Author's Note: A series of OnjiAang pieces, drabbles, sort of, from both their points of view (alternating by chapter. Chapter one is Aang's POV, chapter two will be Onji's, and so forth). I like this pairing, and lo and behold, I'm going to keep it canon, right down to the dialogue, but looking at things from the points of view of two people who need each other. It's an idea that would not leave my brain. And while I know I'll get an endless sea of flames for writing a non-mainstream pairing, I've been used to that since I first started writing fanfiction.

To all my few but awesome OnjiAang shippers: Review please. I'd like to think I'm not totally alone in supporting this pairing. I know you're out there, people.

I'm also used to and sick of disclaimers. I own absolutely nothing, at all, in any form, ever, not even a single word of dialogue, a single gesture, Onji or Aang. All characters are copyright to Nick and the creators of Avatar.

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Did you ever have something inside you couldn't share with anyone?

Have you ever wanted to be stupid? To blurt out everything, show yourself for who you are, lay it all out in front of someone, even if you don't know how that someone will react? Even if to do so would be stupid and leave you vulnerable without any kind of emotional protection? Have you ever wished you could just be totally honest, completely and really yourself?

That's how I felt every day, every hour, every second in the Fire Nation.

I wanted to rip off my headband and scream. But my logical brain, the smart part of me, told me to be quiet, that this was for the best. I followed that part of my mind. I did not enjoy doing so. I hated doing so. I felt like no one saw me as me. Just a colony kid, not me. It's hard to explain. Everything felt awkward in the Fire Nation. Nothing was right or normal anymore. Where was the nation of before? I wanted to rip off my headband and go back to the Earth Kingdom, but that was gone, never to be the same, either.

I felt so out of place and awkward.

Until she showed me the hand sign. The gesture I lacked, the piece of knowledge I didn't have.

When someone is new, people don't do that kind of thing. They reject newness, the unknown factor, for what it might bring. No one else did anything but watch me. I'm the Avatar. People watch me like a volatile unknown all the time. As if that's all I am. She did not watch me as a piece of entertainment, as most people were watching me. She did not watch me as a hero or a villain or a hope or a disappointment like everyone had my whole life. I was new. An unknown. The shallow person shuns the unknown. The ignorant person fears it, mocks it as I'm sure some of them would do if I kept missing gestures and information.

She did not see an unknown person and react like those around her. Her hands moved without her looking at them, drawing the least attention possible. These kids would not get any more ammo to make fun of the new person if she could help it.

I suddenly felt better then. I made the bowing hand sign, I sat down, I felt calm. My legs were shaking from my nervous tension, but that faded as minutes passed. My presence was different then. People looked at me as kind of like them. The familiar is not the unknown. The familiar is acceptable. I was acceptable. I was not out of place. I was okay. I was part of a class. I could be normal for once.

I knew who I had to thank for it.

And suddenly I wanted to make her a friend, like the kind a normal kid had. I never had one of those in a hundred years. You know, a friend where the person did not look to you as a critical asset to the survival of mankind. The kind of friend who didn't fear the Avatar State or want to take out the Fire Lord or talk politics and plans. The kind of friend who wasn't your friend because you were something. I know, I knew, I always know that Katara and Toph and Sokka aren't friends with me for that reason. But somedays, it feels like that, like me being the Avatar is a block between a real friendship and me.

It would be so great to have a friend who did not know me as anyone but me, someone who just knew about my personality.

Suddenly I wanted to have a friend who I could blurt everything out to, my grief and my fear, my loneliness. Sokka calls it suppressed emotions. That's a fancy term for longing, I guess. And for reasons probably based on all my past failed friendships and backfiring mistakes as an Avatar, I longed for her. For someone who I didn't even know. For someone who could never really know me. I wanted a friend.

That's how this crush started, I guess. I was lonely.

And she welcomed me with a closed fist and an open palm. A single gesture, a single kindness to a stranger among all the people who didn't care. Certain moments you remember from school forever. Her hand gesture is embedded within my memory now.

I didn't know it then, but that's how most of our relationship was going to work.

Gestures.