Author's Note: I'm sorry the second chapter of this took so long to post. It took me a while to figure out which direction I wanted to take this story in…I'm still not really sure, but I'll still settle for the victory of chapter two.
Like I mentioned in the first chapter, these chapters are going to be considerably shorter than they used to be. The order of the story is also changing form the first version of this fic, because of reasons.
As usual, this is considered post-series AU and disregards all comics and LoK. I'm too lazy to make it all work together /shrugs
Every Impossible Thing
2. Decisions
Aang would never forget the moment that changed everything.
That moment that changed not only the course of his life, but of the entire world. The moment he lost himself to the storm and vanished from the world for a generation.
Like magic, frozen in ice.
He did not like to dwell on the memory, coated with so much regret, but he had grown to understand the nature of it.
He had been a child, so much younger than Avatars of past when his birthright was revealed. Gyatso had known the dangers in revealing it prematurely, had argued against it.
He had been right, of course, but it changed nothing in the end.
Not when he was a child with fate of the world heavy on his shoulders. And not just any world; a world so fractured and wrought with discord, it would go on for a hundred years. A hundred years of war, destruction…the loss of an entire people. His people.
He would never forgive his fear and what it had meant for the Nomads and for the world…but he could understand it. The dread and expectations that had driven the moment, shaped and sculpted it into the terrible thing it had become.
Aang stared blankly back at the assemblage of ambassadors, emissaries, council members and miscellaneous agents of foreign states, arranged in neat rows before the Avatar and the Fire Lord.
Blinking, he focused on the red and brown of Zuko's members and beyond to the green and blue of the representatives of the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes, Northern and Southern.
Word by word, the sentence pieced together in his mind. Aang mentally combed over each word, as if he had heard incorrectly. It sounded suspiciously like, "The Avatar must be married before the year is out."
"Excuse me?" Aang said, straightening his spine.
Acutely aware of every gaze in the room on him, he looked sideways to Zuko. He was pointedly ignored.
"Could you please repeat that?" Aang asked, courteous and ever so mildly panicked.
There was a beat before a member of the Northern party from the Tribes drew herself up and said, "The Avatar must marry before the year is out."
Aang's ears did not deceive him. The outrage on Zuko's face was confirmation enough.
"Sika, what you're insinuating–" Zuko began uncomfortably, folding his hands into his sleeves like his uncle would.
Zuko was becoming the portrait of Iroh, as both a young man and a ruler. Patient and forgiving of his nation, Zuko sought to guide his homeland as his uncle had guided him. With understanding and love, with firmness and with honor.
Aang noted the tension in the movement. Zuko's posture was the practiced and formal bearing of a nobleman, so unlike Aang's gangly, boneless mien.
"–is perfectly feasible," interrupted a slim, severe man in green robes, rising from his position a row away from Sika.
Comments and declarations of assent sprung up from every party gathered, so united a response Aang understood at once this demand had not been an impulse.
It was a crafted, calculated entreaty, of no surprise to anyone but himself.
Zuko would still not look at him, but balked at Sika, his face so uncharacteristically indignant. To Aang, it was a safe bet this was not the first the Fire Lord had heard of it.
"Roku was never interrogated this way," Zuko said tersely, removing a hand from his sleeves to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Not even by those mother hens the Fire Sages."
Aang knew from experience Zuko was not accustomed to being cornered so baldly, but was tolerant of such impertinence from his foreign guests. Particularly those of the Tribes.
"My Lord, please do not be insufferable. Roku was not the last firebender," intoned Sika gravely, unimpressed with the Fire Lord's opposition.
Zuko drew in a deep breath, one Aang recognized from Zuko's training. A deep breath to calm and center a firebender, whose emotion could never be unchecked. Fire was an element rooted deeply in emotion but honed with control.
"It is not, and has never been, anyone but the Avatar's business who he does or does not marry. If he marries at all."
A scoff came from the same man who had stood in support of Sika and of the room majority. Yeon, Aang remembered. His name was Yeon. "Of course he must. And have children besides. As many and as soon as possible."
He would have been sick all over Zuko's fine carpets if he'd eaten anything that morning. But he hadn't and was grateful to be saved the trouble and embarrassment.
As many and as soon as possible.
Children. It was his life and his children – non-existent and, in truth, debatable – being hawked like some ware on a street corner.
Aang tried to focus on the discussion as it continued on heatedly, but could only pick out pieces of it as Zuko and his assembled officials squabbled over the minutiae of the subject.
In fragments he heard: "A lady from the Earth Kingdom would not do. How could we possibly expect airbenders from such a match? Between such opposing elements?"
He would learn later this point was a sore subject for the Earth Kingdom, but of such accepted rationale they did not push the matter.
Water, it was suggested, would be a more complimentary avenue.
At the mention of water, Aang was plucked from his distraction, suddenly too-aware of all people in the room, of all the eyes. Especially Zuko's.
His eyes cut to Aang's quickly, yellow pools widened in surprise.
He opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again after a moment.
Both the Avatar and Fire Lord looked away from each other as Yeon conceded: "Perhaps." He waved towards those gathered on behalf of the Tribes. "But can they afford the daughter? Sika, Imnek? Sedna?"
"It is not...advisable. Our daughters are precious to us," said Imnek, a man close in age to Hakoda, dark hair drawn back and laced with beads.
Aang recognized the ghost of pain in their eyes, the sadness that lingered for their lost princess, Yue.
Our daughters are precious to us.
"We have so few left," continued Imnek, a sharp, purposeful look to Zuko. "You are already prepared to take another from our sister Tribe in the South. I do not think we can give another, even to our friend the Avatar."
An awkward silence lingered, especially heavy between the Avatar and the Fire Lord.
Zuko coughed delicately. "Be that as it may, Avatar Aang's…personal affairs are not the fodder for ambassadors and councils."
"The Avatar's 'personal affairs', as you call them, are of foremost importance to us all," said Yeon, a sentiment Aang suspected was shared by most, if not all, present company. "I find myself asking why they are not as important to the both of you. As champions of restoration, I would think the rebuilding of the Nomads a priority."
"You cannot know," said Zuko, a note of panic tightly coiled through his voice. "You cannot know if there will be airbenders."
The word and Zuko's apprehension sat oddly with Aang.
Airbenders.
Beneath the upheaving of his personal life and continued awkwardness with Zuko, there was something beginning to nudge at Aang.
Something clicking into place, strange and peculiar.
One of Zuko's men, who as a group had been curiously quiet on the whole, said patiently to his Fire Lord, "Would you prefer we send him off to a noble lady of every nation to sire a nation's worth of children? In the hopes of airbenders? Broker him out, my Lord, like a prized pony?"
It was Hata, and Aang could see the genuine concern in him, in so many of them, as the questions and protestations continued on about how to restore the Nomads and, as consequence, a key piece of balance.
This was not the insipid thirst of Zuko's courtiers, the scheming of the Fire Nation's, Earth Kingdom's and Water Tribe's, noble born.
"It must be thought of," was said as the meeting was drawing to its close, the Fire Lord on his last dregs of patience and at the behest of other engagements.
Aang recognized the speaker as Sedna, one of the few delegates able to sojourn from the Southern Water Tribes to the balmy capitol of the Fire Nation. She worked closely with Katara, for there was so little representation for their people in post-war mediations.
"We cannot force this course upon the Avatar, our ally and emancipator. But we beg of him to consider what he is – the world's last chance for airbenders. And regardless of where your allegiance fell in the war, Fire Lord, your dynasty is responsible for the loss of the Nomads. Your forefathers brought this upon us."
Zuko, Fire Lord and master bender, hero and friend, bowed his head to the room. An acknowledgment of the destructive legacy he had been handed.
"We have every hope you will continue to right their wrongs." Here, Sedna paused, expression and words imploring both Fire Lord and Avatar.
"Start with the airbenders."
There was a quiet steel in her eyes that suddenly reminded Aang of Yangchen, and her offered wisdom:
Selfless duty calls for you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs, and do whatever it takes to protect the world.
He'd been selfish once, and afraid; it had cost the world so dearly. It was a price paid in the lives of airbenders and waterbenders, one people gone and another so weakened in numbers.
Airbenders.
How could he refuse? To bring the Air Temples to life again? To brush the dust from the Nomad's libraries and monuments of worship and enlightenment? To rebuild and pass on the culture of his people?
In the end, the answer was simple. So simple.
He couldn't.
So he said, "We will consider it."
"Aang," Zuko warned, slamming a hand down like a gavel onto his pulpit. So much guilt built into the gesture.
Aang and Zuko both understood guilt and the responsibility that came with it.
Aang knew this was not one of the troubles Zuko expected to face when re-modeling his empire, but like guilt and responsibility, they understood choices and decisions. Mistakes and atonement. Rebuilding, renewal.
"Give us time to consider it," the Avatar repeated, firmly and loudly enough that it echoed against the walls of the circular chamber and back to him.
Not a promise, but good enough.
"Very well, Avatar."