Avatar the Last Airbender: Hundred

A/N: This was originally written to be a one-shot, but I decided to break it into Arcs just to make it easier to read and hopefully get reviews. There should be four or five Arcs by the end of the story. Drama/Romance, so be aware its not a "happy" story.

Also, attentive readers will notice that names aren't used. I can't explain why I wrote the story this way, but it does work out with the ending (which has already been written).

Rated M for future content and adult themes.

Arc I

The how I can't recall
But I'm staring at what once was the wall

The Frey: Hundred

She dreamt of being covered in blood.

The heavy liquid covered her hands, her arms, slowly turning her blue tunic purple then black as it continued to fall from the body in front of her. It flowed around her to the beat of a heart; rising and falling in a failing staccato. She tried to control the blood, to move it away from the body she knew needed healing, but whenever she tried words from the past filled her mind, destroying her control on the blood.

Bloodbender.

Life stealer.

She wanted to scream, to silence the voice. She was trying to save a life, not take it.

By then the blood had become a pool and she began to worry. This person, this person she just knew had to live – she wasn't sure why, something vaguely came to her about balance – would drown in their own blood if she couldn't heal them. The wound was bad, the skin black and crisp like a fish left to cook too long over a hot fire. As she felt her power finally flow out of her hands she looked down to scream. She was using the blood to heal, but the wound only blossomed under her treatment until the pale chest was one large wound.

By then the blood had reached her mouth, an impossible feat but as the blood entered her mouth she could taste its metallic bite as she was forced to swallow to breathe, to live. Even as she struggled to survive she continued to force her powers on the body, a panicked desperation taking over.

It didn't work and as she inhaled the blood into her body the heartbeat that had controlled it suddenly fell silent. The sudden loss of sound - she couldn't even hear her own screams anymore - was almost as terrifying as drowning in a lake of red liquid.

She woke with a name on her lips and the feeling of blood on her hands.

During the years it took to truly end the hundred year war a rumor started around the Fire Nation that their young lord was haunted. It started with the Palace Guards a year after the fall of the Phoenix King, when they would patrol the winding palace halls and see flashes of red and white in the shadows and disappearing around corners.

They could never catch the apparition and for the longest time there was no evidence of their passing. Stories would be passed in bars about the sightings and they figured it was the Fire Lord's sister, who even in death would torment her older brother.

Months after the ghost first appeared, servants started to notice oddities occurring around the Fire Lord. There would be trays of food left in his office and bedroom that no one could remember him ordering or taking to him. He would ask about doors and windows he swore had been open when he fell asleep, but closed when he woke up. Even the Fire Lord's closest companion could not offer any information, besides commenting that the strange happenings were breaking up the monotony of trying to fix a broken and shattered nation.

Many of the Fire Lord's ministers and generals were disconcerted with the appearance of the ghost. Two years after the world war ended civil war threatened to break out in the Fire Nation, led by soldiers and civilians who claimed to have lost more from the war ending in pride and profits than those who had gained back fathers, sons, and relatives.

The map in the war room changed from that of the world to that of the Fire Nation and its colonies in the Earth Nation, showing that indeed change did occur. What would bother these generals, the men who had survived under both Azulon and Ozai's cruelty, were the messages appearing on their map in blood and knives made of white bone buried to their hilts in the wooden base. They had all been cautious at first, as would have anyone, but when the Fire Lord sent scouts to the areas marked on the maps they found the information to be correct without fault.

The Fire Sages were brought in as the messages continued to arrive without fail. They talked to the servants who mentioned the figure dressed in red who appeared for only seconds at a time, the odd appearance of food and blankets for their weary leader, and the continued entrance into the War Room despite the fact that the doors were locked when the meetings were not in session. They spent month at the palace to figure it out until one day the Fire Lord became ill, an infection of the lungs a palace physician claimed.

The next morning the guards posted at the palace entrance were horrified to see the body of the physician and a Fire Sage pinned to the massive doors with swords from the military armory. Their faces had been covered with black soot, except for their foreheads where 'traitor' was written in blood. The Fire Lord himself came to see the spectacle before ordering an investigation, not surprised when he was told his drinks had been poisoned in an attempt to kill him. Yet, only hours after falling ill he was cured, though he could not recall being treated.

When he left the protection of his palace to join his soldiers the fight against the turncoats killing his citizens – the first Fire Lord to do so in over two hundred years historians and citizens boasted – whatever haunted the Fire Lord followed. Even citizens found themselves catching sight of the spirit as the army made their way through towns and villages. It would be a flash of red from the corner of their eyes, on the roof top or in the forests where the battles were waged.

By then the rumors had changed. It was his poor deceased mother, some said, watching over the son she had been forced to abandon as a child and would fiercely protect from the afterlife. Others claimed it was Avatar Roku, the great grandfather of their Fire Lord, there to guide him on his journey.

The Red Spirit – as it had been taken to being called to the private mirth of the Fire Lord – was active in their campaign. Men would be found at the break of dawn bound and gagged, faces covered in soot and the markings 'traitor', 'spy', 'assassin' on their heads done in blood. Many times they would be muttering words like demon and monster to themselves. A few of the more coherent, if they could be called that, claimed it had been Death itself who had found them whispering vicious threats about what awaited them in the afterlife, awful images that had grown men scared.

The Red Spirit ended up not just protecting the Fire Lord, but his men as well. Those sent on scouting missions would come back with stories about skirmishes where more men ended up dead than they recalled killing. Some were found away from the scene of the fight, hanging from trees by ropes made of vines and plants or leaning against trees, unseeing eyes staring in horror in front of them. All of them would have been in positions where they could have inflicted the most damage if they had not been stopped.

Once an entire fleet of Yu Yan archers were with their talented arrows piercing their necks and pinning them to the trees.

After one of the largest battles on the main island, the soldiers whispered at night that the Red Spirit had saved the Fire Lord from certain death. Even the generals silently agreed with them, most having been with the Fire Lord when the event occurred. Despite his want to join his soldiers, the Fire Lord usually remained to the rear of the fights unless a change in the tide of the battle occurred. It had been as such when suddenly the kimono-rhino he had been riding started to buck and threw him off as he had been twisted around, shouting orders to the generals and officers around him and was therefore unprepared for the uncontrollable animal.

Seconds after he had been tossed to the ground, earning two broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, a bolt of lightning had struck the poor animal, killing it instantly. The saddle had been mangled in the attack and the Fire Lord would have surely died had he been sitting there. The attack had been silent and well placed so the attacker was able to avoid detection and therefore prevent the Fire Lord from being able to protect himself.

After the fight had ended in their victory, a thorough inspection of the dead animal took place. It was then that they noticed the quill on the animal's flank and the poison on the tip that had caused the animal to buck, saving the Fire Lord's life. That night a body appeared out of nowhere, their face this time painted red with blood and 'coward' on their forehead. The soldiers had cheered for the spirit and even the generals had privately toasted the achievement.

He was slowly going crazy he decided to himself as he silently chased a flash of blue through the empty palace halls. He was constantly seeing blue amongst the red and black of his nation, never enough to catch a good sight of what it was, but always seeing it. It wasn't that he never saw blue: the colors of the four nations filled his capital, so every time he went out he could see flags and clothing in blue.

Those sightings he could deal with. It was those sudden, unexpected flashes that had him doubting his sanity. He would be talking with his companion and see a flash of blue on a neck of a person passing by, both male and female. He would turn and find their necks bare and the subtly curious gazes of his guards on him. Or he would see blue eyes and blink and they would turn gray or green or brown, but never blue again.

It had become worse when he started seeing it in the palace, the one place where all he should have seen was red, the color of life. Yet he would be in the War Room discussing the appearance of another bone knife in what was slowly becoming a destroyed map of the Fire Nation and see a flash of pale blue in the shadows. He would be sitting in his office reading over documents to try and control the breaking peace in his country and would see a figure in blue standing in front of him from the corner of his eye, but when he looked up he just saw dust moats in the air.

He also dreamed in blue. It was rather disconcerting to dream in only one color and he wondered idly if this is what dogs felt like when they saw things. The skies, the sun, even the skin of people were varying shades of blue. They bled when he had nightmares and as he watched his father, his sister, and his people slowly die from loosing that odd blue blood he wished they would bleed red.

Most of the time he dreamt of the ocean, of being surrounded by nothing but two flat blue surfaces, the water blending into the sky. It was this dream he feared the most, because even if he ran or stopped moving it never felt like he actually went anywhere, never gained, never lost. For someone like him who had always been forced to move forward, to never stay still it truly was a nightmare.

He recalled once waking up from such a dream to find himself in complete darkness and covered in sweat. Needing to see light, see something besides blue he had called a single flame to his hand only to scream as a blue flame appeared rather than the soft orange he had desperately wanted to see. It had been a joy when he had caught the bed on fire in his panic, the orange glow produced by the burning fabric enough to sooth his mind long enough to douse the fire as the guards broke into his room.

He tried once to broach the topic with the person closest to him only to be reminded sharply that they didn't care if he saw colors or not. It was followed by a comment that maybe he was joining his family in terms of being crazy and should probably prepare himself a room with white walls. He hadn't brought it up again and once he left to fight in the war that had finally shattered his country did the sightings stop.

But he still dreamed in blue and started keeping a candle lit at night so when he opened his eyes he could see and watch the glorious red blood slowly trickle down his arm.

sSs

Disclaimer: Avatar the Last Airbender is property of Nickelodeon and its creators. I just play in their world.