Telegram

By Vifetoile

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Avatar,' or Aang, or Tenzin, or airbending. Or anything.

One: Words in the Temple

TO: AVATAR AANG KYOSHI ISLAND

FROM: KYA GAIPAN

Hello Father STOP All is well here STOP

Trading agreement reached no problems STOP Weather very nice STOP First anniversary of Liberty School a success STOP Will stay for another month STOP Sky Bison spotted at S Air Temple STOP I think Tenzin is there STOP That was this morning STOP I think something is wrong STOP

The telegram rustled in the breast pocket of Aang's robe as he glided his way over the air currents. It was forty years since he had first arrived at the temple and seen the wreckage of the Hundred Years' War firsthand. Now the world was different. The temple slowly came into view beyond the clouds. Even from a distance, it gleamed. It wasn't fully restored – the lower levels housed a hospital and inn, but the upper spires still gleamed vacantly, empty of any human inhabitants.

Save one.

Aang's eyes were still sharp enough to spot the tiny fleck of orange and yellow atop the tallest spire. He circled around in a narrowing gyre until he came to land, huffing as the impact hit his ankles. One thing was for sure: he was not as spry as he once was.

The man who sat on the tower's edge, his long legs dangling into space, gave no sign of having seen him. Aang stepped quietly towards him. In lieu of a spoken greeting, Aang summoned a breeze to tickle Tenzin's left ear.

The only sign that Tenzin gave in return was to tap his fingers, once. No answering breeze gusted towards Aang's right ear. To discard their playful greeting like that…

Aang sat beside his son. "Hello, Tenzin."

After a long silence, he glanced over. Tenzin's grey eyes were rimmed with red. He looked like he'd been trading sleeping for flight, and square meals for crying.

Aang hadn't felt so fiercely protective of his little boy in decades. He said, "Kya said you might be here. She said something was wrong."

"Did she tell you what was wrong?" Tenzin asked flatly.

"Well, no. It was one of those new-fangled telegrams that Sokka's so fond of – hardly any space to tell me where I might find you."

Silence. Aang sensed the breezes around them – heavy and slow. Tenzin must have been sitting here for at least an hour, to have netted so much gloom around himself.

"Tenzin, my boy, what's wrong?"

Tenzin tilted his head back, like he was trying to swallow a disgusting morsel. He clamped his eyes shut. "Lin and I broke up."

Aang just had time to think that this was nothing earth-shattering, Tenzin and Lin had broken up and gotten back together plenty of times over the years, when Tenzin added, "We broke up per… forev… for good."

"And when was this?"

"Two days ago."

Two days ago Tenzin must have been in Republic City, with Lin – maybe he had just flown on Oogi nonstop to arrive here. Aang checked around for Oogi: the great sky bison was snoozing on the lower deck, sunning himself and breathing heavily. Aang put a hand on Tenzin's travel-stained cloak. Tenzin leaned into his father – or started to. He drew back, but clenched his father's hand in his.

"How do you know it's for good?" 'Just ask the questions,' Aang thought, 'Don't provide solutions or condolences too early.' Aang could just tell that words were bunched up and knotted as tight as gnarled tree branches in his baby son – they needed to be set free, but only in Tenzin's own way.

"Because –" he gulped – "what we want in life is too different. Irreconcilable. It's – too huge a gulf. I – I prop— offered—I asked her to marry me."

"Ooohhh." Aang sighed with regret. That would have been wonderful. They all would have been so happy.

"It was my second proposal."

"Third," Aang interrupted as gently as he could. "I think the first time you were about five."

Tenzin didn't smile. He dropped his father's hand. "She said we had to make a permanent decision, one way or the other. It didn't go well. In fact, it got very ugly. She said… that I was playing her along. Incapable of thinking for myself. Untrustworthy." He scrunched up his mouth, as if he'd found what he'd just said to be rotten.

"She was speaking from anger," Aang started.

"I called her things, too." He wrung out his robe in his hands. After a long pause, he blurted, "A cold-hearted machine, a stubborn, passionless liar, an indecent woman, monster… I shouldn't have, but spirits take me, I was so mad. I said, she didn't deserve to be…" he stopped.

Aang summoned a cooler, fresher breeze to cut through the maelstrom of melancholy around them. Tears began to course down Tenzin's face. He clasped his palms in the gesture to invoke serenity, but his hands shook.

Aang waited until the worst of the sobs were over, and then prompted, "She didn't deserve to be – a police detective? Your wife?"

"A mother. She didn't deserve to be a mother."

Aang's eyes widened. "You fought about—"

"Children. Lin doesn't want them." Tenzin looked away from his dad and muttered something.

Aang leaned forward. "What?"

"I said, 'and I'm not sure I do, either.'"

His jaw fell. "Tenzin, what about your responsibilities to –"

"To whom? The Air Nomads? The Spirits? The 'balance of the world'? To you?"

"Yes, yes, and yes."

"Every single day, every single day of my life I've been reminded of my duty. I'm an outsider even in my own family. People talk about me as if I'm nothing but a vessel for pure Air Nomad existence. They see my arrow and they think, 'Wow, he's got to father all the Air Nomads all over again, what a life!' And what has it cost me? Society with normal people, the freedom to choose my own path, and the love of my life, the woman of my dreams, for a duty that she can't be part of."

Aang frowned. "There are other women, Tenzin."

"Like you know?" Tenzin exploded at his father. "You met my mother at the age of twelve, and got married at sixteen, you've only ever had one woman! I've just had to throw away thirty years with the best friend I've ever had, and – and I never wanted to be the last airbender, never!"

Aang bit back the temptation to ask, "Do you think I did?" He'd already changed the whole conversation with one ill-timed and tactless remark.

"I was born to carry on the Air Nomads, you and Mother were trying for an Air Nomad, to complete your little collection. Isn't that true? Isn't that true?"

"Yes, that's true, but that doesn't mean that we don't love you, cherish you for who you are beyond your bending—"

"Then why stop at me? If it wasn't just a matter of 'We've got what we wanted, let's quit'?"

Aang felt himself going red. "We tried, yes. But there were two miscarriages in two years. It nearly broke your mother's heart, not to mention her health—you wouldn't remember."

"Funny. Almost like the spirits only wanted one airbender in the world at a time."

"Tenzin, some things just… happen."

Tenzin got up and began to pace the top of the tower. "Do you know, some old fashioned Earth Kingdom cities do this thing—" he spoke quickly and loudly, his right hand waving erratically, "where a man takes on as many as four concubines, so he can father as many sons as possible? Did that never occur to you?"

"I could never—"

"Oh, so your duty to the Air Nation ends at one son, but I've got to have more? How many grandkids do you want, Pop? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? How many concubines will I need?"

"I also have a duty to my wife – and I, myself, would never have agreed to concubines. The idea did come up, Tenzin, but I couldn't – it would be wrong, you know that. And I love your mother too fully for any other arrangement."

"I," Tenzin blinked tears away, "would have lived with Lin in a savage jungle, or in the slums, or a volcano's mouth – anything she wanted. But she didn't want children, and so I've thrown away the best thing that ever happened to me – for a duty to a people I'm not even a part of."

"I'm sorry, my son, I'm sorry, but maybe it wasn't meant to be—"

"Shut. Up." To punctuate the last word, Tenzin picked up his glider, which had been lying on the ground nearby, and opened it. Then he turned around and looked at Aang, just a moment, before he took a running leap off of the turret.

"Tenzin!" Aang yelled, hurrying to the edge and bending over to see what had become of his son. But Tenzin was fine; he was flying at breakneck speed away from the southern Air Temple, too fast for Aang to follow.

Not that Aang wouldn't try. He picked up his glider anyway, and leapt off the turret – when suddenly Oogi's furry bulk filled his vision. The sky bison roared once – a warning, nothing more: You are not to follow. Then he took off after his boy.

Aang landed, stumbling and staring. What he had heard rang in his ears, and constantly before his eyes was the glare Tenzin had given him – a glare full of anger, sadness, bitterness, but not hatred. Aang had to hold on to the idea that he saw no hatred.

STOP

"Of course he doesn't hate you." Katara said, after calming Aang (who had flown down to the South Pole in a terrified rush) and hearing the whole story. "He's very upset, and I don't blame him. But this doesn't mean he's disowned you."

"I didn't even see clearly where he was going – he could be anywhere. I need to follow—"

"The last thing that either of you needs is another meeting, Uncle," chimed in Yukito, the redheaded son of Sokka and Suki. "Hate you? No. Want you within a twenty-mile radius of him? No."

"But if something happens—"

"He's a master Airbender," Katara gave Aang a kiss on his arrow. "He learned from the best. He can take care of himself."

Aang was silent for a long time as Yukito served the tea and continued to gossip. After a time he brought the talk to his own family (as he was wont to do), and the stunning achievements of his children. Then Aang said, "I'm afraid."

He said it very calmly and flatly, but his wife and nephew both turned to stare. "What?" Katara asked.

"I'm afraid that Tenzin may have meant what he said. That he will refuse to marry, raise a family – that by my pressure on him, he will be the last Airbender just out of spite."

"Now, he's not like that," Katara said. "You know him too well to think he'd do that."

"I'm not so sure. Or what if he does marry and all of his children are non-benders?"

"Oh my spirits! What a disaster!" Yukito muttered into his teacup.

Aang looked at him, his grey eyes sorrowful. "I will not be around much longer. I'm afraid for the fate of the Air Nomads – completely separate from my fear for my son. I…" he chuckled weakly, "I may have lived in the past, but now I need… I need to know about the future." He scanned the tea leaves at the bottom of his now empty cup. "How can I see what lies in store?"

Silence greeted this query. Yukito gave a sidelong 'He's crazy' look to Katara, but she looked more pensive.

"My Gran-Gran used to recite a little rhyme… I think in the Southern Water Tribe, there was a specific order that Waterbenders had to learn their different tasks: 'First learn ice to shape the town, second they learn to keep foes down, third, bring healing after slaughter, four, see all in frozen water.'"

"Has this become a Spiritual Mumbo Jumbo kind of day?" Yukito drained his tea. "If so, I'm out."

She went on, "I read in the Northern Water tribe that benders would meditate in the Spirit Oasis for visions of the future. But in the South, benders used to See glimpses of what was to come in the ice. They dedicated their lives to it."

"Were they also eating fermented seaweed, by chance?" Yukito asked innocently.

"Yukito, this is your heritage," Katara rebuked him.

Aang looked animated. "I never knew this – this is wonderful to hear. But I suppose the art died out? With the war?"

She looked into the distance, her expression thoughtful. "It actually died out before the war. The Ice-seers were only a myth, a story for the fireside, even to my grandparents. My grandfather said that most of them went mad. And some moved North and were never seen again."

"Ain't that the way? So glad we've got telegrams now, to keep in touch." Yukito began to clear away the cups. "So when I go North next week, anything you want me to buy?"

"North! That's it!" Aang sat up suddenly, smiling like a twelve-year-old once more.

Katara laughed. "What now, my mercurial husband?"

"What if the Ice-seers didn't just disappear? What if some of them just went a little ways north, to where there was lots of water, and they could See without losing their minds?"

"The Foggy Swamp?" Katara asked. "Why, maybe."

"Oh, those guys! Dad's told me about them."

"I'm going to pay a visit. Do you want to come with?" Aang asked his wife.

She got slowly to her feet. "What will you ask, exactly?"

"About… the Air Nomads. Their future. Tenzin's future."

"Then this is your quest. I don't think I would be… well. This doesn't involve me." Katara smiled softly at her husband. "I'll stay here, in case Tenzin comes home."

"Good. Good. Appa and I will fly out there tomorrow."

"You may want to take one of the younger sky bisons." Katara helped Aang to his feet.

"Yes, good idea."

"Aang," Katara's voice brought him back, took him away from the high and fancy schemes he was already halfway to plotting. "Remember to stay safe."

"I will."

"And don't get so caught up in dreams you lose sight of what's here." She clasped his hand tightly. "What's now."

"Sometimes I swear, you should have been born an airbender," Aang muttered, touching his forehead against hers. "My wife, a font of wisdom."

Yukito made a louder noise than was strictly necessary as he cleared away the plates. Aang laughed, kissing Katara. He said, "Well, I'll see which one of the bison is most up for a good flight. And then we'll see... what we shall See."

STOP

A/N: Welcome to my new fanfiction! My NaNoWriMo hiatus has ended, and it's time for me to share with the world this little fic, which I've been sitting on for some time. I'm very happy to be sharing it with you all.

Expect Chapter Two, "Cards on the Table," fairly soon.

And a disclaimer: In addition to not owning 'Avatar,' the little rhyme that Katara recites is inspired by Garth Nix's (awesome) fantasy trilogy, The Old Kingdom, in which the proper rhyme has five parts and is more important to the story proper. This won't be the last small, oblique reference to an outside source I include.

Thank you for reading! And by all means, feel free to leave a review.