In His Element(s) || avatar / bnha

Raising the Stakes

Aang drifted.

Time was... vague.

Zhao, sometimes Iwayama, came and went as he pleased, bringing lightning and fire in his wake.

It hurt.

But that had stopped mattering a while ago.

There were only brief flashes of consciousness now, blurring the edges of reality as they appeared.

Zhao, grinning garishly with water-rotted skin and bleeding eyes, the pale white and purple of the drowned, but in the next second it was Katara, desperately clutching her throat as salt water spilled from her lungs.

A gentle hand, one belonging to Toga, as she hummed and wiped his bloody wrists clean with a damp washcloth before wrapping bandages around them and patting his shoulder, an odd look of pity on her face.

Todoroki, slowly swirling through Dragon's Dance with hands ablaze, and as he turned, he melted into Zuko, hand reaching out to him and a worried look on his face before his own flames consumed him.

Kurogiri, lifting his head and bidding him to drink water, cold and clear.

"Get up, Twinkletoes," Toph snapped, her narrowed eyes slit-pupiled and golden. "What are you waiting for?"

A clear cylinder of glass, settled next to his table, swirling silver.

Midoriya with his quirk enveloping his limbs, sparking green, his eyes blank. The sparks flashed golden as Kaminari tilted his head, before blue lightning lit up his vision once more and Azula caressed the side of his face, crooning low and terrifyingly clear.

"You couldn't escape me after all, Avatar," she whispered. A sharp nail dragged across his cheek, and he could feel blood trickle down his face once more. "How does my lightning feel?"

The General, leaning over him, impassive, eyes of white fire glowing bloody red.

"This is as much mercy as you deserve," the ancient spirit told him, strangely calm. "It will be over soon."

His hands were numb where they lay, and he was so, so cold.

Something was over his nose and mouth, and drawing in breath from there tasted sweet and sickly, and it made him dizzy and dull, unable to move or even think.

The General, setting something aside.

But he could only stare upwards, bright lights burning into his vision and wiping out almost everything else.

Pinpricks of pain, scattered across his chest.

A long, silver knife, attached to a cord.

The General spoke.

"I thought, once, that humans and spirits could share the world together. Our world."

Quiet.

"Tienhai and I were happy, you know. Before the Harmonic Convergence, before the Material and Spirit Worlds broke apart. But over the millennium, all I have seen from humans, from you, the Avatar... is misery. Pain. You bring war and suffering to each other, with no regards for the consequences."

A cool hand, much too cold, brushing the side of his face.

"I do not enjoy this work. I do it because I must. To save my people, to save the spirits of my world, and to end the corruption I have found in these humans in this one. Because the power you wield, our oldest companion, shouldn't remain imprisoned within flesh and bone. I will free us all."

A searing line across his chest.

Pressure.

"Goodbye, Avatar. This is the end of an era. And the end, of you."