Chapter Ten: The Avatar and Her
"What in the fuck is going on?"
Zuko pinched his nose, refusing to open his eyelids. "Language, Toph."
"Like you don't swear all the time."
"I swear when things get emotionally out of hand. You have no filter."
The earthbender rolled her pale eyes. "I think swearing is apt given the situation we're in. Sokka, back me up here."
Upon hearing no reply, Toph turned around, locating the Water Tribesman right where he had been—seated on Appa's head next to Suki, steadfastly piloting the sky bison. "Didja hear me, waterboy?" she asked again.
"Not in the mood, Toph," the young man growled.
"Alright, alright, jeez, fine. No need to get mad. I'm just trying to figure out how all this works. Katara is kidnapped by the Raiders. She's the bait and we fell for it hook, line, and sinker. She's then used as leverage to get Aang to pledge his allegiance to Azula—who, by the way, is absolutely psychotic and wants to build her own empire—and suddenly, the Southern Raiders are the most powerful group of people on the planet. Have I got all that?"
Zuko scraped his fingers across his face. "Yes, Toph, you got it all."
"But the mystery remains—what is the Other Half?" she wondered.
"It's a common expression people use to refer to their significant others. Katara is the person that 'completes' Aang, so to speak."
"But he said it so freakily. There has to be something more to this. I know Aang loves her, but I really thought that when push came to shove, and it was the world or her, that he would have—"
"Can we not have this conversation right now?" erupted Sokka. "Let's just… wait until we land."
A few long, long hours later, as the sun was being swallowed by the horizon, the Fire Nation Capital finally appeared. Zuko was slumped against Appa's saddle, watching the water and ground below fly past before it abruptly skipped to streets and shops. The Capital was as busy as ever, with not a single person aware of the fact that another war might be bearing down on them. He sighed deeply. That was precisely what he had become Fire Lord to do: stop wars. What did that make him now? A failure, surely.
"Oh, Spirits, this did not turn out how I'd hoped," he hissed under his breath.
The Royal Palace rose triumphantly over the metropolis, but even its regal sight wasn't enough to cheer up what remained of Team Avatar. Heads hung and shoulders slumped, when the four of them landed they made a beeline for the Throne Room, in desperate need of counsel with Fire Lord-for-now Iroh. Zuko was perplexed, however, when he noticed the curtains to the Throne Room were drawn, and an armed guard stood outside. Shit, wait, that means there's war planning going on in there! How could they have learned of Aang so soon? the young man realized, and he sprinted on ahead, throwing back the curtain.
"Ah ha! Another great victory!" cheered Iroh, punching the air, as several other generals looked on with contempt.
Terrified, Zuko gasped, "Uncle, what are you—"
The old man looked up, then broke into a massive grin and pointed at the great map before him. "Nephew! You are just in time to see the Dragon of the West vanquish his foes with no mercy to spare!"
Zuko glanced down and scowled, seeing colorful wax figurines of a few armies scattered across the map. "You're playing a board game? What, did you set another national holiday?"
Iroh stroked his beard. "No, I didn't but come to think of it a national board game day would be fun, wouldn't it, Xi?"
"Of course, Iroh," replied the older general next to him, punching him in the arm. "Board games were all that kept us sane at the Siege of Ba Sing Se."
"No more board games!" screamed Zuko. "Everyone who isn't my uncle and my friends, get out!"
Xi and the other pair of older officers shot him sour looks but nonetheless filed out. As Sokka, Toph, and Suki approached, Iroh seemed to grow more concerned, his bushy brow furrowing. "What may be your problem, nephew? Did you find Katara?"
"…Yes, and no. We found her, but, uh, she didn't come along with us."
"Oh? Why was that?"
Zuko looked around, then pressed his uncle and friends to follow him deeper into the chamber, so that their voices might be muffled by the cracking of the bonfires at the edge of the room. "We ran into Azula."
"AZULA?" the firebender exclaimed.
Everyone shushed him frantically. "Yes, Azula," his nephew insisted. "She's leading the Raiders. And she kidnapped Katara to use her as bait for us. And Aang… Aang got hooked."
"You don't mean—"
"I mean the Avatar, the most powerful mortal being in the universe, is working with Azula. Not because he wants to, but because if he doesn't Katara would be a smear on the pavement."
Iroh blinked a few times, falling into thought, before stating, "I think it would be best that you do not mention this predicament with the Avatar to anyone outside of the room. Not yet anyways."
"Yeah. And I won't retake the crown just yet, because I might have to go run off again," nodded Zuko. "We should address the nation together, though."
"You two done yet?" snapped Sokka. "We need to get to work."
"Doing what? An attack on a fully-fledged Avatar would be suicide, no matter how large an army one has at their disposal," Iroh warned. "Do not be a fool and rush into things."
Sokka crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "I don't mean an attack, I mean—"
Toph knocked the boys away and butted in, declaring, "Iroh, you're old, you're wise, you're traveled. Do you have any clue what the 'Other Half' is?"
"In what context?" the former general asked.
"In the Avatar, Spirit World, whooshy-whooshy magic context."
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. Why, is it important?"
She shrugged. "It's only the last thing Aang said to us before we escaped. Like he was explaining himself."
Iroh spread his hands, admitting, "I'm sorry, but I have no idea what that could mean. You could always try the Royal Archives, however. In fact," he said, eyeing the long shadows of late afternoon peeking under the curtain from the sunlit hall, "why don't you all head down there now, and we'll address the nation in the morning? No sense sending everyone into a panic just before nightfall."
"You're right, you're right," agreed Zuko, nodding his head and sighing.
The Royal Archives were in the depths beneath the palace, having been reopened for scholarly use by Zuko in his first month as the Fire Lord. His grandfather, Sozin, had been the one to seal them away, for the treasure trove of knowledge inside surely would have undermined the propaganda and misinformation campaign that had radicalized the Fire Nation populace. The firebender and his friends plunged into the bowels of the building, in search of the books and scrolls that could hopefully shed some light on the situation.
"This is where I discovered my true heritage, you know," explained Zuko, holding his torch aloft as the stairs bottomed out.
"Mm-hmm," Sokka hummed, glaring skeptically around the hall. "This doesn't look like a library to me."
"That's because this isn't the library, idiot," the older boy grumbled, cutting to the right. "This is."
Zuko swept back a curtain and stepped into a great antechamber. The space was huge, though the rows upon rows upon rows of honeycomb shelves stuffed with parchment rolls and platforms piled high with books and papers made everything feel compact and tight. Sokka and Suki's jaws hit the floor, which itself was engraved with delicate images of dancing flames that darted between the corridors of literature.
"I think I'm in heaven," squeaked Suki.
Toph bumped her way to the front of the pack and planted both feet firmly, pointing directly ahead of her into the labyrinth of wisdom. "Alright, suckers, I might be blind but I'm not deaf. This is the place. I want you three out there searching for anything you can dig up on the Central Water Tribe, the Aquatic Empire, and the 'Other Half.' If you absolutely need to see my beautiful face, I'll be at the nearest seating area. Zuko, where might that be?"
"Straight ahead, there's a big table and chairs."
"Thank you, Sparky," she said cheerily.
"Sparky?" the Fire Lord mumbled.
"Hold on, why are we doing all the work while you just kick back and relax?" Sokka indignantly asked.
Toph spun around and, with every word she said, flicked him between the eyes. "Because. I. Am. Blind."
The tribesman slapped her hand away. "Yeah, I know that. Zuko, don't you have anything a blind person could be useful with in here?"
He scratched his chin and pondered for a second. "There are a few historical tomes written in a tactile language—"
"Great. She gets those," ordered Sokka.
"But they're about ancient tomato farming in the Earth Kingdom."
Sokka's eye twitched. "Just make her read them so she can feel like she's doing something."
Into the library they went, searching for any book about Water Tribe legends, ancient history, spiritual concepts, or the Avatar. There were a lot to sift through. Stack after stack after stack of books were acquired and placed on the big meeting table in the room's center, and when they could carry no more, the four of them took their seats and started pouring over everything. Every scrap of paper was noticed, every word was read, every character was analyzed. It was a massive undertaking, and it went on for hours, stretching into the night. Finally, Zuko could not fight to keep his eyelids open any longer, and his head slumped down with a solid thunk.
A good while later, the Fire Lord awoke with a start. He peeled his face from an embossed cover and rubbed his eyes, groaning softly, "I need to sleep more."
His words were met with replies of rolling snores. Zuko observed his friends, seeing they were all thoroughly zonked out. He wondered if he should wake them or not, but decided against it. They needed it, and besides, now that he was up, he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep for the rest of the night. Pushing his chair back quietly over the glossy floor, the bender rose, scooped up a fistful of scrolls and a single book, and wandered off in search of a bed. Shit, he thought suddenly, I didn't even see Mai when I got back.
Zuko heaved himself up the stairs and broke for his chambers. But, as he passed a window, he made the mistake of looking outside, and he stopped in his tracks. Though the palace, ringed by tropical gardens and grounds as it was, was separate from the capital city itself, one building could be seen anywhere from within the metropolitan limits: the new temple dedicated to Avatar Roku. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Zuko found himself climbing out the window, dropping to the ground below, and marching with a purpose to the palace gates. The guards at the front merely nodded when he passed them by, and Zuko absentmindedly returned the gesture. By that point, the streets were empty, and the Fire Lord could walk without impairment of an entourage through the city. Reaching the temple's steps, he looked up and couldn't help but feel incredibly small, seeing the elegant sloping rooves flying forth from red brick, the pointed steeple piercing the night sky.
Inside didn't make him feel much more significant. Zuko squinted at the colossus before him, a statue of his great-grandfather that was almost as tall as the building it was in. The old temple constructed in honor of Roku had been a very different place, an unnecessarily confusing maze of hallways and staircases and located on a remote island no one ever visited. Zuko had also been the one to accidentally help sink the original into a pool of magma, so this one he'd decided to construct as far away from a volcano and as close to home as possible, with a far more simple design.
Kneeling at the foot of the monument, Zuko prayed. "Avatar Roku," he whispered under his breath, "please, lend me your guidance."
"Then rise and speak, young Fire Lord."
Zuko glanced up and gaped at the figure of Avatar Roku—not the statue, but a living, breathing Avatar Roku. The man stood there in the flesh, his gray hair and beard almost reaching the floor, his hands hidden within the folds of his regal robes. "Great-grandfather!" Zuko squealed, quickly jerking his head back down at the floor in a sign of respect for his elder.
"I said rise, Zuko. I may be your ancestor, but you are my Fire Lord. If anything, I should be the one bowing to you."
Sheepishly, the younger man got up, and as he stood, he suddenly noticed his surroundings had shifted. No longer was he in the temple. He was on a mountaintop, shrouded in a cloak of shifting, amorphous white smoke.
"Where are we?" he wondered.
Roku shook his head. "That does not matter. Voice your concerns and your questions. I may have answers."
"But I have so many concerns, and so many questions."
"Then let us waste no time."
"Tell me this then: what is the Other Half?"
Roku narrowed his eyes. "How have you heard about such things?"
"Do you know about Aang?" asked Zuko, swallowing hard.
"Do I know what?"
The Fire Lord quickly explained his predicament, how the airbender had been roped into Azula's maniacal scheming with Katara held at swordpoint. With every word that passed Zuko's lips, Roku's face fell further, until his mouth was twisted into a harsh grimace.
"By the Spirits, that boy is a fool!" the former Avatar roared.
"I mean, I can kind of understand his situation. He's in an impossible place, and I don't really know I would have been able to choose the world over my wife."
Roku's nostrils flared as he yelled, "Yes, but you are not the Avatar. You are fully human, and your duties are to the mortal plane. But Aang? Aang does not just belong to the Four Nations, nor even the human race! He is the bridge that connects the Spirit World and the physical flesh. The Avatar must be apolitical, must rise above mortal demands, because he is the liaison across realms!"
"Are you saying he should have let Katara die?" choked Zuko.
"If I had been in his situation, I would have let the love of my life die. Not because I wished it, but because the world comes first!" the old man rumbled, fire in his eyes.
"I'm—I'm sure he had good reasoning. He said he 'must protect the Other Half.' We don't know what the Other Half is, though, and we were hoping it might shed some light on this whole debacle."
Roku looked as though he might blow a gasket but managed to calm himself down before speaking again. "The Other Half comes from an old legend. Men and women used to be one entity back in ancient times, even before bending was discovered. But they were too powerful. They were like gods. They attempted to build a tower to the heavens, but the Spirits knocked it down. These humans tried to fight back, to revolt, but they were defeated and punished, split in twain forevermore. Man and woman. Male and female. Yin and yang. Cursed to walk the earth for all eternity, searching for one's soulmate. Their other half."
Zuko frowned. "…So, that's it, then. Aang's just worried about Katara?"
"No. There is more. The counterpart of an average person's soul is but another average soul. Not so with the Avatar, whose spirit is bolstered by otherworldly elements. And although they are indeed an otherworldly being, they are still decidedly human. They, too, have a soulmate. This soulmate—their Other Half, capitalized—is what binds them to this dimension. They are what keep the Avatar from spiraling into infinity. They keep us human. And if one were to sever that bridge violently… then the Avatar would become disconnected from this world. They would lose their humanity and become a shell puppeted by the Spirits until their body perishes."
"So, if the Other Half dies violently, then the Avatar's mind… disappears?"
"Precisely," Roku nodded. "And I would have been willing to make that sacrifice, had I been in his place. Every Avatar would have been. And besides, no one should even know about this! The Other Half is the Avatar's one true weakness! He should not have told you, nor anyone else!"
Zuko rubbed the back of his neck, unsure of himself. Biting his lip, he asked, "Is there any way to stop Aang, short of a full-scale war?"
Roku paused. He examined his great-grandson, inspecting his plain red-and-gold gi and the swords holstered at his hip. Zuko could tell something of great importance was on his tongue, but signs of a mental war being waged in the Avatar's mind were just as obvious. Finally, with great effort, Roku announced, "There is one way, though it will be difficult."
Zuko laughed and spread his hands. "What choice do I have?"
Reluctantly, the older man continued, "The Avatar is a powerful being, one capable of toppling demigods and flattening entire armies. Avatars are, in general, people of high morals, but every once in a while, a bad apple sours the bushel. These Avatars are called Rogues, and they use their powers for evildoing or selfish purposes. Obviously, these demons cannot stand, but vanquishing an Avatar is a nigh-indomitable task alone. So, a failsafe was built in by the Spirits. Four benders, each representing one Element and taught by the original benders of those Elements who taught mankind their ways all those eons ago, must band together to defeat the Avatar in combat. You already have half of these benders: you yourself have learned the ways of the dragons, and your blind friend, Toph, was taught to earthbend by the badger moles of the Earth Kingdom. Only water and air remain."
"But that's no good," protested the Fire Lord. "Aang is the last airbender. There are no more Nomads we could enlist the help from. And how is a waterbender supposed to learn from the Moon?"
"With no other surviving Nomads save the Avatar, then someone of a different nation must take up the mantle of air. The Spirits understand your plight, and the original teachers can even bestow nonbenders with temporary power. Your friend, the Kyoshi Warrior… her preferred weapons are fans, no? And regarding the Moon, you may want to talk to your other Water Tribe acquaintance about that."
Zuko clasped his clammy palms to his forehead, moaning, "This is insane. This cannot be real. How have I never heard of this stuff? I spent years hunting the Avatar. I know everything about them."
"Some secrets are better kept than others, great-grandson," Roku offered, then added sharply, "I'm afraid I must leave you now."
"What? No, but I have so many more questions!" he replied.
"All of which will be answered in due time. I have said too much already."
"Don't go, great-grandfather!" yelled the Fire Lord, as Roku took a step back into the smoke.
"I must convene with Aang. He needs my help," the old Avatar said.
Then his wrinkled, aged face was enveloped by the smog, and the mountaintop disappeared into a vortex of impenetrable blackness.
/ / | \ \
Iroh tumbled into his seat, exhausted. Speaking before crowds didn't frighten him, but it was incredibly taxing. He could scantly feel his toes save for the dull, incessant throbbing in them. The announcement he and his nephew had just delivered had not been easy to say, but the masses could not be allowed to wallow in blissful ignorance. Many worried faces had left that assembly, but it was better they found out now than when the Raiders launched a naval invasion of the Capital.
"I'm glad that's over with," Zuko admitted, taking a seat across from his uncle.
"Nothing is ever truly over, nephew, especially something as dire as this," he responded.
"You know what I meant."
Iroh nodded, a small smile pulling at his lips. "I do, but if a moment may be enhanced by a nugget of wisdom, then who am I to deprive you?"
A servant entered the room, bearing gifts of great tea. He set a platter down with two ceramic teacups, a steaming pot, and bowls of milk and sugar. Iroh began to eagerly help himself, but stopped when Zuko picked an envelope up off the tray.
"What is this?" the firebender asked.
The servant bowed low, then explained, "It is official correspondence. The seal is a bit outdated, but it's from a high-ranking naval officer."
Zuko narrowed his eyes. "An admiral, perhaps?"
"I do not know," the servant replied. "I must take my leave now, if you'll let me."
"Yeah, uh, you can go," he said, waving the attendant away. He waited until he was gone to turn back to his uncle and slide his fingers under the folded parchment. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Iroh mixed sugar and milk into his beverage and took a long sip as Zuko unfurled the paper inside. It wasn't a letter, but a poster, with a small essay beneath an image of three swirls connected at a central circle—a triskelion, the rare symbol of the Four Elements combined. The swirls represented the wildness of Fire, Water, and Air, while the circle showed the solid Earth tethering them down.
He read aloud, "To the Peoples of the Three Nations and the Great Cities of the World: the Southern Raiders are no more. In their stead has risen a new Empire. We are not a hateful group. We understand the divisions faced in modern society. The forced disbandment of former Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom, which split families and friendships based upon ethnicity and creed, was in many ways evil, no matter the compromises struck. This separation of peoples because of nationality is despicable, and all world leaders are complicit in these actions, both in the Fire Nation colonies and beyond. There is no purity in division.
Our Empire is diverse, and we have the blessing of the Avatar on our side, the very symbol of global unity. So, as your kings and chiefs squabble, rise up. Join us. The Imperial Union values your voice.
Unity through Strength. Strength through Unity."
Iroh blinked, mulling over the words he'd just heard. Then he said, "That was brilliant propaganda."
"I think they were being genuine," responded Zuko.
"Whatever the case, this is very worrisome," he sighed. "This is a call to arms, and I fear that those still indoctrinated by my brother's tall tales of the Fire Nation waging war to unify all peoples will heed it."
"Assuming they can get the message out, that is."
"Why do you think we are reading a poster, and not a letter, nephew?"
Zuko looked down at the paper he held, hissing, "…Shit. This has to be plastered on every blank wall all over the world at this point."
"We will have to act fast if we hope to beat the rising tide of dissent in the Fire Nation and the world at large. Tell me again what your plan was?" pressed Iroh, leaning forward in his comfortable chair and putting his teacup and saucer to the side.
They had a war to stop.