Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This is a bad idea. The thought—useless as it might be—lingers. He tries not to think about it too much, but... well, not thinking is what got him into this mess in the first place.

The ground is firm beneath his feet, and he can feel the shape of each pebble he walks over through the thin soles of his tabi. He concentrates on that. The tabi are well-worn and comfortable. There was a time where he wore them beneath his standard issue boots, to make sure they got broken in. This wasn’t what he had in mind for them, but then again, nothing about this situation is anything he wants.

Whatever. Nothing about his life is anything he wants. He should be used to the disappointment, by now. Better to focus on something worthwhile, like going over his equipment before he undertakes what is undoubtedly the stupidest thing he’s ever done. His left temple gives a sharp throb, as though in chastisement, and he mentally amends himself: before he undertakes what is undoubtedly the second stupidest thing he’s ever done.

This is a bad idea, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

He needs to focus on something else, anything else.

The tabi are good—high quality cloth and the soles outfitted with thin and flexible rubber treads that help distribute his weight more evenly—but the gi is even better. The top layer is silk, dozens of shades of black, gray and blue woven together in rippling waves that make his movements hard to pick out under the cover of night. The under layers are a dense mesh of cotton blends; not as good as mail, of course, but enough to offer him some protection. And then, of course, there’s the mask.

Some part of him—that small boy that he used to be, that wanted everything to be fair and good—still feels a little guilty about just taking it, but it really is for the better that the mask isn’t traced back to him, or worse yet, back to his crew.

If he could, he’d go back and tell the mask maker that he does good work. Although it’s meant to be a theatre mask, it’s of a good weight and the cloth lining lets it sit snug to his face without smothering him. The eyeholes are long and wide enough that he hasn’t lost all of his peripheral vision and the small holes lining the mouth make his breath soft enough to pass undetected.

Finally, the swords. He shouldn’t be so excited to use them; weapons are lesser, in a world where one can shape the elements to their will, and a sign of weakness. But he can’t bend here, not if he wants to get out of this alive. He’s never been that good a bender, anyway; never good enough to pass muster, never good enough to please others, never as good as he should’ve been. But swords… he’s good with blades. They’re decent ones, too. Nice weight, good balance, and he made sure to oil and sharpen them earlier.

The tabi and the gi and the mask are enough to hide his face and let him blend into the darkness and soften his steps, but the blades are what gives him a fighting chance. He never wanted to be a soldier, but he’s never been able to just go down without a fight, either.

Except—, his traitorous mind begins, but he bears down on the intrusive thought and smothers it. He has enough problems already; he doesn’t need to think about that.

Beneath his feet, the firmly packed dirt gives way to something looser. He looks up, and the Pohuai Stronghold looms before him. Zuko sighs, and rolls his shoulders.

Time to get this stupid idea over with.

Not dead yet. If you’re not dead, you can still fight.

He keeps the thought going in his head like a mantra. Death means dishonor and failure. Death means that he’s lost, that he’s sunk as low as he can go. Death means that he will never go home, that he will die Burned and a failure of an heir. But he’s not dead, even if it feels like he should be.

Sneaking in was easy, relatively speaking. He’s had enough practice sneaking past crew members on the Wani, past royal guards in the Palace, past his sister. He knows how to be quiet, when to move slowly but steadily and when to move, too fast for peripheral vision to track. Finding his quarry is easier yet; the increased presence of soldiers is a dead giveaway. He comes in fast and hard, catching them by surprise and putting them down, making sure that he’s using enough force that they stay down.

His quarry is scared to see him, until he uses the swords to break the chains binding him—it. He has to think in terms of quarry and target, because if he doesn’t, if he thinks about what he’s really doing—really, actually doing—he might scream. Or cry.

This isn’t helping him. But it’s hurting Zhao, and he’ll take what he can get, these days.

He takes point and his quarry follows, jabbering a mile a minute, questions upon questions. Who are you, are you here to rescue me, why are you here to rescue me, have you seen any frogs around lately?

Zuko maintains his silence and keeps his jaw clenched tight. His silence, however, isn’t enough of a deterrent because he’s bombarded with another stream of persistent questions as they slip down the hallway. Is he a spirit? Is he the spirit of swordsmen? How did he know that his help was needed? No really, if he saw any frogs could he please grab them?

Luckily—for Zuko’s tentative grip on his own temper, if nothing else—the next rotation of guards choose that moment to come running around the corner, armor clanking.

(They’re either amateurs or the unfortunate third shift dragged out of sleep. Your armor isn’t supposed to clank.)

Zuko draws the dao smoothly, the rasp of metal against metal calming him. Re-centering him.

No time for talk, now.

If you’re not dead yet, you can still fight.

Of course, it was too good to be true.

It’s his own damn rookie mistake. He assumed that the guards were set in standard shifts; a man at each corner on the outside, lookouts mounted high and every soldier in the line of sight of at least one other. He’d had less than a few hours to do reconnaissance, and now he’s being pressed into a corner.

His quarry is shoving soldiers out of the way with broad, sweeping moves that remind Zuko of watching the maids sweeping cinders out of the kitchen. The gate is to his back, almost a mockery. He was so close to getting away, but now they’re pinned and his target is running out of room, and—

Zuko grabs his target and pulls it close and draws his dao up. Zhao, mid-sentence, pauses. The contingent of soldiers continues to advance, slowly spreading out to block off all routes of escape.

The admiral narrows his eyes, but Zuko is wearing a stone-faced, snarling mask, and he knows that the light from the wall-mounted sconces are drawing a gleam off the finely-honed edge of his blades. His target is prey-still, but for a fine tremble.

Take the bluff.

Up on the parapet, Zhao narrows his eyes.

Take the bluff. You’re too stupid not to, don’t prove me wrong now of all times, you—

Zhao holds up his hand, and the soldiers move back. There’s a creak as the great, tall halves of the gate slowly open. Thank Agni.

Even as Zuko stifles his sigh of relief, his quarry remains still beneath his blades. Another thing to thank Agni for. Kid’s bouncier than a rabiroo, otherwise.

Zuko walks backwards, step by step, keeping his shoulders tense in case he need to dodge. But no one comes charging after them. He passes through the gate, and keeps going, angling for the forest. The gates start to get smaller, and smaller.

Wait, there—He can barely make out the painted white face in the moonlight, the glint of something—shit, shit, that’s a Yu Yan archer, why and how does Zhao have Yu Yan—

He remembers taking the arrow to the shoulder, tensing his jaw with a grunt instead of a shout, and the Ava—his quarry—twisting, dirt kicked up by air. Remembers stumbling, tripping over his feet more than running, barely holding onto his quarry, barely upright. Remembers the smell of pines and oaks growing closer. Remembers thinking that at least the second stupidest idea will end better than the first.

Nothing else.

He comes back to himself between one pained breath and the next, hand snapping out on instinct to grab whatever is hovering over his face. His fingers clamp down, vice-like, on smaller, longer fingers.

“Sorry, sorry!” A high, young voice babbles, the hand in his grip trembling like a leaf, “I just wanted to see who you were—I mean, um, you weren’t waking up I wasn’t sure if—”

He stops paying attention to the stream of words and starts taking stock instead. His shoulder hurts like hell, and he’s sore all over, but he’s not dead, so that’s... something. And his mask is still snug over his face, the cloth lining damp from the heat of his breath. It hasn’t been removed; he can still feel the small blades sewn into the lining, a firm pressure along his jaw. That level of precaution might be overkill, but if anyone sees his face—anyone—he’s dead. He’s dead and dishonored and, knowing his luck, he’ll drag Uncle and the crew of the Wani down with him.

His quarry is still babbling.

“—and I didn’t really get a chance to say it before, because suddenly those archer guys were like thwp thwp thwp, there was a whole cloud of arrows, but thanks for getting me out of there! Um, are you okay?”

He sits up, and the kid backs off, gives him room to breathe. Zuko almost wishes he hadn’t, because breathing means thinking, and thinking is what gets him into these messes.

As much as he doesn’t want to, there are facts he needs to face: his shoulder hurts like hell, and everything else is equal turns sore and stiff, and there’s no way he can capture his quarry and hold it. His eye stings, but he doesn’t cry. He hasn’t cried for a while, for years, ever since—that’s not the point. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating. He’s so close, so close, but he knows he can’t—

“Go.” The word comes out soft, choked and raspy from his dry throat. The mask distorts the sound even further.

“Huh?” The Avatar stammers. Doesn’t matter what he thinks or feels now, better to face it like it is, instead of dancing around it. He’s letting the Avatar go. He’s never going to be able to go home.

“Go.” He says again, and this time it’s louder, sharper. Still thick and raspy, like the rough bark of a komodo rhino. The Avatar flinches backward, uncertain and wide-eyed. He looks hurt. Zuko wants to burn something. He’s never going to go home, and the Avatar has the, the nerve to look hurt, to look betrayed as Zuko tells him to go away, like they’re friends.

“Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry I almost took off your mask, but really, you weren’t breathing right and—”

Does he ever shut up? Does he ever listen?

“Leave.” Zuko snarls, feels the sound of it tear at his throat, pull at his lungs. He can feel fire building up in his chest, strong and angry.

When he looks up, the Avatar is gone. Not even a stirring of the leaves to mark his departure.

He sits there, in the dense cover of the forest, for a long moment. He tries not to tremble, not to think too hard, not to scream out his frustrations like he wants to. He lifts his good hand to his shoulder and palms the bit of arrow still stuck there. He prods at it, riding out the resulting dizziness, and tears some of the lining from the robes to wrap it snugly. He does it all without a sound; he’s clenching his teeth too hard for anything to escape.

He doesn’t look over at the cropping of rocks where the Avatar was perched, not even moments ago. He doesn’t look.

He sits there, fingers clenching tight at his knees and bites his lips until they bleed. He lets it all out—his anger, his frustration, that damning urge to cry because he just wants to go home—in one big, deep, shuddering sigh. He slumps against the rocks, too tired to remain upright, too tired to do much of anything, really.

Agni blast it.

A twig snaps underfoot.

He's on his feet in a moment, already leaping back, but it's too late. He was so caught up in his own head—dangerous place to be—that he wasn't listening. All around him, the breaking of dry wood under softened steps, the slide of cloth against tree bark and rustling leaves.

He's surrounded.

He crouches, for all the good it will do him. The haunting faces peering out at him from the foliage are all Yu Yan, arrows already knocked and trained on him. He can parry arrows, in small groups. By his count, there are no less than fifteen Yu Yan around him. With his shoulder injured, he might be able to parry the first few arrows, if they shoot one at a time.

He's not betting on it.

Another twig snaps and leaves rustle, and one last Yu Yan steps out of the underbrush.

"By order of Admiral Zhao, under the authority of the Fire Lord, you are to come with us. Admiral Zhao is... especially eager to speak with you."

The head Yu Yan speaks with an inland accent, and a bland tone. If anything, he sounds amused.

Zhao will kill him. Quickly, if he's lucky, but Zuko has never had the fortune of luck. More likely, Zhao will wring every ounce of hope and defiance out of him and then arrange for the public execution of the pitiful banished Prince. The Traitor. The Failure.

But he’s not dead yet. He can still fight, even if fighting here will do him no good.

He never did know when to just quit.

… Agni above, this is going to hurt.

He staggers back, breath punched out of him by the weight of an arrow piercing his already wounded right side, tearing at the muscles of his tricep. He tastes blood on his teeth, and grits them to stifle the yelp of pain.

Another arrow catches him in the opposite shoulder. Another in the soft flesh between his clavicle and his arm.

He chokes on his own breath, biting his lips bloodier and bloodier to hold back his instinctive reaction. Let them kill him here. But he will not firebend and he will not scream. He won't give Zhao the satisfaction.

His breath is wet against his face, trapped by the mask. His limbs have been reduced to points of agony and shaking muscles.

For a moment, it had almost seemed like he might make it. The Yu Yan had him and their sights, but none of them seemed all that eager to fire on him. He imagines that it has something to do with the fact of his single-handedly storming the Pouhai Stronghold, with no backup and no bending.

But the Yu Yan archers aren’t benders, and even with the dao still at his side, he’d have to reach them, first.

It’s the captain—the troupe leader, or whatever he’s called—that fires the first arrow. His gaze never once leaves Zuko as he pulls his bow from his back and draws an arrow from his quiver. Zuko can only stand there, sore and exhausted and legs tense. He can only stand there and watch a man prepare to strike him down, the arrowhead gleaming in the dappled sunlight.

He tries to dodge the arrow. He really does, even as he has to grit his teeth against his tight muscles and sore joints. He manages to lunge to the side, enough that the head archer’s arrow goes streaking past by a hairsbreadth.

Unfortunately, Zuko forgot about the other fourteen Yu Yan. It’s a stupid mistake, and a clever tactic, and his inattention gets him two arrows to his shoulders and another two to his thighs, disabling him. If there was any chance of him fighting his way out of this mess, it’s gone now. He’ll be lucky not to bleed out before they kill him. Or take him to Zhao.

The Yu Yan captain watches it all happen dispassionately, his face never once changing from that blank, heavy-lidded look. Zuko wonders what the man would do if he knew who his team had just shot down.

He falls.

(The masked man takes five arrows before he falls. Impressive, given that he does not cry out. Just harsh breathing and soft stutters of breath every time another arrow sinks in.

Zhao had been blustering last night, furious at the nerve of this man, stealing the Avatar from under the nose of an entire unit of imperial soldiers and Yu Yan. He'd sent out the entire legion of archers at sunrise with explicit orders to capture the man and retake the Avatar.

They couldn’t have gotten far, Zhao had insisted. They’d all seen the arrow sink home, before the Avatar had kicked up a torrent of dust and the two of them had disappeared.

Until that moment, Akaashi hadn’t been sure the man in the blue mask even was a man, and not some spirit. It’s superstitious of him, but though the Fire Lord’s army holds no official stance on the nature (or the existence) of spirits, Akaashi is from the outer isles of the Fire Nation, where kitsunebi are just as common as firebirds. It wouldn’t have been impossible, or improbable even, for a spirit to mount an attack against them in order to free the Avatar.

But the masked man is just that, a man, because everyone knows that the spirits don’t bleed. And the Avatar isn't here. There's nothing here to mark its presence save scraps of rope, and Zhao doesn't have trackers.

Zhao had thought the man a mercenary, hired to steal the Avatar for some other Admiral or General. But this fool of a man actually went and let it go.

Akaashi should call off the rest of his troop, before they kill the poor bastard.

... The poor, sneaky bastard, who somehow managed to infiltrate a renown Fire Nation stronghold and run off with the Avatar with nothing to show for it but a single shoulder wound.

Zhao might not have seen it, but Akaashi had. Watching is half his job; it was no trouble to mark the masked man as he tore through reserve forces like a komodo rhino through a flock of turtle ducks, waiting for a clear shot. Those had been Imperial Firebending forms.

This man, whoever he is, is a traitor.

And so Akaashi says nothing.

But then, between the sixth arrow and the fifteenth, their masked traitor disappears.)

Good fight, says the Blue Spirit. Would that you had a few more years and you might've stood a chance.

Zuko trips over his own feet, and only just catches himself before his face smacks into the ground. Warily, he pushes himself upright.

It’s bright like the summer sun, but it’s quiet and the Yu Yan are frozen. Not just unmoving, but literally caught like photographs or paintings, arrows hanging in midair and chests still.

"Wha—" Zuko breathes, and then he stops because he can breathe. There is no pressure on his ribs, no pain in his shoulders, no sore muscles, no arrowheads scraping against muscle and bone.

You're but minutes from death, The Blue Spirit says jovially, the tone a stark contrast to the mask's snarling visage. Agni bid me see you safe.

Zuko slowly pulls his own mask from his face. If he's going to face the Great Spirit whose name he stole, he'll do it with his own face bared.

Uncle had warned him, time and again, that Spirits weren't in the world to be trifled with. Uncle had said that once, the spirits were revered and every noble worth their salt knew how to deal with them. That the spirits—Great or otherwise—all deserved respect and deference. That Zuko should treat every spirit as he would a revered stranger, because one could never know what the last human in contact with that spirit had done.

The spirits were wise, and brave and smart, just like humans were. But spirits were also more. Spirits were the world; they had been there before people and they would be there after. Spirits were like humans, in a way, Uncle had told him. But they couldn’t be treated like humans. Transgressions were severe. And there was nothing more forbidden than taking a spirit’s name. A name was a spirit's sense of self, and messing with one could change what a spirit was.

The Fire Lord had always dismissed these warnings as the foolish and outdated beliefs of a grieving old man, and Azula had taken to mocking Uncle behind his back.

Zuko had listened to Uncle, but never really believed. He regrets that, now.

There are… a lot of things he regrets.

"Why would Agni want to save a traitor?" He asks, making the words as light and nonaggressive as he can.

The Blue Spirit—nearly a foot taller than him with broad shoulders and long legs, wearing a gi the same shimmering color of Zuko’s, and wearing it like Lord wears battle robes, standing casual and confidant in the way of the truly powerful—waves a dismissive hand.

Agni's favor is not touched by the Fire Lord, little flame, for They care little for mortal affairs.

There's not much to say to that, in the end. Zuko lets his head fall back and casts his gaze upward, watching the meager sunlight cast dappled patterned across the frozen Yu Yan.

“How—how are you going to save me? The Yu Yan aren’t going to just walk away. And I’m already bleeding pretty badly; there’s no other settlement besides the Pohuai Stronghold for at least one ri.”

He can’t see the Blue Spirit’s eyes—he’s not even sure the spirit has eyes, honestly—but either way, something about its attention sharpens. It prowls closer, stalking forward on long legs until Zuko has to rear his head back to hold its gaze, and Zuko can all but feel its power, charging the air like the thickening of air before a lightning strike. His shoulders draw up and he has to stop himself from flinching away. The Blue Spirit was already taller than him, but now it looms.

Oh ho, little spitfire, little Name-Stealer. Agni bid you safe. Not alive.

Oh.

... Oh.

Zuko clenches his teeth and blinks, hating the way that his vision has started to blur. Though the Yu Yan are as unbreathing statues, the sun is still bright and fiery in the sky, casting fractured light and shadow through the foliage. The sun is said to represent Agni’s light and strength. Even here—wherever ‘here’ is, though Zuko is starting to suspect it might be the Spirit World—Zuko can feel the blazing heat of it. He watches the sun burn and knows that Agni gazes down with a distant, uncaring eye.

It shouldn't come as a surprise.

Agni may be the Lord of the Sun and Fire, but the Fire Nation has long since fallen out of Their favor, if it ever held a place there to begin with. Zuko is an exile and a failure, and he stole the mantle of a Great Named Spirit to kidnap the Spirit of the Bridge-Between-Worlds twice over.

He’s not going to cry; that Agni would see him dead, that even a Great Spirit's favor does not grant him his life—honestly, he shouldn’t even be surprised.

I am going to die here. Alone. And a failure.

He’s never going home. He will die the way Azula always told him he would; Uselessly.

Zuko doesn’t cry—he promised himself he would never cry again, on that Night when his world fell to pieces for the first time—but he nearly twists his ankle trying to scramble backwards, because the Blue Spirit changes again, no longer looming but abruptly closer, right in front of him—

Oh, little flame. Agni does not seek your End. They have a Task for you.

“I don’t understand,” Zuko grits out, heart still hammering away in his chest. “You just said that safe doesn’t mean alive.”

It is true that Death is the price for your thievery, but Dead does not mean the End, The Blue Spirit wags one finger right in Zuko’s face, and he almost goes cross-eyed trying to follow it.

“I still don’t understand,” Zuko replies.

The living often do not. The Blue Spirit shrugs in an almost exaggerated manner, a movement that sweeps along their entire body. I can only endeavor to clarify the matter.

The Blue Spirit hums with an air of consideration, propping its chin up on one palm, the elbow of that arm cupped in its other hand. Zuko swallows around a choked breath; his mother used to look at him that way, head tilted and eyes fond.

“If I’m not going to die,” Zuko asks, “Then what’s going to happen to me?”

Oh, you will die. The Blue Spirit corrects, with a faint shake of its head. Any lingering nostalgia that Zuko might’ve felt evaporates into annoyance. It’s like one of Uncle’s frosted riddles.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Zuko throws his hands up in exasperation. “Will you stop talking in circles?!”

And then he claps his hand over his mouth in mortification.

If he wasn’t going to die before, now he is. Here lies the banished Prince Zuko, struck down for mouthing off to a Great Spirit like an idiot.

But the Blue Spirit doesn’t lash out. Its hands drop back down to its side, and through the dense foliage, Zuko swears that for a moment, the sunlight grows stronger.

Oh ho! The Blue Spirit plants its hands on its hips and leans forward. There is that fire! Be sure not to lose that, little one. You’ll surely need it in the coming days.

Zuko sighs explosively and drags his hands over his face. He has to stifle a yelp of surprise when he drops his hands, because all he can see is the smooth curve of bright, white fangs spanning upwards.

The Blue Spirit tilts its head back, far enough that it no longer eclipses the entirety of Zuko’s vision, and then it lifts one hand—broad palms and thickened with sword calluses, not to dissimilar from his own—to drag a finger across Zuko’s face.

No, not his face. Across the dead flesh of his scar.

You have remade me, little one. That which is called the Blue Spirit now echoes across time with your actions. And so you will be remade as well.

The tale of the Blue Spirit is an old one. Zuko doesn’t remember all of it, but he knows that there are plays at the Capitol all the time. One of Agni’s spirits, but not a fire spirit. Not an elemental spirit at all, actually. A righteous spirit of both retribution and reconciliation, often righting wrongs in Agni’s name.

The Blue Spirit, Zuko thinks, was never a warrior. And most definitely not a swordsman. The thought is weighty, is important and Zuko’s gaze jumps back to the unmistakable sword calluses, on the wide hand resting just inches from his face.

The Blue Spirit drops its hand, and then pivots on one foot, as though to walk away.

Wait, Zuko wants to call out. He wants to know what that means, that he will be remade. But his throat is tight and his breath is thin, and he cannot move. His mind is racing with half-formed thoughts, an epiphany portending just out of reach, and he cannot speak.

The Blue Spirit does not leave, though. It hums and twirls again, back to face Zuko. It’s a smooth movement, graceful and effortless. Zuko can only watch as the Blue Spirit cocks its head, speculative though unseeing. He hopes that he won't be found lacking, but he doesn't even know what the spirit is looking for. And while Zuko is many things, he has never once been pegged as impressive. The Blue Spirit tilts its head in the other direction and then turns its back to Zuko.

Zuko opens his mouth, to—what, question the spirit again, as though he's not already on the cusp of being punished for name-stealing?—but before he can do, or say, anything, the Blue Spirit turns around again, sharply. Quickly. Zuko takes a half-step back.

You will die, but Trickster Agni’s children know that death is not the End. Your jest has hooked Agni’s gaze, and They would have you play it out ‘til its end. It says, the words loud and echoing in the still forest. It's not an ultimatum or an offer; it's a proclamation, inescapable.

Zuko can only watch, silenced and mesmerized as the Blue Spirit turns and turns again. Slowly, he realizes that the spirit is... spinning. Or shaking. There is rapid movement for all that the spirit's feet remain firmly planted on the ground, a vibrato that turns its gi from a vast night sky to the churning of the sea, blue and black ripples widening and dark waves shuddering apart. He wants to look away, but his muscles are all but locked in place. And so he sees how, with each shudder, the Blue Spirit starts to… unravel, like threads frayed and coming undone, wisping and fluttering away into nothing.

Like an ink painting dipped in water, flowing and then gone. And yet, even as it disappears, it continues to speak.

You wish to don the mask? Very well! Now it is our True Face; Prince Zuko—Son of Fire Lord Ozai and Fire Lady Ursa, hunter of Avatars and Banished Heir—is no more, like ashes scattered to the wind from a pyre.

Now, there is only the mask and the dao, and we will rebuild each other from the dust.

By now, there is barely a face left, just curved fangs and mischievous narrowed eyes, smudged and faint like aged manuscripts.

Take luck and take care, little Name-Stealer.

Chapter Text

one (the heir)

You cannot be more than nine. Too young by far, but it is what it is; your people have so long fed on war that no one is spared of it.

Ozai fills your vision like the jutting of a craggy cliff from the bottom of a ravine; too large to comprehend. Beyond scope. Iroh is there as well, orbiting in your peripheral vision, equally imposing but… softer, somehow. The distant mountain, with beauty and strength to marvel over. Much easier to digest than the more immediate looming spires of Ozai.

Azula is beside you, too avid in watching Ozai and Iroh to flash you a smile. You are waiting, side by side and still; Fire Nation Nobles do not fidget, and Azulon’s get even less so, line of succession or no. Azula watches Father and Uncle like a messenger hawk, unblinking and golden eyes gleaming in the sun. You watch Azula. Even this young, you know to keep your eyes on the more immediate threat.

(Something about this all feels… off. But, hush now, and you will understand.)

Iroh’s face is an uncomfortable mien of tired mourning, lines of exhaustion carved deep, and unfocused eyes that bear the aching memory of tears. He shouldn’t be at the palace; even members of the royal family are due their days of grieving and isolation. But Azulon is a not a man to be ignored, and if he summoned both his sons before him, then there the two of them will be.

Except—

Just looking at Iroh makes something squirm in your chest, because it’s raw and new, to see Uncle in so much pain, and too, there is this frustration mounting because he was getting better, wasn’t he? But how could he have been, if Lu Ten’s body had only just returned? The longer you glance at Iroh out the corner of your eyes, the more your temples start to throb and in the end, you clench his teeth and turn your gaze away. To Father.

Ozai is blank. You cannot grasp neither the edges nor the design of him, not the way Azula always seems to manage with no effort. No matter how closely you watch, you have never been able to read Ozai; every snap of flame and biting word always catches you off-guard and vulnerable, because you never see them coming. Now, you watch Ozai and cannot find even a trace of sympathy or care for Iroh in the set of his face.

I show you this for a reason. Come here, and see. This, your younger self—so wide-eyed and Unburned—watches Azula watching Ozai watching Iroh. Ba Sing Se is still uncaptured (still free) and Iroh has returned with the majority of his forces, but no Cousin Lu Ten. Azulon has called both his sons to his side on this day.

Do you remember this day?

Do you remember?

I know that you remember Lu Ten, but over the years you have forgotten some things. It is easy to call to mind the gentle curve of his smile, the kind cast to his eyes. But can you recall the sound of his laughter, the exact line of his jaw?

He has become a myth, in some way, elusive and smoke-like. A relic lost long before you had even the wit to truly mourn him, and now, the unspoken and invisible weight of his obvious absence has lingered over your every interaction with your uncle, a silent spectator.

In those first days, when you were nothing so much as a walking shade of pain and hurt and denial, you would think: Would Uncle have left with Lu Ten?

Would Lu Ten have gotten banished?

Would Lu Ten have gotten Burned?

Would Uncle have still come with me if Lu Ten were still alive?

Those were the wrong questions. You were looking to fold your pain into the neat frame of a life that you no longer had, but dear child, I tell you now, those edges do not match. You must change the frame altogether, rebuild it from the charred pieces that remained of What Once Was. I tell you now, with certainty, that if Lu Ten were still alive then your Uncle Iroh would be Fire Lord.

Hush, now. I know that it is not so simple as that, but it is the truth. You know it is. Even then, as a child of barely nine, you witnessed as Iroh returned—broken in ways that cannot be seen—and then as, somehow, Ozai had become Fire Lord.

And Iroh had not even contested it.

What was there to contest, you ask? His birthright! That which he had been raised from birth to take firm in hand!

I know that you remember: standing outside the throne room in the sunlight, wood and metal warmed beneath your feet. Ozai, prowling inside, with Iroh following in his wake like a strangely compressed shadow, the door slamming shut behind them with an ominous thud.

You stand there for hours, watching the way the patrolling guards circle the entrance, a little more than duty necessitates. Nearby, a pair of noblewomen chatter behind their fans, their sharp gazes pinned to you and your sister. Everyone wants to know what is happening in that throne room, after all; Azulon often met Iroh in the War Room and Ozai near the palace gates. He has not called them both to his side, has not deigned to convene at the Royal Throne since before your birth.

“Come on,” Azula tells you, and you follow her. She is your sister and though she is younger, she already has a rather firm grasp of the iron will that Azulon’s line is known for. You follow her, away from the throne room doors and around to the kitchens.

“Where are we going?” You ask, even though it doesn’t matter. You both grew up in the palace, but each of you have your own interests. You know best how to scale the walls to lay on sun-warmed stone, and Azula seems to know every nook and cranny and hidden path. The scullery maids pay neither of you any mind, and Azula takes you on a journey of dizzying turns and twists, crawling and climbing through the dark inner workings of the palace, until she folds back one last thick, crimson drape and crouches down low.

“—fit to ascend the throne,” Ozai is saying. You are within the throne room, or close enough to hear.

You have only been in the throne room once or twice, but it’s intimidating edges are easy to recall: the throne itself, raised on a dais of marble and heavy silk; the long stretch of stone flooring from the doors to the edge of the dais, the wide rug laid over top; and the walls, encompassed by open pits of magma and their wild tongues of flame.

“What would you suggest?” Azulon—Grandfather—speaks, his voice even and silky. Dangerous, the way Ozai and Azula are. The low simmer that masks the wells of fury and ire beneath.

“What are they talking about?” Azula mutters.

“I will inherit in his place,” Ozai says firmly. Iroh says nothing. If you hadn’t seen him enter the throne room with your own eyes, you wouldn’t even know that he was there.

“You would disgrace the throne, my throne, with that heir?” Azulon snarls, and there comes a flash of heat and light as the fire pits flare.

Azula nudges you in the side, and you can hear the unkind smile in her voice: “He means you.”

Yes, he does. You have only ever been a disappointment in Ozai’s eyes. You are a poor heir in all the ways that matter to him: you can hardly bend, you have too soft a heart, you ask too many questions and defy too many orders.

No, you are too unlike Azula, who is Ozai’s favorite without question.

“Father—” Ozai tries to say.

“Feh,” Azulon huffs, dismissive. “It seems this is a day for both my useless sons to disappoint me. Ba Sing Se remains free of my control, and now the line of succession is destined to sputter out into nothing.”

Neither Ozai nor Iroh have anything to say to that.

It is a mistake, for it gives Azulon time to think.

“No,” the man drawls, and even though you cannot see him, you can all but feel the pressure of his cold gaze. “Iroh has seen punishment enough, but you, Ozai…”

“My Lord—” It is the closest to panic that you have ever heard your father.

“My eldest has lost a son, Ozai. A beloved child. Should you not do the same?”

This is when your heart stops.

Your eyes sting, even as your hearing fades. Azula is pressed still against the wall, her face going through some gamut of emotion at whatever words she hears, but you hear nothing. See nothing. Are nothing. You stumble past her, she who is so enraptured—in terror, horror, glee, in some emotion you cannot name—in the proceedings of this private court that she does not even smirk at you as you go.

You get lost, of course. You do not know this halls, these nooks and crannies, as Azula does. You trip over your own feet, catch yourself with your hands, ignore the sting, ignore the eyes of those who witness your clumsiness. Through narrow passageways, past the scullery maids, across courtyards, down narrow staircases, until your reach the gardens.

She is there, as you hoped.

Your mother. Your safe haven.

Children of the Fire Lord do not run, but you slam into your mother’s side all the same, tiny fingers gripping desperate for the voluminous length of her sleeves.

“Zuko?” She asks, folding loving arms around you. “What do you need?”

She never asks you what is wrong, only what you need. She is kind, that way.

“Hugs,” you mumble, your voice lost. You just need to be held. You just need to know that someone—anyone, just one person—cares for you.

Ursa hums and holds you close until the sun sets.

A day or so passes. Ozai stalks around the palace with the snarl of a lion on his face. You take care to remain out of his sight. Azula is quiet, which never bodes well, but she does not bother you.

The world waits, holding its breath. For what? For what?

Your eyes open in the dark. Moonlight slips elegantly through the window.

A shadow at your side, and you tense, wondering where the guards are—

“Zuko,” comes a voice, so sweet and familiar that you have relaxed before you even realize.

“Mother,” you sigh, as she runs a cool hand over your brow. You are heavy still with dreams, with sleep, a half-smile on your face.

Your mother perches on the edge of your bed, leans over. Draws you up into a hug. She is warm. You are content.

“I love you,” she whispers, her breath muffled into your hair. Your heart stops, freezes, cracks. You can feel the way she trembles around you.

You have never once doubted your mother’s love. Ursa is your North Star, steadfast and unwavering. She is your whole world, your understanding of perfection found in her soft smiles and the way she has never once hesitated to comfort you, uncaring of Ozai’s scorn.

She hugs you. You are folded within her arms, a place that has only ever been safe, and you feel cold terror reach its long fingers and grip your spine. Ursa is caring, but never stifling; you know without knowing, in the way that children do, that this sudden, desperate embrace can only spell ill omen.

“Mother?” Your voice hitches. Wobbles.

Your thoughts race, frantic. Are you sick? Is she sick?

“Oh, Zuko,” Ursa sighs, drawing back, and now you can see the strain on her face. The pallor to her skin—

“Mom?” You are grabbing her now, your fingers clenched tight in the layers of her kimono.

“Take care of your sister, Zuko.” Ursa whispers. “She’ll need you. And you’ll need her.”

“Mom, what—”

And then you awake.

Your chest heaves. There is sweat on your brow. A dream. No, a nightmare.

You press fingers to your forehead, to soothe the throbbing ache behind your eyes.

With the morning, your fear is made true. It is all the maids will talk about, whispering amongst themselves.

Your mother is gone. Azulon is dead. Your mother is gone. Ozai has been crowned Fire Lord. Your mother is gone.

(And what are you, without your North Star but a reckless, lost fool?)

two (the crown prince)

We begin at the end.

You turn around and your blood chills.

Not him. It’s not supposed to be him.

A ruler’s duty is to their people. So say the old scripts, the fables, all of history. War councils are not your purview but you have a head for strategy, and so you were grudgingly brought along.

A ruler’s duty is to their people. One cannot sacrifice lives for the sake of mere warfare. The general who leads their troops to death will be left with no one to lead. So says everything you have been taught.

You speak up. Of course you do. You foolish, impossible, bright boy. How could you not?

You did not mean for this to happen.

(I am sorry.)

You beg. Of course you beg. You plead and can hardly hear your own words for the deafening pulse of your heart beneath your ribs. You might be shaking. Are you shaking?

You beg.

It does not help.

There is a fist—so much larger than your own, sturdy fingers curled in tight—hurtling for your face. You are trembling, even as it seems like the world slows. The fist, like a comet, comes closer. Closer.

You cannot look away. You cannot breathe.

The only thing that you can think, watching your end come is: It was never supposed to be him.

Pain. Fire. One of those comes before the other, but does the order truly matter?

There is fire and there is pain. All is pain and all is fire.

(A cold comfort, but know this: you blinked. Just as fire brushed your skin, you blinked. Your sight can be salvaged. It erases no pain. It changes no scar. I am sorry.)

Everything from that point on becomes… hazy.

You might have screamed. You might have fallen to your knees, keening. You might have vomited from the pain, the fear.

There are hands, too cold and unfeeling, grabbing and prodding at you. You are no longer a body, just nerve endings alight, pain given form. Is there blood? You’re not sure. There is light, a soothing palm pressed to your burning skin, perhaps a dream imagined.

There is a weary, weathered voice always at your side in the brief moments that you slid back into consciousness, gasping and shuddering and sweating and terrified, before the pain grasps you within its claws again. Apologizing, that voice. Always apologizing. You never listened.

Days pass. Weeks, even.

You lie on a pallet and sweat and shiver and thrash awake every night with a plea upon your lips because the sight of a fist of flame is permanently engraved.

Bandages and salves, indifferent hands prodding raw skin. Pain. So much pain.

And time. So much time to think.

After your mother had gone, things had gotten tense. Ozai was Fire Lord, was cruel as ever, cold as anything. You could feel his eyes on you, dissecting, judging, scornful. The Court was in a stir, whispers that silenced themselves as soon as you drew near, noble ladies watching your firebending practice with smiles hidden behind fans.

And then there was Azula.

Azula who trained harder, studied longer, who smiled at you the same way one would brandish a dagger. Dragon-sister.

Take care of your sister, Zuko.

You fled. You skipped practice, you kept an irregular training schedule, you avoided your sister and father alike. You became a ghost, haunting the palace. Now you are a ghost, haunting your own body.

Eventually, you begin to heal. Burned flesh does not pull and ache as harshly as it once did. You can sit upright, remain awake, for more than a handful of minutes now. Your uncle sits at your bedside as though he is still in mourning (he is). It makes you feel as though you are part of the unferried dead, left behind in a world that is no longer yours (you are).

Slowly, you mend. Work stiff muscles until you can move, walk, turn your head without pain bringing tears to your eyes.

You have not heard from your father since—

Well. Since.

You have not seen your sister. This alarms you even more.

Uncle Iroh makes you drink hot cups of tea, which you don’t have the energy to protest. Healers come and go, making faces and conversing in harsh whispers. You attempt to acclimate to your… change in vision, and mostly fail.

On the day when you can stand on your own two feet for the first time… since, your Uncle Iroh gives you a pleased smile that suffuses your tired, aching body with warmth.

Then the messenger arrives. A young one, which you will later understand to be an insult even further. The messenger unrolls a scroll, holds it with hands that barely tremble and murders you with a single word:

Banishment.

(Your father, the Fire Lord, does not come to deliver the news himself. He does not summon you before him. Insults twice over; every member of the royal court will know where you stand without even a hint of uncertainty.)

It gets worse, because Ozai plants a seed of false hope.

You can come home (has it been home?), you can restore honor (worth) to your name. You simply have to capture the Avatar. The Bridge-Between-Worlds. The legend that has near faded into obscurity, having gone so long unseen. Most are of the belief that the cycle has been permanently broken (by your War, Sozin’s War, though those who add this part do so while safely outside of Fire Nation territory).

You are a fool. That is not recrimination, merely fact. You cannot harden yourself the way that your dragon-sister does. You grab hope with both hands.

You are discarded thrice over, banished prince, banished heir, Burned. All you have to your name is a lightweight destroyer, a crew of strangers, and your uncle. And your anger.

You sail away from your home—the only home you have ever known, the home that does not want you—and it is then that you decide. You will scour the planet, every nook and cranny and isolated village, and drag the Avatar back into the world.

You poor fool.

three (the exile)

The men neither like nor respect you, and that is easy enough to understand, even if you do not (did not) understand it. One look upon you is all it takes to see the way that you are burning up, tangles of anger and hurt wound and knotted up into the shape of a boy. A prince. An heir.

Or perhaps it is not so easy as that to see, for anyone who is not your Uncle.

Perhaps the men rankle at being placed under the command of an officer who knows the bare minimum of naval warfare.

It doesn’t truly matter, the why, though you wish to know. Some things cannot be explained so easily, little one.

Outside the palace walls, the war is something altogether different than you ever imagined. People see your armor and glare and cower. There are no people happy for liberation, for civilization. Only anger. Resentment. Hatred.

Do you see, now, the hells that Sozin and Azulon wrought? There is meant to be harmony on this plane, Child.

Then again, they do not teach you what war takes away. Only what they gain.

You begin your search as far away from the Fire Nation as is possible. Ozai, father, Fire Lord, has made his disdain of you all too clear. You are heir no longer, Burned and banished. Staying in familiar waters will do you no good, and were the Avatar merely five islands over, you imagine someone would’ve noticed by now.

You plan. Well. You attempt to plan. It is not that you are an ineffective strategist, merely that you plan for an easy journey, when this will be anything but.

So, you begin your search far from home, and sweating in a poorly fitting set of armor. It is known now, across the lands, of the banished Fire Nation prince. You have seen bounties, scrawled uncaringly under sketches of your face. Your old face. Your Unburned face. Uncle Iroh insists on the armor, because there is no shortage of people who hate this war, hate your people and would gladly see you dead.

Earth Nation colonies bear no fruit. Without discussion, you and Captain Jee arrange for the destroyer to avoid Ba Sing Se. Iroh surely notices, but says nothing. There is relief on his face, though, and you know that you have done well.

(Would that he and Ursa were not the only ones to ever lend you a word or gesture of praise. Many of your failures are not failures at all.)

Were you outside the Fire Nation for some other purpose, it would almost be… nice. You are seeing things you never could’ve imagined, creatures of all kinds, deserts and swamps and plains. Things so vastly different from the islands of the Fire Nation, its metal structures and volcanoes.

It is not nice. (It could be, if you would ever let yourself be, instead of trying to break yourself down into the box that Ozai wants to bury you in.)

It gets progressively less nice, when the bounty hunters start to appear. You very quickly learn the best way to cover your own tracks, to obfuscate your face just so, rending all sighting of you useless. How to plant false trails, how to maneuver around your enemy and become the hunter instead of the hunted. Your imperial bending forms have never been tighter.

Iroh shows you how to lay traps. Captain Jee and the men largely ignore you—which, you suppose, is all they can do. You gain bruises and scars and muscle. You lose nothing (this is untrue, but I know you will believe it no matter what I argue).

At night, during fourth shift, when you lie awake for the pain in your burned face never subsides, only lessens, you let your thoughts wander. You wonder where your mother is, if she still lives. You wonder what will happen, when the War is won—and it will be won, for you have never been allowed to speculate on any other outcome. What will happen to the farmers, the laborers? The silk merchants and ranchers? What will happen to land so green that it hurts to look at, softly packed soil and not a speck of volcano ash to be found?

Only at night, do you have these thoughts. By day you are Fire Nation soldier immaculate. Not that it matters. The men don’t care. Uncle Iroh only wants to ply you with tea.

Each day passes and you feel more and more like a fire barrel about to make impact. So full up of oil and vitriol and burning all over. What you have lost haunts you. What you have gained pains you.

You think about failure. About death. Dying without honor, dying in shame and Burned for the whole world to see. You think about your mother, about Lu Ten. About Azula. You trek from south to north, east to west, swamp and desert to tundra.

Bring the Avatar to the Fire Lord. The Avatar, so long unseen that they are nearly a children’s story, a myth. It is a fool’s errand, a final mockery in the staggering misfortune of your life. You feel it in your bones that you will die in this cold arctic south, a failure.

Until, one night, a Fire Nation flare goes off on the horizon.

Until, one night, there is light.

four (the traitor)

I know what is in your heart, dear child. The fear, the anger, the wash of anxiety and helplessness, yes, yes. I speak of the relief. Here you are, bound to do this thankless task, succeeding where all others would have rejoiced to watch you fail.

Take pride in that, Young Blood. You, scarred and scorned, have done what few others could ever hope to do.

But that relief. That damning relief.

You know of what I speak; there is nothing we can hide from each other now. Every time the Avatar slips away, every time your journey is delayed by yet another moment. That sweet, hellish relief.

And so we have reached this point. Our moment. You enter the stage with little fanfare, but you make an impression, even if you do not know it. This is where you becomes we. I bring the night and the soft step and you bring the gleaming edge of your—our—dao, and we are. We are.

Your endeavor does not help you. This foolish, foolish thing you have committed yourself to. But now, in this moment, delaying Zhao is the only form of recourse available to you.

Oh, child. Would that I could lift this burden from your shoulders.

So, you have donned my mask. Our Face. You have surely pulled a feat worthy of our name, to step light of foot into a fortress called impregnable. Swift and steady and unseen, you free the Avatar.

You will not want to hear it, child, but this thing that you have done? It was the right choice.

Oh, surely, Ozai would not think so. Nor your dragon-sister nor Zhao. But I speak now of things greater than the petty grievances of mortals. You freed the Bridge Between Worlds from peril, Little One. You fought on its behalf against your own. Oh, how you shone with Agni’s light!

An escape made, trickery made offering to bright Agni above. And we had done it! The Blue Spirit would not be forgotten, not with this day come to pass.

But for Tengri’s swift archers.

No, that is no recrimination. Every thief, every trickster, every sly devil knows that there is the chance of defeat. What says it that even Tengri’s righteousness behind feathered arrow shafts could not bar your escape, only delay it?

I say it is providence. So long you have been mired in the dark, in the smothering ashes of your own doubts. Come now into Agni’s favor. Come now into fortune. We are blade and mask, fleet of foot in these beautiful shadows.

Open your eyes, child.

Hear Agni’s sweet whispers.

So, this is you. You have seen yourself. You have seen the self that we have become.

Take up our Face. Carve our name into the mouths of enemy and ally alike.

I have seen you, dragon-child. And there is but one question left.

Is there fire beneath the ashes still? The Blue Spirit demands and its voice is a boom in the sudden silence. Zuko—and he is Zuko again and Zuko alone—flinches and finds himself back within a body, back in an unmoving forest beneath an eternal sun. He glances to his side, unsurprised to see the Yu Yan archers still around him, motionless and washed out, like aged charcoal portraits.

“I don't know.” He licks his lips and it does nothing to help. His skin is chapped and his throat is dry and he can still hear the shouts of FAILURE FAILURE TRAITOR FAILURE like the roar of the ocean’s tide, pulling in and pushing out.

(How strange, he cannot help but think. How strange to have a voice.)

You do, the Blue Spirit insists, unyielding and immovable. Implacable, and why is it even here? Why couldn't it have just killed him and been done with it?

“I don’t.”

What are you then? Mere ashes and dust and smoke?

YES, Zuko wants to scream. Yes, because that is all he has ever been in his father's eyes, in Azula's eyes, in the eyes of the Royal Court, in the eyes of the entirety of the Fire Nation. Zuko, the heir to the throne who might as well not be. Not a bender, not a good enough bender, too soft-hearted and warm-eyed and naive, too unsuited for the glory that the Fire Nation would achieve.

Zuko, the failure.

“I don't know,” he says instead. But he does, he does know.

Who, then, would? The Blue Spirit demands. And Zuko wants to laugh because that has never been the problem. All know of Zuko, and his uselessness. The last one to catch on has always been Zuko himself.

Do not say that you do not know! Tell me, are you fire or not?

“I am, but—”

Then do the embers not still burn?

“It's not that simple—”

Why am I here then, child? Why are we here?

“It's not that—”

You have cast blame on all others but the one who deserves it most.

“That's not true—!”

Name him child. Name him and let us burn freely!

“No, that's, that's not—”

Who, then, do we burn? The uncle in mourning who wishes only the best for his second son?

“Stop. Stop it, that's not, don’t—”

The sister child, bold and ever burning, a monster who sparks love and fear equally within your heart?

“Stop, that's enough—”

Yourself, for your weakness, for your kindness, for the justice in your heart?

“Stop!”

Or perhaps the lady mother who stole into the night and left behind only bitter memories of fonder times?

SHUT UP! Spoken without speaking, words without words, and yet his throat still burns.

NAME HIM. Name he who betrayed you, he who ruined, he who cast you out, he who burned you—

“He's my father.”

Would you have the child bear all sins of the father? Why do you not wear your scars as mark of your tenacity? No, you wear them as shame, for you and all others know that there was no love, no honor in that lesson!

“He—he had to. I shouldn't have been there. I should've been silent. I was only there to listen—I made a fool of him, of the throne—”

And so all children, young and learning, should be treated so. All lessons should be so cruel?

“It’s. Different with me. I’m. It’s not. It’s different.”

Oh?

“I. I'm a failure!”

You are not war born.

“And that makes me a failure!”

That makes you kind. And kind is what will end your war.

End the war. End the war. “I can’t do that.”

Say you so.

“I can’t!” Even if he wanted to, even if he knew how. “I—there's no way no one would listen to me. I'm a firebender, this war—we started this war!”

Are you Sozin reborn, then? Azulon's haunting revenant? You need not bear the culpability of your forebears. Do not all wish for an end to the suffering?

Does he?

To stop the blood and the pain and the loss?

Doesn’t he?

You have a responsibility, yes, groomed for power as you are. But it is not your fault.

Isn’t it?

You are kind, child. I wish you would not try to bury it in anger.

But anger is all that he has left.

His eyes burn, and the world blurs. His throat is tight and dry enough that it hurts to inhale, to exhale, to breathe. Would that he could stop.

Oh, child. Here. Come here.

Three faltering steps, his legs trembling as though boneless. Thick arms pull him forward to rest against a broad chest, warm and soothing. When is the last time a hand raised toward him in kindness, affection? When last was he able to let go, to shrug off the weight of Zuko, crown prince and heir and failure and traitor, to be just Zuko? Just Zuko, a boy scarred and worn.

Zuko’s vision blurs. His throat stings.

“Why did he—”

Shh.

Fingers, bloodless with the strength of his grip on a dark gi. Someone to hold on to. Something to ground him.

“It hurts,” he grits. Would that he could trap his weakness behind his teeth. But who would know him at his weakest, other than this spirit? His second self?

I know.

He didn't have to—! Zuko cannot even finish the thought. Cannot open that floodgate. Not yet.

He is cruel. Said so simple, so easy. And that same cruelness he nurtured in your wayward sister creature. But not in you.

“I just wanted him to... to love me. I wanted to make him proud!”

That is all any child wishes.

“I’m sorry.” For everything. For it all. “I’m sorry.”

It was never any fault of yours, little one.

It is ages, aeons, eternities later that the Blue Spirit draws back. Zuko’s nose is stuffed and his eyes feel swollen and heavy, and everything aches. But, in the way of stretching muscles. It’s almost a comfort, and he can’t spare the effort to be embarrassed.

“Name him, child.” The Blue Spirit says, in a voice like the roar of an avalanche, the howl of tsunami waves against cliffside.

Zuko swallows, and takes solace in the way that it scrapes at his throat. He feels flayed, exposed, raw. But… lighter.

“How?” He whispers.

The Blue Spirit straightens up, taller for a moment that ever before. In that same horrible, beautiful voice, it asks, “Tell me Child, who tried to smother your light?”

The words are old, the cadence of them is pure High Court, the kind of ceremony long since fallen out of favor with the consolidation of the throne.

“Ozai,” Zuko manages, nearly biting his tongue in his haste to get the name out. As though rushing will make the blow softer. As though that will stop him from hurting. “Son of Azulon and Ta Min… Father mine.”

“And does the fire yet burn beneath its ashes?”

“The embers still smolder, Elder.”

The Blue Spirit presses a thumb to Zuko’s forehead, a pressure to unyoke the chakra there, to free Zuko of the chains that leash him to the throne. To the Fire Lord. To his father.

“Agni hears you, Little One. And Agni will guard your flame.”

Chapter Text

Feather-light, a step taken. Worlds bent and teased apart. Flesh to not-flesh, blood to not-blood. Stand tall, stand proud. Bow for none but those who guide you.

The Yu Yan startle, as What Came Before is replaced with What Now Is. Arrows disappear, blood evaporates, and the haunting mask of the Blue Spirit turns its gaze upon the head of the archers’ troupe.

I Bear You No Malice, it says. One arm reaches back to lay fingers butterfly-soft on the hilt of a blade, in clear warning. But Violence Shall Be Met With Only Itself.

At least one of the Yu Yan swallows, the sound loud in the unnatural silence of the forest. The birds do not sing, the leaves do not rustle. Even the river seems to have slowed itself, wary of being noticed.

The troupe leader of the Yu Yan—a southern island man, tawny and sharp-eyed, who knows better than to wander the forest after sunset—straightens his shoulders. “Where’s the Avatar?”

The Blue Spirit tilts its head. A curved fang gleams under sunlight.

Borne Away With The Wind, As You Well Know.

The man nods, as though in confirmation. He brings up a hand, curls his fingers into a fist. Slowly, hesitantly, the rest of the Yu Yan begin to move away. None take their eyes from the spirit—the Great Spirit—before them. None mention that mere seconds ago, that figure was broken and bleeding, mortal. The Fire Lord can say as he likes, but it is known: you meddle not in the affairs of spirits. Not if you want to live long. Not if you want to live in peace.

The barest brush of footsteps, retreating. The Blue Spirit does not move, only watches, until the last archer’s breath fades into distant silence. After a moment, a daring songbird lets out a nervous little chirp.

The Blue Spirit’s shoulders fall. It affects the release of an enormous sigh.

A Bluff Well Made, Was It Not?

Again, its head tilts, as though listening to another speak.

Mere Seconds, We Ought To Wager. Now Let Us Go.

Another pause.

Swiftly Away We Must, For Agni Bids Us Elsewhere.

A longer pause, almost fraught.

We Are That No Longer, My Younger Self-Not-Self. Hold Your Sorrow, That Agni May Relieve You Of It.

As the sounds of nature slowly filter back into the clearing, the Blue Spirit begins to walk. Leaves do not rustle underfoot, dirt remains undisturbed. It disappears between one stride and the next.

From the ether, neither Spirit world nor Mortal, there comes a touch.

First, it is a soft pressure. The Blue Spirit pays it no mind, for it is skimming along an outpost unseen, watching Fire Nation patrols make contact. Straight-backed, heavy steps. It would be easy, and such fun, to slide between them, to point out the spaces they so foolishly think of as guarded.

That pressure becomes yet more persistent, though, and the Blue Spirit realizes what is happening: it is being called upon, summoned, its attention requested by some being. Once it refocuses, the pressure becomes a rope, a length of silk and chain that leads elsewhere.

It would be rude not to answer.

When the Blue Spirit refolds itself into reality, spirit-flesh-and-soul taking physical weight in the realm of mortality, there is someone waiting. The one who called the Blue Spirit forth, ever more obstinate.

It is an old human.

“So you have come,” they say, and something in the Blue Spirit leaps and twists and writhes and wants to shout and scream and disappear. “I had hoped that you would.”

The Blue Spirit says nothing. Within, there is chaos, but no words can be formed from it.

The old human only hums, taking the lack of response as a response itself. From somewhere, the old human pulls a pipe. The Blue Spirit stands there, silent and unsettled—(awkward and useless—)—and watches as the old human lights the pipe and takes a deep inhale of its contents.

“I will ask you only once, O Great Spirit,” and somehow, those words of reverence ring bitter and false, with pointed edges and sharp sides. “Where is my nephew?”

Something in the Blue Spirit cowers, but it is not out of fear. What has a spirit to fear from any mortal? What has a spirit to fear from those who call upon it? It is not fear, but shame, and it is cloying and suffocating, a conscious struggling to stay afloat even as weights drag it down deeper.

Who is your nephew, Old Dragon? Its own voice comes soft, restrained, something cut down in size in hopes of avoiding conflict. Every agonizing second of this interaction is a weight gargantuan, crushing without mercy.

The old human, the old man—his spirit outlined in thin lines of fire beneath his skin—exhales a cloud of dusky dragon’s smoke. He would seem weak, this old man, but the Blue Spirit can see him, the shape and size of his soul and spirit, and it is layered and iron-wrought and dragon-forged.

“Prince Zuko. He is a son to me, and I would have him back.”

Were this any other human, any other circumstance, the Blue Spirit would jest, would talk in circles. After all, how does the old man know that it is with the spirits that his nephew can be found? But the Blue Spirit only swallows, takes a fortifying inhale despite the fact that it needs no breath.

Prince Zuko, son of Fire Lord Ozai and Fire Lady Ursa, is no more.

“That is not an answer I will accept.”

An immovable object. There is no bargaining, no offers. Only fact. Only dragon smoke and narrowed eyes and lines of soul-fire beating a tempo of anger-frustration-desperation.

The Blue Spirit shrugs, but the movement now—once again—feels stiff and unnatural.

Still so soft, still trying to seem small in hopes of simply disappearing, the Blue Spirit responds: Agni bore him away for some task. The Fire Prince is no more, Old Dragon.

“No!” The old man cuts one hand through the air, swift and deadly force. “I will not accept this!”

(His voice, it cracks. Though his body is stubborn and his posture is regal, and though he exhales a stream of black smoke through his nostrils—for all appearances the dragon he descends from—his voice shakes.)

And the Blue Spirit finds that it suddenly has a Voice, that it is once more a tangible thing, a weighted thing for weighted conversation.

“You must accept it,” it says slowly, purposefully. Resigned to the way the old man’s head snaps up from the very first syllable, hope at war with disbelief and anguish in those dark eyes. “Agni has bid him away, and he is no more.”

There is a silence, a tension, a charge in the air.

The old man goes from unmovable to action at blinding speed, grabbing desperately at the Blue Spirit, its shoulders and arms and hands. The Blue Spirit allows this, for it is the least that it can do. Would that it could do more, that it could give the old man what he wanted. Those wide palms and short fingers and rough skin are so familiar, so foreign, a touch that eats away at the Blue Spirit even as it soothes.

“Oh,” the old man whispers, one familiar-unfamiliar hand lifted, fingers brushing against the fang of the Blue Spirit’s face.

“Oh, my foolish nephew, what have you done?”

The Blue Spirit swallows, though it needs neither breath nor saliva. Its chest is full of nervous, tangled energy, wanting to float away and sink into the earth unreachable all at once.

This hurts so much more than it could have anticipated.

“He Is No More,” the Blue Spirit—what-once-was and now will never be again—whispers back, its own Voice rough.

I’m sorry, it means.

Forgive me, it begs.

I’m so sorry.

The old man weeps.

Spirits do not meddle in the affairs of the living. Humans are short-lived and bright-burning and gone before you know it. Easier then to slide in and out of the realms, to fix the things left in the wake of some human miracle-disaster-tragedy-epiphany.

Four nations divided, a people near extinction, and warships on every horizon.

It will not be easy to end Sozin’s war, no, but the Blue Spirit is hardly doing this thing for the ease of it.

The Blue Spirit traces the line of cragged rock with the eyes it does not have, following jutting earth as it splits and rejoins itself mile after haphazard mile.

… Would That Kyoshi Could Hear Us. The Blue Spirit muses. Then, with humor: I Think She Made It Worse.

It takes effort to end wars, but not all battles must be fought. Sozin’s war is a symptom, but not the illness.

The balance of the world has gone.

Yes, many humans would say that the balance has gone because of the Fire Nation, because of Sozin. But no. The disturbances across the world of the living are mired in familiar filth and malice. Such darkness that has existed long before Sozin was even a thought.

That Spirit who is not spoken of, whose name has nearly been lost. Yes, the Blue Spirit can taste the hate and dark of that scheming enemy. Difficult to deal with, the Blue Spirit ultimately decides. It itself has been too long Un-alive, power present but meager. With the monks gone, there is little to carry stories from place to place. Little to move spirits around as they are meant to be moved.

Difficult does mean not that it will not fight, only that it will fight in its own way.

Kyoshi Island is quiet, but for the sound of the tide. Beneath it, deep within the sea, a fissure. Here the Blue Spirit stands, looking out into the distance. Following the spaces left behind by the Avatar-That-Was.

The Blue Spirit has no need for air, and so does not breathe. It has no need to stay buoyant, and so does not swim. Even so, it follows along the fissure at the bottom of the sea. 10 kilometers. 40. 80. 100.

It is so very interesting to see, the after-effects of the Avatars’ power. The changes made in the world that remain even as the Bridge-Between-Worlds itself changes and changes. Mountains raised and torn down! Rivers expanded into seas, cities wrought of ice, of wood, of clay, of sand and all else that can be found. Nations, that mortal concept of singular identity, of isolation. So many changes from when the world was new, was full of echoes and curiosity.

There are things to be taken care of, promises and destinies left unfulfilled. There are things that have been left behind.

With luck, these things will even be of help in the arduous task of saving Life, as it is known.

The dragons, yes. And too a council of the Greater Names, should they deign to take note of such a request. Shrines and temples to rediscover; the panegyric trail that is drawn from one end of the world to its opposite.

Then too the matters more personal. There is blood that need be dealt with. Chaos that need be put back to balance.

Much to do, for a lone spirit. Though the Blue Spirit will be lone for only moments; word will spread. Paths will reveal themselves.

The light of Agni’s love flares strongly, a pressing wave of heat and pressure, and the Blue Spirit knows that its intentions have been heard, and accepted by at least one of the Greater Names.

That makes the task more possible yet.

Heal the world, spirit and physical. Save Life, mortal and beyond.

End this mortal war and restore what can be replenished. Mend the jagged edges between worlds and allow the sown seeds of harmony to bloom, as they once did.

And that?

That is most assuredly an undertaking worth a tale or two.

The Blue Spirit is slowly coaxing fire—life—back into a cluster of sorry-looking desert flowers when the world… hums. It unfolds from its crouch, tilts the face of its mask to the sky and listens.

There.

A thought becomes a movement, a step through space. Closer now, it is easier to see: two humans, fires burning bright but transient in the way mortal things always do. Beside them, a supernova. Light echoing forward and back; the Avatar.

You Have Come Far, Bridge-Between-Worlds.

The Avatar startles, stumbles, flails. Eyes wide and heart beating a rapid staccato. The two humans turn, both tense. One crouches with a hand at a blade, the other falls into a waterbending stance.

Curious.

(Known.)

A silence.

“So,” one of the humans says, stilted. “That mask is a little… terrifying.”

The Blue Spirit would roll its eyes if it had them.

Instead, it turns to the Avatar, who has yet to stop staring. What Brings You, The Fleet Foot of Tengri And The World-of-Worlds, Down To Oma and Shu’s Domain?

Again, the Avatar jumps like a startled rabiroo, a sudden breeze whipping air temple robes into a flurry of cloth.

“Um!” The Avatar stammers. “Uh, we’re just… passing through, heh heh…”

The Blue Spirit lets the awkward, barren silence speak for itself.

Why so nervous, it begins to wonder. But no, a sense this makes. Last that the Blue Spirit—even if that is not what it had been at the time—spoke to the Avatar, it was from a place of anger. Desperation, frustration, fear.

It has surely not been forgotten, given that the Avatar looks mere seconds from fleeing in terror. “Honest! We’re just passing through!”

“Aang.” It is the other human—blue and plush furs means Water Tribe. The girl—equally mired in the Moon’s Light as she is in the Face Stealer’s festering Dark—speaks slowly, eyes never once leaving the Blue Spirit’s mask. She keeps her fingers spread, water awaiting her call. “Who are you talking to?”

The Avatar… flutters, for lack of a better term. “You guys can see him, right?”

The Water Tribe boy crosses his arms across his chest, weapon still in hand. “Sure. But who is he?”

The Blue Spirit, for all that it was once a boy-with-a-scar who only ever wanted to go home, is nothing now. ‘He’ is as superfluous a defining trait as ‘it’ or ‘she’ or ‘they’. The Blue Spirit is the Blue Spirit, Agni’s favored and beholden only to itself.

But… the living are always—have always been—so peculiar about the smallest and strangest of things. To them, silence is as threatening as a drawn sword. Anonymity is secretive, secretive is dangerous, dangerous is enemy. It is for this, only because there is a need, that the Blue Spirit gains (reclaims) a Voice.

“Avatar.” The Voice is familiar and comfortable, is strange and new. It once belonged to a hatchling far from home, though with an edge that is rougher than What-Once-Was-Before recalls. The Blue Spirit tilts its mask just so, unseeing eyes trained with precision on the vessel of the Bridge-Between-Worlds, the Light-That-Fills-The-Gaps.

“You are… misplaced.”

“Oh!” The Avatar sighs, bright eyes and shoulder hung low with relief, ignoring the Blue Spirit’s actual words in favor of whatever passing thought has snared his rabiroo-footed attention. “It is you!”

“Aang?” Neither of the Water Tribe pair look comforted.

“It’s okay!” The Avatar is light, is reassurance, is something earnest and bright-eyed. “He helped me out when you two were sick. I didn’t realize he was a spirit, though…”

Something, some part of that seems to do the trick. The other two relax, almost as one.

Then, sudden and wide-eyed, the girl leaps forward, narrowly avoiding stomping on her companion’s feet.

“Wait, what do you mean he ‘helped you out’? You said everything went fine!”

A pause, a silence, a strangled squeak from the Avatar, who darts his eyes nervously, pleadingly, from the Blue Spirit to the Water Tribe boy and back again. That, the Blue Spirit knows, is the look of one who has been caught out.

One narrow arm raises, fingers rubbing the back of a shaved scalp. “Heh… uh, so about that…”

“Aang!”

The Blue Spirit tilts its mask, one way and then another.

“Why such ire?” It asks. “The Admiral could not hold him, least of all with my interference.”

The Avatar’s arm shoots out to grab the Blue Spirit’s arm, pulling himself in fast and drawing the two of them closer, and quickly squeaks-mumbles-hisses, “Not helping.”

“The Admiral? Is he talking about Zhao?” The Water Tribe boy looks… amused? Surprised? Brows raised high. His companion rests her clenched fists on her hips, standing tall and towering for all that she is but mere fingers’ widths taller than the Avatar. It makes her look… What is it? Hmm. Like La, Scorned. The Sea Churning, stronger than its appearance belies.

“How did you even run into that guy?” The girl demands.

“I—” The Avatar’s grip on the Blue Spirit’s arm tightens. That is interesting, is it not? That there is this tension amongst the camaraderie. Though, is it? The Water Tribe deals in responsibility, in owning one’s actions. The Air Nomads did not punish, did not chastise. All that occurred was, after all, a lesson bestowed upon the world.

“I didn’t mean to!” The boy chokes out, muscles so tense that the Blue Spirit would not be surprised if he threw himself off, away into the winds and away from this damning moment of consequences. “I didn’t even know he was there, Katara, I swear! They came outta nowhere and then they took me to this huge fort and had me all chained up—”

Here, the girl’s face twitches into something that is purely of the Face Stealer, a flicker of distaste-hatred-plotting-vengeance wrapped into a moment. The Avatar either does not notice—as Air Nomads oft did not ‘notice’—or he pays it no mind, too busy sweeping his arms in wide, expressive gestures.

“—out how to escape, but then this guy showed up! You should’ve seen him; he didn’t even bend, he just had these swords and he took out all the guards, but then Zhao had us trapped and there were these archers and—”

Confronted with such exuberant verbosity, the Water Tribe children try to keep up and only succeed in looking dazed. The girl is nodding absently, with the panicked eyes of one who has realized that they have completely lost the path of the conversation, and the boy looks near concussed and entirely overwhelmed by the deluge of information.

“Aang, buddy,” he begs. “Shorter sentences. Smaller words.”

The Avatar stops, mid-syllable, and then blinks. Ponders a moment.

“Um. I got caught, but then he helped me escape?” He offers, to which the Water Tribe pair look starkly relieved at the concise summary. “We would’ve been fine, if Zhao hadn’t had those archers. Who were those guys? The arrows kept coming, even when I tried to blow them away!”

The last part is directed to the Blue Spirit.

Beholden to no nation, no king, no lord, the Blue Spirit does not know, not in the way that the Avatar means. The archers were spirit-blessed, blood full of earth and air. What-Once-Was knows, though, has the words enough to give a simple answer to a simple question.

“The Yu Yan. They are a troop of… specialized archers under the command of the Imperial Army. There is not much that can divert a Yu Yan’s arrow from its path.”

“Tell me about it,” the Avatar grouses.

“Okay, let’s pause,” the Water Tribe boy makes an impatient series of hand gestures. “And go back to the part where you got caught.”

“It was those Yu Yan guys,” explains the Bridge-Between-Worlds. “They shot all these arrows, but the arrows had ropes and made a net and I couldn’t bend out of it.”

“You could’ve gotten away before though, right?” The Water Tribe girl frowns.

“I was getting the medicine for you guys! I wasn’t gonna leave it behind.”

“Aang…”

Here, the boy cuts in.

“Okay, so you got caught.” He jerks his head, pointing his chin towards the Blue Spirit. “How’d this guy hear about it?”

The Blue Spirit does not hesitate, does not pause. What-Once-Was had been tracking the Avatar, had been damn good at it, had been desperate to thwart Zhao at any cost. It had not yet been what it is now, though it has also always been such, but that is yet another thing that mortals find alarming. Better to keep it simple.

The Blue Spirit raises one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug and answers:

“It was known.”

A beat.

“… Right. Weird spirity stuff.” The boy looks disgruntled, both at the Blue Spirit’s non-answer and the idea of… ‘spirity stuff’.

“Hey, wait,” the Avatar pipes up, leaning forward with eager eyes and a furrowed brow. “If you’re a spirit, then how did you get hurt by that arrow?”

Here, the Blue Spirit pauses. It tilts its head back and forth, pondering. There are many truths that would suffice, but which will work best here?

Ah, yes. Begin, and then end. Then begin anew.

“To touch flesh and do no harm, to not possess or corrupt, one must be flesh. That is known.” It says this firmly, not only because it is true, but because the Avatar should’ve been taught this, for the unwillingly possessed fall under his jurisdiction. It is, however, not the only reason. “But, too… We were younger, then. Unknowing. Prideful. Unrelenting and Ever Foolish. Agni’s light illuminates us now, but it has not always done so.”

(Though the Avatar, the Bridge-Between-Worlds, That Which Dies And Lives And Dies, would catch it, the flighty little mortal child that holds the Avatar’s soul does not. Nor do the children of the Water Tribe.

What speaks first is the Blue Spirit, as it once and never again was. Sage and knowledgeable, as all spirits are. What continues is not. What speaks last is what the Blue Spirit once never was and now always will be, a lifetime of lifetimes breaching the surface of all there is to the being that is the Blue Spirit.)

“Who the heck is Agni? Better yet, who are you?” The Water Tribe boy blurts out. He seems to have found no enlightenment in the words given to him, but one cannot force closed ears to listen.

Benders revere the spirits, for they believe that their bending is dependent on the Great Spirits’ whims.

(It is. But it isn’t.)

Non-benders, on the other hand, fall on a spectrum that ranges from skeptical to superstitious.

No mortal—bender or otherwise—bothers to learn the name of the spirits that do not guide them, those who are not of their element. After all, what does a waterbender care of Agni’s Tricks, or an earthbender of Tengri’s Mandates? A firebender cares as little for Oma and Shu’s Chorus as an airbender does Tui and La’s Eternal Dance. Lucky then—if it could be called luck—that the Blue Spirit, though one of Agni’s favored, is bound by no element.

“Agni is all that is. This one is the Blue Spirit,” it answers. And then, with something—someone, who never was—egging it on, it continues: “We are the Mask and the Dao, and we hold Agni’s favor.”

“Agni is all fire, Agni is all life,” the Avatar sings with a small smile. The words have the rhythm of a child’s memorized verse. “Their light shines on all, Agni of the endless mischief. Gyatso told me that some of the monks made offerings to Agni because they grant boons for clever tricks.”

The Water Tribe boy tilts his head back pensively, squinting unknowingly up into Agni’s light and love and regard. “Okay, so that’s actually pretty cool.”

The girl, though, is frowning as she thinks. After a moment, she looks up with narrowed eyes, suspicion writ into the shape and lines of her face.

“The blue spirit…? That’s not a Water Tribe spirit or an Earth Kingdom spirit.” The girl so says decisively, as though she speaks the truth into existence. “And I doubt you’re an Air Nomad spirit, either.”

The Avatar hums, twists, a boy trying to recall a lesson long past.

“Weeeell, Gyatso always said that Spirits don’t really belong to one place or nation, so even though Agni’s mainly fire-aligned—Katara, don’t!”

The girl has leapt to her feet, pulling forth a curve of water that she shapes into something that is both sword and shield. Her eyes blaze, tumultuous as any typhoon.

The Blue Spirit does not move, merely observes. Even with an ocean’s fury in her eyes, the girl is of no threat.

She is plenty full of them, however.

“A Fire Nation spirit?! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just—”

“Maybe because, like you said, it’s a spirit?” The boy—her… brother? There is something soft and pained there, that the Blue Spirit can not, will not touch. Not now.—her brother cuts her off sharply. “C’mon Katara, I know Gran Gran taught you better than that.”

The girl huffs, as though impatient or derisive or hearing no sense in her brother’s words.

“Gran Gran did teach me to respect the spirits,” she admits with a flip of her hair. The movement allows her to angle her head just so, high and haughty and sneering down at the Blue Spirit. “But any specter of the Fire Nation doesn’t deserve even that!”

Ho ho, bold words!

Malice and scorn, to call that which has always been a spirit something so base and ephemeral as a specter. Bold words, indeed. That will likely get her into trouble some day.

“Katara!” The Avatar looks horrified, looks panicked, knows then what the others do not. Knows, then, the power in calling things. “Sokka’s right, okay? I know you don’t like the Fire Nation, but the Blue Spirit isn’t just a Spirit—he’s a Great Named Spirit, which makes him really, really strong so please please please don’t make him angry!”

The girl—she makes a noise. What is the word? Ah, yes.—The girl scoffs. “If it tries anything, I’ll just—”

“Could you stop talking about him like he attacked us or something? You’re the one being all aggressive, Katara!”

“Sokka, it’s a Fire Nation spirit—”

Venom, there. Hurt that has festered into hate.

“We all heard Aang the first time, sis—”

Exasperation. Pleading. Resignation.

“—don’t know why you’re acting like it’s our friend—”

“—saved Aang from that jerk Admiral, and you’re trying to goad him into a fight—”

“—They killed mom! Why can’t you—”

“—You can’t attack spirits for what humans did, Katara—”

“—can’t believe my own brother would—”

“—what would Gran Gran say? What would Dad say—?”

If You Are Quite Finished?

Silence, abrupt and all the more chilling.

The girl looks spooked, looks like a tangle of emotions that provide a sharp contrast and welcome relief from her earlier antipathy, her loathing. She has not fallen too deeply into the Face Stealer’s Dark, then. She might even be able to climb her way out without choking on it. The Water Tribe boy looks unnerved, and by more than just the Blue Spirit. The Bridge-Between-Worlds, Spirit-Of-One-And-Many-Names—uncharacteristically silent through the argument—shudders.

The Blue Spirit unfolds its arms and steps forward, uninterested in the way the two humans scramble for their weapons, hastily pull themselves back into their cloaks of bluster and aggression.

Drawing again upon its Voice, the Blue Spirit hums.

“You seek a teacher,” it muses. “To hear and feel the earth.”

The Avatar nods mechanically, eyes wide and mouth still unmoving.

“Oma and Shu welcome all travelers, but Earth is neither the Water nor the Air.” The Blue Spirit advises. “You must be sure not to… step on any toes.”

More nodding. How strange, how useful! To have once been another, to have words gain new layers and meaning. Now the Blue Spirit is free to measure its words, string its sounds together and make its intentions comprehensible. Much easier than relying on portents and reading ashes and embers.

Exhausting all the same, however. An irony in that, surely?

The Blue Spirit shakes its head, and begins to turn away. Many more things need be done, the Avatar’s interpersonal issues aside.

“I do not want to see you again, Avatar,” the Blue Spirit warns.

If the Water Tribe children once more bristle, this time at the perceived slight against their companion, the Blue Spirit has already departed—edges bleeding into fragments, bleeding into nothing and everything dispersed—and does not see it.

Time passes, as is its wont, and the Blue Spirit progresses slowly from plan to action. It visits many a burned forest and ransacked town to coax life back into what yet remains. Bodies are laid to rest and souls are soothed, for the last thing the Face Stealer needs is an army of the vengeful dead.

Soon, sprites and wisps reappear, peeking out of the Spirit Realm and into the land of mortal things to see who is responsible for so many tiny changes. Then come the larger spirits, those with more defined identities, warrior-poets and weaponless swordsmasters.

Word spreads. Word becomes Word and propagates through space and time.

When asked, the Blue Spirit is glad to explain its reasoning to any willing to listen. The Blue Spirit itself cannot and will not fight that Dark Adversary. It has neither the power nor the means of safely gaining said power. There is death, pain, hurt, and anger in the mortal realm. This is known. The Blue Spirit can see the ripples of cause and effect, the symptoms and the illness.

It cannot get to the root of the problem, so it will do what it can above ground, so to speak.

Why not put aside the bigger picture, and focus on the now and here, that which is tangible? Its actions do nothing against Ozai or his army, but the slow bloom of flowers and the patient creep of saplings cannot be called a mistake.

The old man calls again. This is neither new nor unexpected; he has called upon the Blue Spirit ever since the first: to talk, to sit in silence, to play slow games of pai sho and watch the horizon until the last light of the sun melts away.

It is a company that the Blue Spirit had never thought of having, something fragile but welcome.

The Old Dragon calls, and the Blue Spirit answers, unfolding into the plane of three dimensions with the effortlessness borne of routine.

The second human is a surprise.

Old Dragon, the Blue Spirit greets with a nod, regarding the second human with eyes that do not see.

A smaller human, thin and coltish in the way of the adolescent. A firm, rooted stance: an Earthbender. Fine cloth that means money but bare, dirt-smudged feet that do not.

“I am glad that you are here,” the Old Dragon says, with a small smile. There, on the table, is the usual pot of tea. The Pai Sho board is near the window. There is a bonsai sitting content in the path of the sun’s beams. It is a sight familiar, a sight known, but for the addition of a third.

The old man clears his throat and gestures to the new human. “This is Toph B—”

“Name’s Toph,” the smaller human interrupts, flat like earth and blunt like rock.

“We have a mutual acquaintance,” the Old Dragon explains, glib and unbothered. His hands are folded over his stomach as though that does anything to hide the clear satisfaction radiating off of him.

This One Is The Blue Spirit, it offers humble and distant. An acquaintance of the Old Dragon surely merits a measure of respect, but even now the Blue Spirit has little interest in the going-ons of mortals.

The three of them gather around the low table, sitting in silence as the tea is poured.

What Word Have You? The Blue Spirit asks, once the old man has taken a deep sip of tea. The Blue Spirit interferes not with human affairs, but even in passing does information flow freely from loose lips.

“News coming out of Ba Sing Se is grave,” the old man replies, frowning. “There is not only the matter of the Dai Li, but moreover…”

A pause that stretches into a silence. The Blue Spirit waits, but there are no further words.

“Some crazy chick deposed the king, is what I heard,” Toph leans back, throwing the words out almost carelessly. Her own feet betray her, though, the way she roots herself to catch the minute shifts of their reactions.

Oh?

“Yeah, she and her goons took the palace.” Toph digs into one ear with her pinky and then flicks the detritus away. “Kicked out the Avatar and everything.”

(That Does Not Take Much, the Blue Spirit nearly intones, but it ultimately restrains itself.)

The two humans give more information: the Dai Li prowl across rooftops where Fire Nation soldiers stalk the streets. Movement within the city is heavily monitored and restricted, to say nothing of trying to leave. The Avatar is likely in the area, still in need of an Earth-bending instructor.

The only “good” news that can be said is that Ozai has yet to enter battle himself.

And, of course, where there is good news, the bad news follows.

“Mmm,” the Old Dragon hums, then clears his throat. He sets his cup of tea down with a pointed clack of ceramic against wood. Toph, explaining to the Blue Spirit the intricacies of Earth Rumble and the most exciting upcoming matches, falls quiet.

The Blue Spirit waits. Toph waits. Yet another pause stretched into silence.

“It is my niece,” the Old Dragon confesses, voice low and heavy. “I fear that her father has ordered her to conquer the Earth Kingdom. And though young, she is nothing if not efficient.”

“Your niece?” Toph parrots, head tilted.

The old man looks burdened, looks as though the world is clawing at his feet, dragging him down.

“Yes,” he answers. He still has not lifted his gaze from the tea cup on the table.

“Her name is—”

(my niece, he says, and the Blue Spirit can see nothing but blue flame and the arc of lightning. Can hear nothing but poison-sweet words, cloying and applied skillfully like a blade to the throat. Eyes narrowed in calculation, in a vicious kind of glee. Deft fingers that distract while a forceful blow comes from below—

It can think of nothing, can hardly think at all, can only hear and see and taste and smell one thing, and that one thing is—

is—

she—)

The Blue Spirit has no voice, but its throat is tight and dry. It has no heart, but can hardly hear for the deep thrumming in its head, scrambling its meager thoughts. Words spill forth without thought, hoarse and intent, too strong and too soft all at once.

“—Dragon-Sister.”