Hooray! Yet another new atla fic on this wonderful site. Hello, lovely readers, and welcome to the ride. Please keep your arms, legs, and mind inside the plot bunny at all times. Thank you!

I'm wanting to write another chapter for this (a little shorter than this one), but it all depends on YOU GUYS! I adore feedback. It keeps me going. Please tell me what you think!

Disclaimer: is disclaimed.

p.s. At least a little bit of Zutara later. I can't resist.

Chapter 1: Tenacity

"Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness."

-Thomas Huxley

If there's one thing Katara will remember about Wan Shi Tong's library, it will be the sand.

And when she's old, with grandchildren, she'll make a point not to talk about buttresses or the giant stuffed catarantula heads that Wan Shi Tong obviously collects, because she won't really remember something like that. It would be pointless anyhow, and her grandchildren would probably laugh the same way she does whenever Professor Zei uses long words that no one understands. No… she'll remember the sand.

It piles in corners of the thousands of bookshelves, falls apart when a finger touches the paper it had been resting on for so long, and coats skin with a white powder not unlike the makeup that rich people use to cover up their warts. One of the foxes bumps a shelf, and a soft drizzle of it falls down in his fur. Katara bites her lip and looks away to give the impression that she hadn't watched, and after a moment the fox chuffs and trots past with a high nose.

The scroll she's holding now—a list, she guesses, of all the past Avatars since the kanjis for 'avatars' (along with some forgettable others) were on the outside—is full of characters she hasn't taught herself to read. The lines are spider web-thin, curling and halting and trailing off like smoke. She squints, but it doesn't make anything different. If anything the extra lack of light blurs her vision a little. The green lanterns hanging from each shelf don't help much; they're more like the soft ruddy light of a glow fly.

When she sees something she can read, she smiles and tells Aang that he was left-handed in a past life. He rubs his head, shrugs, and says that he always knew he was special.

Katara suddenly wonders why anyone would write that in a scroll.

On the page, a carefully drawn portrait of a female Avatar—the left handed one—stares up at her, a raised eyebrow making her look sarcastic. Marza, is the caption where the picture cuts off below her neck. Hailed from fire.

Well.

She's beautiful anyway, even if the nation where she came from is a certain turn-off in Katara's head. Marza's slanted eyes are open halfway, an air of boredom, and her mouth points downward. The angles of her face are sharp, something Katara's always wanted, and her chin is lifted coolly.

Katara can't really tell if she'd like Marza, if the arrogance she can imagine radiating from her is anything to judge by. But then, this particular Avatar lived and died over five hundred years ago. Maybe they will meet in the Spirit World, after Katara is dead. Which could be soon.

She rolls up the scroll and sees Sokka stand on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, reaching with the tips of his fingers for something he's obviously too short to get.

"What are you doing, Sokka?" she asks, and he ignores her. With a strain in his voice that sounds more like a whine, he jumps and grabs a tome caked with dirt, pulling it back down without even glancing at it and stuffing it in his bag. Then he turns and looks at her. She blinks; his eyes are huge for some reason.

"There's some interesting books in this section," he says quickly, making a flicking motion with his hand. He wipes it on his shirt when the dust doesn't come off. "I just want to get as much as I can. Something might have information about the Fire Nation." He looks at the book in her hand. "What's that?"

Katara would say 'nothing,' but that would make his curiosity worse. So she mumbles, "Girl things," and shoves the scroll of Avatars between two others, where she found it. Sokka snorts.

"That owl sure has weird stuff in here," he says, and his gaze shifts once to the ceiling. It goes to Aang when he must realize that he doesn't care if Wan Shi Tong had heard. "You ever wonder if he's eaten anyone?"

Aang drops a scroll between his crossed legs on the floor, then picks it up and glares delicately at Sokka. Katara wonders how he can do that. She will have to try it in the mirror sometime.

"Sokka," he begins, in an exasperated voice. "He's a spirit. Spirits don't eat humans, if they even eat at all."

"That's not what I've heard."

"What have you heard?"

"The Blue Spirit eats people."

Aang's frown is so deep that, if Katara turns it upside down in her head, it stretches to his ears. After a hiccough of silence, he drops his head back down to his scroll and continues reading.

"No, Sokka. He doesn't."

Katara is too surprised by the sadness in his voice to wonder how he could've known something like that.

Soon Sokka finds a room that shows the sky in night and day, and Katara is far too busy reading in the dark to pay attention to why it is interesting.

"A mechanical wonder, no doubt!" Professor Zei gasps, the loudest voice, and she smiles. But it takes a great deal of effort to make your eyes focus without much light, so she hears nothing else of the conversation. Aang, however, gets up from the spot that was suddenly very close to hers and runs after the other two.

Momo stays, lying on her head, and curls his tail around her neck. She takes it as a good thing.

They're gone for hours.

At least it seems like hours. Katara is standing, leaning against a bookshelf, and tapping a booted foot on the dusty ground. Momo grabs her braid and tugs. But she doesn't mind all that much; too many thoughts are going through her head. Like, the book she'd just been attempting to read—written in a completely different language, but it had some very pretty pictures of dead trees and a small black bird with white eyes. She frowns.

What was that book?

Shaking her head and raising a solitary eyebrow, she looks down only to see a rat. …And it's a big rat—no, a huge rat, about the size of a squirrel, apparently frozen in front of her foot. The small frown on her face is replaced by a superior one.

…She's not scared of any old rat, is she? Of course not. That being thought, she moves her boot forward to kick it away and the thing hisses at her.

"Eugh!" she exclaims, because the sound reminds her of fuzzy hissing cockroaches, which happen to live only in the South Pole and adorestewed sea prunes. The cockroach and the sea prunes are even the same color, but one is crunchy and the other is not. So you figure out pretty fast which is which. Katara put one in Sokka's sea prunes once, for revenge on a very broken doll, but he ate everything in his bowl and even asked Gran-Gran where she got the new spice. Katara almost died laughing and Sokka never knew why.

Good times.

Momo climbs down Katara's back and stares over her hip at the rat. He makes a feral noise and swipes a paw, but stays in what he must consider the safe zone. Katara rolls her eyes. When she lifts her foot, the rat raises itself onto tiny hind legs and keeps his nose level with the boot.

"Get him, Momo," she whispers. Momo does not. She rat hisses again, and this time it bears nasty-looking yellow teeth. The front two look sharp enough to cut through leather.

Finally, she sighs. Loudly.

"Where are they?" She's about to be stuck here with a hideous rat who thinks her foot is an impending dinner guest, and everyone else is off having oodles of science-y fun without her.

But that brings up another question… where's Wan Shi Tong? The owl disappeared into the dark a long time ago—what could he possibly have to do? Read? Supposedly he already knows everything; at least that's what he said. If Toph were here, Katara knows exactly what she would have said about that.

"I am Wan Shi Tong, he who knows ten thousand things…"

"Nice to meet you. I'm Toph Bei Fong, she who knows ten thousand and two things. Wait, this place stinks. Make that ten thousand and three."

However, Toph isn't here; she's up with Appa above ground. She's up where the desert sun really isn't pleasant and the sand shifts so it's impossible to get comfortable, where Appa is probably trying to snuggle and get out of the dry heat— but it's freezing down here, so Katara can't really relate.

She takes a moment to stare mutinously at the rodent by her feet, feeling guilty about leaving the two up top all alone. Aang and Sokka are most likely too absorbed in their little machine to wonder what's happening to her.

"Maybe I'll go up and see them…" Katara says to Momo, who's gone back up to holding her neck again. Of course, she is talking about Toph and Appa. She decides she can't really care less about her brother and Aang at this point—unless they're dying.

If I can get away from this stupid rat.

Said creature becomes busy cleaning its whiskers but never changes the course of its vision.

Ten foot pole, anyone? Katara asks, but not out loud. She isn't quite sure how much human the rat—she'll name it Itchy for now even though she's not sure why—understands, and Momo isn't about to protect her should she need it.

She reaches into the shelf behind her to pick out a scroll, lowers it to her foot as Itchy continues to stare, and smacks him with the very end. Itchy skids around for a few seconds and squeals, outstretching his tiny paws in attempt to center himself, but Katara doesn't wait around to see if he will follow her. She grabs ahold of Momo and runs in the opposite direction.

Momo just chitters merrily and clings tighter to her head.

Soon Katara slows down to walk, holding one hand loosely by her side in case Momo decides to slide off of his resting spot. Once or twice it seems as if bright yellow eyes are glowing somewhere behind bookcases, in shadows that the huge walls and pillars cast over the ground, and make her think that Itchy might be back. She shudders and walks faster every time she sees them, while her mind begins to trick her into wondering what other kinds of things could live in the pitch black floors of an underground library. It's scary enough without a torch as it is. She really isn't helping herself.

When she sees the light of the place where they all came in, she smiles and grabs Momo's foot as a cheering sort of gesture. She's not really sure why she does it, but it makes her feel better. She has almost reached the hanging rope when a dark form appears behind her and coughs dryly.

"Might I ask where you are going?" asks Wan Shi Tong.

Katara has wondered, from the moment she first heard him speak, if he has more than one voice. Maybe there are two; one that is dry and scratchy and the other fluid—he is a spirit after all. It's hard to tell. But she's listening closely. And she is so focused on concentrating that when he talks to her again, she barely pays attention to his words.

"Mortals are so predictable. Would you like to know what your friends are doing?"

She hesitates, but then turns to face him and shakes her head. Would it break a bird's beak to smile? Wan Shi Tong simply looks like he's disappointed in everything; he probably will be as long as there's something living to scowl at.

"Um. Is it bad?" She cringes, thinking of her brother. Usually whatever Sokka does isn't that intelligent, unless he's strategizing. He can be a decent leader when he wants to be. And Aang… no one really knows about Aang.

"Oh, I would hardly use that word," he says. She thinks that she hears amusement in his voice but it's hard to pick certain emotions out from him. "Expected, yes. They are doing what all human beings do when they come here—searching for a way to destroy their enemy. The one who gave me the knot needs to practice his lying. It fell apart, by the way, the knot did."

Katara is silent for a while. She opens and closes her mouth a couple times, before working up the courage to speak. Wan Shi Tong's eyes are black and endless and too close for comfort, so she closes her own. "If you knew what they were going to do," she questions, because she's actually curious, "why did you let us in, in the first place?"

Wan Shi Tong chuckles at her. She wonders if it's because she's too scared to look him in the face, but the reason might be that it was a stupid question.

It must be both. "I had hoped the Avatar would realize he was lying to a spirit," he says tonelessly. A great sigh comes from his beak. "Obviously he's too frightened to confront me. I suppose it's in his nature. And he's learned to cower more as he travels."

Katara opens her eyes but just barely, offering a squint to the giant black owl, and her heart seems to stop when she sees how close he is. She swallows. Momo digs his little paws into her braid and burrows into the crook of her neck.

"Yeah," she laughs breathlessly, nervously. "That just might come back to bite him."

Wan Shi Tong regards her silently for a very long time without a single blink. When he finally does close his eyes, it is for so long that when they reopen there is an odd popping noise, like a bubble bursting. He cocks his head… like a real owl. It's almost hard to think that he's not what he appears to be.

"Your friends," he says, "up there. They're in danger, I think."

He stretches his neck up at the one place where the sun comes in. Then he nods.

"Sandbenders." A clawed foot comes up and scratches behind what must be an ear-hole. "They are so irritating." Wan Shi Tong lets his foot down and turns to Katara again, and his eyes are sparkling—Katara didn't think eyes could actually do that. "I have one mummified on the third level. Would you like to see?"

Katara stares for a minute and clears her throat. She's not fond of dead things, doesn't think she ever will be, and something is clearly wrong with Appa and she had more time she might humor him. She wonders, then, if he's lonely. He must be if he'd let someone like Sokka in.

Momo gags against the back of her neck.

"I-I think I should go," she says. She watches, panicked, as the sparkle slowly dwindles from the spirit's tar-pit eyes, pupil and iris and white—what should be white or maybe yellow, but they're not. Black starts to seem like a worse color than red. "I'm not crazy about mummies, actually. I mean, it was really nice of you to let us visit your library. I've never met a spirit before except for Yue, but she just turned into one after she… died." She's babbling. So she reaches out for the rope hanging near and grabs it. Wan Shi Tong blinks and looks between her and the rope, before his eyes narrow. Whether it's because he's annoyed or owls are just like that, Katara's not sure.

"Maybe sometime we'll come back and visit, after we save the world," she suggests cheerfully, before starting to hoist herself up. It takes a lot of work to stay in that tense position, knees locked together and hands gripping the rough knotted rope, but she does it because she can. A lot of time's gone by already. It's almost like Wan Shi Tong is stalling for something—again, maybe he's lonely? She guesses she'll never know.

"All right," he finally says. "I'll go to my solarium, now. Farewell."

She pauses on the rope when she realizes, "Isn't that where Aang and Sokka—"

The words die on her tongue. Wan Shi Tong has disappeared. So she simply shrugs and keeps climbing.

When Katara reaches the top of the rope, she's greeted by a stone ledge and bright, harsh sunlight. Her breath comes fast, since it's hard work to climb up all that way, and her water skin seems heavy at her hip. Instead of being helpful and flying, Momo decided he'd hang all his weight by his paws, around her throat, and dangle the rest of his body downward. She's relieved that she is no longer in danger of choking to death. Momo's heavier than he looks.

Close to the windowsill, she looks directly down and sees a furry white mass, a much smaller green form standing next to it. She frowns. Danger? What danger?

"Hey, Toph!" she yells down and waves, before remembering that Toph can't see it. The girl certainly doesn't act blind, which is no help at all.

Toph startles, recovers her offhand posture, and tilts her head skyward.

"What!" she calls back. "Done already? About time! I've been waiting out here forever!"

"Actually—" Katara's voice fades a bit, and then she shouts again. "Wan Shi Tong said you were in trouble!"

Toph's face twists. "Who?"

"The… giant… owl thing in here! It's a long story, but he knows everything, so can you help me get down there?"

Toph hesitates. "I don't need any help, Katara. You can relax."

"Relax?" Katara loudly repeats. "Relax. Toph. I'm hanging sixty feet in the air by a ropeand there's nothing between me and the ground but Momo. Relaxing is about the last thing on my mind right now!"

Momo hears. He lets go of her neck and makes an irritated noise, diving out of the window before Katara has a chance to protest. She sighs and heaves herself up onto the windowsill, leaning heavily on her elbows, and begins to wonder why she's not afraid of heights. A good fall can kill you, after all. She wishes for a moment that she was an airbender.

Suddenly Toph turns around.

"Do you hear that?" she asks, and crosses her arms. Katara squints into the desert sun, whose light is quickly fading.

"Hear what?"

"That," Toph points, roughly in the direction of a huge cloud of sand.

Appa is freaked out.

There's really no other definition for it; he's roaring and snorting and kicking and sneezing gusts of wind. And Toph, always the tremendous support, is trying to calm him down in her own variety of blaring loud words and waving her hands. Or maybe she's freaked out too. Katara can't tell.

"Toph! Screaming at him is not going to help!" she yells down. Toph probably looks furious, but Katara's eyes are beginning to water and she can't see as well. Momo has come back and is presently hanging on her braid. A headache is blossoming somewhere behind her left eye, and that whole side of her face is numb and fuzzy, like legs when they've fallen asleep before you. She wonders if this is how Zuko feels constantly; she'll have to ask him next time he tries to kill them all.

"What is?" Toph counters. "He won't do anything! He won't fly, he won't walk; all he's doing is throwing a fit! I think he's scared of whatever that noise is!"

Katara looks at the sun. Through the sand and her involuntary tears, all it looks like is the moon in a night sky. If the storm reaches Toph and Appa, who don't have shelter, they might be in some serious trouble. She begins to feel a breeze.

"I'm going to find Aang, Sokka, and Professor Zei!" she yells. "We have to get away from this sandstorm before it hits!"

"That's what that is?" Toph asks, and looks towards the horizon as though she can see it. "Just feels like a bunch of humming to me. And wind."

Katara looks once at the horizon, and sees a darkening cloud steadily climbing over the ground. Sand hurts when it comes at you fast enough. "It's going to be a lot louder pretty soon!" she yells, and starts to inch downward on her rope. "I'll come back!"

There's no answer. Only Appa replies, with a wheeze and a groan. Katara takes a deep breath and begins to fly.

Flying has its disadvantages. Katara knows this now. The biggest one is when you can't fly and you need to stop.

She's got identical red stripes on the insides of both her palms, and her knees hurt when the scratchy blue cloth of her outfit rubs them. But a rope burn is a small price to pay for not dying overall.

As she's looking around the empty dark library, she hisses and shakes her hands to relieve some of the soreness, and it works for some reason. Soon the sharp pain dulls down to a throb, one she thinks must be her heartbeat, and she decides she'll heal herself as soon as she finds the others.

"Hello?" she calls, and cups her hands around her mouth. She leans slightly toward the empty hallway to her left. Which way did they go through, again?

A groan is quickly stifled, and she starts to pace back and forth on the bridge. Where would the solarium be? Wan Shi Tong would know, of course, but he's nowhere that she can see. She's frustrated and Appa might die with Toph and there's nothing she can do about it now, because how is she supposed to find everyone before the sandstorm reaches the library?

"Great," she mutters to herself. She really isn'tlooking forward to spending the rest of her life searching for three people in a dark, miserable, old, dusty library with pictures of left handed Avatars that she is certainly not jealous of in any way.

She pauses in her steps.

"Hello?" she asks, louder this time. She thinks she heard someone shout. And she's pretty sureit came from the right—

"Katara, CATCH!"

She swivels around with just enough time for a pack, a heavy pack, to thump into her stomach. She gets hold of it weakly, but all the air is knocked from her lungs and she collapses to her knees. A small confused noise slips from her mouth. When she can breathe again, she takes huge gulps of air and observes Sokka and Aang bickering between two close bookshelves at Professor Zei, who's sitting stubbornly on his rear with ten books cradled in his arms. She makes out only one phrase, and it's because the words are loud and there's fantastic acoustics in here.

"…I've spent too long looking for this place."

Sokka mutters something like fine then, throws his hands up and turns away, practically sprinting toward Katara. She didn't think he could run that fast. Aang seems a little more patient, though, so he bows shortly at Professor Zei before following.

When her brother passes, Katara doesn't look at him. She begins to see sand trickling down the sides of the walls, gathering on the floor and everywhere else like the flip side of an hourglass. Sokka chooses that moment to grab her hand and haul her up.

"Come on, Katara, what are you sitting down for? That lunatic owl's going to get us!" he cries, and Aang nods furiously.

Suddenly her head clears. There's sand everywhere. More than before, she library is sinking!

"What did you do?" she asks, loudly enough for Sokka to cringe. He turns, gives her a guilty look, and snatches the bag from her arms. She glares.

"Nothing!" Sokka says, with that whine he uses when he complains. He straightens his back and tries to appear flippant. "Now, if you don't mind, I think we should be going."

The shriek of an angry bird makes her break her stare and turn, to the hallway where Aang and Sokka came from. Her breath catches in her throat; Wan Shi Tong loses feathers as he's tearing past shelves and terrified foxes and Professor Zei—but ignores the latter, which is kind of a relief. Sokka obviously did way more than 'nothing' to cause this kind of a reaction in the spirit.

"They are doing what all human beings do when they come here—searching for a way to destroy their enemy."

Oh.

Oh.

"Sokka, you are so dead!" she cries, shaking the arm that's latched onto her. But she doesn't get to elaborate or make good on that promise, because Aang's yelling and he has his glider and they're going up, up the tower to escape. They're out of the window when Wan Shi Tong's beak tears a warm, wet gash in Katara's right calf and takes the boot with him.

It hurts.

She doesn't scream, though, because her heart is pounding fast enough to relay her surprise. She looks down, and sees blood running along her ankle just before it takes the very long fall to the ground.

The last thing she sees before going unconscious is Toph falling backward from the library's highest tower, which disappears into the sand.

"I'm hungry."

"Good grief, Sokka."

"Well, I am. Do you think we still have any of that jerky Chey gave us?"

"…That was jerky?"

"You burned it again, didn't you. Aang—"

"Sorry, can't hear anything! The wind!"

"Right."

"…Hey, Sokka?"

"Yeah, Toph?"

"Do you think Katara will wake up?"

"I don't know. She lost a lot of blood, but I think I wrapped her leg up pretty well."

"Right. After you wrapped up the wrong one."

"I'll have you know, I'm perfectly versed in all things medicine, so… back off. And that was practice."

"It was still wrong."

"How would you know?"

"It was pretty obvious. You kept saying 'Oh darn it that's not right' and 'I knew it was the wrong leg' and 'Dumb Fire Nation ruins everything' and a bunch of other stuff. Why that last one, though?"

"…Because it's true."

The first thought Katara has is that she's sleeping—and consequentially, dreaming. Toph and Sokka always argue in them (not that she dreams like that regularly) and Toph always wins. It doesn't matter if the debate's about who would look better in a dress—Jet or Aang?—or why the Boulder talks in third person all the time. She always reaches the end of the argument before wondering why she'd be thinking about it again.

But she can always seein her dreams. And everything's dark now. Her next deduction is that she's just woken up, rather than fallen asleep.

Katara tries to speak, but it comes out as a painful moan. Her leg throbs steadily and it feels so sticky and gritty, but from the top of her wound all the way up her leg is numb, so at least she doesn't have to deal with that. The sun's in her face. Her face is prickly and hot, so she just knows she has a sunburn by now…

She's going to do something bad to Sokka. She doesn't know what just yet, but it won't be good. And then she'll find the owl again and give him a piece of her mind. She just hopes it doesn't dissolve to a debate on literature; the best she can do there is recite a few dramatic lines from a romance scroll.

Something suddenly hits her leg, right on the cut, and it sends pain shooting up her spine. She moans again.

"Jeez Sokka, kick her while she's down, why don't you."

"Oh, I'm sorry! Sorry, Katara!"

Katara opens her eyes—a squint, really, but she can see a little. She almost expects to see Wan Shi Tong or something. Instead it's Sokka, inches away from her face. One of his hands is held in midair above her forehead. She thinks, distantly, that he must be giving her shade.

She wishes she were able to say something clever to scare them a bit, like Sokka, when did you grow a beard? or, There's something inside my head, quick get it, it's scratching and scratching and pain—oh wait that's always been there, but all that comes out is "water," in an exceptionally rough voice. It doesn't exactly lighten the situation like she wanted to do.

"Wa… oh, she's awake! Water! Toph, can you get it out?"

There's a grumble and a thud, a pause, and then something hard presses down on her bottom lip. It's cold, so she opens her mouth and slightly stalewater rushes down her throat. It's such a relief that she almost forgets to swallow. When she's finished, she lifts a hand to her head and her eyes fly open.

"Ugh?"

"Wan Shi Tong," Sokka says before he can stop himself. "He bit you. And took your boot." A dark expression crosses his face. "I made you those boots."

Katara rolls her eyes, and shifts to rest her weight on her hands. With a great amount of effort, she sits up against the side of Appa's saddle. She feels short for some reason.

"Well, I'm sure it didn't taste very good," Katara reassures her brother, thinly veiled sarcasm in her voice. Sokka only shakes his head and smiles.

"We were really worried," he says. Aang (Katara's just noticed that he's turned toward her and grinning) confirms this quickly and a little mumble comes from Toph, but Katara can't hear exactly what it is. Sokka grabs her hand while she's trying to use Toph logic and figure it out.

"Now that you're better, look down there," Sokka says and points over the saddle, sitting so he's right next to Katara and facing the opposite way. She cranes her neck uncomfortably and sees the wide expanse of desert.

Well, not actually the desert; the ground is rolling and shifting. Everything comes back to her in a wave.

"We're flying overthe sandstorm?" she says, her eyes following the movements of the sand as it rushes underneath them. "Glad we're not in that."

Sokka is silent, except for a shrug and a weak smile.

"…I mean, it's not even that far below. Nasty weather, huh?"

Aang rubs his head. "Well…"

"Well what?"

"…Nothing."

Katara makes a face at the back of his head once he turns.

"All right, what's going on?" She looks to Toph for assistance, and the latter scoffs.

"You're not the only one who got hurt," she says, pointing somewhere around Appa's tail. "We're gonna have to land at the stinky ice dump again."

"Misty Palms Oasis," Aang corrects. "And Appa needs his rest, right, boy?"

Appa grunts.

Katara resigns herself to staring forlornly at the sandstorm below, once she's through gaping at the red stain in Appa's fur. Maybe now she'll try giving it a delicate glare. A little squint of her eyes, and a contract of her mouth, and she's pretty sure she's got it. But then Sokka has to ruin everything.

"Are you okay, Katara? You look like you're about to cry. In which case I'd have to hug you and I really don't think you would like that. Sweaty and all."

Katara rubs her eyes. It's going to be a very long trip.

Fifteen minutes has gone by when Appa makes his first noticeable jolt, and his tail curls inward before flattening again.

Katara considers the fact that it may be a pretty bad idea to climb out and heal him, but when she asks Sokka to confirm this, he fixes her with The Look.

"I'm your brother, so I'm gonna have to say yes. And come to think of it, if I were anyone else, I would still say yes."

Her next question is if Aang can see the stinky ice dump yet. The waterbender is still not quite afraid of heights, but she's almost there.

.

"I see it!" Aang finally says, his back going from a slouch to perfectly straight, the posture he only gets when he's happy or in more trouble than he can handle. "The storm hasn't gotten here, either! This is going to be easier than I thought."

Katara sits up slowly—her tailbone is numb and she has a crick in her neck from letting it hang backward over the saddle—and grimaces, because she can't feel either of her legs now as well as a number of other things she'd like to complain about, but can't. Stupid owl. "Really?"

"That's a relief," Toph says, and then seems to change her mind. "But also… not. I hate sand. How long is this thing gonna last?"

"When I lived in the Southern Air Temple," says Aang excitedly, "I heard about a sandstorm in the Si Wong that lasted for a whole year."

"Perfect," says Sokka.

Katara wonders what would happen to him if he lost his sarcasm.

They begin their descent a few minutes later, and throughout that time Aang never stops talking about the huge storm that happened in this very desert a hundred-something years ago. He doesn't turn to face them, instead making hand motions and waving where he's the only one who can see it, and that means he can'tsee Sokka tighten his mouth and cross his arms or Toph let a grin creep onto her face. Katara's actually pretty surprised at her brother's self-restraint.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing!"

Whatever that nothing was, it obviously put him in a decent mood. A motion catches her eye and she sees Aang with his arms in the air. He's just mimicked an explosion.

When they're close enough to land, Katara looks back and sees the storm is not far off. Then she looks at the small square, where in the center the greatly diminished ice fountain is being hurriedly covered with a tarp and nailed down. The two kneeling men that are doing this look remarkably like the sandbenders they'd seen the first time they'd gotten here—although, they all look the same when wearing those weird outfits and hats.

"Excuse me!" Aang jumps off Appa when he touches down and rushes toward them. They hesitate before standing and staring at him, one slinging a mallet over his shoulder and turning his head to spit. From what Katara can rationalize, Aang is asking for a place to stay and a place to put Appa for an indefinite amount of time; she thinks he must have forgotten how little money they have left. But they do have to do something, and he's one of the few males she knows who will burden himself to ask for help.

The sandbender on the left looks at the other, shrugs, and outstretches his hand to Aang expectantly.

"I thought so," mutters Katara.

Aang pats everywhere on his person that could conceivably be a pocket, and shakes his head sheepishly after a thorough search. Both of the sandbenders kneel down again and return to their work, but not before gesturing wearily in the direction of the tavern and an adjoining stone building that looks suspiciously like a barn, though apparently it's a tea shop—judging by what the overhead sign says. Obviously Aang didn't need to pay after all. And even they aren't cruel enough to leave someone out, unprotected, in this big of a storm.

Toph wakes up with a snort just as Aang's coming back. She rubs her eyes and yawns, uncrossing her legs and letting them lay flat across her space.

"Are we there yet?"

"Yes, actually," Katara says. She takes a moment to stare at Momo, who's curled up in Toph's lap. He's cute when he sleeps. "I guess we're staying in the tavern."

And, predictably, that's exactly what Aang says. Then he rubs his head and mentions that it is, after all, a tavern, and they might serve really good fruity drinks but it's best not to try other… assorted beverages as long as they stay there. Sokka points out that he's very susceptible to influence and on the off-chance that he gets drunk not to judge him. Katara scoffs. Toph simply looks glum as she scratches behind Momo's ears.

When they start to unpack the saddle and get off, they each clutch a sleeping bag and two other sacks to carry inside. Aang tosses Sokka his staff and turns to Appa, gently patting the bison's nose before taking his reins in both hands and tugging—then stomping—away.

When they are inside and Appa has been put to safety, Aang loudly observes that the tavern is much bigger-looking when all the chairs and tables have been stacked.

Sokka says it does not.

A debate ensues.

With a roll of her eyes, Katara reaches down to take Toph's hand, ignores how the younger girl's face twists up in distaste, and marches (limps) over to an unoccupied corner where she dumps her pack and sleeping bag. After some coaxing from her friend, Toph does the same.

"So, this is it," she says.

"Yeah," says Katara. "Not much, but we're not dead, right?"

"I guess."

Katara smiles a little. "Aw, come on," she urges, nudging Toph in the side before sitting and carefully crossing her legs. "This will be over before you know it."

Toph shakes her head and leans over her conspiratorially. "You heard Twinkle Toes. This storm could last for a hundred years, and then we'd have a main course of never getting to defeat the Fire Lord with a side dish of death."

Katara sighs. Her smile disappears. "Well, that's one way of putting it," she mutters lowly, pretty much all pretense of happiness gone. They're stuck here for goodness knows how long, and she doesn't know how she will compensate for all four good moods without exploding.

Oh, well.

She's done it before. She can do it again.

"Here, help me set these out," Katara says. She reaches over to her sleeping bag and pulls it onto her lap, unhooking the clasp that keeps it bundled together and letting it roll out by itself. The ground beside her looks clean enough, so she lays it out beside her and strokes the fur lining.

"But I don't want Sokka's," Toph complains. "It smells funky. And not a good funky either."

Katara pauses. She takes a slow, deep breath. "I remember," she says gently. "Would you rather sleep on the floor?" Asking is better than nothing, she figures. So when Toph smiles—a real one, she'll have to remember that—she knows she finally said something right in the girl's presence.

"Yes, please," Toph says with actual enthusiasm. With two grunts and stomps of her feet she's created both sides of an earth tent that sprout up from the floor where the sleeping bag was. After an extended consideration, Katara decides not to mention that since they're inside, a tent wouldn't really be needed.

Who is she to tell Toph what to do, anyway?

Sokka walks over with a cup of fruit juice and begins twiddling with the tiny complimentary umbrella. He grins, and seems about to say something, when he abruptly changes his mind and starts to look rather perplexed. He lifts an eyebrow at Katara.

"Hey, where's my sleeping bag?"

People have begun to file into the tavern under a very loud warning that all the entrances to all buildings are about to be boarded up. A few very burly men have come in and leaned against the wall, smoldering at each other; the tension is palpable and it's quite obvious none of them want to be in the same room as the other, but it hasn't come to blows. Yet. Perhaps it's because of several women with babies who had come in straight after.

Mustn't upset a baby, after all. Katara knows this from experience.

A small group of dirty men have gathered in the opposite corner from the bar. They begin to complain that it's too dark in here and they could have done better across the street and do you call that fancy decoration and that man has nothing to do with his swords but cut fruit, does he. They're like a bunch of old ladies. But even old ladies get bored of gossip eventually, so they turn their gazes toward the women with babies and… ogle.

Katara's a little creeped out. But she shrugs it off.

"Hey Sokka?"

Sokka looks up from a scroll he has. He's smiling.

"Yes, dearest sister?"

Oohkay...

"What are you looking at?"

He shakes his head at her. Like she's incompetent or something.

"Oh, nothing important really," he says. "You wouldn't be interested."

Katara narrows her eyes.

"Why?"

"You don't like this kind of stuff."

"What kind of stuff? Sokka, I swear—"

"Jeez, relax. It's just guy stuff, okay? Satisfied?"

She humphs. "All right, be that way," she says, and turns her head away from him. She sits up straighter and makes motions to bend the water out of their skins. If she can't get something out of Sokka, she might as well find something else to take up her time.

The first touch of water on her rope burned hands is euphoric. She sighs in pleasure and allows the water to ebb and heal. Considering the burns weren't that big, it doesn't take long for them to be completely free of blemish. They don't even throb.

When her hand wanders down to her leg, though, she inhales sharply. Her dress has been torn away from that part of her thighs and the one leg is thickly covered in bandages. If her gash looks as bad as it feels, she's pretty sure she might not make it through the unwrapping stage.

"Hey, Aang?" she calls loudly, but not too loudly, since she doesn't like unnecessary attention. The boy looks up; he has been playing Pai Sho with a disgruntled old bald man at one of the tables that hasn't been stacked. He glances at her and smiles amicably.

"Yeah?"

"I need some help." She squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on the noise of Toph's snoring, which is occasionally disturbed by a grunt or a mumbled word. At least it doesn't sound like the little voice in her head saying she's going to cry. The next time she hears Aang's voice it is coming from right next to her.

"What's wrong, Katara?"

She forces her eyes open.

"My… leg," she says. "I need to heal it, but I'm not sure if I can…" she gestures weakly in the direction of the bandages, "…do it myself." Aang nods reassuringly.

"Don't worry, I was always great helping out the nurse at the Air Temple," he says. Down on his knees, he shuffles to her leg and touches the edge of the bandage so lightly she can't feel it. "Just don't look. That'll make it worse." He sounds like he's quoting someone—but he probably is. Compliantly, she closes her eyes again and thinks about anything, everything but the blistering heat and the torn skin she can picture in her head. After all, looking will just make it worse…

When she is utterly exhausted and demands a delicious fruity beverage for her struggles, Katara slouches against her wall and takes small sips of the papaya-berry drink. At least it's cold.

She tried to heal her cut all the way. She really did. But it was simply too tiring to keep it up for more than five minutes. To be honest, she's proud of herself.

Aang has given her several romance books and scrolls he apparently smuggled from the library and she's decided he couldn't be a better friend. She only wonders how he was able to put them into Sokka's pack without the latter noticing—after all, so many books couldn't possibly fit up Aang's shirt (there's no room left since he keeps his toothbrush and marbles in there).

Toph snorts.

This comes as a surprise because ever since Momo crept in with her to take a nap, she's been strangely quiet. Katara shrugs it off and notices that her cup is melting and water is running down her fingers.

"BOARDING UP! LAST CHANCE TO FIND SHELTER, COME INSIDE OR FACE YOUR SANDY DOOM! HEY, YOU, OVER THERE! YEAH, YOU! WHAT ARE YOU DOING LYING AROUND? YOU THINK I'M JOKING? YOU WANNA DIE? MOVE IT!"

The voice that's yelling is gravelly and deep and manly and… a woman's. Katara watches as the plump lady ushers in a group of last-minute stragglers and purses her lips at them disapprovingly, to which they duck their heads and mumble stuttering apologies. Six sandbenders are nailing boards to each open window, and every now and then one drops his hammer and cradles his hand. Katara observes that they must not be very patient.

The screaming woman has both hands on her generous hips and her dark eyebrows are bunched together as she peers around the dimly lit tavern. Her eyes flit across Katara's face and lock on Toph's earth tent, and she stares at that for a bit before muttering darkly to herself and turning back to the door. She must have decided a lecture isn't worth her time.

…Boy, would she be in for a surprise.

"I SAID HURRY!"

Her outburst causes several of the small babies in the room to jolt from unconsciousness and begin to cry; Katara feels sorry for one mother, who winces when her child shrieks before spitting up on her shoulder.

"Katara, check this out!"

Sokka leans over from his little area—he and Aang are sitting on his sleeping bag and reviewing some scrolls—and pokes her on the shoulder. She looks at him in response.

"Okay, I'll read it to you then. 'The darkest day in Fire Nation History prompted a massive panic throughout the entire Fire N—'"

"Uncle, I told you we would be stuck! How long are we going to be in here?"

A harsh question spoken by a familiar voice causes Sokka to freeze in the middle of his sentence and look up. Aang does the same and his eyes are so wide, Katara knows it can't just be a coincidence that the voice sounds exactly like who's been chasing them around the world for as long as Aang has been out of that iceberg.

She peers up just as the door is starting to be nailed closed, each swing of the hammer drilling one more reason into her brain why they should really get out of here. Being stuck in a room with your worst enemy isn't a good idea, but that might be only her opinion.

Zuko, she thinks. But his angry yellow gaze is locked on Aang, and doesn't move. Aang is paralyzed.

"…You!"

:O