Disclaimer: It should be pretty obvious that Avatar is not mine.

A/N: The title is butchered Japanese.

Thanks to Quorothorn for Beta-ing!

Shi ni Ichi

Water

When Zhao plunged into the water, it was so cold it nearly knocked the air out of him right then. His muscles locked and his bones ached, and he tried to summon inner fire but didn't have the breath for it.

He thrashed, more out of reflex than any real belief that it would help. The water pulsed all around him like muscle or blood, and was horribly, unbearably cold. Even as his lungs screamed for air, he felt his extremities go numb.

Dully, he felt his back hit the bottom of the shallow canal, and he looked up. There, through the water, he could see the surface rippling with the light of the full moon. One arm was free and floated upward, as if reaching (now he reached, when no one was reaching back) for the surface.

Even then he tossed his head, clutched his hands, struggled. But he lost the fight, as all mortals lose, and the salt sea poured past his hopelessly gasping lips.

The water that hit his tongue and filled his lungs was so cold it burned.

Earth

Smellerbee's hands were on his brow, and the earth was so cold and so hard. He wanted to tell her how much it meant to him that she had remained by his side. He wanted to give Longshot some words of wisdom about life or revenge or hate or some crap like that.

Jet opened his mouth, and coughed.

"Shhh," said Smellerbee, her voice low and rough to cover her tears. "Hold still. We'll get out of this. We'll find a way out."

When the Dai Li agents lifted him up, something seemed to crack deep inside him, and he grunted in pain.

"This one isn't going to make it," said the earthbender.

I'm still alive! Jet wanted to scream. Don't talk about me like that! But breathing was so difficult; all he managed was a weak gasp.

Where were Longshot and Smellerbee? Jet wasn't sure. He couldn't remember them leaving.

Then the Dai Li dragged him to a small cell, literally dragged him and dropped him, and left him.

The silence was oppressive, even more so to Jet because it was only broken by the sounds of his body: his gasping breath, his rapidly-fluttering heartbeat, and the grinding noise coming from deep in his chest. These sounds stirred terror in him, because he wasn't sure when they were going to stop. He tried to stay conscious.

The ground was hard. Breathing was hard. Everything was hard. He couldn't really see anything.

He was scared.

After a while he began to shiver uncontrollably. After a while he noticed that blood had collected in the hollow of his cheek and under his tongue. After a while, he thought he felt Smellerbee stroking his hair again, though he was pretty sure that Smellerbee wasn't there.

He was almost sure, after a while, that he was home. He thought he might be in his treehouse, in the dark hours before dawn lit the sky, listening to the treefrogs chorusing. He thought he might be in his childhood cot, curled beneath the covers with some small insects he'd caught, trying to incite them to fight. He thought he might be burying his face in his mother's skirt.

Jet coughed weakly. Then, he didn't.

Fire

The last time Kya had been burned, she was cooking a fish in whale oil, and a bit of grease had spattered onto her thumb. She had instinctively put the injured digit into her mouth, then packed some ice on it to quell the pain. Then she went on with her cooking.

It wasn't much in the way of experience with fire, to be sure. But it was a taste.

I'm afraid I'm not taking prisoners today.

The fire came, and she shielded her face with her arms. Her parka, stuffed with the down of an arctic hen and lined with oily sealskin, lit easily. She tried to run.

When the next blast knocked her over, she tried to crawl away, but a boot pressed into the small of her back, holding her to the ground. She tried to curl, arms and legs automatically moving to protect her front.

The human body holds water, and does not burn easily, so the man, the human being standing on her back, had to keep the fire on her, had to release his flame again and again onto her body to make sure she burned. He aimed for her head, though her struggling made it difficult.

She could hear the flames burning in her hair, even above her screams, and in a haze of agony she clawed and bit at the floor. She couldn't see, her eyes were burning, she tried to get up but the next blast drove her back to the floor. She moved an arm to cover her head.

Kya moaned and shuddered, her skin black and red where it hadn't been seared away. Some places on her body she couldn't feel anything at all, but others still ripped with pain. Her breaths came in shuddering gasps, and the muscles along her upper back clenched and unclenched.

But she never regretted it, not once, and she never gave up her daughter.

The next blast she barely felt. The one after, not at all.

Air

When Gyatso opened his eyes, he was for a moment unsure where he was or why he was lying down. Then he smelled the smoke in the air, and he remembered. There was an explosion, a lightning bolt that missed by inches. He must have hit his head.

A few attempts made it clear that he couldn't walk on his own, but he could see a staff lying on the ground not far away. Someone had dropped it, and no lemur had fetched it. A quick wind funnel sucked the staff to his side, and he leaned on it as he hobbled through the smoky air, trying not to put any weight on his injured foot.

He didn't know where the other monks were, but it was clear that if any of them were still alive, they would be leaving the temple. It was with this in mind that Gyatso limped towards the bison stables, but he was seen before he got there.

The company of soldiers, skull-masked and plated in metal, marched down from the upper plaza to the lower. They weren't in a hurry. They could see he was wounded.

Gyatso knew he would not make it to the stables in time. Instead, he ducked into the small shelter used to house the student's training gliders. There, he rested his entire weight on the staff, and considered his options for a moment.

"Give us the Avatar."

Weary to his bones, Gyatso turned and looked at the firebenders. The one who spoke had his face covered by one of those indeterminate masks, but his voice was that of a youth. The monk doubted that he was a day over twenty.

"The Avatar?" replied Gyatso. "Surely you've killed him already."

There was no point in any further conversation, and as the firebenders lined up, Gyatso lowered himself carefully to the floor. He could not bend with his hands clutching the staff, so he arranged his legs into a moderately stable position, sitting upright against a bag of spare glider parts. He inhaled deeply, sucking more breath into his lungs than any but an airbender could hold. He'd need it.

As the soldiers released their flame, Gyatso formed a wind funnel, sucking the air through a window and out of the room. Normally, more air would come in to fill the space, of course, for that was the primary law of the void. But Gyatso reached out to halt these winds and keep them away, and the comet-fires died before they reached him.

Then the firebenders were stumbling and running into each other, as eardrums and sinuses ruptured. Some of them were probably screaming, but who could tell, without air to hold the sound?

Gyatso kept the air out, even as the world began to fall away, and with the extra air in his lungs he managed to hold on to consciousness until the last firebender collapsed. And while it was not with satisfaction that he finally let his hands slump to his sides, it was with a kind of relief. These ones, at least, would not go on to hunt his student, wherever he may be.

And compared to that, all else could be forsaken.

Spirit

The body stills, and the spirit moves.

The senses close, the fear and pain end, and there is a release, gentle as dreaming. Seeing now without eyes and feeling without hands, we become aware of the energies of the world pulsing in and out, positive and negative.

We become as light, burgeoning, swelling. The water surrounding us, the stone, the flame, the wind, these elements are unforgiving, but they enter the spirit because they are spirit. At their heart, all matter and all energy are variations on the same music.

The divisions, the me and you, the us and them, the living and dead, become like smoke. We lose our boundaries, and our selfhood, our dreams, our hopes, our thoughts, our fear and shame and will and love and pride, flow out and join with all life, touching everything and merging with the cosmos.

What are we, after all, but pieces of this world, our blood and breath and bone the sea and wind and earth, carved off and ignited into being, a burning coal, glowing for but a moment? We walk alone for a time, we see what living is, and then we return home.

Listen. Does the fire not leap higher now than before? Does not the wind sing in jubilation? Do the waters not dance with joy? And does the earth not spring forth with greater abundance each year?

We live still, in every breath and in every stone and spark and breeze and drop of rain. The benders feel it when they bend, when the elements jump at their touch like an old friend.

The benders feel it. Do you?