(A/N)- This has actually been finished for a while, I just felt like updating it in the middle of Whumptober to give y'all a palate cleanser.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Nope, don't own Avatar.

Equivalent Exchange

Angka leaned forward on her knees, eyes eager.

"Show me again."

Katar obliged, drawing out a tendril of water from their canteen. He curled the water carefully around his arm, focusing on the sensation of cold and soothing, and the tendril lit up with a soft glow.

"See?" he said, holding out the glowing water for Angka to see. "I just kind of... focus until the water looks like this." He pantomimed laying his hand palm down. "And then I touch whatever I want to heal, let the water flow and..."

The water billowed out around his hand.

Angka marveled, the glow of the healing effect glimmering in her eyes.

"Wow..." she breathed, as Katar let the magic fade and stowed the water back away. She turned her face up towards his. "That's amazing, Katar!" she said.

He ducked his eyes, pink flush dusting his cheeks.

"How does it work?" Angka asked, leaning so far forward she was almost toppling off her knees. "Can you teach me?"

"I'm not exactly sure how," Katar admitted. "I dunno if it's something that can be taught." His smile went wan, rueful. "I didn't even know it was possible to use waterbending for healing."

Angka withdrew a bit, tilting back onto her legs. Reading some kind of deep regret and sorrow in his tone, her eagerness dimmed.

"I... just thought since we're both waterbenders..." She pasted on a smile. "Two healers is better than one, right?"

Katar gave a short laugh. "Yeah, I suppose you're right." He slung the canteen back in its usual spot on his hip. "Next time we find another big body of water I'll see if I can teach you," he promised.

He stood, reaching out his hand to Angka.

"C'mon, let's go join Sokki at the storyteller's hollow."

-ATLA-

It was a pleasant evening, all things considered. The firelight flickered and danced across their faces. Sparks popped and crackled, adding percussion to the low winding reedy notes of the flute the storyteller's companion played.

Katar felt himself lulled by the warm air and the old man's soothing voice, and almost didn't notice how Angka was leaning her head quite comfortably against his arm.

Almost.

Glancing aside, his face blushing lightly, Katar wondered if she was aware of her proximity, if he should draw attention to it, and if he did, would that embarrass her? Or if he was overplaying things in his head and she was obviously just at ease with friends and he happened to make a convenient pillow.

Before he could decide how to approach the topic, the storyteller finished, and Angka leaned up to offer some polite applause, lifting her head from his shoulder.

Katar flushed and decided not to broach the topic, raising his hands to also give some appreciative claps.

Of course, their conversation with the old storyteller very rapidly shifted their attention and focus.

Katar put the lingering warmth of her on his arm out of mind as they rushed back to their campsite to pack up Appa.

-ATLA-

Angka found herself fading towards the back of the group as the Mechanist—(Did he have a name? Angka wasn't sure she'd caught it.)—chattered on, leading a sort of impromptu tour of his workshop and his... "improvements" to the temple.

She gazed up at the pipework and clanking gears with a quiet bewilderment. It was all so... odd. So loud and so metal and persistent and... not at all Air Nomad.

Her eyes pinched with dismay at the cracks in a painted wall fresco, bulging pipes crawling out of it like a long round bug. The color was faded from age and steam, the surface worn off in places.

She stared at it. A vague memory pulled at her mind. She knew what the painting was supposed to look like, she thought, but it had been so long ago that her memory was fuzzy. Was the elder's necklace supposed to be on the rightmost or center-right figure?

She couldn't recall.

Angka felt her insides shrinking, sagging down and pooling into her stomach. Her eyes tickled as she looked around what she thought was once a sacred inner space, burning around the brims.

At some point, the group got too far ahead of her, their voices fading around a corner. Angka didn't feel much like catching up to them... but she didn't really feel like wandering either.

She wound up sitting on a broken piece of masonry in the middle of another repurposed room, knees up, face pillowed sadly on her hands.

The mid-morning sun started to grow warm on her head. She traced the edges of the cobblestones and strained her mind after the illusive far-off memories.

"Angka?"

She startled at first, then relaxed at once when she realized it was only Katar, making his way through one of the archway doors, blue eyes radiating soft worry.

"Did you not want to see the bathhouse plans?" he asked.

Angka managed a weak smile. "No. Not really."

Katar came over and sat down on the side of the masonry next to her. "Guess this must all look pretty different from what you remember, huh?"

"I dunno," Angka sighed. "I grew up in the Eastern Air Temple, mostly, and we rotated out to the Western Air Temple in the summers. They moved me to the Southern Air Temple after they told me I was the Avatar. I've only ever been here once, I think." She lifted her chin, shifting her arms and legs so her hands draped off her knees and her face rested on her forearms. "When I was three or four. So I don't really remember what it was like... before."

She sighed heavily.

"It's sad though," she confessed. "It must have been really beautiful. Most of the Temples and outposts were."

Katar said nothing for a moment, then placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Gran-Gran tells me we used to have walls around the village—huge ice walls with a gate and a big watchtower and everything," he said, voice low and kind. "When all the waterbenders were... gone," he said carefully, and Ankga didn't miss how he couched his words, "no one left could maintain them and eventually... they just melted." He withdrew his hand, tucking it under his knees. "So I think I understand how you must feel."

A smile, sad but comforted, tweaked at her face as Ankga looked up at him, grateful for his compassion.

Abruptly he stood, brushing off his pants.

"Those gliders still looked pretty exciting," he said. He sent a grin towards her. "Think you can show me how they work?"

Amused, Angka asked, "You wanna learn how to fly a glider?"

"I'm teaching you how to waterbend and heal." Katar shrugged. "Only fair that you get to teach me something, right?"

Angka stood, beaming widely.

"Okay!" she said.

-ATLA-

Katar looked down over the ledge, gulping with trepidation.

"I've changed my mind. I can't do this," he squeaked nervously.

Beside him, the Mechanist's daughter, a girl named Téa, laughed. "Of course you can! Just trust the air and it will carry you."

He glanced anxiously aside at Angka, who smiled and hefted her own glider. "That's how it works," she assured him.

Téa rolled her chair in and reached up, briefly correcting Katar's grip on the glider. Sliding back she asked, "Are you ready?

"No," Katar warbled.

But he leaned out over the side and let his feet leave the solid stone of the ledge anyway.

A weightless sensation sent his stomach plummeting. He shrieked for a moment before the wafts of heat from the vents caught the thick canvas wings of his glider and lifted him, and the weightlessness became less falling and more rising, sending his insides back up towards his head in a giddy thrill.

His feet dangled behind him. Wind rushed past his face, whistling through his hair. His body felt lighter than a feather, twisting and lifting with the updrafts.

The air carried him, buoyant underneath the glider like an ice floe bobbing on top of the sea, drifting in the current.

As he angled to catch the strongest breeze he caught sight of Angka flying just behind him. Téa also joined them in the air, after she got someone to attach her glider to her chair, and she looked as exhilarated as Katar felt.

Angka moved through the air like a natural, weaving circles around him. Katar gripped the handles of his glider tightly, as he craned his head to look at her.

Breathless, he yelled over the wind.

"I can't believe I'm flying!"

He thought he spied her grinning. "Just make sure you keep your mouth closed so you don't swallow a bug!" she called back, helpfully.

He made a note of that as another updraft caught him, his thrilling flight continuing.

(A/N)- Angka lowkey flirts with Katar and he Notices, the two commiserate about being genocide survivors, and Katar makes friends with a glider and discovers that flying is pretty cool, actually.

I think I managed to squeeze in several of reviewer kalaong's suggestions. Thanks for them, hope you enjoyed seeing them!

Not going to dwell too much on "Northern Air Temple", there's really not too much material that's interesting or different in the genderbent universe. But we're about to hit the North Pole and wheeeeeeeeee that's gonna be fun. See you next chapter!