Note: The prompt for this chapter is Healing.
TW: implied/referenced suicide.
To the guest reviewer, Welkin: Your in-depth analysis is very interesting indeed! Yes, the root of all of this is that for a second, Aang wanted to destroy Ozai while he was taking away his bending. Yes, Toph sensed someone else because Aang wasn't in there. It was Vaatu. Lastly, yes, that flashback was Wan. Good eye!
Stitches
In a hazy, far-off lifetime that Aang could not quite recall, he was once a boy named Kun. A boy the people called a little too lanky, a little too tall, especially for his age. He had a mop of brown hair and a sprinkle of freckles splattered across his tanned nose. His eyes were a bright forest green that turned hazel with just the right amount of sunlight.
He was playful, sociable, a teenager through and through. He liked to make jokes about the way old men babbled about everything and nothing, and how the iguana parrots that the sailors insisted on taking with them on voyages in the fishing village he lived in squawked nonsensical things. He had a best friend who he deeply cared for that would laugh with him and play pranks on passerby on the docks, a best friend that understood his awful jokes.
"You'll never become a respectable fisherman with that attitude, Kun," his friend would scold him. "You gotta remember that the iguana parrots are the key to success!"
Kun would laugh and pat his friend on the back. "Who says I want to be a respectable fisherman? I want to be a pirate! I want one of my two front teeth to be made of solid gold!"
He was only fourteen, and no one took him seriously, least of all the adults. That is, until he accidentally bended the element of fire when he tried to protect himself from a scoundrel who he had dumped a basket of day-old fish on. An elder had seen him and that was that.
His world fell apart.
"You're the Great One, our protector," said an elder of the village. "You cannot live with us anymore. The trivialities of the human world should never touch you. You are too precious, the reincarnation of Yuka of the Water."
He had tried to protest. "All because I can control two elements?" he questioned. He had felt the desperation as it caught in his throat, the absolute need to be wrong. But he knew in his heart of hearts what would happen. The same way he instinctively knew how to create flame, he knew who he was.
He was not human.
As Kun, Aang was taken from his family to a grand estate atop a mountain that had been built a lifetime ago. The walls were high, the hallways winding, there was hardly a person in sight.
They came to train him, to cower and grovel to him. He stayed there, knowing what had to be done because it was the way of things.
He stayed there because he had to. It was his duty, his purpose.
And he stayed locked away in a room with slats of light that streamed through the rice paper walls and sliding doors while the people told him that they adored him. They worshipped him.
He was, beyond all else, one of the spirits.
Yet, there was one who called him by name, who snuck around the guards when dusk fell, who threw a pebble at his window every other night.
"Are you there?" a voice would call for him from below, just above a whisper, just enough so he could hear. "I've missed you."
So as Kun, Aang latched onto what he had left. He kept ahold of this person, this wonderful best friend of his. But one day the elders found them.
"You are meant to let go of all worldly possessions, as your other incarnations have!" they shouted at Kun. More than berating him, they said words that stung. "To have connections is to have possessions! You must never love!"
His best friend had disappeared the next day. He was told that they had gone somewhere far away, somewhere he could not follow.
He told himself that he could not love again. He was not human, not like the rest of them.
He continued his duties with diligence, with detachment, and the world knew peace for years.
Aang's life as Kun was weary, and he remained weary. He had mastered three elements when he had held the plain porcelain cup in his hand. The warm liquid inside glistened. He took a moment to watch the yellow powder settle to the bottom, and then he raised it to his lips.
Aang's vision swam. He was Kun, then he was Kureno, then Samaya, then finally himself again. One moment he was Yangchen, then Kuruk, Kyoshi, and Roku. The next, he fell into his body like a stone sinking to the depths of the sea.
His palms were sore and swollen. There was grime underneath his fingernails. A smear of dirt slashed across one of his cheeks. Remnants of his attempts to dig himself out of the Tree of Time dusted his clothes.
He had no bending to assist him, and no amount of spiritual energy could get him past the barrier that separated him from the rest of the Spirit World.
He did not know how long he had been inside the hollow of the tree. He sat there, silent. Visions of the past continued to flit by him, but he was used to it now. The words and phrases that the images buzzed became background noise, the kind of thrum that lulled someone to sleep. Nevertheless, it was also a persistent nuisance.
Over and over, he was forced to hear and see snatches of time. In a loop, in a never-ending cycle.
"I am sorry, Aang," Raava murmured gently from somewhere inside his head. "I am truly sorry."
He felt a brush of energy on his shoulder, as if someone was comforting him there. Something stirred inside him. It was a tingling sensation, a rush in his ears.
"Though perhaps, light always has a friend," Raava added, softer this time.
The visions that drifted about him stuttered, stopped, restarted. Illumination flooded the tree hollow, and he heard someone calling for him.
"Aang? Aang!" they shouted. It echoed through the space. He knew that voice. He knew it like the back of his hand, like the wood grain of his glider staff, the tufts of hair on Appa's back.
He blinked, and he was somehow outside looking in. He was standing just outside the barrier, and he peeked inside the tree. Someone else sat there instead of him, a familiar person. A girl wearing blue.
No, no, no. Not her. Not here. It was all he thought, all he could muster.
He pounded a fist on the barrier that separated them, and the sound pealed out across the realm.
In one, clear ring, everything became dark and blank. All of a sudden, he was floating in a world of bleakness, of nothingness. A void he did not comprehend. There was a constant ebbing and flowing of energy that engulfed him. Strings of different colors that made up pieces of him, pouring out of his heart like an unravelling tapestry.
Blue strings led to his left, his right. Yellows went above him. Greens squiggled to a place he did not see, for it was too far beyond him. Black and pink, lavender and orange, they tangled and furled from the opening in his chest.
"Give him back to me!" the voice bellowed again. It was louder now, coming closer.
Out of all the strings that drifted from him, there was a single red one. It led straight from his middle and outward, into a burst of yellow and gold.
Katara, in all her beauty and grace, reached for him across the expanse on the other side. Her arm outstretched from far away. She was a dot upon a distant horizon.
She grabbed a handful of strings, and then another clump of them, yanking him forward. Her hands moved in quick succession, and the strings started to detangle from the knots in which they came.
Katara was as dazzling as purifying light. She stitched his seams back together and told him how to heal.
