The Shadow of Kyoshi (Avatar, The Last Airbender)

So he’d known about that. “I don’t want to fight you, Kyoshi,” Yun said. “But you’re not leaving me much of a choice here.”

Knowing the truth, that Yun wasn’t being controlled by a spirit, that thi

s was the real him, was as painful as Kuruk had warned. Talking to Yun was like pulling out barbs. Little pieces of her flesh were tearing away with every word, irrecoverable. But it had to be done.

Kyoshi drew her fans. “I didn’t say you had a choice.”

His brows shot up, as if he were only now seeing her for the first time. His friend had been suddenly possessed by a spirit. Yun rose from his chair and slapped his thighs. “All right, Kyoshi. Let’s see how this plays out.”

He flicked his elbow, like a greengrocer bouncing an apple, and a square stone column burst through the floor of the dining room, snapping planks and overturning the heavy table to the side. It reached the ceiling before stopping.

Kyoshi didn’t move or flinch. The attack wasn’t directed at her. He was just setting up the game board, bringing in earth the two of them could use.

The stone had thrust into the house exactly between her and Yun, equal in distance. He leaned to the side, his grin serving as a salute and a signal. There. Fair for both of us. Have at it.

As if a frenzy had fallen upon them both, they began punching bullets from the monolith, chipping off fist-sized rocks and sending them speeding at each other. They were aiming blind. Yun’s projectiles smashed through the plaster of the walls behind her. She ducked and circled, never letting up her own barrage. Yun matched her in violent parody of the gentle spiraling footwork of airbending, keeping to the opposite side of the pillar. The vicious hail of stones whined by her ears.

Kyoshi ended the challenge early by shoving the entire pitted and cored stone column at Yun. It sawed through the dining hall as easily as a finger opening an envelope, ripping its way outside the mansion itself, leaving a gash of sky and field behind.

She cleared the dust with a blast of air. Yun was no longer in the room with her.

There were three exits he could have taken. She chose the one that led to the central part of the house with its many rooms and corridors. It would make for a more interesting battleground and therefore it would be the one Yun favored.

Kyoshi stepped through the lanes of her own memories. The mansion’s paths solidified, changing from phantoms to solid terrain. She knew which floorboards creaked. She remembered which turns were sharp.

A spike of earth burst from a nearby painting on the wall, aimed at her head. She blunted it with brute force, holding out her fans, grinding the stone to dust a foot away from her face with sheer willpower.

“Such strength!” she heard Yun hoot.

She followed his voice. She passed the woodpile where she’d once stolen a maul and used it to bash open her inheritance. The door to the kitchen, where she inadvertently revealed the first sign she was the Avatar. Kelsang’s meditation alcove. It was a drubbing from her past. These were the lumps she had to take.

Kyoshi rounded a corner and a wall of bricks laced itself together, barring her way. “Hey, now,” Yun called from the other direction. “You know how I never liked you going into my room.”

“And I never did,” Kyoshi said without turning around. “Not even after I took over the house.”

“Thank you.” He was nearing her from behind. “It’s the small kindnesses that mean the most.”

She flung a thrust kick at him, a torrent of air shooting from her foot, enough wind to scrub the hall from the floor to the ceiling. Only after she heard a crash against the back wall did she let up and look. The force of her airbending had sent paper screens and hallway tables all the way to the other end, smashing them to bits. No Yun though.

“I was wondering when you’d bring the other elements to bear,” he said from somewhere close by. He knew the house as well as she did, every nook and hiding place. It had been his domain before it had been hers.

Kyoshi moved toward the back of the house, where the expanse of the training ground lay. She entered the empty courtyard. It smelled like rotting straw, the stuffing of the target dummies moldering from disuse. Many of the clay earthbending disks had shattered on their own, exposed to seasons of cold and heat that bleached them from brown to white.

She walked to the center, exposed and vulnerable to attack from all sides. “Yun,” she said. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.” He echoed off the surrounding walls, impossible to pinpoint.

“It’s time to let go.” Kyoshi lowered her hands. “Whether you kill me here today or not, you have to let go of what happened.”

Yun emerged from one of the alcoves. A shadow fell across his face, blanking out his expression. A wave of malice as tangible as the elements came pouring forth from him, the sickening wrongness she’d felt when he first came back to the world of the living. “Let go?” he snarled. “Let go?”

She’d been trying to pick the words that would help him, and instead she’d struck a nerve. “You have the gall to say that, after helping me kill Jianzhu?” Yun shouted. “You got exactly what you wanted, Kyoshi!”

She closed her eyes and let the violence of his emotions wash over her. It was a test of her root. When she opened them again, she was still standing firm.

“And it didn’t bring me peace. It was wrong that you were lied to, Yun. It was wrong for Jianzhu to do what he did. But he’s gone. Whatever pain and anger you have left—you have to live with it. You can’t put it on anyone else.”

If the boy she knew was still inside somewhere, he would listen to what she had to say next. “You don’t deserve to hurt more people because of what you suffered, Yun. You don’t deserve to hurt me.”