They clamour and fight, they doubt and despair, they know no end

to their wrangling.

Let your life come amongst them like a flame of light, my

child, unflickering and pure, and delight them into silence.

They are cruel in their greed and their envy, their words are like

hidden knives thirsting for blood.

- R. Tagore

She startled awake in the middle of the night, becoming upright without wasted movement, listening for what woke her: some change in the air, or ground. Perhaps it had been only a piercing sense of dread. Memories of her dreams had not come easily in years, but she often woke with a crushing sorrow, a sense that she had been on the edge of a dream, and then his face would rise before her. His laugh, his voice. The wind at her back felt like his touch for years before she ceased to hope. Struggling to focus, she pushed the thoughts out of her head and held her body attentively, listening.

It was a temperate night late in spring. No breezes blew. Next to her she could hear the sounds of her brother's shallow breathing. Her own heartbeat thudded in her ears. From the moonlight which filtered into their tent she judged it to be several hours before dawn.

Then she felt it. The earth shivered delicately beneath her, as if it had been struck and retaliated in kind. In the next instant, as she sprang to her feet, Toph appeared at the opening to their tent, her lower face knit up in a vague grimace. "They're coming."

Sokka had woke with Toph's voice, getting up and grabbing for the sword at his side, as she rushed out of the tent. They'd practiced – and executed – the maneuver dozens of times, but it was never any less nerve-wracking, never devoid of a sense of desperation. The possibility of death for all of them always leered, mocking their efforts. The last time they had not been quick enough, and had suffered for it.

That night it had been Toph's turn to sleep with the children - Katara offered a voiceless prayer for this small blessing. Now she stood by Appa, palms to the ground, erasing their marks from the earth, covering the area they had been using as a latrine over with rich black soil. The children were already awake, their meager possessions gathered in their arms and on their backs, some of them rubbing at their eyes. None of them made a sound as they gazed at Katara, almost sullenly. She detected the fear in their expressions and made a calming gesture in place of the reassuring smile she could not muster while she counted, double-checking.

Ten. She fought against the terror that seized her limbs, making them tremble, and re-counted. Still only ten.

She motioned for them to gather close, and herded them to the side of the airship. Already Zuko was inside, stoking the fire which inflated the balloon, and the ship rose a few feet from the ground. Glancing behind her, she confirmed that Sokka had loaded the rest of their supplies into Appa's saddle and was now tethering the bison to the airship. He reached down to give Toph a hand up, and caught his sister's eye.

Silently, she held up a finger. His eyes widened momentarily and then he stood upright, trying to use his perch on Appa as a vantage point from which he could survey the surrounding forest. After a few seconds he glanced back down and shook his head.

The earth shuddered again, and Zuko paused in his bending to gesture at her. Get them aboard. The airship rocked back and forth gently.

She strove to push her terror aside and help them aboard one by one. As she did so she mentally checked off names and faces, until she reached the very last, and her heart dropped as she realized which child was not present.

Amit.

One of the girls was whispering into Zuko's ear. He looked up in alarm when she had finished, and bent another column of flame into the stove before coming to crouch beside Katara, favoring the leg that had been wounded in their last fight.

"She says he left in the night and never came back."

"How?" Angry with herself, Katara shook her head briefly to clear it. "Does she remember when?"

"No."

"I'll stay behind."

He reached down and grasped her forearm gently. "We'll see you at the meeting place." She nodded. Some of the children peeked over the railing, looking after her, and she motioned them back.

As she disappeared into the forest, she glanced back, and saw her brother looking after her, a silent upright figure against the night sky. She lifted one hand, but he turned away, pulling at the reins, and Appa rose slowly into the sky, the airship trailing.

Katara watched them go. She knew that they would fly low for awhile, gaining distance from the enemy in one direction before lifting up far above the lower cover of clouds and heading in the opposite direction. If she did not have Amit to worry over, it would have been a valuable opportunity to evaluate the strength and force of the warriors now trailing them.

Instead, she took several deep breaths to calm her nerves before touching a nearby tree. Now that the others were safe, most of her anxiety had evaporated, but she wanted to ensure that none of the negative feelings, like poison, would leach out of her body and flowed into the forest. It was the rainy season, and the ground was fortunately damp from a night-shower. Closing her eyes, she filtered out the shaking of the ground and tried to listen to the forest.

The trees trembled, too, with the force of the oncoming enemy. The water pooling in underground recesses filled with ripples, seeming to flow over the surface of her skin. Breathing even more deeply, finally she found him: not a half-mile to the west, his bare feet in a small pool fed by the trickle of a stream. His aura was calm and seemed to expect her inquiry; his energy flowed back to hers like ripples on the surface of a pond. Joy and relief flooded her when she found him, and the connection was abruptly broken.

Pausing only briefly to ensure that all traces of the camp had been cleared away, she headed for the cover of the forest, toward Amit.

His work at the stove which fed the airship finally done, Zuko moistened a rag in a bucket of water and wiped the soot from his face, chest and arms. The children were clustered in small groups, many of them already sleeping peacefully. Others whispered to one another, glancing at him from time to time, or stared off into space, thinking their inscrutable thoughts.

Even though it had been just over two years that he'd been with them, he still never felt totally at ease around the children. They were drawn naturally to Katara, with her motherly air; they admired Sokka, as the de facto leader, and were natural companions to Toph, who made them laugh and played with them. But there was always a sense of hesitation in their gazes when they saw Zuko, especially when he was bending; they were unable to separate the fire which burst from his palms from the fire that had destroyed their lives and families. He accepted it, content to function in the role of 'protector' and not 'caretaker'. He had no stories for them, no comforting caresses; no wise explanations. He submitted himself to their protection as repentance for the evil his family had wrought.

The death of the Avatar at the hands of the Phoenix King had been the catalyst for a veritable frenzy, chaos spreading like forest fire. The Fire Nation's forces were divided between spreading their territory and commanding the holdings they had won during the time of Sozin's Comet, and seeking out the new Avatar to kill it. The honor of the job had been given to the new Firelady – his sister, Azula. The orders she issued were simple: to kill any Water tribe children born within a week of the Avatar's death. Being unable to make an absolute determination about the time of birth, the command led to the death of hundreds of children. The people of the Northern Water tribe were scattered to the four winds, their lands reduced to rubble.

A small team of young people from the Four Nations had kept themselves barely ahead of the slaughter, pleading with new mothers to follow them or go into hiding; raiding orphanages and monasteries for any children without parents who fit the description. They spread out into hidden enclaves in the most remote parts of the world, relocating as the need arose. With the rebellions that flared up in the years after the Phoenix King assumed the throne, killing the next Avatar (especially in his or her childhood years) was less of a priority than it might have been otherwise.

When the children turned five, the enclaves in various places around the world weeded out those who demonstrated no skill at waterbending and returned them to their parents, or fostered them out as they were able. The remaining children began new lives as nomads with Toph, Sokka, and Katara, the numbers of original protectors having severely waned due to death, imprisonment, or joining with the various rebellions in the different nations. It had been some time after this that Zuko joined their number, having been imprisoned until that time for attempting to wrest control of the throne away from Azula on the day of Sozin's Comet. Though it had taken some time – and cost Zuko his dignity, and nearly his life – he managed to gain their trust and join with them in protecting the new Avatar.

The Avatar relics gone or destroyed, they had no way of knowing if the reincarnation of Aang was among them, or if the cycle had moved to its next incarnation because of an infant they had looked over or failed to save. They continued their mission without questioning, fearing the answers. Soon, it was agreed, Toph would begin to instruct them in earthbending, and if any demonstrated capabilities it would be known for sure. Until then…

"Is anyone hungry?" he called, trying to make his voice less rough but unused to doing what was usually Katara's job. Their supplies had been scarce since the time of his injury, which made it difficult for him to hunt. Though his own stomach groaned with hunger, he pushed the sensation aside, knowing that if any of the adults ate there would scarcely be enough for the children. Several of them raised their hands hesitantly, and he took them dried meat and berries from the supply baskets, counting their dwindling rations out carefully. He hoped none of them had to go to the bathroom.

Though they were filthy (a recent idea of Sokka's, or an excuse since they had no time to bathe them: mud as camouflage) he had no trouble recognizing each one of them. There was Sulati, whose parents had taken out her eyes for fear she would be recognized as a child of the Water tribe, before they could stop them. She wore an embroidered blindfold covering the ugly scar tissue. Yural of the throaty voice, who cried the loudest when Katara had shaved their heads to make them less distinguishable from one another. Rann, who had not spoken a word since the day his father was burnt alive in front of him. And - though his visage was not among them, his spectre rose behind Zuko's eyes - Amit.

Though she had never pronounced the exact words, restrained by fear or hope or both, Zuko and the others knew that Katara thought Amit was the next Avatar. He thought of her now, scouring the forest to find him, and silently offered a prayer to no one that she would find him, and then them, safely. Pain raced through his leg as one of the children jostled it and he gritted his teeth, remembering Mai's face, cold and calculating, as she'd run his thigh clean through with one of her knives. It had missed the bone, but had not failed to carve its way through his heart - his betrayal had hurt her most of all, and it was evident she still fed the flame of her vengeance years later. It was the last time they had engaged the three girls and their soldiers, and they'd barely gotten away with the children's lives.

With a barely audible sigh he lowered himself back into a sitting position near the stove so he could keep it fired, and to his surprise Quopuk, one of the smaller and more timid boys, leaned onto him. Awkwardly Zuko shifted so that the boy's head was on his shoulder, and let him rest that way.

The bison and airship raced ahead of the night that threatened to consume them.

Katara rubbed at her cheek where an overlooked streak of dried mud made it itch. The sound and rumble of Azula's tiger-elephants had faded into the distance. Here and there, streaks of sunlight penetrated the forest canopy. She relaxed in the curve of a large branch, watching Amit sleep.

She'd found him soon after being forced to leave the others behind, and she could not find it in her heart to chastise him. Instead they shared a simple meal, washed their faces, and climbed high into the branches of an old tree. Exhausted from spending the night wandering the forest, he fell asleep in her lap without a word. Absently she ran a bandaged and half-gloved hand, stained rust with the color of old blood, over his smooth-shaven skull.

His eyes were dull gray, almost black, and the way he smiled with his eyes closed reminded her so much of Aang that it had made her heart ache since she'd first discovered him in an Earth Kingdom orphanage at the age of two. At the time, she, Sokka, Suki and Haru had composed a group and had a full outfit of Earth Kingdom soldiers and nearly sixty children and their parents with them.

They'd been in hiding in a swamp, and a man had come from the orphanage carrying a small boy. He claimed that a woman of the Water Tribe had abandoned him nearly two years earlier after coming to the orphanage to give birth. The timeline was right, Sokka had conceded, but his eyes were too dark, his skin too fair, to be a member of the Water tribe, no matter what the owner of the orphanage claimed. Besides, they had too many children with them already. Katara had been on the verge of agreeing before the small, nameless boy had smiled at her, and from that time she had kept him at her side as they traveled from enclave to enclave.

Amit, as she named him, never demonstrated partiality to her as many of the other children did; rarely cried, and never played. Instead he spent hours watching a single fireant make its way across a field, or listening to wind howl over a gorge. When she began to instruct the children in waterbending, he showed no initial aptitude until one of the bigger boys pushed him into a swift-moving river. Calmly, he'd waterbended himself out. On several occasions she'd caught herself thinking of him as Aang, and her physical recoil when she realized the direction of her thoughts was enough to make her nauseous.

He is gone. The next Avatar will not be him, even if they are able to channel his spirit. She'd been unable to function for the first few months after his death. Sokka dragged her around by her hair, screaming that she would die, that they would all die, and the children with them. Eventually she'd snapped out of it, but the damage she'd done to her relationship with her brother, and to herself, was already done, written in something less impermanent than water.

It was not Aang who haunted her, but her creation of him. It waited for her, for any moment of quiet, of peace, bidding her remember, suffer, regret. The moment at which she imagined herself saved, it returned, instantly provoking a thousand thoughts, a thousand emotions. She forced herself to function in spite of it, but privately she was in agony.

The weight of the years pressed on the chasm his death had left in her, but it never threatened to collapse or grow smaller. Her being moved around the ache, like the rot at the heart of a tree. Each day, it pained her afresh; with each season passing, a new element came into focus, and devastated her in its particular way. The earth tore at her. The water wore her away. The fire charred her. And the air chilled her to her very bones. The first day it had started to truly lessen was when she had found Amit. She protected and nurtured him especially, conscious of her duty to the reincarnated Avatar.

She'd found him once, trapped in the iceberg, waiting for her breath, the sound of her voice, her touch.

She would find him again.