A/N: Finally, this is finished. Don't know how many people are still reading it, but here is the end. This 25 years after the main storyline, and seven years after the previous chapter. Enjoy. Now I will revel in my second-ever completed multi-chaptered fic.

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Set Eighteen: Epilogue

Part Three: Twenty-Five Years Later

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On this winter day in Year Twelve of Fire Lord Zuko’s reign, a quarter century after the end of the Hundred Years War, I, Avatar Yin, Master Waterbender and Airbender, chronicle the loss of the great spiritualist, theorist, and caretaker woman Maija, daughter of Qing and Sona, of the Earth Kingdom. She died of a severe case of pentapox contracted while visiting in the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu (also known as New Ozai) and passed away at two hours after the sun’s rise on one day past at the age of fifty-five. The Fire Lord, his highness Lord Zuko (who insists that I call him anything but a long stream of titles), deemed that I was the most appropriate person to put down Maija’s death in the records. Unbeknownst to me, he meant for me to write not only an obituary, not merely report on the facts of her passing, but also a memoir of my life and in the remembrance of her life. I am not the most skilled scribe by a long shot; my characters are those ones I learned in the South where I oft stayed to train with my Sifu, Kotahi, son of Chief Sokka. Sifu Kotahi is my junior by only a few months (his mother Ty Lee kept his birth a secret until long after Chief Sokka married the Kyoshian Suki) but he is a prodigy who seems to learn faster than even I, the Avatar. Sifu Kotahi is brilliant, and he is a steadfast friend. I hope to travel to the South sometime soon to see him once again.

I am not quite sure where I should begin in my discussion of Maija’s life. I do not know much of her childhood. I never met her parents, and I never found out their names until recently. Maija’s mother Sona was an Earthbender and her father Qing, a warrior. Both died in the last years of the Hundred Years War. My brother Avatar Jin once wrote that he suspected their deaths fueled Maija’s need to find us. My brother could not speak, as he was mute, and most of the time he was very angry; but he wrote things on occasion, when he felt the need, in a small journal of his that Maija had originally gifted him. He also wrote about how she always witnessed his training as a child and how she aided our parents, when they were still alive. I do not remember most of these things that he remembered. I have little memory from when I myself was a child.

My memory is very thin during the first seven years of my life, but I can recall my parents’ faces. It is Maija who I most remember most though, as mother, parent, guardian, caretaker, teacher, and confidant. Maija lived long after the death of my parents; she fought hard for Jin and I. She cried alongside me when we mourned Jin’s young and tragic death. She aided me in any way possible when I had to take care of the world, for that is my duty—I am the Avatar, possibly the last, and I must keep this world from tearing apart at its seems.

Fire Lord Zuko seems to think that there will be another Avatar reborn, perhaps to those living in the Northern Air Temple, or perhaps in the Fire Nation. It is a cycle, he tells me. It is a cycle that cannot end. Maija’s life work was not for nothing. She lived to find you.

Maija lived to find me. She held me in the highest regard and loved me as no one else did. I was not declared the Avatar until later in my life, when I was eleven or so. After being pronounced half-Avatar, people didn’t dare ignore me. Maija was the only one who loved me besides my parents before I became the Avatar, before I ascended to my lofty position.

Now look at me. I am not so crazy anymore. I am not so insane. I am not so unimportant.

I am nothing without Maija.

Fighting for this world is harsh, but I must.

Forgive me, Lord Zuko, for stepping outside the bounds of formality. I will rewrite this memoir later, I suppose. Or the scribes will censor it for me and clear out all the unnecessary commentary. But, Lord Zuko, I have taken your request of familiarity into account.

My heart will never be absent from anything I write about Maija.

Maija was such an astonishing paradox, a walking contradiction. She was a cynic, and she was a hopeless romantic. She was full of hope and drive, but she was so skeptical and distrusted herself and her beliefs.

Sometimes I think she was more contradictory than Jin himself, who was “bipolar,” as the scientists call it.

Maija’s inherent realism and her capacity to hope is what made her such a great person, I think. She was perhaps the perfect mentor for someone like Jin or me.

Maija helped relieve my insanity. Yin, you have half a spirit, she said, but a full heart.

I will never forget her words. She brought my calmness, my sanity. She brought me my life.

Your life is like silver, and Jin’s like gold, Maija used to say. Indeed, Yin does mean silver and Jin does mean gold. I wonder if our parents knew, or if the naming was just instinctive.

The spirits work in strange ways, I suppose. I have met a few spirits myself, and some are beautiful, some are ugly, some are intelligent, and some are lacking in intelligence. But all spirits are equally strange. All spirits are mystical and ambiguous. Like Maija, now that I think of it.

I wonder if Maija was a spirit, or if she is a powerful spirit now.

Wherever and whatever she is, she lives on in the spirit world. Perhaps I will see her again on one of the Solstices.

Maija, if you can feel me, know that you are well loved and dearly missed.

Lord Zuko, thank you once again for allowing me to write this memoir. I am deeply honored to write in memory of Maija.

Peace to All,
Avatar Yin
Winter of Year Twelve of Fire Lord Zuko’s Reign