Chapter Notes: The end of Book One - or the first half of it, at least. As always, feedback of all kinds is welcome, even now that this part of the story is finished, and even though I may not necessarily incorporate it into further works in this 'verse; for me, writing this fic has been less about thoughtfully and painstakingly attempting to improve my abilities, and more about gleefully rolling around in the world of Avatar and bending it to my will. :D I hope you've all enjoyed it anyway, and I have appreciated every single review more than I can possibly say.
So: fic time!
Chapter Thirteen: The Ocean Awakened (Part 1)
Traveling through the spirit world was unspeakably strange. The rules were all different - or, perhaps more accurately, there were no rules. Things changed on a whim. The sky went from cloudy to a pure summery blue, and then to a startling grass-green; they left the swamp behind for a forest of jewel-toned trees that glinted like ice, and then flatlands creased with steaming crevasses that glowed faintly, and then a sudden desert of distinctly purple sand.
But Appa seemed to know where he was going, though Katara couldn't tell how. There was a sun - or a light in the sky, at least - but it didn't seem to be traveling in a straight line.
"Do you know where he's taking us?" she said.
Aang shrugged, wholly unconcerned. "No idea," he said, "but it's Appa. He wouldn't take us somewhere dangerous. Well, not unless that was where we had to go, that is."
"That's so reassuring," Katara said.
Aang stuck his tongue out at her; and then suddenly his eyes slid past her, his brow creasing in concentration, which made for a hilarious expression until he pulled his tongue back in and spoke. "Do you see that?"
Katara turned, following his gaze over her shoulder, and squinted. They were over another forest, though this one was of massive leafless trees the height of mountains, and the sky was a murky sea of low, yellow-tinged clouds. There was a particularly large billow of cloud behind her; she certainly could see it, and she was about to turn around and tell Aang so when she realized that there was a face in it.
Or, more accurately, a face forming out of it, chin and brow and cheekbones slowly shaping themselves from the mist. And a familiar face, too, though it took Katara a long moment to place it.
"Yangchen," she said, when the name finally came to her; and the mouth of the cloud-face bent into the barest shadow of a smile.
"Avatar," Yangchen replied, cool and echoing. "You seek the moon and ocean, do you not?"
"Yes," Katara said. "Is that where Appa's taking us - to see the moon and ocean?"
"Moon and Ocean are ancient spirits," Yangchen said, "and they traveled to the mortal world long ago. Your bison is clever: he takes you to the nearest of the spirits old enough to remember such things. But it will not be easy for you to obtain the answers you seek from Koh."
"Koh?" Aang said.
"The face-stealer, he is also called," Yangchen said, and the expression on her cloud-face turned very grave. "This is not the first time the Avatar has met him. Of the youngest of us, Kuruk knows him best; but Kuruk will not venture here." She paused. It was not quite a hesitation, Yangchen was too deliberate for that; but perhaps a moment of consideration. "Koh has done things that should not have been done, but he is not evil. It is his nature, to take faces; he cannot be other than what he is."
"To take faces?" Katara said, exchanging a nervous glance with Aang. That didn't sound good.
"This is what I have come to tell you," Yangchen said. "When you stand before Koh, you must have no expression - no matter what he says, or what face he wears. The tiniest smile, the briefest grimace of discomfort, and he will steal your face."
Katara bit her lip. She could hunt and fight and argue and Waterbend; but expressionlessness wasn't one of her notable skills. Perhaps if she were very, very angry, she would be able to do it. But right now, she was only uncertain, and a little bit afraid. She looked up at Yangchen, who gazed back impassively. "I'm not going to be able to do it," she said, and then paused, not sure how to make the suggestion without sounding presumptuous. "But I think you could. Can you - help me?"
Yangchen looked at her measuringly for a long moment, and then nodded, very slightly. "It would be my honor to assist you, Avatar," she said, and closed her eyes.
The cloud Yangchen's face was shaped from had been the same mud-yellow as all the rest, but as Yangchen concentrated, it began to glimmer with a very familiar shade of blue light. The blue intensified rapidly, and then all at once swirled out and away from the cloud, and Yangchen's features abruptly melted away, the mist that had formed them dissolving like smoke. The blue light dimmed, and then Katara's vision suddenly went blue-white; and when it cleared, the light that had been Yangchen was gone.
"Your eyes did that thing," Aang said, and then, "Hey, are you okay?"
"Yes," Katara said. It was easy to tell that Yangchen was with her, now; she felt different - older, and somehow quieter on the inside. Everything was muted. Or, no, not muted, but tempered, by a sense of deep patience - deep acceptance. Things were as they were. It was their way.
"... Are you sure?" Aang said.
Katara felt herself smile, very slightly. "I am," she said, and that was Yangchen's formal tone in her voice, she could hear it. "We have come to the land where Koh dwells."
They were still among the giant trees; but Appa was angling down toward the massive gnarling roots of one of them, the dull yellow mist twining around them like hands as they dropped lower. He landed with a scrape, six massive feet against bark that had to be at least a few feet thick, and Katara slid from the saddle like she had been riding sky bison all her life. "Easy, clever one," she murmured, stroking Appa's side absently.
There was a hole at the base of the trunk - a cave, Katara might have called it, except it was in a tree instead of a rock face. "That is where he lives," she told Aang, and held up a hand when he moved as though to leap from Appa's neck. "You should stay here."
"Katara," Aang said, sounding confused and unhappy; when she turned to look at him, he was staring at her uncertainly.
"I am still here," she said, and then paused; that hadn't come out right. She tried again. "I - need to let her be me, for a while." She let that deep feeling of Yangchen rise to the surface, and it was more Yangchen than Katara who smiled at him next. "Be at ease, Avatar," she said. "I will be careful. You have been a fine guide, and will be again; and you do our people proud with your care. But it is my time now."
Aang's face clouded briefly, but he nodded, and when she stepped forward into the dark of the treetrunk, he stayed there, waiting, behind her.
The crunch of the ship's prow against the ice reverberated through Yin from her boots to her helmet, and she couldn't help but grimace - no harm in it, after all, because with the helmet on, no one could see it anyway.
It was a ridiculous plan, arrogant and self-serving and oblivious to potential cost; exactly the kind of thing she should be expecting from Zhao by now, she thought grimly. Quite a trick of destiny, that a man like Zhao should be the one to find the legendary library of Wan Shi Tong. A repository of knowledge like no other, filled with vast and wonderful secrets long forgotten - and he stayed only long enough to learn how to murder spirits, and considered the time as well spent as could possibly be wished.
Another volley of fireballs hissed by overhead, the orange glow jarring against the moonlit ice, and landed with a crash in the city. Yin could see them come down; Zhao had a team of Firebenders at the flagship's prow, and they were melting a tunnel through the city wall that grew wider with every passing moment.
"It is enough!" Zhao shouted, and slapped a hand against Yin's shoulder. "Come, Lieutenant. My victory is close at hand."
"And what a victory it will be," Yin said, hand tight on the hilt of her sword. This was not going to be a good night.
She turned and nodded to Kishen, and he called for her soldiers to ready themselves; and then Zhao yelled wordlessly and led them through the wall.
.*.
The chaos on the other side might have been unbelievable, if Yin hadn't been in battle before - Zhao could not have stood being anywhere but at the center of the wall, and the space they charged into lay between a battalion of Waterbenders and a crowd of warriors with pikes and painted faces. The tanks were already rolling out of the ship behind them, but six Waterbenders at once clenched their fists and stretched their arms toward the sky, and the ice of the wall heaved up and crushed the third tank against the mouth of the tunnel. Lieutenant Anshi's, it must have been, because she turned and shouted for a team of Firebenders, and sent a blast of fire at the ice herself.
Yin swept forward and closed with a pikeman before he could gut her; he blocked her first strike neatly with the haft of his weapon, but he was unprepared for the way she kicked him in the side of the thigh, armored boot swinging heavily, and he dropped to one knee, eyes startled. He swung the pike out, and she had to duck back a step to avoid it - but the moment the blade had whistled past, she darted back in, swung her elbow up, and trapped the haft against her side, shoving her sword up under the man's chin at the same time.
He squared his jaw, preparing himself; but she wasn't going to kill him if she could help it. She ducked her head in close, and hissed, "Where are the spirits?"
"... What?" the man said.
Yin dug her sword in a little further. "The spirits," she said. "They're here - where are they?" She didn't even know what she would do, if he told her - cut Zhao off before he could get there? Find a Water Tribe captain and explain everything? - but at least she might know what to expect.
But the man's face showed only confusion, and she was fairly certain he wasn't pretending. "The legends say they dwell with us," he said, "but not - perhaps you seek the sacred waters?"
"Yes, fine, okay," Yin said, "where are those?"
"The chief's palace," the man said, "the heart of the city - there is a passage back-"
"Great," Yin said, and pulled the sword away so that she could slam the pommel into his head. The chief's palace - that wasn't going to be an easy place to get to; but even as she thought it, she turned, and Zhao was already pushing forward across the nearest canal. "One day," she murmured to herself, "I will know everything ahead of time," and she let the man slide to the ground and hurried after Zhao.
Koh's lair was not as inhospitable as it seemed at first glance; the entrance might be narrow and dark, but it led to a flight of broad stairs. Old ones, for they were no longer level - the stairs at the Western Air Temple had also come to be so, in time - and a tangle of roots had begun to grow across them. Besides, Koh's reasons for easing the way into his home were not reassuring thoughts to ponder. Still, it was simpler than climbing would have been.
There was a rustle overhead, and Katara wanted to startle; but Yangchen did not let her look away from where she was placing her feet. It did not suit the dignity of the Avatar to trip.
Soon enough, they came to level ground, and Katara looked up. "Koh," she said quietly into the dark, and did not so much as twitch when a great pale face appeared out of the gloom.
Someone who had worn a mask, perhaps, or face-paint. A clever attempt; but Koh was a spirit, not a human, and could not be tricked by such things. "Avatar," said a hissing voice from between blood-red lips, and the white cheeks widened in a smile. "It has been some time since I have seen you last. Five hundred years? Eight hundred? Human measures are so inadequate; I can never remember."
"I am not here to kill you, Koh," Katara said, to the mustached man's face that slid into view next. "Not this time."
"Oh?" Koh said. "Not even a little?"
The mustached man vanished with a scowl, and the next face was a girl's - a young woman's, more like, dark-eyed and lovely. Katara found her eyes moving over it like she had looked at it a thousand times, a thousand upon a thousand: there was the scar by the brow, only visible if you were looking for it; and there, the single, uneven dimple, as the young woman's face smiled. Katara had traced that dimple a hundred times, she was certain of it - had mocked it, secretly adored it, kissed it-
Yangchen surely felt the great, drowning grief as clearly as Katara did; but it only lasted for a moment, transmuted by Yangchen into a terrible quiet sadness, and Katara's expression remained blank. "Not even a little," she said, very evenly.
Koh stayed in front of her for a long moment, peering curiously out of the young woman; and then her face slid away, replaced with a stern-eyed owl hawk. "Avatar, my old friend, you have become so dull," he said.
"I am not here to entertain you, either," Katara said. "I seek knowledge of Moon and Ocean - their help is needed to save a people far from here."
"Ah, yes, Tui and La - push and pull, a pretty pair," Koh said. The owl hawk gave way to a plump young boy. "Amusing, that you should ask; they need your help much more than you do theirs."
There was a burst of startlement - Yangchen was just as surprised to hear Koh say that as Katara was, but Katara's face stayed still. Yangchen had faced many things in her time, had negotiated with emperors and generals; to cover surprise and pretend foreknowledge was a trick she had learned early on. "Do they," she said.
"Oh, they do," Koh said, a trickle of glee working its way into his tone, and the plump boy became a monkey, fanged mouth open in a silent laugh. "Someone's going to kill them, if you don't hurry up and go back where you came from."
"How can I save them?"
"Go back where you came from," Koh repeated, a hint of impatience in his voice. "That bison of yours will take you back to the place where you passed through. Go back. Moon and Ocean are there, waiting for you; if you are quick, they will be saved."
Koh did things that should not have been done, but he also told the truth; that, too, was his nature. "Thank you," Katara said, bowing formally.
"No need, Avatar," Koh said, graciousness a thin veneer over the cool menace that filled his voice. The white mask-face slid back into place. "I will see you again someday; perhaps you will repay the favor."
Yue watched another volley of fireballs crash into her home, and then shook herself. The Fire Nation soldiers were moving quickly, pressing forward, as though they hoped a flood of superior numbers might serve to outweigh the power of Waterbenders under a full moon. The sounds of fighting were coming closer every moment, and if they made it all the way here, Katara needed to be kept safe until she could come back from the spirit world.
Yue made the ice lower her back down. The Fire Nation prince was still frozen to the wall, watching her with narrowed eyes; he would not escape, at least not in the next thirty seconds.
She had fought him on the open end of the Oasis island - but Katara's body sat on the other side of the pool, beneath the gate, and behind the gate grew a thick stand of bamboo, impossible to see past.
There was no other choice: she had to keep the Avatar safe as best she could, even if it meant she died herself. Hopefully, Katara could find her body again even if it wasn't in the same place she'd left it.
Yue hurried around the pool and curled her arms around Katara's at the shoulder. The pounding of feet sounded impossibly loud - how could the Fire Nation have come so far already? She pulled; Katara draped back limply in her arms, and her eyes slid shut.
Not a good sign - but Yue thought there was still some blue leaking between her lashes, and there was no time to reconsider. She had managed to tow Katara almost around the end of the bamboo stand when the door was flung open.
She turned and pulled up a wave, without even looking; but Kilurak caught it before it could topple, and smoothed it back down.
"Yue, whoa, it's just us," Sokka said, and then glanced across the Oasis. "Hey, hang on, is that the crazy prince guy? What's been going on back here, anyway?"
"Katara is in the spirit world," Yue said. "The prince came for her, but I fought him. What are you doing here?"
"We - cut our mission short," Tuteguk said, from behind Sokka. "The Fire Nation admiral plans to kill the moon; we have come to stop him."
"Kill the moon?" Yue said. "And he's coming here? I don't understand."
Tuteguk hesitated, looking at her with trepidation. "It is the greatest secret of our tribe," he said. "Only the chief and his top advisors are ever told of it. You and Hahn would have been told, too, when it was time-" He broke off, and glanced over his shoulder: a great gout of fire burst up on the other side of the Oasis wall, far too close for comfort. "Quickly," he said, "we must finish hiding the Avatar; if she does not come back from the spirit world before the Fire Nation admiral arrives, she must be kept away from the fighting."
It was much easier going, with five people to lift Katara instead of just one; and she was safely behind the bamboo grove when Yue heard the door swing open again. "Yes, this will be a proud day indeed for the Fire Nation," someone said, and laughed.
"I was very pleased to think that you were dead," Zhao continued, still chuckling a little. "But to find you here - frozen to the wall, no less - in the place where I will fulfill my destiny? Better than I could ever have imagined."
Zuko pressed his mouth flat and said nothing, tipping his chin up defiantly. It was satisfying, in a way - if nothing else, he had managed the ruse successfully for as long as it had been up to him. It did not make up for being defeated by some random Waterbender girl mere feet away from the Avatar; but it seemed to be Zuko's fate, to be humiliated whenever he came near his only goal.
At least he wasn't the only one. Zhao stood not thirty yards from the Avatar and didn't know it, because she had been carefully and thoroughly hidden behind a bush. Zuko fought the urge to laugh. Uncle was there, too, standing behind Zhao with a sober look on his face; he would appreciate the situation, if he knew the true depth of it. And Mizan was beside him - she would rub Zhao's face in it forever, Zuko thought.
"Come now, who was it?" Zhao said. "Your dishonor is already all-encompassing, you cannot shame yourself further."
"Stop this, Zhao," Uncle said - quietly, but there was a touch of iron in it.
Zhao laughed. "You disapprove - of course you do," he said. "I should have known you were lying about him. You always were too fond of the boy."
"Stop all of this," Uncle said. "Turn around, now, and walk out of this place. You must not do this thing."
"Must not?" Zhao said. He rounded on Uncle, as though to threaten him - wasted effort, of course, for Uncle stared up at him impassively and did not move an inch, but Zhao seemed not to care. "The very world is within my grasp. This is everything we have been working toward for a hundred years, and I - I - have the power to bring it to pass. I will not let that slip away from me." He chuckled again. "Is this what happened to you at Ba Sing Se, General? Did you come within seconds of victory, and turn from it like a coward?"
"I came to understand that the victory I sought was not worth the price," Uncle said, almost gently. "The balance of the spirits touches all things - and you would destroy that for the sake of not even a war, but a single battle?"
"Ah, yes, the balance," Zhao said, sneering. "I have heard about your sacred journey to the spirit world - not all of us can be so enlightened, General Iroh. I am no Waterbender; the moon does not govern me, and I owe it no allegiance, no protection." He shook his head. "Sometimes I am sorry that your son is dead, because it seems he took the best of you with him when he went." Zhao turned back around and smirked at Zuko. "You are two of a kind, in your weakness. Watch closely, exile: I will show you true strength. Perhaps this time the lesson will sink in."
Zuko looked unimpressed - and even before, Mizan could tell by his expression that he knew something. Something he wasn't telling Zhao, and she wanted to smile at him for it, even though nothing was going the way it was supposed to.
His plan might have been stupid, but up until now, it had also been working. Clearly Zuko had managed to find a way through the part of the plan Mizan had disparaged the most - he was inside the city, after all, even if somebody had found him and wrapped him in ice after.
Perhaps that was the secret he was keeping: if whoever had frozen him in were still around, it might be a bit of a nasty surprise for Zhao.
She glanced behind her, and hoped it had taken a few dozen Waterbenders. Zhao had brought that lieutenant, Yin, and a handful of his better soldiers besides; Yin might not fight for him with all her will, but it was a long way from a few lies of omission to outright betrayal. Mizan had only talked to the woman for five minutes; it might be possible to persuade her, or it might not, but there was no way for Mizan to tell.
Frustrating, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
Zhao grinned at Zuko, and then strode forward. The path along the ice was narrow, but the bridge to the little island of greenery was wide, and Zhao paraded along the middle of it like he was three men abreast, and not one.
"Zhao," General Iroh said, moving as though to catch Zhao's arm - but Zhao stepped away and into the pool.
It was small, circular, and by the height it came to on Zhao's thighs, moderately deep. There were fish in it - koi, Mizan thought. They were large, certainly, and pretty; Mizan could see only two, one black and one white, circling each other playfully. What she could not see was a good reason for Zhao to be staring down at them like they were made out of living gold.
"For the glory of the Fire Nation," he said, hushed and almost reverent, and then he darted a hand into the pool, and drew the white fish out of the water.
In the split second it took for the full moon to dim sharply in the sky behind her, Mizan put it together, and cursed herself for a fool.
Suki was peering out from behind the bamboo and wishing Tuteguk had thought to fill them in a little earlier, and Yue's sudden tumble took her completely by surprise. It was only good luck that she happened to jerk backward, and caught Yue against her shoulder before the other girl could hurt herself - or make a loud sound, which would be almost as bad.
"Help me lay her down," she hissed at Sokka, and, looking as startled as she felt, he complied.
Yue had clearly realized that she needed to stay quiet, even through whatever had suddenly drawn her strength away; her eyes and mouth were squeezed shut, and she was clinging to the grass like she felt she might slide off the earth sideways. Suki reached out to touch her hands, and immediately had to fight the urge to pull back - her fingers felt like ice.
"Yue?" Sokka said, careful to keep his voice low.
"Tui," Yue murmured, and her brow furrowed in what was not quite an expression of pain.
Suki glanced over at the bamboo - she'd moved, from here she couldn't see anything, but she knew what was on the other side. "Now," she said, "now, we have to stop him right now," and she pulled her fans from her belt and threw herself around the bamboo.
Zhao was standing in the pool, and as she rounded the edge of the stand, he held the white koi high and began to laugh. "You see," he said triumphantly, turning to the old man behind him. "They are helpless - would the spirits not have struck me down already, if they could?" He grinned up at the fish, and steam began to rise from his hand - and then a faint crackling sound came to Suki's ears, and the koi's scales began to blister and curl as it thrashed in Zhao's grip.
In the sky, the face of the moon was suddenly flooded with red. Somewhere behind Suki, Yue screamed, breathless with agony; and then Zhao stopped laughing abruptly, and looked down at his chest. The bloody point of a sword was protruding from it - no, through it, Suki realized. Through it, from behind.
"Perhaps they cannot," Lieutenant Yin said, very calm. "But I can."
Her hand was shaking a little, which was stupid - she had done it, and there was no undoing it, no point to uncertainty now. Still, it was steady enough; so she made herself grip her sword's hilt a little tighter, and very carefully pulled it back out of Zhao.
She would die for this, almost undoubtedly. She was as good as dead already. But the moment had come, and she had recognized it for what it was. In Jindao, she had asked the spirits to intervene, and they had; now, they required her aid - they could not have asked more clearly if the fish had looked her in the eye and spoken aloud - and she could not have refused to give it.
"You," Zhao said, and faltered back against the lip of the pool. The moon spirit slid from his hand and onto the grass, still shuddering in pain; and Zhao gazed up at her like he had never seen her before in his life.
"Me," Yin agreed quietly.
Kishen was standing at her elbow, and she suspected their interests were aligned, for the moment; but the other twelve soldiers Zhao had brought were staring at her. When the startlement wore off, Yin was fairly certain they would be less than pleased with her.
But perhaps she was not entirely doomed. It was the friends of the Avatar who had burst out from behind the bamboo a moment ago - or two of them, at least. Yin remembered the girl with the iron fans vividly, and one of the boys had a particularly familiar face. She was not precisely expecting them to leap to her defense, but however much they disliked her, surely they had to dislike Zhao's more loyal soldiers more.
The lieutenant raised her sword, still stained with Zhao's blood, barely in time to catch the blade one of the other Fire Nation soldiers swung at her. Sokka didn't even think about it before he rushed across the grass and kicked the feet out from under the one who was coming up behind her.
If he had thought about it, he reasoned later, he would have done exactly the same thing. She'd already saved them two or three times now, which was enough that he was willing to forgive her for having held a sword against a guy's throat for thirty seconds that one time; and she'd also just maybe saved the moon, which was worth a lot of points all by itself. Granted, the fish was still scorched and flopping helplessly, but Yue had stopped screaming, and as long as it wasn't dead, there had to be something they could do.
So he stopped the woman who was coming at the lieutenant with a glaive, knocking her back against the wall and leaving a long slice along her arm. Much as he might have complained at the time, he was grateful for all the grueling practice now; he still wasn't as skilled as Suki, but the fans were starting to feel good, natural, like extensions of his arms instead of awkward sharp things he couldn't stop dropping. He flared them at the woman as she came at him again, and almost wished he had some red-and-white warpaint to put on - or maybe some green battle skirts.
Suki was only a moment behind him, knocking down the next guy who tried to rush the lieutenant with a sharp strike to the ribs; and Kilurak reached out with his bending and threw a dozen spears of ice at the rest of them.
The funny blue light almost got Sokka's head chopped off, because he knew that color - that color meant wacky Avatar things - and he turned to stare at it and gave another guy a clear shot at the side of his neck. But he caught the blow against one of his fan handles before it could land, and a second later, Katara burst out from behind the bamboo and plunged into the spirit pool.