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Aang had never really thought about what he would do after the war ended. Sure, he’d had ideas, but nothing concrete. He’d mainly just hoped to rest, to rest and go with the air currents, listen to them and go with where they took him.
Maybe they would take him towards rebuilding his culture. Maybe they would take him towards Katara. Maybe they’d take him towards helping to rebuild the world. Whatever the case, he didn’t care. He did care, but he didn’t, he’d be happy to surrender to life and its whims and get to be a kid, get to be at peace, no matter what peace would bring.
Instead though, he doesn’t find that peace he wants. Because instead of getting to celebrate with his friends, with Katara and Sokka and Toph and Zuko and everyone else, he has to mourn again. Because instead of it being over, Zuko was dead and his sister was on the throne.
And while Aang had hoped Zuko wouldn’t kill her, wouldn’t have had to, that there would be a chance for Azula to learn how to be a kid eventually in a peaceful world, this wasn’t what he wanted either. Zuko, despite being older than him, was still a kid, just like he was. He was a friend, he was a friend he’d been friends with for far less time than he should have been. And he was dead. Just like almost everyone he’d ever been close with.
And Katara…well a small part of Aang hoped she was too. Because, despite the value of life, how much it always mattered and how much it mattered to him, he knew there were still somethings worse than death. And that, if anyone knew how to do them, it may well be Azula.
However, while Zuko’s fate is known, Azula had bragged about it to the Fire Nation and one of their spies had brought the message, Katara’s fate wasn’t quite as known. Aang remembered something Zuko had mentioned to him, that he hadn’t wanted to mention to Sokka or Katara for fear of making them upset, that Azula had seemed obsessed with Katara for some reason, after Ba Sing Se, after she’d…yeah, after she’d done that.
He refused to let Azula have her, refused to let her, if she did live, and most of Aang so desperately wished she did, he refused. So immediately, before the war effort even calms down, before everyone else can congratulate themselves, he and his friends infiltrate the Fire Nation. If Katara is still alive, they’ll save her. They have to. And if she’s not…well, Aang lets Sokka be the one to find out for a reason. He’d do what he couldn’t.
Instead, he and Toph and Suki and others drum up a rebellion. It’s easy, a few rumors started about the new Fire Lord cheating at her Agni Kai, and they had a mini rebellion forming. It would take time for her to respond, it would take attention, which meant Sokka should be able to sneak into the palace and either rescue Katara or…something else entirely that Aang never wanted to know or think about.
After starting the rebellion, they leave to a place on the edge of Caldera. It was small and not very populated and sold Cactus Juice. If Katara was alive, they’d need to leave quickly to get her healed. If she wasn’t…they’d probably need to leave soon anyway.
It takes far too long while they wait, every second feeling like a minute, before Sokka walks in. Aang shoots up out of his chair, quickly making his way over to him, Toph close behind.
“Sokka…where’s Katara?” Aang asks, a slight, hopeful grin on his face dying when he sees the look on Sokka’s. “Where’s Katara?” He repeats, more desperately, and Sokka shakes his head, crumbling and Aang feels his heart do the same.
“Snoozles…what happened?” Toph is the one to ask, because Aang can’t. He doesn’t want to know with Katara not here and dead. He doesn’t want to know what Sokka would’ve done.
“I failed,” Sokka says, and his voice was hollow, it sends another thousand needles to the part of his chest where the shattered remains of his broken heart exist. First Zuko, and now Katara? He almost disliked Azula more than he had Ozai now. “I’m the worst big brother ever.” He collapses into a seat, and Aang takes one next to him, resting a head on his shoulder. He was crying now, and Aang could sense Toph joining them.
“That’s not true,” Toph says, in a tone softer than Aang had ever heard from her. He thinks he can hear her barely holding back tears. Neither he nor Sokka were doing the same.
“It is,” Sokka repeats, despaired. “If I wasn’t…If I wasn’t…my little sister wouldn’t be a murderer!” Aang’s shocked so much his tears stop, he shoots his head up and looks at Toph. She looks more surprised than he’s ever seen her, and he’s seen her shocked before.
“Snoozles…” Toph starts, tone remarkably steady for the situation. “Sokka…we’re gonna need more details than that.”
Sokka starts his story, and Aang finds himself regretting his foresight, his realization that some things were worse than death. Because this, it had to be. For him, becoming a twisted, demented version of himself as the right hand of a psychopath, it would be worse. It’d be so much worse.
“How?” Aang asks, voice hoarse in horror, because he couldn’t believe it. If it wasn’t Sokka, he wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t at all.
“Bloodbending, apparently Azula taught her a few things,” Sokka says, his tone angry. Angry and empty. “I was helpless, trapped in my own body. She thought I’d be happy for her, she was so certain of it, the only reason I even got a shot at her was because she was so sure of that that she didn’t freeze me first.”
Aang was speechless. How had they missed this, how had they all missed this so much? How had they missed this descent? Or had this been Katara all along? Had he never known his best friend, his maybe crush, at all?
“Azula said if I tried anything again, she’d have Katara kill me,” Sokka says, and Aang whimpers.
“She—she wouldn’t,” Toph is the one who stammers out. Toph. Aang had never heard her like this, had never heard Sokka like this. This felt almost as bad as when he discovered that the Air Nomads were dead.
“I was afraid she would,” Sokka says, and Aang cries again. That couldn’t be true. Not to her own brother. “She’d killed Zuko for her, I…I didn’t want her to have to kill me too. I didn’t want her to have to live with that. So I left.”
“And…” Aang starts, the remains of his heart clenching still. This couldn’t be the end, there had to be something they could do, right? “What do we do now?”
“I have no fucking idea.” Sokka had never sworn, at least in front of Aang, before. Aang sobs again, and hears him start crying.
—
It turns out that “what they did next” was leave. Leave and go their separate ways. Toph tried to keep them all together, saying it was better to stick together because they’d have to, Azula wasn’t going to stop, the war wasn’t over. But Aang, his heart wasn’t in the pursuit of balance anymore. It just wasn’t. It was a selfish thought, but he’d always been selfish, he’d ran away because he was selfish, but he thought he didn’t care if the world burned. Not after Zuko and Katara.
Maybe seeing it all burn down would make Katara realize what she’d done. Maybe it’d make her happy.
So he leaves. He does what he always does and he leaves. He gets Momo and gets on Appa and flies to an Air Temple. No better place to live out the rest of his days than as the last Air Nomad, the last monk. The last of his kind, alone. The way he was apparently destined to be.
He’d heard Sokka was going to Kyoshi Island with Suki. He hoped they could be happy, Sokka deserved to be happy. He’d heard Toph say she was going to work with Zuko’s Uncle in the White Lotus. He knew she would do a good job. She’d do a better one than he ever could. The world would be much better off if Toph was the Avatar.
Aang isn’t sure how long his self imposed exile lasts. He isn’t sure how much he grows. It could’ve been a few months. It could’ve been years.
He settles into a routine, awaken, find something to eat, normally berries, there were a lot of kinds of berries and more he could grow. Then he would meditate. He would sit, sometimes with Momo on his head or shoulder, sometimes against or on top of Appa, but oftentimes entirely alone. And then he would meditate until the sun set, trying to connect to his people, to his past lives. He’d lost part of his connection to them when he came up here. Maybe he’s unworthy because he left, and the Avatar Spirit has left him for another. He hopes so, they’d be better. He doesn’t bend much anyway anymore, just air bending to get around the temple.
Or maybe it’s because he lost his heart. Zuko dying and Katara breaking had taken his heart, had taken his will, had taken his spirit and his soul. Maybe he couldn’t connect with them anymore, because he was empty.
Being the Avatar, and an Air Nomad, was supposed to be about disconnecting oneself from any earthly attachments. It was supposed to make someone stronger to do so. He’d heard the legends, how Air Nomads had been able to fly freely before the Sky Bison. Aang now knew that that was wrong though. He was alone, he was all alone like he’d been destined to be, he was where he should’ve been all along, and yet, he’d never felt weaker.
One day during his meditation, and Aang wasn’t sure he was near the beginning or the end, he hears something shift. Senses something in the air shift. Eyes opening quickly, he sees Toph, body directed towards him.
“Heya Twinkle Toes, long time no see,” She say and tosses something in his direction. A newspaper. “They’ve written about you, at least that’s what Uncle says,” Toph continues, “He also says it isn’t flattering.”
Aang reads through. It wasn’t. It called him a coward, mused on if he was happy to sit back and let Katara rule. He wasn’t sure that he wasn’t, surely a world under her rule, even with what Azula made her, couldn’t be all that awful? Surely Katara wasn’t that awful.
“Omashu’s fallen again,” Toph says, and Aang’s stomach sinks. “Bumi’s in prison again. The White Lotus…we don’t have many members left. They’re ruthless.” Aang thought he didn’t have any heart left unbroken. He was wrong.
“Katara…she married her. She annexed the Southern Tribe. Her father let her.” Toph sounded nearly robotic, and Aang feels worse and worse. “The Earth Kingdom is shrinking more and more by the day. Ba Sing Se…I don’t think it’ll last long. Neither does Uncle, any members not actively defending the city have gone to the North.”
“What about you?” Aang finally asks, finding his voice.
“Me? Go to a land of ice? I’d be useless,” Toph says, laughing briefly. It wasn’t humored or at all positively, but it was a sound that warmed Aang’s chest briefly. “Everyone else though? Uncle, the Lotus, Sokka, Kyoshi, they’re all heading there. It’s a gamble,” Toph explains, sighing and burying her head in her hands. “Sugar Queen…Katara…she’ll be too powerful there, but it weakens the Fire Nation. Uncle thinks, so does Snoozles, that they might be able to get through to Katara.”
“And if they don’t?” Aang asks, feeling both too young and too old for this conversation. He thinks Toph might feel the same way. She sounds too much like a general, not enough like the way he knew her.
“The Fire Nation won’t be necessary.” The certainty in Toph’s tone chills Aang to his core. “You haven’t seen what she’s been doing, neither have I, but I’ve heard it,” Toph says and snorts. Humorless again. “She and Azula, they don’t fight often in their conquests. But Sugar Queen, when she does, she’s unstoppable. She wiped out an entire village in a night, no army, just her and Azula.”
“Why—why are you telling me this?” Aang finally asks, tears stinging at his eyes. He didn’t want to know this. He didn’t want to know how much Katara had done and changed. Didn’t want to know how much Toph had had to change to keep up.
“Because I need you, Twinkle Toes,” Toph says, and Aang can see a grin on her face. Small, no joy, but present. “You’re the only one who can fight her. Can stop her.”
“What about…what about talking her down?” Aang asks, Toph had mentioned that as an option. He wanted that option.
“It won’t work,” Toph says, shaking her head and laughing again. “None of them will listen to me, despite everything, I’m still just the Little Blind Girl without as much experience as them. Sokka, he’d listen to me, if it was anyone else.”
“Why do you think I will?” Aang asks, bitter and sighing. “I’m not help for anyone, Toph. I can’t fight her, I can’t fight Katara.” He couldn’t bring himself to hurt her, even hearing how powerful, how dangerous she was. He just couldn’t.
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to fight her myself,” Toph says, smiling again, a small, dying little thing. “I’m powerful, I’m the most powerful Earth Bender in the world. One on one, I’d be able to kill Princess Bitch and end this. I would have already,” Toph says, and Aang feels worse. Someone his age shouldn’t have to talk about killing so casually. “But Sugar Queen, it doesn’t matter how powerful I am when she can wrench away control from me. If she’s merciful, she’d kill me quickly. If she’s not, she’d make me kill everyone else first.”
“Stop,” Aang says, trying to be forceful but it came out as begging, as pleading.
“I’m still gonna fight her though. I have this grand plan, I’ll make sure everyone else evacuates, and then I’ll make a deal, I’ll open up the gates if they show up. I’ll bring down the Walls of Ba Sing Se and meet them. I’ll try to bury Azula under them, and then Katara will stop me,” Toph continues, and Aang can’t take it.
“Stop!” He repeats, begging fully now.
“And then, hopefully, she’ll just kill me quickly. Maybe her control will be off and I’ll be able to spit in the Fire Lord’s face before I go.”
“Please…please stop,” Aang begs, he sounded and felt pathetic. He was pathetic. Thankfully, Toph does stop.
“C’mon Twinkle Toes, you know what’s going to happen,” Toph says, and Aang does. He doesn’t want to believe it, but he does. All his people, what’s left of his friends, dead again. All because of his cowardice. Again. “One last stand of the North, and all of them dead. We can stop this, we need to stop this.”
“What if we can’t?” Aang asks, tears falling silently. “What if I can’t?”
“Then we go out trying to help people,” Toph says, sighing and taking a seat next to him. “You know it’s the best shot, none of those dunderheads, they can’t stop them.”
“What’s your plan?” Aang asks, resigned. He should’ve done this years ago. He’d been a coward again, and the world was worse again. But he could still try and correct it. He had to.
“We go to the Fire Nation. I take Her Royal Bitchiness, you take Sugar Queen. Then we raid their kitchen afterwards.” Aang laughs. He surprises himself, but he laughs. He laughs and he can’t stop laughing for minutes. Maybe hours. He’d forgotten the passage of time a while ago.
“That—that’s a good plan,” Aang say, still chuckling, still humored and Toph punches him in the shoulder. He’d missed it. He’d missed her.
“Of course it is. Now c’mon, you’re gonna have to fly the bison,” Toph says, standing up and Aang was still laughing. Before he does leave though, he focuses. He bends a stream of water. He moves a few stones. He summons a small flame. He was still the Avatar.
The Avatar wasn’t dead yet.