A/N:...Things keep rolling along.
And who's to say that I can't do multiple endings? *hint hint nudge nudge wink wink*
A long, brightly lit hallway stretched into the distance, the sides plastered with intricate portraits of Firelords past...and the one very recently deposed.
Aang's nimble footsteps were easily muffled by the plush carpeting as he wandered towards a arched doorway draped in crimson curtains. He gently parted them to emerge atop the pavilion overlooking the throne room, the enormous map in the middle flanked by a circle of pillows still indented by recent occupancy.
During the Day of Black Sun, he had entered the Firelord's throne room, where the scent of ash had hung thick in the air despite the lack of flames. At that time it had been shrouded in darkness and he hadn't been able to firebend a light. Now however, it was lit by rows of oil lamps attached to the columns dotting the room.
He shivered slightly at the sensation of fear and anger unfolding within him when he realized that this was the place where the diabolical conquest of the world had been planned for over a hundred years, but despite all he had seen and experienced in his long struggle against the Fire Nation, he still had a sense of curiosity about the Fire Nation's side of the war that would not be denied. Aang trusted Zuko not to intentionally hide anything important from him, but he was nevertheless curious to see what secrets the room held before Zuko could destroy them all in his quest to begin anew.
The table in the center of the room didn't tell much. A complex web of lines and pictographs dotted the map, mostly on the Fire Nation's considerable conquests in the Earth Kingdom. Miniscule red and green symbols faced each other across the papery expanse, each one representing hundred or thousands of soldiers in the real world. The things that drew Aang's attention the most, however, were the miniature airship replicas placed above the western coast of the Earth Kingdom.
His memory drifted back to the memory of yesterday's titanic battle with the Firelord. Until he had entered the war room, it had been too fresh, too raw, for him to reflect on, but now that he was here, in the innermost sanctum of the Fire Nation's war machine, he did begin to feel a new sensation arise.
Pride.
It wasn't completely foreign to him. Despite the humility that had been ingrained throughout his life, he did occasionally allow himself to feel proud of his accomplishments - and never more so than now.
He knew, however, that his pride was misplaced, and he stepped back guiltily from the table, walking past the towering columns towards the side of the room.
There's nothing to be proud of. This is just the first step in fixing my mistakes.
His friends had long reassured him that the war was not his fault, and that he should not bear the burden of fixing everything, but they didn't - no, couldn't - understand how he felt. Even though his mind had long accepted that he wouldn't have been able to stop the war when it first broke out, his heart told him that the least he could do would be to pick up all the pieces. The place of the Avatar was to bring balance to the world, and that healing would start here, in the Fire Nation.
Aang looked up absentmindedly at the bold characters above the doorway in front of him. Map Archival Room. He paused and tilted his head thoughtfully. This must be where the old maps are stored. Both curious and apprehensive, he stepped into the dank room and came face-to-face with a crisp, framed map with the same basic format as the one he had just seen. This one, however, was titled with a distinctive golden nameplate: Conquest of the Air Nomads.
He gasped and ripped the frame off the wall. With a single glance he knew that it couldn't be the original, as it looked to be in better shape than the one in the war room itself. However, he had never known anything about the actual conquest of the Air Nomads besides the tidbits he had heard from Zuko on his travels and the one-day propaganda lesson in the Fire Nation school.
Aang pried open the sturdy frame and withdrew the unblemished paper within to get a closer look. This map was eerily reminiscent of the ones he had studied under Monk Gyatso, where the Fire Nation was still restricted to its home islands, the Earth Kingdom still controlled its western coast, the Southern Water Tribe was still a patchwork of closely associated villages, and where the Air Nomads...
His thoughts trailed off at the painful memory of his people, but he forced himself to re-examine the map to make sense of it. The locations of the four known Air Nomad temples were blotted over with neatly drawn flames. However, when he looked closer, he noticed the smaller red dots spread over the map's various mountain ranges, some of which he knew were seasonal retreats, trading posts or grazing spots for Air Bison... and many of which he had visited what seemed to only be a year or two ago with his Air Nomad friends or just with Gyatso.
His face contorted with pain as if he was re-experiencing the loss of his people.
But with pain came clarity, and it was then that he truly believed the Air Nomads were gone. Despite the outwards acceptance that he had long conveyed to his friends, he had always secretly harbored a tiny hope that one of the many enclaves of his culture, his people, had survived the genocide on the day of Sozin's comet, perhaps in the mountains that he had thought until now were inaccessible to the Fire Nation.
There was no hope anymore.
It was blatantly clear from the map that Sozin had very meticulously planned out his strike on the day of his namesake comet to completely wipe out the Air Nomads. Aang knew that even if Air Nomads had escaped, the Air Nomad culture was completely annihilated and would never return as it once was. There likely werea handful of Airbending descendants scattered throughout the world, but that was meager consolation.
The Air Nomad culture, their way of life, their entire civilization, had been burnt to ashes a century ago and were now, ironically, long scattered by the wind.
He unceremoniously dropped everything in his hand onto the grimy ground, leaning against the wall for support as tears silently trailed down his face.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter. I don't want to rush to the conclusion of this just yet, but it is coming.
Merli: You're obviously a seasoned reader to be able to decipher stories like these so easily. Just don't spoil the ending for anyone else! just kidding...I enjoy having readers like you critique my work.
Kimberly T: That's certainly a possible scenario...
ByTheWayYou'reHair'sOnFire: Thanks, I definitely will!