Kya's Legend

AN: Host is what I assume is the group name for spiritual beings (host of angels, etc). When I use the word, it is not in a formal or parasitic context. Just so you know.

AN2: This is called Kya's Legend because I wrote this for her, to go as a prelude to her little future-tense ficlet. This is, in essence, the setup of one of the minor circumstances of her design. (And a little fun fact for you, known perhaps by those who saw the pre-first-season pilot, Katara's name was initially supposed to be Kya pronounced, as Kya's is, KAI-YAH but was later changed, probably to sound more Inuit.) So this is dedicated to her, for she is my muse.

In future generations, elders would tell the tale of the Brave Ones, who shattered the foundations of the rebellious Fire Nation and sealed the growing rift between Spirits and Mortals. Favorite among these heroes was the Warrior Sokka, son of Hakoda, who fought alongside Avatar Aang and assured his ultimate victory in his darkest hour. Children would invent games of strategy and wit, imitating the ancient hero with devoted awe, and playwrights would craft their epic masterpieces around that single hour of triumph and tragedy.

Sokka, however, really couldn't care less about what future generations thought of him, or of anything else. From the cries and shouts around him, he gathered that his side was slowly losing the battle. But that should be impossible; Aang had already summoned a small host from the Spirit World and the North Pole to fight alongside them. Could even the Spirits have been driven back? Had Azula been so prepared? His mind was racing, folding in on itself as he darted fruitlessly back to the dreaded chamber. The marbled floor was littered with rubble and shards of ice and smoldering furniture and dozens of bodies—one of which was still alive. Barely.

"Katara." He forced himself to speak softly, despite his desperation, as he knelt by her side. "I can't find them. The only Waterbenders that came are… they're already dead, Katara." His voice cracked painfully, but he forced himself to regain control. "Just… just hold on for a little while longer, let me get Aang—"

She gripped his hand with what remained of her failing strength. "No," she rasped, her voice barely audible. "Let him… finish this…" She had been burned and stabbed almost beyond recognition, a cruel retribution for her attacks as her ability to Waterbend failed. But it shouldn't have happened that way—it was the sun that had been eclipsed, not the moon.

The moon. Yue.

Of course!

"I know who can help you!" he cried, half giddy in his desperate conclusion. He scooped his sister up into his arms, not daring to look down at himself to see if that sudden wetness on his shirt was merely water or blood.

"Hold on," he told her as he ran, "Hold on." It became his mantra as he stumbled through the halls, ducking behind walls like a coward at the sound of footsteps. His father and his people were fighting out there, as he should be… but he would not abandon Katara. He darted through the labyrinthine halls until finally he found an ornate window that opened into a wide courtyard. He didn't even spare it a passing glance before he kicked his way through it and landed with a splash under the open sky.

"Yue!" he screamed to the heavens, where the moon shielded their battle from the sun. "Yue! You have to help me! Katara's—"

"…Sorry…" He could hear her, just as he had on That Day, more than a half year before. She sounded exhausted.

"You don't understand," he cried, storming forward with a foreboding splash. "She's dying! She needs your help, just—" Finally he looked around.

Even before the Moon attempted to explain, he understood: the courtyard had been flooded almost to his waist with briny water, and slumped against the far wall was a not-quite-solid lump. He recognized that dimly glowing shape all too well—it was the Ocean Spirit. Tui. And it was sinking into the mass, damaged beyond repair. A torrent of jagged shapes was still visible beneath the water, likely the weapons used to murder this Spirit.

"…Can only...guide water…must choose… to obey... …Ocean…my other half…is gone… I'm... weak… can't alone… I'm so sorry…"

Tui was dead or dying, and so all of the Waterbenders had been struck powerless. Yue was doing all she could to hold off the Sun. And Katara, his baby sister, lay unconscious in his arms. She was moments from death, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Or maybe there was.

Sokka had long since been blessed with a peculiar clarity of thought. And even if he wasn't spiritually astute, he knew exactly what to do. Or at least, he had a guess. Perhaps Yue had instilled the thought in his mind, or else it was because he'd seen it happen before, or maybe it was just his infamous instincts finally taking charge. Regardless of the reason, he tore the rest of the paper window from its frame and laid Katara on its wide sill.

"Hold on," he whispered again, kissing her forehead. "Just another couple minutes, I promise."

What gave him the idea to physically shake a lump of water was anybody's guess.

"Come on, Your Spiritual Wetness ," he shouted at the Spirit, pounding his fists against its amorphous sides . The Spirit shuddered (though Sokka couldn't be sure if it was out of acknowledgement, or just because it didn't like the way it had been addressed). At least he had proved that it was still partially alive. "Come on, wake up already! You've got a job to do!"

The Spirit was not impressed.

"Get up already!" he cried, throwing his entire body against Tui and landing halfway through it, emerged up to his shoulders in the dying water. He glanced back to Katara—her head had turned to face him, her expression confused and agonized and—

There was no other option. No turning back.

"I've got a deal for you," he said quietly, so his sister wouldn't hear, though his eyes stayed glued to her ruined form. "You're dying, I'm alive. So we'll trade, just like Yue did. Remember that?" The Spirit swelled and sank deeper into the water. He dearly hoped that was a sign of aknowledgement. "Just one condition, okay? You've got to help Katara. Heal her, help get her out of here. And then do what you can for the others. Do we have a deal?" No reply came. Hesitation. Annoyance. Uppityness. The Spirit was just refusing to answer him right away. That had to be it. Because he couldn't bear the alternative. "Do we?"

The Spirit gave a terrible shudder, and collapsed around him, as though it had drawn its final breath.

Barely a hundred strides away, Katara drew hers. Her eyes rolled in her head, her head slumped woodenly against the sill on which she was draped; her entire body trembled and went ominously still.

"NO!" Sokka roared, wading back toward his sister. The distance between himself and that cursed window seemed to stretch on forever, the only distance in a rapidly crumbling world. It couldn't have failed. There was no way. She couldn't be dead. She couldn't really be... "No, don't do this! You have to—You—Please don't let this—KATARA"

He was barely an arm's length from her still side when his foot caught on some cursed shard of debris and he plunged beneath the water.

The first thing he felt was cold. Awful, piercing, all-encompassing cold, unlike anything he had ever faced in his arctic home, that stole the breath from his lips and pulled him to the edge of awareness. He was hazy and distant and not quite alive but not nearly dead yet and... Then came a wrenching pain, too sharp after the frozen numbness. He choked on the sensation, writhed beneath the water, stretching and howling as though every fiber of his being was being torn asunder.

Because it was.

He was consumed, divided, reformed, and then—

He had cried out under the water, gasped and screamed and moaned, and meanwhile torrents of cold fluid had flooded his lungs… and he had yet to drown. It was only now that he made the observation, as he lay motionless on the bottom of the false pool. And the horrible cold was… tolerable, at least. And he was distracted. Too distracted to feel the pain, which even now was beginning to subside. His attention was divided as it had never been before, and so little of it remained on himself. There was just so… much… he could feel undersea currents a thousand miles away… tiny ships chasing even smaller fish across the cloudy surface…winds lapping against the edge of his consciousness… massive sheets of ice gliding along the edges… and not too far away, something hot and salty was seeping into the pool that had once been a courtyard. That caught his attention and he promptly decided to do something about it. His shape wasn't quite solid—not the way he had remembered it—but he found he could move.

Yes, he could move. It wasn't even difficult—just rise up, and out, and he was standing on the surface as though it was solid rock. Only it wasn't, because he could feel every ripple and rivulet that danced beneath him, as though he was merely wiggling his toes in sand and snow.

And there was Katara. The windowsill had been stained red beneath her, and now tiny tendrils of red seeped into the waters at his feet. He knelt beside her and laid his hand gently on his sister's face; she didn't move. The previous surge of power sank like bile in his throat.

"Yue," he said again, too weary to shout. "Please tell me there's something you can do."

I can only try. It was less of a word than a feeling; exhaustion bled into him through her voice, but he turned it away and offered her his own vigor. He could feel Yue savoring that renewed energy. At any other time, in any other circumstance, he would have puffed himself up and tried to look as macho as possible as he waited for a word of admiration or praise. Now he only felt anxious. This isn't something that I can do alone, she told him.

"Then guide me," he replied softly, relinquishing all control to the Moon.

And he felt it—the steady push and pull, the regular sway of a native gravity, the piece of himself that was not quite broken away, that even now coursed through his little sister's cooling veins. His consciousness focused on that path as it twisted, contorted, shifted, and then he could feel the jolt as it reanimated her heart, as it closed the fissures that had been carved into her body, as it smoothed the grizzly burns that had once marred her skin. He could feel every miniscule drop as it worked within her, mending her as it went. He could even feel the blood that she coughed up as she finally returned to life.

It was definitely the crowning point of his new existence.

"Sokka" Okay, so that was the crowning point. He didn't even know humans could make that kind of sound.

"Guess what?" he mused, for the first time aware of the odd way his voice seemed to echo through the air. "You're alive again."

"But… but Sokka… you…"

"Yeah, yeah, you can thank me later," he said loftily. Something else was ebbing at his attention. Savage arcs of ice, twirling bodies, so many of them sweating and bleeding. He could feel every drop. He found himself staring out at the walls that hid the combat from his eyes.

"What hap—" She squeezed her eyes shut. She knew. She had been there, too. She remembered. "What's happening now?" she asked instead, trying to hide the sorrow in her voice.

"Aang could use some backup," he observed. "All of them could, come to think of it." He turned back to her, placing an almost insubstantial hand on her shoulder. "Will you be okay here?"

She raised herself unsteadily. "I'll be okay," she said, sliding onto the floor on the other side of the wall. "But I'm not staying here. I came to fight, so don't try to stop—"

"I wasn't planning on it," he said with a grin. "But don't think you can get rid of me either, Katara. I'll always be looking out for you." He glided through the shredded window to stand beside her, and together they made their way into the heart of battle.

Everyone knows the rest of the story—how the rekindled Ocean Spirit (now called Sokka) turned the tide of the war, how the Avatar finally emerged victorious. Some travelers will swear on their own graves that they saw the White Princess and her Dark Prince pause in their eternal dance and embrace, forever binding the union between the Ocean and Moon.

But too early forgotten was the greatest, truest tale: of the man who was willing to lay down his life for his sister.