Author's Note: OK, this requires some explanation.

I started this fanfic back in 2011, and stopped updating in 2012 for several reasons, mainly: I got busier, and I became less confident in the course I was on for the fanfic. Then, for other reasons (which I won't relate quite yet) I've recently decided to come back and finish it. However, as it stands I can't really do what I want to do with this fanfic. I uploaded chapters as I wrote them, which meant I can't go back and change earlier chapters when I realized they needed to be changed. As such, the fic is currently too shaky a foundation to build the ending I want to build.

Therefore, I am officially abandoning this version of The Adventures of Avatar Azula. Instead, I will be rewriting both it and its predecessor fic Trapped. My rewrite of the latter is called "Prisoner," and you can find it by going to my profile page. After I finish Prisoner I will start posting my rewrite of this fanfic (I'll keep the title a secret for now). I plan on releasing a chapter a week until I'm all done.

As a final send-off to The Adventures of Avatar Azula, I will post the incomplete chapter I was working on at the time I stopped.

Thanks so much to everyone who read or reviewed this fanfic!

Disclaimer: See Chapter 14.

Timeline Note: The time this chapter takes place will be made clear in due course.

The Adventures of Avatar Azula

An Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic

Chapter 15

Rebirth

Azula stifled a groan as she stepped into another puddle of swamp muck. She couldn't remember why she had ever thought this would a good idea.

During the last step of her…training with Pathik a month ago, she had seen (as in, actually seen, as if she had eyes again) many things, but the one that was relevant to her present purpose was a group of bisons like the one Aang rode living in the depths of the huge swamp that festered like a wart in the center of the world. After a consultation with the century-old Air Nomad brat, the plan was formulated and off Azula went.

She had actually been looking forward to this, enough so that she didn't even bother to check in with Toph or Iroh or anyone else. Being able to fly around would let her get places much quicker, so she figured it would be just as fast to find the Air Bisons first. And she didn't want to let anyone else know about them—she figured this was the kind of military technology the Avatar should monopolize.

Then she got to the swamp.

Neither she, nor anyone else she knew, had ever been to the swamp. Mainly because it was completely worthless from every possible point of view. She had read about it in scrolls, sure, but all the scrolls had neglected to mention or properly emphasize some key points:

It was huge. There was nobody there. And holy Agni was it the most disgusting place she had ever encountered or imagined.

The feel of the spongy mud and dirty water caressing her legs. The constant plopping of frog-beetles, buzzing of cicada-bees, and many other lovely sounds of nature. The taste of dirt and waste that stuck to her tongue.

And above all the smell, the constant smell! It was garbage mixed with rotting corpses mixed with she didn't even want to think about what, and it haunted her dreams even more than it did her waking hours.

Oh right, did she mention it was huge? Good, because it was, and she couldn't quite remember just where the Air Bisons were, so she had already spent four days in this wasteland and hadn't gotten anywhere closer to her goal. The hideously overgrown vegetation, which required her to cut off branches and burn away bushes constantly in order to proceed in an orderly fashion, didn't exactly help matters either.

So that night, after the fourth day of pointless searching, she had finally had enough. She didn't want to use the Avatar State—it would apparently create a random pillar of light (seriously, what was up with that? She wasn't aware lightbending was a thing), and who knows what people might think if they saw that—but she was too tired and cranky to care.

She sat down under the nearest tree (and landed right in a puddle of mud, of course) and meditated.

It took a while, since she was kind of inexperienced at it, but her memories from her time with Pathik slowly returned.

And it happened.

Break

Some time later—it was hard to say exactly how much—Azula punched the tree hard enough to crack her skin a bit.

Of course. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Why did I ever think otherwise?

The Avatar State let her see much with her drastically enhanced earth and airbending. But the swamp was soft and stagnant enough that her vision was still severely limited.

And she couldn't see the Air Bisons.

She sighed, and pushed herself away from the tree (pulling some rotten wood with her, to her great delight). She was too tired to even hold a proper amount of contempt for the Avatar State, which proved to be utterly useless the first time (second? Had she actually entered the Avatar State with Pathik? Whatever) she actually had control over it. So she found some ground that seemed relatively firm, lay out her sleeping bag, and let the night take her.

When she woke up, she could see. Like, with her eyes.

After looking around a bit in confusion at the utterly uninteresting green and brown fauna around her, she slapped her forehead and sighed.

Great. The Spirit Realm.

"Aang?" she called out while standing up. "Kid! Bratty old man! You must be here somewhere; you never have anything important to do except bother me. Aang!"

The only sound she heard was the faint buzzing of cicada-bees.

"…Aang?" There wasn't even an echo.

She had never been alone in the Spirit World before. As much as Aang annoyed her, being unable to bend and so open to whatever predations the Spirit World contained, without any sort of aid or advice forthcoming, did cause a certain amount of unease.

Azula shook her head. She was an awakened Avatar now; she had already eliminated all her earthly attachments. There was no fear left for her to feel. With that resolution in mind, she starting walking in an arbitrary direction, expecting that the Spirit World would eventually show her what it wanted to show her.

Without Aang around to distract her, Azula focused all her attention on the Spirit World itself. It was strange, to say the least. While she did feel dead leaves crumble and mud squish under her feet, smell faint traces of burning wood, hear the burbling of stagnant water, and taste the permeating heavy air, it was all…hollow, somehow. Without substance. Like all of reality was just a kabuki play, and not even one put on for her edification, but just non-existent actors pretending to be real out of whimsy.

She saw a lot of things too, of course. But maybe because she had gotten so used to seeing with earthbending and airbending, all the sights lacked even the hollow reality of the other senses. They were just…there, like some sort of backdrop.

It had only been a few years since she lost her eyesight. Had she really become so unattached from it so quickly?

The cicada-bees buzzing away any sense of time, Azula was just about to try sitting down and meditating again when a flash of black hair caught her eye.

Without even really thinking about it, she ran after it, some part of her registering that the hair was very familiar…but when she arrived at the place where she saw it, there was nothing there.

She didn't have much time to harbor her twin feelings of disappointment and relief when she heard a voice behind her.

"Azula."

She turned around automatically, then barely managed to suppress a gasp at who it was.

"Mai?"

Mai didn't blink. "Thanks for remembering my name."

Azula closed her eyes…or eyeholes…angrily. It didn't help; she could still see everything perfectly. Well, I am seeing with my spirit or whatever, after all, she thought, then grew frustrated with herself. This is ridiculous. The girl in front of me is clearly around ten or eleven. Must be some sort of spirit, using my memory to take her form. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"You just said who I was," the spirit said.

Her voice and posture and expression were all just as downcast and melancholy as the real Mai's. It was extremely disturbing.

Azula clenched her fist. What am I doing? I shouldn't be getting scared at some spirit; with my Chakras open, I shouldn't be feeling fear at all. "Tell me what your purpose is," she said, hoping she sounded appropriately angry, "or—"

"To tell you something," not-child-Mai said.

That threw her. "Huh?"

"I'm here to tell you something." Not-child-Mai was still staring at her, not having blinked once. The deadpan expression was becoming more and more off-putting. "I just wanted you to know that I've always hated you."

…Oh, I see what this is. Apparently Pathik wasn't the only one who enjoyed dredging up old memories, emotions, and fears. "So what," Azula said, "are you supposed to represent my self-loathing or—"

"When I get the chance," not-child-Mai interrupted her, "I'm going to cut off your nose and your tongue." She continued staring, still not blinking, no muscle in her face or body moving. "I'll burn your arms with a torch, peel the skin off your legs, then take a sword and—"

Azula ran toward not-child-Mai and punched her in the head. But the spirit disappeared before she could touch it, and her fist merely passed through air.

Before she could get angry with herself over her stupidity, a new voice from behind did it for her. "How shameful," it said. "And here I thought you had let go of all worldly attachments."

So that black hair had indeed belonged to who she thought it did. Fighting against a growing sense of resignation, she turned around.

Standing before her now, in full royal regalia, was her father. No, Ozai.

"I'm given to understand," she said slowly, "that I only need to let go of my worldly attachments at the times I want to enter the Avatar State."

"Convenient," not-Ozai remarked. His voice gave the impression of light amusement; his mouth was turned upward into a wide smile, the wrinkles around his eyes and calmness in his gaze testifying only to kindness and pleasantry. Presumably, this was meant to discomfort her.

It worked, of course.

"What do you represent, then?" she asked.

Not-Ozai said, with the same expression the real Ozai used whenever he praised her, "You have so many mental issues, my dear daughter. Whichever one shall I choose?" He chuckled softly. "But no. I only represent myself. And I am here to ask you a question."

Azula put on a pose of indifference that was, she hoped, not completely feigned. "Go ahead."

The spirit pretending to be Ozai pointed at its chest, and a charred hole, very reminiscent of a lightning strike, began growing there. "Why did you throw away your duty to your country?" His flesh burned away, then his bone, and despite the blood leaking from his mouth his voice remained lighthearted, almost joking. "When are you going to realize that your foreign so-called allies will soon turn on you and—"

She thrust her hand into the hole and grasped the spirit's fake spine. This one didn't disappear. She yanked it—

And found herself falling, the world dark again (yet somehow seeming substantial again), with what felt like a tree branch in her hand.

Azula didn't even have time to scream in frustration before she landed in water.

Her mouth filled with swamp water before she managed to close it. She thrashed around, clamped down on her panic, somehow managed to splash to the surface, and spat out the liquid.

Then she felt a net fall on top of her.

"Hey, Tho!" someone shouted. "I caught a live one!"

Azula found herself intensely missing the days when she was just wandering pointlessly around the swamp by herself.

The situation was both better and worse than she had thought it was.

It was better because while Due and Tho, the natives of the swamp (why anyone would willingly live in this place she had no idea) were indeed idiotic savages, they were not savage enough to be cannibals. When they saw she was human, they let her out of the net, apologized, and even offered to take her to their village.

It was worse because…well…

"What's an Avatar?" And it was Tho, the smarter one, who said that.

She knew they were savages, but still.

"Well…" Azula began, then stopped. It was actually a little difficult to explain this from scratch, and she wasn't exactly at her full capacity at the moment. "The Avatar is the incarnation of a spirit, that reincarnates into a new human every time the old one dies."

"What's reincarnation?" That was Due, the stupid one, but Tho didn't move to answer him.

Azula sighed. "Never mind, I guess that part's not important right now. Anyway, I can bend all four elements, and…I suppose you could call me a go-between for the Material World and the Spirit World."

'Why would you need to do that?" Tho asked.

"…Which one?"

"Both."

Azula opened her mouth, checked herself, then said, "Well, bending all the elements is often useful to defend oneself, or others."

"I've always only needed waterbending," Due said.

"But what if another waterbender attacked you?" she asked.

Due gasped. "Why would they do that?"

"Even if they did," Tho cut in, "my kin would protect me."

Azula shook her head. "Whatever. Anyway, why wouldn't you need a go-between with the Spirit World? Especially here," she waved her hand around, "this swamp seems especially…spiritual." Or at least that's one word for it.

Tho said, "We've never really had a problem with spirits."

"Seriously?" She had a very hard time believing that.

"They don't really bother you as long as you treat the swamp all right," Due said, with an infuriating lecturing tone.

Memories of all the plants she had damaged or destroyed the past four days came to her. Treat the swamp all right. Was that seriously why she had gotten those visions?

"Not everyone is as kind to their environment as you all seem to be," she said carefully.

Tho clucked his tongue.

"Anyway," Azula said, deciding it was time to get to the point, "one of my duties is to keep the world at peace, supposedly, and I'm here for something related to that. I would be…grateful if you could aid me, and would offer you a reward."

There was a silence. "What kind of reward?" Tho eventually asked.

Azula grinned. "I'm a powerful figure. I could probably give you almost anything you might want."

"Really?" That was Due.

She nodded. "Just say the word." I can't imagine you all might want something hard for me to get.

Tho made a sound like he was thinking. "You say you can bend all four elements?"

She wasn't sure if she liked his tone, but she said, "Yes, I can."

"Then…"

A long time later, she finally returned to the village, bringing the charred remains of a giant anaconda-lizard behind her by bending the mud under it. Apparently, most of Due and Tho's village was curious as to how it tasted.

"How is that 'treating the swamp all right'?" she had asked.

"Animals eatin' each other is only natural," Tho had said.

"Ain't nothin' wrong with that," Due had piped in.

When she got back, she was extremely tired and irritated. But before going to sleep, she decided to confirm that they would help her find the Air Bisons.

"Oh, we don't know where they are," Tho said.

"…What?"

His words muffled by his eating, Due said something like, "But we do know who does!"

Azula breathed in deeply. Enlightened. You're enlightened now. This is nothing compared to Pathik's games.

She breathed out. "All right," she said, resigned, "lead me to them in the morning."

"His name's Huu!" Due added unhelpfully. Azula didn't bother acknowledging it.

She felt better the next morning. Not having any visions this time helped, and at least she was finally making progress of some kind. It didn't even take particularly long for them to reach this 'Huu' person.

"And this is the banyan-grove tree I reached enlightenment under."

Even though Azula had sworn to herself not to get involved in any discussions after Huu insisted on showing her around before leading her to the Air Bisons, she was interested despite herself. "What, Pathik taught you too?"

"Pathik?" Huu was clearly confused. "No, I just meditated."

"…You meditated. That's it?"

"Yes. If you're the Avatar, you should know this swamp is very—"

"That's it!?"

Huu didn't speak as her scream spread through the surrounding area. Finally, he said, "Is there something wrong…Avatar?"

Azula forced herself to smile. "No, no. I was just surprised. For me, it was…a little more difficult." As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate Pathik…

Huu cleared his throat. "In any event, after that I decided I would stay and protect this swamp from anyone who would do it harm, by—"

This also caused her to become interested despite herself, albeit for a different reason. "Wait. Don't tell me you're the one who gave me those visions?" she asked, with a certain amount of anger.

"No, I just bend the water in these vines." He demonstrated said waterbending by moving some nearby vines around.

She was still a little suspicious, but he seemed to be telling the truth, and she needed his help anyway. "All right. But this swamp is huge. How can you defend the entire thing?"

Huu chuckled. "It is indeed huge, but actually the entire swamp is just one tree. This tree, as a matter of fact."

Having eliminated her anger already—enlightenment was at least helpful in emotional management—she was able to consider that information rationally. "I see," she said, thinking back to some of the biology scrolls she had read as a child. "But then, this tree must have lived for hundreds of thousands of years."

"At the very least. Though I suspect it's as old as the world itself."

"That is impressive if true, but how does it help you protect the swamp?"

"If you are the Avatar," Huu said pleasantly, "and are enlightened yourself, as you appear to be, you should understand."

He sounded way too much like Pathik for it to be a coincidence. But just as she was about to respond with something sarcastic, she felt something under her feet. Some sort of movement, a rhythm…

Without really thinking about it, she bent down and laid her hand on the giant branch she was standing on, and the feeling became clear.

A heartbeat.

When I say everything is connected, I am not being glib or metaphorical. I am saying something literally true. However, hearing that truth is meaningless unless you understand what it truly means. It is precisely because we are all unique that we are in reality one, Avatar. The difference between difference and unity is itself an illusion. Life and death, past and future, truth and lies, reality and illusion—they are all the same, because they are all different.

She saw them. At least six tiny bisons, sleeping against one of the tree's huge roots, in the depths of the swamp.

"See Avatar," Huu said, "I did promise you would see the Air Bisons, did I not?"

Azula stood up, swaying slightly. "So…" she said slowly, "if you can see everything going on in the swamp…"

"I knew you were here the moment you stepped foot inside. As a matter of fact, I was the one who told Tho and Due there was a good hunting spot near where you saw your visions."

I should've known them being there wasn't a coincidence. "There a particular reason you had me wander around for days instead of just coming to me immediately?"

"Years before you came, I had a vision of you," Huu said. "I just followed it. Now I see why." Azula saw him place his own hand against the tree, though not through earth or airbending. "If you hadn't received those visions, would you have truly understood this swamp?"'

She should probably have been angry at him. But the emotion she had when she saw…when she felt the swamp… "I'm going to the Air Bisons now."

"Be careful, Avatar." Something in Huu's tone of voice slowed her down. "Those great creatures have been hiding from humans for a century. Even I don't dare go near them, though I protect them from afar."

And my former nation is the reason they are afraid of humans. At least Huu had enough tact to not bring that up.

After thanking Due and Tho politely—no sense alienating potential allies—Azula traveled to the Air Bisons' location alone. She found it much easier to travel the swamp now, after her recent experience.

She stopped when she was still far away. She didn't know the exact limits of the Air Bisons' senses, and now wasn't the time to test them, for along with the tiny ones (presumably children) there were four rather large ones…and one veritable giant.

Despite her enlightened nature, Azula involuntarily gulped. As a child, she had read reports from the Fire Nation soldiers who had burned the Air Temples to the ground; the Air Bisons had killed more than the nomads themselves. By far.

Well, I can't exactly back off now, after coming all this way. She shut up the part of the mind that told her that was a fallacy, sat down, and meditated.

There were two aspects to the Avatar State: gaining the power of all previous Avatars, and gaining their knowledge. These mostly came hand in hand, but with enough time and concentration they could be separated. Borrowing the previous Avatars' knowledge was far less exhausting than borrowing their strength, so this technique was quite useful at times.

Soon enough, perhaps helped by the swamp's influence, all the knowledge of the previous Avatars came flooding into her.

She and Aang had discussed the basics, but with direct access to thousands of years of Air Benders, a much more detailed, better plan soon formed. Air Bisons were some of the most spiritually-aware creatures in existence, so no matter how terrified of and/or angry at humans they might be, they should recognize the Avatar. The full Avatar State might have been too frightening, but there were a myriad of ways to reveal one's spiritual signature, so to speak, to a wide area.

And indeed, soon enough, the giant bison was flying toward her.

…Flying rather quickly.

Well. That's not good.

As previously mentioned, this bison was very big; easily twice as large as the one Aang rode in the Spirit World. And it was speeding up, reaching a speed that to all accounts should've been impossible, almost annihilating the swamp's growth that was in its way. And it was charging straight at her.

Best of all, Azula's previously-conquered fear came racing back, banishing the previous Avatars' knowledge from her mind. So it was just her, versus a gigantic angry Air Bison.

Why does nothing ever go my way?

She rocketed into the sky using both fire and airbending. The bison passed a few heads below her, but the wind blowing in its wake knocked her off-course; she had to cushion her crash into a tree with some air. The bison made an incredibly sharp turn and came rushing at her again with only minimal delay.

Azula was ready this time, though. The swamp was still a presence in her mind. Reaching down, she took the water in the mud and undergrowth and shoved it upward, putting a column of swamp in the bison's way. She used the time that bought her to set her feet and launch herself back above the animal. The bison roared and the swamp growth flew off of it, propelled by an incredibly strong gust of wind. The bison itself followed right after, once again charging straight at her.

Azula's breathing was almost as short and ragged as it was during her duel with Ozai. She was acutely aware that, for the first time in a year, one false move would lead to her death.

It wasn't an entirely bad feeling.

She breathed in, stretched her arms behind her, then breathed out and moved them forward, palms out. A gigantic column of flame erupted from them, as large as the bison was. The beast was already committed to its charge. The air pressure in front of it dissipated some of Azula's attack, but not all of it.

The only sign of pain the bison gave as the fire consumed it was a short, soft (for it) grunt. Its charge continued.

Almost frantic, Azula bent as much air and swamp growth as she could as the bison. She had no time to assess how much the animal slowed down before it made contact.

For a few seconds, all she could sense was a vague ache in the front of her body from the neck to the stomach. Then she felt a falling sensation. On instinct, she tried to slow her fall with firebending, which was when she realized that breathing was suddenly extremely difficult; with her short, ragged gasps, she could barely manage a few embers. That fact registered, she tried to think of other options. It took a few seconds—probably a lot longer than it should have, she was having trouble remembering very much right now—but she decided to use airbending to slow down and waterbending to move as much mud as she could to her landing spot. She vaguely recalled it was best to roll in this situation, but that seemed improbable given her current condition, so she just stuck her arms and legs out, which worked adequately.

The impact seemed to knock something into place, or possibly out of place, as the dull ache in her chest area instantly turned into a searing, unbearable pain. She tried to scream, but her (presumably broken) ribs were compressing her lungs too much, so it came out as something like a gasp. The bison, perhaps sensing weakness, dove at her.

Azula almost smiled. She was more than used to pain—and now that she was out of shock, she had her brain back.

"Typical firebender tactic, pressuring your opponent with constant attacks," Bumi said patronizingly. "I had hoped the Avatar would be less predictable."

It had been too long since she last fought, and she had reverted back to bad habits. Time to rectify that.

Her first mistake, she now realized, was going above the bison instead of below it. There was a reason for it, but the timing was wrong; Air Bisons were most powerful in the air. Now that she was on the ground, it wouldn't charge at full speed, or else it'd risk slamming into the ground. Azula used this time to stick her hands in the mud, separating out two large chunks in preparation. In the process, she noticed the bison was turning around. But why—?

It's planning to whack me with its tail, she thought. All the better for me, then.

Right before the tail hit her, she brought up her hands, each one dragging a mass of mud with it. The mud engulfed the tail, trapping it.

The bison tried to free its tail by flipping it up; Azula's stomach lurched as she was dragged along for the ride in a wide, verticle circle. But she had packed the mud so tight it might as well have been fused to the animal—and to herself. Earthbending had always been Azula's second-best bending skill, after all.

The end result was that Azula once more found herself above the air bison. There were two big differences from the previous time, though: the bison wasn't moving, just levitating, and she was a lot closer. The scrolls recording the Fire Nation's defeat of the Air Nomads were right after all: the one area an Air Bison couldn't attack was directly above itself. She just had to do it the right way.

She removed the masses of mud from the bison's tail. It was already moving, but not fast enough—it had just begun accelerating. She swung her arms forward, to where the air currents told her the Bison's front was, and surrounded its head with mud.

Its air supply now cut off, the bison flailed wildly; Azula had to press herself against the animal's own fur to avoid getting whipped around like a doll. Eventually it seemed to get the idea to smash Azula against a tree. Her chest still screaming in pain, and her ribs still pressing against her lungs, didn't give Azula much confidence in her agility at the present; all she could think to do was cover herself in mud and cushion herself with as much wind as she could muster. The impact was painful, but not overly so. The air bison slammed itself into another tree, but its movements were becoming distinctly sluggish—the impact hurt much less (well, relatively speaking). The bison withdrew from the second tree; they hung in the air for a bit; and then, finally, it started descending.

Azula's battle with the air bison ended with a surprisingly peaceful landing into the swamp.

When the bison stopped moving, Azula sighed in relief, though better of it when it made her chest erupt in pain again, and then quickly pulled the mud away from its head. Despite the fact that the bison had attacked her with no provocation, killing it would contradict the entire purpose of this escapade.

Anyway, that problem was now dealt with. Now to deal with the fact that she was seriously injured in the middle of nowhere.

After giving herself a few minutes to relax, Azula steeled herself and concentrated.

The Avatar State was useful for a great many things. An incarnation who lived about 1800 years ago had been an extremely talented waterbending healer. While it was much harder to heal yourself than another using waterbending, she was at least able to do a patchwork job. She'd need to see Kalu about it later, but now she could at least breathe normally again (though it sent a small jolt of pain throughout her body every time she did).

But being in the Avatar State was also quite physically taxing, and maintaining concentration for the precise work needed in healing even moreso. That, combined with the residual exhaustion from the battle, meant she would have to fall asleep very soon.

It took all she had to dredge up solid earth from deep underneath the swamp and wrap it around the air bison. She lost consciousness almost immediately afterward.

Author's Note: And that's the end. I hope to see you all in Prisoner, my rewrite of this fic, and maybe even future projects!