XX.

A shadow fell over the mist of yellow rot as Katara and Sokka reached the geyser flats. They could actually hear the crinkles of the fire as the comet approached, filling up the sky like an ominous eye. The two stopped in what felt like the middle of the flats. Sokka framed his mouth with his hands.

"AANG! WE'RE HERE!" A blue glow came from a geyser close by.

"Great! Katara, you gotta come up here with me. It's the only way this will work!"

"Uh, Aang? I don't think I could get up there. The geysers are dead. Bumi said they'd never…"

"Really? That's too bad. But that's not what I meant. Close your eyes, Katara. Let me find you."

"Okay." Katara slipped close her eyes. Sokka stared at the sky, the comet showing no sign of slowing.

"C'mon, Aang-do something heroic here…" Katara's necklace gave off a faint lapis lazuli glow. Her hair lost gravity and tumbled around her face. Sokka watched her lips part slightly and reached out to her.

"Don't worry, Sokka," spoke a mix of Aang, Katara, and a host of voices unseen, "we'll take care of it. Wait here." Katara's eyes flew open. They were as blue as the Avatar's.

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Suki pushed away a Fire Nation soldier and briefly glanced at the sky. She saw the black ball of the comet against the grey curtain, but doubled back when she glimpsed two shimmering shapes, side by side, closing in on the comet. Haru paused, the looming shadow a slipcover over his face. Jet followed Suki's gaze and like a ripple invading the chaos, the battle was forgotten. They stopped to watch the boy, waited for him to take away the fighting, the long nights away from family, the paranoia of dying in a strange land or even worse-living another day fearing death to watch those whose middle names and favorite songs they've learned die before their eyes.

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Aang felt Katara's fingers slip through his and he let out his breath. He hadn't been aware he was holding it, but the comfort of having her there, of feeling whole, reminded Aang of simple things, the smaller picture.

"Hey, Aang."

"Hey, Katara." He gripped her hand to assure himself she wouldn't fade. Katara was a tracing blue light, a sketch of her physical self. She glanced at the world below.

"It doesn't look as bad from up here."

"Nope."

"I can see the South Pole!"

"Yeah."

"And the Yukito Mountains…and the Crescent Island…there's Bumi's palace…wow, it's covered in Fire Benders…"

"Katara?" She turned to Aang, "if we don't make it, if we can't stop it…"

"We will Aang." Her undying belief in him: Aang couldn't help loving her for it.

"But if we don't…" he felt sweat roll down his back even in the cold pocket of space. Katara didn't speak, she simply waited for Aang.

"Katara, everything's going to change after we finish this. It won't be as much a problem if we can't stop the comet and the world becomes dust around our ears, but if we do…then our journey ends. We can't be together anymore. I'll have to continue traveling and working on fixing the world from all this. And you'll have to go back home…" A pool of wavy tears lined Aang's eyes. He felt Katara's thumb on his cheek, her hand curved around his face.

"I'm home when I'm with you, Aang. No matter where we go, I'll always feel I'm home when you're with me." Aang drew Katara to him and wrapped her in his arms. Nuts to his age, to being a monk: he would take care of her for all of his days.

"Aang-let's finish this." They took each other's hand, holding their remaining hand out to the comet. Aang grunted, straining to pull the comet towards them. The sky grew lighter, the fire hotter. Katara watched Aang, feeling useless with no water to bend. The comet was close, fire licking holes in their clothes.

"I can't bend anything up here, Aang! What can I do to help?"

"Give me your other hand!" She felt Aang's hand close over hers.

"Try to find the Avatar Spirit, Katara."

"I don't know if I can."

"Just concentrate. Don't think about the fire, think about your element. About the Haku waterfall!" Katara bent forward, eyes shut. Her forehead touched Aang's, their noses just barely apart. His arrow reflected a blue circle on her head.

Katara remembered how it felt to climb the falls of Haku, her feet just a surface for the water, mist stuck to her arms: cold, calming squirts of water running tongues of green in the light. She felt the water on her palms. Her eyes slowly opened and she was delighted to see it wasn't an illusion-her hands were actually wet!

"Aang!" He smiled, raising his head away from hers.

"You've connected with the Avatar Spirit of water, Katara. I think we'll be able to stop it now."

XXI.

Sokka watched Katara's body stand rigid as a grave marker, casting a hazy shadow on the yellow flats. The comet seemed to have somehow stopped its decent and Sokka eyed it nervously. He had never thought, when the world ended, he'd be all alone. He wished that girl he had kissed was with him. Heck, even Suki's company would be appreciated. Or Lenara's. Sokka kicked a pebble, convinced his fate was sealed. He wouldn't go out fighting like his father. He wouldn't be hunkering down with family, waiting for the end. He'd stand here, a battered boomerang clutched in one fist as a huge space nugget dropped from the sky and pressed everything pancake thin. It bothered him that Aunt Woo was right…he was the cause of his own misery.

"Man, "he said aloud, "what a way to go." The silence that greeted him couldn't have been more vast.

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Zuko and Iroh approached the dais and mounted the steps to the cradle just behind the throne. Lenara moved and Zuko helped her stand. The three peered into the depths of velvet and silk. The infant regarded them with a finger in its nose.

"He looks like Ozai," Lenara muttered.

"Yes, it's a shame he couldn't have inherited your mother's eyes, Prince Zuko," Iroh commented, "they were the warmest greeting after a long day on the battlefield. Ah, well, I am satisfied in seeing them in you, between your tantrums." Lenara asked:

"What should we do with him?" Iroh pinched the child's big toe gently, making the baby grin and drool.

"He's part of the royal family. We will protect him."

"He's NOT my family," Zuko muttered venomously. Lenara's voice was patient.

"He's your brother, born of your father, Zuko. He's blood, not your competition." Zuko turned away from Lenara.

"You're lucky, you know. You and Sokka and Katara-having a sibling makes you part of a kinship no one else can claim. You can confide and conspire with them and know it's almost a part of yourself you are talking to. Hey," she turned the Prince's chin gently towards her, "don't turn your back on him. Give him the chance you never got. Live the life you never had with him. Your brother is more of a gift than you realize."

Zuko touched his hand to hers, then move to face the child. He studied the stub nose and round mirrors of its eyes reflecting Zuko's face. A swath of raven hair, a pink fingernail, the smell of life fresh from the woman…he turned to his uncle.

"Do I have to?" Iroh chuckled, knowing a joke when he heard one. Zuko sighed. From exile to traitor to protector to brother in a few short hours. This world was taking pleasure in tormenting him, he swore it.

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A hot wave of air swept back Katara's hair. Aang felt the start of a grand sunburn on his nose and cheeks. He gripped Katara's hand.

"Ready?" She nodded. They felt water on their fingers and opened their palms out toward the comet. The flood was released. The flames receded, grew, pushed, relented, consumed and died. The rock dripped in the void of space, pocked with the scars of its travel. It hung in the sky to face the Avatar's judgment.

Aang and Katara exhaled and the rock grew cold, ice curled and clotted the jagged surface. Aang used Air bending to float to the other side of the comet, Katara in tow. He was becoming exhausted, bending air currents, the rock, the water, the fire…it was almost killing him. He swallowed a ragged breath and wiped his pale forehead with his arm.

"You okay, Aang?"

"Yeah. We're almost done." He sucked in a cold breath and forced his arm out, using the small traces of earth in the comet to push it away. His elbow locked; muscles of a twelve year old taunt and shaking. Katara dropped her hands on Aang's shoulders, capping the boy's frame and holding him upright. He felt the adrenaline dam behind his shoulders, the blue glow from his arrow almost blinding, his head ached, a thousand voices from the past whirled in his brain, Aang's vision went white…

…the explosion wasn't expected.

XXII.

A deafening roar poured down from the sky. Bumi and Suki shielded their eyes from the bright light of the explosion. A panicked gasp escaped the battlefield residents and Haru capped his ears as they rang with aftershock. Jet chewed a blade of grass thoughtfully.

"Hey, Jet! What'd ya think that was?" Smellerbee whined. Jet kept his eyes on the growing clouds of powder.

"The end of the war, Smellerbee…the end of the war." The crowd was silent, slowly realizing he was right. A Fire Nation guard sheathed his sword. Two women folded their arms around one another. Bumi snorted.

"Hah! I knew he could do it!"

"What should we do now?" Haru asked. Suki bent to help an injured Fire bender.

"Tend to the sick and the wounded. Then, let's get the living home."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Jet lifted a young kid off the ground.

"Shouldn't we celebrate or something?" The Kid asked. Suki passed him, struggling under the weight of the man.

"There will be time for that later. Life doesn't stop just because the war did." The Kid contemplated this, which took several minutes since Suki had used words with more than one syllable. He scooped up two Earth benders, one under each arm, and stomped up to the palace.

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As Iroh lifted the infant from the cradle, the walls of the palace rumbled, dust seeping from the stone as it separated from the ceiling. The floor cracked and the lamps toppled. A loud explosion tipped the cradle over as Iroh hugged the child to his chest. Zuko braced Lenara. She watched a fissure split the palace in half, warm steam rising from below. It cast an orange glow like Hell's floodlight on the unconscious Fire Lord. The floor broke away in pieces, devoured by the hole that seemed to curl back the lip of the marble floor. It rushed to swallow Ozai. Lenara felt pressure on her shoulders from Zuko's slender fingers.

"Just don't get yourself killed, okay?" Zuko ran past her and hurtled the first gaping crack, stumbled, regained his balance, and kept on running. Ozai's leg was dangling off the edge when Zuko reached him. He grabbed his father's arm. It was warm almost to the point of fever.

"Father," he grunted, "you have to wake up…I can't carry you…" Flames bubbled up from the hole, specks of lava freckling the marble.

"Is everything in this screwy nation built over a volcano?" Lenara yelled.

"Yes!" Iroh answered, "Prince Zuko! Hurry!" Zuko knelt by his father, shoving his head under his father's arm and braced himself to stand. Suddenly, the arm around his shoulders locked around his neck and a second hand slammed into his back. Zuko toppled over the rim, stopped only by an uneven chunk of marble below his foot and his fingers that scratched for the ledge.

"Still trying to do the noble thing. I could always rely on you for that," Ozai laughed. Zuko watched his father's fist spark to life. The flames reflected in his hollow eyes…and faded as his father's face was engulfed in fire that sent him shrieking to the edge. The skin peeled back from his left eye, the stench overwhelming. Another blast sent Fire Lord Ozai over the fractured floor to the rumbling abyss below. Zuko watched his father burn and become claimed by the fire. His nightmares were far from over. This would haunt him until he died. Any chance of reconciliation was now lost. It almost bothered him…almost.

Zuko pulled himself up to see Iroh and Lenara, side by side, lowering their arms. Iroh clutched the child in the crook of his other arm. Lenara sprinted down the dais and hopped across the disintegrating floor. She reached Zuko as the space between them crumbled and fell. Zuko pulled her into his arms, unable to watch someone else go over into the volcano.

"Forgive us," she mumbled through his shirt, "we couldn't bear to lose you." She pulled away and motioned to Iroh.

"Get ready to run, Iroh! You only get one chance!" Lenara bent the remaining water from Katara's flask across the canyon and froze it with a single breath. Iroh backed up and then ran at the bridge, the infant pressed to his side and covered with his old oversized hand. He slid, but found his balance and pushed himself across the ice just as the fire consumed the bridge.

The three ran from the throne room and down the dark halls now lit with an eerie distilled light. They burst through the doors and down the steps of the palace, past the Kid, who held a man under each arm, past Suki and Jet baring their own burdens, past the whole crowd who stared at them, wondering if the hounds of Hell were at their heels.

"Get clear of the palace!" Lenara shouted over her shoulder, "it's going under!" The crowd panicked, people fell over each other as the ground bled lava and the walls fell. Cracks like hot veins traced a path from the hole where the Fire Nation Palace once stood to the survivors collected several miles away.

"If it ruptures, we're dead," Jet muttered.

"I don't think it will, " Iroh replied, "it has finished it's work." The ground stilled, the gardens of dust settled. The only sound heard was the chirp of a baby coughing history from his lungs.

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Sokka stumbled backwards in shock as the explosion above shook him out of his thoughts of dying alone. He touched his sister's shoulder. She didn't respond. He panicked.

"Katara!" The sky was dark with debris. Sokka searched for a trace of the Avatar's blue light, anything organic among the crumbs. Sokka searched his sister's face. He recalled his decision to help her find Aang when they first met the Avatar. He did it because their father had told him 'a warrior protects the village, but Sokka must protect his sister first'. In the end, he couldn't have done anything to save her and it was the worst feeling in the world-to step back and let someone else fight and die while he stood, useless and feeble. He wrapped his arms around his sister.

"I'm sorry, Katara." He forced himself not to cry…and was failing. He felt warmth, pressure, and a rumbling of sound through his jaw as a voice said:

"Sorry about what, Sokka?" Sokka pushed himself away to stare at Katara. Her eyes were a lively brown, hair hung askew around her face, but she was very much alive. Sokka threw his arms around Katara again and she laughed.

"What's with you, Sokka? Did a rock fall on your head?"

"No. I'm…just glad you're okay." Katara smiled. Sokka glanced behind her.

"Where's Aang?" Katara drew her hands up to her mouth.

"He passed out…I didn't see…" Sokka watched the sky, saw a small orange dot against the grey-blue clouds, and ran for it. Aang was falling too fast and Sokka doubted he would make it in time.

"AANG!" he screamed, "WAKE UP!" Aang neared the ground. Sokka had a horrible mental picture of pancakes again…

Aang stopped on a cushion of air. He levitated for a moment, then see-sawed down on a gentle breeze. He landed in Sokka's outstretched arms. Sokka didn't know how Aang managed to save himself. Perhaps his Avatar spirit reacted to mortal peril?

Aang cracked open an eye and gave Sokka a weary smile.

"Hey, Sokka…what's for breakfast?" Sokka shook his head. Aang stood upright and clutched his head. The migraine still lingered.

"Where's Katara?" Sokka turned and found his other half jogging up to them. The three stood together for a moment, unable to realize what they had just accomplished. They were just glad they could all stand with each other again. The sun finally broke through and ushered in the beginning of a new time: the time after the war.