Chapter Fourteen : Of Returns and Reality

"I think, therefore I am." – Descartes

Colors were all around me, weeping, bleeding. They ran into each other like watercolor paints on damp paper, rioting without order. Sheer anarchy. I had never liked bright colors much. Soothing greys are best, dark reds, blacks. The warm clear gold of Zuko's eyes. This was overwhelming, and painful, and wrong, an affront to nature and reality. We were in a rip, a rift, a wound. Floating among the colors.

It wasn't complete chaos. There were patterns. Shapes. Figures. All the people who had come through. Aang, Katara, Toph, Sokka. The uniform, anonymous Fire Nation troops. Azula. Zuko. All part of the madness.

And one more, a great winged shape. It took me a moment to recognize it: the eagle from Columbus Circle. Only here it was a much larger bird, its wings casting a shadow in the sourceless light. Not an eagle. A Roc.

"The time for the Amulet has not come," it said.

As it got closer, it got smaller – that didn't seem right at all – until it was right in front of Aang, and barely any taller than the small airbender, who looked at the unforgiving, predatory bird and said, "What do you mean?"

"It is to be saved for an hour of dire need. You will not require its powers," said the Roc majestically.

"Hey," said Sokka. "He's got a pretty big job. He has to defeat the Fire Lord."

"And he's just a kid," Toph added condescendingly. "He's going to need all the help he can get."

"But he has you," said the Roc, bending its head. "The loyalty of those who would follow him to another world and back. And his own loyalty to them, to see them all safely home again. His is not the cause that the Amulet is meant to serve. Avatar." It turned to Aang, and seemed larger again, not because it grew, just because it was. "Yours is not the cause. If you take the Amulet now, another will suffer in the future; when the need of the world is greater, there will no way to meet it."

"Then…" Aang sighed. "Then I shouldn't take it."

Sokka's mouth dropped open. "You mean we just wasted a week on something we can't even use?"

"You have wasted no time," said the Roc gravely. "You may return to your world at whatever point you wish. Your memories of this will fade."

"Then… we'd better go back to when we found the carvings," said Aang.

"Can we go back to the eclipse and do that one over?" Toph asked curiously. "Because, frankly, it was a fiasco."

"Your memories will fade," the Roc repeated. "You will make the same mistakes, besides this journey."

"Then we want to go back to just before we found that room in the air temple," said Aang decisively.

Ty Lee frowned at me. "I guess that means we go back to prison," she grumped.

"Yeah." I hadn't thought of that.

Zuko touched my shoulder. "When this is all over…" he began.

"Don't get your hopes up," I told him. "You've been nothing but trouble." If the idiot didn't know I loved him by now, I wasn't going to make it easy.

"Return, then," said the Roc, and spread its great wings until they blotted out all the colors… all the light… and everything faded.

When I came to, I was indeed back in a Fire Nation prison.

You know the rest; the Firelord deposed, Zuko crowned, the good guys win, balance restored. Everyone cheers and goes home happy. None of the others who came to the other world seem to have any memory of it – but I do. I can't decide why, but I have moments when I still think I'm Liz, when I find myself wondering what's real.

The whole thing could have been a delusion, I guess. Me trying to escape from the present while languishing in a cell, having been betrayed – for whatever reason – by the only person I ever really cared about, and having betrayed one of my precious few friends.

Or it could have happened precisely as I put it down, me taking out a time share on some girl named Liz and only remembering the episode because I botched that spirit chant. I don't know what would have happened to Liz afterwards. Maybe she was left with an inexplicable gap in her memory, maybe she remembers it all clearly and wishes she could have come through the portal too. Maybe she didn't exist before I crossed over and maybe she doesn't exist, except in my mind, now that I'm back.

Or – here's a frightening thought – maybe I'm still Liz, and that's all there ever was. Maybe I went over the edge into a delusion induced by instability and an Avatar obsession, and I'm sitting in a madhouse or a coma, and this is all in my head.

Tell you the truth, though –

I don't care.

– Fin –