Day Two: Complications

His skin was transparent, taking on a strange bluish-purple hue. The aura around him resonated with an oddly defining clarity and a dim yellow light that seemed to seep from the very pores of his skin, but yet was definitely disconnected from his being, like the brightness was a part yet not part of him at the same time. The thought was confusing to say the least.

Surrounding him were the stars. They twinkled in an eerie white flame, flickering in and out of existence against a dark sky. But perhaps the strangest part of his current existence had to be the fact that he was standing on absolutely nothing. His feet were touching something solid and it felt like dusty ground brushed against his soles, but once his gray eyes tried to spot the resistance, there was nothing at all. It was emptiness.

"Aang," a voice echoed outward, "How could you? I believed in you!"

The young Avatar blinked once and swiveled around on the heels of his feet. He searched frantically for the source of the sound, a speaker, a person, anything. But, there was only the silence afterwards. It was as if the fantastical world he was in had lost all sound. Suddenly, he could not even hope to hear the sound of his own breathing or the sound of his tentative footfalls.

"This is weird," Aang said, or rather mouthed. Not a peep came out of his voice box either.

Then, slowly, the natural sounds began to come back. Noises were muffled as if cotton had somehow lodged itself in his ears. Black water started to rise. Ripples were being created by his feet, then his ankles, and then his knees. The coldness spread throughout Aang's body and the twinkling stars flickered and spun in swirling patterns until, a moment later, they completely faded out of sight.

He didn't realize it until it was too late, but the liquid had risen up to his chin and rapidly past his bald head. He was sinking and not swimming. Falling, falling, falling…

Bubbles broke through to the darkened surface and popped. A silver mist shimmered out of each one and in each new shimmer, an eye blinked at his face. They were blue eyes and familiar somehow. Some seemed gentle, others were scared, and still some were brilliantly happy or loving. In the spur of the moment, Aang recognized the eyes as Katara's. They showed her many different emotions and he found them beautiful in an unusual way. He always thought her eyes appeared as azure and as stunning as the point at which the ocean met the sky on a clear, cloudless day.

The airbender was transfixed, and even though he was now floating underwater, he never noticed that he had no problems breathing.

But almost just as immediately, something in the blackness changed. The bubbles appeared rigid; they were threatening him. The mist turned into a dark purple color and instead of tendrils of it, bulbous clouds of the peculiar haze came forth and Guru Pathik's sage tenor resounded in his mind.

"You must learn to let go."

Aang shook his head desperately. "No! I can't let her go! I—I love Katara!"

"Aang, you have made your choice! Now suffer the consequences!" The Guru's intimidating anger resonated in the water and the Avatar could not breathe in the fluid any longer. He was suffocating. He was drowning. The world was turning impossibly bleaker and blacker. He couldn't see a thing! He could not hear anything anymore!

The Guru shouted again and this time he appeared in Aang's thoughts in the form of Wan Shi Tong, the great shadowy and gigantic owl spirit who knows ten-thousand things. Out of its beak came the yells of Pathik, words that Aang was trying not to hear.

The bird flapped its wings and out gushed a terrible wind. "You have abandoned the world! You are a failure! The Earth Kingdom fell because you could not let go of your earthly attachment!" The spirit snarled and spat at him and continued, "You traitor! You fool!"

"No," Aang tried to tell the being, "No!"

An image of Katara melted onto the scene and she was crying. "Aang," she said, "How could you? I believed in you!"

And her voice echoed and echoed, bouncing off the caves of his inner soul. She had been the original voice he had heard. It was her who he had disappointed. It was she who had lost all of her hope now. Aang had not just let down the entire world; he had let down his best friend, the girl he had only recently realized he loved. He had let down Katara.

Then, it was all too much. The bubbles surrounded him, pulling on his arms and legs like dogs biting at a piece of vulnerable meat. They scratched at his skin and rammed into his ribs. An unfamiliar pain shot horrifyingly through his back, almost as if a bolt of lightning had been blurring through his system…

"AANG! AANG! Calm down!" Katara bellowed worriedly at the convulsing form of her best friend who was lying on a makeshift mattress in the middle of a successfully captured Fire Navy ship. "Please! It's just a dream! Please! AANG!"

The metal door burst open and in came an avidly alert Sokka and Toph, as well as Bato and her father, Hakoda. The members of the intruding group were all in fighting positions until Sokka noticed that there was no one attacking. He was the first to relax, but then he surged forward to grasp his sister's shoulders urgently.

"Katara!" He shouted to her. "What's wrong? Is it Aang?"

He only watched as she nodded, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. Aang was still jerking occasionally and she was holding him down as she saw a pained expression on his face. He was hyperventilating and apparently, she was beginning to do so too because Toph soon told her to take deep breaths and pull herself together. ("Sugar Queen! They could hear you breathing in the Northern Water Tribe!")

Hakoda sighed and made the suggestion that they should change his bandages. Maybe the injury was starting to make him sick and was giving him disturbing nightmares. The group agreed to the comment and the waterbender wordlessly began to change the white wrapping as soon as Aang's movements settled to a minimum.

Her fingers were trembling and everyone but the blind earthbender noticed how her eyes glistened with a new set of tears when she was forced to witness the still raw and bleeding wound on the Avatar's back.

In the silence, Aang murmured one word softly.

"Katara," he muttered, but all could hear it. No one dared to speak as the girl in question put her hands to her face, all too aware that Aang was not conscious and did not know what he was saying. Toph bowed her head in sadness and Sokka only clutched his sibling's arm as she started to outright cry.

They were all going through hard times in this war and the Water Tribe warrior knew that. But, he did not appreciate the fact that even though their little ragtag group of friends all was suffering from the almost-loss of Aang until now, his sister was suffering the most.

"He'll be fine now, Katara," Sokka said comfortingly. "He'll get better."

Blue eyes peered up at him. "But what if he won't be? What if Aang never wakes up? What will I—what will we do then?"

"I don't know," he replied, downcast. "But I think Aang will wake up to us. He has to."

She opened her mouth to say something more, but the warrior stopped her. "Don't forget it," he added. "When he wakes up, you can tell him how you really feel."

Katara looked confused and then shocked. A knit formed in between her arching eyebrows, but she did not bother to deny anything or say anything for that matter. The remaining crowd watched as the waterbender silently turned to Aang's side and how she had gently, but lovingly, clasped his limp and sweaty hand.

"He has to be okay."