Two words: Emotional Hangover


The moment Aang vaulted over the edge of the balcony and skipped down the mountain, Katara knew that the argument had gone too far on both sides. She didn't remember moving, but she was leaning over the railing, watching the trees and bushes below rustle and sway. She cried out Aang's name. At least, it felt like her vocal cords were the ones producing that noise, but she didn't recognize the animalistic howl.

Her face was so wet. Could you drown yourself in sobs? She clawed her arms out because she couldn't breathe, and something was trying to pull her under.

And then her big brother's arms were around her and his voice was soothing in her ear, and it would be okay because her big brother could fix this. Aang apparently had not trusted her and had ignored how she had tried to help him since the day she met him. She had told one of her best friends to go away, and he had followed her order. Somehow this hurt more than anything else she had experienced in her life – worse than her family leaving her in the Fire Nation, worse than the day she couldn't find Zuko until the hawk that had followed her for hours landed at dusk and transformed before her.

She didn't care if Toph traveled back to Gao Ling, or Sokka sailed north, or Zuko searched for his uncle in Ba Sing Se, or Aang and Appa flew back to the Air Temples, or she sailed south to help rebuild. She didn't care about what they did, as long as the five of them (six, with Appa) did it together. They could change the world, this strange mash-up of young men and women from all four nations. It felt right, as though the fates had preordained it.

But Aang didn't seem to see it that way. He thought the weight of the world rested on his shoulders alone, and didn't realize each of them were willing to bear it with him.

She sobbed into her brother's tunic, blowing snot into the fabric. The back of her mind felt bad about it and promised to wash it out, but the rest of her was trying desperately not to fall apart completely. She was failing. She didn't feel bad about fighting with the Avatar – she felt bad about fighting with her best friend.

Even when her entire body stopped shivering and the hiccups ceased – when did those even start? – her brother rocked her and she realized Toph – Tough Toph – was sponging her face with a wet rag, holding her cheek gently with one hand while cleaning off the salty tracks with the other. The hawk – her hawk – was on her shoulder and rubbing against her hair like human Zuko would do when she was upset, and all of the fears she and Sokka had discussed a week before flooded back again.


Aang had been running for an hour or so, and was nearly at the base of the mountain when something whipped out and stabbed his shoulder. His arm was simultaneously on fire and freezing over, and the sensation spread through the rest of his body.

Good, he thought. Now everything has turned to shit.

He had been flying at a decent clip, and wasn't sure what could have hit him. Once he lost control of his balance and legs, though, he bounced until he came to a stop, face down in the dirt. He lay there waiting, wondering if this was just a weird Avatar lock-down-defense mechanism to keep him from doing anything incredibly stupid.

If it were, it was too late for it to work.

The longer he stayed there, smelling the dirt, muscles spasming and overall just feeling like shit, the more he resigned himself to whatever happened next.

"Okay, Avatar what's-your-face," he wanted to yell. "I'm ready for your lesson and you to tell me again what a shitty person I am."

He didn't yell though, because he couldn't breathe deeply enough.

Something large and four-legged ambled out of the forest from behind him. It was sniffing a lot, like it was trying to find him. It sounded very large.

Great, he thought. Now something is going to eat me because the Avatars have decided to teach me a lesson and I can't fight it.

"Oh good girl, Nyla," a woman's voice came from the same direction as the sniffing. "I think we've got a live one."

He heard boots hit the ground as somebody dismounted. Footsteps came closer, and someone dragged him up by his collar and he found himself face-to-face with a woman with black hair and dark clothing.

"Oh yes, definitely a live one," she practically purred. She flipped him over onto his back and he fell back down on the ground, staring up at the tops of trees and blue skies.

The sniffing continued. "Yes Nyla, you'll get your reward once we confirm this, good girl," she cooed at the animal.

The woman loomed over him, holding a small orange fan above him. He felt puzzled until he saw that it was attached to the base of a staff, broken off to be a smaller piece. His eyes widened when he realized it was the foot fan on has air glider. Too late, he attempted to school his features.

The woman smirked and tossed the fan to the side. "Yep, I'd say that's a positive," she said as she leaned down to pick Aang up again.

His head lolled down, watching his feet drag on the ground before his face fell into unwashed fur. It reeked of sweat, fear, and rotten meat.

The woman tied his wrists together, placed them above his head, and then hoisted him over her saddle so he was bent across the creature's neck. He looked down at talons as big as his hands. She bound his knees together, and climbed after him, whipping the animal into a trot.

For the first ten minutes on the move, Aang had no control over his body. His face bumped into the side of whatever animal they were on – he still hadn't gotten a good look at it. He could do little more than drool, so asking questions and getting answers was also out of the question.

Little by little, though, he regained control of his body. He swallowed better and could turn his head to the side and stick it away from the animal to avoid the retched smell.

After some time like this, he turned his face toward the woman. There wasn't much to see from his perspective, but he studied her black-clad knee and wondered how this was going to end. If she had the glider… their destination filled him with dread.

"How long is this going to last?" he stuttered through his locked jaw.

"The whole paralysis, or just the drool phase?" she responded.

"Unh," he said as they jumped over some downed trees. "Both."

"You should be out of drool phase soon, if you're not already," she said. "It's not exactly my favorite part to deal with either."

"So who exactly are you?" he asked as the hard edge of the leather saddle replaced the burning tingle in his ribs.

"Don't worry about it, airbender," came the reply.

"Whoa now, I think you have the wrong guy. Who said anything about airbending?" Aang objected weakly. Maybe he could convince her that she had made a mistake. Maybe.

She said nothing but poked the blue tattoos on his hands.

"Oh, these?" Aang said. "You know the kids these days… we'll do anything to seem cool. I just like the way the airbending tattoos look, you know?"

"Mm-hmm," she said.

A million other questions ran through his head, but he didn't want to press his luck. He sat and thought instead. She had part of his glider, so she probably worked for Zhao. He had a good idea of where she was taking him, and a cold stone rumbled in his stomach.

"What should I call you then?" trying to forge a personal connection.

"Kid, if you don't shut up, I'm going to gag you before we get back to Pohuai. It's a long enough trip as it is."

His guess confirmed, he followed the woman's advice and stopped talking. He turned his head back to face forward. As he did, he felt a wooden bulge dig into his chest. His mind filled with hope as he wondered how soon he could use his air bison whistle.


Katara had been sitting in a catatonic state since she had quieted down a few hours before. Toph's preferred method of dealing with stress was to beat something or someone up, but she would have killed at that moment for a swig of booze. Although, she reflected, maybe if she had to kill for it she would no longer need the booze.

Their camp was quickly getting colder like it did just before the sun set, and Aang still hadn't returned, leaving her without a deserving punching bag. Instead she reformed and redesigned the ceiling of their balcony to feel more like – well, look more like, for the others – the inside of the temple sanctuary.

Every time she walked through the hall, she got a thrill knowing about the columns that soared dozens of feet in the air around her before they exploded out into flying arches to support the ceiling. They were like upside-down trees, the roots flying out in orderly designs. There were still tons of solid rock above them, yet it was all supported on a delicate system of stone in star and floral patterns. It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing Toph had ever encountered in her life, including the underground Spirit Library, and she was the only one in the group who could sense it in its entirety.

She wondered if the old Earthbending Masters of Taku had used their earthbending to listen and sense their surroundings like she did. Sokka had investigated with her – he said there were no windows, no signs of large chandeliers that would have hung up, and no way mere torches could light the ceiling. His only other guess was something with mirrors. Toph didn't care beyond the fact that all signs point to the designer only building the arches and patterns for people who could sense them.

She could tell the moment the sun vanished because Zuko was suddenly sitting next to Katara, pulling her to him and murmuring to her. That was the most amazing part of their situation, she thought. Not that they couldn't remember what they did in their animal forms, but that when they changed they could transition from doing whatever they had been doing in their animal forms to doing it in their human forms.

She tried to ignore them, but it was too sweet not to make her feel something. Once Katara had four legs again, Zuko came over and studied her art project.

"So, what horrible thing happened today?" he asked as inspected her handiwork. "Do we have to kill somebody to make it better? And do we have any alcohol?"

Toph tried to smirk but her heart wasn't in it. When she recounted the day's events to Zuko, he kicked at a pile of her scrap rubble.

"I guess we'll just have to see if he comes back then," he said softly. "I was kind of looking forward to helping him get rid of my father," he added so quietly Toph didn't think she would have heard him if she hadn't been listening to his heart beat.


They stopped for camp shortly before the sun set. The saddle had definitely bruised the left side of his torso, and his arms felt dislocated from their sockets after dangling above his head for so long.

The woman tugged him off the animal by the back of his shirt and deposited him in a pile in the middle of the clearing. His arms flopped down mercifully, and parts of his neck and back he didn't know about popped and creaked. The change in position made most of his muscles burn and shake from cramping.

He slowly pushed himself into a kneeling position with his bound wrists in his lap. The bison whistle still hung around his neck, nestled into the layers of his clothes. Escape plans and rescue plots flitted through his mind, as he observed his captors.

The woman removed the saddle from the creature – Nyla – and rubbed her down. She pulled a slab of rancid-looking meat out of a pouch on the saddle and tossed it toward it. Its barbed tongue shot out to catch its prize, and Aang suddenly thought he had a better understanding of what hit him.

He still had no idea what it was, though. It was slightly smaller than Appa, but had no eyes. Instead, its nose took up about half of its face. He didn't care what it was; Aang decided he had finally found one animal he absolutely detested. He would have rather taken on a grumpy Zuko-hawk for eternity than ever deal with this slithering mammal again.

His attention drifted back to the bounty hunter. She looked like she was of Earth Kingdom descent, but her clothing and demeanor were colored by the endless war. She wore all black, and just about the only bit of skin exposed were her shoulders and upper arms, where red snakes eating their own tails were tattooed. Aang had never seen anything like it, and wondered if they were for vanity or a mark of some kind.

As she came closer, he noticed her topknot was secured with a pin that looked like a skull.

"I'm going down to the stream to clean up. Nyla will strike you again if you try to move," she said without looking at him. "Here, might as well eat something you obviously enjoy before tomorrow."

He opened the pouch and went light-headed. It was full of the nuts he had enjoyed so much on their journey to Taku.

How long has she been following us? He wondered. Are the others still safe, or were there others?

He slumped forward, and the bison whistle poked him again. He glanced around and yanked on the leather cord around his neck to pull it out. Nyla lounged a few meters from him, and he whispered a small prayer before blowing the high-pitched whistle.

Nyla immediately went berserk. She whined a high pitched yowl before running away from the camp. Aang wished he had taken his leg bindings off before attempting this escape, but stood and began tried to get them off.

Something hit his head from behind and pinched a point in his neck that made his body go numb.

"What did you do to my shirshu, Airbender?" The woman's voice was hot and dangerous in his ear. She yanked the bison whistle and leather cord from around his neck and cursed.

The paralysis from the shirshu venom before had been uncomfortable, but this nerve pain burned. "Just trying to survive," he wheezed.

The bounty hunter hit a different pressure point, and though he fought for consciousness, he slipped into darkness.

He awoke just before dawn. To the east, past the mountains, the sky was a lighter grey. Clouds hung heavily overhead, and he wondered how soon it would be before they released a torrent of rain on them.

The bounty hunter was already packing up camp. The shirshu had come back whether on its own accord or the woman chasing it through the forest, Aang couldn't tell.

She noticed he was awake and squatted on the ground in front of him. He peered up at her.

"Listen kid, we can either do this the hard way or mine," she said, staring at him. "Do I need to have Nyla paralyze you again, or are you going to sit in the saddle on your own?"

Aang moved into a kneeling position and the world spun and he leaned over to vomit. The woman jumped out of the way.

"Your answer," she said.

"Your way, for now," he said.

She stared at him for a beat longer and nodded.

Once she had him tied into the back of the saddle to her satisfaction, they took off again. Aang enjoyed the ride better from this position. Even though his hands and legs were bound, the air blew through his hair and he could breathe.

They stopped midafternoon. She pulled him off the saddle and propped him against a tree next to the rank Nyla.

Aang finally asked the question that had been nagging at him since the night before. "How long have you been tracking me?"

The woman didn't look up as she pulled out some dried food and a water skin. "Since you dumped that private on the beach and flew away. We almost gave up, you know, until we caught a lucky break with that trail of nut shells out of the Stone Fingers."

Aang cocked an eyebrow in surprise. "Did you go to the Stone Fingers?"

She shrugged and gulped down some water. "One of the nuns mentioned you had gone that way." She stopped eating and cocked her head to one side, her eyes calculating and speculative.

A chilly blast of wind picked up a trickle of sweat on the back of his neck, and he shivered. A hard lump started rolling around the pit of his stomach.

"You know, I try to be lenient with the locals. You never know when you might need help again, and sweetness works better than the sword," she continued, not taking her gaze off of his face. "And one of the sisters, when she heard I was looking for you and that I wasn't going to harm you, opened up a little more."

Aang couldn't hold her eye contact, but he feared what breaking it would tell her. He swallowed hard and tried to keep his face as emotionless as possible as she leaned closer.

"So, Avatar, if I don't return with you and word gets out that I bailed on an assignment, Zhao will likely send out a hit for me. No matter what I might believe or think, I need to look after myself," as she kept talking, Aang realized she wasn't pleading with him. She was trying to reconcile with herself.

"Look, I get it," he began weakly. "It's just – can't you let me go? I won't say anything – I might even be able to help you. Just return me to my friends and we'll keep you safe."

She smiled sadly and chuckled. "The real world, out here beyond your Air Temples, doesn't always work out. You seem like a nice enough kid, aside from that stunt last night. But your spirit took too long on the other side and the world didn't stay nice enough for you. It's dog eat dog, and I'm nobody's snack."

Aang collapsed back on himself. The little flutter of hope he had dropped back into the pit. He barely noticed as the bounty hunter patted down his clothing, probably looking for knives or another whistle.

"Nyla will keep you company until I'm back," she said before vanishing into the forest.


Aang has really taken over my Zutara story here. Nobody is more annoyed than I am because I just want fluff, but the plot keeps getting in the way.