REVELATiON

un: an end to beginnings

All was quiet in the eastern wing.

From just beyond the icy palace walls, a fanfare could be heard, announcing the arrival of a somewhat unexpected, but definitely not unwelcome, guest. Slick metal gates opened with an eerie creak outside the frosted window, and snow crunched beneath two pairs of feet. Then, their boots met stone.

Somewhere, a heavy door opened with a whistle as the wind slipped through and slammed shut with a muffled bang. Footsteps echoed through the wide corridor; the same two pairs of feet were carrying their masters forward toward the end of the hall, where a single blue door remained closed.

As they grew closer, voices could be heard.

"… so surprised by the news of your voyage, My Lady. Pleasantly surprised, of course." The first voice was shrill and feminine, and all-too-familiar to the man behind the door.

"It has been sixteen years," said the second woman. Her voice was deeper, calm and smooth. "I felt obligated to come."

"Ah, yes, well … you would," replied the first, and then her voice took on a frantic, worrisome tone. "I-I apologize, My Lady! That sounded … I-I don't mean to be rude, or anything –"

She was silenced by the second. "It's alright, Miss Nana. I'm not offended."

"—it's just that, I feel so anxious, what, with such nobility in my presence –"

"Nobility? Miss Nana, I'm hardly –"

"Oh, but you are!" The pitch of Nana's voice was painfully high. She was practically shrieking. "Surely your relationship with the late Avatar more than qualifies you for the 'Nobility' title!"

An unnervingly long pause followed, in which even the tap, tap of the soles of their shoes against the floor seemed to fade away. And then –

"I'm sorry, My Lady. I'd forgotten …"

Nana trailed off, but she had spoken in no more than a whisper to begin with. Yet, the speech was still easily deciphered by the man behind the door.

They'd reached the end of the hall.

The footsteps that had reemerged from the silence ceased completely as Nana and the visitor came to a stop. Here, the hallway was narrow and dimly lit by a single sconce to the left of the door.

"Please excuse the gloomy atmosphere, My Lady," said Nana, her voice still very low. "I've told that boy that just one light won't do but, well … this is his part of the wing, and with him, there's really no doing anything about it."

The second woman couldn't help but notice all the small holes in the walls.

Clothing rustled as she shrugged. "I don't mind it."

"… You think the lighting is adequate?"

"The rest of the hall is fine, anyway."

"Oh. Right."

An inaudible grunt came from inside the chamber. Women and their pointless conversations.

Nana could be heard shuffling her feet, and it was likely she was fidgeting. "This is it," she said. "This is the room."

"He's in there?"

"He never comes out."

The guest chuckled. "I see. Well, boys will be boys."

"Hmm, certainly."

A small squeak was heard as the doorknob was turned halfway … and no further. Nana had just discovered the door was locked.

"Master Mizurou," she called sweetly. "Oh, Master Mizurou! Kindly open the door, child. You have a visitor!"

There was no answer. The silence pursued.

Then, all of the sudden, Nana began pounding on the door with her fist. "Master Mizurou! Open the door, please, Mizurou!"

Again, there was nothing.

"Master Mizurou! Please open the door! You have a very special guest, and she's traveled such a long way to see you! Don't you think you should show her some hospitality?"

Nothing.

"Mizurou. Mizurou!"

Nothing. Nothing! There was no reply. There would be no reply! The door would not open! The guest would not be welcomed! Wasn't it obvious that he didn't want to see anyone?

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the pounding stopped. Nana's hand fell away from the door and landed back at her side with a slight thud. Again, there was silence, and though the one who occupied the room was quite content with silence – he thrived in silence – he couldn't help but feel the slightest bit uneasy. What could those women be conspiring on the other side of his door?

He stared intently at the door, eyes fixed on the knob. It did not turn. The door did not budge. Yet, he couldn't help but fear for his door, his beloved door, which kept him so secluded day in and day out. You could call it instinct, or you could call it something else entirely.

Whatever the case, these feelings of his were usually right, and this situation was no different than others.

Then he heard it.

Drip.

It began with a trickle, as droplets of water began to seep from the keyhole of the knob. One after another they came forth until they formed a continuous stream. Then, that stream did something quite peculiar, something that would have struck any normal human being that had never seen such a bizarre occurrence as extremely odd: it began to twist and turn until it had curved completely upward, defying all laws of gravity. The eyes watched as this magic water began to wind itself around his knob, around and around until it was completely submerged. Next, the wavy liquid became still and began to cloud over as it froze. Where the knob had been visible just a few seconds earlier was now an opaque block of ice.

Then came the final step, and the eyes widened in horror as, with a sickening crack, the block of ice fell from the door, taking the knob with it, and the door swung freely open.

The first woman stepped into the room – a rather twitchy middle-aged one with reddish-brown hair wound into a tight bun at the back of her head. She donned a shin-length, light blue dress covered partially by a white apron. The brightness of the apron practically blinded the sixteen-year-old Mizurou, whose eyes were hardly ever exposed to light. He'd told that woman time and time again not to wear that stupid thing, but alas, she refused to listen.

And she calls me stubborn …

Nana smiled. "Don't look so down, Master Mizurou!" she said, always the cheery, optimistic one. "It's nothing that can't be fixed!"

Mizurou ground his teeth together. Even if Nana might as well have been his mother, and if he was water tribe royalty, he couldn't help but feel hatred toward both her and the waterbending art for doing such a terrible deed to his door.

But Nana's a non-bender … so that means …

There was a swish of robes as the second woman stepped gracefully into the room, her head down. She was clad in a navy-blue cloak, with the hood bunched around her neck, contrasting beautifully with her bronze skin tone. Dark brown tresses that shone slightly silver in the light were tied together at the nape of her neck, but with one tug at the ribbon, she freed them from their hold and they cascaded over her shoulders in soft waves. She looked up, and Mizurou could see her age defined by the fine lines in her skin, the dark circles under her sad eyes.

Her eyes …

Deep blue irises met his own as their gazes locked, and Mizurou felt his heartbeat speed up ever so slightly. Questions began to flood his mind. Why did she look so miraculously familiar? Why did he feel so strange, so unlike himself and so like another, under her scrutiny? Was this nervousness … or was this excitement?

But most importantly … where was it that he'd seen her before?

Her eyes …

Mizurou had never felt so uncomfortable as he did with those eyes upon him. It was hard, but he managed to remain perfectly still as he sat upon the end of his bed, on top of the warm, blue satin sheets. Oh, how he felt like squirming, or standing, or running, running and diving into this stranger's arms, welcoming her embrace.

But he quickly shoved that last thought out of his mind. Where in the world had it come from?

It felt like an eternity that they stayed like that, staring at each other. Any longer and he was sure he would have begun to perspire, despite the eternal cold of the North Pole. But, alas, this moment was interrupted by Nana clearing her throat, and only when their eyes broke contact and time seemed to return to normal speed did he realize it had slowed down at all to begin with.

"Well," she began, drumming her fingers together, "I suppose I'll leave you two alone …"

And with that, she'd left the room, pulling the door to, but she needn't have bothered, for it only swung back open again.

Mizurou's eyes had followed Nana out of the room, and they hadn't turned back to the guest yet. He was not the kind of person who was easily frightened – or frightened at all, for that matter – and yet for some reason, he was afraid to look at her again. He could feel her eyes upon him, her gaze fixed upon the back of his dark head of hair; that spot on his head burned and itched, but he resisted the urge to scratch it.

No, he wouldn't budge, because the child in him thought that maybe, if he didn't move, she wouldn't see him.

But she did see him. She saw all of him. It was if she knew him, inside and out, and that was scary.

How does she know?

He heard her move to the corner of the room, heard a scrape across the stone floor as she pulled forward a chair, heard nothing as she sat lightly upon it, crossed her ankles, and folded her hands in her lap. Mizurou let his head turn slightly to the right. He was looking forward now. Maybe, if he strained his vision, he could see her out of the corner of his eye. Maybe.

Nothing passed between them for a moment or two, and then the woman broke the silence.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Avatar Mizurou," she said, her voice no louder than it needed to be, but her tone somewhat sad. "Or, should I say, it's nice to see you again."

"What do you want?" he snapped, and his own voice made him wince. He hadn't meant it to come out like that. In fact, he hadn't meant to say anything at all. It had just slipped out, and instantly he regretted not keeping his mouth shut. He wasn't normally the kind of person to consider the feelings of others, but for some unknown reason, he wanted to show this woman as much respect as he could muster.

She heaved a sigh. "Forgive me, Your Highness," she said. "I only wanted a bit of your time. It's been sixteen years since we last spoke, after all."

Mizurou's eyes narrowed. He didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"You are the Avatar, are you not? Avatar Mizurou of the Northern Water Tribe? Am I wrong?"

The boy's shoulders slumped forward. No, unfortunately, she wasn't wrong. As of one week ago, he'd been completely aware of his Avatar status.

Mizurou was sure she was waiting for a reply, some sort of confirmation or denial on his part. He worked quickly to come up with something to say to avoid giving a straight answer, as if it would matter whether he said "yes" or "no." She knew the truth; that much was painfully clear.

So he began to say, "What's that got to do with anything?" but stopped himself mid-sentence. The words that had been exchanged between this woman and Nana not long ago were still fresh on his mind, still being tossed around and contemplated within his head. She'd been an acquaintance, at the least, of the Avatar before him, and therefore his being the Avatar had to do with everything.

And so, he asked a different question. "How did you know Avatar Aang?"

He could hear the smile in her voice as she said, "You tell me. How do I know you?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"But you do know," she said. "You do know, because you are him and he is you, because you lived his life and he is living yours. It's obvious you recognized me when I walked through the door!" There was a slight pause before she continued, as if she was letting everything sink in. "So, you tell me … who am I?"

It was true, he'd recognized her. But just recognition was not enough for him to know her name, to know what their relationship had been in a past life. That was years ago! Those memories belonged to a completely different person, even if they were still the same!

That much he summed up:

"I don't know."

The woman sighed again. He could sense her impatience, her frown. "You do know. You're just not digging deep enough."

"I don't know."

"You do know!" He heard her stand, heard the chair slide backward across the stone floor a few inches. "Don't tell me you don't when I know you do! Think deeper. Don't be so quick to give up. You were never one to give up so easily!"

"But how can I know?" He'd turned his head before he could stop himself, and now he was looking straight at her. Once again, their gazes locked, and that was all it took. Something clicked into place.

It was then that he remembered where he'd seen those eyes before. He'd dreamt about them … and not just once. It had been many times, he was sure. He'd seen them at night, his eyes closed, when all there'd been was darkness and the outline of her face. He'd been haunted by her in his sleep, by those eyes and that face and that dreadful feeling, a degree of cold he'd never thought possible … only he'd been sure it was his imagination … a ghost, maybe. Maybe.

He'd never expected it all to be real.

And now he found himself struggling to remember anything that he could about her, straining to find within the depths of his soul a friendship between them, or at least a name. But nothing came to him, and out of fear, he took a stab at it.

"We were … best friends?"

Something in her expression changed. Her eyes softened a little, and the weakest of grins worked its way onto her face. "That is true," she said, and his heart dropped. The tone of her voice had suggested she wanted something more, a more elaborate answer, perhaps. Then she confirmed it.

"But that's not all we were, was it?"

Mizurou stood, angered by the question. "I really have no idea!" he shouted. "Why is it my job to do all the guesswork? Why can't you just tell me? Who do you think I am?"

"I think you're the Avatar!" she shouted back. "I think you're the reincarnation of someone very important to me! But with all this uncertainty, I can't know for sure, now can I?"

"But I can't remember!" he yelled. "I can't remember! Whatever we were, I've died since then! I've been born again since then! I've lived sixteen unhappy years since then!"

"I need you to remember!" the woman cried. "I need you to remember what we were!"

"What were we then?" Mizurou was on the verge of violence. "We were best friends, but what else could we have been? Surely not anything else! Definitely not lovers! He was a monk! It was forbidden!"

"The world couldn't know!" The old woman's eyes glistened with unshed tears, and surely she was at the brink of insanity. "You told me yourself, the world couldn't know! It all had to be a secret, you said! It was for my protection, you said! You said it, Aang!"

"Aang!"

His past life's name hit him like a ton of bricks, and he staggered backward, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to process all of the memories that were flooding back to him now. Aang's – his – entire life was flashing before his eyes. A storm, an iceberg, blue eyes, a flying bison, brother and sister, South Pole, North Pole, blue eyes, a tournament poster, the Blind Bandit, black hair, green eyes, clouded eyes, blue eyes, Kyoshi, a great wall, Ba Sing Se, earthly attachment, blue eyes, falling, failure, fire, honor, scars, invasion, reunion, a new life, a new family, birth, death, and rebirth, blue eyes, water, earth, fire, air, and water again –

"Katara …"

The name fell from his lips as he fell to his knees, tears flooding his eyes. The name … he knew it well, and it felt so sweet on his lips. He looked up, up and into the beautiful blue eyes of the stranger before him who was not so strange anymore, now that he knew her name.

"Katara …"

She nodded, shaking slightly, and smiled. "You remember," she said, obviously relieved. "Finally, you remember …"

Mizurou nodded. "Yes," he said, his voice threatening to give out. "You're all that I remember … Please don't make me remember any more …"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "No … that was enough," and she sat back down in her chair.

Mizurou swiped an arm across his eyes to wipe away the tears. The boy, the prince, the Avatar, was completely exhausted. Yet, there was strength left in him for one final question, the first question he'd asked that had never really been answered.

And so, he summoned what strength he had left and said, "Tell me, Katara … why are you here?"

Katara stared down at him, beaming, and her smile did not fade in the least when she answered him.

"I am here, Your Highness, to teach you everything you need to know about being the Avatar."

A

-- ZD