Disclaimer: Avatar is not mine. It is Nickelodeon's.
A/N: I honestly thought that this was what was going to happen, way back when I first watched this episode. So I figured I might as well finally write it down.
Bonus points if you can point to the origin of the title.
This Is No Temple
"The key, Sokka, is airbending."
Aang stood before the sanctuary doors, and breathed deeply. The air filled his lungs and, as he stepped forward, streamed from his mouth and hands, into the flared openings to the twisted structure adorning the entrance. The rushing air activated some kind of mechanism within the door, and its spiral insignias turned and whistled a three-note tone. A practiced eye could distinguish the Air Nomad symbol, embedded in the looping tubes.
Then, the latch flipped, and the doors opened. Inside was nothing but darkness.
"Hello?" Aang called. "Anyone home?" He walked in fearlessly, and Sokka and Katara cautiously followed.
100 years ago, give or take
Smoke in the air, ash on the wind. Lightning struck from the earth to the sky, and the Temple trembled with the roar of wildfire.
The bison were dying, and they screamed.
Where was Monk Gyatso? Where was Monk Khang? Monk Dakyu looked around and tried to clear the smoke with a motion, but more smoke came in to replace it.
The orchards were burning.
Dakyu ran for the schoolyard, where the children would have been practicing when the first explosions came. He passed a bison with half its legs burned away, still trying to get up, but had no time to do anything but pray for its spirit as he sprinted.
The firebenders could fly, and there was no place in the temple that was safe.
Except one.
"Monk Dakyu! Monk Dakyu!"
Dakyu looked up, to see the face of a frightened boy. "Monk Dakyu, what do we do?"
Dakyu remembered the bison, remembered the lightning striking gliders out of the sky. They could not fly away; it just made them targets.
"Child, where are the others?"
"I don't know! Some of the other students are hiding in the skyloft, but th-there was no room for me."
Dakyu coughed and rubbed his burning eyes. "Take me to them."
The students that had packed themselves into the loft were relieved to see Dakyu, and came floating down like falling leaves, the younger ones clutching at his robes and crying, the slightly older ones looking drawn and fearful. One held a lemur kit to his chest, gripping tightly. "Come," said Dakyu. "We need to get to the sanctuary."
There were others. Monk Ghuri was protecting some of the older students from a lone firebender, his air shield quickly shrinking against the assault (one! one against a master like Ghuri!). Dakyu swung his staff, and the firebender was blown into a wall, momentarily stunned.
Ghuri paused for a moment, only a moment, looking at the armored, masked man as he got to his feet. Then, he swung his own staff, and the firebender was flung 30 feet into the air. The soldier may have tried that fire-flying trick as he fell, but was unable to summon the required breath.
He hit the ground with a clash of metal, and didn't get up.
The students stared, and Dakyu met Ghuri's eyes. He saw some guilt, but mostly resignation, and perhaps even a hint of that ferocity that blew in the worst winter gales.
There was no time. Ghuri's transgress could be addressed later. "Where are Khang and Gyatso?"
"Khang is dead," said Ghuri tersely. "And I do not know where Gyatso is."
Dakyu could feel the heat of the fires, getting closer. "We are going to the sanctuary. But they will follow us there."
"We will go as well, then. Gyatso may join us, if he is able."
There was little time to argue, discuss, or mourn. The two monks and the dozen-odd students ran with wind-swift speed up the stairway and past the newly-commissioned statue of Monk Gyatso, hitching their robes as they went. When they reached the sanctuary door, the two monks bent the air in tandem, opening it. They shepherded the children inside, and closed the doors behind them.
Captain Pon Re halted outside the large door, obviously a defensive barricade. Lieutenant Hai had said he'd seen airbenders fleeing into them, and they needed to be routed out.
This whole mission was becoming increasingly frustrating. The few airbenders who they bothered to stop and interrogate, mostly the older ones, insisted that the Avatar was not here. And they could have been telling the truth. There were three other temples, after all.
But, Pon Re had earlier mused, that wasn't really the point, was it? Killing the Avatar would only accomplish so much. Not really worth it, for all this effort. Mostly, he figured, the Air Nomads, with their old-fashioned way of life, were just getting in the way of progress.
Oh, well. Not his place to question, was it? It's not like these arrow-headed mountain rats really mattered or anything.
Pon Re looked at the door again. It could be blasted open, certainly, with comet-fueled fire hot enough to melt the bronze. But was that really the best way to get at the nomads? After all, hadn't that one airbender killed a good dozen soldiers by sucking all the air out of a confined space? Going in there could be a death trap. Comet or no, Pon Re and his men still needed air to breathe, much less firebend.
Air to breathe… Captain Pon Re smiled. He knew exactly what to do.
It was pitch black inside the sanctuary, and the airbending students huddled close around the two older monks, standing still after a few minutes of walking into statues every few feet. The boy with the lemur kit held onto it even more firmly, as it squirmed and squeaked and tried to wriggle out of his hands.
"Is this it, Dakyu?" asked Monk Ghuri. "We hide like elephant rats in a nest?"
Monk Dakyu closed his eyes in the darkness. "We will be safe here. They cannot get in."
Monk Ghuri shook his head. "No. Don't be a fool, Dakyu! They will blast the door down!"
"Ghuri, please, you will frighten the children."
Monk Ghuri took a careful step forward, feeling his way around the statues, until he was standing in front of the door. "This door is more easily defendable. When they come in, we can keep them back."
Monk Dakyu nodded invisibly, then said to one of the older students: "Tarun, please take the others further back into the sanctuary."
Dakyu waited until he could hear the sound of the students fumbling their way back into the forest of Avatar likenesses, then felt his own way to the door. If they could defend this passage… perhaps the firebenders would give up, convinced that it was not worth the effort.
Then, he smelled the smoke.
Captain Pon Re adjusted the makeshift metal tubing over the burning books, making sure the smoke flowed into the sanctuary door's locking mechanism without obstruction. Other soldiers were gathering more kindling: books, scrolls, wood, clothing from off the now-plentiful corpses… anything would do. The tubes had been metal sheets brought as patching material for the ironclad ships, should they run into a reef, now softened by comet-fire and rolled into a pipe.
It was, the Captain thought, quite ingenious.
Why fight harder, after all, when you can fight smarter? And why follow the rat-viper into its nest, when you could smoke it out from where it lay?
The inside of the Southern Air Temple sanctuary was quickly turning into a nightmare.
The two monks, once they realized what was happening, bent the air to deflect the smoke upward and towards the ceiling, but the fumes kept coming. Some of the younger children were crying, and the lemur kit, having escaped the hands of its owner, was squealing loudly from somewhere amongst the statues.
The firebenders were not coming in. There would be no defense at the doorway, no last stand. They had not even made any demands.
As the smoke grew thicker, Dakyu left his place by the door, and felt his way back to the children. "Tarun?" he said, and coughed. "Tarun, are you there?"
"Yes, Monk D-" the boy's words dissolved into hacking and choking. When he managed to retrieve a bit of breath, he rasped out, "What do we do?"
Dakyu coughed, eyes burning in the blackness. After a long moment, he said, "The smoke will float. Lie on the ground."
The children whimpered and coughed and hacked and gasped, but they lay down, eager to follow the lead of someone who knew what to do, how to save them.
Every breath was a cough, rattling his bones and making his chest and head ache. His eyes were on fire even when closed, and he thought he could smell burning hair. The lemur kit had stopped squealing.
"Dakyu!" It was Ghuri, still at the door. His voice was laboured, wheezing. "Dakyu, I can't…" Then there was nothing but coughing, and the sound of something heavy sliding to the floor.
Lying on the ground, Dakyu's head was still just clear enough to think. He could, he knew, simply open the door. But then what? He would be cut down. Would he die by fire, or by air?
Through a strange, grey haze, Dakyu could hear someone moving. One of the children had gotten up, was trying to run, crashing into statues. He was screaming for his mentor, his bison, anyone. Dakyu tried to call to the student, but could not summon the breath for more than a rattle.
He realized he could no longer get up.
The Prayer for the Journey bubbled through the smoke filling his mind, and he recited it silently.
Bless the wind that carries me,
Bless the sun that warms me,
Bless the earth that provides me,
Bless the waters that soothe me,
Bless all I meet on this long, hard road, until the day that I return home.
100 years later, give or take
"Statues?!" cried Sokka. "That's it? Where's the- oh spirits."
There was a skeleton by the door, draped in faded Air Nomad robes.
Aang was standing a bit further inside, and as Sokka approached him, he saw the others.
There was one larger skeleton, but mostly they were children. The bones of children, lying amongst each other as if haphazardly dropped in a pile, tangled in yellow and orange cloth. Cloth colored like the tunic now worn by the arrow-headed boy looking down at them.
Oh, man, thought Sokka. This place is a tomb.
Then Aang screamed, and the sanctuary erupted in light.