Chapter Text
The Avatar is more than just a keeper of peace. All the benders and non-benders relied on them. The Avatar has the ability to read one's state of mind, willpower, and being. They use it to appoint leaders. Most cultures have specific traditions relying on the Avatar. Some require them to perform miracles, others to reason with spirits and dragons and monsters, and some even ask them to stand in for a god.
As such, when Avatar Aang sealed themself in ice and slept, the world fell into ruin. While the governments still ran and the militaries grew, corruption skyrocketed and traditions were slowly changed and forgotten. Cultures were losing their long kept histories.
However, Aang was not truly sleeping. It is impossible for an Avatar in the Avatar state to sleep - instead, they are briefly acquainted with their energy, the energy of Avatars.
For Aang, who kept this meditative state for a hundred years, there was nothing brief about it. The first few days they listened to Roku, learning their history, their culture, their stories. When they were done, Kyoshi picked up.
Slowly but surely, every iteration told Aang their life story, taught them their philosophies, and failures. It took only a single year to listen and learn.
For a while, they were unsure of how to proceed. No one has ever been in the Avatar state for such a long time. The airbender from the twelfth cycle, Zen, had kept themself in the state for six weeks. They were the previous record holder.
Zen had a short story. They were born four thousand, eight hundred, fifty-five years before Aang. So far, Zen was the youngest Avatar to pass. They had died of tumors in their chest, and had to stay in the state until they could fulfill an Agni Kai.
It was set between two firebenders, who were both trying to gather other firebenders onto a volcanic chain of islands. One wanted a king, the other an oligarchy. Zen had recently learned they were dying, yet it was their duty to oversee the fight.
During the flight towards the arena, Zen had to go into the state, in fear of death. If they had died before the fight, the two factions would likely to have been at war until the next Avatar was found to conduct the Agni Kai.
It took six weeks for the tournament to be set up, and once Zen was awake the fight went by fast. The oligarchy faction had won, the leader appointing himself as Fire Lord.
Zen passed weeks later, at sixteen years old. The tumors in their chest were only held back by the Avatar state for a couple months. Amanik was born seconds later.
What was learned from the stint proved useful for Aang. In the Avatar state, their body stilled. No new cells were created, and no cells died. When Aang awoke, they would still be a twelve year old. During this process, any outside factors will not hurt them either. The meditative Avatar state was defenseless, and as such, needed to provide the greatest shield. Nothing could kill a meditating Avatar, something Narashi, the third firebender, had found.
Narashi was a travelling monk, who had survived on the good will of people. Of course, because they performed rituals and oversaw traditions, they often got offerings.
One tradition that Narashi themself had started was meditating in order to connect with the heart of an ecosystem. They started it to calm a forest that kept flooding a farm, which they found was built upon the bones of the forest’s first guardian. It was a simple fix, and had started a long standing job for the Avatar.
During one such meditation, they were in a desert, witch was known to Aang as the Si Wong desert, and they were stung by the Ālābó Féi Wěi Xiēzi, an extremely potent scorpion.
By all accounts, they should have been dead in minutes, yet the scorpion's tail could not penetrate their skin.
It was reasonable to say that Aang would not be affected by the cold or shock of being submerged. However, the same could not be said for their poor bison, Appa. Once they realized this, they drowned in guilt. This was slightly abated by Sulama, the eighteenth cycle's waterbender, who spent their life experimenting with what water could do.
They had hypothesized that swiftly freezing a lifeform could keep it alive, if barely. They never managed to prove the hypothesis, but hopefully the Avatar's ice would have been sufficient. Even so, Appa might have flown off and landed after Aang had fell. They could only hope.
But Aang needed to do more than just listen, and so they started to truly learn. First, the waterbenders taught them their ways, taking twelve years for them to be satisfied. Then, the earthbenders pounded their knowledge into their brain. It took longer, but it was only natural. After twenty-seven years, they were passed along to the firebenders. They was pronounced a master within sixteen years.
They had spent fifty-six years meditating. Three more were spent learning how to perform rituals, dances, and traditions. Included were the recent, and not-so-recent, politics and etiquette lessons. Aang soaked up the information like a sponge.
When it seemed like there was nothing else for Aang to learn, Raava pulled the Avatar's energies together and formed, in all Her unhuman glory. She taught them true bending - the bending of the spirit, energy bending. With it, She told them the secrets to reading a person, seeing their worth and titles, experiencing their hardships all through the energy that coursed through every being.
However, She warned, they would not be able to truly use it until they assimilates the energies of the world's current masters. Once they take in the energy of a waterbending master, an earthbending master, and a firebending master, they would be near unstoppable. They would be able to bend time and space itself.
Aang asked what assimilating energy would entail, worried over causing the death of any living creature. Their restraint was for naught; they needed only to feel, to be drowned in, almost be taken over by the masters’ energies in order to assimilate them. If they chose, nothing negative would happen.
But without full control, there was little they could do using energy. They can remove bending from a person, but only if they have more willpower. They also have the basics needed to fulfill their role as Avatar, like being to read the titles and names of a person, as well as look into one's memories if they consent to it.
They will only be able to do so without consent with full control, or else the person's mind will rip apart at the seams.
Aang had to be careful of energy bending more than elemental, as there was nothing fair about the fights except for will, which Aang has been cultivating for nearly a century, having spent thirty-six years learning under Raava. There was not much else for them to learn, not for the maturity of a twelve year old child.
Of course, they had matured during the years under the guidance of Avatars, but children were never truly adults, and for one to have the responsibility and outlook of one is heartbreaking.
They had spent ninety-five years trapped in the ice. It was hard to track time here, but not impossible. There was a mechanism that needed wound up every twenty-four hours, buried along with Avatar Beluri, the seventeenth earthbender.
The mechanism was old, but it worked. And after every day, another mark would be drawn in the sky, and every month they would be replaced by a star, before being replaced with a full circle that signifies a year. They had all agreed to mark a century using a tear-shape.
Aang continued to practice and refine their skills, bending multiple elements at once, strengthening their understanding, pranking the elders with the younger Avatars, and observing the world around them.
Then, they change the ninety-nine circles into a teardrop.
Soon, the ice around them broke, and they finally left the Avatar state, after a full century and forty-four days.