Chapter Text
Avatar Roku said:
If you are killed in the Avatar State, the reincarnation cycle will be broken and the Avatar will cease to exist.
i
Dying felt a lot like falling.
Like plummeting to the earth, a sever in his body, splitting into pieces like glass; shattering, cracking, a slicing sensation from the very core of his chest, spreading across his limbs like the arrows the monks had painstakingly tattooed across his skin.
This is dying, he knew. This is death.
Not just one death, but a hundred deaths, a thousand. The deaths of all those that came before him, wiped out in and instant; the deaths of all those that would come after, their distant, glowing breaths wiped from existence in a snap.
The light shuddered. The Avatar State split.
Aang’s body crumpled against the stone.
ii
Zuko was questioning his decisions, even after the Water Tribe girl – Katara, her name is Katara, and her mother is dead, and she would’ve healed your scar – vanished up the waterfall with the corpse of the Avatar. He was questioning his decisions as his uncle was thrown down in front of him, arms clasped in rock cuffs, feet bound, refusing to even look at him. He was questioning his decisions as Azula blew the smoke from her fingertips, like murder was nothing, assassination was nothing, like this was what was always meant to be.
After the Catacombs, he paced his room in the Earth Kingdom palace. The Dai Li, Azula’s personal private bodyguards, had found him a room and whisked Uncle away, into the depths of the dungeons.
He’d seen the Fire Nation banners unfurl, covering the Earth Kingdom insignia. He’d seen the servants bow, quivering and afraid, before the Fire Nation Prince and Princess. He’d seen Long Feng’s head roll, detached from his body, across the throne room tiles, as Azula watched on, her expression indifferent, but her eyes alight with power.
Zuko had always wondered why he was the first born when it was always clear that Azula intended to rule.
iii
Night descended on Ba Sing Se, and Ty Lee peered out the palace windows at the glowing yellow lights of the city. She may have come from nobility, but she had never felt comfortable in the palaces; she was meant for life, for people, for both the stage and the audience that watched, enraptured.
She kept her eyes pointed towards those lights and ignored the body of Long Feng being carried away from the palace. His corpse would be used to scare straight a few deviants, as Azula had put it; his death would keep their hold on this city.
It was very impressive of Azula, Ty Lee thought, that General Iroh had spent six hundred days trying to break this city, but it had only taken her a month.
A difference in technique, she thought as she rose to her feet, ready to sleep the night away and awaken in the morning to start the long trip home. Iroh tried to invade from the outside in, while Azula just slipped amongst the ranks and stole from the inside out.
She really was very impressive.
vi
Katara had seen death play out before.
She’d seen the before and after; her mother saying Go find your father, and the cold corpse she returned to. She’d seen it happen, seen Fire Nation soldiers crumple, seen them bleed and choke and drown. She’d drowned many of them herself, in fact. Katara was a natural waterbender, and though it was said that fire was the element of destruction, she could think of no more painful way to die than with water in your lungs or ice cracking your skin.
Though perhaps, she allowed, lightning could come close.
She’d seen the way it had torn through Aang’s body; the way he’d convulsed in the air, shocked and rigid and tense. The lightning had sparked white around his body, had burned straight through his back, and left him broken, left him… dead.
What a violent end lightning could bring. What an overwhelming pain, a tsunami of intensity, to force you from one world to the next.
As they rode away on Appa from Ba Sing Se, from the defeat and the betrayal, Katara cried, Aang tight in her arms. Sokka had tried to take him from her, but she refused to let go. She could still feel the warmth of him; he was gone but not all the way – not like her mother’s body, which had grown cold so quickly after the firebender had cut her down.
Katara only pulled away from Aang so she could lift the vial of spirit water from the cord that kept it around her neck. It was a good thing, she thought, that she hadn’t healed Zuko’s scar after all. Not least of all because he’d turned his back on them not ten minutes after she’d offered.
She used her teeth to pull out the stopper, and carefully bent the water to the scar on Aang’s back, angry and red and blistering. The lightning had entered at his foot, she’d find out not long later; it had coursed all the way up his left leg and exited out of the centre of his back, stretching and reaching for everything it didn’t immediately touch.
The water glowed a light, powerful blue as it gloved her hand, soothing the burn and seeping inside, finding the heart, the lungs, the blood. She focused hard on the water, on Aang, on the energy of the universe, push and pull, Tui and La.
The Avatar would live, she decided. He had to.
v
Aang gasped sharply, his eyes flying open.
He felt numb, felt hollow. He saw Katara, crying, holding him. He saw the night sky, the moon, the stars that watched from on high.
He said, “Don’t go,” like a prayer, like asking for mercy when he knew there would be none.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Katara replied, but she was not who he was speaking to.
He closed his eyes again and slept.
A PROCLAMATION FROM THE PALACE OF THE FIRE LORD
Long may he reign.
On the day of the sixth year, the fourth month and the eleventh day of our Lord, Ozai, the Avatar was heroically struck down and killed by our once-banished Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation.
It is today, six years, four months and thirteen days after the ascension of our protector and ruler, His Majesty, Fire Lord Ozai, the Fire Lord’s first-born son, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, has been permitted his return to the home country, and will return to his duties as Prince.
His return is of great joy to the Fire Lord. His highness Prince Zuko’s banishment lasted three years, two months, and nineteen days, and has been overturned after his successful assassination of the Avatar, and his efforts involved in conquering Ba Sing Se at the right hand of Her Highness Princess Azula of the Fire Nation.
Prince Zuko and Princess Azula deposed the king of the Earth Kingdom, and have turned over rule of Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation. Their war-changing victory shall be celebrated for a week upon their return, on the fourteenth of this month, in the sixth year of our Lord, Ozai, culminating in a Caldera-wide celebration on the twenty-first in their honour.
May the Fire Lord’s reign burn bright and lasting.
Lo and Li said:
Your Princess Azula, clever and beautiful, disguised herself as the enemy and entered the Earth Kingdom’s Capital. In Ba Sing Se, she found her brother Zuko, and together they faced the Avatar… And the Avatar fell! And the Earth Kingdom fell! Azula’s agents quickly overtook the entire city. They went to Ba Sing Se’s great walls, and brought them down! The armies of the Fire Nation surged through the walls and swarmed over Ba Sing Se, securing our victory. Now the heroes have returned home! Your princess, Azula… and after three long years, your price has returned… Zuko!
vi
Zuko had seen a party in Ba Sing Se. He’d watched it from the shabby apartment he and Uncle had rented as refugees in the lower ring. There had been music and dancing; people laughing and swinging each other around by the elbows. He’d watched from his bedroom window, perched with his cheeks resting in his fists as the yellow light blazed through the night from the strangers’ windows.
It seemed they were celebrating a birthday.
Zuko had not celebrated any of his birthdays since his banishment. The first one had come along some eight or nine months after the bandages were removed from his face, and Uncle had requested a good meal from the kitchen crew on board the ship, with some of his favourite foods. There hadn’t been much else, just a warm wish from his uncle, and a warning that fourteen was not much older than thirteen, though sometimes the difference felt like decades.
On his fifteenth birthday, Uncle had gifted him the dao blades. The set was certainly cheaper than the expensive swords he’d trained through his childhood with under Master Piandao, but they were good, and they were balanced, and they were his.
Very few things had been his by that point.
On his sixteenth birthday, they’d docked in the port of a Fire Nation colony on the western border of the Earth Kingdom. He’d seen dancing that night, too, and though Uncle had attempted to encourage him to join in, Zuko had refused.
He hadn’t danced since he was thirteen. Dancing was not generally an activity the Fire Nation regarded particularly highly; it was reserved for nobles at parties just like the one they were throwing in his honour tonight. Those dances were about form and dignity – they were nothing like the ones he’d seen in Ba Sing Se, out his bedroom window. Those dances were about fun.
Zuko made his way into the ballroom, where the ball was to be held. Parties would play on throughout the entirety of the Caldera tonight – Zuko wondered about them, about what they might be like. The one in the palace was filled to the brim with the nobles he’d done his best to avoid all week; the ones who’d grinned maniacally at his Agni Kai, or whispered about him in the halls when they thought he couldn’t hear.
No, he had perfectly good hearing in his right ear, even if the left’s was muffled on a good day. The fire had taken most of his sight in his left eye, but it was the infection afterwards that had stolen his hearing.
A band played on one side of the room, and Zuko took his place beside Azula, on the thrones that towered over the nobles. The set up was much like the one in the throne room; luxurious cushions settled in three spaces; one for Zuko, another for Azula, and the third for their father. Ozai, however, was absent, but Zuko didn’t feel particularly surprised.
The only time he’d seen his father since his return was on the day of, when he’d bowed to the Fire Lord and had been officially granted stay in his home, and at a war meeting, three days later, when they had waited for his arrival.
For a while, Zuko watched the nobles talk and chatter. He was aware that there was a lot of ceremony about these things, about how long he had to watch from his seat for, about if and when he was allowed to dance, or eat, or speak. He let his mind float as he did so, thinking of Uncle, in his prison cell, of Azula, claiming the kill was his, of the Avatar’s dead body in the Water Tr—Katara’s arms.
He wondered, silently, if he would’ve made the same decision to side with Azula had he been given only a few more minutes with Katara. They’d only shared a few sentences and he had let her touch the rough skin of his scar as she had offered to heal it. But then Zuko looked across to Azula, who was already watching him with a steely gaze and he thought, No. I made the right decision, and I would’ve made the same one even if that Water Tribe peasant had begged.
“We should dance,” Azula said, suddenly, like the idea had just occurred to her. Zuko thought she’d probably decided they would dance at least three days in advance; she probably knew every decision every guest would make tonight.
“I don’t dance,” Zuko lied. They’d taken all the same classes together.
“Oh, get over yourself,” she replied, rising gracefully from her seat. Azula’s ceremonial dress matched the robes his tailor had sewn for Zuko; from the way the silk hung to the pattern of the beading, they were a matching unit. The siblings who brought down an empire, supposedly. “If you don’t dance with me, I’ll have to dance with some noble upstart, and I don’t particularly feel like doing that.”
Azula descended the steps to the level of the ballroom, and raised a single eyebrow. “Well?”
Zuko took a single controlled breath in, and then exhaled it out.
“Fine.”
“There’s my big brother.” Her smile was the devious kind, but he knew everyone else would find it sweet.
Zuko rose and stepped down to her level, taking her outstretched hand and leading her towards the centre of the ballroom, where other nobles danced to the band. They turned to face each other, and Zuko glanced beyond her shoulder, to the audience they’d amassed simply by getting up.
“Don’t worry about them,” Azula whispered. “You’re a perfectly fine dancer. Of course, I’m better, but I’m sure all your time travelling the world hasn’t dulled your abilities.”
Zuko pressed his lips in a thin line, refusing to rise to the bait. Rather, he raised his hand, and Azula smirked, matching it with her own. The band, eyes on their royalty like everyone else, caught on immediately, the music changing from the slow traditional waltz type, to something a little faster.
For the first half of the song, Zuko and Azula were the only ones on the floor; matching each other’s every move, stepping around their circle in unison, their arms raising and falling in time. He caught her hand and she side stepped, they twisted and turned, their steps in perfect time. Soon enough, other nobles were permitted to join the dance, matching their movements and rhythm.
“I see you haven’t forgotten the steps at all,” Azula commented, twisting to raise her other hand as he did the same. “Did they do these sorts of dances in Ba Sing Se?”
He thought briefly of the jaunty, bright dance of the birthday part in the lower ring.
“No,” Zuko said evenly. “They didn’t.”
Azula’s eyes flitted away from his face to a spot behind his shoulder. “You know, perhaps you should invite Mai to dance.”
Zuko narrowed his eyes an inch. “Why would I do that?”
Azula sighed, rolling her eyes. They both turned, backs to each other, and she continued, “Because she’s had the largest, most annoying crush on you since we were children, Zuzu.”
Zuko used everything he had to keep his eyes from bugging out while everyone watched him. He stopped himself from spluttering, and instead asked, “Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s so.” He and Azula stepped back, so they were side by side, and continued on. “And I know you did, too.”
“I was a child.”
“And now you’re the returned war hero Prince,” she replied. “I do imagine that with some good behaviour, your Crowned title will be returned, and then you’ll need a wife to continue the lineage.”
He shot her a sideways gaze. “You wouldn’t let that happen.”
“What, your marriage?”
“Losing your title.”
Azula looked considering for a moment. Zuko, as the heir to the throne, was given the title Crowned Prince when he turned twelve, approximately a year and a half before his banishment. After that, the title was passed onto Azula, though Zuko had secretly wondered if it would be returned upon his reinstatement in the palace.
“I suppose the killer of the Avatar deserves such a title,” she said, her words a double-bladed knife. The killer of the Avatar was Zuko; the killer of the Avatar was Azula.
Zuko hummed, non-committal.
“I wouldn’t want to leave you to dance by yourself,” he said at last, returning to their previous conversation. “I’m sure Mai would understand that, too.”
“Oh, it’s no bother. I’ve been meaning to meet a few potential suitors for some time.”
“You don’t plan on marrying soon,” Zuko accused quietly.
“Of course not, brother, but perhaps someone will catch my eye.”
They stopped in front of one another and bowed, the song coming to an end. The audience clapped politely as they took a step away from one another. The Prince and the Princess stared each other off, a silent competition, until Zuko nodded, and stepped turned towards one side of the room. The nobles that he drew close to immediately began muttering under their breaths, but he ignored them, standing before Mai.
He held out a hand.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked.
Mai took a sip of her drink. The nobles muttered louder.
“I don’t like dancing,” she replied.
“Neither do I,” he lied again.
Mai considered his hand. “I suppose one dance couldn’t hurt.” She took it, and Zuko’s stomach flipped.
vii
Katara raised her arms and the fog rose with her, rolling across the ocean surface and disguising the purple sail of the Water Tribe boat. She moved slowly, precisely, her arms drawing wide circles to keep the fog curling and growing as they approached the Fire Navy ship in the night.
The moon was high already, curved in a smooth crescent. Behind her, Water Tribe men prepared their weapons, crouched low on the deck in wait.
As they drew close to the Fire Navy ship, the men leapt across and into battle. Katara kept the fog high and dense, her skin dripping wet from its cover, and she listened to the distant fight occurring in the bowels of the ship. The moon vanished behind the mist, the stars melted in the black of night.
It had been a little over a week since the Catacombs, and still she saw lightning streaked across the back of her eyelids. Would the impression of Aang’s death ever leave her? She hoped so; she hoped it would melt away like thin ice in the summer sun, and be at most a puddle she occasionally stepped in. There was too much to do to be weighed down by that singular moment, but she guessed it wouldn’t let go until Aang finally woke up.
He was still asleep, back on shore at Chameleon Bay as he had been since she brought him back to life on Appa. He had died, she had been sure of that. She had felt that. Felt the way his heart had stopped beating, his lungs no longer expanding. Aang had looked… hollow. Empty. And now it was just a waiting game for his body to heal and allow him to return – though, Sokka seemed pretty excited over the already wide-spread news of his death.
The Avatar had never been a secret weapon before; his entire purpose was to be the harbinger of change and balance. Not to hide in the bowels of a stolen Fire Navy ship and sail around the world, undetected.
But soon enough, the Water Tribe warriors were shining lanterns, to let those remaining on the boat know that they had taken the ship, and Katara slowly rolled back the fog as the boats turned and sailed for land.
She watched her father’s silhouette on the deck as they went. She watched as he and Bato threw the bodies of the Fire Nation soldiers overboard.
viii
Toph listened to Aang’s heartbeat through the ground. She felt for the footsteps of the remaining Water Tribe men, of Sokka, who had been pacing around camp all evening. Apparently, a large amount of Fire Navy ships had been in the area recently, and rather than pulling the Water Tribe boats ashore and Toph covering them with what hopefully looked like more mountainside, the others had decided it would be just better to steal a ship and make a break for it on that.
They’d left well over an hour ago.
Toph should probably be sleeping.
Aang’s heartbeat was steady but slow. It had been that way since he was first settled on the thin mat in the tent a week before. She hadn’t touched him since. In fact, the last time she’d seen him, they had been splitting up. Aang was going to get Katara back while she and Sokka warned the Earth King of the coup.
They had returned to find Katara holding a corpse.
Toph knew it was a corpse. There hadn’t been a heartbeat. It had taken her a minute to recognise it as Aang, and that was only because she couldn’t feel him anywhere else, and Katara wouldn’t drop the dead body.
She felt Sokka’s footsteps approach the tent.
“We just spotted them off the bay,” he said. “Get your things.”
Toph hesitated and she felt that hesitation echoed right back at her. Seeing with her feet was her way of life; she recognised the subtlest of movements, the way Sokka clearly moved his weight to his back foot to leave, and then returned it to the front one, to stay.
“How’s he doing?” he asked softly.
“There’s no change,” Toph replied. She paused and Sokka waited. “Do you think he’ll wake up?”
Sokka stepped further into the tent and then crouched by Toph’s side. He landed a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“I think he’s the Avatar. He has to.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll figure out another way to defeat the Fire Lord.”
“No—” Toph cut herself off, shaking her head. That wasn’t what she meant. “For—for us. For you. For me. And Katara. What do we do if he doesn’t wake up?”
Sokka’s hand tightened, his thumb pressed against her collar bone. No one had ever described what he looked like (except Sokka, with the words “devastatingly handsome”) – but she imagined kind eyes. That was it, really, though she had no reference point to what those things were. Kind eyes and big hands and maybe a nice smile. Definitely a nice smile.
“He’ll wake up.”
“Sokka.”
He sighed. “We’d mourn him,” he said. “We’d bury him, too. I’m not sure how the Air Nomads buried their dead, but in the Water Tribe, there’s not much ground to dig up, so maybe we’d give him a sea burial, like my Mom. Push him out on a raft into the ocean. Katara couldn’t waterbend when our Mom died, so we couldn’t do the part of the ceremony where waterbenders flood the raft and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. And, considering how she died, it didn’t feel right to shoot a burning arrow at the raft.”
“What did you do?”
“We tied weights to the bottom of the boat and sunk it,” Sokka replied. “We knew La would look after her in the next life.” He shook his head. “After that, we’d move on, Toph. We’d have to. There’s no use being stuck in the past.”
Toph felt Aang’s heartbeat, slow and soft.
“He’s not the past yet.”
“He’s not. He’s still here, and I’ll bet that he’ll be up on his feet any day now.” She could hear Sokka trying to sound chipper, but she couldn’t feel the honesty he usually spoke with. “Everything will be okay.”
His hand vanished from her shoulder as he stood. “We’ll need to you cover up the boats again,” he said. “We’ll leave them intact in case we need them again, but they’ll need to be hidden.”
“You got it,” Toph said, and Sokka left the tent. She felt his hesitation by the door; the brief pause before moving his weight forward, but this time he didn’t stay. Toph counted Aang’s heartbeats, before rising and following Sokka out.
ix
“Oh, this is so much fun!”
Ty Lee skipped down the hall, flinging herself forward into a handspring before continuing on. She spiralled at the end, to see Mai, Zuko and Azula slinking after her, like dejected goth royalty. Their auras were terribly dreary colours, even after a party.
“Keep it down,” Azula said. “Do you want the whole palace to know what we’re up to?”
“You make it sound like we’re doing something bad,” Ty Lee replied, peering around the next corner and starting off down the steps.
“Father will blow a gasket if he knows what we’re doing,” Azula informed her as they all followed along, dressed in their ceremonial robes but with the new, stylish addition of deep red cloaks to obscure their faces. “Either that or he’ll give me a deformity to match Zuko’s.” She humphed. “Even I couldn’t pull that look off.”
Ty Lee pointedly did not look behind her. She didn’t want to see the glower on Zuko’s face.
Frankly, she thought that Prince Zuko had grown up rather attractive despite the deformity the Fire Lord had given him. He wasn’t her type – in fact, her type was a little less broad and sulky – but she could appreciate him anyway. Ty Lee knew she couldn’t say as much out loud, or Mai would probably sulk for a year. She knew that in a different way to how she knew she couldn’t express her dislike for how Zuko received that scar.
She couldn’t imagine her own father, a non-bender as he was, ever doing something like that to her or her siblings.
The Fire Lord raised two very talented children, but she wasn’t sure if that made him a good father.
She skipped around the next corner to forget about such treasonous thoughts.
At the door, she unbolted it carefully, and peeked around the outside, before glancing back to her friends.
“The coast is clear,” she whispered.
The palace was not an easy place to access, but there were a few quiet entrances, largely for servants. However, even on a night like tonight, they knew those entrances would be manned. Instead, they sneaked their way into the bunker that ran under the length of the Caldera, and out into one of the side exits, near the centre of the city. On the outside, it looked like a regular door into a regular house. On the inside, there was a long, twisting hallway that ran into a maze beneath the palace.
Once her friends had caught up, she too raised the hood of her cloak, though Ty Lee doubted she was recognisable enough to be a problem, and slipped out into the darkness of the alley. The sudden rush of music and scent of spicy festival foods was glorious.
It was a whole new world out here; a world she belonged in.
Zuko was last out of the bunker, locking the door behind them, and then Ty Lee grinned, snatching up Azula’s wrist and running towards the street.
“Ty Lee!” Azula protested, but once they were out in the orange glow of the street, the complaint died in her mouth.
It was marvellous.
Glowing lights were strung up the length of the street in paper lanterns of all colours, and vendors sold food on sticks and in paper cones to the crowds of partygoers. There was music clashing with each other from all angles – that tea shop with a lute, this restaurant with a tsungi horn. Ty Lee slipped her hand down to Azula’s, grinning.
“Don’t you just love it?” she gushed. “Oh, I’m so glad I could persuade you all to see this.”
Azula’s eyes reflected the lantern lights as she stared. “I didn’t realise the celebrations would look this way,” she said carefully, her voice quiet.
Ty Lee matched her volume, drawing close. “Fire Nation parties are rarely like the ones in the palace.” Azula didn’t meet her gaze, instead clocking everything in the vicinity. Ty Lee eventually glanced over her shoulder, to Zuko and Mai, also staring out at the celebrations.
“Follow me,” she said, loud enough for them both to look over. “There’ll be performers down in the town square!”
Ty Lee tugged on Azula’s hand once more, and the group followed her down the street, weaselling between strangers and citizens. She felt Azula’s skin grow particularly warm when she was bumped, but Ty Lee threw a reassuring smile over her shoulder, which Azula matched with a glower.
Ever since they were children, there had always been a glaring difference between herself and the princess, though that was to be expected. Azula had always found joy in firebending, in fighting, and she’d rarely gotten along with the girls of lesser stature in school. Ty Lee had only gained her favour when she and a number of others had tripped at once, but she’d flipped herself out of the fall. Azula had liked her because she hadn’t been humiliated like all the rest.
They raced through the crowds and parties until they reached the town square, where a large audience had gathered. Ty Lee climbed up onto a lantern post to see over the audience, and then grinned down at her friends.
“You’ve got to see this!” she said.
Zuko glanced behind him and climbed up onto an empty chair at an outdoor restaurant, helping Mai climb up beside him. Azula gestured for Ty Lee to move, so she swung herself up higher, and Azula took her place.
Then they could all see the acrobats and firebenders. It wasn’t dancing, as dancing was largely prohibited among the common people, it was something different, something better. This was a series of identically-dressed girls flipping in unison over bursts of fire; long coils of flame soaring overhead like twirling dragons, young children with ribbon batons leaping impossible leaps.
At the end, the crowd cheered and Ty Lee grinned down at her friends.
“I imagine you could do that,” Azula said, gesturing to the show.
“I used to perform like that all the time!” Ty Lee replied, before swinging herself down from the post, landing lightly on the cobblestone.
“Is this what happens at regular parties?” Azula asked. “There’s acrobats and performers? That feels a lot like the balls at… home.”
Azula jumped down to the ground.
“At regular parties, everyone eats and drinks and talks,” Ty Lee said. “This is a street party!”
“So there’s no drinking?” Mai asked, stepping down from the chair. Zuko followed after her.
Ty Lee hummed. “I’d say there’s more drinking,” she replied.
Zuko waved a hand. “What are you waiting for, then? Lead the way.”
Ty Lee laughed. Her hood had come down when she jumped down from the post, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t royalty, or famous. She was no war hero. She was an acrobat, once part of a matched set, like the girls flipping during that performance.
She had never been noble, even if that was what she had been born into.
She was one of the people; faceless, but daring; unknown, but the star of her own show.
This time, when she reached forward, she grabbed Zuko’s hand. She caught the way Azula’s head tilted to the side just an inch, the way Mai’s eyes narrowed just a slither. Ty Lee thought they both needed to lighten up.
Zuko’s hand was rough from years of sailing and what had apparently been poverty in Ba Sing Se, but he followed along with no complaints as she darted back into the fray of the streets. They picked up the pace, racing and dashing through the crowds. Eventually, her laughter was joined by Zuko’s hesitant one, though Mai and Azula, following behind, didn’t join in.
It wasn’t hard to find a house party, nor was it hard to find alcohol being sold on the streets.
Ty Lee’s coin purse jingled happily and she paid whatever necessary, handing out the cups to her friends. Azula pulled a face at the taste and Mai grimaced. Ty Lee practically retched at the first one, unfamiliar with it, but Zuko simply downed it and asked for another.
“Brother,” Azula drawled, “I didn’t think your tastes would be so…” she pulled another face, like tasting it again, “unrefined.”
“I spent three years with sailors,” Zuko said, taking the next cup, “what do you think I learnt during that time?”
“What it means to be a disappointment?” Azula asked.
“Sea shanties?” Ty Lee suggested.
“Fishing?” Mai answered.
Zuko rolled his eyes and swallowed the contents of the cup in one. He didn’t even wince as it went down. “How to handle my liquor,” he replied. When he ordered again, he ordered a different drink, one Ty Lee had never heard of but was a pretty shade of maroon in colour. This one wasn’t so sharp and harsh, and was even a little sweet.
“This is what you spent your banishment doing?” Azula asked, hissing the word banishment, as they walked away from the vendor and towards the house party Ty Lee had pointed out. “Drinking rum with sailors?”
“And learning how to swear,” Zuko replied.
“The Fire Nation Navy is a disgrace for teaching the prince such things,” Azula said, high and mighty, which Ty Lee found funny and giggled over.
Zuko frowned at her. “I wasn’t with the Fire Nation Navy.”
“Hm? Of course you were, I heard all about your ship.” Azula made a vague gesture with her hand. “It was puny and small.”
They were at the door of the house by this point, pushing their way inside. People milled about, music played from somewhere unknown, and it felt very different to the atmosphere out on the street. Still, no one danced, because it simply wasn’t done.
“Uncle bought that ship,” Zuko said, and Ty Lee’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Father refused to spare a single man, even for a small crew, and didn’t give me a boat either.”
“Then who made up your crew?” Ty Lee asked.
Mai hummed. “Didn’t they wear Fire Nation uniforms?”
“They did,” Zuko replied, “but they were mercenaries for the most part. Defectors, if not.”
“Defectors?” Azula hissed. “You were travelling around with treasonous scum?”
Zuko levelled her with a cold gaze. “Wasn’t I treasonous scum?”
Azula leaned back, considering. “You’re right,” she decided. “You belonged together. Ty Lee, let’s go find some more drinks. I can only take so much depressing backstory from my brother at once.”
This time, Ty Lee did glance over her shoulder at Zuko. He didn’t even seem to care about the way Mai had tucked her arm around his. He just stared after them, like something broken.
x
When Aang woke up, he did so with hair.
He was on a Fire Nation vessel, though soon discovered that the crew was anything but.
Katara held him tightly when he appeared above deck, followed by Sokka and Toph punching him in the arm.
Two weeks, he was told. Two whole weeks since Ba Sing Se. He could barely remember it at all; just the lead up, tunnelling down into the dark with Iroh and finding Katara in the Catacombs, surrounded by crystals of blue and green. It was beautiful down there, like the bottom of the ocean frozen in shards.
There was nothing much after that, but he was told the whole horrible story.
He died.
He died and he barely came back.
But the world didn’t know that. The world thought he was dead.
The Fire Nation had announced the news within days and the message had spread far and wide: THE AVATAR IS DEAD. THE AVATAR WAS KILLED. PRINCE ZUKO KILLED THE AVATAR.
“Did he really?” Aang asked, slapping his head into his hands. After months of chasing them around the world, Zuko finally got what he wanted.
“No,” Katara said. “He didn’t.”
Aang sighed, rolling his head back up to look at her. “I get it. I’m still here, so he didn’t kill me—”
“No,” Katara corrected, pulling the dark cloak further around her shoulders. “Zuko didn’t kill you. Azula did.”
“Then why—”
“We don’t know. But Azula is scary; if she didn’t want the Fire Nation to believe Zuko killed you, then they wouldn’t. Whatever her motives are, she’s still dangerous.”
They told stories of the two week interlude while he was out, and Aang flattened his back against the deck, staring up at the cloudy sky above. It was growing foggy out on the sea, the mist rolling off the water in thick clouds. Katara said that happened sometimes near the Fire Nation – the heat of the active volcanoes constantly affected how the ocean breathed.
“Katara!” Bato called from across the deck. Aang remembered him from their time ice dodging. That felt like a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was. “It’s getting tough to see. Would you mind making a path? We want to make good time to the next drop off.”
“No problem,” Katara replied, rising from Aang’s side. She smiled sadly down at him; he’d started growing hair, there were bandages wrapped around his torso; he probably looked like a pathetic version of himself. “You wanna help?” she asked. “Bending fog isn’t particularly strenuous.”
Aang sighed. It might make him feel a little helpful, after he failed the world and let Ba Sing Se fall. Aang climbed slowly to his feet and followed Katara down to the bow of the boat, settling on the opposite side of the deck.
He breathed slowly out, feeling the twitch of pain in his back, the way it shuddered all down his left leg, into his bandaged foot, then he reached out, drawing the fog away.
Only—
He took another breath, stretching out his mind to the water in the air, just like Katara was doing. He bent it away from the front of the—
Alright.
Waterbending was about fluid motions; calm, serene actions. He loosened his stance, made his limbs slacker, and swayed forward, pulling the—
“Are you alright Aang?”
“Hm? Yeah. Yeah. No—I—I can’t seem to get this.”
Katara’s face cut into a frown. Aang didn’t have the wherewithal to even think about how pretty she looked out at sea; her braid had loosened and flyaway hairs fluttered in the breeze. The fog dampened her skin, making it glisten, but—
“You’ve bent fog plenty of times before,” Katara said. “Just follow my motions.”
She led him through the actions, just as he had been doing; leaning forward and dragging the fog backwards, dissipating it into the air as they went. But it was only happening on Katara’s side of the boat, not on Aang’s.
“I don’t get it,” Aang huffed. He shook out his hands. “I could do this yesterday—two weeks ago. I could do this in my sleep.”
Katara’s concern was etched deep now. “Can you waterbend some of the ocean for me?”
“Hm?”
“I just want to see.”
“Alright.” Aang sighed and moved his hands out towards the side of the boat. Bending water was a lot about feeling the energy and pulling on it; sliding through the motions and picturing what he wanted before it happened. He imagined lifting a globule of water from the surface, but in practice—
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I know how to waterbend. I’m good at it.”
“Maybe your injury isn’t as healed as we thought,” Katara said, slipping her hand on his bare shoulder. “Maybe after a bit more rest, you’ll be able to bend like always.”
Aang didn’t think so, though. That didn’t sit right within him; in the spaces where he felt hollow within his own chest. He swallowed, pressing a hand flat against his sternum. Something was missing, maybe. Gone.
Reality hit him like intrinsic knowledge; known, unavoidable, inevitable. He hadn’t noticed when he woke up, just the aching space where the truth sat, or where it used to.
He looked up at Katara, and just knew.
“I don’t think I can waterbend anymore.”