One is the Loneliest Number
An Avatar: The Last Airbender Fanfic by Quill N. Inque
I do not own Avatar.
Chapter 1 (and only)
"Ye know the problem with bein' the last of anythin': by the by, there be none left at all."-Captain Hector Barbossa, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (2007)
The Southern Air Temple…
Once, it had been filled with Airbenders, living out a quiet, peaceful existence, cut off from the outside world. Its beauty and splendor had been a wonder to all who beheld its spiraling towers.
Now it was a graveyard, its halls and courtyards scattered with the remains of Fire Nation troops and Air Nomads, its once-breathtaking murals charred and chipped, its towers crumbling, and its halls deserted. Broken Airbending staffs and rusted swords and spears littered the ground amidst cracked and corroded shields, a testament to the fierce battle that had once taken place here.
Everywhere there was wreckage, destruction, and death, the extinction of an entire people brought about by one man who desired more.
Avatar Aang surveyed the carnage around him, his eyes brimming with tears as he beheld the destruction of his people; he was even able to identify some of the skeletons from their dress and build. Here were the remains of the woman who'd sang to him as a baby, and lying in the corner he saw the bodies of his childhood friends, their small bones scorched black, telling of the horrible fate they'd suffered.
Aang didn't think it was possible for one person to experience so much sadness, so much pain and heartache all at once. His home, his friends, his teachers...gone. What had they done to deserve this, such brutality and genocide from the Fire Nation? Why couldn't he have been there to stop it?
The tears flowed unchecked down the young man's face as he sank to his knees, his sobs the only sound that answered his incoherent questions, the only noise that had been made in this temple in over a century.
For his people, for Gyatso, Aang wept.
In the middle of a battlefield.
In the middle of a temple.
In the middle of nowhere.
The Avatar wept.
The last of his kind.