Legend: The Last Airbender (Part I)

“I’ll carry you,” he tells her simply, and he reaches for her.

The Elder’s great grandson is almost sixteen when he first hears the whispers of the betrayal suffered by the Last Airbender. He has heard the stories for as long as he can remember; knows them all, word for word, by the time he’s ten – but he is never able to forget the sad, faraway look in his father’s eyes, or the shame that blooms in his heart in the instant he is made aware of the secret they keep. The Others, liars, usurpers, destroyers, don’t know – cant’ know: it’s a secret, deep and dark like the old places of the earth – and honor – love, friendship, peace, and pride – demands it stays that way.

Not even his siblings, his cousins, his aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews, are allowed a glimpse. He is the first son of the first son. He will keep the truth of the Betrayal, and his broken heart will be the broken heart of the Last Airbender; the broken heart of the waterbender, the warrior, and the prince.

It happens in the fifth month of his twenty-second year, while spring is blossoming into summer. The fire is stifling in the warm evening air, and the smells of burning rosemary and hawthorn, eyebright and ginseng, pervade the smoky atmosphere of the hut. The tea is bitter on his tongue as it passes his lips, but the bed is cool and soft and his eyelids are fluttering even as he’s being laid down by his father and grandfather, the Elder keeping watch with that same sad, familiar, faraway look.

When he awakens, long hours later, the sun is rising, and things are not as he remembers even though they are exactly as they’re supposed to be. A woman is sleeping beside him. She is young, and beautiful, and the mother of the children he knows are sleeping in the next room. She is his wife, and even as his heart begins to burst with love for her and the family they have together, something is weighing it down. Suddenly, the sun is not quite so bright.

And he knows it’s because she is missing. She’s been missing for three days, with not a scrap of cloth, a drop of blood, or a surviving soldier to tell her whereabouts. Everyone was already dead by the time he’d arrived, but none of the bodies had been hers, and that thought chills as much as it comforts.

His brother-in-law has been restless ever since, and the soldiers won’t stop muttering to eachother: It’s hopeless…

It is hopeless, but it’s been a long time since he’s had any use for hope. Faith works just as well. On the fifth day, he kisses his wife goodbye – hugs his little girl, holds his infant son one last time – and he goes out searching himself.

He goes alone, despite everyone’s protests: he’s faster that way, and time is critical. She needs him, and he has never failed her before, but for all his speed he can feel her death keeping pace with him. He has to reach her before it does, because they’re too much like the Fire Nation, these Others. They’re too much like his drowned, distant memories of the Princess who once terrorized his dreams - cruel, callous, uncaring, unremorseful – and he knows that if he doesn’t find her first, her end will not be quick.

He has to fight to get to her, and it’s not as easy as it used to be. They are too willing to die and he is too hesitant to kill. When he finally finds her, past stone and steel and the wooden door that couldn’t hold a grown man but is so terribly perfect for holding her, he’s exhausted, and his fears are confirmed. She’s broken.

Even his untrained eye can see that she’ll never walk again. The mangled remains of her feet will never heal properly, not even with his wife’s care, and one of her arms hangs limp. She’s cradling it to her chest as she moves, struggling to turn her unseeing eyes toward the first living soul who’s entered her prison in two days, moving not with anger or fear or any of her usual defiance, but with only a vague, listless curiosity. She hasn’t even noticed the sounds outside.

“Toph,” he chokes, his voice thick with tears to see her looking so small. He wonders if the woman who moved mountains is still alive somewhere in this little wooden room, because he doesn’t see her in the broken remains of the girl curled up on the floor. He can’t find his old friend, or his teacher, or the girl he’s loved like a sister for as long as he’s known her. He calls her name again, over and over, searching, praying she’ll answer, but she keeps her silence until he lays a hand on her curiously unmarred face.

Recognition, strength, will, hope. All these things spread through her limbs like wildfire, branching out from the place where his fingertips rest against her temple, but the hope dies just as it’s flaring into life.

“No,” she groans, her voice anxious and raw, almost nonexistent. “No, Aang, what are you doing here?!”

He’s smiling through his tears when he says, “I’m here for you. I’m taking you home.”

“No,” she says again, her voice gaining volume, and some semblance of its command. “I can’t walk. You have to leave – now! You have to go-“

“I’ll carry you,” he tells her simply, and he reaches for her.

She’s light in his arms, but she fights him, demanding – begging – him to leave her, to get away, she’s expendable, he has a family, what about Katara, his children, they need him, the world needs him-

And then she freezes, quiets, and the sound of his blood pounding in his ears is deafening. The air around them is thickening, its particles charging with some unseen energy that smells and tastes like lightning even though he knows it’s anything but. There’s something – someone; it’s so hard to tell with Them – behind him. It’s laughing.

Turning her crying face into his chest, Toph mumbles, “I’m sorry.”

The air is heavy, hard, choking, and when the dark closes in, the Elder’s great grandson wakes up.

AN: Convoluted? You bet. Confusing? Of course. Answers? Next chapter.

So... who thought I'd never update this again?