After the Fall
-: An Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction :-
They had been so close to victory, then it had all fallen apart piece by piece, like a Pai Sho strategy gone wrong.
They had planned every single detail, covered all the possible angles and examined each and every eventuality. They had formulated plans based on as much information as they could gather, divided up tasks and assigned them to people only after they were sure they could be relied upon and devised ways to get the injured to safety even in the midst of battle - but in all of this they had neglected one vital fact.
There are no guarantees of success and every battle must have a losing as well as a winning side, otherwise there is no balance - ying and yang, good and evil, right and wrong = all opposing yet harmonious concepts which the world cannot exist without.
When he was on the other side, he believed it was the winning side, he wondered why they believed their cause was just. It wasn't until he had turned his back on a life where he had been brought up to believe in lies that he realised he was wrong.
Now he can see the truth, but in the end believing in their cause wasn't enough to save them - why should it have been? He is just one person and not the Avatar - and when they realise this, so many have died already.
They know they have lost.
The Fire Nation burn the bodies of the dead, displeased with the way their enemies are given a funeral that was only ever used for their own nation, but believing that without a grave - or even just the knowledge that there is one - their captives cannot grieve in the way to which they have been raised to do and that this will cut them even deeper than being the one who survived.
It does.
But he is of the Fire Nation, though banished and despised by all but those who joined him on his new path. He remembers the names of the fallen and chants them each night in a now-daily ritual, hoping that this will do something to lift them from the darkness into which the survivors have fallen.
Hakoda. Chief of the Southern Water Tribe. A brave warrior and loving father.
Suki. Kyoshi warrior. A skilled fighter and charming young lady.
Mai. Calm yet passionate. A promising potential fire-lady.
Ty-Lee. Cheerful and energetic. Astounding to see in action.
King Bumi. Mad yet wise. Old yet young.
Katara. Daughter of Hakoka. Graceful yet headstrong, with a talent that never saw its true potential realised.
He has always thought himself strong, but now he cries for them and so many more and though he tries to do so silently, his companion in the cell can still sense it and offers comfort the only way she can, by sitting beside him and resting her head against his chest so that she can feel his heartbeat.
Somehow, it helps.
One hundred years ago, the avatar disappeared.
He knows the story well.
After all, history is written by the winners.
His nation had been able to set the plans of Fire Lord Sozin into motion, destroying the air nomads to ensure that the avatar would never be able to rise against them, then heading for the Earth kingdom and the water tribes to crush the strongholds of likely resistance and many battles had been won in those early days, before the other nations had realised that this was no idle threat.
When the avatar had reappeared after so long, he had felt like celebrating. Yes, they were still fighting for complete control of the Earth Kingdom, Ba Sing Sei had not yet fallen and he was banished along with the only member of his family who would tolerate him, but the Avatar was a child, a twelve year-old boy who had only mastered his own element - what could there be that could possibly stand in their way?
That had been a mistake. Aang had proven to be more trouble than they had thought and after seeing this in their first battle he had tried to prepare for it, frustrated as every encounter between them had ended in failure or at best a bittersweet success.
It should have been his first clue, but he ignored it. As the seasons had passed, things changed even further, but still he resisted them, even when they were forced on him. How could he have done? They were so unlikely as to have been conceived by only the most inept of fortune-tellers - being branded as a traitor, living within the city that had never yielded to the assaults of a former general and prince of the fire nation, and finally joining with the avatar to try and bring about the complete opposite of what he had once fought for and believed in so strongly.
It had been a humbling lesson.
It should have been the last.
He doesn't know whether or not there could be different worlds, that there could be one just like this but different, though it is something he has thought about many times.
Could there be a world where the final battle was won by the Avatar and not the Fire Lord? Where Sokka, Suki and Toph succeeded in taking control of the air ship armada and prevented the incineration of the earth kingdom instead of being captured or falling to their death? Where the Order of the White Lotus had succeeded in liberating Ba Sing Se instead of being overwhelmed by the advanced weaponry unwillingly designed by the Mechanist. Where Azula is defeated and chained by Katara instead of laughing as she stood over her lifeless body.
He dreams of all these possibilities, but there is no way to change what has been done.
All they can do now is survive.
It is hard. He and many others have been captured and imprisoned in the Boiling Rock. The earth kingdom is ruled under Fire Lady Azula, who revels in her new position by choosing a different town each week to burn to the ground as her father, calling himself the Phoenix King, rules a world unified not by peace but chaos. The air temples which had lain in ruins since the destruction of the air nomads have been torn apart completely, and the Water Tribes are now surrounded by Fire Nation fortresses.
The Water Tribes should have been warned to evacuate by the combined efforts of Momo and Appa, sent with messages he tied to their legs when it became obvious that the battle was being lost, but he cannot know for sure.
If they have, then there is hope - it is slim and comes from tragedy, but it is the only hope they have left.
The avatar is dead, but the triumph of the Phoenix King will be his undoing.
Had he simply imprisoned Aang they would not have had this plan to fall back upon for the avatar, the last airbender, would have been kept in a prison a thousand times more secure than the Boiling Rock, fed just enough to be kept alive but not enough to give him the energy to use the elements he had mastered so quickly and subdued or killed the moment he entered the avatar state.
If that had happened, there would be nothing they could do.
Aang, however, was killed in battle before unlocking the seventh and final chakra and that fact is what their plan now hinges on - had he succeeded and been killed in the avatar state then the cycle would have been broken, but because that didn't happen a small, thin thread of hope remains.
It is a bittersweet miracle.
Aang is dead, but this means that the next avatar is alive.
Somewhere in the Northern or Southern Water Tribe, a child has been born into a world that he or she has no idea they must be the saviour for, just as the avatar before them was meant to be, but this time, the avatar must not fail.
They must escape the Boiling Rock and find him or her.
Before the Fire Nation does.
It is all he can hope for.
Authors note: This will probably be left as a one-shot but could be expanded into an actual series. It's left up to the viewer to decide who is speaking.
Disclaimer: Avatar and all characters are (c) Michael DiMartino & Bryan Konietzko/Nickelodeon.