Author's Note: Sorry it took so long to post this, and I'm sorry about the quality of this chapter. On the other hand, if you're reading this one after the first 8 chapters, you might not notice. This chapter is extra angsty, because that's how I was feeling when I wrote it. Thank you for reading?

Aang's mind froze at that moment. A fifth temple. The fifth temple? He had never heard of such a thing. "Central air temple?"

Toph smirked, an unconscious curl of her lips. "I thought you were the airbending master here, what? You never heard of the central air temple? Everyone knows about it, even poor old me who can't read."

He took a closer look at the temple, trying to find some flaw, some deviation from the other temples, something to prove that this was some forgery. Walking closer to the temple, he couldn't find any such mistake. The columns were carved in Air Nation fashion, and they were thousands of years old like the four temples he knew. He traced his fingers over the arch that served as a doorway into the temple. The chiseled pattern felt every bit as authentic as he feared. "Why . . . why didn't I know?" He kneeled down and looked at the sigils for an answer that would never come.

Toph made her way to Aang and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Man, don't you feel dumb now? I sure shocked you, didn't I?" Aang didn't respond. "Hey, what's got you all bummed out for? I thought you would be excited, like look at this place! It's got all the airbender stuff that you like and all," she said with what sounded like confusion. He was pretty confused too, his arms and legs tensing up as if preparing for a fight. He took deep breaths, focusing on the air. His mind drifted to thoughts of how a hundred years ago, there were other airbenders, standing on the exact same spot that he was, breathing the same way he was. Probably slower though. His body's tension reached a certain point and he decided to get out of there before it got even worse.

"I'll be back soon, stay here?" He asked without waiting for an answer, as he snapped his glider open and jumped, soaring in a loose spiral up into the sky.

Up in the sky, his tension started to bleed away from his arms and legs. It was just him and the air, floating around without a care. But when he looked down, he could see an unmoving green speck, and tensions built up in his chest. He shouldn't have left her down there, but there was no way he could have stayed there. It had only been minutes, she was probably fine. Although . . .

He dropped like a stone, leveling himself out as late as possible. Toph jumped a little from the return of his presence on the ground. "I'm sorry. I needed to . . . think."

She turned to him and smiled, seemingly unperturbed by his sudden disappearance and reappearance. "And have you been thinking?"

"Not really?" He smiled disarmingly, scratching at the back of his head. His heart beat faster though, and all he could think about was how she could hear it.

"Then that was pretty useless, wasn't it." She kicked up a stone stool for her to sit on, then gestured to the floor in front of her. "Think here, on the ground. It's easier to not have your thoughts drift off when you're on something solid." Aang tilted his head, but decided not to raise a question. He sat, trying to think about his own feelings. Toph began to hum softly.

"Toph, what are we doing here?" He finally asked, after a couple minutes of trying to focus. Her humming had made it pretty hard though.

"I thought you'd like to see the fifth temple of your people, isn't that obvious?" Toph's face was blank, nearly expressionless. Her answer, her face, none of this was any help to Aang. He almost wished she would tell him how to feel so that he could just feel it and be over with it.

"But how did you know this place was here? And how didn't I? And how did you just have all of this ready for me as soon as you decided to take the trip?" Questions were definitely the way to go. It took none of his own thoughts to ask a series of questions, and there was no way that she could avoid giving her own opinion when she had to answer all of them.

"Aang, I've wanted to go on this trip for years." Her face remained blank. "I heard about this place and did my own research on the temple in the mountains. I made my own maps and had them stuffed in every bag I carried with me, just in case. I just . . . I thought you'd be happy about it. Why aren't you happy about it?"

"Why should I be?" He countered. Questioning was better than answering, always.

She looked shocked for a moment. "They're your people? You were always harping on about how you were losing touch with your culture, this is a way to regain it or something." She was right, this was obvious. He spent so much time in the other temples, just trying to gain insight into his people, why was it taking so much out of him to be here right now?

"It's not, it's not my culture, this place isn't a part of me like the other temples. Why didn't they tell me about this temple, why didn't I know about it? They should have told me." His ears began to run hot as the torrent of words burst out from him.

Toph's sightless eyes grew wide. "Hey, hey, easy there. I wasn't trying to upset you or anything." He knew that, and he couldn't understand why he was so mad.

"I know, I know . . . I'm sorry," he huffed. He tried to relax his shoulders as he sat on the ground, but only succeeded in lowering his arms halfway. Something about the tension was too palpable. "This is just all wrong and there's no way to make it right."

Toph smirked, a wicked look appearing on her face. "You want some help?"

Aang shrugged. "Sure? What would that -" His words were cut off as he felt the earth move underneath him. "Toph! Don't do-!" His words were cut off again as slabs of rock raised off the ground, trapping his legs. Only his upper body peeked out of the stone structure. "What are you trying to do?"

Toph's smirk turned downright malicious. "We're gonna solve this. You've got a problem, we're facing it head on now. Now go, what are you mad at?"

"You, right now."

"Wrong." Toph cracked her neck and laughed. "Oh man, I thought this was going to be fun, but I didn't know how fun."

"What even is this place? Who used to live here?" Aang asked, his heart shill racing but his legs unable to keep up their uncontrollable twitching. "The northern and southern temples weren't allowed to have any women, and the eastern and western temples weren't allowed to have any men, so . . . who lived here?"

Toph nodded in amused approval. "Oh look, it's question man again. Also, how little do you know about your people, man? I learned all about this place in like ten minutes." She cracked her knuckles and stared into his eyes. "And stop making your heart beat so fast, it's annoying and it feels like you're always lying."

"Well I could learn about it too if you told me." Aang disregarded the heartbeat comment. What was he supposed to do about it? The two of them ended up in a silent standoff, Aang staring at her while she sat.

"Cool your jets, Twinkletoes, I was just about to. Now stay seated and shut up!"

Aang always thought that Toph was a bad student. She had no patience that he could see, and no ability to sit still when she got bored. She also couldn't read. This, combined with her inclination to throw any person she thought was condescending out of a window, made Aang think that she wouldn't know much about history. She probably didn't.

"Have you never wondered how little baby airbenders were made?"

Aang shrugged. He really hadn't. He had known that kids were made somewhere, but he resigned himself to the facts that boys and girls weren't allowed at the same temples and that there was no person to tell him what had actually happened.

"Well . . . when a mommy airbender and a daddy airbender love eachother very-" Toph spoke in a vaguely sing-song voice.

"I know that! I think! I gathered that!" Aang broke out frustratingly. This was a lie, over the years he had floated the idea of the air monks just stealing children from the countryside. There was also the slight chance that there were no children in the air temples and airbenders were just ever-lasting. It didn't matter though, there were going to be no more.

"When two airbenders decide they want to be mommies or daddies, they come here. And then they . . . uh . . . how would your people say it? They-" Toph's voice luckily broke out into peals of laughter as Aang closed his eyes tightly and shook his head.

"No! No no no no no! I get it, I understand what people did. But here? Why here?"

"Are you not getting it? Weren't you the one that said that people weren't allowed in other temples or something? Where were they supposed to go to-?"

This time, Aang banged his head hard enough on the rocks which he was encased in to break them, shutting Toph up for once. "They're not your airbenders, they're mine! They're all I have left! And airbenders don't do these things, they're not like that at all! So just-!"

"Just what, Aang? Just what?"