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Chapter Text

Shhh. Listen. Come close, my loves, and I will tell you a story.

Do you know what a story is? I will tell you. Everything has a heart, and the world is no exception. A story is what beats at the centre of the world, the engine that drives this universe, which is fuelled by narrative and metaphor. Stories are what keep us all alive, no less than food or sunshine or love.

I am a storyteller. It is all I know, and when you have done it as long and as well as I have, you will find yourselves invited to all manner of places. I have sat with the Air Nomads up in their cloud-dusted aeries at the top of the world, and I have sipped tea in Water Tribe villages by the sea, where the air is full of roaring and the taste of salt. There was even a time in my life where I lived in the Royal Palace of the Fire Nation, a time I spent with the children of the queen Ursa – Ursa, who found me and said, Come to Caldera with me, Butterfly. Come and you will eat off of golden plates, and recline on silk pillows. All I ask is that you tell my children stories, so they know they are not the only ones in the narrative of the world. I did, and there were many things I told them during the long spring of their rearing.

When you have been telling stories as long as I have, you know when you are in the presence of one. They were always meant for great things, Zuko and Azula. I knew it the minute I saw them.

Zuko loved best stories of justice, of bravery, of paladins vanquishing armies and conquering kingdoms, armed with the weapons of righteousness, courage in their eyes. He cheered when maidens were freed from wicked men with handsome black wings, when the crown was set on the right head and the true king rose victorious in front of his applauding people. Tell me another one, Butterfly. Tell me one where everybody wins, in the end.

At first, Azula did not want to hear stories at all. So she told me, many times when I arrived to care for her. Stories are for babies, and other helpless things. I am not helpless, Butterfly. I will never be helpless. She sat in the corner more often than not, and turned her back, every line of her profile disdainful. But when I spoke of battles, and gentle boys dying, and bad fortune, I heard her breath catch in her throat, and saw her amber eyes glance at me over her shoulder.

There were many stories I told Zuko and Azula, but this is the only one that matters.

I began with a question. This is a very good way to start a story. The question was: What do you think happens when people die?

Zuko, Who Always Answered: They go to the Spirit World, don’t they?

Azula, Who Always Argued: That’s stupid. When people die, they die. That’s all there is to it. Not that I care.

And I, Who Was Always Patient: There are many answers to this question. There are many stories people tell, my loves, about what happens after we die and no way to know which is true. It could be none of them or all. But one thing all the stories agree on is that death is absolute. That death is final. Wouldn’t you say so?

Azula, Who For All Her Scorn Could Never Resist: Well, obviously.

Maybe. Would you like to hear a story, then, where death wasn’t the end? Would you like to hear the story of Orpheus, who loved somebody so much he braved the abyss for her, who went down into the dark so he could bring her back into the light with him?

Zuko, Who Was Always Easier To Love: Oh, yes. Tell us, tell us.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Orpheus, who played his lyre so beautifully that even the birds stopped to listen. Even the wild beasts of the world stopped to lay their heads on their paws when he played. I suppose you could call him the greatest musician in the world, although I rather think that that title goes to Zuko and his tsungi horn now, hmmm?

Azula, Who Always Demanded Hot Milk Before Bed: Ha!

Zuko, Who Did Not Like Being Teased, Even In A Story: Do go on, Butterfly. What happened next?

What, indeed? What happened next is what always happens next, in stories. Orpheus fell in love.

Both Of Them, Who Were Still Very Young: Ew!

Yes, he fell in love. His beloved was a woman named Eurydice. When she smiled, the lyre in Orpheus’s hand sang out so beautifully deserts burst into flower, and the seas yielded up pearls, and for a time they were happy. But tragedy is ever the lot of lovers in stories. They were married, and after the wedding, on their way back home, Eurydice stepped on a serpent’s tail –

Azula, Who Had Been Waiting For This: Hooray!

- and the snake twisted and spat and sank its fangs into Eurydice’s beautiful ankle. She died instantly. When she fell, the lyre in Orpheus’s hand cried out so terribly the very rocks shuddered. The very stars wept, they who had watched in cold indifference for eons upon eons. Did you know that grief has a sound, my loves? It is the sound of no one holding your hand and empty beds and loneliness shaped like a girl, where once your beloved stood next to you. Orpheus took that sound and wailed it to the heavens, so that the very mountains wept. Mad with loss, Orpheus decided to do what nobody else had – go down into the dark, and take back the bride that Death had stolen from him.

Both Of Them, Who Were Quiet:

It is not so very hard, to find the Land Of The Dead. It nestles close to the Land of the Living, and the passports of both countries are very similar. Border officials are often lax. That is why it is so easy to get lost there, so easy for people to slip from one into the other. Orpheus walked until he stood at the very gate of the Land of the Dead, playing, or perhaps weeping, for by now both those sounds had become one and the same. At the gate stood Hades, Lord of the Dead, with tears on his face.

“Yes, take her,” Hades said to Orpheus, who stood there with a cavern where his heart had once lay. “Take her, and lead her into the light, and she will live once more, but on one condition – you must not look back when she follows you upwards. If you look back, she will be mine again, now and forever, and you will never have her back, never, even unto the end of the world.”

So Orpheus agreed, and the shadow of Eurydice emerged from the dark, and together they started to walk back up into the living world above. For an eternity they walked, and soon Orpheus came to believe that Hades had tricked him, for try as he might he could not hear any trace of Eurydice’s feet, no sound of her passage. The suspicion grew, and twisted, and gnawed at him like a serpent, like the snake that had sent him and his beloved here in the first place. And so Orpheus, fool that he was, turned to look – just heartbeats away from the entrance to the Land of the Living, just moments away from happiness. For a moment that stretched into an eternity, he saw the look on Eurydice’s face, and then Hades whisked her back into the shadows, back into the ranks of the dead, and Orpheus fell to his knees, and wept.

Azula, Who Had Been Tender Once, No Matter What The History Books Would Have You Believe: What? That can’t be it, Butterfly. That can’t be how the story ends.

But it is, my beautiful girl. How would you have it end?

Zuko, Who Could Not Believe This: He doesn’t look back, of course. He saves her. They live. Change the ending, Butterfly. Tell us a story where everybody wins.

Well, that is the only ending I know. But perhaps you could change it. Perhaps when you tell this story one day, you can speak of the ending where they both live.

Azula, Who Could – And Would – Be Broken By Nobody But Herself: Well, that was a stupid story. I shall never love anybody like that. It is a weakness. It makes you helpless. I am not helpless, Butterfly. I will never be helpless.

Ah, Azula.

Zuko liked to hover by my side after I had finished telling stories, after the last words hung shimmering in the air like soap bubbles. He liked to ask questions when his sister had left the room – she was ever cruel to him. But this is the truth, and I will tell it to you no matter if you believe me – she loved him, too. There was a time when both of them had been nothing more or less than children.

I, Who Had Become Wise To This Move: Is there something you would like to ask me, little prince?

Zuko, Who Would One Day Die in Caldera: I don’t care what Azula says. I should like to be loved that much one day, Butterfly. Do you think anybody would ever do that for me? Go down into the dark, and bring me back into the light?

I am sure of it, my golden-eyes. You are so wonderfully easy to love.

And Zuko, Who Would One Day Come Back From The Dead: Thank you, Butterfly. Tell me another story tomorrow. One where everybody wins in the end.

Ah, Zuko.

Chapter Text

“Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”

- Herakles, Euripides (trans. Anne Carson)

Where does this story begin?

- That depends on what you mean by story. That depends on what you mean by begin.

You know very well what I mean.

- Then it begins at a funeral.

That’s strange. I always thought funerals were where stories ended.

- Yes. The dead always think that.

The worst part isn’t the way the day of Zuko’s funeral dawns so beautifully that Katara registers it even through the dull pain in her chest, the way the sunlight slants exquisitely through the clouds so that every single detail is somehow rendered both sharper and more delicate – the dark green leaves and the tangled branches of the oak tree before them, the gold and red carvings on Zuko’s casket, the crystalline tear sliding silver down his uncle’s cheek like mercury. Here, in the gardens of Caldera, all emerald hills and golden sun and blue sky, the Fire Nation is beautiful.

In another life, Katara might’ve turned to Zuko, alive and breathing, and said, Yes, I understand now. This is your arctic night; these are your Southern Lights. I understand why you fought so hard to come home. Here, in this glorious late summer, the horizon promises a kingdom infallible – and the worst part isn’t that it did not promise a king equally as invincible.

The worst part isn’t the expression on Aang’s face. The look in his eyes is the one Katara remembers from the Southern Air Temple, all the helpless grief and fury and exhaustion of discovering that he was the last one of his kind, the only airbender left. The look in his eyes is terrible and ancient and - and fitting, somehow, because oh, this is a genocide, too, isn’t it? Zuko might be the only one in a box, but he is not the only casualty.

The worst part isn’t the way Sokka cries as they stand together and listen to the Fire Sages read out the burial rites. Katara has seen him weep before, of course, but the way he grieves now is different. A boy’s sorrow is always tangled up with white-hot fury, with stubborn denial, with the righteousness bestowed by youth – she has seen those emotions mirrored on Sokka’s face when their mother died, when Yue vanished into the sky. But a man’s grief is pure and unadulterated. A man grieves with nothing but sadness, and it is a man’s face that Sokka wears now.

The worst part isn’t even that Toph is wearing shoes, close-toed and thick-soled, her pale feet hidden, rendered truly blind for the first time. When they’d first met Toph, insolent and so young, the Blind Bandit, she’d told them, I see with earthbending. I feel the vibrations in the Earth, and I can see where everything is. And now, here, a war and a death and a thousand years later, she says to them, her voice empty, When they put him in the ground, when they lower the box into the hole – I do not want to see that. Do not make me feel him beneath my soles.

This is the worst part: the terrible, terrible sound Iroh makes when Zuko disappears into the greedy earth, as Aang closes his eyes.

This is the worst part: Iroh finding Katara afterwards, in the shadows of the palace corridors away from the sun-drenched day outside, her shaky legs giving out so that she has to lean against a nearby window for support.

This is the worst part: Iroh looking at her with eyes that make Katara close hers. He swallows, once, twice. “You’re a waterbender,” he rasps at last. “Master Katara, I know you can take away pain. Could you… could take away mine? Could you take away this grief?”

“No,” she says to him softly. Her mother’s death has taught her this, but she does not blame Iroh for asking. It is pain, after all. It is possible to miss someone so much your whole body hurts from it. “I can’t.”

He turns away from her, drawing in a harsh, shuddering breath. For a long, long while he does not say anything, and then he says hoarsely, “I am a good person, Master Katara. I have tried to be. I do not understand why I have lost both my sons to this war. I do not understand,” Iroh says, and his voice breaks, “why I have had to bury the whole of my heart under the ground.”

“Iroh,” she says, and when he turns to her, love and despair written all over his face; when she steps forward to hold him tight, shaking, his sobs buried into her shoulder, Katara has to close her eyes as the tears roll out. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I loved him,” Iroh says, pain threaded throughout his voice, serrated, shaking. “I did my best.”

So did I, Katara thinks, and she does not let herself think which part of Iroh’s confession she means.

I’m glad it was a burial, and not a cremation. Fire was the last thing my living eyes saw. I could not bear it if fire had to be the last thing felt, even in death.

- The war had just been won. People are always kinder in light of that.

No. This is the worst part: Katara stepping out of the palace afterwards to see Toph on her knees under the tree where Zuko is buried. She is alone, her head bowed, her fingers splayed out on the grass next to the raw upturned earth. From here, Katara can see that Toph’s milky eyes are half-closed, her features granite-still; the only one, out of all of them, who has not yet cried.

Toph is still for a long, long time, and Katara is just about to go when her voice emerges. It is low, almost at the edge of hearing, but Katara’s senses have long been honed by war; Toph’s murmured voice carries easily to her through the quiet evening.

“Always so dramatic,” Toph says. “I’m just saying, Sparky, if you didn’t want to go on a field trip with me, you could’ve just said, you know. You could’ve just said. You didn’t have to die.” And now her shoulders start to shake, and her pale fingers curl helplessly into the grass, and Katara has known and travelled with and loved Toph long enough now to know what the other girl is thinking.

I am the greatest Earthbender in the world! All it would take is a twitch of Toph’s wrist to split the ground before her, to bring Zuko back up to the surface. Her fingers tense, but then, abruptly, everything about Toph crumples.

“You didn’t have to die,” she says, her voice thin and awful, and something about seeing Toph curl into herself, seeing her tear-streaked face as she shakes, cuts through the grief that clings to Katara.

Another emotion fills her chest, hot and bright, and without saying anything, she turns and leaves Toph shuddering in the grass behind her. She stalks out of the palace gates, drawing the hood of her cloak around her face. She follows the path her rage illuminates before her.

She was angry.

- Yes. Are you angry?

Yes.

- Why?

I did not die for this. I did not sacrifice myself so she would come down here into the dark anyway. I wanted to save her. I wanted her to live.

- So do we all, with the people we love. Do not blame her. You would have done the same.

Katara is not yet fifteen years old, and she is slender as a willow branch, made thinner by the same grief and exhaustion that has cut dark shadows under her eyes. But despite all that – or maybe because of it; because of the knowledge that despite her unassuming exterior this girl has the power to lay waste to this stronghold – every single prison guard she levels her gaze at cowers, takes a step back as she sweeps past them into the stone fortress. One of them says feebly, “Master Katara – nobody is permitted – “ but she is already disappearing into the dark. As she descends deeper and deeper into the belly of the earth, following the stone steps spiralling downwards, Katara has the very faint thought that Zuko is not the only one of Ozai’s children now buried under the earth.

This isn’t a prison. It’s a tomb.

When she emerges into the chamber at the bottom of the stairs and sees the slight figure look up at her, for a moment the fury in her blood is overshadowed by shock. Katara was expecting rough stone walls and floors, strong iron bars, flickering torches, everything shadow and flame and a thousand shades of gray.

But of course it would be the height of foolishness to allow open flames anywhere near a firebender, even one drugged and chained. Instead everything is illuminated with a blue-white light, cool and steady and unwavering, emanating from several small globes positioned around the room. Later Katara will find out that the sources of this light are the crushed and dried bodies of a particular kind of luminous deep-sea fish unique to the oceans surrounding the Fire Nation, but for now all she can do is look at the way the blue light falls on Azula’s drawn face, the way the icy glow reflects in her amber eyes.

The first time I saw your brother it was in a light like this, Katara thinks suddenly, and for a moment she is back in the South Pole, the frosty sunlight all around her as Zuko’s eyes narrow at her through the slits of his helmet, back at the beginning of everything.

And then she is in the palace grounds, heat searing her throat and clawing at her eyes as the fires rage all around her, Zuko’s eyes widening as he runs towards her, the electric blue glow of Azula’s lightning bolt lighting up his face, there at the end of everything. The last time I saw your brother it was in a light like this, Katara thinks, and just like that the fury is back, rearing up in her chest so sharply it almost takes her breath away.

For a moment they stare at each other in silence.

Then Azula says, her voice hoarse, “Was it today?”

Katara doesn’t say anything, and the other girl continues, “The funeral. Was it today?”

Katara doesn’t blink; every time she closes her eyes she sees Zuko’s casket disappearing into the earth. Instead she stares at Azula, her gaze unflinching as the other girl’s slender hands tighten around the bars, her knuckles whitening. Watching each other through the bars, they are exactly the same height, but Azula is infinitely sharper; a serrated girl, all jutting cheekbones and pointed chin and jagged black hair falling all over her pale face.

“Tell me,” Azula demands, her voice imperious, the command of a princess. “Tell me!”

“Why?” Katara says at last. “Did you want to make sure that managed to do the job? Because you did, Azula,” she says, leaning in, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “You did. You killed him.”

“Stop it,” Azula says, but Katara continues.

“Your own brother,” she says, rage coursing through her veins. “Your own brother, and you killed him –“

“No!” Azula shouts suddenly, and despite the chains around her wrists and ankles, despite the fact that she has been kept semi-drugged since the Agni Kai, despite all the anger in Katara’s heart, Katara also feels a sudden surge of fear. Terror, and rage, and hate – all these feelings reach out into some shadowed place inside her, a dark crevice where a buried power sleeps. A place that Hama carved out, that Yon Rha called out of hiding, that Zuko has seen – and it is Zuko’s face she thinks of now as her bloodbending rises to her fingertips. She can feel Azula’s blood in her veins, feel every beat of her heart.  

Azula’s face twists as Katara clenches her hand into a fist, and Katara knows the other girl can feel the corresponding way her heart has jumped in her chest, her veins contracting, blood flow restricted for a brief second. She hisses out a breath, but still holds Katara’s gaze as she leans forward and says through the bars, “You killed him.”

Katara’s fist tightens, and Azula gasps as her muscles twitch out of control, a spasm shuddering throughout her entire body. Katara’s voice is too tight, her breathing too shallow. “How can you say that?” she snarls, and somewhere at the back of her mind she can hear Zuko saying those same exact words, his voice an exasperated rasp in the darkness of the Ember Island theatre. How can you say that? For a moment she thinks of a lifetime both with and without him; a lifetime of seeing nothing but his shadow, his voice always in her ear, and the despair that opens up in her stomach feels black and never-ending. “You sent the lightning bolt towards him –“

“No,” Azula says. “I sent the lightning bolt towards you.”

Everything falls away; the power pulsing through Katara vanishing abruptly; her breaths quick and fast. This is the only weapon Azula, drugged and manacled, has left to her, but it is the only one she needs: the truth. She has spent days drawing this conclusion like a blade, and now she intends to make Katara bleed with it. I sent the lightning bolt towards you.

Katara doesn’t say anything, and Azula presses home her advantage. “You didn’t do anything,” she says. “You didn’t run, you didn’t fight back. You just stood there and waited for him to jump.”

“That’s not true,” Katara says, even as the floor underneath her shifts, as she clings to the cold iron bars in front of her. “That’s not true –“

“It should’ve been you,” Azula says. “We both know it.”

“No –“ Katara says, tears rising up in her throat, and she doesn’t quite know how and where it happens, but suddenly the water in the flask at her hip is in her hand, shifting to form a dagger of ice. The blade glints cold and sharp in her hand, just inches away from Azula’s stomach, but the other girl doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t even look down; instead she stares right at Katara, an accusation.

Her eyes are the exact same colour as Zuko’s.

“It should’ve been you,” Katara says, and she doesn’t know what she plans to do next, only that her hand is moving as of its own volition when –

A voice comes from behind her. “Stop!”

Azula raises her head, and Katara feels the weight of her gaze leave her like a physical thing, like a thorn being pulled out, something that leaves her gasping and streaked with pain. She hesitates, unsure if she should turn her back on Azula, but the other girl is staring past her with an intensity that makes very clear Katara no longer exists for her. Azula’s attention is that of a cat’s; the way she fixates on things so utterly everything else disappears, sharp and unyielding. But there is something else in Azula’s eyes, too – naked shock, and this is what makes Katara turn around.

Standing behind them is a woman, strange and unfamiliar. Her skin is the same shade of brown as Katara’s, Water Tribe brown, her hair as black as anyone’s from the Fire Nation or the Earth Kingdom. But when she steps forward to take hold of Katara’s elbow, Katara sees that her eyes are gray, almost silver in the cold light that surrounds them. Katara has known only one person with eyes like those.

(For a moment she is looking into Aang’s eyes as he falls into her arms, as the iceberg splits around them.)

But this woman has none of the youthfulness Aang wears. Instead her eyes are impossibly ancient as she looks into Katara’s, and they hold so much grief that for a moment Katara feels as if she is looking into a mirror, a looking glass. Katara has known only one person with eyes like those.

(And for a moment she is looking into Zuko’s eyes as they stand under the crystal catacombs, as the green light shivers all around them, as recognition chases its way down her spine.)

This woman is a stranger. But in some strange, distant way, Katara feels as if she recognizes her, too, as if looking at her is somehow like looking simultaneously at everybody she knows and loves.

“No,” the woman says again, softer. “This is not how the story goes.”

“Butterfly?” Azula says in disbelief, and Katara has heard Azula’s voice a thousand times before, in a thousand situations: screaming in fury and crowing in triumph and purring as she draws closer; as the trap closes in around them – but she has never heard her sound like this, as if the word has been punched out of her: breathless and so, so young. For some reason, this scares Katara than anything else that’s happened so far, the way this woman, just by appearing, has disarmed Azula so completely. Her fingers tighten around the blade in her hand, but the woman gently rests her fingers on Katara’s wrist.

“Not like this, child,” she says. “There has been death enough.”

“Butterfly!” Azula calls, but the woman doesn’t look away from Katara.

Katara says to her, voice hoarse, “I have to do this, I have to –“

“No, Katara,” the woman says, and Katara blinks at the use of her name. The woman – Butterfly – slides her fingers under Katara’s chin and tilts her face upwards gently. Katara doesn’t resist, not even as the knife in her fingers dissolves into water, cool as the tears sliding down her face. “You have a very different role to play.”

“Butterfly!” Azula snarls, and suddenly Katara feels the pressure around them drop, tastes metal on her tongue. The air around them shivers, gathering static prickling its way along the back of Katara’s neck as she whips her head around. This, here and now, finally is the power of Azula, all her fury unleashed – how, even now, buried a mile under the earth and in irons, she has managed to summon a storm. “Don’t look at her, look at me! She’s just a peasant – I’m the one you should be talking to, me –“

Katara can feel the lightning in the air, the threat of violence, and not again, she will not let another person die for her again –

But as fast as she lunges towards Azula, Butterfly moves faster. The woman reaches in through the bars and touches Azula’s cheek, and Katara half-expects Azula to strike her –

But instead Butterfly says softly, so softly, “Oh, Azula, my beautiful girl,” and Azula crumples, the proud, defiant line of her shoulders collapsing into rubble. Katara’s ears pop as the air pressure surges back up, as the metallic tang behind her teeth begins to fade.

“Azula,” Butterfly says, and slowly, painfully, almost as if against her will, Azula closes her eyes. “What have you done?”

“Where have you been, Butterfly?” Azula says to her, her voice so like a child’s. “Where did you go?”

The woman doesn’t say anything for a moment, her hand stroking Azula’s hair. And then: “Far away, my love,” she says. “I had to go very far away.”

“I looked for you, when you disappeared," Azula says. "I looked for you, but I couldn't find you. You left me. You all left me. Mother left and Zuko left and Iroh left and I was left here all alone."

“Not alone,” Butterfly says. For a moment the world is just the two of them, this woman and this weapon pressed against each other through the bars. Katara is forgotten. “Your father was there.”

Azula doesn’t say anything; Katara can see the way her pale throat moves as she swallows.

“But maybe,” Butterfly says, her voice so gentle, “maybe that was worse than leaving you alone.”

Azula turns her face away.

“My beautiful girl,” Butterfly says again, almost sighs. “What have you done?”

“I should have ordered you to stay,” Azula says, and the woman smiles at her, so sadly.

“That wouldn’t have worked.”    

“It should have!” Azula spits at her. “If I had ordered you to, you should never have disobeyed me. You should have feared me more!”

“No, Azula,” Butterfly says. “I should have loved you more."

The expression on Azula’s face is terrible beyond belief, the look in her eyes fractured. “What good did love ever do me? Fear is the only reliable way. No,” she says, as the woman moves to speak. “You look at me in this prison and pity me. I won’t have your pity. I will not stand for it. I am not helpless, Butterfly,” Azula whispers. “I will never be helpless.”

Everything is quiet, the air so still. For some reason, Katara finds herself holding her breath.

“You said that to me once, years ago,” Butterfly says finally, as her fingers brush strands of hair out of Azula’s face. “Do you remember?”

Azula doesn’t reply, but she looks at the woman like she is drinking her in; the way Hakoda had looked at Katara and Sokka when they’d found each other again, as if she is trying to fill a hunger carved out by years of absence.

“I was telling you a story that day, you and Zuko.”

A beat, and then Azula’s rasp, slow and distant, like she is looking back across the years. “The story of Orpheus.”

“And how he loved someone so much he went down into Death to get her back,” Butterfly says, and laughs, just a little, just a breath. “And you look at me, here in the dark, my beautiful girl, and ask me what good love has ever done. Have I taught you nothing? All the stories I told you over the years. Nobody ventures into the dark when it is fear that drives them, or hate. Love is the only way.”

“That was just a story,” Azula says, but she sounds so uncertain. More than that – she sounds exhausted, as if she would like nothing more than to curl up and sleep for a thousand years, her voice so mechanical. “And stories are for babies, and other helpless things.” 

“Yes,” Butterfly says. “But I ask you now, Azula: would you do it? Would you do for your brother what Orpheus did for Eurydice?”   

Azula looks the woman straight in the eye. “No. I wouldn’t.” She laughs, but the sound is painful. “I have never been Orpheus in this story, Butterfly. We both know that. I have always been the snake.”

Butterfly doesn’t say anything else, and Azula blinks at her, long and slow. “She would do it, though,” she says tiredly, and it takes Katara a moment to register that Azula means her.

“What do you mean?” she says.

“You would do it,” Azula says. “You would go into the dark to bring him back. You would make a deal with Hades. You would lead him up here. And you wouldn’t turn around to look at him, not until you had both reached the light.” Katara takes a step forward, but Azula continues talking. "You would make a better ending," she whispers. "One where everybody wins."

“What on earth are you saying?” Katara snaps, but Azula doesn’t even flinch. She looks so tired.

“You love him,” she says, her voice heavy. “Don’t you?”

And grief seizes Katara by the throat then, so that for a second she cannot speak for the pressure that chokes her. “Don’t you dare,” she says at last, almost whispers, and she doesn’t even know what she means by that. How would I know? is what she wants to snarl at Azula, wants to scream at her with all her helpless, injured fury. How would I know if I love him, or if I could have? You took that away from me. You took him away from me.

Then Butterfly is standing in front of her, her hand on Katara’s arm. Her eyes are so, so pale, much lighter than Aang’s.  “Well, would you?” she asks. “Would you do it?”

“Do what?” Katara says. “I don’t understand.”

“What would you do for Zuko?” Butterfly says, and Katara feels something dark and heavy shift inside her, like all her life she has been waiting for this moment and here and now, it has finally arrived. Here in this prison, Azula defeated and this strange woman looking at her with eyes the colour of the mists that lie heavy over the ocean she has left behind, the sea she has not seen in so long, Katara feels as if she was always meant to come here, always going to hear the words Butterfly says next. “What would you dare, for him? What would you sacrifice?”

“Anything,” Katara says, and it feels like she has answered this question a thousand times before, and will a thousand times again, the past and future distilled into this single point. “Everything.”

And Butterfly looks at her, and her expression is almost sad, but when she holds her hand out to Katara, there is no hesitation in the gesture. “Then come with me,” she says, and so Katara reaches out and takes it.

- Oh, I see now. It was not her you were angry with.

How could you do that, Butterfly? How could you let her go into the dark like that? How could you show my daughter the way?

- I never showed her the way, Kya. This was always the path she was on.

What path was my daughter on?

- Across the ocean, under the catacombs, through a million forests. But leading again and again, always and forever, to the same person.

I don’t understand.

- Don’t you? This is a very old story.

So, what? Falling rocks, a hand pulling the other onto a sky bison, a lightning bolt. Is this the only part they will ever play? Trading one death for another?

- Trading one death for each other. Some paths should not be walked alone. Shhh. It is starting.

Is this how she comes in?

- Yes. The stage is set. This is how she comes in.