EDIT: Please excuse my derp, FFNet Link here: FFNet
Hello, ladies and gents~
Two things: I...
Hello, ladies and gents~
Two things: I...
Weary Sovereigns: An Avatar the Last Airbender Time Travel Story
- Thread starter Wribro
- Start date
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 57
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 14
-
Statistics (14 threadmarks, 41k words)
User Total Wribro 14
Chapter 1: Again
- Location
- United States
EDIT: Please excuse my derp, FFNet Link here: FFNet
Hello, ladies and gents~
Two things: I just learned about this forum, and I took too long to update my story on Spacebattles. I don't know how to inform my readership over there that the thread is so super, duper dead that I can't update anymore. Could someone here maybe assist?
Also, always good to maybe get more people to read this story who haven't seen or heard of it before.
Also also: I hated the way my story ended up being in an atomized mess on Spacebattles, so I'm going to update more cleanly from now on: Whole chapters/mini-stories in an update!
So, I'm posting this story here. It's also on FFNet, so... if you get the urge, please feel free to make a review!
EDIT 2: WOW, threadmarks are so unbelievably useful!
-
Chapter 1: Again
The first thing that Katara did upon becoming aware was reflexively reach forward to catch Aang, who had just come out of the Avatar State and was tumbling down from the lip of the half-melted iceberg.
After coming out of his own disorientated state, Sokka just squatted, pulled out his bone-knife and started scratching things into the surface of the ice, muttering to himself.
"Stupid past with no inkwell pens or typewriters or word processors… or calculators... ugh. Xiao was really onto something with his probability theory of fundamental syntax, I can't forget that stuff…" Scritch scratch scritch scratch.
Katara ignored her brother and focused on Aang, quickly waving her arms so that his entire body except for his nose was covered in glowing healing water. In addition, she reached in and touched the blood flowing in his veins and arteries, making it glow with the power of healing. The result was pretty spooky-looking if one had never seen it before, but to her, it was as common as breathing; she knew that she could do it asleep if need be.
For this, however, she was wide awake.
Those first seconds out of the iceberg turned out to be crucial to his future health. His one hundred years of slumber damaged him in a way that could not be mended easily unless he got instantaneous medical attention from either a proper modern hospital - which wouldn't exist for another 120 years or so - or Katara's abilities. If he didn't get the deep-healing treatment within minutes it would wreck his chromosomes' telomeres and hasten the aging process, among other things. The only way to stop that was to wrest control of thermodynamics from its natural course and get the remaining microscopic ice crystals present in his body to slowly defrost.
This one procedure added decades to his lifespan. Almost doubling it, actually. Delayed healing would have only managed twenty years, maximum.
His eyelids slowly fluttered open, and Katara moved the water covering them out of the way. But as soon as he conscious of where he was, grey eyes (with still-glowing blue veins) flicked over to her face, and beneath the water covering his mouth, he slowly grinned.
She smiled tiredly down at him.
"Here we are again, Aang."
At those words, his beaming dialed down a notch, becoming slightly pained, but he closed his eyes and shook it off, and the corner of his mouth went up in an expression of shared cynicism. Katara's smile faltered, becoming a small frown, and she looked away even as her hands stayed busy shaping the water to do as she commanded.
"I know," she said in response.
There was no end.
But that train of thought led to madness and despair. So she instantly let it go.
A few more minutes later, she gently lowered her hands. Her work with him was done, but there was another member of their precious family that needed attention. The water sloughed off and Aang stopped glowing with healing light. Then Katara stood up from her kneeling position and briskly strode directly towards where Appa lay within the broken egg-shell of ice, brushing the wall separating them away with a flick of fingers and thought, but retaining the water in a globule which trailed after her.
Standing up, the airbender followed after to make sure that the flying bison had a familiar face to wake up to.
And to give him a hug. It was definitely a tradition, by now.
Katara swiftly brought the water she took from the iceberg-shell to bear on Appa in a luminescent blanket which she used to completely cover him except for his face, speaking casually as she did so, "Your book got made into a mover."
Aang, who was leaning back against the bison's forehead watching her work, flushed red, groaning as he brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, "Oh, no… which one?"
"The Thrilling Adventures of the Blind Bandit."
The comedy. Of course. "Who…?"
"Lobsang. Your fifth great grandchild. Airbender."
The Avatar blinked. He knew who she was talking about.
"Really?" Of all the acolytes, he least expected him to become attached to the material world. He had seemed so enthusiastic about the Air. Or maybe he just worshipped the ground Aang walked on, he wasn't sure now.
"He didn't really like temple life," she explained, "He took the 'I'll do whatever I want, thank you' approach to airbending philosophy. Or so he told me. He left the island around the time when Toph moved on," she shifted, and the water moved with her.
Shrugging, he nodded in understanding, "That's freedom. Doesn't get much more airbender than that. I'm glad he decided to be an artist."
Moving around to Appa's other side to focus more of her energy, she glanced at her spouse, "It was good. He renamed it, though. Professor Wang Fire Must Be Stopped."
He snorted in amusement. "Good one."
"I thought it was a good adaptation. You would have liked it. I told him so."
"Yeah?" he closed his eyes, feeling mellow.
Katara smiled gently, "I think he was happier than when he got the Golden Gong."
The mood turned cold.
"Stop," he implored, "Please." No more.
She understood. "... Okay."
Aang suddenly found himself being lifted up by a giant tongue. Groans vibrated through the ice to their feet.
"Hey, Appa!" he called, laughing, "Good to see you awake!"
He was lowered to the ground, and Aang leapt on to his head, embracing.
"I missed you buddy," he murmured into his fur.
When he jumped back off to his feet, he faced his companion and gestured, "This nice girl's name is Katara. She's healing you right now, and she needs you to stay still."
A slow blink and a moo of acknowledgement.
"It'll feel good, I promise!"
Then he backed off, looked to his wife of another life, and looked away. The air between them was uncomfortable, as it sometimes was. That was the difference that a decade of distance, for her, and yesterday, for him, brought.
It wasn't that he wanted to avoid her. He just didn't want to think about the people that he left behind. Pointing, he started shuffling back to where Sokka was scratching up the ice.
"I'll be over there having a lie down."
Her voice was soft as he walked away, "Alright."
-
It was cold, but he was a master of body temperature regulation by now, so it was nothing.
The Avatar just lay there in the snow watching clouds go by through the bright blue sky, and all was silent except for the distant blowing of arctic wind and the scratching of a knife against the ice.
Scritch scratch, "... the sum of the frequency of occurrence for n-tuple relations between morphemes within a random grammatically correct sentence should add up to the expected value…" Sokka mumbled, eyes raking over the symbols he'd already written even as he hurriedly continued his figuring.
Aang couldn't stop the smile coming to his face, and he sat up from his previously horizontal position.
He might as well ask; taking care of Appa usually took Katara a while, since he was pretty big.
"How's your research going?" he asked curiously. Updates on Sokka's projects were invariably interesting.
He didn't look up from what he was doing, but possessed the presence of mind to answer his friend while he worked, "Finished… for now. I finally found that basal bit I was raving about, about six months after the Ba-Sing-Se Element Collider was built this time, only about five years after you left."
"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Aang offered honestly. It was heady to be around Sokka when he was excited about something. A beautiful breath of fresh air.
The glow of Katara's healing session suffused the air with an ethereal light and a low ringing, bell-like sound. He could hear Appa's groans of contentment as Katara washed away the aches of cryogenic sleep.
"Don't worry about it. I'll paint a picture of the party for you when I get my hands on a kit."
That was a skill that Sokka had taken singular care to absolutely master. There wasn't any other way to share memories from another lifetime, after all.
Sweeping snow over what he had written, he waddled over to a fresh patch of ice, still in his squatting position, and started making a table of numbers based off of the calculations he had been making previously. Sharp blue eyes scrutinized the work, endeavoring, as always, to extract meaning from the world.
"After that, I decided I wanted to switch specialties. I think I'm done with physics for now. I wanted to see what was up with linguistics."
"Linguistics?" his friend asked bemusedly.
He vaguely waved his free hand around, eyes still focused on the task at hand, "The study of how language works?"
Aang rolled his eyes, rolling his whole head with the movement and leaning back on his elbows, "Ugh, I know what it is, Sokka. I mean, why?"
At that, his head turned up from what he was doing to pierce the airbender with his analytical gaze, some degree of unbelief showing in the tilt of his head, "Why do we do anything?"
The Avatar coolly returned his stare, raising an eyebrow. That question did not deserve a response. "Patronization doesn't suit you. I mean," he stressed, "What made you think of linguistics in particular? Why not," he threw random disciplines into the air, "Computers? Chemistry? Or…" he thought for a moment, adding on wistfully, "Rocket science?"
Now Sokka rolled his eyes, "Your love affair with space is heartbreaking, you know that? You do know that it's going to be at least eight decades before that's even close to happening, right?"
"I can't help it, okay? The stars, the sun, the moon… It's beautiful. And -"
"And it's the ultimate expression of detachment from the earth. Right. Every airhead's wet dream. How could I forget?" he replied dryly, outwardly sarcastic, but internally wondering somewhat at how Aang managed to hold on to that part of his identity, even after all this time. He, himself,certainly didn't feel like he was Water Tribe anymore. Turning back to the chart he drew, he eyed it critically, "To answer your question, let me see if I can remember…"
Adding a few changes to the graph he composed out of the data he somehow still had stored in his head, he finally stood up, looking over at the monk and shrugging, "I guess that it started when I wondered if there was such a thing as a 'perfect language'."
"A 'perfect language'?" he queried, a hint of skepticism in his voice, "What does that even mean?"
At that line of inquiry, Sokka smiled, big and bright, and Aang felt himself automatically reciprocate it. It was too rare. Those moments when they were lighthearted. For whatever reason he found, and even for no reason at all for the sake of raising his family's spirits, Aang would smile.
Chortling, Sokka nodded, a starlike twinkle in his eyes, "Well, that's the big question, isn't it? What, indeed?" he affirmed happily, "I hope to spend a nice long time figuring out the answer."
And that's all that it ever was... just a matter of time.
-
They waited, simply absorbing the environment of the South Pole, neither saying anything while they waited for their flying bison's medical treatment to finish up. Aang went back to laying in the snow, lazily flicking and twirling his left pointer finger and letting his mind wander while he bent the air into a convoluted pretzel of jets and cyclones.
The glowing stopped, and Aang looked over just in time to see Katara removing the sheet of water that she covered Appa with, who moo-ed energetically, feeling refreshed and ready to fly due to being rejuvenated by Katara's waterbending. Wandering back over to where Sokka was standing, she folded her arms and her mouth twisted into a smirk as she gave a sidelong glance at her brother.
"You didn't tell Aang how you died this time?"
Having had a great deal of practice, Sokka's card face was truly a thing to behold… to anyone who wasn't included in their little group. Whenever he pulled it out in front of one of them, though… well, all it served to do was afflict the airbender with morbid curiosity and a sense that he was about to hear something ridiculously funny.
"Forgive me for my oversight," he said, a hint of annoyance peeking through, "It was only a few minutes ago for me, you see, so it slipped my mind. I think it was a very dignified way to go, thank you very much. By the way, how long did you last?"
Katara allowed the temporary deflection to answer him, "Zuko ended up croaking first… again. I suppose it was too much to hope for otherwise. He held out for four months after you. I'd already taught the new Avatar waterbending by then, so I didn't really have a reason to stick around, and wasn't looking forward to the waiting time to expire of old age, so I drank the tea."
"Katara…" uttered Aang sadly, quietly. But he didn't say anymore when she flicked a warning glance his way. They had been over this before, and with the relentless march of time, he came to understand her point of view. Not that he'd ever personally be okay with it. But he could see how, after having seen their grandchildren's children become adults, having outlived her children, having outlived all of them, she would be quite tired of it all by the end of the run and want to get it over with.
Her gaze moved back to pointedly pin down the tall warrior, raising her gloved right hand to gesture at him, mockingly offering him to walk the plank, as it were, "That was an admirable attempt, brother mine, but it will come out of your mouth, where you can control it, or it will come out of mine, where I will twist it to the fullest extent that I'm capable of."
Finally giving up, Sokka huffed and crossed his own arms, his lips turning into pout as he glanced down at Aang with some trepidation. The Avatar leaned forward from his sitting position in eager anticipation.
"... I fell asleep during a lecture."
Even though he guessed that it would be good, he didn't expect that.
Laughter exploded out of him, and he nearly tipped backwards from the force of it, "HAHAHAhahaha! Y-You! The fearsome Professor Sokka, slayed by the boring drone of one of his colleagues! HAHAHA-!"
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, airboy!"
"A-and that explains w-what you were doing just now… y-you were still taking notes! HAHA-!"
It didn't become hysterical, but it was close. Novelty like that was the most precious thing in the universe, following his family. He enjoyed it to its fullest.
Wiping away the tears that came with such a good laugh, Aang nodded to himself, "That right there… Is going into a book."
And what a threat that was, since he seemed to regularly find himself hailed as the greatest man of literature in history. It was pretty flattering, and, Aang noted slyly as he watched Sokka blush and start to spit in incredulous fury, it would bring in a suitably large audience.
"Don't worry, Sokka! I'll be sure to use a nice, opaque pseudonym for your character!" he said cheerfully, bringing his big, innocent, twelve-year-old gaze to bear on him.
Upon seeing just what that deceitful flying rat was doing, he flicked at the biological preteen's forehead-arrow, "Like Wang Fire? And drop the act. That never worked, you pipsqueak. From day one. Not even when you were an actual little kid."
"Oh, I recall a lifetime or three when it worked," Aang replied loftily, letting up on the cuteness and swiping away the older boy's offending finger.
"HA! Never," he sniffed.
"Besides, you were never Wang Fire last time around! No one knew!" the Avatar argued.
Sokka shook his head. "Oh, no, that punk knew exactly what he was looking for when he picked a lookalike of me to act that part in the mover. You've been talking."
To his right, Katara sighed in exasperation when Aang looked like he was about to retort.
"Anybody interested in getting off of the hunk of ice? Today, maybe?"
With that interruption, the airbender paused and glanced in Katara's direction. Wrapping arms around his legs, he turned away from his love of innumerable years and leaned his head into his knees.
"You guys sure about this?" came his muffled voice.
It was a pertinent question. Katara hummed a bit, raising a hand to rub at her eye. She recalled the last time they all had a meeting together, and the decision they had arrived at.
"I am. This'll be good for us, Aang. I think that we've all been a little depressed, lately. We should be more active, this time."
He lifted his head back up.
"Yeah," he said softly, "I agree. I just wanted to know whether you two were still okay with that. It's been a few years since then for you, is all. I was wondering if you might have changed your mind."
Neither Katara nor Sokka acknowledged the lie they knew their friend was telling. Both knew that if they showed even the remotest hesitation, Aang would latch on to that and it would all be over before it began. He was always a little skittish about these kinds of lifetimes, at least at first. His pacifism, still present within him, made him resistant to the idea.
But, for one of them, the specter of boredom was a far more powerful motivating factor, and they knew it.
Throwing up his arms, Sokka made a warding gesture.
"Hey," he interjected, "I'm with all of you on this one. Relaxing is fine, and all, but I can tell we've been coasting for a while, now." A small, dark smile as he brought his gloved hand to his chin to stroke a nonexistent beard, "It'll be fun to shake things up, for once."
Boy, that sure brought back memories. And they were Really Bad ones.
Aang and Katara shared a brief look, communicating volumes of trepidation in an instant.
Noticing the byplay, Sokka sighed in irritation at the other two, "I'm not gonna blow up anything important, okay?"
"Oh, that's reassuring," his sister said dryly, but not without some warning in her voice.
He frowned, "How long ago was that, now?"
"Long enough that we really should just forget about it," the Avatar emphasized, turning pleading eyes onto Katara to please don't bring it up again please.
She relented. "Anyway," she added reasonably, "It'd be rude to hang Toph out to dry when she's going to act according to plan with or without us."
It was her plan, went unsaid, and she'll probably kick your butt if you jump ship while it's her turn.
Taking this pause to finally airbend himself up from his reclined position on the ice, Aang snickered, "I guess you guys are right," he said, grinning, "It's not like it's the end of the world, or anything."
The deliberate irony of that statement was not lost on any of them.
Once upon a time,that was how it really was. Frightened children lost in a war-torn world, trying desperately to snatch peace from the jaws of destruction. It was an unforgettable journey, a date with destiny topped off with an epic battle between the forces of good and evil. Then, afterward, it was a long drive to rebuild and reshape the world, filled with successes and pitfalls and happy (now faded) memories and unnecessary pain. They were pleased with themselves, when all was said and done, having lived fulfilling lives. They had done their best.
But then it happened again. And again. And again, ad infinitum.
The Avatar turned suddenly to gaze off to the east, a brief look of concentration appearing on his face before relaxing.
Katara inclined her head. "Zuko?"
Aang nodded. "He says hello."
The moment was interrupted when the three of them were bowled over by an impatient Appa.
Hello, ladies and gents~
Two things: I just learned about this forum, and I took too long to update my story on Spacebattles. I don't know how to inform my readership over there that the thread is so super, duper dead that I can't update anymore. Could someone here maybe assist?
Also, always good to maybe get more people to read this story who haven't seen or heard of it before.
Also also: I hated the way my story ended up being in an atomized mess on Spacebattles, so I'm going to update more cleanly from now on: Whole chapters/mini-stories in an update!
So, I'm posting this story here. It's also on FFNet, so... if you get the urge, please feel free to make a review!
EDIT 2: WOW, threadmarks are so unbelievably useful!
-
Chapter 1: Again
The first thing that Katara did upon becoming aware was reflexively reach forward to catch Aang, who had just come out of the Avatar State and was tumbling down from the lip of the half-melted iceberg.
After coming out of his own disorientated state, Sokka just squatted, pulled out his bone-knife and started scratching things into the surface of the ice, muttering to himself.
"Stupid past with no inkwell pens or typewriters or word processors… or calculators... ugh. Xiao was really onto something with his probability theory of fundamental syntax, I can't forget that stuff…" Scritch scratch scritch scratch.
Katara ignored her brother and focused on Aang, quickly waving her arms so that his entire body except for his nose was covered in glowing healing water. In addition, she reached in and touched the blood flowing in his veins and arteries, making it glow with the power of healing. The result was pretty spooky-looking if one had never seen it before, but to her, it was as common as breathing; she knew that she could do it asleep if need be.
For this, however, she was wide awake.
Those first seconds out of the iceberg turned out to be crucial to his future health. His one hundred years of slumber damaged him in a way that could not be mended easily unless he got instantaneous medical attention from either a proper modern hospital - which wouldn't exist for another 120 years or so - or Katara's abilities. If he didn't get the deep-healing treatment within minutes it would wreck his chromosomes' telomeres and hasten the aging process, among other things. The only way to stop that was to wrest control of thermodynamics from its natural course and get the remaining microscopic ice crystals present in his body to slowly defrost.
This one procedure added decades to his lifespan. Almost doubling it, actually. Delayed healing would have only managed twenty years, maximum.
His eyelids slowly fluttered open, and Katara moved the water covering them out of the way. But as soon as he conscious of where he was, grey eyes (with still-glowing blue veins) flicked over to her face, and beneath the water covering his mouth, he slowly grinned.
She smiled tiredly down at him.
"Here we are again, Aang."
At those words, his beaming dialed down a notch, becoming slightly pained, but he closed his eyes and shook it off, and the corner of his mouth went up in an expression of shared cynicism. Katara's smile faltered, becoming a small frown, and she looked away even as her hands stayed busy shaping the water to do as she commanded.
"I know," she said in response.
There was no end.
But that train of thought led to madness and despair. So she instantly let it go.
A few more minutes later, she gently lowered her hands. Her work with him was done, but there was another member of their precious family that needed attention. The water sloughed off and Aang stopped glowing with healing light. Then Katara stood up from her kneeling position and briskly strode directly towards where Appa lay within the broken egg-shell of ice, brushing the wall separating them away with a flick of fingers and thought, but retaining the water in a globule which trailed after her.
Standing up, the airbender followed after to make sure that the flying bison had a familiar face to wake up to.
And to give him a hug. It was definitely a tradition, by now.
Katara swiftly brought the water she took from the iceberg-shell to bear on Appa in a luminescent blanket which she used to completely cover him except for his face, speaking casually as she did so, "Your book got made into a mover."
Aang, who was leaning back against the bison's forehead watching her work, flushed red, groaning as he brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, "Oh, no… which one?"
"The Thrilling Adventures of the Blind Bandit."
The comedy. Of course. "Who…?"
"Lobsang. Your fifth great grandchild. Airbender."
The Avatar blinked. He knew who she was talking about.
"Really?" Of all the acolytes, he least expected him to become attached to the material world. He had seemed so enthusiastic about the Air. Or maybe he just worshipped the ground Aang walked on, he wasn't sure now.
"He didn't really like temple life," she explained, "He took the 'I'll do whatever I want, thank you' approach to airbending philosophy. Or so he told me. He left the island around the time when Toph moved on," she shifted, and the water moved with her.
Shrugging, he nodded in understanding, "That's freedom. Doesn't get much more airbender than that. I'm glad he decided to be an artist."
Moving around to Appa's other side to focus more of her energy, she glanced at her spouse, "It was good. He renamed it, though. Professor Wang Fire Must Be Stopped."
He snorted in amusement. "Good one."
"I thought it was a good adaptation. You would have liked it. I told him so."
"Yeah?" he closed his eyes, feeling mellow.
Katara smiled gently, "I think he was happier than when he got the Golden Gong."
The mood turned cold.
"Stop," he implored, "Please." No more.
She understood. "... Okay."
Aang suddenly found himself being lifted up by a giant tongue. Groans vibrated through the ice to their feet.
"Hey, Appa!" he called, laughing, "Good to see you awake!"
He was lowered to the ground, and Aang leapt on to his head, embracing.
"I missed you buddy," he murmured into his fur.
When he jumped back off to his feet, he faced his companion and gestured, "This nice girl's name is Katara. She's healing you right now, and she needs you to stay still."
A slow blink and a moo of acknowledgement.
"It'll feel good, I promise!"
Then he backed off, looked to his wife of another life, and looked away. The air between them was uncomfortable, as it sometimes was. That was the difference that a decade of distance, for her, and yesterday, for him, brought.
It wasn't that he wanted to avoid her. He just didn't want to think about the people that he left behind. Pointing, he started shuffling back to where Sokka was scratching up the ice.
"I'll be over there having a lie down."
Her voice was soft as he walked away, "Alright."
-
It was cold, but he was a master of body temperature regulation by now, so it was nothing.
The Avatar just lay there in the snow watching clouds go by through the bright blue sky, and all was silent except for the distant blowing of arctic wind and the scratching of a knife against the ice.
Scritch scratch, "... the sum of the frequency of occurrence for n-tuple relations between morphemes within a random grammatically correct sentence should add up to the expected value…" Sokka mumbled, eyes raking over the symbols he'd already written even as he hurriedly continued his figuring.
Aang couldn't stop the smile coming to his face, and he sat up from his previously horizontal position.
He might as well ask; taking care of Appa usually took Katara a while, since he was pretty big.
"How's your research going?" he asked curiously. Updates on Sokka's projects were invariably interesting.
He didn't look up from what he was doing, but possessed the presence of mind to answer his friend while he worked, "Finished… for now. I finally found that basal bit I was raving about, about six months after the Ba-Sing-Se Element Collider was built this time, only about five years after you left."
"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Aang offered honestly. It was heady to be around Sokka when he was excited about something. A beautiful breath of fresh air.
The glow of Katara's healing session suffused the air with an ethereal light and a low ringing, bell-like sound. He could hear Appa's groans of contentment as Katara washed away the aches of cryogenic sleep.
"Don't worry about it. I'll paint a picture of the party for you when I get my hands on a kit."
That was a skill that Sokka had taken singular care to absolutely master. There wasn't any other way to share memories from another lifetime, after all.
Sweeping snow over what he had written, he waddled over to a fresh patch of ice, still in his squatting position, and started making a table of numbers based off of the calculations he had been making previously. Sharp blue eyes scrutinized the work, endeavoring, as always, to extract meaning from the world.
"After that, I decided I wanted to switch specialties. I think I'm done with physics for now. I wanted to see what was up with linguistics."
"Linguistics?" his friend asked bemusedly.
He vaguely waved his free hand around, eyes still focused on the task at hand, "The study of how language works?"
Aang rolled his eyes, rolling his whole head with the movement and leaning back on his elbows, "Ugh, I know what it is, Sokka. I mean, why?"
At that, his head turned up from what he was doing to pierce the airbender with his analytical gaze, some degree of unbelief showing in the tilt of his head, "Why do we do anything?"
The Avatar coolly returned his stare, raising an eyebrow. That question did not deserve a response. "Patronization doesn't suit you. I mean," he stressed, "What made you think of linguistics in particular? Why not," he threw random disciplines into the air, "Computers? Chemistry? Or…" he thought for a moment, adding on wistfully, "Rocket science?"
Now Sokka rolled his eyes, "Your love affair with space is heartbreaking, you know that? You do know that it's going to be at least eight decades before that's even close to happening, right?"
"I can't help it, okay? The stars, the sun, the moon… It's beautiful. And -"
"And it's the ultimate expression of detachment from the earth. Right. Every airhead's wet dream. How could I forget?" he replied dryly, outwardly sarcastic, but internally wondering somewhat at how Aang managed to hold on to that part of his identity, even after all this time. He, himself,certainly didn't feel like he was Water Tribe anymore. Turning back to the chart he drew, he eyed it critically, "To answer your question, let me see if I can remember…"
Adding a few changes to the graph he composed out of the data he somehow still had stored in his head, he finally stood up, looking over at the monk and shrugging, "I guess that it started when I wondered if there was such a thing as a 'perfect language'."
"A 'perfect language'?" he queried, a hint of skepticism in his voice, "What does that even mean?"
At that line of inquiry, Sokka smiled, big and bright, and Aang felt himself automatically reciprocate it. It was too rare. Those moments when they were lighthearted. For whatever reason he found, and even for no reason at all for the sake of raising his family's spirits, Aang would smile.
Chortling, Sokka nodded, a starlike twinkle in his eyes, "Well, that's the big question, isn't it? What, indeed?" he affirmed happily, "I hope to spend a nice long time figuring out the answer."
And that's all that it ever was... just a matter of time.
-
They waited, simply absorbing the environment of the South Pole, neither saying anything while they waited for their flying bison's medical treatment to finish up. Aang went back to laying in the snow, lazily flicking and twirling his left pointer finger and letting his mind wander while he bent the air into a convoluted pretzel of jets and cyclones.
The glowing stopped, and Aang looked over just in time to see Katara removing the sheet of water that she covered Appa with, who moo-ed energetically, feeling refreshed and ready to fly due to being rejuvenated by Katara's waterbending. Wandering back over to where Sokka was standing, she folded her arms and her mouth twisted into a smirk as she gave a sidelong glance at her brother.
"You didn't tell Aang how you died this time?"
Having had a great deal of practice, Sokka's card face was truly a thing to behold… to anyone who wasn't included in their little group. Whenever he pulled it out in front of one of them, though… well, all it served to do was afflict the airbender with morbid curiosity and a sense that he was about to hear something ridiculously funny.
"Forgive me for my oversight," he said, a hint of annoyance peeking through, "It was only a few minutes ago for me, you see, so it slipped my mind. I think it was a very dignified way to go, thank you very much. By the way, how long did you last?"
Katara allowed the temporary deflection to answer him, "Zuko ended up croaking first… again. I suppose it was too much to hope for otherwise. He held out for four months after you. I'd already taught the new Avatar waterbending by then, so I didn't really have a reason to stick around, and wasn't looking forward to the waiting time to expire of old age, so I drank the tea."
"Katara…" uttered Aang sadly, quietly. But he didn't say anymore when she flicked a warning glance his way. They had been over this before, and with the relentless march of time, he came to understand her point of view. Not that he'd ever personally be okay with it. But he could see how, after having seen their grandchildren's children become adults, having outlived her children, having outlived all of them, she would be quite tired of it all by the end of the run and want to get it over with.
Her gaze moved back to pointedly pin down the tall warrior, raising her gloved right hand to gesture at him, mockingly offering him to walk the plank, as it were, "That was an admirable attempt, brother mine, but it will come out of your mouth, where you can control it, or it will come out of mine, where I will twist it to the fullest extent that I'm capable of."
Finally giving up, Sokka huffed and crossed his own arms, his lips turning into pout as he glanced down at Aang with some trepidation. The Avatar leaned forward from his sitting position in eager anticipation.
"... I fell asleep during a lecture."
Even though he guessed that it would be good, he didn't expect that.
Laughter exploded out of him, and he nearly tipped backwards from the force of it, "HAHAHAhahaha! Y-You! The fearsome Professor Sokka, slayed by the boring drone of one of his colleagues! HAHAHA-!"
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, airboy!"
"A-and that explains w-what you were doing just now… y-you were still taking notes! HAHA-!"
It didn't become hysterical, but it was close. Novelty like that was the most precious thing in the universe, following his family. He enjoyed it to its fullest.
Wiping away the tears that came with such a good laugh, Aang nodded to himself, "That right there… Is going into a book."
And what a threat that was, since he seemed to regularly find himself hailed as the greatest man of literature in history. It was pretty flattering, and, Aang noted slyly as he watched Sokka blush and start to spit in incredulous fury, it would bring in a suitably large audience.
"Don't worry, Sokka! I'll be sure to use a nice, opaque pseudonym for your character!" he said cheerfully, bringing his big, innocent, twelve-year-old gaze to bear on him.
Upon seeing just what that deceitful flying rat was doing, he flicked at the biological preteen's forehead-arrow, "Like Wang Fire? And drop the act. That never worked, you pipsqueak. From day one. Not even when you were an actual little kid."
"Oh, I recall a lifetime or three when it worked," Aang replied loftily, letting up on the cuteness and swiping away the older boy's offending finger.
"HA! Never," he sniffed.
"Besides, you were never Wang Fire last time around! No one knew!" the Avatar argued.
Sokka shook his head. "Oh, no, that punk knew exactly what he was looking for when he picked a lookalike of me to act that part in the mover. You've been talking."
To his right, Katara sighed in exasperation when Aang looked like he was about to retort.
"Anybody interested in getting off of the hunk of ice? Today, maybe?"
With that interruption, the airbender paused and glanced in Katara's direction. Wrapping arms around his legs, he turned away from his love of innumerable years and leaned his head into his knees.
"You guys sure about this?" came his muffled voice.
It was a pertinent question. Katara hummed a bit, raising a hand to rub at her eye. She recalled the last time they all had a meeting together, and the decision they had arrived at.
"I am. This'll be good for us, Aang. I think that we've all been a little depressed, lately. We should be more active, this time."
He lifted his head back up.
"Yeah," he said softly, "I agree. I just wanted to know whether you two were still okay with that. It's been a few years since then for you, is all. I was wondering if you might have changed your mind."
Neither Katara nor Sokka acknowledged the lie they knew their friend was telling. Both knew that if they showed even the remotest hesitation, Aang would latch on to that and it would all be over before it began. He was always a little skittish about these kinds of lifetimes, at least at first. His pacifism, still present within him, made him resistant to the idea.
But, for one of them, the specter of boredom was a far more powerful motivating factor, and they knew it.
Throwing up his arms, Sokka made a warding gesture.
"Hey," he interjected, "I'm with all of you on this one. Relaxing is fine, and all, but I can tell we've been coasting for a while, now." A small, dark smile as he brought his gloved hand to his chin to stroke a nonexistent beard, "It'll be fun to shake things up, for once."
Boy, that sure brought back memories. And they were Really Bad ones.
Aang and Katara shared a brief look, communicating volumes of trepidation in an instant.
Noticing the byplay, Sokka sighed in irritation at the other two, "I'm not gonna blow up anything important, okay?"
"Oh, that's reassuring," his sister said dryly, but not without some warning in her voice.
He frowned, "How long ago was that, now?"
"Long enough that we really should just forget about it," the Avatar emphasized, turning pleading eyes onto Katara to please don't bring it up again please.
She relented. "Anyway," she added reasonably, "It'd be rude to hang Toph out to dry when she's going to act according to plan with or without us."
It was her plan, went unsaid, and she'll probably kick your butt if you jump ship while it's her turn.
Taking this pause to finally airbend himself up from his reclined position on the ice, Aang snickered, "I guess you guys are right," he said, grinning, "It's not like it's the end of the world, or anything."
The deliberate irony of that statement was not lost on any of them.
Once upon a time,that was how it really was. Frightened children lost in a war-torn world, trying desperately to snatch peace from the jaws of destruction. It was an unforgettable journey, a date with destiny topped off with an epic battle between the forces of good and evil. Then, afterward, it was a long drive to rebuild and reshape the world, filled with successes and pitfalls and happy (now faded) memories and unnecessary pain. They were pleased with themselves, when all was said and done, having lived fulfilling lives. They had done their best.
But then it happened again. And again. And again, ad infinitum.
The Avatar turned suddenly to gaze off to the east, a brief look of concentration appearing on his face before relaxing.
Katara inclined her head. "Zuko?"
Aang nodded. "He says hello."
The moment was interrupted when the three of them were bowled over by an impatient Appa.
Last edited:
Extra 1: SPAAAAAAAAAACE!
- Location
- United States
Hokay, the thrusters are-a-burnin'...
-
Extra 1: SPAAAAAAAACE!
It was the work of tens of thousands of people.
"Sokka…"
It took fifteen lifetimes to make it happen.
"Yes?" came the reserved response.
To realize it was possible, to live long enough to get there, to speed up technological advancement sufficiently enough.
"You win. At life. Forever."
It was a technological wonder; a triumph of human ingenuity.
Patiently, "And?"
It was proof that humans were not bound to the World.
"... and Science wins. Forever."
Proof that, one day, humans would be free in a way that they hadn't been for millenia.
"You get to go on it first."
"... Will you marry me?"
-
"Three… Two… One… Ignition…"
-
Little beads of water detached themselves from his wrinkled face to float around in the tiny chamber of oxygen which drifted through the vast nothing of space.
Eyes brighter with life than they'd been in eons gazed out the window… and saw the world beneath him. Just as he remembered it in his previous meditations of the Thought Chakra… only real. It was real, and, there was more. He looked 'up', through another window, and saw an endless field of stars.
"... It's beautiful," an ancient voice hoarsely whispered.
Static crackled.
"Avatar Aang? This is Mission Control; do you copy?"
"... Yes. I'm fine. I copy."
He could hear cheers in the background.
They're right to celebrate, Aang thought with wonder, pressing a hand against the insulated inside of the ship as he leaned closer to the window.
He found himself contemplatively looking at the moon that he could see from this position.
-
"So… how was it?"
"... We are doing that again."
-
Extra 1: SPAAAAAAAACE!
It was the work of tens of thousands of people.
"Sokka…"
It took fifteen lifetimes to make it happen.
"Yes?" came the reserved response.
To realize it was possible, to live long enough to get there, to speed up technological advancement sufficiently enough.
"You win. At life. Forever."
It was a technological wonder; a triumph of human ingenuity.
Patiently, "And?"
It was proof that humans were not bound to the World.
"... and Science wins. Forever."
Proof that, one day, humans would be free in a way that they hadn't been for millenia.
"You get to go on it first."
"... Will you marry me?"
-
"Three… Two… One… Ignition…"
-
Little beads of water detached themselves from his wrinkled face to float around in the tiny chamber of oxygen which drifted through the vast nothing of space.
Eyes brighter with life than they'd been in eons gazed out the window… and saw the world beneath him. Just as he remembered it in his previous meditations of the Thought Chakra… only real. It was real, and, there was more. He looked 'up', through another window, and saw an endless field of stars.
"... It's beautiful," an ancient voice hoarsely whispered.
Static crackled.
"Avatar Aang? This is Mission Control; do you copy?"
"... Yes. I'm fine. I copy."
He could hear cheers in the background.
They're right to celebrate, Aang thought with wonder, pressing a hand against the insulated inside of the ship as he leaned closer to the window.
He found himself contemplatively looking at the moon that he could see from this position.
-
"So… how was it?"
"... We are doing that again."
Wait what happened over there on SB? If the thread is locked due to too many necros just pm a mod to reopen or just make a new thread. Also I just discovered the threadmarks myself even though I have been on here a while. Totally ignored it when looking around for some reason.
Like walking pass a real Picasso in someone's house and not caring.
Also, as the OP, you adding a new story post is not considered a necro, so if you put something new up, you're safe.
Oh I am slain!
Wynaut?
- Location
- Tatooine
Ooh, I almost didn't see this one. It's quite a ball of fun. 
Chapter 2: Lie By Omission
- Location
- United States
Hello my lovelies~
Apologies for the prolonged pause. Life intervened.
-
Chapter 2: Lie By Omission
Zuko's reaction to the pillar of light which had appeared in the distance had been… unexpected. The usual exclamations about the Avatar would not have been out of place. Even a simple barked order to the helmsman to head a course for the light would have been fine.
Collapsing onto the deck whilst holding his own head between his hands was not fine.
Iroh barely noticed as, across from him, Lieutenant Jee slid a tile into place on the pai sho board.
At first, he had only felt concerned about the situation. Now, he was feeling anxious. Something was wrong with his nephew, and he didn't know what. Oh, it was obvious that it had something to do with that beam of light from earlier, but he still couldn't figure out what could have happened to the prince. Other than it must have something to do with the spirits.
"General Iroh?"
Jostled from his thoughts, the aging firebender focused onto the table between them, before breaking out into chuckles.
"Well, that was very... assertive of you, Lieutenant," he offered diplomatically. The pattern in the game had been easy discern before. Now it was utterly transparent. The hourglass marking the time was still only half-full.
Though he couldn't see his own demise which he had wrought, Jee groaned, "I'm going to lose, aren't I?"
The helmsman, Wan, coughed from his standing position at the wheel, and the man turned around in his seat to give the man a stink eye.
"You think that this is funny?"
Shrug. Grin. Of course not, he signed.
"You dumb son of a-"
"Your ire is misdirected, soldier," Iroh chastised.
Abashed, "Sorry, sir."
"And don't worry about your game; every time we play, I see your skills increase greatly!" he said jovially, placing and sliding his Stone Tile into the Fourth Intersection to deal a fatal blow to his opponent's stratagem, "I'm sure that when we play again, I'll have a much more difficult time obtaining victory."
"Right, sir," Jee commented with a straight face as he watched the General decimate his formation beyond recovery. Closing his eyes as if it pained him, he took the still-running hourglass and set it on its side, "I resign."
Another cough sounded from behind him, and the soldier twitched.
"It was a good game," Iroh asserted, folding his hands into his sleeves. He caught sight of Wan's left hand flipping through signs, eyes still facing forward and his right hand still on the wheel.
Thank you, sir.
Since there was no way to acknowledge that without alerting the other occupant of the room, Iroh simply blinked and yawned.
"I think now, however, that these old bones need their rest," he said as he stood up, cracking his back as he did so, "I'm going to check in on the prince and turn in for the night. Sleep well."
"Yes, sir, you as well, sir."
As the old man slowly made his way down the ladder leading to the rest of the ship, his sharp ears could hear grumbles and the exchange of coin.
So that's why the Lieutenant was so cross, he thought mirthfully, before sighing contentedly as he touched down at the hallway leading to Zuko's captain's quarters, Well, that was an awfully big hourglass. Maybe he should have bet on not losing to me in a smaller amount of time.
-
Aang.
Hey, Zuko.
It's nice to hear you again. Say hi to Sokka and Katara for me. See you in Yu Dao.
Alright.
-
Gently tapping on the metal portal, he tentatively requested entry, "Prince Zuko?"
Iroh didn't hear any response. He didn't expect one, at this point.
Opening the door, he took in a sight which he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
What he had been expecting, upon opening the dormitory door, was an immobile vegetable on the bed. Vacant eyes staring. That was what he and Lieutenant Jee had had to deal with, bodily carrying him from the outside deck to his quarters, after all. All the while listening to nonsense mumbling about light and fire. Jee had said that the Prince had gone insane. The General swore him to silence about what had happened, and internally had begged the spirits that the lieutenant was wrong and that whatever it was could be fixed…
But instead of that, the old man could only goggle at what was, to his knowledge, the most impressive feat of firebending he had ever seen in his life.
Candles filled the room. Waves of heat billowed out into the hall, and Iroh was blasted by the various sweet-smelling scents of melted wax. He could see that the entire room had been rearranged, cleared to make room for as many candles as could fit. The mattress stood on its side, out of the way. The meditation table, where the customary four firebending training devices were supposed to sit, and the cushion that one normally sat on: They, too, were folded and put away. At a glance, he guessed that the candles were as evenly-spaced as possible throughout the room. And in the center of it all…
If his eyelids widened any further, he'd have to fear for his eyes popping out.
Zuko was sitting, cross-legged, in the midst of all this. Eyes open, alert, and immediately focused on Iroh. Not on the candles which moved in time with his breathing. In his right hand was his dagger which Iroh had gifted to him (Never give up without a fight). In his left… In his left was the phoenix plume which, evidently, the prince had decided to cut off for some reason.
For a few moments, all they did was stare at each other. Then the aged general slowly got down on his knees.
A flash of amusement went across his (maybe not) nephew's face, like he knew what he was about to do.
He suspected it when he had seen each of the flames move in perfect unison, but he had to see it for himself. When the side of his head was pressed against the cold metal floor of the entryway, he peered at the candles from the side.
When the flames lowered with Zuko's exhale, Iroh could not hold in a gasp.
The wax. All of the candlewax. It was all melted down to exactly the same level.
Hastily, the Dragon of the West vaulted back up into a ready fighting stance, glaring at the… being who masqueraded as the Prince in front of him with deep suspicion.
"Who are you, spirit? And what have you done to my nephew!"
Everything stopped for a few moments, the candlelights holding themselves eerily still. Then the apparition shifted, letting the cut ponytail fall into its lap and lifting its left hand in a mollifying gesture.
"Peace, Uncle," it replied, "I am still here."
"No, he is not," Iroh contested quietly, dangerously, "You wear his body like an ill-fit pair of britches, fiend. No human can do what you're doing right now!"
"If I was a spirit, then you know what would come of this if you were to challenge me. It would end badly," it intoned, letting its pacifying pose fall. Then something… appeared in its eyes which gave him pause, "As it is… Please… Listen to me."
The Dragon of the West narrowed his eyes, but nodded, lowering his arms, yet keeping himself at the ready to attack at the slightest deception. The being returned the motion with a grateful look on Zuko's face, before closing its eyes and breathing, causing the candles to flare higher momentarily before settling back down as it slowly, meditatively breathed out. Then, in a clear, yet lowly pitched voice that wouldn't carry out into the hall:
"I am Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. Brother to Princess Azula. Nephew to Prince Iroh. Son of Fire Lord Ozai, who was grandson of Fire Lord Sozin, now passed. And I am son of Ursa, who was granddaughter of Avatar Roku, now passed. You, Uncle, are Grandmaster of the White Lotus before you are Prince. My destiny… Is not to capture the Avatar. And I have seen visions… so many visions… of the future, that I am old, now. Visions which are so much stronger than dreams, that they're memories. I've mastered firebending a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes…" and he opened his eyes, lifting an eyebrow, "And you should come inside before you catch a cold," his nephew said, gesturing at the doorway.
He heard loud and clear. Shut the door before someone hears me passing out secrets like so much fire flakes, please.
Hurriedly, Iroh stepped inside, turned, shut the door with a clang, locked it in place, turned, and gaped.
"... Zuko?" he whispered, "Is that really you?"
"Yes," he said stoically, before offering a somewhat bashful smile, "I apologize for frightening you earlier this afternoon, by the way. I was not myself."
Feeling as though his head was going to wobble off of his shoulders, Iroh brought his hands up to his temples to steady himself and try to refrain from shouting.
"Zuko," he said carefully, "If that is who you are… What happened to you?"
-
So that's what happens when you die in the middle of deep meditation. Thanks, Sifu Hotman!
Aang, you made me look crazy!
You're welcome!
Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.
-
The prince's smile disappeared, becoming a frown twinged with a definite, familiar note of irritation that put the general more at ease than a hundred impassioned speeches ever could.
"That was… the vision, coming to me," he grated out, annoyance clear in his voice for some reason that Iroh couldn't fathom, "Please," with a final huff of breath, every candle in the room was simultaneously extinguished… except for the one that was directly in front of Zuko, "Clear a space. Pull up a cushion. Sit. I have much to tell you."
Shaken by yet another casual display of awesome firebending control, Iroh found he was still not entirely sure that this was really his nephew. But his current demeanor was so reminiscent of the prince… He would operate, for now, based on the assumption that this really was his family and not some benevolent ghost who had taken over his body.
Careful not to spill any melted wax from any of the candle holders, the man did as he had been asked and cleared a space, grabbing the meditation cushion when he finished. As he settled down on the floor in front of him, the old general observed the way the candlelight threw Zuko's face into sharp relief.
"The first thing that you need to know is that the Avatar is definitely alive, and he is very close by," he revealed bluntly, and Iroh lurched back in surprise, "The light that you saw earlier was him emerging from an iceberg after being frozen for a hundred years. We need to leave the South Pole, tomorrow, for two reasons. As you well know, the Fire Lord has spies planted on this ship; it would be a good idea," stressing the words lightly, "for them to not find out about Aang."
"Aang?"
"The Air nomad."
"The Avatar," the Dragon of the West breathed out, awed. Continuing, and searching his nephew's countenance for confirmation, "You…?"
"Yes, Uncle," the prince placated, eyes glittering with warmth, "I'm on his side. I'm not going to try to capture him in some misbegotten attempt to get Ozai to restore my honor."
Zuko slid slightly as he moved into a more comfortable position. Then came the words, "You've been more of a father to me than he ever was, anyway."
Before the older man could gather his wits at the bombardment of information and the storm of emotion brought by those words, his nephew soldiered on, "The second reason that we need to get out of here soon is that Commander Zhao is currently stationed at Whale Minor, but he won't be for much longer; he's about to be transferred to the Crescent Island Naval Defense Point. I have… business, with him," he finished grimly.
Iroh fastened onto the discrepancy that he detected in that pronouncement, "Commander Zhao? Isn't Zhao just a captain?"
The corner of Zuko's mouth twitched upwards, "He was. Supposedly his performance as a mere captain marked him for bigger, better things. You will find that he has been promoted for… loyalty, unofficially."
He sings Ozai's tune the loudest.
The old soldier understood that concept quite well. It was the reason that murderous animal, Bujing, had been promoted to general. It was the reason that the forty-first division was dead and buried in an unnamed Earth Kingdom mass grave. It was the reason he had to watch Zuko's vehement reaction to the vile plans discussed within the war room, realizing too late that he should've just said no…
"The truth is a bit deeper than what you're probably thinking…"
Returning to reality, Iroh leaned forward to listen intently. Zuko was frowning, and his gold eyes were gazing intently into the flame of the sole candle between them.
"Zhao is not competent enough to have the confidence of Ozai; the Fire Lord, rightly, thinks he's an imbecile. The esteemed commander is blackmailing, on the one hand, and bribing, on the other hand. Through an impressively twisted series of events, which I will not recount for now, he found an underground spirit library in the Earth Kingdom containing both of these instruments.
"The bribe is that Zhao has found a way to permanently destroy the Water Tribes, involving the Moon and Ocean Spirits. However, this by itself would not have been enough to convince Ozai of the truth within the documents. And, even if he did believe that the scrolls were true, and that Zhao's plan would work on top of that, he would have assigned the plan to someone he felt was more fitting for the job. In Zhao's mind this was probably even worse than not selling the plan at all, because he's twice as egotistical as the Fire Lord.
"This is where the blackmail comes in."
Zuko's gaze moved up to look his uncle in the eyes, and the general was transfixed.
"Zhao has irrefutable proof that Ozai usurped the throne."
If this evening continues in the vein that it has for much longer, Iroh remarked to himself in a distant corner of his mind, I will need to see the ship physician about heart palpitations.
Reeling at the news of his brother's apparent treachery, all of the breath went out of him in a great big whoosh as he slumped in his seated position. His nephew continued:
"Through this, the commander is extorting the Fire Lord into giving him the resources he wants… But also has convinced him about the veracity of the Moon and Ocean scrolls. So, even though the Fire Lord very much hates Zhao's guts, he will give him absolutely everything he wants and more to ensure that his scheme succeeds. The only thing which prevented them from moving in on the Northern Water Tribe immediately is that it would have been suspicious, to say the least, for someone to go from being a private in the Army to being an Admiral of the Navy."
Zuko went quiet, and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, the light of the candle glowing brightly for a brief moment before settling back down.
"He will fail, if he attempts this plan. That is a foregone conclusion. In fact, if he comes close to the point of succeeding, he will regret it for the rest of his very short mortal life… and for his much longer afterlife."
At that, Iroh sat back up and commanded his lungs to function properly, attempting to get himself back in order. He stared at the prince for a long moment.
"... If his failure is certain, then why? Why are we going to meet him?"
Zuko looked at him like he was stupid, raising an eyebrow. Then the general shook his head, berating himself within his mind and answering his own question aloud with the obvious conclusion.
"Of course… If nothing is done, I suppose many people will die."
"So will he."
Now Iroh looked at his nephew in disbelief.
"Him? What do you mean? You can't possibly care about him; you hated him!"
Zuko sighed, and it sounded like exasperation.
"You must understand, Uncle, the time I've spent in my visions… I am tired. So tired. And old. I just don't have it in me to hate anymore. It's pointless. And aside from that… The Avatar is very particular about the sanctity of life," he informed wryly, and, beyond the reflection of the flickering light of the candle, Iroh could see the spark of admiration within his burnished eyes.
That wasn't the distant recollection of a vision. Iroh knew that personally from his own experience with the spirits.
It was genuinely as Zuko had said earlier. They were memories… from the future.
And, by now, the old man was beyond convinced that Zuko was himself. No spirit he had ever heard of was on this good terms with a human. Any human.
Screwing his eyes shut, he let his face rest in his hands.
"Do you… Do you have a plan, Zuko? You must have something in mind."
A conspiratory smile.
"I am going to give Zhao… pause, about trifling with spirits. And about other things. Don't worry. There's a long laundry list of things to do. Zhao is just the most immediate."
After that, they both were silent for a long time.
Iroh listened to the prince's inhales and exhales while he turned over all that he'd been told. It was an incredible fortune, like his deepest wishes had been granted. For him, personally, and for the entire world. Zuko… was like everything he ever hoped for him to become… the beautiful prince he was always meant to be. Though, it had come at a price, he could see, in the manifest age of his nephew's soul. And yet never, in his wildest dreams, did he expect anything like this to just… fall into the world's lap. In fact… Dare I ask…?
"My nephew… the war? Everything? Will the Avatar defeat the Fire Lord? Will I live to see peace?" he asked in a small voice, holding his breath.
A beat passed, then the prince gave a small smile:
"Firstly… I thought I told you that you are my father, to me. Secondly, if things go according to plan, and there is no reason why they wouldn't… Yes."
And he threw his arms forward, knocking over the candle as he embraced his newfound son.
Unseen by Iroh, Zuko's smile had become tinged with sorrow. The sorrow of eons.
-
I have that routine memorized.
… I'm sorry.
Don't be.
You'll never tell him the truth again? I mean… ever?
No. I can't burden him with that knowledge anymore. It kills him, Aang. He knows what a curse it is for me. For us.
… Yeah.
Apologies for the prolonged pause. Life intervened.
-
Chapter 2: Lie By Omission
Zuko's reaction to the pillar of light which had appeared in the distance had been… unexpected. The usual exclamations about the Avatar would not have been out of place. Even a simple barked order to the helmsman to head a course for the light would have been fine.
Collapsing onto the deck whilst holding his own head between his hands was not fine.
Iroh barely noticed as, across from him, Lieutenant Jee slid a tile into place on the pai sho board.
At first, he had only felt concerned about the situation. Now, he was feeling anxious. Something was wrong with his nephew, and he didn't know what. Oh, it was obvious that it had something to do with that beam of light from earlier, but he still couldn't figure out what could have happened to the prince. Other than it must have something to do with the spirits.
"General Iroh?"
Jostled from his thoughts, the aging firebender focused onto the table between them, before breaking out into chuckles.
"Well, that was very... assertive of you, Lieutenant," he offered diplomatically. The pattern in the game had been easy discern before. Now it was utterly transparent. The hourglass marking the time was still only half-full.
Though he couldn't see his own demise which he had wrought, Jee groaned, "I'm going to lose, aren't I?"
The helmsman, Wan, coughed from his standing position at the wheel, and the man turned around in his seat to give the man a stink eye.
"You think that this is funny?"
Shrug. Grin. Of course not, he signed.
"You dumb son of a-"
"Your ire is misdirected, soldier," Iroh chastised.
Abashed, "Sorry, sir."
"And don't worry about your game; every time we play, I see your skills increase greatly!" he said jovially, placing and sliding his Stone Tile into the Fourth Intersection to deal a fatal blow to his opponent's stratagem, "I'm sure that when we play again, I'll have a much more difficult time obtaining victory."
"Right, sir," Jee commented with a straight face as he watched the General decimate his formation beyond recovery. Closing his eyes as if it pained him, he took the still-running hourglass and set it on its side, "I resign."
Another cough sounded from behind him, and the soldier twitched.
"It was a good game," Iroh asserted, folding his hands into his sleeves. He caught sight of Wan's left hand flipping through signs, eyes still facing forward and his right hand still on the wheel.
Thank you, sir.
Since there was no way to acknowledge that without alerting the other occupant of the room, Iroh simply blinked and yawned.
"I think now, however, that these old bones need their rest," he said as he stood up, cracking his back as he did so, "I'm going to check in on the prince and turn in for the night. Sleep well."
"Yes, sir, you as well, sir."
As the old man slowly made his way down the ladder leading to the rest of the ship, his sharp ears could hear grumbles and the exchange of coin.
So that's why the Lieutenant was so cross, he thought mirthfully, before sighing contentedly as he touched down at the hallway leading to Zuko's captain's quarters, Well, that was an awfully big hourglass. Maybe he should have bet on not losing to me in a smaller amount of time.
-
Aang.
Hey, Zuko.
It's nice to hear you again. Say hi to Sokka and Katara for me. See you in Yu Dao.
Alright.
-
Gently tapping on the metal portal, he tentatively requested entry, "Prince Zuko?"
Iroh didn't hear any response. He didn't expect one, at this point.
Opening the door, he took in a sight which he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
What he had been expecting, upon opening the dormitory door, was an immobile vegetable on the bed. Vacant eyes staring. That was what he and Lieutenant Jee had had to deal with, bodily carrying him from the outside deck to his quarters, after all. All the while listening to nonsense mumbling about light and fire. Jee had said that the Prince had gone insane. The General swore him to silence about what had happened, and internally had begged the spirits that the lieutenant was wrong and that whatever it was could be fixed…
But instead of that, the old man could only goggle at what was, to his knowledge, the most impressive feat of firebending he had ever seen in his life.
Candles filled the room. Waves of heat billowed out into the hall, and Iroh was blasted by the various sweet-smelling scents of melted wax. He could see that the entire room had been rearranged, cleared to make room for as many candles as could fit. The mattress stood on its side, out of the way. The meditation table, where the customary four firebending training devices were supposed to sit, and the cushion that one normally sat on: They, too, were folded and put away. At a glance, he guessed that the candles were as evenly-spaced as possible throughout the room. And in the center of it all…
If his eyelids widened any further, he'd have to fear for his eyes popping out.
Zuko was sitting, cross-legged, in the midst of all this. Eyes open, alert, and immediately focused on Iroh. Not on the candles which moved in time with his breathing. In his right hand was his dagger which Iroh had gifted to him (Never give up without a fight). In his left… In his left was the phoenix plume which, evidently, the prince had decided to cut off for some reason.
For a few moments, all they did was stare at each other. Then the aged general slowly got down on his knees.
A flash of amusement went across his (maybe not) nephew's face, like he knew what he was about to do.
He suspected it when he had seen each of the flames move in perfect unison, but he had to see it for himself. When the side of his head was pressed against the cold metal floor of the entryway, he peered at the candles from the side.
When the flames lowered with Zuko's exhale, Iroh could not hold in a gasp.
The wax. All of the candlewax. It was all melted down to exactly the same level.
Hastily, the Dragon of the West vaulted back up into a ready fighting stance, glaring at the… being who masqueraded as the Prince in front of him with deep suspicion.
"Who are you, spirit? And what have you done to my nephew!"
Everything stopped for a few moments, the candlelights holding themselves eerily still. Then the apparition shifted, letting the cut ponytail fall into its lap and lifting its left hand in a mollifying gesture.
"Peace, Uncle," it replied, "I am still here."
"No, he is not," Iroh contested quietly, dangerously, "You wear his body like an ill-fit pair of britches, fiend. No human can do what you're doing right now!"
"If I was a spirit, then you know what would come of this if you were to challenge me. It would end badly," it intoned, letting its pacifying pose fall. Then something… appeared in its eyes which gave him pause, "As it is… Please… Listen to me."
The Dragon of the West narrowed his eyes, but nodded, lowering his arms, yet keeping himself at the ready to attack at the slightest deception. The being returned the motion with a grateful look on Zuko's face, before closing its eyes and breathing, causing the candles to flare higher momentarily before settling back down as it slowly, meditatively breathed out. Then, in a clear, yet lowly pitched voice that wouldn't carry out into the hall:
"I am Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. Brother to Princess Azula. Nephew to Prince Iroh. Son of Fire Lord Ozai, who was grandson of Fire Lord Sozin, now passed. And I am son of Ursa, who was granddaughter of Avatar Roku, now passed. You, Uncle, are Grandmaster of the White Lotus before you are Prince. My destiny… Is not to capture the Avatar. And I have seen visions… so many visions… of the future, that I am old, now. Visions which are so much stronger than dreams, that they're memories. I've mastered firebending a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes…" and he opened his eyes, lifting an eyebrow, "And you should come inside before you catch a cold," his nephew said, gesturing at the doorway.
He heard loud and clear. Shut the door before someone hears me passing out secrets like so much fire flakes, please.
Hurriedly, Iroh stepped inside, turned, shut the door with a clang, locked it in place, turned, and gaped.
"... Zuko?" he whispered, "Is that really you?"
"Yes," he said stoically, before offering a somewhat bashful smile, "I apologize for frightening you earlier this afternoon, by the way. I was not myself."
Feeling as though his head was going to wobble off of his shoulders, Iroh brought his hands up to his temples to steady himself and try to refrain from shouting.
"Zuko," he said carefully, "If that is who you are… What happened to you?"
-
So that's what happens when you die in the middle of deep meditation. Thanks, Sifu Hotman!
Aang, you made me look crazy!
You're welcome!
Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.
-
The prince's smile disappeared, becoming a frown twinged with a definite, familiar note of irritation that put the general more at ease than a hundred impassioned speeches ever could.
"That was… the vision, coming to me," he grated out, annoyance clear in his voice for some reason that Iroh couldn't fathom, "Please," with a final huff of breath, every candle in the room was simultaneously extinguished… except for the one that was directly in front of Zuko, "Clear a space. Pull up a cushion. Sit. I have much to tell you."
Shaken by yet another casual display of awesome firebending control, Iroh found he was still not entirely sure that this was really his nephew. But his current demeanor was so reminiscent of the prince… He would operate, for now, based on the assumption that this really was his family and not some benevolent ghost who had taken over his body.
Careful not to spill any melted wax from any of the candle holders, the man did as he had been asked and cleared a space, grabbing the meditation cushion when he finished. As he settled down on the floor in front of him, the old general observed the way the candlelight threw Zuko's face into sharp relief.
"The first thing that you need to know is that the Avatar is definitely alive, and he is very close by," he revealed bluntly, and Iroh lurched back in surprise, "The light that you saw earlier was him emerging from an iceberg after being frozen for a hundred years. We need to leave the South Pole, tomorrow, for two reasons. As you well know, the Fire Lord has spies planted on this ship; it would be a good idea," stressing the words lightly, "for them to not find out about Aang."
"Aang?"
"The Air nomad."
"The Avatar," the Dragon of the West breathed out, awed. Continuing, and searching his nephew's countenance for confirmation, "You…?"
"Yes, Uncle," the prince placated, eyes glittering with warmth, "I'm on his side. I'm not going to try to capture him in some misbegotten attempt to get Ozai to restore my honor."
Zuko slid slightly as he moved into a more comfortable position. Then came the words, "You've been more of a father to me than he ever was, anyway."
Before the older man could gather his wits at the bombardment of information and the storm of emotion brought by those words, his nephew soldiered on, "The second reason that we need to get out of here soon is that Commander Zhao is currently stationed at Whale Minor, but he won't be for much longer; he's about to be transferred to the Crescent Island Naval Defense Point. I have… business, with him," he finished grimly.
Iroh fastened onto the discrepancy that he detected in that pronouncement, "Commander Zhao? Isn't Zhao just a captain?"
The corner of Zuko's mouth twitched upwards, "He was. Supposedly his performance as a mere captain marked him for bigger, better things. You will find that he has been promoted for… loyalty, unofficially."
He sings Ozai's tune the loudest.
The old soldier understood that concept quite well. It was the reason that murderous animal, Bujing, had been promoted to general. It was the reason that the forty-first division was dead and buried in an unnamed Earth Kingdom mass grave. It was the reason he had to watch Zuko's vehement reaction to the vile plans discussed within the war room, realizing too late that he should've just said no…
"The truth is a bit deeper than what you're probably thinking…"
Returning to reality, Iroh leaned forward to listen intently. Zuko was frowning, and his gold eyes were gazing intently into the flame of the sole candle between them.
"Zhao is not competent enough to have the confidence of Ozai; the Fire Lord, rightly, thinks he's an imbecile. The esteemed commander is blackmailing, on the one hand, and bribing, on the other hand. Through an impressively twisted series of events, which I will not recount for now, he found an underground spirit library in the Earth Kingdom containing both of these instruments.
"The bribe is that Zhao has found a way to permanently destroy the Water Tribes, involving the Moon and Ocean Spirits. However, this by itself would not have been enough to convince Ozai of the truth within the documents. And, even if he did believe that the scrolls were true, and that Zhao's plan would work on top of that, he would have assigned the plan to someone he felt was more fitting for the job. In Zhao's mind this was probably even worse than not selling the plan at all, because he's twice as egotistical as the Fire Lord.
"This is where the blackmail comes in."
Zuko's gaze moved up to look his uncle in the eyes, and the general was transfixed.
"Zhao has irrefutable proof that Ozai usurped the throne."
If this evening continues in the vein that it has for much longer, Iroh remarked to himself in a distant corner of his mind, I will need to see the ship physician about heart palpitations.
Reeling at the news of his brother's apparent treachery, all of the breath went out of him in a great big whoosh as he slumped in his seated position. His nephew continued:
"Through this, the commander is extorting the Fire Lord into giving him the resources he wants… But also has convinced him about the veracity of the Moon and Ocean scrolls. So, even though the Fire Lord very much hates Zhao's guts, he will give him absolutely everything he wants and more to ensure that his scheme succeeds. The only thing which prevented them from moving in on the Northern Water Tribe immediately is that it would have been suspicious, to say the least, for someone to go from being a private in the Army to being an Admiral of the Navy."
Zuko went quiet, and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, the light of the candle glowing brightly for a brief moment before settling back down.
"He will fail, if he attempts this plan. That is a foregone conclusion. In fact, if he comes close to the point of succeeding, he will regret it for the rest of his very short mortal life… and for his much longer afterlife."
At that, Iroh sat back up and commanded his lungs to function properly, attempting to get himself back in order. He stared at the prince for a long moment.
"... If his failure is certain, then why? Why are we going to meet him?"
Zuko looked at him like he was stupid, raising an eyebrow. Then the general shook his head, berating himself within his mind and answering his own question aloud with the obvious conclusion.
"Of course… If nothing is done, I suppose many people will die."
"So will he."
Now Iroh looked at his nephew in disbelief.
"Him? What do you mean? You can't possibly care about him; you hated him!"
Zuko sighed, and it sounded like exasperation.
"You must understand, Uncle, the time I've spent in my visions… I am tired. So tired. And old. I just don't have it in me to hate anymore. It's pointless. And aside from that… The Avatar is very particular about the sanctity of life," he informed wryly, and, beyond the reflection of the flickering light of the candle, Iroh could see the spark of admiration within his burnished eyes.
That wasn't the distant recollection of a vision. Iroh knew that personally from his own experience with the spirits.
It was genuinely as Zuko had said earlier. They were memories… from the future.
And, by now, the old man was beyond convinced that Zuko was himself. No spirit he had ever heard of was on this good terms with a human. Any human.
Screwing his eyes shut, he let his face rest in his hands.
"Do you… Do you have a plan, Zuko? You must have something in mind."
A conspiratory smile.
"I am going to give Zhao… pause, about trifling with spirits. And about other things. Don't worry. There's a long laundry list of things to do. Zhao is just the most immediate."
After that, they both were silent for a long time.
Iroh listened to the prince's inhales and exhales while he turned over all that he'd been told. It was an incredible fortune, like his deepest wishes had been granted. For him, personally, and for the entire world. Zuko… was like everything he ever hoped for him to become… the beautiful prince he was always meant to be. Though, it had come at a price, he could see, in the manifest age of his nephew's soul. And yet never, in his wildest dreams, did he expect anything like this to just… fall into the world's lap. In fact… Dare I ask…?
"My nephew… the war? Everything? Will the Avatar defeat the Fire Lord? Will I live to see peace?" he asked in a small voice, holding his breath.
A beat passed, then the prince gave a small smile:
"Firstly… I thought I told you that you are my father, to me. Secondly, if things go according to plan, and there is no reason why they wouldn't… Yes."
And he threw his arms forward, knocking over the candle as he embraced his newfound son.
Unseen by Iroh, Zuko's smile had become tinged with sorrow. The sorrow of eons.
-
I have that routine memorized.
… I'm sorry.
Don't be.
You'll never tell him the truth again? I mean… ever?
No. I can't burden him with that knowledge anymore. It kills him, Aang. He knows what a curse it is for me. For us.
… Yeah.
Extra 2: Windows
- Location
- United States
More things~
I know that I could go back to posting things on Spacebattles, but if I do I want it to be on a new thread, because the old one is as messy as a horizontal tango.
By the way: If anyone sees anything that's, like, embarrassingly badly written, at any point in any of my writing ever, please tell me.
'Nuff said. Another extra:
-
Extra 2: Windows
"No- just… Shut up. Shut. Up. I need to think… Just. Hang on. What."
She finally took the seat that was offered to her at the beginning of the conversation.
The woman across from her waited patiently.
"I-I mean… Okay, wait. Wait. Tell me… again."
-
"Alright ladies, gentleman," she began, speaking through her surgeon's mask and looking intently at the others standing around the table, "You've done this before. The stakes… are exactly the same as before."
To her right, the youngest person at the table at thirty-five years old, and also the only male, swallowed visibly. His blue eyes were trained on his leader, desperately wishing, wanting to believe her.
"You are my best students. That makes you the best medical professionals in the world. Our patient is going to walk in through that door… and then we're going to do this operation flawlessly."
-
Zuko was working through a series of building permits for Caldera when his secretary got the phone call.
"Yes, sir, your appointment is confirmed for tomorrow afternoon- I beg your pardon, please wait a moment, I have another incoming call- Hello, you have reached the Office of the Fire Lord, may I ask who-... Ah. Yes, madam. I'll put you through."
She called through the door, "Miss Katara on Line 2!"
The older man paused, before reaching for the machine on his desk and pressing the blinking red button. He lifted the handset to his ear, a smile coming across his face.
"It's good to hear from you, friend. It's been too long. What occasion-?... Oh, you have news, do you? What-?..."
Whatever he heard caused his eyes to shock open, and his lips parted.
And for a while he was silent, listening.
"... I… That's… Of course. Of course. I'll be there. Yes. Yes. Goodbye."
And he hung up. For a moment, he kept his hand on the handset, as if not quite able to believe that he had just had that conversation, Then he slowly let his hand slide down so that it rested in front of him on the desk, arm resting lightly on the table's surface.
"Ming?" he called through the open door.
"Yes, my Lord?"
"I need you to cancel my appointments for the next two weeks. Please tell them they have my sincerest regrets- in fact, make sure that they get individual letters…"
-
"Alright, Tian, pass the topical anesthesia. Thank you. Ren, move the scope into position…"
The three other doctors in the room were quickly, quietly, and orderly doing as they were told with machine-like precision, bringing everything to bear with maximum efficiency.
"Right. Good… We'll be starting with the left one, okay?"
The earthbender who was quite completely out of her element timidly answered, "Okay, whatever you say, Sugar Queen. You're the boss."
-
They had to physically come to his home on Kyoshi island to deliver the message. There were no telephones yet.
"-long way to Ba Sing Se, and the girls, they look so~ prettay~"
"Gramp-Gramp, you're funny when you sing!"
Teasing, "Funny how?"
"Funny funny!"
"How funny?"
"The funniest!"
Sokka laughed, reaching down to pick up his (so far) only grandchild and putting her on his lap, "You are such a twerp."
Poke, "You're a twerp!"
Scoff, "Pfff. I am the original twerp. All your twerpiness came from me!"
"... what does original mean?"
"Eh… That means first. Sorry. It's just that you're such a smart cookie, I keep thinking you know all these words!"
The little girl gave him the biggest hug she could, wrapping her little arms as far as possible around her grandfather's frame, "I love you, Gramp! You play with me all the time!"
His eyes softened, and he wrapped his arms around her, "I love you too, Aga."
A treacherous voice whispered in the back of his mind: Even though it'll all be over in the blink of an eye, and I'll never see you again, and I'll probably forget about you…
No, he thought firmly, eyes hardening into steel unseen as his granddaughter pushed her face into his chest, None of that. I will not walk into that insanity.
Instead, he sent a prayer. Not to any spirits, or gods. But to people who never existed. People who were known only by five very special people in the world. Who were subsequently forgotten. People who, Sokka knew, he had loved.
And then let them go.
He was able to forestall the tears, and he pulled back from the hug, "Hey, munchkin. You want to get something to eat?"
"No seaweed stew! Yuck!"
"Yuck, indeed! That's Northern food! We're gonna have arctic hen!"
The little girl threw up her hands in celebration, cheering, "Yay! Meat!"
"You truly are a girl after my own heart," Sokka said with some wonder, thinking that perhaps it wouldn't be quite so easy to forget this one, after all.
Knocknocknock.
Raising an eyebrow, he called towards the front door from his rocking-chair, "Who's there?"
"Telegram for Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe."
-
"Okay, it's finished. It's looking a little peaky, give it some hydration before sealing the wound."
The young man, Ren, answered, "Yes, Ma'am."
The master waterbender turned to Lan, the second-oldest woman in the room, "Did you clean the eyelid speculum?"
Holding up the object in question, the surgeon's smile could be seen through her mask, "You know it."
Katara's face betrayed nothing, taking the proffered tool, "You… are just so on it, aren't you? Be ready. We're doing the right one in five."
-
He wasn't far. He lived in the same city, after all. They just sent a courier to Zhongyang Mountain a few miles away, where they knew he'd be.
It was spring. And if there was one thing that Aang could not find any fault in whatsoever with regards to the Fire Nation colonizing the Earth Kingdom… it was the importation of cherry blossom trees. They were too beautiful to find fault in.
Beauty. Beautiful. Heavy words. Should be used sparingly. Completely justified in this case.
A light breeze blew through the branches above him, and a snowstorm burst into existence as the flowers detached to fall in a swirling dance. Glancing down, the airbender wasn't surprised to find his picnic blanket almost completely covered in petals.
He sat in seiza on the top of a hill, overlooking Shangfang Pond, a body of water surrounded by sakura and nestled between the peak of the foothill Aang sat on and the rest of Zhongyang. Behind him, he knew, was the not unimpressive view of the United Republic, with Republic City taking up a prominent pose at center stage. That was beautiful too… but that treat was year-round. Cherry blossom blooming season came once a year, and only for two weeks, before it was over.
However, he took a break from drinking with his eyes.
Aang raised his cup of tea to his face, heating it a little with his bending, and breathed in.
Darjeeling. Is. The best.
Ginseng was a close second, but for this life… the Avatar decided that darjeeling was it. And he suspected that it would remain his number one choice for quite a few lifetimes. His record was three lives and sixteen years, for oolong. Maybe this time he'd break it.
Now, now, this isn't a competition, he chided himself. The brought the cup to his lips to sip the hot liquid, tea is meant to be enjoyed at the pace of falling sakura petals.
Lowering the cup, he sighed, wrinkled eyes closing.
Bliss.
I don't think I've felt this relaxed in a long, long… long… time.
"Avatar Aang!"
-
The knife was dipped into alcohol. Then dried. Then handed to the operator who stood at the microscope aimed directly at the earthbender's eyes.
"Alright, Toph, no talking for this part, please. You're being held steady, I know, but I need you to be as still as you can."
The sarcasm welled up instantly.
"I'm an earthbender, Sugarcake. If I put my mind to it, I can be as motionless as a rock."
Katara calmly rejoined, "Great. That makes this really easy. Please act as a rock to the best of your ability; bonus points for accurate volume imitation."
Toph, with the skin surrounding her right lids freshly swabbed with disinfectant, went still.
The waterbender looked straight down, through the magnifier, at the milky surface of the cataract with considering, dark blue eyes, lifting her knife and holding it in a steady grip.
She was glad to see that the growth looked just as easy to work with as the other eye.
A corneoscleral incision… just like the other, then, she mused.
Carefully, she aimed.
-
When they were sitting in that office, Katara explained the procedure. Then she explained the three-day exercise-period afterwards that the earthbender would have to go through. Toph sat quietly through it all, not saying a word more until she was finished with her explanation.
They sat quietly for some time.
Then:
"Okay," Toph calmly spoke into the air, flat, "That's… great."
A tiny crack appeared in the window overlooking the bay.
Katara looked at the woman in front of her with soft eyes, "Toph-"
"No. No. It's okay. I get it. I get it. Shut up."
The crack expanded into a fracture, catching Katara's attention, who eyed it warily and spoke a little more urgently.
"You don't have to do this right now if you don't-"
"Shut up."
The fracture became a spiderweb covering the entire pane of glass.
"I know it's a bit of a shock-"
The window shattered.
Followed by Katara's eardrums shortly afterwards.
"NO SH-!"
-
"Okay, yeah. We're doing this. In a fluffy room. Where I can't see."
Ren's hands stilled from fiddling with the wrappings, "You ready?"
"I said-"
The blindfold was taken off.
"..."
"..."
"... Okay… first impressions on this whole… 'seeing' thing… it kinda sucks."
"... Um…"
"It's just a giant, blurry mess. Can I have dirt now?"
"... No?" the doctor said timidly, "We're here for you to practice your eyes. Mistress Katara was very specific: No rocks."
"Monkeyfeathers."
-
"Right. I've got one request… before I go in."
"What is it?"
"That therapy thing? I'm gonna practice using my working peepers with one of your goons, or something."
"... I've still gotta do the waterbending healing sessions."
"I'll do those blindfolded. I want… When it's all fixed… And I see for real for the first time…"
"... Okay. Not a problem."
-
"Three."
"Next."
"Four."
"Next."
"... Eight?"
"Very good," the young doctor said warmly, lowering his two hands, "You're getting the hang of this fast. You might actually be done by the third day."
"Sweetness. Next thingy?"
Ren nodded, and Toph noticed that.
"Alright, we're gonna work on colors, now…"
-
Zuko sat in the waiting room, eyes closed and sleeves folded, the very picture of calm and tranquility.
However, to anyone who really knew him, like Aang, it was beyond obvious that the Fire Lord was internally wringing his hands in excitement.
Shaking his head and chuckling, the Avatar moved from the doorway to stand next to the airbender.
He opened with a drawl, "So…"
Eyelids opened to reveal a single, burning gold eye, meeting the bright grey gaze.
A small smile appeared on Zuko's face, "So."
Momo, by now an ancient creature, grawped and smoothly leapt from Aang's shoulder to land on the seat to the right of Zuko, curling up to take one of his very frequent naps.
Aang's smile widened, "Isn't this the greatest thing?"
The Fire Lord leaned back in his seat, breathing in and letting out a huge sigh, "Yes. It's wonderful."
But Aang could see that Zuko was already starting to think beyond the present moment as the small smile began to vanish. Already thinking about… about a day when this would be… boring.
Intervention, the Avatar thought hastily, Intervention!
"Hey," he rushed out, sitting next to the unoccupied seat next to the firebender and putting a hand on his shoulder, "Don't. Don't… do what you're doing right now, alright?"
He didn't dare to say it out loud, lest he trick himself into the same downward spiral of thought.
Reiterating firmly, "This is a great moment that we're all going to share together and then remember fondly forever. And that is it."
Zuko turned his head, meeting the determined face of his friend, and rolled his eyes.
"Melodramatic, much?"
Aang thought back over the moment and his face reddened a bit, "Uh… yeah, that was… I overreacted right there, huh?"
Someone spoke up from the doorway, "How to be a Drama Queen in Thirty Seconds or Less: A Novel by Aang."
The Avatar and the Fire Lord looked up to the imposingly tall figure of the Scholar, laughing blue eyes greeting them.
Aang grinned, "Hey Sokka."
-
"Okay… Hokay… okay... "
Katara looked at Toph in amusement as they walked to the waiting room where the others had gathered.
The earthbender could feel the gaze; she was not happy.
"Shut up," she snapped.
The waterbender giggled, "I didn't say anything."
"Your mom didn't say anything, Sugar Queen!"
The insult just washed over the Doctor, who blithely replied, "Calm down. You're going to love this. You're not going to see us wrong; your eyesight has been verified 20/20 by three of my top optometrists."
They pushed through a set of doors. The waiting room was within sight.
The earthbending mistress had thin lips, "... I know. It's just…"
They reached the door, and Katara glanced sympathetically at the other woman, "... crazy?"
The blindfolded, formerly-blind earthbender's nerves were pulled taut.
"Yeah."
The wanderbender put a reassuring hand on the shorter woman's shoulder.
"Well, this is gonna be crazy awesome."
And she opened the door.
I know that I could go back to posting things on Spacebattles, but if I do I want it to be on a new thread, because the old one is as messy as a horizontal tango.
By the way: If anyone sees anything that's, like, embarrassingly badly written, at any point in any of my writing ever, please tell me.
'Nuff said. Another extra:
-
Extra 2: Windows
"No- just… Shut up. Shut. Up. I need to think… Just. Hang on. What."
She finally took the seat that was offered to her at the beginning of the conversation.
The woman across from her waited patiently.
"I-I mean… Okay, wait. Wait. Tell me… again."
-
"Alright ladies, gentleman," she began, speaking through her surgeon's mask and looking intently at the others standing around the table, "You've done this before. The stakes… are exactly the same as before."
To her right, the youngest person at the table at thirty-five years old, and also the only male, swallowed visibly. His blue eyes were trained on his leader, desperately wishing, wanting to believe her.
"You are my best students. That makes you the best medical professionals in the world. Our patient is going to walk in through that door… and then we're going to do this operation flawlessly."
-
Zuko was working through a series of building permits for Caldera when his secretary got the phone call.
"Yes, sir, your appointment is confirmed for tomorrow afternoon- I beg your pardon, please wait a moment, I have another incoming call- Hello, you have reached the Office of the Fire Lord, may I ask who-... Ah. Yes, madam. I'll put you through."
She called through the door, "Miss Katara on Line 2!"
The older man paused, before reaching for the machine on his desk and pressing the blinking red button. He lifted the handset to his ear, a smile coming across his face.
"It's good to hear from you, friend. It's been too long. What occasion-?... Oh, you have news, do you? What-?..."
Whatever he heard caused his eyes to shock open, and his lips parted.
And for a while he was silent, listening.
"... I… That's… Of course. Of course. I'll be there. Yes. Yes. Goodbye."
And he hung up. For a moment, he kept his hand on the handset, as if not quite able to believe that he had just had that conversation, Then he slowly let his hand slide down so that it rested in front of him on the desk, arm resting lightly on the table's surface.
"Ming?" he called through the open door.
"Yes, my Lord?"
"I need you to cancel my appointments for the next two weeks. Please tell them they have my sincerest regrets- in fact, make sure that they get individual letters…"
-
"Alright, Tian, pass the topical anesthesia. Thank you. Ren, move the scope into position…"
The three other doctors in the room were quickly, quietly, and orderly doing as they were told with machine-like precision, bringing everything to bear with maximum efficiency.
"Right. Good… We'll be starting with the left one, okay?"
The earthbender who was quite completely out of her element timidly answered, "Okay, whatever you say, Sugar Queen. You're the boss."
-
They had to physically come to his home on Kyoshi island to deliver the message. There were no telephones yet.
"-long way to Ba Sing Se, and the girls, they look so~ prettay~"
"Gramp-Gramp, you're funny when you sing!"
Teasing, "Funny how?"
"Funny funny!"
"How funny?"
"The funniest!"
Sokka laughed, reaching down to pick up his (so far) only grandchild and putting her on his lap, "You are such a twerp."
Poke, "You're a twerp!"
Scoff, "Pfff. I am the original twerp. All your twerpiness came from me!"
"... what does original mean?"
"Eh… That means first. Sorry. It's just that you're such a smart cookie, I keep thinking you know all these words!"
The little girl gave him the biggest hug she could, wrapping her little arms as far as possible around her grandfather's frame, "I love you, Gramp! You play with me all the time!"
His eyes softened, and he wrapped his arms around her, "I love you too, Aga."
A treacherous voice whispered in the back of his mind: Even though it'll all be over in the blink of an eye, and I'll never see you again, and I'll probably forget about you…
No, he thought firmly, eyes hardening into steel unseen as his granddaughter pushed her face into his chest, None of that. I will not walk into that insanity.
Instead, he sent a prayer. Not to any spirits, or gods. But to people who never existed. People who were known only by five very special people in the world. Who were subsequently forgotten. People who, Sokka knew, he had loved.
And then let them go.
He was able to forestall the tears, and he pulled back from the hug, "Hey, munchkin. You want to get something to eat?"
"No seaweed stew! Yuck!"
"Yuck, indeed! That's Northern food! We're gonna have arctic hen!"
The little girl threw up her hands in celebration, cheering, "Yay! Meat!"
"You truly are a girl after my own heart," Sokka said with some wonder, thinking that perhaps it wouldn't be quite so easy to forget this one, after all.
Knocknocknock.
Raising an eyebrow, he called towards the front door from his rocking-chair, "Who's there?"
"Telegram for Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe."
-
"Okay, it's finished. It's looking a little peaky, give it some hydration before sealing the wound."
The young man, Ren, answered, "Yes, Ma'am."
The master waterbender turned to Lan, the second-oldest woman in the room, "Did you clean the eyelid speculum?"
Holding up the object in question, the surgeon's smile could be seen through her mask, "You know it."
Katara's face betrayed nothing, taking the proffered tool, "You… are just so on it, aren't you? Be ready. We're doing the right one in five."
-
He wasn't far. He lived in the same city, after all. They just sent a courier to Zhongyang Mountain a few miles away, where they knew he'd be.
It was spring. And if there was one thing that Aang could not find any fault in whatsoever with regards to the Fire Nation colonizing the Earth Kingdom… it was the importation of cherry blossom trees. They were too beautiful to find fault in.
Beauty. Beautiful. Heavy words. Should be used sparingly. Completely justified in this case.
A light breeze blew through the branches above him, and a snowstorm burst into existence as the flowers detached to fall in a swirling dance. Glancing down, the airbender wasn't surprised to find his picnic blanket almost completely covered in petals.
He sat in seiza on the top of a hill, overlooking Shangfang Pond, a body of water surrounded by sakura and nestled between the peak of the foothill Aang sat on and the rest of Zhongyang. Behind him, he knew, was the not unimpressive view of the United Republic, with Republic City taking up a prominent pose at center stage. That was beautiful too… but that treat was year-round. Cherry blossom blooming season came once a year, and only for two weeks, before it was over.
However, he took a break from drinking with his eyes.
Aang raised his cup of tea to his face, heating it a little with his bending, and breathed in.
Darjeeling. Is. The best.
Ginseng was a close second, but for this life… the Avatar decided that darjeeling was it. And he suspected that it would remain his number one choice for quite a few lifetimes. His record was three lives and sixteen years, for oolong. Maybe this time he'd break it.
Now, now, this isn't a competition, he chided himself. The brought the cup to his lips to sip the hot liquid, tea is meant to be enjoyed at the pace of falling sakura petals.
Lowering the cup, he sighed, wrinkled eyes closing.
Bliss.
I don't think I've felt this relaxed in a long, long… long… time.
"Avatar Aang!"
-
The knife was dipped into alcohol. Then dried. Then handed to the operator who stood at the microscope aimed directly at the earthbender's eyes.
"Alright, Toph, no talking for this part, please. You're being held steady, I know, but I need you to be as still as you can."
The sarcasm welled up instantly.
"I'm an earthbender, Sugarcake. If I put my mind to it, I can be as motionless as a rock."
Katara calmly rejoined, "Great. That makes this really easy. Please act as a rock to the best of your ability; bonus points for accurate volume imitation."
Toph, with the skin surrounding her right lids freshly swabbed with disinfectant, went still.
The waterbender looked straight down, through the magnifier, at the milky surface of the cataract with considering, dark blue eyes, lifting her knife and holding it in a steady grip.
She was glad to see that the growth looked just as easy to work with as the other eye.
A corneoscleral incision… just like the other, then, she mused.
Carefully, she aimed.
-
When they were sitting in that office, Katara explained the procedure. Then she explained the three-day exercise-period afterwards that the earthbender would have to go through. Toph sat quietly through it all, not saying a word more until she was finished with her explanation.
They sat quietly for some time.
Then:
"Okay," Toph calmly spoke into the air, flat, "That's… great."
A tiny crack appeared in the window overlooking the bay.
Katara looked at the woman in front of her with soft eyes, "Toph-"
"No. No. It's okay. I get it. I get it. Shut up."
The crack expanded into a fracture, catching Katara's attention, who eyed it warily and spoke a little more urgently.
"You don't have to do this right now if you don't-"
"Shut up."
The fracture became a spiderweb covering the entire pane of glass.
"I know it's a bit of a shock-"
The window shattered.
Followed by Katara's eardrums shortly afterwards.
"NO SH-!"
-
"Okay, yeah. We're doing this. In a fluffy room. Where I can't see."
Ren's hands stilled from fiddling with the wrappings, "You ready?"
"I said-"
The blindfold was taken off.
"..."
"..."
"... Okay… first impressions on this whole… 'seeing' thing… it kinda sucks."
"... Um…"
"It's just a giant, blurry mess. Can I have dirt now?"
"... No?" the doctor said timidly, "We're here for you to practice your eyes. Mistress Katara was very specific: No rocks."
"Monkeyfeathers."
-
"Right. I've got one request… before I go in."
"What is it?"
"That therapy thing? I'm gonna practice using my working peepers with one of your goons, or something."
"... I've still gotta do the waterbending healing sessions."
"I'll do those blindfolded. I want… When it's all fixed… And I see for real for the first time…"
"... Okay. Not a problem."
-
"Three."
"Next."
"Four."
"Next."
"... Eight?"
"Very good," the young doctor said warmly, lowering his two hands, "You're getting the hang of this fast. You might actually be done by the third day."
"Sweetness. Next thingy?"
Ren nodded, and Toph noticed that.
"Alright, we're gonna work on colors, now…"
-
Zuko sat in the waiting room, eyes closed and sleeves folded, the very picture of calm and tranquility.
However, to anyone who really knew him, like Aang, it was beyond obvious that the Fire Lord was internally wringing his hands in excitement.
Shaking his head and chuckling, the Avatar moved from the doorway to stand next to the airbender.
He opened with a drawl, "So…"
Eyelids opened to reveal a single, burning gold eye, meeting the bright grey gaze.
A small smile appeared on Zuko's face, "So."
Momo, by now an ancient creature, grawped and smoothly leapt from Aang's shoulder to land on the seat to the right of Zuko, curling up to take one of his very frequent naps.
Aang's smile widened, "Isn't this the greatest thing?"
The Fire Lord leaned back in his seat, breathing in and letting out a huge sigh, "Yes. It's wonderful."
But Aang could see that Zuko was already starting to think beyond the present moment as the small smile began to vanish. Already thinking about… about a day when this would be… boring.
Intervention, the Avatar thought hastily, Intervention!
"Hey," he rushed out, sitting next to the unoccupied seat next to the firebender and putting a hand on his shoulder, "Don't. Don't… do what you're doing right now, alright?"
He didn't dare to say it out loud, lest he trick himself into the same downward spiral of thought.
Reiterating firmly, "This is a great moment that we're all going to share together and then remember fondly forever. And that is it."
Zuko turned his head, meeting the determined face of his friend, and rolled his eyes.
"Melodramatic, much?"
Aang thought back over the moment and his face reddened a bit, "Uh… yeah, that was… I overreacted right there, huh?"
Someone spoke up from the doorway, "How to be a Drama Queen in Thirty Seconds or Less: A Novel by Aang."
The Avatar and the Fire Lord looked up to the imposingly tall figure of the Scholar, laughing blue eyes greeting them.
Aang grinned, "Hey Sokka."
-
"Okay… Hokay… okay... "
Katara looked at Toph in amusement as they walked to the waiting room where the others had gathered.
The earthbender could feel the gaze; she was not happy.
"Shut up," she snapped.
The waterbender giggled, "I didn't say anything."
"Your mom didn't say anything, Sugar Queen!"
The insult just washed over the Doctor, who blithely replied, "Calm down. You're going to love this. You're not going to see us wrong; your eyesight has been verified 20/20 by three of my top optometrists."
They pushed through a set of doors. The waiting room was within sight.
The earthbending mistress had thin lips, "... I know. It's just…"
They reached the door, and Katara glanced sympathetically at the other woman, "... crazy?"
The blindfolded, formerly-blind earthbender's nerves were pulled taut.
"Yeah."
The wanderbender put a reassuring hand on the shorter woman's shoulder.
"Well, this is gonna be crazy awesome."
And she opened the door.
Last edited:
Oh I am slain!
Wynaut?
- Location
- Tatooine
D'awww
Chapter 3: She's Back
- Location
- United States
Here's that destructoball that we all know and love...
-
Chapter 3: She's Back
Lao quietly sipped on his tea at the dining room table as he contemplated the coming day. Poppy had just sent the servant to go fetch their daughter.
"How goes business, dear?" came the daily, traditional inquiry from his caring wife. She sat to his left, and brought a pair of chopsticks up to her not-yet-painted lips, breaking fast.
As was custom, he humored her, "Shipments of finished metal from the western coast of the Earth Kingdom have been slowing, lately, though this is ordinary at this time of year. The routes are currently plagued with storms. But things should return to normal once winter's over."
"Oh, good," came the reply, though they both knew she had no idea what he was talking about. That was fine, though, because her role was solely to support her husband and run the household. It was the way of things, and they were both happy with it.
Of course, now it was time for him to reciprocate, "What is scheduled for today?"
By which he meant to inquire whether or not there were any guests coming to visit.
None, it turned out. "I planned to practice Haiku verse with Toph."
Nodding, "Very good."
At that point, their very ordinary morning was violently disrupted.
KABOOOOM!
Poppy was about to have another bite of steamed rice, but cried out in shock when the barrier to her left next to the paper door connecting to the main hall was blasted open. The piece of wall slid forward before crushing the table, room quickly filling with billowing clouds of dust. Man and wife both quickly went into coughing fits.
"Guards! Hehehack, guards! Defend my person, we're under attack! Ack!" he called out, eyes squinting, waving a hand in front of his face to clear away the air.
He felt clinging hands on his robe, "Lao!"
Standing, he tried to grab hold of his wife and lift her into a standing position, "Come with me! We have a panic room, maybe we can get away -!"
"Hey Mom, Dad, how ya doing?" said a voice filled with childish happiness.
They froze, and looked at each other in distraught. Toph!
Her mother reacted first, her green eyes searching through the cloud of grit as she tried to warn her daughter, "Toph! We have to get away, there are burglars!"
"Is there anyone with you?" Lao stumbled in the direction of his little girl's voice, "Poppy, get to the guest hall! Toph, quickly, follow the sound of my voice, grab onto my hand!"
"Hmmm, let me think about that… No."
And the dust that filled the room was promptly swept away, revealing their daughter in an earthbending pose for a brief moment before she relaxed and waved, giving a wide grin.
"What's up?"
One could hear a pin drop in the silence which followed that greeting. Poppy, with one foot through the servants' door in the opposite hallway, looked as though she might pass out. He could hear his own heart pumping in his ears, trying to take in the scene before him.
The choice of clothing she wore was totally unfamiliar; she looked like some peasant boy dressed up as one of those vagabond earthbending gladiators he'd heard about in town. Toph had her left hand planted on her waist, her right hand up in a mocking salute and was still smirking.
Stunned, her father shouted, "What on earth are you doing, Toph!"
She moved and held up her hands in a 'Who knows?' gesture, breezily strolling into the room as she did. "Remodelling the dining room?" she tried, "I thought it could use a new door."
Lao's brain returned an error message as it scrambled to find the correct response to this stimulus.
Red faced, "Do you have any idea how expensive…! No, what am I saying…?" he brought the palm of his hand to his forehead, horrified at himself for thinking of expenses ahead of his daughter's safety. "You could have hurt yourself, earthbending like that! What were you thinking!"
His wife unfroze from her previous stupefaction, rushing back into the room, picking her way across the wreckage of the dining room table and lifting a scolding finger, "Don't scare us like that! You don't know how to earthbend; you're only allowed to bend when Master Yu is watching over you!"
"You, young lady, are going to your room," her father declared imperiously, "There will be no visiting the gardens for you today. You're grounded!"
Before Lao could reach forward and grab hold of his daughter's hand to drag her away to her punishment, Toph held up two fingers to her mouth.
"Sh-Sh-ssssshhhhh…"
Out of pure punch-drunkenness from the blows reality was delivering them, both parents obeyed the odd command to be silent. An intense look of deep focus appeared on the girl's face, smile gone and replaced with a small frown of concentration, and her head tilted to the side as if she were listening for something.
"You hear that?"
Total silence. Their daughter stayed perfectly still, waiting. Gradually, having been allowed a respite from chaos to actually think, it dawned upon Lao what was wrong about this state of affairs.
Raising a hand to one of her ears, his daughter spoke, "Nothing. No footsteps down the hall, not the girly screams of your servants running around like pig-chickens with their heads cut off, not the thumpity-thump of your dunder-headed, overpaid estate guards racing to save your sorry butt," beneath the bangs which hung over her eyes, Toph's frown morphed until she wore a positively wicked grin, "Do you know why you can't hear any of these things, Dad? It's because this morning,"
Suddenly, before either he or Poppy could react, their daughter twitched her chin upwards and cones of earth drove their way through the oak-spruce floors to encase man and wife in perfect casts up to their noses.
"I happened to 'em."
Both of them were completely immobile, glued into the position that they were in moments before. Breathing heavily through his open nostrils, Lao watched the girl with wide eyes. He couldn't turn his head but he thought he had heard a squeak -
"Aw, Mom, I'm touched that you'd faint for little ol' me."
Shocked, his eyes focused onto Toph, and he felt his stomach performing somersaults.
Holding up and waving her hands around, "Don't panic, don't panic! No one's dead. I'm not a complete bitch. Besides, Twinkletoes made me promise to use the kid gloves, and trust me, nothing puts that guy into rage mode quite like cold-blooded murder. I'd like to keep my soul intact, thank you."
What… what… what… ? Lao's mind seemed to be stuck in a loop, not knowing which wrong thing to grasp at. The bizarrely aggressive behavior? The absurdly reckless earthbending? The disgusting vulgarity? What she was actually saying?
"Right, let's get down to business," and, without turning her head to face him, she pointed directly at his face, "This is my half-minute notice that I'm moving out. I'm the Greatest Earthbender Who Ever Lived. I've got things to do, people to save, small countries to conquer. G'bye. I'll miss you dearly. Not."
Then she moved her head so that her filmed-over eyes were looking directly into his own, somehow.
"This is also my fair warning, just for you, Pops," she articulated, "'cause I know that what I just said didn't pierce your thick skull. If you do anything stupid, like, I don't know, send bounty hunters after me, at the very least, don't pay them anything up front. I'm telling you right now, they suck. I don't need to know who they are; unless one of them's a kid my age with some swanky blue tats, they don't stand a chance. Also,"
She lightly heeled the floor with one of her (bare?) feet, and a raised platform - which Lao felt was disproportionate to the almost gentle tap of the child's foot - smashed its way through the now totally destroyed floor. Toph was lifted up so that she stood at his height, and he became aware of the sweat gathered on his brow. How he wished he could wipe it off with his sleeve…
Misty green eyes glared straight past and through his head as she scowled. Her finger was still pointed at his face.
"Don't deal with the Fire Nation in your pathetic efforts to capture me. Ever. Or I will be back, and you will not like it. I've got a zero tolerance policy for that kind of shenanigans."
With each pause, she jabbed her finger forward, making Lao go cross-eyed as he watched it. When she was finished, she backed off and was back to smiling.
"Well, that was fast! Wish I could stay, but I gotta run; I had to keep it under the length of an autolift pitch."
Lao was briefly jarred by the meaningless expression.
Toph stopped at some unknown cue. Then she mumbled to herself, "Oh. Right. That turn of phrase ain't invented yet. Whoops."
Shaking her head, she continued, "I meant that I had to keep it brief, get it? I've got a schedule to keep."
With that, she stomped.
The platform she was standing on instantly launched upwards in an enormous pillar, demolishing the roof of his home as it went. The morning sun shone through and debris rained down from the freshly created hole in the ceiling.
And Lao was left staring at the new stone fixture, unable to look anywhere else until his earthbending servants woke up from being knocked out and got him out of his impromptu prison.
Where did I go wrong? he wondered pitifully.
His daughter, for one reason or another, was out of control. And, from what he had heard her say, he had a heavy impression that it was because she had become irrecoverably mentally ill. Wild dreams of the outside world he knew that she had never been to before, having raised her all her life within the closed walls of the compound. An over-inflated view of her own earthbending prowess. Even a made-up friend (the one she called 'Twinkletoes'). It was the worst case scenario, representing every dark fear he had harbored. His fragile daughter was in danger, the world would break her, and, in addition, if it ever got out that she's Lao Beifong's daughter, his reputation would be utterly ruined.
Muffled noises came from somewhere behind and to his left. Poppy.
So she is safe, he thought with some relief.
A grumbling noise sounded in his ears.
Lao's brow furrowed in distress.
… I have to go to the bathroom…
-
Just outside of Gaoling, strolling into a lovely clearing, feeling the cool grass between her toes and the damp ground with the soles of her feet, Toph jauntily whistled random notes.
It feels great to be young again.
Upon thinking this, she paused, standing still. The melody settled on a sentimental tune.
Winter, Spring; Summer and Fall~♪ There it is. The story of our lives.
She stopped blowing air between her lips and huffed air past her bangs, feeling a little melancholy.
Just so many seasons going by. Dangit. And I was in such a good mood.
Her life, their lives, were a joke, and the punchline was not funny. Because she knew that she was young now. But it was only a matter of time before she'd wake up and, surprise!, she was a sack of old bones and there were creatures rolling around in her front yard and she had an irrepressible urge to yell at them to get off her lawn and then go have tea with the thick-skinned one that stuck around and wasn't afraid to break rules and then share eternal wisdom with the brat. And then she'd blink again and she'd be right back at monkeyfeathering square one.
It could've been worse.
She could've been in it alone.
Shivering, she ground her teeth and stomped the ground in frustration, causing a minor earthquake in the area.
What in the courts of hell am I moping about!?
It was her turn. Her turn to call the shots and steer the wheel of destiny. Her turn to decide what the world would look like. That was like… a winter solstice celebration or a birthday or something. For one of them, anyway. Actual winter solstices were like watching a day go by. Days were like seconds ticking on a clock.
Speaking of which…
Starting up her marching again, she finished crossing the clearing and began hiking the mountainous terrain north of the city in earnest. She had an appointment to get to.
This is going to be fun, she thought to herself firmly, approximately 9,000 times more awesome than the powderpuffs I just ditched, that's for sure.
That put a grin back on her face.
She knew which buttons she could have pushed to make them see her for who she is the quick way, of course. She'd done it before. The problem was:
1) The quick way took a depressingly long amount of time and energy.
2) Like the others in Aang's merry band of time-travelers, she thrived on originality, which Mommy and Daddy lacked, big time. They were boring people with very boring personalities and desires. At least to begin with.
No bigger wet blanket than that.
So, although she did have a minor soft spot for her parents, she wasn't willing to do all the work of making the relationship happen. They were going to have to do some soul searching, themselves.
Just like the first time.
In a way, it made it feel more real.
She frowned and stopped again, this time in the midst of the forest covering the slopes leading up to the mountain range.
Walking's too slow. I'm late.
-
It was a beautiful day to die.
The sky was cold and bright, and even though the sky was clear, the sunlight was weak and brought no warmth - an alien concept to many men of the Fire Nation who never experienced true winter. And winter was coming to this place; it became considerably colder at these higher altitudes during this time of year than at the base. The path was well-trod; the most direct route from Gaoling to Omashu without crossing the Si Wong Desert or the Banyan Swamp was over the hill and through the plains. The light bathed the east side of the mountain, and a gentle breeze blew through the dying leaves of the forest bordering the path, prompting a shower of reds and yellows and oranges. They fell with many a whisper, sounding like the ghosts of the spirit world greeting him.
Shi stood rigid, feeling numb, knowing his fate.
What a beautiful day to die.
Colonel Mongke, firebender specialist, sat upon his komodo rhino mount, smirking, no doubt, at the thought of the money which would soon fill his coffers, "You are wanted by the Fire Nation for desertion."
It was simple, Shi's fate. It was decided a long time ago, by Fire Lord Azulon. One thousand gold pieces are paid out by the military to anyone who brings back a deserter's head.
Usually, that was deterrent enough.
Not for Jeong Jeong. But at least he was a master firebender, and could defend himself.
Not Shi. He wasn't even a bender to begin with.
But he still left.
The other members of the renowned Rough Rhinos emerged from their previously hidden places along the road. Kahchi, Ogodei, Vachir, Yeh-Lu.
"Desertion is an act of treason," the leader continued.
Not for the first time, he pondered the wisdom of that decision.
He wasn't the first one in the forty-first infantry division to become more desperate than they were sane. It had become a madhouse of paranoid soldiers since the slaughter nearly three years ago. No one trusted the higher-ups. They got a reputation as a 'problem' division, and were moved from the outskirts of Ba Sing Se to the Southwest Theatre. New recruits weren't sent to the forty-first division anymore. 'Undesirable Numbers' were, now. 'Dishonored' citizens. Political inconveniences. Every week was a constant stream of blood and death; the Southwest was perhaps the most contested area in the Earth Kingdom aside from Ba Sing Se. They were sent on raiding missions, and it was very much a thing of luck to get out of one alive. Many others before Shi got to the point where the killing and dying was just too much. They wanted out. They were all wretches and they wanted out. But there was this rule…
Mongke scraped his wrist guards against each other, "The penalty is death."
The Rough Rhinos circled him. Shi stared at the fist aimed at him by the leader, and absently thought of all the dry kindling surrounding them in the form of dead leaves. Undoubtedly, a fire started here would burn uncontrollably.
Shame. It's beautiful, here.
According to the Fire Nation's military policy, if one is declared insane by the division physician, then one no longer needs to serve; he or she would receive an honorable discharge and be allowed to go home. Since one had to be crazy to go on a mission in the forty-first division, all that one had to do was ask. However, in so asking, according to the official rules, that marks oneself as sane due to showing concern for one's own safety. And if one is sane and able-bodied one must fight, or one is a traitor.
If you fight, you're crazy and don't have to fight.
When you opt to not fight, you're sane and you have to fight.
If you desert, you're a traitor for being sane and avoiding battle before you're crazy for running into the teeth of a mercenary group or elite cavalry team like the Rough Rhinos, so the penalty for that was the customary death sentence.
It was a beautiful, simple system.
Gold, merciless eyes narrowed, fist punching forward, fire flaring into existence, and Shi was abruptly aware of a wetness on his face.
All he ever wanted was to not die.
Flames rushed forward in an expanding cloud, and Shi closed his eyes tightly, hunching in on himself and covering his face with his arms. He let out a squeak of fear.
Only for the heat to abruptly vanish.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNGGGGG!"
That sounded like… the colonel…?
Opening his eyes, he peeked over his upraised arm.
Something… Well, something was happening to Mongke.
The colonel was looking directly upwards, bending backwards slightly. Where his arms were previously in an attacking pose, now they were flung open in a wide T-shape. His nose ring was sticking out at an odd angle, not falling where it ought to have naturally. His pierced earlobes were strange, too, elongated as if they were being pulled downwards. Shi couldn't see the colonel's face, but, based off of the whimpers, he guessed that Mongke was experiencing quite a bit of pain.
There was no frame of reference for what was happening; Shi's brain was completely unable to place what was going on. Feeling confused, he looked around, standing in place as he turned his head.
From the looks on the other Rough Rhinos, they had no idea what was happening to their leader, either.
"Ya know, you're so much fun," a high pitched voice called out fondly.
The voice came from behind Colonel Mongke, and Shi was stunned by the occurrence, because that sounded like... What… a little girl…?
The dissonance of the situation was temporarily interrupted as bare footsteps sounded against the ground. The owner of the child's voice came into view, walking around the leader's komodo rhino.
She was a little girl. Black hair bundled up into a bun with bangs hanging low, and wearing an earthbender warrior's get-up. At a guess, he placed her at thirteen years old, maximum. Curiously, she had her arm outstretched, fingers splayed out, in the direction of Colonel Mongke.
Then he noticed the tigershark smile on her face.
"It's just, you have these pieces of metal… in so many, amazinglypainful places. And when I see you, every time… "
No… it can't be… Shi jerked his head back and forth between the two, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Judging by the conspicuous lack of deadly objects being hurled at the little girl, the rest of the Rough Rhinos were in a similar state of shock.
"... Well. A target like that? I'm sorry, but that's totally impossible for me to resist, sonny."
From behind him, he heard the twirl of a metal chain, and he ducked.
Shi curled himself up into a ball, head down, as soon as Ogodei launched his bolo at the self-proclaimed metalbender. So, he never saw. But the audio information was plenty.
The sound of the jangling chain switched directions.
"Hmm. Your minions are kinda idiots, aren't they?"
A whimper issued from the leader.
The chain wrapped around something.
"AAAaarrrgghhh!" Ogodei yelled.
Correction, someone.
Then he heard an arrow slicing through the air… but no accompanying thump indicating that it landed.
"Anyways, back to you… I mean, come on, man. That? Seriously?"
She must've done something, because the colonel cried out, "YAAAAAAHHHHHHNNNGGG!"
Then the ground was shaking and the komodo rhinos started making fearful noises.
"I mean, just, wow. Wow. Really."
The whizz of an arrow going back where it came from; there was a snap of string.
The bow… Vachir's bow…
"I… I don't even get it. No one would see it. Except… oh."
There was an odd sliding sound, and there was a muffled shout.
Shi struggled to comprehend, and it dawned when he heard the rattles of a suit of armor. Yeh-Lu, the grenadier. Who was completely covered in metal.
What did she do to him?
"You tryin' to impress the ladies or something? Show 'em how tough the big bad cavalryman is?"
One of the komodo rhinos charged, and Shi knew it was because the only one of the Rough Rhinos who wasn't incapacitated yet was also the only one of them that wasn't a long-range specialist.
Kahchi, the wielder of the guan dao.
There was a whistling sound as the blade was presumably sliced forward… interrupted by a crunch.
"Well… shucks. Congrats, macho man. I'm sure they all thought you were super tough, honey."
The earthquake which had been rumbling in the background ratcheted up in intensity. Shi tipped over until he was curled up on his side, and there was a thump as one of the warriors was jostled off of his mount.
"But if you wanted to impress someone with your tolerance, you shoulda gone to Huifang's House of Hurt. It woulda been a lot less painful than what I'm about to do to you and your boy's club."
What followed that pronouncement was not a battle.
No.
It was pure chaos.
-
The deserter was frozen in place.
Silence.
There really had been no way to parse what was going on, before. It was just screams and panicking steeds and an earthquake all in one. Soon, however, everything went quiet.
Shi kept his head down.
"Hey."
If I stay still, maybe she'll think I'm dead…
"Wuss. I just pulled your butt outta the fire. Because of me, now you can say you're the third guy to desert the Fire Nation Army and live. How sweet is that, huh?"
Goawaygoawaygoaway…
Her voice was coming from directly above him, now. "Pfff. Fine. I've got places to go, anyway. I'm not here to listen to you wax poetic with your whining, bub. You think you're the only one in the world with problems?"
Shi shifted his head to glimpse upwards.
Fogged-over gray-green eyes greeted him.
She's… She's blind. Agni above…!
"Oh, good. Now at least you're lookin' at me. Ya need to be able to describe me to the rest of the bar, anyhow," she grinned cheerfully. The girl had a bag hefted over her left shoulder, now, where before she wasn't carrying anything (No travelling supplies? Why? How?).
He looked around, wanting to have a better grasp on what happened during the fight.
The komodo-rhinos were all gone. Understandable. He felt like running, too.
Then he caught sight of the pile of bodies further behind the girl. All the Rough Rhinos, with the leader slumped on top.
Somehow the girl must've sensed where he was looking, because she waved her free hand dismissively and answered the unasked question with, "Unconscious."
Shi barely knew where the words came from, but they were blurted out, nonetheless.
"Who are you?"
A smirk.
"To you? I'm just a Blind Bandit."
Then she dropped the bag she had been holding in front of him, and Shi startled at the solid thump and the chingling of a bag full of coin.
"Alright, here's what you're gonna do…"
-
Chapter 3: She's Back
Lao quietly sipped on his tea at the dining room table as he contemplated the coming day. Poppy had just sent the servant to go fetch their daughter.
"How goes business, dear?" came the daily, traditional inquiry from his caring wife. She sat to his left, and brought a pair of chopsticks up to her not-yet-painted lips, breaking fast.
As was custom, he humored her, "Shipments of finished metal from the western coast of the Earth Kingdom have been slowing, lately, though this is ordinary at this time of year. The routes are currently plagued with storms. But things should return to normal once winter's over."
"Oh, good," came the reply, though they both knew she had no idea what he was talking about. That was fine, though, because her role was solely to support her husband and run the household. It was the way of things, and they were both happy with it.
Of course, now it was time for him to reciprocate, "What is scheduled for today?"
By which he meant to inquire whether or not there were any guests coming to visit.
None, it turned out. "I planned to practice Haiku verse with Toph."
Nodding, "Very good."
At that point, their very ordinary morning was violently disrupted.
KABOOOOM!
Poppy was about to have another bite of steamed rice, but cried out in shock when the barrier to her left next to the paper door connecting to the main hall was blasted open. The piece of wall slid forward before crushing the table, room quickly filling with billowing clouds of dust. Man and wife both quickly went into coughing fits.
"Guards! Hehehack, guards! Defend my person, we're under attack! Ack!" he called out, eyes squinting, waving a hand in front of his face to clear away the air.
He felt clinging hands on his robe, "Lao!"
Standing, he tried to grab hold of his wife and lift her into a standing position, "Come with me! We have a panic room, maybe we can get away -!"
"Hey Mom, Dad, how ya doing?" said a voice filled with childish happiness.
They froze, and looked at each other in distraught. Toph!
Her mother reacted first, her green eyes searching through the cloud of grit as she tried to warn her daughter, "Toph! We have to get away, there are burglars!"
"Is there anyone with you?" Lao stumbled in the direction of his little girl's voice, "Poppy, get to the guest hall! Toph, quickly, follow the sound of my voice, grab onto my hand!"
"Hmmm, let me think about that… No."
And the dust that filled the room was promptly swept away, revealing their daughter in an earthbending pose for a brief moment before she relaxed and waved, giving a wide grin.
"What's up?"
One could hear a pin drop in the silence which followed that greeting. Poppy, with one foot through the servants' door in the opposite hallway, looked as though she might pass out. He could hear his own heart pumping in his ears, trying to take in the scene before him.
The choice of clothing she wore was totally unfamiliar; she looked like some peasant boy dressed up as one of those vagabond earthbending gladiators he'd heard about in town. Toph had her left hand planted on her waist, her right hand up in a mocking salute and was still smirking.
Stunned, her father shouted, "What on earth are you doing, Toph!"
She moved and held up her hands in a 'Who knows?' gesture, breezily strolling into the room as she did. "Remodelling the dining room?" she tried, "I thought it could use a new door."
Lao's brain returned an error message as it scrambled to find the correct response to this stimulus.
Red faced, "Do you have any idea how expensive…! No, what am I saying…?" he brought the palm of his hand to his forehead, horrified at himself for thinking of expenses ahead of his daughter's safety. "You could have hurt yourself, earthbending like that! What were you thinking!"
His wife unfroze from her previous stupefaction, rushing back into the room, picking her way across the wreckage of the dining room table and lifting a scolding finger, "Don't scare us like that! You don't know how to earthbend; you're only allowed to bend when Master Yu is watching over you!"
"You, young lady, are going to your room," her father declared imperiously, "There will be no visiting the gardens for you today. You're grounded!"
Before Lao could reach forward and grab hold of his daughter's hand to drag her away to her punishment, Toph held up two fingers to her mouth.
"Sh-Sh-ssssshhhhh…"
Out of pure punch-drunkenness from the blows reality was delivering them, both parents obeyed the odd command to be silent. An intense look of deep focus appeared on the girl's face, smile gone and replaced with a small frown of concentration, and her head tilted to the side as if she were listening for something.
"You hear that?"
Total silence. Their daughter stayed perfectly still, waiting. Gradually, having been allowed a respite from chaos to actually think, it dawned upon Lao what was wrong about this state of affairs.
Raising a hand to one of her ears, his daughter spoke, "Nothing. No footsteps down the hall, not the girly screams of your servants running around like pig-chickens with their heads cut off, not the thumpity-thump of your dunder-headed, overpaid estate guards racing to save your sorry butt," beneath the bangs which hung over her eyes, Toph's frown morphed until she wore a positively wicked grin, "Do you know why you can't hear any of these things, Dad? It's because this morning,"
Suddenly, before either he or Poppy could react, their daughter twitched her chin upwards and cones of earth drove their way through the oak-spruce floors to encase man and wife in perfect casts up to their noses.
"I happened to 'em."
Both of them were completely immobile, glued into the position that they were in moments before. Breathing heavily through his open nostrils, Lao watched the girl with wide eyes. He couldn't turn his head but he thought he had heard a squeak -
"Aw, Mom, I'm touched that you'd faint for little ol' me."
Shocked, his eyes focused onto Toph, and he felt his stomach performing somersaults.
Holding up and waving her hands around, "Don't panic, don't panic! No one's dead. I'm not a complete bitch. Besides, Twinkletoes made me promise to use the kid gloves, and trust me, nothing puts that guy into rage mode quite like cold-blooded murder. I'd like to keep my soul intact, thank you."
What… what… what… ? Lao's mind seemed to be stuck in a loop, not knowing which wrong thing to grasp at. The bizarrely aggressive behavior? The absurdly reckless earthbending? The disgusting vulgarity? What she was actually saying?
"Right, let's get down to business," and, without turning her head to face him, she pointed directly at his face, "This is my half-minute notice that I'm moving out. I'm the Greatest Earthbender Who Ever Lived. I've got things to do, people to save, small countries to conquer. G'bye. I'll miss you dearly. Not."
Then she moved her head so that her filmed-over eyes were looking directly into his own, somehow.
"This is also my fair warning, just for you, Pops," she articulated, "'cause I know that what I just said didn't pierce your thick skull. If you do anything stupid, like, I don't know, send bounty hunters after me, at the very least, don't pay them anything up front. I'm telling you right now, they suck. I don't need to know who they are; unless one of them's a kid my age with some swanky blue tats, they don't stand a chance. Also,"
She lightly heeled the floor with one of her (bare?) feet, and a raised platform - which Lao felt was disproportionate to the almost gentle tap of the child's foot - smashed its way through the now totally destroyed floor. Toph was lifted up so that she stood at his height, and he became aware of the sweat gathered on his brow. How he wished he could wipe it off with his sleeve…
Misty green eyes glared straight past and through his head as she scowled. Her finger was still pointed at his face.
"Don't deal with the Fire Nation in your pathetic efforts to capture me. Ever. Or I will be back, and you will not like it. I've got a zero tolerance policy for that kind of shenanigans."
With each pause, she jabbed her finger forward, making Lao go cross-eyed as he watched it. When she was finished, she backed off and was back to smiling.
"Well, that was fast! Wish I could stay, but I gotta run; I had to keep it under the length of an autolift pitch."
Lao was briefly jarred by the meaningless expression.
Toph stopped at some unknown cue. Then she mumbled to herself, "Oh. Right. That turn of phrase ain't invented yet. Whoops."
Shaking her head, she continued, "I meant that I had to keep it brief, get it? I've got a schedule to keep."
With that, she stomped.
The platform she was standing on instantly launched upwards in an enormous pillar, demolishing the roof of his home as it went. The morning sun shone through and debris rained down from the freshly created hole in the ceiling.
And Lao was left staring at the new stone fixture, unable to look anywhere else until his earthbending servants woke up from being knocked out and got him out of his impromptu prison.
Where did I go wrong? he wondered pitifully.
His daughter, for one reason or another, was out of control. And, from what he had heard her say, he had a heavy impression that it was because she had become irrecoverably mentally ill. Wild dreams of the outside world he knew that she had never been to before, having raised her all her life within the closed walls of the compound. An over-inflated view of her own earthbending prowess. Even a made-up friend (the one she called 'Twinkletoes'). It was the worst case scenario, representing every dark fear he had harbored. His fragile daughter was in danger, the world would break her, and, in addition, if it ever got out that she's Lao Beifong's daughter, his reputation would be utterly ruined.
Muffled noises came from somewhere behind and to his left. Poppy.
So she is safe, he thought with some relief.
A grumbling noise sounded in his ears.
Lao's brow furrowed in distress.
… I have to go to the bathroom…
-
Just outside of Gaoling, strolling into a lovely clearing, feeling the cool grass between her toes and the damp ground with the soles of her feet, Toph jauntily whistled random notes.
It feels great to be young again.
Upon thinking this, she paused, standing still. The melody settled on a sentimental tune.
Winter, Spring; Summer and Fall~♪ There it is. The story of our lives.
She stopped blowing air between her lips and huffed air past her bangs, feeling a little melancholy.
Just so many seasons going by. Dangit. And I was in such a good mood.
Her life, their lives, were a joke, and the punchline was not funny. Because she knew that she was young now. But it was only a matter of time before she'd wake up and, surprise!, she was a sack of old bones and there were creatures rolling around in her front yard and she had an irrepressible urge to yell at them to get off her lawn and then go have tea with the thick-skinned one that stuck around and wasn't afraid to break rules and then share eternal wisdom with the brat. And then she'd blink again and she'd be right back at monkeyfeathering square one.
It could've been worse.
She could've been in it alone.
Shivering, she ground her teeth and stomped the ground in frustration, causing a minor earthquake in the area.
What in the courts of hell am I moping about!?
It was her turn. Her turn to call the shots and steer the wheel of destiny. Her turn to decide what the world would look like. That was like… a winter solstice celebration or a birthday or something. For one of them, anyway. Actual winter solstices were like watching a day go by. Days were like seconds ticking on a clock.
Speaking of which…
Starting up her marching again, she finished crossing the clearing and began hiking the mountainous terrain north of the city in earnest. She had an appointment to get to.
This is going to be fun, she thought to herself firmly, approximately 9,000 times more awesome than the powderpuffs I just ditched, that's for sure.
That put a grin back on her face.
She knew which buttons she could have pushed to make them see her for who she is the quick way, of course. She'd done it before. The problem was:
1) The quick way took a depressingly long amount of time and energy.
2) Like the others in Aang's merry band of time-travelers, she thrived on originality, which Mommy and Daddy lacked, big time. They were boring people with very boring personalities and desires. At least to begin with.
No bigger wet blanket than that.
So, although she did have a minor soft spot for her parents, she wasn't willing to do all the work of making the relationship happen. They were going to have to do some soul searching, themselves.
Just like the first time.
In a way, it made it feel more real.
She frowned and stopped again, this time in the midst of the forest covering the slopes leading up to the mountain range.
Walking's too slow. I'm late.
-
It was a beautiful day to die.
The sky was cold and bright, and even though the sky was clear, the sunlight was weak and brought no warmth - an alien concept to many men of the Fire Nation who never experienced true winter. And winter was coming to this place; it became considerably colder at these higher altitudes during this time of year than at the base. The path was well-trod; the most direct route from Gaoling to Omashu without crossing the Si Wong Desert or the Banyan Swamp was over the hill and through the plains. The light bathed the east side of the mountain, and a gentle breeze blew through the dying leaves of the forest bordering the path, prompting a shower of reds and yellows and oranges. They fell with many a whisper, sounding like the ghosts of the spirit world greeting him.
Shi stood rigid, feeling numb, knowing his fate.
What a beautiful day to die.
Colonel Mongke, firebender specialist, sat upon his komodo rhino mount, smirking, no doubt, at the thought of the money which would soon fill his coffers, "You are wanted by the Fire Nation for desertion."
It was simple, Shi's fate. It was decided a long time ago, by Fire Lord Azulon. One thousand gold pieces are paid out by the military to anyone who brings back a deserter's head.
Usually, that was deterrent enough.
Not for Jeong Jeong. But at least he was a master firebender, and could defend himself.
Not Shi. He wasn't even a bender to begin with.
But he still left.
The other members of the renowned Rough Rhinos emerged from their previously hidden places along the road. Kahchi, Ogodei, Vachir, Yeh-Lu.
"Desertion is an act of treason," the leader continued.
Not for the first time, he pondered the wisdom of that decision.
He wasn't the first one in the forty-first infantry division to become more desperate than they were sane. It had become a madhouse of paranoid soldiers since the slaughter nearly three years ago. No one trusted the higher-ups. They got a reputation as a 'problem' division, and were moved from the outskirts of Ba Sing Se to the Southwest Theatre. New recruits weren't sent to the forty-first division anymore. 'Undesirable Numbers' were, now. 'Dishonored' citizens. Political inconveniences. Every week was a constant stream of blood and death; the Southwest was perhaps the most contested area in the Earth Kingdom aside from Ba Sing Se. They were sent on raiding missions, and it was very much a thing of luck to get out of one alive. Many others before Shi got to the point where the killing and dying was just too much. They wanted out. They were all wretches and they wanted out. But there was this rule…
Mongke scraped his wrist guards against each other, "The penalty is death."
The Rough Rhinos circled him. Shi stared at the fist aimed at him by the leader, and absently thought of all the dry kindling surrounding them in the form of dead leaves. Undoubtedly, a fire started here would burn uncontrollably.
Shame. It's beautiful, here.
According to the Fire Nation's military policy, if one is declared insane by the division physician, then one no longer needs to serve; he or she would receive an honorable discharge and be allowed to go home. Since one had to be crazy to go on a mission in the forty-first division, all that one had to do was ask. However, in so asking, according to the official rules, that marks oneself as sane due to showing concern for one's own safety. And if one is sane and able-bodied one must fight, or one is a traitor.
If you fight, you're crazy and don't have to fight.
When you opt to not fight, you're sane and you have to fight.
If you desert, you're a traitor for being sane and avoiding battle before you're crazy for running into the teeth of a mercenary group or elite cavalry team like the Rough Rhinos, so the penalty for that was the customary death sentence.
It was a beautiful, simple system.
Gold, merciless eyes narrowed, fist punching forward, fire flaring into existence, and Shi was abruptly aware of a wetness on his face.
All he ever wanted was to not die.
Flames rushed forward in an expanding cloud, and Shi closed his eyes tightly, hunching in on himself and covering his face with his arms. He let out a squeak of fear.
Only for the heat to abruptly vanish.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNGGGGG!"
That sounded like… the colonel…?
Opening his eyes, he peeked over his upraised arm.
Something… Well, something was happening to Mongke.
The colonel was looking directly upwards, bending backwards slightly. Where his arms were previously in an attacking pose, now they were flung open in a wide T-shape. His nose ring was sticking out at an odd angle, not falling where it ought to have naturally. His pierced earlobes were strange, too, elongated as if they were being pulled downwards. Shi couldn't see the colonel's face, but, based off of the whimpers, he guessed that Mongke was experiencing quite a bit of pain.
There was no frame of reference for what was happening; Shi's brain was completely unable to place what was going on. Feeling confused, he looked around, standing in place as he turned his head.
From the looks on the other Rough Rhinos, they had no idea what was happening to their leader, either.
"Ya know, you're so much fun," a high pitched voice called out fondly.
The voice came from behind Colonel Mongke, and Shi was stunned by the occurrence, because that sounded like... What… a little girl…?
The dissonance of the situation was temporarily interrupted as bare footsteps sounded against the ground. The owner of the child's voice came into view, walking around the leader's komodo rhino.
She was a little girl. Black hair bundled up into a bun with bangs hanging low, and wearing an earthbender warrior's get-up. At a guess, he placed her at thirteen years old, maximum. Curiously, she had her arm outstretched, fingers splayed out, in the direction of Colonel Mongke.
Then he noticed the tigershark smile on her face.
"It's just, you have these pieces of metal… in so many, amazinglypainful places. And when I see you, every time… "
No… it can't be… Shi jerked his head back and forth between the two, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Judging by the conspicuous lack of deadly objects being hurled at the little girl, the rest of the Rough Rhinos were in a similar state of shock.
"... Well. A target like that? I'm sorry, but that's totally impossible for me to resist, sonny."
From behind him, he heard the twirl of a metal chain, and he ducked.
Shi curled himself up into a ball, head down, as soon as Ogodei launched his bolo at the self-proclaimed metalbender. So, he never saw. But the audio information was plenty.
The sound of the jangling chain switched directions.
"Hmm. Your minions are kinda idiots, aren't they?"
A whimper issued from the leader.
The chain wrapped around something.
"AAAaarrrgghhh!" Ogodei yelled.
Correction, someone.
Then he heard an arrow slicing through the air… but no accompanying thump indicating that it landed.
"Anyways, back to you… I mean, come on, man. That? Seriously?"
She must've done something, because the colonel cried out, "YAAAAAAHHHHHHNNNGGG!"
Then the ground was shaking and the komodo rhinos started making fearful noises.
"I mean, just, wow. Wow. Really."
The whizz of an arrow going back where it came from; there was a snap of string.
The bow… Vachir's bow…
"I… I don't even get it. No one would see it. Except… oh."
There was an odd sliding sound, and there was a muffled shout.
Shi struggled to comprehend, and it dawned when he heard the rattles of a suit of armor. Yeh-Lu, the grenadier. Who was completely covered in metal.
What did she do to him?
"You tryin' to impress the ladies or something? Show 'em how tough the big bad cavalryman is?"
One of the komodo rhinos charged, and Shi knew it was because the only one of the Rough Rhinos who wasn't incapacitated yet was also the only one of them that wasn't a long-range specialist.
Kahchi, the wielder of the guan dao.
There was a whistling sound as the blade was presumably sliced forward… interrupted by a crunch.
"Well… shucks. Congrats, macho man. I'm sure they all thought you were super tough, honey."
The earthquake which had been rumbling in the background ratcheted up in intensity. Shi tipped over until he was curled up on his side, and there was a thump as one of the warriors was jostled off of his mount.
"But if you wanted to impress someone with your tolerance, you shoulda gone to Huifang's House of Hurt. It woulda been a lot less painful than what I'm about to do to you and your boy's club."
What followed that pronouncement was not a battle.
No.
It was pure chaos.
-
The deserter was frozen in place.
Silence.
There really had been no way to parse what was going on, before. It was just screams and panicking steeds and an earthquake all in one. Soon, however, everything went quiet.
Shi kept his head down.
"Hey."
If I stay still, maybe she'll think I'm dead…
"Wuss. I just pulled your butt outta the fire. Because of me, now you can say you're the third guy to desert the Fire Nation Army and live. How sweet is that, huh?"
Goawaygoawaygoaway…
Her voice was coming from directly above him, now. "Pfff. Fine. I've got places to go, anyway. I'm not here to listen to you wax poetic with your whining, bub. You think you're the only one in the world with problems?"
Shi shifted his head to glimpse upwards.
Fogged-over gray-green eyes greeted him.
She's… She's blind. Agni above…!
"Oh, good. Now at least you're lookin' at me. Ya need to be able to describe me to the rest of the bar, anyhow," she grinned cheerfully. The girl had a bag hefted over her left shoulder, now, where before she wasn't carrying anything (No travelling supplies? Why? How?).
He looked around, wanting to have a better grasp on what happened during the fight.
The komodo-rhinos were all gone. Understandable. He felt like running, too.
Then he caught sight of the pile of bodies further behind the girl. All the Rough Rhinos, with the leader slumped on top.
Somehow the girl must've sensed where he was looking, because she waved her free hand dismissively and answered the unasked question with, "Unconscious."
Shi barely knew where the words came from, but they were blurted out, nonetheless.
"Who are you?"
A smirk.
"To you? I'm just a Blind Bandit."
Then she dropped the bag she had been holding in front of him, and Shi startled at the solid thump and the chingling of a bag full of coin.
"Alright, here's what you're gonna do…"
Extra 3: The Play that Showed the Very Truth and Nature of Compassion
- Location
- United States
Here you guys go.
People who've already read my story: I promise that when I'm done regurgitating, you'll see something new.
As it is, more old stuff!
-
Extra 3: The Play that Showed the Very Truth and Nature of Compassion
They decided to make the play worthy of their cheers.
Oh, the Fire Nation still had to win, they all agreed. That was the core of the propaganda. They would be outed, otherwise. They couldn't have the Avatar winning, no. They would play ball as far that was concerned.
First, they had to make it real. They had to actually do the things they'd depict on the stage before arriving at Ember Island.
Second, Pu-On Tim and the Ember Island Players needed to be taken out of the picture, pronto, and all copies of the script had to be burned. Zuko was able to take care of that by ingratiating himself to Ozai once again (it had become pathetically easy to do so). He just bought them with royal funds and liquidated them.
Third, a new play company was to be started, quietly, called the Players of Time. The name meant something only to the owners.
Fourth, the new script was written. Many roles are self-portrayals, but the audience would only be aware of that status for Zuko. Yes, Zuko would remain in the palace beyond the Day of Black Sun, not needing to teach Aang or seek forgiveness from Iroh, so he instead kept the ruse of the Fire Supremacist Prince.
Fifth, they took care to hire competent extras and rehearse the script with them for two solid weeks (it had to be perfect). In a novel move (for this life, anyway), they decided to introduce the concept of a narrator/announcer who would announce the premise at the beginning and pronounce the ending.
And last.
The curtain goes up.
-
"The powers were divided into four…! And all under heaven… were guided by one…"
"Things have changed."
"Yes… they have."
"It's still true."
"Indeed. I can only hope that Fire will fill those shoes well…"
-
"Who are you?"
"I'm Aang!"
"Be careful! He might be Fire Nation in disguise!"
-
"No one before me has had anything to lose. I do. I will find the Avatar."
-
"Where are we?"
"You're on the Island of Kyoshi, and you have some explaining to do."
-
The Mad Admiral laughed, "What can a banished prince like you do? Your own father doesn't want you! And you've got the scar to prove it."
A roar of rage. "MAYBE YOU'D LIKE ONE TO MATCH!"
-
"This isn't right!"
"It's something that has to be done!"
The Avatar slammed his staff onto the stage, and the sound reverberated.
"Those are people down there! I won't let you do this!"
And then the actor whistled.
"What are you doing?"
"You're too late."
-
The Water Tribe Warrior shouted:
"I won't let you! Your father told me to protect you!"
"I have to do this, Sokka. There must be a moon in the sky. Or everything will fall."
-
The girl stomped on the wood.
"I see with my earthbending. It's who I am. But my parents won't see."
"... Come with us."
-
"Uncle, how? The Avatar gets stronger every day, but he's still a child! He doesn't even know what he's doing!"
"He wants to do right by the world. It's who he is. It's what he's made to do."
"What are you saying?" the Prince asked suspiciously.
"Join me, Zuko," the Traitor suggested, "Join me with the Avatar! The world can be a better place!"
"No… NO! I can't believe… You! You're a traitor! I won't betray my country! I won't!"
But the Traitor was persistent with his temptation, "Don't you remember? The suffering we've seen! We could stop that!"
The Prince stood in the catacombs, frozen onstage with indecision.
-
Lightning flashed.
The audience collectively gasped.
-
"Aang! You're alive!"
-
"Your Prince has RETURNED!"
-
"The Avatar is alive. Find him. End him."
-
The crowd of Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom warriors cheered: "Avatar Aang!"
-
"The Eclipse has started!"
-
"I failed again."
-
"The Avatar has a teacher," the general explained to the Fire Lord, "You brother, Iroh."
"That man is no brother of mine," the Fire Lord snarled in righteous fury, "He would throw the Fire Nation to the dogs in the name of his precious balance."
-
"Sozin's Comet returns!"
-
"I will stop you," the Avatar, the naive child with the power of a god, said seriously, sincerely.
"No, Avatar," the Fire Lord returned coldly, "I will stop you."
-
"The Fire Nation will march across the world, bringing civilization to All Under Heaven!"
-
"And thus, the war came to an end, and with it, came the end of an era. With the Cycle ended, it was the first time in ten thousand years that the world was without the Avatar. It marked the end of stagnation, of thousands of years of ignorance and folly. The Fire brought its light forth… and illuminated a world full of misery. The Superior Element had the work of generations ahead of it to rebuild the world, but in the end, the world would be a better place.
"All it took was the death of a child. A person, with hopes and dreams. Someone who loved and was loved."
-
And then the curtain went down.
The audience was incapable of speech at the end of the performance.
When they walked into this theater, they had no idea that they would wish they didn't have to leave. That they would wish the play never ended.
Most scandalously of all, they had no idea that they would find themselves in tears over the heroic death of the Avatar at the hands of the glorious Fire Lord.
And yet, when the announcer completed the final line of the play, and the audience sat still and quiet...
Someone started to clap.
The thunderous applause could be heard all the way from Caldera.
People who've already read my story: I promise that when I'm done regurgitating, you'll see something new.
As it is, more old stuff!
-
Extra 3: The Play that Showed the Very Truth and Nature of Compassion
They decided to make the play worthy of their cheers.
Oh, the Fire Nation still had to win, they all agreed. That was the core of the propaganda. They would be outed, otherwise. They couldn't have the Avatar winning, no. They would play ball as far that was concerned.
First, they had to make it real. They had to actually do the things they'd depict on the stage before arriving at Ember Island.
Second, Pu-On Tim and the Ember Island Players needed to be taken out of the picture, pronto, and all copies of the script had to be burned. Zuko was able to take care of that by ingratiating himself to Ozai once again (it had become pathetically easy to do so). He just bought them with royal funds and liquidated them.
Third, a new play company was to be started, quietly, called the Players of Time. The name meant something only to the owners.
Fourth, the new script was written. Many roles are self-portrayals, but the audience would only be aware of that status for Zuko. Yes, Zuko would remain in the palace beyond the Day of Black Sun, not needing to teach Aang or seek forgiveness from Iroh, so he instead kept the ruse of the Fire Supremacist Prince.
Fifth, they took care to hire competent extras and rehearse the script with them for two solid weeks (it had to be perfect). In a novel move (for this life, anyway), they decided to introduce the concept of a narrator/announcer who would announce the premise at the beginning and pronounce the ending.
And last.
The curtain goes up.
-
"The powers were divided into four…! And all under heaven… were guided by one…"
"Things have changed."
"Yes… they have."
"It's still true."
"Indeed. I can only hope that Fire will fill those shoes well…"
-
"Who are you?"
"I'm Aang!"
"Be careful! He might be Fire Nation in disguise!"
-
"No one before me has had anything to lose. I do. I will find the Avatar."
-
"Where are we?"
"You're on the Island of Kyoshi, and you have some explaining to do."
-
The Mad Admiral laughed, "What can a banished prince like you do? Your own father doesn't want you! And you've got the scar to prove it."
A roar of rage. "MAYBE YOU'D LIKE ONE TO MATCH!"
-
"This isn't right!"
"It's something that has to be done!"
The Avatar slammed his staff onto the stage, and the sound reverberated.
"Those are people down there! I won't let you do this!"
And then the actor whistled.
"What are you doing?"
"You're too late."
-
The Water Tribe Warrior shouted:
"I won't let you! Your father told me to protect you!"
"I have to do this, Sokka. There must be a moon in the sky. Or everything will fall."
-
The girl stomped on the wood.
"I see with my earthbending. It's who I am. But my parents won't see."
"... Come with us."
-
"Uncle, how? The Avatar gets stronger every day, but he's still a child! He doesn't even know what he's doing!"
"He wants to do right by the world. It's who he is. It's what he's made to do."
"What are you saying?" the Prince asked suspiciously.
"Join me, Zuko," the Traitor suggested, "Join me with the Avatar! The world can be a better place!"
"No… NO! I can't believe… You! You're a traitor! I won't betray my country! I won't!"
But the Traitor was persistent with his temptation, "Don't you remember? The suffering we've seen! We could stop that!"
The Prince stood in the catacombs, frozen onstage with indecision.
-
Lightning flashed.
The audience collectively gasped.
-
"Aang! You're alive!"
-
"Your Prince has RETURNED!"
-
"The Avatar is alive. Find him. End him."
-
The crowd of Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom warriors cheered: "Avatar Aang!"
-
"The Eclipse has started!"
-
"I failed again."
-
"The Avatar has a teacher," the general explained to the Fire Lord, "You brother, Iroh."
"That man is no brother of mine," the Fire Lord snarled in righteous fury, "He would throw the Fire Nation to the dogs in the name of his precious balance."
-
"Sozin's Comet returns!"
-
"I will stop you," the Avatar, the naive child with the power of a god, said seriously, sincerely.
"No, Avatar," the Fire Lord returned coldly, "I will stop you."
-
"The Fire Nation will march across the world, bringing civilization to All Under Heaven!"
-
"And thus, the war came to an end, and with it, came the end of an era. With the Cycle ended, it was the first time in ten thousand years that the world was without the Avatar. It marked the end of stagnation, of thousands of years of ignorance and folly. The Fire brought its light forth… and illuminated a world full of misery. The Superior Element had the work of generations ahead of it to rebuild the world, but in the end, the world would be a better place.
"All it took was the death of a child. A person, with hopes and dreams. Someone who loved and was loved."
-
And then the curtain went down.
The audience was incapable of speech at the end of the performance.
When they walked into this theater, they had no idea that they would wish they didn't have to leave. That they would wish the play never ended.
Most scandalously of all, they had no idea that they would find themselves in tears over the heroic death of the Avatar at the hands of the glorious Fire Lord.
And yet, when the announcer completed the final line of the play, and the audience sat still and quiet...
Someone started to clap.
The thunderous applause could be heard all the way from Caldera.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Awesome.
Chapter 4: Something Odd's Going On
- Location
- United States
Slowly but surely... I will be forced to write something brand new. It's coming, I promise.
-
Chapter 4: Something Odd's Going On
Kanna felt numb while her fingers automatically went through the motions of sewing. Knowing that that wasn't a good sign and usually heralded fingers getting stabbed, she decided to stop for a moment and looked up at the other occupant in the tent.
Sokka, sitting across from her in the hut, was imitating her, hands flying with thread and needle.
Sokka.
And he wasn't just aping her, either. She was working on a tunic. He was working on pants. And he wasn't doing a half-bad job of it, from what she could see.
If this didn't convince her of their midnight-sun-induced story, nothing on this earth ever would.
"That child is really the Avatar?"
The teenager had his eyes focused on his task, clearly thinking about something else entirely, but he nodded his head absently, "Yep. The one and only."
Then he focused onto his grandmother, glancing up when he got to a stopping point and quipping with some humor, "But don't say that to anyone who comes by asking."
Then he was back at it again.
Kanna huffed at the boy's cheek, but segued into another question.
"And you know this because… You've already lived your life? You and your sister?"
"Yeah," came the short answer as Sokka navigated a tricky portion of the britches.
She was silent for a short while, absorbing that.
The young man stopped again, this time setting his work aside… the finished pants. To be fair, it was just one of Sokka's older pair of leggings being refitted for the twelve-year-old newcomer, but still.
Blue eyes twinkled, and he made a dry observation, "I think you want to ask a different question."
What happened to 'sewing is a woman's job'?
She had her work cut out for her to keep from exploding, "What... are you... doing...in here?"
Sewing? she wanted to tack on.
"Instead of Katara, you mean?" he asked shrewdly. He nodded towards the hut's entryway, indicating the outside, "She's a master waterbender, now. She's outside with Aang making new houses for everyone."
Sitting back at the profoundly sensible answer, Kanna shook her head, still unable to fully grasp the repercussions of this… second chance that Sokka and Katara were apparently granted.
"In your previous life… when did you learn… and why?"
He shrugged, "Well, when the wife is away and one of your kids tears a hole in their tunic, something's gotta be done, right?"
Old wrinkles that hadn't seen much use lately went up in a smile.
Then the young man pointed at her unfinished tunic, "You gonna do more, or should I?"
His grandmother wordlessly handed over the pile, and in no time Sokka was fiddling away with the thread.
Speaking again, "There is one thing you should know about."
"Oh?" she murmured.
"Everything will be fine. No more deaths will come of the war for the Southern Water Tribe. That's a promise."
That jolted her, eyes going wide in shock.
My goodness! It didn't even occur to me to ask about that! she wondered, thoughts racing and euphoria blooming within her heart.
"Please don't try to hug me. I'm holding a sharp, pointy object right now."
-
Jee listened to the others at the mess-hall table while he quietly ate his plain noodles.
Yao, komodo-rhino caretaker, was attempting to dispel the pall of cabin-fever that had fallen over most of the rest of the crew by talking. A lot.
"It was huge! I never saw a bigger one in my life!" he yammered. The hot potato-carrot jook in front of him sat untouched.
The ship's engineer, Xing, was humoring the chatterbox, nodding along while resting his head in his hand, elbow propped on the table next to Jee's eating mat. His bowl was also full of uneaten food.
"Uh-huh," he mumbled.
"That turtleseal just sat there looking at me for a minute, and then it gave a croak and started to waddle off towards the edge of the iceberg-"
Li-Wei, one of the crew's firebending seamen, was sitting across from Jee, shaking his head and muttering to himself in annoyance. He leaned over and smacked Yao on the back of the head.
"Hey! What was that for!"
"Stop talking, you moron. You're embarrassing yourself."
Sputtering, "What? What are you talking about? You think that I'm lying? I'm telling you, I saw it yesterday-!"
"Turtleseals live in the North Pole, meathead!"
That shut him up.
"... Really?"
"Yeah, Yao. Really really."
"Oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'."
"Well, why didn't anyone say anything!?" he cried indignantly.
Li-Wei made a mocking guess, "Because it was fun to watch you make a fool of yourself all day with your tall tales?"
The animal caretaker growled, before turning his accusing gaze to the person across from him, "What about you?"
At the questioning tone in his voice, Xing jumped a little, "Huhwhat?"
"You just want me to look dumb? That why you let me talk while you're sittin' there?"
Xing stared at him like he was speaking gibberish, "... What?"
Yao, who looked like he was about to launch into a tirade, clammed up at the unexpected nonresponse, blinking.
Li-Wei simply raised an eyebrow.
The engineer narrowed his own eyes, this time asking more pointedly, "What? There somethin' on my face?"
Jee set his bowl down, looking at his neighbor in concern, "... Are you alright?"
Xing moved out of his resting pose, sitting upright, giving the Lieutenant a sidelong glance, "I'm fine. Why?"
"You seem kinda… out of it."
Interjecting, Yao guffawed, breaking out of his funk with his voice warbling like he was about to weep, "You weren't even listening in the first place!? You guys are the worst!"
Thoroughly vexed by the peanut gallery, Li-Wei did not afford the pathological liar any leeway. He cracked his knuckles, and brief jets of fire blew from his nose as he growled, "Shut up, you, or I'll knock your block off."
"Hey," Jee interrupted, eyeing the two of them, "Settle down. I don't deal with that kind of roughhousing on this ship. You screw around like that and you're in the brig, you get me Li-Wei?"
The Lieutenant's word was law, being the third in command after General Iroh and Prince Zuko.
A pink tinge colored the firebender's cheeks, but he held his superior's gaze.
"Yes sir."
"And you," he directed towards the animal caretaker, "If you don't want to get into trouble, don't lie to everyone's faces all day long and then whine and moan when you find out that some of them have learned to pay no attention to you. Understand?"
Cowed by the much bigger man, Yao settled down, nodding contritely.
Awkward silence followed, interrupted by a cough from Li-Wei. Everyone else at the table looked to him.
Then he gestured at the table, giving a significant look towards Xing, "You haven't touched your food since you sat down… And you haven't been motormouthing like hay-for-brains."
Yao looked like he was about to say something about that, but glanced across the table and slowly closed his mouth while Jee kept a steady gaze on him.
Xing sighed in answer to all the poking and prodding, "I'm just thinking about something… weird… that happened earlier today."
"Sounds riveting," Jee commented, switching from looking at Yao to directing an inquiring look at his seating partner, "What was it?"
Eyebrows lowered in faint consternation, "Prince Zuko came down to the engine room earlier."
-
The first thing that Shi did after walking dazedly into the roadside tavern was immediately order a round for everyone there. He had the money for it; the metalbender looted the Rough Rhinos' unconscious bodies, and the money she found was gifted to him for that exact purpose of gossip, because there existed no better way to get the benevolent attention of all within earshot. He didn't question how apparently a twelve-year-old girl was aware of this. He just did what the extremely scary earthbender told him to do.
He was also warned that the area to the north was full of bounty hunters, and that he really should turn around yesterday and head to Gaoling… for health reasons. When he asked why he couldn't just head northwest through the Plains or go east to the Misty Palms Oasis, the girl had said something to the effect of, "Only if you wanna hang from a tree, hon." and, "The mercenary capital of the Earth Kingdom has a sucky tourist industry.", respectively.
People must really hate Fire Nationals around there, he had thought with some sarcasm, I wonder why?
So here he was.
"Hey, everyone! Drinks on me!"
And everyone cheered.
The second thing he did was tell his story. That wasn't hard. Every detail of the encounter was burned into his mind. The little lady specified that she wanted to get a reputation as a larger-than-life heroine.
Wish granted.
He was only alive because of her, after all.
Thankfully, the blind girl told him that he was free to throw out any details implicating himself, for which he was most grateful to the Greatest Earthbending Mistress In The World.
"So there I was, minding my own business on the road from Gaoling, when suddenly… the Rough Rhinos showed up!... and then…"
"... but when I thought I was gonna die, the fire went out and the captain screamed!..."
"... there was a girl… No, you idiot, a little girl, she was a kid!..."
"... Somehow, she bent the metal in the guy's piercings and… oh spirits…"
"... she was blind. Blind! She said that… she was a Blind Bandit."
The third and final thing Shi did that night was skip the sake and go straight to drinking the local supply of cactus juice until he was bombed out of his gourd.
"Did he drink that thing before or after he started talking about metalbending?"
Shrugs all around.
-
They were all gathered outside of the newly restored village walls.
The Avatar stood away from the main group near the flying bison's head, giving the Water Tribe siblings some space. The clothing he wore did its job; he was the very image of a member of the Southern Water Tribe. He wore a blue parka, for now, but when they got away from the cold and started getting further north, he'd start wearing clothes more appropriate for warmer weather. Bandages covered his (for now) bald head to cover the tattoo.
Sokka and Katara stood in front of the small crowd of women and children with their grandmother.
"We love you, Gran Gran," Katara offered warmly, drawing the little old woman into a hug, "We love you so much. We'll be back; we'll see you again."
Then she pulled back to look at her in the eyes.
"That healing session I gave you should help with the aches you've been having. Try and exercise a little bit each day; a walk around the village should be good. Also, remember that when you eat meat, try to stick to freshwater fish. Eat lots of sea prunes. When we get to the North Pole, we'll send healers so that you can get a regular physical therapy, too, okay?"
Kanna nodded to indicate that she understood the directions, and what they implied about herself. She knew what was coming; she'd seen it claim many elders in her time. Ordinarily, waterbending healing was enough to flush out the toxins which caused arthritis, but there hadn't been any such waterbenders in the South Pole for decades. Obviously, in Katara and Sokka's first life, they had to deal with their grandmother falling ill, and were now pre-empting the disease's onset.
Clever children, she thought fondly as Katara stepped away.
Then Sokka stepped forward.
When he got close… close enough that the other villagers wouldn't hear, Kanna realized…
"We missed you, you know," Sokka whispered, "We will miss you."
It's been decades since we've last seen you. But we're leaving again.
Stepping forward, she gathered both of the (not?) children in her arms, and they both returned the gesture.
She tightened her hold of her two amazing grandchildren.
"I'm so proud of you two, and… " she tried to say what she was feeling, but she lacked the words.
"We know," Sokka assured. And for a while they stood together.
Then one of the children in the group by the village entrance - a girl, Buniq - rushed forward with a cry and latched onto Katara's legs. The three of them were jostled out of their embrace.
"Don't go!" came the first muted demand.
Then she turned her head towards the airbender child, Aang, who was still standing further away, and looked back up at Katara, before switching her gaze to Sokka, pleading, "Don't go, I'll miss you."
Clearly, those eyes were too much for the Avatar to handle, because he leaped forward and swept the girl into an embrace with a wide smile, and she gave a surprised laugh. He looked over at the crowd of kids who were fidgeting ever since one of their number had been brave enough to break ranks.
"Come 'ere! One last big hug!"
And there was a small avalanche of children rushing forward. The Avatar gave an 'oof' as he was tackled beneath a pile of little bodies, laughing.
Kanna watched the interaction with no small amount of wonder.
He's perfect.
Katara's voice caused her to jump, "... I know."
Did I say that out loud?
The old woman turned her attention to her granddaughter… and wasn't sure what to make of what she saw.
She looked sad. Frowning slightly. Something tired in her eyes as she watched the world's last hope for peace tell the only children left in the South Pole that everything would be fine and he'd be back, just to see them. The young woman watched this… and, to Kanna's mystification, there was only exhaustion in her frame.
-
Katara waved from the back of Appa's saddle at the receding crowd of cheering villagers calling out goodbyes and well wishes.
When they were gone from sight, she lowered her hand and turned around, closing her eyes and sighing.
"Are you sure that there's no way to reverse Gran's aging just a little?"
Her eye twitched, "Yes, Sokka." She knew. She tried. Hundreds of times. "The technology to extend her life just doesn't exist yet."
"But-"
"Look," she opened her eyes and glared at her brother, "Every life, we have this conversation. The answer isn't changing. She's too old. My regenerative healing doesn't work when the HM is too deteriorated. I didn't magically come up with a solution to that problem in the four months between your death and mine."
Sokka didn't lean back at her suddenly aggressive demeanor. He didn't react to her speech at all. He just looked at her. Serious.
She couldn't keep looking at that. Letting out a breath, she shook her head, "Sokka… sorry, you're right. I'm just… irritated. Someday, I'll probably come up with something. Someday. You know how it is. Anything's possible when… when you can research something forever. Just… not this time. Sorry."
Her brother looked down into his criss-crossed lap, "It's okay. I get it. And when you figure it out… well, it'll probably just extend her life by a decade or so, right? Just… don't give up hope, okay?" he gave a scoff, and looked up at the sky in disbelief at himself, "I'm giving the hope speech," he muttered. He turned his head so that one eye was on his sister, "You're supposed to be the hope speech giver."
Katara giggled at his attempt at humor.
She glanced away, looking towards the front.
Aang sat on the crown of Appa's head, reins in hand. She knew that he could hear what they were saying. But he hadn't said anything.
… Aang…
The air between them wasn't clearing up. It still felt heavy. Too weighted-down with time.
… We're tired.
The thought came unbidden, but it wasn't a surprise when it came.
-
Jee went still at that news, but Li-Wei leaned forward in interest.
"What? Sounds bizarre already. What would that brat be doing in the engine room?"
Xing brought a hand up to scratch his beard, "Well…"
~
"Fireman Xing!"
It was a good thing that his shovel hadn't been laden with coal, otherwise there would've been an unholy mess to clean up.
Prince Zuko!?
As it was, he dropped what he was doing with a start before whipping up and around to a rigid attention.
"Sir!" nervously shouted.
What's he doing here!? Oh, spirits… his eyes darted over to the wall next to the doorway that the Prince was entering through. It was covered in some… very unflattering caricatures of the illustrious captain of the Huoling. Involving komodo rhinos and various anatomically impossible positions.
You've got to be joking! he screamed in his mind.
In nearly three years the brat had never set foot down here; it was supposed to be a Zuko-free zone! He looked away from the crude drawings out of self-preservation, as it wouldn't do to draw the kid's attention to them.
Oh, who was he kidding?
I'm dead.
As if he could hear his internal pronouncement, the prince smiled. "At ease," he said, holding up a placating hand.
Xing tried to relax out of attention, but he was too stiff with existential fear. As had been usual for the last couple of days, the engineer's attention was drawn not to the giant scar, but to the prince's conspicuous haircut. His ponytail/phoenix plume/whatever… gone. It was still completely weird. The first time he saw it, he almost didn't recognize him. If it weren't for his other extremely distinguishing feature, he bet that he wouldn't have.
… just… why? his muddled thoughts pushed forward, before his attention was snagged by the captain taking a further step forward into the engine room.
"What is the status of things down here? Everything running smoothly?"
… What?
"Er… the engine…?"
"Yes, fireman. The engine. Give me a full diagnosis."
While it was customary for the captain of a ship to ask such things on occasion… not on this ship. Usually, Xing gave such reports to the Lieutenant, who'd report to General Iroh, then he'd say something to his nephew if something was urgent… because they were the ones who actually cared about the day-to-day functions of the crew. The princess was typically being a brat somewhere up on deck, pouting about his avatar or flinging fire around at one or two of the soldiers.
… not now.
He quit trying to analyze the situation and just rolled with it.
Half an hour later, the prince was nodding and humming as the engineer finished with the engine check.
"So, it looks like we're going to have to purchase some more fuel at our next stop, but otherwise, everything looks fine?"
Untangling himself from some of the pipes, and without turning away from the machine, Xing gave a stiff shrug.
"... yes, sir," he affirmed, still trying to figure out what this was all about.
"Alright, if it is as you say, we will buy some more coal at Whale Minor. Good work," Prince Zuko's voice said.
It was the prince's voice, but the engineer felt that he ought to check. Turning around in bewilderment, he could only look at the young captain, eyes wide.
The kid calmly returned his look, that strange smile still on his face.
He's serious.
"Keep that up. The ship is depending on you," he finished, before turning around and freezing.
Xing recoiled.
Oh, COME ON-!
But, instead of turning back and reaming him the way he expected, the young man… walked forward and out the door.
Completely ignoring the filthy cartoons that were in plain view.
For a long time, he just numbly stood there, before something occurred to him.
That smile he had on this whole time… was normal, he realized. On anyone else, it would've looked normal.
Prince Zuko wearing a normal smile was not normal.
Shaken, the engineer stumbled forward, picked up a rag and started furiously scrubbing away at the charcoal marring the wall.
~
Yao was clearly stunned by the conclusion of the story, giving his head a shake and staring harder at the engineer across from him.
"No way."
Arms folded and leaning back in his chair, Li-Wei frowned.
"That… is really weird. Do you know why…?"
"I have no idea," holding his arms up in a defensive posture, "It just… happened. He came in, asked how I was doing, wished me well, and left. I mean… just that would've been okay, I guess. I might have been able to swallow that the prince was scolded or something by the General, and was forced to do something nice or something… but… what happened at the end… no. Just, no. I don't believe it."
Narrowing his eyes, the soldier was blunt, "Me neither… I mean," he said quickly, seeing how that might've been taken differently, "I believe you, I do! It's just… what? Where did that come from?"
Looking across the table, Li-Wei noticed that the Lieutenant was a bit pale, and immediately knew that his superior had some idea of what was going on, "Hey, you know something! Do you know what's going on?"
Feeling uncomfortable, Jee reached up to tug on the collar of his uniform, "Uh… yeah. Maybe."
Yao pounced, "What? You know? Wait, is any of this related to… to Zuko's…" he gestured at his own skullcap to indicate the prince's new hairstyle.
Sighing, the officer affirmed, "I think so. And I might know something about what's going on. But," he held up a finger to forestall any more gossip digging, "The General very specifically made me swear an oath to Agni not to speak about what happened."
Looking around at the other three, making eye contact with each person, "I'm serious. I'll take it up with the General and see if he's changed his mind, but I can't say anything. Understood?"
Old Xing was looking at him intently, "What can you say?"
Jee eyed him cautiously. He didn't want to leave the rest of the crew unprepared if something more off happened, but he was a loyal soldier and wouldn't break an oath to Iroh, "I can say that… something happened to Prince Zuko. Earlier, while we were further south. And that it might be why he's acting strange now. And that you probably should be careful," he stressed, wanting to get that point across, "But that's it. I won't say anymore."
With that, the Lieutenant stood up and headed towards the barracks, leaving a table of spooked sailors behind.
-
"Nowr dat…*hic* wash a gret shtoreh."
"Hear hear!"
Everyone agreed that it was a excellent story, and it wasn't just the flow of free alcohol talking.
The bartender absently rubbed a clay mug with a dirty rag while he listened to the others in his bar rehash the tale.
"That Shi fella sure does have a way with words."
"Best thing I heard all month!"
The bartender was in agreement with that sentiment. It was very well told, and the man who stumbled in for a strong drink was obviously a gifted orator.
There was only one complaint that most of the bar patrons felt was deserved criticism: The story was far too fantastical to be believed.
"Sheesh. Dry that out and I could fertilize the whole farm!"
"Eh, sure, he did lay that on a bit thick, didn't he? Give 'im a break, though, yeah? It was good."
Yes, it was certain that the man needed to tone down the exaggeration; it was clearly overkill. No one would believe it.
Except, well:
That was how everyone felt until the news came in.
The doors to the saloon slammed open.
"Have you guys heard!? Someone beat the hells outta the Rough Rhinos!"
All of the patrons in the building froze. This resulted in several mugs getting emptied onto chins and down shirts.
The bartender set down his washrag.
"... Who did it?"
The man who announced the shocking development was unsure what everyone's reaction meant, but he answered the question after only a small hesitation, "You're not gonna believe this, but… people are saying that it was some… earthbending child. A girl."
And then the man laughed a little, shaking his head at what he was about to say:
"And that she can bend metal. But, well, that's not true… Uh… guys?"
Every head in the room, with the exception of the person who just entered, turned to look at the pile of limbs and smelly clothing sitting in the corner.
"... Well," the bartender uttered faintly, "Yeah. We mighta heard something about that."
-
Chapter 4: Something Odd's Going On
Kanna felt numb while her fingers automatically went through the motions of sewing. Knowing that that wasn't a good sign and usually heralded fingers getting stabbed, she decided to stop for a moment and looked up at the other occupant in the tent.
Sokka, sitting across from her in the hut, was imitating her, hands flying with thread and needle.
Sokka.
And he wasn't just aping her, either. She was working on a tunic. He was working on pants. And he wasn't doing a half-bad job of it, from what she could see.
If this didn't convince her of their midnight-sun-induced story, nothing on this earth ever would.
"That child is really the Avatar?"
The teenager had his eyes focused on his task, clearly thinking about something else entirely, but he nodded his head absently, "Yep. The one and only."
Then he focused onto his grandmother, glancing up when he got to a stopping point and quipping with some humor, "But don't say that to anyone who comes by asking."
Then he was back at it again.
Kanna huffed at the boy's cheek, but segued into another question.
"And you know this because… You've already lived your life? You and your sister?"
"Yeah," came the short answer as Sokka navigated a tricky portion of the britches.
She was silent for a short while, absorbing that.
The young man stopped again, this time setting his work aside… the finished pants. To be fair, it was just one of Sokka's older pair of leggings being refitted for the twelve-year-old newcomer, but still.
Blue eyes twinkled, and he made a dry observation, "I think you want to ask a different question."
What happened to 'sewing is a woman's job'?
She had her work cut out for her to keep from exploding, "What... are you... doing...in here?"
Sewing? she wanted to tack on.
"Instead of Katara, you mean?" he asked shrewdly. He nodded towards the hut's entryway, indicating the outside, "She's a master waterbender, now. She's outside with Aang making new houses for everyone."
Sitting back at the profoundly sensible answer, Kanna shook her head, still unable to fully grasp the repercussions of this… second chance that Sokka and Katara were apparently granted.
"In your previous life… when did you learn… and why?"
He shrugged, "Well, when the wife is away and one of your kids tears a hole in their tunic, something's gotta be done, right?"
Old wrinkles that hadn't seen much use lately went up in a smile.
Then the young man pointed at her unfinished tunic, "You gonna do more, or should I?"
His grandmother wordlessly handed over the pile, and in no time Sokka was fiddling away with the thread.
Speaking again, "There is one thing you should know about."
"Oh?" she murmured.
"Everything will be fine. No more deaths will come of the war for the Southern Water Tribe. That's a promise."
That jolted her, eyes going wide in shock.
My goodness! It didn't even occur to me to ask about that! she wondered, thoughts racing and euphoria blooming within her heart.
"Please don't try to hug me. I'm holding a sharp, pointy object right now."
-
Jee listened to the others at the mess-hall table while he quietly ate his plain noodles.
Yao, komodo-rhino caretaker, was attempting to dispel the pall of cabin-fever that had fallen over most of the rest of the crew by talking. A lot.
"It was huge! I never saw a bigger one in my life!" he yammered. The hot potato-carrot jook in front of him sat untouched.
The ship's engineer, Xing, was humoring the chatterbox, nodding along while resting his head in his hand, elbow propped on the table next to Jee's eating mat. His bowl was also full of uneaten food.
"Uh-huh," he mumbled.
"That turtleseal just sat there looking at me for a minute, and then it gave a croak and started to waddle off towards the edge of the iceberg-"
Li-Wei, one of the crew's firebending seamen, was sitting across from Jee, shaking his head and muttering to himself in annoyance. He leaned over and smacked Yao on the back of the head.
"Hey! What was that for!"
"Stop talking, you moron. You're embarrassing yourself."
Sputtering, "What? What are you talking about? You think that I'm lying? I'm telling you, I saw it yesterday-!"
"Turtleseals live in the North Pole, meathead!"
That shut him up.
"... Really?"
"Yeah, Yao. Really really."
"Oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'."
"Well, why didn't anyone say anything!?" he cried indignantly.
Li-Wei made a mocking guess, "Because it was fun to watch you make a fool of yourself all day with your tall tales?"
The animal caretaker growled, before turning his accusing gaze to the person across from him, "What about you?"
At the questioning tone in his voice, Xing jumped a little, "Huhwhat?"
"You just want me to look dumb? That why you let me talk while you're sittin' there?"
Xing stared at him like he was speaking gibberish, "... What?"
Yao, who looked like he was about to launch into a tirade, clammed up at the unexpected nonresponse, blinking.
Li-Wei simply raised an eyebrow.
The engineer narrowed his own eyes, this time asking more pointedly, "What? There somethin' on my face?"
Jee set his bowl down, looking at his neighbor in concern, "... Are you alright?"
Xing moved out of his resting pose, sitting upright, giving the Lieutenant a sidelong glance, "I'm fine. Why?"
"You seem kinda… out of it."
Interjecting, Yao guffawed, breaking out of his funk with his voice warbling like he was about to weep, "You weren't even listening in the first place!? You guys are the worst!"
Thoroughly vexed by the peanut gallery, Li-Wei did not afford the pathological liar any leeway. He cracked his knuckles, and brief jets of fire blew from his nose as he growled, "Shut up, you, or I'll knock your block off."
"Hey," Jee interrupted, eyeing the two of them, "Settle down. I don't deal with that kind of roughhousing on this ship. You screw around like that and you're in the brig, you get me Li-Wei?"
The Lieutenant's word was law, being the third in command after General Iroh and Prince Zuko.
A pink tinge colored the firebender's cheeks, but he held his superior's gaze.
"Yes sir."
"And you," he directed towards the animal caretaker, "If you don't want to get into trouble, don't lie to everyone's faces all day long and then whine and moan when you find out that some of them have learned to pay no attention to you. Understand?"
Cowed by the much bigger man, Yao settled down, nodding contritely.
Awkward silence followed, interrupted by a cough from Li-Wei. Everyone else at the table looked to him.
Then he gestured at the table, giving a significant look towards Xing, "You haven't touched your food since you sat down… And you haven't been motormouthing like hay-for-brains."
Yao looked like he was about to say something about that, but glanced across the table and slowly closed his mouth while Jee kept a steady gaze on him.
Xing sighed in answer to all the poking and prodding, "I'm just thinking about something… weird… that happened earlier today."
"Sounds riveting," Jee commented, switching from looking at Yao to directing an inquiring look at his seating partner, "What was it?"
Eyebrows lowered in faint consternation, "Prince Zuko came down to the engine room earlier."
-
The first thing that Shi did after walking dazedly into the roadside tavern was immediately order a round for everyone there. He had the money for it; the metalbender looted the Rough Rhinos' unconscious bodies, and the money she found was gifted to him for that exact purpose of gossip, because there existed no better way to get the benevolent attention of all within earshot. He didn't question how apparently a twelve-year-old girl was aware of this. He just did what the extremely scary earthbender told him to do.
He was also warned that the area to the north was full of bounty hunters, and that he really should turn around yesterday and head to Gaoling… for health reasons. When he asked why he couldn't just head northwest through the Plains or go east to the Misty Palms Oasis, the girl had said something to the effect of, "Only if you wanna hang from a tree, hon." and, "The mercenary capital of the Earth Kingdom has a sucky tourist industry.", respectively.
People must really hate Fire Nationals around there, he had thought with some sarcasm, I wonder why?
So here he was.
"Hey, everyone! Drinks on me!"
And everyone cheered.
The second thing he did was tell his story. That wasn't hard. Every detail of the encounter was burned into his mind. The little lady specified that she wanted to get a reputation as a larger-than-life heroine.
Wish granted.
He was only alive because of her, after all.
Thankfully, the blind girl told him that he was free to throw out any details implicating himself, for which he was most grateful to the Greatest Earthbending Mistress In The World.
"So there I was, minding my own business on the road from Gaoling, when suddenly… the Rough Rhinos showed up!... and then…"
"... but when I thought I was gonna die, the fire went out and the captain screamed!..."
"... there was a girl… No, you idiot, a little girl, she was a kid!..."
"... Somehow, she bent the metal in the guy's piercings and… oh spirits…"
"... she was blind. Blind! She said that… she was a Blind Bandit."
The third and final thing Shi did that night was skip the sake and go straight to drinking the local supply of cactus juice until he was bombed out of his gourd.
"Did he drink that thing before or after he started talking about metalbending?"
Shrugs all around.
-
They were all gathered outside of the newly restored village walls.
The Avatar stood away from the main group near the flying bison's head, giving the Water Tribe siblings some space. The clothing he wore did its job; he was the very image of a member of the Southern Water Tribe. He wore a blue parka, for now, but when they got away from the cold and started getting further north, he'd start wearing clothes more appropriate for warmer weather. Bandages covered his (for now) bald head to cover the tattoo.
Sokka and Katara stood in front of the small crowd of women and children with their grandmother.
"We love you, Gran Gran," Katara offered warmly, drawing the little old woman into a hug, "We love you so much. We'll be back; we'll see you again."
Then she pulled back to look at her in the eyes.
"That healing session I gave you should help with the aches you've been having. Try and exercise a little bit each day; a walk around the village should be good. Also, remember that when you eat meat, try to stick to freshwater fish. Eat lots of sea prunes. When we get to the North Pole, we'll send healers so that you can get a regular physical therapy, too, okay?"
Kanna nodded to indicate that she understood the directions, and what they implied about herself. She knew what was coming; she'd seen it claim many elders in her time. Ordinarily, waterbending healing was enough to flush out the toxins which caused arthritis, but there hadn't been any such waterbenders in the South Pole for decades. Obviously, in Katara and Sokka's first life, they had to deal with their grandmother falling ill, and were now pre-empting the disease's onset.
Clever children, she thought fondly as Katara stepped away.
Then Sokka stepped forward.
When he got close… close enough that the other villagers wouldn't hear, Kanna realized…
"We missed you, you know," Sokka whispered, "We will miss you."
It's been decades since we've last seen you. But we're leaving again.
Stepping forward, she gathered both of the (not?) children in her arms, and they both returned the gesture.
She tightened her hold of her two amazing grandchildren.
"I'm so proud of you two, and… " she tried to say what she was feeling, but she lacked the words.
"We know," Sokka assured. And for a while they stood together.
Then one of the children in the group by the village entrance - a girl, Buniq - rushed forward with a cry and latched onto Katara's legs. The three of them were jostled out of their embrace.
"Don't go!" came the first muted demand.
Then she turned her head towards the airbender child, Aang, who was still standing further away, and looked back up at Katara, before switching her gaze to Sokka, pleading, "Don't go, I'll miss you."
Clearly, those eyes were too much for the Avatar to handle, because he leaped forward and swept the girl into an embrace with a wide smile, and she gave a surprised laugh. He looked over at the crowd of kids who were fidgeting ever since one of their number had been brave enough to break ranks.
"Come 'ere! One last big hug!"
And there was a small avalanche of children rushing forward. The Avatar gave an 'oof' as he was tackled beneath a pile of little bodies, laughing.
Kanna watched the interaction with no small amount of wonder.
He's perfect.
Katara's voice caused her to jump, "... I know."
Did I say that out loud?
The old woman turned her attention to her granddaughter… and wasn't sure what to make of what she saw.
She looked sad. Frowning slightly. Something tired in her eyes as she watched the world's last hope for peace tell the only children left in the South Pole that everything would be fine and he'd be back, just to see them. The young woman watched this… and, to Kanna's mystification, there was only exhaustion in her frame.
-
Katara waved from the back of Appa's saddle at the receding crowd of cheering villagers calling out goodbyes and well wishes.
When they were gone from sight, she lowered her hand and turned around, closing her eyes and sighing.
"Are you sure that there's no way to reverse Gran's aging just a little?"
Her eye twitched, "Yes, Sokka." She knew. She tried. Hundreds of times. "The technology to extend her life just doesn't exist yet."
"But-"
"Look," she opened her eyes and glared at her brother, "Every life, we have this conversation. The answer isn't changing. She's too old. My regenerative healing doesn't work when the HM is too deteriorated. I didn't magically come up with a solution to that problem in the four months between your death and mine."
Sokka didn't lean back at her suddenly aggressive demeanor. He didn't react to her speech at all. He just looked at her. Serious.
She couldn't keep looking at that. Letting out a breath, she shook her head, "Sokka… sorry, you're right. I'm just… irritated. Someday, I'll probably come up with something. Someday. You know how it is. Anything's possible when… when you can research something forever. Just… not this time. Sorry."
Her brother looked down into his criss-crossed lap, "It's okay. I get it. And when you figure it out… well, it'll probably just extend her life by a decade or so, right? Just… don't give up hope, okay?" he gave a scoff, and looked up at the sky in disbelief at himself, "I'm giving the hope speech," he muttered. He turned his head so that one eye was on his sister, "You're supposed to be the hope speech giver."
Katara giggled at his attempt at humor.
She glanced away, looking towards the front.
Aang sat on the crown of Appa's head, reins in hand. She knew that he could hear what they were saying. But he hadn't said anything.
… Aang…
The air between them wasn't clearing up. It still felt heavy. Too weighted-down with time.
… We're tired.
The thought came unbidden, but it wasn't a surprise when it came.
-
Jee went still at that news, but Li-Wei leaned forward in interest.
"What? Sounds bizarre already. What would that brat be doing in the engine room?"
Xing brought a hand up to scratch his beard, "Well…"
~
"Fireman Xing!"
It was a good thing that his shovel hadn't been laden with coal, otherwise there would've been an unholy mess to clean up.
Prince Zuko!?
As it was, he dropped what he was doing with a start before whipping up and around to a rigid attention.
"Sir!" nervously shouted.
What's he doing here!? Oh, spirits… his eyes darted over to the wall next to the doorway that the Prince was entering through. It was covered in some… very unflattering caricatures of the illustrious captain of the Huoling. Involving komodo rhinos and various anatomically impossible positions.
You've got to be joking! he screamed in his mind.
In nearly three years the brat had never set foot down here; it was supposed to be a Zuko-free zone! He looked away from the crude drawings out of self-preservation, as it wouldn't do to draw the kid's attention to them.
Oh, who was he kidding?
I'm dead.
As if he could hear his internal pronouncement, the prince smiled. "At ease," he said, holding up a placating hand.
Xing tried to relax out of attention, but he was too stiff with existential fear. As had been usual for the last couple of days, the engineer's attention was drawn not to the giant scar, but to the prince's conspicuous haircut. His ponytail/phoenix plume/whatever… gone. It was still completely weird. The first time he saw it, he almost didn't recognize him. If it weren't for his other extremely distinguishing feature, he bet that he wouldn't have.
… just… why? his muddled thoughts pushed forward, before his attention was snagged by the captain taking a further step forward into the engine room.
"What is the status of things down here? Everything running smoothly?"
… What?
"Er… the engine…?"
"Yes, fireman. The engine. Give me a full diagnosis."
While it was customary for the captain of a ship to ask such things on occasion… not on this ship. Usually, Xing gave such reports to the Lieutenant, who'd report to General Iroh, then he'd say something to his nephew if something was urgent… because they were the ones who actually cared about the day-to-day functions of the crew. The princess was typically being a brat somewhere up on deck, pouting about his avatar or flinging fire around at one or two of the soldiers.
… not now.
He quit trying to analyze the situation and just rolled with it.
Half an hour later, the prince was nodding and humming as the engineer finished with the engine check.
"So, it looks like we're going to have to purchase some more fuel at our next stop, but otherwise, everything looks fine?"
Untangling himself from some of the pipes, and without turning away from the machine, Xing gave a stiff shrug.
"... yes, sir," he affirmed, still trying to figure out what this was all about.
"Alright, if it is as you say, we will buy some more coal at Whale Minor. Good work," Prince Zuko's voice said.
It was the prince's voice, but the engineer felt that he ought to check. Turning around in bewilderment, he could only look at the young captain, eyes wide.
The kid calmly returned his look, that strange smile still on his face.
He's serious.
"Keep that up. The ship is depending on you," he finished, before turning around and freezing.
Xing recoiled.
Oh, COME ON-!
But, instead of turning back and reaming him the way he expected, the young man… walked forward and out the door.
Completely ignoring the filthy cartoons that were in plain view.
For a long time, he just numbly stood there, before something occurred to him.
That smile he had on this whole time… was normal, he realized. On anyone else, it would've looked normal.
Prince Zuko wearing a normal smile was not normal.
Shaken, the engineer stumbled forward, picked up a rag and started furiously scrubbing away at the charcoal marring the wall.
~
Yao was clearly stunned by the conclusion of the story, giving his head a shake and staring harder at the engineer across from him.
"No way."
Arms folded and leaning back in his chair, Li-Wei frowned.
"That… is really weird. Do you know why…?"
"I have no idea," holding his arms up in a defensive posture, "It just… happened. He came in, asked how I was doing, wished me well, and left. I mean… just that would've been okay, I guess. I might have been able to swallow that the prince was scolded or something by the General, and was forced to do something nice or something… but… what happened at the end… no. Just, no. I don't believe it."
Narrowing his eyes, the soldier was blunt, "Me neither… I mean," he said quickly, seeing how that might've been taken differently, "I believe you, I do! It's just… what? Where did that come from?"
Looking across the table, Li-Wei noticed that the Lieutenant was a bit pale, and immediately knew that his superior had some idea of what was going on, "Hey, you know something! Do you know what's going on?"
Feeling uncomfortable, Jee reached up to tug on the collar of his uniform, "Uh… yeah. Maybe."
Yao pounced, "What? You know? Wait, is any of this related to… to Zuko's…" he gestured at his own skullcap to indicate the prince's new hairstyle.
Sighing, the officer affirmed, "I think so. And I might know something about what's going on. But," he held up a finger to forestall any more gossip digging, "The General very specifically made me swear an oath to Agni not to speak about what happened."
Looking around at the other three, making eye contact with each person, "I'm serious. I'll take it up with the General and see if he's changed his mind, but I can't say anything. Understood?"
Old Xing was looking at him intently, "What can you say?"
Jee eyed him cautiously. He didn't want to leave the rest of the crew unprepared if something more off happened, but he was a loyal soldier and wouldn't break an oath to Iroh, "I can say that… something happened to Prince Zuko. Earlier, while we were further south. And that it might be why he's acting strange now. And that you probably should be careful," he stressed, wanting to get that point across, "But that's it. I won't say anymore."
With that, the Lieutenant stood up and headed towards the barracks, leaving a table of spooked sailors behind.
-
"Nowr dat…*hic* wash a gret shtoreh."
"Hear hear!"
Everyone agreed that it was a excellent story, and it wasn't just the flow of free alcohol talking.
The bartender absently rubbed a clay mug with a dirty rag while he listened to the others in his bar rehash the tale.
"That Shi fella sure does have a way with words."
"Best thing I heard all month!"
The bartender was in agreement with that sentiment. It was very well told, and the man who stumbled in for a strong drink was obviously a gifted orator.
There was only one complaint that most of the bar patrons felt was deserved criticism: The story was far too fantastical to be believed.
"Sheesh. Dry that out and I could fertilize the whole farm!"
"Eh, sure, he did lay that on a bit thick, didn't he? Give 'im a break, though, yeah? It was good."
Yes, it was certain that the man needed to tone down the exaggeration; it was clearly overkill. No one would believe it.
Except, well:
That was how everyone felt until the news came in.
The doors to the saloon slammed open.
"Have you guys heard!? Someone beat the hells outta the Rough Rhinos!"
All of the patrons in the building froze. This resulted in several mugs getting emptied onto chins and down shirts.
The bartender set down his washrag.
"... Who did it?"
The man who announced the shocking development was unsure what everyone's reaction meant, but he answered the question after only a small hesitation, "You're not gonna believe this, but… people are saying that it was some… earthbending child. A girl."
And then the man laughed a little, shaking his head at what he was about to say:
"And that she can bend metal. But, well, that's not true… Uh… guys?"
Every head in the room, with the exception of the person who just entered, turned to look at the pile of limbs and smelly clothing sitting in the corner.
"... Well," the bartender uttered faintly, "Yeah. We mighta heard something about that."
Last edited:
Oh I am slain!
Wynaut?
- Location
- Tatooine
Blargh. I'm finding it difficult to decide whether your story segments deserve the funny or hugs rating.
Extra 4: Madness
- Location
- United States
Hello again...
Guess what? Like... new content! Kinda.
People who've been reading my story... significant changes to this extra piece. You've read it; it's the really high-drama one.
Below, the reason why everyone has issues when Singing-Groundhog-Sokka mentions explosions.
Like, extremely not-fluffy.
EDIT: I think there were some small but important improvements that needed to be made to the last quotes.
-
Extra 4: Madness
The sky was blue, the clouds were white, the hills were calm, and the sun was bright.
And Aang stood underneath the branches of Lu Ten's tree, fingers outstretched towards the metropolis of Ba Sing Se, high-rise towers gleaming in the distance.
"No… Please…"
It was that day. Lifetimes away, centuries old, the memory still haunted him.
He couldn't move from where he stood. He couldn't bend. There wasn't any time. He couldn't do anything but watch.
A second sun blossomed into existence within the heart of the city.
"No…"
-
The metal door creaked open ominously, and the Avatar stepped through with deadly intent.
The Scholar drummed his fingers on the wooden surface, eyeing the enraged demigod who barged into his cell with amusement, "So… will it be my aorta, severed by blood? My brain, those electrical impulses stopped? Or perhaps… you want this to be quick, and you'll empty my lungs, so full of life-giving air?"
The prison door gave a very final slam shut behind Aang as he stepped fully into the room.
"No," he intoned grimly, "It will not be that way. No bending. No weapons. No machines," he cracked his knuckles, "Just you and me."
The man stood up from the seat behind his desk, humming in interest.
"No bending? You wanting to bloody someone with your bare hands?" the moon shone through the barred high window and illuminated his smirk, "Maybe you are starting to learn."
He tilted his head, popping his neck, and he let the long-coat he was wearing fall to the floor. At 85, he was definitely not frail by any stretch of the imagination; sleeveless arms bulged with muscle. Taking a step to his right, he kicked out with a chi-reinforced strike, and the desk was jostled out of the way.
"Learn what, you honorless dog?" the Avatar growled, walking across the room with his hands up in an aggressive form reminiscent of firebending, "You killed Katara!"
"Oh, please," Sokka rolled his eyes, and lifted his arms into a kickboxing stance, "She'll come back. We only always do. Besides, what about Toph? Is she blubbered seal-jerky or something; is saving her not good enough for you? Or how about the millions of other wretches that just died in nuclear fire? Do they not count?"
Yelling out, Aang flashed forward with a high kick aimed at his face, "SHUT UP!"
The former President of the People's United Republic of Equality stepped forward into the attack, parrying with his right forearm and launching a punch. "Of course they don't count," he concluded smoothly, "They're nothing. Nothing at all. Equally, unequivocally, nothing," he spat.
Block. Punch. Parry.
Pause, "They're just shades. Marionettes dancing on a string, performing a play we've all seen a thousand times."
Riposte. Chamber. Kick.
Pause, "I just wanted to see something different happen, you know? Anything."
Dodge.
"But you? No. Everything has to be perfect. Peaceful."
Weave.
The madness, usually so carefully hidden, shone brightly in those blue eyes, "I just wanted to see you break, Aang."
Jab.
"For once."
Roaring in rage, the Avatar slugged him in the face.
The force of the blow drew blood, and the old man was flung back into the stone wall, but he recovered, using the wall to launch himself back forward in renewed attack and punishing his opponent for overextending his reach by getting inside his guard with a vicious knee to the stomach.
They fought on, heedless of tearing muscles and breaking skin as they sought to inflict the maximum amount of pain possible on each other.
Soon, they found themselves in a stalemated position, arms interlocked with each other and heads butting, giving Sokka a moment to speak again, "And what are you going to do, after you've beaten me into a smear on the ground, hmm? Will you do what you've never done before?" he wondered.
A trail of blood dripped down the Avatar's twisted face. The answer was pained, even as his voice strained with fury, "I've already lived through having everything precious to me taken away from me, Sokka… and, somehow, you've managed to do worse than Sozin could've ever dreamed of with a hundred comets in the sky. I've killed so many by letting you live this long… and I still won't kill you. Instead, I'll inflict the dark of solitary confinement on you, for the rest of your life."
"Really?" he was surprised… and disappointed, "That's it? That's the best you can think of? That's the best you can do? A speech about how tragic you are? And prison? Really? You do recall just how well that worked last time," his eyes suddenly widened, grinning "Don't you!?"
Unbidden, the memory came. The light of a second sun blooming into existence on the skyline of Ba Sing Se. Millions… gone.
It was all the distraction his opponent needed.
Sokka lifted a knee, and Aang blocked with his leg, resulting in an unexpected snap. Giving a shout, he involuntarily loosened his hold, giving the nonbender all the advantage he needed. Without hesitation, Sokka stepped forward and elbowed the airbender across the face, twisting him around in a half circle. Then he put his head under Aang's left arm, wrapped both arms around his opponent's stomach, and lifted him back, bringing them both crashing down onto the ground and leaving the Avatar gasping on the flat of his back.
Quickly, the former water tribesman positioned himself on top of his opponent, pinning him down.
His smile was ravenous, wide and bloody, "You know, it's a novel thought, but I think I might actually hate you, Aang, for being this predictable. I thought this of all things would drive you to think, to come up with something new, but I guess there really is nothing but air between your ears after all."
He lifted a fist and threw it forward, but before he could smash it into his face, it was intercepted by an open palm. Catching the fist, Aang pushed it back, slamming it into Sokka's nose with a crunch. Using his good leg, he forced them to trade positions on the ground.
Pinning the older man's arms down, Aang leaned downward.
"It's over."
"Oh, if only," Sokka chuckled between soft coughs, blood spraying "It's never over."
"I'll never let you walk free again. I'll never let you out of my sight. I'll lock you away from everyone forever."
"You still do not get it, do you, Aang?" he whispered, his aged and bloodied face grimacing as he said those smug words.
"I understand that you are never going to see the light of day again in this life."
"And after that?"
"You'll awaken, and I'm sorry that you'll see daylight again at that time, because I will take it away from you again, with all possible haste."
"And you'll just keep doing this? Forever?"
The Avatar was resolute with his response, "Yes."
"Oh Aang. No cold dark cell will hold me forever. I can promise you that."
The Avatar felt something cold settle in his stomach at the cutting logic driving that statement as his adversary continued, "There is doh easy solution for you. Dot this time. Because eved if you keep be away from everyone, someday you'll get tired. Bored. Add you'll wonder to yourself: 'What'll happen if I let out Sokka to play this tibe?'. By kind of power?" his smile growing wider, manic, "Is dot sobethigg which you can remove from be. Without. Removing. ME!" he roared, whipping a hand up and pulling the trigger -
A crack shot out into the cold chamber, followed by a groan of pain.
The gun, unused, fell from Sokka's shattered hand.
"I see she taught you a dew trick."
"Toph learns new things all the time."
"Uhuh."
"..."
"..."
"... You didn't think I'd make it that easy for you, did you?"
His injuries caught up to him, his words slurring through his broken nose, "I did hope to give you tibe to cool off while I was six feet udder."
"Tough."
Beyond the pain he was feeling, Sokka slowly shook his head, breathing heavily as forearm fell limp, and Aang got off, knowing his opponent was finished, now. He stood over his defeated enemy.
"Your pridciples are truly udshakeable, ared'd dey?" his opponent said sleepily.
The Avatar said nothing. Only wondered. Because he knew, deep down… that Sokka was right. His personal understanding of the cosmos gave him a unique perspective. Eternity… was a different beast. Resolve could only crumble in the face of such an infinity. Nothing, nothing, could survive that. Not his sense of love, not his peace, not his sanity… Not even the overwhelming hate he could feel burning in his breast right now.
Until that day, though…
"Bastard," he told his unconscious form.
That resolve was being put to the test.
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
Sky. Clouds. Hills. Sun.
He opened his eyes with a shout, blurring into an upright position in his bed with his arms up in a reflexive defense. Cold sweat poured down his back.
Am I going to live those moments in my dreams for eternity?
"... This is killing you, Aang."
He looked to his left reflexively at the sound, but when he registered the words, flinched and looked away from his wife's concerned, pained eyes.
"... Look, I know it's not what you want to hear-"
"He killed so many, Katara," Aang cut her off, voice dead and hard "He killed you. He will not breathe free air ever again."
"It's been four lifetimes-"
"No."
-
Aang stared into the dark cell which he alone guarded.
"... It's different. Without you."
-
"..."
-
"... Katara said she missed you today. She wants to forgive you. She does forgive you, I can tell. But I don't. I can't. Because if I do, you'll hurt us. She wants her brother back, but he's gone. He died seven lifetimes ago. You'd hurt the world at a whim… and I can't abide by that…"
He couldn't quite tell, but the Avatar thought he could hear the stir of rags through the metal bars.
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
"Toph and I fought today. She's saying I'm being an idiot. That eleven lifetimes is plenty. That you've been punished enough," the airbender stated.
Then, he leaned forwards to whisper into the prison, "It'll never be enough."
"... You're still wearing it."
At the voice, after a thousand years of silence, Aang started, "... What?"
"That charm. Necklace. Thingy. With the air swirlies on it. You're still wearing it."
"..."
"I want to know what makes you tick, Aang. I really do. Because this is a part of you that's a complete mystery to me. I've seen your culture; I know the words, the motions, the actions. I've seen them over and over again. But I've never tried to live by them before. And out of all of us somehow you've managed to hold onto your past the best. I want to know. I want to know. Maybe I'll know peace, then."
-
"..."
-
"I won't forgive you for what you did. I can't. But... I think I can forgive you for breaking."
-
EDIT: I think there were some small but important improvements that needed to be made to the last quotes.
Guess what? Like... new content! Kinda.
People who've been reading my story... significant changes to this extra piece. You've read it; it's the really high-drama one.
Below, the reason why everyone has issues when Singing-Groundhog-Sokka mentions explosions.
Like, extremely not-fluffy.
EDIT: I think there were some small but important improvements that needed to be made to the last quotes.
-
Extra 4: Madness
The sky was blue, the clouds were white, the hills were calm, and the sun was bright.
And Aang stood underneath the branches of Lu Ten's tree, fingers outstretched towards the metropolis of Ba Sing Se, high-rise towers gleaming in the distance.
"No… Please…"
It was that day. Lifetimes away, centuries old, the memory still haunted him.
He couldn't move from where he stood. He couldn't bend. There wasn't any time. He couldn't do anything but watch.
A second sun blossomed into existence within the heart of the city.
"No…"
-
The metal door creaked open ominously, and the Avatar stepped through with deadly intent.
The Scholar drummed his fingers on the wooden surface, eyeing the enraged demigod who barged into his cell with amusement, "So… will it be my aorta, severed by blood? My brain, those electrical impulses stopped? Or perhaps… you want this to be quick, and you'll empty my lungs, so full of life-giving air?"
The prison door gave a very final slam shut behind Aang as he stepped fully into the room.
"No," he intoned grimly, "It will not be that way. No bending. No weapons. No machines," he cracked his knuckles, "Just you and me."
The man stood up from the seat behind his desk, humming in interest.
"No bending? You wanting to bloody someone with your bare hands?" the moon shone through the barred high window and illuminated his smirk, "Maybe you are starting to learn."
He tilted his head, popping his neck, and he let the long-coat he was wearing fall to the floor. At 85, he was definitely not frail by any stretch of the imagination; sleeveless arms bulged with muscle. Taking a step to his right, he kicked out with a chi-reinforced strike, and the desk was jostled out of the way.
"Learn what, you honorless dog?" the Avatar growled, walking across the room with his hands up in an aggressive form reminiscent of firebending, "You killed Katara!"
"Oh, please," Sokka rolled his eyes, and lifted his arms into a kickboxing stance, "She'll come back. We only always do. Besides, what about Toph? Is she blubbered seal-jerky or something; is saving her not good enough for you? Or how about the millions of other wretches that just died in nuclear fire? Do they not count?"
Yelling out, Aang flashed forward with a high kick aimed at his face, "SHUT UP!"
The former President of the People's United Republic of Equality stepped forward into the attack, parrying with his right forearm and launching a punch. "Of course they don't count," he concluded smoothly, "They're nothing. Nothing at all. Equally, unequivocally, nothing," he spat.
Block. Punch. Parry.
Pause, "They're just shades. Marionettes dancing on a string, performing a play we've all seen a thousand times."
Riposte. Chamber. Kick.
Pause, "I just wanted to see something different happen, you know? Anything."
Dodge.
"But you? No. Everything has to be perfect. Peaceful."
Weave.
The madness, usually so carefully hidden, shone brightly in those blue eyes, "I just wanted to see you break, Aang."
Jab.
"For once."
Roaring in rage, the Avatar slugged him in the face.
The force of the blow drew blood, and the old man was flung back into the stone wall, but he recovered, using the wall to launch himself back forward in renewed attack and punishing his opponent for overextending his reach by getting inside his guard with a vicious knee to the stomach.
They fought on, heedless of tearing muscles and breaking skin as they sought to inflict the maximum amount of pain possible on each other.
Soon, they found themselves in a stalemated position, arms interlocked with each other and heads butting, giving Sokka a moment to speak again, "And what are you going to do, after you've beaten me into a smear on the ground, hmm? Will you do what you've never done before?" he wondered.
A trail of blood dripped down the Avatar's twisted face. The answer was pained, even as his voice strained with fury, "I've already lived through having everything precious to me taken away from me, Sokka… and, somehow, you've managed to do worse than Sozin could've ever dreamed of with a hundred comets in the sky. I've killed so many by letting you live this long… and I still won't kill you. Instead, I'll inflict the dark of solitary confinement on you, for the rest of your life."
"Really?" he was surprised… and disappointed, "That's it? That's the best you can think of? That's the best you can do? A speech about how tragic you are? And prison? Really? You do recall just how well that worked last time," his eyes suddenly widened, grinning "Don't you!?"
Unbidden, the memory came. The light of a second sun blooming into existence on the skyline of Ba Sing Se. Millions… gone.
It was all the distraction his opponent needed.
Sokka lifted a knee, and Aang blocked with his leg, resulting in an unexpected snap. Giving a shout, he involuntarily loosened his hold, giving the nonbender all the advantage he needed. Without hesitation, Sokka stepped forward and elbowed the airbender across the face, twisting him around in a half circle. Then he put his head under Aang's left arm, wrapped both arms around his opponent's stomach, and lifted him back, bringing them both crashing down onto the ground and leaving the Avatar gasping on the flat of his back.
Quickly, the former water tribesman positioned himself on top of his opponent, pinning him down.
His smile was ravenous, wide and bloody, "You know, it's a novel thought, but I think I might actually hate you, Aang, for being this predictable. I thought this of all things would drive you to think, to come up with something new, but I guess there really is nothing but air between your ears after all."
He lifted a fist and threw it forward, but before he could smash it into his face, it was intercepted by an open palm. Catching the fist, Aang pushed it back, slamming it into Sokka's nose with a crunch. Using his good leg, he forced them to trade positions on the ground.
Pinning the older man's arms down, Aang leaned downward.
"It's over."
"Oh, if only," Sokka chuckled between soft coughs, blood spraying "It's never over."
"I'll never let you walk free again. I'll never let you out of my sight. I'll lock you away from everyone forever."
"You still do not get it, do you, Aang?" he whispered, his aged and bloodied face grimacing as he said those smug words.
"I understand that you are never going to see the light of day again in this life."
"And after that?"
"You'll awaken, and I'm sorry that you'll see daylight again at that time, because I will take it away from you again, with all possible haste."
"And you'll just keep doing this? Forever?"
The Avatar was resolute with his response, "Yes."
"Oh Aang. No cold dark cell will hold me forever. I can promise you that."
The Avatar felt something cold settle in his stomach at the cutting logic driving that statement as his adversary continued, "There is doh easy solution for you. Dot this time. Because eved if you keep be away from everyone, someday you'll get tired. Bored. Add you'll wonder to yourself: 'What'll happen if I let out Sokka to play this tibe?'. By kind of power?" his smile growing wider, manic, "Is dot sobethigg which you can remove from be. Without. Removing. ME!" he roared, whipping a hand up and pulling the trigger -
A crack shot out into the cold chamber, followed by a groan of pain.
The gun, unused, fell from Sokka's shattered hand.
"I see she taught you a dew trick."
"Toph learns new things all the time."
"Uhuh."
"..."
"..."
"... You didn't think I'd make it that easy for you, did you?"
His injuries caught up to him, his words slurring through his broken nose, "I did hope to give you tibe to cool off while I was six feet udder."
"Tough."
Beyond the pain he was feeling, Sokka slowly shook his head, breathing heavily as forearm fell limp, and Aang got off, knowing his opponent was finished, now. He stood over his defeated enemy.
"Your pridciples are truly udshakeable, ared'd dey?" his opponent said sleepily.
The Avatar said nothing. Only wondered. Because he knew, deep down… that Sokka was right. His personal understanding of the cosmos gave him a unique perspective. Eternity… was a different beast. Resolve could only crumble in the face of such an infinity. Nothing, nothing, could survive that. Not his sense of love, not his peace, not his sanity… Not even the overwhelming hate he could feel burning in his breast right now.
Until that day, though…
"Bastard," he told his unconscious form.
That resolve was being put to the test.
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
Sky. Clouds. Hills. Sun.
He opened his eyes with a shout, blurring into an upright position in his bed with his arms up in a reflexive defense. Cold sweat poured down his back.
Am I going to live those moments in my dreams for eternity?
"... This is killing you, Aang."
He looked to his left reflexively at the sound, but when he registered the words, flinched and looked away from his wife's concerned, pained eyes.
"... Look, I know it's not what you want to hear-"
"He killed so many, Katara," Aang cut her off, voice dead and hard "He killed you. He will not breathe free air ever again."
"It's been four lifetimes-"
"No."
-
Aang stared into the dark cell which he alone guarded.
"... It's different. Without you."
-
"..."
-
"... Katara said she missed you today. She wants to forgive you. She does forgive you, I can tell. But I don't. I can't. Because if I do, you'll hurt us. She wants her brother back, but he's gone. He died seven lifetimes ago. You'd hurt the world at a whim… and I can't abide by that…"
He couldn't quite tell, but the Avatar thought he could hear the stir of rags through the metal bars.
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
"..."
-
"Toph and I fought today. She's saying I'm being an idiot. That eleven lifetimes is plenty. That you've been punished enough," the airbender stated.
Then, he leaned forwards to whisper into the prison, "It'll never be enough."
"... You're still wearing it."
At the voice, after a thousand years of silence, Aang started, "... What?"
"That charm. Necklace. Thingy. With the air swirlies on it. You're still wearing it."
"..."
"I want to know what makes you tick, Aang. I really do. Because this is a part of you that's a complete mystery to me. I've seen your culture; I know the words, the motions, the actions. I've seen them over and over again. But I've never tried to live by them before. And out of all of us somehow you've managed to hold onto your past the best. I want to know. I want to know. Maybe I'll know peace, then."
-
"..."
-
"I won't forgive you for what you did. I can't. But... I think I can forgive you for breaking."
-
EDIT: I think there were some small but important improvements that needed to be made to the last quotes.
Last edited:
Just a small request but could you maybe give each character their own text color. There were some dialogue at the very end there where I can't for sure tell its coming from who I think it is.
HanEmpire
Delicious
The end game would be for these folk to gain immortality through SCIENCE!, and live lives where their actions cause actually lasting changes.
And when they get tired of life, instead of killing themselves they can put themselves into some absurdly durable cryogenic sleep that they won't ever wake from.
And when they get tired of life, instead of killing themselves they can put themselves into some absurdly durable cryogenic sleep that they won't ever wake from.
From their perspective, they would still awaken instantly when the universe evaporates in a quintilion years. Immortality for everyone sounds good though.
Their main difficulty is they have to go back to steam engines every life, so their scientific progress gets really limited that way.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
Not that limited given the whole demigods thing, especially since they don't start from bronze age level and have at least some precision machining to bootstrap off of.
Most annoying aspect (aside being effectively never getting to see anyone from the previous loop) is probably the decade or so of the hard part of world domination and uplifting. Maybe the blindness bit for Toph, though she's closer to colorblind than fully blind in terms of disability.
There's also the fact they either haven't crack immorality yet, decide to restart once they live for a few centuries (for some reason) or just plain in the "we've looped a few hundred/thousands times and it's going to be like this forever" depressed state of the looping doubly immortal life with a fifty billion year long cycle, during which chaos theory and exponential growth to saturation ensure there'll always be something new and interesting they haven't known.
Of course that's if their memories are infinite, which iirc isn't the case. Still the amnesia thing means that if they accept their state they basically get to experience all the awesome life ever. A terrible cost for a payoff equally grand.
Questions to @Wribro:
(by the way, love the story)
How does the whole Avatar thing work with the loops? In particular the past lives (which would be depressingly hilarious if it's a row of Aangs) and the Spirit World. (do spirits remember?)
Can any of the loopers be permanently harmed via mindrape/spirit shenanigans a-la smiling at Koh?
Why am I getting the feeling Zuko ended up the sanest of them?
Most annoying aspect (aside being effectively never getting to see anyone from the previous loop) is probably the decade or so of the hard part of world domination and uplifting. Maybe the blindness bit for Toph, though she's closer to colorblind than fully blind in terms of disability.
There's also the fact they either haven't crack immorality yet, decide to restart once they live for a few centuries (for some reason) or just plain in the "we've looped a few hundred/thousands times and it's going to be like this forever" depressed state of the looping doubly immortal life with a fifty billion year long cycle, during which chaos theory and exponential growth to saturation ensure there'll always be something new and interesting they haven't known.
Of course that's if their memories are infinite, which iirc isn't the case. Still the amnesia thing means that if they accept their state they basically get to experience all the awesome life ever. A terrible cost for a payoff equally grand.
Questions to @Wribro:
(by the way, love the story)
How does the whole Avatar thing work with the loops? In particular the past lives (which would be depressingly hilarious if it's a row of Aangs) and the Spirit World. (do spirits remember?)
Can any of the loopers be permanently harmed via mindrape/spirit shenanigans a-la smiling at Koh?
Why am I getting the feeling Zuko ended up the sanest of them?
Last edited:
Chapter 5: Broken People
- Location
- United States
@Black Noise
Ssshhhhh... The plot-bunnies are sleeping. You don't want to wake them up, do you?
On that note: Chapter regurgitation time!
-
Chapter 5: Broken People
Iroh slowly came out of his afternoon nap, and when he became awake enough, he gazed up at the metal ceiling of his sleeping quarters in a contemplative mood.
How things have changed.
It took a few moments to adjust to the new reality, because it still felt like a dream. He felt the urge to get out of his bed and see for himself. Just for a double-check. He had done such, in fact, yesterday. He remembered. It was quite embarrassing. He wasn't doing it again.
Aside from the task of simply centering himself after the revelations of a few nights ago, there were several things to account for. Plans that needed changing. In many cases, downgrading the urgency or altogether eliminating certain plans was called for. Thanks to the things his nephew had been sharing of late, it truly seemed that the White Lotus nearly had nothing at all to worry about.
His thoughts were interrupted by the door to his quarters swinging inward, and quickly closing behind the young man who entered.
"Father."
A thrill still went through Iroh at being addressed as such by his beloved nephew. It'd been nearly a decade since Lu Ten… But this was the present. This was now.
Zuko.
"What… what are you doing here?"
The prince was smiling and carrying two bowls full of roast-duck nikudon, judging by the mouth-watering smell.
-
First, they went penguin sledding.
They laughed. They were children again.
The clock had turned back. It was an amazing gift.
It was heaven.
After they tired themselves out, they stood around at the bottom of the hill, feeding and playing with the penguins for awhile. And then Aang asked about what things were like after… After. During their conversation, she had looked delighted. It was all wonderful, so wonderful. She told him all that he asked about. About how beautiful Republic City became. About the new Avatar, Korra. About Air Temple Island. About Tenzin. His grandkids. Jinora, Ikki, Meelo, Rohan. All airbenders.
He had been so happy.
She never volunteered any information, though.
Because, she had said later, she needed to know.
"Aang?"
"Yes, sweetie?"
Her smile seemed… strained, "Don't you have… Any other questions? About before?"
"No, not really. Why?" he asked, curious.
The atmosphere became decidedly awkward after that.
"Katara?"
She looked slightly dazed. "Huh. They were right."
"What?"
"I didn't believe it. I couldn't. I wouldn't let their words taint my memories of you. I pretended to agree with them, maybe. But… with you here, now, in front of me and breathing, alive, it's even more unbelievable than ever. And they were... completely right."
Feeling somewhat off-balance, now, Aang cautiously asked, "What are you talking about?"
She crossed her arms, pensive and worrying her bottom lip, before elaborating "Our children. They were right. About you."
He raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Kya used to beat up Tenzin when they were just babies, and Bumi would tease him until he cried. You remember?"
Blinking at the apparent non-sequitur, he shrugged, "Yeah? I remember. I'm pretty sure you've grounded those two for it. Often."
"I did," she said softly, "I didn't understand why. Why they were so hard on him. Tenzin was so sweet. And when he grew up, he was so amazing. He took being the legacy of the Air Nomads so seriously… maybe a little too seriously. But even when they were all full grown, they wouldn't stop. I couldn't see…"
Suddenly she brought a hand up to her mouth, and he was stunned to see that his wife's eyes were watering.
"Katara," he whispered, alarmed, "What's wrong?"
"I can't talk to you right now. Just… I need…"
"Please," Aang begged, "Tell me what's the matter! I can't see you cry!" He stepped forward to place his hands on her arms. To bring her closer. To steady her. Anything. His heart fell when she backed away.
Ice settled into his stomach, "What… What did I do?"
"We'll talk, Aang," she said dully, and she brought up a gloved hand to wipe away the tears before they froze on her face. Now her eyes were red. "We need to talk about this. But I need to be clear-headed when we do. If I do it now… I might not forgive myself for what I'd say."
She turned around and walked away, leaving a confused and hurt twelve-year-old-but-not behind at the base of the hill.
-
Aang opened his eyes, and for a moment he just stared upward at the starry night sky and listened to the water lapping the nearby rocks, losing himself in memory.
What a thing to have a nightmare about, he marveled.
Especially considering that he was guilty of far worse things in his many lifetimes. This? Was a harmless, honest mistake in comparison to those trespasses. Something that he'd long ago forgiven himself for.
He thought that demon had been laid to rest.
Then again… and he lightly blew air out his nose in derision at himself.
He supposed that he knew about the key difference of that particular sin.
That, and the… the way things were between him and Katara right now probably had something to do with it.
He pondered those dark injuries, wondering at how fresh the pain from those old wounds felt in the aftermath of the dream.
But he quickly stopped. He knew it wasn't spiritually healthy to stew in past regrets.
In fact, it seemed like it was just about time for a chakra spring cleaning.
Angsting is a pretty good indicator, he thought wryly.
It happened once every few lifetimes; some memories would never fade with time. Given the opportunity to live one's life over and over… well, one learns things about oneself. Things that, at times, Aang felt he wished he never learned about himself. But that kind of attitude was no way to deal with it, he knew. That was a lesson all of them learned. When all one has is time… It's better not to brood.
So he sat up from his horizontal position on his sleeping pad and stretched, before settling back down into a cleansing seated position.
Since it was that memory which was bothering him, that would be his Fire Chakra getting clogged up.
He closed his eyes and meditated on his shame.
-
Iroh was fascinated by this side of his nephew. He had no idea how long they'd been sitting there in Iroh's quarters just talking, and, frankly, he didn't care. It all started when Zuko came by to visit him in the evening with dinner, and they settled at the low pai-sho table and ate. Then they started talking. He couldn't even recall what the beginning of the conversation was about; that was how lost in dialogue he was right now.
"Don't you think that love is eternal?"
-
That evening, he was frozen in place as he faced the onslaught.
"You never asked about them."
She took a step forwards.
"I…"
"You never even thought about them before I reminded you, just now, did you?"
Another step.
"N-no… I…"
"Bumi. Kya. They just disappeared from your life when Tenzin airbended for the first time."
Step.
He felt physically pained at the words which were aimed like daggers at his chest, even though she said them gently, "I loved them, Katara! How can you say… What, that I just didn't care about them?"
The thorny, hurtful words of his daughter echoed through his memory.
I have no family! You can't tie me down!
But that was just a phase, wasn't it?
She was just being a teenager, right?
Wasn't it just misdirected aggression?
The rationalization sounded hollow.
"I think that you let the rest of your life take over. Being the Avatar. Teaching Air Nomad culture to Tenzin. They loved you, too, you know. More than anything, I think they just wanted to hear you say those words again. Be with them again."
Katara reached a hand up to his face.
"Kya missed penguin sledding with you. Did you know that? She remembered that. That one time when she was five. And she said she was sad that she never did it with you again."
Hot trails burned their way down his cheeks, "Stop…"
She wrapped her arms around him, and he clutched back at her like a lifeline, "And Bumi, he loved the city, the nation that you built from the ground up. He accomplished so much; protected so many people. He did it for you. He wanted to do right by you so badly."
He hiccupped.
"He thought that he disappointed you."
He choked, "What…? What… How could he…?"
"For not being an airbender."
His fingers dug into her back spasmodically, letting out an inarticulate cry of pain.
"I think… Even if you couldn't admit it to yourself… That he was right."
She pulled back, looking at him directly, "Do you know what they told me? They told me that when they finally got around to visiting an air temple, the air acolytes there had no idea that you had two other children."
He couldn't look at those ocean blue eyes. Nonjudgemental. But frank. Loving. But earnest with her damning words. He buried his face into her shoulder.
"Aang… I won't tell you that you didn't make mistakes…"
It was all too much, suddenly. Being young again. Features unmarked by time. Being a child. He remembered being a child. Being carefree. Having fun. He hadn't realized it, not even on his deathbed, what he had turned into. Someone like Monk Tashi from the Southern Air Temple. Someone who was consumed with trivial make-work. Someone so burdened by thoughts of the future, of his legacy, that the present was left behind, forgotten. Someone who had no time for important things like playing games with his children.
He had died with the thought that he had succeeded in his life, for the most part. That, despite his mistakes, he had made the best out of them at every turn. He had felt content.
Now, he felt astonished at the magnitude of that error in thinking.
"I… I failed…" he whispered into her parka, and the words left him gasping.
She held on to him, rubbing his back in soothing circles and not saying anything as Aang cried until he fell asleep.
-
"I… I failed…"
Yes… I did. I was a poor father to them; I know this, now. It was my first, and, as far as I knew at the time, my only chance at getting it right. And I failed them. Katara raised them, not I. I burdened Tenzin with all of my attention and expectations. And in doing so, I hurt them all.
And yet the slate was wiped clean.
I've since lived many lifetimes loving my children, telling them, being with them.
Gyatso's words, so ancient, still rang true.
I cannot change what was. I can only affect what is.
He let out a breath, letting the chakra flow clear again, and opened his eyes, gazing out across the open ocean in front of him. Thinking about his spiritual health. The task of clearing his chakras.
It was easy.
Maybe too easy.
"Nightmare?"
He brought up his forearm and quickly wiped his face with his sleeve. "... Yeah."
Footsteps, then the rustle of cloth as Katara sat beside him on the sleeping mat.
Just as it was back then, all those years ago, her voice was soft, "I didn't know that still bothered you."
He shook his head in negation, albeit slowly, "No. It doesn't, really. Not anymore. But, in a way, that memory is important to me."
There was quiet for a moment as she took that statement in, then, "Because things still mattered."
It was still possible to feel something back then. Anything.
How long? How long had they been together, now? A thousand years? Ten thousand?
How long did it take to realize that he was just going through motions at this point?
His eyes were dry of tears, "... I'm tired."
And it wasn't the first time.
Pause.
"... Me too," she agreed, reluctant, yet relieved.
And, without saying anything further, he knew… and he knew that she knew... they wouldn't be together.
In another life, perhaps.
But not this time.
-
"No."
"No?"
"Through the many futures I've seen, I've found that love can burn hot for awhile… but not forever. Eventually, it turns into cold ashes. Oh, the flames can be stoked anew. Love is a form of energy, and it always returns with a fresh start, but only after much time. The opposite of infatuation is not hate, but familiarity. So much of a romance depends on the curiosity of exploring something, someone new or with hidden depths yet untouched. Only time can renew what's lost in the flame."
-
"Up and at 'em, sleepy head!"
One baleful eye peeked out from the wrappings, glaring at Aang's laughing ones.
Sokka was unamused.
"I will get up when I want to get up, and not one second sooner, airhead."
A troublemaking light entered those gray orbs, "Oh yeah? What about-"
"Don't…" the older boy sat up abruptly in his wrappings, eyes blazing with such ferocity that the Avatar blinked "even think about it. I haven't had a peaceful night's sleep for the last decade since my hip started acting up. I don't care what you are thinking of right now. Earthquaking, shining light in my face, live frickle snakes. I. do not. care. Understand? Can you comprehend the words coming out of my mouth?" he was standing, now, sleeping bag and all, leaning forward and forcing the airbender to take a step back at the black look on the water tribesman's face, "If you even think of doing anything like that in the next week, it will be war."
"OKAY, okay!" the child shouted, nodding his head as fast and as hard as he could, eyes wide and throwing up his arms in surrender, "I get it! I'll be good, I swear!"
He'd seen Sokka with the gloves off. It wasn't pretty.
Explosions. Big ones.
Katara edged in from the side into her brother's view, looking delighted, "Well, looks like you're up. Eat your breakfast: The camp won't pack itself, will it?"
He pulled a long face.
"... I hate you," he deadpanned.
"And look at how much I care!" she beamed, eyes closed, grandiose and spreading her arms expansively to indicate a huge volume. Only to pause, opening her eyes in a falsely quizzical expression and bringing up a finger to her lips in a thoughtful pose, "Oh wait, there's nothing here."
"Ha. Ha," he said in a robotic monotone, already shuffling towards the campfire.
Aang walked up to the fire and sat down with the other boy on the ground, "C'mon, Sokka, we're camping. We haven't bothered with that since we were kids last time. Aren't you excited?"
"Says the guy who can practically snap his fingers and do the packing instantly."
Katara came over and sat at her brother's other side.
"Hey now, ever since I learned that trick, no one wants to do the packing anymore," the monk rebuked, "I have to make the others in the group do it sometime, or they don't get the full experience!"
Scooping a bowl of stew with newly-earthbent cookware, Sokka sat back with his breakfast and looked askance at his sitting partner, before switching sides and looking at his sister.
Raising an eyebrow, he brought his bowl up to his mouth and blew on the hot soup.
His meaning was obvious, just from that, but he clarified, "I don't recall you making Katara do any packing. Ever."
Katara scoffed.
Mirroring her thought process, the airbender had an easy answer to that, "I never have to. She does her part."
At that particular wording, he snorted. "Yeah, sure she does. I'll bet she does her part really well," Sokka drawled, before closing his eyes and taking a sip from the stone bowl, missing Aang's twitch and the waterbender's eyeroll.
"Classy."
Sokka came up for air after swallowing a big mouthful, answering his sister graciously "Why, thank you."
"… Yeah, about that," the monk-child brought a hand up to rub the back of his head, "Katara and I kinda… broke up? Last night. Thought you oughta know."
Sokka stilled, his stone bowl halfway up to his mouth for a second gulp, "... What."
Katara looked across at Aang for confirmation, and at his nod, "Yeah, it's over."
The bowl dropped from numb fingers, breaking in half on the ground.
"... That was full of stew," she said flatly.
"Back up," her brother brought his hands up to his temples, pushing into them as if to head off an enormous headache, "Go back to the part where you said… What you said."
Sensing a comedic moment, the Avatar was happy to oblige while the waterbender bent the spilled food into the ocean with a twist of her arm, "Katara and I have decided that we are no longer together, effective immediately," he enunciated, eager to get to the punchline.
He was mumbling, talking under his breath, but the airbender caught:
"No, this can't be happening."
"Huh?" Aang intelligently queried, confused.
"Please tell me you're lying," he moved suddenly, grabbing the younger boy by the folds of his blue coat, fixing him with a desperate gaze "You're joking, right? This is a prank?"
"Um…" he looked over, and Katara gave a shake of her head in agreement with his view of the matter, "Nope. I'd say we're pretty much sure of it now. We're done."
Letting go, Sokka sank his elbows onto his knees and put his forehead onto his hands.
"No. No," the biologically-teenage tribesman's voice wavering in a crack, "No, no, NO!"
Katara put a hand on his arm, but he shook it off.
"Sokka! What is wrong?" she asked, half concerned, half convinced it was an act, but sharing a look with the air nomad. He lifted his shoulders in equal befuddlement.
"NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo…!" he finally wailed, moving his hands to cover his face as he started to sob, "WAAAAAaaahhahaaaaaaa…! Y-you… Ohoh, no! Why? WHY!?You gotta be kidding me! Ohohoooo, wahahohowahahaaaa! No, no, noho…. *gasp*... WAAAAA-"
Feeling very uncomfortable, Aang patted his back while Sokka leaned forward in abject sorrow, "Uh... everything'll be okay, I think? Don't worry about it? There, there…"
"You can't! Not now! Spirits, no! Ahuhuhuhuhuhaaaaa-"
"Wait, what? What are you talking about?" inquired Katara suspiciously, connecting that statement to her and Aang's declaration of separation, "We weren't supposed to break up? On whose schedule?"
Sniffling, Sokka muttered, "Toph's."
"What?" the airbender blurted, "I don't remember her saying anything like that at the meeting-?"
"This has nothing to do with her obsession with world domination!" he screeched, raising his head and confronting the other two with puffy red eyes, before flinching under their stares and continuing at normal speaking volume, "We… we made a bet… a long time ago…"
It clicked.
The Avatar was shocked. "You… you made a bet with Toph about when Katara and I would break up? Since when?"
Wiping his nose with his sleeve and seeming to recover slightly from his bout of woe, Sokka scowled, "Five lifetimes ago. Trust me, I counted."
"Let me guess," Katara offered dryly, "You bet we'd be together until the very next life."
"Your wisdom knows no bounds, sis."
Aang was present enough to grasp the important part of the equation, and he leaned in intently, "What did you bet?"
For one of them, bets held absolutely no value whatsoever unless they were extremely high-risk. That was to say, nothing material would do. In fact, the only thing that mattered was:
Still-red eyes glowering, "We bet our next turn."
Quiet followed those words.
"... Wow, man," the Avatar slow-blinked as he backed off, "That is bad."
"What part of, 'Do not ever gamble with Toph.' did you miss from the last eternity of dealing with her?" Katara asked in disbelief.
"I know, I know, okay, but I thought I had an in with this one!"
She was unimpressed with that logic, "... Right. Because you knew my relationship with my husband so much better than her."
A cloud of despair settled over him, before he brightened.
"Hey, wait," he said, abruptly holding up a hand, and Aang and Katara both tensed at the tone of his voice, "What if… you guys just pretend that yo-"
"No."
The two simultaneous voices were equally unforgivingly level.
"Please?" he begged, "Just one lifetime! One!"
"Why should we do that?" Katara asked pointedly, "You lost. Fair and square. She deserves her win."
"And I really don't wanna try to con Toph," Aang reasoned impassively.
"Please?" reduced to supplication, Sokka got onto his knees in front of the two of them, switching his gaze between them intermittently.
And this was officially getting into dangerous waters.
This was because something important was on the line. And when it came to important things, stuff got interesting. And that - interesting stuff - was the primary commodity for the group of time-travellers.
Katara's eyes barely moved sideways until it met Aang's equally sly gaze.
This was getting squeezed for all it was worth.
And her brother was really just asking for it with his unsightly, dishonest begging.
"Okay, Sokka, I'll do it. For you," Katara, pretending to be put-upon, "If he's up to it."
When he looked away to receive an answer from Aang, she winked in his direction.
The Avatar gave no indication that he saw a thing, only sighing, "Sure. Whatever. But you owe me."
"Yeah!" Sokka said, earnest, "I owe you! Big time!"
Ugh, she thought, looking at her brother with unfeigned incredulity, He expects us to believe he'll honor a debt after weaseling out of a bet like that? He's going to get exactly what he deserves!
It'll end with him getting his butt kicked, sure, but that was no skin off Katara's nose after that slimy wisecrack about the camping pecking order.
And while Sokka's back was turned away as he cheerfully searched through the bag of supplies for another bowl to use, Aang gave her an answering smile, mischievous.
The corner of Katara's mouth went up.
The bedrock of who they were to each other hadn't changed.
And they both realized unexpectedly at that moment… that everything between them was fine again.
-
"There is something that does last, though. Probably the kind of love that you were thinking about in the first place."
"Oh?"
"Friendship."
"Aha."
"Yes. Friendship is steady, adaptable, passionate, and free," he smiled, "It's like the Avatar of relationships. It can survive a lot."
"Oh, that sounds intriguing. Tell me about this philosophy."
-
"You have to work with a critical patient sometime!"
A middle-aged woman stammered, "I-I w-want to h-help…"
In a dark, but relatively clean, room, a bloodied young man lay on a cot with wounds partially dressed, moaning in pain, "Uggggghhhhh…"
A chime echoed into the room from the front of the shop, signalling a customer.
"I'm busy with a patient right now, please wait! Listen, you can't freeze up every time someone comes in torn up like this," the elder man explained patiently, not looking at her but at the broken form of his patient and gingerly attempting to discern what was damaged without increasing the pain, "You say that you want to be a nurse, but that will not happen if you get queasy doing the very thing nurses are needed for most. You need to come to a decision here, Sela. If you want to be a nurse, you've got to act like one. Otherwise-"
Must've hit something sensitive, because: "ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!"
Sigh, "This won't do. Well, if you're not going to help me figure out so-called Mr. 'Tax Evader', go get the poppy syrup. Obviously the painkiller I already gave him isn't working…"
"Y-yes sir," she wavered, then bolted out of the back room to do as she was told.
Feeling a bundle of nervous energy coil up somewhere between her heart and stomach, she hastily poked around the storage room in search of the asked-for drug. The room was poorly lit; that was on purpose, because some of the materials in it were sensitive to light, and lost their properties if exposed for a prolonged amount of time. All the same, she needed light if she was going to see what she was doing; she moved to a table and took the lone oil lamp there to assist.
Holding up the weak light source, her eyes moved over shelf after shelf, frantically trying to recall where the sopoforics were in relation to everything else.
She'd already disappointed Doctor Shang several times before. Gensu always said she wasn't cut out for this, and that she should help him around the farm - and she was aware that it was harder for him without her. If she failed again, she'd be axed, and then she'd be stuck on the farm with her husband forever. Not that she wasn't prideful of her husband's livestock and accomplishments; it's just that she always wanted to do more with her life than just tending walking chicken-pork all day.
"Dragon root, herb of earth, dried banana leaf… come on,where's the opium!?"
The doctor's concerned voice came out of the back:
"Quickly, now! I'm trying to set one of the fragments but-"
"GaaaAAAaaargh..."
"Yo."
Startled, Sela looked up to see that someone had come into the storage room through the front entryway. A child; she couldn't immediately tell if it was a boy or a girl due to the bad lighting.
"I'm sorry, but you're not allowed to come back here-!"
The child rolled over her attempt to turn her away, "Second case, third shelf down on the far left, it's a big clay jar sealed with wax, you can't miss it."
"... Eh?"
"The pain killer? You know, might wanna get it quick, because otherwise the pain will kill him?"
Sela blinked, then checked, moving her lamp to illuminate the indicated area. She had already checked that part of the shelf, but…
There it was. The words were there on the jar: Poppy Syrup. But the ink was faded; that explained how she missed it the first time around. But it didn't explain how a perfect stranger just strolled in and told her where it was.
Lifting the jar, Sela opened her mouth to say… something, really, she wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth, but was cut off before she could properly formulate a question:
"Don't ask. Just grab it and go; he needs it."
A string of curses culminated into a yowl, before devolving into soft sobs, "YAAAaargh… ahahuhu… waaaaahhh..."
"Now."
She was jolted into action, hurrying through the shelves to put the lamp back where it came from and moving back to the doorway leading to the back room with the jar clutched against her chest. Whereupon, she froze as images of blood and gore careened through her mind and her stomach rebelled at the thought of seeing it again.
Why is this such a problem!? she internally wailed as a bead of sweat slid down the back of her neck.
The mystery girl's voice (she was fairly sure it was a girl, now) came from right behind her, "Move it, sister, that man needs our help. If you don't light a fire under your butt in three seconds, I'm pushing."
Sela obligingly stumbled forward.
Snatching the jar out of her arms, Shang started measuring out a dose, all the while clucking his tongue.
"Slow. You were slow. How would you like it if a nurse took their time with the morphine while you lay abed with your bones in broken pieces?"
"S-sorry. The label was faded," Sela mumbled, looking everywhere except for the young man on the cot.
Carefully, the doctor held the patient still with one arm while entreating him to open his mouth. Once he had done so, he tipped the cup so that the painkiller went straight into the mouth.
Having administered the medicine, the older man lifted up the jar to his face for a closer look. "Hmm, I see. That's no good. I'll have to ink a new one, then, before I get it refilled when the suppliers come by. I'm just glad I haven't used it by accident at some point!"
And then a five foot tall problem spoke up, walking around to the other side of the bed to address Shang directly, "Gramps. What's the sitch with the guy?"
Definitely a girl. Black hair with bangs low enough to cover her eyes. Wearing some kind of costume. Bare feet.
And apparently out to ruin her life.
Sela flinched.
The doctor gave an outraged shout, "WHAT!? Who are you? What are you doing in here!? SELA! You are fired! You let some random kid come back here!?"
Attempting to explain, "N-no! I tried to tell her to leave, but-"
The girl cut off her half-started clarification with, "His ribcage is a jigsaw puzzle, isn't it?"
The statement stunned the two adults in the room with its bluntness for a second, and then Shang sighed.
"Well, yes, actually. It didn't look so bad at first when I had him carried in here, but... there's just… too many pieces. From what I can tell from looking just now, Mr. Ling will not survive this. The damage is too great, I'm afraid. The best that we can do is make the end come as painlessly as possible," and then he squinted through the dark, "And what would you know about it, brat? You can't just come waltzing back here! Leave!"
The man that lay between them, Ling, gave a shuddering breath and made a garbled noise through his drug-induced stupor, "Hegarbluguglargarug… hegugaguh…? Gerblerguh…"
"No," came the resolute response. Through the dark, Sela saw the flash of a smile underneath face-obscuring dark hair, "You said it yourself. If I leave him in your hands, then he's dead meat. Guess that means I'll have to do something about that."
"What?" and here the doctor snorted, "This is not a place for you, little girl. Get out of my clinic, now. Where are your parents, anyway? They ought to be ashamed of themselves-"
"My parents… are not here. And for your information," she growled, "I'm the greatest earthbender you will ever meet," and the girl sat, so that she was directly across from the doctor and right next to the patient on the raised mat. She pointed one finger at Ling's chest, "I can heal him. The bones are made of earth, and chi shifts through a living person's skeleton. I can feel where the pieces are with my earthbending, move them to the right spots, and heal the fractures."
Sela had never heard of such a thing before, and if the look on Shang's face was any indication, neither had he, and he had something to say about it.
Would have, except that she could see her employer's adam's apple jerk as the words froze in his throat. She was feeling pretty speechless as well.
For the little girl had lifted her other hand, already covered in a neat glove of stone which had thus far gone unnoticed, and through the cracks of the rocks came a ghostly greenish glow.
-
The chi didn't flow. No. That was the domain of water. Blood.
It shifted. Like the earth. Slow.
The bones were strong.
Like a mountain.
And would be made whole once more.
-
Wordlessly, Sela joined the doctor, sitting at his side, and he unconsciously moved to make room, both of their eyes trained on the marvel at work in front of them.
All that she and Shang could do was stare at Ling's peacefully sleeping form in awe.
"Amazing…" the doctor breathed.
The girl - she still hadn't given any name - continued to slowly move the glove of glowing lodestones over the patient's ribcage, muttering to herself before speaking aloud:
"This is gonna take awhile. Earth healing takes forever, no matter how experienced you are, trust me. I know some really old people who would know. With that in mind, just out of curiosity… Who decided to use this Ling guy as an earthbending practice dummy?"
Jarred out of their wonderment, Sela and Shang glanced at each other, before the man decided to speak for them both.
"Well, if this," he gestured at the green healing light, "wasn't enough to show that you're not from around here, then that remark certainly was. It was Gao, the captain of the local garrison for the Earth Kingdom Army," he grimaced, looking like he wanted to spit at the name, but unwilling to do such an unsanitary thing in his clinic, "Feh. That… thug… and his cronies aren't accountable to anybody, in his mind. He's a greedy coward; only picks fights he's sure he'll win, and defends nothing but his own hide. If the Fire Nation came knocking, all they'd have to do is fork over some gold and he'd be gone like the wind."
"What'd Ling do to get his attention?"
Sela tentatively spoke up, raising a hand up to her temple to banish the headache which was already forming at the thought of that person, "I think it was because Ling refused to pay the 'tax' twice in one week. He's new; just moved here a few months ago. He didn't know how Gao runs things around here," her other hand clenched into a fist in her lap, "He didn't know that Gao… 'punishes tax evaders'."
The girl hummed.
"Sounds like the guy desperately needs a royal kick in the pants," she commented.
"You think that hasn't crossed the mind of everyone who lives here?" Shang asked darkly, "There's nothing we can do! There aren't any other earthbenders here; no one can face Gao," he deflated, and gestured at the limp form between them, "Not without ending up like him."
"And if you just rounded up the whole village and fought him, he'd end up killing someone trying to escape the consequences of being a hoodlum jerk."
She paused, and nodded her head sagely, "I personally volunteer for this most noble task of butt whoop."
The man raised an eyebrow, "Just because you happen to be an earthbender-"
Snapping, "The best, and don't you forget it. I can do things with a handful of dirt that would give you nightmares just to imagine, old man, so don't insult me by saying that I can't put that loser in his place. All you guys need to do is put together a real militia to defend this town after I'm done."
Arms folded, the man quieted, his skepticism at the prospects of such a fight quite clear.
Ignoring him, the healer finished her work, huffing as the glow dimmed.
"He's lucky none of his organs were pierced, 'cause I wouldn't've been able to do diddly-doo-dah about that," then she stood up and walked around, saying, "As it is, I don't do open wounds." and grabbing Sela's arm. Bemusedly, the woman allowed herself to be dragged to the other side of the mat, "C'mon, sister. You wanna be nurse, you gotta make it happen."
-
Chuckling, "Now, why do you think that there's a whole philosophy behind what I just said?"
"Well, it's pretty obvious," his opposite said gamely, "I'd bet my Pai Sho set that Passion is Fire, right?"
"That is where Passion would mostly fall, yes. But only Fire is Fire, old man."
"Of course." On this they both certainly agreed. "What is the most suitable analogue for, say… Earth?"
"That is not a relationship."
"Hm?"
"It is simply presence. Being there. Strong and unmovable. No matter how the wind howls, or the waves crash, or the flames burn, the mountain will not, cannot bow to these things. Supportive, in some contexts, but implacable in others. The Earth is unfeeling. A stone doesn't talk or communicate… or throw itself. It simply exists, despite anything else."
"Hmmm… And what of Water? Is that a relationship?"
"Yes..."
And the night turned on.
-
Deep within the soul of Aang, there was a special place that was not human.
A place set aside by providence to be the home of a wondrous being.
Light flowed from this place, and connected to every living thing.
In this place, was the Spirit of the World, goddess of all.
She was bound to the Good Soul, the soul of Wan.
Reincarnated tens of tens of times, until Aang.
For nigh on ten thousand years, a human.
Knowing humans, now, conscious.
Guiding them. Protecting them.
Often, from themselves.
Caring for them.
Loving them.
Raava.
It was not a physical place. There was no way to describe it in a classical three dimensional analogue; it was simply beyond the comprehension of the human mind. However, if one were to use such a metaphor…. one could say that She shifted restlessly.
Something was… wrong.
The Good Soul… Aang, now… it was… dark.
And She had no idea why.
The spirit is not the mind; though the two were connected, they were distinct, and Raava Herself was typically barred from such interaction with Her host by the weight of hundreds of previous incarnations. That avenue to answers was barred to Her.
So She decided to call on the next most accessible thing.
"Roku…"
Ssshhhhh... The plot-bunnies are sleeping. You don't want to wake them up, do you?
On that note: Chapter regurgitation time!
-
Chapter 5: Broken People
Iroh slowly came out of his afternoon nap, and when he became awake enough, he gazed up at the metal ceiling of his sleeping quarters in a contemplative mood.
How things have changed.
It took a few moments to adjust to the new reality, because it still felt like a dream. He felt the urge to get out of his bed and see for himself. Just for a double-check. He had done such, in fact, yesterday. He remembered. It was quite embarrassing. He wasn't doing it again.
Aside from the task of simply centering himself after the revelations of a few nights ago, there were several things to account for. Plans that needed changing. In many cases, downgrading the urgency or altogether eliminating certain plans was called for. Thanks to the things his nephew had been sharing of late, it truly seemed that the White Lotus nearly had nothing at all to worry about.
His thoughts were interrupted by the door to his quarters swinging inward, and quickly closing behind the young man who entered.
"Father."
A thrill still went through Iroh at being addressed as such by his beloved nephew. It'd been nearly a decade since Lu Ten… But this was the present. This was now.
Zuko.
"What… what are you doing here?"
The prince was smiling and carrying two bowls full of roast-duck nikudon, judging by the mouth-watering smell.
-
First, they went penguin sledding.
They laughed. They were children again.
The clock had turned back. It was an amazing gift.
It was heaven.
After they tired themselves out, they stood around at the bottom of the hill, feeding and playing with the penguins for awhile. And then Aang asked about what things were like after… After. During their conversation, she had looked delighted. It was all wonderful, so wonderful. She told him all that he asked about. About how beautiful Republic City became. About the new Avatar, Korra. About Air Temple Island. About Tenzin. His grandkids. Jinora, Ikki, Meelo, Rohan. All airbenders.
He had been so happy.
She never volunteered any information, though.
Because, she had said later, she needed to know.
"Aang?"
"Yes, sweetie?"
Her smile seemed… strained, "Don't you have… Any other questions? About before?"
"No, not really. Why?" he asked, curious.
The atmosphere became decidedly awkward after that.
"Katara?"
She looked slightly dazed. "Huh. They were right."
"What?"
"I didn't believe it. I couldn't. I wouldn't let their words taint my memories of you. I pretended to agree with them, maybe. But… with you here, now, in front of me and breathing, alive, it's even more unbelievable than ever. And they were... completely right."
Feeling somewhat off-balance, now, Aang cautiously asked, "What are you talking about?"
She crossed her arms, pensive and worrying her bottom lip, before elaborating "Our children. They were right. About you."
He raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Kya used to beat up Tenzin when they were just babies, and Bumi would tease him until he cried. You remember?"
Blinking at the apparent non-sequitur, he shrugged, "Yeah? I remember. I'm pretty sure you've grounded those two for it. Often."
"I did," she said softly, "I didn't understand why. Why they were so hard on him. Tenzin was so sweet. And when he grew up, he was so amazing. He took being the legacy of the Air Nomads so seriously… maybe a little too seriously. But even when they were all full grown, they wouldn't stop. I couldn't see…"
Suddenly she brought a hand up to her mouth, and he was stunned to see that his wife's eyes were watering.
"Katara," he whispered, alarmed, "What's wrong?"
"I can't talk to you right now. Just… I need…"
"Please," Aang begged, "Tell me what's the matter! I can't see you cry!" He stepped forward to place his hands on her arms. To bring her closer. To steady her. Anything. His heart fell when she backed away.
Ice settled into his stomach, "What… What did I do?"
"We'll talk, Aang," she said dully, and she brought up a gloved hand to wipe away the tears before they froze on her face. Now her eyes were red. "We need to talk about this. But I need to be clear-headed when we do. If I do it now… I might not forgive myself for what I'd say."
She turned around and walked away, leaving a confused and hurt twelve-year-old-but-not behind at the base of the hill.
-
Aang opened his eyes, and for a moment he just stared upward at the starry night sky and listened to the water lapping the nearby rocks, losing himself in memory.
What a thing to have a nightmare about, he marveled.
Especially considering that he was guilty of far worse things in his many lifetimes. This? Was a harmless, honest mistake in comparison to those trespasses. Something that he'd long ago forgiven himself for.
He thought that demon had been laid to rest.
Then again… and he lightly blew air out his nose in derision at himself.
He supposed that he knew about the key difference of that particular sin.
That, and the… the way things were between him and Katara right now probably had something to do with it.
He pondered those dark injuries, wondering at how fresh the pain from those old wounds felt in the aftermath of the dream.
But he quickly stopped. He knew it wasn't spiritually healthy to stew in past regrets.
In fact, it seemed like it was just about time for a chakra spring cleaning.
Angsting is a pretty good indicator, he thought wryly.
It happened once every few lifetimes; some memories would never fade with time. Given the opportunity to live one's life over and over… well, one learns things about oneself. Things that, at times, Aang felt he wished he never learned about himself. But that kind of attitude was no way to deal with it, he knew. That was a lesson all of them learned. When all one has is time… It's better not to brood.
So he sat up from his horizontal position on his sleeping pad and stretched, before settling back down into a cleansing seated position.
Since it was that memory which was bothering him, that would be his Fire Chakra getting clogged up.
He closed his eyes and meditated on his shame.
-
Iroh was fascinated by this side of his nephew. He had no idea how long they'd been sitting there in Iroh's quarters just talking, and, frankly, he didn't care. It all started when Zuko came by to visit him in the evening with dinner, and they settled at the low pai-sho table and ate. Then they started talking. He couldn't even recall what the beginning of the conversation was about; that was how lost in dialogue he was right now.
"Don't you think that love is eternal?"
-
That evening, he was frozen in place as he faced the onslaught.
"You never asked about them."
She took a step forwards.
"I…"
"You never even thought about them before I reminded you, just now, did you?"
Another step.
"N-no… I…"
"Bumi. Kya. They just disappeared from your life when Tenzin airbended for the first time."
Step.
He felt physically pained at the words which were aimed like daggers at his chest, even though she said them gently, "I loved them, Katara! How can you say… What, that I just didn't care about them?"
The thorny, hurtful words of his daughter echoed through his memory.
I have no family! You can't tie me down!
But that was just a phase, wasn't it?
She was just being a teenager, right?
Wasn't it just misdirected aggression?
The rationalization sounded hollow.
"I think that you let the rest of your life take over. Being the Avatar. Teaching Air Nomad culture to Tenzin. They loved you, too, you know. More than anything, I think they just wanted to hear you say those words again. Be with them again."
Katara reached a hand up to his face.
"Kya missed penguin sledding with you. Did you know that? She remembered that. That one time when she was five. And she said she was sad that she never did it with you again."
Hot trails burned their way down his cheeks, "Stop…"
She wrapped her arms around him, and he clutched back at her like a lifeline, "And Bumi, he loved the city, the nation that you built from the ground up. He accomplished so much; protected so many people. He did it for you. He wanted to do right by you so badly."
He hiccupped.
"He thought that he disappointed you."
He choked, "What…? What… How could he…?"
"For not being an airbender."
His fingers dug into her back spasmodically, letting out an inarticulate cry of pain.
"I think… Even if you couldn't admit it to yourself… That he was right."
She pulled back, looking at him directly, "Do you know what they told me? They told me that when they finally got around to visiting an air temple, the air acolytes there had no idea that you had two other children."
He couldn't look at those ocean blue eyes. Nonjudgemental. But frank. Loving. But earnest with her damning words. He buried his face into her shoulder.
"Aang… I won't tell you that you didn't make mistakes…"
It was all too much, suddenly. Being young again. Features unmarked by time. Being a child. He remembered being a child. Being carefree. Having fun. He hadn't realized it, not even on his deathbed, what he had turned into. Someone like Monk Tashi from the Southern Air Temple. Someone who was consumed with trivial make-work. Someone so burdened by thoughts of the future, of his legacy, that the present was left behind, forgotten. Someone who had no time for important things like playing games with his children.
He had died with the thought that he had succeeded in his life, for the most part. That, despite his mistakes, he had made the best out of them at every turn. He had felt content.
Now, he felt astonished at the magnitude of that error in thinking.
"I… I failed…" he whispered into her parka, and the words left him gasping.
She held on to him, rubbing his back in soothing circles and not saying anything as Aang cried until he fell asleep.
-
"I… I failed…"
Yes… I did. I was a poor father to them; I know this, now. It was my first, and, as far as I knew at the time, my only chance at getting it right. And I failed them. Katara raised them, not I. I burdened Tenzin with all of my attention and expectations. And in doing so, I hurt them all.
And yet the slate was wiped clean.
I've since lived many lifetimes loving my children, telling them, being with them.
Gyatso's words, so ancient, still rang true.
I cannot change what was. I can only affect what is.
He let out a breath, letting the chakra flow clear again, and opened his eyes, gazing out across the open ocean in front of him. Thinking about his spiritual health. The task of clearing his chakras.
It was easy.
Maybe too easy.
"Nightmare?"
He brought up his forearm and quickly wiped his face with his sleeve. "... Yeah."
Footsteps, then the rustle of cloth as Katara sat beside him on the sleeping mat.
Just as it was back then, all those years ago, her voice was soft, "I didn't know that still bothered you."
He shook his head in negation, albeit slowly, "No. It doesn't, really. Not anymore. But, in a way, that memory is important to me."
There was quiet for a moment as she took that statement in, then, "Because things still mattered."
It was still possible to feel something back then. Anything.
How long? How long had they been together, now? A thousand years? Ten thousand?
How long did it take to realize that he was just going through motions at this point?
His eyes were dry of tears, "... I'm tired."
And it wasn't the first time.
Pause.
"... Me too," she agreed, reluctant, yet relieved.
And, without saying anything further, he knew… and he knew that she knew... they wouldn't be together.
In another life, perhaps.
But not this time.
-
"No."
"No?"
"Through the many futures I've seen, I've found that love can burn hot for awhile… but not forever. Eventually, it turns into cold ashes. Oh, the flames can be stoked anew. Love is a form of energy, and it always returns with a fresh start, but only after much time. The opposite of infatuation is not hate, but familiarity. So much of a romance depends on the curiosity of exploring something, someone new or with hidden depths yet untouched. Only time can renew what's lost in the flame."
-
"Up and at 'em, sleepy head!"
One baleful eye peeked out from the wrappings, glaring at Aang's laughing ones.
Sokka was unamused.
"I will get up when I want to get up, and not one second sooner, airhead."
A troublemaking light entered those gray orbs, "Oh yeah? What about-"
"Don't…" the older boy sat up abruptly in his wrappings, eyes blazing with such ferocity that the Avatar blinked "even think about it. I haven't had a peaceful night's sleep for the last decade since my hip started acting up. I don't care what you are thinking of right now. Earthquaking, shining light in my face, live frickle snakes. I. do not. care. Understand? Can you comprehend the words coming out of my mouth?" he was standing, now, sleeping bag and all, leaning forward and forcing the airbender to take a step back at the black look on the water tribesman's face, "If you even think of doing anything like that in the next week, it will be war."
"OKAY, okay!" the child shouted, nodding his head as fast and as hard as he could, eyes wide and throwing up his arms in surrender, "I get it! I'll be good, I swear!"
He'd seen Sokka with the gloves off. It wasn't pretty.
Explosions. Big ones.
Katara edged in from the side into her brother's view, looking delighted, "Well, looks like you're up. Eat your breakfast: The camp won't pack itself, will it?"
He pulled a long face.
"... I hate you," he deadpanned.
"And look at how much I care!" she beamed, eyes closed, grandiose and spreading her arms expansively to indicate a huge volume. Only to pause, opening her eyes in a falsely quizzical expression and bringing up a finger to her lips in a thoughtful pose, "Oh wait, there's nothing here."
"Ha. Ha," he said in a robotic monotone, already shuffling towards the campfire.
Aang walked up to the fire and sat down with the other boy on the ground, "C'mon, Sokka, we're camping. We haven't bothered with that since we were kids last time. Aren't you excited?"
"Says the guy who can practically snap his fingers and do the packing instantly."
Katara came over and sat at her brother's other side.
"Hey now, ever since I learned that trick, no one wants to do the packing anymore," the monk rebuked, "I have to make the others in the group do it sometime, or they don't get the full experience!"
Scooping a bowl of stew with newly-earthbent cookware, Sokka sat back with his breakfast and looked askance at his sitting partner, before switching sides and looking at his sister.
Raising an eyebrow, he brought his bowl up to his mouth and blew on the hot soup.
His meaning was obvious, just from that, but he clarified, "I don't recall you making Katara do any packing. Ever."
Katara scoffed.
Mirroring her thought process, the airbender had an easy answer to that, "I never have to. She does her part."
At that particular wording, he snorted. "Yeah, sure she does. I'll bet she does her part really well," Sokka drawled, before closing his eyes and taking a sip from the stone bowl, missing Aang's twitch and the waterbender's eyeroll.
"Classy."
Sokka came up for air after swallowing a big mouthful, answering his sister graciously "Why, thank you."
"… Yeah, about that," the monk-child brought a hand up to rub the back of his head, "Katara and I kinda… broke up? Last night. Thought you oughta know."
Sokka stilled, his stone bowl halfway up to his mouth for a second gulp, "... What."
Katara looked across at Aang for confirmation, and at his nod, "Yeah, it's over."
The bowl dropped from numb fingers, breaking in half on the ground.
"... That was full of stew," she said flatly.
"Back up," her brother brought his hands up to his temples, pushing into them as if to head off an enormous headache, "Go back to the part where you said… What you said."
Sensing a comedic moment, the Avatar was happy to oblige while the waterbender bent the spilled food into the ocean with a twist of her arm, "Katara and I have decided that we are no longer together, effective immediately," he enunciated, eager to get to the punchline.
He was mumbling, talking under his breath, but the airbender caught:
"No, this can't be happening."
"Huh?" Aang intelligently queried, confused.
"Please tell me you're lying," he moved suddenly, grabbing the younger boy by the folds of his blue coat, fixing him with a desperate gaze "You're joking, right? This is a prank?"
"Um…" he looked over, and Katara gave a shake of her head in agreement with his view of the matter, "Nope. I'd say we're pretty much sure of it now. We're done."
Letting go, Sokka sank his elbows onto his knees and put his forehead onto his hands.
"No. No," the biologically-teenage tribesman's voice wavering in a crack, "No, no, NO!"
Katara put a hand on his arm, but he shook it off.
"Sokka! What is wrong?" she asked, half concerned, half convinced it was an act, but sharing a look with the air nomad. He lifted his shoulders in equal befuddlement.
"NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo…!" he finally wailed, moving his hands to cover his face as he started to sob, "WAAAAAaaahhahaaaaaaa…! Y-you… Ohoh, no! Why? WHY!?You gotta be kidding me! Ohohoooo, wahahohowahahaaaa! No, no, noho…. *gasp*... WAAAAA-"
Feeling very uncomfortable, Aang patted his back while Sokka leaned forward in abject sorrow, "Uh... everything'll be okay, I think? Don't worry about it? There, there…"
"You can't! Not now! Spirits, no! Ahuhuhuhuhuhaaaaa-"
"Wait, what? What are you talking about?" inquired Katara suspiciously, connecting that statement to her and Aang's declaration of separation, "We weren't supposed to break up? On whose schedule?"
Sniffling, Sokka muttered, "Toph's."
"What?" the airbender blurted, "I don't remember her saying anything like that at the meeting-?"
"This has nothing to do with her obsession with world domination!" he screeched, raising his head and confronting the other two with puffy red eyes, before flinching under their stares and continuing at normal speaking volume, "We… we made a bet… a long time ago…"
It clicked.
The Avatar was shocked. "You… you made a bet with Toph about when Katara and I would break up? Since when?"
Wiping his nose with his sleeve and seeming to recover slightly from his bout of woe, Sokka scowled, "Five lifetimes ago. Trust me, I counted."
"Let me guess," Katara offered dryly, "You bet we'd be together until the very next life."
"Your wisdom knows no bounds, sis."
Aang was present enough to grasp the important part of the equation, and he leaned in intently, "What did you bet?"
For one of them, bets held absolutely no value whatsoever unless they were extremely high-risk. That was to say, nothing material would do. In fact, the only thing that mattered was:
Still-red eyes glowering, "We bet our next turn."
Quiet followed those words.
"... Wow, man," the Avatar slow-blinked as he backed off, "That is bad."
"What part of, 'Do not ever gamble with Toph.' did you miss from the last eternity of dealing with her?" Katara asked in disbelief.
"I know, I know, okay, but I thought I had an in with this one!"
She was unimpressed with that logic, "... Right. Because you knew my relationship with my husband so much better than her."
A cloud of despair settled over him, before he brightened.
"Hey, wait," he said, abruptly holding up a hand, and Aang and Katara both tensed at the tone of his voice, "What if… you guys just pretend that yo-"
"No."
The two simultaneous voices were equally unforgivingly level.
"Please?" he begged, "Just one lifetime! One!"
"Why should we do that?" Katara asked pointedly, "You lost. Fair and square. She deserves her win."
"And I really don't wanna try to con Toph," Aang reasoned impassively.
"Please?" reduced to supplication, Sokka got onto his knees in front of the two of them, switching his gaze between them intermittently.
And this was officially getting into dangerous waters.
This was because something important was on the line. And when it came to important things, stuff got interesting. And that - interesting stuff - was the primary commodity for the group of time-travellers.
Katara's eyes barely moved sideways until it met Aang's equally sly gaze.
This was getting squeezed for all it was worth.
And her brother was really just asking for it with his unsightly, dishonest begging.
"Okay, Sokka, I'll do it. For you," Katara, pretending to be put-upon, "If he's up to it."
When he looked away to receive an answer from Aang, she winked in his direction.
The Avatar gave no indication that he saw a thing, only sighing, "Sure. Whatever. But you owe me."
"Yeah!" Sokka said, earnest, "I owe you! Big time!"
Ugh, she thought, looking at her brother with unfeigned incredulity, He expects us to believe he'll honor a debt after weaseling out of a bet like that? He's going to get exactly what he deserves!
It'll end with him getting his butt kicked, sure, but that was no skin off Katara's nose after that slimy wisecrack about the camping pecking order.
And while Sokka's back was turned away as he cheerfully searched through the bag of supplies for another bowl to use, Aang gave her an answering smile, mischievous.
The corner of Katara's mouth went up.
The bedrock of who they were to each other hadn't changed.
And they both realized unexpectedly at that moment… that everything between them was fine again.
-
"There is something that does last, though. Probably the kind of love that you were thinking about in the first place."
"Oh?"
"Friendship."
"Aha."
"Yes. Friendship is steady, adaptable, passionate, and free," he smiled, "It's like the Avatar of relationships. It can survive a lot."
"Oh, that sounds intriguing. Tell me about this philosophy."
-
"You have to work with a critical patient sometime!"
A middle-aged woman stammered, "I-I w-want to h-help…"
In a dark, but relatively clean, room, a bloodied young man lay on a cot with wounds partially dressed, moaning in pain, "Uggggghhhhh…"
A chime echoed into the room from the front of the shop, signalling a customer.
"I'm busy with a patient right now, please wait! Listen, you can't freeze up every time someone comes in torn up like this," the elder man explained patiently, not looking at her but at the broken form of his patient and gingerly attempting to discern what was damaged without increasing the pain, "You say that you want to be a nurse, but that will not happen if you get queasy doing the very thing nurses are needed for most. You need to come to a decision here, Sela. If you want to be a nurse, you've got to act like one. Otherwise-"
Must've hit something sensitive, because: "ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!"
Sigh, "This won't do. Well, if you're not going to help me figure out so-called Mr. 'Tax Evader', go get the poppy syrup. Obviously the painkiller I already gave him isn't working…"
"Y-yes sir," she wavered, then bolted out of the back room to do as she was told.
Feeling a bundle of nervous energy coil up somewhere between her heart and stomach, she hastily poked around the storage room in search of the asked-for drug. The room was poorly lit; that was on purpose, because some of the materials in it were sensitive to light, and lost their properties if exposed for a prolonged amount of time. All the same, she needed light if she was going to see what she was doing; she moved to a table and took the lone oil lamp there to assist.
Holding up the weak light source, her eyes moved over shelf after shelf, frantically trying to recall where the sopoforics were in relation to everything else.
She'd already disappointed Doctor Shang several times before. Gensu always said she wasn't cut out for this, and that she should help him around the farm - and she was aware that it was harder for him without her. If she failed again, she'd be axed, and then she'd be stuck on the farm with her husband forever. Not that she wasn't prideful of her husband's livestock and accomplishments; it's just that she always wanted to do more with her life than just tending walking chicken-pork all day.
"Dragon root, herb of earth, dried banana leaf… come on,where's the opium!?"
The doctor's concerned voice came out of the back:
"Quickly, now! I'm trying to set one of the fragments but-"
"GaaaAAAaaargh..."
"Yo."
Startled, Sela looked up to see that someone had come into the storage room through the front entryway. A child; she couldn't immediately tell if it was a boy or a girl due to the bad lighting.
"I'm sorry, but you're not allowed to come back here-!"
The child rolled over her attempt to turn her away, "Second case, third shelf down on the far left, it's a big clay jar sealed with wax, you can't miss it."
"... Eh?"
"The pain killer? You know, might wanna get it quick, because otherwise the pain will kill him?"
Sela blinked, then checked, moving her lamp to illuminate the indicated area. She had already checked that part of the shelf, but…
There it was. The words were there on the jar: Poppy Syrup. But the ink was faded; that explained how she missed it the first time around. But it didn't explain how a perfect stranger just strolled in and told her where it was.
Lifting the jar, Sela opened her mouth to say… something, really, she wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth, but was cut off before she could properly formulate a question:
"Don't ask. Just grab it and go; he needs it."
A string of curses culminated into a yowl, before devolving into soft sobs, "YAAAaargh… ahahuhu… waaaaahhh..."
"Now."
She was jolted into action, hurrying through the shelves to put the lamp back where it came from and moving back to the doorway leading to the back room with the jar clutched against her chest. Whereupon, she froze as images of blood and gore careened through her mind and her stomach rebelled at the thought of seeing it again.
Why is this such a problem!? she internally wailed as a bead of sweat slid down the back of her neck.
The mystery girl's voice (she was fairly sure it was a girl, now) came from right behind her, "Move it, sister, that man needs our help. If you don't light a fire under your butt in three seconds, I'm pushing."
Sela obligingly stumbled forward.
Snatching the jar out of her arms, Shang started measuring out a dose, all the while clucking his tongue.
"Slow. You were slow. How would you like it if a nurse took their time with the morphine while you lay abed with your bones in broken pieces?"
"S-sorry. The label was faded," Sela mumbled, looking everywhere except for the young man on the cot.
Carefully, the doctor held the patient still with one arm while entreating him to open his mouth. Once he had done so, he tipped the cup so that the painkiller went straight into the mouth.
Having administered the medicine, the older man lifted up the jar to his face for a closer look. "Hmm, I see. That's no good. I'll have to ink a new one, then, before I get it refilled when the suppliers come by. I'm just glad I haven't used it by accident at some point!"
And then a five foot tall problem spoke up, walking around to the other side of the bed to address Shang directly, "Gramps. What's the sitch with the guy?"
Definitely a girl. Black hair with bangs low enough to cover her eyes. Wearing some kind of costume. Bare feet.
And apparently out to ruin her life.
Sela flinched.
The doctor gave an outraged shout, "WHAT!? Who are you? What are you doing in here!? SELA! You are fired! You let some random kid come back here!?"
Attempting to explain, "N-no! I tried to tell her to leave, but-"
The girl cut off her half-started clarification with, "His ribcage is a jigsaw puzzle, isn't it?"
The statement stunned the two adults in the room with its bluntness for a second, and then Shang sighed.
"Well, yes, actually. It didn't look so bad at first when I had him carried in here, but... there's just… too many pieces. From what I can tell from looking just now, Mr. Ling will not survive this. The damage is too great, I'm afraid. The best that we can do is make the end come as painlessly as possible," and then he squinted through the dark, "And what would you know about it, brat? You can't just come waltzing back here! Leave!"
The man that lay between them, Ling, gave a shuddering breath and made a garbled noise through his drug-induced stupor, "Hegarbluguglargarug… hegugaguh…? Gerblerguh…"
"No," came the resolute response. Through the dark, Sela saw the flash of a smile underneath face-obscuring dark hair, "You said it yourself. If I leave him in your hands, then he's dead meat. Guess that means I'll have to do something about that."
"What?" and here the doctor snorted, "This is not a place for you, little girl. Get out of my clinic, now. Where are your parents, anyway? They ought to be ashamed of themselves-"
"My parents… are not here. And for your information," she growled, "I'm the greatest earthbender you will ever meet," and the girl sat, so that she was directly across from the doctor and right next to the patient on the raised mat. She pointed one finger at Ling's chest, "I can heal him. The bones are made of earth, and chi shifts through a living person's skeleton. I can feel where the pieces are with my earthbending, move them to the right spots, and heal the fractures."
Sela had never heard of such a thing before, and if the look on Shang's face was any indication, neither had he, and he had something to say about it.
Would have, except that she could see her employer's adam's apple jerk as the words froze in his throat. She was feeling pretty speechless as well.
For the little girl had lifted her other hand, already covered in a neat glove of stone which had thus far gone unnoticed, and through the cracks of the rocks came a ghostly greenish glow.
-
The chi didn't flow. No. That was the domain of water. Blood.
It shifted. Like the earth. Slow.
The bones were strong.
Like a mountain.
And would be made whole once more.
-
Wordlessly, Sela joined the doctor, sitting at his side, and he unconsciously moved to make room, both of their eyes trained on the marvel at work in front of them.
All that she and Shang could do was stare at Ling's peacefully sleeping form in awe.
"Amazing…" the doctor breathed.
The girl - she still hadn't given any name - continued to slowly move the glove of glowing lodestones over the patient's ribcage, muttering to herself before speaking aloud:
"This is gonna take awhile. Earth healing takes forever, no matter how experienced you are, trust me. I know some really old people who would know. With that in mind, just out of curiosity… Who decided to use this Ling guy as an earthbending practice dummy?"
Jarred out of their wonderment, Sela and Shang glanced at each other, before the man decided to speak for them both.
"Well, if this," he gestured at the green healing light, "wasn't enough to show that you're not from around here, then that remark certainly was. It was Gao, the captain of the local garrison for the Earth Kingdom Army," he grimaced, looking like he wanted to spit at the name, but unwilling to do such an unsanitary thing in his clinic, "Feh. That… thug… and his cronies aren't accountable to anybody, in his mind. He's a greedy coward; only picks fights he's sure he'll win, and defends nothing but his own hide. If the Fire Nation came knocking, all they'd have to do is fork over some gold and he'd be gone like the wind."
"What'd Ling do to get his attention?"
Sela tentatively spoke up, raising a hand up to her temple to banish the headache which was already forming at the thought of that person, "I think it was because Ling refused to pay the 'tax' twice in one week. He's new; just moved here a few months ago. He didn't know how Gao runs things around here," her other hand clenched into a fist in her lap, "He didn't know that Gao… 'punishes tax evaders'."
The girl hummed.
"Sounds like the guy desperately needs a royal kick in the pants," she commented.
"You think that hasn't crossed the mind of everyone who lives here?" Shang asked darkly, "There's nothing we can do! There aren't any other earthbenders here; no one can face Gao," he deflated, and gestured at the limp form between them, "Not without ending up like him."
"And if you just rounded up the whole village and fought him, he'd end up killing someone trying to escape the consequences of being a hoodlum jerk."
She paused, and nodded her head sagely, "I personally volunteer for this most noble task of butt whoop."
The man raised an eyebrow, "Just because you happen to be an earthbender-"
Snapping, "The best, and don't you forget it. I can do things with a handful of dirt that would give you nightmares just to imagine, old man, so don't insult me by saying that I can't put that loser in his place. All you guys need to do is put together a real militia to defend this town after I'm done."
Arms folded, the man quieted, his skepticism at the prospects of such a fight quite clear.
Ignoring him, the healer finished her work, huffing as the glow dimmed.
"He's lucky none of his organs were pierced, 'cause I wouldn't've been able to do diddly-doo-dah about that," then she stood up and walked around, saying, "As it is, I don't do open wounds." and grabbing Sela's arm. Bemusedly, the woman allowed herself to be dragged to the other side of the mat, "C'mon, sister. You wanna be nurse, you gotta make it happen."
-
Chuckling, "Now, why do you think that there's a whole philosophy behind what I just said?"
"Well, it's pretty obvious," his opposite said gamely, "I'd bet my Pai Sho set that Passion is Fire, right?"
"That is where Passion would mostly fall, yes. But only Fire is Fire, old man."
"Of course." On this they both certainly agreed. "What is the most suitable analogue for, say… Earth?"
"That is not a relationship."
"Hm?"
"It is simply presence. Being there. Strong and unmovable. No matter how the wind howls, or the waves crash, or the flames burn, the mountain will not, cannot bow to these things. Supportive, in some contexts, but implacable in others. The Earth is unfeeling. A stone doesn't talk or communicate… or throw itself. It simply exists, despite anything else."
"Hmmm… And what of Water? Is that a relationship?"
"Yes..."
And the night turned on.
-
Deep within the soul of Aang, there was a special place that was not human.
A place set aside by providence to be the home of a wondrous being.
Light flowed from this place, and connected to every living thing.
In this place, was the Spirit of the World, goddess of all.
She was bound to the Good Soul, the soul of Wan.
Reincarnated tens of tens of times, until Aang.
For nigh on ten thousand years, a human.
Knowing humans, now, conscious.
Guiding them. Protecting them.
Often, from themselves.
Caring for them.
Loving them.
Raava.
It was not a physical place. There was no way to describe it in a classical three dimensional analogue; it was simply beyond the comprehension of the human mind. However, if one were to use such a metaphor…. one could say that She shifted restlessly.
Something was… wrong.
The Good Soul… Aang, now… it was… dark.
And She had no idea why.
The spirit is not the mind; though the two were connected, they were distinct, and Raava Herself was typically barred from such interaction with Her host by the weight of hundreds of previous incarnations. That avenue to answers was barred to Her.
So She decided to call on the next most accessible thing.
"Roku…"
Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
I have a few thoughts about this.
What if - at the time - Aang saw it as sparing Kya and Bumi the burden of being the new "Last Airbender"?
And also, Kya had her own legacy - not as heavy as Tenzin's but still great and terrible - the new "Last Southern Waterbender"? A legacy Aang felt he had no right to intrude upon, full of furs and ice dodging?
And finally, could both he and Katara have seen Bumi in a special light? The one they didn't have to share with the world, that was weighed down by no legacy, and was therefore nothing but theirs and theirs alone?
So each of them focused on how Aang spent hours on end training Tenzin, and missed how Katara did the same with Kya, or how they both would spend hours on end seeing if Bumi could somehow get Momo to fly down a chimney?
The Air Acolytes saw Kya and Bumi as "Not-Airbenders", but that's their major malfunction.
What if - in a way they were never able to fully communicate - Aang and Katara saw their children as, "The Future of the Air Nomads", "The Future of the Southern Water Tribe", and "Our Special One"?
It's still a screw-up - treating the children differently in this case meant they thought it was favoritism, and that assumption caused unnecessary pain - but what if each of the children saw in the other's lives something they desired, and missed how they each had their own special place?
Last edited:
Oh I am slain!
Wynaut?
- Location
- Tatooine
I want to see an entire series for this Toph.