Chapter 19

The ground was moving.

No. He was moving. His head lay on a hard surface, lolling back and forth with every bump, every jolt. Under his chin, downy wisps of fur tickled his face. Biting cold stung his cheekbones.

Fire. Raging, roaring, a hot poker stabbing his insides, twisting twisting—


"—twisted up around there," Katara was saying. Water rippled on Aang's back as her fingers wove through his chi. He felt her tug on something. "Let me just see if I can—"

When she tried to pull the twisted energy out of his back, Aang stiffened. Every muscle jerked taut, his arms yanking out to the side. An invisible hand bent him backward, his spine about to snap.

Aang was back in the crystal catacombs. He rose up in the air—higher, higher, higher. Raw power flared through his veins. He had let go of Katara at last, and there was nothing left to hold him down.

Far below, Dai Li agents in their dark robes swarmed like beetle ants. There were too many of them. But that didn't matter. He was going to wipe them out. He commanded the Avatar State now, and the Avatar State obeyed his will. The Dai Li and the Fire Nation were going to pay for—

CRACK!

Pain slammed into him, hot and blinding. Nerves raw and screaming, muscle ripping from bone.

The world exploded into white.

When he could see again, he saw Katara. Gazing down at him, tears pouring down her cheeks. But she wasn't just crying. She was weeping. Her spirit shattered, her heart bleeding.

Then he saw his own body, sprawled out on Appa's back. Blank irises peering through uneven slits. His once-vibrant clothing now blackened and burned. Katara, hovering over him. Her hands gripping his shoulders. Holding him. Hanging on. Unable to let him go.

Aang suddenly lurched forward, his body released from that crushing spasm.

"I went down," he said, breathing hard. "I didn't just get hurt, did I?"

The shock of reliving his death, of seeing Katara weeping over his body—

His head swam. Darkness began to swallow up his vision.

But he had to stay with it. He steadied himself with a hand to his forehead.

"It was worse than that," he managed to say. "I was gone…but you brought me back."

"I just used the spirit water from the North Pole," Katara said from behind him. Her tone was soft, subdued. So different from her upbeat manner while they were up on the main deck. "I don't know what I did, exactly."

Aang turned to find her watching him. Like she couldn't stop looking at him, couldn't believe he was really here.

"You saved me," he said.

She reached over and cupped his cheek, her thumb brushing over his ear. "You need to rest."

Only in this quiet, rust-colored room on a Fire Nation ship could Aang finally begin to grasp the aftermath of the crystal catacombs. The toll that the last few weeks had taken on Katara hit him like a ton of boulders. Her eyes were as worn as her tattered blue tunic. Stray strands of hair had pulled free from her braid and hung limp around her face. She had aged far more than three weeks.

But it wasn't just her slumped shoulders or the shadows under her eyes. It was the way she looked at him. Her once unwavering hope, now scarred and fragile. Her fiery self-assurance, replaced with worry and doubt. And the bone-deep sorrow, the grief that would flash across her face whenever she talked about her mother—that grief had torn away all the layers protecting her and bared her spirit like an open wound, tender and unhealing.

Coming face to face with her grief shook Aang to the core.

When he had made the choice to leave the guru to save Katara, he never imagined—never believed—that things would end up like this.

He hadn't understood how dire the consequences of his decision could be. He hadn't understood how badly he could hurt the people around him, how badly he could hurt Katara—until now.

Aang was no stranger to guilt. The guilt of running away, abandoning his people to their doom. The guilt of burning Katara. With the guru's help, he had learned to let go of that guilt.

But this guilt was different—this guilt stayed. This guilt would not let him go.

This guilt dragged him down—


—into a freezing windscape.

Sharp gusts sliced and numbed his face. The air filled his lungs with a thousand pinpricks of ice.

Eyes cracked open. Bright blinding white. Ribbon of blue.

Where the snow meets the sky, his only thought.

Eyes slipped closed. He slipped away—


into a cave dimly lit by a small campfire.

Katara's arm emerged from behind him, with the unraveled length of bandage loosely looped around her fingers. She nudged his elbow. "A little higher, please."

Aang raised his arms higher to give her more room as she unwound the bandages from around his torso. He couldn't help noticing that Katara nearly wrapped her arms around him every time she passed the loop of bandages to her waiting hand on his other side. Feeling her breath tickling his neck, her arms brushing his sides sent a warm tingle from his head to his toes.

"This healing session shouldn't take long," she said. "You just spent a whole day at the Fire Nation school, and you're still in pretty good shape. That's a sign you're recov—"

She broke off with a gasp.

Aang twisted around in alarm. He couldn't see his wound, of course, but he could see Katara and the shock on her face.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his heart pounding.

"The wound on your back," she said as she hurriedly unwound the rest of the bandage. "It opened up again. It's bleeding."

"What do you mean, it opened up?" he said in disbelief. "I thought my wound was pretty much healed. How is it bleeding again?"

Katara quickly drew water out of her bending skin and covered his back. The cool water soothed the dull burning that had been nagging at him all day.

"Mostly healed. But not all-the-way healed," she said. "Your wound must have opened because you've moved around more today than you have in the last three weeks. The stress of being active must have torn it open."

Aang was still half-turned, looking at Katara over his shoulder. The small fire in the cave lay several paces away, its flickering light casting somber shadows over her face.

"I'm sorry, Katara."

"Aang…" she said quietly. "It's not your fault."

Although her attention was trained on his wound, he could see in her eyes what she had left unspoken.

It's not your fault, she had told him. But he knew she also wanted to say: It's mine.

His heart cracked under the weight of the blame Katara laid on herself for not being able to heal him completely. For not being able to do enough and coming up short.

But her blame was misplaced.

The blame was his, and his alone.

Katara had just finished dressing Aang in clean bandages when Sokka let out a shriek. He had discovered a blister on his foot, which meant he couldn't run as fast and not running fast meant the Fire Nation catching him and—

She snapped at her brother to stop being such a baby and stalked over to look at his foot.

Aang slipped on his shirt and pulled on his sleeveless red-and-black jacket. As he was buttoning up the front, his gaze fell on the heap of discarded bandages. Spots of crimson covered the stark-white strips, stains of a wound that wouldn't heal. His shame, stamped in blood.

Near the fire, Katara was busy tending to Sokka's foot. Aang picked up a length of blood-streaked bandage. He ran the cloth between his fingers, smearing the spots of still-damp red.

Aang didn't want Katara to see the bandages again. He didn't want her to blame herself for not being able to do enough for him.

He rolled up the bloodied bandages and tucked them inside his jacket. If she asked about them, he would say he had thrown them into the fire. And he would when he got the chance. But for now, he carried his shame close to his heart.

Aang turned his head at the sound of—


—voices shouting, frantic.

He couldn't tell what they were saying. The words were muffled, as if he was hearing them through ears stuffed with wool.

Hands grasped his arms, legs. Even his head.

They lifted him up. He hung in the air, in nothingness.

Then the world shifted. His body began to plummet.

He fell and fell


and fell into Katara's arms. She pressed her forehead against him as if to say, you're safe, you're safe.

"I'm okay," Aang said, catching his breath, his own arms going around her.

They held on to each other as Appa flew them to safety, neither one willing to let go.

"Well, that was random," Toph said.

Katara finally let her arms drop. She looked over her shoulder past Appa's broad tail, as if she was watching for the man with the third eye tattoo. "I don't think so. I get the feeling he knows who we are."

She turned back to Aang. They no longer had their arms around each other, but they hadn't pulled apart. She sat opposite him, but her knee was still nestled against his leg. They were so close that she moved and shifted whenever he did, as if they were two parts of the same whole.

"Are you all right?" she said in a low voice. She touched his knee. "There were so many explosions and flying rocks and—"

Aang covered her hand with his. "I'm okay," he said again.

She looked like she wanted to believe him, but worry darkened her eyes.

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "I would let you know if I wasn't."

Katara's gaze stayed on him, as if searching for something to hang on to that would quiet her anxiety, convince her that he really was safe.

But shame burned in Aang's heart. If she looked too deeply, he was afraid that she might find the truth—that he was the one responsible for her pain.

After a moment, she nodded. "I know you will," she said.

But she didn't move her hand from his knee.

Only after Appa had landed did Aang notice his pants chafing against his leg when he walked. He pulled up the cuff to find the skin sliced open below his knee. During his fight with the third-eyed man, his pant leg must have ridden up and left his leg exposed, allowing a stray rock to slash him. The adrenaline that came with fleeing the assassin's fireblasts had masked the pain.

The gash was oozing. A line of red trickled down his leg. Aang glanced back at Katara, who was helping Toph down from Appa's saddle. Katara was acting like herself again, no longer clouded by the worry that had made her cling to him earlier.

Aang had already told her that he was fine. He wasn't about to drag her down by showing her his injury. The wound wasn't that deep. It would heal. He just needed to wrap it with something to stop the bleeding. His pant cuff would conceal it from view. Katara didn't need to know.

Then he remembered the bandages—the ones stained with his blood—in his Fire Nation school jacket. He never did get rid of them. The bandages contained his guilt and Katara's grief. The idea of throwing the stained cloth into the fire felt underhanded. Shameful. As if he was trying to burn away evidence of his guilt without anyone knowing.

No one knew about the decision he made at the Eastern Air Temple. He had told his friends something vague about chakras, and that he needed to concentrate in the crystal catacombs to unlock the Avatar State. Other than a few puzzled questions, everyone seemed to accept his explanation.

Aang slung his satchel over his shoulder and stole his way around Appa's hind leg, staying out of sight from his friends. He set the satchel on the ground and pawed through his jacket until his fingers hooked around a strip of cloth. The blood didn't cover all of the bandages—some sections were still clean.

He tore off a length of unblemished white and began to bind his bleeding leg. Best to take care of this quickly before anyone noticed. He wound the bandage below his knee and pulled tight, wincing as—


—the jagged spike was wrenched out of his gut.

His body jackknifed, a protective reflex—

Or tried to.

Hands shackled his arms, his ankles. He thrashed against the claws pinning him down.

The pain was an inferno, searing him alive.

Something covered his burning flesh.

Cold. Soothing.

Water dousing a fire.

His body unclenched. Tension melted away. He sighed—


at the sight of the mountain of clothing piled outside of Sokka's closet.

"You know, I really hate this tradition of cleaning house on New Year's Eve."

Sokka's voice came from somewhere inside the ornately carved wardrobe closet, where half of his body had disappeared in a forest of tunics and bags and trousers.

"If you weren't such a pack rat, Snoozles, it wouldn't be this hard," Toph said, lounging in a chair and absently digging a finger in her ear.

"Less complaining and more sorting, if you want us to help you get through all your stuff before tonight," Katara said as she examined a green silk scarf with a gold border.

Sokka emerged with an armful of clothing and a dark hat with narrow wings cocked on his head. "You guys won't believe what this pack rat just found."

His sister arched an eyebrow in surprise. "You really kept that hat from Chin Village?"

"Oh, I've got something way better than the hat."

Sokka tossed a bundle of dark red garments to every person in the room. Katara unfolded hers with a gasp.

She held up a maroon one-shoulder top. "This is the outfit I wore when we were traveling through the Fire Nation during the war!"

Aang unrolled his bundle, but he already knew what he was going to find. Sure enough, it was his Fire Nation school uniform, complete with his sleeveless black jacket and red headband. He had forgotten about this outfit—it was one of many things he had left behind when he swam to the lion turtle in a trance, on the night before he battled Ozai.

Seeing his Fire Nation disguise brought back memories of the two short days he had spent living like a normal kid earlier that summer. And, of course, the dance in the cave that had left him and Katara gazing into each other's eyes, sweating and breathless.

But when he saw a corner of bright white peeking out from the dark armhole of the jacket, his stomach dropped.

The bandages covered with his blood. He had forgotten all about those, too.

"I wonder if these still fit? That was only a few months ago," Katara was saying.

Aang raised his head to find her looking at him with soft eyes.

"Maybe we could try them on and find out," she suggested. Her slender hand landed on his jacket, and her mouth curved into a playful smile. "My shoes are made for dancing, this time."

But Aang snatched his jacket away from her hand and stuffed the entire bundle of clothing under his arm.

Katara stared at him, her eyes bright with the sting of rejection.

Guilt spiked through his heart for hurting Katara both now and on that dark night in the crystal catacombs. But her hand had drifted too close to the armhole where the bandage stuck out in plain sight. If she spotted the bandage, she would have questions. Questions that would lead to a place he didn't want to go. Questions with answers that would break her trust in him, answers that would crush her.

The war was over. Tonight was a night of celebration. It was time to sweep out the old and ring in the new.

There was no need to dig up the past.

Aang took Katara's hand and gave her a peck on the lips. "Maybe later tonight?" he said, looping an arm around her waist. "Dancing will be a lot more fun after we're done helping Sokka."

He pulled her close and nuzzled her hair, both to soothe her injured spirit and to calm the nervous racing of his heart. That was a close call. He had to do something about the blood-stained bandages. But he could figure that out later.

Because right now, Katara softened into his touch and laid her hand on his chest. "All right," she murmured. The half-lidded look she was giving him made him shiver—


—and tremble as cold spread through his body and filled his veins with ice.

Fire no longer writhed inside him. But the water that had drowned the fire froze him to the bone.

His body shivered, grasping for warmth but finding none.

Then—

The ice in his blood started to melt.

His shivering lessened.

The water covering his core was almost warm. Almost inviting.

His quaking quieted into shudders, shudders into tremors. Tremors—


quivered through Aang's hands as he held a narrow cloth between his fingers. He rubbed his thumb over the places where rust-brown spots puckered the smooth white cloth, passing them over his knuckle like the beads of his monk's mala necklace.

Aang had kept the blood-stained bandages folded up within his black-and-red Fire Nation jacket, which had lain in the lower drawer of his wardrobe closet for the past half year. After he and Katara danced on New Year's Eve in their Fire Nation disguises, he had stuffed the entire outfit between some blankets and shoved the drawer closed.

I'll figure out what to do with the bandages later, he had thought at the time. But he never did—until today.

Six months had passed since the bloodied bandages reappeared in his life. Six months since guilt had pricked his heart anew, the hurt in Katara's eyes piercing him when he jerked away from her touch. Six months to work up the courage to tell her the truth.

And now, Aang was going to tell her everything.

Even though the thought of laying himself open before Katara, like a turtle duck flipped on its back with its underbelly exposed, made him tremble.

What would she say when she saw the bandages? Would the rust-brown spots look bright red to her? Would the stiff, dried blood bring back memories of the dark weeks between his fall and his awakening, the terror and grief still fresh in her mind?

If he told her that he hadn't wanted her to see the bandage, that he'd hidden some of his injuries from her, would she lose her trust in him? Would she feel betrayed and shut him out?

What would happen when he revealed that he had given up the Avatar State to save her? That he had thrown away their best chance for ending the war because he couldn't let her go?

Aang would never forget Katara's words, when he and Iroh broke into her prison in the catacombs: I knew you would come. She had believed in him, and he had lived up to her hope.

But he hadn't lived up to her hope of being the Avatar who would save them from their enemies.

Instead, he had unleashed the Avatar State far too late. And he had died in front of her eyes.

Katara had been able to save him because she happened to be a waterbender and a healer who had spirit water in her possession. His life had been restored by a fragile string of coincidences.

And he was about to find out how fragile his relationship with Katara would become.

The door of his bedroom banged open. Katara stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and frantic.

Aang jumped up from where he was sitting on his bed. Without thinking, he jammed the wad of bandages into the robes that hung across his chest.

Maybe he wasn't as ready to talk as he thought.

"Aang!" Katara cried, flying across the room. She threw her arms around his neck. "Thank the spirits you're all right!"

Aang folded his arms around her back, his hands disappearing under her hair. "What's wrong?" he asked. She trembled in his arms like a frightened deer dog pup. "Did something happen?"

"There was an explosion at the Fire Nation embassy," she said as she clung to him tightly. "You were supposed to be inside with Ambassador Sato. No one in the neighborhood remembered seeing you leave. Rescuers pulled Sato from the wreckage, but they couldn't find your…your…"

Katara cut off with a sob and pressed her face into his neck. Her shoulders heaved. Hot tears dampened his skin.

Eventually, she sniffled and lifted her head. Her hands moved to his shoulders. She seemed focused on tracing his collarbone with her thumb. "I thought—I thought you were gone, Aang," she said unevenly. "I was the one who asked you to meet with him today. If you had died in that blast, it would have been—" Her voice cracked under the strain of guilt. "—all my fault."

Aang took her face between his hands and tilted her head up gently. The grief and terror that haunted her eyes and stained her cheeks with tears—he'd seen it before, in his vision of Katara weeping over his body in the night sky over Ba Sing Se. Only this time, her grief was bound to guilt so heavy that it dragged her down.

That was when he knew he could never tell her about the choice he had made at the Eastern Air Temple.

When Katara left, when he was alone again, Aang buried the bandage soiled with his shame deep within his wardrobe drawer. No one would find it there. And keeping it out of sight might help him forget, for a while.

The edge of his guilt dulled with time, and he eventually did forget. There were times when the guilt would spike through his spirit, seize his breath—usually when Katara was worried about his safety, with that haunted look in her eyes. But he did forget, and he carried on with life. No longer weighed down by the past, his step became so light that—


—he floated in the void.

His body no longer burned with fire, no longer shivered with ice.

He felt nothing. As if he no longer existed.

And then, he heard it.

The sound of someone crying.

So distant, so faint. It might not even be real.

But he heard crying. The kind of crying that—


racked Aang's shoulders as he sobbed.

Two months had passed since Katara locked Aang out of her room and out of her life. At first, he had walked around in a stupor, spacing out in meetings, hardly hearing a word anyone said to him. Two months since she had begun to distance herself, scrambling away like he was the last person she wanted to see.

Two months since the balance in his life had been completely shattered.

It had all started with a simple question. An Air Acolyte wanted to know if he had ever let go of someone he loved.

The guilt that Aang had buried in his heart welled up unexpectedly. He would have been able to tamp it back down if Katara hadn't asked him the same question one week later.

Instead of dying down again, his guilt had flared into a roaring fire.

Then Katara had told him that she needed space away from him. He didn't know why. But guilt clutched him in its relentless grip, whispering that he must have done something to drive her away. He had been too eager with his kisses, too strong in his affection. He had talked about marriage like it was something they both wanted when the desire to marry really belonged to him alone.

As weeks went by, she grew more distant. She faded from his life and left a cold ache in his heart.

But empty spaces must be filled. And the void Katara had left behind was flooded by his guilt.

His choice in the Eastern Air Temple and his failure in the crystal catacombs followed him like a restless spirit. Doubt plagued every decision he made. Blame hung on his every step when things didn't go according to plan.

And underneath it all, the place in his heart where Katara had torn away her love wouldn't stop bleeding.

The guilt and heartache had grown so heavy that Aang was being crushed under their weight.

He had to do something about it, or he wouldn't be able to breathe.

So he had clawed through the blankets in his wardrobe drawer and dragged out the bandages, the dark splotches spotting the cloth like a stain on his spirit.

Holding the strip of cloth plunged him back into the violence of his death under Ba Sing Se, the rawness of Katara's grief, the pain of seeing the love of his life hurting because of him. And then the agony of Katara shutting him out came crashing back and took his breath away. He crumpled the blood-stained bandage in his hands. In the dark purple of dusk filtering into his room, he rocked on his heels and sobbed.

When anguish drained him beyond the point of tears, Aang wiped his hand across his face. He stared dully at the cloth strip wadded in his hand. Then he remembered what he had to do.

During the war, after his awakening, he had burned his glider in the lava trails of Crescent Island. Flames raced up the wooden shaft, consuming the broken ribs and tattered wings like they were dry tinder. Burning away his last possession from his old life. Letting go of the part of himself he held most dear. All so he could fully move on in the present—and survive.

Once again, Aang needed to burn away a part of himself to survive. The ritual of burning an item linked to a harmful or unwanted attachment was the most powerful act of letting go that his people had practiced.

So when he crossed his legs and laid his feet atop his knees, when he breathed a flame into his palm, when he lowered the blood-cursed cloth into the fire, he fervently pleaded for release from his guilt.

He hardly noticed, from outside his door, the despairing sound—


—of his name, an echo through the murk.

Or he thought it was his name.

He wasn't sure what he heard.

He wasn't sure of anything, except that he would sometimes bob to the surface, where light and voices and pain lived. Then he would sink back down into unfeeling darkness.

Down he drifted.

Weightless. Numb.

Down a well with no bottom. A fall with no end.

His feet flailed, searching for a place to land—


on the flat rooftop of an Air Temple pagoda.

Aang folded his glider closed as his feet touched down on the rooftop, the golden hue of the stone dulled into gray by the darkening twilight. He walked to the edge. Before him lay the Tanggula mountain range, a forest of wind-weathered spires carpeting the isle that airbenders had once called home. The wide waters of the Eastern Sea shimmered beyond the peaks. The sun had already disappeared, the fiery glow that lined the horizon steadily giving way to night.

As stars filled the dome of the sky, Aang was reminded of another night when he had meditated atop this same tower under the guidance of a wizened, white-bearded man. The night when he had tried to let go of Katara—but couldn't.

Aang wasn't sure why he had come back to the Eastern Air Temple. Did he really hope to find closure by returning to the place where he had made the most disastrous decision of his life? Did he think that by coming here, he could forget Katara and let her go, once and for all? Perhaps he might, by meditating on this rooftop as he had done two years ago. Or by reflecting on his past under a canopy of stars. Or—hoping against hope—by chancing to meet again with Guru Pathik, who wandered the ruined Air Temples like a spirit.

As the last blush of sunlight was swallowed up by the blue-black sky, darkness blanketed the earth. Surrounded by nothingness, lost in the embrace of night, Aang was truly alone.

Until he wasn't.

The faint rustle of someone behind him reached his ears.

Aang's heart leaped. The guru! he thought.

He whirled to find the dark shape of a man standing on the other side of the rooftop. But instead of wearing a simple set of robes draped over a wiry shoulder, the man was decked in the flowing dress of an airbending master. In place of a bushy beard was a long mustache with ends that drooped down on either side of his mouth. And his face—

His face, with a blue arrow arching over his forehead, was achingly familiar.

"Gyatso?" Aang whispered.

The man's mouth widened into a smile. "You've grown so tall, Aang."

"Gyatso!" Aang cried and ran to his friend.

The old monk chuckled and hurried to meet his pupil and swept him up in his arms. Aang clung to the man who had been his guardian, his mentor, the father he never had. Happy tears leaked from his eyes and he laughed and laughed until laughing turned into sobbing and his tears turned into the sorrow of loss.

They finally stepped apart. "You're here," Aang said brokenly. "You're really here."

Gyatso nodded. "Yes, I am."

"But how? How is that possible?" Aang still couldn't believe he had just clutched Gyatso's robes between his fingers, thrown his arms around his friend's solid back. He couldn't believe he was actually looking into his kind face, hearing the warm tones of his voice. "You're supposed to be—" He stumbled over the words he couldn't say. "The Air Nomads are—"

Gyatso smiled gently at Aang's confusion. "What are you doing here, Aang?" he asked.

At first, Aang only stared at Gyatso, still not understanding what was happening. But Gyatso had asked a question, and Aang should probably give him an answer.

"Katara broke up with me. She left Ba Sing Se two months ago. She's gone, Gyatso," he blurted out. He knew that he was babbling, but he couldn't help himself. "But I can't stop thinking about her. I can't stop thinking about the guilt—the guilt that's been following me since the war. All of this is taking over my life. I have to let it go, somehow."

Gyatso didn't know anything about Katara, and he certainly didn't know anything about Aang's guilt. But he nodded like he understood. "Why are you here, Aang?" he asked again.

Aang forced himself to slow down his breathing. He had worked himself up into a frenzy. This time, he would explain things calmly, in a way that made sense. "I'm here because—"

The arctic wind whipped across his face as Appa circled the air, looking for a place to land.

"—I was in the South Pole—"

A flurry of blue as he collided into Katara.

"—with Katara—"

The huffing of his breath as he and Katara dashed through a dark cave.

"—we were running through the ice caves—"

A hail of ice daggers flying straight at him.

"—there was a fight—"

Stabbing pain in his gut, his hand coming away red.

"—I was hurt—"

"Aang, we need your Avatar State!"

"—and then—"

Katara lying on the ground, pleading with him, her eyes confused and desperate.

"—and then…"

His voice faltered. He couldn't go on. He couldn't bring himself to explain that after the fight in the ice caves, memories of his guilt and the bloodied bandages had come flooding back. Memories that he was reliving in a state of half-conscious confusion. Memories that were like putting a knife to a wound that had healed over—yet still sensitive and tender—and tearing it open again.

But this time, Aang realized, he wasn't experiencing a memory.

"Gyatso," he said, "we're at the Eastern Air Temple. I came here two months after Katara broke up with me and returned to the Southern Water Tribe. I was a mess back then. I came here hoping to figure myself out. I wandered the halls, and I meditated. But this place was empty. I was alone.

"So that means whatever is happening right now isn't a memory," he continued, "because I never met you here. That would have been impossible. Because you're…you're gone."

As he studied Gyatso's face, Aang started to wonder if he was dreaming. Or maybe he was just losing his mind. "Gyatso…why are we here?" he said, turning his friend's question back on him.

But instead of answering, Gyatso said, "Aang, what do your memories have in common?"

Aang was surprised that Gyatso knew about the memories. "My guilt," he replied. "My shame."

Gyatso ducked his head and removed his mala necklace. He held a short length of the sandalwood beads between his hands. "Your memories are like the beads of this necklace," he explained.

He offered the necklace to Aang, who dangled the string of beads from his hand, with the wooden disc and the twin red tassels hanging at the bottom.

"My shame and guilt…the bandages stained with my blood…they're the ribbon that threads the beads together," Aang said, beginning to understand.

Gyatso wound the necklace around Aang's hand. "Your memories and your guilt are bound together, and they have surrounded you," he said. "Unless you break the cycle of guilt, you will remain trapped—" He pulled the beaded string tight around Aang's hand. "—and eventually it will choke you."

The beads of the necklace were wrapped around Aang's hand like the coils of a serpent. "But how do I break the cycle?" he asked. "I tried everything I could. I meditated. I burned the bandages. I even tried to cut myself off from Katara completely. How do I let go of my guilt?"

Gyatso loosened the necklace from around Aang's hand and placed the beads back around his own neck. "Do you want to talk about your guilt?" he said.

Aang's heart hammered in his chest. Such a simple question, asked in such an unassuming way. A question that was loaded with all of Aang's self-blame and fear of being exposed.

But Gyatso knew about the memories, somehow, and Aang suspected he also knew about the guilt. The only other person who he had talked to was Yangchen, but Aang did not feel the need to hide anything from her. Yangchen, like his other past lives, was a part of him. She witnessed everything he experienced, even if she could not read his thoughts.

Gyatso, on the other hand, seemed to know more than he should about Aang's life after the iceberg, when he shouldn't know anything at all.

Then again, he shouldn't be standing here, either, talking to Aang on top of a pagoda in the Eastern Air Temple within a memory that had turned into…something else.

The old monk was watching Aang expectantly, waiting for an answer. Aang's mouth had gone dry. The weight of his guilt sat heavy on his chest. But this was Gyatso, the man who had weathered a younger Aang's temper tantrums and smart mouth. The man who had comforted Aang when he was sick, not batting an eye if he coughed or threw up on him. The man who had helped Aang take off on his first glider flight. Who had held his hand while another monk inked sky-blue tattoos down his back.

Though they were not bound through blood, Gyatso was his father.

And Aang could tell his father anything.

So he told Gyatso. He told him about the guru, the chakras, the vision of Katara in chains. About turning his back on the Avatar State and flying to Ba Sing Se to save her. About the battle in the crystal catacombs, closing out the world in a crystal fortress, finally letting go of Katara and opening himself up to the Avatar State. About his death by lightning, the spirit water, and Katara's healing and her love.

As Aang spoke, he avoided Gyatso's eyes. When he was finished, he kept his head down, afraid to see Gyatso's reaction.

Two hands landed on his shoulders. "This was why I didn't want the other monks to take you away from me," Gyatso said softly. "They wanted to turn your days into a life of training, when your shoulders would grow heavy with responsibility soon enough."

"Gyatso…" Tears blurred Aang's vision, and he fell into his friend's arms. "I'm sorry I ran away. I'm so sorry."

Aang sobbed on Gyatso's shoulder, the one place where he could pour himself out, the good with the bad with the ugly. The place that had once been his home, his entire life, but was now lost to the dust of ashes and time.

"Nothing could have saved us, Aang. Not even the Avatar," Gyatso said as he rubbed his hand in comforting circles over Aang's back. "And I was worried about you. I didn't know where you were."

Then Gyatso tightened his arms around Aang, as if he had finally found a long-lost treasure. "In my final moments, I prayed that you were safe," he murmured. "And you are."

When Aang eventually stopped crying, he still held on to his friend. "I've made so many mistakes, Gyatso."

The old monk pulled back from him, but his hands remained on his shoulders. "Aang…do you really think you made a mistake?" he said.

Aang took a deep breath. "It wasn't a mistake to save Katara," he said. "But I can't help feeling like I made a mistake anyway. Because I died. The Avatar cycle would have died with me, if Katara hadn't brought me back. I still ended up hurting Katara, anyway. And if she ever finds out about my decision, it's going to crush her.

"But Avatar Yangchen said that if I don't address my guilt, it's only going to fester and get worse," he continued. "She's right. My guilt is blocking me from the Avatar State. So I tried to set down the past and walk away. I tried over and over, but I just can't do it. The guilt is still there, and the Avatar State is still blocked."

Gyatso gave a thoughtful grunt and lowered his arms to his side. Then he said, "Do you remember the time you played a prank on Monk Tashi and ran off with his staff? You were only ten years old. Without his staff, he fell and broke his ankle."

Aang cringed. This was an incident he'd rather forget. "Yeah. I felt so guilty. I thought about it all the time. I couldn't even enjoy airball anymore. That's when you taught me to set the past down and leave it behind.

"But why can't I do it now, Gyatso?" he said. He raised his head, his eyes searching his mentor's face, desperate to find an answer. "I was able to do it all those years ago. Why can't I do it again?"

"Do you remember what I said to you back then, when I found you moping around the airball court?"

Aang nodded. "You said that I had to forgive myself. Yangchen told me the same thing yesterday." He sighed in frustration. "But for some reason, I can't seem to do it."

Gyatso puffed out his mustache with a thoughtful hrm under his breath. "Aang, you are a gentle spirit, and you often think of others before yourself. It's hard for you to see your loved ones hurt. And if you've played any part in the reason why they're hurt, you tend to blame yourself.

"We monks have taught you how to forgive," he went on. "It is not easy to let go of anger and blame when someone else has done something to hurt you. But you have learned to do it. You have learned how to release those emotions and let them go.

"But the hardest person to forgive is yourself." Gyatso's voice grew soft with sympathy. "Forgiving yourself is something you have always struggled with, Aang."

Aang sighed. "I know."

A brisk wind blew across the roof of the pagoda, ruffling their robes of saffron and gold.

'"Love is a form of energy,'" Gyatso mused, echoing the words of Guru Pathik. "Our people's love for you, my love for you, was reborn in your heart. Our love was reborn in your love for your friends. In your love for Katara." He gave Aang a long look, as if he was peering into the bottom of his spirit. "And I think that's why you're having such a hard time forgiving yourself."

Understanding began to dawn on Aang. "Because when I do anything that hurts Katara, it's like I'm hurting you. Like I'm stepping all over the memory of our people. It's like you've trusted me to protect something precious, but no matter how hard I try…" He lowered his head. "…I still end up breaking it."

"Letting go of Katara from your life isn't what you need to do, Aang," Gyatso said. "If you want to let go of the past, you need to forgive yourself."

He took Aang's face between two hands wrinkled with age. "We love you, Aang. Our love lives on in you," he said. "Nothing can hurt us anymore. We know you will never forget us. And we will always be with you, no matter what happens."

Aang wished he could stay in this moment forever, face to face with the man who was once his father, because he knew that he would never get another chance to look upon him again.

A sound in the distance echoed over the mountains.

"Let out your blame, and let it go," Gyatso said. "Forgive yourself, Aang."

The sound came again. Almost like someone was…

"Forgive yourself."

calling his name.

Aang clasped his friend's hands where they cradled his face, wanting to feel their gentle strength a little longer. "I will, Gyatso."

Aang!

"I'll try my best to cherish the love you've given me" he said, clutching Gyatso's hands even tighter. "I'll try my best to honor you and our people."

Please come back…

Gyatso smiled. "You don't have to try. You already have."

Aang…

His surroundings began to fade. The voice calling him penetrated his awareness, started to pull him away.

Can you hear me?

Gyatso turned into ash. Aang grasped for him, but his hands clutched only air and dust as his friend's body crumbled away in the wind.

Her voice came again. Calling to him, drawing him through layers of consciousness like she had so many times before. From deep underwater, as he sank to certain doom. From the other side of death, with water gifted from the spirits. From the spirit world, as his body froze in a cave of unforgiving ice.

Please, Aang…


"…please come back to me."

Aang gasped. Sensation flooded his body. Dull pain in his belly. Heavy weight of blankets. Hands cupping his face.

He opened his eyes. He blinked in the blinding light.

Gazing down at him was the desperate and tear-stained face of Katara.


Author's note: Once again, I just want to say that itsmoonpeaches is an ✨amazing beta reader✨

Since next Thursday is a major holiday in the US, I'm posting next week's chapter on TUESDAY, November 22. After that, I'll go back to posting on Thursdays.

As always, if you liked this chapter, I would love to hear from you! ❤️