Chapter 2!

Otabek didn't see the blond boy until nearly a few days later. He stayed in the temple, training and meditating on his last elemental hurdle to becoming a full fledged avatar. He made little to no progress. With Viktor not panning out, Otabek was left watching or participating in the children's formation classes. While he did learn some new things, he still couldn't make a flame. Just smoke, and that was only a few times. It was barely pathetic.

When he wasn't training, or meditating, or failing, he spent time walking around the city. There were armories and vendors on the street, all of them offering the best deals around. A small school was just north of the temple, giving children the other typical lessons than firebending. A popular clothing shop helped him get some Fire Nation clothes so he'd blend in better. A few individual carts sold goods from travelling merchants, all who assured that their goods were limited and the finest around. One slightly crazy man guarded his heads of cabbage like a dog with a bone. He barely let anyone near the cart to sell them.

Otabek waited until midday to bend a large rock structure to sit on outside the city, making sure the sun beat down on him. Surely feeling the warmth from the sun would help his elemental block. At the least, it couldn't hurt any.

He could do this! He would learn firebending, and then laugh at how hard it was before he became a master. Laughing at himself was easy, and he was sure he'd look back at this exact moment and think himself a fool for not getting it. He was just lacking that epiphany moment where it all clicked. Perhaps it was the pressure of being the Avatar that blocked him, although he'd had no problems with the other elements like he did with fire. That wasn't to say he hadn't had trouble learning, but now he felt stuck. If he didn't learn firebending (and learning the skill seemed to grow more impossible every day) then he wouldn't become a full-fledged Avatar. Possibly the only one in any of the cycles to not master all four elements. He'd fail at firebending, and then fail at being the Avatar, and...

Sighing in frustration, he blew out his breath quickly, using airbending to push at the trees in front of him. Maybe he'd have to resort to his air nomad meditation techniques again to help his block.

Almost an hour went by and Otabek made no progress. Instead, he grabbed the pouch of water on his hip and did little tricks with the water, freezing and unfreezing it at will. Immediately, Otabek felt a little better. He had learned something, even if the pressure and anxiety he felt said otherwise.

Water had been relatively easy for him to learn, much to his surprise. He had originally thought that the fluidity of waterbending would be a challenge compared to his rigid teachings of earthbending, but he found it to be the opposite. After stretching his muscles, and working through the basics for a couple weeks, his body moved like a novice waterbender with little problems.

A small family let him stay with them in the north pole. Everything was covered or carved into the very snow, and Otabek's first step was to find some clothes that would keep him warm. The woman, Hiroko Katsuki, made sure to fill him with warm soups and meat while she covered him in blankets. Grateful after a long boat trip, Otabek let her fuss over him. It had been a while since he'd seen his mother and the motherly attention was nice. Her husband made good natured jokes about the snow while she gathered his things and showed Otabek his room.

The solid walls of the room help keep the freezing temperatures out, but a chill still managed to permeate his new coats and skin tight under-clothes. Surely he'd acclimate to the cold after constant exposure. If he was going to be living here for the indefinite future, he'd have to get used to it...

He didn't, but he never complained and just worked his body harder to warm himself. Or he hoarded Hiroko's soups; they were the best at warming his hands and his insides to keep the freezing temperatures at bay.

The Katsuki's also had a son a few years older than himself who went through the waterbending training with Otabek. He was more advanced, but there was only a handful of students so more often than not they were together in the same group. Otabek was surprised that Yuuri took the time to help all of the children with their bending. Not that there was anything wrong with the guy himself, Yuuri was actually really nice. But helping the students so much while Yuuri had his own bending to practice came as a surprise. Most of the earth benders Otabek had met usually made him figure it out with helpful instructions, but nothing more. It was his job to power through and figure it out on his own. Otabek discovered that he liked the strong sense of community that the water benders seemed to have.

Yuuri actually taught Otabek some of the more advanced techniques as he exceled quickly. Most of the younger students would stomp their feet in annoyance when Otabek monopolized Yuuri's free time, but they usually got over it when Otabek helped them with snowball fights. His original teacher, Minako, only got to teach him for a few weeks before she headed towards the Earth Kingdom on business. She taught Otabek the foundation of waterbending, and then left it to Yuuri and the others to help with her apologies. Otabek could have followed her back to his homeland, but she said it would be easier for him to start off learning waterbending while literally surrounded by water.

Otabek stayed with the Katsuki's and in the north pole for a little over half a year. By then, he felt confident in his abilites as a waterbender. Between Minako's teachings, and practicing with Yuuri for so long, Otabek felt like he had another element safely under his belt. He still practiced as he wasn't actually a master yet, but he knew enough to move on.

Hiroko had given him a hug before he left with small tears in her eyes, while Toshiya clasped him on the shoulder with a smile. She made Otabek promise that once he was done learning the elements, or if he needed a break, that he'd come back and visit. It had meant a lot, and Otabek had thanked them profusely, bowing deeply as if they were the masters he had learned from. Hiroko, Toshiya, and Yuuri had went with him to the boats, waving him off as he headed back to the Earth Kingdom.

Feeling a chill around him, Otabek opened his eyes to see that the sun was nearly set now. He definitely had to get back to the temple. Viktor was staying there now, something to do with appeasing the Fire Lord who demanded that Viktor stay with the Avatar and teach him anyway. Otabek didn't particularly care either way, and he probably wasn't ever going to meet the Fire Lord in person to tell him otherwise. Viktor did teach him some of the forms so it wasn't technically a lie. Viktor just wasn't teaching him to actually bend.

Otabek stood and pulled on his sleeveless shirt over his head. Pushing his heel into the rock, Otabek bended the rock back into the ground, making his way back into the city.

Maybe he'd ask Viktor who that blond man was. Maybe he could him how to firebend, how to control the fire in that elegant way that Otabek had witnessed. Maybe maybe maybe... With a determined nod, he decided to ask the blond the next time he saw him.

When he returned, he was surprised to see flames shooting around the far side of the courtyard. The teacher Otabek had met yesterday kept towards the front of the temple with another group of older children, blatantly ignoring the fire show far behind him. Otabek chuckled as the teacher kept having to snap at the students to keep them from getting distracted by whatever what happening.

Otabek sent the group a wave as he made his way to the back of the courtyard. The little blasts of fire that Otabek saw started to wane in power, but they continued valiantly all the same. When he rounded the corner of the temple, he stopped suddenly as fire came flying at his face. A quick whirl of airbending thankfully kept him from getting burned, but it had been close. Sadly, it was the closest Otabek had been to fire since he arrived.

"Come on, Yuri, I want to go walk Makka before it gets too late," Viktor complained, side-stepping as the blond that Otabek had been looking for as he shot flames at Viktor through a fancy set of forms.

Yuri (at least Otabek knew his name now) just snarled as he kept attacking relentlessly. Viktor kept dodging easily, but he was watching intently at each move Yuri made even while he looked nonchalant about it. Finally, after about ten more minutes of Yuri shooting flames at Viktor, Yuri finally hunched over with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

"Are you finished?" Viktor asked, hands on his hips again. The silver haired man didn't even look fatigued, and only a bit of his hair was out of place from dodging for so long.

"I'm going to beat you one day, Nikiforov. Just you wait," Yuri panted, looking slightly wild and disheveled.

"I'm sure you will," Viktor smiled brightly. "But you'll have to try harder and control that temper a bit more. Go take a rest, I'm going to walk Makka before it gets too dark." Viktor patted Yuri on the shoulder quickly as he strode by, laughing as Yuri shot a small flame at the older man who just skipped out of the way. Otabek waved at Viktor as he walked inside to open the door, revealing quiet, yet excited boofs coming from a poodle that sat just inside.

Otabek turned and watched as Yuri inhaled and exhaled slowly, fists clenched and frown in place. Frankly, he was impressed at both Yuri and Viktor. Yuri had an aggressiveness and drive that Otabek hadn't seen anywhere else. And Viktor was far more skilled than Otabek had originally thought since he hadn't even lifted a finger against Yuri.

Well, it's now or never, Otabek thought. "So your name is Yuri?" Otabek asked, walking over towards the blond who was still standing in the middle of the courtyard hunched over. It wouldn't do him any good to dwell on those negative thoughts of his struggles.

Yuri's head whipped up, blond bangs covering his face. "Oh, it's you. Were you staring again?" he asked, nearly demanded, grumpily. "Weirdo."

Otabek couldn't help the small smirk that threatened to pull at his face. He reminded Otabek of a grumpy kitten for some reason. "Not this time, but I did get to watch the end of the fight. You two are excellent benders."

"Quit making fun of me," Yuri huffed, standing up again. Then he glared up at Otabek. "Don't you have something else to do than stand there watching all the time? Go throw some rocks or create a breeze or something!"

"I actually have a question for you," Otabek told him, walking up to stand in front of Yuri. "Would you be my firebending teacher?" There was no point in waiting to ask, or pretending that it wasn't what he wanted. He needed to learn, and Yuri seemed like his only option left.

Yuri's eyebrows rose as he was caught off guard. "What?!" he nearly shouted.

"I want you to be my firebending teacher," Otabek repeated himself calmly. When he had begun his Avatar journey, he had figured air would be the hardest for him to master. The natural opposites were supposed to be the toughest to learn, and yet Otabek was having the most problems with his final element.

Surely, surely between Viktor's beginning lessons and Yuri's passion for bending, Otabek could learn. He'd master his final element in time and become a full-fledged Avatar and remember when he was an idiot who couldn't even make smoke half the time. He'd finally overcome this infuriating hurdle and could move on.

Otabek waited for Yuri to say something. The blond just stood there quietly, still looking slightly confused and grumpy. As it seemed to be Yuri's natural look and attitude, Otabek took it with a grain of salt. He didn't care if Yuri was grumpy, he was pretty hard to anger anyway. He could deal with difficult; he'd let his Earth Kingdom nation down if he wasn't tenacious. All Yuri had to do was teach him, that didn't necessarily mean that he had to be Otabek's friend. And to do that, all Yuri had to say was-

"No, not interested."

So there's chapter 2, hope you guys liked it! Leave a review and let me know what you thought!