Notes : Remix & reboot of my old fic Timeline. Inspired heavily by my not-quite-a-decade-long slow burn fury at the post-AtLA canon treatment of Katara and listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat.

In many ways, this fic is still my baby.

Expect me to explore the problematic implications of canon, both in terms of worldbuilding and characterization. Expect me to shamelessly indulge in my favorite tropes like reincarnated lovers, mythological parallelism, and families of choice. Expect me to haul in my favorite characters like Koh the Face Stealer, who never got enough screen time, and June the Bounty Hunter, who never got enough anything. Expect me to plumb the depths of moral dissonance. Expect me to, to borrow a phrase from the aforementioned Hamilton soundtrack, deal with the implications of who lives, who dies, who tells your story.

Do not expect me to be entirely beholden to canon. (Particularly not the comics.) Do not expect me to treat Aang as a paragon. Do not expect me to be entirely beholden to the original fic. Do not expect me to be entirely beholden to my update schedule.

I've been in this fandom over half my life. I love you all. Here's my sorry attempt at a gift in return for all the things you've given me.

Interlude

Koh

The new Avatar roars like a lion turtle. All self-righteousness and teeth. "Petty problems?" And there it is, the lightning crack after the thunder. It would be impressive, perhaps, to a younger Spirit. One who does not remember Avatars backed by thousands of lifetimes. One who does not remember before Avatars. One who does not remember before humans. One who is less weary. "This is the fate of the world."

"It always is," Koh says. Humans, always there and gone in the blink of an eye, cannot fathom the way the universe dances with extinction. They write histories only to forget, forget, forget. Most mortals can at least acknowledge their limitations. Koh will grant them that even as he steals their faces, their lives, their stories. Avatars, however…

Dark hair flows over centipede body. Koh blinks the eyes of a woman taken centuries ago when her lover was too late. From this Avatar there is no reaction. Of course. Lifetimes lost. He allows the face and the memory to disappear away and brings forth another of his thousand faces.

That merits a reaction.

A cringe, marked by a brief curl of the upper lip and stiffening of the shoulders. Gone so quickly that it could've been imagined. Whoever trains the Avatar these days is good, but not good enough. "You're lucky," Koh says. "That I am old and bored. I could have taken your face just then." And there's another stiffening but the face, oh the face, it remains perfectly still. Better, better, maybe the Avatar can learn.

"It's just," the Avatar begins, voice as carefully neutral as expression. "This is the fate of the world."

Koh twists away from the young human. He crawls up the walls of his abode. Disappears into the dark. "What is it this time?" he asks, snake's tongue giving him a sibilant hiss. "You need to find a Spirit? Maybe one of the old gods you humans worship?" Old man replaces snake and the words are easier now. "Or is it an eclipse?" Cat replaces monkey. Eyeing the Avatar, he changes his mind, "No, no, it must be something else. Something less…"

"There's a war," the Avatar says.

"There's always a war."

Stiff, eyes fixed to a knot in the tree, the Avatar says, "This is worse than the usual war." Humans, so petty. So forgetful. The world has survived wars that lasted a century, wars that led to the breaking of continents, wars that gouged out the tender underbelly of humanity. "People are dying. Spirits are dying. The war is…it's terrible."

"And you haven't stopped it," Koh growls, swooping down toward the Avatar with teeth bared as the cat blinks away to reveal a baboon. He's gratified to see the Avatar take a few stumbling steps back. Less so to realize that the Avatar has kept a blank expression. Well, the game isn't over yet. Koh is old and he is patient. "So tell me, Avatar, what do you need from me, hm?" Sliding back into the shadows, Koh waits for the Avatar to gather courage once more.

It takes…longer. Longer than Koh would expect from one brave and stupid enough to enter his abode.

When it does happen, it's almost a surprise. "I need you to tell me how to defeat Republic City. My friend, you see, my best friend... A Spirit possessed her and transformed her. After that, the General of Republic City declared war." Again the pause drags on, just a few beats too long, before, "The General blames me. For not stopping the Spirit. For not closing the Portals. For…for letting Jiang suffer this way."

Echoes. There are always echoes in the Spirit World. Someone's going to kill them. Koh, the Face Stealer, He of One Thousand Faces, retreats into the furthest reaches of the tree. Where shadows cling so thick they feel near alive. From here, the Avatar is but a distant bit of bright cloth. Perhaps here, the echoes will muffle and die.

"Leave," Koh croaks. "Leave now."

"Please!" The Avatar, for the first time, looks up into the darkness. Brown eyes are wide, pleading. Nothing like the grey eyes that were younger and older than they ought to be. Nothing like the one face he never wanted to put on. "Please, our worlds could both be destroyed if you don't help."

Another time. Another place. Another tragedy. Always, always another story. Koh laughs but there's no humor in it. It tastes like bitterness and rust on his tongue, the tongue of an old woman. "No." There can be no help for this. "I will not. I cannot. Even if I could, even if I would, it is already too late."

The Avatar stills. "I can still fix things." Fix what the old gods could not? Fix what the Spirits of all that is great and terrible could not? Fix what an Avatar, an Avatar before there were Avatars, set into motion? Universe save him from headstrong, self-righteous Avatars. "Please, I can fix this. I need your help. I think it might save Jiang."

Jiang. Jiang, and Rie, and Shu, and Kupthik, and Chuan-Li, and Nanaki, and Lee, and Eiko, and Jin, and Nian-Zu, and Katara. More than a thousand lives, blurred and spun, arcing through the heavens. Forgotten. Mourned only by the one left behind. Their tragedy made into romanticism. Their sacrifice into martyrdom. Their love made into fairytales. Their stories made soft, if their stories were made into anything at all.

Save for the little Waterbender. The woman who commanded blood and ocean, who bore her scars like blessings, who would have remade the universe with the sheer force of her will. Katara would raise fearless eyes the exact color of a summer sky just after a thunderstorm to meet his ever-changing face. And she would demand he tell her story, tell it true. "Let me tell you a story," Koh says. "It is a story so old that not even the Great Spirits remember it now. It is a story about the first days, and the last days, and the days in between. It is a story, you see, about two lovers."