Title: After the End

Author: overlithe

Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender

Summary: AU. The boy in the iceberg is only found almost twenty years after the return of Sozin's Comet; the world goes on even when no one is there to save it. Three ficlets.

Characters/Pairings: Aang, Katara, Zuko, Iroh, Azula, Ty Lee; implied Azula/Ty Lee in the third segment (though you can definitely read it as gen).

Prompt: avatar_500 prompt 023. Soothe; fanfic100 prompt 010. Years

Word Count: 500

Rating: T

Warnings: Crapsack World and all that implies

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement.

After The End

A ladleful of sea-prune soup rose from the pot and hovered onto the boy's bowl, where it landed with a splash. 'Sorry,' Katara said.

'It's all right,' Aang said, his smile bright as snow-glare. He was always doing that—smiling—and he felt as out of place in her world as a patch of green in the ice plain.

'I had to teach myself waterbending.' She prodded the soup with a spoon. 'There wasn't anyone else. The Northern Water Tribe surrendered after the fall of Ba Sing Se. And us, well.' Bubbles burst against the spoon. 'Nobody cared what we did.'

'I'm sorry. It's—'

She looked up. His eyes had widened; she felt the urge to hug him. 'No. I never stopped believing in you, you know. That you'd come back.'

That you'd save the world, she thought, silent.

She just wished it weren't this one.

:=:=:

'Hey, you heard, Lee?'

Zuko unloaded his tray. Glasses and cups clinked. Thick steam rose from the teapots. 'Heard what?'

A little girl bounced on her mother's lap, spilled out words in a single, excited breath. 'Dad heard someone say there was a big burst of light in the South Pole and that must mean the Avatar is back I think it would be great to see the Avatar do you think he's really back?'

I doubt it, he wanted to say, but instead he folded his dishcloth. He had been to the South Pole, in another life, and had failed to find anything but ice.

Then he had lived long enough to see both failure and success burn to nothing when a comet had turned the walls of Ba Sing Se to ash. 'We'll see,' he ended up saying, and walked away.

A hand fell on his arm. He looked up into Uncle's eyes. Iroh didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

'I have to go finish the inventory,' Zuko said.

:=:=:

'General, I am thinking of a two-handed gesture.' Azula moved her right arm. The armour had been altered to accommodate the stump, the sleeve tied off just above the elbow. 'So you'll just have to picture it in your mind and react accordingly.'

General Shin, war-calloused and flint-eyed, look flustered. She edged a little closer. 'This is the part where you go away.'

She waited until the general had vacated her tent to drop onto one of the folding chairs and close her eyes. Crystal glittered. The smell of earth and her own sweat and blood closed up her throat, spun back time twenty years.

'Do you think the Avatar is really back?' Ty Lee had glided up to her in silence.

Princess Azula. The thought felt foreign. Captured at Ba Sing Se, risen like a phoenix to conquer it. 'I think it's a load of rubbish.' She wasn't talking about the Avatar.

Ty Lee squeezed her shoulder.

Azula looked at her. 'Still,' she said, 'if someone's going to find him, it might as well be us.'

++The End++

Notes/Disclaimer: The "That you'd save the world/She just wished it weren't this one" lines are borrowed from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel Watchmen, where Adrian Veidt says "No, I don't mind being the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one." in a Nova Express interview.