Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Water was a symbol of change, the embodiment of flow and constant movement. As tides moved under the wane and wax of the moon, so did the energy that surrounded it, life itself, and the enrichment of the planet. In order to manipulate such an element to your own will, you had to first understand that waterbending was not a force to move water, but to harness its natural flow to your advantage.

Hyunjin had no such understanding of these prospects.

He had been standing on the icy shore for far longer than he’d care to admit, hidden around a corner, arms straining from effort. And if the sneaking around wasn’t shameful enough, all he had managed to achieve in his strain was one lousy ball of water.

It wasn’t even a big ball of water. His personal record was about a twenty-inch circumference, but this current version was barely even the size of his palm. It hovered in the air between his hands, as his fingers trembled, and continued to drip more of its mass onto the ice below.

This was dangerous, somehow. Doing things like this had gotten most of their tribe killed, though Hyunjin couldn't imagine why, glaring at the weak product of his abilities. In the grand scheme of things, it was the smarter choice to not practice bending at all, lest you become stronger and therefore a potential threat to the Fire Navy. Seungmin had made it explicitly clear, Hyunjin should lock away his bending for the good of the tribe.

But what did he know, anyway? He wasn’t the boss around here.

Granted, neither was Hyunjin.

“Hyung!” The familiar voice cut through the mellow burbling of the water ball and the whistle of wind over the snow. Hyunjin flitted his gaze to the side, and sure enough he spotted Jeongin, trudging through the snow, all bundled up in his coats of leather and fur.

At the loss of Hyunjin’s focus, his water ball lost its form completely and promptly splashed onto the ice at his feet. He stared down at his now-damp shoes and sighed. “Yes?”

From the expression on his friend’s face, you might have thought he had just been caught with a dead body.

“Seungmin–” Jeongin huffed. “He’s gonna kill you if he finds you doing your magical stuff–”

“It’s not magic. It’s waterbending.”

At the forbidden word, the younger boy stole a wary glance at the distant horizon. When no Fire Navy ship made its entrance to burn them both alive, he grunted. “It seems like magic to me.”

“That’s because we’re not–” Hyunjin stopped to stuff his hands into his pockets. There wasn’t much point in finishing that sentence.

Jeongin did it anyway. “Not surrounded by other waterbenders?”

“Well, we all know that,” Hyunjin gritted out.

“Right.” Jeongin pointedly avoided his eyes. “Sorry.”

It was common knowledge, for a very good reason, that waterbending was dangerous to practise. If all the deaths and captures were anything to go off of, anyway. Everyone in Hyunjin’s vicinity had made it abundantly clear that he was not to expose himself. If news of a last remaining southern waterbender reached the Fire Nation, their entire tribe could be wiped out before the moon even had a chance to rise.

While Hyunjin pulled on his hood to swaddle his head in the warm fur lining, Jeongin gestured with a gloved hand in the direction he had come from. “I was actually looking for you. Seungmin’s just over there, preparing the canoe for a hunt. You wanna come with?”

Hyunjin must have looked against the idea, so Jeongin quickly tacked on; “it’s a pretty secluded area. You could waterbend the fish out of the river for us?”

At the very same time, both their faces lit up with matching grins. All it took was a nod, and Jeongin led the way back through the snow toward their friend.

They made their way across the bend of land to reach the stretch where the boat was moored, and sure enough Seungmin was waiting for them on its bench seats. He looked up from the spear he was sharpening and smiled at them, before motioning for them to climb aboard. Then he used the blunt end of the weapon to push them from the snowy shore and out into the narrow ribbon of icy blue.

It was a well-practised task, on a very regular day. Hyunjin’s future self would laugh at him for ever thinking of this day as ‘regular’ at all.

Far too many minutes of tense silence passed as they drifted with the lazy current. All of them spent the time staring into the blue, watching for movement. Seungmin broke that silence with a sudden stab into the river, followed by a curse under his breath.

Jeongin and Hyunjin blinked at his empty spear.

“You’re half blind, you know,’ Jeongin quipped. “If you’re gonna catch a fish, you should stick your face really close to the water.”

Seungmin eyed him up for a moment. “You should try that too.”

“But my eyesight is fine– Hey! That’s just some sick trick so you can push me overboard.”

Seungmin shook his head, but he was poorly hiding a smirk. “I would never do something like that…” He stabbed the water again, and successfully decapitated a block of ice.

Jeongin scoffed. “That was not a fish.”

“I noticed,” Seungmin snapped.

Hyunjin, left to his own devices whilst the other two bickered over the values of different fishing techniques, had pulled off his gloves and begun to mould the water around a nearby fish into a warbling ball. Slowly, steadily, he lifted it from the river and into the air. It was the same technique he always used when Seungmin wasn’t looking. The other boy liked to hush waterbending for the sake of their safety, but Hyunjin knew he secretly appreciated the helpful skill when they needed a good catch to fill their bellies. Contradiction or not, as long as he was careful, his friend would let it slide.

It took a great deal of focus to move the floating fish over to the canoe, and the animal made it no easier as it tried in vain to swim outside the confines of the bubble. To Hyunjin’s left, Seungmin was readying his spear for another attack.

“Seungmin, look!”

“Shhh, Jeongin. You’re gonna scare this one away.” The non-bender licked his lips. “I can already smell it cooking.”

“But, hyung, he caught one.”

“Not yet,” Hyunjin muttered. Just a few more seconds, and this fish could be dropped into the boat. If he focused–

Seungmin reared his spear back for a strike just in time to smack the fish from its bubble. It soared over them and landed back in the river, but the water bubble, knocked from Hyunjin’s control, splashed onto Seungmin’s head and shoulders.

“Ah!” He made a dramatic show of hurriedly wiping away the water before it could freeze. Then he turned to Hyunjin with a look of pure exasperation. “Why is it that every time you play with magic water, I get soaked?”

Now, that wasn’t true. Last week’s incident had technically been Seungmin’s fault when he snuck up on Hyunjin. Throwing the water at his face was purely instinctual self-defense. And the week before that was a simple knock of the elbow, messing up Hyunjin’s form enough to topple them both into the river. They had both gotten soaked that time, but Hyunjin had still been a little bit proud of capsizing a boat all on his own.

“It’s not magic,” he corrected, for the second time that day. “It’s waterbending, and it’s–”

“Yeah, yeah. An ancient art unique to our culture, or whatever…” He stuck out his tongue. “Look, I’m just saying that if I had weird powers, I’d keep them to myself.”

“Hyungs,” Jeongin groaned.

“You’re calling me weird?” Hyunjin snapped. “I’m not the one who can’t tell the difference between a fish and a literal block of ice.”

“Ugh, again with the eyesight slander…”

“Plus, I actually caught one!”

Seungmin threw up his arms. “I know! And it’s helpful, sometimes, but you got me all wet and–”

The boat jolted.

The three of them froze, silenced at last, long enough for Seungmin to glance around at their surroundings. When he gathered his bearings, he turned almost as white as the surrounding snow.

“Shit, I, uh. Shit.” He dropped his spear by his feet, picked up one of the oars, and when the boat jolted again he spat out a series of incomprehensible curses.

Now that Hyunjin was looking around too, this area was completely alien to him.

The boat began to pick up speed, passing their comfortable drifting pace, and went on to carry on down the quickening current. Icy walls rose up on either side of them, an unchartered ravine, and all three boys shouted in alarm.

“How did we–” Jeongin started.

“Where the hell are we?” Hyunjin yelled.

Seungmin plunged his oar into the water. “I forgot to steer!”

“What do you mean, you–!”

They raced with the speeding water currents, all of them shouting and clinging for purchase to the sides of the boat. They were sent rushing down the river and into the treacherous rapids. Nearing the ocean, the waves were pulling them out to sea.

“Rapids!” Seungmin shouted over the roar of the water. He tossed the second oar to Jeongin, who only just caught it before it could fall overboard. “Help me steer, little one!”

Feeling utterly helpless, Hyunjin flattened himself to the boat’s floor. There wasn’t much he could hope to do against a rapid current, never mind icebergs twice the size of the three of them combined.

Jeongin and Seungmin were shouting directions at each other, dodging the smaller icebergs as they sped past them. One wrong move and they would be crushed, but Hyunjin still couldn’t find it in himself to look over the edge of the boat. If they hit something, he’d have no warning for the impact that might kill them all.

Spirits, if this was how he died–

“Seungmin, that one’s too big to dodge!”

“We can make it!”

Head ducked, hands over his ears, Hyunjin yelled, “no, we can’t!”

“Shit shit shit– Jump!”

Seungmin’s shout was all the warning Hyunjin had before he was being hauled to his feet by his armpits and thrown from the canoe. He landed hard on his shoulder, a sharp jolt of pain as he hit the ice. Two more dull thuds landed beside him as his friends tumbled out of the boat, and then a sickening crunch filled their ears. They only had to glance up from where they lay to see their boat crushed between jagged walls of ice.

Hyunjin’s first thought? That could have been us.

He sat up, aggravated. “How the hell do you forget to steer?”

“You don’t like my steering,” Seungmin started. He grunted and rolled over to sit up too. “Well, maybe you could have waterbended us out of the ice.”

Unbelievable. Hyunjin scoffed. “So, it’s my fault?”

“It’s not ‘your fault’, you just didn’t do anything when we were in trouble!”

“I was trying not to die!”

“So were we!”

Hyunjin only held back his next remark because Jeongin sprung to his feet and shoved them both with a scowl. “Stop fighting. We’re stuck out here already, and we can’t take any of it back.” He huffed and placed his hands on his hips. “So, what now?”

Indeed, what now.

Seungmin and Hyunjin tentatively rose to their feet too, and together they all took in their surroundings in detail. The only reason they were no longer being swept along with the current was thanks to being pushed into a sort of alcove to the side of the river. Here, the walls of ice rose up high around them, radiant blue and surely older than they were. Their canoe was wedged in a thin gap in the walls, torn and broken beyond repair. The only way out of this place would be to swim… or try their luck scaling the cliffs of ice.

There was something off about this place. Something was askew, an eerie stillness, as if the clearing itself was sleeping.

There was something in the water. Or, within the ice. Hyunjin had no idea how he knew, but he could feel a difference. A presence, perhaps. Something was trapped, and it had been for a very, very long long time.

Jeongin and Seungmin were speaking, discussing their best route out, but Hyunjin barely heard them. He crouched by the edge of the ice sheet they were on and his hand, still ungloved, he plunged it into the frigid water.

Immediately, he took note of the way his skin tingled and fizzed; arctic water was not supposed to feel like that. Bubbles collected where his hand met the liquid, blurring the surface of the skin. Strangest of all, it wasn’t all that cold. By now, the temptation to wrench his arm away should have been overwhelming, but Hyunjin stayed. He stared at the water, fascinated, and watched as it began to tremble.

Seungmin stopped halfway through explaining a possible route up the nearest ice wall when Jeongin frantically nudged his shoulder. They both crouched down like Hyunjin had, lowering their centres of gravity, as the ice sheet below them swayed and shifted atop the water.

The water shivered, as if reacting to the cold. The ice walls creaked as something within them disturbed their age-old tranquility. A deep humming rose up from the depths and Hyunjin could feel it, rather than hear it, as it thundered through his bones.

He could only whisper his revelation.

“We’re not alone.”

The final split was near deafening. Where their canoe had wedged itself in the cracked cliffs of ice, the fracture expanded like lightning, snapping mile-thick layers of frozen wasteland in a complete collapse of structure. Sections of the cliffside plummeted to the water below, sending waves rolling outwards, and the boys yelled and screamed as they were pushed to the edge of the ravine, clinging to their iceberg as they went.

They would have hit the wall too, if it weren’t for Hyunjin sweeping his hands in front of them with a wild flourish that slowed the ice right down to a standstill.

He clutched his chest, body heaving from either adrenaline or exertion. Perhaps, both. The world stopped falling apart, the water sloshed around quietly, and all three water tribe boys took a good moment to catch their breath.

“Okay, Hyunjin,” Seungmin wheezed. “You’ve gone from weird to freakish.”

Hyunjin didn’t even have it in him to bite back at that. Instead, he stared at the damage around them. “You mean, I did that?”

“Yep. Congratulations. Maybe with all that power you can defeat the Fire Nation.”

“Ha-ha. Real funny.”

Jeongin, who had curled himself up by Hyunjin’s side, propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the water below. His eyes grew wide as saucers, and in the reflection of brilliant blue within them, a light grew brighter by the second.

Hyunjin and Seungmin whirled around to see it.

The glow came from the depths of the ocean below them, and as it rose it grew far brighter than any fire that the tyrant nation themselves could ever spark. It illuminated the water around it and the cliffsides of the ravine, and the three boys watched transfixed as it rose from the surface, a gigantic orb of solid ice. Encapsulated deep within its frozen walls were two otherworldly figures; the suspended shape of a great beast and the fragile silhouette of a boy.

The light seared into Hyunjin’s eyes with such intensity, he feared that when he tore his eyes away he would have that image printed onto the backs of his eyelids. Reaching blindly for something to keep him steady, his hand found the fabric of Seungmin’s coat and he gripped it tight.

Still, he could not look away.

The boy, the figure in the ice, was frozen in some sort of meditative position. His legs were crossed neatly, his eyes were closed, and his hands balled into fists touched together at the knuckles, over his chest. There were distinct markings on his body; arrows made of the same blue glow pointed down his arms and wound up and over his skull to sit in one arrowhead above his brows. His clothes, though silhouetted by the harsh light, were nothing like Hyunjin had ever seen before.

The boy’s eyes, once peacefully closed in meditation, opened in an instant.

“Woah, shit!” Seungmin yelled. “Why are his eyes glowing? That’s–”

“The Avatar state?” Jeongin quipped.

“No! No.” Sobering up from his fright, Seungmin resolutely shook his head. “Look, we’re on our own. The Avatar doesn’t exist anymore, okay? It hasn’t for a hundred years.”

“Then whadd’ya call that?”

“Some freaky witch shit!”

“Avatar or not, he’s alive.” Hyunjin snatched Seungmin’s bladed club right from his friend’s belt and was out of reach before anyone could think to stop him. He navigated his way across the wreckage, leaping from one block of ice to another, approaching the glowing sphere.

“Hyung, get back here!” Jeongin called. “That thing is dangerous!”

The boy in the ice almost seemed to stare directly at Hyunjin as he got closer, boring into him with pupil-less eyes of pure blue. He huffed and kept going. “How do we know it’s dangerous, anyway?”

“It’s glowing?” Seungmin provided, like Hyunjin was some kind of idiot. “Things don’t just glow. It’s unnatural!”

“You’re unnatural.”

“What– Ugh.” There was a pause, in which Hyunjin finally reached the platform of ice around the sphere, and then Seungmin followed after him and ushered Jeongin to do the same. “Careful, don’t slip. These things aren’t fastened.”

Hyunjin was now hacking at the iceberg’s surface, taking wild swings and connecting the blow with a loud ‘crack’ each time. On the point of damage, a fracture began to wind its way up the curve of the orb.

Seungmin helped Jeongin onto the platform and then stared at Hyunjin with increasing concern. “Hyunjin, you’re gonna break it.”

“Yep, that’s the point.”

“He’s looking at me,” Jeongin said.

“He can’t look at you,” Seungmin assured him. “The dude’s frozen solid. Hey– Hyunjin? Are we one hundred percent sure, we wanna break him out? See, I’m thinking that maybe he’s frozen for a reason.”

That’s five hits, Hyunjin thought with the sixth swing. Now six, seven… eight! His club made contact with the weak point he had created, and the thick ice split upon impact. The fracture wound its way completely through the surface, travelling up and over out of their sight. Up, up, up, until the iceberg crumbled and a beam of blinding blue light shot directly into the sky. It bore an aurora as it hit the atmosphere, a declaration to the world that a being of ancient power had made his way back to them, that he had broken from his arctic prison.

— — —

Miles away, upon a Fire Nation war ship, a prince was watching the beam of light as it torched the skies. His face was showered in blue for a matter of seconds, and with a recognition that he felt in the core of his soul, his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Finally.”

He had to shake off the nerves skittering across his skin before he turned, stiffly, to the man sitting behind him. “Uncle, do you realise what this means?”

“I won’t get to finish my game?”

The prince grinned. It was the kind of grin that came with relief, and it should have been a wholesome expression, but it was unnerving all the same. It means… my search has finally come to an end.”

His uncle sighed, and placed a card onto the table before him.

“That light came from an incredibly powerful source,” the prince continued, beginning to pace as he sorted his thoughts. “It has to be him, right? That kind of glow, it’s what’s mentioned in the texts. It can’t just be another spirit, but if it is another spirit then I swear to Agni, I’m gonna strangle the next person I see. I’ll do it, I swear–” He spun, shutting his mouth with a click of his teeth, and stared wide-eyed at his uncle.
The man blinked, and looked past the prince’s shoulder to the aurora left by the beam. “Or… it’s just the celestial lights.”

“You’re kidding. We saw the giant beam of light.”

“We’ve been down this road before, Prince Minho. I don’t want you to get excited over nothing.” With careful movements that only someone bored out of their mind could possess, he placed a card that bestowed the Air Nomad spirals on top of a Fire Nation card. “Please, sit. Why don’t you come and enjoy a nice cup of calming jasmine tea?”

The prince’s eyes, if possible, grew ever wider. “I don’t need any calming tea,” he gritted out. I need… to capture… the Avatar!”

No calming tea? The man shook his head with a sigh. If anyone needed calming tea, it was this boy.

“Helmsman!” The prince pointed an arm to the bow of the ship, strong and sure. “Head a course for the light!”

— — —

Back at the source of the explosion, the three Water Tribe boys were flat out on their backs for the third time that afternoon. Hyunjin was the first to get to his feet, and he helped the others, then they hugged each other against the wind and the light erupting from the ice crater like smoke after a bomb.

Two hands reached over the frozen edge, and the boy, still bathed in the light from his arrows, pulled himself up to stand teetering on the thin lip of the crater. His arrows dulled, then faded, his eyes closed, and he collapsed, falling forward off the side.

Hyunjin broke from the others to catch him, without a second thought for what he was doing, and the boy tumbled down the smooth ice into his arms, landing heavily with all his limp dead weight. Hyunjin cradled his head and felt for his pulse, and for a moment there was not a single bit of sensation under his fingers. A horrifying few seconds, until a steady beat drummed under the boy’s skin.

One of the oars from their destroyed canoe appeared out of nowhere when Seungmin, who had apparently fished the thing out of the water, began to poke at the unconscious boy like you would a dead animal.

Hyunjin pulled him out of reach and scowled at Seungmin. “Stop– Jeez, can you give him some space?”

Jeongin snatched the oar from Seungmin, who raised his hands in surrender. “Just checking for life, is all.”

“He’s alive,” Hyunjin confirmed with a huff. “I felt his pulse, he’s definitely alive, but… I don’t know. He might not even wake up.”

“Coma?” Jeongin suggested.

Hyunjin shrugged. “Maybe.”

Seungmin and Jeongin watched as Hyunjin moved to prop the mysterious kid up against the ice. Getting a good look at him now, in easier lighting, his face was dotted all over with little speckles; as if someone had taken a paintbrush and flicked the contents in a well-arranged map over his nose and cheeks. His hair was a shock of silky golden white, a colour more suited for a polarbear-dog than a human head.

Hyunjin waved his hand over the stranger’s face in an attempt to wake him. Nothing happened for a good half a minute, until the boy stirred, groaning, and finally opened his eyes.

Everyone held their breath.

He blinked at them; His eyes a stunning silver.

“I need…” he groaned again, and stared at Hyunjin with what could only be fascination. “I need to ask you something.”

Hyunjin sucked air in through his teeth. “Yeah?”

“Come closer…”

Lost for words, Hyunjin did as he was told and leaned in so the weakened boy could whisper in his ear. He expected the same strained voice, but instead heard a rather excited tone ask him, “Do you think we could go penguin sledding?”

What.

Hyunjin leaned back, and frowned. “Uh, sure. I guess?”

“Aw, sweet!”

Instead of hopping to his feet, the boy was pushed to stand by a random gust of wind. Seungmin immediately lowered into a fighting stance, oar at the ready and eyes narrowed to slits.

The boy glanced around at his surroundings with a perplexed frown. “What’s going on here?”

“You tell us,” Seungmin said. “How’d you get in the ice?” He prodded him again. “And why aren’t you frozen? Or dead?”

“I’m not sure,” the boy said with a halfhearted swat at the oar. “I just kind of… I don’t know.”

That was not even close to a satisfactory answer, but there was no time for any more questions, as they were interrupted by a deep growl that rumbled from within the ice crater. Everyone from the Water Tribe took a frightened step back, but the boy scrambled back up to the top from where he’d fallen. He jumped and slid down to reach whatever had made the noise, and let out an excited yelp.

“Bboki! You’re okay!”

“Deep voice for a kid,” Seungmin muttered, to which Hyunjin shrugged.

“Maybe he’s older than he looks?”

Jeongin broke off from the other two and began to make his way around the crater wall, to the gap where it had collapsed and broken off. He gasped loud enough for everyone to hear, once he saw what lay beyond it.

After sharing a look, Hyunjin and Seungmin followed his lead.

“Bboki? Wake up, buddy,” the boy was saying. The creature he was speaking to was unlike anything the three of them had ever seen. With a body the size of a whale, six stocky legs, and horns atop its massive round head, the animal had a thick coat of white fur. It had the same arrow as the boy, pointing down its forehead. Its tail was wide and flat.

When the creature opened its mouth and ran its gigantic tongue up his back in an affectionate lick, the boy laughed. “You’re okay! It’s good to see you, too!”

“Uh, what is that thing?” Seungmin, always asking the important questions.

“He’s Bboki!” the boy said with a grin. “My flying bison!”

“Right,” Seungmin drawled. “And this is Hyunjin, my flying problem.”

“Excuse me?” Hyunjin protested.

The boy cocked his head, absentmindedly stroking the fur of his animal and eyeing them all up. “So… Do you guys live around here?”

Before Jeongin or Hyunjin could open their mouths, Seungmin thrust his oar in the boy’s direction again. “Don’t answer that! Did you see that crazy bolt of light? He was probably trying to signal the Fire Navy.”

“Oh yeah,” Hyunjin scoffed, lacing his words with sarcasm. “I’m sure he’s a deadly spy for the Fire Navy. You can tell by that evil look in his eyes.”

To help sell Hyunjin’s mockery, the boy produced a cute, toothy grin.

Hyunjin sighed. “The paranoid one is my friend, Seungmin. The little one is Jeongin, and I’m Hyunjin– as Seungmin said earlier.” He looked the boy up and down, still getting his bearings on the guy’s appearance. “You never told us your name, though.”
“Oh, I’m Fe–” He stopped, scrunching up his nose. “Fel– ah. Ah…”

He sneezed, and coincidentally shot himself high up into the air. Where one would expect a person to land back on the ice with a smack and perhaps a broken bone, he floated right back down to land soundly on his feet. He wiped a finger under his nose. “I’m Felix.”

No one said a word about the weird name. There were much greater things to freak out about.

“You just sneezed,” Seungmin said, “and flew ten feet in the air.”

“Really?” the boy called Felix asked, with a glance upward to where he had been. “It felt higher than that.”

Someone landed a loud stomp to the ice below them.

“You’re– you’re an airbender!” Jeongin gasped.

He couldn’t be.

Felix shrugged. “Sure am.”

They all stared at him.

“Okay just to be sure,” Seungmind said. “Correct me if I’m crazy, but airbenders– We haven't seen one since– I mean, I’ve certainly never…” He stopped, if anything for the empty look Felix was giving him. The guy really didn’t know, did he? Just how long had he been stuck in that ice?

“Since?” Felix shook his head. “You’re talking about the Comet Festival, right? All Air Nomads like to gather on that day, so you won’t see many of us around.”

He was saying all of this like it was casual. Like not seeing an Air Nomad was nothing to cause alarm.

“Sure,” Seungmin said, a shake in his voice. “Technically, that is correct. Maybe just not in the way you think.”

Seungmin then turned around to Jeongin and Hyunjin so he could very obviously mouth ‘what the actual flying fuck’ at them. The airbender boy, none the wiser, cocked his head at them.

“What?”

“Seungmin!” Hyunjin marched over to clamp his hands over the airbender’s ears. He sighed at Seungmin as Felix squirmed under his palms. “Wrong time. Wrong place. We should at least take him back to the village first.”

“Yeah, back to the village,” Jeongin grouched. “On our non-existent boat.”

Oh shit, yeah.

Felix wriggled out of Hyunjin’s grip and bounded over to the massive beast he called ‘Bboki’. With a hop and a leap, he scaled the height of the creature in seconds. “Well, if you guys are stuck, Bboki and I could give you a lift.”

Indeed, the bison’s horns were laced with crisscrossed reigns, and a walled saddle large enough for a small family was strapped onto its back. Why a boy their age had possession of an animal fit to transport large groups of people, Hyunjin didn’t have a clue. Was this… culture shock?

Without so much as a second of hesitation, Jeongin was scaling Bboki’s side, where Felix reached down and pulled him up onto the saddle. Hyunjin figured, ‘fuck, why not’, and looked to Seungmin with a shrug.

“I mean, we’d love a ride.”

“Oh no,” Seungmin said. He crossed his arms with a grimace. “I am not getting on some weird fluffy monster.”

But, Hyunjin was already halfway up. “Are you hoping,” he called over his shoulder, “that some other kind of monster will come along and give you a ride home? Before you freeze to death?”

About half a minute later, all of them were sitting in the saddle with their hands grasping for purchase and their backs against the raised walls. The airbender, however, simply sat himself on the bison’s head and grabbed ahold of the reins. He had no protection or straps, but Hyunjin supposed he didn’t need any. In the event that he fell, he could just airbend himself right back up to safety.

“Alright, first-time flyers,” Felix called back to them, “hold on tight!”

Jeongin met Hyunjin’s eyes with a very wide, very nervous grin.

The airbender flicked the reins. “Bboki, yip yip!”

With his rider’s command, the sky bison lifted its tail in a wave of movement that had the air around them swirling in a quick pick-up of speed. As the tail made its descent, the force of it pushed them upwards, and the great beast leapt into the sky to take flight. Seungmin gripped the walls of the saddle like a lifeline, and Hyunjin let out a very dignified squawk. They sailed above the water’s surface for a short distance, before the bison dipped in the air and eventually settled its massive body in the water, deciding instead to swim.

The airbender glanced over his shoulder with a perplexed frown. He flicked the reins again. “Come on, Bboki. Yip yip?”

“Wow,” Seungmin muttered from the floor of the saddle. “That was truly amazing.”

Felix, probably highly experienced in the face of sarcasm, took no visible offense to the jab.

“Bboki’s just tired,” he explained. “A little rest and he’ll be soaring through the sky. You’ll see.” He paused to roll his shoulders, groaning a little as he did so. “Speaking of, I’m feeling a little stiff, too. How long were we knocked out, anyway?”

“Well…” Hyunjin looked to the others, who only winced and shrugged. “We don’t really know. Days, maybe? Years?”

That had been a wild guess on Hyunjin’s part, but Felix laughed like it was some well-delivered joke.

“Ha! Yeah, I bet!” He turned to them with an expectant grin. “Now, which way is your village?”

Sky bison, like the avatar, had not been seen for a hundred years; gone for so long that they had become mere mythology. They were said to be the original airbenders, and the very creatures that taught humans how to control the wind. Bboki had no wings, but his species could achieve flight using simple airbending alone. How such massive animals could become airborne in seconds and sustain flight as they were said to do, people of the Water Tribes had no idea.

— — —

“Prince Minho, you need some sleep.”

The prince’s uncle had found him standing out on the deck in the cold wind, hands clasped behind his back, still in his sleepwear. He did not turn at the voice, but his shoulders slumped a little, if anything in anticipation of the oncoming lecture.

“Even if you’re right,” his uncle told him, “and the Avatar is alive, you won’t find him.”

The prince flinched at the sudden bluntness.

“Your father,” his uncle said, “your grandfather, and even your great grandfather all tried and failed.”

Prince Minho sighed. “Yeah. Because, it was all just a fun little hunt for them. Their honour didn’t hinge on the Avatar’s capture. Mine does.” He turned with an incredulous scowl. “You know that. This coward’s hundred years in hiding are over.”

“You say that, but have you considered how old and experienced our current Avatar might be? My prince, we could be facing off with a fully realised master of all elements. As an airbender, he could be twice your size and terribly skilled at evasion. It would be akin to catching a fish in rapid water. A fish, with very large teeth.”

“We know he’s skilled in evasion,” the prince reminded him. “But, I don’t have a choice. This is what decides whether or not I can return home. I can’t…” He swallowed, and it moved down his throat like a rock, heavy and rough. “I can’t afford to lose.”

— — —

Night fell quickly on the snowy tundra which housed the Southern Water Tribe. The golden light of the setting sun stretched across the icy reflective landscape, bleeding to blue as the moon took its place in the sky. Only when the light had faded into dusk did the odd group of boys reach the village.

As a precaution to not scare the people, the sky bison was parked beyond a small hill outside the village walls, where he would explore his surroundings and await his Air Nomad’s call. Hyunjin insisted, as they made their way past the gates and in between the huts, that Felix would be given a full examination from the village elders for any damage to his health. This only earned him some very exasperated looks from Felix, who clearly had no idea to the extent of time he had spent frozen solid under the sea.

The tribe was winding down and readying themselves for bed, but the elders were never ones to close their doors at any time, should you need them. Hyunjin, Seungmin, and Jeongin strode into their hut with Felix in tow, and the old ladies only looked up from their cups of tea with not an ounce of judgement on any of their faces. They rose from the floor and circled Felix like he was an artifact to be observed at all angles. Hyunjin’s grandmother touched her hand to the airbender’s face. Seungmin’s great aunt felt the fabric of the stranger’s clothes between her fingers.

“We’ll make sure he’s cared for. You may see him in the morning.”

That was all the information they were afforded before being ushered out of the hut.

“A hundred years,” Seungmin said from his bed of furs, pulling off his boots as he spoke. “He’s been in that ice for a hundred years.”

Jeongin yawned into his sleeve. “How do you know?”

“The sky bison is one thing, but the Comet Festival?” Seungmin’s eyes were wide. “He mentioned that the last time we would have seen any airbenders was before the Comet Festival. That they gathered together on that day.”

Hyunjin froze, midway through tucking himself into his blankets, and let out a quiet gasp. “Sozin’s comet.”

“Yes,” Seungmin said. “That was a hundred years ago. Almost exactly.” He started to gesture wildly with his hands. “It was also the day that Fire Lord Sozin led his army to destroy every Air Temple on the map. No Air Nomad was left alive. You guys know the history.”

Just a few months off from the hundred year mark, the Fire Lord who killed Avatar Roku had pledged to keep the next Avatar out of his way, no matter the cost. Naturally, as the next elemental ethnicity in the Avatar cycle, the Air Nomads were wiped out less than twenty years after Roku’s passing. A genocide that, if done right, would keep the world free of the Avatar for at least another two decades. Every single monk in the temples was slaughtered.

“He thinks his people are still right there, where he left them,” Hyunjin said, barely a whisper. “Who’s… who’s gonna tell the poor guy?”

“I think we’re missing something way more important here,’ Jeongin spoke up, at which point the other two snapped out of their mournful daze. “Sozin didn't just kill all those people because he wanted to. He killed them to kill the next Avatar. After Roku… After fire, next comes air. Sozin wanted to kill the next Avatar before they were strong enough to fight against him. He didn’t want anyone to interfere with his war.”

“Why kill every monk, then?” Hyunjin wondered aloud. “Why not just the kids?”

“Dark,” Seungmin muttered.

Jeongin shrugged. “That’s not my point. I meant today that the guy we found– and Seungmin, I know you don’t believe me, but he might just be the Avatar that Sozin failed to kill.”

“That,” Seungmin said, “or he’s just a random lucky survivor.”

“No.” Jeongin shook his head, persisting. “If the Avatar died that day, then a new Avatar in the Water Tribes would have been born, and by now would have already died of old age. We would be onto the Earth Kingdom part of the cycle by now.”

Seungmin and Hyunjin stared at him.

“We don’t have an Avatar,” Jeongin told them, frustrated now. “So, the Air Nomad Avatar is obviously that guy.”

It couldn’t be. A hundred years of war, millions of lives lost to battle and raids and slavery, all because their one hope for peace had been… what, trapped in the ice? Only to be rescued by three clumsy teens and a few swings of a club? The odds were stacked against them. It was such a ridiculous thought, but the idiotic part of Hyunjin wanted so badly to believe it might be true.

“It’s a wild shot in the dark,” Seungmin argued weakly.

Jeongin fell backwards, with a huff, onto his pillow. “The Avatar is back.”

—

Hyunjin woke early the next morning, unable to rest from the jitters of anticipation crawling over his skin. There was nothing else for it; he just had to see the airbender. It was all like a pull in his chest, guiding him out of the hut and through the snow to the medical house, and though Seungmin and Jeongin were still asleep, they would find him easily enough once they rose.

He had to stop at the door to steady himself with a deep breath. When he pushed through, the visitor was still sound asleep.

Felix had been stripped shirtless by the elders, treated with poultices, and then bundled up in sealskins. The furs shifted as he slept, a peaceful rise and fall, and it was only the sound of Hyunjin’s footsteps that woke him from his slumber.

He sat up with groggy movements and shook his head, blonde hair a mess, then gaped down at what he had been wrapped within.

“Animal furs!”

“Yes?” Hyunjin said.

“Oh, ha ha.” Felix kicked them all off and scrambled to his feet. “Oh, no thank you.” His bare back hit the leather wall of the hut and he recoiled immediately with a shrill squeak. “Oh, would you look at that? More skin.”

More skin indeed, Hyunjin thought, as he let his eyes wander over the airbender’s bare torso. The blue arrows wound their way down every limb, and right up the back of his neck. Hyunjin frowned. “What’s wrong with the animal furs?”

“Oh.” Felix cringed. “Air Nomads are vegetarian.”

Hyunjin blinked at him, so he tried again.

“We value all life…”

“Oh!” Hyunjin winced. “Right. Sorry. I’m sure the elders were just trying to keep you warm.”

Felix’s eyes widened. He waved his hands in apology. “Yes, yes, of course! I’ll just let them know that I don’t need blankets.”

This caused Hyunjin’s face to scrunch up in confusion. They were in the South Pole, for crying out loud. What was this guy on about? “You don’t need blankets… at all?”

“Air Nomads have breathing techniques to keep us warm,” Felix said with a shrug, like this was common knowledge. “All we need is a light robe. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”

Hyunjin sighed.

“No,” he admitted. “Not lately, I guess.” Oh boy, this was going to be difficult to explain. “It must have, uh, slipped my mind.”

Felix just gave him a kind smile. “No worries.”

If Hyunjin’s shameful lack of awareness around Air Nomad culture didn’t give away the horrible truth, then the villagers’ onslaught of questions would. But hey, they were a tiny boring tribe in the South and he was an airbender. You couldn’t blame the sheer excitement of the crowd.

“Where’s his coat?” This question was the first to emerge once Felix had made his appearance in the centre of the village.

Expecting this, Felix politely answered, “I have breathing techniques to keep myself warm.”

“And why are you wearing orange and yellow?”

“Because, those are the colours of my people.”

“Why’s your hair so light?”

“Ah, see that one–” Felix laughed. “That was kind of a decision I made because… Let’s just say it was a compromise I made with the other monks.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you know how Air Nomads are usually shaved bald?” All of the kids and adults only gave him blank stares. “Oh, you don’t. Okay… Well, we’re usually bald as a show of respect and piety, but I made a compromise that I would be allowed to grow my hair out if I earned my tattoos earlier than everyone else my age. The monks were concerned about my hair covering the arrow on my head, so I found a way to bleach it blonde.” He did a full turn for his audience, and sure enough you could clearly see the line of blue ink underneath his hair. “Now, I get to keep my hair, and show off all my hard work. Cool, huh?”

Everyone clapped for him, earning another bright smile.

“What are the arrows for?”

Felix’s face grew instantly serious, but in the playful way that adults hardened their features when they told stories. “You see… Long ago, the first Air Nomads were taught to airbend for the first time, and their teachers were these huge beasts called sky bison.”

“The original airbenders,” Jeongin supplied.

Felix pointed at him and smiled. “Exactly. We monks form special bonds with them at a very young age, so that every airbender has their very own sky bison friend. Mine’s just outside the village, but he’s resting right now.”

A few children nudged each other at the mention of a fun new animal to play with. One of the women, a younger mother with hopeful eyes, stepped forward to ask her own question.

“Forgive me if this is too forward, but…” she looked Felix over, from the toes of his delicate boots right up to the arrow above his brows. “Are you the Avatar?”

Beside Hyunjin, Seungmin sucked in a breath through his teeth. All heads turned to the boy in question, and he was met with a sea of big blue eyes staring back at him.

He let out a nervous laugh. “That’s not important, is it?”

“It’s wildly important,” someone said.

“More important than anything right now,” another chimed in. “You’re the last airbender.”

No. Hyunjin surged forward. No, no, no, not like this.

Felix’s throat was, in a single second, dryer than ever. He trembled slightly, and his voice was incredibly small when he found the nerve to speak. “I… What..?”

“The last airbender visiting this tribe,” Hyunjin cut in. He grabbed Felix by the arm and stalked off with him. “Especially with all these questions. No one from your temple will want to visit this place ever again.”

Seungmin moved to follow them, but he was stopped by Jeongin, who held out an arm to block his way. “The Avatar wanted to go penguin sledding. Let him.”

“But, Hyunjin’s dragging him off.”

“Let him, hyung.”

— — —

The Fire Nation prince faced off against two of his soldiers, running through sparring matches while his uncle watched from the comfort of a nearby chair. Minho stood in wait with his feet planted firmly on the iron flooring, his body shivering as the arctic wind swept over the open deck.

“Again,” his uncle instructed.

At the signal, both the soldiers drew fire into their palms and advanced on the prince. He shot twin blasts at their chests and used their disadvantage to leap between them. He rolled with his landing, shot to his feet, and he and his opponents glared at each other, now on the opposite side to where they had begun.

Displeased, his uncle sighed and rose to his feet. “No! Still wrong.”

Minho gritted his teeth, and turned to face him.

“Power in firebending comes from the breath, not the muscles,” his uncle chided. “The breath becomes energy in the body.” As he spoke, he mimed all of this with the appropriate gestures, completing every part of firebending except the actual fire. “The energy extends past your limbs, an easy transition, and becomes fire.”

With the last word, punched his fist forward, erupting flames from his knuckles directly in Minho’s face. The prince did not flinch. He knew this man would not hurt him.

“Get it right, this time. Run it again.”

The prince, forgetting himself, broke into a scowl. “Enough,” he said, and he began to march toward his mentor. “I’ve been drilling this sequence all morning, so teach me the next set. I’m more than ready.”

His uncle returned the expression. “No. You’re impatient, nephew. You’ve yet to master your basics.”

Oh, and if that wasn’t a load of shit. For Agni’s sake, they’d been at sea, doing this exact routine for five years already. Minho was more than past his ‘basics’.

His uncle didn’t take note of his seething. He sat down in his seat again with a huff and a sigh, and looked back up at the prince. “Drill it again.”

Minho’s brows twitched. He reeled in a spin and kicked a roaring jet of flame directly into the chest of one of the soldiers. The blast hit the man in the armour and sent him flying backwards into the air. He slammed into the wall of the warship with a grunt; not harmed, only winded. The prince turned back to his uncle, fists clenched.

“The sages tell us that the Avatar is the last airbender. He must be over a hundred years old by now– He’s had a century to master all four elements.”

“So, how can you hope to fight him?”

If Minho clenched his jaw any tighter, he might break his teeth. “I’m saying, I’ll need more than basic firebending training to defeat him.” He leaned close to his uncle’s face and lowered his voice right down, a deadly murmur. “You will teach me the advanced set.”

There was a prolonged silence. The prince’s uncle stared up at him, brows furrowed so low to his eyes that Minho feared they might stick there, and his mentor would be trapped in a permanent scowl of disappointment. He was used to the expression, though. Not much would change.

His uncle cleared his throat.

“Very well,” he said, and the prince blinked at the apparent change of heart. “But first…” He reached down to the floor beside him, and to the prince’s dismay, pulled up a bowl of steaming food. “First, I must finish my kimchi stew.”

He dug in without another word, and the prince resigned himself to slump onto the floor beside him. Perhaps, training really would have to wait. It would take a lot more than threats of defeat to get this old man moving.

— — —

Hyunjin led the airbender out of the village and far into the icy plains. He kept his eyes peeled for otterpenguins, all while listening to the hefty crunch of snow beneath his boots. It was the only sound for what felt like hours, and Felix’s thin fabric shoes made no noise at all. Only after what was more accurately five minutes, Hyunjin sniffed loudly.

“Thanks,” Felix said. “For pulling me out of there.”

Hyunjin winced. “Sorry for making you talk to them.”

“You didn’t force me to. They wanted to learn, so I indulged. And all of the questions were fine, I just…”

“Except for one,” Hyunjin sighed. “Are you–” He winced and redirected instead. “I mean, did you know the Avatar?”

“No,” Felix answered, immediately without a second thought. “Look, I know that Avatar Roku died seventeen years ago, and I am seventeen… But that doesn’t make me the Avatar.” He smiled sadly. “I’m just another airbender.”

‘Another,’ Hyunjin thought, was no longer a word that Felix could use. There was no ‘other’ air bender to compare to, and no other person who could possibly be the Avatar. This boy was on his own, and Hyunjin just couldn’t bring himself to break it to him. You could say that they were both lying to each other now.

“I have a question,” he said. “If it’s alright with you.”

Slightly ahead of him, Felix looked back to send him a polite smile. “Shoot.”

“How did you get your hair to be so pale?”

Felix raised an eyebrow. “You’re interested in that?”

“I’ve never seen anyone with hair that colour.”

“Well.” A cheeky grin found its way onto the airbender’s face. “There was quite a lot of trial and error, and the other monks made it clear that I had to do it all myself.” He was running his fingers through his golden hair as he spoke. “Honey and vinegar were used. Also chamomile tea? A couple of teas, actually. As it turns out, tea is really good for bleaching hair. I had to put it through a couple of times to get the right colour, but eventually I got to this!”

He spun, showing off the treasure of his hard work. Hyunjin laughed, and he skipped to catch up with him.

“They really let you do that?”

Felix shrugged. “If you’re someone’s favourite student, it’s quite easy to make loopholes in the system.”

“You’re a rule breaker,” Hyunjin concluded.

Felix chuckled. “I’m a rule bender.”

They found the otterpenguins rather easily, as all that the animals really did was laze around or catch fish. Hyunjin was beyond confused when Felix knew exactly how to catch one, as if he had done it many times before. Only, he didn’t really catch his otterpenguin. He talked to it, asked it a few questions, and eventually got it to cooperate. The animal flopped onto its belly and waited for Felix to clamber on. Hyunjin’s process of securing a ride was a lot less elegant.

They raced each other. Down the snowy slopes and through caverns of ice. Their otterpenguins were well-accustomed to this activity, and appeared to enjoy the competition their riders had set for them. They sped across the landscape for as long as they could manage, and then shook their riders off once they had reached flat ground.

Felix and Hyunjin burst into a fit of giggles as they rolled off the otterpenguins’ backs. A snowball hit Felix square in the face, and when he saw Hyunjin still laughing with snow all over his gloves, he returned the attack with one twice the size.

“Oi!” Hyunjin squawked. He shook the snow out of his hair.

“Hey, can you waterbend?” Felix asked. He was shaping some snow in his hands into another ball, and stopped to hover his fingers over the shape and wriggle them about. He stuck his tongue between his teeth in concentration, attempting to make it move without touching it.

“I can,” Hyunjin said.

Felix looked up at him with wide, curious eyes, and completely missed the sight of his success. As his hand moved above the snowball, it warped without contact. Waterbending. Not a doubt about it, but Hyunjin couldn’t tell him. Felix wouldn’t want to hear it.

“Can you show me?”

“I– Uh, sure.” Hyunjin removed his gloves; he found it easier to connect with the element that way. With some practised movement of his arms and a whole lot of concentration, a clump of snow rose from the expanse of white beneath them to hover in the air. Hyunjin sighed. “That’s the most I can do. Move stuff.”

“But, hey that’s pretty good,” Felix said. “Wait, hold it there a second.” He dropped his snowball to move closer to Hyunjin, and lightly took hold of the other boy’s wrists. “Bending is an extension of your body, a connection to the soul and the world around you. That snow is made up entirely of water. Focus on how you can change its current form.”

Hyunjin stared at the snow he held in front of them. It shivered, as though somehow it felt the cold, and as Felix guided Hyunjin to move his arms in a fluid motion, it liquified and warped. The waterbender gasped at his achievement, and Felix broke away from him with a brilliant toothy grin.

“See, you did it. You’re a natural.”

Hyunjin continued to swirl the water in the air. “I’m the only one.” And so are you, he thought, but at least there were still waterbenders in the North. Felix was the last of his kind.

“The only one?” Felix prodded.

Hyunjin nodded. He dropped the water and spread his hands. “Yep. You’re looking at the only waterbender in the whole South Pole.”

“Hmm, well I can’t teach you waterbending,” Felix mused. “You need a waterbender, a proper teacher for your skills.” He paused, silent for a moment as they continued their walk, then gasped and clapped his hands. “What about the North Pole? There’s another Water Tribe up there, right? Maybe they have waterbenders who can teach you.”

“Maybe.” Hyunjin shrugged. “But we haven’t had contact with our sister tribe in a long time. It’s not exactly ‘turn right at the second glacier’. It’s on the other side of the world.”

“But you forget,” Felix said, with that brilliant grin of his. “I have a flying bison. Couldn’t Bboki and I just–” he motioned a flying swoop with his hands “–fly you to the North Pole?”

Hyunjin wanted to escape. He really did. It was all he had been wanting to do for at least ten years. The Water Tribe was tiny now, with a current maximum of twenty-seven people, and it was suffocating. Then again, he had absolutely no clue what would await him once he stepped foot on green ground. Leaving home was a dangerous game to play, even if his offering guide was impossibly agreeable and kind.

“That’s…” He sighed. “I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never left home before.”

Felix meant to respond, but in the next few steps they took, a looming shape rose above them and blotted out the sun. The snow around them plunged into darkness. And both boys craned their necks to see the monstrous moored shipwreck before them. It was scorched, tattered, and stuck deep into the ice. A Fire Nation flag fluttered at its mast.

The sight of the ship brought Felix no remorse, but at his side Hyunjin shuddered and clutched his arms close to his body.

“A Fire Navy warship,” he said, feeling the need to announce the vessel. “And a very bad memory for my people.”

Felix set his brows and stepped up to the ship. Still frozen in place, Hyunjin sucked a hiss of air through his teeth.

“Felix, stop! We’re not allowed to go near it. The ship could be ridden with traps!” It was usually beyond him to have any qualms with rushing into potential danger without thinking, but this ship… Just the sight of it made him dizzy. A lump in his throat bobbed, and his knees grew suddenly weak.

Seeming not to notice, or having noticed everything, Felix turned and sent a gentle smile his way. “To be a bender,” he said, “you have to be brave.”

He was right. Of course, he was right. This guy was the Avatar, and who was Hyunjin to deny an adventure with their world’s ancient protector? Okay, that was a tad bit dramatic, but he couldn’t refuse, right? Felix had a point, anyway. It was better to face his fears, even if that meant revisiting some very lost and very forgotten trauma.

Taking a deep breath, he took another step and followed the airbender into the wreck.

They helped each other climb up massive shards of ice to reach a torn opening in the ship’s belly. The whole time, Hyunjin did not say a word. He followed blindly behind his brave guide, as they ventured into the horrid history of the broken vessel.

The first thing Hyunjin noticed; how could a Fire Navy ship be so cold? He had imagined the evil within it would stoke a fire so bright that the flame would survive even a hundred years. Instead, the air was icier than the winds outside and it rushed over their bodies and made their teeth chatter. Even Felix, who apparently never got cold.

They made their way through the endless hallways of frozen iron, and peered into empty rooms as they passed. The pipes creaked and whistled. Critter that had made the ship their home squeaked and scurried above their heads.

When Felix finally decided to enter a room, they padded into what had very obviously once been the armoury. The two of them looked on at the abandoned spears and swords, and Hyunjin shivered again.

“This ship has haunted my tribe ever since the elders were children,” he said, and his voice reverberated around the metal walls. “It was part of the Fire Nation’s first attacks.”

This statement brought up a heavy feeling in Felix’s chest; the kind of feeling that weighed on him whenever he felt someone had wronged a person he cared about.

“Okay, he said. “Back up. I have friends all over the world, even in the Fire Nation. You keep talking about the navy and the Fire Nation being a threat… I’ve never seen any war.”

“Felix,” Hyunjin cautioned. “How long were you in that iceberg?”

If Felix was being honest with himself, the entire iceberg thing was a little fuzzy. There had been a storm, he was sure. Then, there was water. Cold water, and a panic that rushed through his veins like never before. Then, he woke up. “I don’t know… A few days, maybe?”

The lump in Hyunjin’s throat sank to his chest and morphed into a deep, guilty ache. As he looked at this boy before him, exactly his age and not a day beyond, it was eerily clear that he was ancient; a thing of the distant past. He had been born in a time Hyunjin would never know, and had been awoken in a new era that was completely alien to everything he would have known.

“I think…” He swallowed, trying to rid that ache. “I think it was more like a hundred years.”

“Ha!” Felix brushed it off immediately. “That’s impossible! Do I look like a hundred-and-seventeen year old man to you?”

No, no, no, he had to understand.

“Think about it,” Hyunjin pushed. “The war is a century old. You don’t know about it because, somehow, you were in there that whole time. Felix, that's the only explanation.”

Felix’s face was doing odd things, his expression twitching and changing, as if at war with himself. “No. No, you’re wrong. Maybe, I’m just out of touch.”

It couldn’t be. Not a hundred years. If he believed that, then everyone he had known would be dead. Everyone who had ever known him would just be gone. His entire world, his chosen family, lost to time? No.

Please, don't let it be true.

But Hyunjin didn’t look like he was lying, or even grasping at straws. He looked… pained. Sorry, actually. A tentative pity that Felix wanted to run from, more than anything.

“I’m… Felix, I’m so sorry.”

Felix sank to the floor and buried his face in his hands.

“Felix?”

“A hundred years…”

It wasn’t true until he had proof. It wasn’t real until he saw the outside world again, the sure evidence that he really had travelled forward in time.

“Maybe…” Hyunjin, by the soft noise of his coat, shifted closer. “Maybe, there’s a bright side to all of this?”

It was a nice thought. A gentle one. He ought to at least humour him.

“I guess,” Felix said, a shallow breath leaving his lungs. “I guess, I did get to meet you.”

When he lifted his head from his arms, Hyunjin was smiling.

“Come on,” the other boy said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They wound their way back through the corridors, retracing their footsteps, but Felix was more fidgety than he had been before. He peered into more rooms than he had on the way in, and he kept stepping into them too, if only to investigate them further.

Hyunjin continued to follow him, dutifully stepping in his wake, but his skin was beginning to crawl in a sure sign that something was about to go horribly, terribly wrong.

“Felix?” He stopped when the other boy strode through a doorway, marching on without a care for the danger. “Felix, let’s head back. I’m serious. This place is creepy.”

Felix kept exploring, wandering deeper into the room. It appeared to be the navigation bridge, for all the windows which opened to the front of the ship. Panels with operation buttons and levers, all outdated by decades, lined the far edges of the space. Hyunjin grumbled a few curses under his breath, and he stepped in too.

It was at that second that Felix gave a sharp gasp, his foot tugging on a thin wire on the flooring, and spun to Hyunjin in alarm. The door behind them rattled shut with a hidden trapdoor, and the steam valves hissed as the mechanisms sprung to life.

Oh, shit.

“Uh,” Felix said, intelligently. “What’s that you said about ‘ridden with traps’?”

Hyunjin sent him a desperate, exasperated glare.

Apparently, the trapdoor wasn’t the extent of their mistakes. As the valves and pipes screamed out steam, chains and dials rattled and worked to fire up an unseen machine. There were pops and clunks and the whirring of gadgets. All until something clicked, and a high whistle rang out from deep within the ship as an object was fired from a gun.

The flare rose up, up, high into the sky, trailing smoke as it flew. A fiery signal to the tyrant nation’s navy.

“Shit!” Hyunjin yelled.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. Hold on–” Felix flitted around the bridge, checking windows and walls. He glanced upward, to where sunrays streamed in from an open skylight, and made a loud noise of surprise.

The instructions, “hold on tight” were all the warning Hyunjin got before Felix had grabbed him by the back of his legs and around his middle, scooped him into his arms, and leapt out through the skylight into the open air.

Suffice to say, Hyunjin screamed.

— — —

Prince Minho watched the scene through the round lens of a spyglass, following the distant figure as he hopped, one by one, in graceful leaps down the structure of a Fire Nation shipwreck. Minho had spotted the flare and had promptly spilled his tea, rushed from his quarters, and sprinted to the open deck of his ship for a chance to see it with his own eyes.

Now, there he was. A tiny figure dressed in vibrant oranges and yellows which stood out stark against the blues of the Southern Pole. The dress of a culture long forgotten to time. All until now.

“The last airbender,” he murmured as his soldiers watched on from behind him, trying for a look at the spectacle with the naked eye. Minho let out a quiet, near silent gasp when the figure landed easily on the snow below. “Quite agile for his old age.”

This was everything. It was an end, a beginning, a light at the end of a tunnel. Five years, he had been at sea. Scouring the globe; a perilous, futile journey. Now, none of it had been wasted. Everything led to this moment here, standing on the bow of the ship, with his target in his sights.

Minho was free. He was, at last, restored.

The excitement bubbled up within him until it burst out of him in a shout.

“Wake my uncle!” he called to the soldiers, and one of the men split off to hurry down the open staircase. The rest waited, wide eyed, and Minho grinned at them with a glee he could not contain if he tried.

“Tell him… I found the Avatar.”

Then, he turned back to the spyglass and rotated it West as the figure ran with his companion, no doubt to warn whoever lived nearby of the flare they had set off. Minho sped along the skyline, searching for their destination, and found it. A tiny village formed within ice-packed walls; the Southern Water Tribe’s remains. A disbelieving laugh escaped the prince as he made the connection.

“As well as his hiding place.”