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Separation III
Title: Separation
Rating: PG-13 for language
Genre: Crossover fusion
Fandoms: Avatar: The Last Airbender and His Dark Materials
Timeline: Season One, immediately following 1x09, The Waterbending Scroll
Summary: Returning to his ship after the fiasco with the pirates, Prince Zuko stumbles across the body of a boy in the river. Quickly it is determined that the boy is alive, but that something is terribly wrong...
Warning: Inspired in part by avocado_love's Inner Nature but completely different from her story, I promise you. Original characters, who will be familiar faces for those of you who've kept up with my other works. Some foul language.
I | II
III
"There's that voice again," complained Sokka, looking around. He, Katara, Aang, and their dæmons had been kept up late the night before by the voice of a girl desperately calling for someone named Kouji. "I'm telling you, it's following us!"
"Maybe these woods are haunted," suggested Katara, running her hands gently over her dæmon's wings to check for loose feathers.
"We weren't in these woods last night," pointed out Akiak, Sokka's dæmon. This said, the arctic wolf returned to her meal.
Asia alighted on the Avatar's head as a sparrowkeet and replied, "The spirit could be following us."
"The brat has a point," Siku agreed, a rare instance between the rabbitswan and the Avatar's dæmon. "The Avatar is supposed to be the bridge between worlds." He hissed as Katara plucked one of his feathers, then went on, "Perhaps she needs his help to cross to the Spirit World."
"Hey!" Sokka objected immediately. "I thought we were supposed to be heading to the North Pole! You know, so Aang and Katara can learn waterbending? We don't have time for all these side trips!"
On cue, the voice called, "Kouji!" again. The pain and sorrow in that voice was heartrending. Akiak shuddered and leaned heavily into Sokka, Siku tucked his head under his wing, and Asia changed forms to a turtleduck and crawled inside Aang's shirt. As one, the three children drew closer together, Katara taking Siku into her arms at the same time.
"Is it just me… or is it getting… closer?" Sokka asked in a small voice.
"I don't think it's you," whispered Aang.
Silence fell, to again be broken by that grief-stricken cry — and as one, the children's dæmons insisted that they needed to leave, now, immediately, at once, with Akiak even going so far as to grab the bottom of Sokka's shirt in her jaws and trying to drag him to Appa.
"What is with you?" Sokka yelped, prising her off as Katara tried to calm Siku.
"Ouch!" The rabbitswan had managed to crack her across the face with one of his hind legs, leaving Katara with a bloody nose.
Asia, on the other hand, was changing forms every few seconds, trying to get big enough to drag Aang with her. "We have to go!" she insisted.
"What's the matter with you?" the Avatar demanded, standing his ground.
Before any of the panicked dæmons could say, a small sabre-tooth mooselion cub wandered into the camp, looking thin and utterly piteous. The two Water Tribe children blinked, and then regarded their dæmons askance. "That's what you were so scared of?" Sokka demanded. "It's just a little cub!"
"No," said Aang unexpectedly, staring at the little creature. "I feel it, too. There's something wrong."
Ignoring them, the little beast strode boldly to Akiak's abandoned meal and tucked in, which was entirely too much for the beleaguered dæmon. Snarling, she lunged at the creature, snapping; the cub let out a shriek and fled — and changed shape to that of a beaded mongoose, scrambling up on Appa and away from the flashing teeth.
All of them froze, eyes wide, staring at the lone dæmon.
"No way," said Sokka.
A lone dæmon was utterly unheard of, due to the invisible ties between humans and dæmons. While a human could survive the death of their dæmon, in those rare cases the human would inevitably kill themselves rather than live as half a person. No dæmon had ever survived the death of its human in any written history or spoken lore.
It was no small wonder that the children's dæmons had been so upset; that Aang, the Avatar, had sensed something wrong. It was true that Asia could travel far from Aang, but that was a very recent development that had startled all of them, especially the Avatar, and none of them knew why it had happened.
Katara was the first to recover from the shock, climbing up Appa despite Siku's protests. The rabbitswan, however, refused to move closer, and briefly they both struggled against their bond as the waterbender pulled to the very limit. In the end it was Siku who gave in, hissing his dislike and taking wing to land on the rim of Appa's saddle. Breathing hard, for the tugging had pained them both, Katara finished climbing and immediately spotted the lone dæmon trying to hide under one of the supply bags, now in the shape of a cringing hedgepuppy.
"It's all right," she said, trying to coax it from hiding with her voice. "We're not going to hurt you." Siku huffed his annoyance as the dæmon peeked out at Katara.
"H-have you seen Kouji?" she asked, and her high voice proved her gender. So that was what they had heard calling before. "I can't find him anywhere!"
"You were separated?" Katara asked gently, hiding her horror at the thought. This little dæmon was so small, so young, still unsettled; surely the boy she belonged to was no less scarred by whatever had happened.
After a moment, the dæmon nodded.
"What happened?" Siku asked; his sulkiness and hostility had vanished as he, too, realised the scope of the little dæmon's trauma.
She crawled out from her hiding spot a little further, then whimpered, "K-Kouji was hurt."
Katara longed to hold and comfort the little creature, but the taboo against touching another's dæmon held fast. Instead, Siku hopped off the saddle and to the hedgepuppy, extending a wing and gently covering her with it. Slowly, she calmed under the rabbitswan dæmon's care; meanwhile, Aang, Sokka, and their dæmons had joined the pair on Appa's saddle.
When she had sufficiently calmed, the little dæmon — Ishiko was her name — huddled tight against Siku, now in the form of a turtleduck. Seeming to take comfort from being tucked under his wing, she slowly explained that her human had been attacked and very badly burned. The trio and their dæmons listened in horror as Ishiko described the attack, how the attacker's dæmon had held her down so she couldn't help, how Kouji's older brother had pushed him into the river to put out the fire before it killed him but his own dæmon hadn't been able to free her before Kouji had been pulled downstream away from her.
"I tried to follow him, so hard," Ishiko whimpered, "but that man held me back." She shuddered, and Siku gently ran his beak along the back of her neck, trying to calm her. "H-he put me in a cedarwood cage, to keep me from going after him…"
Sokka's eyes hardened. What sort of monster would attack a child so young as to have an unsettled dæmon? Why would anyone actively try to keep dæmon and child apart? "How did you escape?" he wanted to know.
"I… think it was Yui," Ishiko replied. "My human's twin sister. She and Kouji are very close." The little dæmon closed her eyes. "When the cedarwood effect wore off me, I went looking for Kouji."
The rest didn't need to be told, it was easy enough to figure out. And now the children had a dilemma.
Sokka voiced his opinion first. "We can't," he said, but his voice cracked as he did. "We have to go to the North Pole."
"But Sokka," Katara protested, "she needs help! She and her human!"
"We can't search the world for one kid!" Sokka countered. Akiak nuzzled him and he hugged her close; he didn't like what he was arguing any more than his sister did.
Aang sighed and looked down at the lone, lonely dæmon. She was strangely lively for being so far from her human, despite the obvious pain and sorrow that tore at her. He considered now how Asia could go so far from him now, and how the dæmon of Zuko's uncle could do the same. But why? "This might take awhile," he told Ishiko quietly. "But we'll take care of you while your human is still away."
She nodded and, taking again the form of a hedgepuppy, curled closer to Siku and closed her eyes.
Current Location: my bed
Current Mood:  cold
Tags: character: aang, character: katara, character: sokka, crossover, fandom: avatar, fandom: his dark materials, story: separation
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