A/N: It's uh. It's been a minute, hasn't it? I'm so sorry, I got swept up in real life things and doings (like graduating college!) and forgot all about this. And then I saw it had made it onto a rec list on tumblr, where the reccer mentioned being so sad that it was never completed and I kind of cringed in remorse. The thing is, it's complete, on my hard drive. The whole trilogy. And I keep meaning to upload the entire thing, but, well, see above. So I'm going to post the final couple of chapters of this one today, and hopefully get to posting up Book 3 in one big rush, like I've been meaning to for literally five years. Again, I'm so sorry, and if you're still following this, you have my eternal gratitude and awe. You're all awesome.

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Where we left off: The Gaang has gotten a set of Waterbending scrolls from Hama and used them to heal Toph's spine, but were unable to save the life of Yue's mother in the process. Upon arriving at Beaumonde, they were set upon by Princess Azula and the Operative known as Long Feng - only to witness Azula kill Long Feng for opposing her, and take Aang as a hostage. Suki was badly wounded in the scuffle, and the ship badly damaged, but perhaps all is not lost.

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On Freedom

"Hurry up on fixing those holes," Jet snapped, and Toph resisted the urge to snap his head off. He was acting like a complete ass, like he was the only person on the entire gorram ship who cared that Aang was in the Fire Nation's clutches - that Azula was probably going to lock him back up in cold sleep for who knew how long? - and she could just remember how fear had lanced through him when she had mentioned it, a complete, paralyzing terror, and it hurt her to think about.

She was still fighting an uphill battle with her legs and her spine, so Haru insisted that she do as much as she could sitting down with upright posture, but she was agitated and infuriated, which meant that the whole ship was shaking as she worked tirelessly, her bending accidentally warping the floor at her feet more times than she could count.

"I'm working on it," she replied hoarsely, welding a piece of sheet metal in place. Her throat was dry and cracked and stopped-up with a tight ball of needles.

"Well, work faster," Jet hissed through clenched teeth, and she growled at him.

"You want this to go faster? Pick up a torch and start helping."

"Fine," he said sharply, a sign of how desperate he really was: Jet never did menial labor on the ship. "Where is the other torch?"

"Engine room, above the cot," she answered, without looking up. Jet stalked off and returned a moment later, then went to work repairing the other side of the cargo bay in silence. After only a few minutes, Katara came in.

"How much longer?" she asked, voice quiet, and Toph bit her tongue hard.

"It gets longer every time someone stops me and asks that," she snarled, and Katara left hastily.

She drew in a shaky breath under the welding mask, gut twisting. Aang was so young, too young to be imprisoned and tortured and hurt the way Azula would hurt him, and - and Aang was her second-ever friend, only the second person ever to reach out to her by choice and care about her and try to make her feel better. No one ever wanted to be friends with Toph, but Aang - and Iroh - had, for some reason they had both seen through her mask when no one else had in her whole life, and she'd already lost one and she couldn't lose another.

Hot tears slid underneath the leather of her visor and gathered at the chin of the mask, and was glad they were there to hide them. She bit her tongue hard; stop being scared and do something about it, she thought.

She'd get Aang out of the princess's clutches, if it was the last damn thing she did.

"Calm down," Mai said, as Katara paced. Everyone on the ship was tense, snapping at people they never snapped at, glaring holes in the wall, rearranging things over and over again, hiding out in their bunks and pretending to sleep - Aang's imprisonment hung heavy over all of them.

Mai hadn't been there to see it - she had left in her shuttle when they'd hit atmo on Beaumonde to do some shopping (picking up clothes for Katara, mostly, so that she might not have to wear that same now-shabby dress) and when she'd returned to see the cargo bay in pieces and Toph screaming hysterical curses out into the docks for no apparent reason. It was Katara who had told her, voice shaky, what had happened.

It remained to be seen, she had said, if Suki could still walk.

Now, they were ostensibly sharing a pot of tea while Toph and Jet repaired the cargo bay, but neither of them had touched their tea and it had gone cold almost an hour ago.

"It's going to take a while," she said evenly, smoothing over her own fears with years of training. The 'Verse needed Aang. Azula had something up her sleeve, something more than merely locking him up in cold sleep, she was sure of it, and only Aang would be able to stop her.

Mai knew of Azula from childhood, although their paths had only crossed a few times; the calculating way that the princess had looked at her and spoke to her had convinced her that she should get as far away from Azula as she could. She knew more than enough to know that Azula was dangerous, in a way that only Zuko or Ty Lee might possibly understand. The princess was a perfectionist, and once she decided that she was going to do something, have something, create or destroy something - that was it. She had tried to get her claws around Mai in their teenage years, with sweet-tasting gifts and favors that quickly gave way to suggestions and the offer of being Azula's own personal bodyguard.

Mai didn't know exactly when she had started to see the cost of Azula's kindness, but after the offer came, she had fled the capital to become a Companion, the only thing she could think of that would disgust Azula so much that she would forget about the gloomy knife-thrower.

It was her second deepest secret - not even Katara knew why Mai had left the comfortable life of Fire Nation nobility to become a Companion.

If she was honest with herself, Azula was the only person she had ever truly feared, and one of only two times in her entire life she had listened to her heart and her gut rather than cold logic. Her instincts had said run when she had gotten the invitation from the princess, and she had run, sharply cutting off her noble life without so much as a goodbye to her family. Not that she cared much for them, or that escaping Azula had been the only force driving her out of the Forbidden City - it was the catalyst, at least.

The other reason and the other decision settled heavy in her mind, blackening her emotions until they were the color of despair.

"What's wrong?" Katara asked, startling her. She looked up.

"You have to ask?" she replied, and Katara watched her, eyes calculating.

"Something has been bothering you," she said softly, "for a while. What is it?"

Mai looked into Katara's face and considered, for a moment, telling her everything - after all, Katara had been there when Mai's grandmother had died, a bed-ridden, drooling invalid, stripped down by disease into something barely human - but it would break Katara's heart to hear, and she had enough to deal with right now. She didn't need to know, not yet, and hopefully not ever. Mai never wanted to see that look in Katara's eyes, the same look of horrible understanding that had crossed over Haru's face when he had caught her stealing medicine.

"Katara," she said quietly, "don't ask me that question."

It was a mark of their friendship and shared experiences that Katara simply nodded and allowed the topic to drop.

Following the scene in the cargo bay, Diana - Yue, Sokka remembered, Chief Arnook's lost daughter - had decided to stay on the ship. She sat in the dining room with him, Bee, and Longshot during the long, awful wait for the ship to be ready to fly again.

"Those men called the boy the Avatar," she said quietly, staring into her untouched cup. "Is it true?"

"Yes," he replied shortly. Even though some part of him knew he shouldn't trust her, there was something about the way she looked right now that told him she wasn't planning any cons. In fact, she looked more like she was planning vengeance. "He is. He's been frozen since the Age of Bending."

"And the princess wants to put him right back in the ice?" she asked, and then nodded. "So, how do we stop her?"

"You're in the crew, now?" Bee said, raising an eyebrow and glancing at Longshot. "Since when?"

"I still owe you," Diana - Yue - replied. "They say the Avatar can bring balance to the world," she continued, sighing, and ran a hand through her hair. "I'll fight for that."

"We ain't startin' up the war," Bee snapped, and Yue turned to her, face hard and cold. "We won't," Bee repeated, then drained her cup of something which was not tea in one gulp, and raised it high in a mockery of a toast. "But our little show at the Water Tribe revitalized the Independent movement... and now the border and rim systems are all fired up about rebellion, gonna take down the Alliance regime with the help of the Avatar! It's such a mess," she said, voice falling as she leaned forward, stretching over the table bitterly. "All I want is for the fighting to stop, just finally stop," she added in a small voice, reflecting Sokka's own emotions regarding the war. Longshot rubbed her back, and looked to Yue.

"I know what it looks like," he said gravely, "but we fought to protect Aang, not start up a war we've already lost."

There was a long silence, and then Yue shrugged. "Fine by me," she said, almost flippantly, glancing around the table. "I'm still on board." She muttered something else, the words quiet and strung-together so much that he wasn't sure if she said I'm sick of the fighting, myself, or I'm sick of fighting myself.

Funny, he thought vaguely. The only time he'd ever seen her tell the truth, and she said it like a lie.

Zuko sat outside the Infirmary with Haru and Ty Lee because he didn't know where else to go. He wanted to go to Katara, but he just didn't know what to say to her, and she had disappeared after his sister had dragged Aang off - did she blame him, he wondered? It was his family, after all, and his fault that she was even involved in all of this.

He had tried to sit in the dining room with Bee, Longshot, Sokka, and the white-haired woman they all called Diana, but there was an oppressive atmosphere there that he thought was because of Suki, sleeping in the Infirmary, leg bandaged up. Katara's healing had done wonders for her, Haru said, but they wouldn't know for certain until she woke up if she could walk again. Even Zuko, who tried to stay removed from the crew, felt the tension there - Suki had just been planning to restart the Kyoshi Warriors, reform a part of her past, and she'd been so happy to be able to spar with Katara and teach Ty Lee...

Suki had risked something more than her life to protect Aang - she had risked her dream of a new future. And for what? They had failed to save him from the Operative and they had failed to save him from Azula. Jet swore that they were going to storm Azula's ship and bring Aang back, but Jet swore a lot of things, and Zuko was the only one who knew Azula well enough to know how hopeless that was.

Although - he glanced at Ty Lee's pale face - maybe he wasn't the only one. Ty Lee had left the capital before Azula had really started gaining power, but she had been friends with the princess in childhood, so maybe she understood as well as he did that the princess was a force to be reckoned with.

He wanted to scream in frustration - he should have been able to do something, to stop her! But Azula had always been the better one, the faster one, the smarter one, and he'd gotten into so much trouble in the past for acting without thinking, and he'd hesitated at the wrong moment for just too long. He had tried to find another opening to attack her, but he'd missed his window. It seemed like he was damned no matter what he did, right or wrong, cautious or impulsive.

Azula was right - he was pathetic.

On Desdemona

Aang shouted until he was hoarse, beat against the door of the room, kicked and screamed until all of his energy was spent, before collapsing against the wall. Deep breaths, he thought - maybe the others were still safe. Calm down, Monk Gyatso had taught him, how to deal with fear and helplessness. Take in your surroundings and ask yourself: what can I do?

What could he do? He knew he was en route to the Core, and that Azula wanted to put him back into cold sleep, and the thought terrified him so much it blocked everything else out. What if he went to sleep and woke up and everyone he knew was dead - again? Katara, Toph, Mai, Ty Lee, Zuko, Jet, Haru, Sokka, Suki, the Duke, Pipsqueak, Bee, Longshot... all gone.

He shook his head in an effort to clear it. He knew what that path led to - he could feel it trying to come on, the screaming rage of the Avatar State dancing like ice on his nerves. He couldn't give into it: while it might help him destroy the ship, it would leave him alone, floating in space, and he'd heard that was near-instant death. No, what he needed now was control.

Yangchen had said that he needed to unlock his chakras, but he wasn't even entirely sure what his chakras were, let alone how to unlock them. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, forcing his chaotic thoughts into silence.

There was no way that the crew would leave him in the Fire Nation's clutches. He knew that - if nothing else, Toph would scream herself sick and lead the charge herself while Katara initiated mutiny and locked herself on the bridge to bring the ship in to find him. They were his friends, and they cared about him. Like Yangchen, and Katara, had told him: he was not alone. They would never leave him to that fate.

What he had to do was ensure that he could properly help them when the time came to do so. Yangchen had said that he couldn't unlock his chakras in the spirit world, but now that he couldn't find someone in the real world to help him, he thought that maybe he could find some knowledgeable spirit there who could tell him how, and then he could return to his body and do it on his own. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than ranting at a locked door until he went blue in the face.

He let out a deep breath, reached out in his mind, and opened his eyes - he was still in the cell, looking at his own body, tattoos glowing white. He shook off the sense of disassociation and fled the ship, making his way to the silent temple Yangchen had brought him to.

"Avatar Yangchen?" he asked, shouted at the walls, but she didn't show up. He searched the empty temple until he found an old man, dressed in orange, sitting alone in the belfry in the lotus position with a look of determined meditation on his face. "Hello?"

The spirit opened one eye, and then grinned. "Avatar Aang," he said, "I have waited a very long time for you."

"What is he doing?" Azula asked the guard, who was standing outside the locked door. The woman shook her head.

"He shouted and hit the wall a lot at first, but he's been quiet for a while."

"Hmm," she mused.

On Freedom

"You got a lock on the nav-sat?" Jet asked, and Longshot nodded. "Follow it, but keep a good distance, don't go hard burn until we're all ready."

Longshot nodded once, and Jet made his way into the dining room. Slowly, as he and Toph had finished fixing the cargo bay, the dining room had filled up with his crew, one by one, all knowing without having to ask that the next stage was planning. He looked around - Bee was at the head of the table, Toph was in her usual spot, the Duke and Pipsqueak were facing each other, their poker game untouched in front of them, Zuko was brooding in the alcove with Sokka and Diana, Katara and Mai were sitting side-by-side, Haru was standing next to Toph, and Ty Lee was sitting on the table beside Mai, flipping Suki's fans through her fingers over and over.

"All right," he said gravely, "here's how it is."

Bee stood by Longshot as they came in range of the Tower-class. They hadn't yet deployed gunships, but she knew they were going to, and they would have been stupid not to plan for it. While Longshot dodged the big ones, Jet - along with the three benders - would take one of the shuttles and make for the hangar while Sokka - along with Mai, Diana, and Ty Lee - would take the other shuttle to make for the other side of the hangar, to trip up the gunships.

The Freedom, meanwhile, wouldn't bother with the hangar. Toph had instructed the Duke in how to properly use her Maria Mark Three, and he and Pipsqueak were at the ready, suited up in the hermetically-sealed cargo bay, prepared to open up the bottom of it and use the hyper-Gatling gun to tear an opening into the center section of the Tower-class, into which Longshot would fly the ship and they would land. Zuko was the only one who knew the layout of the ship, so his team was going to break for the prison while Sokka's team distracted the gunners and her team took on Azula.

It was a dangerous, thin plan. She clutched Longshot's shoulder tight; odds were, they wouldn't all come out of this one alive. She simply prayed that they got Aang out.

That was all that mattered at this point - get Aang out. Do the job, she thought, at any and all cost.

"There they go," she whispered, as the whole bottom of the Tower lit up with gunships. She hit the open all button on the intercom. "We got incoming ships. Shuttles deploy in fifteen seconds," she barked.

"Strap yourself in," Longshot said quietly.

As soon as she was in her seat, he jerked the controls hard to the left and they careened past the first line of gunships. Bee counted down from fifteen as they swerved past bullets and ships, Longshot taking the ship left and then right and then up and then a sharp drop down to avoid a crafty gunner that had remembered they had three dimensions to work in - and then, "All right, that's fifteen," she said quietly, and Longshot glanced at the controls.

"Both shuttles are deployed," he said, and then hit the comm button. "Pipsqueak, Duke, at the ready."

They had to give Jet and Sokka time to get to the hangar - she could barely see the two shuttles dodging fire with much more grace than they were, shooting straight for the hangar. There was a blast from beneath them, and the black was briefly lit up as Pipsqueak and the Duke fired the first round from Maria, taking out a whole row of gunships. Longshot pulled the ship into a near-vertical climb, daring the gunships to chase them (she heard the Duke shout an expletive over the intercom), pulling Freedom into position.

"Pipsqueak, now!" she shouted, and another brilliant white blast shot from beneath them, goring a huge gash into the Tower's side as they swerved up and Longshot rolled the ship in the black to bring it in. She felt the ship rock as what must have been ten-thousand small-caliber bullets hit them, but it wasn't enough to cause a hull breach.

There was a horrible feel of tearing metal reverberating through the ship as Longshot pushed Freedom at almost full burn into the hole Maria had torn into the tower. Once they were in, he cut the power as bits of shorn metal plinked off the backside of the ship. Everything in front of them was dark except for a few sparks and pipes discharging into the vacuum; she tried not to think about all the people they had just killed.

Do the job.

Any and all cost.

She pulled her helmet on and loaded up her last weapons and ammo, the only ones she didn't already have stashed somewhere on her body, and ran for the cargo bay, her husband right behind her.

They joined up with Pipsqueak and the Duke - now, the only protected place on the ship was the Infirmary, where Haru kept watch on the still-unconscious Suki, and that would stay closed, for the duration. If anyone on the crew got hurt, they were on their own. She shouldered her rifle and led the charge into the empty sector of the ship.

Mai loaded several bolts into her crossbow, preparing to leave the shuttle and go into the hangar. Ty Lee was nervously playing with Suki's fans beside her.

"Are you sure you want to take those?" Diana asked derisively, and Ty Lee nodded firmly.

"I'm a Kyoshi Warrior now," she replied gravely. "Suki would do it, but she's still out, so it's up to me."

"You've only been a Kyoshi Warrior for a day," Mai pointed out, and Ty Lee shook her head.

"I know, but this was important to Suki." And, she didn't say, this is the only thing I can do to help.

Sokka joined them then, sweating from all the madcap flying he'd had to do to bring them into the hangar and away from Maria. "All right, we're in the clear. Toph must've been working on the electrical system, 'cause the hangar closed behind us. We can go."

Mai nodded sharply, and the four of them burst into the hangar on full attack, which quickly gave way to full defense as a small knot of soldiers unleashed suppressive gunfire at them. Far away, on the other side of the ship, Mai caught a glimpse of orange fire and sparkling water - good, the others were already moving forward. All they had to do was draw attention.

She waited, counting the time for the clip to run out on full-automatic - four seconds - and then stood and fired three bolts in three precise places, quickly falling back behind cover as the three dead guards were replaced by new ones. Four seconds, and then Sokka stood and fired three powerful shotgun blasts, straight through the cover the guards were hiding behind. He ran forward, shooting several more times, and then called to them. Mai and Ty Lee joined him at the wall he was using as their new cover.

"Look," he muttered, pointing to the other side of the hangar. There were guards lining up to take on Jet's crew, having realized that the second shuttle was the bluff. "Looks like we're taking on his job. Let's move, before they start coming for us."

Mai nodded, pointing to the halls the soldiers were pouring from. "Those will lead to the interior. We should work our way up the sides. Fewer soldiers and narrower passes. It's our best chance."

"Sounds good," Sokka replied, and the three of them began moving.

"You will begin with Kundalini, the base chakra," Guru Pathik explained. "This is connected to your survival instinct, and it is blocked by fear. To unlock it, you must allow yourself to let go of stability, to risk ultimately and without fear. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Aang replied, tension knotting in the back of his head.

"Good," Pathik said, and then continued quickly, like he was running short of time. "The second chakra is Swadhisthana, the sacral chakra. This governs pleasure, and it is blocked by guilt. To unlock it, you must let go of your sorrows, allow them to be washed away. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good," he repeated, and the tension within Aang coiled tighter around him. Something was happening in the physical world, and he needed to be there for it, but he couldn't go until he had the information he needed from Pathik, or else he'd be useless. "The third chakra is Manipura, the solar plexus. It governs your willpower, and is blocked by shame. To unlock it, you must recognize your greatest failures and let go of them. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Aang answered, privately thinking that he was most worried about that first one, since right now, he was terrified, Azula's threat still ringing harsh in his ears.

"Good," Pathik said again, and then continued. "The fourth chakra is Anahata, the heart chakra. It governs your love, and is blocked by grief. To unlock it, you must let go of the memories that haunt you. Understand?" he asked, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "The fifth chakra is Vishudda, the throat chakra. It governs truth, and is blocked by lies. To unlock it, you must accept the lies you have told and been told, and let go of the guilt and injustice caused by them. The sixth chakra is Ajna, the brow chakra. It governs insight, and is blocked by illusions, particularly the illusion of separation. To unlock it, you must realize that everything is connected and nothing exists alone. Do you understand?"

Aang nodded, and Pathik continued, voice speeding up as though he, too, knew that they were running out of time and Aang had to get back to the real world.

"Last is Sahasrara, the crown chakra. It governs pure energy and is blocked by earthly attachments. To unlock it, you must recognize the things that bind you to this world and release yourself from them. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he replied, and then woke up abruptly in the metal room he had been in before. Distantly, he heard shouts and gunfire and a loud, awful sound of metal tearing against metal, and he knew that his friends had come for him. He took a deep breath to still the pounding of his heart. Begin with Kundalini, the guru had said - let go of fear.

But how? He was terrified, alone in a stark metal room, in Azula's clutches, with the sounds of a battle going on all around him - how could he let go of fear?

Diana choked back a cough as she crawled through the dust of the vent - part of her felt bad for leaving them behind, but it wasn't in her to just walk into gunfire like a moron. She had meant it when she'd said that she'd fight with them, but she had no intentions of dying with them. Her plan was much simpler: get to the prison block while everyone else was occupied with the primary attack. She made sure to crawl in to the ship; the last thing she wanted was to get torn apart by Freedom making its violent docking.

Unfortunately, the air vents were cramped and dusty, with a lot of dead ends where it narrowed too thin to get into and a constant rush of frigid air, but she kept crawling - it wasn't the first time she'd taken to a ventilation system to bypass guards or security. It was one of those things that had become so commonplace in fiction that no one believed it possible anymore, but if she was good at anything, it was using other people's misconceptions against them.

She considered it her greatest strength... or used to, at any rate.

Her mother had always believed in something more than the rage that led to war - Mother had believed in peacemaking, in compromising, in finding ways to stop the fighting before it had the chance to kill anyone. She had always thought it naive, and although she still didn't think that assessment was wrong, she was starting to think there was something to be said for idealism.

Much as Diana's blood boiled for revenge, it left an acrid taste on Yue's tongue.

Mother wouldn't have asked for vengeance; in fact, she would have been angry at the notion.

Mother would have fought for Aang. And for that, Yue wanted to save the Avatar from the Fire Nation. It would probably be the last thing she ever did, but considering her history, she didn't think it would be such a bad way to go: the consummate liar, the failed Companion turned con artist, offering the ultimate sacrifice. It wasn't frightening. If anything, it was fate.

The legends said that her namesake, the moon goddess of the Water Tribe, had been a girl once, born with brilliant white hair, a gift from the previous moon goddess - but less a boon and more a debt: the moon goddess saved Yue's life as a child, and for that, Yue's life could never be her own.

Some time later, after she had married and had her own white-haired daughter and maybe even forgot what she owed, the Fire Nation had broken through the Water Tribe's defenses and killed the moon goddess, and so Yue's debt was called in. Dutifully, she had sacrificed herself to take the dead goddess's place.

Diana had been taught all about Yue's nobility and bravery and selflessness and goodness, but all she had ever read from the tale was that nothing came without a price. And besides, people talked about the nobility of her sacrifice like she had been given any choice - how could someone be brave for never being allowed to choose?

She had always felt like her name and her hair were a sick joke played by a cruel god - people expected things from a white-haired Water Tribe woman named Yue, they expected bravery and goodness and that capability of tragic, helpless sacrifice that had cemented the goddess's name in memory, and she had none of those. Didn't want any of them, either. Her independence was all she could call hers; she made the decision years ago to live her own life on her own, no matter how much it hurt her.

The goddess Yue was an example of everything she wasn't, of the path she had refused to follow. It was a name she neither wanted nor deserved, so she'd stopped calling herself Yue entirely, taken on name after name, a new one for each con she pulled until the name Yue was nothing but an old wound that still ached when it rained - she was Diana, Nanna, Ceridwen, Phoebe, Artemis, Selene, Tsuki, a thousand others, but never Yue.

Yue was something sacred... and something monstrous.

Yue was her mother's daughter, and now, Malina's body cold and stiff and left behind on the docks of Beaumonde - now, she had her own debt to repay, an apology several years and a thousand lifetimes too late, a fate that would torture her if she tried to escape it and kill her if she didn't. Twenty-five years of running, only to end up where she started, out of choices and forced to sacrifice; the curse woven into her hair. It was either a watershed moment, or an event horizon.

"Fine," she whispered, too quiet even for herself to hear, "You win, I give up." She wriggled into the main vent and was hit with a hard blast of cold air that took her breath away, and she had to turn before she could begin crawling up the ladder - left there from when the ship was constructed - that would take her all the way to the top. "Okay, Yue," she gasped, closing her eyes and burying her face in her sleeve to catch her breath against the air, "this is what you want from me. So you can damn well help me get there."

The air cut off abruptly.