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rivensil · 3 years

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on sept 18, 2020 (almost exactly 11 months ago!!) i said this and only just now found the remnants of the fic while organizing my google docs. i still have not finished it and no longer really intend to, so i wanted to share it here anyway since i came up with a title and hashtag and everything

this was my orignal hurt/comfort idea for rangshi week 2020 that fell through where i wrote cat and mousetrap instead 😂

yun-centric, MAJOR shadow of kyoshi spoilers, 1752 words, unedited and unfinished!

Interlude.

Yun died.

He thought he already knew what it felt like to have his heart frozen over when he crushed Father Glowworm between his teeth. The spirit hadn’t changed anything about Yun’s physical appearance, but something inside him rotted and died when he clawed his way back to the mortal world.

Yun killed everyone in that teahouse in the mining village for mocking him about his stolen Avatarhood. He couldn’t Waterbend himself a drink of water, but he could make their blood run in deep, red rivers.

And Yun did—splattered in steaming gore, Yun found that his heart was unmoved by the slaughter. He even felt good flexing his strength, his Earthbending that rivaled the Avatar’s and bested the evil spirit, Father Glowworm.

Staring into the dark green eyes of the girl he once loved and with splintering ice in his veins, Yun died. All the saliva in his mouth went cold as his chest seized and his heart stopped, still painfully aching as it tried to squeeze out one last heartbeat.

He fell to the side, his gaze distant and cast into nothingness.

If Yun could still speak, he didn’t know if he should curse Kyoshi or thank her. The girl he knew before would have been devastated, her eyes swimming with conflict and pain, but while Kyoshi was weeping when she placed her hand on Yun’s chest, he knew that the tears were not for him.

As Rangi lay dying cradled in her arms, Kyoshi looked at Yun with a steely calm. Seeing that, he almost leaned into her touch. He might have.

Was this the worst he could have done? Yun had told Kyoshi that she was the one person he did not hold a grudge against, but ultimately, he still forced her hand.

Yun’s voice returned from a past so distant it felt like a previous life: If it turns out not to be me, I’ll be glad it’s you.

His own echo, nearly distorted beyond recognition: If I don’t take you down with me, I’ll make sure it’s you.

Even at the end, Kyoshi was too kind to leave him to suffer—she made sure that Yun’s death was painless. Ice spread through Yun faster than his body could feel the shock and by then, the cold had numbed him. Perhaps it was her form of mercy. Yun never knew that Kyoshi could kill, and he’d never thought that she would do it looking like she had already come to terms with his death.

An idea struck him. Maybe Yun had truly died when Father Glowworm took him that day he learned he wasn’t the Avatar. Maybe Kyoshi had been grieving for him since. Life would be awfully convenient if Father Glowworm, that cruel, disgusting, vengeful creature, had killed him.

Life would have been easier if he’d died in the streets. Yun had no parents, no family, fine. No food and no place to sleep was a different problem, but he’d managed until Jianzhu found him. Then Yun was given everything and finally found a destiny to shoulder.

Without his Avatarhood, Yun may as well have died. No identity, no purpose, fine. With my own two hands, I will carve out a place for myself in this universe, Yun had vowed as he tore the earth asunder in the Spirit World.

The spirits and the stars must have colluded to curse Yun when he was born because even in death, he couldn’t rest easy. His final breath was stuck inside his frozen lungs, the exhale lingering on the edge of his lips. The teasing promise of closure was just out of reach like how Avatarhood had been dangled in front of his face.

Yun’s spirit slipped out of his body, and he could see his dull eyes widened in surprise and frozen lips parted in a gasp. Clear water rippled around his corpse. For a moment, Yun thought he was melting, but a bright light began to shine above him.

It wasn’t the sun, but it may as well have been—Kyoshi was in the Avatar state, and her eyes glowed a brilliant blue with the combined power of generations of benders before her.

This was never for me. Yun took one last look at the Avatar, at the girl in her arms, at the connection they shared, then shut his eyes and turned away, letting his spirit drift to wherever it wanted to go.

---

During his Avatar training, Yun had learned about Tui and La, the Moon Spirit and the Ocean Spirit, who chose to leave the Spirit World thousands of years ago to manifest in mortal forms. Like them, Yun wanted to help humanity. Yun dedicated his life to the commoners. He would risk his life to save those weaker than him and did; Yun almost died trying to lead that rescue in the southern sea.

Yun remembered this one night on his journey across the Earth Kingdom to find Jianzhu. He thought the spirits were foolish. In the Spirit World, Tui and La would be virtually unkillable—what about mankind was worth sacrificing one’s immortality?

They were all selfish, lying creatures, none of them worth giving a second chance. Even Kyoshi, the one person Yun had thought to spare on his quests to right the wrongs he’d been given, had betrayed him.

Kyoshi killing him might have been a mercy. It would have been, but even in death, Yun couldn’t rest easy.

Yun didn’t want it to be true, but he’d always excelled at his studies regardless of whether he was the Avatar. Spirits couldn’t be killed in the Spirit World, and when Yun’s mortal body died, his spirit, immutably intertwined with Father Glowworm, also returned.

The hard, uneven earth of the broken training grounds in the Avatar estate had disappeared. Yun could feel soft grass crushed beneath his back, and a light breeze brushed across the exposed skin of his face and hands.

Could he stay like this forever? Would the world let him? Yun lay unmoving for as long as he could but aching pain began to sear in his chest, and as a deep gasping breath tore through him, Yun’s eyes shot open and he sat up.

The Spirit World already shifted without his consent. Gone was the field of grass and gentle warmth of the sun, replaced by the same ravaged swamp Yun had escaped from months ago. At Yun’s feet, the broken scar he’d left in the Spirit World swirled with its unpredictable, wild colors and threatened to swallow him whole.

Yun absentmindedly wondered what would happen if he fell inside, but his body moved without permission, hands and feet scrabbling on the dried and dusty mud to push him back.

“I will make my new home here.” The words fell from his chapped lips, but Yun hadn’t intended to speak. He tried to raise a hand to touch his face, his mouth, anything, and his body wouldn’t comply.

Without his mortal form, Yun was more spirit than man, and whatever remained of Father Glowworm inside him now had the upper hand. Yun lost his sense of identity and purpose in life then lost his life altogether; he didn’t think he could possibly lose anything more until he no longer had bodily autonomy.

If he could, Yun would’ve thrown his head back to laugh until his throat was raw.

---

Yun’s legs dragged gracelessly over the jagged hills and broken rock that marked the site of his battle with Father Glowworm. Yun had expected a few things from his possession while others caught him by surprise.

First, he thought his body would have undergone a change to better suit Father Glowworm’s original shape. Yun’s consciousness had spent days shaking in a body that wasn’t fully his, anticipating the agony that comes from bones shattering and skin tearing apart to transform into some dark terror, but nothing happened.

Father Glowworm was a distant presence in the back of his mind, but the spirit’s instincts were too strong for Yun to fight. The second thing he learned was that if he struggled hard enough, he could break free of the possession for seconds, even minutes at a time. Ultimately, Father Glowworm would wear Yun down to regain control, but Yun found that the spirit wanted to patrol his territory and little else.

Yun shrunk back in the recesses of his mind to let Father Glowworm make his rounds. It was an extremely territorial creature, and he’d already fought with dozens of other spirits who’d accidentally wandered into the dead swamp.

The reason why Yun gave up on controlling his body was the third thing he’d found out about surviving in his afterlife in the Spirit World: he and Kyoshi were still connected. More accurately, it was the remnants of Father Glowworm connected to the Avatar, but when the spirit let him close his eyes at night, Yun could almost see her.

If Yun had control of his body, he most certainly would’ve scoured the Spirit World for a way to remove the visions and sever the connection but he didn’t, so he was forced to watch.

Kyoshi always appeared bathed in brilliant, blue light. It only took one appearance for Yun to know that she was in the Avatar State, but she also showed up in hazier shapes like shadows in the corner of his eye or mirages in the distance. Those were when Kyoshi was experiencing bouts of some powerful emotion.

Yun had no idea how time passed in the Spirit World. Especially in the deepest corners of the swamp, light shone through in fingers as thin as the withered roots that Yun had torn out of the ground. Days could have passed, weeks or years, Yun couldn’t tell. All he knew was the regular patrol that Father Glowworm would take around the swamp, carefully avoiding the savage gash right in the center, as well as Kyoshi’s occasional visits.

They very well could have been hallucinations or apparitions of a life that he’d yearned for in the past, but Yun could see Kyoshi slowly begin to age. The speed at which she aged also confused him. She looked so young for so long, but the gradual change in her emotions that rang through the thread between them like a musician strumming on their strings said otherwise.

Kyoshi’s first few visits were fraught with anger and fear. She shook with a restlessness that made Yun want to throttle Father Glowworm to remove him entirely.

i only have today and tomorrow to start and finish this fic because i prepped exactly one (1) buffer for these ship weeks ☠️ logically i should be writing the capitalism au for atla wlw week that i already outlined but i want to write hurt/comfort… it calls to me… and it’s gonna be yun pov for ~spice~….

#sil speaks #int #i hope everyone is keeping safe and well! i'm really inactive on tumblr but my dms are always open and i have a discord!

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