AN: This is an excerpt out of my notes for this chapter: Change the direction of the conversation at the beginning. This is Aang's chapter let him talk. Get a happy dynamic.

You can tell me how that went. Next chapter will be... different, and usually something different = fast. So we'll see. I'm aiming for two weeks. Bring your friends.

Also: Come one, come all, to the Pro-Bending Circuit this fall! Sign-ups are still open! I'll be there, judging, competing, I don't know! But be there! Forum link in my profile.

"Up, up, c'mon! Keep your guard up! Wap, wap – pssssh!" Sokka makes the swipe across Aang's ribs in slow motion, letting his wooden sword just skim the monk's robes. "And, you're dead."

Aang lets his own sword drop with a crack in the snow, and heaves in cool, summer air. "Just – just give me a minute."

"Hang in there, Aang," Katara calls to him as she brushes Appa's fur. He roars out support as well. "And Sokka, don't you think this is a little… over the top?"

"It's either this or boomerang lessons, and I don't intend on getting hit in the face today."

"Sokka, Aang and I need to get back to training."

"And what do you call this?" Sokka brings out his true blade. "I'd like to get him up to real swords in this lifetime."

"We need to practice healing; Aang doesn't have time for skills he won't use."

"Can't we take a break today? We've being training so much more than usual these last few days." Weeks. Months. It seemed like an eternity since he'd last gone to bed without aches running across his spine.

Sokka gives a thoughtless no and Katara wears a reassuring smile, patting the ice beside her and the bison. "A short one. I'm sorry, Aang, but we have to keep moving forward."

Sokka's up again before he'd taken his seat, dancing in mock battle with his metal blade advertising ruin in every move. When he wasn't on the other side of the battle, Aang could appreciate the grace in his swordplay. He recognizes a parry, a pivot, a false edge then a lunge, and, proud that he'd been able to recognize that far, a dead stop.

The metal finds itself fast in the ground, owner slumping against its hilt. He sighs. "Was it like that?" It was almost as if he'd been talking to the sword. He turns to his audience, annoyance bubbling through the creases of his face. "See this is why we need to keep going. I had, what? Five years to ask him about this move? And I didn't, cuz I was doing what you're doing now."

"Taking a break? Running yourself into the ground won't change anything."

He just shakes his head and drives the steel deeper in the earth. "Every moment is an opportunity, kid. That's why I teach you everything I can. Sailing, knots, swordfighting; who knows what kinda hellhole you'll drive the world into if you're not prepared the second you need it."

A hellhole. That was a pretty mild way to put it. Sokka waited for him, giving him time to digest his words, but in all truth, he'd come to terms with it all before. History happened in seconds. On a flying bison. In a storm. In a flash of lightning, the entire world could fall.

Aang answers stalely. He doesn't have the energy to entertain the man with easy sentiment. "Yeah. I guess so."

"Sokka likes to think he can make everything better," Katara puts in, her inner sensor picking up on the minute strains in her student's words. "But in the end, there are plenty of things we can't change. Things that we aren't meant to."

She lets her hand drift to his knee, to remind him, again; no one blames you, it wasn't your fault. He loves her for trying, but she'll never be able to drag him out of the crater he's dug himself into, not with soft words and hollow gestures.

"I know."

"It's especially true for you, Aang. You're the Avatar; the spirits pay close attention to you."

"Yeah, right." Sokka slices through the air, his sword still held firm by the earth. "Like that's an excuse." He pulls the air straight from Aang's chest.

No one had ever confessed, at least, not frank enough for him to realize until now. He'd known, of course, had even suspected the swordsman of harboring the judgment earlier on, but the realization hit him deeper than the frigid tide of the north ever had.

For once, Katara doesn't notice his blanch, or if she did, she was, alarmingly, unmoved.

Her brother, sunk on one knee, eyes steady above the sword's hilt, dares her to dispute his words. "Are you gonna try and convince me?"

"Stop it, Sokka," she strains, her chagrin tinged with hues of sorrow he'd never heard her direct at the man, yet, so familiar to Aang's own mind. "You can't blame yourself for that."

"You can't tell me it was 'meant to be', Katara. There were so many things I could've done."

Aang sunk back even further, wishing he could drown under the tangles of Appa's fur.

"I'm sorry." He chokes out, words smudged beneath his hands. Katara notices this time, but he can't see her face.

"-Aang." Is all she can manage, before Sokka, who had not the skill nor the patience to pick up the subtleties of the scene mere feet from him, chooses to speak in his defense.

"I let him go. I let the entire rebellion fall apart." Aang lets his head lift up, letting his confusion distract him from the burning in his chest. "I-I let it happen."

"That doesn't mean it was your fault!"

"It was."

"Then by that logic, we're all to blame."

"You weren't there with him! You didn't have a chance!

The biting of their voices stop as the two siblings revisit this moot point, obstinate glares shot from both sides, unrelenting. Aang hazily realizes that a pepper of wet snow had brought false tears to his eyes.

"You couldn't…" The flakes paint sorrow on Katara's face as well, but the sheen in her eyes are nothing less of real. Words tasted like ash. "…You couldn't have."

"I couldn't have…" His voice is rendered gentle by wear. "That's why I have to make sure I can this time."

Snow keeps falling, heavy and callous, filling the silence. There's a change, and Aang lifts his head a touch higher. He lets a drop perch on his hand. They keep falling, effortlessly, each one burying a thought they had had just moments before.

It's professed in a stunned choke. "-Black snow." Words tasted like ash.

When Katara and Sokka stand and stare blankly into each other's eyes, only one thought remains exposed in their minds. They're early.

"Aang, Katara; inside the walls, now."

"What's wrong? What does it mean?"

They crash into their little house, away from the panic mounting in the streets. Sokka rushes into his own alcove, where he keeps his table of nations and the little stone markers he uses to play strategist, and shouts over his shoulder. "Katara, the supplies! Get him ready!"

"What's happening?" Aang tails his sifu as she picks through pantries and closets. She doesn't answer, and Aang finds himself besides Sokka, who leans over his map, marking red crosses all over.

"Look here, kid. This here's where you need to go."

"What are you talking about? What's happening, why's the snow so dark?"

"Soot and snow, ok kid? Do I need to spell it out for you? The Fire Nation's here, at our doorstep, for you. Now look at this map."

He mistakes Aang's choking silence as understanding.

"Here, this town's one of the closest to us, and it was one of our stronger bases back then, so there's a chance it's not Fire Nation yet. Or maybe there's people in hiding, I don't know, but it's our best shot. You got that, kid?"

Sokka's never been one to read between the lines, and Aang can't risk being misunderstood. "-No."

"Well, listen! We don't have time for this! Look, here –"

"No, I can't. I won't go."

Sokka opens his mouth a few times, face contorting between anger, confusion and plain desperation. He mumbles a quick I don't have time for this and a few curses, but turns back to the map and continues.

"Here. You're going here. You can work a compass right? You need to find allies and-"

"No! I can't leave now!"

"You can and you will!"

"Stop! Both of you!" Katara has an old seal-skin bag strung over her shoulder that speaks of a long journey and Aang's heart pounds.

"I can't leave! You need me here. I- I can't run again!"

"What's wrong with you today?"

"Sokka, stop it!" The bag is laid too close besides him, and Katara's there with a grip on his shoulders and those eyes that always made him want to take back the words that had pained her. He sees his guilt mirrored in her and he can only shake his head, refusing to believe it.

"Why?"

"Because it's not safe here, Aang."

"I should help."

"Not here. You could help so many more out there."

"I'll just end up hurting people again, I don't want to take that risk."

"You need to," Sokka's voice is milder, but weary, "You don't win wars by staying in your comfort zone." He has a scroll tied up in blue in his hand and holds it out to him. It's a map, a mission. "The Fire Nation's here, kid. You have to get out there."

An order. It's the exhaustion in the voice, yet passion in his words, it's the quiet against the panic and the brave cowardice in his stance that throws him back to a moment he'd hope to have forgotten. The warm quiet of the pier roamed his mind in a flash of memory, the grinning blue face seemingly too close to him. Honestly, the wraith seemed too ethereal to belong in this reality, entirely. But persistence was a pitfall of memory, and he remembers every word uttered in that tired rasp.

When the armies come, go to the ghost town.

He can almost feel the strings wrap around him.

"What was that, Aang?" Her grip stiffens, for a moment, then numbs entirely. Her harrowed eyes draw an answer from his mouth.

"He – he told me… he told me to go to somewhere." He's pressingly aware of Sokka at his side, gripping the blue bound map in his paling hands.

"Who?" Katara's hands are stone against his shoulders. "Who told you?"

"The person who rescued me from the Fire Nation." The word 'rescued' snags at his throat. "He wore a blue mask." He adds that in, sensing some myriad relevance in the fact.

The weight drops from his shoulders but another, less tangible, is mounting.

"Enough," Sokka steps into his bleared vision, lines and movements too harsh as he thrusts the abused parchment into his face. "You need to get moving."

"Sokka, didn't you hear him?" Her mind is still wandering in some far off nebula, eyes shining with the sight.

"I don't care. We're wasting time." Under Sokka's gaze, he feels nothing less than a pawn on the map just a step away from where they stood. "You need to get going."

"I'm not-"

"Didn't you hear him? Don't you know what that might mean?"

"I heard him. But I don't care."

Sokka picks the bag off the floor and drops it in his leaden hands, carelessly. Aang's hands grasp at the fabric, vainly searching for an outlet to silence the resentment boiling in his mind.

"You can't just ignore this! This means something, Sokka!"

"He needs to move! This is the best plan we have, Katara, does that mean anything to you?"

His fate is yanked back and forth, like some obscene display of puppetry.

"You can't ignore him!"

"Can't you think logically for one second of your life, Katara! Aang!"

When Sokka turns back to him, likely to prod him with another round of crude words, the blue of his eyes have never felt so frozen. They melt in an instant. He looks into Aang's eyes and sees a storm so foreign to him that he takes an entire step backwards.

"I'm not going anywhere!" He abandons the bag on the floor and bursts out the doors in an anger so blinding that his voice reverbs in his ears and Katara's calls mean nothing to him as he runs. But it wears. The puppet stings snap behind him and he feels himself collapsing.

He smells ash, a scent that when juxtaposed with the frailty of the realm around him makes him feel like retching. He's still running. There's a ridge just up ahead that juts out towards the sea. It hangs too far out and calves away meters at a time but over its horizon is his destiny. Perhaps it isn't the one he wants but it is the one he chose, and in his 100 years of experience, that means everything.

He vaguely recognizes Appa's shadow along the ice, but any semblance of the thought vanishes as the sea opens up before him. The sight steals whatever is left of his spirit. The ocean is more steel than water, and he can envision this moment immortalized in some Water Tribe carving years from now, or seamed onto a Fire Nation tapestry because imagining the scene as a lifeless relic stops him short of collapsing. He sees catapult rounds lit, one after the other, like restless stars in a smoldering imitation of the night sky.

The bluff sheds, and Aang takes it as alibi to avert his eyes from the sea. He darts back to the base of the cliff where Appa waits and he has nothing to look at but the white warmth of the bison's fur. His façade of noble defiance crumbles to nothing but fear. Fear and resentment and searing, searing guilt.

"Aang!" He can't even tell whose voice that is, but he shouts the moment someone is there to listen.

"I never wanted to be the Avatar!" The sound of fire in flight eats at the end of his words. "I never wanted any of this!"

"I know, I know," Katara's voice mirrors his own, "I'm so sorry, Aang."

"I can't do anything. I can't - I can't even…" He gestures stiffly at the haze of battleships behind them.

"No, Aang." She takes him into her arms. "You can do so much, more than you can even imagine." Her eyes take on a gleam, like his own but there are no traces of fear or blame in hers, just the radiant glow of what he now recognizes as unbound adoration.

"You're an amazing person. And we, we should have listened to you. We can't decide things for you." She pauses as a fireball casts its blazing shadow over them.

"I – I don't know what's happening, Aang. I don't know what this means or what's going to happen but… but I trust them. And I trust you more than anything else. I know you'll do whatever you need to do, Aang."

Thinking of nothing to say, he falls into her embrace once more. He hears Sokka shift, and when he turns to him there is no calm pretense on his face. He's scared and remorseful and he can't disguise it in shrewdly weaved sarcasm today.

"Aang." The catapults return fire with a vengeance, and whatever words the man had prepared crumbles in his mouth. "I – I'm… I can't. I can't tell you what to do, but... I guess…"

He hands him a parchment, folded up to fit in his palm. It was a map, inked in black with ill-defined coasts and smudged lines.

"I marked some places for you, in case, you know… but there's everything you I know and more. Just in case you might need it." He adds in with a somber grin.

Aang mirrors this as well. A spark of redemption flares in the dark somewhere, but it's not here. He has to leave.

Anything they had left to say is truncated by the ridge disburdening itself as a fireball hits its mark. They hold together as the ice plunges into the sea with a roar that shook up through his spine and scorched his ears.

Whatever words they care to give him in the next minutes are lost on him forever. The wind numbs him and the smoke masks everything as he flies, except for the restless stars trying to shoot up through the dark. They hang in the twilight for a moment, leagues short of hitting him, before they plummet back to Earth, where the waters wait to embrace them.