(A/N)- *drops two chapters* Oh would you look at that. How did that happen?

No seriously it was murder trying to work on this around my work schedule. But! I prevailed and now here we are. Enjoy dear readers! I know I did.

Disclaimer: Good gracious my brain hurts, what the heck did I do today? Anyway, still don't own the intellectual property I'm playing with.

Last Survivor

"Where is everybody?" Angka wondered, as she wandered through the empty temple hall. Her footsteps echoed, her thin-soled shoes muted on the dusty tile. The silence was all but complete otherwise.

Any moment she expected to round the corner and run into one of the elder monks, or hear the distant laughter of the boys playing. But so far the only one they'd seen had been the cute lemur she'd decided was her new pet. (Assuming she got to it before Sokki did.)

Where were they all hiding?

She paused, putting a hand to her chin and thinking a moment, then snapping her fingers.

"I know!"

It was just a little after noon, right? That meant it was time for the midday meditation. They were probably all at the prayer field!

She rushed off, her feet light on the ground as she ran. They had really let the place go in her hundred-year absence, there was crumbling stonework and untended gardens everywhere.

She pushed aside a dusty cloth curtain, sneezing lightly. A bright grin found its way onto her face as she finally caught a glimpse of familiar orange fabric, and she was about to call out a greeting, the words on the tip of her tongue.

She stopped dead, the words faltering, dying before she spoke them.

Red, pointed armor and white bones littered the ground at her feet. The bodies of Fire Nation soldiers.

H...How...? came the dull thought inside her, as she stared, uncomprehendingly, at the scene of the massacre.

There were... so many...

Numbly, Angka raised her eyes towards the far end of the room. There was another body there, leaning up against the wall.

The body of an airbender.

Her knees felt weak but she was frozen to the spot, her eyes stinging.

Dead... He was dead. One of her people. Someone she'd probably known. Killed by the Fire Nation.

They were here...she realized weakly.

"Got him!" came a distant shout from behind her. Angka didn't hear it over the rushing in her own ears.

She didn't turn around as Sokki entered, wrangling the lemur awkwardly as it scurried from one of her arms to the other.

"Slippery little guy, isn't he?" the Water Tribe girl quipped, grabbing the critter by the scruff with one hand as it ran across her shoulder. She looked up, and saw Angka standing still in the middle of the room, back turned towards her. Saying nothing.

Guiltily, she deposited the lemur into the crook of her elbow, holding it gently, her smile fading.

"Hey, you know I wasn't really gonna eat him, right?" she asked, as she came up to Angka. "I just said that to annoy..."

She trailed off, stopping next to Angka, seeing the dusty carnage.

"Oh... no..."

That... looked bad. A dozen or so Fire Nation corpses surrounded the skeleton of an airbender. There was no hiding it from her this time. Her brother's efforts to keep the truth from the little Air Nomad, however misguidedly noble, were over now.

...Was she okay?

Sokki looked to Angka, who was pale-looking, wavering slightly on her feet. She seemed in shock.

Her eyes were fixated on the body of the airbender, on the crest it wore. Memories were playing in her head, images of a warm, smiling face with a fuzzy white mustache, dark wrinkled skin that folded in soft ripples, a carefree chuckle, a gentle hand patting her head affectionately...

"It's... it's Monk Gyatso..." she whispered weakly. "I knew him... He was my friend... He was one of our strongest benders..."

She swayed heavily.

"If—if even he's—"

Her voice hitched, a breathless sound that broke Sokki's cynical heart.

"Angka..." she said, with genuine sympathy and pity. "I... I'm so sorry."

She reached out her free hand towards Angka's shoulder.

Some warning tingle in the air had her drawing it sharply back.

Angka's tattoos were glowing.

Sokki gasped, dropping her arms, the lemur scurrying off somewhere as a rush of strong wind began swirling throughout the room. "What in the world?" she yelled, the force of the gale pushing her back.

Angka's back was stiff, her fists clenched, the light from her eyes and arrows blinding. Air swirled all around her, forming a tightly-wound ball of energy. Sokki found herself flung back, her face smashing on the ground as she bounced once, twice, grabbed hold of a piece of broken wall to hang onto.

The earth rumbled beneath Sokki's feet. Bits and pieces of the walls and roof flew past her head, a veritable tornado surrounding Angka, who floated silently in the center of the maelstrom, her face blank, tears streaming from her eyes. Sokki clung to her handhold with tight fingers, her hair whipping into her face.

Suddenly she felt her brother at her side.

"What happened?" Katar yelled in concern, shouting over the sound of the rushing wind.

"I don't know!" she cried, both hands clinging to the wall piece. "She just found out firebenders killed a friend of hers and started glowing!"

"It's her Avatar spirit!" Katar said, looking towards the floating girl with worried eyes. "She must've triggered it!"

Sokki wanted to groan. Of course Katar knew exactly what had happened, Avatar fanboy that he was.

He was already gone from her side, fighting against the winds and heading towards Angka.

"Where are you going, lunkhead?!" Sokki demanded after him.

"I'm gonna try to calm her down!" Katar said, not looking back.

Sokki ducked her head, her arms grabbing tighter to her handhold. "Well, make it fast! Before she blows us off the mountain!"

She really hoped her brother knew what he was doing.

-ATLA-

There was a storm of air and energy crashing all around her, roaring in her ears, the faint sounds of yelling behind her, but Angka registered none of it. All she could feel was the hollow emptiness inside her, filled with pain.

Her glowing eyes stared out, unseeing. She couldn't feel her body. There was nothing in her thoughts, nothing at all except the horrible knowledge that what Katar and Sokki had been warning about must be true—that her people were all dead.

Faces passed in front of her eyes. Nun Choenyi, who had raised her like a daughter. Her friend Woten from the Northern Air Temple. Gyatso.

One by one, they seemed to vanish before her eyes, leaving only darkness.

Gone. All gone.

Every one of them.

The faces flashed faster and faster in her thoughts and her mind could only repeat, Gone... gone... gone...

The elders. Her playmates. The bison-keepers. Weird man Jiang who cleaned up the incense ashes with his pushbroom.

Everyone she knew.

Lost.

Her heart wrenched, tearing in two, and she wanted to curl up inside herself and never come out.

"Angka!"

From far away a voice seemed to call out to her. Angka stirred a little.

Katar...?

His face appeared in her mind, vivid. She saw him as she had when she first met him, awakening from a strange and lonely darkness, the sense of something missing, some great hole in her heart washing away as she opened her eyes to the most beautiful boy she'd ever seen.

Bright blue eyes. A face full of concern.

The same concern that shone in his voice now.

"Angka, I know you're upset," he was saying. "And I know how hard it is to lose the people you love." There was a pain in his words, a slight tremor to them. "I went through the same thing when I lost my mom."

That's right... she thought. Hadn't he just told her that the Fire Nation had been responsible for his losing his mom?

So, they had that in common... at least... in a way.

"The other airbenders may be gone, but you still have a family!" Katar was shouting above the wind. "Sokki and I... we're you're family now!"

The words made her want to cry, but for entirely different reasons than before. Some life was stirring in her broken heart again. She rather liked the idea of being a family with her new friends. Sokki was a little bit like a sister, wasn't she? And Katar... well she wasn't quite sure what he was yet, but the thought of staying by his side was very... comforting.

Almost before she realized it, her hands were unclenching, and her floating feet were descending towards the ground, the maelstrom around her subsiding. The wind died away. The ground settled. The storm within and without stilled.

She felt Sokki and Katar come up to flank her, and Katar's warm hand on her shoulder.

"Sokki and I aren't going to let anything happen to you," he told her, tenderly. "I promise."

He shot a look over Angka's shoulder at his sister.

"Uh, right! Right!" Sokki hastened to add, managing to smile genuinely nonetheless. "Nothing bad's happening to you on our watch, kid!" she promised.

With a soft sigh the glow faded from Angka's eyes. She felt all of sudden quite drained, her knees buckling softly under her.

Katar's arms were there to catch her. The rough texture of his fur-lined wool coat felt nice against her cheek, and he smelled of pitch and fish and oil. A strange scent, but one that seemed to suit him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. She hadn't realized it before in the fog of her grief, but now she could see that the building she'd found the bodies in essentially no longer existed, reduced to rubble by the force of her pain. She could've hurt Sokki or Katar very easily in her blind anger and despair.

"It's okay," he reassured her. "It wasn't your fault."

"But you were right," she strained out. Her throat threatened to constrict again. "And if firebenders found this temple, then they found the other ones too."

Her eyes welled up thinking about it, imagining the fountains and courtyards of the Eastern Air Temple scorched to ruins, the bodies of everyone she'd grown up with left to rot, forgotten.

"I really am the last airbender..." she said.

Katar just wrapped his arms around her, holding her tighter, enveloping her in the smokey fragrance of his coat.

Angka gave a shuddering sigh.

For just a moment, while he hugged her, she felt like she was home.

(A/N)- Angka learns of the genocide of her people and has a rather destructive Heroic BSOD, which Katar brings her out of by reminding her You Are Not Alone. Also Sokki thinks air lemurs are actually kind of cute and definitely would not eat one. Probably.

Next chapter!