Chapter Text
The last thing Maven Song could remember was screaming, and the heat of her school’s football stadium lights casting warmth across the side of her face. She knew she died, could still feel the remnants of pain and discomfort in her gut from whatever had killed her, and yet ━ was this really what death was? Floating in never-ending darkness?
No, she refused to be condemned to this afterlife of nothingness. She’d spent her whole life preparing for one goal in mind: To go to Harvard. She kept her grades above a 4.0, she joined extracurricular activities like cheerleading and Taekwondo. She had even been accepted. It couldn’t have all been for nothing.
Maven started to cry, a single limb flying out only to hit something in the darkness. She frowned, reaching out once more, hitting the invisible wall once more. So it wasn’t just a never-ending nothingness then. The situation was even worse than she thought.
A faint hum appeared from all around her ━ no, it was coming from the other side of the wall. She maneuvered herself closer as best she could and pressed her ear to the wall, listening intently. It was… singing? Inexplicably, she began to calm down. The panic eased, and Maven felt at home.
She fell asleep to the warmth of the lullaby.
Maven didn’t know how long she spent in that never-ending nothingness. It was hard to tell time when there was nothing but darkness. She spent the time filled with silence thinking about her friends and family, about what her life could have ended up like. Occasionally the silence was lifted by the same voice ━ a woman’s. Sometimes she sang, but often it was just talking.
Somehow it felt like the woman was talking to her.
Other times, another voice joined in, this time a man whose voice was as deep as the rumbling ocean. They talked to each other, and sometimes they both talked to her. Maven found it to be the one thing she could look forward to in this dark void of an afterlife.
She wondered if they were the gods of Death. Maybe the Greeks had it right, and the afterlife was ruled by Hades and Persephone. She had never been all that religious despite both her parents being Catholic, but even she could admit when she was perhaps wrong.
The little routine Maven had come to know was broken one day (or was it night?) by a loud pop, and a sudden force pushing her down. Light peaked through the cracks of the direction she was being pushed towards, and she felt her emotional state flood into one of confused panic.
WhatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuckwhattheFUCK?
Why can’t she breathe? WHY CAN’T SHE BREATHE?
Her lungs burned as she tried to help whatever force was guiding her, trying to push her into the light, wriggling like a drowned fish. She’d be a drowned fish if she didn’t get out of there soon.
There was another shove, this time stronger than any before, and finally she was free. Eyes used to complete darkness, the sudden brightness burned her eyes, causing her to release a cry of alarm.
Someone hushed her, cooing softly, but Maven was too busy getting her eyes to adjust to her new surroundings. The brightness, while partly due to the change to her environment, had only been amplified by a white canvas that blanketed the area. The ceiling (sky?) was curved into a dome, almost like it was an igloo.
Huh. The afterlife sure was strange.
“Congratulations, Senna, Tonraq. You have a healthy baby girl!”
What?
Maven was handed off to some sort of giant woman, who gazed down at her with soft, crystalline blue eyes. Peering over her shoulder was a muscled man with shoulder length dark hair and a well-kept beard.
Why did they look so familiar? Why was everyone so big?
She tried to voice her confusion, but the words that came out weren’t words at all. Just garbled gibberish. Both the man and woman laughed softly, the man touching her head like he couldn’t believe she was real. Embarrassed, Maven cried once more.
“What will you name her?”
Maven squinted up at the giants holding her, searching her mind for answers. And then it hit her, and her world came crashing down as the loudest cry yet burst from her new lips.
Senna and Tonraq. The fictional parents of Avatar Korra.
Her life was now a damn self-insert fanfiction.
Senna smiled, and it was like the sun itself had been reborn with her. “Her name will be Maven.”
Two years passed quickly, and Maven was stuck in a sort of mental limbo. It took her a long time to fully accept that she was in a fictional universe, and the mental struggle made her a very quiet and introverted child ━ the complete opposite of who she really was. Her new parents had been concerned about her strange behavior, so they called a healer of the mind to examine her.
The healer had taken one look at her and proclaimed she was an “old soul”.
In the first few days after her rebirth, she waited patiently to see Korra, wrongly assuming that she was the younger sister. When it became clear that Korra wasn’t there, she began waiting for her to be born as Maven’s younger sister. But then she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of a frozen-over pond, and she realized she was starting to look an awful lot like baby Korra.
To test her newfound theory, she snuck a pail of water and a handful of stones into her room one day. Her mother was busy washing clothing, and her father had taken the day to go hunting, so it was easy to slip by unnoticed.
Maven breathed in deeply and focused her attention on the water. She lifted her hands until there was a small bit of tension in her veins, one that felt like the flowing of a river. Thinking that may be the indication that she had a hold on the water, she waved them further upwards, allowing her hands to bend at the wrists. A stream of water followed her movements.
Well, at the very least she was a waterbender. But now it was time for the true test.
She turned to the pile of rocks at her feet and swallowed. Instead of opened hands like she’d had when she bent the water, Maven closed her knuckles into fists and positioned herself into a horse stance, her fourth degree black belt in Taekwondo coming in handy (she had tested her skills after she learned how to walk and found that, thankfully, she had retained her martial arts and tumbling muscle memory ━ though the adjustment to her smaller, more clumsy body had been difficult to navigate).
Maven waited for the same tension ━ only this time, it felt more like a tugging at the muscles of her gut. She thrust a single fist forward in a punch, and the rocks clattered into the icy wall. It had left a slight indent, but it was hard to really care with her recent discovery.
She had replaced Korra, and she was the Avatar.
Always the overachiever, Maven spent most of her time hidden away from her family, honing her newfound skills. She even attempted generating lightning for the first time and was pleased when she had made a small spark. She made sure to give herself a section of time in her training to practice lightning bending, and soon enough her fire turned blue.
Her lack of presence in the family did not go unnoticed by her parents.
“It’s so sunny out today.” Senna came to her one day with a gentle smile, picking her up into her arms. Maven had forced herself to get used to being held like a child again. “Why don’t you go play with some of the other kids your age?”
Maven gazed out into the village, noting the joyous giggling of the children as they pelted each other with snowballs. Most children in this world didn’t learn they were a bender until at least five years old, she had found, so they were manually using their hands to throw them.
Her father looked up from where he was skinning an animal pelt, listening to their conversation.
“I don’t want to,” Maven said, stubbornly crossing her arms and looking away.
Senna and Tonraq looked at each other in concern.
“And why is that, sweetheart?”
Maven swallowed, trying to think of an excuse that would hide (part of) her true reasoning, but nothing she could come up with made any sense. She also didn’t want her parents to send for the White Lotus just yet. Korra had been four when they took her to the compound to be trained, and while she was currently three years old, Maven hoped to delay the inevitable until she was several years older than four.
So she settled for a half-truth.
“I’d rather practice my waterbending.”
The change in her parents’ expressions was almost enough to make her laugh.
“Show us,” her father urged gently, his eyes almost hopeful. It made sense that he would wish for a waterbending child, seeing as she remembered being very impressed with how powerful he was in the original show.
So Maven nodded, and Senna set her down. There was still some left over water from the pot of snow they had boiled, so she turned her attention to that and pretended to struggle with forming a blob.
Tonraq’s eyes shined with pride, and from that day forward he insisted on being the one to train her. Maven didn’t mind at all. She had always admired her father’s character when watching the show, and he always had this sense of warmth to him when he interacted with her. She did have to tone down her skill level, though, but her father believed she was just a fast learner ━ which she was, but not for the reasons he expected.
Tai Chi was a different art to Taekwondo, but many martial arts forms had similarities and influences in others of the same genre. When she trained waterbending by herself her prior experience helped immensely. Firebending was the quickest for her to pick up, as many Shaolin Kung Fu techniques were present in Taekwondo. But when practicing her elements, a different problem presented itself.
Like Korra, she still couldn’t airbend.
Maven tried for fifteen minutes at the beginning and end of her personal training sessions, performing the movements she remembered watching Aang and Korra do across both shows ━ but not one, single, measly puff of air ever burst from her fists.
She failed even in finding the individual feeling of the pre-bend. For water, it was a flowing tension in her veins. For earth, it was a strong tug in her gut. And for fire, it was a deep warmth in her lungs. For Air? She couldn’t tell you.
And so Maven remained the same half-baked Avatar from the show, and even the memory of Miguel O’Hara’s (sexy) voice saying “It’s a canon event!” couldn’t break her out of the poor mood it put her in.
Her plan to remain out of the White Lotus’ grasp worked until the week before her sixth birthday, when her father came home sooner than expected from his weekly hunting trip. He caught her practicing firebending in her room, the blue blast dissipating in front of the door right as it opened.
Maven’s heart dropped when she saw the look on his face, and realized she could no longer run from what came next.
She knew the day had come when she heard her father’s voice outside their igloo. She swallowed the lump in her throat and walked over to her mother’s side, who was busy tidying up the place for their guests. Maven wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face into her coat.
“Oh, honey,” Senna cooed. She reached down to hold the sides of her head, brushing soothing thumbs through her hairline. “You don’t have to be afraid. You’ll do great.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” Maven sniffled.
Indeed, the girl had grown attached to her new parents in the years she had spent in their care. With everything she knew from her old life gone, her heart had reached out to grasp the first thing it could find. Obviously that had been Senna and Tonraq.
Her mother’s eyes softened, and she kneeled down to embrace her. “I know, honey. I don’t want you to leave, either.” Maven’s eyes burned, and for the first time since she’d arrived in this world, she actually felt like a young child. “But you’re the Avatar now. You have a duty to the world that overshadows your duty to this family. No matter how much I wish it could, that can’t be changed.”
When Maven still didn’t say anything, Senna continued. “If they don’t let us visit, I’ll knock down their walls like a mama polar bear-dog and yell at them. Okay?”
She couldn’t help but giggle. “Okay.”
The door opened, and Maven peered at the small delegation of White Lotus members that had come to collect her. Senna bowed, a hand placed on the top of her daughter’s head. “Welcome!”
The leader of them studied her intently before turning to her parents. “We have investigated many claims, both here and in the Northern Tribe. All have turned out to be false.”
“Then you should be happy to know your search has come to an end,” Senna replied kindly. Her father came over to stand beside her so that Maven was between them.
The White Lotus delegate gave her a skeptical look. “What makes you so sure your daughter is ‘the one’?”
Maven looked up at her mother, who gave her an encouraging nod. With a deep breath, the young girl took a step forward and calmly met the man’s eyes.
“I’m the Avatar,” the puddle at her feet froze over with a wave of her hand, “you don’t have to keep searching any longer.” Her palms lit up with blue fire.
Maven knew her capabilities, she had no need to overdo it just to show off.
“Very well.” The man nodded his head, pleased. He silently gestured to the two lower ranking members behind him, and they exited the igloo for a moment just to return with a medium sized wooden chest. “Among this collection of toys, four were once owned by previous Avatars. If she chooses the correct ones, we may proceed.”
Tonraq narrowed his eyes at him, a single brow raised. “My daughter bending two different elements wasn’t enough indication?”
He shook his head. “Merely tradition.”
Maven knelt in front of the chest and opened it. She remembered this test from the original show. All she needed to do was find the same relics: a stuffed hog monkey, a clay turtle, a whirligig, and a drum. She found three easily, but the last ━ the clay turtle ━ was missing. Thinking perhaps she missed it, Maven put each spare toy back in the chest one by one then pulled them out again.
It was still not there. The hard way it was then.
She steadied her breathing and closed her eyes, trying to focus so that she’d hear the call to her inner spirit. It took a few moments, but an echo of a boyish laugh appeared in the back of her mind, and her hand suddenly reached out of her own accord to grasp a stuffed flying bison.
Maven’s eyes widened. This had been Aang’s.
The White Lotus shared a collective intake of breath. Their search really had come to an end. “It is decided. Your daughter truly is the Avatar.” He turned to Tonraq, though he eyed Maven carefully. “There has only been one other person known to have blue fire. She’ll likely be monitored more carefully.”
Maven had expected this. When this world’s only example of a firebender who bent blue fire was Princess Azula, anyone who showcased a similar skill would obviously be held on a tighter leash. Her own satisfaction was worth it in Maven’s eyes.
The next day, she was off to the White Lotus compound. The entire journey there, her veins buzzed with excitement at the prospect of seeing the Gaang. It took her an entire day to remember that her very existence as the Avatar meant that Aang was no longer alive.
The head White Lotus delegate, whose name she learned was Varnuk, spent much of their time together explaining what her training would be like and how the Order of the White Lotus came to be. She never had a chance to read the comics, so most of the information he gave her was brand new to her. She also learned that not only was he the head of the mission to find her, but was the head of the entire thing ━ the Grand Lotus.
Four days later, they arrived at the White Lotus compound at sunset. A small group of people waited outside the gate for them, and Maven felt her heart rate skyrocket when she realized she recognized two of them, a gasp escaping her lips.
She turned to Varnuk and tugged at his sleeve. “Is that Master Katara and Chief Sokka?”
“Indeed it is, young Avatar.” The man smiled. “They have waited six long years to meet you.”
Without warning, Maven shot forward, ignoring the calls for her to wait. As she grew closer to them, she could make out the unmistakable blue eyes, and their graying hair, and her heartbeat began to race faster, outpacing even her steps.
As if the Spirits had a sense of humor, she tripped just as she reached them, face planting into the snow. She released a muffled groan of embarrassment, hoping for the snow to bury her.
Two warm chuckles sounded from above her, and magically all her woes disappeared. Maven hesitantly peeked upward. Katara and Sokka were both there smiling down at her, real and standing right in front of her. She’d spent her childhood dreaming of a moment like this. Of course she just had to go and embarrass herself.
“Well, hello there.” Sokka chuckled as he gently hauled her to her feet. “And who might you be?”
“Maven,” she mumbled, her cheeks still burning. Her next words were said more confidently. “I’m the Avatar. I hope to live up to Aang’s legacy with your help to guide me on the correct path.”
“You’re quite well spoken for a…?” Katara tilted her head, her eyes twinkling with kindness.
“Six in a few days,” Maven supplied.
“I see,” the woman mused. “You’re quite well spoken for a six year old, Maven.”
Maven felt the need to excuse herself in front of her idol.
“Well, the mind healer called me an old soul,” she informed in one breath, a wince following shortly after. Her nerves had her filter off-kilter.
“I can definitely see why,” Katara laughed lightly, placing a comforting hand atop her head.
“That was quite the entrance you made.” Sokka stole her attention. “You could say you were… diving for a chance to meet us?” He leaned forward expectantly, waiting for a laugh, but Maven only stared up at him with wide eyes as his sister sighed tiredly.
She had just heard a Sokka joke. Her inner child was healing.
Sokka grimaced at her silence, scratching his head awkwardly. “You know, because you, well, fell? And a dive is kind of like a fall? Well, in the sense thatㅡ”
Maven burst out into a fit of giggles.
Varnuk and the White Lotus delegation finally caught up to her, their lungs heaving in exhaustion. Varnuk turned to her with a scolding look. “You can’t run off like that, Maven. You’re the Avatar now. If something were to happen to you–” He shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” Maven muttered, grinning sheepishly. “It won’t happen again.”
It hadn’t meant to be a lie when she said it, but it turned into one anyway. Many times, in fact. And one of those times would bring tragedy.
Varnuk stared at her intently, searching for signs of deceit, before looking between Katara and Sokka apprehensively. “She chose all the correct Avatar relics, and has proven to be able to bend more than one element but… there’s something you both need to know.” He looked down at her again. “If you’d please firebend for us, Maven.”
Maven’s grin faded. She hadn’t thought of how her blue fire might affect her relationship with the original Gaang. Their experiences with Azula may have given them a fair bit of trauma. This was real life now after all, and real life was not a children’s cartoon.
Hesitantly, she stepped away from the adults, giving herself space to bend. She cast another glance at Katara, who, though confused, gave her an encouraging nod and smile.
With a deep breath, she held her fists in front of herself and called upon that warmth in her chest. When she found it, Maven threw two punches in a jab-cross combo in rapid succession, spurts of blue flame following the motions. The heat from her fire was a biting contrast to the frozen air all around them, and the path they made above the snow left a thin trail of melted water.
Maven refused to turn around in the frightening silence that followed, her head bowed to the ground and eyes burning.
“I’m sorry,” she felt the need to apologize.
Footsteps crunching towards her in the snow sounded, before Katara appeared in front of her and knelt down, placing comforting hands on her shoulders. “There’s nothing to apologize for, child. It’s clear that you’ll grow into a skilled bender one day.”
Maven allowed a small smile but glanced towards Sokka. His arms were crossed in front of him, one hand resting on his bearded chin both thoughtfully and apprehensively. “We do need to consider all possible options, though. If we call Zukoㅡ”
The reincarnated (reincarnated reincarnated? reincarnation-ception) Avatar’s eyes flashed at the mention of her all time favorite Avatar universe character, but Katara glared at her brother over her shoulder. “Not right now, Sokka. For now, let’s get you inside and have you get acquainted with your new home.”
“Okay,” Maven agreed.
Her first lesson was the day after her birthday. Like Korra, the order of the elements she’d learn was water, earth, fire, then air. Which meant she’d start off being taught by Katara, a notion she wouldn’t ever complain about.
“Varnuk tells me you’re quite the little prodigy in your bending,” Katara said to her after she made Maven run a lap around the compound, White Lotus members stationed at every few checkpoints. “Do you know what a water whip is?”
Maven nodded, and performed the move with ease without her asking. Logically, she knew she should be holding back, but the dominant part of her wanted to impress Katara.
“You seem to have more than just the basic theory of waterbending down. Who trained you?”
“My father,” she answered immediately. But Katara gave her a look that said she knew that was a lie ━ or at least, a partial lie. Maven admitted, “I’ve known I was the Avatar since I was two, and was training myself in secret until my father found out I could waterbend. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that my parents found out I was the Avatar.”
“I’ll ask you why you felt the need to hide your identity as the Avatar some other time, when you’re more comfortable with me. For now I want you to do another water whip, but this time slow it down so you can focus on each individual movement. Your movements are a little too sharp for waterbending. That’s a good thing for a firebender, but we as waterbenders must allow our movements to flow like the very water we control.”
“Firebending has always come more easily to me,” Maven admitted as she loosened her stance.
Katara smiled. “And that’s alright. Even Aang had elements that came more naturally than others. For him that was his natural born element, air, but there have been Avatars that were known to favor other elements than the ones they were born into. Now, try once more.”
Maven did as she was told, slowing down the movements of the water whip and this time focusing on keeping her muscles loose and flowy like water. The whip portion of the move that cracked against the target surface wasn’t quite as sharp, but that was to be expected with the slowness of her movements. The rest of the technique was performed nearly perfectly.
She turned to her Master with a grin, and Katara gave her a proud nod and smile. “Very good. A prodigy and fast learner indeed.”
“Thanks!” Maven exclaimed. “By the way, when will I begin my healing training?”
Katara was the best healer in known Avatar universe history, so the girl was eager to learn.
The woman chuckled. “Patience, young Avatar. That will come in time. Now, do the water whip again. Keep it slow until I say otherwise.”
“Yes, Master.” Maven bowed.
They spent the rest of the morning going over the water whip and a couple other techniques, practicing them until they were flawless.
That night, Maven found herself staring out of her window, the moon illuminating her features. The compound was eerily silent around this time, and while there were multiple guards placed for the night shift, most of them were dozing off. Maven couldn’t blame them.
A flash of red, yellow, and orange in the small outdoor corridor of the building opposite to her caught her attention. Airbender colors. Maven’s face lit up with realization. Aang? Or maybe it was Tenzin?
Quietly, she exited her little cabin and crept to where she had seen the person.
“Aang?” she called as she grew closer to the corridor. “Is that you?”
Maven hadn’t yet tried to connect with her past lives, but in the original timeline Aang was the one to reach out to Korra. Maybe it wouldn't be so different for her. But what would Aang have to tell her when she hadn’t been in contact with Amon or Tarlokk yet? She currently had no need for the information that Yakone was their father.
Yet, as she stepped into the darkness, there was no one there. Just an empty dead end.
Something grabbed her from behind and she immediately began flailing, her mouth opening to shout only to be smothered by a hand. Perhaps if she was in her normal body, she would have been able to use her skills to get out of their grasp, but the strength of a six year old was nothing compared to an eighteen year old. But then she remembered she could conjure fire, from her mouth no less, and reached for the warmth in her chest.
“It isn’t our intention to harm you, young Avatar, but if you keep struggling against me, that will be inevitable.” The voice was vaguely familiar, and Maven stopped struggling, the building warmth in her chest halting. “If I let you go, will you try to run or scream?” When she shook her head, her captor slowly released her.
There were four of them ━ two women and two men. And she recognized all of them, even though they were dressed in White Lotus uniforms. The Red Lotus.
Maven took a step away from them to examine them further, and Zaheer let her, knowing there was nowhere for her to go with a wall on every side and them in front of her. The man himself was the most different to both versions she had seen in the show ㅡ the one with long hair while imprisoned, and the one with buzzed hair while an outlaw. Instead, his hair was neatly pulled back into a low bun.
“Who are you?” she questioned, despite knowing exactly who they were.
Zaheer took a slow step towards her like he expected her to bolt. Maven remained in place, watching him warily as he knelt in front of her. “My name is Zaheer. My friends and I are the leaders of an organization I created called the Red Lotus.”
“Like the White Lotus.” Maven was trying to stall until she remembered what their goal was. The lavabender, Ghazan, grimaced at the comparison.
They were never shown the kidnap attempt the Red Lotus made when Korra was a child, only mentioning it later on as a means of plot progression. She knew it wasn’t originally their goal to end the Avatar cycle, and that only came after Korra grew into her own person that they would no longer be able to shape into who they wanted. Which meant they likely meant to take her under their wing and brainwash her into an anarchist.
Zaheer confirmed her suspicions. “Yes. But also no. With your permission, I’d like to bring you with us to our home to teach you the difference in philosophies.”
Maven was silent as she mulled it over. Even if she refused, they’d take her anyway. She was the Avatar, yes, but she was also only six, and they were four of the most powerful benders (not that Zaheer was not a threat without his later airbending) in existence, bar probably Amon. Korra barely held her own against one of them at her full strength, so what chance did she have?
“We don’t have time for this, Zaheer.” Ming Hua glanced behind them at one of the towers in the distance, where Maven knew a guard was planted. “The guard rotation will change any minute now. Then there’s no chance of getting out of here without a fight.”
“Patience, Ming Hua.” Zaheer didn’t remove his eyes from her face.
Maven narrowed her own at him, studying him. It wasn’t hard to see how he had gained such a following, his words were always enunciated in a way that you just couldn’t help but believe him, to want to follow him. If Maven weren’t who she was, perhaps she would have been swayed.
But she still consented. “Fine. But as long as you promise not to harm anyone on your way out.”
People would come for her either way. Might as well make the wait easier on herself instead of resisting.
“I give you my word.” He placed his hand over his heart and dipped his head.
Maven moved her eyes over to his friends. “And them?”
Ghazan snorted as the leader of the Red Lotus turned his head to them and gave them each a stern look. “I promise I won’t attack anybody, little lady.”
P’li and Ming Hua gave each other apprehensive glances but did the same.
The Red Lotus managed to get her out of the compound undetected, Zaheer carrying her in his arms because she wouldn’t be able to keep up with them otherwise (he didn’t say it, but she knew he also didn’t trust she wouldn’t just run off and alert someone). Hidden in a small cave obviously made by a waterbender was a snowmobile large enough to hold five people.
They traveled North for four days, heading towards the docks where all the trade came in from other nations and Republic City. They only ever stopped to rotate between drivers when one of them grew tired, to allow the others to rest while they continued on. Maven was almost surprised the snowmobile had enough gas for the journey.
“She’s just… staring at me,” Ghazan whispered not-so subtly to the women sitting next to him. “It’s unnerving.”
Ming Hua smirked snidely. “Don’t tell me a little girl is making you uncomfortable.”
“She is!” He hissed, crossing his arms.
The lavabender met her eyes again and flinched slightly. Maven hid her smile by turning away, accidentally right into view of P’li, who started snickering.
Ghazan made an affronted expression, grumbling under his breath. “Shut up! It’s not that funny.”
Maven turned to P’li with a small smile. “You’re very pretty.”
The combustion bender’s eyes flickered with surprise, before her lips pulled into a pretty, wide grin. “Why, thank you!”
“The Avatar is wise beyond her years,” Zaheer spoke up from behind the steering wheel. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world.”
Maven’s heart could have melted when P’li’s face lit up in a flustered shade of red. The other two members of the Red Lotus deadpanned at each other, then started gagging in faux disgust. She burst into a fit of giggles at the interaction.
She had found them funny when watching the show, but seeing it in person was almost the same kind of high she got from hearing one of Sokka’s jokes in person.
“You’re an earthbender, right?” Maven asked Ghazan, who gave her a surprised look and nodded. “Can you show me?”
With an arched brow, the man pulled out one of his rocks that he used to lava bend into shurikens. At first he just juggled the rock between both of his hands, but then he melted the rock into a blob of lava.
“Cool,” she murmured, gazing at the molten rock. “Was one of your parents a firebender?”
Not much was known about the Red Lotus members’ pasts, but Bolin’s parents were an earthbender and firebender, and he had the ability to bend lava ━ or he would, but in the future. It had never been confirmed, but the running theory was that only an earthbender with Fire Nation DNA could lavabend.
“Uh, yes.” His expression was confused, if not a little bit uncomfortable as he compressed the blob of lava back into a rock. “My mother.”
“How did you know?” P’li spoke up. Her tone wasn’t accusing, just curious.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Maven tilted her head. “I doubt there’s many known lavabenders in the world, and the ones that are likely come from the former Earth Nation colonies during the Hundred Years War.”
An indecipherable glance was shared between the four Red Lotus members. Maven briefly wondered if perhaps she had revealed too much, but Zaheer interrupted the thought before it could evolve into anxiety. “Has anyone ever told you that you don’t speak or act like a six year old?”
“Yes, actually.” She grinned. “More than once.”
A collective chuckle ran through the inside of the snowmobile.
The light mood was cut by a piercing roar, and a great shadow eclipsed them in the snow. There was a flash of red, and Maven leaned forward to catch sight of a large dragon ━ Zuko’s dragon, Druk.
Druk flew into a parallel position to the left of the snowmobile. Another roar, this time more of a groan, sounded from the right, where a flying bison was flying in a similar position on the vehicle's right. On its back was Sokka, her father ━ and Tenzin.
Maven watched as each member of the Red Lotus’ faces hardened.
“They’ve come for the Avatar!” Ming Hua shouted.
Zaheer switched gears. “Hold onto something.”
He pressed down on the gas pedal, causing the vehicle to lurch as it sped up.
Tonraq straightened into a crouched position on Oogi’s saddle, spinning his arms backwards twice in a winding motion. The ground shuddered as a wall of ice rose in their path. Reflexively, Zaheer turned the wheel, causing the snowmobile to spin out until eventually it came to a smoking rest.
Maven’s head pounded. Somewhere in the chaos, she must have hit her head against the back wall.
Zaheer turned his head to her, sternness in his eyes as his cohorts readied themselves for the fight ahead.
“Stay here,” he ordered harshly, before the four of them burst out into the cold.
Maven watched in awe as Druk barely touched the ground before Zuko was leaping from his back, and the dragon flew into the sky once more. Oogi landed with a groan, and his riders vaulted over the sides of his saddle as Tenzin commanded him away.
Did Zaheer actually expect her to listen?
She stumbled out of the back of the vehicle, eyes widening when she spotted Ghazan on the trailer hosting boulders, sending them in waves towards those there to rescue her. Maven ducked down, the sharp movement causing her vision to pulse with black.
She winced. Definitely a concussion.
After waiting for the pain to subside, the girl began to creep low to the ground. She could hear P’li’s explosions, felt the ground shudder beneath her feet as her missiles hit their marks. Each time one hit the snowy ground, she had to brace her weight against the side of the snowmobile.
“Psst,” someone hissed at her. Maven looked around in confusion. “Over here.”
She spotted him behind one of the wheels crouching, dressed in a familiar blue with a sword and boomerang strapped to his back. Sokka held a finger to his lips when he realized she was about to exclaim his name in surprise. He beckoned her over to him with a single hand, and after an apprehensive glance back at Ghazan to make sure he hadn’t noticed, she quickly crawled over to him. Sokka braced her when she stumbled due to another explosion.
There was a low noise beneath them that sounded like tiny footsteps echoing in a cave.
“Hey, kid. Are you alright?” he questioned lowly, noticing the permanent grimace on her expression.
Maven idiotically shook her head, the movement summoning nausea from her gut. “Hit my head, I think.”
Another explosion. Shuddering ground. More tiny footsteps.
Sokka reached behind her head to touch the base of her skull. When he withdrew from her, there was blood on his fingertips.
“Shit, yeah.” He winced.
It was still strange to her that these characters she had only ever seen in a child-friendly setting were capable of cursing. The first time he’d accidentally cursed in front of her, Katara had smacked him in the head with a water whip. After scolding him immensely, she stormed off, and Maven had whispered to him that she’d heard far worse things, and not to worry about censoring himself around her. Sokka had cackled, causing Katara to come back into the room suspiciously and for their laughing fits to cease.
Sokka gave her a small, reassuring smile. “Don’t worry too much about it, kid. Katara will heal you up when we return.”
A shout of pain she recognized to be Tenzin’s rang out from the other side of the vehicle they took cover behind. Sokka’s expression turned serious, looking every bit the battle-strategist she remembered him to be in the show.
He braced his hands on top of her shoulders and looked over her head to where Ghazan was. “I need to take out this earthbender guy. He may have an absolutely fantastic mustache, but he is causing far too many problems.”
Maven smiled despite the situation.
Peeking under the hood of the vehicle (she had to squint to quell the burning behind her eyes brought upon by Zuko’s bright flames — still fucking insane to her that she was seeing him with her very own eyes, by the way), she realized he was right. Every time someone got close to taking out one of the Red Lotus members, Ghazan launched a boulder into them, giving his teammates space to recover. He was being smart about it, too, only using them when absolutely necessary. There was still plenty of ammo in the trailer with him.
“See that snowy hill just over there?” Maven craned her neck in the direction he was pointing at, instantly locking onto the pile of snow he was talking about. She nodded once, mindful of her injury. “Oogi will have landed behind it. Do you think you can make it there on your own?”
Her head was still pounding, and the edges of her vision were still blurred, but she confirmed anyway, not wanting to appear weak before him. “Yes.”
“As soon as he notices me, go.” Sokka placed his hand on top of her head affectionately, and her eyes widened. “Be brave, Maven.”
Before she had a chance to fully process his words of encouragement, he stealthily began making his way towards the trailer. Maven watched his movements closely, waiting until he vaulted himself over the rails to bolt towards the snowy hill.
“The Avatar is getting away!” shouted Zaheer somewhere behind her. Maven didn’t turn back, icy wind nipping at the flesh of her round cheeks as her pace continued towards her destination.
A wall of flames suddenly appeared in front of her, causing her heels to dig into the snow as she yelped. Her head pounded yet again as she whipped it around to stare incredulously at P’li, who had paused her fight with Tenzin to raise the wall of flames. When the woman began circling her arms, bringing forth more orange flames that grew and grew, Maven realized she wasn’t actually trying to hurt her, otherwise she’d be using her combustion bending instead.
Tenzin sent a powerful funnel of wind in P’li’s direction, causing her pending attack to halt. Maven shook herself from her surprise and began to journey towards the hill once more.
But the fight had caused instability in the ground beneath them ㅡ because they weren’t just on a snowy plain, but an enormous glacier. Heat from firebending flames melted the ice beneath their feet, and the impact of multiple missiles, boulders, and ice spikes had begun to chip away at what naturally bound the glacier together at the surface, giving way for the crevasses underneath to grow ever bigger.
Maven froze, breath stolen by terror when the ice beneath her rumbled loudly, cracks forming as the glacier began to slowly pull away from itself. It was then that she realized what the noise she’d been hearing had been all along was… not tiny feet, but snow dropping down the icy walls of crevasses.
She stepped away from the crevasse opening in front of her. A mistake. Because another had formed behind her, and her foot slipped on the small incline of ice. A scream left her lips as she began to fall, arms flailing.
Was this really how she’d die in this new life of hers? She hadn’t even met Toph yet…
Something caught her before she could tumble into the deep trench of a crevasse, stabilizing her back on full ground. Maven’s breath shuddered, and she looked up with wide, grateful eyes.
“Sokka!” she exclaimed in awe.
“Hey, kid.” He grinned, though Maven could easily identify the concern in his eyes. “Close call there, huh?”
“Uh huh.” She nodded dumbly.
“We’re almost to Oogi.” Sokka hauled her to her feet. “How’re you feeling? Think you’re up for a run?”
“Yes!” Maven nodded quickly, like an idiot, only to cry out slightly when the movement brought one particularly painful pulse of pain to the back of her head, vision blackening. She clutched her head with a groan.
“Your stubbornness is admirable, but I’m going to carry you the rest of the way.” He picked her up before she could protest, and began cautiously making his way towards the snowy hill once more.
When Maven looked back, she saw Ghazan knocked out in the trailer of his snowmobile. Her admiration for Sokka only grew. All that training over the years with Suki, and perhaps even Ty Lee, had truly done wonders for his stealth.
She watched as Ming Hua froze the ends of her water arms, spinning them like maces like in her later fight against Kya. Zuko managed to weave under each, taking advantage of the opening it gave him to punch orange flames twice, following with a butterfly kick serving to dodge an incoming water-arm and another blast from his palm.
Further back, Zaheer was battling her father. He dodged several ice spikes with a series of handsprings and flips, just to engage the waterbender head on in what was basically hand-to-hand combat, seeing as her father’s style of waterbending was very close-range in comparison to traditional styles. The fight was heavily leaned in Zaheer’s favor, however, and the Red Lotus leader soon had him on the retreat.
Maven had almost forgotten how proficient of a fighter he had been even before he gained airbending.
A powerful kick to Tonraq’s chest had him stumbling into a kneel, bracing his hands into the snow. Water crawled up his limbs until it encased the entirety of his forearms, and he froze them to his fists. He lept towards Zaheer with one arm behind his head. Zaheer’s eyes widened, and he quickly dove out of the way. Tonraq’s ice hammer slammed into the ground, shattering, but he was back on his feet in an instant, continuing his assault on the martial arts master.
There was another rumble. Sokka tensed, eyeing the ground ahead of them warily. But the resulting crevasse from her father’s attack didn’t open anywhere in front of them.
It opened directly beneath them.
The ground fell away from their feet, and then they were falling. Sokka barely managed to grab her by the hand as they began to slide down the steep incline.
Maven’s frazzled mind scrambled for a solution. There was no earth to bend but the earth at least a mile beneath them. She could attempt to use firebending to rocket them up and out, but if she failed it would only result in a quicker death, the heat of her blue flames only intensifying the speed of ice melt.
A desperate light clicked on in her consciousness.
Before they could fall too far, Maven froze a chunk of ice to Sokka’s other hand as it searched for a hold. Their descent halted suddenly, and the man groaned out from the strain it put on his arm socket. The ice began to slowly pull them both up. He looked down to see her arm outstretched, the muscle wavering as she focused, ignoring the way the pain in her head grew to a constant.
It wasn’t until they were maybe ten feet from the surface again that something warm and wet slipped onto her upper lip, and a low scream tore itself from her throat from the effort to ignore the physical trauma her body was under. Her voice echoed far below them in the abyss of the crevasse.
Sokka stopped her. “Maven, wait.”
She didn’t want to, but the pain became a crescendo. His form flickered in and out of focus, and she quickly realized it was far too dark. The slow elevator she’d attached to his hand halted.
“We’re almost there,” Maven argued weakly. “I can get us out!”
Sokka sighed. “You’ll kill yourself if you keep using your bending with such a severe head injury.”
“The ice won’t hold long enough for the others to save us.”
It was true. His body heat was already beginning to melt the ice that kept them from falling to their deaths.
“I’m the Avatar!” she cried out desperately, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I’m powerful enough to save us both.”
His eyes flashed at her words, and he looked back up to the surface as if weighing the distance. “Do you think you can climb out? Maybe you can alert someone to get help.”
But even Sokka didn’t seem to believe his own words, because his eyes slipped closed as another explosion sounded above. Snow dropped from the edge, and he covered her as best he could from any hitting her.
“I’m not leaving you,” Maven said, determined to make sure they both survived this.
She forced the need to pass out away, her hand outstretched once more, and she cried out again as pain stabbed her in the back of her head. They barely moved two centimeters.
There was resolve in the way Sokka sighed, and dread flooded her being at the sound.
“Please, don’t,” she begged him weakly, but her hero had already made his decision.
“Remember what I told you, kid.” He left her no time to argue, screaming out as he launched her into the air.
Maven hit the ground hard, a crack sounding from her shoulder blade. She quickly scrambled to the edge, searching for Sokka in the darkness below. But the force of his throw must have broken the ice that once held them up, and he was nowhere to be seen. He was just… gone.
Her resounding sob was far more a scream. It echoed into the crevasse in a haunting sort of mournful sound, like she was nothing but a lost soul lamenting her life’s mistakes.
She barely registered that the fight had ended, and someone appeared at her side, placing their hands on her shoulders. She looked up through her tears to see her father. He was speaking, but the sound was drowned out, muffled like he was underwater.
Energy failed her, and her consciousness fell away into a dark abyss.
✧
There was the sound of trickling water in the cool void Maven found herself in, as well as that of low voices surrounding her, engaged in conversation. She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but she could tell it wasn’t happy.
It was a struggle to open her eyes, but she managed to eventually. Once she had, Maven realized the cool sensation she’d felt was the pool of healing water she was in, entire body submerged in it other than her face as waves softly lapped over her. The low conversation she heard was her father, Tenzin, and Zuko.
Maven tried to call out to them, but her body was still too weak, meaning the only sound that came from her lips was a soft moan. It was enough to garner their attention, though, and Tonraq was instantly rushing to her side.
“Thank the Spirits you’re alright,” he breathed, relieved. He reached over to brush his hand over her hair in a soothing manner.
“What…” Her mouth felt dry. She swallowed. “What happened?”
“How much do you remember, Maven?” Zuko questioned. He eyed her like she was a puzzle to be solved, but there was something else in his expression.
Mourning.
Maven thought back as far as she could. She remembered arriving at the compound. She remembered training with Katara. She remembered thinking she saw Aang, and the Red Lotus kidnapping her. She remembered them coming to rescue her, remembered Sokkaㅡ
Her next breath came wavering.
Maven turned her head to the left, to where Katara had been healing her weakened body this entire time. The utter heartbreak on her face was like a spear through her heart.
“I’m sorry,” Maven choked out, a sob shaking her bones. “I’m so, so sorry, Katara. I could have — I should have saved him.”
Katara started to cry, but the red rim around her eyes told her this wasn’t the first time she had. The blue glow of the pool halted as the older woman crouched before her to hold her head to her chest. “It’s not your fault, child. Please don’t blame yourself for an unfortunate accident.”
An accident. If she weren’t who she was, maybe that would have been true.
Be brave, Maven, Sokka had told her.
How was she meant to be brave when it was her fault he was gone? She could have saved him, but she’d grown too comfortable in her new life to remember he was supposed to die ㅡ to plan for it. She refused to allow something like this to happen again.
Instead of saying anything, Maven closed her tearful eyes, turning her face to bury it into Katara’s motherly embrace.
It’s all her fault.
Notes:
i still have to write chapter two so its going to be a hot minute before this is updated (i also have two books on wattpad i need to focus on). after that, i have until a fourth of chapter eight done. each chapter after chapter two will be equivalent to an entire episode from the show, with the changes growing more and more important. i've tried my best to ensure each decision she makes has consequences, whether good or bad, and think i've succeeded for the most part. as stated in the tags, this is one of the more ambitious fics i've ever started.
ngl i did cry a bit writing sokka's death. i didn't want it to be an intentional murder on the red lotus' part, as it was always implied that it happened during the rescue operation (or maybe that was the fandom's assumption, idk). there was another place i had in mind for it somewhere in chapter two but i think it was far more effective for her growth here.
Chapter 2: growing pains.
Notes:
chapter warning: animal abuse (very brief and vague description, but this is what comes with the bloodbending tag i guess. tried my best to keep it tasteful and not graphic at all, but i can go back and change it more if anyone expresses discontent)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The months that followed Sokka’s death were difficult. It had only served as a stark reminder that death came just as commonly in this life as it did in the real world, and Maven knew well enough now that she needed to do something about it, or else more things would happen that would throw the world (or maybe just herself) into a state of chaos. So Maven did what most people would in her position, or at least what she should have all along.
She began to plan.
With her seventh birthday fast approaching, Maven all but begged for a new journal. Surprisingly, it was Varnuk who ended up being the one to gift it to her, and she practically flung herself into his arms in excitement and gratitude. As soon as she gained a moment of privacy when the rest of the compound was heading to bed (bar, of course, the increased guard stationing during the night due to her previous kidnapping), she sat down at the small wooden desk allowed to her and began to write.
First, Maven wrote everything she could remember happening in both shows, whether the details were big or small. She refused to let something happen again just because she allowed something thought to be superficial slip past her attention. Then, once everything from what little she knew about Avatars Yanchen and Kiyoshi’s lives, Avatar Roku’s friendship with Sozin and the following betrayal and airbender genocide, to the third Spirit Portal opening in the center of Republic City was timelined and annotated, she continued to list everything she wanted change.
For example, Harmonic Convergence. Maven would no doubt make the same decision as Korra did in allowing the portals to remain open, as it was essential for the rebirth of the Air Nation, but she would not allow herself to be manipulated by Unalaq, nor would she let him get close to Raava. Unlike Korra, Maven had the advantage of knowing his exact plans, and also had no pre-existing familial bias.
Her first idea on how to prevent Unalaq and Vatuu from overpowering her was learning how to spiritbend. The only problem was that there was no way for her to practice until Vatuu grew closer to reawakening and Chaos affected the spirits powerful enough to break through the barrier of the Mortal Realm, turning them into Dark Spirits. Perhaps if she somehow managed to convince the White Lotus to bring her to Toph’s swamp and piss off some vines there was potential for growth there, but Maven found herself not wanting to mess with power so ancient. For now she left a small question mark towards the top of the Harmonic Convergence section.
Something Maven knew she could prepare for presently was countering Tarlokk and Amon’s bloodbending. And, from what she recalled, there were only two known ways to do so: one, the Avatar State, and two, being a more powerful bloodbender. However, just as she could not seem to tap into her airbending, she also couldn’t tap into the Avatar State, no matter how many tomes on the subject she requested Varnuk have imported to the Southern Water Tribe from the other nations, and no matter how many hours she spent meditating before bed each night.
That only left bloodbending — and yet the matter itself presented another obstacle. It was illegal, and almost all those who knew about it in the present day had a violent distaste for it. For good reason. Bloodbending was completely violating, and likely very painful based on the imagery showcased from the shows. Maven already felt like she was on thin ice with her firebending being blue, so she couldn’t imagine requesting to be allowed an exception as the Avatar.
How would she even attempt to justify it? Oh, hey, so remember Yakone? Well, he had two sons that he intimidated and forced into learning bloodbending, and now one of them, who is honestly pretty hot, will become my greatest nemesis. He’s even more powerful than his shit-stain of a father, and probably the most powerful bender in existence. So, yeah, I kind of need to learn how to bloodbend so I can resist it, or else he’s going to take my bending. Oh, how do I know this? Well, I’m actually a would-be twenty-five-year old in a seven-year-old’s body from another dimension where you’re all fictional characters in a children’s show. Surprise!
Hah. Fat chance. She’d only be written off as an imaginative seven-year-old, and would likely gain a stern talking to from all the adults in her life about the utter and inherent evilness of bloodbending. Still, there was a certain line of questioning Maven had carried over from her real life, one that had pondered if the usage of bloodbending was really all bad, or if there was actually some good that could come out of it as well.
So as the first few weeks of her healing lessons with Katara began, Maven decided to bring up the subject in as delicate a way as possible.
“I have a question,” she broke a comfortable silence. The water currently enveloping her palms flickered from an unnatural blue glow to a state of normalcy as Maven glanced up at her Master with an apprehensive swallow.
She had to be smart about this.
Katara tiredly glanced over from where she tended to an unconscious patient. He was an older earthbending White Lotus member who had come in with the claim that he was experiencing blurred vision, headaches, and fatigue. The Master had instantly told him to lay down in the healing pool with a concerned look on her aged features. Once he did, and Katara took control of the water, he almost immediately passed out. She spent the better part of an hour directing her healing towards his head.
Maven was not yet at the point in her healing lessons to use her knowledge on real people. Instead, she was allowed to observe, all the while gently guiding water through the chi paths of a wooden dummy, or practicing the ‘healing’ of a specific point on the body of the dummy. During Katara’s session with the man, she asked why the water was being focused around the patient's head.
“Often, blood flow can be blocked to the places of our bodies in most precious need of it. It is much rarer of a phenomenon in younger people than it is in us older people,” Katara had explained. The water around the man’s head pulsated blue. “It is tricky to mend when it occurs, as the veins in one’s body are very delicate and small. You must have a precise and yet gentle hand to use the element we control as we guide it through the body to where the blood must go.”
A stroke, then. It made sense, considering the symptoms and the way Katara had rationalized it to her.
She remembered forcing her father to watch both shows with her as a young teen. As a practicing surgeon, the concept of bloodbending was always the one he’d found most intriguing – yet also, the most frustrating. He’d often ranted to his very amused daughter (and very exasperated wife) at the dinner table about how beneficial it could be in healing. It was probably the reason Maven herself had such a two-sided outlook on the matter.
A man coming in with an exact condition that bloodbending would be most useful in healing gave her the perfect excuse to bring it up, perhaps nudging the adults in her life into a more open-minded stance. And yet the longer she sat there with her hands absentmindedly occupying themselves with shifting the water enveloping them from normal to iridescent healing blue, the more her doubts began to catch up to her. It had grown to the point that Maven knew any longer spent stewing in her shaky resolve would have ultimately led to the topic not being brought up at all, so she’d swallowed her fears and asked what she planned to ask.
The water around her hands dropped into the pool before her as she placed them firmly in her lap to hide the way they trembled slightly when Katara turned her attention to her. “Of course, child. Ask away.”
Pretending to appear more disinterested than she truly was, Maven glanced over to the unconscious man in her Master’s own healing pool and tilted her head. “If the patient’s ailment has something to do with the blood, and if it’s truly so difficult to fix with just normal healing, would it not be easier to… to use bloodbending to heal it?”
When Katara went rigid, browline now tense with something other than exhaustion, her pulse fluttered in panic. “I made bloodbending illegal for a reason, child.”
“I – I know that, and I know it has been used for bad things in the past,” Maven stammered, trying to justify her reasoning, “but think about all the ways it could be helpful! If someone were poisoned–”
“Enough, Maven.” Katara sighed deeply when Maven faltered, falling silent as the Master raised her voice. “You are young.” Her voice had softened. “It is natural to start questioning the world around you at your age, but you have not yet lived to see the things I have, to experience the darkness certain things can bring to you.”
Even if Maven had, in fact, lived far more than Katara might ever know, it was true she had not experienced the things she had as someone who was born originally in the Avatar world, as someone who herself had been bloodbent as a teenager. So Maven’s fight died swiftly in her throat, and she ducked her head.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, voice low. She clutched the fabric of her blue, fur-lined pants tightly.
Katara’s face softened, and she reached over to place a nurturing hand atop her own. “It is quite alright, child. Just… promise me not to think too much more on it, alright? I know more than many how the knowledge of something so invasive and inherently evil can affect someone.”
Maven wondered briefly if she was talking about the way she had once seeked out her revenge on the man who killed her father, and had become so lost in the idea of it that she used bloodbending against the wrong person.
So she nodded once.
“Alright,” she said, “I promise.”
But three days passed, and the idea refused to leave her mind. The more she thought of other ways to resist bloodbending and came up empty, and the more she tried and failed to access Korra’s past lives and therefore the Avatar State, the more her desperation grew.
So the next full moon Maven remained awake long after the White Lotus had sent her off to bed until she was sure as much of the compound as possible, bar the night shift, was asleep.
Since her attempted kidnapping by the Red Lotus, security had been increased. Four guards at every checkpoint, two placed in between. Varnuk had called upon at least three dozen more sentries previously stationed in other nations for the task of protecting the Avatar. Anyone who tried to infiltrate the compound would be hard pressed to make it very far, let alone the deemed most important little girl in the world… if, that is, she tried to leave above ground.
Maven quietly rose from her bed and hauled her fur-lined cloak over her shoulders, before lacing up her similarly-fashioned leather boots. She moved to the center of her room and eyed the flooring.
Most of the buildings in the compound just left the South Pole’s snow as the flooring, but the living quarters and barracks had been made of wood that had been imported from the Fire Nation however long ago they decided to build there. Her bedroom was no exception. If she wanted to sneak out from underground, she’d have to use precise earthbending to shift the floorboards out of place without completely ruining them. Luckily, the snow she thought would be underneath had been cleared with construction, as she found when she’d placed her hand to the wood and felt around with her bending.
Maven straightened, then began her work. Every time she accidentally made a sound, she winced and glanced towards her door, where she knew three guards were stationed not far away. When nothing came from it, she continued.
It took maybe twenty-five minutes for her to get enough of the floorboards loose so that she would fit between them. She slowly moved them to the side one by one before beginning her tunnel.
It started out rather easy, as it was pure stone and gravel beneath the living quarters, but it soon shifted into a mixture of ice and stone, and every shove of the wall led to further aching muscles until she eventually realized she had to stop. When Maven returned to her room and looked out her window to gauge the distance she’d traveled, she was disappointed to find she had only made it a quarter of the way to her destination; the small cliff half a mile outside the wall.
Learning from her mistake, she did not wait for the next full moon to continue her work on the tunnel. By the time it came, she had finally completed it. The opening ended up being just behind a collection of large boulders, where the hill that led to the cliff began to incline, which meant it would be out of sight from the sentries stationed in the watchtowers. Perfect.
With the full moon acting as a guiding force, shining brightly above her head like a beacon (she did give a little wave to Yue, but immediately felt somewhat stupid when there was no response), Maven journeyed out into the icy wasteland until she could no longer see the compound in the distance. She came upon a small cove housing a frozen lake, and it was there she decided she would start her training.
It took a few full moons to get a grasp on the concept of bloodbending. Bending an element that you could not see or feel was truly a challenge of another breed. The first time she managed to take control of an animal, she immediately threw up the contents of her stomach. The screeching of the unfortunate Tundra Sparrow that found itself in her path was too much for her to bear. But Maven knew she needed to continue, so instead of bloodbending animals that roamed above ground, she practiced on the fish in the frozen lakes until the guilt she felt because of it faded altogether.
Once she was confident in her ability to bloodbend during a full moon, she started to sneak out on other nights as well. The show had rationalized that Yakone’s bloodline had a mutation in order to make it so other waterbenders wouldn’t be able to bloodbend whenever they wanted. But surely, as the Avatar, Maven would be able to perform such a feat as well?
Just as before, it took a few nights of sneaking out to finally manage to bloodbend without a full moon. She continued this until she was able to bloodbend without much thought at all, and she could lift multiple organisms at once. Having the basic principle of controlling a body down, and unwilling to bloodbend an actual human being unless she had to, Maven decided she’d try coming up with less invasive techniques.
One such technique she came up with was something she so creatively deemed Blood Sense. Theoretically, she’d be able to extend her bloodbending similarly to how earthbenders were able to extend their bending to sense their element in the surrounding area. In this case, said element would be blood. If she mastered it no one would ever be able to sneak up on her. Though, now that she truly thought about it, Amon may or may not have used something similar to know Korra was hiding under the table in the season one finale.
She tested her new technique during a waterbending spar with a White Lotus member. While Maven knew the man must also be going easy on her due to her age (as did most of the White Lotus members she faced, though she also thought it might be to protect their egos), she didn’t particularly care, finding it to be the perfect opportunity to practice her new abilities. Sure enough, she managed to sense every move he tried to make before he made them and he was tapping out in record time.
Two weeks after her eighth birthday, a snowstorm rampaged in the South Pole. It made it so it was too dangerous for Maven to venture beyond the compound, especially to her normal practice spot, and even her combative waterbending training was put to a halt. Hardly able to even go outside at all, she spent those three days in the healing huts with Katara.
At least with all the time that had passed she was now advanced enough to be allowed more involvement in the actual healing process, and Katara even encouraged her to work on some patients on her own unless it was a more serious affliction. It meant Maven was far from bored by nature’s imprisonment, which she was glad for. The task gave some reprieve for her otherwise dissatisfaction at not being able to sneak out to train bloodbending in seclusion.
When the blizzard finally calmed down enough for travel, Maven was back to her regular nightly schedule of escaping into the icy wilderness. Visibility was still not at its full capacity with snowflakes calmly falling from the sky, but she was growing too restless to stay cooped up for much longer.
That restlessness was a blessing in disguise as it turned out.
As she approached the cove she’d found all those moons ago, there was a low whining sound emanating behind a cluster of rocks. Just above it was a small but steep incline, one that was very nearly able to be deemed a cliff. Concerned but wary, Maven slowly made her way towards it, and her eyes widened in surprise at what she found.
A young polar bear-dog pup. It was obviously injured – if not evident from its whines, then the dry, semi-frozen blood that stained its white fur at its side and two of its legs. She quickly came to the conclusion that it must have fallen from the cliff it now rested beneath during the snowstorm, left stranded by the mother it was barely old enough to be away from. Then she wondered how long it had been there as her attention noted its subtle emaciation, unable to move much to hunt for itself and the only hydration to be found being the snow and icy landscape surrounding them.
It growled when it saw her, but Maven could see from its eyes how terrified it truly was. She raised her hands to show she meant no harm and averted her gaze to the snow in front of it.
She wasn’t sure which animal characteristics she should be behaving towards; the bear or the dog. Or whether or not animal safety should be held to the same regard in this world as in the real world in the first place. She could only hope that not making direct eye contact translated just as well to the animals here as it did there.
“It’s okay,” Maven voiced quietly, gently removing her leather satchel and placing it against the rocks. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a waterbender, see? I can help.”
It felt stupid to be talking to the polar bear-dog like it would understand what any of those words meant, but for all she knew animals here were far more intelligent than the ones she was used to.
She dared a slow step towards it, but it growled again, louder this time, so she froze. Overhead, Yue beamed down upon them, her surface reflecting the sun’s rays bright enough to find its way through the gentle sheets of white falling from the sky.
“Please let me help you. You won’t survive much longer if you aren’t able to hunt,” she tried again. Maven waited patiently for any indication that the pup would decide to trust her, but it only continued to growl through its whines and pained panting. She sighed and relented to allow it its space.
She moved herself down to the frozen lake, intending to at least find it something to eat. And it would serve as further practice for her bloodbending anyway.
Not long passed before Maven pulled three fish of respectable size with her bloodbending from the hole she’d melted in the ice. A grimace passed over her expression as they began suffocating, struggling wildly against her hold while she returned towards the rocks. Maven didn’t react when the polar bear-dog began growling lowly once more, merely pausing a distance away and directing the fish closer, resting them in the snow before it.
“Here,” she began, smiling slightly when the growling faded, its dark nose twitching as it smelled fresh food. “I know it’s not much, but I’m not sure if your stomach works similarly to a humans.” Her smile widened when it struggled to sit up and began to eat its meal. “For us at least, eating too much after a long time not eating anything can be too harsh on our stomachs. I’m not exactly an animal expert, you know. But if you’d let me heal you…”
Maven choked on a giggle when the polar bear-dog pup paused to raise its head and give her a look that she read as a glare. She raised her hands again in surrender. “Alright, alright. I won’t get close to you, I promise.”
She took advantage of the chance to study the animal as it ate as fast as it could manage in its current state. When it sat up, she hadn’t been able to see anything that indicated it was a male, so she concluded that this particular pup must have been a female.
Did that mean this was Naga then? Maven hadn’t read the comics, but she vaguely recalled that Korra was the first person to ever tame a polar bear-dog. Of course, it probably helped that Naga was always supposed to be her Animal Guide, but Maven had assumed that she wouldn’t bond with Naga since this body’s soul was technically not Korra’s anymore.
Maven noticed a subtle yet constant shiver running through the pup’s body and frowned. “Are you cold? I can make a fire.”
She paid the Avatar no mind, merely continuing to chow down, so Maven backed away again, this time heading towards the small collection of dead trees just past the entrance to the cove. Breaking several branches off the trunks, she bundled them to her chest and made way back.
Naga – which Maven would proceed to call her for as long as she was certain she was correct – was done eating, and she was pleased to note that some strength seemed to have been returned despite the quiet panting still attacking her body. She raised her head and eyed the girl warily but didn’t growl this time. Progress.
“It’s lucky that the South Pole tends to be a dry cold more often than a wet one,” Maven explained absentmindedly, setting the collection of wood down as close as Naga would allow once she used her bending to clear the snow from the dirt beneath it. She thought trying to get her used to her voice was a smart way to go about gaining her trust. “Otherwise it would be hard to ignite a flame.”
She was only partly bluffing. While, yes, she could bend the moisture out of the branches, she had found it was harder to waterbend when the liquids that surrounded her were all the same level of, well, wetness. Besides, she was mostly just spouting knowledge she remembered from her real life.
Naga watched closely as she kneeled down and began arranging the sticks and branches into a suitable position. Once satisfied, a tiny blue flame flickered to life at the tips of two fingers, and she held it close to the wood until a fire slowly started catching. With luck, it would last until afternoon.
Maven glanced towards the shadows formed by the moonlight peeking down from above and frowned. Based on the angle, she estimated there to be about three hours before sunrise. If she wanted to get at least two hours of sleep she needed to start returning to the compound now. Her nightly escapades had taken their toll on her, and she could tell her mentors were starting to notice. She couldn’t risk falling asleep in the middle of a lesson.
“I have to leave now, but I’ll be back tomorrow night, okay? I’m not giving up on you.” Naga’s only answer was a slow blink, before she lowered her head to the ground and closed her eyes, exhausted. She supposed she couldn’t blame her.
Before Maven left, she stole a page out of Toph’s book. Digging her heels into the ground, she uppercut her fists in a crossed motion. A tent of earth rose in response, offering Naga shelter and shielding the fire from any sudden gusts of wind that might aim to put it out.
True to her word, she returned the next night, bringing with her some berries and fruit she snuck from the kitchen to get some extra nutrients into Naga. Said polar bear-dog pup was relatively excited to see her all things considered, but still refused to allow Maven to get close enough to heal her. Instead of causing more stress, she went down to the lake to train as she always did after bringing up some fish and building another fire.
The girl was conscious of the eyes on her as she trained. Naga observed each of her movements so intently that she was too uncomfortable to practice bloodbending on any fish or animals, so she opted to run through various waterbending techniques she’d learned thus far, then moved onto her attempts to airbend. To no avail, as usual. Maven did, however, figure out that she could bend her own blood to a certain extent, but she wasn’t sure how to utilize that knowledge just yet.
Her efforts to gain Naga’s trust finally proved successful on the fourth day following Maven finding her. Each day leading up she allowed her to get closer and closer, until Maven was sitting mere feet from where she rested and dared to slowly reach a hand towards her. Naga was justifiably apprehensive, but she was also curious. When she pressed her nose into her palm of her own accord, Maven could have burst with joy.
Due to the amount of time that had passed since Naga’s initial injury, the healing process took a greater amount of effort than it probably should have. Not only was she unused to the differences between a human body and an animal one, but the bones that had been broken had started to reheal in the wrong positions, meaning Maven had to guide them back to their proper anatomy slowly and carefully.
“You can’t come back with me,” Maven told Naga when she started following after her the next night, affectionately nudging her nose against her back. “They’ll get suspicious, and then I’m going to have to deal with an interrogation and increased security. I’ll never be able to leave my room again!”
She couldn’t risk anyone finding out the reason she snuck out at night in the first place. After what went down with the Red Lotus, if they discovered she had been able to get away from the compound unnoticed, not only would a bunch of guards get in trouble for something that wasn’t really their fault (Maven didn’t want anyone to be held accountable for her own actions but herself), but she knew for certain she would never be able to go anywhere without someone hovering over her shoulder again, even while sleeping. Though, she wondered what the White Lotus would do if it was revealed that she was bloodbending illegally, seeing as she was a child and the Avatar.
Maven frowned when Naga whined in dissatisfaction, ears flattening. She sighed, facing her fully and propping a hand against her hip. “Don’t give me that look, girl. I’m not supposed to be out here in the first place.”
Naga huffed and sank low into the snow, covering her eyes with her oversized paws and whining dramatically. Maven shook her head incredulously, but couldn’t help the low snicker that escaped her.
“Fine,” she relented, “but you have to follow my instructions closely, alright?”
Naga barked, wagging excitedly. Maven looked up at the sky in disbelief (the snowstorm had fully dissipated by now, which meant Yue was visible in her full glory). She couldn’t believe she was actually planning this like an animal would fully understand her words.
The next morning, shouts came from the watchtower, waking the compound. Maven shot out of a bed with a wide grin, hastily throwing her coat over her shoulders and rushing out into the frostbitten air. She vaguely registered that she passed Varnuk as she made her way to the front gate, energy in each of her steps. Her feet slid to a stop in the snow, her smile swiftly fading as she got into character and came upon the scene.
Four guards stood in a wary half-circle around Naga, who was laying on her side much like the night they had met, releasing very dramatic whines to make a show of her pain. Varnuk and Katara came to a halt behind her, and it was at that moment that Maven gave a concerned gasp and sprinted forward, breaking past the four White Lotus sentries before they could stop her.
“Maven, wait!” Varnuk shouted after her. She was sure she would give him a migraine one of these days. “It’s too dangerous to–”
“But she’s hurt and just a pup. Trust me on this,” Maven called back, dropping to her knees beside Naga, who offered a weak growl. “Easy, girl. I’m here to help.”
Ignoring the indignant muttering of the man behind her as he scolded his sheepish employees, she pulled water from the surrounding snow around them, tapping into her chi as she formed it into the rough shape of a sphere. The blob glowed brightly as it attached itself around her palms, and she pressed it to Naga’s body.
Maven had already healed everything that needed to be healed two nights prior, but she had to act as if Naga was truly injured in order for this plan to convince her caretakers to allow Naga to stay to work.
As she ‘worked’, she noticed Varnuk and Katara engaged in low conversation, glancing over at her every once in a while and studying her movements. Curiosity rose within her, but she was too far away to actually make out anything that was being said.
Eventually, she signaled for Naga to stop whining with a subtle click of her tongue, just as they had practiced the night before. As Maven sat back on her heels as though admiring her hard work, Naga immediately leapt up to attack her with a flurry of licks to her face, causing a bright giggle to escape from her mouth, failing to push the polar bear-dog’s wet nose away from her.
The guards stepped to the side as Katara approached behind her, footsteps lightly crunching in the snow. Her head tilted to the side, examining her efforts in healing closely. Maven felt herself tense up slightly, nerves erupting at the possibility of her mentor figuring out she’d been faking it the entire time.
Soon enough though, she nodded in appreciation. “Excellent work, young Avatar. It seems your healing training has paid off nicely.”
Maven couldn’t help but beam proudly, giddiness fluttering her stomach like butterflies. “All thanks to your tutoring, Master.” She looked down at where she was continuing to pet Naga’s head, the polar bear-dog having turned onto her back in her lap, and frowned dejectedly. “I guess I’m going to have to say goodbye to her, huh…”
“Perhaps not,” Katara responded thoughtfully, turning back to look at Varnuk, who immediately crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. He only faltered slightly when Maven gave him her most pitiful, hope-filled eyes, but he still shook his head.
“Absolutely not!” Varnuk grumbled. “A polar bear-dog is not a pet. It’s a wild animal!”
Maven stubbornly made a face at him. “She is just a pup, like I said. She’s too young to survive on her own without her mother, and she can easily learn how to be domestic – I mean, look at her!”
Helpfully, Naga stuck her tongue out, wagging her tail energetically.
“And Aang had Appa, and Roku had Fang,” Maven continued to ramble, “And Kiyoshi had… had her fox… and… and Yangchen probably had a sky bison too – the point is, all my past lives had some sort of Animal Guide. She should be mine.”
But Varnuk was still not convinced, skepticism on his browline.
Katara chuckled softly. “Come on, Varnuk. If anything, she will grow up to be Maven’s most fearsome protector should we let her stay.”
Maven nodded quickly in agreement, and it was then that Varnuk finally relented.
After Maven helped the White Lotus set up a space for Naga for the time being, Katara peeked over her shoulder as she allowed Naga to sniff at her hand. “Have you decided on a name for her?
Maven smiled. While naga’s were depicted as snakes in the real world, they were also known to be loyal guardian spirits. She couldn’t think of anything more fitting for her name, so she wouldn’t be changing it.
“Naga. Her name is Naga.”
It had only been three years since she first started her waterbending training, which was why she was taken by surprise when two weeks later, Katara proclaimed that it was time for her mastery test. The days leading up to the announcement, she had been pushing her harder than usual in both combat and healing training, giving her harder tasks than she had ever done and yet still completed without too much trouble.
To be completely honest, Maven knew that it could have happened much sooner had she not been holding back as much earlier on, but she was more than prepared to take on this new challenge with her head held high.
The first portion of it was leaned towards healing.
On the first day of her test, Katara brought in several patients of varying degrees of needing bender intervention. She critiqued her silently while Maven worked, having her talk through her process as in depth as possible throughout each, while thinking on the fly for answers to made up complications.
She passed with flying colors.
On the second day, she was tested on her memorization of several forms, as well as her ability to shift through the different phases of water: snow, ice, stream, and mist. Bar one slight hesitation in one of the more complex forms, she passed this stage of her test easily enough too.
Finally, the third day was a test of her combat abilities. She was given three advanced White Lotus waterbenders to spar against, ones she knew to be powerful. Still, it didn’t take much effort to defeat all three, especially with the help of the bloodsense technique she continued to develop.
After all of it was done, Katara proudly deemed her a waterbending master, chuckling warmly when Maven squealed in excitement and hugged her tightly, firing out a series of rapid thank you’s.
The White Lotus had the person who would be her new earthbending master brought to the Southern Water Tribe about a week later. He was a middle-aged man on the beginning end of his forties, his hair only just beginning to gray but his physique very much above average even for an earthbender his age. Maven couldn’t lie and say she wasn’t disappointed that her earthbending master wasn’t Toph, but she had always known it wouldn’t likely be her when she was so far into her swampy retirement.
Earthbending didn’t come as naturally as firebending or even waterbending, but she was able to keep up relatively well. Most of the training in the beginning was just building up her muscle strength and stamina without the use of bending, as earthbending seemed to require as much.
She remembered Aang’s impatience in Jeong Jeong’s teachings of firebending, and couldn’t imagine Korra would have been much better in this situation. Probably worse. In fact, her mind sometimes wandered to imaginary scenarios in which young Korra might rush into earthbending head first, accidentally destroying the compound in the process, only for her master to scold Maven for losing focus and being forced to concentrate harder on her task of squatting against a wall.
On top of it all, she was still sneaking out at night to practice bloodbending and other less-savory bending techniques unbefitting of her age and title as Avatar. With the increased physical demand earthbending required of her body, the lack of sleep was starting to get to her in a more noticeable way than it had during her waterbending training. Her progress in the art was slower than it should be for someone who had already proved to be a prodigy in three elements.
It came to a head three years into her training as she was practicing an intermediate earthbending form. As Maven began the part that required her to lift a boulder larger than her body weight from the ground, her head began to pound, black creeping into her vision as all of the strength left her body. She stumbled, releasing her hold on the large rock and bracing her weight against the packed snow of the training sector, using all her willpower not to pass out.
“Maven!” she vaguely heard Varnuk call out in concern, several pairs of feet rushing towards her. He, Katara, and her earthbending master, Tai Lan. “What happened? Are you alright?”
“Fine,” the now twelve-year-old girl lied, swallowing back bile as she squinted at the ground, vision slowly refocusing. “Just… slipped.”
It was silent as the three adults shared skeptical looks between them. Maven pressed her lips together tightly as she raised her head and struggled to force herself to her feet, refusing their attempts to help her.
“Perhaps she should take the rest of the day off,” Varnuk said finally, frowning in concern. He glanced at Tai Lan and Katara, the latter watching her closely in thought.
“No!” she argued immediately. “I’m fine. I want to keep going.”
“You’re not in any condition to push yourself through this,” Tai Lan told her gruffly. “I’m ending it here for today.”
Frustration simmered behind her eyes, forming subtle tears as she watched the two older men walk away, conversing about what she deemed as a failure. Her hands closed into fists, wavering at her sides from both emotion and effort. She had to be strong enough. She had to. Or else someone else might die because of her weakness.
It took her a few moments to realize Katara had remained, looking down at her softly, something sad and understanding in her eyes.
The older woman placed a gentle hand atop her shoulder. “Walk with me, young Avatar.”
The walk across the compound was silent, Maven too lost in self-deprecating thoughts to attempt to make conversation with her waterbending master. Katara paused at Naga’s pen, who immediately perked up as she noticed them approaching, barking happily. Despite her crestfallen state, Maven smiled and left Katara’s side to enter the pen and bask in Naga’s greeting, embracing her tightly and pressing her face into her white fur.
Naga was nearly fully grown now, the rest of her body finally caught up to the size of her paws. She’d been told that it wouldn’t be until she was about five-years-old that she would stop growing, as was the rate of most polar bear-dogs’ growth.
Katara didn’t enter the pen with them, instead resting against the gate and watching the interaction fondly, though the air of sadness still surrounded her. She allowed them a few moments, which Maven was grateful for, then finally spoke up, her voice gentle as wind. “How have you been sleeping, Maven?”
Maven tensed. Of course, being the experienced healer that she was, she wouldn’t need to use healing water to figure out the true root of her body’s weakness wasn’t from any sickness, but from exhaustion. She didn’t answer immediately, in fear that Katara might realize the real reason she was so tired nowadays, but the woman seemed to find confirmation in that period of silence.
Katara sighed, and Maven’s eyes filled with tears once more. “I should have realized sooner.”
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, clutching her pants tightly.
If Katara found out she’d been bloodbending, what would happen to her? Would she be thrown in prison, like the rest of the Red Lotus? Would… would she be killed, so that Raava would be passed on to someone more deserving?
Instead of being disappointed in her for sneaking out though, Katara opened the gate and approached them, her face soft and eyes glimmering with grief. “Sokka’s death was not your fault, Maven. You shouldn’t put the blame on yourself.”
Maven blinked in realization, but her stomach still sank as she looked away and glared at a support beam. Naga whined and pressed her snout into her stomach. “If I had been strong enough–”
“Not even Aang could have prevented what happened when he was your age,” she murmured comfortingly, pulling her into her arms. Maven’s shoulders shook as she struggled to retain the urge to sob. “You were gravely injured and untrained. There were far too many negative factors that resulted in that outcome, none of which you could have taken on all by yourself.”
“But I’m the Avatar. It’s my responsibility to save the people I care about.”
Katara retreated from her motherly embrace to gaze down at her, a lifetime of wisdom in her eyes. “What do you think Aang told himself when his people were wiped out? When the world believed he was truly gone after Azula struck him with her lightning?” When Maven didn’t answer, tearful eyes fixed to the floor even as Naga nudged her head under her arm, Katara bent down slightly and placed two hands atop her shoulders. “No one, not even the Avatar, can save every single person.”
And what about an Avatar with the knowledge that she had?
“Tell me you understand, Maven.”
And even though part of her never would, Maven whispered, “I understand.”
She could tell Katara didn’t fully believe her, but she sighed and straightened anyway, brushing a gentle hand down her brown hair. “I’m glad. Now, I want you to rest as best as you can for the remainder of the day. I have some leftover chamomile to fix into tea for you to drink every night before bed until I can figure out a more permanent solution for your wellbeing.” Maven opened her mouth to insist she didn’t need anything permanent, but Katara stopped her with a scolding look. “No ‘but’s. This is for your own good.”
Maven pouted slightly, but did as she was told.
She didn’t want to worry Katara any more than she already had, so she stopped sneaking out as often, instead only doing it once a week on the eve of her one day off from training. She also made sure to drink the tea left on her nightstand each night so as to not raise suspicion (and damn did that stuff really work). It didn’t take long for her training to return to soaring beyond expectation.
While waterbending had taken a little less than three years of training to reach mastery, it took a little over four for Tai Lan to finally deem her ready to take her earthbending mastery test. So, four months after Maven’s thirteenth birthday began, the three day gauntlet began anew.
Unlike her waterbending test in which she was thrust straight into healing, Tai Lan tested her strength and stamina first, the two most important traits for an earthbender. This included a difficult marathon that she had to finish under a certain time, before several other tasks including lifting a fifty pound boulder above her head for twenty minutes straight and a match of what could be considered tug-of-war, in which she was meant to keep a wave of earth within a certain radius of her for at least five minutes, all the while another earthbender offered resistance from the other side.
If Maven hated strength exercises in her past life, she absolutely despised them now.
Despite the difficulty, she managed to pass each task on the first try, and her sore muscles were given reprieve the next day as it was an earthbending form mastery test, just like it had been for her waterbending mastery. This one was little challenge for Maven, who aced it with ease.
The final test was sparring, and she was made to face three opponents once more. She took two down pretty quickly, but the last managed to give her a good challenge. Her bloodsense technique came in handy once again, giving her an advantage that no one would be able to notice unless they were another bloodbender actively searching for it, and she was granted the rank of earthbending master when the match was finished.
As she was packing her sparring gear away into her training pack, Katara walked up to her.
“I spoke with Varnuk a few weeks ago,” she said, making Maven raise her head to listen. “I know things have been… hard the last few years after my brother died, and I’m sure such a monotonous landscape hasn’t helped any in moving on. I thought a change in scenery could do you some good, so I asked Zuko if he’d be willing to take you in as a ward and train you, since he’d be unable to leave the Fire Nation otherwise, and he said yes.”
Maven’s eyes widened, excitement lighting her veins.
Part of her didn’t want to leave the compound. Sure, she disliked being cooped up in this place, but she had so many people she cared about here, and the idea of such a drastic change frightened her. But at the same time, traveling the world to learn the elements was what she meant to do anyway, and seeing the Fire Nation with her own eyes, outside of the TV screen, was something she’d wanted to do since she first watched the cartoon.
“And Varnuk agreed?” she questioned hesitantly, not wanting to get her hopes up so soon. “My parents?”
Katara smiled. “They agreed.”
Maven inhaled deeply, struggling to contain her excitement and energy renewed after such rigorous physical exertion the last few days. She still bounced on the balls of her feet though, a wide grin overtaking her face. “Then when do I leave?”
Notes:
so this portion of my original chapter two was way too long (specifically the bloodbending training arc and meeting naga), so i ended up splitting it into two, meaning one more chapter before we start with the beginning of the show. i'll try to get it out as soon as possible so it's not as long of a wait as this one was.
iroh is introduced next chapter ;)
sergeantalex on Chapter 1 Tue 23 Apr 2024 07:47AM UTC
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Vee_Eternal (Guest) on Chapter 1 Tue 09 Jul 2024 01:17AM UTC
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peachyvns on Chapter 1 Thu 11 Jul 2024 02:06AM UTC
Last Edited Thu 11 Jul 2024 02:07AM UTC
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Vee_Eternal (Guest) on Chapter 1 Thu 11 Jul 2024 06:12AM UTC
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