Katara's steps dragged. Aang noticed and asked, "What's wrong? You're about to meet someone from your home. Isn't that a good thing?"

This prompted Katara to pick up her pace. She waited until they were almost caught up with Sokka, several feet ahead, to reply: "You're right. It is. It's been too long." She tried to look forward as Sokka did, thinking only of what awaited.

But she couldn't. Something behind her dragged at her mind. Or rather, someone. Why was a certain notoriously volatile firebender suddenly playing nice? What did he want? Sokka had shrugged and gone along with it, but she couldn't do that. He had thrown fireballs at them for months, thrown fireballs at innocent people too, burned houses. Aang and Sokka might be able to put that behind them, but not her. She'd seen just what harm fire could do before. There was no indication that this firebender was any different. And now she was supposed to turn her back on him?

He and his uncle stayed behind at the gate. Apparently she was. Katara picked up her pace and did her best to put the past out of her mind. She hadn't fully succeeded at it yet, but she was going to try to forgive Zuko for the past. It was impossible, but she would try.

A woman walking with two others following behind her approached. Katara guessed she was the Mother Superior. "Hello," she greeted.

"Hello," the Mother Superior replied. "What brings you travelers to our little abbey?"

"We're looking for someone," Sokka said. "A grown man, dressed like we are, from the Southern Water Tribe. Have you seen anyone like that?" Katara stifled a laugh. Sokka sounded younger all of a sudden, like the little boy he'd been when the warriors sailed away. He leaned up to the Mother Superior, practically begging her to tell him yes.

The Mother Superior opened her mouth to do just that, but was interrupted. "Katara? Sokka?" A man with bandages covering his left shoulder and arm came up.

"Bato!" Just like that, all her concerns evaporated. Bato was here, and Katara instantly felt at home, safe. She and Sokka ran to embrace him.

"What are you kids doing here?" Bato asked. He wrapped his arms around their shoulders and peered into each of their faces.

Sokka freed himself from Bato's arm with a grin. "You won't believe the adventure we're on!" He looked around, finally spotting Aang back by the gate, standing with the firebenders. "That bald kid in orange is Aang. He's the Avatar, and we're taking him to the Northern Water Tribe for waterbending lessons. Those other guys with him are some people we picked up. They needed a ride north."

He sounded completely at ease, as if it really was so simple. Katara envied him. "Really? The Avatar?" Bato asked. He beamed with pride.

"What about you?" Katara asked, eying the bandages that covered so much of Bato's skin.

"I was injured in battle and couldn't keep up with the rest of the men," Bato explained. He stared sadly at his injured arm. "Your father carried me to this abbey, where the sisters have looked after me and given me ointments to speed up the healing. I'm almost fully recovered."

The Mother Superior cleared her throat, and Bato remembered his manners. He put both arms around Katara and Sokka's shoulders again and turned to face her. "Superior," he said, "these are Kota's children. My apologies for getting carried away."

The Mother Superior smiled. "Young Avatar, it is an honor to be in your presence. Welcome to our abbey. Unfortunately, I'm afraid we can't afford to shelter you for very long - this is a small abbey, where we make and sell perfumes and buy only what we need. We don't exactly have funds to give away. But you may stay a night or two at your leisure."

Aang bowed. "Thank you," Katara said. "We have to keep moving anyway. We won't trouble you."

"Well, maybe we could trouble you for some perfume," Sokka said. "For Appa, 'cause he stinks so bad. Amiright?"

A few early crickets chirped in the surrounding woods. "You have your father's wit," observed Bato.

.

After Appa was settled, Bato welcomed them into his room. It was a large room taking up the entire interior of a building and set up like the ice houses from their childhood, with pelts lining the walls and floor for comfort, furs hung on the wall, with Water Tribe weapons hung nearby. There was even a tent inside the room, for ease of sleeping. The sight of the furs made the firelight feel warmer and look softer. Katara and Sokka gasped. "Bato, it looks like home!" They raced in. Sokka looked at the weapons hanging on the wall. There were fishing spears, knives, and a duplicate of the sword Sokka carried in his pack. There was no boomerang. That wasn't a traditional Water Tribe tool. It was an exotic thing, carried back from some voyage to the Earth Kingdom, or maybe washed up in a raid. He'd been too young to remember. The boomerang was almost a lifelong companion, never found anywhere except at his side. Except for now. Now it lay on the bottom of the ocean somewhere, rusting away. Sokka continued to face the wall, keeping his back turned to the room so no one could see him mourn.

"The pelts, the cooking fire, the mats. It's all here!" Katara exclaimed.

"Yeah… Nothing more cozy than dead animal skins." Aang didn't sound too sure of that.

Iroh politely commented on the visible softness of the furs, and the warmth of the fire. While they were thus engaged, Bato came over to Sokka. "Sokka. Is something wrong?"

Sokka straightened in surprise. "How'd you know?"

"I would recognize the look of a warrior trying to gather his strength anywhere."

Sokka allowed his shoulders to slump. "Yeah. When we met those guys…" He glanced toward Iroh and Zuko. "It's a long story, but they were traveling on a boat and got into trouble. We were sucked in. I lost my boomerang. It's in the ocean now." He looked back up at the weapons. "I miss it."

"Oh…" Bato was a very close friend of their father's, more like an uncle. He'd been there for their childhoods just as much as their father had. He knew exactly what the boomerang meant to Sokka. "I'm sorry."

Sokka sniffed back tears. "It's okay."

"No way! Stewed sea prunes!" Katara sounded a little too excited, as if she was forcing it. She probably was. Seeing all these trappings of home made Sokka feel homesick at the same time as he felt at home. How did that work? But he did smile, and turned around to join his sister next to the fire.

"Help yourself," Bato said graciously as he seated himself on the mat at the entrance to the tent.

"Dad could eat a whole barrel of these things," Sokka remembered. He snatched the ladle as soon as Katara was done and filled his bowl quickly. He meant to do the same. There was nothing like a warm, full belly to keep you moving even when things seemed bad.

Entirely too short a time later: "Is it true that you and Dad lassoed an Arctic hippo?" Sokka looked at Katara sideways. He was still eating! You didn't start storytelling in the middle of a meal! In fact, she hadn't eaten much of her bowl. Sokka shoved sea prunes into his mouth as fast as he could. He wasn't going to leave his food untouched just to start storytelling early.

He finished his bowl while Bato answered, just in time to suggest another story. If they hadn't been on opposite sides of the fire, he would've elbowed Katara for making him rush like this. But it was alright. Storytelling proceeded smoothly, one story after another. They'd heard many of these stories before. Some were new; stories like the Great Blubber Fiasco weren't told to little kids, but Bato shared them now that Katara and Sokka were nearly grown and on a quest of their own. All traces of homesickness disappeared. Anywhere there was storytelling like this, there was home.

He came to understand why Katara had been so eager to start the storytelling. The warmth of the fire, the furs, the familiar smells and voices and rhythms of the stories that they all knew… Sokka could almost reach out and touch the icy wall of their house, could almost smell the tang of salt and smoke. The Water Tribe members laughed easily and often. Bato's eyes shone with delight.

"Uh, excuse me?"

The illusion broke as they remembered that they were not at home, and there were other people not of their tribe present. "Yes?" Bato asked politely, but his hands curled and his voice had lost some of its easy warmth.

Iroh shot his nephew a glare, which Zuko ignored. "Sorry to interrupt, but do you -" He swallowed some of the residual taste of sea prune in his mouth and promptly started to choke. After coughing twice, he managed to croak out, "- have anything edible to eat?"

Oh. Right. There were people not of their tribe present. Only now did Sokka, Katara, and Bato notice the untouched bowls next to everyone else. Aang picked his bowl up quickly with a grin, but didn't fool anyone. Sokka winced as he realized that he hadn't noticed that Aang wasn't speaking. Storytelling was supposed to be a family bonding experience, and Aang was family.

"Sorry, Aang," he said after Bato left to ask the Mother Superior for alternative meals.

"It's okay," Aang protested.

"No." Sokka drew him onto the third mat. "You're family too, so you should be part of our stories." Aang's eyes shone with tears.

"Nephew," Iroh admonished.

"What." Zuko crossed his arms. "I just did everyone he might make food for in the future a favor."

"Hey, sea prunes are delicious!" Sokka shot back.

"Says someone whose taste buds are half-dead from the salt."

Sokka took Aang's untouched bowl and shoveled prunes into his mouth. "Mm, delicious!"

"You're proving my point."

One of Sokka's eyebrows twitched. The illusion was completely gone, shattered, swept up, and put in the dustbin. The room was cozy, but he was all too aware of how far from home they were. And then some jerk had to go and insult their culture. "They're delicious to us, thank you very much."

A glare was back on Katara's face as she nodded in agreement. Zuko looked between the two of them. "What?"

Iroh put a hand on his nephew's shoulder. "When you are a guest, do as your hosts do."

Zuko blinked, then twitched. "Oh. Right." He folded his hands in his lap and returned to the surprisingly inconspicuous posture he'd had before. He even had the decency to blush.

That was enough to satisfy Sokka. He finished off the rest of Aang's bowl quite happily. It was good to see at least one Fire Nation person could be taught to respect other cultures.

It wasn't enough to satisfy Katara. She made the glare go away, but there was still a hardness around her eyes as she turned back and looked down at her bowl. She didn't finish it, either.

.

Bato came back with three steaming bowls of rice-based food, which were eaten very quickly. But he did not return to the storytelling. He waved for everyone else to come closer, and said, "I have news."

"For them?" Sokka pointed a spoon at the firebenders to his left.

"Yes." Despite this, Bato looked only at Katara and Sokka as he spoke. "It's about your father." He told them he was awaiting news from Kota at any moment, news that would lead him to a meeting point. If they waited and went with him, they could see their father again. "But of course," and now Bato looked at everyone else in his audience, "I know you have guests that need to travel north. If you all decide to move on instead, I'll tell him you were here and that you have grown into fine, strong, brave young warriors."

"It would be great to see Dad again," Sokka said. "That would be incredible! Right, Katara?"

"I've really missed him," Katara agreed. "That would be amazing."

Aang swallowed. Hadn't Sokka just called him family? And now they were going to be leaving? There was no way they would turn down a chance to see their dad, who they hadn't seen in years. Aang stared at the ground, bewildered and betrayed. Momo, curled in his lap, looked up at him.

"But…" Sokka hesitated. "We can't. We have to take Aang to the North Pole first."

Aang's jaw dropped.

"We can't exactly stay here to wait," Katara added. "And who knows how far we'd have to travel? We can't take a long detour, either."

Aang was too bewildered. What was this? How could they possibly be saying such things? "No, no," he protested. "I don't want to keep you guys away from your family."

"Shut up, Avatar," Zuko whispered under his breath. Aang ignored that. He just wanted to do the right thing! Even if...that meant asking Katara and Sokka to leave him behind… His throat went dry. He really hadn't thought that one through.

Sokka sighed. "He went off to help in the war, Aang. The war you're supposed to be fighting, too, and winning. You're more important right now."

"B-but…" Aang was speechless. They might not see their father again until after the war, if ever. He might be killed. And they thought Aang was more important? He would never ask them to believe that, or to pass up a chance to see their real family! But he hadn't asked. They'd offered.

Iroh's words rang in his ears. He needed to trust his friends. Here he was, not trusting that Katara and Sokka really meant what they said. If he couldn't take this bit of grace that they offered him, how would he ever be able to ask for more? If he was going to confront them about their anger and how it made him feel, he had to pass the test of accepting their kindness now. Aang stayed speechless. He had no idea trust could be required to accept good news. "But...don't you guys miss him? It's been years."

Katara stared back at him. "Aang? What's wrong?"

"Don't you…" He looked down, unable to face her. "Don't you want to see your real family?"

There was silence. "What are you talking about?" Sokka asked. "You are real family. Just because you're 100 years old and an airbender doesn't make you less real."

"You said that when I was so upset I was about to blow you off the mountain!" Aang exclaimed. "I'm just some kid you found in an iceberg a few months ago. I don't know all these stories, and I don't like dead animal skins, and I don't eat stewed sea prunes. I'm not…"

As one, Katara and Sokka put a hand on both of his shoulders. "Aang," Katara said. "I meant that. You are family. We've dodged Fire Nation blockades together."

"Saved multiple towns," Sokka added.

"You've told us lots of stories about your home, about Monk Gyatso. If you wanted to hear some of ours, why didn't you say so?" Aang couldn't think of an answer to that. He met Katara's eyes, hoping she could see an answer somewhere in his face. Her eyes widened. She must have seen one. "Oh, Aang…"

"I meant everything I said yesterday," Sokka said. "You're a warrior too, and a pretty good one for a twelve-year-old."

Tears spilled down Aang's cheeks. "Thank you." He reached up to touch both of their hands, and dared to smile. They sure sounded like they meant every word.

Bato's and Iroh's eyes shimmered with tears. Only Zuko was unaffected. His mind was worlds away, barely there though he thought he understood what was happening. He grimaced at the open displays of emotion and tears, but otherwise did not react to them. He waited for whatever this was to be over.

It was late in the night, so it was over soon enough. Bato brought out all the pelts he had, creating just enough beds for all five of them to sleep. Aang offered to get the sleeping bags, but Bato insisted on being hospitable. After some grimacing, Aang slipped under his dead animal skins. Momo refused to get under there with him, so the lemur curled up on top of his chest. His weight, even though it made breathing a little harder, was comforting. Aang quickly fell asleep.