Hallelujah! I'm sorry it took so long to finally get this up... I actually started to have a life outside of the internet again lol. (aka: I lost track of time.) Much thanks to those that have taken the time to review! I feed on those just so you know... Even though I've done my best to avoid mistakes here, if you find any misspellings or grammar flukes, tell me please.
TTAvatarfan:) I'm glad you thought the ending was cute... unfortunately I'm not sure how many more of those there are gonna be... at least for the time being. Whatever I write comes out angsty. I'm cursed I tell ya!
Twilight Rose2: I'm afraid that we're not gonna find out who "they" are for a while... not too long though... thanks for the enthusiasticreview lol
Aangsfan: Thank you for the encouragement! At the time I really needed that... well, I still do.
I'm sorry I didn't personally thank my reviewers in last time I updated, so I've done it now. I know that these three chapters have been going pretty slowly, and I'm working on that.
Night's thick velvet had befallen the thick forest and its surroundings. Various lanterns had been lit in the center of the town, their light never quite reaching the outskirts where four fugitives had hidden.
Katara reached into a lower cabinet to find two small rocks which she used to light the few candles throughout the room. She then set them down, picking up her waterskin to walk over to Aang. To her surprise, though, he was not asleep. Instead, his eyes roamed over the room before settling on her, dark and contemplating.
"She took it didn't she... Ba Sing Se..." Katara looked down and nodded. "That's why we're here..."
"Yes," she breathed. He sighed, feeling the effects of failure more than earlier. His head was clearer and he was more acutely aware of his surroundings, now noticing the sharp pain that shot up his spine from time to time. Glancing in surprise at the bandages around his torso, Aang tried to lift himself up on his elbows but failed miserably. He'd been able to do this before... he groaned.
"Katara, why... what happened to me?"
She halted instantly, in the middle of beginning to draw her healing water out of the pouch. How could he not remember that? She slid the water back inside and quickly corked the opening. "I'll tell you later," she managed to force out, inwardly wincing. Aang appeared to accept this response as his thoughts drifted back to the present.
"All that matters is that we're all here, together," she continued, mentally questioning the whereabouts of her brother and Toph. Aang watched her sit next to him on his bed and again, wrap her arms around him. He couldn't remember the time Katara had done this so much... what had happened must have been intense... courtesy of his obvious failure.
Katara savored the close hug with her friend, then pulled away so that she could finally see those eyes that had held the vivacity and love of life that had endeared him to her. Her heart had leapt -- and stopped mid-beat. Why wasn't he smiling... and why wouldn't he hold her as he had done so often before? The worry and seriousness of his eyes abruptly pierced into her and forced her to admit that there was something about him that had turned definitely off-key.
"This is all my fault," he confessed, frustrated. Katara, surprised, shook her head.
"No, please don't say that, Aang. Everything will work out fine..." Katara felt the proverbial scabs on her heart peel away with each evidence of the fact that things were not as reassuring as she'd expected them to be. "What's wrong?"
"I just--" he broke off, cutting the rest of his sentence and biting his lip, averting his eyes to rest them on the red poster to which he had arisen. "How did everything come to this?"
"I don't know, Aang..." She went on more forcefully, "But we'll make it. I promise." Katara pulled him close to her. Both shut their eyes at the close contact but Katara felt her heart falling just a little bit more... she still didn't feel his arms around her.
-----
Sokka stumbled onto the porch steps, struggling to see where his feet were going as he craned his neck over the pile of robes and other garments he was carrying. He kicked open the door, grateful for the small amount of light emanating from the cabin as he strode inside and yelled to his sister.
"Hey Katara, what--" Immediately, he stopped short at the scene before him. The picture of Katara on Aang's bed struck him, as she heartily embraced the boy whom Sokka knew of to be unconscious. His eyes were closed, arms hanging limply by his side and Sokka was wondering how such an emotional action had erupted from a girl who'd been anything but demonstrative of her feelings since... the incident of weeks ago. He had no reason to believe that Aang was awake and he wondered whether Katara had finally been pushed past her limits to the point of showing her concern to guys that weren't even conscious...
"Uh, Katara?" he said softly. "I thought Gran Gran taught you better than to take advantage of comatose boys." Expecting a negative reaction if she were in fact doing this because she was upset, Sokka automatically flinched. She didn't respond, however, she only held the boy in her arms tighter when Aang frowned, tensed, and then completely relaxed, hugging her back tightly.
So he was awake? Sokka couldn't quite adjust to that revelation as he'd been asleep that very morning... after all those weeks, he'd been starting to wonder if he ever would wake up...
"Aang?"
The younger boy sighed and slowly pulled away from Katara, staring into her eyes as he did so. Their gaze was unbroken as she gently lay him back onto the bed. "Hey, Sokka," he whispered, finally managing to turn his eyes from the girl to her brother.
Sokka's pure relief hesitated at the lack of enthusiasm from the formerly vibrant boy. The pile of garments in his arms were dumped into a bag by the door. He'd started to move forward to smilingly clap a hand on the boy's shoulder but decided to simply answer, unsure as to the spell that he seemed to have just broken, "Welcome back."
Good to be back. The phrase suddenly echoed in Aang's head, bringing back memories of the Fire Nation prince... strangely, the more recent they became, the more his head hurt trying to remember. Why was the scarred boy's face conjuring up images of a green-lit area with... crystals? Aang rubbed his forehead trying to offset the pain and swallowing to mellow the sickness in his chest. Katara began to move away from him.
"Let me get some water to heal your back."
"My back?" He snapped out of his thoughts. He knew it hurt, he had already become aware of the bandages across his body... but why...? "What happened to it anyway?" Aang knew he had asked earlier and had supposed that she just didn't feel like saying anything at the time. She turned around but her reluctance of speech was evident. Sokka raised an eyebrow at the tension between the two and wondered why she hadn't yet told the boy of the disaster at Ba Sing Se.
No one noticed the soft creak of the door from the front of the room.
"Twinkletoes?"
Toph. Aang's mouth twitched into a wry smile... if only he felt so twinkly. The earthbender approached the three others with a light smirk before her smile turned more genuine. Two long weeks and finally... She almost couldn't believe it
"Glad you're back, buddy." She almost went ahead and hugged him in assuaged anxiety but stopped when she realized he didn't feel at ease at all, and probably wouldn't appreciate it. Toph slightly cocked her head in confusion at his obvious change in demeanor then mentally shrugged. Sappiness wasn't really her thing anyway.
"So, what took you so long?" Toph went on, regaining her usual sarcasm. "We were about to ditch Katara with how paranoid you were making her." Aang watched Katara glare at Toph, even though a light blush was evident on her face. How worried was she? He never really knew how much she truly cared...
The sudden silence in the room caused the three to turn their attention to the boy gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling. Katara touched his shoulder. "Aang?" He simply gave Katara a blank stare. Words seemed to echo in a faraway seclusion of his mind... he just couldn't remember for the life of him from where...
"Let her go, Aang."
And in a split second, he saw her figure floating away from him... floating away as the Avatar Spirit he had chosen loomed before him to take him... forcing all of his attachments from him...
"Aang."
But why? What had caused this to occur -- if it wasn't a trick of his tired mind.
"Aang?"
The last thing he could recall was seeing a mass of people about him, how everything had gone wrong and he felt himself rise into the air...
"Aang!" The panicky call shattered his musings and he narrowed his eyes confusedly at Katara.
"What happened to me?" When she did not respond, he cast quizzical glances to the other two observers. He noticed they were also staring intently at the waterbender to whom words seem to come at a loss. He sighed, feeling the roots of irritation take hold of his nerves. Why wasn't she answering him?
"Please, tell me," he said firmly. He could tell she was trying to ignore his cold tone... he mentally kicked himself.
She'd tried to avoid dealing with this earlier... but it could not be put off -- judging by his solid stance on the issue, he wouldn't allow it to be. "She-- you..." Katara stammered, surprised at her discomfort. Somehow, she just couldn't hear her own speech through the scream in her head as she relived the battle in Old Ba Sing Se.
-----
It hit her as strange that she hadn't noticed this before: that neither she nor Sokka had ever been told what had happened within the underground catacombs of the Earth Kingdom's capital city. She figured Katara had simply forgotten to tell them, so she had let the matter drop... until now when it came up and the other girl was still having difficulty explaining it. After the first several times of trying to get the information out of her days ago, she had given up...
"Katara, what happened?" A pause ensued as Toph waited for an answer from the girl who was slowly eating from an old metal bowl.
"Nothing much." It didn't take much for her to know she was lying. She didn't even have to listen to her heartbeat... she could feel her trembling and hear the tiny sounds of metallic clattering as she told Toph to excuse her -- she had to go check on Aang.
Toph had expected for Katara to gladly get whatever had happened off of her chest, but that hadn't been the case.
She never forgot, Toph thought. In fact, it appeared to be the complete opposite of that. Toph could tell that Aang was thoroughly perplexed -- most likely more so than she considering he probably wasn't even aware of his previously fatal situation. She shifted her weight, intently waiting for the whole story from Katara. What was taking her so long? She was a sentimental person, but what was so terrifying about saying, "You got a random blast in the back from one of the royal-pain-in-the-neck siblings," end of story? You'd think she'd be more angry than anything and easily spout off bitter words about whoever had done this. Sokka's mind was traveling along those exact same lines.
Most of Katara's face was covered in shadows as the flickering candlelight skimmed over some parts on her lowered head.
"I need to know," his weak voice insisted. Why did her eyes look so haunted?
She could see the confusion in his eyes and read the question that plagued his mind. Because it's not every day that you see your best friend being electrocuted. Didn't he understand that? she thought irrationally. Nobody else seemed to...
That's when she remembered that she hadn't told them -- no one else knew. Somehow, the boy's fate had been erased from his memory. After fighting so hard in such a large battle, she had forgotten -- especially after two weeks of traveling with them -- that she was the only one protecting him because neither her friend nor her brother were there to help. Only she had been the one to aid the Avatar, only she could have protected her friend. That moment was also when she realized how much that experience had actually traumatized her. How did it feel to be the only compassionate soul to watch him be shot as the battle reached its deciding climax?
His body shaking and convulsing in the air, as the raw power he possessed was killed in cold blood.
It took forever for even she to finally understand how much she had been affected by that experience, and she had witnessed it. Now, she knew where those late night shivers that crawled up her spine came from. The feeling of safety that would suddenly tear her away into the darkness of fear. The images constantly replayed, although she bid them into repression. It was haunting, it was scary... and she had no idea what to do with it... but he'd always seemed to have the answer for things anyway.
"Tell me about it, Katara." His earnest voice replaced the night of their loss with the face of a caring, more mature boy, who still seemed to gleam with hope, however dim, even after the world had stopped. She took a deep breath.
"Azula, she... she hit you with lightning." Aang stared at her. Katara bit back the sickening dread that she felt and pressed on. "She electrocuted you, Aang, right in front of me. I didn't protect you..." she continued bitterly.
"Woah." Sokka raised both of his eyebrows this time. So it wasn't just some stray ball of fire...
Katara watched Aang, waiting for him to speak. She anticipated a lighter response -- he always made her feel better right? The growing feeling of newfound worry expanded in her chest when his brow creased even more deeply.
"Why don't I remember this? Why didn't I see it coming?" Then, everything slowly dawned on him. "I was in the Avatar State wasn't I?" Sokka and Toph looked on wide-eyed as the memories rushed back to the airbender.
"Why didn't you tell us any of this?" Sokka demanded of his sister. The very temperature around them seemed to rise dramatically the more information that spilled out of Katara's mouth. Aang didn't have time to catch her deep wince as worry filled his mind when a warning of long ago resounded in his ears.
"If you are killed in the Avatar State, the Avatar will cease to exist." A gasp on Katara's part brought him back to reality. Had he really said that aloud...?
"I... I guess I thought I had died." He said nothing more, waiting for Katara to contradict him.
Not a single sound echoed within the entire room.
"You did," she choked out. Everyone was shocked into even more deafening silence. Toph's eyes widened... She thought she had been dreaming when she couldn't find the boy's pulse that night.
"K...Katara, I'm alive now, I couldn't have been..."
"The Oasis water brought you back... I... I think it healed the spirit inside of you, and that's why the injury on your back never got better..." She vividly remembered that moment of seeing his scar still there, thinking that all hope was forever lost... and watching his stony face only reminded her that it almost was. Nice one, Katara. Now he knows you'd lost him. Again.
Why did he feel so upset -- or perhaps, more importantly, why did it barely bother him to feel this way? She was there to help him wasn't she? The only reason he'd been down there in the first place was to save her and look at what it had brought him!
No -- she's your best friend. Why do you feel such resentment?
Truth be told, he had no idea.
"But, it's still damaged though, isn't it." Aang looked down, deciding it didn't matter because he'd failed in his task back then anyway.
"If you leave now, you won't be able to get into the Avatar State at all!" He'd tried to get it back... for her. Come to think of it, everything he'd done was for her.
He caught a streak of silver hitting the floor and resulting in a tiny pool of water on the dry wood. He raised his eyes to see another drop fall from Katara's eye. Any thought or trace of bad feeling fled from him as soon as his mind registered the sadness in her, and it didn't even occur to him that for the first time, he was the one trying to comfort her instead of the other way around. She must have been though a lot... He pulled her hands toward him and she grasped him around the waist. The lips next to his ear uttered two words.
"I'm sorry."
Aang felt instantly guilty of his unforgiving thoughts. "It's okay, Katara." After taking a shuddering breath, she straightened herself, visibly embarrassed by her display of tears.
"Let me get the water for you." She walked away before Aang could even nod.
Toph mumbled something to Sokka, out of the other two's earshots. "What's wrong with those two? They're taking this so hard... I never knew that seeing something could be so... horrifying. I could tell she was scared out of her mind..."
Sokka nodded, mirth taking a backseat to the pictures his own mind would rather never have seen at all. "Yeah... it's like a scar that you can't get rid of. You don't forget things like that. Toph--" he spun around to her and placed his hands on her shoulders "--vision isn't just a blessing. It's a curse too, like everything else." The unexpected force of his words and motions moved her and she nodded dumbly. She trailed after him as he exited the house.
--------------------
Shadows danced across the far wall, coalescing into graceful puppets against the hazy light. Smoky incense permeated the area, courtesy of the town's new ownership.
Aang had held in a sharp breath each time nimble fingers had peeled his wrappings off of his raw, sensitive skin. Katara had taken care to not hurt him any more than necessary as she removed the bandages, watching wordlessly as he reached back and gingerly felt the ominous black scar that did not hesitate in invoking unneeded memories. Again, their other two companions had left - Toph as their guard and Sokka apparently with her - while Katara drew water around her hands and pressed it against Aang's looming wound.
It was curious how so little time could completely alter one's comprehension of the world, brutally prying it from them and turning it upside-down. She was Katara, the healer; he was Aang, the one who always got back up when struck to the ground, the one who always became better when hurt. So many times as he sat in front of her, would Katara watch her shining water glow and draw it away from his back... and so many times he would hear her breathy sigh and his head would lower even further in defeat.
Because every time, the dark memory burned into his flesh stayed precisely the way it had been before.
Sometimes, healers couldn't heal; sometimes those that fell within the sea of trouble could never resurface... could never be healed. Katara realized that for the first time, she and her friend were living those scenarios.
He heard the small click as she topped her water pouch and backed away. The word that had never needed to be mentioned because it was already implied by the onerous air and knowledge about them.
"Nothing," she said. Nothing. That single proclamation that described everything that was going on around him.
What can we do to help others now? Nothing. What can be done to erase all the horrid memories that plagued him? Nothing. What was he feeling? Nothing. For once she could do absolutely nothing about that... and clearly, nothing about anything else either.
Sad faces mourned the empty scene of two friends distanced because of inner failure and desolation. They wished all of this pain would cease for the two undeserving adolescents.
They wished it could.
The long minute when Katara was awkwardly waiting for a response from the uncommunicative boy broke when a chilled gust of air blew in from the newly-opened door, momentarily darkening the small flames within the room. Sokka burst in, stopping as he noticed he'd again stumbled upon the unearthly stillness between his sister and the Avatar. Katara quickly dropped her concerned train of thought at Sokka's hasty entrance.
"What's wrong?"
"Fire Nation," he answered gravely. "Lots." A buzz of energy was sparked in the very currents of the room as soon as the siblings recovered from the dire sense of urgency.
A flurry of excitement whizzed in front of Aang's eyes as Sokka grabbed three traveling sacks from the floor and two cloaks. He tossed one to Katara. She pulled it over her head as she threw rolled bandages and her water skin into a deep red bag at the foot of Aang's bed. She had been previously unaware of its existence but had not dwelled on the unimportant distraction.
"Aang, can you walk?"
Transfixed by the breathless rush, it took a few seconds for him to lower his feet from the bed and raise his body onto his shaky legs... and immediately crumple into a dead fall.
Katara's arms caught him surprisingly quickly and lifted his body before it had been halfway to the floor. By the time his arm was looped around her neck and they hobbled to the door, the room had been stripped bare and in pitch darkness -- the warm candles having been disposed of in a burlap bag in Sokka's possession. They'd definitely thought of everything. The swiftness of their departure came to a screeching halt, however, before Aang's brain had even completely wrapped around the laborious and painful walk that his body had to endure.
"Where's Appa?" As if it were second nature he posed the question, already knowing the answer by the lack of growls and groans from his friend. Another piece of his world had darkened already... this could not have good results.
"A lot safer than we are -- that's what," Sokka whispered harshly. "And a lot more alive too if we don't get out of here soon."
Why? What had happened? Apprehension raged in Aang's head. Where was his friend and only link to a long lost past? As much as adaptation and freedom was part of his nature, this did not sit well inside of his troubled heart. There was such a thing as too much change, especially in such a short time from Aang's point of view. Why was he always blissfully unaware when his world slowly came crashing down upon him?
Labored breaths drew his attention to the girl who was almost dragging him along in her hurry. Katara's exhausted voice, now full of worry, addressed Sokka.
"Wait! Where's Toph?"
A familiar grunt from ahead seemed to answer her, the cover of night effectively hid the earthbender from view.
Aang forced himself to disregard his own wheezing while he struggled to keep up with the fast paced escape. He grimaced at the constant irritation Katara's robe was causing on his bare back. None of them dared to stop until the forest completely swallowed them into its wilderness. They kept silent for fear of those from whom they were on the run...
Meanwhile, a troop of foot soldiers burst into the recently vacated home with nothing but the comforting after scent of votives to carry any trace of the four runaways.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Some parts in this chapter were meant to be in the last one but it made things a bit too awkward... otherwise, this would have been much more eventful. I needed to get some character development out of the way. All crit is welcome.