Chapter Text
All leads to darkness, everything around them is a darker pitch of its original light. The people are drained of their light to embrace this darkness that’s been around for longer than Yerim had lived. More than twenty years, more than her father’s age, or her grandmother’s. More than the vision in front of her, cladded with light, small and rare light spirits floating around it as if they too see it.
No one can see it, but for her. The image of the former avatar. Yerim had asked her father once about the avatar, the stories are not many, but for all that have been shared portions of the truth that Yerim remembers in details about her former life.
The annihilation of an entire nation at the hands of dark spirits, that until this day, even the spirit form of former avatar Heejin cannot explain. She only says that that their numbers were untold, cities wiped out in the matter of couple of hours. She tells Yerim that this evil is still stands to this day, that the dark spirits are hiding and waiting for the right moment to strike.
Avatar Heejin appears once again once Yerim had wandered the forest all on her own. “Why are you here?” Yerim ignores her floating form above the water surface and crosses the river after bending it away from her path.
She wanted to get out the temple, out of the daily training and lectures, hidden in a small island in the middle of nowhere.
“You called for me.” Yerim sees her reappearing again just near the tree she’s sitting under, “I’m here because you need to ask something. I don’t appear out of nowhere.” Ask for a path, a calling that proves she’s truly is this spirit’s successor and can do something about this war between benders and dark spirits.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, what my purpose is.” How can she be an avatar if she has no purpose? What they daily teach her to surpass, what is it for? If it’s not to use it anytime soon.
“Your path is lit by the light you spread.” Another unsolvable, unrealistic advice. The spirit of her former avatar is no difference from her teachers, from her father. He’s been telling her about the light for so long, that when the light is separated from the dark, that is when she’s needed, to balance them out. “The dark will show you many paths. With light, you can choose the right one.”
“For once... Can you stop speaking in riddles?” she stands up, making her lose her focus, the her lack of spiritual training results in the spirit fading before it can speak again. She wants to focus to call it again, but Heejin’s spirit appears when Yerim expects her the least. She grabs her back and heads back to the temple.
It was useless to come here and for the millionth time, Heejin is no help at all. She needs to speak to someone that understands what the former avatar means, someone that used to be close to her. Her memories that belong to Heejin all point to a woman named Kim Hyunjin. From the memories, Hyunjin was the chief of police in a city named the United Republic. One of the firsts avatars had created it, to portray peace among nations. A war before this one between benders that divided everyone, brought under the flag of peace created by the avatar that united them.
“Dad?” she calls once she’s inside, takes off her boots and runs to the main dining hall, not finding him there. Yerim makes it to his study and she finds him reading a book.
“What is it, sweetheart?” he closes his book, removes his reading glasses and ushers her to sit down.
“Do you know someone called Kim Hyunjin? A woman, an earth bender that used to be the chief of police in the United Republic.” Her father frowns. He sits with her and looks down.
“How?” he stops, shakes his head and looks at her one more time, “How do you know her?” part of Yerim’s training and secret position that none knows of, is that she’d never travelled out of the island. The people that had left and returned to the island, had already seen her grow up and she knows them by names and ages. She wasn’t exposed to new faces for all of her twenty years, except for the spirit of Heejin that she had kept a secret from anyone else, even her father.
“I don’t, but..” she thinks this is the best to tell him. Keeping it a secret from him might not been the right choice, maybe he knows more of Heejin’s cryptic words. “Avatar Heejin used to know her.”
Surprised, Yerim watches how her father opens his mouth and closes it, speechless at her words. “How do you have connection to your avatar spirit? Can you go into the avatar state? When did this happen-”
“Slow down,” she chuckles when she sees him smiling at her, “I’ll answer one at a time. I just need to tell you something first.”
Yerim goes into detail at how she for the first time was taught to tap into her avatar spirit, but failed horribly, the nightmares had never stopped ever since. Dark spirits attacking and killing anyone they see and she was powerless against that herd. That she had purposefully highjacked her own spiritual training sessions to fail, just to halt the nightmares, which she later learned were Heejin’s memories, connecting to hers when she made contact for the first time.
Yerim explains that the previous avatar had shown her a portion of her memories on how to stop the nightmares, how to balance her energy and keep herself the master of her own mind.
“When did she contact you first?” her father wipes her tears, and she sniffs to holds his big warm hands.
“Right before I beat the three air-bending masters. She taught me how to air-bend.” Heejin is a master air-bender before she was the avatar, her memories and mastery of the element had boosted the lack of expertise in air-bending that Yerim could never understand.
“well, if you do have connection with the previous avatar, then you also have connection with the others?” he asks, and she expected him to ask that.
Yerim shakes her head negatively, “It’s just Heejin that pops out of nowhere. I haven’t seen anyone else before her.” She herself is not sure why and even Heejin doesn’t know when she asked her. She only tells her to light the dark path. “She told me to light the path of darkness, she always speaks about finding the light to navigate the darkness,” she explains everything. “She never elaborates and I thought that if you know, then I should tell you about this.”
He nods. “The light and darkness, the unbalance between those had caused her nation to fall.” He stands and heads to his bookshelf, “There is nothing in the history of avatars about the dark and light, I guess it’s something they all had kept a secret.” He returns to her with a small laced notebook. The sign of the fire-nation on it. “This belonged to one of the avatars, no name on it, but it has all of their diaries written in here.” He gives it to her, “It might help with your question.”
She reads it, and the more she reads the more the writer’s sanity seems to be diminishing. He was looking for light, but all he could see was darkness. The notes are well kept for the first ten pages, but the more she flips to the next page the frequent a sentence becomes. ‘I am the light.’ The last pages have only this sentence written over and over again.
The last page ends with:
‘I am the light.’
‘I am the light.’
‘I am the light.’
Yerim should have answers by now, but all she discovers are short lived outcomes and more complicated questions. Halfway into the diary, Yerim concluded that he starts to suffer from memory loss, him venturing into the dark had only brought him into a chaotic state of mind. His discoveries are little, but they can be her starting points where he failed and she might succeed.
Yerim leaves her bed and room, returns to her father where he is sitting on a bench in the small garden of the temple. She sits next to him, places the diary in the spot between them. “You didn’t read it.” She tells him. She sees him nodding, lighting his smoke pipe with his fire-bending.
“Avatar Heejin refused to finish it too when we presented her the diary, she warned us to not read it and I made sure no one finds out about it, unless an avatar seeks me for knowledge.” Yerim wasn’t born when her father used to be one of the previous avatar’s companions.
The previous avatar had went through the war of spirits against her nation, only to lose that war and be murdered by the same dark spirits that had been fueled for hatred. He was there with her, fighting, surviving, saving others, and they were almost were extinct. Now they are not even allowed to cast their air-bending, dark spirits will be attracted to it, and they will end up killed.
“Was her corrupted?” she asks him.
He doesn’t seem to be expecting that question, means he really did not read the diary. He inhales from the pipe, blows the smoke and its carried by the wind. “Not all avatars had found their way to both light and dark.” He tells her. “Heejin might have been guided by them both since birth, but that was before I was even born.”
Air nomads do live for a long period of time, more than the average person of 80 years old. They can live up to 150 or sometimes 200 years. Their pacifist nature helps and their diet is all about balance. Yerim had read all about their way of life and the pictures of Heejin doesn’t even show that she had lived for 100 years.
“When did you join her?”
“When I was fifteen, I think she was thirty back then,” he smiles, but it’s always short and barely visible. She decides to keep her questions for herself. It’s clearly not something he likes to talk about.
She keeps Heejin’s memories to herself, even if they always show her father in her younger days, images of them either fighting or laughing.
Her argument with her father leads her to uncalculated decisions. Yerim was born and given first in his arms, and he knew she was the avatar from just looking at her. His spiritual powers are one of the greatest, riveling that of an air-bender, coming close to the level of an avatar. He knew from the start and he had told that the moment he held her in his arms, she had the spirit similar to the previous one.
It must be hard to talk about her in his presence, but he was always open to talk about her if Yerim had asked him. Until she is older now, more considerate with others, more careful and conscious of their feelings, his pained expression and the sobs that break through in hiding whenever he speak of her. Yerim had stopped asking about Heejin, not wanting to cause her father more pain, and Heejin herself pops out of nowhere.
“You called me.” Again, this time in her room, reading the diaries again in case she’d missed something important.
“The dark, how do I find it?”
The first pages are telling his perspective on how he started the journey to find the darkness that the dark spirits had emerged from. He had followed the spirit to its destination and watched it -as he describes in detail- how it had slaughtered benders and he couldn’t do anything about it, just because he wanted for it to return to its source.
“The light inside of you will lead you to darkness.”
“It will light my path,” Yerim completes for her, “You’ve said this before, but where do I start? Where should I go?”
“You’ve already seen it.” Is the avatar referring to her nightmares inside of Yerim’s own dreams? Is she referring to Kim Hyunjin?
She closes her eyes, wishes her away and opens them again, Heejin is still there. She forgot that the spirit appears and disappears on its own will or as it claims ‘Whenever she is needed or not.’
Instead of paying attention to her, she turns a page, follows how this nameless avatar had slowly lost his sanity. He had found darkness. Did he fail to find the light? “What will happen when I find the dark?” she looks up, but Heejin is gone.
Unlike the past, or her prior investigation that had seen no path in the end, this time, Yerim has something and she will ask her father again.
It hurts him, she knows, but it might lead her somewhere out of this useless state, this unending waiting without purpose. It might stop the nightmares from invading, sleepless hours to subside, the slipping in and out of reality the more she spends her time away from her duty as the source of restoration of balance to this world.
“I have to go,” she tells him. “I have to find Hyunjin. She might help me. I have to do something, you cannot keep me here forever.” He stands at the walls of the temple island, in the highest watchtower where he always observes the sea.
“I know, but I will not send you to your death.” He speaks after lighting the candles with his bending. “Your training is not done, your spirit will be corrupt if you leave without the proper preparations. Waiting for another avatar to be born and grown will take twenty more years we might not have.” The breeze is light this night, the smell of oncoming rain is so familiar in her nostrils is an announcement of an uncertain storm. She must leave. She’ll go insane first, it will kill her second if she couldn’t do anything to protect the people.
“It’s my duty, my choice. When avatar Heejin fought the dark spirits, she did not run away and hide and leave her people to die-”
“-You’re not Heejin.” He stops her, turning with a hardened look in his eyes.
“I’m not, but she’s part of me now and I cannot just let all of that she worked so hard for...to just...be destroyed.” Her hands shaking, cold, the sound of thunder and the pouring rain are chilling her, even when her father had warmed up the air with his fire-bending. “I have to go.” She stands up, keeping her eyes on his back, and he refuses to look at her. Yerim walks to him, grabs him by his shoulder and turns him to face her gently. She sees him and his tears. She sees him and the fire in his eyes had died down again. She sees him and hugs him just because he means the world to her.
“I cannot send you to your death.” He tightens his arms around her small body. “I cannot be responsible for the death of two avatars that I could protect,” his voice is wavering, “But I failed you both,” he squeezes out when she had never expected him to. “Not you too, please.”
“I know, I saw what you did. Heejin showed me.” She backs a little from their hug and takes his face with her hands. His beard had grown long and itchy for her, but it suits him well. “You saved her nation from extinction, they are alive because of you.”
“They are alive because Heejin was there to defend us,” his head shakes from side to side in denial. “We had survived that night because she was an unbreakable defense that allowed us to escape.” He backs away from her, unzips his jacket and reaches for his neck. It’s a neckless that holds two keys and a ring.
“What is this?” she asks when he hands them over.
“Heejin used to live here when she was still mastering fire-bending and her spiritual training.” He walks and she follows. “The white key is to her room, and the other one is for her belongings.” They walk into the common rooms, and when he arrives at the end of the hall, one of the old Dai Li agents from the earth kingdom bows to her father.
With his earth-bending, he brings down a wall to reveal a door. Yerim assumes it’s what her father had spoke off. The room that used to belong to Heejin. “None had entered his room ever since she left.” He goes on saying. “It was only for her and everyone at the temple respected it.” he steps to the side. “I don’t know what the other key does, or the ring.” He points. “She said to give them to you when you’re ready.”
“But I’m not.” He said that, and he nods too, agreeing with her.
“But we will lose this world if you are kept here in hiding. You have to make your own discissions starting from now.” He then points to the room, “I’ll hear it after you finish what Heejin wanted to show you.” Then he leaves and the Dai Li agent right behind him.
She turns the key in the lock, hesitant first when she makes her way inside. She stands in the middle, on the carpet made from bamboo. She can tell it’s handmade. Yerim sits there in the middle and thinks of Heejin used to sit here, write in her diaries, communicate with the avatars before her, the light and dark balanced in her vision. She can see them in the shape of two humans. Standing there, one to her left and the other to her right. They are speaking to her, but Yerim cannot hear what they’re saying.
“You called for me.” Heejin is mirroring her position when Yerim opens her eyes.
“I did.” Heejin’s gaze falls to where Yerim is holding the other key and the ring in both her hands, and she sees her smiling for the first time. “What are they for?” she asks.
“My partner,” she says, “Can you bring them to her when you find her?”
“Hyunjin?” a nod, her eyes on the ground, she doesn’t lift her head back. “I don’t want to burden you with my unfinished business, but my soul cannot rest for this reason.” Even in her spirit form, Yerim sees tears. “I failed so others can survive, and I’m happy my life continues with you. We are balance, we cannot stop.” Heejin’s eyes glow, Yerim feels the energy coursing through her veins. She’s taken from the simple room she’s inside of, teleported to the northern air temple, Heejin’s final residing place.
And instead of what Yerim expected to see, like the air nomads and the pilgrims that visit them, she sees all of her past lives. She sees them greeting her, all of them connected by the light that shines from the eyes, the light that she cannot find.
“As the avatar, your mastery over the elements is but your starting point.” They are riding on Heejin’s bison, the beautiful landscape surrounding the temple, mountains and rivers, forests and dirt roads. All Yerim could see around hers, are just endless waters. “The mastery of spiritual energy, will be a big factor to keep the light and dark in balance.”
“Can we just get rid of the dark?”
“One will be blinded by the light if there is no dark to contain it.” It must exists. “Dark cannot function if there is no light to surround it. Our people are at the brink of extinction, the spirits cannot take over the physical world, you must stop them.”
Heejin Bison’s, and for a reason Yerim knows its name, takes them back to the western air-temple. She’s back in her own body, the light fades and colour is back. “I’m at balance,” she tells herself, looks up from her hands to find that Heejin is still there.
“You’re ready.”