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Cartoons ( Avatar: Last Airbender

Distorted Reality ! Follow/Fav

By: Ogro $
Three years after losing the war, a bitter and cynical Aang is told by the Avatar spirits that he has to
relive his adventures - this time, with Zuko and Azula at his side in a war against the Water Tribes. [AU
from The Day of Black Sun; working on editing earlier chapters] [Cover art by Axxonu from the
Distorted Reality webcomic, used with permission]
Rated: Fiction T - English - Drama/Adventure - Aang, Sokka, Zuko, Azula - Chapters: 58 - Words: 519,504 -
Reviews: 2,182 - Favs: 2,544 - Follows: 2,200 - Updated: Jun 21 - Published: Dec 18, 2007 - id: 3952155

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1. Prologue Next >

Author's Notes: I have

completely rewritten the prologue (for the first time since I
wrote it almost 15 years ago!) but there are no official plans to
rewrite any other parts of the story. At least, not quite yet.
Honestly, in all these years I've barely been writing so I can't
even say the quality would have even improved all that much.
And for the first time in ten years I'm continuing the story!

At any rate... let's begin!

Prologue

It had been three years since Aang last journeyed to the Spirit World.

Three years since he spoke to any of his past lives.

Three years since the coming and going of Sozin's Comet and his failure
to defeat Fire Lord Ozai.

It wasn't that he hadn't tried to speak with Roku or Kyoshi or anyone

else. He meditated whenever he had time, whenever he had enough
safety to do so. Infrequent, constantly interrupted meditation was not
enough to get him in a deep enough trance to project his spirit to
another world or dig deep enough to unearth the wisdom of his past
lives. How could he, when his mind wandered so much? When he
thought about all of those people he had failed or abandoned or was
unable to protect?

This time, apparently, the stars must have aligned or he meditated in a

place of power where monks had attained spiritual enlightenment long
ago. He didn't think there was an equinox or solstice, but it was hard to
keep track nowadays. Or perhaps he was simply at his lowest point.

He knew he had done it this time before he even opened his eyes.

The Spirit World stretched out before him, an open field of strange,
twisting trees with orchids instead of leaves and jade instead of bark.
The sky was bright and blue - unnaturally so - without a single cloud.
Aang had never been to this part of the Spirit World, but he had only
been here once before. For the first time, he wondered how large it
could be, if it could be mapped and explored or if he and his friends
could one day escape here in safety.

He stepped forward, his boots sinking into spongey moss that wasn't
actually moss because it dispersed into fuzzy green creatures, spirits
upset at being disturbed. He examined them for only a moment before
proceeding onward, careful to step only on the softly swaying grass. He
had no time for idle curiosity. He needed to find his past lives.

"Roku! Are you here?" he called out. "I need your guidance."

"I am always here with you, Aang," said the voice of an old man,
behind him. "None of us have ever left you."

He turned around to face the wizened man in red robes. The boy
remembered him as being much taller, but Aang supposed he had
grown a lot in three years. "Then why haven't I been able to connect
with any of you? To use the Avatar State?" Not since that time so long
ago, beneath Ba Sing Se, when Azula…

"The energy within you is blocked," said Roku, hands folded in his
sleeves.

"I know," said Aang. "And I've tried to unblock it. I've tried so hard, but
I failed. I've failed and I've failed over and over again and now the
world is more out of balance than ever before and I don't know what to
do anymore." His voice shook and he stared down at his clenched
hands, hoping that Roku wouldn't see his eyes getting wet.

Roku sighed. "I understand, Aang," he said. "Truly. I trust you

remember the story I told you of my time with Fire Lord Sozin. Our
friendship and my failure to stop his dreams of conquest."

"I do remember."

They were silent for a moment. Sometimes, when he lay in his bedroll
trying in vain to sleep, he silently blamed Roku for everything that had
happened. Sometimes it was tiring to only blame himself. Then again,
he supposed, Aang and Roku were one and the same, so he only had
himself to blame to begin with.

"Perhaps you should seek the wisdom of our other lives," Roku said
finally. "Others who have not made the same mistakes as you and I.
You have spoken to Kyoshi before, have you not?"

"I have," said Aang. "Well, not directly. She did make me admit to
murder once as I was on trial for it."

The corners of Roku's mouth quirked up. "Indeed." It flashed away just
as quickly. "I am sorry, Aang, that I cannot provide more wisdom for
you and only leave you to clean up and suffer from my mistakes. Just
remember… be decisive. Learn from what I have done so the same does
not come to pass yet again."

The old man vanished, leaving Aang alone again with orchid trees and
living moss spirits. But the scene around him dissolved as if splashed
with water and he fell deep into the earth, landing within a bamboo
grove. He did not feel as disoriented by it as he would have expected to
feel.

Avatar Kyoshi emerged from the bamboo, her makeup and clothing
making Aang ache for the familiarity of a friend he had lost. "Aang," she
said. "I am sorry for nearly getting you killed that time."

Aang almost laughed. "It's okay. We got out."

"You've changed. There is hardness in your eyes now, grey like stone
instead of the sky."

He wondered if that had to do with the fact that he didn't find her so
intimidating before, so unlike him in her directness and willingness to
carry out justice. "I have changed," he affirmed. "I need help. I need
the power of the Avatar State so I can finally end this war. I need to
make up for my failures."

"You may never make up for your failures," she said. Her tone was flat,
hard enough to make it seem like she struck Aang in the chest.

"What?"

"They can take lifetimes to be fixed. Anything you do here and now can
one day affect your successors, just like my failures have. Did you know
that I was the one to establish the Dai Li? In my time, they were meant
to preserve the cultural heritage of Ba Sing Se, to root out the
corruption of the Earth King."

Aang's mouth dropped open. The Dai Li have caused him no small
amount of grief, even now. "But they're the most corrupt part of the
Earth Kingdom!"

Kyoshi closed her eyes, her face impassive. "Every action has
consequences. It is impossible to predict what the future may bring,
and foolish to attempt to do so. All I can suggest is to be swift and
decisive now, to mete out justice where it is due, and fight not to lose
yourself in it. As I nearly did, so long ago."

"I don't see how that's going to help me now…" he said, crossing his
arms.

"Go back further," she said. "Speak next with Avatar Kuruk."

She vanished. He vanished, too, before he could even say a word.

He found himself in a swamp next, his head on a stone as the rest of

his body lay in brackish water. He pulled himself up, disgusted, the
smell clinging to his hair and clothes. He wished he could bend it off
him, but bending was impossible in the Spirit World.

With a start, he found himself recognizing this swamp. This was the
only part of the Spirit World he had been to before, back when he
visited Koh the Face Stealer. He wiped his face of all emotion. That was
much easier for him now.

A form in blue and white emerged from the fog, a spear of wood and
bone in his hands and the visage of a wolf on his head. It took Aang a
moment to realize he was a man in a wolf helm like Sokka sometimes
wore and not a man-wolf spirit hybrid. "You must be Avatar Kuruk,"
Aang said.

"And you must be Aang," said the man. He wore an easygoing smile.
"Nice to finally meet you."

"Can you help me?" Aang asked. "I need your wisdom. I need a way to
access the Avatar State."

"Hate to break it to you, kid, but I was never really known for my
wisdom in life," he said, sticking the end of his spear in the mud. "I was
a 'go with the flow' kind of Avatar. I was lucky enough to live in a time
of peace where I didn't really have to do much. But my life was fraught
with failure, too. I left the affairs of the world to my much more
responsible and capable friends. But I was punished for my
complacence. Koh the Face Stealer kidnapped someone very important
to me and I've been hunting him down ever since."

"Even now?"

"Even now." He hefted his spear again, turning away from Aang. "So I
leave you with this… Fight for what's important to you. Never let it go,
but never let it get in the way of doing what you need to do, either."

"And what's that?" Aang asked, but Kuruk disappeared again into the
fog, perhaps in pursuit of his greatest enemy once again.

The fog thickened, obscuring his view so much that Aang couldn't even
see his own hand in front of his face. When it finally dispersed, he found
himself sitting atop a mountain in the lotus position beside an Air
Nomad nun, her arrows displayed prominently on her shaved forehead.
Not like Aang's own, hidden by his hair and a headband for survival.

"Avatar Aang," she said by way of greeting. Her eyes stayed shut. "I am
Yangchen."

"Yangchen…" he said. "What wisdom can you offer to me?"

"What type of world do you want to leave for your own successor?" she
asked him.

He stared ahead, deep into the fog and the rocky crags partially
obscured by it. Far away, he could see colorful creatures soaring
through the sky, like kites. They must have been spirits. "I haven't
really thought about it much," he said finally. "I just want to have a
successor, to leave them a world free of the war with the Fire Nation.
And… failing that, I want to leave things so that they're able to pick up
where I left off. To finish it in my stead."

"To finish what?" she asked.

He hesitated to answer for a moment. He looked away from the sky, as

if afraid of what his own people would hear him say. He had never
admitted this aloud to anyone before. "The Fire Nation itself," he said.
"To do to them what they did to us, Yangchen. Our people."

She didn't twist in her seat to look at him, didn't so much as open her
eyes. "I do not believe you truly think that, Aang." He was about to
open his mouth to protest, but she continued. "You were raised by
monks and taught to value all life, as I was. And I did value life, but
also recognized the necessity of death. I put the needs of the world
before my own spiritual beliefs, as any Avatar should. And the world
needs balance." At that, she finally opened her eyes and turned to face
him.

"With the way the world is now it may never achieve balance," he said.
"Everything's different now. The airbenders are gone."

"They may come back, one day," she said. She smiled. "You never
know. Have hope." She turned back to face the open sky. "Besides,
don't you have a close friend who is a firebender? Do you mean to
eradicate him, too?"

Aang bit his lip. "Of course not. Zuko's not like them." But obviously
Zuko would never let him do that. He knew it was unrealistic and
desperate and he did not have the power to make it happen, anyway. "I
know, I know, okay? It's stupid and it'll only make things worse. I
just…" He sunk down next to her again. "I just feel so helpless.
Everything is so wrong."

"This is not how things were supposed to go," she admitted. "But to go
further, we think it is time for you to see the world from another
perspective. To take what you have learned and fix things so your
successor can live in a time of peace and balance."

"Who is 'we'? And how? What do you expect me to do?"

"All of us." Roku appeared, floating in front of the great chasm before
Aang and Yangchen.

Kyoshi appeared next to him. "We've decided together. You will do it all
over."

Then he saw Kuruk. "Learn from your mistakes. And change them."

Yangchen turned toward him, placing a head on his forehead. All of his
past lives cycled in his vision, floating past him and spinning and pulling
him apart and putting him back together, hurtling through space and
the stars and seeing unrecognizable faces from every nation that he
knew better than anyone else, ending with a man with messy hair and
blinding white light. He was unknowingly ancient and young at the
same time, and his hand, like Yangchen's, was on Aang's forehead.

"Good luck, Aang."

1. Prologue Next >

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