Avatar: I do not own Avatar.
Well, sorry for not updating for awhile. Life has way of being busy you know! This is a sequel to my earlier piece, "Consideration." I don't know why but it stuck with me somehow. Thanks for reading and please review.
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." –Helen Keller
"But…you're the Avatar!"
That voice…always…it cried in his dreams. A voice permeated with pain and denial. Someone who could not grasp in that singular moment of horror that he was not all powerful. He had amazing, awe-inspiring strength and control of the elements, especially with the Avatar State. Yet there are some things beyond his control. Even his life was at times.
The one thing he could not control that he wished he could have was life. The Avatar cannot bring the dead back from the Spirit World. However much he might desire it. That shadowed voice was now instilled in his dreams, sometimes even his waking moments.
"…you're the Avatar!" Cerulean eyes, the same shade as hers, were frantic with disbelief. The need to believe otherwise…that it could not be true! "You can't just let her die! Save her!"
Oh…how he had wished that…desperately…
But…but she was already gone! And had left behind….
…a son…
Aang opened his eyes and stared up at the tan ceiling of his room. He could feel the small form of Gyatso breathing next to him. He put an arm gingerly around his son and held the boy close. His mind flashed briefly to his conversation with Toph that morning. Later in the day, she had said in her stark, blunt way, "You should be happy, twinkle-toes. You have a son to raise." She paused and propped Gyatso up on her hip. "She wouldn't want you to burden yourself like you are."
She was right…sweetly, tortuously right about that.
...Guilt!....Guilt!.....GUILT!
It breathed in him. It held him in a bitter embrace in his thoughts. Sometimes…like that morning….They would retreat, if only for a little awhile. He wished…no, wanted, to be able to drive it away. Yet every time…every time…he looked at Gyatso's blue eyes he felt a stab of hardened regret in his heart. Not for his son. Never upon his son!
It was for his failure to keep his son's mother in the world. Gyatso deserved to have a mother. He…he wanted what he could not reach on his own, even if Gyatso was his only reason now. As the Avatar, he owned the world his duty. He still did his duty, but it was not for them. The only people he had loved in his life had been taken from him: his people…Katara…and even her brother who hated him now.
It was not fair!
That is why Gyatso gave him reason and even a smudge of hope that it could one day be different. Aang looked down at his son's peaceful face. He recalled the way Toph had tenderly held his son.
Would it be so wrong?
Aang shook his head, blaming his exhaustion, and fell back into an anguished sleep.
"But…you're the Avatar!"
Over and Over.