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“let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence — ”
A lifetime ago, when Aang was younger and the world was different, Monk Gyatso decided to tell him a story.
“Have I ever told you the tale of the Tribes of the Four Winds?” Monk Gyatso had asked him one day, after they’d finished up a game of pai sho.
“No, you haven’t,” Aang had replied, and then he’d settled down at Monk Gyatso’s feet, waiting eagerly to hear the tale his master was sure to unfold. Gyatso was an excellent storyteller, with a voice smoother than the date-whip they used for their fruit pies, and Aang could’ve listened to him talk for hours. Nothing compared to it- the cadence of his words, they way he always spun his stories so that they enveloped the listener like a cocoon, silky soft and honey sweet- it always made Aang feel light, and carefree. Like he could do anything. Be anyone.
“Well! We should fix that, then. Many, many, years ago, there were four ancient tribes that roamed the earth. They lived in the directions of the Four Winds- the north, the south, the east, and the west, and they traveled with those winds every season, always ending up somewhere new.”
“They were nomadic!” Aang had said. “Like us.”
Gyatso chuckled. “Yes, indeed, Aang,” he’d replied. “These tribes were the embodiment of the Four Winds themselves, and they soon began to be known as such. Each tribe eventually settled with in the homeland of their wind currents- the Northern tribe in the North, the Southern tribe in the south, the Eastern tribe to the east- and I’m sure you can guess where the Western tribe settled.”
“In the South, of course,” joked Aang, and Gyatso let out another happy chuckle.
“Of course. Once each tribe had settled in their homeland, they began to build. Magnificent temples that stretched towards the sky, structures that hung off the sides of mountain cliffs- all buildings that honored the currents from which the people came, and they created thriving societies there, where they could learn and live and be happy. But it could not last.
“You see, for all their movement, the currents had not yet crossed. And so although the different tribes traveled far and wide- across the whole world, even- they did not intersect. Until one day, some say through intervention of the spirits, when they finally did. The tribe of the northern wind met the tribe of the southern. The tribe of the eastern wind met the tribe of the western.”
Aang had been on the edge of his seat. “What happened then, Gyatso?”
Gyatso had only shaken his head grimly. “Violence,” he’d said. “For all that the winds are peaceful and kind, for all that they keep us free and floating, they are also destructive, Aang. Even the smallest breeze can take a leaf from a tree. Whether the tribes intended to harm each other, we do not know. But there was fighting among the tribes, and it lasted for years, until the winds themselves grew weary.
“The spirits intervened yet again, and demanded the Tribes of the Four Winds cease their quarrels. ‘You hail from the North, from the South, from the East, from the West,’ they cried, ‘but are you still not of the same flesh, the same blood, the same flight? Do the winds not run through all of your veins? You are from many currents, but you inhabit the same sky, and you would do well to remember so. What are you fighting for? Air cannot be contained, and neither can the spirit.’” Here Gyatso smiled wryly. “You know this well, don’t you, Aang?”
Aang nodded vigorously. He did know this. He knew it quite well, in fact. How else could he explain the call in his blood to soar, to fly high above the earth and feel the breeze around his body? How else could he explain the way he loved to wander, to explore everything the world had to offer and then some? “I know,” Aang replied to his mentor. “But what happened to the four tribes after the fighting stopped?”
“On that day, the Four Tribes put aside their disagreements. They instead focused on peace, and cooperation, and were able to move forward and create something you are very familiar with today.”
Aang furrowed his brow- something he was familiar with today? But what could he possibly-
And then it hit him.
“The Four Temples,” he gasped. “Wait, Monk Gyatso- were the Four Tribes airbenders? They lived in each direction of the wind- did they create the places we live in today?”
“Very good, Aang,” Gyatso said, and he’d grinned so widely that his eyes crinkled up at the corners. “The Four Tribes are our ancestors. They built the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western temples, and they established the nomadic traditions we still follow today.”
“Oh, wow,” Aang said again. That was mind boggling to him, that some of the very first airbenders, generations ago, were fighting in bloody battles across the sky. He couldn’t even imagine it- he had friends at the Northern and Western and Eastern temples. How could he possibly want to harm them in any way? He frowned.
“What’s wrong, Aang?” Gyatso asked, noticing Aang’s contemplative expression.
Aang hesitated, for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Well-” he began, then paused. “There’s just something I don’t understand.”
“Ask away, young one.”
“It’s just that- you said the Four Tribes were fighting, right? And it sounds like it was pretty awful, and bloody. The spirits had to intervene themselves; that’s no small thing.”
“Yes,” Gyatso said simply, his head tilted to the side, like he was waiting for Aang to continue.
“Well- how did they move on from that? It sounds like a lot of harm was done, and I don’t really know how they were able to just make up with each other so easily- and it’s not like we fight with the other temples today! You’re always saying that all life is sacred!”
Gyatso nodded. “This is true,” he said. “Much harm was done to each of the four tribes on behalf of the others. But once the fighting stopped, there were only a few things they all could do. Each tribe could forget what had happened, and gone back to ignoring each other on their own current. They could have stewed in resentment and bitterness for ages to come. But then we would not be as close with our brother and sister temples today, now would we?
“Instead of forgetting, the tribes chose to forgive. They chose to repent, to work for absolution, to find gratitude and love. They chose to find peace. And that’s why you and I are sitting here today.” With that, Gyatso reached out and lightly tapped Aang’s nose. Aang laughed and leaned his head against Gyatso’s knee, warmth and affection bubbling in his chest for his old master. The person he loved most in the world.
“That makes sense, Monk Gyatso,” Aang said. “But- why are you telling me all this?”
Gyatso gave him another affectionate smile. “Because, Aang,” he'd responded. “Only through peace can we be born anew. You will not be able to create a new world from the ashes of the old if you are holding onto old hurts. Our ancestors taught us that, and we remember them for it.
“We are infinite sources of love and healing, Aang. When you are hurting, when things get hard, you must not give into it, but instead let your energy flow down inside your body, and let yourself feel whole. Let yourself forgive. We know this to be true, the same way we know that the wind cannot be contained. The same way we know we are many currents, but we live in one sky. And it’s important to learn, don’t you think?”
One hundred years go by in an iceberg.
Aang wonders, sometimes, if Gyatso knows just how right he was.
i. repentance
He loses his mind, just a little bit, when he sees Gyatso’s skeleton.
Many things happen all at once. He is vaguely aware that he is not in control of his body, he can hear Katara’s cries over the roaring wind, and the rational part of his mind is screaming at himself to stop, stop, what are you doing, someone is going to get hurt-
He comes back to himself in pieces, and all he’s aware of is Katara’s arms around him, and the aching, empty spot in his chest. That’s just it. If this one Air Temple looks like this, a mess of desecration and mass destruction, he can’t even fathom what the others look like.
He is the last Airbender. It’s all his fault. He’s the one who ran away.
“That’s not true,” Katara says to him later. “It wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could have done.”
Aang just shrugs. How can she say that? There are a million things he could have done, he could have chosen to stay, he could have chosen to accept his responsibilities. But now everyone he’s ever known and loved is dead, and it hurts.
“I mean it, Aang,” Katara says forcefully, interrupting his reverie. Her blue, blue eyes are serious and sad, but he can tell that she’s speaking to him from her heart, because that’s how Katara is. She doesn’t do anything by halves. He thinks that she thinks that if she says it enough times, he might start to believe it. “It all happened how it was meant to. Besides, Sokka and I are your family now, and we’re going to help you defeat the Fire Lord and restore balance. I just know it.”
“Okay,” Aang says, because that’s all he can say. He feels a surge of affection in his chest for this girl, and her brother, who found him and saved him and were opening themselves up to him. There’s a lump in his throat.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe he couldn’t help it, maybe that’s how things were meant to go.
He dreams, later that night, of Monk Gyatso. Of the Air Temple he grew up in, of the laughter of the other monks and pupils as they worked and played and lived.
I’m sorry, he thinks as he watches them. They are fuzzy and indistinct, floating on the edges of his vision. He misses them. He misses home. I’m so, so sorry.
He thinks, suddenly, of the story Monk Gyatso told him all those years ago. About the Four Wind tribes, and how they fought. They must have regretted it, he thinks. They must have begged each other and the spirits for forgiveness, apologized a thousand times.
How many times will Aang have to apologize for this? He aches, he breaks, he falls apart.
And yet. He still wakes up in the morning. It’s an unfairly nice day. The sky is bright and blue, the sun is shining, and the winds are dancing.
Many currents, one sky.
Sokka greets him with a light punch to the arm, and Katara gives him a smile and a warm embrace. Aang revels in her touch, breathes in the scent of her hair, and lets her anchor him to the earth. Sokka comes up behind him and places a steady palm on his shoulder, and Aang stills for a moment, and lets himself breathe.
He is sorry, more than anyone can ever know. He may never stop grieving, may never fill this screaming chasm in his chest.
But he is still here.
And there’s nothing left to do but move forwards.
ii. absolution
Aang has to make things right. He knows that. So when General Fong offers to induce the Avatar State to end the war early, even though he’s only barely mastered water and hasn’t even begun learning earth or fire, Aang agrees.
The monks used to say that even the smallest breeze can take a leaf from a tree. That only careful hands can wield power. That all life, even that of the tiniest spiderfly caught in it’s own web, is the most sacred thing on this earth.
The Avatar State scares him. Its power is immense, and Aang’s not sure he likes the person he becomes when his eyes start to glow. Images from the North Pole keep him up at night, meld together with pictures of the temples burning, of his friends screaming, of Monk Gyatso’s hollow bones.
But it doesn’t matter, because he has to fix this. He has to make things right. He has to, for his people, for the world, for himself.
Sokka thinks it’s brilliant. Katara is incensed.
“If you two knuckleheads want to throw away everything we’ve worked for, fine!” she snaps. “I’ll have no part in it.”
Aang’s heart contracts and squeezes. She doesn’t understand. “Katara, I don’t have time to do this the right way!” he cries, but it doesn’t matter. She’s mad at him, Sokka is blindly enthusiastic, and the pit in Aang’s stomach only grows deeper.
It doesn’t work, of course. He should’ve known it wouldn’t. General Fong sends Katara under the earth and Aang forgets himself again, because he can’t lose another person, he can’t he won’t-
When he comes back to himself, there is nothing but destruction, and it makes him sick. Even when he’s trying to make amends, he hurts others. And that isn’t the person he wants to be. That isn’t what Monk Gyatso taught him.
Only careful hands can wield power, Gyatso’s voice says again in his head, and Aang knows that if he’s going to do this, he has to do it right. He has to be content in that, for now. It’s the only way he can restore balance. It’s the only way he wants to.
Coming to this conclusion feels like absolution, like a major weight’s been lifted off his chest. Their little group travels on in search of an earthbending master, and Aang finds that Katara and Sokka and Appa and Momo make him feel whole in ways he never thought he could be. They laugh, they joke, they have fun.
They meet Toph, and their family grows.
They lose Appa, and Aang’s grief threatens to swallow him whole, yet again.
And yet again, it’s Katara who tugs him back to earth, Katara who wraps him in her arms when he cries, Katara who reminds him what he’s fighting for. Katara who gives him hope.
Seeing this family together, so full of happiness and love, it’s reminded me how I feel about Appa… and how I feel about you.
Yes, Aang thinks, once they find Appa again, once they’ve escaped the Dai Li, once they’re safe and Katara and Sokka and Toph are clutching him like a lifeline. Yes, this is what forgiveness feels like.
He is ready to master the Avatar State.
iii. gratitude
Guru Pathik reminds him so much of Monk Gyatso he aches with it. They have the same mannerisms, the same quirk to their smiles, the same date-whip smooth voice. If Aang closes his eyes, he can almost pretend that he is in his room at the Southern Air Temple, listening to Gyatso tell a story, or hearing his laughter as he trounces Aang at pai sho. Usually, these memories would make his chest feel uncomfortably tight, like someone was reaching in and squeezing his heart. But today, as he remembers, all he feels is fondness, and a prickle of happy tears from behind his eyes.
“First we will open the Earth Chakra,” says Guru Pathik, and Aang closes his eyes and lets go of all his fear. It dissipates into nothingness, and all that’s left are the afterimages, outlined faintly in his mind’s eye.
But he can deal with them. He is stronger than he knows, made of sturdier stuff. The four winds run through his veins, and air cannot be contained.
Neither can the spirit.
With Guru Pathik, Aang opens his chakras, one by one. As excited as he is to finally master the Avatar State, there’s more to it than just that. With Guru Pathik, he is finally airing out his ghosts, his lies and his shame and everything in between. It feels right. It feels good.
They move onto the fourth chakra, the one located in the heart. “Lay all your grief out in front of you,” Guru Pathik intones, and Aang thinks he’s going to burst from this feeling. He is everything and nothing all at once. An infinite source of love and healing, whispers Monk Gyatso, and Aang has to bite back a sob.
“You have indeed felt a great loss. But love is a form of energy, and it swirls all around us. The Air Nomads’ love for you has not left this world. It is still inside your heart, and it is reborn in the form of new love.”
Aang sees everything, then, in the space behind his eyelids. Monk Gyatso and the Council of Elders. The nuns from the Eastern and Western Temples. All of his friends, frozen in time, gliding through the air. The whole world explodes when he closes his eyes, and even though there’s war, even though there’s suffering, there’s joy, too. Joy, and peace, and light, and a great banyan tree, connecting everything through its roots.
And there’s Katara, and Sokka, and Toph. Appa, and Momo, and even Suki. They’re smiling, they’re laughing, they are a family, now.
He loves them all, so much. It fills up the spaces in his chest, anchors him to this earth. He has lost so much, and gained so much more.
“Let the pain flow away,” Guru Pathik says, and Aang wipes his tears away and smiles.
iv. love
When Aang enters the Avatar State for the last time during the Hundred Year War, time seems to slow to a crawl. He has done this many times before- but it’s different now, somehow. It no longer feels like he’s out of his body, watching the proceedings from the outside. Now, he is in full control.
He knows how things must go. He knows what he has to do.
And then he makes his decision.
“No. I’m not going to end it like this.”
Instead of forgetting, the tribes chose to forgive. They chose to repent, to work for absolution, to find gratitude and love. They chose to find peace.
Only through peace can we be born anew.
You will not be able to create a new world from the ashes of the old if you are holding onto old hurts.
We know this to be true, the same way we know that the wind cannot be contained.
The same way we know we are many of currents, but we live in one sky.
In the moments before Aang takes Ozai’s bending away, he thinks of Monk Gyatso.
Monk Gyatso, smiling at him over a pai sho board. Monk Gyatso, laughing as he baked fruit pies. Monk Gyatso and his silky smooth voice and the way he could spin a story better than any other monk at the Southern Air Temple.
Monk Gyatso, who Aang loved- loves - more than anyone else in the world.
Guru Pathik was right about a lot of things, but he was wrong about this.
Aang looks Ozai in the eye and chooses mercy. He chooses peace, and to hold onto the part of himself that the world tried to stamp out. Because how could he ever let any of his past go? How could he ever forget the people who make him who he is?
The Southern Air Temple is gone. He is the last airbender. Gyatso isn’t coming back.
But he’s built a new family, here on this earth, in this time, with all of them- Katara and Sokka and Toph and Zuko and Suki. All of them patch up the cracks in his heart, set him free while keeping him grounded, give him someone to come home to at the end of the day.
He honors his family- old and new, past and present. He honors himself- who he was, and who he will become. This world is still beautiful and full of joy. He is still living, and breathing, and alive, and happy.
I’m not going to end it like this.
For thousands of years, airbenders have lived and breathed and loved and laughed and forgave. Even in the space of horrifying circumstances, his people have been able to find peace, to create something new, to etch out places for themselves in a constantly changing world.
That cycle will not end with him.
I am not what you tried to make me.
Blue light sears the sky, cuts it open, changes the course of history.
Avatar Aang rises.
Fire Lord Ozai falls.
After, after everything, when they’ve reunited at the Fire Nation Palace and Zuko’s been coronated and they’re all laughing and spending time together at the Jasmine Dragon under the pink and purple sky of Ba Sing Se, Aang finally feels at peace with himself. He finally feels entirely and completely whole.
A new era has begun. He knows this, deep within his bones. And besides, it’s all anyone’s been saying, after Zuko gave his speech. After they discovered what truly happened with Ozai and Azula.
A new era has begun. An era of peace, an era of love.
Aang has Katara and Zuko and Toph and Sokka and Suki by his side. He can do anything, be anyone. He can move freely, he can love openly, he can enjoy life with his whole heart, the way he was meant to all along.
And just like that, he is reborn.
“ — but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
ocean vuong, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous