Author's note: Hi everyone! So before I start, I just want to say - yes, I know it's been a month since I last posted a new chapter, and I'm really sorry it's been so long. I'm stuck in the middle of exams right now, so my mind has been a bit busy to say the least! But I've been beavering away at the story in any spare moments I get. I can't wait for you to see what we have in store... This chapter is a little more on the cerebral side of things. It's the best look into Aang's state of mind that we've had yet. There's a lot in there, so I hope you enjoy unpacking it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Plus, we get some more * tension * with a capital T towards the end between our favourite pair...I do owe you that much. Enjoy... DYT

This chapter's song is 'Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears' by A Winged Victory for the Sullen

'Katara?'

The figure ahead of him didn't respond. It simply turned away, and began to travel down the corridor. Aang didn't move at first. He shouted, this time with more urgency.

'Katara!'

She didn't turn. He felt sure he had seen her face, recognised her silhouette as he had done many times before, but she seemed to not even hear him. A feeling of familiar dread overcame him. This isn't real. She's not real. She looked real enough.

He started after her. As he began gaining, she broke into a run. He sped up. So did she. She matched his pace perfectly. He found himself running as fast as he could, and yet the distance between them simply would not close.

He was beginning to sweat. It was cold, but he was pithing his body, seemingly, as far as it could go. There was a hint of desperation in his eyes as he ran. All he could hear was the sound of his own breath, and the thud of his feet on the ground as they pounded into the stone. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. On and on ad infinitum. His vision narrowed to a single point directly ahead of him, everything apart from the figure running a few feet ahead of him blurred. Everything sounded muffled, as if he were underwater, or going deaf.

It didn't occur to him to try bending. He wasn't even sure that it would work if he tried. Something about this place felt cut off somehow. This isn't real. It didn't matter. He had to catch her.

He worked himself up, and picked up his pace. He could feel his muscles contracting, the sinews pulling together and powering him forward down the corridor. Right. Left. Right. Left. He felt as though he had never moved at such a speed. He wasn't going to catch her. He couldn't. It was an impossibility. She was not real. But still he tried.

He began to hear a sound. It was ugly. High pitched. It was something he couldn't quite place, the sound of metal on metal, a scything groaning, the flex and friction of steel clashing against itself somehow. He could not tell where the sound came from. Perhaps it was in his own head. Some way of his brain. Warning him to slow down, telling him that he was going to far, too fast. That he was doing this to no avail. He wasn't going to catch her. He knew he wasn't going to catch her, but he couldn't stop himself now. He might stand a chance of catching her. If he could just-

She was gone.

Aang ground to a halt, steadying himself so as not to fall. He dropped to one knee, heaving air.

She was gone.

Slowly rising back to his feet, he peered down the corridor. He couldn't hear anything. He couldn't see more than a few metres down. He hadn't seen her disappear.

There was no smell in the air. No breeze. He turned back the way he had come.

What…

The corridor was gone. The infinite path he had just arrived on was no longer there. Instead, Aang was faced with what looked to be the corridor's end. There was a door. It had a brass handle that reflected what little light there was, casting a faint gold glow over the floor just in front of it.

Aang slowly walked towards it, not for a moment taking his eyes off the door for fear of it disappearing too. This was nothing he had seen before. He knew the corridor, somehow. From where he did not know but he recognised it. Perhaps he had seen it in a dream once.

He had not seen her disappear. He couldn't even remember what happened. He was running after her one moment, and the next… He had become somewhat used to things he could not explain. He thought of Kya. He wondered whether she was ok. They had never been apart for this long before. He was filled with a quiet sense of loss. He knew, somehow, that she would be fine. She was probably doing better than he was. He thought about what he would say when he got back. He thought about what he would say to Katara and Sokka when he got out of here. If he got out of here. He would, he told himself.

He was drawing close to the door now. His vision began to flash with little flecks of golden light coming from the brass handle of the door.

He stood before it. Studied the wood. It was old. Ancient. Yet it looked as if it had been painted, gone over with little care over and over throughout the centuries. Each new veneer had begun to peel from the inside out, leaving the topmost coat bubbled and cracking. He smelt it. It was damp. The kind of smell you only find deep underground, in the darkest caves where you can't see beyond your own nose and the sound of rushing water and the slow drip, drip of ancient stalactites, older than time itself, is all you can hear. Where you find yourself at the mercy of fate to bring you safely up to the surface.

Aang reached out and put a hand to the door. He rested his palm gently on the cracked wood. He could feel something within its very fibres, but it was clouded. More uncertainty was not something he had come here for, but it was all he had really found so far. He heard a noise behind him, but didn't turn to look. He couldn't. If he turned, he thought, the door would simply vanish again, leaving him stuck in the infinite corridor chasing illusions and figments of his own exhausted mind.

He put a hand to the brass. Gently, and slowly, he began to turn it.

'Stop.'

A voice called from behind him. He didn't turn. He didn't need to turn. He looked straight ahead at the door.

'Stay with me.'

Don't turn. Don't turn around.

He shifted the door by barely more than an inch.

'Please. Stay with me.'

The voice had changed. It was a child. Aang closed his eyes. He could feel tears beginning to well up, and he knew that if he allowed himself to look back now he would never leave this place. He found himself asking whether he even wanted to. Whether the three of them could just stay here forever. In this place. This dark, cold, quiet place.

No.

He opened the door.

Aang stood in the desert. He had been here before. The sand was bleached white. The sun was colourless. He cast a long shadow. He felt oddly cold.

The door was gone. He was alone again.

He took a few steps forward and looked around. There was nothing. For miles all he could see was glassy sand, and the rippling waves of heat rising from the ground, distorting the air.

He cast his mind back tot he last time he was here. It wasn't a time he liked to remember. He had made a point of trying to avoid the desert whenever possible since… It's ok now. He had to remind himself that, every so often. Aang didn't like losing people. The guru was right. He loved. Perhaps more intensely than anyone he knew. This meant that losing people was especially painful.

He had lost a lot in his life. He had lost his family. His people. His entire culture was wiped out without a seconds thought. The people who had raised him. The people who had brought him into the world.

He thought about his parents. He had never known them. He had never really given much consideration to who they might be. He had simply come into being. He had never known anyone in that way. The Air Nomads lived in a way that to many seemed strange. Even to him now, that idea seemed a little strange. There was so much distance between them now. The Aang of then and the Aang of now. So much time. Fatherhood had come upon him unexpectedly, but with great force, and he found himself unable to turn away from it. He had kept seeing flashes of Kya throughout his journey. Whenever he slept. He couldn't keep her out of his head.

He sat down, and played with the sand. He let the grains fall between his fingers, scooping it up, and slowly pouring it back out again. There was no wind. The sand simply fell into a neat little pile between his feet.

He kept thinking about his own parents. The more he tried to put it out of his mind, the more he dwelt on it. He wondered why he had never thought about it before. In so many years of having his own child, he had never once stopped to think about how he couldn't remember his own father. He wondered how differently he might have done things if he could. He wondered if his life would be spent trying to live up to, or even surpass his own father's legacy. That was something, he supposed, that he could understand. To feel responsible for a legacy. He thought of Zuko. His relationship with his father. He shuddered at the thought that he could become that. Perhaps, he thought, that was precisely why he hadn't. Or wouldn't.

He stood up. He could see something glinting in the distance. A flash of light, as though the sun were reflecting off a tiny mirror, directly at him.

He began to walk towards it. Trying to peer at it without blinding himself. He couldn't make anything out. Just this tiny, iridescent flash. He pressed on.

As he got closer, he began to notice the sand becoming softer beneath his feet. Walking was becoming more difficult. The fine grain on top of a bedrock of white salt had become a thickening sludge of heavy dirt. It was still dry, but somehow he found himself sinking into the earth. He began to scramble, trying to force himself upwards and forwards towards the light, but it was becoming more difficult to keep himself above the surface of the sand. Walking had become wading, which was slowly becoming more difficult still. He was now up to his thighs in the sand, and sinking fast. The panic had begun to set in. He couldn't move. He couldn't move at all. He tried bending his way out, but here, as in the corridor, he seemed powerless. He was up to his waist, and slowly realising that there was nothing he could do to get out.

It isn't real. Don't panic. It isn't real.

He was sinking faster now, his chest covered in sand. It put a pressure on his ribcage. A horrible, creeping, vice-like pressure that felt like he was slowly having every last drop of precious air slowly squeezed out of him.

He gasped, trying to fill his lungs for whatever awaited beneath the sand.

As he looked out into the sky above him, he thought he saw a familiar shadow streak its way by, silhouetted by the invisible sun.

He took a deep breath, and he was under.

Aang stood in a dark room.

He looked up. The ceiling was hard, smooth stone. There was no sign of an entryway. He had no idea how he had got here. The last thing he could remember was sinking into the desert floor. That was it. He had seen something in the sky. A shape. Then everything was black. And then he was here. There was no sand in his clothes. His eyes were still adjusting to the light.

The room he was in was small, and dark. There was no light. Aang tried to bring a tiny spark of flame to his hand, to get a better look at the place. He couldn't. His eyes, however, had begun to adjust. Somehow, though he could see no source of light, he could just about make out his surroundings. It was as if the entire room were emitting some dim glow. Just enough to peer out into the murkiness and get his bearings. The walls, like the ceiling, were smooth stone. The room was circular. He walked over to the wall, and put his palm on it. Cold. He walked around the entire circumference of the room, tracing an invisible line in the rock with his palm. It was as though this place had been carved out. The walls were perfectly smooth, almost soft. It was unsettling. He thought he had got back to where he started. He couldn't be sure.

He stopped. Feeling a presence behind him, he turned.

There was something shining in the wall that up until this point he somehow hadn't seen. Either he had walked right past it, totally oblivious or… or it wasn't there only a moment ago.

Cautious, he moved over to it. Yes - it was. It was a mirror. Polished to within an inch of its life. The presence he felt, apparently, was himself.

He took a moment to look at himself. It dawned on him that this was the first time he'd seen his own reflection in quite some time. He looked older than he remembered. Perhaps he was just tired. The last few days had proven exhausting. He allowed himself to feel just a little vulnerable. He slouched his shoulders. Cricked his back. He was still very much in his physical prime - after all, he wasn't yet 25 - but he felt like a man who had lived… well, centuries. He smiled just a little to himself. He had been through a lot.

He put his finger up to the mirror, joining it with his reflection. He put his palm flat against the glass. There was something oddly magnetic about the mirror. It didn't feel like any he had touched before. Something about it made him scared to take his hand away. The room was silent, save for his breathing. Strange… It didn't fog up the glass.

He tried to lift his hand. He couldn't. It was if the mirror was pulling him in. He looked at his own reflection. Into his own eyes. What he saw didn't look right. It was him, but he was pulling the…wrong face. He looked sad. Lonely. A tear rolled down his cheek. Aang went to wipe it away with his free hand but found his own face dry. The reflection gestured for Aang to put his other hand on the mirror. Something told him he had to.

Slowly, he raised his other hand to the shining surface. His reflection gave him a look, as if to say 'I'm sorry'.

He was on the other side of the glass. He was stood in the void. There was black all around. He couldn't see the floor. He wasn't really sure there was even a floor. It felt as every atom in his body was simply suspended in nothingness. He watched as his reflection lifted its hands from the mirror and walked, slowly, to the centre of the room. It sat down, legs crossed, and stared at him. He looked small.

He blinked and it was gone. In its place was a body, floating towards him. It was the same woman he had seen in the warehouse. He tried to walk towards her, but he was rooted in place. Her eyes weren't dead and empty like before. They were glowing a bright blue. She looked as if she were… She was getting closer. Aang couldn't move. He was frightened. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, she was gone. So was the void. He was stood in the central hall of the temple. He breathed, deeply. He tried to bend. A whoosh of air launched itself from his palm, flowing around the room and rattling some wind chimes hanging from the ceiling. He sighed with relief. He could see light through the window at the top of the stairs. He ran up, calling out.

'Guru Pathik!'

He received no answer.

'Guru Pathik?'

He reached the top of the stairs, and slowed as he wandered out onto the veranda.

'Guru Pathik?'

He was alone. The Guru was gone. He watched a pair of leaves dance in the wind. Rapidly, they twirled and tested around one another before taking one final, defiant, balletic leap off the edge of the veranda and into the valley below. He watched them go.

Aang sighed, and took a moment to take in the fresh air. He stared out over the mountains.

He wondered if he had really learned anything here. If any of what he experienced was real, or simply his own mind confusing him even further. He wondered if there was anything he could take from this place. Anything that might help him come to terms with what he had just experienced here. He supposed that if he were to ask the Guru he would be met with another 'does it matter?'. I guess not.

He was learning very quickly that nothing seemingly mattered. Or at least, that was the philosophy of everyone who had seemed to come before him. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered whether the air nomads were all that wise at all. Of course, he had learned much from them. They had much to teach. But as the Avatar he had a responsibility to move beyond those boundaries. He had a sneaking suspicion that he had come here to realise that this wasn't where his answers lay. Perhaps it had taken him coming here for him to realise that. But he was sure that he had gotten all from this cold, abandoned shell that he could. He resolved to sit for a few more moments. He cleared his mind, and watched the sun finish rising. After a while, he sensed that he had been here long enough. He thought of his friends, waiting for him. Katara.

Time to go.

The wood of the ancient door creaked as light spilled into the entryway of the temple. As he walked, tired but filled with a renewed sense of purpose and peace, he felt the doors of the temple close behind him, as if the very building itself could sense his leaving, as if it were bidding him farewell.

Sokka was lounging by what was left of the previous nights fire, munching on a fruit of some kind as he approached their campsite. He seemed not to have noticed Aang's absence at all. Katara, on the other hand clearly had. She came running over to him. Once again, he was gripped with a feeling of giddy anticipation, as if she were preparing to fling her arms around him, pulling him into an embrace that neither of them would ever want to let go. Instead, she slowed as she reached him, giving him not that passionate embrace but rather a kind hand on the shoulder. His skin practically fizzed under her touch, the mere presence of her hand sending sparkling neural shockwaves dancing round his body. He said nothing, opting instead to simply smile.

'Where have you been? I was… I was worried.'

'Sorry. I went into the temple. Found someone. Someone I hadn't seen in a long time. I don't know where he went. I don't really even know if he was there at all'

Katara seemed to understand.

'Did you find what you were looking for?'

'No. Well. I suppose so. It feels like I only found more questions. But maybe that was why I needed to come here.'

'We can stay if you l-'

'No. No it's fine. I think this place has had enough of me. I don't think we'll find anything else here.'

She gave him a warm smile. He had only just noticed that her hand was still on his shoulder. It was as if she couldn't - or hadn't wanted to - let go. She seemed to notice too, and quickly lifted it, sheepishly stroking her own elbow with the hand that still left traces of her scent on his skin.

'Ok.'

She blushed, though tried to hide it.

'Let's go.'

'Where to?'

'I'm not sure. Home, maybe? I think we'll know when we're there.'

With that, the two walked over to the campsite, joining Sokka. They sat, and laughed for a while, before packing their things once more, readying themselves for the journey ahead.

The sun was up.