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In the aftermath of Sozin’s war, it seemed as if the world was beginning to slowly rebuild: previously crumbled structures were erected, new treaties were negotiated, trade lines were starting to be delineated, and communities that had been decimated from the war were beginning to repopulate.
However, the Southern Air Temple continued to remain in a certain state, almost unchanged almost since that day -- even after all the debris and remnants of the fire nation invasion had long since been tidied away.
At each annual summit of the Four Nations, discussions of restoration were often a subject matter at the forefront. Proposals were brought forth to build a new community of new acolytes, or perhaps re-open the monasteries to be accessible to outsiders of the general population.
And Aang would sit there, listening to the investors and politicians drone on and on, his stomach churning and churning until on the cusp of curdling over.
And across the council chamber, Katara would discreetly give him that ever so concerning look, to which Aang would promptly stand up, and respectfully declare his leave -- lest he utter something unbecoming as the Avatar.
A soft patter of hesitant footsteps echoed nearside him, but Aang kept his gaze focused outward as he propped himself upon the overlook. He examined the steady stream of denizens on the bustling streets below. How simply their lives seemed to be carried forward, shaped by habit and necessity, like the flow of the water yielding to the river that governed its path.
“I know this isn't easy for you, Aang,” Katara’s soft sigh floated into his right ear. He could just feel her sympathy radiating off her gaze, a cloying feeling that was making things even harder for his stomach. “I know how this must feel for you.”
No, you don't, was what Aang wanted to say, but instead he kept his head down and preoccupied himself with fiddling the trim of his glider staff.
He wasn't a twelve year old boy anymore, one who needed to be coddled and handled with kid gloves like he couldn't take things. After all, it had been well over ten years since he had discovered Gyatso’s body and the full magnitude of what had happened to his people. So much had happened since then: a war had been won, Ba Sing Se had been restored, and people everywhere slowly, but steadily endeavored towards healing and rebuilding. The world was different now.
“All these councilmen and politicians are eying to turn the Southern Air temple into some tourist trap.” Aang swallowed the lump in his throat that refused to budge. “I’m being cornered.”
“No one’s trying to make you do anything.” A gentle touch rested his shoulder. “You just need time. We all do.”
Time, huh. There was a time -- a more simple time when all it took was Katara pulling him into a hug and that was all that was needed for Aang to feel like things were going to be okay again. But the world, and his responsibilities alongside it had expanded, as demonstrated time and time again, of the complexity of the politics of rebuilding a fragmented postwar society.
Katara reached over his shoulder to wrap him in a half hug, but Aang shrugged her arm away. She blanched, but she kept her appropriate distance, and tucked her hands to her side.
“Aang, you can't keep running away like this. It hurts me to see you hurting yourself --”
“I’m not running away, Katara. So what if it never reopens.” Aang continued to divert his gaze away from her. “I already have to give myself up for the world as the Avatar. Am I going to have to give the Southern Air Temple -- my home -- up, too?”
“No, you don’t owe anyone anything.” Her words were all but a melancholy echo to his ears. “But you owe it to yourself, Aang.”
“Then tell me what I’m supposed to do, then!” Aang glared at her. The words tore out of him before he could stop them. Upon seeing her palpably restrain a flinch, a tug in the back of his mind reminded him that Katara didn’t deserve this, but right now, he couldn’t be bothered to care.
“The Southern Water Tribe had to rebuild after the war too. We lost so much -- our home, generations of waterbenders.” Katara’s expression drew in a sorrowful frown, her lips pressed taut, and she slowly shook her head. “I couldn’t hold off any longer to come back to pick up the pieces -- where would we even start, when we had lost so much? And for a long time…” Her voice wavered but steadied again after a deep sigh. “...I had to carry that without you there. But we kept going. We had to.” She paused, halting for a moment. “And it was painful, and unfair, and lonely -- but I learned to trust that someday, I would find a way to keep looking forward.”
“Someday, huh.” Aang scoffed. A wry laugh warbled from his throat. “When? When will I have enough time, then?”
The distant sadness, the brilliant brightness reflected in her eyes -- Aang couldn’t stomach her glistening sympathy anymore. He shied his gaze away.
And so, Aang returned every year, to make his visit to tend to the grounds. To prune the overgrown vines that encroached the pathways, to sweep the cobbled paths with a gust of his breath, and to honor the veneered statues with a brief prayer. He would slowly saunter the winding, sloped path that led upwards towards the temple’s entrance, but not before stopping to halfheartedly flick the goal posts of the air ball courtyard where he had spent many idyllic afternoons. And he mindlessly would watch the posts spin and spin, and spin again, all while he stood here, tethered to the earth.
This annual trip had become a sort of pilgrimage. A task he always chose to undertake himself, and by himself only. Just him, by the skin of his clothes, with the breeze carrying his stride, with Momo on his shoulder and Appa by his side.
The Southern Air Temple, enshrouded by peaks, tiered pavilions of blue and white ascending into the greyed misty sky. The wind, coiling through empty corridors and across the smooth stone walkways, its song tracing the echoes of the chatter of acolytes ringing through the courtyard. The wind, a pale semblance of the saffron-robed spirits that had once floated amongst clouds. The wind, or perhaps -- maybe, just maybe, one could hear the faint hums of the morning mantras and recitations.
Indeed, the structures stood unyielding, ostensibly unchanged by time or tragedy -- as if the temple itself resisted the truth of its own solitude. The halls remained swept, the statues unblemished; everything preserved, awaiting footsteps that might never come. Flowering trees in the courtyards bloomed unseen, and with the passage of the year, its petals would drift over the promenade of unstepped stones.
And so, Aang would light a flicker of incense, where its ephemeral, faint scent inevitably would dissolve with the wind: a final prayer for those gone, and for the boy who remained within him, returning every year, only to find stillness where there was once life.
“The water tribe peasant has a point, you know.” Azula languidly leaned back against the saddle, her eyes glazing over the ziplines of the skyline.
Aang’s fingers reflexively tightened around Appa’s reins as if gripping onto a lifeline. His companion supplied a noncommittal rumble in response at the tug. He loosened his grip and offered an assuring rub on his fur.
“Katara,” Aang corrected, as calmly as he could manage. “She was there when I discovered what happened to the temple. To my people.”
“I’m only saying this for your own good, you know.” Her gaze pincered him, sharp and incisive. "You can run to the next village or whatever your next pet project your airbrained mind wants to leap into. But you're still running away by letting the councilmen squabble while you dawdle around because you refuse to come to any sort of decision.”
“I'm not running away," Aang chirped cheerily. “In fact, we're going there right now, are we?"
“You're only delaying the inevitable.” Azula clicked her tongue. “Things will change. They already have and will. Even Zuzu has commoners freely walking on sacred royal grounds where peasants would have been executed for merely stepping foot.”
“The Southern Air Temple is under my sanction,” Aang clipped back. “It’s not as simple as just letting anybody walk in.”
“And with the dilapidated state it's in, it’s hardly anyone's first choice for a vacation,” Azula sniffed with disdain, and made a show of examining her fingernails. “After all, a girl could really use a proper spa day, after doing nothing but camping around for weeks."
In response, Aang formed a small cloud on his palm and wafted his creation over with a gentle push. “Spa day, you say?"
“Charming, really.” Azula wrinkled her nose and shooed the oncoming mist away with a dismissive wave. “I don’t see why I have to get involved. It's horribly undignified for a princess. Deweeding the place and repolishing statues, all because you insist on indulging in this pointless ritual of self flagellation.”
“Aw, don’t be like that Azula!” Aang turned around to beam his obnoxiously cheerily wide grin at her. “Besides, think of it like ... community service. Nothing says quite like connecting with culture like getting right in there with a healthy coating of dirt.”
Azula narrowed her eyes at him, and then sighed in an appearance of ceding resignation, for now. “The biggest ghosts we face are never far home. That I would know.”
To that, Aang said nothing, but as he turned to keep his gaze forward towards the horizon, looming before them was the biggest ghost in question.
Colors blind the eye.
Aang sat down, rested his hands on over his folded legs. He closed his eyes, and drew a deep breath from the pit of his stomach. His eyes stirred underneath, flicking left and right, luxuriating in the warmth of the late morning sun weighing on his eyelids.
Sounds deafen the ear.
The faint thrum of the cricket-beetles; a faint rustling in the thrush; a soft skittering in the distance, not too far away, of the faint sounds of Momo foraging for grub. His ear twitched slightly. He took another breath.
Flavors numb the taste.
Stark, crisp air gently breezed over the pebbled goosebumps of his bare shoulder. The air was thin and brisk at this altitude, sharp against his lungs in a way that was achingly familiar, each breath drawn like one of countless others before it -- discrete, fleeting, yet bound to every precedence, in an unbroken current unable to be contained within the memory of a single lifetime.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
His ears twitched at a skeptical click of a tongue beside him, and he felt of certain calculating eyes drilling into him, but he was resolved to remain unaffected. After all, stillness was not the absence of the external storm, but truth somewhere within its eye, if one stills the mind to search for the truth within.
Disciplining a breath, Aang straightened up, keeping his shoulders loosened as he resharpened his focus inward.
Oṃ. Inhale.
Āḥ. Hold.
Hūṃ. Exhale.
A gentle pressure, a knee nudging intentful but unrelenting. A whisper of the scent of her hair falling, sweeping like a curtain to veil the periphery of his senses.
Desires wither the heart.
His fingers on his knees tightened and his breath caught the merest slight, an inner snarl that needed to be unfurled, but he smoothed it out with another breath.
The Master observes the world, he recited internally, but trusts his inner vision.
Releasing the tension between his brows, Aang disciplined his expression to remain impassive, and took yet another breath.
Oṃ.
Āḥ.
Hūṃ.
His shoulders twitched at something sharp skimmed across his collarbone, the touch light as a feather but keen with an intentional edge of equal ability to mark the flesh. A shiver rippled from the nape of his neck down his spine as her spindly touch traversed the surface of his skin.
A soft press followed -- fingers curling at his neck. A subtle shift of forward weight pinned behind the grip, gracefully feline in its weight and balance.
Oṃ.
Āḥ.
Hūṃ.
The moment her lips grazed his neck, a sudden surge of heat blazed along the governing meridian of his sensation. His nostrils flared, but he told himself to let it pass. In his mind’s eye, he could see the image of her wicked smirk as felt her lips curving against his skin.
Like a score flame consuming the edges of a parchment, burning outwards into the center of his consciousness, his pulse chased her soft presses in a descending trail down the column of his neck, ever so deliberately, tantalizingly slow in its wake.
Fire against air, pushing against his breath.
Oṃ.
Āḥ.
Hūṃ.
The corner of his lip twitched; if he could outlast it, then his mind could settle once more. A flame began to kindle low in his belly, full-bodied and pulsing.
Oṃ.
Āḥ. --
Aang's eyes snapped open. Before him was how he had pictured her, her elusive face that chased his nightmares, and when those nightmares became dreams; it was her, her that dwelled in the twilight where the spaces bled into another in tidal rhythms, one surging forward as the other ebbed away, neither overtaking nor ceasing.
Gone were the days where she had donned her Fire Nation armoire, instead she was robed in an unassuming hanfu the color of earth. The only hint that bore her lineage was her regal features, and her glinting golden eyes, and that devious grin crooked on her lips, baiting him to strike back.
"Azula." Holding onto the last vestiges of his discipline, Aang maintained an even tone, bearing his most diplomatic Avatar smile. He kept both hands rested on his knees, but he made no move. Yet. "You know, I can be quite a dangerous man to provoke."
“Me, provoke the Avatar?” Azula angled her head, coquettishly batting her most doe-eyed look with a pout. "Perhaps you haven't heard, but I can be an equally dangerous woman if left to my own cunning.”
Like any accomplished disciple of jing, Aang weighed his next actions. She was just within an arm’s grasp. His fingers twitched for the merest fraction, and Azula's hawklike eyes narrowed.
“Hmm.” Aang hummed, maintaining his serene composure. His eyes drifted, lingered over the rather appealing pout of her bottom lip, and trailed downward along the sinuous dip where the neckline of her tunic parted from leaning toward him.
“Meditation helps clear the mind,” Aang continued, as if gently lecturing a disciple. He flicked his gaze back to face her. “When the mind is stilled, it unveils the clear-seeing.”
“Perhaps you weren't mentally vigilant enough to ward distraction, then.” Azula arched her brow, her fingers trailing across the oblique hem of his robe across his chest in a lackadaisical flutter. “What could possibly trouble the all-benevolent Avatar?”
“A chittering ocelot-mink in my ear.” Aang smiled, drumming his fingers on his knee. “One soon to be apprehended.”
Perhaps it was the gleam in her eye, or the sly curve of her grin. Like a snare, something in Aang’s chest coiled and snapped.
Air spiraled beneath his feet -- he propelled himself forward and dove towards her.
He was fast; but she was faster. Azula glided and slid three paces back, keeping her hands neatly tucked behind her.
"What's the matter, Avatar?" Azula cast a disparaging glance at her surroundings. “This dilapidated air temple seems to suit you after all.”
Aang feinted left and propelled himself forward with a whoosh; but yet again Azula twisted away, pivoting on spin of her heel and yet again, retreating three paces back with an exacting finesse. She kept her gaze trained on him, her own lip curling upwards in a taunt as if to challenge him: what are you going to do next?
A sly grin tugged around the corners of his lip. Well, this was familiar. "Stop running away, Azula."
"Hm, are you sure I'm the one running away here?" Azula theatrically pulled a bored expression. “Tell me, Avatar -- do you ever get tired of running? Or do you just like chasing whatever whimsy strikes your fancy?”
“I’m not running from anything. Because maybe… you’re just like me,” Aang sidestepped and darted his eyes around. “You pretend like nothing bothers you. Because you’d rather be anywhere than facing the very person you're avoiding.”
Her golden eyes flared, and her expression tightened. “Hit a nerve, did I now?” The levity of her tone was gone. “Face it, you're running away from the fact that your friends have moved on without you. You’d rather chase other people’s troubles than deal with your own.”
Were they mirroring each other? Aang could barely tell if she was matching his movements, or the other way around. Air curled between them, his chase whipping dust throughout the temple. Azula’s steps were light as if skipping on clouds -- weaving between whorls of air, slipping easily around pillars and statues.
“I’m the Avatar.” Aang's gaze followed the long tapestry, whose colorful intricate threads depicted an abbot seated in reverence upon a radiantly colored lotus throne, right hand pressed to the earth in bhumisparsa mudra. Smaller figures bordered by gilded medallions framed the composition -- pandits, protectors, directional guardians, or perhaps previous incarnations -- but a deep scorch mark marred the cloth across the central figure. “It’s my job to chase other people’s troubles to bring balance around the world. ”
“And Children of the Fire Nation were lulled to sleep by promises to share our benevolence to the rest of the world, and that it was our duty to make the world see it.” Azula’s voice dripped with mockery from behind the cloth. “But do keep telling yourself that, will you? Well, I suppose whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Aang narrowed his focus to where her voice was. He cast another arc of wind that flanked both sides, and Azula gracefully leapt, arching her spine backward and dodging with a backward flip, and landed on her toes.
Her taunting laugh echoed across the hollowed antechamber of the sanctuary. Tap. Tap. Two pairs of footsteps inter-weaved between the pillars and ground, between pursuer and prey. The chase spilled into the courtyard, where arched stone pillars framed the central fountain -- a space once used for meditation and reflection.
He faced her, counterposed on the opposite sides of the fountain, gazes locked on each other to see what the next move would be. Would she feint left, or right?
"How long do you want to keep this up, Azula?" Aang leaned over, resting his palm against the fountain’s edge, allowing a suggestive grin to slip through. His tone dropped to a husk as he continued, "Because we both know how this usually ends."
"Oh, what a pity. I was hoping for a little effort," Azula hummed. Her fingers traced across the contours of the fountain’s stone surface, and contemplatively examined the crumbs of dusting on her fingers. "Surely a princess like myself deserves to be pursued. Or maybe…” Azula cut a glance towards him. “Because I’m willing to do what everybody else seems scared to do. Unlike someone."
“I’ve never run away from what needed to be done,” Aang retorted, his gut hardening into stone. “Not since that day.”
“And yet here we are. At a stalemate, so it appears.” Azula straightened up and squared her gaze at him. Rivulets from the water’s reflection glimmered across her countenance as she leaned forward. “So, what's it going to be? Are we just going to keep playing footsy around each other?"
“Everybody expects something from me.” The voice that answered was worn, tired. Aang gazed into the water, its shallow basin offering nothing but his own reflection.
He was the Avatar. The last airbender. It was a self-terminating mantra by this point -- beholden with the expectations, the responsibility of the world, his duty toward the people.
But, he was also Aang.
“Enough.” With a decisive force, Aang struck the earth with the heel of his foot. Slabs of rock jutted from the ground in a cascading succession, arc after arc. Azula’s eyes widened as it encroached closer, and hastily dodged, just barely managing to rebalance as she leapt from each formed surface.
He stole through the gap between them, siphoning a stream of water from the fountain to form a whip. With a snap of his wrist, the torrent uncoiled and lashed forward in a bright ribbon. Azula dodged with another leap, tumbling in the air with a mid air twist to avoid the strike. Loose strands of hair around her braid fell, but her gaze still steadied on him as she regained her footing.
“Well?” Azula huffed a strand of hair out of her face, and she narrowed her calculating eyes at him. “I’m waiting.”
Aang’s answer came in a surge of heat. He thrust a curled palm forward -- a plomb of fire ignited from his hand; briefly, the yellow flame illuminated Azula’s features and her smirk faltered for a heartbeat. Her arms swirled to diffuse the initial blast but he pressed in, stepping in the offensive, pushing her backward with another blast, and Azula’s footing began to falter, step by step.
Flames guttered between their fingers -- one last, explosive pulse -- and Aang’s palm slammed into hers. A sharp gasp escaped from Azula as her footing gave beneath her. The fire flared, then extinguished, and he toppled on top of her, his hands closing around her wrists and pinning her to the ground.
“I've won this round. You’ve been caught now,” Aang declared in triumph as he straddled her, steadying his breath as he loomed over her. He locked his eyes on her. “Nowhere to run. Give it up, Azula.”
Azula grinned, unbothered. Mischief twisted her lips and she deliberately shifted beneath him, rolling her hips against his. “Oh no, you’ve captured me,” she intoned. “Whatever will you do, Avatar? Surely you will do the honorable thing and demonstrate a merciful act of benevolence.”
Irritation flared in his gut upon seeing her self-satisfied sneer. He had won, had the upper hand, had her trapped underneath him, but why did it feel like he had played right into her?
“Who said I wasn’t below doing the honorable thing?” Aang leaned in, his breath ghosting against her lips. The fringe of his lashes nearly brushed against hers. “I don’t always have to do what’s expected of me.”
“Is that so?” She purred, and with another shift of her hips the heat almost seemed to singe through the tenuous fabric between them. “The noble, righteous Avatar. Always following his duty. Everyone knows exactly what you’ll do. That’s the problem with being good, you see.”
“Maybe if you keep talking, you’ll find out what happens when I don’t.” Aang gazed upon her, his eyes tracing yet again the smooth column of her exposed neck.
“Show me, then.” Her eyes flashed. “Show me what happens when the Avatar doesn’t behave.”
Here she was, her gauntlet thrown for him to take. To take something for himself. Not for balance nor duty's namesake -- but just because he wanted it. Pure Taṇhā.
So he chose.
Aang began his descent, his mouth leaving a hot, wet trail down the column of her throat. He nipped at the tender spot where her pulse fluttered between his lips, then soothed it with his tongue, returning her gesture in kind. A sharp gasp stuttered from Azula as she reflexively curled her wrists against his grip, her hips grinding up against his, seeking the friction, the hard length of him straining against his robe and pressing into the cradle of her thighs.
“Is that it?” Azula laughed, fighting the strain in her voice. “That is really a shame. Too bad, I guess you have nothing, nobody. Everyone you’ve ever known has settled down and moved on. Toph’s building her school. Sokka's settled in with Suki. And Zuzu's far up his nose with official Firelord Business.”
I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. Aang silenced her with a bruising kiss, swallowing her gloating laugh and claiming the air from her breath. She stiffened against him; she was not going to allow herself to be conquered so easily. Her lips nipped right back in warning, with enough edge of her teeth.
He didn't break the kiss as his hands left her wrists, dragging down her arms with enough force to leave heat in their wake. He grabbed the fabric at her waist and wrenched it upward, bunching the tunic above her hips. His fingers tore at the drawstring with a graceless frustration until the ties finally loosened. Azula's hands weren't gentle either, her nails scoring down his chest to claw at the fastenings of his lower robes, jerking them loose. His cock sprang free; thick, heavy, and achingly hard.
Stripped raw before her, Aang hovered over her, notching the tip of his length at her slick wetness. He paused, and looked into her eyes, expecting that mocking, taunting glare, but finding her gaze holding a surprisingly soft expression. Azula reached her hand out, tentatively outstretching her fingers over the side of his face. Her thumb swept over his cheek. And in that moment, all Aang wanted to do was allow himself to fall, to fall off the precipice into her devastatingly tender, gentle touch, even if illusory.
“And Katara,” she whispered, her voice soothing like pond stones as she leaned upwards. The intimate whisper of her hot breath licked his ear, coiling before striking its bite. “Left you because you were too committed to being a man for the world, but you couldn’t commit to being a man for her.”
An anguished sob swelled in his chest, extinguished by the snarl that clawed free from his throat, uncoiling from within; and he breached her in one savage, unyielding thrust, choking himself to the hilt in her heat.
Azula’s hip lurched, a choked mewl escaping her lips that twisted into a laugh. Her nails everywhere; clawing his neck, digging into his shoulder, and encroaching on his mottled scar onto his back. The pain lanced through him, rippling outward like cracks splintering on ice that made his vision haze. He seized, still sheathed fully inside her, every muscle locked rigid. He glowered over her, jaw clenched tight.
“Does it hurt?” she cooed. Her grin widened, and her nails sunk in like barbed hooks. “Good. Embrace it. Remember it well.”
Blood thundered between Aang’s ears as he snapped his hips into hers with renewed vengeance in a brutal, punishing rhythm. Whether he was in pursuit of or escaping from, he did not know. Fueled purely by the primal urge where nothing else mattered but to keep chasing that frisson; like he could exorcise his frustration, his loneliness, his rage of her perceptive cruelty; like he could fuck the ghosts out of his head and the taunts out of her mouth. Everything narrowed to her hold around him, a clarity that could be divined from the singularity of chasing that mounting sensation in its purest form, pulse after pulse, stroke after stroke.
A groan retched from his gut; he was sick, so sick of the world, so sick of himself, so sick of it all. Edged by her stilted moans ricocheting into his ear each time as he sunk into her, he picked up the pace; his thrusts becoming relentlessly shorter, harder, deeper, carving himself deeper inside her. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back, plunging him deeper with every thrust.
He couldn’t take it anymore. His hands slammed on the ground, faultlines spidering out between his fingers into craters, overturning the foundations of the earth underneath his palm. His vision blanked at the edges at the last thrust; and then there was only the infinitesimal, starry void shuttering just beyond the cusp of perception within his mind’s eye. His physical body revolted in spasms of descending cessation, releasing everything he held, giving way a weightlessness all but fleeting.
Aang collapsed forward, his forehead falling into the curve of Azula’s shoulder as his shudders calmed down. An unusually tender touch traveled to the back of his shaved head, gently tracing its spine and cradling him. Finally, he allowed himself to close his eyes as he rested against her, allowing himself to be lulled by the subsiding heaving of her chest and touch.
Then, the cool air hit his bare shoulders, striking the dew of sweat beading on his back, bringing him back to reality.
With languorous effort, Aang propped himself back up, as his gaze gradually refocused upon her. Matted black tendrils of hair clung to her face, and the rest of her hair splayed in a canvas of ashen charcoal. Her skin was flushed, and her lips parted.
A slow, aching groan escaped as he rolled over on his back, bare skin soothed by cool earth. His eyes traced the swirled mandalas engraved into the arched ceiling above him, and after a while he felt Azula's breathing beside him grow quieter, slower, until it fell into the same rhythm as his own.
Lifting his arm, Aang shied his eyes and rubbed the back of his forearm across his tattooed forehead, feeling the last of their heat dissipate into the cool air. The full gamut of what he'd suppressed for so long -- unfettered raw anger, grief, need -- had finally broken through and given itself back to the air, too,like all things eventually returning to what first breathed them into being.
Then, the weight of what he had just done sunk in.
"I cannot believe you made me lose my temper like that.” Aang bemoaned, dragging his hands down his face. “This was a sacred meditation site dedicated for acolytes to clarify and purify the mind. It was over a thousand years old.”
He bleated a hollow laugh despite himself. “...And I just completely desecrated it. Real spiritual role model, aren’t I?"
Azula’s voice drifted in, dry and flat. “If it makes you feel better, at least you defiled something that no one left alive still cares about.”
Aang shot her a look. “That’s not -- You don’t understand. Azula, this was my home. If I don’t protect it, I -- ,” He began, espousing the familiar flurry of words instinctively like a sparrowkeet. “The teachings, our culture, the way we lived -- ” He swallowed, his tone quickly sobering up. “...And it’s all on me now.”
“Of course I don't understand. I was born a monster by my own mother. A traitor to my own nation. The denounced number one public enemy to humanity. Really, I’ve stopped counting,” Azula shrugged nonchalantly. “Once you've fucked up beyond the bend, you’ll realize sooner that there’s no such thing as good or what's right in somebody else’s eyes.”
“This isn’t about what’s wrong or right. If I don’t carry it forward -- then it’s gone. If I let their traditions disappear too…” His voice wobbled. “It would be like they never existed at all.”
“You’re trying to live for people who aren’t even here,” she cut in. “Who will never come back.” Azula shifted to her side and fixed her gaze on him. “Tell me something, then. Has being the most obsequious disciple ever suited you, Aang? Considering upon your visit to the Fire Nation, you blew a gust of wind to ruffle Zuzu’s perfectly coiffured hair during his peacekeeping address to the Nations.”
“That was pretty funny.” Aang chortled at the memory. More memories resurfaced, things he hadn’t thought about in a long time. The elder monk pausing mid-chant to cast a stern reprimanding glare during recitation, for constantly letting his mind wander of the world’s stirrings around him. The timbre of Gyatso’s voice, patient yet amused, gently telling him that clear-seeing did not arrive faster simply because one willed it so. He’d never been very good at stillness. Not even then. “And no, I suppose not.”
Azula’s golden eyes blazed into his. “Once everything's been scorched to the ground, the only thing left is what you choose to keep burning. Your own flame. Your own desires. That’s what keeps going.”
“I guess… I never thought of it that way.” Aang scratched the side of his head. “Why couldn't you have said this upfront?’
“And would you have listened?”
“No, I probably wouldn’t have.” Aang chuckled ruefully. He beamed his gratitude towards her with a smile. “Wow, thanks Azula.”
“You were surrounded by cowards too afraid to say anything. You deserved that respect, at least.” Azula paused, as if calculatingly choosing which cards to divest. "Because I know what it's like to be looked at like you're made of glass. Like you might snap at the smallest hint, completely undo all the progress you've made, even if it's been almost a decade.” She cast her gaze offhandedly. “Maybe some ghosts never stop following us, no matter how long it’s been.”
A pull resounded within the cavity of his chest, and Aang opened his mouth to speak, but Azula quickly diverted her eyes and a disparaging scoff. “Not that I have any attachment to any of this, or to you for that matter.”
Aang looked towards the open space where Azula was staring at, his mind wandering idly again.
The Master observes the world but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.
Destiny really was a funny thing, Aang mused. It was one thing to hold onto the belief that as long as he always kept an open mind and open heart, a kindred connection could be bridged in the most unlikely of places and from the most unlikely of faces. But who would have thought, out of all the souls he would connect with, would be the one whom he had encountered at crossroads before, albeit under far different circumstances then and now.
"I guess we both ended up being disappointments to our nation, then.” Aang clasped his hands together, searching again within the iterative patterns again engraved in the ceiling as he mused to himself, idly repeating Azula’s words. “Desires, huh… what do I want?”
Truth be told, the patterns in the ceiling only repeated themselves back to him. Perhaps by design, circle within circle, each ring returning to its own beginning, the same perennial question turning on itself endlessly.
Rolling over on his side, Aang turned instead to Azula, and watched the smooth cascade of her hair tumbling down her bare back. Now sitting upright, Azula twined her hair with her fingers, smoothing out the knots before threading her hair into a loose braid. With a small smile, he stared appreciatively at the bud of her particularly pert nipple on her bare breast, partially concealed by cloth loosely slipping around her shoulders.
“Azula, what do you want?” Aang said suddenly, his voice low. “Would you ever…”
Aang stiffened, this throat stuck on the words he wanted to say but couldn't. Because if he did, it was the kind of admission that he could not take back.
Azula’s eyes widened, but she quickly recovered and as she shrugged the fabric over her shoulder nonchalantly. “I'm not stupid. I don't expend such futile energy to ponder such fanciful notions." She shot a knowing smirk at him. "...Since the Avatar is right at my heels to apprehend me if I step out of line.”
“Aww shucks, and here I thought we had a nice thing going on here between us -- giving chase and being chased.” Aang propped himself up with his elbows on his side, his palm resting against the side of his head. He flashed her his most impish grin, his most charming that was widely known to win over the most jaded of hearts. Azula debuffed him with a huff and a roll of her eyes.
“Oh, I thought of something.” Aang tapped his chin thoughtfully, miming a motion in the air as if pretending to stroke his (largely aspirational and very much imaginary) sagely beard of wisdom. His voice trilled higher as he pitched, “How about, 'Together, we shall be the greatest couple of all time. We will dominate the earth?'”
A flush briefly swept Azula’s face, but her eyes flared as she skewered him with her nastiest glare, tantamount to transgressing upon a deep and personal betrayal. "You’ve been fraternizing with the likes of Ty Lee, I see.”
“Let's just say I like to keep my friends close, and my enemies even closer.” Aang weaved his arm around her and drew her flush against him. “After all, the key to peace is to make love, not war.”
“Only you would be such a fool to recite such lofty ideals, let alone actually live by them,” Azula reflected back his playful grin. She slid her foot against his leg, sliding upwards like silk, and hooked her leg around him, ensnaring their hips together. “But I suppose there is also the saying, lightning never strikes the same fool twice.”
“Once perchance perhaps, but if it happens twice -- isn’t that what we call destiny?” Aang’s thumb traced a strand of hair across the side of her face before tilting her chin towards him. "For you, and only for you, my dear princess -- I'll build you a whole empire."
Azula scoffed yet again, but when she set her gaze on him, it lacked its usual, lethal heat. Her expression commanded the one that always challenged him -- whether enemy or ally -- if he was finally ready to stand again, like a rising phoenix reborn from the ashes, to face whatever adversary before him.
The corner of her lip curved upwards, but by the merest slight. “And where would you start?”
Aang hummed at first, feigning thought. He leaned in, chuckling against her lips. “How about right here? The Southern Air Temple.”