XXI. Memoriam
Toph was dreaming.
Or at least it felt like dreaming. It had that sensation of awareness without vibration that she'd come to associate with sleep, something she assumed must be like sight. But this place felt closer, safer than dreaming, almost controllable.
More home than her school, more familiar than the house she had grown up in. She belonged here, this was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Something important had been happening, she could feel the thoughts just out of reach but they slid away when she tried to grip them.
A sound like wind chimes and air through the trees raised to thunderous volume reverberated across the open space and then, where there had only been the familiar whispery forms of her vibration sight, there was something else.
It wasn't until she squinted involuntarily and moved to look away that she realized she was seeing something.
People shied away when the light was too bright.
Light.
The brightness coalesced into the shape of a young man. His outline was familiar but she was distracted from identifying him by simply looking.
There were so many different shades on him. Kind eyes that were dark, but not as dark as the boots he wore, skin and clothes paler than both. Colours, she thought giddily, wondering which was which, dear spirits I'm seeing colours!
Smoothly bisecting his forehead was a shape that mimicked the point of an arrow. A shape with a soft raise that she had traced with the tips of her fingers.
"Aang?"
"Hi Toph."
"Aang I can see! I can see you!" She fixed him with a deadly stare. "What did you do?"
He'd been bracing himself for the pain.
But when the blue light faded away, to Aang's surprise he found himself in calm, soft darkness. The deep blackness of his surroundings was no hindrance to his sight; the world was sketched out in paler shapes formed of silvery lines like an inverted charcoal drawing.
He was standing in what amounted to a wide bowl. The bottom of a deep canyon, all rock and earth, but here and there the craggy walls gave way to the shapes of imperial Earth Kingdom architecture. Intricate latticed screens and sweeping gabled roofs with elaborately formed figures on the raised corners grew out of the cliff face like plants, all formed of the same stone that glittered with ribbons of mica and veins of silvery metal.
The flat bottom of the canyon in which he stood was carpeted with lotus flowers, growing without water or visible stems; their scent improbably subsumed by the smell of sandy soil, pine needles baking in the hot summer sun and the aroma of camphor wood.
And high above in the endless velvet expanse of the sky were stars that looked like they'd been made with the point of a pen.
Even as he took it all in Aang could read the reasons behind it, the endless array of memories that lived beneath every element. All the accumulation that made up the woman who stood before him, sketched out in white light.
Her glare fit to make a grown man weep for his mother.
"You're not seeing," he told her gently, hating to break the news that it was only temporary. "Not really. We're inside your mind. This is my mental image of how I look."
"Your hair is gone," she said.
Aang laughed awkwardly. "That's what I mean."
He felt her struggle to remember what was happening, the rush of information as it all came flooding back ran through his mind just as it ran through hers. The canyon walls quaked as Toph dropped into a fighting stance. "I won't let you take it. I can't." She slid her hands up and forward trying to make the rocks obey. There was no response, the rocks weren't real even if bending could work inside a mind, but Toph's panic resonated through him with all the force of a typhoon. Rain began to fall – inky black spots of nothing that landed in silvery splashes against the flower-strewn ground – and Aang moved forward to catch her before she even started to crumple.
"I'm not going to take your bending, Toph," he promised against the wispy curtain of her hair. "Even if I could, I wouldn't."
Her fear ebbed away and the rain stopped slowly. The feeling of being held was pulling forth other memories. Very interesting memories.
Toph pushed him back sharply. "Twinkletoes I can feel you rifling around in there!" Her cheeks were scarlet.
"Not my fault!" He held up his hands defensively. "If there's something you don't want me to see, don't drag it out."
"I'd like to see you control your associative memory," she retorted, but her irritability faded as her eyes locked on his face. Toph lifted one hand to cup his cheek, swallowing hard. "How… how long do I have like this? Aren't they going to figure out something is wrong?"
"We have time," he explained. "Not too much, but things seem slower like this than they actually are."
Her relief and wonder burst through him like fireworks and she laughed at the expression on his face.
"Do you ever get used to this?"
"I've only done it once before," he reminded her. "And that was-"
"Awful," she supplied, pulling at his thoughts, seeing his memories; right there with him through what had been the most terrifying moment of his young life to that point. "Fire and blood and so much rage."
Stepping into Ozai's mind had been like stepping out onto the fires of Agni. The Fire Lord had fought him like a cornered animal and almost succeeded in tearing him apart.
"Toph, don't look."
But Toph Bei Fong never met a rule she wouldn't break with a smirk on her face. Commands were there to be ignored, orders were meant to be countermanded, and there was never anything to be gained by leaving things well enough alone.
"Oh Aang."
"Hey it all worked out for the best – you were there."
"I must have really scared you when I jumped off Appa."
"A little bit," he laughed before it dawned on him that he'd never told her why her leap had scared him so much. "Wait, what?"
"You broke my feet?"
He stepped back from her sharply. "How are you seeing that?"
"You're inside my mind Twinkletoes, is it so hard to believe I'm in yours too?
She was. There unexpectedly, deeper than the surface images he couldn't help but pull along, he could feel Toph's presence in his thoughts, moving through the corridors of his memory. She stood next to him on the platform where Zuko surrendered his life for his country; watched him fling Suki's body at Sokka's feet; stepped with him into the audience chamber of the Earth Queen.
Her fingers wrapped over his death grip on the dagger sharp shard of ice in the darkness.
She leaned softly into all the lonely spaces and knew him, utterly and completely.
Toph looked for a moment as though she might cry. "I had no idea-"
"You were never supposed to."
She seized him by the collar and shook him so hard that if they had been out in the real world his teeth would have rattled. "No more you hear me? Not ever again. You let someone subject you to that again and I will hunt you down and remind you why I'm still your Sifu!"
Aang held up his hands, placating. "Only if you do something for me."
"What?"
"Hang on to your headband Sifu." He cracked his mental knuckles. "I have a really bad plan."
Katara woke alone. The grey light of dawn was just beginning to turn brighter outside the window and the crumpled sheets next to her were still warm.
She was deliriously happy.
She rolled back and forth in the bed for a moment, muffling a sound which could only be described as a squeal into her pillow, before she calmed enough to sit up, smooth back her hair and make an attempt at dignity.
Though Zuko must have only risen moments before her, he was nowhere to be found inside the inn. There was, however, a bowl of peaches on the end of the table closest to the door of their room still beaded with water. Katara snatched one and headed out into the misty morning.
Despite the earliness of the hour it seemed as though she'd slept late. The whole village appeared to be up and moving about, people buzzing like ants over the damage to the town hall cum-Black Fist base, pulling out the myriad inner walls and erecting scaffolding over the burnt sections. Those who chanced upon eye contact or stepped across her path nodded respectfully, but otherwise her presence was almost deliberately ignored. Katara did her best to stay out of the way, keeping to the edges of the open lawn while she searched the shifting crowds for Zuko.
"Katara!"
Eloa beckoned her down towards the shore, her omnipresent hammer replaced with a thick coil of rope slung over one shoulder. There was a small sloop moored at the docks just past the blacksmith, and her boy Keegan was clambering the rigging with an enthusiasm that made the healer in Katara wince.
She was about to race down and stop him when two strong arms reached up and plucked the enthusiastic lad free of the ropes. Zuko set Keegan firmly down on the wooden jetty, looking up just as she approached.
"Good morning, Fire Lady," he said, his smirk sliding right past smug into completely giddy. "Sleep well?"
"Incredibly," she replied, dropping her voice into a sultry whisper and looking up at him through her eyelashes, gratified to see him swallow hard. "So," Katara returned her tone to brisk just to make his head spin. "What's all this?"
"I promised we'd go after Gamen," Zuko explained. "Eloa says the Black Fist who weren't from here always came by boat from across the bay." He gestured to a cloudy smudge on the horizon that might have been a far off coastline.
Katara whipped a stream of water up from the ocean and directed it smoothly into her waterskin, just imagining the crack it would make when it wrapped around that foul man's neck, before the sound of hammering in the background brought her up short. "But the village… Zuko, we should help."
"I tried," he began, but Eloa interrupted.
"No one is more grateful for what you've done than I am." She placed her rough hands on Katara's shoulders. "But this town has been blaming the benders for our troubles so long that it would probably be better if you weren't around until things settle down and everyone realizes just what your upheaval means for the village."
Guilty though she felt, Katara couldn't deny her blood was calling for vengeance. "Well if we're going, you might want to let me handle the boat," she said, leaping smoothly from the dock to the stern.
"Hey, I spent four years of my life on a ship before I met you," Zuko protested.
Katara untangled the hash of knots he'd made on the mainsail and rethreaded the rigging in a matter of moments, reefing the main a little to compensate for the higher winds picking up on the water. "And I'm Water Tribe, Fire Lord. Don't you ever forget it."
Zuko sighed and flopped down in the prow, looking absurdly regal for a young man in rough clothing on a rickety ship. She rolled her eyes and ignored him in favour of Eloa.
Katara reached up and took the other woman's hands. "I can't thank you enough for what you tried to do."
"I can't thank you enough for what you did," the blacksmith replied simply. "I'll never forget it. Any time you wish to return, you will be welcome here." She craned her neck back to look at the damaged village over her shoulder. "Although not perhaps within the next six months."
"I'll keep that in mind. Stay safe." She leaned down to look at Keegan very seriously. "Don't you go running around too much and making things worse," Katara instructed, prodding very lightly at the slightly pink and tender flesh on the boy's bare stomach. "And take care of your mother."
Keegan nodded solemnly and they both stepped back to wave as Katara cast the mooring lines away and steered the sloop out towards open water.
Sokka took a flying leap off the crest of the earthen ridge Shan was bending beneath them, launching his body towards the lintel of the main gate. Ty Lee could almost certainly have made the jump with more grace but Sokka had gotten there first and he would never let a good opportunity to show off for his girl slide by.
He landed in a deep crouch, whirling to cut down the guards. Space Sword sheered cleanly though the metal winch, securing the gate's counterweights and before anyone could move to stop him or raise the alarm the rest of his little army was flooding into the compound.
The fortress-city was instantly a study in chaos.
The Kyoshis and the Bandits spread out quickly in teams - one earthbender to each green clad warrior – and swept between the low wooden buildings, quickly dispatching any opposition as Suki jammed the gate open from below, ensuring they had a retreat where their enemies could be bottlenecked.
They'd all been surprised at the lack of sentries or measurable resistance as the trail they were following drew into the mountains and closer to the coast. A few scouts had hampered their progress, but the Black Fist were making no effort to hide their tracks and the stronghold seemed barely guarded. Sokka raced along the narrow ledge behind the spiked ramparts, tossing archers off the walls. If the barracks were anything to go by they should have been encountering a lot more trouble.
A flash of sails on the horizon drew his attention, distracting him from the next sentinel to be dispatched and giving the man an opportunity to strike the large bell that hung from his tower.
The fighting below seemed to pause for breath while the sonorous note rang out, echoing off the mountains into an endless drone.
Then guards began to pour out of the citadel.
Ah, that's where the trouble was.
Abandoning his attempts to silence the sentries, Sokka grabbed the rope of a large banner and slid down the wall, slicing through the sigil of the Black Fist as he dropped.
Suki met him halfway across the open yard toward the oncoming force, yelling for the rest of their allies.
"Back to the gate!" he called. "We need to keep them from surrounding us!"
"The water!" she shouted back, pointing towards the open coastline.
There was no chance for him to protest before the Kyoshis were moving. The Bandits covered the retreat, obfuscating their movements by filling the air with a cloud of swirling dust. Shan and Suyin brought up low, constantly shifting walls that sent the Black Fist fighters tumbling to be trampled by their fellows and Jai drew the seawater forth to coat the ground behind them in treacherous ice. Those who made it across the hazardous field, coughing and half blind, were faced with the deadly golden fans of seven vengeful Kyoshi warriors.
Sokka grabbed a nearby combatant by the hair and neatly slit his throat, surveying the battlefield grimly. For every one who fell, two more seemed to stumble free of the cloud less impaired, and the dust cloud had become impossible to control once produced and was heading towards them. "Drop it," he called to the closest Bandit, deflecting an attack with a thrust that pointed to the encroaching billow.
Lan did him one better; spinning her arms out and clenching her fists, she condensed the granules into rocks the size of winter plums and sent them rocketing out in a shockwave, making their enemies scatter like frightened birds.
When their proverbial smokescreen dropped, the twins shot their retracting walls up, forcing the Black Fist into a defined space and preventing them from coming up on the sides of the little group. Waves of pillars burst in rippling lines from the ground, sending the soldiers flying into the air; those who were not sliced and skewered by the Kyoshis landed with bone-breaking force. From somewhere to the back of the advance a horn sounded and the nervous looking men took up the call.
"Retreat!"
"Oh no you don't," Sokka spat, locking eyes with Suki. They exchanged a nod and as one raised their voice to the sky.
"CHARGE!"
The dull roar didn't register at first. It wasn't until the sound grew deafening, even above the clash of battle and the sky began to go dark that Sokka turned and was confronted with a terrifying blue-green wall of water.
Faster than he could consciously act he'd caught Suki's wrist and yanked her close enough to shield her with his body, but the wave simply parted and rushed over the huddled group on the shore, crashing with devastating power onto the panicking Black Fist.
Impact with land barely slowed the water at all. It consumed the fortress, blasting back men and buildings alike and sending everything smashing into the face of the mountain. Thinking quickly, Ayashu caught Suyin's hand and they moved in tandem to sink a deep channel into the earth, giving the ebbing wave and all it carried a path to rush past them into the sea.
"Jai!" Sokka exclaimed. "That was amazing!"
"Not Jai," Suki told him, trying to disentangle herself from his protective grip. "Katara!"
The swirling torrents of water parted on either side of an Earth Kingdom boat, revealing his sister balanced on the bowsprit looking fearsome and powerful and every inch the impressive master waterbender that she was.
"You're supposed to be in Omashu!" he roared, voice carrying easily over the water.
The vision of an ocean spirit calming the tides cracked like thin ice and gave way to the much more familiar sight of his annoyed little sister. "So are you."
"It's dangerous here!"
"I just saved everyone!" Her hands were on her hips now.
Bad sign. A little voice somewhere inside Sokka's head warned.
"They were retreating!" He gesticulated wildly to emphasize his point.
Katara dropped easily to the damp earth as the boat ran aground. "And now they're retreating out to sea."
"Hey Suki," Sokka heard Zuko say somewhere behind him as the firebender jumped down from the boat.
"Hey Zuko."
"How's it going?"
"Pretty good. You?"
"Can't complain."
"That's not the point!" Sokka refocused his attention on Katara. "We were here first. Victory was ours."
"Wait, wait – you were here first? Aren't those the Bandits?" She indicated the group of earthbenders looking rather awkward standing amid the puddles and detritus of the ruined fortress, trying to pretend they weren't watching the Water siblings fight. "Where are Toph and Aang?"
Sokka grinned wolfishly. "They're in Ba Sing Se!" he crowed. "They're stuck looking through libraries and making nice with the Earth King, while we fight all the bad guys."
"Oh Toph's not going to like that," Zuko said.
Katara rolled her eyes at them. "If you're both quite finished, we are in the middle of a mission here."
"Not much of one anymore." Ty Lee kicked at a lost helmet.
Suki looked thoughtful. "This can't possibly be their whole operation. I mean if they were capturing earthbenders, where would they keep them?"
"I'm going to take a wild guess," Zuko pointed to the ominous stone citadel that rose up from the mountain, "and say they might be in there."
"Wait." Ayashu held up a hand for their attention. She was crouched with one hand pressed to the muddy dirt. "There's something…"
Sokka didn't really understand the idea of feeling vibrations through the earth. It was part of why he so continuously forgot that Toph couldn't actually see. But it was hard to dismiss the girl's earth senses when he could feel the rumble himself. Small pebbles danced across the ground as the whole world seemed to quake and buckle. Ahead, one of the guard towers that flanked the gate tipped dangerously as one of its support struts sank into a fissure. Cracks snaked across the open ground at their feet and the group of them leapt back almost as one.
"Sokka." Katara's voice was laced with suspicion. "Are you sure Toph's in Ba Sing Se?"
The creaking thump of the heavy door closing behind him was such a terrifyingly final sound.
Two years and Zuko didn't think he would ever get used to it.
Two years and every time he entered he had to stop outside the door and gather his courage, gird himself for the abrupt shock and the instinctive terror. Fight the ingrained need to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness.
This time he swept through without hesitation, the flames of rage burning away the seeping chill of fear.
The small room was always so dark inside. Light trickled down from a window in the ceiling but it only struck the floor for a few hours every day.
"Well, well."
The voice was weak and scratchy from disuse, its owner hidden in the darkness at the furthest wall. Zuko considered the floor but did not sit, pacing the familiar three steps to the bars and gripping them as though he might pick up the whole cell and shake it.
"Hello father." The appellation was like ashes in his mouth.
"And how is my lovely wife?"
The corners of Zuko's mouth tightened slightly and the metal began to heat under his palms. "The scout I sent reported no sign."
"You didn't go in person? You terrible son. What if she was waiting and was scared off by the sight of a Fire Nation messenger?" Ozai's voice was full of bitter amusement.
The jab stung more than he should have allowed it to, those niggling little doubts that had sent him off chasing every other lead preying on his mind again. What if he'd been there? "She could have been, but she wasn't. Mother was never there at all."
"She might have been."
"Really?" There was only skepticism in the question.
"No." The older man shifted, bringing his face into the watery light. "So you've caught wise to my little game. It took you a disappointingly long time."
"Well me disappointing you is sort of our thing," he spat. "I wouldn't want to break with tradition."
"Kind of you."
"You never knew where she went did you?"
"No."
Zuko couldn't help the anger that welled up inside him. "Then why? Why did you string me along like that?" He released his grip on the metal that was molten red and began to pace. All those months of hoping and searching and there'd never been anything to find.
The former Fire Lord laughed uproariously. Zuko wanted to burn him to ashes. "You should take this more seriously, father. I could easily-"
"What, boy? What will you do? If you could kill me I'd already be dead. You'll twist on the hook of your precious honor and my rations won't even be cut."
"Count yourself lucky. It's more than you would have done for me."
"Lucky?" Ozai's voice was a strangled scream. "I should have died fighting the Avatar. In glorious battle. Or been executed as befitting a conquered leader, with honor. Instead you've condemned me here to rot – crippled as surely as if you'd gouged out my eyes and cut out my tongue!"
"It's less than you deserve." Zuko's words dripped with vitriol.
The broken wreck of a man disappeared as quickly as he had come, hidden behind Ozai's impermeable court mask. "Advocating a fate worse than death. You really are my son."
Nausea swamped him, but Zuko pushed it aside in favour of rage. "I am nothing like you."
"And yet here you are to gloat over the torment of a prisoner."
"I take it back; you may have given me my tendency for melodramatic self-pity. You are alive and well. Others have lived without bending before you."
"If it's so easy boy, go to your precious Avatar and have him take yours as well."
Zuko lit a ball of flame in one hand. Loving and hating himself for enjoying the way Ozai tracked the fire with his eyes. "Don't expect sympathy from me. Not when there isn't a hint of remorse in you."
"And yet here you are." His father's voice positively oozed self-confidence. That strength and command he had always feared and revered in equal measure. "When you could have easily made your displeasure known without bothering. Do you know how many people have come to visit me?"
No one but me.
"Azula wants to." Zuko tried to evade the question and summon up his righteous anger again.
"Azula." Ozai waved his hand dismissively.
"She misses you. And you don't care."
"The man she misses is gone."
"She doesn't want the Fire Lord," Zuko spat. "She wants her father."
"There was never any distinction for Azula. That was always your mistake."
His terrifying little sister. She would have done anything at all for this man and she was worth no more to Ozai than Zuko had been. "It wasn't a mistake to want to be a family!" The flame ball grew white hot and Zuko hurled it at the wall of the cell where it burst in an explosion of sparks. "You could have been our father, you should have been!"
The door flew open with a crash and two guards tumbled through, weapons drawn and leveled at the darkness beyond the cell bars. "Fire Lord, are you alright –"
"OUT!" Zuko roared at them, fire licking at the spaces between his fingertips.
The two men looked terrified. Caught halfway between genuflecting and sprinting away, they managed to obey, stumbling out of the cell to the sound of his father's mocking laughter.
Zuko willed himself to calm, strove to center his mind, and when that didn't work he pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to make the bone ache.
"Oh Zuko, the way you care about things." Ozai reined in his half-hysterical chuckling and shifted closer to the bars. Zuko felt compelled to turn around and face him, determined to project cool impassivity. The former Fire Lord's gaze held something that might have been fondness on any other person's face, but was only an unrecognizable expression on those forbidding features. "No one else was ever like that, not in our family, not in our world. Even when you were beaten down railing about having nothing to live for or care about, you were passionate in your depression."
"Did your spies tell you that?" Zuko still couldn't suppress the lurch of humiliation in his gut when he thought about the reports Ozai must have received about him during his years of searching for the Avatar.
"I'm your father; I've known you since the day you were born."
He laughed at that, he couldn't help himself. "You never knew me at all."
"Spoken like a true adolescent."
"Doesn't make me wrong."
"No? You believe that if I understood you I would have been kinder. That if I knew you I would never have put you in a position to hear that pivotal war council and kept you at my side, loyal. But you are wrong."
"You wanted me banished to make way for Azula."
"No, I wanted to teach you a lesson. Firstborn with everything handed to you. Just like your Uncle. You had to understand that the consequences for disobedience on behalf of your beliefs wouldn't be sympathy, like it was under Azulon. Conquest is paramount. And look how well you learned."
"All I learned was how to hate you."
His father tsk'd. "Come now Zuko, self-deception is foolish and pointless."
"I'm still visiting you, aren't I?" With rage fueling him, Zuko felt daring enough to attempt a smirk. "Maybe you don't want me to stop all my foolish and pointless activities."
"I don't know. It makes it harder to concentrate on hating you with all the noise." Ozai's smile was practically congenial.
Zuko remembered a time when all he wanted was for his father to smile his way. Manipulation. A voice at the back of his mind reminded him. Ozai doesn't lie; he doesn't have to because you'll bend yourself over for a kind word.
"Why not try to have me killed? You have a few supporters in the city. I don't doubt you could manage an assassination attempt."
"You are a lesser son of greater sires, Zuko, and everyone in the Fire Nation can see it. There will never be peace while you sit on the throne. You will never stop waiting for the axe to fall. The people will destroy you eventually; I don't have to do anything but watch."
Smoke coalesced at his fingertips as Zuko's inner flame became a firestorm. "You could just forgive me. We could forgive each other and be done with it." He detested himself for wanting even that much from the man who had banished him without a second thought. Loathed that he could not break himself of wishing.
"We'll never forgive each other; there isn't any space left in us for forgiveness. Look at you, all snarling and pale with rage. You want me punished for hurting you. You want to kill me so much you can taste it, don't you?"
"Yes!"
"I thought you might. Good feeling, isn't it?" Ozai's gaze was riveting. "This is what you are, Zuko."
He felt helpless. Broken. "Spirits, you're such a bastard."
"I know." He leaned back, breaking the spell and began again in a more conversational tone.
"How much blood is on your hands, my boy? How many men have you killed?"
Zuko crossed his arms, leaning against the cell bars. Deliberately trying to show he had nothing to fear from getting close to his father. Determined not to show any more emotion. "Not as many as you."
"Oh probably - if you're looking at it from a general, karmic perspective. The number I've actually physically destroyed? It's far fewer than you might think. But you're such a hands on person Zuko, always quick to rush in yourself and enact bloody revenge. You're a child of war, it's all you know how to be, all you can think about. The only time you are ever at peace is when you're fighting. Deep down you're a ruthless murdering bastard. Just. Like. Me."
Enough.
He wanted to rail at Ozai, to swear up and down that his father was wrong. But there was no use in it. There had never been any use in fighting for the love of a man so far removed from his humanity.
Unfolding his arms, Zuko turned to go without a goodbye, not trusting himself to speak without giving his father more ammunition.
Ozai's voice pinned him in place like a bug on a card.
"Whatever my sentiment-addled brother may tell you about family being a choice and a bond, you are my son, Zuko. My child. And unless you are conquering, you will never be happy."
A/N I must thank my incredible Beta once again for her oh so crucial help with this chapter!
I also wanted to tell everyone who reviewed my last chapter how much I appreciate hearing from you. Especially Static Lull who somehow managed to time it perfectly to when I was feeling down about my writing and cheer me up immensely. You guys keep me going and I adore you for it.
Have to credit Booter-Freak for a line in this chapter, and you should all check out her art on Deviant because she is absolutely hi-larious