Archive of Our Own ^beta

Death is a white country, the blaze of snow, mountains of ice. Trapped between the living and the dead, Aang sees those icy peaks glitter on the horizon, their light cold and clean, promising a strange reprieve. A voice says, come here. Lie down. But each time he drifts closer, the ocean draws him back. The ocean that’s warm and full and tender, keeping him close to living, green shores. Underneath the waves, he recognizes fear, worry and a gnawing desperation. He recognizes Katara, willing him back to life.

Aang wants to live. He wants to see the light in Katara’s eyes, bruise from an earthbending lesson with Toph, laugh with Sokka, feed Appa and Momo from his hand. He wants to see the sky again, the real sky, the one that called him to soar, where he felt closest to Gyatso and the others. He wants to live. But the white ice shines in the corner of his eye. He could sleep there, like he slept in the glacier. He is so tired of fighting, of trying to stay afloat.

When the ocean is resting, no longer pulling him back to the waking world, Aang drifts. He follows the white light and sets foot on the icy shore. Cold races up his body like eels, but it’s a welcome sensation. His skin shimmers in the starless dark and he walks further and deeper.

He’s not alone.

A figure flickers in and out of sight. A young girl not much older than himself, barefoot in mourning white, her hair black against the snow. She is very beautiful, but something tugs at the back of his mind, some ugly reminder. Her feet and lips are blue. They shine in the eerie light and make her look ethereal. She tilts her head like an animal, though her gaze is not unfriendly. Who are you?

I am Aang. I am the Avatar. I am not-yet-dead. I am the last of my people. But what he tells her is this: I’m no one.

The girl smiles wide and white, nearly blinding. Me too, she sings, over and over again. Me too, me too, me too.

They play together.

She’s fast, faster than an airbender. But then again, according to her, she’s been here a long time. Longer than she can recall. 

They rush and roll down the snowy peaks, across the ice that doesn’t hurt them. They skim across a frozen lake so bright it’s like touching a mirror. They’re never tired, never thirsty, never in pain. Death is a white country and it’s beautiful. They make it so together.

The ocean calls for him. Even his companion hears it, lying beside him at the foot of a mountain they’d raced down. What is that? 

Aang listens to the chorus in the distance, calling to him, calling him back. Katara, his friends, the whole world, pouring out their grief like music. His heart hardens. What did they know about him? What did they care for him except as a solution to their problems? Problems he had tried and failed to solve? He turns to his strange friend, her pretty face and black hair. Each day, the odd slant to her appearance grows dim. Each day she grows more beautiful, more familiar.

They’re ghosts, he replies, holding out his hand to her. Nothing to do with us.

You lied, she says. You’re not like me.

Her voice is hard, her gaze piercing. Suddenly, she’s all sharp angles and pointed nails. Even her teeth seem to elongate. You’re not like me , she growls. You don’t belong here .

I am like you, he pleads. I’m dead. I’m dead like you. We’re here together.

Some one’s a liar , she sings, liar, liar, liar, and her voice is silvery, tinkling like glass bangles. 

He knows that voice, its cadence and venom, its purr and whisper, its terrible music.

Aang says her name just once. Azula. 

She flies at him and the world turns black.

He’s running, faster than he’s ever run, feet slipping and falling through black ice. The pristine landscape is suddenly hostile. He runs and returns to the same place, over and over. The mountains loom behind, before, around him. He’s lost, and his pursuer will soon catch up, she’s never too far behind. She knows this place like the back of her hand.

How is she here? Why is she here? Aang remembers her lightning like a fish-hook in his back. He remembers drowning in the pit of her eye. She killed him and he’s dead, so why pursue him here? What more could she do? What more could she want?

Aang runs until he can run no longer, not because he’s tired but because his will is extinguished. Hope is a distraction , as the monks used to say. Without hope, he is suddenly, resoundingly calm. Empty. Serene as the snow around him which turns in an instant back to white as Azula emerges between dazzling glaciers. Spots of blue color her cheeks.

There you are.

Here I am.

Her head tilts again, that inhuman attention. Well?

What now?

She frowns like he’s said something remarkably stupid. Follow me.

She’s leading him through the mountains, across the lake and past the glaciers, back to the shore he arrived at, back to the ocean. Azula, or whatever spirit wears her face, knows this empty, white landscape. She lives here. Death is a white country and it glitters and dazzles in the light of a sun he can’t see. He watches her slender figure climb and step and clamber over the ice, blue-footed, graceful like a snake or a salamander is graceful, knowing the topography by instinct. She’s lived here a long, long time. Grown up in the ice and snow and emptiness. A terrible, blinding clarity washes over him.

There, she says, pointing at the black shoreline. Go. Swim back to where you came from.

He knows the question is futile but he asks anyway. What about you?

I live here, she says, peering at him as though he’s daft again. 

She sent you here, didn’t she? The Azula in the living world. She killed you too.

She gives him a hard look, but her blue lips waver.

Aang smiles. I told you we’re alike.

I was getting in her way, Azula says. I was dangerous.

You saved me, he returns and marvels at the truth. He had to come here, to walk this frozen place, to taste death fully, so he wouldn’t go back with one eye always looking at the white mountains. He had to come here, so he could return whole. 

They’re calling for you, she says, turning so her black hair whips in a sudden, cold wind. Go. 

I’ll come back for you.

You can’t, she says. No one can.

I’m the Avatar. His voice grows stronger as he says it. I’m the Avatar, and one day, I’ll come back for you.

You’ll forget me. As soon as you wake up.

The wound in his back stings and aches. All this time he’s felt nothing, now it throbs with livid life. No I won’t.

She turns slowly, and like a veil lifting he sees her anew. Her lips and cheeks pink with youth, her eyes pools of amber, her face bright. Don’t be so easy with your promises, Avatar, she warns, smile full of sharp mischief, and there’s a tug in his chest, because he’s looking at Azula, the real Azula, whole and free and radiant, the way she was always meant to be.

An icy dagger sinks in the middle of his spine. Like a fish-hook he’s yanked away, back out to sea. The waves engulf him and he looks back at the ice mountains one last time. Aang sees the shadow of a girl with black hair standing on a snowy peak, watching him swim away. Then, like a candle snuffing out, she and the white country are gone. Warm waters lift him gently up and out.

He wakes up in the red belly of a ship, mind empty and reeling. Aang has no recollection of where he is, or how he got here. Amid rising panic he grows aware of a strange, cold tingle in his toes and fingertips, like they’ve sifted through snow.