destroyed, the metal folding too easily, the fires catching too quickly. Fire Lord Azula surveys the damage from the sky.
What a pity, that she's arrived too late. Modern engines can be so troublesome.
vii.
Victory, at long last.
The world's shadow begins its slow journey across the face of the moon.
Destiny pulls paths to a single center.
---
Phoenix King Ozai stands battle-ready on the foredeck of his flagship.
---
Lightning lashes towards them, and Zuko spins to catch it. Looks his father in the eye, for the first time in four years.
He doesn't feel anything for this man, any more.
Still, he releases the lightning to rend through the ship's command tower rather than its commander.
---
"Go," Zuko tells Toph, and Suki steps to her side. It's too dangerous, bending metal with electricity in the air.
Suki glances back over her shoulder as she ushers Toph away. The lightning has left his body, but the thrum of its power remains, barely contained beneath his skin. He's disciplined, a soldier, but there's something feral in the flat gold of his eyes.
A dragon guarding its hatchlings. They'll come home safe, tonight.
---
It's ironic. Her control of blood and even water becomes increasingly tenuous on the Night of the Blood Moon.
Soon, she'll be simply Katara, for the first time in a long time.
She wonders what she'll say to that woman, when she meets her.
---
The dragons live, in her brother, as they had in her uncle.
Ozai is still doing his best to wipe their existence from the world.
---
The boy is outnumbered, and forced to spread himself thin for the sake of his friends.
Weak.
But so, so powerful.
Ozai begins to wonder if he made a mistake.
---
He'd never planned to come within striking distance of his father. But the Navy has cut off their retreat with its own burning rubble, and Zuko will draw his father's fire for as long as it takes for the others to escape.
A barrier of flame obscures Toph and Suki from the soldiers' sight; Zuko breathes a bit easier, and the fire, in response, flares yet higher.
---
Sokka's breath comes hard and fast, muscles burning with fatigue, yet his body singing with the adrenaline of the successful hunt. He sprints through the tunnel of flame, cool under Zuko's control, warding off the hellfires raging above.
---
Zuko has always fought better, when it's for someone else.
Growing up, they told him that's what makes a good soldier, but not a good commander.
He knows better, now.
---
His swan song is beautiful, and Azula understands.
She wants to scream. She struggles to rise from under the heel of the King.
Her promise binds her, more than loyalty to the Empire ever did.
---
Katara shouldn't be here. It's all Fire and she's Water, and even that's trickling away with the darkening Moon.
Yet with all that stripped away, at her core she still strains to fight.
Will slaying the monster silence the devils within? Can she find absolution in a single act of atonement?
---
Whoever said that lightning doesn't strike twice has never had the dubious honor of meeting the Phoenix King.
Ozai may be surpassed by his daughter in perfection and his son in creativity, but he's still the quickest firebender alive.
Lightning strikes.
Twice.
---
It's not aimed at him. Blue fabric flashes in his periphery.
Zuko leaps, arm outstretched.
---
In
---
Death comes for her through the crackling air. Katara's not ready, something deeper than regret protests, and she clings to the ever-waning hope for life anew.
A pale hand intercedes, scars she put there stark in the electric light.
---
Sokka's heart stops once, for his sister. Starts again, at her salvation.
Stops twice, for the second strike that follows.
---
Down
---
Azula doesn't want it to be this way, why does it have to be this way? Why isn't she strong enough, good enough, perfect enough to find another way?
It's not fair, not fair, not fair.
Bloodbender. Do something.
Save him.
---
Katara moves.
It's too little, too late.
Monster's blood refuses to yield to her weakened grasp.
---
Up
---
The hurricane abates, clouds ripped apart to reveal a shocked sixteen-year-old boy.
---
They're safe, he thinks. They all made it.
Agony ignites him from the inside out, a white-hot supernova of pain.
---
They might call it a victory. But so will the Phoenix King.
Ships can be rebuilt.
Hope, not so easily.
---
One last time, Azula watches. Her brother, facing their father.
Burning.
Fighting to the last, this time.
She smiles, just like she did that first time, because if she screamed she would cry treason.
---
Fire is life. And death is a part of life.
He sees his mother and uncle again, and smiles.
Cold fire goes, and inner fire follows it --
viii.
Out.
ix.
The moon chokes in a cloak of blood.
---
He dies as he has lived, in flame. Aang won't look away. He holds that golden gaze until the twin suns go down.
It's peaceful, at the heart of the inferno.
----
Toph can't feel his heartbeat, anymore. She can't feel anything, anymore.
She'll tear the earth asunder if it stops the cracks spreading to her very core.
---
They leave him behind. But he'd left them first, Sokka thinks bitterly.
---
Her airship shakes with the Avatar's rage, splinters and sinks towards angry waters.
Small matter. Azula was already in free fall.
x.
He was a traitor. They throw the charred remains in the streets.
A funnel of dragonfire erupts around him, a pyre fit for a prince. White ash floats to the sky, the air itself an honor guard that carries its cousin home to rest, over the open ocean.
---
Azula stares at her hands. She wants to laugh, she wants to cry. Her mind cracks and slips sideways, again.
It comes to rest in a better place.
Her smile is bitter, full of sorrow. It shouldn't have taken this much.
It shouldn't have taken everything.
---
Phoenix King Ozai hears, and is afraid.
---
Sokka lays down his wolf helmet in the ice next to its blue-and-white partner. They'll hunt together in the next life.
---
Avatar Aang shaves his head for the first time in four years.
This ends now.
---
Toph asks Sokka to point her to white stone.
He finds her a block of pure marble, with the smallest vein of sunlight through its heart.
She wears the armband opposite her meteor one. She'll wear it till the earth re-claims her.
---
Katara snaps the whalebone comb in half, rises to crush it to white dust under her heel.
She'll never bend blood again.
---
Fire Lord Azula kneels to light the incense beside her brother's portrait.
She stands, never to bend the knee again.
---
Buried among the snowy ashes lies a golden spark, a nascent Sun.
Notes:
If you're not screaming FUCK YEAH KATARA, FUCK YEAH AZULA through your tears at the end of this chapter, I have failed as a writer.
This chapter took so much out of me, emotionally. Yeah, I know, you just read it but... imagine writing it. Comments keep me going, so please feel free even if you absolutely hate me for this, it was certainly a foreseeable outcome.
A summary of the final chapter, in case it helps the recovery process, is roughly: Azula and Katara save the world.
Chapter Text
i.
Mourning periods are different in each of the Four Nations.
Grief outlasts them all.
---
Yet the world spins on. Duty doesn't pause for heartbreak.
---
"It's time to finish what I started, four years ago." Aang's voice is young, old, and grim.
Toph's is quiet. "You'll take his life?"
"I'll do whatever it takes."
---
In her memories, he was a boy, not a man.
"You'd forsake that tenant of your people?" Katara asks. It's not her place, she knows, but this is Aang. She thought she knew him.
"The Avatar doesn't belong to any one nation," Aang explains. "They are the World Spirit."
"But you're also the last airbender." Sokka is solemn. "You've had so much taken from you already."
"Don't you think I know that?" Aang's cry is an entire world of sorrow.
---
It's not the time, Katara knows, but she tells him anyway. "I've lost my bending."
"Blood?" Aang asks, tentatively.
"No. That, never again. But even the water. It's just -- it's like it doesn't recognize me."
"We could," he says slowly. "Pay a visit to the Moon."
---
"No, Twinkletoes. Not alone. She's too dangerous. Have you forgotten what she did?"
"She can't bend, Toph. Besides, we'll be in the Spirit World. And it was --" his voice breaks.
Comes back together, resolved. "It was no different with Zuko. The first time."
---
It's a fearsome thing, watching the Earth break apart.
The Avatar holds the fractures together, in his arms, for as long as she'll let him.
---
"I miss him," she wails. "He was our brother, Aang! How could he do that to us? Leave us alone like this? He didn't have to … he could have … he didn't have to save her! Not at the cost of his own life!"
"He saved us all, Pebbles. And you know he's always been prepared to pay that price."
Toph's voice is the susurrus of dust over cold marble. "Why did he choose her over me?"
---
She's an intruder in their grief; Sokka sees it on his sister's face. It's shaken her, too, he knows. That her greatest enemy would spend his life for her own…
He thinks that might be why she can't find the water's rhythm. The cycle of push and pull is broken, interrupted by the incomprehensible.
---
"She's connected her anger at Zuko's death to her anger at me," Katara realizes, watching the small earthbender. Beside her, Sokka shrugs.
"Can you really blame her?"
---
"I blame myself," Katara whispers.
Sokka shakes his head, slowly. He's thinking about their mother too, about everything that happened… before.
"You trust too easily, and love too fiercely," he says, but it's not an accusation. "And yeah, that led to some awful things. Does that mean you're going to stop?"
"Should I?" That trembling voice shouldn't belong to his sister.
"No," Sokka says instantly, unthinking. "Please don't stop."
---
"Ready to go?" Aang asks, a hint of the old playfulness peeking out from under the blanket of sadness.
She'd left everything behind to go after him once. Katara squares her shoulders, nods, and does it again.
ii.
It's the Spirit World, and he's the Avatar, the Great Bridge.
That doesn't mean Aang isn't nervous every time. And he's never brought anyone with him before.
---
Aang is greeted by his past lives here.
Katara meets many, many past lives as well.
None of them are her own.
They're the lives she's taken.
---
Perhaps it's days, perhaps it's years. Time, like all other things, is immaterial in the Spirit World.
Katara is already so, so broken by the time she meets the Moon.
Yue stares back at her through a shattered mirror; the noble Princess who sacrificed everything to save her people.
---
"Who are you?" asks Yue, who is Tui, who is Agni's sister.
---
"I don't know," Katara whispers.
All she knows is that she can't be who she was. Hama's perfect heir, the last of the Southern Waterbenders, keeper of their sacred, bloody secret.
---
"What happened?" Tui and La, push and pull. The moon alone, untouched, purely impartial, and the teeming ocean, overflowing with the calamities of life. Ever balancing one another.
---
"I lost hope," Katara cries.
I lost myself, is what she means.
Aang remembers who she is.
---
"You were the first person to believe in me," Aang says. "I found myself adrift in a new world, and you were my rock."
---
"I betrayed you," Katara whispers.
---
"Can you really call it betrayal, when a loyalty you held long before me claimed its hold?"
---
"Yes," Katara replies, unhappy, remembering crystal catacombs and a boy, scarred and scared. She won't ask to be judged differently than she herself has judged.
---
"Child," speaks the Moon. "It is our place to judge, but we do not do so blindly. Our partner is the Ocean, and her memory is vast. Do not seek to contain her waters in a bottle."
---
She was a waterbender, before she was a bloodbender. Will the Ocean remember her? Can the Moon forgive her?
---
"But I have been human, too," continues Yue. "I was a girl, before, bound by duty to my family and Tribe. And I, too, have been terribly cruel for their sake."
---
"It's not the same," Katara whispers. "Oh, Yue. How can you ever think that what we've done is even close to the same?"
---
"Is it not cruel to force a parent to mourn their child? Selfish to abandon a generation of women looking to you as a leader? Unfeeling to break the heart of a boy who loves you?"
"There are two sides to every story, Katara. Love and hate so closely intertwine." This Tui knows, as one half of push and pull. "You must decide which one is more important to you."
Eternal eyes regard a young woman, as they once had in a glass mirror.
"The Ocean always remembers. The question is, do you?"
---
"I am Katara," she says, slowly, tasting the name. It's still hers, after all it's been through.
Her Tribe, she will not be so bold to claim after the wrongs she has wrought.
Her parentage, a source of pains both dealt and received.
Her bending, a gift become tainted, abused, as much a source of guilt as it once was of pride.
What does she have left, stripped of all of that?
---
He'd thought she was his forever girl.
Forever is so long at twelve, so short at sixteen and ageless.
Katara.
"And I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me."
Aang grins. For better or for worse, it's who she is.
---
Yue smiles.
"Use your gifts wisely," she exhorts her. "All of them."
"And no matter how things seem to change, Katara -- never forget who you are."
---
They open their eyes on the physical, the bright sun high in the sky.
Katara's throat is hoarse from screaming, her eyes swollen from shed tears.
The silent thrum of push and pull reverberates in her veins.
---
"Hey," Aang says, shocking her out of her stupor. "I remember. Who you are. So if you ever need a reminder…"
He doesn't have to do this, he knows. Probably shouldn't, but he knows who he is.
"I forgive you, by the way."
---
"Why?" she has to know.
"I forgave Zuko," Aang replies. "Even after everything he'd done. If it had been more, or if it had been less?"
Katara doesn't know how anything could possibly be so much more, so much worse than what she's done.
"I would have still forgiven him, and it would still have been worth it, one thousand times over. That's why I'm offering the same to you, now."
---
Sokka sees her reddened eyes, the weight lifted off her shoulders.
"Sokka, I --" she starts.
He stops her short with a hug; she understands, at last.
"I'm so sorry," she says, muffled, into his chest. "I was so, so wrong. I don't even know how to say how wrong I was."
"You don't have to say anything," Sokka murmurs. "You're my sister."
---
It's more than she deserves, Katara knows. It's not the balance of things, of transgression and revenge.
Perhaps it's better this way.
iii.
Phoenix King Ozai, to Fire Lord Azula, greetings.
Due to urgent military matters we were never able to discuss your tardiness to our last conference. While I admire your dedication to the home Islands and understand what necessitated your hasty return, there are important things that were left unresolved.
Did you know the traitor Zuko had survived your last encounter? Your word of honor claims otherwise. Don't make me doubt it.
---
Fire Lord Azula, to Phoenix King Ozai, greetings.
May Agni shine eternal upon your glorious reign.
The start of my own, less decorated reign was, as you know, tumultuous. On the day of my coronation I was visited by several visions, indistinguishable to my mind from reality. Top specialists from the Caldera (medical reports attached) agreed that assuming the crown under the Comet's immense power resulted in a temporary psychosis, or perhaps some brief connection to the Spirit World. I deeply regret that I may have unknowingly given false witness to Zuko's death, so great was my belief in the vividness of the vision. I can now say with confidence that it was in fact prophetic in nature, as your great victory was accomplished in the same manner as I first beheld it, that is, a precision lightning strike.
As you have raised me, I remain,
Your loyal daughter.
---
"I don't understand what the Fire Lord wants," Sokka says, pulling at his hair. "And she's too big a player in this game to ignore. Does she want Ozai gone, does she want to take his place, or something else? It won't do Aang any good to defeat the Phoenix King if someone else is just going to step into the power vacuum."
"Zuko always said that she was complicated."
"Thanks, Toph. That helps a lot."
His sarcasm stings a little, but it's the first time in a while that Toph has felt a smile pull at her lips upon the mention of her brother.
---
"I think… I might know." Katara's still not sure if she's welcome, but she's nothing if not a fighter.
---
"The Islands first, the Fire Lord seemed to say, in the gardens. Also: she's too good for Ozai -- I don't know exactly what she means by that, except that the two of them don't see eye to eye."
Sokka considers his sister's witness. "For now, it's only conjecture. And it might be too good to be true."
"We'll need more than that to depose a despot." Aang has the final word. "Let's keep gathering forces for now."
---
Phoenix King Ozai, to Fire Lord Azula, greetings.
I will overlook your past indiscretion, on the condition that such a thing never occurs again. You are Fire Lord because you are strong. Should this weakness of yours affect you again, I shall obviously need to take a more direct hand in goings-on in the Islands.
Meanwhile, the Avatar's return mandates a strengthening of our seat of power. I expect minimum five thousand strong shipped out to Phoenix City on the fortnight.
---
Fire Lord Azula, to Phoenix King Ozai, greetings.
The loyal sons and daughters of Fire have loved and defended our nation well throughout the conquest and occupation of the past decade. The majority of them continue to do so in the entirety of our enlightened jurisdiction.
Your order, though astute, poses logistical challenges, considering the current of-age population of the Islands. May I suggest recruitment from the Continental prisons to bolster any deficit in numbers?
My humblest regards.
---
Fire Lord Azula,
Lower the age of mandatory conscription if you have to. We need bodies, not officers.
---
"It's clear you're going to need more fighters, son," Hakoda says gravely. "I'll do what I can to have them ready when you need us."
"You're leaving?" His daughter's voice, not his son's.
"I have a duty to my warriors." My countrymen, he doesn't say, because they're not hers any more.
Her head is bowed, heavy under the weight of that knowledge.
---
"So do I," says Suki, standing tall. "Kyoshi Island will fight by your side, with sword and fan."
---
Hakoda tells his children that he loves them.
Did she ever do the same, after?
---
It's just the four of them again, same as it was five years and five lifetimes ago.
---
Katara and Toph have fought before. Never like this.
---
"I haven't forgiven myself either, you know." There's truth in Katara's voice, Toph's feet say.
"For him, or all the other things?" Toph's small voice is bitter. She pulls her legs to her chest, away from telltale dirt.
"Both."
"Well, it doesn't matter because I'm not going to forgive you anyway."
---
Katara knows better than to push back at unyielding earth. So she pulls instead.
"Come with me to Gaoling. You still know the fighters there, don't you?"
---
"I don't want a fucking field trip. I want my brother back."
---
"Listen, I'm sorry Toph, but it's not my fault! Zuko made a choice, to protect me, to protect you, to protect all of us! Are you saying that he chose wrong, that his sacrifice was for nothing?"
"He didn't have to choose you, why couldn't he for once have chosen himself instead? For Aang and I? His family?"
"For once," Katara whispers, marveling, before her voice turns bitter at the mirror's distorted reflection. "And who would he have been then?"
Toph throws a rock at her in response.
---
Toph hears a frustrated sigh as Katara gets up to leave. "Don't lie to yourself, Toph," she says. "This isn't between you and me."
Liar, liar, liar, the earth chants, accusing, to Toph's feet, even hovering as they are above the ground.
Shut up, Toph chants to herself, tears tracking from sightless eyes. Truth hurts almost as much as grieving does.
iv.
We need bodies.
Azula wants to burn the missive.
She wants to laugh as she comes unhinged; it comes back to this, then, for the both of them.
Azula is eighteen and cynical, instead of thirteen and idealistic.
Yet she can't see herself wishing to do anything differently then from how Zuko did.
---
"New Ozai. Omashu," says Sokka, considering.
Aang shakes his head. "Too close to the Islands, for us, too far from the Capital to draw him out."
"But it's manageable, for us now," argues Toph.
"We need victory, not manageable. We'll try something else."
---
Azula will have to find another way. She's willing to pay the price, but she needs to know it'll be worth it. Ironic, that a Fire Lord dares not speak out of turn.
Even though she has all the power, there's still always someone there. Watching.
---
Sokka's trying, but they don't have a lot to go on. "An air assault? Capture some war zeppelins, maybe, and drop enough explosives?"
"I won't accept the loss of civilian life that might incur."
Katara nods, accepting. "We all know where it has to be. Let's work on the what later."
---
I will personally escort five thousand of our finest new recruits to your service, she promises her father.
Half truth, half lie. Not that the hawker sending the message would know.
So few, so precious few people that a Fire Lord can trust these days.
Azula summons her angels.
---
Phoenix City, the seat of Phoenix King Ozai, formerly known as Ba Sing Se. Once impenetrable, now unconquerable. Sokka sighs; there's no way around it. "We're going to need an army."
---
"Why?" The voice is a monotone grey. "It only took three women last time."
---
A woman dressed in pink waves at them, hanging upside-down from the rafters. "Azula says hi! Oh, and we're here because you probably need help getting rid of Ozai."
---
"Uh," says Sokka, in the famed oral tradition of his people.
Ty Lee flips down to earth and pokes his nose. "Still a cutie!"
Sokka finds his voice. "Shouldn't you be dead?"
---
"Who isn't, these days," Mai replies, emerging from the shadows.
They start, but she doesn't smile. It's expected, after all.
---
Ty Lee and Mai, one the diversion, the other the silent knife, a routine perfected over the years.
Officially, they don't exist anymore. Officially, airbenders don't exist anymore.
"Fire Lord Azula doesn't waste resources. We all serve her in the end, one way or another." Mai narrows her eyes. "Even you."
---
"What's in it for her?" Katara asks, arms crossed, although the corks on her waterskins are milliseconds away from popping.
---
"Ozai wants to send other people's kids to war now," Ty Lee says, tone light despite the words. "Azula's not that kind of monster."
Mai rolls her eyes. "The Phoenix King has been bleeding the Home Islands dry for the last five years," she explains. "Fire Lord Azula was never going to stand for that."
---
"What changed?" Aang asks. "Why not before?"
"You know why."
Toph feels some of her own sorrow reflected in the vibrations of Ty Lee's soft voice, and chokes back a sob.
---
Azula dreams of Zuko, sun-touched skin shining yellow, unscarred, as he stands smiling in the Spirit Word next to Iroh and Lu Ten and a white haired, dark princess.
But her own personal monster isn't there, and Zuko was never happy; the dream is a lie.
She wants to believe.
---
"The Fire Lord believes in the Avatar," Mai drones, solemn.
"That's not to say she doesn't think he needs some help!" chirps Ty Lee. "So, where do we start?"
v.
They say the stubbornness of youth, but it's really the stubbornness of age.
The White Lotus is mired in the mud of nations past.
---
"They've helped us before," Aang insists. "And we need more people. A revolution of a dozen is only a coup."
"They only ever wanted to use you, to use Zuko," Toph argues. "And if it's a revolution you want, there are better places to start."
---
The Grand Lotus is very, very interested in the powers of a fully realized Avatar.
Less so in the opinions of a sixteen-year-old boy and his young friends.
---
"The Phoenix King's time has come, we agree. The Nations must be what they once were. This is the balance that we are charged to guard."
"And what of my Nation?" asks the Last Airbender, critical as he never used to be.
---
"You will be found a wife, in due time, Avatar. Likewise the line of Sozin must be replaced with one more… suitable."
---
"Is this your balance?" Sokka criticizes. "One of privilege and power?"
"The right to rule is not one to be assumed by commoners," answers the Grand Lotus.
Or to play board games with the fate of the world, apparently. The faces surrounding them are aged, noble; masters and lords, still too few ladies despite the blows time has dealt to the ranks of the White Lotus.
---
"And what about those who are ruled?" challenges Katara. "Do you guard them too? And if not, then who does?"
"Harmony is an illusion if it only lies in the great houses, the great names, but not in the hearts of the people," Toph warns.
---
The chatter of children is discordant, distracting.
"There's a second cousin, to resume the Earth Kingdom monarchy," muses Master Fong, once a minor Earth King. "But what of the Fire Nation? Azula can no more suffered to rule than Ozai."
---
Ty Lee masks her rage with an endearing smile. "Why not?" Her voice is young, guileless. "What's wrong with the Fire Lord's rule?"
---
"It's about the balance, child," Master Fong dismisses. "You wouldn't understand. It was always meant to be the Prince. And anyway, the girl is insane."
---
Ty Lee is Fire Nation too, and she's burning.
She's a master performer, and she's never hated the necessity of her art as much as she has now.
"Tell me, Master Fong," she begins, in the sweet tones she's been trained to. "Have you ever lived in the orbit of the Phoenix King?"
Of course he hasn't.
"We're all putting on performances. That's what we have to do to survive. The Fire Lord is no different."
---
The slightest corners of Mai's mouth tip up. This is going to be good.
---
Ty Lee tells a story.
Of siblings and rivalry, suffering and heartbreak, of the fire still burning strong throughout it all, fueled by something more than their father's greed.
Then she lists facts, gives numbers of harvest yields, factory outputs, recruitment tallies, her voice gradually gaining the sharpness of one of Mai's blades.
---
It falls on deaf ears, and not only because of the audience's age. Ty Lee strains with all her art in her plea, but she's no earthbender to reshape hearts of stone.
Still, she's nothing if not attention-getting. Enough, at least, for half-gloved fingers to filch select papers into long, wide sleeves.
---
It's not enough, without the weight of perceived wisdom. She's not enough for them.
Ty Lee almost laughs. If Azula wasn't enough, what chance did she have?
"You're not going to listen to me, are you," she says, sorrowful yet strong.
---
"Because all you see is a girl dressed in pink, dancing her way through life. You have no idea who I am underneath, and you don't even care. Don't make that same mistake with Azula. I believe that she can change the world."
Katara's back stiffens. She'd believed something like that too, once, of someone completely different. Or maybe they're not that different, the Fire Lord and the Avatar, flesh and blood both, possessed of loves and fears, pains and passions, faith and failures. And if flawed, damaged people like these can save the world -- well, then so can she.
"The only question is, how much blood will be spilled? Less, the Fire Lord thinks, with the Avatar on her side."
---
"It's the nameless who matter now, not your precious legacies and bloodlines."
Zuko had understood that, Aang knows. It's why he'd shed his own.
"How many lives is your pride worth?"
---
Too many, apparently.
They leave. They never needed an army, anyway.
vi.
"Toph was right," Sokka starts, looking at the small gathering with pride. "It's not about the great houses, the powerful players. It's about the little guy."
"Your point?" Mai, inspecting her fingernails.
"We don't need to rage against the machine to break it."
---
"Start small," Aang realizes, inspired.
"But not from nothing," Mai offers, opening up her sleeves. Inside are lists, names, resistance cells waiting to be triggered by the right words.
---
"We've only got two weeks. Three, maximum, before Ozai finds out about Azula," Ty Lee says finally, stretching nervously. "Will that be enough?"
"We'll make sure it is," Katara swears. She's all in.
Katara will pay for her sins, seventy times seven.
---
"On to the important stuff," yawns Toph. "When do I get to break some heads?"
"Pretty much immediately," Sokka answers. "As long as you're talking about… screw heads!"
Toph socks him in the arm. Still, she leaves with him when he asks.
---
It feels weird, to proudly show his face once more. But it's true, what Azula's Angels say. The Phoenix King's forces are spread thin over a large continent. People of Earth chafe against the yoke of Fire.
If the Avatar can't be the seed that tips the scales, the women with him certainly will.
---
Aang speaks of hope, a new world of elements in harmony.
---
Katara speaks of forgiveness, of laying past prejudices to rest alongside the acts of hate they engender.
Of healing.
---
Should impassioned speeches fail, Ty Lee offers fact and flexibility.
---
If they laugh her off as a circus freak, Mai looms behind her and flashes the Fire Lord's seal.
They usually stop laughing at that point.
---
Sokka and Toph arrive in Phoenix City under cover of darkness, and in darkness they stay. After all, it hardly matters to her.
Neither do such petty things as locks.
---
"Do what you can," Katara urges. "Because you must. The time has come, there is no other."
"It doesn't have to be big," promises Aang. "The Fire Lord and I will take care of that. What we can't do is be everywhere at once."
---
Miniature acts of treason on a mass scale, shifting sands underneath a cracked foundation to topple an emperor.
Toph moves the earth; Sokka frowns. "Not quite," he says.
---
It's exhausting, meeting frightened people one-by-one, or in small groups. They're turned down as often as not. Fear is a hard habit to forget, even for a day. Hope is not so easily remembered.
"Why work so hard?" Mai asks Katara, one night. "Do you truly hate the Fire Nation's rule so much?"
---
"It's not about that," Katara replies. Never again, for revenge. "I have to do my part to fix this mess I made."
"Seems like a lot of effort, for people who might never forgive you." There's interest, under the ever-present veneer of boredom.
Katara shakes her head. "Forgiveness is given, not earned. The work is an act of gratitude, not guilt."
That's not to say the guilt lets her rest, or slow in her efforts to overcome. Katara and Sokka should know.
---
Sokka pores over stolen blueprints of gate mechanisms, catapults and airship engines. He painstakingly describes key areas to Toph, until her earthen models are exact.
She draws a pin out here, loosens a coupling there.
They practice over and over again.
---
"I loved him once, you know. More than I feared Azula."
Katara isn't sure what brought about this confession, but it draws forth one of her own. "I hated him," she sighs, thinking of her nightmares, full of fire, shouting and scars. "Then I became him."
---
Enough practice. Sokka keeps watch while the world's only metalbender leaves her calling card.
---
Finally, they're ready. The world as they know it is rigged to explode.
All that remains is the spark.
vii.
It's a date and time of the Avatar's choosing.
Those of Water who would fight are there, led by the Southern chief. Kyoshi's legacy is there too, fans raised in fierce protection.
Farther off, the Fire Sages stand official witness.
---
Fire Lord Azula comes face to face with Avatar Aang. Their last meeting ended in death.
"We stand together," Aang proclaims, "for life and freedom."
--
"My people's lives, and my people's freedom first, Avatar."
Azula won't make empty promises, not for something like this.
"I understand," Aang answers. He knows the priorities duty binds them to.
---
"Fire Lord Azula has arrived, Phoenix King. She has brought the Avatar." Truth is treason today, although Ozai doesn't know it yet.
Captain Akihiro lets out a shaky breath. He's done his part.
---
Ozai goes out to meet his daughter, who has once again done what his son could never do. She stands on a hill, outside the city, under a lone tree, beside an old grave.
No promised child army is gathered behind Azula. Six adults stand next to her.
---
Yellow-ribboned messages go from Islands to Continent, words of peace carried by predators as hawks turn to doves for the day.
---
"What is this, daughter?" Ozai demands. No army, no chains, and yet Azula has always been loyal.
… For the most part.
---
A thousand miniature uprisings, personal acts of rebellion. The great machine thunders to a halt, undone by the very cogs and wheels it bound for so long.
---
Azula is completely composed, every last hair in its place. "Treason, Father, some might call it. Others might name it justice, revolution, balance."
She checks her fingernails. Manicured and perfect.
"I prefer to think of it as… an awakening."
---
The steamed bun vendor is out of the spicy pickled cabbage ones the officers love so much. They grumble, but wait the twenty minutes required to cook a fresh batch.
---
"You dare lie to me again, Fire Lord? Remember who put you on your throne. I can just as easily undo you."
"Too late." A thoughtful tone, almost amused. She'd come undone so many times, since the lightning.
"You found my breaking point, after all these years." Azula gestures to the empty fields behind her. "Almost a pity, that it took so long."
---
A carpenter finds an irregularity in the falcon cages. He takes initiative, shuffles the birds around, sends the communications post into an uproar.
It won't matter when he loses his job, after all.
---
"At least you brought me the Avatar." Ozai is nothing if not supremely confident, with Imperial Earth- and Firebenders and four years of unopposed world rule at his back. "I might overlook your impudence for this."
"Actually, Phoenix King Ozai," says the Avatar, voice changed since their last encounter.
Not the only thing that's changed.
"Azula brought me you."
---
Roads are made impassable by storms, floods, or dry spells. Whatever excuse the local earthbenders find to explain the sinkholes popping up.
---
"You don't want to test me, daughter. You saw what I did to Zuko."
"Do not. Say his name," the Fire Lord hisses, suddenly irate. "You haven't the right."
Thunder rumbles, as lightning gathers.
---
Soldiers are detained by reports of rebels in the woods, bar fights, unpaid taxes, truants, lost owl-cats. Whatever keeps eyes off the sky and officers away from their desks.
---
Electricity crackles around one hand, rainbow flames dance about another. "Now we end this," Azula declares.
A soft snort from behind her. "Drama really runs in this family, huh Snoozles?"
---
In the end, it's not much of a contest, no matter how spectacular the fight.
The Avatar has grown from a whisper to a legend.
He was born to Air, sprouted by nurturing Water, strengthened in the arms of Earth, ignited to destiny by Fire.
More than Aang, he's Katara, too, Sokka and Toph and Zuko. Suki is there, along with Bumi and Gyatso, Roku and Kyoshi, Kanna and the little child Hope.
---
Phoenix King Ozai, arisen from the ashes of those crushed under his heel, doesn't stand a chance.
viii.
Azula regards her father, in his bonds of earth and metal.
He's diminished; shown for the cruel, shallow man he is, dreams as empty as his conscience.
She pities him; not because he lost, or has lost. Because he could never find in himself the power to understand, which is the power to change.
---
"You dare to judge me, daughter? Me, who gave you everything? Who taught you everything you ever knew?"
Even now, he refuses to see his wrongdoings.
---
"I am not your judge, Phoenix King Ozai." Azula's voice is weary.
---
The World Spirit looks out through youthful eyes.
"We are. And we find you guilty."
---
"I am not your jury."
---
"We are." The voices are of Earth, Fire, and Water. "As are the people you have wronged."
"Our families."
"Our nations, which you have burned and bled dry in your greed."
---
"I am not even your executioner, as much as I would like to be."
---
Katara steps forward.
"I am."
Her hands are bloody in a way that Aang's should never be, fit for a task that Azula should never have to undertake.
The villain is a necessary role, and she'll play it one last time with grace.
---
A father regards his child with unbridled hate.
"What are you then?"
---
Azula smiles.
"I'm exactly what your flame forged me to be. Your perfect heir and successor."
---
Katara's heart aches at the thought of her mother.
She hears the bitterness in Azula's even voice, wondering at the wonderful lie it all was.
---
"You say I've learned everything from you, but you should be glad that's not true. Because what have you taught me? To use people. To cast aside those you deem useless. To push away the people who loved you freely. Regicide. Fratricide. Filicide."
She has to take a moment, to steady herself. So much, lost for so little.
"And above all, an obsession with power and greatness, in the name of a fabricated duty to share it with a world that doesn't even want it."
---
Katara learned cruelty, too. To see the enemy as less than human, to hide favoritism as tribal obligation, consumed by the insatiable hunger for control and revenge, and to call it all righteousness.
---
"What you don't understand is… true power is given, not taken. If all you do is take, you fear to lose everything, so you'll never risk enough to win. Even Zuko knew that."
---
"Traitors, the both of you. You're better than this, Azula, I made you better --"
---
"No! How dare you? Don't you see? I am so much more than what you made me."
She stands backed by the Avatar, witnessed by the Four Nations, and thinks of Mother, who saw the monster and still loved her, of Zuko, who never gave up on her, of Mai and Ty Lee, who dared to challenge her when she strayed from who she was.
---
Katara has her brother, the push to her pull, her balance. She has her father, his unconditional love and strong sense of justice, no matter how painful it may be.
She has, impossibly though it once seemed, Aang and his endless compassion again, Toph's blunt truths and Zuko's example of sacrifice.
It's more than enough.
---
Azula's voice gives out. "But I'm still your daughter."
"I spent so long loving you, trying to please you. And you treated me like a tool. A thing to be used and controlled. You praised my abilities and saw my prowess, but did you ever see me? Did you ever meet the woman I became?"
---
Katara sees on Ozai's face what she fears to find on her mother's. A blindness of the spirit, contempt for that which does not conform to their narrow visions.
---
Azula can only shake her head. "It doesn’t matter."
It's a lie. It matters more than anything. If he could only look beyond, there might be a chance for him. An alternate ending, a re-writing of fate.
He can't, and it breaks her heart, because she's got a job to do.
"I'm not here as your daughter today. I'm the Fire Lord, and my voice is the voice of our nation. A nation that you treated...just like me. Just like Zuko."
---
Push and pull, crime and punishment, life and death in endless cycle. This is the balance.
Yet no one who's lived it could ever say it felt fair.
---
"This age of ash is over. The only ones left to join it, I'm afraid, are yours."
---
Katara takes a life, one final time.
It won't heal the world's nightmares; she knows that now.
But this is justice, not revenge. She takes no pleasure from the act.
---
Azula can finally cry, like she wasn't allowed to for her mother, for her brother. Yet she finds herself unable to shed a tear.
"Fire is life," Azula says, softly, as a new age is born.
ix.
The world is burning, with the labor pains of a fresh dawn. It's a bright and cleansing flame.
Above it all, two women stand tall underneath a yellow sky.
---
"I was never my father's puppet." She who was born to flame.
"Nor I my mother's." The moon and the ocean.
Sisters, reflections twice, thrice over, yet at once unique.
"The mistakes I made, I claim for myself. He taught me that much."
---
The Avatar falls to his knees.
"It's finally done," he gasps, head bowed.
Weeping for that first time, and what might-have-been.
---
"If only he could see it," Toph says, laughing a little at her own joke.
Her tears are not of sorrow, but of healing.
---
Sokka rolls his shoulders, ever working to earn what was given to him. "Now the rebuilding begins."
---
"Not yet." Hakoda speaks, the voice of experience, war-weariness, fatherhood.
"Rest a little, first. We've all been fighting for so long." Suki closes her fans, and embraces her sisters.
x.
Who lives
Who dies
Who tells your story?
---
The axis of the world changes once more, brought back to balance after tipping out of control.
---
The Fire Lord and the Avatar bring peace, as foretold.
Sozin and Roku make amends.
---
The elements have erased the home ice. A clean, white slate with a tint of yellow from the sun stretches out endless before her, and it's so beautiful that Katara cries.
----
Father and son start a new nation out of the memories of the old.
Some memories, that is.
Others are best buried, left forgotten in Fire Nation caverns.
---
There's less need in the world for knives in the back now. Mai always had liked arranging flowers. More elusive targets, emotions.
---
Ty Lee's days of giving performances are over. She can finally let herself say what she thinks, with no apologies for her intelligence. She remains Azula's closest adviser. After all, she can still spot the roles the actors are playing.
---
The United Republic brings together families torn apart by war, forms new ones out of the patchwork of peoples.
---
Azula names her heir and daughter Izumi. The baby has her brother's eyes, purest gold.
Life, death, rebirth. A piece she thought lost returns.
---
Republic City wants to honor the Fire Lord with a statue in the main square.
Azula agrees, on one condition.
---
It's titled, The Coronation of Fire Lord Azula. A fifteen-year-old girl with uneven hair screams and cries in the arms of her scarred brother.
Destiny is your own, is carved into the marble pedestal in shining bold script.
---
Aang marries; the airbenders return to the world. The first of them is named Zuko.
---
Sokka sees his dragonflame in sunlight split from icicles, sometimes, as he teaches his son the dual dao.
---
Toph finds no peace in the violence of the elements. She learns to walk the Spirit World and listen through the vines. She sees those long lost once again.
---
Katara never marries. Bloodbending and its secrets will die with her. This is her final penance.
---
Slowly, slowly, the new world forgets its birthing pains. Its face is whole again, its Spirit at peace.
---
The spark ignites, and is now a flame.
--- fin
Notes:
The ending was bittersweet until I started listening to Hamilton while thinking about it and then it just destroyed me. You're welcome.
Scenes 7- 9 taking place at Lu Ten's grave, in case you needed a visual.
Please ask me anything either in the comments or on tumblr -- if you want to know what I meant by a particular turn of phrase, in-depth discussion of the characters and what they're going through -- I'm happy to talk about this stuff all day! This has been a real labor of love and one of my favorite things I've ever written, and it's been so nice knowing there's people interested enough to follow along on this mad journey with me.
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