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On the eve of Avatar Aang’s death, Lu Ten is visited by a spirit.
This is less a surprise than it could be. For one thing, Lu Ten is himself a spirit. For another:
“I always knew it was tied to the Avatar.” He says, as casually as he’s able with clenched fists. You’d think the last fifty years would have filled him with peace, serenity, and zen. Some type of lesson learned from not being able to affect the world around you.
Lu Ten has found no such acceptance, but Roku nods his head regally. The dragon under him is as majestic as the two preserved at the temple of the Sun Warriors. Lu Ten tears his eyes away from it.
“Well?” He asks, the question slipping free. He’s wanted to know why, has needed to know why, ever since he woke up dead in an iceberg next to a frozen child who wouldn’t wake for two years yet.
“It was the only way.” Zuko’s great-grandfather sets his arms into his sleeves, regal and untouchable and Lu Ten has never wanted to punch someone in the face more. He can’t affect the real world, of course, but if Roku is also a spirit, then there’s a chance.
Then again, he wasn’t able to interact with Aang in the spirit world, or Hei-bei, or Koh . He’s well and truly held aloft. Not even Wan Shi Tong could see him. Most people knew the spirits were real; fewer believed in ghost stories.
Lu Ten hadn’t believed in them, either, until he became one.
“Just tell me why,” He implores, biting his tongue on the rest of it. Why me , he wants to ask. Why Lu Ten instead of anyone else, why alone, why cut off from human and spirit alike, until not even the bridge can see him. Why fifty years a spector, a spectator, only able to watch and see, never able to be seen in turn?
“Look.” Says Avatar Roku. “And see, for yourself, why history had to be rewritten. Why all of this had to be done.”
The dragon reaches forward a single whisker that touches Lu Ten in the center of his forehead. The clouds part, and he is flying, a translucent wraith through a vision of history.
It begins with a dark night over the ocean, thunder booming, rain pelting down, and dangerous arcs of lightning striking fast and hard. La is hidden and Tui rages below.
Avatar Aang, having never touched the Avatar state, dies in a storm.
--
Kaya of the Southern Water tribe blinks open gray eyes. Her father is Tsanyang of the Southern Air Temple. Akko, her mother, is grateful when her toddler bends water instead. She would not want to give her child to the temples, no matter her father. News of the war hasn’t reached them, yet.
That year is an unusual harsh winter, followed by a cold summer that barely thaws anything at all.
It’s as if the spirits are angry. The tribe is cautious, afraid; they don’t venture out far at all, relying on stored meat whenever they can.
By the time they can reach the Southern Air Temple for the midsummer trade, Kaya is two years old.
There is no trade that year. They are two years too late. Akko is given another reason to thank the Tui and La for blessing her daughter, that Kaya did not bend air like her father. It is not yet dangerous to be a water bender in the South.
When the Southern Raiders come, the South is strong. Kaya has a big family, a daughter named Hama, and there are dozens of benders. She is one of the water benders who rises up in fierce defense of her home. After a generation of fighting, she is one of the water benders struck down.
-
Tien is born during the reign of the 51 st Earth King. His parents are farmers. It’s possible they could have lived in the southeast, where the tide of fire’s army came like a wave, a century in the making. He could have taken up arms like many earth benders, like many farmers and shop owners and families.
But he is raised in the North, quite near the coast, and the fighting would have to cross Ba Sing Se among other great cities to reach him. Life is hard, because of the war, but he doesn’t see any fighting. The able-bodied men of the village go to the front, of course, but Tien is young and stays to take care of his family.
Tien and two of his sisters are earth benders, so they quietly help till the fields. Tien figures out a way to bend the seed into place and cover it lightly with earth. He moves, without meaning to, into a more fluid stance—
As though he could water it afterward.
He obviously can’t, though.
He has no teacher, nor badgermoles to learn from; nor does he need any great bending. One day, soon after the 51 st Earth King dies, there’s an avalanche in the mountains near the village. Great rocks tumble down, flattening houses, but worse is the river of earth that comes after, mountain snow melting and carried along in a flood of sludge and death.
Tien’s feet carry him through a strong stance as if he’s done this thousands of times before. Before him, Kiyoshi broke an island off a continent and moved it out to see. He bends without thinking, without pause or instruction, creating great walls in front of the small village of Howra.
His second-youngest brother is caught in the flood. Tien acts without thinking, bending pillars up through the muck; they rise up, stepping stones that he takes as fast as he’s able. His brother, filthy and half-drowned, clings to him, and Tien uses the last of his strength to throw Lirin to safety. He loses his footing on the slippery earth and can’t regain it; the floodwaters surge and he goes under.
--
Lu Ten is born to Prince Iroh, son of Ilah and Azulon, heir to the Phoenix Throne, seventy five years after the genocide on the air benders.
His story is unchanged.
--
There are no air benders.
The Avatar cycle is broken.
--
Lu Ten stares at the spirit of Avatar Roku in mounting disbelief.
“But Avatar Aang lived.” He says, standing at the foot of said Avatar’s deathbed as his wife and children cry for him.
It’s a bizarre fever dream, a sequence of scenes presented to him in odd order and for no reason.
“Yes.” Says Avatar Roku, gravely. “He did.”
Behind him, Kiyoshi stands tall, folding her fans and placing them in her robes. She is just as majestic as the stories suggest, more than living up to the legend, even now as see-through as Lu Ten.
“There were consequences.” The woman grimaces, brown eyes yet boring into Lu Ten’s soul.
A man appears behind her, eyes glowing, and then an Airbender, and so on, and Lu Ten abruptly realizes what this is. He’s seen it before, when Aang visited the Temple; a long line of Avatars, stretching back as far as the eye can see.
“It didn’t happen,” He insists, even as a similar glow builds up inside him. “It’s not real!”
“Our spirits linger.” Tien says, one hand landing on Lu Ten’s forearm. He has never met this earthbender before, only seen a brief vision of his life, yet feels like he knows everything about him; his parents, his twelve siblings, the small village he died saving.
“There was no other way.” Says Kaya, on his other side, older than his own mother. Her eyes too begin to glow, as they never did in life.
And in front of all of them, in front of Lu Ten directly: Aang.
Aang as Lu Ten first knew him, as he waited for two years in the iceberg.
“Oh.” He said, looking down at his own hands with eyes wiser than any normal twelve-year-old’s. “I see now. I always wondered how I survived. None of the others did what I could. No Avatar before me used the Avatar state before they mastered the elements.”
“We intervened,” Said Roku, looking every one of his years. “There was no other way.”
Aang nodded, accepting this. The world around them moved; it shifted and blurred until they were in an icy house. Lu Ten recognized it, despite himself, as the type of house Kaya was born in.
“The Avatar after Aang was to be a Southern Water bender. It was meant to be you.” Kyoshi looks directly at the woman holding Lu Ten’s arm.
“We could not allow that to happen.” Said Yangchen, her expression sad and resolved at once. “My people were dead and gone. If the last airbender was allowed to die, the Avatar line would be broken. The world would never know balance. The airbenders would be gone forever.”
Behind them, untouched by the glowing bodies and eyes and proclamations, a small family gathered around a woman in labor. Lu Ten realized what this must be.
Aang looked with melancholy happiness at the scene, every inch a young airbender; he leapt with wind at his feet to stand firmly in front of Lu Ten.
“I’ve joined the cycle, now.” He says, wondering. “The knowledge is coming to me quickly. Why they did it; what they did. What has to happen now.”
Lu Ten hadn’t been aware spirits could have mouths this dry, but his was like the Si Wong desert.
“But you never did.” Aang’s eyes began to glow. “The three of you could not be part of the cycle. It was meant to happen, but it couldn’t , so they—they saved me. I took your place.”
“You cannot join us.” Says Kurak, in his furs. “I am sorry. The line must continue.”
“Where—where will I go?” He somehow knew it was he, alone, who would be going, and that he couldn’t stay here. There was a sense of finality to all of this; the final unveiling of why his spirit had lingered, tied to this world, following Aang on his journey.
Lu Ten was meant to be the very last Avatar.
There would have been no Airbender to succeed him.
Aang’s eyes and tattoos are glowing. Roku’s, Kyoshi’s, Kurak’s, Yangchen’s, back and back until Lu Ten realizes a line of hundreds stares back at him, something he’s a part of, something that his heart reaches for, an empty space, and yet-- he already knows he can’t touch them.
Aang’s entire spirit lights up, as it had once before, and the airbender’s hands settle on Lu Ten’s forehead, on his chest, and he’s so surprised to be touched that he doesn’t even protest, lungs too small and breath too short, eyes wild.
Please , he thinks, but he can barely mouth it, and he already knows it’s too late.
The glow builds, builds, and reaches a crescendo. It becomes impossible to see anything.
Behind them, Korra breathes for the very first time, crying loudly in the night. The sound echoes, too loud, shaking the world apart. Her eyes flicker, white with power, a circuit completed--!
When the glow fades, everything is dark. His eyes struggle to resolve anything, only pinpricks of color, and after a few moments Lu Ten realizes that’s because there is no light.
He is standing in a field of stars in an ocean of blackness.
He turns and a reflection made of galaxies greets him, eyes as white as the glow of stars. The great spirit being made of space opens Lu Ten’s mouth, as tall as a mountain, and speaks with his voice, echoed by a thousand.
“The cycle ends with me.”
A great wave of grief, like the muddy waters that killed Tien, settles over his shoulders. It’s foreign, yet familiar; what could have been.
“No!” Lu Ten yells, desperate. “I’m not—I wasn’t the Avatar! This didn’t happen!”
The great void turns its head to look at him, infinite and unknowable and glowing.
Always with the spirit-damned glowing.
“You.” It says, as though acknowledging the whole of Lu Ten’s existence.
It reaches, a hand of null-space with grasping fingers, and Lu Ten feels fear as great as he’s ever felt.
Before the Spirit of the World can touch him, the path vanishes. Lu Ten’s gut clenches, sharp and painful, as he’s suddenly falling in the void between stars.
His arms reach out, desperate, but there’s nothing to cling to, nothing to grab; he’s going to die again !
The air punches out of him, and though there’s no end to the plunge—nothing to hit, no way to stop, no end—he wakes up, gasping for breath.
When he can breathe again, when the fear stops drowning him, and the ache in his lungs eases somewhat, he looks around at his surroundings with numb disbelief.
It’s a room, certainly. More like the fire nation houses than anything else, walls made of wood instead of earth or ice. It’s completely new to him, yet somehow a place he recognizes.
The last few minutes strike him hard. He’s sure no other Avatar—he was meant to be the Avatar! —lived here. As the sense of being connected to the stars, the world, the impossible lineage inside him starts to fade, he realizes—abruptly—that he is a spirit no more.
He’s alive.
As his hand flies to his—solid—chest in shock, a voice reaches him, quiet as a whisper. It could have been any of the Avatars.
It could have been all of them.
Don’t worry , they say, as though that’s in any way possible. We sent her a dream.
“Who?” He demands out loud. There’s something wrong with his voice, but he shuts up, straining to hear the fading words.
To change the future, your life was changed. The Avatar Lu Ten could not exist in our world. Your spirit lingered, cast out of the natural order. What we did was impossible, but not wrong. Your spirit exists now in another world, far beyond the spirit plane, connected yet apart.
Another world? Lu Ten scrambled out of the bed, hurrying to the mirror propped up on some sort of chest of drawers. A young face looked back at him, freckled and unknown.
The hair is right—black, long, like all his family’s—and the eyes, a dragon’s gold, but the rest was completely alien.
He has a horrible thought.
“Who?” He repeats. “To whom did you send a dream !?”
You will yet keep your name. Say the voice of countless Avatars. Lu Ten’s life was stolen from him. Lu Ten’s life will be returned.
“It’s not my life!” He protested immediately, already knowing it was too late. “Listen to me! It’s not—” His voice broke, screaming turned hoarse.
“It’s not my life without my father! Without Zuko, Azula—without my kingdom! My people need me!”
He’s been a spirit for fifty years, but he’s never been anything but who he is: Lu Ten, prince of the fire nation, son of Iroh.
The face in the mirror looks back at him, none of these things.
“Lu Ten, honey?” Comes an unfamiliar voice, from another part of the domicile. “Are you alright?”
Gold eyes look out at him from a stranger’s face.
He can’t be more than six or seven years old.
