Southern Air Temple/Secret Writings
4
The restless lemur could have picked anyone else to perch on, but it took to running carelessly, happily, across Sokka's shoulders, trotting down his arms and sitting on his lap. Despite his previous irritation over the creature's attention, Sokka couldn't help but sigh as he resigned himself to taking care of the lemur for the time being. Momo, was it? A simple enough name, he guessed…
"You don't think Aang's going to want us to keep him… do you?" Kino asked, softly, hoping his voice wouldn't reach the Avatar inside the sanctuary.
He raised a hand towards Momo, reaching for him over Katara's lap. The waterbender shot him a meaningful glare that Kino ignored, smiling eagerly as he tried to catch Momo's attention: the lemur, to Sokka's surprise, didn't pull away from Kino. Instead, he grabbed his index finger with his own, small fingers, and licked him as though hoping to find food. Kino giggled goofily at the gesture, and Zuko, at his other side, huffed in a way that made his shortened bangs sway in the air.
"Sounds like you're the one who wants to keep him," he said, curtly. Kino smiled guiltily at him, rising back to his proper sitting position. Katara sighed, shaking her head.
"I doubt he'll want to take this little guy with us to fight in the war, it'd be unnecessarily risk-…"
She hardly meant to say anything more, but as she turned to cast a glance at Aang, Katara's final word was left unfinished.
There had been no light inside the dark sanctuary, none other than the weak, fading sunlight that drifted into it from where they sat… thus, the sudden glint of weak, blue glow she glimpsed inside the sanctuary took her aback.
"What…? Did he do it?" Katara gasped.
At once, all her three companions turned quickly – Momo squeaked, displeased that Sokka had shifted around too fast for him to keep up with his motions. Four sets of eyes scrutinized the darkness of the sanctuary in utmost confusion… as a sudden, blinking blue light seemed to come to life.
"The hell is that?" Sokka growled, immediately on edge.
"It's… I… I think it's the Avatar State," Katara said, swallowing hard. "It looks like what he did back when he nearly tore down the igloo, when I told him his people had been killed…!"
Sokka's eyes widened as he took in the strange, unsettling sight before him: Aang's newly shaved head seemed to glow ethereally… no, his tattoos did. The brightness seemed to fade out, though, then return at full force, blinking unsteadily.
"Was it like that, too?" Kino asked, swallowing hard. "All… wavery-wobbly?"
"No, it… it was just bright light, and then he started bending of his own accord," Katara said. Sokka flinched, his eyes narrowing now.
"Bending?" he repeated. "Katara…"
The perfectly meditative Aang that had been sitting by Roku's statue moments ago suddenly shifted in his position: his head dropped forward, his arms stretched out… the tattoos upon them were alight again with the power of whatever was happening within his soul, within his spirit…
"He's… he's not okay," Zuko said, rising to his feet with a wary scowl. "That can't be normal… you said it wasn't like this, that day?"
"No! It never happened again since then…!" Katara explained, jumping to her feet too, joined by the others.
By now, the brightness in Aang's tattoos had strengthened further… and it had spread beyond him, too: the eyes of Roku's statue were suddenly lit… and after him, the eyes of the next Avatar in the cycle glowed blue as well. Slowly but surely, every statue was alight with the power of the Avatar State, responding to Aang's proximity, perhaps. Yet Katara's unease over the Avatar State worsened Sokka's caution: she was the only one, out of the four of them, who had seen Aang like this… and from the looks of it, he hadn't been shifting awkwardly, as though an invisible being were attacking him and he struggled to dodge the blows…
"The hell is happening to him…?" Sokka gritted his teeth, clasping Katara's shoulder protectively, albeit still unsure of what would be the best way to break Aang out of his full-body spasms. He suddenly began hovering place…
They couldn't know, couldn't understand, the strange conflict taking place within the Avatar's soul at the time: his chest rose as his arms continued to shake, as his crossed legs unfurled, shuddering as well. His eyes, wide open, glowed with the same brightness as his tattoos, power channeled in an uncontrolled, unmeasurable burst… yet deep inside himself, Aang felt anything but powerful right now.
"I'm here because you called for me!" Aang cried out, pleading at Roku, his heart breaking with each word the Avatar had spoken so far. "I'm here because I need your guidance, Roku! I know it's late, but… but it's not too late! I can still help save this world! I have friends who want to fight, who believe we can still do right by this world…!"
"When Fire Lord Sozin attempted to break the balance between the nations, I intervened and put a stop to his ambitions," Roku declared. "Even so, I failed to stop him completely. As soon as I was out of the way, he rallied his forces and marched on the Air Temples, destroying your people… and you weren't there to stop him."
"I tried! I did my best, but the storm caught me, and I couldn't…!"
"Chin the Conqueror could have taken over the entire Earth Kingdom," a new voice, deep and daunting, reached Aang's ears: he turned his eyes to a tall woman, bulkier than many of the Water Tribe's warriors… bearing fans like the ones Suki had always kept on display in her home: Kyoshi. "It was almost too late when I intervened… but I stopped him by any means necessary, nonetheless. Had I failed, Chin the Conqueror would have led occupation, invasion forces to the other nations and destroyed the balance I devoted my life to building. The Avatar Cycle would have been broken by my mistakes instead of yours. And yet I acted… while you did not."
"I had no chance to!" Aang gasped, gazing at them hopelessly. "I…! I meant to! I tried, but…!"
"I failed to save my wife," the next Avatar spoke: a sudden burst of awareness in Aang's heart told him the Water Tribe man was called Kuruk. "I lost her to the cruelty of a spirit I couldn't placate, couldn't best. My arrogance, my carelessness… my mistakes could have cost so much more to the world than I realized in my youth. I failed as the Avatar, much as you have…"
"But…!" Aang gritted his teeth, desperate tears spilling down his cheeks as he turned to look at each Avatar in disbelief, in pain… "I'm trying to set things right. I can't do anything about the past… but I can try to fix the future!"
"There is no set way… no right way to be the Avatar," the next voice spoke, and Aang's heart jolted upon turning on his heels anew: the one speaking now was Avatar Yangchen, the previous Air Nomad Avatar before him. "But you have not been the Avatar, Aang, for as long as you have lived. Our world faces the worst crisis it ever has… balance has never been broken as deeply as it is now. Attempting to amend what has been lost would be a noble, commendable choice… if there were any chances of success anymore."
"There are. There have to be…" Aang said, gritting his teeth. "Please! I… I need your help, all of you! I know you had expectations, you all believed I could stem the tide of the Fire Nation's conquest and do better…! But the world is still out there! There's still people worth fighting for…! There's a chance, no matter how small, how fickle…! There's a chance we can restore balance, if not in my lifetime, then the next! It has to be possible, because if it isn't…!"
If it wasn't… then they would be right. All of them would be right… and he would be the last airbender.
The last true Avatar.
He shrank in place, clasping his head with his hands: was this why he had been summoned? So that all his failings, all his shortcomings, would be tossed back in his face? Was it truly his fault not having taken action throughout the years in which he was frozen? Was he supposed to have been broken out of the ice years earlier…? How could that have ever happened? It wasn't in his control, within his power… how could he have stopped the Fire Lord from taking advantage of Sozin's Comet to conquer the Earth Kingdom?
More than that… was the Earth Kingdom truly so lost, truly beyond all hope, the way Aang's own people were? From his understanding, hadn't most their people survived, being assimilated into Fire Nation society one way or another? Wasn't it possible to save them, to help them return to their lives, to their world, the way it had been before the Fire Lord crushed everything in his path? Perhaps there was no true restoring the Earth Kingdom's previous state… but couldn't something new be born? Couldn't they find a way to rebuild their nation? If they couldn't… then what hope was there for the Air Nomads?
"You were meant to bring back balance… to defeat the Fire Lord, before the Comet's second arrival," Roku reiterated, and Aang glanced at him in despair. "I waited… I waited for countless years. I spoke to those who would help you find your path, once you were ready… true balance was meant to be restored through my legacy, after my own failings allowed Sozin to destroy the harmony between nations with his relentless ambitions. Yet when the time came… you never arrived. Ten years ago… ten years ago, you would have stood a chance. The Fire Nation could have been stopped. But as you are now…"
"You're… you're rejecting me," Aang concluded, shuddering violently. "You… you're not going to teach me, to guide me. You called me here… you called me here! One of you did, if not you…! You said you'd help me master balance within myself, but this is…! You're blaming me for the outcome of the world's catastrophes when the ones to blame are the Fire Lords! When I was powerless to keep that storm from taking me down, when I couldn't control when or how I'd break out of the ice! I know it's taken me too long… But I'm here now! I'm here, and that should mean something to all of you! I want to set things right…! I want to try, even if it takes me my last breath, to fix this world and everything that's worth fighting for in it! Even if I can't do it the way you believed I should… isn't it a worthwhile goal, trying to restore this world now that I have a chance?!"
However spirited his words might be, the Avatars appeared poised to reject them: mastering balance within himself… Aang couldn't believe that was possible. Not if this was the weight he carried inside him… not when his own past lives rejected him as violently as this, blaming him for the world's outcome because of his inaction. He had been helpless, unable to do anything… but once he was free from the ice, he had done nothing, too. Maybe that was the problem… maybe his choice to hide away in the Southern Water Tribe, safe and sound while the world fell apart, was the problem. Even if they had no plan, no true idea of how to save the world, how to defeat the Fire Nation… did they believe he should have been out there, trying to save it regardless?
He hadn't done his best all along… no, he hadn't. He had failed in more ways than he wanted to acknowledge, in ways he was aware of, painfully so. He felt broken and alone… his efforts to keep the Southern Water Tribe safe were meaningless in the face of so much that had already been lost. He had protected one nation and he had failed to do anything to save two others. He had failed…
"I'm only… only one man," he whimpered. "Even if I can bend all elements… I'm only one man."
"You are the Avatar," Roku said, sharply: Aang winced at the strength in his voice. "You are more than one man, and you always have been. But your true weakness… is in your willingness to set aside duty under the belief that you should have not been the Avatar. In seeing your role as a burden you couldn't comprehend. Now you act, now you step out from the shadows… but even as the Avatar, you cower and hide behind the backs of your friends, stronger than you, or so you believe, when you are meant to be the strongest of them all! It is you who can bend all four elements, you who should have the power to serve as a bridge between the spirit world and the human world! And yet you have hidden behind every excuse, rejecting the legacy you have all but destroyed…"
"I can't accept that…! I can't accept that, not when I'm finally here, Avatar Roku…!" Aang whimpered: the Fire Nation Avatar, however, remained unyielding.
"You could have been the best of us," he whispered, bitterly. "Instead… you have condemned our spirit and, in doing so, you have doomed our world."
"No… NO!"
A burst of wind, powerful enough to rattle the statues and shake the very foundations of the Southern Air Temple's sanctuary, poured suddenly from the Avatar's figure, which had been twisting under violent bursts of unnatural action and motion. The gust was so potent it shoved his friends out of the sanctuary's corridor: Momo squawked and flew off, and even Kino, as fascinated with him as he had been, forgot all about the creature as he rolled on the courtyard until his back hit the dry fountain.
"Guys!" Sokka called them: he had managed to roll over the courtyard, winding up in all fours, and clasping his sister's parka to keep her from flying off any further. Zuko had found no stability until he hit the wall that surrounded the small courtyard, fortunate not to be flung further out of the area by the relentless power of the Avatar's bending.
What on earth was happening? Sokka flinched, trying to recall what little Azula had told him about the Avatar State during their flight on Xin Long, on their way to the Northern Air Temple. Whenever they faced danger, the Avatar channeled all their past lives while in this strange condition: the Avatar could handle all four elements at once, and as each of those past lives had been a master of bending, if only theoretically…
"Thousands of masters of bending, working together…?" Sokka snarled, yanking Katara close to himself as the gust of wind eased up… only for a loud crack to split the air, the unequivocal sound of earthbending. "Shit! Didn't you say he can't…?!"
His own, previous words answered his question before Katara, Zuko or Kino could so much as try to address it: of course Aang couldn't earthbend… but all his past lives could. Sokka snarled, clutching his sister tightly as he prepared himself for whatever chaos Aang's sudden earthbending would surely result in…
"We have to stop him!" Kino screamed, trembling violently as he attempted to rise to his feet. Zuko, by the wall, coughed and rose back to his full height, rubbing his lower back, where he had received the worst of the impact. "I have no idea what's going on with him, but it's…!"
"It's bad!" Katara agreed, gritting her teeth and glancing at her brother. "It's worse than whatever happened to him back in the Tribe! Sokka, he never did this before!"
"It's… shit, this is supposed to be a defense mechanism!" Sokka scowled. "That's what… what Azula learned about it! The Avatar does this to fight dangerous threats, Aang should channel all his past lives and use their conjoined power to overcome whatever challenge he's facing! But… no one's fighting him! He was alone, he was fine, there's no one in there, so if he's in the Avatar State and he's bending wildly, it means…!"
It meant he might just be fighting against himself.
Sokka's eyes widened when the thought solidified in his mind: the weird way Aang's body had jerked, as though he were completely out of control of his own movements… the instability in the flickering glow of the Avatar State… was Aang fighting back against the tide of his past lives, that had turned out to be more hostile than he anticipated? The Bloodlust Spear came to mind anew… was Aang possessed by the spirits of the previous Avatars in some roundabout, twisted way?
"What the hell are we supposed to do?" Zuko asked, gritting his teeth as he joined Sokka and Katara again. "He's going to attack us for sure if we try to approach him! I read that too, okay? The Avatar State, it's a defensive mechanism that will most definitely kill all four of us unless he somehow snaps out of whatever's going on with him!"
"I… I calmed him down, the first time this happened," Katara said, gritting her teeth. "But I can't do that again unless I can get any closer to him! I could try, but…!"
"Woah, you're not going anywhere near him when he's like that!" Sokka huffed, shaking his head as he stepped forward: Katara clasped his arm, yanking him back to her.
"Oh, I'm not, but it's fine if you do?!" she asked, and Sokka gritted his teeth. "Sokka, you're not even a bender…!"
"How much water do you think you could bend at him if you go inside that room with him, Katara?" Sokka asked her, skeptical. "There's plenty of snow you could use out here, but not in there! And besides, I've dealt with benders with ridiculous powers before…!"
"Sokka, this is a lot worse than Azula, or Combustion Man, even!" Zuko hissed, grabbing his shoulder violently. "I get that you want to help him, but maybe…!"
"Maybe it's better to let him kill himself?!" Sokka asked, startling both Zuko and Katara with his sudden, unexpected question. "It's a defense mechanism, and there's nothing in there threatening him, Zuko: the other Avatars might just be trying to kill him!"
It seemed like the most absurd possibility of all… and yet both Zuko and Katara were floored by Sokka's logic, by the bluntness of his delivery… by the possibility that he might just be right about his guess, too.
"No way… no way, that makes no sense!" Katara gasped, terrified… but this time, she couldn't stop Sokka from stepping forward, a hand reaching for his boomerang.
"If his past lives are reacting adversely to him… then maybe what we should do is give him something else to fight," Sokka suggested: again, his idea froze the two benders behind him. "If they do have a threat to deal with… they might just work with him, stop trying to trample over Aang's own spirit, and start behaving the way they're supposed to!"
"Sokka, you're saying you want to bring the full power of the Avatar State down on US?!" Zuko asked, aghast. "Are you insane?!"
"Well, no one ever said I was completely sane, so sure, might be I am," Sokka huffed, stopping by the archway anew: another gust of wind buffeted him, though weaker than the last one.
He could see chunks of earth breaking out in the room, some statues toppling over… even the stairs, cracked and shattered as Aang now hovered in the air, spilling blazing flames upwards, downwards… the fire fell upon his own skin, and he flinched, rejecting the pain he inflicted upon himself. After all the surreal things Sokka had seen so far, he suspected Aang's violent reactions against himself shouldn't be all that startling… and yet it was hard to believe the young, good-mannered man would hold such a dangerous storm of power within himself, more so that he would use it against his own body.
Well, if this was what Aang needed, so be it. One way or another, Sokka would sort this out and save him from himself, if it was within anyone's power to do so.
When the gust of air eased up, Sokka sprinted inside the corridor: Katara shouted after him, and he heard Zuko grumbling something along the lines of 'reckless idiot', but he ignored them both: he slowed down a few steps away from the room's entrance before tossing the boomerang he had been brandishing.
The weapon struck Aang's shoulder, and the new chunk of earth he had been raising suddenly dropped when he received the unforeseen attack, flung at him by an unforeseen enemy. Sokka flinched as the weapon returned to his hand… and then Aang's bending eased up, despite the glow in his body did not.
"Well, shit," Sokka grinned dryly at the result of his own, reckless choice, before sprinting down the corridor as fast as his legs could take him.
Moments after he took off, the Avatar's glowing, blue-white glare fell upon him. And within an instant, a force of four different types of bending shot after him, barreling through the sanctuary's threshold and pursuing the non-bender into the courtyard anew.
"RUN! OUT OF THE WAY, ALL OF YOU!" Sokka shouted at the others.
Kino froze on the spot, so shocked by what was happening that Zuko was the one who seized his parka and pulled him down the stairs anew. Katara had already taken off first, constantly glancing over her shoulder at her brother, terrified that he might not make it…
As soon as he exited the corridor, Sokka leapt to the side: the walls of the courtyard happened to be ornamental… and they featured large openings through which Sokka's full body could fit easily. Making use of his renowned agility, Sokka managed to change directions and leap through one of those gaps in the wall. He flinched upon finding there wasn't a lot of ground past that particular gap: he stopped short of rolling downhill, balancing himself as best he could on the natural ledge…
A gust of wind, when the Avatar burst through the sanctuary's archway, knocked him off his feet and down the hill, despite his best efforts to retain his balance.
Sokka shouted as he tumbled downhill, and he heard Katara crying out his name as gravity continued to claim him. Well, a perfectly peaceful and uneventful journey certainly wasn't what he'd signed on for… though he had expected, even hoped, that the madness wouldn't begin until after they found the damn White Lotus.
He snarled, glancing at the nearest rooftop, in towers positioned lower in the Temple. Angling his body towards it wasn't easy, but he managed to do so: he stretched his hand out and clasped his boomerang as hard as he could before hooking it through a window. The sudden break in speed hurt his arm considerably, but it didn't dislodge it outright, fortunately. He snarled after his body slapped fully into the wall, and while the armor protected him from the worst of the blow, the impact still rattled him. He breathed out twice, hoping to stabilize himself, then clasped his boomerang hard as he used his other hand to hoist himself up to the windowsill. Good thing he had regained whatever strength he'd lost by training so many warriors in the Water Tribe…
While he was struggling to gain his bearings in the tower he'd wound up in, Katara, who had hoped to help her brother, found herself facing a most confusing, furious Avatar, a most uncharacteristic façade of the man she had fallen in love with. He powered towards them and there was nothing she, Kino or Zuko could do but run as fast as possible. To think that Aang, so sweet-mannered, kind-hearted and earnest, had seemingly lost his mind to such a degree, completely consumed by whatever conflict was happening inside his heart… it was unthinkable for Katara, and yet she had to fight back, to help him however she possibly could…
"Watch out!" Kino screamed: Katara tripped over a ledge, falling over carelessly… and as good as singling herself out as Aang's first victim, if it came to that.
Katara tumbled down a slope, breaking her fall with a hand as best she could, raising her head in sheer fright as she felt the wind abating her: Aang loomed above her, a swirl of firebending wrapped around his hand…
Another burst of fire slammed into the Avatar's side: he flinched before turning his attention to Zuko now, who had distracted the rabid Avatar from Katara at the last moment. Aang's fire now flowed at him, and as much as Zuko had strengthened his firebending skills, deflecting the flames the Avatar shot in his direction took enough strength that his stance was broken, and the earthbending attack that slammed into his stomach saw him flying off in another direction.
Feral, furious, mindless as he seemed to be, Aang still managed to protect himself when Katara conjured a new barrage of waterbending to strike him: he raised his hand and froze the melted snow she'd swept in his direction, shifting it almost effortlessly and swinging it back at Katara. The waterbender jumped out of the way skillfully, taking advantage of the flow of the liquid water to once again bend it towards Aang… and just so, Zuko regained enough strength to attack Aang as well.
"It's kind of beautiful to see you two working together, but this whole mess sucks!" Kino winced, shrunken behind a tall, natural wall. What the hell were they supposed to do to stop Aang from rampaging all over the Southern Air Temple? He was completely out of control, he wouldn't do any of this if he could help it… but Katara said she had calmed him once before, hadn't she? Surely, if she tried again…
"Kino!"
Sokka's voice was a great relief to Kino, who smiled upon seeing him rushing towards them. He seemed mostly alright, though he was rubbing his right arm repeatedly, attempting to ease out the pain from his earlier stunt to save himself by hooking his boomerang to that window.
"Sokka, he's gone completely nuts…!"
"I'm aware!" Sokka huffed, slowing to a halt by Kino's side: he could see Aang's rampaging bending displays from here, and as much as Zuko and Katara were working together to hold him off, Sokka knew it was only a matter of time before Aang did anything that could shut down both the fighters before him… presumably, with either earth or airbending.
"Katara said she calmed him down before, didn't she?!" Kino said, gritting his teeth. "Maybe, if you guys distract him enough, she'll have a chance to…"
"That was what I thought too, but…! I'm not sure it's going to work, and I'm also not sure Katara should take that sort of risk!" Sokka huffed, putting away his boomerang… and drawing out his sword and club instead. "To hell with this, he's going to kill them if this keeps up…!"
"Sokka!" Kino gasped, but the warrior had dashed out into the fray anew.
They had wound up near the bridge that led into the Southern Air Temple – fortunately, Appa had landed elsewhere, much higher on the mountain, so, with any luck, the bison would still be safe and sound… unless Aang's outburst leveled the whole mountain, of course.
Zuko drew Aang's attention again when Katara's eyes fell upon her brother's figure: simultaneous relief and anguish surged inside her, first upon confirming that Sokka was fine, and next upon realizing he was charging into battle recklessly anew. He had next to no chances of victory against an Avatar completely out of control…
"Sokka! Stay back!" she exclaimed, though she wasn't surprised at all when her older brother scoffed in her direction, dismissing her order immediately.
"We have to put a stop to him, now!" Sokka shouted. "And no one here's more trained or prepared to deal with at least three of the elements he can wield than I am!"
Katara snarled, aware that Sokka had a point: she commanded a new barrage of snow at Aang, but before he could respond with an earthbending attack, a swinging club near his feet caused the Avatar to turn around, alarmed. Sokka had leapt as high as he could, almost reaching the hovering Avatar and dropping heavily on the ground once again. In the midst of that distraction, Katara's snow had reached him… but the gust of wind surrounding Aang scooped up the snow, and he channeled it powerfully towards the non-bender.
Sokka huffed, holding his position and raising his club before him to keep the snow – littered with sharp shards of ice – from touching him. It parted around his weapon, keeping it from striking any vulnerable places of his body, just before Zuko launched one of his better kick attacks, a potent stream of fire at the Avatar.
By now, though, Aang was gaining strength and control… or rather, Aang's past lives were: had they overcome him? Had his will been utterly thwarted by the Avatars of old? His face remained poised in a fierce frown, but no longer did his body appear to rebel against his impulses. Good for him, Sokka guessed… but that he wasn't attacking himself anymore was terrible for the three who had to fight him out of his frenzy now.
"Aang!" he called, in a hopeless, pointless bid to bring him back into control of his own body. Katara and Zuko glanced at him in confusion, still defending from the bender's relentless attacks. "Guys, call him too! If we can bring him back to the surface, maybe…!"
"Aang! Aang, get back down here!" Katara screamed: the Avatar appeared determined to ignore her, however, as he hovered higher and higher, powered by a swirl of airbending, a column that could shape into a tornado, perhaps even a hurricane if it strengthened further… "Aang!"
"Oh, for crying out loud…!" Zuko hissed, powering his limbs once more.
The technique he conjured was one he had seldom resorted to, especially in his youth, even if he had long memorized how it was done. His bitterness stemmed from having nearly lost his Agni Kai with Zhao so long ago to that particular move… but it was effective, and he was no longer a bitter, mindless child: he lowered his hands, pressed together, towards the base of Aang's tornado. The flames that accompanied them seeped powerfully through the swirling air, enough to break it, he hoped… then he froze upon realizing his fire had seeped through the air as well, rushing upwards… towards the Avatar.
He had only an instant to feel a surge of guilt, fearful of seriously hurting Aang, before the Avatar took the fire into his control, seemingly strengthening his position with a mix of air and fire. When Katara attempted to cast snow at him again, Aang seemed to assimilate it into his tornado, only to shoot a spring of boiling water at all of them. Katara screamed, Zuko flinched, and Sokka shielded himself behind his armor.
Yes, he was the Avatar. Yes, he was far more challenging and powerful than any bender he'd ever met… but curses, this was the most ridiculous hurdle they could have bumped into so far. His journey, his plans… he snarled as he glared at Aang anew, a burst of fury taking over his soul.
"You… you're fucking kidding me, aren't you?" he asked, with a fierce snarl. "Well, fine, then! Be a pissbaby and throw a tantrum, why don't you, Avatar?! Go ahead and do it!"
"Sokka?!" Katara gasped, as Sokka snarled.
The Avatar attacked him anew, with a burst of earthbending he sorted through with expert footing, slicing through the heavier rocks and shattering the smaller ones. Zuko and Katara froze where they stood, tired of their exertions so far, but confused over Sokka's sudden change in behavior, too.
"I've come too damn far… I've put up with too damn much for some glorified god-like entity to get in my way now!" Sokka roared: a sudden attack of ice shards came next, and he shielded himself from it at first until his sister started combating them with her own waterbending. "So stay here and wreck everything you're supposed to protect, for all I care! That's what Avatars do, isn't it?!"
His words seemed poised as provocations, but neither Zuko nor Katara expected they'd serve any purpose: Aang was completely out of it, and so far, it didn't seem that his past lives had much rationality, if any, while they controlled Aang's body. Yet it didn't stop Sokka from speaking out, dashing across the battlefield, dodging attacks as best he could, counting on his sister's bending to help him handle the ice shards that might find their mark regardless of his agility.
"Kyoshi just broke off a chunk of the Earth Kingdom…!" Sokka continued, relentless both in his approach and his accusations. "Thinking that'd solve every damn problem Chin had brought up? Roku didn't do enough to make Sozin cut his shit and stop invading the Earth Kingdom…! One hell of a legacy you have to live up to, huh, Aang?!"
Next, Aang conjured a barrage of airbending that attempted to blow Sokka off the mountain: he stabbed the ground with Space Sword, sinking the weapon to the hilt and positioning himself in such a manner that the weapon wouldn't slide through the ground, regardless of Aang's violent airbending.
Katara and Zuko's attacks couldn't reach Aang while he commanded that potent shield of air around himself. Sokka snarled… but the snarl shifted into a smirk before long.
"That's… that's all you've got, then?!" he roared. "Oh, mighty Avatar… that's what you think balance is about, huh?! No fucking wonder none of you guys could save the world, let alone yourselves! Just a bunch of elements, haphazardly put together to…!"
"SOKKA!"
A massive boulder flew towards him, cast by Aang's earthbending now: Katara's scream reached him through the noisy air storm, and Sokka clenched his weapon as tightly as could be for just one moment, as the boulder moved closer and closer…
He yanked the sword out and jumped.
The rock flew through Aang's airbending, causing the relentless array of wind to break: Sokka, however had climbed over the rock by then, and as it shattered into the courtyard they fought in, Sokka gathered his strength on his thighs and jumped.
The momentum, the height of the large rock, and the combined attacks shot at the Avatar by both Katara and Zuko offered Sokka what he had been waiting for: an opening. One way or another, the Avatar would be unable to defend from all three of them, even if he revitalized his decaying tornado, even if he raised up new boulders, new flames, further snow to strike at them all…!
The fire licked at Aang's feet, and the water slammed into his side: his balance had been broken by the reckless boulder he had launched, by the three simultaneous threats that had arisen around him…
Space Sword's pommel struck him, hard, right between the eyebrows.
The Avatar's powerful airbending display crumbled, and his body flopped down in an awkward heap: the brightness of his eyes and tattoos fizzled out as he struggled to retain consciousness after the blow he had received. Sokka, still carried forward by momentum, wound up landing hard on the bridge, while Katara rushed in to catch Aang right before he could hit the ground directly. She no longer feared he'd keep attacking: now she turned him in her arms, gazing at him frantically…
"Aang… Aang, I'm here. We're all here… Please, come back to us. Aang…" she gasped, cupping his face delicately with a hand.
His feverish temperature made her flinch upon touching him… but slowly, the powerful glow of the Avatar State vanished. Aang's voice returned to him as he groaned, his face a mask of sorrow…
"Katara…?" he called her, so softly she almost couldn't make her name out of his sounds.
"I'm here… It's me, Aang. We're… we're okay. You didn't hurt us…"
"Much," Zuko added, and Katara shot him a dirty glare for his comment.
"Don't listen to Zuko… he's being stupid," she said, with a worried, insincere smile. "Aang…?"
He grunted softly again… then he seemed to fall unconscious. Katara blinked a few times before sighing in defeat, lowering him delicately so his head would rest on her lap, if just temporarily. Curses, that had been terrifying…
"Sokka…?" she called for her brother, glancing in the bridge's direction.
Sokka put away his weapons gradually, slowly, rising back to his full height. Once again, his silhouette, his shape contrasted against the world around him, almost brought Katara to shudder. Was that truly her brother, the goofball she had known since birth… the boy who had constantly landed himself in trouble for the silliest things? Had he truly become the scourge of a Fire Nation hellbent on his capture and execution? Had he seriously grown strong enough to challenge an uncontrolled Avatar… and win?
He turned around, and the dark expression on his face made Katara wince again. However casual he acted, however careless his comments could be… the hardening of his heart, of his spirit, wasn't something she could possibly deny anymore.
"He's out of it, then?" Sokka asked, letting out a sigh. "Wasn't sure he'd go down with that, but it was worth a shot."
"Was that why you were saying all that stuff? You wanted to rile him up into attacking you in a way that… that would allow you to knock him out, somehow?" Zuko asked, raising his eyebrow. Sokka shrugged.
"No, I was just pissed off."
Zuko blinked blankly, and as much as Katara had been stunned cold by her brother's new strength and daunting presence, she couldn't help but snort with laughter at his unforeseen response to Zuko's question. The firebender's displeasure couldn't have been more obvious.
"Every time I think I'm about to learn to respect you, every time I expect I really might… you say stuff like that, and I go right back to thinking you're an idiot," Zuko huffed, shaking his head as Sokka approached them again, a slow smile spreading over his face.
"Y-you guys…?"
The two benders and the Gladiator raised their gazes towards the source of that voice, behind them: Kino seemed to have collected Appa and Momo, who now perched upon the former soldier's shoulder. He seemed relieved now upon finding Aang had stopped bending, though his face was twisted with guilt and hopelessness all the same.
"I… I thought maybe if I brought Appa on time, you guys could've… tried to climb on his back and get to Aang, but…" Kino whimpered. "I'm sorry I was late."
"Well, that was good thinking, even if you were," Sokka conceded, with a weak smile. "Thanks anyway, Kino. Hopefully, he'll be all sorted out now… though that was damn dangerous, especially in this mountaintop."
"I don't understand it," Katara said, grimacing as she gazed at Aang hopelessly. "Why did Roku summon him if he just wanted to hurt Aang? I mean… if your guess is right, Sokka, isn't that what just happened?"
"I guess so," Sokka said, frowning. "There's no way we'll figure out what was going on until he comes back to his senses, though. Might be a while before he does…"
Katara sighed as she reached for the nearest cluster of snow, melting it into water and pressing it to Aang's heated forehead: she hoped she'd be able to ease out his fever, then she'd try to patch up the wounds Aang's outburst had caused himself and the rest of their team, herself included. Of all things she had expected in this journey, never had she thought she'd have to fight Aang himself…
"What a way for our first day on the road to turn out, huh?" Zuko huffed, raising a hand and evoking a plum of fire in it: absorbed as they had been by Aang's wild frenzy, only Zuko had noticed the final sliver of the sun had sunken in the horizon just now. "I guess at least we're exactly where we meant to spend the night, if nothing else…"
"Yeah," Sokka sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Guess we'll find a place to settle in… away from that sanctuary, if we can help it. Hopefully, Aang will come back to his senses in the morning."
"And hopefully, he won't ever use the Avatar State ever again," Zuko finished, frowning heavily at Aang's unconscious figure.
"Oh, now, that would be unfortunate, wouldn't it?"
The foreign, unknown voice that suddenly spoke out in the darkness caused the travelers to jump, quick to distrust whoever sprang up in that manner upon them. Sokka unsheathed his weapons anew, stepping fast in front of his sister while Kino flinched, clasping Appa's reins tightly. Zuko held up his fire, strengthening it in order to better see, in the dark…
An alarmingly thin, dark-skinned man with a fluffy white beard, drooping earlobes and a hooked nose stood right beside Appa's snout. He was clad in a mustard-colored light robe that exposed half his chest and most his legs, and it certainly wasn't the healthiest attire choice in a weather as cold as it was in those tall peaks, halfway through winter.
Even while being at the receiving end of so many apparent threats, the man in question appeared perfectly happy to be exactly where he was: he smiled fondly at the unconscious Avatar when Sokka, with a heavy frown, asked the question that crossed the minds of all his friends right now:
"Who the hell are you?"
"I am the one who called Aang to this temple. Greetings to all of you: my name is Guru Pathik."
He had no recollection of having fallen unconscious, but a profound relief filled Aang's heart when he felt his solid, physical body around himself once more. He flinched and winced, struggling to open his eyes, hearing the crackle of firewood beside him…
"Aang! Oh, finally…!"
Katara's voice eased his slowly growing tension immediately: she was still there, with him. A strange twinge of guilt struck him as a sudden, unexpected image flashed inside his mind: Katara, attacking him? Was he reminiscing on their training sessions of old, for no reason? It didn't make any sense to evoke that instead of better moments, better emotions, related to Katara…
"Try to give him some water?"
"Might be better to give him some space, instead."
Zuko and Sokka… he had trained with Zuko, but never with Sokka: why would he glimpse the Gladiator's furious eyes as he charged powerfully towards him, his sword in tow? Was he losing his mind, or…?
Or was Aang simply rejecting reality, rejecting what he'd done, what had happened, without his awareness?
He gasped and opened his eyes abruptly, as though awakened from a long nightmare. Katara and Kino's faces were the first he saw, as they knelt beside him with worried grimaces.
They were in an open courtyard, still in the Southern Air Temple. A fireplace sat not too far from where Aang rested, and its glow allowed him to detail the faces of his friends even if he still felt somewhat out of it, for reclaiming reality proved to be a more difficult chore than expected, thus far.
"Aang?" Kino called him, softly. Katara clasped his hand in hers, dragging her palm over his knuckles.
"It's alright. Everyone's okay, Aang," she said, reassuringly. His chest heaved as his eyes traveled over their faces, and a powerful shiver rushed through his body. "You didn't hurt anyone, not for real."
"I… what?" Aang gasped, focusing on Katara, chagrined and anguished. "What do you mean, Katara? I… I could've hurt someone?"
"You… Aang, did you forget everything?" Katara asked, eyes wide.
"Might be he wasn't even conscious through it all," Sokka intervened, stepping into view, arms folded over his chest. "Good to have you back, Aang."
"T-thanks… but what did I do? Or, well… what happened, rather?" Aang gritted his teeth: he had no real recollection of anything other than…
Other than being stuck in that strange, dark space, a space that had darkened further with every passing moment as his grief, failures and mistakes consumed him completely: the Avatars had rejected him. He had failed them… he had broken the cycle through his inaction, through his inability not only to save his own people, but the Earth Kingdom as well…
"You lost control," Katara explained, softly. "One moment you were fine… the next, your tattoos and your eyes started glowing, and I knew it was the Avatar State, but…"
"You were moving all weirdly, like you weren't really trying to move at all?" Kino mumbled, gazing at Aang worriedly. "Like… like there was someone else inside you, I guess, and they were trying to make you move in some way, but you didn't want to do it, so…"
They fell silent as awareness dawned upon Aang's face. Slowly, his confusion was replaced with absolute desolation: he dropped his head back on the pillow he'd been resting on, only realizing now that he was in a sleeping bag. He pressed his free hand to his face, a heavy feeling weighing on him, dragging him down…
"I… I communicated with Roku. I finally did," he said: Katara's grip on his hand strengthened, and Sokka's brow furrowed as Kino gasped upon the confirmation of what Aang had achieved.
"But he wasn't happy?" Zuko guessed: he remained out of sight so far, and Aang didn't even dare try to locate him yet, ashamed and anguished as he felt.
"He… he said there's no hope for the world anymore," Aang said, with a thread of a voice. Katara's eyes widened. "That… that I'm too late. Ten years too late…"
"That's… that makes no sense, how can it be too late?" Katara gasped. "If it were, we'd all be dead by now!"
"I… I don't know, Katara," Aang admitted, lowering his hands. "He showed me something I didn't understand at all. A vision… of you and Sokka breaking me out of the iceberg, many years ago? Something that didn't happen, and something that couldn't have happened…"
"What, he's blaming you for not breaking out of the iceberg ten years ago?" Sokka scoffed. "Or us, for not breaking you out of it, without even knowing you were there?"
"As it is, it's a miracle that Katara found me when she did… I know that," Aang said, dropping his head back with a sigh. "But then he… he also showed me the destruction of the Air Nomads, of the Earth Kingdom… visions of slavery, of the horrors that happened because I didn't do anything to stop them. I thought… maybe because I'm trying to act now, to correct things, he'd wanted to call to me, to teach me what I need to know, to help me now that I'm on this journey with you guys. But instead, he just… he just seemed to think this was pointless. That I'd already failed and that… that I'm the last airbender, and the last complete Avatar."
Sokka's brow drew together heavily, his shoulders tense and squared. Aang flopped in the sleeping bag, his eyes clouded with grief and sorrow. His hopes for that encounter, for that reunion with his past lives… all of them had been dashed and destroyed, and that wasn't all that had been destroyed, either:
"What did I do?" he asked, glancing at Katara warily. "You said… I didn't hurt anyone badly? But then… did I hurt you, Katara? Or Sokka, or Zuko…? I… I had glimpses of fighting the three of you. I hope… I hope I didn't hurt you either, Kino. Did I…?"
"No, no, you didn't fight me. Scared me, sure, but I didn't get to do much to placate you, myself," Kino sighed. Aang swallowed hard, returning his attention to Katara. She shook her head.
"It's not important…" she said, answering in the worst possible way she could have. Aang winced, gritting his teeth again.
"Then… I did. I did hurt you, Katara? I… I'm so…"
"You hurt yourself way more than you hurt any of us, Aang," Katara huffed, frowning heavily. He blinked blankly at her words, puzzled…
But then he sensed the pain. Burns, even if faded now, ached all across his body: he had wielded fire against himself? Bruises, also faded… rocks, and even the blow of snow and water whips that had slammed into him… bent by his own hand.
"I… I…" he gasped, eyes filled with fear: the very foundations of his world seemed to have been shaken completely. Never before had he heard of these sorts of hardships in being the Avatar… never before had he imagined he would find himself at war with his own past lives, with his identity as the world's so-called protector. "What did I do? How did I…? K-Katara…"
"You entered the Avatar State when you weren't prepared to control its power. That's why its power controlled you."
Aang frowned at the voice… finding it familiar, in a strange way, despite not belonging to any of his friends. For a moment of scattered carelessness, he let himself think it might have been the lemur, Momo, yet how could the creature possibly speak…?
His friends' uneasy reactions brought Aang to glance in the direction he'd heard the voice, close to where Zuko sat, he found. All of them appeared unsure, uncomfortable… and upon setting eyes on the old man sitting by the fire, Aang hardly needed to wonder why: he had no idea who this was, on first glance… but he was immediately filled with an eerie, ancestral sensation upon gazing at the man. As though, perhaps, he had seen him at some point in his past… but how? However old he was, surely their group's new, unexpected companion hadn't been alive over a hundred years ago… or had he?
"Uh… okay?" Aang blinked blankly, rubbing his eyes as though to brush off what briefly appeared to be a mirage. The old man remained exactly where he was, however. "Who…?"
"Ah, I should have introduced myself when I connected with you," the old man said, dropping a fist on his open hand. "A careless mistake on my part. I take it you assumed it was Avatar Roku summoning you, instead of me."
"You… it was you?" Aang gasped, pushing himself up as best he could. Katara and Kino moved closer, helping him sit properly, and he nodded at them gratefully before glancing at the old man anew. "The dream I had… you sent it to me?"
"In a manner of speaking… yes," the man declared, beaming. "I am Guru Pathik, and I have called you here to help you master the Avatar State."
"Huh?" Aang blinked blankly for a moment… then he shook his head, abruptly. "No. No way, not after that. I'm not… I'm not doing that again."
"Aang…" Katara's compassionate voice reached him, but the Avatar shook his head harder yet.
"I could've hurt you guys! I could've… could've destroyed the Southern Air Temple. What's left of it, anyway," Aang said, gritting his teeth. "I don't want, and I don't need, a power given to me by people who hate me, and I don't want to use a power that could hurt those I love!"
"The same could be said about any form of power," Guru Pathik spoke, raising a hand as he spoke. "All power must be wielded properly if you wish to avoid hurting those you love. Even when you're fully conscious of your actions, your bending could cause others harm. Controlling the Avatar State is no different, as a concept, than learning to control each element."
Aang gritted his teeth, knowing the man spoke reasonably… but his heart refused to accept it. He couldn't do this, he couldn't put his friends at risk with a skill as dangerous as that one…
"I understand you have seen your fair share of sorrow, young Avatar," said Guru Pathik. "The journey to mastering the Avatar State, however, is not only a means through which you will harness power granted to you by your past lives… it is also a way to attain balance within yourself. Otherwise, how will you ever restore balance in the world?"
"According to Roku and the rest of them? I won't. I can't," Aang huffed, lowering his head.
"Really, now?" Sokka said, his voice coated with skepticism. Aang glanced at him warily: the moody, dark side of the Gladiator appeared to have reared its head often through that day, and at no point had it reared it higher than it did now. "Goes to show what they know, if that's how it is…"
"I told them we were going to fight, to set things right," Aang grimaced. "That we'd do our best… but they wouldn't listen to me. I don't think they can be reasoned with… they truly believe balance can't be restored anymore."
"Which should make you wonder what the hell do they think balance is" Sokka scoffed, arms folded over his chest. "I'm sorry to be blunt, Aang, but even if your past lives got to you and you decide to give up now, I have no intentions of doing the same thing. Maybe our big mission is doomed in ways I can't even fathom, but I'm not giving up before we even get started just because some old asshole with a spiky hairpiece and a snobby robe decided we're not going to succeed."
Aang swallowed hard, glancing at Sokka with unease. All eyes were on him, and this time, it didn't seem Sokka minded being at the center of so much attention… probably because he was far too furious to mind it at all.
"I don't want to sound dismissive, but I don't expect the Avatars would have all the answers," Sokka snapped. "If they did, the world would've never spiraled the way it did over the past hundred years."
"Well… I don't think it's their fault," Aang said, frowning. "I mean, not completely…"
"If they're going to blame you for not thawing yourself out of an iceberg on time before Sozin's Comet arrived, it's more their fault than it is yours," Sokka snapped, surprising Aang with his latest declaration. "Look: years ago, when I was in the Northern Air Temple… well, I hit a very low point. I thought I'd failed to protect the Northern Water Tribe. The Fire Lord wanted some deadly weapons, bombs to use against them, and he chose me to design them. I intended to sabotage the whole process, but my partner in their development, the Mechanist, had other projects to deliver on. Unknowingly, I helped him with one of them… and that's where the airships, and the hot-air balloons, came from."
"I remember that story…" Kino said, frowning. "You told us, in Whaletail Island…"
"Well, you don't know the full extent of it. Neither did Mari, when I told her the happier version of it," Sokka said, frowning heavily. "The truth is, when I… when I realized what the Mechanist had done, I lost my temper with him. Then, it dawned on me what kind of pressures I was putting on him, how unfair I'd been when I… when I couldn't expect to ever be ready to sacrifice everything I was as good as expecting him to sacrifice. Both the Water Tribe and the refugees in the Northern Air Temple deserved to survive and live safely. Putting one over the other… it would've been an act of cruelty as well, typical of Fire Lord Ozai. And why would I make a demand of the sort? I had no right to force the Mechanist to make any sacrifices, not when I couldn't even bring myself to die so others could live, back in the Amateur Arena. So, I… I broke. I lost my way, did something pretty stupid and… and Azula saved me, as she always did."
Katara gritted her teeth, her grip on Aang's hand tightening. Sokka breathed deeply, trying to still himself as he spoke of moments that had meant everything to him… that still did, to this very day.
"After she managed to break me out of my misery properly, to talk me out of the depths of my self-loathing… we had a pretty long conversation about, well, everything," Sokka said, breathing out slowly. "And she blew me away, completely… when she said the answer to my plight, to our problems, to how to handle our relationship and our duties to the world, was precisely that: balance. It took her a while to explain what she meant, but little by little, I understood. You knew this world as it was before, far better than any of us knew it: how many times did you come across families of mixed nations? How often did you see Earth Kingdom-born waterbenders, or Fire Nation-born airbenders?"
"Well… never," Aang answered, blinking blankly. "Though it's not like I… like I knew everyone. It might have happened…"
"But even if it did, it wasn't the norm. It wasn't common," Sokka continued, frowning. "The nations are separate, strictly so: why? Because that's what your clever past lives decided it meant to create balance: if you're born to one nation, that's the one you belong in. What about people like Kino, then? He was born to the Fire Nation, but he found more belonging in the Water Tribe than he did in the place he was born in."
Kino flinched, cheeks reddening as he glanced at the rest of the members of the group. He hadn't expected to be part of Sokka's speech in any way, but he certainly hoped he was trying to get at something good with what he was saying about him.
"How about Zuko and Suki?" Sokka asked, gesturing at the exiled Prince. "Them, their daughters… they belong in other nations, if you go by where they were born, and what elements they're supposed to have an affinity with: but Mari is a firebender born in the Southern Water Tribe. In the world, as you knew it before… how many firebenders were born there?"
"N-none," Aang admitted, shrinking in place. "I… I did spend a lot of years in the Southern Water Tribe before, but I never saw… any firebenders, or anyone from the other nations."
"Everyone stuck to themselves. Everyone belonged someplace, by someone else's design, not their own, and if they ever dabbled in what was going on with other nations, it surely was a temporary, casual thing," Sokka said, with the flick of a hand. "The Earth Kingdom has seen internal chaos in more ways than I ever even learned, but not only did Azula tell me as much, I read it later on in books of my own: Avatar Kyoshi's clever idea to deal with a tyrant's attempt to take over the Earth Kingdom, after he had taken over virtually every other place in the continent, was to split off her village from the rest of the land when that village, along with Ba Sing Se, were the only places left for that bastard to conquer: how does an Avatar stand by, doing nothing to stop a mad military leader from waging war and violence all across a continent, instead of taking a stand against his uprising before it could affect tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of Earth Kingdom lives? I don't even know how bad the death toll of Chin's conquest was, but I do know it was bad: and she did nothing until he was at her doorstep. Had he charged into Ba Sing Se rather than to Kyoshi's village? The Earth Kingdom would've fallen into Chin's hands, and she would've done nothing anyway so long as no one bothered her. And later…! Oh, then the peasants of Ba Sing Se revolted against the Earth King, and she supposedly stood with the people, sure thing: but she founded the Dai Li, the most corrupt group of earthbenders the Earth Kingdom must have ever seen. How the hell would further control, exerted by the Earth King, help the common folk? It doesn't make any sense, does it? All she did was split the Earth Kingdom further, enhance the power of the Earth King and she continued to prove, through her actions, that her understanding of balance and harmony only translated into further control over everything.
"Breaking things apart, breaking people apart, was the simplest, straightforward and stupidest answer they could've come up with. Because look at us! Even if we're from the same nation, we're different, me and Katara, Zuko and Kino! Being born in a different place, to a different nation, shouldn't mean we should never be free to see the world for what it is, that we could never discover if maybe the right place for us could be elsewhere. There's whole families now, Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation, like Zuko and Suki's: how could someone tell them they belong in either of their nations, tearing their family apart or forcing them to adapt to only one nation, as though both their heritage, their roots, meant nothing? Those differences… understanding what makes us different from each other is what allows us to build balance. Understanding each other is how we avoid making the mistakes your past lives surely did. Because, if they had ever taught people why balance mattered, if they understood the point of their duty, if they had understood why they had to fight to ensure all four nations lasted through the ages… well, if they'd done that and the Fire Nation had decided to attack as it did, maybe the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes could have communicated with the Air Nomads and lent them their help! Maybe, if that was the kind of world we lived in, your people wouldn't have been massacred by Sozin's mad conquest at all! And it's true for Ozai's conquest of the Earth Kingdom as well. We would have been stronger, this whole world would have been stronger, if we had stood together… but we didn't. And that's why the damn Fire Lords took advantage of the situation, destabilized the world, killed as many people as they pleased, stole as much of other nations' heritage as they dared, reduced their people to slavery…! Because they had no one left, in the Avatar's absence, to tell them why balance mattered, and why their damn choices were going to condemn them, in the end.
"We saw it ourselves, in the battle of the bay: thousands of Fire Nation people, dead and destroyed by a much smaller group of people that rose up to fight back against their invasion. Their forces have surely died countless times in similar ways throughout the Hundred Years War, and they will continue to do so, because the Fire Lord is a piece of shit who finds all these sacrifices meaningless. All he wants is to satisfy his ambitions and his greed, to enforce his worldview, his ideas, over everyone else. He's not only destroying the world: he's destroying his own nation. I've seen how badly he's destroyed it for myself: there's a river in the Fire Nation where a village used to be. Ships can't even travel there anymore, the village is empty, because the whole place has become nothing but a dumpster of industrial waste, courtesy of Fire Lord Azulon's grand weapons factory. How many factories have caused the same thing, in places I never got to see? I have no idea, but I have no doubts it must have happened a lot more times than I ever knew. The homeless people… Fire Nation people reduced to being beggars on the streets of their own nation, desperate and unable to eat or find a roof under which to spend the night, to the point where prison looks like a paradise to them: that's Fire Lord Ozai's Fire Nation. Control, cruelty, destruction… and willingness to sacrifice whatever it takes so he can have everything he wants, as he cleverly writes on all his official announcements to his people. All this… all this could've been avoided, if only Avatar Roku himself had set Sozin straight and made him, and every leader of his time, understand why balance mattered, why his ideological bullshit would destroy it, and why he would stop him from following the wretched path he threw his whole nation in for well over a hundred years!
"So… yeah, balance, the way the Avatars believed in? It's done. It's gone. It's impossible for any of us to go back to that," Sokka continued, chest heaving. "We can't even pretend we'll ever see a world like the one you saw, Aang… and man, maybe it was beautiful. Maybe it was incredible in ways I can't fathom. But I'm fighting now so I can return to someone with whom I'd never have a chance to spend my life with if we went back to the way things used to be. I've fought Ozai, resented him as badly as I have… because I know he was wrong, and I know he had no right to force us apart because he thinks I'm an unworthy, lowborn savage from another nation. That's not balance. That's not true harmony. That's just control, forceful order, as brittle and breakable as it was when Sozin got his flat-brained idea to destroy every nation and set his own as superior to the rest."
Aang swallowed hard, unsure of what to say, of how to respond: the words the Avatars had spoken to him in his meditation had returned to him gradually after he had come back to consciousness, and his heart hung heavily at the thought of being one of them… more so upon hearing Sokka's words now. He had no doubts the Avatars had thought they'd done their best, trusting their next lives would correct or amend whatever mistakes they'd made in their own. He hadn't done that, though… at least, not yet. Roku's mistakes… they'd cost the world so much, and Aang's own mistakes, whether present or future, could be just as costly.
Yet… was Sokka right about what he was saying? Did he have a point? Had the Avatars settled for building the wrong kind of balance, enforcing it in an unreasonable way…? Never had he heard the Air Nomads claiming as much. Either Sokka was that much of a visionary… or he was an idealist, far more naïve than he realized he was. Perhaps the reason why balance was kept this way was because there were no other means through which to do so successfully… perhaps other Avatars had tried to do it differently, and failed.
But if they hadn't tried… if they hadn't, it meant Sokka truly might have a point, difficult as it was to concede it.
"That night, when I talked with Azula about all this…" Sokka continued, tightening his fists at either side of his body. "She said she'd finally understood why balance mattered because of our bond. Because of how we'd struggled to find a rhythm, a way to coexist without destroying each other over of our differences and over everything that should've broken us away from one another. We learned how to understand each other's plights, each other's needs and pressures… as much as I thought she'd be mad at me for sabotaging the mission her father had given me, she wasn't. She understood what I'd been doing… and she had intended to save me by giving her father something else, anything else to steer his attention away from my likely failure. In the end… she found a way to stop Ozai from making the most of his airships, since it was too late to fix that problem once the messenger hawk was sent. She fixed what I couldn't. There was a way… we always found one. Whenever she couldn't act, I would, and when I couldn't, she stepped forward. That… that's what balance meant for us: we understood each other, we worked together, and we trusted and valued each other completely. But… in the end, we weren't as balanced as we tried to be, at first. If we had been… I might not even be here right now. We would've managed to keep the Fire Lord from learning about us, probably. She said it herself in the end… we failed to keep balance between us and the world around us, we were reckless, careless, and we were so lost looking after each other that everything else fell to the wayside: but our mistake, damn it, and not our balance, was the reason why things turned out so badly. If we'd done better, the world could be on a better path by now. We might have saved even more lives than those we already had.
"Neither of us even knew you were alive, Avatar. She believed, still believes, that the Avatar is dead and gone from this world. That night… we pledged to build a new world together, to work side by side to create a new kind of balance, not like the one your past lives preserved. And maybe the old Avatars would say our ideas, our answers, were wrong… but they're still answers. They're still a way to do better for the world than what's being done right now. A much better way to help this world than by letting mad tyrants, raving with lust for power, do as they please while standing on the sidelines, hoping that maybe the rest of the world will understand why we need balance by inertia, without doing the slightest thing to teach anyone as much.
"So… I'm sorry, Aang, but I don't put a lot of stock, or a lot of faith, in whatever bullshit masqueraded as wisdom your past lives might spout. Let alone in whatever accusations they may hurl at you," Sokka snarled. "You may be the Avatar, and you may be meant to represent the embodiment of balance, yourself… but while one man alone can be a symbol of balance, he is no guarantee that the concept will be upheld and honored properly by those who won't know better if they're not taught to value balance for what it is, what it's meant to achieve. The only way to create true balance in this world is to teach everyone why it matters. From the highest kings to the humblest of commoners… if they don't understand it, if they don't grasp why we need it, the same mistakes will be made again, over and over, until someone finally attempts to truly understand why balance needs to be preserved and protected.
"And heck… Azula came to that conclusion herself, without you telling her expressly about it. I came to understand it when she told me about her thoughts. How many others haven't had the same thoughts, by now? How many people might have realized this is exactly what we need, even when the Avatar wasn't around to guide them to that conclusion? Imagine just how many more would actually learn better if this were your role… to serve as a guide for this world, and not as some sort of enforcer of boundaries between nations and elements. You wouldn't even have to do it alone: all those who come to terms with why balance matters will eventually be likely to teach others to do better, to be better, for the sake of moving this broken world forward. It's… it's not even hard to think about, it's practically instinctive: it's not enough to fix what's broken, not if we don't learn how to avoid breaking it again. Stopping Ozai… that's not where this will end. That's not the only battle we have to fight. Balance… a true world of balance is what I want to fight for. All of this is to say that…"
Sokka breathed out slowly, only seeming to realize how spirited his rant had been, how much he had spoken and revealed, just now. Still, his returned self-awareness didn't keep him from speaking his conclusion out loud:
"That your past lives don't have all the answers," Sokka determined, frowning. "I'd rather see the world for myself and learn what's right and wrong this way, than cling to whatever mad pressures and ideas a bunch of old goat-dogs might think is the way forward. Whatever wisdom they want to share, they're not the ones who get to decide what fights you should be fighting, what journeys you should be undertaking, or what your destiny will shape up to be."
He breathed deeply as he finished, eyes drifting into the fire before him. Maybe he had gone too far, with some of the words he'd said… but the blazes of their small fireplace seemed to warm his soul deeply, making his very chi vibrate with that frequent sensation… the feeling that she was with him still, that their every experience together had brought him to a place where he could speak this way to the Avatar. In moments like these, his heart ached for her, needing her company, her cleverness and wisdom, too… but he knew, deep down, that he channeled her through him, much as he had channeled her fire before. She had touched him in more ways than anyone would likely understand, binding her soul and her heart to his own, filling him with courage and strength to carry on in the path he had chosen to follow…
"Ahaha! Well, aren't you interesting!"
Again, the guru's presence startled all the newcomers to the Temple. Sokka crooked an eyebrow as he turned towards the man, to find he gazed at him with utmost fascination.
"It sounds like you're a rather insightful young man!" Guru Pathik smiled, hands on his hips. "I only had thought to teach Avatar Aang how to unlock his chakras, but perhaps his companions should partake in this practice, too!"
"Unlock his… what?" Zuko said, frowning. Sokka's words had unsettled him too, though not as deeply as Aang: he'd give them some more thought later, despite suspecting he'd find himself agreeing, against his better judgment, with more of them than he wanted to. Still, was Kyoshi truly responsible for such large mistakes? Suki hadn't told him about that… but perhaps Suki herself didn't know those details? It was pointless to ponder this now, however, when the guru seemed to have taken over the center of attention.
"Chakras!" Guru Pathik answered Zuko, beaming. "Surely you're familiar with the concept…! Or, uh, at least some of you should be. Perhaps Aang…?"
"Uh… not really," Aang admitted, with a half-hearted smile. Guru Pathik's enthusiasm waned.
"My… well, that's troubling," he said, stroking his beard. "I suppose we'd have to start at the very beginning, if so. Either way… your friend here speaks many, many surprising truths that I didn't quite expect to hear anyone putting into words quite so… bluntly."
"Uh… well, sorry about that, I guess," Sokka mumbled, slightly flustered.
"It's quite alright, delicacy is a secondary matter when opening your chakras," Guru Pathik smiled again. "Were the Avatars infallible, young Aang, gurus like myself would have no place in this world! We are spiritual guides, and many other gurus like myself have honored our roles, not only with other Avatars, but with countless people, even with some animals! While the Avatars are as powerful as they may be, their duty can be overwhelming, to the point of consuming them… and they can lose sight of what truly matters. That is part of why the process of unlocking your chakras serves more purposes beyond helping you gain control of the Avatar State: you will find true balance within yourself only if you learn how to unlock each of these chakras. And as you are on your way to an incredible voyage… perhaps you'd do best to accept every bit of help you can get, eh?"
Aang grimaced, uneasy still. This day had felt wrong, so wrong… so much about it had turned out to be nothing like what he had initially expected. He hadn't been summoned by his past lives but by a guru, said past lives had attacked him, then they had attacked his friends through him, and now he found that perhaps the way the world had been shaped, through all the years before the war, made no actual sense? That perhaps, all along, the Avatars had made more mistakes than they'd acknowledged or realized? If so… if gurus like this man existed to ensure Avatars wouldn't go off the rails, how had they failed to make the Avatars that preceded him understand a better way to preserve balance? Had they just been terrible gurus, just as their Avatars had failed at their duties? He didn't know yet…
"Aang…" Katara said, a hand on his shoulder. He glanced at her uneasily when she squeezed, gently. "I know what's happened over the last few hours has been… a lot to take. This isn't how any of us expected our journey to begin… but if the one who called you here was Guru Pathik, don't you think you owe it to yourself to find out what the purpose of this journey was?"
"To myself… and to you guys?" Aang sighed. "I did ask for this detour… but I don't know, Katara. Do I really want to do this and risk them fighting me if I ever go into the Avatar State again? They… they didn't do this, did they? When I woke again after you broke me out of the iceberg…"
"No, or at least, I think not. It was different, for sure," Katara sighed. Aang grimaced.
"I don't like this. I… I have too much to think about," he said. "And I'll just end up delaying us all too long if we do this…"
"Aang…"
"You're worried you'll be making us spend too much time here when we wanted to take off as fast as possible?" Kino asked. Aang grimaced. "Well… huh. I don't think anyone will be too angry if this somehow helps you."
"It wouldn't only help him," Guru Pathik announced, smiling brightly. "All five of you could do it! Opening the chakras, like I already said, is not a process meant for the Avatar alone. Balance, as the bold young man said, is the business of all of us. And in order to bring balance to your world, as you intend to, you should first bring balance to yourselves. Your noble mission will surely benefit from it, altogether."
"Can't you join us in it, then?" Zuko suggested, though his voice wasn't all that friendly. "You can teach us all about these chakras, whatever they are, on our way to that swamp. We'd save time that way."
"Well… that may be the case, but the chakras cannot be opened if you're in a rush, focused on your material pursuits," Guru Pathik pointed out. "Therefore, a spiritual location like this Air Temple is the ideal place to take up this challenge."
"Ugh. Of course," Zuko huffed, glancing at Sokka with a raised eyebrow. "Well? You really think this will be necessary?"
"Well… I'm not sure if necessary, but at least it could be informative," Sokka admitted, with a shrug. Zuko scoffed.
"Bet you just like this guy because he thinks highly of you after your big speech…" Zuko grunted, and Sokka rolled his eyes, ignoring his last comment.
"How long do you expect this process will take?" Sokka asked. The Guru smiled and shrugged.
"It can be very brief for prodigiously spiritual people. It can take the rest of your life, if you happen not to be all that spiritual…"
"Ugh," Sokka flinched, though Katara spoke up by then.
"Good thing Aang is supposed to be good at spiritual stuff, then," she said, smiling at the Avatar. He shrank in place but nodded, still willing to hold onto Katara's hand. "You did say as much…"
"The monks said that about me, yeah. I have no idea why they thought so," Aang admitted.
"Indeed, Gyatso trusted you would be a most spiritual child," Guru Pathik declared, startling the Avatar. "He assured me that, when the time came, you would be ready to undergo this journey…"
"You talked to…? How?! When?!" Aang gasped, jumping to his feet, his injuries and convalescence forgotten as Pathik scrubbed through his beard.
"Hmm, it has been a hundred and ten years since Sozin's Comet's first passing, unless I lost count…" he said. "So, uh, he told me so… a hundred and fourteen years ago!"
All of Aang's excitement froze over, shattered with his new disbelief. The guru seemed perfectly happy with his reaction, though.
"He had high hopes for you," Pathik said, fondly, as Aang shook his head.
"You're saying… you knew Gyatso?" he asked, perplexed still. "You… you really have been alive for that long…?"
"I have! And I still remember many things, such as how you scurried about recklessly on that air scooter of yours, shortly after you gained your master's tattoos," Pathik chuckled. "Gyatso intended to introduce me to you after the ceremony, but you were much too excited… I let him know you'd come to me when the time was right. I didn't think it would take over a hundred years, but I was right, nonetheless…"
"You… you knew them. The Air Nomads… my people," Aang said, his eyes tearful as a smile spread over his face. Pathik smiled and nodded.
"And I know they would be very proud to learn you will fight alongside such upstanding young people to bring back balance to the world, in their honor," Pathik said, bowing his head towards Aang. "Whether you choose to pursue the avenue of wisdom I have offered or not, your people cherished you and believed you could be a beacon of light within the encroaching darkness that loomed over them, on their final days. You will do them proud for sure, Aang, by becoming the Avatar only you can be."
"The Avatar only I can be…" Aang repeated, mulling the words over with uncertainty. Did Pathik expect him to be an Avatar to herald a new age? An Avatar who broke the pattern Sokka had accused the others of upholding…
Well… he wasn't sure how to become anything like that, not just yet. But if he was to continue on this journey with the others it stood to reason, to common sense, that he should learn everything he could learn. That he would harness every Avatar power that might be within his reach. And most importantly, that he would learn how to control said power so that it would never hurt his friends again.
He frowned with determination and certainty before nodding at Guru Pathik. Kino gasped, and Katara smiled warmly upon finding Aang seemed to have found his strength once more… Zuko scowled, uncertain still about what he expected might amount to a waste of time, time they could be spending attempting to track down the White Lotus and setting Sokka's big plan in motion.
Yet Sokka himself appeared to believe this was a good idea. He had folded his arms over his chest again, and when Aang met his eyes, Sokka nodded in his direction. Whether he was ready for it or not, the Gladiator had certainly taken on a role of leadership in their small group and, despite not knowing whether he agreed with everything Sokka had said so far or not, Aang still looked to him for guidance, for approval. He nodded back at Sokka, and he faced Pathik once more:
"Alright… I'm listening," the Avatar said, lacking the confidence he should have felt upon accepting this new challenge: "How do I control the Avatar State?"
A/N:
We're doing yet another double update next time, so stay tuned for that! I hope you're enjoying this arc so far! Happy holidays, and may 2023 be a better year for everyone!