FANFIC: The Siege of the South (3/3)

[lavanya_six]

Title: The Siege of the South
Rating: PG-13 (for minor language and violence)
Fandom: Avatar - The Last Airbender
Summary: "He'll have plenty of time to see the world. The Fire Nation doesn't know he's back yet and it'll be years before he'll be ready to defeat Fire Lord Azulon. So Aang studies and waits, and dreams of flying away again." AU.

The Fire Nation opens their invasion with a bombardment of the Great City. What comes is a hail of fire that even Aang, with his airbending genius and glider, is hard-pressed to fend off. For every attack he blocks, three more hit their mark. With a heavy heart, he concentrates on protecting the rear of the city; covering the populace as it flees into the icy wastes for the safety of the mountains. He's still protecting the last stragglers, who Sokka is loading onto Appa, when the Great Roundhouse at the city's center is struck for the final time. In a shower of ice shards and smoke, it collapses in on itself.

Aang hadn't expected watching that to hurt.

"Go," he tells Appa, rubbing the sky-bison reassuringly. "Don't come back. I'll find you, buddy."

Sokka, thinking he is talking to him, says, "R-right."

Aang takes to the skies.

The bombardment stops, its mission accomplished. The Great City has been smashed. Towards the icy shoreline, a dozen ships are unloading streams of troops. The men look like ants swarming out of an anthill.

There are too many soldiers for the city militia to fend off. The waterbenders are being captured in nets and dragged back to the ships. The non-benders... aren't.

Aang sets down at the edge of the battlefield, puts down his staff, and then bursts into an airbending-powered sprint. He moves faster than the eye can follow. His vision blurs. The world shrinks down to swords and spears knocked from hands, nets blasted away mid-throw, and freezing the feet of soldiers to hold them in place. He slips through the perimeter defenders guarding the landing platforms and impales the bow of each ship on a giant spear of ice, blocking more soldiers from easily joining the fray.

All this takes less than a minute.

Aang stops to catch his breath.

"...nnnfgh..."

The pained noise draws Aang's attention. Over a rise of snow he finds a group of Fire Nation soldiers lying face down on the ground. To his horror, several of them are missing arms. The source of the moaning is a wounded boy clad in Fire Nation armor. Aang rushes to his side.

The boy doesn't look much older than Kanna or Sokka. His helmet is missing and the cuts and pimples -- he still has pimples! -- stand out against his bloodless complexion. His right arm ends in an ice-encrusted stump jutting out from his shoulder.

Aang helps him sit up. "I'm Aang. What's your name?"

The pimple-faced teen stares and stares at Aang before remembering he has a tongue. "Y-you're an airbender! You're him! The Avatar!"

"No duh. Who are you?"

"S-Second Lieutenant Jeong Jeong, Fire Nation Navy." The other boy shakes his head, stunned. "It... they never said it was going to be like this. I never saw what my fire did to a person before."

Aang's never seen what waterbending can do to a person, either. The boy's missing arm is testament to Aang's guilt. "I can't heal you, Jeong Jeong, but I know people who can. I'm... I'm really sorry about your arm." He pauses. "Oh, and I guess you're my prisoner. Is that alright?"

"AANG!"

Aang looks up to the top of the snow mound. "Hama! Quick! I need your help!"

Hama, her disheveled, sweat-soaked black hair clinging to her forehead, just stares down at Aang likes he's grown a second head. "What are you, an idiot? Kill him or forget him! They're falling back to regroup and we need to keep pressing our counterattack! Free the waterbenders they've taken aboard their troop transports!"

Jeong Jeong trembles. "Y-you're not going to leave me here," he whispers to Aang, "are you?"

"AANG, HURRY UP!"

"Please," the young firebender says, bowing his head, "just... make it quick."

"NO!" Aang shouts. He jumps to his feet. "Hama, get down here and help me! Jeong Jeong's going to bleed to death once his arm defrosts!"

"Who?" she asks. "You mean him?!"

"He surrendered!"

Hama smirks. "Only after he was disarmed."

At his feet, Jeong Jeong barks a laugh that could pass for a sob.

"That's not funny!" Aang screams back at his friend. "And I'm not going to kill him or leave him in pain! He's a human being!"

"He's FIRE NATION. We're at war!"

"Roku was just as much Fire Nation as Sozin," Aang counters. "Their story proves anyone's capable of great good and great evil. Everyone, even the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation, has to be treated like they're worth giving a chance." At Hama's reluctance, he adds, "They're not monsters! He," Aang gestures to Jeong Jeong, "chose to stop!"

"One man, Aang. ONE." Hama swept one arm out towards the ruined city. "Look what they did! They need to PAY for what they've done!"

"I'll... stop them," he promises, "but revenge is wrong."

Hama takes a half-step back. Her shock lasts only for an instant before transmuting into righteous anger. "THEY MURDERED YOUR PEOPLE!"

He bows her head. "Revenge isn't our way, Hama."

"Your people are dead, Aang!"

Aang remembers fruit pies and airball games and children laughing as they glided through the sky. "No, they aren't. I'm alive. And as long as I'm alive, the airbenders will survive."

Hama quietly, urgently, says, "I want my people to live too."

"If the initial invasion failed," pipes up Jeong Jeong, "the plan was to level everything on the shore and then send in the next landing of troops. We've already lost too much and too many from the sound of things. You can't stop it, Avatar. My people will carry this through to the end. Just... take your allies and go. Run as far as you can inland!"

"Aang," says Hama, "I'll follow you, whatever you decide. I trust you. And we can't win this without the Avatar's help."

"Enough people have died today!" Jeong Jeong pleads. "Just GO!"

"Hama," Aang says, "we're taking him with us. We're not leaving anyone behind."

The waterbender wipes the sweat from her brow. For an instant she looks like she's going to argue with him but ultimately she says nothing. Hama darts down the mound to Jeong Jeong's side. "I'll make it quick. He just has to be able to walk without bleeding out."

"Y-you're a healer?" asks Jeong Jeong. "I thought waterbending healing was just a myth!"

"Yeah, well," mutters Hama as she lays a glowing hand on Jeong Jeong's bloody shoulder stump, "I think you'll be quite impressed by my waterbending."

"Wait," Aang says. "What did you just say?"

Hama doesn't look up from her work. "I'm making a quick and dirty job of it. He can cauterize his own damn wounds later for all I c--"

"No! After that!"

"What? I said he'll be impressed by my waterbend-- AANG, WAIT! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!"

* * * *

Fang brings him and Roku to an arctic destination. In the distance, Aang sees a city of ice far grander than even the Great City. It is, he learns, the Great City of the Northern Water Tribe. Kanna's home. The one she left by choice.

"After my years mastering airbending," Roku tells him, as they watch a memory of a young Roku dueling with his waterbending sifu, "I traveled to the Northern Water Tribe. Waterbending was especially challenging for me."

The duel ends with the most awesome display of waterbending that Aang has ever seen. Roku blasts a sharp, narrow wave of water at his opponent. The blast destroys the glacier his sifu is standing on... and it doesn't stop there. The ripple of bended water shoots across the bay and into the city, rushing uphill until it deposits Roku's instructor on the very top of the Northern Water Tribe's temple, the highest point in the city.

"But in time, I mastered it as well."

* * * *

The tide of battle is turning. With Aang's speedy assault behind enemy lines, the Southern Water Tribe's warriors are pressing a successful counterattack against a disorganized foe. The Fire Nation soldiers are falling back to the stranded ships but, with their loading prows destroyed, they have to make a stand at the shoreline.

Aang ignores them.

There are forty ships out in the middle of the harbor, all of them flying the Fire Nation's flag. Their smokestacks are pouring soot into the atmosphere, making it rain black snow. If Jeong Jeong is right, they'll soon be raining down more than just soot.

Aang stands on the edge of the ice shelf, the pounding surfing seemingly raging at the cruel mistreatment of its elemental nation.

He closes his eyes.

* * * *

"Talent is no excuse for intellectual laziness, especially from someone as talented as you, Avatar. Only once you've mastered the very basics of waterbending and you are able to perform them under any circumstance will the advanced techniques make sense."

* * * *

Aang opens his eyes.

Feet planted firmly on the ground, the Avatar draws back his arms in a smooth replica of the move he witnessed Roku perform in his... their... memory.

Aang recognizes bits and pieces of the drawback; the curling of his fingers, the angle of his bent knees, the way he's supposed to move his body. He can find them in a dozen different waterbending moves -- the water whip, the water bullet, the ice spike, and more still -- all of which he's practiced again and again and again over the past three months. Even his snowball toss game with Hama fits into how it is supposed to work.

By understanding its components and synthesis on every level, he knows how to modify Roku's move to suit his needs.

With utter confidence in his technique, Aang bends the water.

The sea explodes.

The surface of the water bursts into the air like an overstuffed sausage casing, its skin splitting apart and spilling out its innards. A sharp, narrow wave rockets across the harbor.

The lumbering Fire Nation ships have no time to dodge. The wave catches two ships along their broadsides, punching through them with animalistic ferocity. One of the ships cracks in half. The other erupts in a spectacular fireball.

Aang staggers.

"What have I done?" he whispers to himself.

You've hurt people, a part of him whispers back. Killed people.

(Jeong Jeong's frozen arm stump.)

You protected us, says a voice that sounds like Kanna.

(Kanna and Sokka, watching the battle from the safety of the mountains.)

You kept your promise to stop them, says Hama's voice.

(The Fire Nation invasion force, falling back to their ruined landing craft. The exploding ships in the bay.)

You stayed, says Monk Gyatso. You stood your ground, even as I did, in the end.

(Gyatso's skeleton, surrounded by the skeleton of Fire Nation soldiers.)

(Gyatso as he lived, smiling, throwing pies.)

Somewhere over the horizon, the Southern Air Temple sits empty save for the sound of the wind.

Behind Aang, the ruins of the Great City smolder.

"Right," he says, taking a deep breath. "Two down."

Again, Aang bends the water.

The sea explodes.

Again, Aang bends the water.

The sea explodes.

Again, Aang bends the water...

* * * *

By the time the Fire Nation ships recover from the confusion of Aang destroying them at will, thirteen total in the first minute alone, they launch a haphazard bombardment of the shore.

He's thrown the Fire Nation off their game. Their ships zig-zag in the middle of the bay, frantically trying to avoid getting hit by his waterbending strikes, and it's making it impossible for them to aim. The fireballs they rain down go wildly off-target, either landing in the empty, devastated city or splashing down short of the shoreline.

Aang keeps on bending the water.

Five minutes later it's all over. The four remaining warships chug away in frantic retreat. Aang even spots one ship flying a white flag in place of the Fire Nation's emblem. A glance down the shore confirms that the battle is over. Aang sees rows of men and women in red armor, kneeling on the ground with their hands above their heads while figures dressed in blue stand stand guard over them.

Aang falls to the ground and empties his stomach. Hama finds him that way; head between his knees, sobbing.

* * * *

All but one of the Fire Nation ships are hoisted high into the air on giant pillars of ice -- warnings to serve to any future attackers. The last remaining ship is given over to prisoners of war, more of them missing one arm than not. There's talk among the Water Tribe militia of simply killing them all. Aang puts his foot down on that idea.

"I want to thank you," a solemn Jeong Jeong tells him before boarding the prison ship back to his homeland. The scarred flesh of his ruined arm stump burns red under the midnight sun. "You've been more merciful than any of us had the right to expect after what we did here... and to the Air Nation."

"Don't," Aang says. "I'm nothing like that."

"I'm alive," Jeong Jeong replies, "because of you. And I thank you for that."

"What will you do when you get back?"

The pimple-faced teen smiles. "You mean if the Fire Lord doesn't execute us all for being utter failures?" He shakes his head. "The truth is... I don't know. Go home, I guess. Even if the military would want an amputee, I don't think I could go on doing the job."

"I'm sorry," he says.

Jeong Jeong bows. "Goodbye, Avatar."

* * * *

The ruins of the Great City are scavenged for supplies and then abandoned in place. The survivors rebuild in the mountains to the south of their former city. It's hard, cutting themselves off from direct access to the ocean waters, but the vulnerability of the Great City's location to off-shore bombardment has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.

The work of transforming a glacier-choked mountainside into a livable city is hard work, but with its waterbenders (and Aang pitching in) the Southern Water Tribe can rebuild far quicker than if they had lost the battle. In the space of a week the crude outline of a new city, nestled in the side of Mt. Anuun, takes shape.

The city is built like steps on a staircase, with each level running up the side of the mountain. There are even more igloos on the mountainside city than there were in the Great City, which puzzles Aang at first until he learns that outlying villages were sacked while the Fire Nation's main force came after him. After learning that, Aang works himself harder each day to build houses for the displaced refugees. Because everyone needs a home.

"I wonder what we'll call it," Kanna muses one night around the fire, the midnight sun shining. Aang knows that his friend is trying to coax him out of going back to the construction work. Kanna and Hama haven't left his side since the end of the battle, making sure that he remembers to eat and sleep.

"Grah," says Appa, who is curled up behind Aang, providing the Avatar with a backrest.

"Not a bad name," says Sokka, who's sitting next to Kanna. "'Grah' has a nice ring to it." He starts to chuckle, then bursts out laughing.

"You have a strange sense of humor for a tailor," Hama comments.

"If you think that's funny," says Kanna, "you should have heard him before."

Hama smirks in anticipation. "What'd he say?"

"Sokka wants to join the army."

Hama snorts.

"My reaction exactly."

"Hey! I'm SO warrior material!"

Aang, staring blank-faced into the fire, blurts, "I'm leaving tomorrow."

Hama whips her head around, the small smile melting off her face. "Excuse me, you're what?"

Aang looks up at her. He repeats himself in a sedate, matter-of-fact tone. "I'm leaving tomorrow. If I stay here, I'm just going to put everyone in danger again."

"What about building more homes?" asks Sokka. "We practically have to sedate you each night to make sure you sleep." Hama and Kanna nod in concurrence.

"Things are still a little overcrowded, but the basic work is pretty much all done," Aang replies. "No one's sleeping in caves or tents anymore. And maybe it'd be better for me to leave so I can take the heat off you guys. If the Fire Nation knows I'm someplace else, they'll chase me and ignore the Water Tribe."

When his friends start to protest again he cuts them off, "I need to learn earthbending, anyway. I can't do that here."

"Where will you go?" asks Kanna, leaning forward. "The Fire Nation has armies all over the western Earth Kingdom. Trust me, they're hard to avoid."

"Omashu," Aang says. "There's an old friend of mine I want to find. He's an earthbender and he's really smart. A mad genius, actually."

Hama looks at him, the firelight casting flickering shadows across her neutral expression. "You're just... going to go? That's it?"

"I don't want to make a big scene. Appa and I will just escape tomorrow at dawn." Aang sits up. Resting his palms on his folded knees, he says, "You've all... been really good friends to me." He looks at each of them in turn: Hama, Kanna, and even Sokka. "I don't think I would have it made it without you guys."

Sokka asks, "Are you going to come back after you've found your earthbender?"

Aang shakes his head. "I still have to master firebending after that. And, eventually, I'll... I'll have to face Fire Lord Azulon. If I have to come back here before the War is over, then it probably won't be a good thing."

Silence falls over them all.

They don't do much more talking for the rest of the night.

* * * *

The next morning, three hours before 'dawn', Aang gathers his things and slips out the back of his new ice house through a door he bends into existence...

...only to bump into a teed-off Hama.

"You're a lying liar who lies, Avatar Aang! Trying to feed your friends bad information so you can sneak off!"

"H-Hama!" he squeaks.

The young waterbender uncrosses her arms. "I'm coming with you."

He blinks. "What?"

"I'm coming with you," she repeats. Belatedly, he notes the travel pack at her feet and the three waterskins strapped on her back. "You're my friend, Aang. And someone has to watch out for you."

"It'll be dangerous," Aang says solemnly. "You'll be leaving your home, maybe for good. I can't risk y--"

"I think I'm the one who decides that, since I'm the one taking the risk," she counters. "I've decided it's worth it. I'm coming." She steps forward, into his person personal space. "You can try to stop me but I'll just chase after you, even if I have to paddle a canoe to Omashu myself."

Aang sighs, but it's not as exasperated as he tries to make it seem. "Well, if there's no talking you out of it..."

They make it three levels down the mountainous cityside to Appa's stable before they run into another familiar face, this one racing up what's become known as the 'grand staircase'.

"Kanna?" says Aang, surprised.

She's shocked for a moment, but the stunned look on her face quickly transitions into anger. "You jerk!" the seventeen year old says. "You were leaving early, weren't you?"

"Called it," says Hama.

Kanna wrinkles her nose in disgusts. "Great. Now I owe her money."

Aang is aghast. "Y-you made a bet on me?"

"More like a friendly wager," says Kanna. She underhand tosses a small bag of jingling coins to the younger girl. "Hama's usually a sucker."

"Which makes it so much better when I win," the waterbender retorts, pocketing the money.

A grin sneaks across Kanna's lips. "It is a rare occasion to celebrate, I'll give you that."

"Hold up!" shouts Aang. The two Water Tribe girls turn towards him. "I'm already bringing Hama along. Why do you want to come?"

"I don't want to come. I'm coming." Kanna shoulders her satchel. "It's been better than thirty years since you were frozen, Aang. The world has changed. You need someone who knows it, who's walked across it -- well, that's me."

Aang is dubious. "What about your boyfriend?"

"Sokka understands," Kanna replies, then adds with narrowed eyes, "Not that I need to ask a man's permission to do what I please."

"Er--! I didn't mean--!"

"Easy, Aang," says Hama, clapping a comforting hand on his back. "She's just yanking your chain."

They quickly load up Appa after that with all the supplies they'll need to make it to Omashu... and maybe to a few detours along the way, just for, y'know, fun. He'll let the Elephant Koi surfing be a surprise for Hama. She'll be more impressed by his feat that way. And Kanna has to know a few choice sight-seeing spots from her travels. Aang makes a mental note for them to compare notes as soon as possible.

Of course, their departure is delayed somewhat by Sokka showing up with half the city in tow.

Looking at his three friends, Aang bursts, "None of you can keep a secret, can you?!"

Amid all the cheering and waving, the Council of Chieftains gives the three of them ceremonial forehead marks: bravery for Hama, wisdom for Kanna, trust for Aang and, after some subtle prodding from him and a quick search for a large enough broom to use as a brush, Chief Atka anoints Appa's furry forehead with the mark of strength.

It's strange, sneaking off again, but, this time, having everyone cheer you for doing so.

Aang discretely scrubs his forehead clean as he mounts Appa. "You guys ready?" When no immediate reply comes, he glances over his shoulder. "Guys?"

Kanna has already curled up in her bedroll, eye mask on, intent on catching up on her sleep. Hama, meanwhile, is smiling. She says, both to him and their mutual snoring friend, "Omashu, here we come."

It's word enough for Aang. Grinning, he says, "Yip yip!"

And like that, they're flying...