Chapter Notes: Some violent - implications, I guess, in this chapter. I think it's said somewhere in canon that it's impossible to reach the Air Temples without a sky bison - I take that with a grain of salt since Sozin's armies were obviously able to get there, although they could have captured some bison (or used Azula's rocket boot trick). Anyway, in this story, it's not impossible; just tough. Also: Sokka's life? So hard.

Chapter Two: The Southern Air Temple (Part 1)

"You're doing it again," Sokka said, in a long-suffering tone.

Katara blinked. "What?" she said.

Sokka gave her a flat look and pointed to the midday sun. They should have been going essentially right toward it, keeping it a little to the left and letting it fall away further left as it set in the west; but for the fourth time that day, Katara had let her mind wander, and the sun was now on her right. "I know Gran-Gran's map is pretty old," Sokka said, "but I'm pretty sure the Earth Kingdoms haven't relocated to the middle of the ocean."

Katara grimaced in acknowledgement, and let the canoe slow a little, dragging the water under the bow back to the east with a gesture. Sokka was right; there was a little land to the west of them, but it was just the empty islands the Air Nomads had once inhabited - no reason to go there, except the faint outline of mountains on the western horizon kept drawing her eye.

"You're doing it again," Sokka said, exasperated, but Katara interrupted him before he could go on.

"I think we should go to the Southern Air Temple," she said. She wasn't sure why she was saying it, but she was certain nonetheless that it was the truth.

"Oh, definitely," Sokka said, throwing his hands in the air. "The abandoned site of a bloody massacre a century ago - nothing creepy about that. It's the perfect place to do a little sightseeing; especially in the middle of a war that you're presumably supposed to be stopping."

Katara felt herself flush a little, but the strange certainty hadn't left her. "Not for sightseeing - just because we should," she said. "I just feel ... drawn there. I think - I think maybe it's an Avatar thing."

"You realize you can't just say that any time you want to do something weird," Sokka said, but he didn't argue any more; so Katara turned until the sun was off to the right, and kept it there.

She didn't even need the map - well, she wouldn't have anyway, with the peaks of the Air Nomads' islands already visible from where they were, but she felt like she could have steered her way there in the middle of a winter storm. She hardly even had to do anything; it felt like toward the mountains was downhill, and every other direction was just that little bit harder to go in.

Katara pulled on the water a little harder - she figured she might as well, since it was so oddly easy to bend the canoe toward the islands; and in the end, it took them barely an hour and change to reach the island of the Southern Air Temple. The temple was visible from the water, mostly just because its shape was so regular compared to the other peaks; the stone it was built from was the same color as the mountain, and they were too far away to see any actual details.

"Are you sure this is the right one?" Sokka said, squinting up at the temple after they hauled the canoe up onto the dirt. "Because I don't see any paths up."

"I ... don't think there are any," Katara said. "It was an Air Nomad temple; they all had sky bison, remember?"

"Oh, great," Sokka said.

.*.

They reached the temple before sunset, though not by a lot; the last few hundred feet were especially rocky, and Katara was glad to pull herself over the last rise of stone and find herself looking at the wide flat floor of a balcony.

"That actually wasn't too bad," Sokka admitted, hauling himself up behind her as she climbed over the balcony railing. "Not that I'm looking forward to climbing back down, you understand." He pulled himself up with a hand on the rail, and blinked. "Wow."

Katara had to agree. They had climbed up onto the edge of one of the lower, smaller parts of the temple complex, and it alone was extraordinary. The temple might have been made out of rock, but it was still an Airbender temple; the beauty of it was not in the stones, but in the spaces around and between them. The balcony led up to a wide, shallow-stepped staircase; the large room at the top of the stairs had a soaring arched ceiling that was nothing like the low practical dome of an igloo, and the flare of the roof seemed to defy gravity. The entrance to the room was arched, too, and so were the enormous windows - it barely seemed right to call it a room at all, when it was so open to the air.

It was absolutely lovely; and the beauty of it was even more obvious because it was so sharply contrasted with the lingering signs of past violence that still marked the place. Katara stepped onto the first stair without looking at it, and ending up leaving a smudge of cleanliness where her foot had lifted away some of the sticky layer of soot that covered it - there was a long, fat streak that slashed across several stairs. The walls of the little temple building were smeared with ugly scorch marks. The big room was round, so it didn't really have corners; but there were mounds of ash still piled in spots around the edge where wall met floor, protected from blowing or washing away even after a century.

The wind blew, and where it was caught by the temple buildings and channeled past the windows and spires, it made a low singing hum against the stone. Sokka shivered a little. "Creepy," he proclaimed. "I told you it would be creepy."

"And you were right," Katara said, a little absently - not that it wasn't true, but she was distracted; something that wasn't quite a headache was gathering behind her eyes. For a second, she was gripped by the sudden fear that something was seriously wrong, because her vision went abruptly grey. But it cleared just as fast, and when it did, everything was different.

There were people everywhere, dressed in yellow and orange: monks, calm and smiling, with blue arrows like the ones she'd seen on Aang tattooed on heads and hands; and boys, un-tattooed students, shouting to each other and calling breezes into their hands. The sun was high, the room full of light and noise, sky bison and boys with gliders flying past the windows, and the stones were clean and unscarred by fire.

Katara blinked, and the vision was gone: Sokka was staring at her warily, hands wrapped around her arms, as she had evidently started lurching toward the floor. "If you're going to start glowing and breaking stuff again, tell me," he said, "so that I can get out of the way."

"No, it wasn't that," Katara forced out, straightening her half-folded legs. She felt choked, half-suffocated, but in a completely mundane way, and her eyes were starting to prickle at the corners.

Sokka looked, if possible, even more alarmed. "Uh, Katara?"

She squeezed her damp eyes shut, and tried to make herself take deep breaths. "They were just - there were so many," she whispered, when her throat had loosened. "So many people here; children - and they killed them all-"

Sokka's face had gone serious, when Katara opened her eyes again. "Well, it won't happen again," he said firmly.

Katara thought of their lone little village, all that was left where Mother had told them a city used to be, and of just how long it had been since they'd seen any other clans traveling the ice fields. "Why not?"

"Because of you," Sokka said, the tone of his voice implying that this ludicrous statement was obvious. "That's why you're here."

Katara stared at him, and then shook her head. "How can I - this was Aang's home, and he couldn't save it-"

"Aang? You mean the frozen kid?" Sokka said. "He was stuck in a block of ice at the time. Unless you're planning to get stuck in a block of ice, I think we'll be okay."

Katara couldn't help it; she giggled. It came out a little soggy, but Sokka either didn't notice or didn't care, and just smiled back at her. "Also," he said, still smiling, "I am not climbing back down in the dark, so we're sleeping here, even if it makes you cry."

"You're a terrible brother," Katara said, wiping her eyes, and punched him in the arm.

.*.

They laid out their sleeping mats in the big round room. It actually wasn't as bad as Katara had thought it might be, to be there in the dark; the lack of light meant that the scorch marks and soot were invisible against the more general darkness of the stone.

But her dreams were initially unpleasant, all about a hive of air and rock - like the temple, but larger - and Katara had to find someone inside. She wasn't sure who, since it seemed to change: for part of the dream it was Mother, and for another part, Father; but whoever it was, they weren't there. No one was there, except for Katara's dream-self, and she rushed from empty room to empty room, anxiety winding ever tighter in her gut.

But then her dream-self hurried into a room that turned out not to be a room, but rather a familiar grey flatness; and Aang was there waiting. This wasn't the comfort it probably ought to have been, as all Katara could later remember thinking was that this was a violation of dream-rules - there wasn't supposed to be anyone there, that was what the whole nightmare was about.

"I knew you'd get here," Aang said, blithely uncaring about the dream-rules he was breaking, and then paused and tapped a finger against his chin. "But I think this'll work better if you wake up."

Katara did, suddenly, and found herself blinking groggily into the darkness, frowning a little. That had been weird even for her dreams, which had admittedly been increasingly odd lately, with all the visitation from dead Avatars.

She blinked again. There was a funny blue light in the room, obviously there but at the same time strangely failing to actually provide illumination. Katara turned her head to look at it, and found herself staring into Aang's face, glowing and blue, two inches from her nose.

"Hi!" Aang said, waving a transparent blue hand.

Katara screamed, and hurled herself away reflexively, rolling from her mat onto the cold stone floor.

"What," Sokka said, coming suddenly awake; he didn't say it like it was a question, more like it was simply the word he'd found in his mouth when he'd been abruptly returned to consciousness, and it had slipped out without his intending it. Katara couldn't see him, but there was a sound like someone fumbling around. "Katara?"

"Aang!" Katara blurted, still wrestling with her startlement. He was still there, blue and shiny and completely see-through.

"The frozen kid?" Sokka said confusedly. "What about him?"

Katara stared at Aang, who showed no signs of fading away, and was looking expectantly back at her. "He - can't see you?" she said, a little faintly.

"Who can't see me?" Sokka said. "If Aang can't see me, that's okay, Katara; he's dead."

"He can't see me," Aang confirmed.

"Seriously," Sokka said, "are you talking in your sleep, or what?"

Katara could see Sokka's face a little, now - the sky was just barely starting to lighten, and her eyes had needed a moment to adjust. He was squinting over at her like he couldn't decide whether he wanted more to figure out what was wrong with her or to go back to sleep.

"Aang's here," she said, after a moment. She could've lied, but she had a feeling that Aang would be around for a while; they might as well have the awkward conversation about whether she'd lost her mind now, instead of later.

Sokka's eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. "I'm sorry, I must have something in my ear," he said slowly. "Could you say that again?"

"Aang's here," Katara dutifully repeated.

"Ah, yes, I did have something in my ear," Sokka said; "it was a piece of crazy. Are you really trying to tell me the Airbender kid who died before you were even born is here right now, talking to you?"

Katara turned back to Aang. "Is there anything you can do to convince him?"

"To convince who?" Sokka said, before Aang could even open his mouth. "Oh - no, I get it, you're talking to him now, right?"

"Yes," Katara said, "I am, so shut up."

"... Yeah, I don't think so," Aang said. "I mean, maybe if I got angry, there'd be a little wind or something."

"Great," Katara said, rubbing her eyes.

"Okay, that's seriously weird," Sokka said. "You really aren't kidding, are you? You genuinely think you're talking to him."

"Because I am," Katara snapped.

"Okay, fine. So why is he here, then?" Sokka asked. He was sitting up now, evidently having given up on sleeping in order to stare at her skeptically.

Katara thought about what she would do if Sokka suddenly started talking to thin air and acting like he was hearing replies, and reminded herself to be patient. She looked back at Aang. "You can hear him, right?" she said, because it seemed only reasonable to check.

"Oh, definitely," Aang said, nodding. "As for why - I'm here to help you."

"To help us?" Katara repeated.

Aang nodded again. "I mean, obviously you'd need me eventually," he said. "You'll have to master Airbending sometime, and you'll need a teacher." Aang's face, normally so sunny, closed down a little; Katara felt the slightest touch of breeze, and remembered what he'd said about getting angry - being upset would probably do it, too, she thought. "I'm - well, the closest thing there is to the only one left, I guess."

"I'm sorry," Katara said, which was ridiculous in the face of the death of Aang's entire people; but it made Aang look a little less pained anyway.

"But there's other things, too," Aang said, pushing past the subject determinedly. "There were a lot of people to help me, when I was the Avatar - tell me things about being the Avatar, and all that. You're a Waterbender, so you have to learn air last; that kind of stuff." He jumped to his intangible feet, and bowed. "I'm here to be your guide."

Katara voiced the suspicion that had been forming in her mind while Aang had been talking. "You drew me here, didn't you?"

"Well, kind of," Aang admitted. "I mean, it wasn't just me - you were supposed to come here."

"So now you're blaming your invisible friend for your inability to stay on course," Sokka said.

"It was him," Katara told him. "I told you it was an Avatar thing."

Sokka sighed. "You're going to be unbearable after this, aren't you?"

Katara grinned at him, and said nothing.

"Here, come on," Aang said, gesturing for her to get up. "There's something you should see, and it might help convince him."