"Have you calmed down now, Mrs. Hala?" Ayaan whispered.

"I'm s-sorry for this, Lord Ayaan," She said, picking herself up from the floor. Ayaan was quick to assist her.

"It is fine." He said. He wasn't sure how to truly comfort the distraught woman.

"What do I do?" She whispered to herself, "First my husband, and now my son... everyone I love has been taken from me. What do I do?"

Her worst fear came true today. She had been so careful... only to still lose him in the end. "What do I do?"

The house was too empty, too quiet. It was unbearable. It was as if the silence was attempting to consume her. All of the what-ifs of their plan played on repeat in her mind. What if they failed? What would happen to her husband and son? Would those empty threats cease to be empty? What if they're hurting them in there? What were they forcing him to do?

Ayaan was quiet as he watched her recede into her own mind. The scene was too familiar, painfully so. He was very intimate with helplessness, a feeling he wished to forget.

'There was another? Interesting. I'll just kill you both!'

He tried to ignore the phantom pain that shot through his arm, a sigh or a hiss escaping him as he made his way to the door. "Please, wait here. I will return," He said.

Hala could only nod as tears began to fall again. It was too sudden, too soon, too much.

"I'm sorry, my baby... My Haru... I couldn't protect you after all..."

•───────•⋅•⋅⊰∙∘ ∘∙⊱⋅•⋅•───────•

Ayaan got straight to the point when he got to gremlins one and two, "Explain. Now. Where is Katara?"

Sokka was sweating enough to fill buckets, and Aang wasn't much better. They'd never seen that expression directed at them before. His lips were thinned into a narrow line and the crease in his brows was deep, his eyes blazing with emotion.

Aang sighed, looking away from Ayaan in shame, "Some days ago, before you started training the villages, Katara convinced Haru to earthbend. An old man was trapped due to a rockslide and earthbending was the only way to save him." He explained.

Something in his eyes was unreadable as he continued, gripping onto his staff, "That old man sold Haru out, and came with that Tax Collector to take him!"

Aang felt ashamed that he'd been so trusting. All of them did. Katara was hit with it the most, and not hours later came up with the plan to go to the prison to rescue him. Being reckless and in the moment, both of the boys agreed with her.

"She had Aang get some rocks on a hill, and with a little bit of 'perspective magic', made it look like she was earthbending at the fire nation soldiers." Sokka explained, "Just as we thought, she was arrested on sight."

As Sokka was going through how they thought through the plan, Ayaan was silent.

They'd felt like shit since it was their fault that Haru had been compromised. After thinking about what they could do over and over again, they remembered something.

Ayaan had shown them the map with the location of the prison on it. After he scouted for it, he'd marked it on the map they had. He'd given them the gist of the plan to get the prisoners out, though there were obvious holes here and there. He did not know the layout of the prison or the route of the ferries to and from the rig. He only had the framework of a plan, which he'd explicitly said they needed more information for.

But that particular detail was lost in their panic to do something.

"Since we knew where they were taking her and could get her out easily thanks to Appa, we agreed to help her." Aang finished. "We could end this right now, and get her out without anyone knowing. That... that was the plan."

Both boys waited for Ayaan to speak with bated breaths, but the young warrior remained silent.

He was quiet for a very, very long time. What he was thinking? The boys didn't know. They could only brace themselves for the worst berating they'd ever gotten. They were ready for it. They deserved it.

But Ayaan's voice was calm when he finally did speak. "The people I met with, The Phantom Unit, figured out the routes of the ferries getting to and from the prison. They have someone on the inside already. Saving the prisoners had been their mission even before we got here. Their plan coupled with our own regarding the townspeople, and Appa gave them the stealthy way in that they needed to complete their end."

Ayaan's expression was unreadable as he continued. "We were to spread the news of the plan to the prisoners stealthily. There was no need to infiltrate as someone was already there. Once the prisoners knew the plan, we would proceed to give them the ammo they needed to fight. The prison is powered by coal, and it is likely the insider knows exactly where it is already."

Aang and Sokka sunk as the realization of how grave their mistake was settled in. There was no need for any of them to get captured. None, at all. It was better for them if the fire nation never knew they were coming. It was supposed to be a sudden, planned, and thought-out assault on the prison. How was it that even though his voice hadn't raised an octave, it was painful to hear?

"The prisoners, like the villagers, would probably need something to get their fighting spirit back. Going from simple miners to rats trapped in a metal cage for years... a little pep talk isn't going to get them to fight. They are not like me."

Sokka grimaced at that last sentence. Ayaan wasn't the type to give up. Never in a million years. He would struggle until there was nothing of him left. Sokka would know.

He'd done so when he tried to save their mom.

"A stealth mission," The younger watertribe sibling whispered, "This was going to be a stealth mission without someone actually going inside the prison."

"Yes," If they were shocked by this information, Ayaan didn't give a damn, "The guards of the rig aren't pushovers, and if the earthbenders are too broken down to fight, then that would be a massive problem. We needed to take care of one of these two problems, and that could only be done stealthily."

Either take the fire nation soldiers out without them noticing, or rally the broken down earthbenders to show some backbone again.

'Haru... that boy is a fighter at heart. But I can not say the same for the others. It was not just young men and women that were taken. Elderly, children, just bursting in there would cause casualties.'

And then came Katara on her fucking high horse.

"Qī." Ayaan called. "You there?"

"Who's 'Qī?'" The boys asked.

Ayaan just pointed, not saying a word. When they turned to where he was pointing, they gawked like stranded fish.

Clouds of sand rose, a hole right behind them opening up. A shadow jumped forth, and out came the little spy. "Hi, Sir Ayaan!"

"What the—?!"

"Whoa!"

"Qī, tell your brother that we must move to Plan B."

The little boy's heterochromatic eyes sparkled. "Awesome."

Before the boy disappeared again, he gave a glance toward Sokka and Aang. He didn't really pay much heed to our beloved boomerang guy, but with Aang, his gaze halted.

The Airbender felt a chill down his spine from the gaze. There wasn't any hostility, but it wasn't friendly, either. There was actually a hint of dislike in the kid's stare, something that Aang wasn't used to receiving.

Qī wanted to trust Ayaan's judgment on this Avatar. As a blessed one, they had the ability to sort good people from bad ones. It was written in his tribe's tomes, spoken time and time again in their history.

Just as there were many writings about blessed ones, however, there were writings on the Avatar. These stories were taught to them as children in the clan, and Qī remembered them vividly.

"Our people used to live atop an ancient creature known as a Lion Turtle," his mentor said. "Our village was a paradise where spirits and people walked as one. It was a peaceful time, a golden age for us, The Asrar."

"Then how come we hide now, Master?" A young Liù asked. He held Qī in his arms, and Wǔ at his side as they listened to their teacher speak, "No one knows we exist now, not even the Order of the White Lotus."

"The Avatar is to blame. The first one. Many do not know this tale, as it is age-old, but this clan is all too intimate with it," He said solemnly. "When he made the mistake of rescuing the evil spirit, written in history as Vaatu, the world we knew fell to ruin. It only became worse when he decided to seal the spirit portals."

"How can it be worse than saving an evil spirit?"

"Because of the people's abuse of the Lion Turtle's gracious power, we could no longer live there. It was no longer safe for us to stay as the humans of that time hunted them for their power. But our gracious Lion Turtle gave us a parting gift for the years that we took care of him."

The mentor gazed towards his three wards, "Liù, your nose is so sharp you can even smell lies, right?" The raven-haired youth blushed under the impressed gaze of his mentor.

"I-I'm not sure if it's that keen, Master..."

"Nonsense," He said, "I tested you when you were younger, my boy. You gave me a look every time I lied, and my lies weren't simple to figure out, either. You could smell it. You even sniffed the air to confirm, like a puppy."

Liù felt embarrassed because, yes, he had done that. Their master had been playing pranks all day and whenever he told them something, he gave off a strange scent. He hadn't known that it was because he was lying.

"And my dear, quiet Wǔ, your sense of hearing is the most acute I've ever seen. You could hear a pin drop three rooms over!"

The boy's eyes sparkled at the praise, but he remained ever silent. His own voice was very loud to him, after all, so he prefers to stay quiet.

Then his gaze went to Qī, the toddler in the waterbender's arms. "And this little one has a sight beyond the norm. Nothing escapes your sight, does it?"

Qī giggled. Of course! His sight was awesome! He saw things in extreme detail. Though he was a little confused. These were things they'd always had, their heightened senses.

Seeing their confusion, their mentor chuckled as he explained, "Our beloved Lion Turtle empowered us this way, heightening our five senses to a degree no other human could reach. This was the last blessing they could bestow before departing."

"Isn't this a good thing? Wouldn't we be fine since Lord Lion Turtle gave us this gift?"

Their mentor sighed, "Unlike us, the world did not take kindly to spirits. As we were close to them during that time, they did not understand us, either. They feared and hated us. Scattered, killed, enslaved, only our willpower kept our clan going through the wars the dark spirit wrought. All of the world went through suffering, but none knew more pain than the Asrar. Our flourishing clan became an echo of what it once was."

Their mentor turned away as he continued, "The simple fix to our problem at that time was to let us rejoin our spiritual counterparts in their world, to open the portal and let us through. We had been living in that world already through our Lion Turtle. At that time, the mortal plain was too harsh on us to bear. But when our people begged for this after decades of suffering..."

"What did he do?"

He turned to them, a sad smile on his face as he finished the story, "He refused, for what was the suffering of the few compared to the many, even if their suffering was his doing?"

Qī pulled himself from the memory as he took one last look at this new Avatar. He wasn't but a child like him, naive and hopeful. Their mentor had told them that while this hurt the people of his clan, the Avatar had not been a bad person. None of the Avatars were. But the hardship their clan faced wasn't something the people of that time could forgive.

"Then how come we are still here? Wouldn't our clan have faded away to nothing?"

"We almost did, Little Liù, but in our darkest hour, someone did save us." He said, awe in his voice, "Raised by a great spirit that chose to stay, they gained that spirit's blessing in both body and soul. We, as the Asrar, could see and feel this. We were able to survive thanks to their kindness, leading us to a place we could call our own. And from then on, as we grew stronger, we promised to protect them as they had us."

It was only with the help of blessed ones, those touched and loved by the spirits that remained, that they managed to survive. That was how their people grew to want to protect those people wherever they found them, and after centuries of building their stature, they became who they are today.

The Avatar had not saved them.

His gaze shifted to Ayaan, whose expression was unreadable.

'The child of the moon spirit did. And we, The Asrar, will repay this dept many times over in our gratitude.'

"Leave it to me, Sir Ayaan!" Qī said, determined, "Everything shall be ready in three days. All you'll need to do is be there."

"Will that person be there as well?"

Ayaan never forgot a face. He never forgot a grudge. And he sure as hell wasn't going to let a chance to vent some frustration slip through his fingers.

Qī's eyes sparkled with mischief, "We'll make sure of it, sir." And like that, he disappeared into the ground. There was not a single trace he'd been there at all.

The kid was a stealth god, if you weren't Ayaan you weren't catching him.

"W-who was that!?" Sokka was gaping at the now still earth where the kid had been for all of one minute before disappearing again, "Was that one of the people you met? Are they all skilled like that?!"

"His earthbending was unbelievable!" Aang gushed excitedly, though he was still careful to keep his voice down, "Will I be able to do that one day...?"

The silver-haired teen sighed. He wasn't really in the mood for their positivity right now. Katara was still on a damn prison rig. Was this his fault? Somehow, he felt that it was. His communication with her wasn't as smooth as he hoped it would be.

After he began training and Katara took up village duties, they didn't communicate as often as they used to. Sokka openly sought him out to try and train with him, so he spent more time with him than he did with her, who at the time wasn't interested in anything else other than waterbending.

As waterbending was something that he felt was useless without knowing the most basic forms of it, their conversations on it fell flat. He learned it by feeling, not by teaching. It wasn't something he could explain.

Speaking was something he was having to do more of on this journey than he had in the past five years. He was not very good at it, especially when it came to communicating feelings. How do you practice something you openly avoid doing altogether?

The only one that could convince him to even attempt to was Gran-Gran.

But Gran-Gran wasn't here. She was home.

"This situation is my fault," Ayaan said finally.

That drew them back into the mess they'd made, "W-what do you mean? We're the ones who helped her! We convinced Haru to use his bending, and we went along with her plan. We're at fault, not you!" Aang said.

Sokka nods solemnly. "This is on us. We acted without thinking it through."

Ayaan was silent. His expression portrayed none of the turmoil he felt.

His mother's death and his failure to save her, putting his family in danger, losing them to something he wasn't strong enough to defeat... Night after night he lost to these fears, and he would sit beneath every phase of the moon repeating his mantra.

'I am the eldest son of the chief. I can not falter. I can not give in.'

Through all of these nightmares, he would repeat his mantra like a prayer before the moon. Under its glow, his racing heart would calm and his fatigue faded. He would grasp his spear to still his trembling hands, wash his tears in the icy rivers, and train to become stronger as the sun rose.

After Omashu, he had been having a very rough time. One of his many fears stopped being just another nightmare. It was the reason he wanted to train them harder and keep them closer. Katara thought he was just nagging them to no end, which hadn't been very far off.

He never wanted to experience something being so out of his control again, even if he knew one day it might happen. It was what he trained them for, right? In the instance that he wasn't there to protect them, they could protect themselves. They'd been doing wonderfully in his training thus far, especially Katara.

But who would have thought he'd be feeling this way again?

This did not prove that she was ready to be on her own. This just proved how reckless she was.

There wasn't anything wrong with being reckless sometimes. It was a part of growing up. Learning from mistakes was a part of life.

But this and that was different.

They shivered visibly when he lifted his head to look them in the eye. His expression was neutral, a careful, practiced mask of his true emotions... everything but his eyes. They were that vibrant, icy blue. His entire aura was off, and the boys actually took a step back, scared.

"I am the eldest, your mistakes fall upon my inability to teach you better. The blame falls to me." With that, he leaves them alone to return to the house.

Their blunder caused a mother to lose her child. Hala needed reassurance that her trusting them was not a mistake. Even now, he can hear her sorrowful cries from the innermost room in their home.

His own thoughts could wait.

His fears could wait.

They did not need to know of them. They would never know and clearly, they would not understand.

They could not even wait for him to return to do this. Did Katara choose to do this to avoid him saying no to her? Could this be why he felt weird telling her about his plans? Did she have this idea already set, and Haru's capture gave her even more motivation to go through with it? It wasn't just her fault either, Sokka and Aang were just as much a part of this as she was.

Ayaan sighed. This recklessness came from somewhere, and he knew where. He wasn't much different from his sister or his brother, or even Aang, his little brother by default at this point. He was a reckless, impulsive teen just like the rest of his group. He ran on emotions just like the rest of his group, and he had lapses of judgment just as they did.

He was just more capable.

And a lot angrier.

•───────•⋅•⋅⊰∙∘ ∘∙⊱⋅•⋅•───────•

Hello! Jenna here! I'm so sorry that the chapter is out so late. A lot has been going on, and it put my schedule COMPLETELY behind. Things are still out of order, but hopefully, everything should be back to normal soon.

Thank you for your patience!