in the spirit of this being an AU, there are a few storyline changes. the biggest one is that gyatso is aang's father/adoptive father (or he doesn't know he's adopted, idk we'll see ok?) and aang's mom was a hoochie. this will come back later so you know. be good.

thanks to all for the kind words & reviews & messages - very sweet. so enjoy this because the good lawd knows that i want you to. XOXOXO big kisses.

i have contemplated/uncontemplated sharing my blog link on this site. thoughts? it's not ATLA related so you guys would probs hate it lul :')

When Suki pushed through the cafe door, Aang made note of her sleek green and black leather gloves, her tight track jacket, and her wide, glowing eyes. He had met the girl on his own - without Sokka's introduction or intervention - when he had brought a more-than-slightly-tipsy Katara back home a few nights back. In her bedroom, Suki had seemed soft, docile, wearing her footsie pajamas and watching a Fire Nation drama on the internet. She had opened the door wide for him, and when he plopped Katara on her bed, Suki had offered her own to him. "I need to study and I can't do that here now with that noise," she had claimed with a timid smile, and Katara seemed to snore louder as a testament. "You can sleep here." With that she had spread a fresh gray sheet over her bed, threw on her track jacket, and waved goodbye with her whole arm, slow and long like a drawn sword.

Yet now the sight of Suki made him nervous, and Sokka's ringing plea was loud in Aang's ears. He didn't realize the Earth Kingdom native looked so strong up front, and he wondered briefly how a goofy Water Tribe peasant ever cut through this tough girl exterior, how he managed to hurt a girl who seemed to be made of stone and strength. She saw him from the doorway and waved, this time her gloved hand cutting the air like a paring knife, before she spun to the counter and ordered a hot drink.

Omashu's suddenly seemed muggy and crowded, and Aang zipped off his own jacket and pulled at his collar while Suki fished for change in her pocket. He hadn't rehearsed any kind of apology or gimmick, no go-to quote to ensure her safe return to Sokka's arms, no one-word magic to make her fall for him again, or forgive him, or forget what he did. All he could muster were facts - the poor guy was drunk, horny, and stupid, and it was one small accident, after all. What were years and years of love, over one silly accident?

That was not to say that Sokka wasn't in the wrong. And truth be told, if Aang was unfortunate enough to be in Suki's shoes, he didn't know himself if he would forgive Sokka - much less take him back, and afford him entrance to their relationship again, something that was supposed to be sacred and private.

He bit his tongue and took his own perspective with a grain of salt, reanalyzing his right to judge this. After all, he wanted to be fair, and he knew that he had never experienced a real relationship himself. Girls seemed to come and go from an early age, and never long enough for it to get very serious. He met girls at school outings and trips, mostly from the Earth Kingdom or other Air Temples, and when he was thirteen a loud, ambitious girl with wild hair from one of the nearby colonies had planted a kiss forcefully on his mouth. She had small, round lips that had grown cold and pink from sucking on cherry snow cones all day. They were visiting their sister temple in the west. At the time, Aang hadn't found the girl attractive, although she wasn't necessarily bad-looking, but after her kiss he felt his body pulsating with a new, electric energy. Meditation didn't help, neither did overeating, neither did a lap around the temple. That night he went home and clutched the thing that would make itself present from time to time, thought of her pink lips and wild hair, and the ejaculation - though it relaxed him - made him feel mysteriously empty. Luckily Gyatso had been by his side back then; he wasn't certain how Guru Pathik would have reacted to a sticky, miserably love-sick teenager. The memory suddenly made him think of Katara and he shook the thought quickly before his body could react. He didn't want Suki to think he was some creep.

In spite of the lack of experience, though, he knew that a vital piece was lost when one party decided to cheat. He knew because his mother cheated on his father and almost everyone back home knew it too. It wasn't even the physical aspect of cheating that ruined the couple. The physical aspect, from the monks' point of view, wasn't related to their love. If one looked at sex as ownership, only then did the physical aspect become a problem, and the monks were all about detachment. Right?

Aang struggled to remember his teachings. No, it wasn't the physical betrayal that bothered Aang (although who knew, maybe one day in the future he would understand its significance, its pinnacle, variant role), but it was the cognizant recognition of betrayal. It was Sokka saying to Suki, "Look at what I can do. Despite my knowledge that it hurts you, I have invited a third to our two. I have split myself to become part of another." Maybe that was the bigger part of Aang's problem now; though he was supposed to convince Suki, Aang himself was not convinced that Sokka deserved redemption. And true, the poor guy was drunk - under the influence, and Suki's absence was destroying him. But he knew. He knew he had a tendency to drink too much. He knew how he "got." And he knew that Rough Rhino's was not a place for good girls like Suki. So why go? Why tempt it? In Aang's eyes, if the relationship had any significance, any true, viable weight in Sokka's life, he would have been afraid to go, afraid to press up against his chances.

And his mother.

Spirits knew Aang heard enough about that woman from the other monks, as well as his non-bender friends who lived at the Southern Temple. It was bad enough having his heart broken by a woman who too frequently was gone with the wind - but Gyatso succumbed to the bender virus only a four years after Aang's mother disappeared "for good." When she returned once word reached her about his death, she had requested to see Aang, then sixteen, but he had run away. To where, no one knew - Aang himself didn't know what his plans were when they found him washed up on the shores of the colonies a few weeks later. Ironically, pink-lip girl was swinging her legs from a private wooden bridge, contemplating throwing herself to the splintery rocks beneath and ending her misunderstood, cruel teenage life, when Aang's orange and yellow garb caught her eye. She had climbed down the makeshift watchtower and ran to him to wake him up. She performed CPR and continued mouth-to-mouth even after he was conscious. He noticed but did nothing. Then she yanked his soaked pants to his ankles and took him into her throat. Her mouth was warm, her tongue muscular and slippery, and Aang didn't know why but he felt nothing - no guilt, no sadness at his father's death, nothing but this large, gaping emptiness. Half and hour later, pink-lip girl straddled him and put her head to his chest and told him about how her mother doesn't let her do anything fun. Then she went down on him again, and Aang cocked his chin up to look at her and then looked up at the purple and yellow clouds.

It was as if someone had sent him an omen. It was as if someone had sent her an omen. He had missed his mother's visit and in some ways felt proud of it. He did not know - nor does he know to this day - what she she looks like. And pink-lips discovered the beach was the perfect place to get away from the constrictive, patriarchal buzzing of the colony.

These thoughts dampened his mood. When Suki approached, Aang smiled weakly and wiped his damp palms over his thigh. "You made it," he said, and the lump in his throat loosened with a cough.

She took a seat and slung her backpack beneath the table. "Did you think I wouldn't show?" Her perky eyebrows matched her perky breasts. The track jacket was mercilessly unzipped to the naval. Aang caught himself staring and turned his attention too quickly to the ceiling.

"I wasn't sure," he admitted, "that you would."

"I want to fix this."

"You do?"

"Yes. Of course I do." She became defensive; her shoulders tensed, bunched up towards her ears, and she drank from her paper cup with haste. "It's not like this is easy for me. But what the hell does he expect me to do, anyway? It's not like he misses me - I mean... Right? He doesn't miss me."

"No, he does." He added with certainty, "He definitely does. He's going crazy without you."

She didn't even stop to consider this fact. "He doesn't," she decided, then sighed and slumped in her chair. "He hasn't contacted me," she murmured with a tone that implied it was a question.

"He was just scared."

"Of what?"

"Rejection. I don't know."

"Huh!" Suki snorted in disgust - it sounded dangerous and hoarse. "I swear, two years with that ass and he acts like he doesn't know me." Suki tilted her cup to her lips before admitting, "All I wanted this week was to hear from him. Is that too much to ask?"

Aang wondered what to say to fix this and end the conversation. He could tell Suki was not going to be responsive, and that Sokka was not going to take 'no' for an answer. Aang became immensely bothered that he was in the middle of this, bothered he had offered to help on an impulse, bothered that it had reminded him of his mother and that strange girl, bothered him that his experience - at twenty-two - was still so limited compared to his peers. He felt cheated somehow by Sokka... or maybe Katara... or maybe Suki. Maybe himself. Maybe no one.

"Look, I know you have to study and you have a life outside of all this drama." His tone startled her and she looked up from her cup with some level of bewilderment. "I'm being honest with you when I tell you that he misses you, and that he made a mistake."

"I know, I know..."

"Let me finish, please." Aang pulled his elbows off the table and caught Suki's eyes. He was amazed again how bright they were, soft, burning like orange streetlights. She didn't look away. "He didn't want to sleep with that girl. He doesn't even know her. And I saw them at the club. She's the one who wanted to go home with him. It was a mistake. If you decide you can forgive him, that's great, but if not, you don't have to. I'm not here to lecture you. It's not what I was taught. You have choose your own path."

She paused before asking, "Then what were you taught?"

He turned away suddenly because he could not help rolling his eyes. "Is that what you got from all that?"

"What," she laughed "I'm curious!"

"It's simple. Just that we're autonomous. I can't really 'convince' you to do anything if your heart is not already there. This is the basic principle. So if you really don't want Sokka back, nothing I say is going to change your mind. Sure, you may take him back on my word, but it won't work in the long run, because your heart is not into it. With that in mind, please don't take him back and bring up his hopes if this is already the end for you."

End. Suki drank from her cup again and let her eyes drift shut. What a terrible, bleak word. When she was a girl in Kyoshi she had written adventure stories on notebook paper, illustrated and bound the whole project on her own with thread. Every week, she wrote at least three stories, sometimes many more. All of them included a girl who went into the world and changed it. Sometimes she enforced a new law, sometimes she took out a bad guy, sometimes she solved a dispute. But the girl never fell in love. She never got married. These facts were brought to the author's attention when a group of giggling girls had found the collection of short stories and, scanning for a love scene, fell disappointed. "When is she going to get hitched?" they wanted to know. "These are boring!" It was only after Suki wrote in a marriage did she conclude with "THE END" at the very last page. She had never used those words before, so certain there would be another adventure in the cards for her young heroine. As soon as she had written them, she'd regretted it.

"I don't know what this is for me," she confessed slowly to Aang. "You need to tell him that I need time. And I appreciate you coming out here." She pushed her tea to Aang and urged him to take a sip. He agreed and drank. "You know," she admitted, "part of the reason I came out here is because I'm so involved with his family. I don't know if I would have showed if it wasn't for the fact that I room with his sister."

Aang felt the tea catch in his throat and he coughed. If there was any doubt that he was an airbender before, all of Omashu's patrons were well aware now. Suki's hair blew back from the impact of his sneeze, along with her eyeliner. Her jacket ripped off her shoulders and exposed her low-cut tank. Aang's chair crashed backwards, his shaved head meeting the welcome mat. He kicked the table up during his trajectory. One of the shorter waitresses yelled from the front counter, "Stop fooling around, you asshole airbender! You're cleaning up your own shit before you leave!"