Author's note: This fic expands on an idea introduced in chapter 19 of my drabble series, Slices of Life, but this fic is meant to be read on its own. There are also some minor references to the Kyoshi books and the Smoke and Shadow comic (but no real spoilers).


Lullaby for the Departed

Katara wished they had never come here.

She and Aang walked along the sickly stream that cut through the bottom of the valley. Neither the stream nor the valley would have been worth noting if not for tall grasses the purple of bruised plums nor water the color of ink. The sky above the jagged hills glowed with clouds of crimson and ochre and bile that swirled in nauseating patterns. Trees towered over them on either side of the stream, hair-like leaves drooping along the branches as if the trees themselves were weeping. Unseen birds—she thought of them as birds, anyway—murmured amongst the boughs. Snatches of birdsong reached her ears, some of them melodies that were hauntingly familiar. Like the songs she'd heard from Gran Gran as a little girl. Sometimes the birdsong sounded like human voices.

They never should have come here. This was something she knew with her entire being.

Katara wanted to beg Aang to summon Hei Bai again. He had formed a preternatural bond with the panda spirit ever since they had first met in Senlin Village. Whenever Aang visited the Spirit World, Hei Bai appeared whenever he sensed Aang had the need. So when she and Aang climbed out of a crumbling tunnel into the domain of spirits, Hei Bai ambled into view as if he'd been waiting for them all along. With a few curt instructions, Aang had told Hei Bai what they were looking for, and they set off, riding on the spirit's back.

When Hei Bai halted at the mouth of the valley, Aang had taken that as the signal to dismount. The panda spirit galloped away, and nothing had ever filled Katara with such despair as the sight of Hei Bai's black-and-white hulk disappearing into the hills.

She had her bending water, and Aang had his staff. But the fact that they had retained their bending abilities in the Spirit World was scant comfort. They were on their own.

As she and Aang forged deeper into the valley, the sense that they had made a mistake grew stronger with every step. She hated the way her feet disappeared in the knee-high grass. Anything could be lurking in there, and they would never know until it was too late. With no other landmarks to guide them, they walked along the bank of the stream. The weeping trees grew thick in the heart of the valley, forming a dark wood that nearly blotted out the unnatural sky. The birds had grown in number as well, the strains of their songs blending into an unsettling cacophony.

Katara clenched Aang's hand so hard that her knuckles popped, the bones of her fingers rolling over his. He slipped his hand out of her grip and cloaked her shoulders with his arm, pulling her close. She wound an arm around his waist. Though her husband was the picture of calm—shoulders square, chin high, face grim—his arm trembled against her back.

They should not have come here, but they'd had no choice.

The silk farmer's daughter was the one who had seen it—the spirit who had carried away their son. The fluttering cloak, the flash of a pale mask, the bundle in its arms. It had vanished into a cave by the farmhouse whose opening was hidden by dangling vines and overgrowth, untouched probably for centuries. Inside the cave was the entrance to a tunnel leading to the Spirit World that one of Aang's past lives, Avatar Kuruk, had previously sealed off.

Who had lured the spirit to kidnap Tenzin, they did not know. All they knew was that someone was trying to end the Avatar cycle by targeting not the Avatar himself, but his airbender son. Aang was too powerful to take down without a small army, and the perpetrator seemed to want to operate in secret. Eliminating Aang's airbender children, and thus any future Air Nomads, was a far simpler task.

The thought that someone would hurt Tenzin sparked a burst of anger in Katara. Rage burned inside her veins, and though it did not make her brave—the feeling of unease remained—it numbed her to fear. The trees and grass and birds were just things, now. Part of the landscape. Strange and curious, sure, but no longer menacing. None of them mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting Tenzin back.

Katara's fearlessness, however, did not last.

The stiffening of Aang's posture was the only warning she had before she heard it herself.

"Snowflakes gently fall
White blanket over all
Close your eyes, my love."

She knew the melody the way she knew her children's voices, the verses a well-traveled path from her own childhood.

"Cold wind murmurs by
Nighttime breezes sigh
Drift to sleep, my love."

The song was how Katara soothed the little ones to sleep. Every time she sang it, she could feel her mother's warm arms, smelling of furs and the sweetness of her suaasat stew.

"Moonlight shining bright
Watching o'er the night
Sleep and dream, my love."

But hearing the lullaby now chilled her heart. The stanzas echoed around them in unsynchronized chaos, repeated over and over by wailing spirits. The rustling in the trees had crescendoed into an agitated quaking. The precious song of her childhood, violated by a nightmarish chorus.

"Tenzin. He's gotta be here," Aang said, tension straining his voice. "We're close."

His words snapped Katara out of her shock. Her hands were cold. Her fingers trembled as she brushed a lock of hair away from her face. The sour taste of acid rose in her throat.

She stumbled and would have fallen, but Aang's arm around her held her steady. "We're almost there," he said. A shadow darkened his face, his gentle features turning hard. "We'll get him back."

They rounded a bend in the stream, and a small clearing appeared before them. In the middle of the grassy circle sat a hunched figure that rocked back and forth, a dark cloak shrouding its body. When it lifted its masked head, certainty flashed through Katara like lightning.

This was the spirit who had taken their son.

The Kemurikage.

Katara had thought the Kemurikage were supposed to resemble women, the vengeful spirits of mothers whose children had been kidnapped by Fire Nation warlords in ancient times. But this Kemurikage was a hulking mound the size of a polar bear dog, and the only thing remotely human about it was the mask covering its hooded face. The mask was stark white, with crimson teardrops trailing from its twin eyeholes. Hairy arms as wide as logs emerged from the tattered cloak, and in those arms lay a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.

"Tenzin!" Katara cried, charging forward.

"Katara, no!" Aang grabbed her arm and brought her up short.

"Aang, let go!" She tried to wrench free, but he held her fast. "The Kemurikage has Tenzin!"

"That's no Kemurikage," her husband said quietly.

She stopped struggling. "What?"

"Kemurikage look like women, and their masks have swirls of smoke on one side and shadow on the other. This isn't a Kemurikage, Katara."

His revelation filled her with dread. "Then…what is it?"

"I don't know."

The spirit's head swiveled to stare at them, and it stopped rocking. "Ah," it said, its voice strangely amplified, like several voices speaking in unison. "You have come."

Aang stepped forward and jabbed his staff at the spirit. "Give us our son."

The cloaked figure reared up and seemed to grow larger, raising its hackles. "He is your child no longer," it said. "He is our child now."

"'Our child?'" Katara stepped up beside Aang. "What do you mean by 'our child?'"

But the spirit didn't reply. Instead, it started to sway again, the pale mask with its bloody tears forming the center of a grotesquely large head that weaved from side to side.

In the next few heartbeats, Katara oscillated between rage and revulsion. The urge to snatch her son out of the arms of that abomination burned and seethed until it came to a boil.

She had to strike fast, without warning, and take Tenzin back before the spirit knew what had happened. They would beat a hasty retreat, and with any luck, Hei Bai would be waiting for them at the entrance to the valley.

But before she could do more than uncork her waterskin, the spirit hunched over Tenzin and began to sing.

The creature's guttural crooning was disturbing enough, but the words were what made her sick.

"Moon hangs bright in darkened sky
Wind whispers softly in the trees
Go to sleep, my little one
Sleep and sweetly dream."

"Aang," she said hoarsely. "How does it know?"

"Wisps of cloud shroud mountains high
Spirits gather in the peaks
Go to sleep, my little one
Sleep and sweetly dream."

She grasped Aang's wrist, digging her fingers into his palm, making him flinch. "How does it know your Air Nomad lullaby?"

The bird spirits around them—or was it the trees themselves?—picked up the melody, echoing the lines in frenetic screeches.

"Wind whispers softly in the trees…"

"Go to sleep, my little one…"

"Wisps of cloud shroud mountains high…"

"It knows your Water Tribe lullaby, too," Aang said. "The spirits in the trees just repeat what they hear. They must have learned it from that…thing." His jaw clenched with barely suppressed anger. "It must have been spying on us."

He took a few steps toward the spirit and planted his staff on the ground, sending a shockwave through the earth that made Katara stagger. "Listen here, spirit," he bellowed, thrusting a finger at its masked face. "I am the Avatar. And I am taking back my son. NOW!"

Aang slashed his staff at the spirit, releasing an explosion of air that stripped the leaves off nearby trees. The blast caught the spirit's cloak, ripping the rotted cloth off its body.

Katara did not know what she expected to see underneath the cloak, but she never imagined it would be this.

A large mound loomed before them, covered with thick strands of hair that fluttered in the wind. With a heave, the mound rose up on gigantic eagles' claws with talons as long as swords. Either the loss of its disguise or Aang's display of power captured the thing's attention, because three pairs of limbs unfurled from its hulk like the legs of an enormous insect. But as the limbs unfolded, Katara saw that they weren't legs at all—they were wings, and the hairs covering the spirit were mottled brown feathers, mangy and broken. A fourth pair of wings cradled Tenzin over its breast.

But the head was the worst of all. The mask with bloody tears was attached to a long, serpentine neck that bobbed over Tenzin's tiny form. The base of the neck arose from a large bulge whose surface rolled and undulated before breaking apart into snake-like cords. The creature now had four heads on necks that writhed like tentacles. But unlike the first head she and Aang had encountered, the new heads did not hide behind masks, their faces bare. Katara had seen faces like that before, on women who had died in childbirth—skin chalk-white, their bodies draining of blood as they bore new life into the world. But the spirits of these women had been transformed, warped by some dark force in the Spirit World, their lips contorting into snarls, fangs like daggers protruding from their mouths.

"Tui and La…" Katara whispered, her feet rooted to the ground, her limbs refusing to move, even as every nerve in her screamed at her grab Tenzin and run.

Aang's tall figure was dwarfed by the monster before them. But if the spirit cowed him, he didn't show it. "What are you?" he said in a tone as hard as flint.

"We are Hi-Tan," the heads said, speaking in concert. "We have lost our children. We gave them life, but we paid the price in blood. The world has taken them from us." The heads whipped toward Aang, necks stiffening, their faces a hand's breadth away from his. "Give them to us. Give us our children," they hissed.

Then the heads reared back, poised like a four-headed rat viper about to strike. Aang tightened his grip on his staff and shifted into a defensive stance.

A wail pierced the air.

Tenzin!

Hearing her son's cry stirred Katara into action. "Get your foul wings off my baby!" she screamed. "Get away from my husband!"

She crouched low and jabbed her hand at the spirit, fingers splayed wide. A flurry of water whips surged out of her bending skin and shot toward the monstrous heads. With her leg cocked behind and her arm stretched out in front, she held her body straight and stiff. Katara was a spear, a weapon. Unyielding. Without mercy.

The tips of the water tendrils narrowed and sharpened into points, transforming into arrows flying toward their mark. She had only ever used water whips to restrain her target or defend herself. This time, she aimed to kill.

The water whips were about to pierce the Hi-Tan's heads when they froze in mid-air. The tips hardened into solid ice. White frost traveled down the tendrils, rapidly freezing them in place. For half a heartbeat, an icy lattice hung in the air between Katara and the spirit. Then the frozen tendrils shattered into a spray of splinters so tiny that they melted before raining down onto the grass.

"Sweetie…" Katara said pleasantly and stomped toward Aang, who was just lowering his outstretched hand. She grabbed his shoulder and forced him around to face her. "I had that thing. What in La's name did you do that for?"

But his stricken expression took her aback. "Do you hear them?" he said.

Only when Aang pointed them out did she notice. She had to strain to listen, but she could hear them over Tenzin's wailing.

Tenzin wasn't the only child crying.

At first, the sobbing was soft, indistinct. Then the cries grew louder and louder until Katara could make out what sounded like speech. Most of what the voices babbled was incoherent, but the few words she did understand pierced her heart.

"Mama…"

"Baba…"

The blood drained from her face, her entire body turning cold. "Bumi? Kya?"

But Aang shook his head. "It doesn't sound like them."

And it wasn't them. The crying came from the gaping mouths of the Hi-Tan, their bloodless lips moving as they formed the words.

Katara let out a breath, the tension in her muscles leaving her body along with the air rushing out of her chest. She pulled out the stopper of her other bending skin. "We need to grab Tenzin and get away from this place."

Her husband, however, didn't move. "It's like they know us."

She narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean? Who knows us?"

But before he could answer, the Hi-Tan's masked head hovered over Tenzin, whose face was now purple from crying. The mask swayed back and forth, humming the tune of the Air Nomad lullaby. Then it started to sing again.

"It's time to spread your wings and fly
Our hearts go with you in the night"

Katara grasped Aang's sleeve, her knuckles white. "No…"

"Go to sleep, my little one
Our tears flow like a stream"

Her body began to shake like a pennant flapping in the wind. "They do know us, Aang. Those voices. The other children."

"Go to sleep, my little one
Sleep and sweetly dream."

"They're the children we could never have," he said softly, coming to the same conclusion as she had.

Katara clutched at her belly, the memory of the miscarriages still fresh as if they had occurred only days ago. The cramping, the painful spasms that threatened to split her apart. The life snuffed out too soon, leaving her body. Wrapping the bloody clump in white linen, carefully, so carefully. The heat of flames from the tiny funeral pyre. Wind whipping her hair and Appa's mournful bellow as they released the ashes, the downy flecks swirling in the breeze before drifting into the waves below. Aang's quiet tenor as he sang the final verse of the lullaby, the verse he had composed to bid farewell to the children they would never meet. Her own voice silent, locked up with sorrow.

"It's time to spread your wings and fly
Our hearts go with you in the night
Go to sleep, my little one
Our tears flow like a stream

Go to sleep, my little one
Sleep and sweetly dream."

The ashes were the spirits of the children they had lost, laid to rest in the embrace of the sky and the sea. That was what Katara wanted to believe. The thought had given her comfort.

But the truth, in the shape of a four-headed monster, was horrifying.

"Our children…" Katara struggled to put the reality of their children's fate into words. "The Hi-Tan…"

"The Hi-Tan consumed their spirits. That's why it has their voices. That's why it knows our songs," Aang said bleakly. "And it wants to do the same with Tenzin."

Through the haze of shock, something clicked within Katara, the way a Pai Sho player snapped her tile into place on the board. The tile that had to be sacrificed to win the game.

She drew the water out of her remaining bending skin. "We have to destroy that thing. If we don't, even if we rescue Tenzin, he'll never be out of danger."

Aang's eyes widened and he stared at her, stunned. "But they're in there. Our children," he said. "Their spirits are in there, Katara."

The knowledge of it ate at her heart, but she steeled her resolve. It's no different than cutting off rotting limbs to save a life, she told herself.

Except those limbs were their children.

"We can't save them, Aang."

He clutched at his head with both hands. "I think we can. There has to be a way. I can bend their spirits free. I have to try."

Katara watched as the Hi-Tan weaved its heads over Tenzin, crying and babbling and singing. The spirit shed straggly feathers with every movement, the molt of a diseased creature carpeting the grass.

Even if she and Aang could whisk Tenzin away, even if Aang could subdue the Hi-Tan long enough to energybend, what state would they find their children's spirits in? She had the sinking suspicion that their spirits would not be whole, that they had been corrupted beyond redemption. Assuming that Aang could bend them free in the first place, and without destroying them in the process.

She and Aang would be risking everything when they might gain nothing. Or worse, lose what they had come here to save.

"No, Aang. It's too late," she said, tears streaming down her face. "We have to kill that spirit so it can't hurt our children or anyone else ever again."

Aang flung his hands down, the blast of air that radiated from him rattling the trees. "We can't just leave them to that monster!" he yelled. "We can't just leave them like that!"

As if spurred by his outburst, the Hi-Tan shrieked and stretched out its wings, rising up like a deformed mountain. Then the wings snapped together to cover Tenzin. Cracks appeared in the masked head, spidery lines spreading across its smooth surface. The spirit's heads writhed in a tortured dance, then swooped behind the wings to strike at Tenzin, a scorpion pouncing on its prey. Katara didn't know if the high-pitched screams came from the spirit or from her own throat.

"TENZIN!"

Aang's roar ripped through the air. His eyes and arrows flashed, blazing with the fury of a thousand lifetimes. A gale whipped through the clearing, surrounding him in a whirlwind of leaves and dust. Katara dug her feet into the ground, bracing herself against the wind, but it steadily pushed her away from Aang.

The vortex pulled earth and rocks into its relentless rotation, then inky water from the stream and even the bending water from her own hands. Flames flared into life, twisting around Aang like a fiery tornado.

Katara couldn't remember the last time that something had triggered Aang's Avatar State in all its raw, unbridled power. Over the years, he had mastered the ability to the point where he could go in and out of the Avatar State at will. And when he did, he was fully present and in control.

But she'd never seen Aang like this before. The elements swirled around him in a maelstrom that grew wider and wider, consuming everything in its path. Earth, water, fire, and air, shredding the trees and grass around him. The full fury of his pain and rage, unleashed.

This was nothing like the Avatar State when he was younger. He had been terrifying back then, but at least she could get through to him and bring him out of it. But this time, she couldn't approach him in that storm without getting ripped apart. And with the wind pushing her back, she couldn't even hope to get near him.

Katara's eyes darted between Aang and the cursed Hi-Tan. She grit her teeth and made a dash for the spirit.

I have to get to Tenzin before Aang destroys the entire valley.

I have to get to Tenzin before the Hi-Tan can…

Before it can…

She couldn't bring herself to finish the thought.

As she neared the Hi-Tan, all four of its heads reared and thrashed as it stumbled backward in the face of Aang's tempest.

That's it, she thought. That's my opening.

With a sweep of her hands, she drained the water from the grass around her, their shriveled husks collapsing to the ground. Still running, she flung her hands out, whipping tendrils of water at the spirit's wings. She would have to pull the wings away, destroy them if she must, and snatch Tenzin out of the Hi-Tan's vile grasp.

Then the ground under her feet exploded.

As Katara was tossed into the air, she saw the floor of the valley billow and roll like an ocean. Waves of earth emanated from the center of the storm, from Aang, kicking dirt and rocks skyward. The Hi-Tan fell over, its huge bulk floundering on the undulating earth.

A rock struck her thigh, slicing through the thick fabric of her pants. Pain flared behind her eyes as another rock smashed into the back of her head. Spots blossomed in her vision.

Katara blacked out before she hit the ground.


When she came to, the first thing Katara noticed was the silence.

No spirit birds twisting her children's lullabies with their shrill voices. No Hi-Tan screeching with frenzied rage. No wind tearing through the trees.

In fact, there were no trees anymore. No grass, no stream. Just the garish clouds bleeding into each other in the sky above and a vast plain of freshly turned earth stretching between the hills around her. Splintered trunks and hair-like leaves and blades of grass littered the landscape, the remnants of that sinister valley.

The Hi-Tan lay in a heap not far from Katara. What was left of it, anyway. Two of the wings stuck out at an awkward angle. The four necks drooped from its body, ending in stumps that had been shorn clean through, the grotesque heads scattered some distance away. The body itself was impaled with massive spikes of earth, blood like yellow pus oozing from the wounds.

A cry shattered the silence.

Then another.

And another.

The cry of an infant.

Tenzin! He's alive!

Katara rolled over, fighting through burning muscles and the throbbing in her head, and forced herself to stand. Tears of relief flowed down her face, and sobs racked her bruised chest.

"Tenzin," she cried, her throat gravelly and dry. "Tenzin!"

She followed the sound of his wailing, which was coming from the other side of the Hi-Tan's body. When she limped around a massive wing, she found Tenzin squalling on the ground, thrashing his tiny arms and legs, his swaddling clothes strewn around him. Next to him lay her husband, unconscious.

Katara scooped Tenzin into her arms, bouncing and shushing him as she bent to shake Aang's shoulder.

"Aang? Aang, please wake up," she said as panic welled up inside her. "Please tell me you're okay."

A groan. The stirring of his shoulder beneath her hand. Aang blinked his eyes, and she helped him sit up.

"You're okay. Tenzin's okay. We're gonna be okay." Katara was babbling, but she didn't care. She cupped Aang's face and brought their foreheads together. Tenzin had stopped crying, calmed by the cocoon of his mother's arms.

"We'll be okay," she said, the words a comfort in this nightmare, a light at the end of this very, very dark tunnel.

But Aang shrank back, burying his face in his hands. "I couldn't save them."

Katara wrapped an arm around his broad shoulders. "You saved us, Aang. That's what matters."

"I couldn't save them," he said again, his voice cracking.

His words were like a knife to her heart. I couldn't save them either, she wanted to tell him. She couldn't save them when her water-sheathed hands found stillness in her belly where there should have been a tiny, pulsing life. She couldn't save them when the Hi-Tan caught their tender spirits in its ravenous jaws. She couldn't save them when she and Aang came face-to-face with the monstrous spirit itself, forced to choose between Tenzin and the spirits of the children they had never met.

Aang had destroyed the Hi-Tan, and along with it their children's spirits. But Katara might as well have sliced off the heads herself, since in her mind she'd already sacrificed them for Tenzin.

"It was already too late. They were never ours to save," she said to herself as much as to Aang. She had to remind him, remind herself. They couldn't save what had already been lost. They had to remember that fact above all else, or they would never be able to move from under the weight of what they had done.

"I couldn't save them," Aang said, his shoulders racking with sobs. "I couldn't save them."

Katara took in a breath, about to tell him, again, that there was no way they could have saved their children's spirits, but something stopped her. Perhaps it was the way he curled up into himself. Or the way he rocked on his heels. The grief shaking his shoulders, the grief of a hundred years. The anguished guilt in his voice, begging for forgiveness.

Crouched in front of her was not a grown man, but a boy of thirteen. Twenty years ago in a temple hidden high in the Patola Mountains. The serene gaze of a wind-worn statue. The boy, bowed over, spirit breaking, gasping with sorrow.

"I couldn't save them," he had whispered then, his words carried away by the eternal eddies of the lonely peaks.

"I couldn't save them," he said now, sobbing into the silence of a devastated valley.

Katara gathered Aang to her and pressed her face into his neck, just as she had back then. His head found her shoulder, just as he had all those years ago.

Together, they wept for the ones they had been powerless to save. For the ones they would never see again.

They wept for the pieces of themselves that had been lost forever.


Cultural notes:

The concept for the Hi-Tan is based on spirits in Chinese mythology – the Changui (wraiths/demons) and the Guhuo Niao (nine-headed demon bird that kidnaps children), both of which are spirits of women who died in childbirth. The Hi-Tan in this story has four heads - four is a very unlucky number in Mandarin Chinese, since the pronunciation for "four" is close to the word for "death." The name, Hi-Tan, comes from hitan, the Japanese word for grief.

In Katara's memory of mourning her miscarriages, the burial shroud is white, which is the color of mourning in many Asian cultures.