Note: The prompt for this chapter is Role Swap.
Additionally, I want to thank those of you who have left a review! To the guest reviewers: Thank you for taking the time to write such detailed observations! Let's just say some of you are spot on ;)
Reversal
First, her gaze was locked on his eerie one. The vice grip around her hand was starting to cut off her circulation. The blood pumping in her veins stuttered there, pulsating on the oxygen that was left. Like a river's mouth about to burst into the ocean.
No one had yet noticed what was happening, how the air seemed to thicken and crackle with something visceral all at once. Katara could feel the power underneath his stare, roaring against her body. Whatever it was, it was waking from a sleep that thundered and threatened. She should have been used to the kind of power Aang possessed as the Avatar, but this time it was different.
This time, she sensed the anger of someone else.
Katara could not react fast enough when the explosion of pure unadulterated energy burst forth. She along with the crowd shouted in shock when they were blasted away. She skidded to a stop only when she was forced to. Her back slammed into a pillar on the other side of the courtyard. She stumbled to her hands and knees. Her head ached, and she was sure that she was bruised, if not a little concussed.
When she looked up, she saw Aang at the center of a perfect circle with fallen people around it. All of them were groaning, and many had already sprinted off to call for help.
The ground was cracked, more lines spreading out from the middle like branches on a leafless tree. The sky above had turned dark with looming storm clouds above them, a contrast to the hopeful clear blue that it had been mere minutes ago. There was no sun in sight, and the gloom appeared to stretch on for miles.
It was cool, dank. Katara felt the joy seep away from her body almost as if someone had squeezed it from her until it dribbled into an abyss. Her mind was full of negative thoughts and emotions. She could only think of destruction, of unfairness, of the way that there were children who would come to a home devoid of life even after the war was ended.
She thought of her mother, of Yue, of Jet. Of Aang falling from a pillar of light, smoke trailing from his back after lighting had arched through him. All of them coming to crash together and against her like a boat sailing upon harsh waves only to break upon the jutting rocks.
Someone grabbed for the crook of her elbow and yanked her upward so that she was standing up. It was Sokka, still wobbling against his crutch which he had somehow managed to hold onto. He turned to her, worry and fear in his eyes. "What's going on?" he asked. "Why is Aang in the Avatar State?"
Before she could respond, it was Zuko who broke the silence. "Everyone get out of here!" he yelled the command. He was near the stairs, crown askew atop his head.
A switch seemed to click and there was sudden movement. Everyone who attended the coronation ran away from the center, some into the palace, and others toward the streets of the capital. Katara saw her father give her and Sokka a meaningful look from nearby. He had been forced aside by the explosion and ended up somewhere near Sokka. An understanding passed between the three of them before he departed with the others.
Aang remained standing there, unmoving in the middle of it all. His robes were flitting upward with an invisible force. Wisps of air filtered around him, as if in a warning that it would all detonate again.
It was just enough time for Katara to realize that she, Sokka, and Zuko were not the only ones that remained behind. Toph and Suki stayed too, and the friends began to converge to where Zuko stood at the front in a kind of unspoken agreement.
It was them, always. Even when it was most difficult.
The air rumbled, shaking the pebbles and bits of debris that was caused from the initial burst.
"Everyone brace for impact!" screamed Toph who had widened into a horse stance. "I don't think I can do much for this one!"
Sure enough, all she could do was erect a large enough stone barrier that blocked most of the waves of debris from hitting them, but it did not stop them all from toppling backward onto the palace steps over each other. Toph did not lower the shield.
"What the heck is going on?! Did someone attack us?" she bellowed with effort. The courtyard shook with wind again. "Is Twinkle Toes going to get his butt over here and help us out or what?"
It was then that dread pooled into Katara's stomach. She whipped around to face Toph, a wild and frantic emotion rising into her throat. "That is Aang!" she hissed. "He's the one who attacked us!"
Toph's eyebrows furrowed together. "That doesn't make any sense! Aang isn't anywhere near us!"
It was Suki who looked terrified next. Her fans were clutched at her sides, and she looked ready for battle in her Kyoshi Warrior uniform. "If that isn't Aang," she started, "then—"
"Then he's in trouble," Zuko finished. He had a determined expression on his face. "Whatever this is—"
But he did not have enough time to finish his sentence. The rock shield that Toph worked so hard to keep steady was ripped apart down the middle with a slice of air alone. She could do nothing to hold it together and grunted as she was pushed back. They were lucky that they were not torn to pieces.
Before them, Aang stood, glowing purple eyes and all. A stark crimson pattern with complicated lines and curls beamed through his skin from his shoulders to his midsection and showed even through his clothes. There was an orange diamond burning through where Aang's heart was.
A tornado of twisting wind rested casually in one of his hands. It was storm-like and menacing, and not at all like Aang.
He laughed in a deep, unfamiliar way. As if he were mocking them. "It was almost too easy to take this body from Raava, especially when her newest incarnation was so weak," he said. It was a voice Katara did not recognize. It sounded like the voice of nightfall itself. "That boy was a typical human…pathetic to a fault. It was his stupid choice really that led to this…trying to bend another one's energy. No one has done that in eons, not since before the age of the spirits."
Katara tamped down her fear. "Who are you and what have you done with Aang?" she demanded.
Aang's form glared at her. The tornado in his hand dissipated, but there was still a power that radiated from him that kept them all stock-still. His mouth twisted into a smirk. He walked forward and stopped close to Katara. Too close. He leaned so that he was observing her.
Katara opened her sealskin pouch, and she commanded a tendril of water to hover in front of her. It separated them, if only in an infinitesimal amount.
"I've simply switched places with him, girl," he said. "He has taken my place in the prison that his original incarnation trapped me in. He had a moment of weakness in battle you see…when he was facing that Fire Lord. It was a mere second when his energy was entwined with Ozai's, but a mere second was enough." He let out a spiteful laugh. "You have to be careful when your energy touches such a wicked man's, you see, because even one mere second of thinking that you want a little more justice for what your enemies did to your people—when they wiped their blood across the face of the earth—and even the spirit of light can be stolen by the spirit of darkness and chaos."
He tilted his head, and the world shifted. "Now," the spirit said, "Where was I?" He leered. "Oh."
A gale blasted them back again and they screamed. The walls of the foyer began to fracture. Katara barely held her own. She had to bend the water back to her side lest it spill across the tiles.
The spirit sauntered toward them again as they struggled to stand. His hands were clasped behind his back. "It's a pity that I couldn't take the power of the other elements from Raava, but no matter," he spoke. He raised his hands. "I can still remake this world in my era."
A ball of swirling air surrounded him. He laughed as he rose, shooting his arms outward, collecting rubble and wreckage. He spit it out everywhere he could.
Toph and Katara tried to defend them while Zuko shot out flames to disintegrate what he could. Suki held Sokka up, cutting her fan out to slash the air that ravaged them.
"What do we do now?!" screamed Sokka, blocking dirt from his eyes with his arm. "We can't even attack him!"
It was impossible to find an opening. Katara tried everything she could from icicles to water whips, but there was nothing that could distract or deter the spirit.
All she could see was the form of the person she loved, so far out of reach.
She saw Aang as he was, vengeful and shuddering and different. Katara reached out to him, arm stretching across the expanse. "Please, Aang," she shouted to him with conviction, "This isn't you!"
The Avatar turned his attention toward her with a knowing, menacing voice, and said, "But it is."
His hand cut across the space and a gust came rushing toward them. Toph broke it with another boulder.
Katara trembled, lost in herself, not knowing what to do. The others were whispering plans behind her, plans that she knew would go nowhere. She could not stop looking at what used to be Aang, how he was drifting further and further away from her, tearing up the palace and going toward the city.
She had to stop him.
She had to get him back.
Without thinking, she dashed out into the open. She heard Sokka call for her, but she ignored him and the call of her friends. She halted just under the swirling ball of air, just as it was about to escape into the rest of the world.
She knocked her head back until she was looking at soles of Aang's shoes. "I'll make you a trade," she belted, "My soul for Aang's!"
Aang's possessed body jolted, lowering just in front of her. His feet still hovered a meter above the ground. He looked down at her. His eyes were bright and frightening, and he grinned.
It looked wrong.
"All you need is a body, right?" she asked. She did not stop quivering. "Take mine. Give Aang back. I'll take his place."
"Katara, no!" she heard her friends protest, but she would not dare answer them.
"And what do I get out of this, little girl?" asked the spirit, unfazed.
"Your freedom, my bending, and the chaos you want," she said. She spoke in half-truths, in promising lies. "If you live as me, no one will suspect you. You can hide in plain sight. If you're Aang, there'll be too much attention on you. It's better to cause destruction when no one suspects anything."
The spirit laughed the same guttural, horrible laugh as before. He did not hesitate when he floated closer to her. The air around him dispelled, and he alighted on the ground.
He grasped her forearm, and she grasped his. His nails dug into her skin, biting into the scratches already there, and blood beaded along the surface. She tried not to show how scared she was. She knew, above all else, who she was doing this for and why.
She would not lose him. Never again.
"We have a deal," said the spirit. "I can assure you that I need no assistance nor strategies from you, but I have never seen such naive foolishness at the cost of someone else in all the eons of my life." His glowing eyes lowered to meet hers. "If there is something chaos does love, it is a good tragedy," he finished.
When he let go, it was as if all her energy left her at once. Her vision blurred, and she was taken over by colors and night beating in tandem with each other. She gasped as she rushed through them.
Abruptly, she appeared in a field of tall, emerald grass. She was wearing an indigo dress that reached her ankles, just above a pair of soft boots.
There were white cumulous clouds that covered the sky in mountains and eddies. She stood at the crest of a hill of some sort, looking out over a piece of land with a forest of trees and the shore of the sea.
"Want to go inside?" someone asked her. It was a pleasant tenor.
She looked up to see an eclipsed figure of a tall man that strolled toward her, the sun a large disc at his back. A ray of sunlight obscured his features. He held out a pale hand to her, palm open and inviting, waiting for her.
"It's been a long day," he said.
Katara's fingers curved around his, and she let herself be led away.
