Carved In Rock || ATLA

Machines

The Avatar State

"Where will you run when there's no place left for you to hide? When you're faced with the flood, will you stand for the future and swallow your pride?" - Crown The Empire

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The smell of burnt flesh was something that Aelita was sure would haunt her forever. After three years she had hoped the memory of it would fade but here it was, still as grotesque and prominent as ever.  As the smell filled her head images of the Fire Lord danced through her mind. In her nightmare, she had killed him. She'd been having near-constant nightmares since the siege but this one was new. Sitting alone on the netting of the large catamaran she watched as the sun slowly began to rise above the open waters. At least part of her dream made sense now, it was the morning of the anniversary.

"Hey." A soft voice called from behind her. Aelita pushed one of her stray silver waves behind her ear and glanced over her shoulder to find Aang walking toward her. "Can't sleep?" He asked as he sat beside her.

"When can I ever?" The sixteen-year-old tried to joke but it sounded stiff. "You?"

"No." The monk sighed, rubbing a hand over his bald shaved head. "Just a nightmare. I was in the spirit state but I was outside my body watching myself." The fourteen-year-old explained. In his dream, he was one of the men standing on a Fire Navy ship outside the North Pole, helpless as the boat was cut down by the fused form of himself and the water spirit La. "It was scary, I was scary." When he looked back at his friend he half expected her amber eyes to be full of judgment but instead, they met his grey ones with understanding.

"Me too." She admitted. "I had a nightmare about the spirit state." She had dreamed of Zuko's Agni Kai, this time when she jumped in front of the strike that would've killed the Prince she watched an older version of herself emerge from the smoke. With eyes glowing she struck Ozai down without a second thought. "I killed the Fire Lord." She said and Aang couldn't help but flinch at the other girls' words. Aelita was a fighter but she wasn't a killer. "I turned on Zuko before I woke up."

"Do you think we could ever hurt someone when we're like that?" The boy asked, his eyes staring down at the blue arrows tattooed down his arms onto his palms. He had similar ones that traced down his legs, along his spine, and up to his neck to his forehead. "That we could actually...kill someone?"

Aelita was silent for a moment. She hated to admit how likely it was. In the spirit state - a great feat of physical power only achievable by the Avatar and the Akira - anything was possible. They learned that first hand during the siege when two teenagers alone wiped out the entire Fire Nation fleet. Using that same raw power Aelita had banished Admiral Zhao to The Fog of Lost Souls in the spirit world without an ounce of remorse. If she could do that so easily she was afraid of what else she could do, but she was even more terrified of what she would be willing to do if she needed. 

"I don't know Aang." She finally said. "When we're in the spirit state we aren't in control."

Aang and Aelita spent the last hours of daybreak in tense silence, neither of them necessarily having the words to say to reassure the other but still thankful to have one another, the bond they had formed over time so unique. The promise they made to face the war together was one they both intended to keep. Thinking back now it was hard to believe there was ever a time the two could've been considered enemies. Not only was Aang the Avatar but the last airbender left after the Air Nomad genocide at the hands of the Fire Nation, having survived after being frozen in ice a hundred years ago with his sky bison Appa. Sokka and Katara, the children of Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe, discovered the monk by chance this past fall.