To flip a soul inside and out.
"You are weak! Just like the rest of your people. They did not deserve to exist in this world — in my world!"
—
The orange light, unnerving, creeps along his arms, as the sky bathes itself in a clash of colours.
—
Aang heeds the lion-turtle's advice.
(The true mind can weather all illusions and lies without being lost.)
The Firelord's spirit penetrates his own and he understands the desire to take another life. He feels it through Kuruk's aching thirst for revenge, the regret which wells in Roku like a deep ocean of blackness, Kyoshi's cold indifference freezing the blood in Yun's veins —
But he watches Katara sleep under a mural of baby bison, the orange firelight caressing her soft cheeks. He hears the laughter of the nuns among the cracks in the stone and the vines creeping along the walls.
Across the fountain, Zuko lies on his side beside a wall blackened by his forefathers who came under the shadow of a comet —
And burned his people to dust.
It would be so easy!
They scream at him — the Firelord and all his past lives, all his friends. Zuko's red face on a rocky hill on Ember Island. Yangchen's memory in an empty clearing on a lion-turtle's back. A roar of fire on a dry mesa in the western reaches of the Earth Kingdom.
He holds the Firelord's life in the palm of his hand: the power to restore the balance of a devastated world upon his lifeless body. He understands the power in taking another life to make things right — allows the Firelord's will to penetrate his own, to dominate his being.
Snow falls in the ruins of a desolate chamber where Gyatso sleeps forever. He watches the turrets of the Southern Air Temple recede into purple clouds —
Zuko kneels before him in submission (I am your loyal son!). Respect must be earned and suffering will be his teacher —
And Kuzon, breathless, climbs the sheer face of a craggy mountainside (this is so flamin'!). They laugh in search of a dragon's egg but he slips and falls —
Beneath the waves and crashing wind, between the shifting land, drowning in magma. Chin the Conqueror, tyrant and despot, a deserving death for —
Bumi, sliding down chutes among the terraced buildings of Omashu, both of them together so hopelessly free and ignorant of the people screaming around them — at the chaos and pandemonium (Bumi, you're a mad genius!). Riding in guileless glee without the nagging worry —
In the back of his mind, as he looks upon Sozin, his old friend suspended by the hem of his cloak on a pillar of stone. Fire swirls around his fingers. It would be so easy —
To throw the round of fruit pies at the meditating monks, as Gyatso guffaws beside him (the secret is in the gooey center!), and lemurs dance across their soaked and wrinkled faces.
He leans over the railing — his friends are doing their morning gliding across the mountains, accompanying the bellowing bison — and spots a spider-fly landing on his hand. It tickles, and he looks with familiarity at the fragile being, as it gropes across his knuckles for the scent emanating from the pies. He spots a tiny web under the railing where it must have made its home. Gyatso throws another round over the balcony to hoarse protests from the monks below, and the spider-fly twitches and skitters and scampers as his other hand reaches to swat at it —
But he lets it fly away.
His friends whisper as do his past lives: Zuko and Toph and Yangchen and Kyoshi. Sokka and Katara and Roku and Kuruk. Even the Firelord himself lends a voice.
It would be so easy to end it all —
To have the Firelord at his mercy and to take his life.
In the end, Aang yields his spirit and surrenders himself to the poison and hatred and anger of a hundred years of war and —
Winds whip in the ruins of a room where Gyatso sleeps forever, among the monsters who burned his friends to less than a memory. Pipes and metalwork desecrate the painted faces of monks in the empty halls of the Northern Air Temple. Sorrow and anger sting his heart in a desert as he raises his staff towards terrified sandbenders. And yet —
He lets it go.
(The true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed.)
Yellow sunbeams fall upon the monks who reveal his Avatarhood (we need you, Aang), as they stamp their hopes and fears on the destiny of a boy — of a child. The sun feels hot on the collar of his acolyte robes even in the cold light of the room. He feels a childish urge to run and fly into the wind, but —
Aang watches Katara sleep under a mural of baby bison and hears the nuns laughing among the cracks in the walls —
And he makes his choice.
The lion-turtle opens his spirit in a flash of green.
(To bend another's energy, your own spirit must be unbendable — or you will be corrupted and destroyed.)
Aang will never willingly take a life.
Never.
—
The beam, gleaming and blue, pierces the sky into the heavens.
—
"The monks always taught me that all life is sacred. Even the life of the tiniest spider-fly caught in its own web."
finis.
See next chapter for Author's Note (04/07/24)
