On Freedom

The datapad left a dent in the metal wall.

Jet slumped against the wall of his bunk, staring at the now-broken gadget on the other side of the room. Veniton's, she had said, would explain everything. Veniton's disease. The definition burned itself in his eyelids, and every time he closed his eyes, he read it over again: a degenerative, incurable genetic disorder.

With treatment, the patient may live as many as ten years after initial symptoms.

Mai was dying.

And instead of facing it, instead of spending what time she had left with people who cared about her, she was leaving - he'd never pegged Mai for a coward, but goddamn it, she owed them more than that! Ten years - nine, now that he thought about it, since she'd probably been diagnosed on Sihnon and pulled this same bullshit on her friends, on Katara, there - was all she had left, and she'd rather spend them whoring than -

He took a deep breath, running both of his hands through his hair. He was being unfair, he knew it, but he just - she couldn't -

With a snarl, he slammed his fist against the wall several times and leaned his forehead against it. He knew why he was so angry; it was the same reason he'd gotten mad at Toph when she'd gotten impaled by that Reaver javelin. If he got angry, he didn't have to be scared.

And he knew why he was scared.

He'd been afraid when it had been Bee laid up on his Infirmary bed, when it had been Toph, even when it had been Suki and Ty Lee - but he'd never been this kind of scared. Then, he was afraid that they might die and he'd lose one of his own. Now, he was afraid that she might die and he would never have his chance. The bunk swirled in his vision, and the dent blurred into the calendar hanging over his desk, blurred into the old hooked swords that had been in his family forever, blurred into the green tapestry he had near the corner. Mai was dying, and she was leaving, and that was it.

But she owed him more than that, didn't she?

There was a knock at his bunk door, above him, and he glared at the ladder. He took a deep breath to calm the rage that still shook his body (and the fear threatening to overwhelm it). "What?" he snapped, and Pipsqueak's voice floated down to him.

"Uh, is there a reason you tried to punch out your wall?" he asked.

"Go away," he snarled, and it came out angrier than he intended it. He ran a hand over his face - it came back wet.

Jet leaned heavily against his wall and pretended that this all didn't hurt.

At the Fire Nation Palace

Katara stood watch while Toph tinkered with the lock and finally, with a low exclamation of niúchā!, opened the door, and the two of them slipped in. It had been far too dangerous for all of the team - even as reduced as they were - to risk coming in, so Katara had gone, as the member of the palace team with the most at stake, with Toph, who would be needed to break the locks and ensure that no one was going to interrupt them.

"All right," Katara muttered, walking through the short hallway into the round room. It was set up so that the record would come up in the center, on a small platform specially built for this purpose - around the room were all sorts of mechanical bits and pieces meant to facilitate the hologram technology, and opposite the entrance was the computer used to access the records. She walked over to it and brought the list of records up, using Zuko's passcode to get into the system, and then began scrolling through them.

There were millions - Jet had said that Yue hadn't given him much information beyond the passcode, which meant that she had to try everything that was labeled high security. It narrowed her search down quite a bit, but there were still too many to choose from. She growled, and tried a record at random - but when it let her through without requiring another passcode, she knew she had the wrong one.

An image of a girl in a chair came up in the platform, on top of Toph, who cried out and leaped out of the way. "Sorry," Katara said. "That's not it."

"Some of our best work is done while they're asleep," a man on the record said, and Katara ran a hand through her hair. It didn't help that all of the labels were horribly cryptic, things like ACADTAM and BLUESUN17, which surely meant something to someone, but were lost on her.

"What the hell are they doing to this chick?" Toph asked, tilting her head. Katara glanced behind her, and then shrugged.

"I don't know," she replied, "probably something awful."

"Sounds awful," Toph muttered. "You hear her screaming?"

No, she wanted to sneer, I don't hear the teenager shrieking in pain and fear behind me, but she bit it back. They were on a mission here, and she had to focus - if they were caught here, the whole plan went up in smoke. She began thumbing through records one by one, going onto the next one as soon as one would start; the one she was looking for would stop her.

Finally, it did: MIRANDA, the label read, and it came up with a request for a passcode as soon as she hit it. "Toph," she said. "I found it. Give me the code." Toph handed over the scrap of paper Jet had scribbled Yue's code on, and she punched it in: G-2-3-P-X-1-1-7-8-4-M. The record playing behind her vanished, and she turned - it was replaced by a lone woman, standing, with terror all over her features.

The picture was frozen at the start, and a tinny voice said, "Message from Dr. Ariana Caron, Alliance Outpost 7437, planet Miranda. Message reads." She stared at the picture, confused, for a moment - where was Miranda?

"Toph, have you..." she started, but then the message began.

The woman brought up a series of pictures - all of people, clearly dead, laying in various states of decay around an empty city. "These are just a few of the images we've recorded," she started, "and you can see, it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here, and no terraforming event. The environment is stable." She swallowed hard and continued, voice strained. "It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression," she explained, and then took a ragged, deep breath. "Well, it works," she choked. "The people here stopped fighting, and then they stopped... everything else."

Katara stared hard at the pictures on the screen in front of the woman, and felt like she was about to be sick.

"They stopped going to work," the doctor continued, "they stopped breeding, talking... eating," she said, voice stretched thin. "There's thirty million people here, and they all just let themselves die." There was a roar from beyond the message, and the woman turned to it, and then back to the screen, desperation and terror on her face. "I have to be quick!" she cried. "About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased... beyond madness. They have become..." she said, and then choked back a sob. "Well, they've killed most of us. And not just killed, they've... done things," she whimpered, and Katara stepped backwards, hand clamped over her mouth. "I won't live to report this," the doctor said, crying outright, "but people have to know. We meant it for the best, to make people safer." Just then, in the direction the roar had come from, something burst through, and the doctor turned, raising a gun and firing several times. "Oh, God," she cried, and then held the gun up to her own head - but something attacked her before she could kill herself, knocking her to the floor, screaming.

Katara reached over and stopped the recording then, the doctor's death screams still ringing in her ears.

"Reavers," Toph breathed, and Katara turned to her - she was crying, although she didn't seem entirely aware of it. "The Alliance - they - they made them."

And then they covered it up so that no one would know, lied about the existence of all of it - thrown away thirty million lives! - and now they were going to do it again, to St. Albans. To the last major Independent force in the 'Verse. To her home. "Toph," Katara croaked, her shock and horror slowly being taken over by righteous fury. "Help me copy this."

On Freedom

Neither Toph nor Katara had been very forthcoming about what was on the record they'd stolen from the palace. Katara had looked at him with strangely haunted eyes, handed over the chip with the recording, and then she'd disappeared. When he followed her back to her shuttle, he'd found that the door was locked, but he could hear the sounds of someone being sick within.

Sokka, with an ominous feeling he'd never experienced before, took the chip back to the bridge, where everyone was waiting, and put it in to play.

Toph was touching the engine reverently. She'd made sure that it was in as perfect shape as it could possibly be - Jet could probably keep her running in generally good repair, but if something went wrong, they'd be screwed over, so it was up to her to make sure that nothing was going to go wrong from the engine room. Problem was, she'd done all of that before going into the palace with Katara, so now she didn't have anything to do. She didn't care - she just had to do something, anything to focus on something other than the memory of that doctor's voice, ringing in her ear.

There's thirty million people here and they all just let themselves die.

She felt Haru coming in, felt his heart pounding and the shaking in his whole body - everyone's hearts and bodies were doing the same thing, all over the ship. She didn't wait for him to reach her; she went out and caught him by the arm as she passed by, then went to the dining room where Jet was pouring shots of whiskey for the crew.

"How long has this been buried?" Jet asked, when he handed her a shot glass. She knocked it back, and then shook her head.

"I have no idea," she replied, and felt Zuko sink into a seat, holding out his shot glass for a second already.

"I - " he breathed, "I never..."

"No one did," Jet said coldly. "Alliance covered it up. Diana said not even Azula's passcode could get to this, there's no wonder you didn't know."

"You don't," Zuko choked, "you don't understand. I supported the Alliance. I thought - I thought it was the right thing," he said faintly.

"And when you're in charge," Toph told him sharply, "it really will be the right thing."

She felt him shift. "You believe in me?" he asked, and Toph nodded, knocking back her second shot and deciding not to go for a third - she wasn't sure when they'd have to move in to get Aang. Phase Three of the plan involved meeting up with Diana, but they had to wait for everyone to digest the information they'd just heard - and for Katara to finish being sick all over her shuttle. Still, time was running against them. It would take most of a day, going hard burn, to reach St. Albans, and if Azula had already given the order...

On second thought, she mused, a third shot would really do wonders for her.

"Take it easy, Tophlet," Jet said, stilling her hand as she reached for the whiskey bottle. "You need a clear head."

She turned away, and swallowed hard. "When do you leave?" she asked, and Jet shifted slightly.

"As soon as the palace team is ready to get off. We need to beat that stuff to the planet."

Privately, Toph thought that it was already too late. Azula didn't seem like the kind of person to wait on something like this. Instead, she nodded. "I'll gather up the rest of the palace team."

They weren't hard to find - except Katara, they were all sitting, still and shaky, outside of the Infirmary. Suki, she noted, was holding Sokka tightly, murmuring that they were going to fix this, that it would be all right - she felt horribly like she was intruding upon something sacred, but if anyone could swallow her lingering horror and whip them into shape, it was Toph.

"C'mon," she snapped. "We're moving out now. I don't know about the rest of you, but I wanna get on with this."

"Yes," Sokka said, voice surprisingly strong in spite of the terrified flutter of his heart. He stood up, still holding Suki's hand with what was certainly a vice grip, and took a deep breath. "We have to - it's time."

She nodded, and together, they all went to the cargo bay - Katara finally left her shuttle, and Toph caught the powerful scent of perfume on her that didn't quite cover up the smell of vomit, but no one commented on it. They all understood.

At the door, Jet stood, watching them gather, and waited for everyone to form into a semi-circle in front of him before he spoke. "All right," he said gravely. "Now we know. Palace team, this is your port. There won't be anything we can do for you once you get off, so check one last time, make sure you've got everything you need. St. Albans team... we're going full-burn the whole way. We stocked up on fuel so we'll have enough to get us there, should take us about a day. Hopefully, by that time, the Palace team will have us a new Fire Lord on the throne who can send help. If not... We'll do what we can."

"And what is that?" someone asked, and it took Toph a second to realize it had been her. She felt Jet turn.

"Anything," Jet replied firmly.

"All right," Katara said, swallowing hard and wishing she had more water to wash the taste from her mouth, "it's time." She looked around - the palace team was gathered at the now-open cargo bay. No one felt like leaving; it felt too permanent. She glanced at Zuko, to see him watching her with something akin to sorrow, and she reached out and took his hand - if only for a moment, she wanted to forget the distance between them. He clutched her hand tightly, like he didn't want to let go.

Toph stepped forward, making for the street, and they all followed her lead. Small as she was, she was the strongest of all of them, Katara thought - strong enough to take this horror and turn it into something useful, strong enough to fight for the Avatar even though she had everything to gain by giving up the fight and going back to Pelorum, strong enough now to lead the way when they all just wanted to hide.

At the street, though, Toph paused, and took a deep breath, then whirled around and bolted back on the freedom and - it almost made her smile - grabbed the doctor by the shirt and planted a hard kiss right on his mouth. Ty Lee, in what might have been an attempt to lighten the mood, wolf-whistled at them.

Toph didn't laugh. When she pulled away, she glared fiercely at Haru and said, "You come back."

"We will," he replied, hand lingering on her cheek, and then Toph nodded sharply and joined them on the street. Freedom's doors closed behind them and the ship that had been home for two and a half months lifted off into the air.

They all stood and watched until she disappeared into the blue.