A/N- Ugh. Writing Zuko killed my soul and increased the severity of my psychological issues. I wish I was kidding, or even just exaggerating. I really didn't want to write this chapter either, to be honest. This chapter is HEAVY, and it's also the last of what I like to term "the dull episodes." Yes, I like the first three episodes, but as far as I'm concerned, Suki marked the true advent of Avatar's awesomeness.
Anyway, I feel like this is the Getting To Know Aang chapter. It's also The Chapter Where Aang Was So Precious It Killed Me Because I Had To Rip Out His Heart. And I strongly recommend everybody keep in mind that Bryke intended for Momo to be the reincarnated spirit of Gyatso. Just FYI.
Phooka- Not hardly. You just happen to have exceptionally good timing. I'm happy you like my take on Zuko, too. I always felt like Zuko was this bizarre combination of uncontrollable temper and intense self-discipline, and that was what I most hoped to convey with last chapter.
~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~
Chapter 8: Ashes
"If I could go back once again,
I would change everything.
If I could go back once again
I'd do it all so much better,
But time won't let me go..."
-The Bravery
They discovered that Aang was a morning person.
Katara was not one, and Sokka even less so, but Aang was up with the sun and already had Appa's saddle on, most of their bags packed away, and was all but bouncing with excitement to get going by the time Katara had pulled on her parka.
"Yeesh, who spring-loaded you?" Sokka griped as Aang hauled him bodily to his feet while Sokka's feet were still half-tangled in his sleeping bag.
"Come on, Sokka!" Aang exclaimed, his cheery mood undamped by the older boy's grumbling. "It's still a long flight to the temple, and we need to get there by noon!"
"Why?" Katara asked.
He beamed at her. "For an hour after noon this time of year, the sun shines at just the right angle to light up this huge piece of cut crystal and make rainbows. You guys will love it!"
And so, with much poking and prodding and boundless enthusiasm, Aang managed to get both of his new friends up and ready to go with remarkable speed. By the time the sun cleared the horizon, they were in the saddle and ready to go. With an energetic flick of the reins and a cry of "yip-yip!" from Aang, they were off.
For the first two hours or so, they soared over the rolling grassy hills of the lowlands. Katara and Sokka couldn't help but gape at the scenery. Even in the winter, there was still more green spread out below them than either of them had ever seen in their life. Although the landscape was relatively flat, it was still a thrilling change from the flat tundra landscape the two were accustomed to... but that was nothing compared to the mountains that loomed ever larger on the horizon. The Patola Mountains, Aang informed them gleefully. Or, in other words, his home.
Katara felt, looking across the swiftly-vanishing plains to the high blue range beyond them, that she could understand the puzzle of Aang a little better upon seeing the land he called home. This strange, silly, occasionally wise boy seemed to fit the wild landscape she was observing. She could picture him belonging here.
As they crossed the last stretch of grassland between the ocean and the mountains proper, Sokka called out, "Look! People!"
Eagerly, Katara leaned over the edge of the saddle to see where he was pointing. There were indeed people below them, a small collection of huts that made even Sokka and Katara's village look like a proper city. As they passed overhead, one of the miniscule figures spotted them, and immediately signaled to some others, all of whom dropped what they were doing and stared up at the sky. Katara waved eagerly at the people on the ground, taking unexpected delight in the barely-discernable expressions of shock on their face. She supposed it must really have been a long time since anyone in the world had seen a flying bison such as Appa.
Aang glanced down as well for just a brief moment, then turned his eyes back to the skies ahead.
"Who are they?" she asked him.
"Probably Earth Kingdom nationals," he said. "Even though the Patola Range is technically Air Nomad territory, the foothills are perfect for grazing zebra-goats; a lot of the nomadic families made their livelihood that way, but Earth Kingdom citizens would relocate here sometimes, and we were more than happy to share the land."
For the briefest moment a shadow crossed his face, and Katara wondered if he was wondering if there was any chance that some of the people might be other airbenders. Aang had been stunningly optimistic about his situation, but Katara couldn't help but wonder if keeping a positive outlook wasn't just his way of coping. She was pretty sure he was in denial.
They arrived at the temple before noon, just as Aang had hoped.
It was so high in the mountains that the Water Tribe siblings, used to living more or less at sea level, had a difficult time catching their breath. A little creative airbending on Aang's part eased their discomfort, but Sokka was a little put up that Aang was so at home with the altitude while he himself couldn't acclimate. All resentment was forgotten, though, when they broke through the final veil of clouds and first caught sight of the temple.
Katara had never seen anything like it. Little buildings clung in dizzyingly precarious clusters to the steep slopes of the mountain and the temple proper, a graceful structure of five white marble minarets capped with blue tile roofs, reached up for the sky like an exquisite extension of the mountain itself. The place seemed ephemeral and impermanent, yet just by looking at it one could see how ancient the temple was. There was history here.
And she realized quite suddenly that some of that history belonged to Aang. This was where he had lived, over a century ago. The strangeness of it all hit her suddenly, and she had to pinch herself surreptitiously to be sure this was real. No, she really was here, approaching one of the legendary Air Temples on the back of a flying bison in the company of her brother and the last airbender who just so happened to be the Avatar.
She snuck a glance at Aang. His grey eyes, so bright on an ordinary day, were gleaming almost silver through a combination of the sunlight slanting down to them and the pure excitement spread across his face. The sight of him broke her heart a little. To Aang, they weren't going to visit a lost piece of history, some fascinating place of legend. To Aang, they were going home.
Katara wanted so badly to believe, for his sake, that they really would find airbenders still hiding out in the temples. But life had not been kind to the young waterbender, and she knew only too well that thinking the Fire Nation might have spared any of the airbenders was nothing but a happy delusion. She hated the thought of witnessing the moment when Aang would have that delusion shattered. She wanted to hide from him, so that she wouldn't have to see the kind of grief on his face that she'd seen on her own eight years earlier. Katara knew, though, that when it finally happened, he would need someone; instead of hiding herself away in Appa's saddle the way she was tempted to, she hopped down just after Aang.
Besides, she really was curious to see the temple.
"Come on, guys!" Aang cried happily. "It's right this way!"
Katara took off after him, with Sokka right behind, as the young airbender led them up the winding stone pathway. The two of them quickly discerned that everything about the temple was winding or circular, full of vaulted archways and round windows on the buildings and sinuous patterns in the decorative stonework. It was beautiful...
And it was deserted.
Aang stopped dead in the middle of the first courtyard they came to. "There's no one here," he said plaintively. "Last time I was here, this place was full of lemurs and monks and flying bison. Now it's just... empty."
Katara laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know how much you were hoping you might find some other airbenders here."
"Yeah, I guess," he said, blankly staring at the weeds growing up between the cracks in the paving stones. Suddenly, he brightened. "Maybe they're just hiding out in the mountains!" And just like that, he was off again, heading for the huge doors across the courtyard.
She glanced over her shoulder to catch her brother's gaze, communicating her concern with her eyes. Sokka just shrugged helplessly.
The two of them rushed to catch up with the airbender, hurrying through the arched doors to a second inner courtyard. Once inside, they discovered Aang standing frozen in front of a stone carving of a bearded monk perched on a low pedestal. The statue was seated in the lotus position, hands resting palm up on his knees, and though the expression on his grey marble features was serious, the sculptor had clearly been a master craftsman because Katara could catch just a glimpse of warmth and wry humor in the eyes. The personality of the commemorated old man showed clearly in the statue.
"Who is that?" Sokka asked.
Aang reached out and traced the carving of the beaded necklace the monk wore, inscribed with the symbol of the Air Nation. "This is Monk Gyatso," he said fondly. "He was the greatest airbender in the world, and my teacher."
"Wow, so you knew this guy?"
Aang nodded. "Besides Appa, he was my best friend."
His tone of voice was warm with remembrance and respect, but Katara detected the wistfulness in his face. Feeling deeply protective of her new friend, she laid a hand on his shoulder, lending him what support she could.
"You must miss him."
"Yeah," he murmured.
Again she shot a look at Sokka, asking him to do something.
Sokka, to his credit, had a solution almost at once. "So, Aang, you said something about a rainbow crystal."
Aang perked up immediately. "Oh! Yeah! In the upper garden! We still have twenty minutes to get there before it gets too late to see the rainbow effect. Come on!"
His excitement was all for naught, however.
When they arrived at the temple garden, itself overgrown with withered vines and oversized rhubarb long since gone to seed, they discovered to much dismay that the huge crystal had been shattered.
From the fragments, and from the size of the stone frame it had been mounted in, it was obvious that the crystal had been huge, nearly the size of a grown man. Traders from the Earth Kingdom had brought stories of such rare and legendary treasures to be found in the warmer parts of the world but seeing the evidence that such a thing had actually existed right here, two days' flight from where she had lived her whole life, was surreal. Katara wondered if it had been a gift from the earthbenders ages ago, in repayment for some favor from the Air Nomads, or if the monks had gone through the painstaking process of excavating and carving the stone themselves.
Either way, it was clear that the crystal had once been a beautiful piece of yellow quartz, set in a recessed corner that did not receive as much light as the rest of the yard. From the position of the setting, Katara could see that Aang had been right: before the stone had been broken, for a short time each day, the crystal would catch the sunlight from just the right angle to send rackets of rainbows across the garden. As it was now, only the frame remained intact. The stone itself lay in ten thousand glistening pieces at their feet.
Aang reached out a hand to touch the frame.
"I don't understand. This stone was thousands of years old. How could it have broken?"
This time, it was Sokka who caught Katara's eye, giving her a pained grimace. Neither sibling had the heart to say out loud what they both had known all along, and neither of them knew what else to say.
Aang studied the frost of crystal shards on the ground for what felt like a long time before he said quietly, "When they told me I was the Avatar, the monks said that when I came of age, I'd be allowed to enter the temple sanctuary. They said that I'd meet someone there who would be able to help me understand how to be the Avatar." He pulled in a deep lungful of air, steadying himself, and turned to face them. "I'm not sixteen yet, but I think now is the right time for me to find out who's waiting for me in there."
"That sounds like a good plan, Aang," Katara agreed. "Do you want us to come along, or are we not allowed to be in the sanctuary with you?"
He pondered that momentarily, his lower lip protruding in thought. "Customarily, only the Avatar and dedicates of the temple ever go in the sanctuary, but there isn't any actual rule that says other people can't, as far as I know. Besides, no one else is here. And..." He shuffled his feet shyly. "And I guess I'd kind of like you guys to be with me."
"You're nervous," Katara guessed.
He blushed, embarrassed. "A little."
"Well then, we'll go with you."
"Thanks, Katara." He gave her a grateful smile, then turned aside. "We might as well head down there now."
"Okay."
Aang headed for the gate at the end of the garden, but Sokka hung back and grabbed Katara's elbow to keep her from following. Once Aang disappeared from sight, he turned to her and said, "Katara, look at those crystal shards."
"What about them?"
He stooped and picked up a fist-sized piece of the polished stone and handed it to her. Katara turned it over in her palms and understood immediately what he meant. Although many of the new edges were the clean fractures made from shattering, one face of the crystal which should have been smooth and flat appeared to have warped. It took her a moment to understand what it meant, but when she understood, she gasped.
"It broke because it was super-heated!"
"Exactly."
"Firebenders?" she asked.
"Probably."
Katara stared at the lump of quartz in her hand. She had suspected that firebenders must have come here when they killed all the Air Nomads. The empty temple had proved it. But it was one thing to know that objectively and another thing entirely to see evidence of this with her own eyes. She sighed at the thought. She was just grateful they hadn't come across any corpses. Then again, they hadn't seen much of the interior of the temple yet. A skeleton wouldn't survive left out in the elements for so long, surely. She hoped that none had weathered the century inside the temple, either, for Aang's sake and her own peace of mind.
"I hate this," she said quietly. "I hate walking around here, knowing the reason it's empty is because they're all gone, and watching him so..."
"In denial?"
"I was going to say 'optimistic,' but... yeah."
"We should tell him."
Katara shook her head. "I can't. I know he deserves to know, but I can't do it."
"You can't protect him forever."
"I can try."
At that moment, Aang poked his head back in the doorway, his trademark crooked grin plastered over his features. "Hey, guys! Why are you still standing there?"
"Sorry. We just got a little side-tracked," Katara replied, slipping the lump of golden stone into her pocket so he wouldn't see it. The last thing she needed was to arouse his curiosity.
"Well, come on, then! We've got a sanctuary to see!"
"Alright, we're coming." With a quelling look at Sokka, she went to join Aang.
The young warrior sighed, and followed his sister.
It took them a some time to reach the Air Temple sanctuary because in order to reach the only door, they had to travel a long path around to the southern side of the mountain and down a long sloping hallway that led them into the mountain itself. Aang could have made the walk much faster, but Sokka and Katara couldn't run like airbenders. The sanctuary was actually comprised of the entire interior of the temple's central spire, but the entrance was underground. Aang had never understood why anything in the Air Temple would be underground, but he'd been told there was a good reason, and he trusted that the elder monks knew better about this than he would.
When they came at last to the door, Aang was a little ball of nerves. Even in these circumstances, it felt so wrong to be opening the sanctuary doors. Even though he'd earned his master's tattoos two years (or rather, one hundred and two years) earlier, even though he was the only airbender in the temple, even though he was the Avatar and had a right to know the secrets hidden behind the huge oaken doors, his years as a temple novice were deeply ingrained in him and it still felt forbidden. Then again, this whole day had been so, so wrong from the start. He'd been so sure when they'd started out this morning that he'd be able to prove Katara and Sokka wrong, and show them that the other airbenders had just been hiding this whole time, but instead they'd come to an empty temple. The people were gone, the bison were gone, and he hadn't even seen a single ring-tailed bat-lemur yet. The sun-crystal was broken and the temple was in disrepair. It really couldn't get worse at this point, so he might as well make the most of it. Entering the temple now would just be the wrongness cap on top of a wrong day.
"How do you get in?" Sokka asked, studying the doors. "Is there a key?"
"The key is airbending. Only a master airbender can open these doors."
At that, Katara's eyes widened. "Wait, if you can open them... you're a master?" she asked in awe.
Aang wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that they hadn't known this, that his tattoos were no longer a signal to everyone across the world that he was a master. It was just one more reminder of how much had changed since he'd last walked these halls. It felt like only a few days ago to him, but his new friends' ignorance to the meaning of his tattoos drove home to him just how long it had really been in a way that the current state of the temple hadn't managed to do.
"Yes," he told her, feeling an odd combination of sadness, nostalgia, and eager pride. "That's what my tattoos mean."
Sokka's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "Really? But... you're fourteen!"
He grinned at his consternation. "The monks told me I was the youngest airbender to achieve master status in recorded history," he told them. As he said it, he shot a look at Katara, wondering if she'd be impressed. He was pleased to see that, judging by her expression, she very much was.
"How old were you?" she asked.
"Twelve."
Scratch that. She didn't look impressed. She looked positively awed. Aang's smile grew wider. Maybe this day was turning around after all.
"Wow," she said. "I could barely make waves when I was twelve, let alone being a master!"
"Well, that's why we're headed to the North Pole, right? To find you a teacher," Aang pointed out. "I bet you anything you'll be a master one day, Katara."
"Yeah yeah yeah, you're both awesome, we got it." Sokka interjected drolly, earning himself a glare from his sister. "If you guys are done complimenting each other can we go in the sanctuary now?"
"Sure thing, Sokka!"
With a whirl and a well-practiced flick of his wrists, Aang directed two powerful jets of air into the twin horn-pipes set into the sanctuary doors. Just as he remembered, as the three lock-valves on the pipes turned into place a unique tone was sounded from each. Together, the three tones made up a major chord that a group of enlightened monks far back into antiquity had determined was the most spiritually harmonious chord. The sound resonated for several seconds before he ceased the flow of his air jets and allowed the chord to fade into echoes and then silence as the doors creaked open.
The sanctuary was dark as he ventured inside, with Katara and Sokka close on his heels. As their eyes adjusted, though, it quickly became apparent that the hall was filled with statues. Thousands of statues, arranged in a spiral, circling around the floor and outward to the walls before rising on a tiered spiral around the interior wall of the sanctuary.
"Wow," Aang whispered.
The three of them approached the nearest statue, a slender Air Nomad woman. To her right was a tall firebender with a solemn expression and to her left was a broad shouldered man in Water Tribe furs. Aang walked past them to the statue of an enormously tall woman in an elaborate costume bearing a spread fan in each hand. He looked back in the direction he had come and started to notice the pattern.
It was Katara who worked it out first. "It's the Avatar cycle!" she exclaimed. "These statues... they must be your past lives, Aang."
"Past lives, really?" Sokka asked skeptically.
"It's true, Sokka," Katara returned. "The Avatar spirit is reincarnated into each new element in the cycle when the previous Avatar dies. All these people have got to be all the past Avatars. Right Aang?"
Aang, for his part, had come to the last statue in the pattern, a sere and noble-looking firebender. He was gazing up into the statue's face, oddly entranced, and Katara's words only barely registered with him. "Yeah... something like that," he murmured. "Don't really... know the details..."
There was something about them all that seemed familiar, but this particular statue, this firebender... something about his elderly face stirred something very immediate within him, some sense of recognition and a wakening awareness of some self beyond what he had previously known. A low, clear, ringing hum took up behind his ears, and he was sure there was a faint glow about the statues eyes...
"Aang? Aang!"
A pair of hands on his shoulders jolted him back to the present.
"Huh? Oh. Yeah. Sorry," he said, both grateful and mildly annoyed with Katara for snapping him out of it.
"Who do you suppose he was?" she wondered, studying the same statue he'd been so entranced by.
Aang cast a nervous glance up at the stone face, wondering if he was about to be absorbed again, but no such thing happened.
"That's Avatar Roku."
"How do you know?" Sokka asked. "There aren't any names."
Aang shrugged. "I'm not sure how I know. I just do."
"Anybody ever told you you're weird?"
Ignoring him, Aang turned back to the entrance of the sanctuary, looking into the light streaming in from the distant end of the hall beyond the doors. "I wonder what was in here that the monks wanted to show me?" he pondered aloud. "It seems like it's just the statues."
"It has been a hundred years," Katara reminded him gently.
"Yeah, I guess. I can't help but feel like there's something important here, though..."
"Can we get out of here?" Sokka asked. "It's creepy."
"It's not creepy!" Katara protested.
"It's completely creepy. All the big creepy statues with their big creepy eyes in the big creepy tower that nobody's been in for a hundred creepy-"
"We get it, Sokka."
"I'm just saying! Why stick around in the Sanctuary of Creepiness when we could go play that air-ball game Aang was talking about earlier."
Katara turned to look at Aang, and he quickly worked to straighten out the grin that had been forming on his face as he watched the siblings bicker. "What do you think, Aang? Do you want to stay here awhile?"
He shrugged. "It doesn't look like there's anything here but the statues. Still, I keep thinking there must be a reason the monks expected me to come in here eventually. But if Sokka wants to go, we can go."
"Tell you what, how about I stay here for a little while? I'll look around and see if there's anything we missed. You can take Chief Creepy over there and whoop his butt at air-ball."
"Are you sure you want to stay in here alone?"
She nodded eagerly. "Yeah. I've never seen anything like this. I wouldn't mind getting a chance to take a closer look."
Aang found himself pleased with her answer and he wasn't totally sure why. "Alright then. Works for me!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Come on, Sokka!"
The two of them left the sanctuary and Aang guided the older boy down to the air-ball courts.
Halfway there, though, Sokka was abruptly assaulted in an unexpected aerial attack by a lemur. "Ack! Ack! Get it off!" he cried, as the furry little creature did its best to scurry inside his tunic. Sokka grabbed at it and tried to push it away, but it was too quick and all he succeeded in doing was making himself look very silly as he waved his arms around ineffectually.
"Sokka, you'll never get rid of him like that!" Aang choked out, trying very hard not to laugh at the sight of his friend's disgruntled expression. "Here, let me-"
He intervened in the man/lemur duel, reaching out to stroke the lemur's large ears at the first instant it paused. Abruptly, the little lemur stilled completely. His large green eyes closed in bliss and a little purring noise emanated from his throat.
"There you go, buddy," Aang said, lifting the creature from Sokka's shoulder and transferring him to his own. "You're the first lemur we've seen all day, so I bet you're pretty lonely. All you want is a little attention, huh? No need to make a big fuss just for that, now was there!"
The lemur chirped and rubbed his head affectionately along Aang's jaw, provoking a laugh from the young airbender.
"See?" he said, looking up at Sokka. "You'll tame more lemurs with honey than with vinegar!"
"You are a weird kid," Sokka repeated, shaking his head.
Aang laughed good-naturedly. He'd known Sokka long enough to hear the reluctant affection in the older boy's voice despite his words. "Come on, Sokka. Let's play some air-ball."
Plucking the lemur off his shoulder, he set him back on the paving stones to continue their walk. To his surprise, though, the lemur followed them.
"Are you coming too?" he asked.
The lemur sat up on his hind legs and trilled brightly, giving the appearance of an affirmative answer.
"Well, alright then. Come on, little lemur."
Despite their new friend's constant attempts to trip them up by attacking their ankles at random moments, they reached the air-ball courts in good time. It was located on a flat terrace hollowed out from the mountain-side, one of several such plateaus that had been created to make room for expansion beyond the temple proper. Aang was pleased to see that this, at least, looked just as it ought to. The multitude of wooden posts of varying heights that stood arrayed across the field were a little more weather-worn than they had been when he'd left, but the familiar court was still standing and in good condition. Aang surveyed the grounds, but he was unable to spy the ball.
"So how do you play?" Sokka asked.
"The rules are pretty simple. You just get the ball through the other person's goal hoop without letting it touch the ground. You get extra points for every post your shot knocks into on the way across the field."
"Seems straightforward enough."
Aang nodded. "I'm not sure how easy it will be for you. You don't have to be an airbender to play, but it might be pretty hard without it."
"I wouldn't bet on that," Sokka said proudly. "I'll have you know, I'm very athletic!" He made a fist with his right arm, showing off his developing muscles that could be discerned even through his parka.
"I believe you! Now I just need to find the ball..." He looked around again, but couldn't spy it anywhere. "Well, we always kept a few extras in the bison's stable, just over there. Wait right here and I'll go grab one."
The bison stables were a massive complex by necessity, located on the terrace just south and a little bit below the air-ball courts. Aang leapt down the ledge as only an airbender can, approaching them. The stables were arranged in a square formation, each connecting to the two adjacent at each end, with a large courtyard in the middle of them serving as a landing space. Each stall was easily three hundred feet square, and had two doors: one massive one which opened on the central courtyard for the bison, and a smaller one inside the stables for their human companions.
Aang entered the stable. There were indeed two spare balls hung on the racks just inside the door. Aang had meant to just grab one and get out of there, but he got distracted by the smell. It didn't smell right. It should have smelled like warm animal and hay and dust, but it didn't. More importantly though, something he spied out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and froze him where he stood.
It was a helmet.
Nothing all that remarkable, really. The burgundy and black stained metal, the large spikes made to call to mind a dragon's horns... anyone who had ever paid a visit to a Fire Nation city of even moderate size had seen helmets like that on the heads of the guardsmen. Just a Fire Nation helmet.
Almost a century ago, the Fire Nation attacked the other nations without any warning.
He ventured further into the stables, taking note of the scorch marks he could see faintly on the walls as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. An unpleasant feeling was building in his stomach, a sick sort of trepidation. He felt that he should turn back, just leave here if he didn't want to know... but he couldn't make himself run. Something was compelling him forward.
And here, a soot-stained gauntlet that certainly didn't belong to any airbender lying on the floor.
The Air Nomads all vanished a hundred years ago, and no one has seen an airbender since.
The temple was empty. Why was the temple empty?
He had been sure that his people were just in hiding. Airbenders were peaceable people, not inclined to involve themselves in violence and bloodshed of any kind, by nature as well as philosophy. He had convinced himself that surely they were just waiting out the war in seclusion, but that didn't make sense. Even if the airbenders were hiding, they would never abandon the temple. The four Air Temples were sacred ground, and there was not a force on earth that could have driven his people to abandon them permanently, short of...
There. More scorch marks on the walls, on the floor. He was approaching a corner that would lead him to another block of stalls, and the evidence of a fire-fight was more prominent.
And besides, his people were nonviolent, but they weren't cowards. The war with the Fire Nation had lasted a century already. If there were still airbenders, they wouldn't have hidden. They would have come forth and tried to encourage reason and foster peace. They would have tried to negotiate a ceasefire with the Fire Nation. They would have tried to shelter the innocent and find a solution that would bring about peace. But they hadn't, which meant...
He reached the corner, and his heart was pounding so hard that he could feel each pulse in his fingertips. He felt light-headed, and not in a good way, and even though every instinct he had was screaming at him to turn back, he couldn't make himself do it. Distantly, he heard Sokka's voice calling him, but he couldn't turn around even to respond.
Aang walked around the corner.
If he'd been able to breathe, he would have screamed. Lying in the middle of the corridor, amid a twisted wreck of scorched wood and metal that had once been the back wall of a stall, was the skeleton of a bison. The bones were clean and scorched black, and here and there a few remaining tufts of white hair still remained. The sightless eye sockets in the massive skull stared at him accusingly.
Feeling as though he was about to be sick, Aang stumbled backwards with a ragged gasp, trying desperately to get some air into his lungs to stop his spinning head. He turned away, unable to bear the sight of the wretched corpse. He tripped back to the corner, aiming blindly for the door, and all but fell through the curtain dividing the interior of the stable from the central yard.
If Aang had been having a hard time breathing before, what he found outside nearly stopped him from trying.
Katara had circled the ground floor of the sanctuary, studying the face of each Avatar, and wondering if Aang would have been able to tell her their names. She hadn't been able to find anything important within the sanctuary except the statues themselves, so she instead dedicated her attention to examining each one closely.
Many of the faces were old men and women who had clearly lived a healthy long lifespan, but some of the carvings depicted very young faces. In particular, Katara noted a firebender Avatar just a few turns of the cycle back from the old man called Roku, a strikingly beautiful girl who didn't look like she could possibly be older than twenty. The very implications saddened Katara, despite the girl being a firebender. She wondered if the statues were carved before or after the death of each Avatar.
Eventually, she circled around back to Roku again, and she peered up into his wise old face. This man had been the most recent Avatar before the war broke out. Had he known what was coming when he died? Had he tried to stop it?
Before she could ponder that much further, though, the statue's eyes flared with a brilliant white light... the same light she had seen burning in Aang's eyes when he had risen from the ocean on a furious waterspout two days earlier. The eyes of the Earth Kingdom woman next to him began to glow, and then the man next to her and the woman next to him... one by one, the eyes of every statue lit up, showing clearly the dizzying spiral of statues as it vanished into the gloom far above her.
"Aang," she whispered, shocked. She wasn't sure how she knew, but her intuition was crying out that whatever was happening was something to do with her new friend.
Without wasting another second, she turned on her heel and fled out of the sanctuary. She ran up the hall before bursting out into the late afternoon sunlight. She paused on the ridge, looking around her in a panic, wondering where on earth they could have gone. "Air-ball courts, where are the air-ball courts?" she muttered to herself.
But before she could make a decision about which direction to try, the solution presented itself to her. The sky darkened above her as heavy clouds rolled in much too quickly to be natural, and a howling wind rose across the mountain, tearing at her hair and parka. A splintering noise reached her ears from somewhere down below, and she peered down the slope to find the source.
It wasn't hard to spot: a large, low building was at the center of the sudden maelstrom, and the tiled roof had blown completely off and been sent smashing down the mountain. Squinting in the sudden dimness, Katara spied two figures at the center of the building, obviously Aang and her brother.
She didn't hesitate, but took off running as fast as she could down the winding path, cursing the dangerous terrain that prevented her from running straight to where they were. Even so, she reached the building with remarkable speed. She was fighting against the press of the wind, but her desperation and worry leant wings to her feet.
She ducked underneath the snapping curtain that barred the entrance to the open space at the center of the building and approached Sokka, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sting of the wind. As she struggled forward, she caught sight of Aang. His eyes and tattoos were alight with the same glow she'd seen in the sanctuary, and he had risen from the ground, suspended in a whirling ball of energy, his fists clenched in rage. The full power of the Avatar was unleashed on the mountainside, and Katara had to struggle to reach the rock her brother was clinging to just to stay grounded.
"What happened?" she cried over the gale.
"Aang found out that firebenders killed Gyatso!" Sokka yelled back, pointing across the courtyard to where a skeleton rested in a corner, sheltered in just such a way that the bones had survived the ravages of time. All throughout the courtyard were random pieces of Fire Nation armor, mostly blown back against the outer walls by the force of Aang's fury. Katara ducked as a spiked helmet, lifted by the wind, came hurtling towards her head.
"He's gonna blow us off the mountain!" Sokka yelled.
"I'm gonna try to calm him down," she assured him. She took a few struggling steps towards Aang, but the closer she got to him, the more intense the wind became and she was forced to stop some distance away. "Aang!" she yelled. "Aang, listen to me! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that this happened to you. I know you're upset right now. It hurts so much to lose the people you love. I went through the same thing when I lost my mom, but I promise, it will be okay! You won't be alone. Monk Gyatso and the other airbenders may be gone, but you still have a family. Sokka and I will be your family now!"
To her relief, her words seemed to reach him. The energy storm he had created died away and he drifted back to the ground. The moment the pressure of the wind released her, she darted forward to stand at his side, and she sensed Sokka following close behind her.
The glow from Aang's eyes and tattoos did not fade, but Sokka said, "We're here for you, buddy. Promise. We won't let anything happen to you."
Katara, for her part, took that promise to heart. Somehow or other this strange, sweet, complicated airbender had wormed his way into her affections, and she knew she would fight to the death to protect him from any further harm. To seal the promise for them both, she reached out and took Aang's hand, which was uncharacteristically cold.
The instant her skin touched his, the unearthly light finally faded from his eyes. He groaned softly and swayed on his feet before collapsing into Katara's arms.
Without hesitation she gathered him close, hugging him as tight as she could. She had started the day afraid of having to see him in exactly this kind of pain, and now that it had happened, all she could think to do was try to shelter him from any more and offer whatever comfort she could, and so she held Aang tight and tried to lend him some of her strength.
"I'm sorry," Aang whispered.
"Don't be. It wasn't your fault," Sokka assured him.
"You were right, though," Aang said sadly. "The firebenders did come here. And if they came here..."
He didn't have to say it. If the Fire Nation had attacked this Air Temple, it wasn't hard to imagine that they had attacked the other temples as well.
"I really am the last airbender," he said softly.
Neither Sokka nor Katara could think of anything to say that would make that painful truth any easier to swallow.
That night they made camp in a valley several miles north of the Air Temple. Night had nearly fallen by the time they stopped and a low mist was creeping along the valley floor, so Sokka expertly set about making a fire while Aang and Katara unloaded Appa's saddle.
When the process of setting up camp was complete, Aang said, "I'm gonna take a walk."
Katara cast him a worried glance. "Want some company?" she asked.
"No, I'd really just like to be alone for a little while."
Aang didn't have the heart to tell her that her concerned tone and sympathetic looks were a big part of the reason he wanted to take a walk. He was so grateful that he had such loyal and compassionate friends with him, but the two of them had been tiptoeing around him ever since his meltdown at the temple. It was making him nervous, and he needed time on his own to reflect on what he'd discovered.
"Okay," Katara said reluctantly.
With a nod to the two of them, he turned and headed into the woods. He wandered aimlessly for some time, until the little flickering light of the campfire had vanished into the mist and he was out of earshot. Then, he found a low rocky outcropping and bent himself up onto it on a little swirl of wind. He settled himself down and drew his legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees thoughtfully as he gazed out at the swirling dark sea of mist.
His head was a mess.
Finding Gyatso's skeleton really shouldn't have provoked him the way it had. He'd been taught better self-control than that, he was sure. And besides, he'd already known Gyatso was dead. His mentor had not been a young man a century ago, and realistically Aang should have realized that with the passing of a hundred years, even if by some miracle Sokka and Katara had been wrong and there were still some airbenders left, Gyatso would not have been among them. It shouldn't have come as such a shock.
Except that it had.
The tears came suddenly, pouring hot down his cheeks. Aang buried his face in his knees and sobbed. He cried for Gyatso and for his fellow temple novices and for the brave sky bison who had died trying to help defend the temple from firebenders. He cried for his people, now gone, and for all his other friends from around the world who had surely died of old age while he'd been gone. He cried for a century of war and suffering that had passed while he had slept beneath the sea. Aang felt as though he might never stop crying, because how could there be tears enough for everything that had gone so horribly wrong?
He felt torn apart. He was the Avatar, but he didn't want to be. He was expected to end a war and stop the Fire Lord and save the world, but how could he, when he could barely take care of himself or understand what was happening to him? His whole world had dissolved in the blink of an eye, and all he wanted was to curl up in the darkness and pray that this was all some horrible nightmare because it had to be, but he couldn't do that because if it wasn't, the world was counting on him to do his duty and protect it, but he didn't know how...
Aang cried so hard and for so long his throat grew raw and he wondered how he still had any tears left in him, but he couldn't stop.
Suddenly, though, he felt a light touch on his hands and looked up, choking in an unsteady breath as he did so. To his amazement, he found himself looking into the wide green eyes of a bat-lemur. It was the same lemur that had taken such a liking to him earlier in the day. The little thing trilled at him in concern before bounding over his knees to slip into the little gap between Aang's torso and legs, within the circle of his arms. He let out another little chirp and rubbed his head along Aang's shoulder affectionately.
The young airbender let out a weak, watery chuckle and stroked the lemur's ears gratefully.
"Hi, little guy," he said in a voice that was raspy from his sobbing. "What are you doing here? Did you follow us all the way from the temple?"
The lemur chirped happily and clambered up onto Aang's shoulder, draping himself around his neck and settling in contentedly. For some reason, the action was immensely comforting to him, and despite his misery, he smiled.
"I guess you're sticking around, huh?"
The lemur let out a yawn and snuggled closer into Aang's warm body.
"I'll take that for a yes," he said. He wiped his eyes in a vain attempt to hide the fact that he'd been crying, and got to his feet. The lemur let out a little noise of protest at the sudden jostling, but Aang ignored his outrage. "Come on, little guy. If you're gonna come with us, you'd better officially meet the rest of the gang. I bet you'll really like Katara. She's nice."
At that thought, a genuine smile crossed Aang's face. He had lost so much, but there was a bright side, too. If none of this had happened, he wouldn't have gotten to meet Sokka or Katara. After everything that had happened at the temple before he'd left, it was wonderful to have friends who didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that he was the Avatar. Although their friendship was still new, Aang liked Sokka immensely, and felt that if he'd ever had a brother, he'd have wanted him to be just like Sokka. And as for Katara... well, Katara was something special. Aang wasn't sure just what it was about her, but he'd never met anyone like her and he was so grateful that it was she who had broken him out of the iceberg.
"We'd better get back to camp," he informed the lemur. "I bet they're getting worried about me."
A/N- Please review. I pour my heart and soul into this thing and I love getting feedback very much. You guys are great! Hugs and kisses! Or, if you like your personal bubble, fist-bumps and high-fives!
