come closer. tell me more.

killerkaleidoscope:

He was so young when he left, he’s not quite thirteen when the war’s over, and he’s got his whole life ahead of him to interact with people who sometimes forget the Air Nomads used to be more than just the Avatar at all.

Does he try to sing songs, and realize that he doesn’t know the middle verse and there’s no one left to ask? I bet he goes back to the temples, and looks through whatever remains of Air Nomad libraries (not much, mostly all burned by the Fire Nation) and wants to cry because the ‘really important’ books are pretty much the only ones that got saved, and they’re philosophical and religious texts and he selfishly doesn’t care about those, he wants the old recipe for meringue that only an airbender can get right and the rulebook for airball in case (when, when) his kids grow up airbenders.

(And that’s really interesting, because Aang was raised with the idea that he’d one day give his future children to another temple to be raised in sex-segregated classes. Now he can’t and also everyone else he’s talked to goes ‘what? you poor kid! but what did the parents think’ and he doesn’t know because he never thought about it and now he can’t ask. He feels funny knowing he’ll have to raise his own kids as a family, like outsider nations do—then he realizes that ‘outsider nation’ is a silly thing to say when his nation is a nation of one.)

There are kids who have this muzzy idea that Avatars dress in orange because it’s a neutral color without a nation. When asked about the elements, they think that air, being the freest element of all, needs no nation to represent it, that it’s the domain of the Avatar only. People serve Aang meat dishes unthinkingly all the time, when back when Aang traveled the world at Gyatso’s side people would take one look at the orange and tell the kitchen there were airbenders here so break out the beans and vegetables.

There’s a period in his teens where he’s mad at everything. Before that he was too busy being diplomatic and helping with demilitarization and working out what to do with a world that’s been at war for longer than anyone’s been alive, but after? He’s grown up to the point where he’d be considered an adult by his nation except his nation doesn’t exist anymore and he’s finally, really getting it that it’s never coming back.

His friends get used to making apologies for when the Avatar suddenly scowls and flies out the window in the middle of the day and doesn’t come back until dawn. He yells at Iroh, blasts Piandao against the wall, furious at their serene calm when once they were complicit in terrible things. He hits Bumi, right in the face, because he lived through the war and everything else Aang ever knew didn’t and it wasn’t fair. There are days when he just can’t talk to anybody from the Fire Nation. As much as he knows they’re sorry, they hate it too, and it wasn’t their fault, sorry doesn’t bring his people back.

It’s over quickly, because Aang might be flighty but he is also a very loving person by nature, and unlike anyone else he’s better at peace than he ever was at war. The ache’s never going to leave, but Aang grew up without parents, without attachments, making friends and leaving them all over the world. He’s good at letting go.

I think that when he is older, and the world is more settled, he hires a scribe. Someone young and patient who doesn’t mind having to weight down all their papers with stones. Aang is not very good at linear speaking, but the scribe takes good notes and has learned the fine art of guiding Aang back on topic. Together they write ‘A First-Hand Account of Air Nomad Life’. Toph gets it published, and they make money hand over fist on perpetual great sales. (Aang actually gets in a fight with a university professor who tries to tell him no, this isn’t right, you’re remembering it wrong, I am an expert. He ensures the professor is very, very sorry. Toph and Sokka buy Aang drinks later, they’re so proud of him.)

So he moves on. Mostly. His people are still gone, and as he grows up his tattoos fade terribly, and he feels bad he can’t get them retouched the proper way with the incense and the chanting. But he has friends who love him and help him remember, and with his children he will make sure the Air Nomads aren’t forgotten.

oh my fucking god OH MY FUCKING GOD this is perfect. fucking perfection. *goes to a corner to think about this for a while* i… might be tempted to write fic now.

(via skalja)