Title: and the Avatar is...
Summary: AU. Aang dies sooner. A scarred farm boy of sufficiently mixed heritage is the next Avatar. He rejects it as much as his predecessor.
A/N: Flipside of Equalist!Korra AU idea floating around. I love Korra as the Avatar and Aang's successor, I really do. But, y'know, just in response to all the Equalist!Korra fic, and I just can't ignore this plotbunny any longer. And Amon is my favorite LoK character. Beta'ed by overlithe.
part 1
So young, for Avatar Aang to be...
His death was a shock to many.
###
The drought had persisted for five years, as long as Amon had been born. The boy watched his older siblings (three sisters, two brothers) and parents determinedly continue on. They let him help with some things, but not much, being the youngest. They promised he could do more when he was older. Amon would remind them he wouldn't be the youngest for long, a comment he'd make whenever Mama let him feel the kicks of his new little sister or brother inside her tummy.
The boy carried a smaller bucket of water alongside one of his sisters (Bastet, fifteen, always on the search for seal jerky when her turn to go marketing) when Mr. Ieyasu met with Baba and Mama again for his fee. When Amon had first asked about the money exchanged, Bastet had told him before it was for Mr. Ieyasu's protection. Chenzira had snorted and muttered, "yeah, from Mr. Ieyasu." (Chenzira was twelve now, liked playing card tricks when not working). Bastet had shushed him, but Chenzira did not like Mr. Ieyasu. Devasha (thirteen, she tried to take in stray animals every other week) shared in Chenzira's dislike; the seventeen-year-old twins Giza (he was already planning to marry the baker's daughter) and Isis (who told Amon stories about Republic City, swearing she'd go there someday and get on the radio) mostly ignored Mr. Ieyasu, though both still watched him warily.
Amon thought he rather agreed with Devasha and Chenzira, as raised voices began to drift from the house where Mr. Ieyasu had entered with his parents...
"Amon!" Bastet shouted as the water in his bucket leapt up and drenched them both. Fortunately Bastet kept her bucket upright, if overspilling a little now, having taken in the addition of some of Amon's water.
"Dum dum, you spilled—!"
"Bast, I did not—!"
"What do you call this?"
And Bastet swept her arm out, taking in their drenched bodies and the wet ground already starting to muddy slightly.
His sister cursed. She then reached out with her free hand. "Give me your bucket, I'm going back to the well."
"I—I'll take the other bucket back home—"
Amon tried, and flinched when Bastet snarled.
"I'll do it myself. Just—just go back inside and get dry."
"But—"
"Amon!"
The boy quickly gave his sister the empty bucket and ran inside the house, narrowly avoiding a collision with Mr. Ieyasu's departing figure.
"You're soaking wet," Mama dully pointed out, hands on her swelling tummy. Her body jerked as she coughed.
"Bast and I went to the well and I dropped the water," Amon said, and his stomach twisted uncomfortably. He'd been told that lying was bad, and that felt like a lie. He hadn't dropped the water, the water had just...he wasn't sure what the water did, but it wasn't his fault...
"Where's your sister now?" Baba asked just as dully as he thunked a bottle of milk down, serving Mama.
"Getting more water."
"Had you spilled all of it?"
Amon flinched, but said, "N-no, she still had her bucket—"
"Why didn't you bring it in while she went off for the well again?"
"Dear, there's no need to interrogate him—"
The boy raised his voice over Mama's, answering Baba, "I tried, but Bast wouldn't let me." He looked down, shuffling his feet. He didn't want to blame his sister, that wouldn't be fair. He explained, "She thought I was just gonna drop it again. Said I should just go inside and get dry."
Baba sighed heavily, sprinkling Mama's medicine into the milk before passing it to her.
"Come back out and clean up this mess when you're done."
Amon nodded with a quick "yessir," then dashed off.
###
Chenzira muttered low in Amon's ear that Mr. Ieyasu stank of drink before dashing inside, shouting at Devasha to shut up, he was coming.
Mr. Ieyasu was talking with Baba just outside the main house, but Amon stayed, though usually the grown-ups liked being alone. Amon would just be quiet and ignore them, he needed more grass to make a toy for the baby, for when it finally came out of Mama's tummy. He looked forward to playing with the baby, no matter how much Chenzira teased about it getting all the attention when it was born (and Giza constantly telling him to shut up).
The boy tried to tune out the grown-ups' conversation, and they were trying to be quiet, but he still caught snatches of it: Baba was telling Mr. Ieyasu how Mama had got sick, the baby...neither of them were getting enough food, they couldn't afford to pay right now...couldn't they get just an extension?...
Amon looked up at a sudden light ahead.
###
A distance away the farm's well trembled and shook as the water uselessly rolled around inside. The current made the stone crack. Finally the waves died down, leveling out and endlessly drifting.
Eventually the smoke drifted over the well.
###
Amon had laid in the healer's hut for days. When the pain was less he finally woke up. And when he was less groggy from the medicine, the boy had to be constantly reminded not to scratch and pick at the bandages on his face. He wasn't even sure if his face was still there. The healer's assistants whispered that he remained in shock. Amon watched and waited for his family to come. He couldn't talk, but he could write on parchment, asking for his brothers and sisters and parents. When Amon pretended to sleep, he saw the healer throw his message away.
He finally made a noise, screaming for them to come, Bastet Devasha Isis Giza Chenzira Mama Baba come come get me when there was a horrible constant beating against the roof of the hut above him, monsters had come in the night to smash him—
Only the healer had come, trying to soothe him, tell him it was just the rain. "Finally the rain, not a drizzle..." She could not keep the awe and relief from her voice. The drought was over.
So was Amon's belief that his family would come.
###
Amon moved on from bandages to cloth wrapped around his face (he had screamed at a mirror's reflection, thinking it a monster that Mama and Baba said didn't really live in the dark). The boy learned to breathe as comfortably as he could through fabric, through obstruction.
###
For a time Amon was passed from neighbor-slash-stranger's home to home, until finally the last one was too unbearable for him to stomach and he ran off, starting to fend for himself at seven years old. He gave himself a very specific goal, to go to Republic City, like his oldest sister Isis had wanted to. She'd told him the streets were paved with jade there. The boy had no idea what jade looked like, but thought he would know when he made it to Republic City.
When the boy finally made it, he dimly listened to the ship's other passengers tell stories about how the statue's subject stopped a volcano in its tracks once, when he was just a boy; Amon just observed Avatar Aang carved in stone with silent awe.
###
Amon was fourteen when he snapped. It hadn't been the first gang turf war he'd seen or was caught up in within the city—maybe that was the problem, the last straw to break one's back. But unfocused icicles speared bystanders and bent earth rammed them and the fire...the fire...the gang turf war had just spilled over again and...and...oh spirits, the fire
The adolescent's head split open as the wind roared in his ears and the earth rumbled and the water snapped and the fire crackled the fire fire fire and all around him was white and faces so many faces one that almost melted into the white but there was red and black it was like a mask and ones with beards like his father's but not and faces with blue arrows and
A large hand grabbed him and pulled him up.
Amon struggled madly, terrified by the stranger's touch.
"Hush, it'll be all right," said a very kind if sad voice as the hands settled him onto very soft fur. Amon startled at the rumbling roar beneath him, and climbed down to pull back a layer of fur and stare into very large brown eyes. The creature blew into his face, and Amon almost fell. The hands came forward again and brought him back up, gently. Amon stared at those hands—blue arrows on them. He looked up into a man's face, a matching blue arrow set above his kind-sad eyes, gray eyes, gray gray gray, gray stone—
"Avatar Aang?"
"Yes?"
"What—where am I—?"
"A space only accessed by the Avatar—we call it the Avatar State."
Amon stared at the famous war hero.
"No—"
"Yes—" Aang frowned as Amon began to fall away, and would not help him up again no matter how much the adolescent scrambled at his robes. "I'm sorry, we'll have to speak later."
"No, I don't want—"
"I know, neither did I—"
"No, you don't understand, I'm not—I can't—"
But Amon fell and slammed back down into
screaming screaming everywhere Amon lay on broken earth, water seeping into the cracks, people screaming as they clawed and beat at ice that encased horrified faces, fires roaring high and dark smoke cloaking all, buildings either toppled or half broken or caved in bodies everywhere everywhere screaming screaming screaming
Crouched in the destruction, the adolescent tried to tell himself it was just the gang turf war, just that, he'd just hallucinated from the trauma, it—wasn't him, it couldn't have been—but it looked like all the gang members were dead—no, they surely just killed each other off—
But the survivors looked at Amon with fear.
He struggled up. From his new vantage point he caught sight of the burnt bodies and the burnt people crying, screaming, others shaking the burnt bodies, begging them to wake up—
His vision swayed and Amon fell into the dark. He prayed he would not wake up.
A/N: Amon's siblings names are a mix of Egyptian and Hebrew, given that "Amon" can have an Egyptian and a Hebrew meaning. Hebrew names from the ' ' website and Egyptian names from 'mybirthcare' website.