Disclaimer: I solemnly swear that I am up to no theft

IMPORTANT: I have to apologize for taking as long as I did to update this story. Familial dysfunction has been the norm for the last few months and it was making it hard to find time to sit down and write. Though things have calmed down, they aren't stable yet. As you'll probably be able to tell from this chapter, I'm a little bitter and that's been reflected in my choice of wording.

This is the longest chapter I've written so far, so please enjoy.


Book One:

Water

Chapter Seventeen:

The Northern Air Temple

We had been traveling for about a day since leaving behind Joung Joung's camp. It was mid-afternoon when I finally gave in to sleep. Even though the cryptic dreams no longer plagued me, I still had trouble sleeping at night. I felt better staying up and watching over the others, taking naps during daylight hours when they were awake and alert. I was dreaming about food when Sokka's voice woke me from my latest nap.

"I agree with Kya's stomach."

I sat up quickly and looked around in confusion. "Sokka, I had no idea you had conversations with my stomach. I hope they're interesting."

"Your stomach growled really loud. He's just hungry and looking for excuses for us to stop and eat." Katara reached across the saddle and pulled a bag towards her, rifling through it and pulling out some seal jerky. "Here, chew on this. Your stomach sounds like it hasn't gotten any food in days."

"I'll be fine," I mumbled, pushing her hand away as my stomach betrayed me and growled again. "We're running low and I don't want to waste it."

"It's not wasteful when you're that hungry. Now, eat it." Her tone had grown dangerous, so I grabbed the jerky and quickly shoved it in my mouth. The girl could be downright frightening when she slipped into Mother Hen mode.

It was another few hours before we came across a decently sized village and landed on the outskirts. The village was small but warm and welcoming. It was just before sunset that we came across a man building a fire in the middle of many logs cut into benches. He advertised to us that later on, he would be telling Air Walker stories. The village was situated just south of the Northern Air Temple, and he commonly regaled wondrous tales of Air Benders from years past. Aang was beyond excited, and we made a point to come back and listen.

"So, travelers, the next time you think you hear a strange large bird talking, take a closer look. It might not be a giant parrot but a flying man, a member of a secret group of Air Walkers who laugh at gravity and laugh at those bound to the earth by it." The man ended with a dramatic flourish of his arms and quickly stood up with a hat in his hands. He made his way around the circle of audience members as Aang and Katara chattered excitedly about the story. When the man got around to us, Sokka dug into his pockets and pulled out nothing more than a bug and some crumbs. The worst part was that he put it back into his pocket.

Walking away, I went to speak with a few of the locals sitting at the other benches, hoping to ask where to purchase a cheap winter coat. Katara and Sokka were both prepared, having brought along their clothes from their village, but Aang and I were going to be in desperate need of proper coats and boots for the snow. To my slight anger and amusement, most of the villagers refused to speak with me. Still dressed in the Fire Nation clothes from Iroh, I was quickly assessed as a threat by most, especially with my swords hanging from my hips. I gave up eventually and wandered back to the others to discover a change in our route for the next day. This could not end well.


"We're almost to the Northern Air Temple. This is where they had the championships for Sky Bison poling." Aang was smiling brightly in anticipation of seeing the rumored Air Walkers the man had spoken of. The temperature around us continued to drop, and I shivered as Katara and Sokka spoke beside me.

"Do you think we'll really find air benders?"

Sokka continued to hack away at the piece of wood in his lap as he responded lazily, "You want me to be like you or totally honest?"

"Are you saying I'm a liar?"

"I'm saying you're an optimist, same thing basically."

"Hey, guys! Look at this!" Aang's cry of excitement at finding the temple became a whine of disappointment rather quickly. Though there were people slicing through the air on gliders, Aang could tell easily that they were not benders. He claimed they had no spirit. Just then, a boy flying the only glider that looked like Aang's swooped in so close to the saddle that we could feel the rush of air as he passed us, laughing jovially at our reaction. Taking to the sky after him, Aang leaped into the air and darted away. Appa lurched suddenly when the other people started gliding around us. Sokka surged forward and took the reins in hand, trying to guide Appa to solid ground as smoothly as possible.

The three of us jumped down and joined the group of other gliders that had dropped from the sky. We all stared up as Aang and the other boy glided seamlessly through the air, seeming to almost dance around each other. It looked as though they were both trying to show off their skills when pale grey smoke began pouring from the back of the chair the boy Teo was in. With the way he was flying, the smoke slowly drew out a picture in the form of a very disgruntled looking Aang. The picture seemed to be their finale and both boys made their way to solid ground, Aang coming to stand with us as Teo landed roughly. A few people came forward to remove the glider apparatus from his wheelchair before he made his way over to us.

Teo looked up at Aang and smiled brightly. "Hey, you're a real Air Bender. You must be the Avatar. That's amazing! I've heard stories about you." Aang spoke a humble thank you before Sokka walked forward praising the glider technology on Teo's chair. "You think this is good, wait until you see the other stuff my dad designed." Teo then lead us to the main tunnel off of the courtyard, and we quickly emerged in a great cavernous room in the temple. It was filled with pipes and bits of machinery, steam billowing out suddenly from gaps and openings. Some of the pipes had been skewered straight through the temple walls, sending out spider web cracking. Even the great statue set in prominence at the head of the room had a pipe sticking out of its right ear.

"Wow!" Sokka ran forward with his arms out stretched like a child given free reign at a festival, fingers itching to touch, eyes bright with rapt fascination, an enthused smile pulled tightly across his face.

"Yeah, my dad is the mastermind behind this whole place." Teo spoke in high praise of his father, his voice vaguely smug as he mentioned how highly advanced they were as a society.

"This place is unbelievable," said Aang softly from in front of us.

"Yeah, it's pretty great, huh?"

"No, just unbelievable." Aang walked away with a sad frown on his lips and a crease between his eyebrows. It looked like the changes to the room hurt him deeply.

Katara stepped up beside Teo to explain why Aang was so displeased. "I think he's just shocked that it's so different."

"So better!" Sokka called out over his shoulder. Katara just shook her head at her brother and walked over to Aang to comfort him.

"And what do you think about this place?" Teo had wheeled himself to my side and looked up at me expectantly. His eyes were wide and innocent. It was plain to see how deeply he did not understand the desecration committed by his father to such a sacred place. I wanted so badly to tell him how disgusted I was inside, but didn't dare speak it. I just walked away.


I wandered alone through the expansive temple, grimacing at every fallen column, every crumbling wall, and every broken statue. There was some form of metal in every room, be it machines or piping. It was like a disease, and it left a bitter taste in the back of my throat. Something wasn't right here.

Suddenly, there was a great crash of stone from somewhere above me, and I dashed outside to find where it came from. The sound of Aang's voice reached my ears, his words spoken in thick anger before the contraption that had knocked down the wall was air bended off the side of the cliff. I ran and had just entered a rounded courtyard with the others when a man began talking. He was dressed in all green with a white apron, and his eyebrows were badly singed. He spoke of how his people were refugees who came across the empty temple. He became fascinated with the people who had once lived there, wanting to emulate their flying capabilities.

"We're just in the process of improving upon what's already here. And truly, isn't that what nature does?"

Katara and Sokka were both wiping at their eyes when Aang responded. "Nature knows where to stop."

"I suppose that's true. But unfortunately, progress has a way of getting away from us." He and Sokka quickly began chattering about the man's many inventions and they went off to entertain themselves elsewhere. Katara, Aang, and I stayed with Teo and continued working our way through the temple, Aang complaining about the lack of anything remaining from the old days.

Teo stopped his wheelchair and picked up a small crab from the floor, handing it to Aang. "The temple may have changed, but the creatures here are probably direct descendants of the ones you remember. And besides, I know of one place that has stayed completely the same." We soon came up to a grand entrance, the lock on the door being one only an air bender could open. "I've always wanted to see inside."

"I'm sorry. I won't open it," Aang said. "This is the last place in the temple that hasn't been touched. I want it to stay that way."

We slowly made our way back to the outer terrace where we first landed, the mood of our group greatly lightened by the knowledge of the untouched room. Teo had become quickly gleeful at the idea of teaching Katara how to glide. The three of them talked about what a person needed to be able to fly, how it wasn't just wind currents and smooth gliding. Flying was spirit, something that comes from deep down inside you. I sat off to the side away from the edge as Katara walked off the side, her screams turning into joyous laughter. Aang made a few loops in the air with her before going back to stand with Teo. He told the boy how he had reconsidered opening the temple door. We quickly made our way back to ornately locked entrance.

With the swift, practiced motions of a skilled bender, Aang opened the door only to be met with devastation. What was once a room filled with sacred statues and scriptures was now a shrine to all things death and destruction. Metal and blades and Fire Nation emblems cluttered every surface and hung from every wall.

"You don't understand!" Teo's father ran up to us with Sokka following closely behind.

"That's where you're wrong. We understand perfectly." I turned my back on the sickening sight and looked into the mechanist's eyes, my shoulders tensed and lightly heaving. "You supply weapons to the Fire Nation in return for your safety. You're nothing but a coward." I started walking then, not caring where my feet took me.


"You have been touched by war."

I had made it to the Mechanist's private workshop, leafing through drawings and fiddling with small scale models of his inventions. He stayed by the entrance, the door only half closed, poised to run at a moment's notice. I picked up one of the models and turned it in my hands. It was a drill of some sort and quite finely made. "Your inventions are quite ingenious, but you fail to realize something important. You supply the Fire Nation army with weapons to protect your people while killing hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people that live beyond these walls. In here, they are just schematics and models, but out there they are bringers of death. These are not toys! You are a Mechanist of Death in a war with no foreseeable end! How can you possibly live with yourself knowing the lives your creations have extinguished!?" My volume climbed as I spoke and by the end I was screaming, angry tears dripping off my chin onto the now broken model in my hands.

"It's horrible to see someone so young with so much pain in their eyes. How old are you, sixteen, seventeen at the most?"

"Fifteen."

"Fifteen and already witness to death. Who did you lose to cause such anger in your heart?"

"My family," I whispered, thinking of the last time I saw my parents. "My innocence, if I ever had any."

He snorted softly and took a step further into the room. "Everyone was innocent at some point in their life. Even the Fire Lord was innocent as a child."

"I don't think I ever was. My very existence was meant for evil." I wiped furiously at the tears still clinging to my cheeks, my eyes fixed firmly on the floor. The silence was thick in the air while he pondered my words.

"Who are you?"

My laugh was choked and bitter. "I don't know." I walked from the room without glancing back.


Katara, Sokka, and I were seated silently on a stone bridge connecting two towers when Aang and Teo rushed over to us. Aang was slightly breathless as he told us of the impending attack on the temple. Soon after I had left, the two boys had gone to speak with the Mechanist, the arrival of a Fire Nation War Minister interrupting them suddenly. Apparently, Aang had challenged him, and the Fire Nation was now on their way.

"Aang, what are we going to do? How are we possibly going to keep them all away?" asked Katara, worried for the well-being of the people living there.

"We have something they don't, Katara, air power. Unlike the fire nation, we control the sky. We can win."

"I want to help. I wish to fight at your side." Teo's father had just emerged onto the bridge and stood within the arched doorway, his eyes briefly glancing at me. Aang smiled gratefully and agreed.

"No."

"Kya, I know you're angry with him, but he wants to make up for what he's done." Aang turned his pleading eyes to me, always the peace maker.

"He can work with you to help stop the Fire Nation, but I will not fight with him at my side."

Aang's wide eyes were blurred with confusion for a moment before clearing with sudden comprehension. "You don't feel like you could trust him fighting beside you. I understand." There was an unspoken question in his eyes. I could tell he was thinking of when Zuko and I had worked together to rescue him. That was different.

The six of us went to the private workshop and were quickly joined by the older settlers preparing a plan of attack for when the Fire Nation arrived. Sokka quickly explained his solution for the problem with the war balloon, showing us all the hatch built into the top to control the altitude. He went on to talk about the various bombs we had available to us, smoke, slime, fire, and stink.

"Never underestimate the power of stink," the mechanist said with a laugh.

We were all out on the terraced courtyard awaiting the Fire Nation's arrival, the children higher up and out of sight so as not to get hurt.

"Where is Sokka with that war balloon?" Katara asked exasperatedly of no one in particular. The first of the troops were making their way up the footpaths to the temple and Sokka was nowhere to be found.

"We'll have to start without him." Aang ran forward and sailed into the sky with Teo and three other flyers, each of them carrying a few slime bombs. Their goal was to drop them on the line of soldiers to knock them off the cliff face. Katara and I were on Appa passing more bombs to the fliers as they ran out when suddenly half a dozen chains flew up past us and latched onto the cliff, each one slowly pulling up a tank. The other settlers began hammering at the hooks to drop the tanks back to the ground as Aang used his air bending to flip them over to no avail. Each one he flipped merely righted itself and continued forward, a relentless charge against a peaceful people.

Katara and I guided Appa back to solid ground to avoid the whipping chains as the tanks fell and tried to reattach, both of us hopping off and gazing out over the edge. "Those things seem unstoppable," she cried.

"My dad worked on their design. It's some kind of water counterbalancing system." Teo was a few steps behind us gazing harshly at the numerous tanks still making their way forward. Staring at Katara, I could see when the words connected in her mind. She quickly made her way down to Aang and began helping him by freezing the tanks into place using the ice around her. The machines seemed only slightly hindered and quickly broke out of their icy bindings, the battle looking more and more bleak as the moments passed. Appa swooped down and picked them up before they could be overtaken.

It seemed like an inevitable defeat until the War Balloon crested the temple peaks. Sokka and Teo's father sailed over everyone, the Fire Nation soldiers neglecting to fire at them after seeing the red material emblazoned with a black flame. They quickly let each of four slime bombs fall on the approaching tanks. I watched as Sokka seemed to argue with Teo's father before they heaved the balloon's engine over the side and into a deep crack in the hillside. The resulting explosion shook the entire temple, tremors rippling through the ground. As the smoke cleared, everyone cheered at the sight of the soldiers' retreat.

"We're going down!" screamed Sokka as the balloon sailed over our heads, plummeting to the ground. Before I realized it, I was clutching an open glider, diving off the edge. Aang was right behind me on his own and we both flew up to the falling balloon. We each grabbed ahold of someone and took off, landing back on solid ground. "Thanks Aang," piped Sokka, wiping the sweat from his brow. "For a second, I thought we were goners."

I tried walking away from the Mechanist, but he grabbed my wrist before my escape. "Why did you save me? You hate me."

Meeting his eyes for the first time, I glared bitterly back at him. "No, I hate what you did, but your intentions were noble. I will not stand idly by as a person of innocence dies, no matter how small or tainted that innocence may be."


After settling from the chaos of the battle, our group gathered with the other villagers before leaving to continue our journey.

"You know, I'm kind of glad you all found this place," Aang was saying. "I've realized it's like the hermit crab. Maybe you weren't born here, but you found this empty shell and made it your home. And now, you protect each other."

Sokka stepped forward with a huge smile on his face. "Aang, you were right about air power. As long as we have the skies, we'll have the Fire Nation on the run."

I chose not to voice the sharp sense of foreboding that came with that statement and instead went and stopped next to Teo and his father. "Though your shame is justified, do not let it consume you. You were right to want to protect your son and your people. You just chose the wrong way to do so. You have learned your lesson, now grow from it." With a kiss to his cheek, I walked away and climbed into Appa's saddle, waiting patiently for the others to join me. As we set off into the sky once more, Sokka plopped down next to me to resume his wood carving.

"I thought you hated heights."

"I do," I said with a slight laugh, stretching my legs out and leaning back onto a folded blanket.

"Then, how are you able to control a glider so well? Aang said it takes practice to do what you both did to save us." Sokka was staring at me with a confused curiosity in his eyes.

"That, dear Sokka, is a story for another day." With a teasing smile, I closed my eyes and drifted away for some much needed sleep.


AN: Again, I'm sorry for taking so long. Please review and give me some feedback on how you think this story is coming, other than being slow. I love hearing people's theories, so please tell me. I encourage your questions and comments.