THWACK
"Aang!"
Hama's neck snaps to one side and Aang drops. The misty ground feels like seafoam against his skin; the cold would almost be soothing had his veins not turned to fire.
He lies on the cloudy ground and feels like an inverted porcupine, with quills pointed inwards, when he hears a faint crackling sound behind him. He gingerly turns his head and sees the mist skitter around a neck folded like paper.
Aang scrambles for his staff. His nerves —like splinters— scream at the sudden movement. He grits his teeth and forgoes standing in favor of making small minute movements with his wrist.
He brushes the ground for his staff, the noise increasing in fervor but not volume, and his fingernails click against metal. He closes his hand and twists.
It hurts. Like he swung his arm against iron instead of striking haphazardly against an unsuspecting ankle.
Hama falls. Her neck is crumpled still and there's a line on the edge of her jaw stretching across the nape that's the same stark, parchment white as Gyatso's skeleton. Aang briefly wonders if he, closer to the spirit world than most, imagined the noise. He wonders if she's dead.
Dead like a fish's eyes, he thinks as his gaze is drawn from the wound on her neck to the listless pools of black that stare back at him.
He freezes.
Zuko. Zhao. Azula. His enemies all wanted something. Honor. Fame. His life. It wasn't personal. Not like this.
The mist is swirling over Hama's wounds and lying skin over bone; stitch by stitch. He doesn't move. Can't. Pure hatred is grappling his gaze and demanding an answer.
"I—"
He doesn't know what to say. I'm sorry? I haven't done anything wrong. I was frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years. I made a mistake. I'm trying to fix it. I don't know what more I can do. They were my friends too.
Air hisses from the gash in her throat.
"Hama," croaks out Aang and, in doing so, remembers his lungs. "It's Hama!" He shouts towards his friends."Lotus is Hama!"
Sokka runs towards him with Toph tagging along behind him. She is gripping the edges of his shirt. Toph can't sense, concludes Aang as he braces his staff against the swirling ground and pushes himself up.
He moves towards them —or tries to— his feet are numb around his ankles and his gait is like a fawn's.
The crackling sound stops.
Instinct has him turning and whirling his staff far before he registers the sharp shreds of ice hurtling towards him.
Ice clack metal but Aang's defense is far from a graceful maneuver. The force of the volley pushes him back and he lands flat on his ass.
We need to attack as one, thinks Aang as he gets back on his feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the red lines of fresh cuts form along Sokka's arms, and he sees Toph behind him ball her hands into shaky fists; helplessness cutting deeper than blood.
He nods towards Sokka and dashes right as Sokka runs left.
It's a maneuver they practiced on koala sheep but Hama, with her ghastly mist and outstretched arms, is no koala sheep.
Aang isn't surprised when his body locks and his hands once again reach for his throat. He stares solemnly at a face of utter loathing and waits for Sokka to strike.
Hama's right-hand twitches away from him. She smiles.
Sokka doesn't strike.
Aang's blood runs cold. "Let him go," he says, straining to turn his head. There's a shadow of a wolf-tail across the hazy ground. "Leave him out of this."
One of Aang's hands idly moves up to cradle his jaw —so she can snap it— his mind helpfully supplies.
He hears Sokka choke.
Hama's mouth twists; lip curling to reveal gums, gums shrinking under teeth, teeth parting to unearth a dancing tongue. "No," she proclaims, her voice gravid with glee, "No, you will suff—"
Hama swallows her sentence as Toph, a yarn of flailing limbs, crashes into her gut.
Aang's hands slacken and then, for a moment, in the swirling mist he sees the silhouette of Avatar Roku.
Hama's fist strikes Toph like the crack of a whip and the moment is gone.
Aang lunges right as Sokka charges left.
Toph is standing, notes Aang as he grabs his staff, she's clutching her face but she's standing. Aang twists, stretching his arms into the mist to offset the lack of air, and curves his blow. A sweep instead of a strike.
He sees Sokka jump at the same time Hama crosses her arms.
Layers of water rush upwards like sheets of ice. Fast, thinks Aang as his staff is engulfed in a wall of water that surrounds Hama like a cocoon. She's faster than the Northern benders. He tugs on his staff and, In the back of his head, is a thought he won't voice; Hama fights like Katara.
It makes sense, reasons Aang, as he lets go of his staff, Katara learned the basics in the Southern Tribe. But as Aang steps back he knows it's more than that; Northern Waterbenders are used to fighting in a group. Southern Waterbender had to adapt.
He tackles Toph out of the way moments before the defensive cocoon launches into an offensive wave. Sokka isn't as lucky; he sidesteps the wave in the nick of time but loses his balance. Hama takes advantage.
One fluid change in form is all it takes for the wave to turn into a whip that coils around Sokka and launches him into the air.
A boomerang hits its mark; slicing into Hama's shoulder and breaking the water, but not breaking the fall.
He's falling too fast, thinks Aang as he runs towards Sokka. He makes three steps.
Oomph!
"Katara!" yells Aang, relief pouring from his body as she groans from underneath a battered and bruised but very much alive Sokka. He hears her grumble, "What did you eat?" to Sokka and Aang smiles.
Hama steps forward.
Aang quickly darts to stand between Hama and Toph, but Hama isn't looking at them. She takes another step and Aang follows her gaze to a woman who is but a stranger clad in blue until Sokka's voice cuts through with a hushed, "Mom?"
The fog parts and Aang can feel stone; a path, beneath his feet. He looks down then quickly glances back up as Hama intones, "Kya, it's really you."
"Hama," replies Kya carefully and with the same tilt of her chin as Katara. "What did you do?"
Hama's mouth firms. Under the churning fog, the movement is nearly imperceptible. However, there is a gauntness to her cheeks that form a shadow when she hides her scowl. "I tried to help your kids but they wouldn't see reason," begins Hama in a halfway measured tone. "They naively believe that, after everything they've done to us Kya, that the Fire Nation should be forgiven."
A pause, left unfilled, and the lines on Hama's face deepen as she scowls further. "The Fire Nation deserves to suffer, Kya."
"Reason?" quotes Kya and she gives a laugh that's too high-pitched and borderline hysterical, as though she couldn't decide whether to laugh or to cry and so tried to do both at the same time.
"This is your reasoning, Hama? Trying to kill my son?" Kya steps forward and gestures towards Sokka and Katara."Throwing him into the air like that. What were you thinking? That his death would hurt the Fire Nation more than it would hurt me?"
Hama blinks slowly. "You're still dead," she says to herself. "This is but another trick of the Spirits."
A trick of the Spirits, echoes Aang as he stands on a stone path no one else seems to see. But not all tricks are bad.
"That doesn't matter!" shouts Kya. "I may be dead but, Hama, of all people," she takes a sharp breath. "Of all people. I never thought you would be one to hurt them. Never."
"Then clearly your memories are mistaken, Spirit," replies Hama, coldly, She bends the mist into forming icicle-like claws from her hands. "For I will gut a Firebender where she stands."
Azula, who has kept quiet until this point, stares at the sharp ice pointed her way and drolls, "Please do. I'll willingly be gutted alive as long as the Avatar goes first."
Sweat drips down Aang's back as the attention is back on him.
"They're children," intercedes Kya.
"You know what children can do. When they're forced to."
Her arm is shaking, thinks Aang. No. I'm mistaken. It's the rolling fog.
He could knock her down. They have the numbers now. One well-placed strike and the tide is turned.
His grip slackens.
"Hama…" he says, gently, like he's breathing the words over a tightrope. "I can't bring them back."
"No," she responds with a mournful cold, "No you can't."
"Don't!" shouts Kya. "Hama. Don't you dare. "
"If I could," continues Aang, making no effort to move, "I would. I would bring them all back."
"But you can't," cries Hama, the ice dissipating as she fully turns towards Kya. "You're dead, Kya. Don't you get it? The Fire Nation killed you and the Avatar can't bring you back and neither can I so why shouldn't they suffer as we have? Why should we forgive? What right do they have to expect mercy?"
"It's not for them; it's for you," cuts in Aang. "Holding this anger will only hurt you."
Kya nods. "The Avatar is right. You have to let the wound heal, Hama." She carefully steps closer. "If you pick at it, it will never heal."
She embraces her friend who is worse than a stranger—a friend she no longer trusts with her children, but a friend all the same for some friendships are strong enough to last past death but only just.
Aang watches as Hama slowly returns the embrace and then he stalls as Katara and Sokka rush to join the Southern Water Tribe group hug. He smiles but it's bittersweet for he still has duties to complete.
Aang walks past Hama towards the silhouette he saw in the fog. The heat of an amber stare, reassures him that he's not going alone.
Azula's eyes flick away from Aang and back to the painful reminder of her own, woefully inadequate, relationship with her mother. The choice is clear though her pathway isn't.
Azula follows Aang.
A/N:
This chapter was a pain to write. Still not sure if I'm satisfied with it. Let me know your thoughts.
Oh! And if you guys maybe want to see some of the edits done to this chapter here's a link to the google doc: document/d/1AlZJCLYZNmCXfIKr10OAQDPOW-B-qpOaHHYoX6HkvlM/edit?usp=sharing
(ignore the last edit that was me copying and pasting and removing ao3 html to stop the extra spaces.)