Hi,
This is my first fic and my first time writing anything for fun. I had some problems with flashbacks and thoughts and what tenses to use, but I finally decided I should stop messing with it. Any feedback is appreciated!
I always wished we got to see what Aang was thinking between "The Ember Island Players" and the finale. I felt like the idea of death wasn't really explored as heavily as it could have been, probably because it's a nick show. The kid's got a lot on his shoulders. Even so, it ended up being a lot more edgy and angsty towards the end than I had hoped. I wanted to emphasize how it must have felt when no one, not even Katara, seemed to grasp how much Aang's duty was wearing on him. Anyways, enjoy! I hope to write some nice fluffy kataang soon to lighten up the mood!
He sat there in silence.
Although his eyes were closed, he could feel the sun's last few moments on his skin before it dipped below the horizon. He had been trying to meditate for hours now. What was supposed to be a tranquil emptying of his mind only served as an echo chamber for invasive thoughts. Aang forced his head to stop, a silence he knew was temporary. Hoping it would all go away, he concentrated intently on holding that barrier in place, only for a small nip of the sea breeze to open the flood gates once again.
He lurched forward, breathing heavily while bracing himself against the floor. Little beads of sweat gave into gravity as they leapt from his forehead to the ground below.
It wasn't working.
He tried to stave off the urge to panic. He wanted desperately to talk to someone, he wanted to run straight to Katara and pour out his mangled thoughts and fears. He wanted her to hug him and tell him that everything was going to be alright. To anchor him to the ground and help him calm the typhoon in his head before it drove him to insanity.
But he knew that wasn't an option.
The memory of the night before on the theater balcony came flooding back with clarity. Egged on by the provocative words of the play, he had pinned her with the question that had been kneading on him since they kissed on the day of black sun. She gave many different answers, the clearest being that she was too confused to think about a relationship. He was annoyed, and unsure, and angry and hurt all at the same time.
Why couldn't she see that this may be their last chance? Their destinies were upon them and the possibility of death thickened every day!
It seemed like with each passing day he had to give up more because of this stupid war. Failure, guilt, and fear loomed over his head. He was scared. He was scared for his friends, but deep down, in the primordial part of himself where instincts reign, an alarm dedicated to self-preservation remained switched on. It filled his whole self with a sense of urgency, a 'do or die' rush that was screaming at him. It manifested at the surface as a deep sense of longing. A sense of longing that he ignored for months despite it remaining at the back of his thoughts like a dull ache.
Maybe that was just an excuse. Maybe she doesn't feel the same way I feel about her. Maybe I had imagined everything between us, and she really just saw me as a brother.
He longed for someone to understand him, to see him how he saw them, someone to balance him. He wanted what everyone else in the world wanted; love. But unlike everyone else in the world, a battle loomed over his head. A battle with his own mortality at stake. A battle that he very likely might not emerge from alive.
Why wouldn't she just tell me then! Why would she leave me hanging, grasping at what's just out of reach until it's too late! If she did feel something, wouldn't she want to experience it before they face the very real possibility of dying?
He looked at the beautiful waterbender standing in front of him. His resolve cracked and in an act of desperation, he kissed her. The soft pressure of her lips was fleeting, and he opened his eyes to see the look of betrayal and anger in hers. She ran back inside and he was left with nothing but his own idiotic actions to contemplate. They were already distant after the invasion, but this was the final blow. The seemingly unbreakable bond they shared was now strained and rotten with awkwardness and misunderstanding and…. confusion.
As the storm raged on inside his mind, the memory of that night at the theater was stationary. It served as a dull and constant reminder of what he lost.
And yet amidst the typhoon of broken thoughts and emotion there was another threat that loomed menacingly over his conscience.
Earlier that day he learned of Ozai's plans to burn the earth kingdom to the ground using the power granted by Sozin's comet. The comet that arrived in 4 days.
3 days now.
The edges of his vision darkened as he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders double.
They had no plan, no army, no eclipse and a deadline that was already a quarter over.
There was more.
Everyone expected him to kill Ozai.
This war had slowly ground him down until there was nearly nothing left. His entire world, everything he knew, everyone he knew was gone. In the blink of an eye, a massive genocide of his race left him as the sole remaining air nomad; a relic of a time long gone. He was alone. He carried with him the remnants of his lost world. The largest testimony to the culture of the air nomads was himself. On his back he carried their beliefs, expectations, hopes and memories. He was their only representative.
And now he had to give that up. He had to betray the most integral part of air nomad beliefs. He had to take another's life.
Thinking about it now was like skating on a thin sheet of ice, only to go too far and fall into the depths below. The longer he thought about it, the deeper he tumbled, accompanied by a dread that thickened as he fell.
Life was the center of air nomad philosophy, the very essence that binds us all to the world. To extinguish life was to sever another's connection to the world and cast them into obscurity.
But this went deeper. Aang had experienced his own mortality. Aang had felt life. He saw his own life drift from his body as time seemed to disappear. He experienced the separation of conscious and unconscious thought, and the disintegration of the thin barrier that both surrounds and divides them. As the barrier broke he felt himself sink and float. There was no light, no heat, no sound and no smell. He simply experienced. From seemingly everywhere, even within himself, total nothingness began to envelope him. He didn't feel fear, he didn't feel anything. He just experienced as he ceased to exist. Until suddenly he felt something. He was instantly moving at impossible speed as his senses returned with a vengeance. Screaming winds assaulted his ears while he watched himself breach the surface of the water. He felt foreign hands on his shoulders. He smelled sea salt and strawberries as he noticed thick, dark locks of hair around his face. Immense pressure surrounded him and he took physical form once again. Raw input stormed his brain as he tried to make sense of it. The fog lifted and he realized his eyes were open, staring into the blue eyes of the girl who ripped him back from the abyss. And then there was nothing. With a shooting pain unlike everything he had ever felt, he realized his eyes were closed once again. When he awoke, he was aboard a ship.
The memory of his own death haunted him.
Reliving it was not a jarring experience. It was more like a slow suffocation. He knew what was happening, but he could do nothing as he seemed to exhale twice as much as he inhaled when he tried to breathe.
How could he do that to someone? How could he put another human through that?
None of it seemed right. None of it seemed fair.
And with that, it all went downhill. His mental fortitude was no match for the torrent of brooding, selfish thoughts he usually deemed too depreciating to be any good.
Why me? It's not fair. I already lost everything! How am I solely responsible for everyone's well-being?! How come no one stopped the fire nation before it was too late? Entire kingdoms stood by idly while the fire nation wiped out an entire race! They should have worked together to put a stop to fire nation aggression before it had the entire world in a choke hold!
…
I DIDN'T MEAN TO ABANDON THE WORLD! I WAS SCARED! I WAS ALONE!
I SHOULD HAVE DROWNED IN THAT STORM INSTEAD OF SAVING MYSELF AND DELAYING THE AVATAR CYCLE!
…
But I didn't. I lived. And now I'm here. Alone.
But I have friends! Right?
Friends that would risk their lives for me!
No. Friends that would risk their lives for the Avatar.
Friends that would give up Aang if it meant the war would end.
Friends that didn't care what emerged from the rubble, as long as Ozai didn't.
Friends that can all see the bigger picture.
I'm the Avatar.
I'm a tool, a means to end the war.
I'm the Avatar, and after this battle I will be nothing more.
And with that, he succumbed to the drowsiness that had plagued him for hours.
His only dreams were of a moving island that seemed to call to him.