Avatar: Reborn in Ice

The water forms a little sculpture of Yue. "She was just finding it out. She sacrificed herself for us. She was what we'd call a leader. In a way, a saviour. Is that what Aang is supposed to do? Sacrifice. If so, then I don't want him to be the Avatar. I want us to save ourselves."

Yue glitters in her light.

I melt her back into a blob of water.

...

"Why did you come with us?" Katara asks, finally. "Because if all this is true, then you should be elsewhere. You should really be with my father."

I cock my head, "There aren't many people who can make anything interesting, you know? Aang does that. Be it because he's the Avatar or just because of his penchant for chaos. You and Sokka add more spice to the mix. I just stoke the flame."

"Or douse it," she mutters.

"Huh?"

"With General Fong. You just took what he said and made a fully-fledged plan out of it that made him sound just as insane as he was. I couldn't… even Sokka said he didn't…" where is she going with this? That's almost a compliment. No, this is Katara. Definitely a compliment.

"For all that you've lived through, you still believe in the good in people."

"You don't?" she sounds surprised. Why is she surprised?

I shift to accommodate for the wet child crawling into my lap. "I do," I say, looking down on the dripping boy, "but I'm also aware of the darkness inside every single one of us."

I bend the kid dry. He shivers and snuggles into my chest. I shrug and wrap an arm around him.

"There's good and bad. Yin. And yang. Tui and La. Yue and General Fong," I chuckle. "Yue used to be such a little bitch. Snooty and stuck up. I'd make it a game to ruffle her feathers."

Katara says, "You sure miss her, huh?"

"Hah," I say, surprised despite the obvious display I must have made. "Like a hole in my heart… keep it a secret?"

Katara nods, exes big and compassionate. "Okay."

I pet the brat's tuft of hair. Why the hell did I admit that?

"I… I'm sorry, too," she whispers.

"What for?" I ask, confused.

"I was… I was looking at everything from only my perspective."

I smile. "That's what emotions do, Katara. They influence you in the way you act, the way you think, the way you perceive others."

"Are you telling me to get rid of my emotions?" she asks, ready to explode again. What a temper. Ready to rise even after our little heart to heart.

"No," I laugh, "I'm just making a statement. Emotions are what makes us us. Don't try to denounce what you feel, that only ever backfires. Just be aware that others around you also have emotions and that they're just as real and valid as your own."

She blinks, stunned. "But you don't act like that at all."

"Well," I say, grinning, "That's because I don't care." I spent another lifetime pleasing people. I have no intention of repeating that. Also, people underestimate me constantly. If you say little and do less you wander to the very back of everyone's minds. From there, you have far more room to act. Katara is the best example of this. Although she is constantly provided with the evidence of my intelligence and brilliance, she only sees the lazy bum hanging onto them as baggage. Except, earlier and just now I've kind of destroyed that image, haven't I?

She snorts. Ha! Objective: achieved. She's not crying and I'm not expected to act nicer in the future. Life is good. Or going to be. Now, how to tell them that I'm not coming with them on their next adventure once we leave Bumi behind.

"I'm going to sleep," I tell her a few minutes later and shift the child to rest with his face pressed into my neck. She follows me back to the campfire.

We take out our bedrolls and lie down next to Aang and Sokka. The kid is sleeping soundly on my chest. I drift off to the sound of his puffing breaths.

But then Aang rolls to face me. "Kaito," he whispers, "Are you still awake?"

Tempted to say no, I turn my head to look at him. "Mmh?"

"I don't like this," he admits and looks at the brat. "I mean. Taking hostages is wrong. And all this… war-stuff."

"We wouldn't harm the child. It wasn't deliberate. We're making use of the tactical advantage he presents," I say. But he knows all that. "It's okay not to like it. It also unfortunately doesn't change what we're going to do. Our enemy is brutal enough to take an entire city – not even as hostages, but as to-be-indoctrinated citizens. It doesn't make us doing this good. It just makes it a clever step to take if our goal is to liberate Omashu and King Bumi."

"Yes. But. I keep thinking, what if this was what the Fire Nation did to my people? If they made them think that they had me hostage, then-"

My hand reaches out before I can think and Aang latches on.

"Maybe that's what they did. We won't ever find out."

Aang sobs quietly, shaking.

"All I can say is that we're trying to make sure this sort of thing won't happen again. If there is a way to get through a war without doing some things you don't like, then I don't know it. I want peace, Aang. I hate that yours was taken from you. All we can do now is use the opportunities we have to stop the Fire Nation. This is all part of that. I wish it weren't. I wish you'd grown up a hundred years ago, happy and free. But you're here with us, in this world. It's horrible. It's brutal. And still I'm glad to have met you."

He struggles to breathe, keeping his voice in. I bend us a dome from the water in the air. The child's woken up, confused sounds coming from him. So I sit up and pull Aang close and he wails.

Heaving sobs, "uuuh-uuu" sounds, and I wish I could do more. But this fighting is all I can. This holding is all I'm good for, and even that-

Aang's pain makes me want to kill somebody.

Anger, deep and hot. Hatred.

It covers pain and sadness and mourning. Helplessness.

The only cure against that last one is taking action, no matter how small.

I rub Aang's back and hope the child doesn't start crying in sympathy, but I think it's too late for that. Yep. Yep. Now there's two children crying on me.

Loving my life.

...

I'm woken by a baby's babbling. It's not the worst way I've woken up. I have a feeling I'm just in time to prevent a disaster in the form of pee on my bedroll, too and take the kid to a niche where he can pee and I can clean him quickly. The dome of ice I made last night is gone. I bended it away once both of them had fallen back asleep, trying to clean their faces without waking them up so their eyes wouldn't be puffy.

(And if I had to clean my own as well… then it's our secret.)

It's close to sunrise. Time to wake Katara and Aang for some good old-fashioned weather manipulation.

Aang does great, Katara, not so much. She likes the straightforward approach. Aang's in the right mindset for cloud-manipulation. It's called 'being flowy'. When Aang tries to help her, Katara gets snappish, so I wonder if I should even try. In the end, I decide to make an effort.

"Katara," I say softly, not loud enough that she couldn't ignore it if she wanted to.

She does cease her erratic attempts to bend clouds. Which tells me she's ready to listen if I've got sound advice.

"Have you ever been underwater and just felt the water around you? The push and pull, the flow of it?"

She nods, face set in a determined manner. I'm not sure if she's resolved not to bite my head off, or if she really wants to learn.

"Clouds are sort of like that. But instead of submerging yourself, you need to be the current that guides the clouds where you want them without changing them. They respond better to nudges than shaping."

She gets better after that. Which might or might not be attributed to my stellar explanation.

By the time the entire city is covered in thick fog, the sun has risen.

We get breakfast and then it's already time to enter the city.

...

Don't forget to throw some power stones :)

...

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