"I spy with my little eye, something that begins with-"

"Is it water?"

"...maybe."

"Sokka, it's been water the past twelve times. Please try to be less predictable, or I will be forced to kill myself out of boredom."

"Fine then. I spy with my little eye something beginning with S. Ha! Who's predictable now?"

"You are. Sea is the same thing as water. Now, can I use your sword to put myself out of my misery, or should I just strangle myself with my whip?"

"Look, Katara, I don't think you quite understand the way this works. You see, I'm supposed to be the cynical one. You're little miss optimism. Spirits, girl, get with the program already."

"...Sokka, I've decided that instead of killing myself, I'm going to kill you"

"Fantastic."

"You brought this on yourself."

"Spirits you're cranky when you lose sleep."

"Meanwhile, your already meager intelligence continues to diminish under the influence of sleep deprivation."

"...Stop using big words. Big words are confusing."

"Your scintillating intellect and rapier wit never cease to amuse me."

"Okay, that iceberg better come soon, or I'm going to seriously lose it."

_The Ancient Mariner_

To Sokka's relief, the iceberg did come into view shortly after that, its tip emerging over the horizon like a frozen sunrise.

Sleep deprivation always seemed to bring out his poetic side.

The time, as Sokka had predicted, was four in the morning, signaled by a bell and relief for the watch. But their work wasn't over yet. Katara readied a dinghy and she and her brother got in. Sokka took the oars, due to the fact that Katara needed to save energy to bend the iceberg. After what seemed like forever to their exhausted minds, Sokka and Katara reached the iceberg. Katara stood up in the boat, effortlessly maintaining her balance even as the boat shifted on the rocky waves and lurched due to the redistribution of weight. For a while, she just stood there, staring at it.

Maybe it was sleep deprivation, or maybe she had honestly gone crazy, or maybe her eyes weren't lying to her. Whatever the reason, Katara was sure she saw a ship in the iceberg. It was an old ship, with a carved figurehead and figures engraved on the hull, all unrecognizable due to the thick layer of ice covering them. The sails were larger than a typical Water Nation or Earth Kingdom vessel, and it wasn't made of metal like a Fire Nation frigate, but that meant that it would have to be-

"Katara! Earth to the waterbender! Spirits, woman, we need to finish this up and get you some sleep. You look like a siren got to you."

"Sokka, there's a ship in that iceberg." Her voice was blank and monotonic. Sokka's insinuation that she had fallen under the hypnotic spell of a siren's song was justified.

Sokka sighed. He was tired. She was tired. They both needed sleep, and he couldn't fault her for hallucinating. "Katara, you're imagining things."

"Am I?"

"Oh for spirits' sake Katara, it's just an iceberg."

She was fed up with the banter before it even really had a chance to start. Katara sent a narrow wave crashing down at what looked like the weakest point of the iceberg. It splintered into smaller chunks of ice. The sudden brilliance of light could be attributed to the near white ice and the angle of the sun. No matter where it came from, it was slightly blinding just the same.

"Does that look like 'just an iceberg' to you?" She demanded as the light dissipated.

The ship was ancient, but close to pristine. A good swabbing and it would look as good as new. This narrow ship with its oversized sails seemed as though it wouldn't stay upright for long. Those who built it meant for it to be used exclusively for sailing. But here it was after...from the layers of ice that had to build up to form that iceberg, at least several decades. That didn't explain why it hadn't thawed out in the warmer summer months. When it doubt, the best way to answer all questions is to explore. Katara unfurled her whip, looped it onto the nearest railing, and swung up over the edge.

"Katara! Get back here! We don't know whose ship that is. You could get in a lot of trouble—"

"If you're so worried Sokka, go stand watch," There was no way he was going to get her off this boat before she got some answers.

A grunt. A desperate creak. The sound of a splash. Sputtering, "Man overboard!"

"Oh really?" She raised her eyebrows, "looks a lot more like annoying brother overboard to me."

"Jokes later. Help me now."

"No...I'm going to make you swim back to our ship."

"Katara!"

She tipped Sokka onto the ship using a wave with an ungraceful thud. "Happy now?"

He righted himself and tried to wring the water out of his clothes. His sister rolled her eyes; pulled the water out of his clothes into a secondary whip. "I'm not wet anymore so, yes, I'm happy."

"You're unbelievable."

"You asked."

"Don't remind me."

"Have you ever heard of a ship called the Flying Bison?"

"Doesn't seem familiar...I don't think so."

"Well we're standing on the deck of it."

_The Ancient Mariner_

They decided to split up. Sokka was on the ship's deck, inspecting the rigging, while Katara searched the cabins above and below deck. In retrospect, it wasn't exactly splitting up. Sokka, after all, had no intent to search the ship. Katara was the one who decided to play explorer. She was fascinated by the ship's unique design; the way the hold was divided into separate rooms filled with bunk beds, as opposed to the giant open space and hammocks of a Water Nation ship, and the fact that there was not one, but two cabins above deck, staircases leading to raised balconies on top of the rooms.

So, as Sokka looked for a spot to nap, Katara wandered down frozen corridors, defrosting doors and breaking down barriers of ice. Eventually, she came upon a door, at the end of the corridor, frozen in a layer of ice at least a foot thick. Curiosity piqued, she broke through the ice - with some effort - and entered the room.

Like the door leading to it, the room was covered in layers of ice. But despite the kaleidoscope walls, Katara's eyes were immediately drawn to the center of the room, where a large bed was frozen in a dome of ice.

And there was someone frozen inside.

_The Ancient Mariner_

"SOKKA!"

With a large thump, The Serenity's First Mate fell off the makeshift hammock he had been sleeping in, roused by the screeching of his overdramatic sister. He got up, rubbed his head, and sighed.

What in Tui's name did that flighty broad want now? Wasn't it enough that he had followed her onto this La-forsaken ship? He was a good brother, damn it, he hadn't done anything to deserve this torturous denial of sleep that Katara seemed dead set on inflicting.

"SOKKA! GET DOWN HERE DAMN IT!"

And, with that lively sentiment from the bane of his existence, Sokka stood up and made his way towards his sister.

_The Ancient Mariner_

Grumbling and, as always, reluctant, Sokka entered the cabin his sister insisted on screaming at him from.

Then, he did a double take. "WHAT IN THE NAME OF TUI AND LA IS THAT!"

This prompted Katara to smack him. "Idiot. It's a person, obviously. Frozen, and for a very long time, from the looks of it." She returned to her place next to the frozen bed and continued to work away at the layers of ice surrounding it. She had to be careful if she wanted the person inside to live.

It was not-so-common knowledge that a person frozen with waterbending would live inside their icy prison, and Katara knew waterbending when she saw it. The tricky part, however, was defrosting the frozen individual. Do it too fast, and they would go into shock; but do it too slow, and they risked frostbite.

So, Katara carefully peeled away the ice, layer after layer, until the figure inside became clearly visible through the frozen water. Sokka, meanwhile, shuffled around the bed, shivering in the cold, remaining largely unhelpful. Until, at last, as the ice became so thin that he could see the bald teenager inside breathing as his breath fogged up the ice.

Sokka, ever the smooth operator, proceeded to scream like a little girl when he noticed this. Then, he began babbling almost incoherently to the boy in the ice; ignorant to the fact that said teenager was completely unresponsive.

At long last, the ice was scattered about the floor as snow, and Katara was attempting to perform a check-up on the now liberated teenager.

He was bald, Sokka noticed, and had bright blue arrow tattoos running up the back of his neck and over his head. He was frighteningly pale, and disastrously thin. As he hoisted the boy onto his back to carry him back to the dinghy, Sokka couldn't help but notice how unnaturally light he was.

_The Ancient Mariner_

When Aang opened his eyes, he saw blue. As his vision cleared, he realized that he was looking at a pair of bright blue eyes, fixed on the face of the prettiest girl he had ever seen (granted, he hadn't actually seen a girl before, but his addled mind assured him that if he had seen other girls, this one would definitely be prettier than all of them combined).

The second thing he noticed was how tired, cold, and, most of all, hungry he was. His stomach ached, and his limbs felt like they were made of lead. He tried to move, and found that he couldn't.

...What had happened to him?

The blue eyes moved away, and he could hear the girl they belonged to calling for someone. The next thing he knew, he was being propped into a sitting position and force fed some kind of edible mush by an aged Water Tribe woman.

Then, bitter medicine.

Then, darkness.

_The Ancient Mariner_

The months passed in a blur for Katara. For the most part, life had gone on as normal, with the exception of the strange boy in the sickbay and the strange ship being towed behind them.

And then he woke up. And for once, he was lucid.

He said his name was Aang. He said the ship was his. He seemed oddly disoriented, and Katara had to wonder just how long he had been in that iceberg.

To Aang, it seemed not even a day had passed. When she tried to explain the situation, to ask the proper questioned to figure out exactly what had happened, he simply replied with a loud shout of "I was FROZEN today!"

Eventually, she calmed him down, explaining how she had found him and released him from his icy prison, how Gran Gran had nursed him back to health. She was shocked to realize that he might have been in that iceberg for longer than she expected, as he didn't even know about the war with the Fire Nation.

Eventually, she led him onto the deck of The Serenity to face the world.

Or at the very least the rest of the people on board the ship.

_The Ancient Mariner_

And there you have it, folks. Chapter two, in all it's glory. Readers familliar with a certain Critic should recogniza a certain joke. Certain people made an effort to fit that in the minute they realized it was actually relevnt.

Once again, we own nothing, reviews make us happy, you know the drill.