CH 19 | To the Library!
Tensions in Yu Dao continued to churn beneath the city's unified façade in the following weeks. The same could be said for a certain walk-up where a certain gang worked to grasp their new role as the unofficial "Avatar Resistance Headquarters."
Katara decided to begin Aang's training on their rooftop. She'd never trained an adult before, but how different was it really from the children in the village?
When Aang got back in from Appa's barn, he landed on the rooftop and clicked his glider shut, already laughing at the scene. Katara was filling a cheap plastic kiddie pool with water which Momo sat in, flapping his wings like a toddler.
The teething lemur was gnawing on the inflatable with wild abandon, and no matter how many times Katara gently nudged the plastic out his mouth he would respond with a screech-tantrum and immediately lunge for the edge once more.
"Momo, cookie?" Aang called, jingling his sweater pocket. The lemur immediately abandoned his chaos to crawl up his leg and into his hoodie pocket, leaving only a damp tail waving in the wind.
"Don't reward his behavior!" Katara complained, hands on her hips. "I'm not!" he said laughing. "They're teething cookies. I baked them yesterday." Aang flashed a wide grin and took a bite of one. "Want one?"
"He's just going to learn that when he screeches, he gets something he likes from you…" she muttered. Aang pointedly ignored the parenting advice. "So…what's with the pool?"
"Tonight, is your first lesson. It'll be a while before you can move large amounts of water, so this will be enough for now. Once you can pull waves, we'll start training in the bay area."
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Downstairs, Toph and Sokka argued over a blueprint copy, a pile of clay, and a flask of rum. "You really don't have to help, Toph. I've done a bazillion scale models. Once I'm done, you can poke and prod it all you want until you understand the library layout.
"That's stupid, because you're never going to get it as accurate as I can get it." Toph retorted. "Just keep describing the prints to me!"
"…face is stupid…" Sokka muttered under his breath, screwing the flask cap open once again. "Okay, so north side is an adjoining wall, 10x36x2.3. The air duct points in at 36 degrees-ish…"
"what the crap is 'ish'?" Toph asked him incredulously, earning a groan and face palm from Sokka. "IS it or ISN'T it 36 degrees? What kind of engineer are you?"
"Ugh this is going to take all night, just—here." Sokka scooted up against Toph's chair and seized her hand in his own. Her index finger under his own, the warmth and sheer size of his hand encompassing her own set her into a hot blush. His other arm snaked around her waist so he could hold the paper still.
Toph's jaw dropped involuntarily at the sensation of his nearness, the soft tickle of his stubble as he craned her in towards the blueprint. Using his hand to trace, he placed her finger to the paper. "This is the northwest corner of the library, bottom floor…" he said casually. If he was aware of the effect he was having on the melting earthbender, he made no indication—not even with his heartbeat.
He started to move her finger from the northwest to northeast. "That's the length of the north wall. No doors. On this side…" he moved her fingers south, both their hands guiding towards her navel. She inhaled sharply, having forgotten to breathe like a normal person. "—is the east wall that opens to the corridor. Windows here…" He interrupted the line they were tracing with two taps. Toph understood immediately that the taps denoted the beginning and end of the window. "—Here, and here. This is the entrance that'll be locked. And here are the air ducts."
Sokka leaned across her to drag her finger from the right side of the paper to the left. She could feel his warm breath millimeters from her lips and nearly gave in to her desire to seize them with her own. His scent was intoxicating—clean cotton and something deliciously earthy—sage? Toph would normally be cracking some sort of joke at his expense, but now she found her mouth quite dry as he finished describing the building perimeter, showing her the internal office walls and doors."
"Toph?" Sokka asked quizzically. "You okay?" She jumped out of her reverie, uncharacteristically fidgeting with her bangs. "—Y-yeah. Yep! Just concentrating. I think I've got it." Toph grabbed her clay pile positioned it on top of the stone cutting board they were using as the model floor. Slamming her fists on either side of the clay, the definition of the building rose forth as the mass seemed to suck to the stone surface. The resulting model reflected everything Sokka had traced with her, right down to the latch locks of each window.
"WOAH." Sokka exclaimed. "Toph! That's amazing. It's perfect! I bet the edges on this thing are more level than the real deal!" Toph tucked her fingers under the table, trying to hide how they were trembling with anxiety. It wasn't just his nearness, but his innate understanding of how to help her see that she found so incredibly intimate.
"No one has ever done that." She blurted, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"Done what?" Sokka asked, still examining the incredibly minute details she'd managed to bend into their mini-library model.
"Shown me. I saw it. You—I could see that!" she said. "Well, yeah that was the point" he responded casually. "And I'm glad it works, because once we get the plans and location from the library, we'll need to make another one of Suki's camp."
Toph nodded, guilt rising in her chest. Over the past week, Sokka had poured all his anxieties and despair over Suki's arrest into planning her escape. He was up before dawn each day for a workout and sparring with Aang, he'd met Iroh and laid out game theory on resistance recruitment, and he was their strategist for their current mission—infiltrating the municipal library to steal ("tactically acquire!" he'd correct) the files on the protest at Yu Dao and the re-education camp where they'd taken Suki and the other professors.
If it weren't for the urgency of it all, the gang would be compelled to stage an intervention for the young water tribesman.
They were all running a bit ragged—not only on account of their upcoming plans, but also as students still bound to the mundanity of homework and classes. Early mornings training the Avatar followed by daytimes of civics and differential equations, followed by evenings working through volumes of White Lotus resistance plans made for an exhaustingly dichotomous existence. Still, he wasn't laying on the floor binge drinking anymore, so the gang decided to call it an improvement.
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Upstairs, Aang sent Momo back through the trap door and Katara had begun to explain waterbending forms to her new student. "Water is never perfectly still. Even a virgin pool devoid of life will still respond to temperature, the effects of gravity…air" she explained. "The way you're going to manipulate the element is no different. Your stances will imitate the interconnected nature of water like this…" Katara positioned herself into a sidelong stance with Aang imitating her from the other side of the pool.
"When you push and pull the water, it needs to be with the understanding that every action has an equal, opposite reaction. If you're pushing up water—" she demonstrated by a gentle lunge forward. The water in the pool seemed to follow the speed and direction of her movement, careening to one side of the pool and upward towards her hand, "the energy generated to flow it in one direction will ripple backwards, so you're always balancing your form while counteracting the pull of the energy in the opposite direction. If you forget to manage the opposite direction…" Katara allowed the water to flow backwards toward Aang generating a splash into his face. "H-hey!" he spluttered. "You'll lose control of the element and probably end up wet" she laughed.
"Okay, show me the push/pull stance. We'll go through it for a while and then maybe before we call it a night, we'll see if you can move the pool surface."
"Yes, Sifu," Aang responded and tugged his shirt over his head. Katara hadn't expected this and couldn't control her roving eyes. Aang had always been a skinny boy by nature (Gyatso had lovingly used the term "beanpole" when he was a child) and sported the lithe form of an airbender. What he lacked in terms of muscle density however, was made up in spades with tightness and definition. Katara swallowed hard.
"What uh…whatcha doin?" she asked, rubbing the back of her neck.
"Oh. Uh…I just figured it'd be easier if we don't go into the house dripping wet. Did you want me to put it back on?"
"No! I mean…no, that's actually a good idea." She replied, a small smile tugging on her lips. It was Aang's turned to swallow hard as she stripped down to her underthings—a sports bra and legging shorts that left very little to the imagination. Oh boy…I am stupid. He mused internally, assuming the stance.
Katara decided it would be several practice sessions before she revealed to him you can actually bend water out of your clothes quite easily.
"Alright. Your body should move like water. You're going to push forward, then pull back with the same amount of energy. Focus on the feeling of the energy and how it ripples back in response to your movements. Later when we add the water, you should feel the sensation of it in your palm as you move…"
"Like this?" Aang executed the move and the water shot up towards his hand.
"WOAH. What the hell!?" Katara dropped her stance while Aang grinned, dropping the water back down. "I figured it would take you all night to get the link!"
He puffed his chest a bit with pride. "Well, I didn't end up in college at 15 for nothing. I'm a quick learner." He stayed in stance but watched the water, pushing and pulling the wave with his movement, then shot in an orb into his hand, holding it briefly before it dissolved back into the pool. Kataras jaw dropped.
"Cool!" he said, oblivious. "what's next?"
They worked on increasingly advanced forms for the next few hours, the session ending with Aang improvising a whip move into a swirling vortex by adding some finger work to the basic hand movement she'd demonstrated. "A little show-boaty, but I'll allow it since you're so good with your fingers…" she concluded. She blushed furiously at his suggestive smirk.
"No-not like that! Ugh, whatever. Great job tonight. We'll have to move to the bay from now on, you're clearly not a baby."
Aang stretched languidly before bending to retrieve his shirt. "Still, though. We should keep the pool up here for Momo."
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The couple made their way downstairs to Toph and Sokka, who were still sitting with the model, discussing their infiltration plan. Katara retreated to the fridge to start up dinner. Aang followed wordlessly to help prep. "Well, if there was any doubt before…Aang is definitely the Avatar." She said, tossing him an onion to dice. Aang demonstrated by bouncing a water droplet between his two index fingers. "Boing! Boing! Boing!" he animated dorkily, as if the added sound effect was necessary.
"Congratulations" said Sokka. "You get to crawl through this air vent."