trans_9 | Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

They reach the end of the train. It's...moving pretty fast, but there's something Sokka's new buddy can do to help, so he simply drags Sokka with him out the broken back door.

"Jump!"

Somehow...somehow the landing isn't as hard as it could be. As if there was a pocket of air keeping them from slamming into tracks as hard as they could have? (Although it's sheer luck they don't slam into the electrified rail).

The phantom train motors off down the tracks and disappears around the corner presumably into the orange glow, only now that they're off the train, they can't see it anymore, and the tunnel looks like a normal tunnel (as much of it as they can see anyway). It's not over yet, though, not by a long shot. As soon as Sokka's on his feet again, the figure has him by the arm and is dragging him again, through the dark, up the tracks the way they came, towards the last station they passed.

Up ahead, the light of the REAL train Sokka had been on is coming towards them, making it a race to get to the station before they're smooshed.

"Come on come on come on come on..."

The dim lights along the tracks miiight mean that Sokka can finally catch a glimpse of a bald head...

A monk, perhaps? Or maybe it's just a really bald young guy like that Luthor fellow?

Who--? Young guy with a bald head...? No time to think. Just to run. He digs in, running with all his strength. His heart is pounding now, feet carrying him faster than he ever thought possible. Run, run, run! Got to beat the other train. Got to keep moving. It's a dream but it's all so real and he has the feeling if he dies here...he won't like what happens as a result.

Faster, faster! The train is getting closer, but so is the platform. It's down to the wire here as they sprint, trying to cover the last few yards...

Right after they both jump onto the platform, the metal monster thunders by, literally right on their heels. They made it! By seconds.

The light is dim here, but at least there's light and there's something tangibly safer about this place, as if they've moved far enough away from the corrupting influence that was making Sokka's dream so dark. In fact, they can even see another stairwell, leading outside, and fresh cool air is pouring down it. There's even a bit of sunshine at just the right angle that's made it to the bottom of the stairs.

If Sokka looks over, he'll see another young man, about his age, collapsed in a heap of saffron robes, trying to catch his breath.

A young man with very familiar blue tattooes.

"Sokka," he murmurs, his voice muffled because he's still facing the floor and . "Next time when you go into a scary dark tunnel and see a giant metal monster that moves by itself, don't go inside it."

It's always the smart ones that seem to do the dumbest things, sheerly out of curiosity, like Roxie climbing onto the shantak-bird.

Sokka is hunched over, catching breath for a moment before he looks up at his rescuer. His very, very familiar rescuer. He steps forward, a hand reaching out instinctively.

"Aang? Aang, is that you?" He pauses, nose wrinkling.

"...when did you get so buff?"

At that last comment, Aang actually laughs muffled laughter into his arms, although the way his shoulders shake suggest there might be more than just laughter. Rescue aside, this is the first he's seen Sokka in--in a very long time.

A very, very long time.

When he pushes himself up (on the backs of his hands because his palms are cut up, cut up and instead of bleeding, they're glowing a faint blue, like the bandaged wound on his arm), Sokka will be able to see that he's older now, taller--maybe about as tall as Sokka is. And he looks...tired. The wrinkles around his eyes from worry. Tiredness ages you, carrying a heavy burden ages you. The Aang that Sokka knew that carried the weight of his choices and of his burden as the Avatar at the end of their journeys, that had to face the Firelord, was older than the flighty boy Sokka and Katara found in the iceburg in more than just years. That seems to be even more the case now.

His smile is the same, though. Aang smiles at him, even if that smile is marred just a little by the fond tears in his eyes.

"Classic Sokka."

Soka stumbles forward and the younger (was he still younger?) boy in a hug. A hug to end all hugs. One of loss and recovery, thanks, joy, love, and comradeship. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Even if this was a dream, it was so real, as if Aang were actually there in front of him. So he embraced him all the more desperately.

"Aang. Oh, man, am I glad to see you. We've been so worried and we've been trying to find you and help you. And, sheesh, yoou're like, my size now! When did that happen?" To be honest, his eyes are a little cloudy. But that's totally because he has something in them. It is most definitely not because he, a man, is crying. No. That is impossible.

"We've been missing you a lot, Aang." He coughs, voice suddenly growing thick with emotion.

Aang'd made a lot of friends back home, but without the monks, without the other Air Nomads, the ones that have made him feel as at home (home being people rather than a place, in Aang's eyes, nomad that he is) as he did with Monk Gyatso are his friends. Guru Pahtik had talked about love and how it didn't leave the world, and Aang knew that his friends hadn't quite filled that hole, but they'd taken up a new space in his heart, and loved him like the Air Nomads did and it made the hole hurt less.

He had gone such a long time alone. So, he's crying, just like he had with Katara. And just like with Katara, he can't run away, either, now that Sokka's seen him--besides, it's too late now, if the Nightmare King already knows about him. Now, the best thing he can do to keep Sokka safe is to try to protect him, rather than staying away so the Nightmare King can't stumble on that connection.

"Not so hard, Sokka, you'll squeeze my tears out."

Sokka just wants to tell Aang it's all going to okay. He wants his Aang back. The smiling, laughing, irrepressible boy who he had grown to love like a brother. So he just squeezes Aang even tighter.

"I don't care. You--You're giving me a pretty good run for my money on the tear-squeezing front." He laughs, brushing at the tears that are pricking at corners of his eyes.

"We're gonna find you, Aang, I promise. We're gonna find you and kick the Nightmare King's butt and everything's gonna be okay. I know you've been fighting him for a long, long time but we're almost there, you just need to hold on a bit longer and we'll be there to help you, I promise. We aren't going to let you go this alone, we never did before and we won't now. You're our family and we don't let our family go without a fight. So hang in there, okay? Don't give an inch." He can't contain his emotions anymore and his tears are streaming freely down his cheeks as he keeps hugging Aang. He doesn't want to let go, even if this is a dream. He wants to take Aang back with him, back where it's (relatively) safe and he can see all of his friends again and be happy and not worry about saving the world, at least for a little while.

"We're coming. I promise. We won't let him take you without a fight."

Maybe it's because Sokka's whole warrior guy thing usually keeps him from being this openly emotional and maybe it's because Aang has never really seen Sokka cry like this, but either way, Sokka now has him sobbing his eyes out even more than he had with Katara, even if he's doing it quietly, his head buried against Sokka's shoulder.

After fighting so hard to make sure everyone else is going to be okay, after trying so hard, for so long to take care of everyone else, it's nice to have someone that cares about him wanting to take care of him.

But he can't let Sokka go forward on false hope.

He shakes his head against his shoulder and pulls away to look at him.

"It's not that simple, Sokka. And it's not about me. He doesn't want me--he just wants me out of the way so he can do what he wants. And he wants you. He wants to hurt all of you. Just to hurt you all, and also because then you can't fix everything. He knows that's what everyone is here for--to stop the war, to save people. He wants to keep you from doing that just because he can."

The guy is pretty much a total, sadistic jerkface. The spanner in the works. He just wants to mess them and everything up because he can.

Aang wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand.

"There's no way all of you can stop him without it killing me or driving me cuckoo-owl crazyface." Aang does a flippy hand gesture next to his head to demonstrate the exact amount of cuckoo-owl craziness there would be, and then after, there's resolve in Aang's gaze that Sokka is only used to seeing every so often--it comes more easily now. "You have to do whatever it takes to stop him, no matter what it does to me. I'm just one person--there's millions on the ship, and billions and billions and billions you all have to save. If you try to save me, you'll just die instead."

Edited 2010-01-10 02:42 (UTC)

"But--" Sokka tries to protest, looking down (well, not nearly as much as he used to) at his friend.

"We can't let you--Katara would--" He groans and rubs a hand across his face, turning away and crossing his arms, lapsing deep into thought. There had to be a way to save everyone, including Aang. And he was damn well going to find it. He was the Idea Guy, darn it, and he would be damned if he would let his mind fail him now, at this most critical of junctions. Besides. It was Aang. And they would need him if they ever got home. He spun back around to face Aang, his expression serious.

"Okay. But I won't give up on you until the very end. You know that. Katara won't. Toph won't. And Zuko won't. We're not going to let anything happen to you unless--" He closes his eyes and looks away, wiping at his eyes again.

"Not unless we absolutely have no other choice. No options at all."

Zuko-- Mention of Zuko makes him look thoughtful.

Well, there's no time to really talk about that. He'll save that question for later (he doesn't remember Zuko actually joining them, but...had he really wanted to join them without it being a trick?) He wants to get Sokka out of the strange tunnel and back up the stairs.

Aang just sighs and grabs Sokka's sleeve, standing up, and tugging him towards the stairs to get him out.

"Let me show you something."

Sokka lets Aang tug him along, not really wanting to stay down in this place anyway. It's super creepy, and what if that train thing comes back, anyway? So he follows obediently up the stairs, one eyebrow raised.

"What is it?"

When they reach the surface, they're out on the ice again, but it's brighter this time, less lonely. It's like all the badness, all the loneliness in Sokka's nightmare had been coming from that tunnel in the first place. Aang stamps his feet and the walls of the tunnel go crashing in, the trap now crumbled and blocked off.

It will stay that way for a time.

"If you see something like that again in your dreams, don't go near it," says Aang. "And I don't mean just like that--anything strange or dark or that seems like it's drawing you in. It could be one of his traps."

He had lost his staff down there, chasing the train, but this is a dream, and it's waiting for him, sticking out of the snow. The monk walks across the ice, unperturbed by the cold as he always is, stops, with a few flowing gestures, a patch of ice melts and he waterbends it up into a cloudy wall of ice before freezing it again.

Then he grabs his staff and goes over to the wall.

"Here's what I need you to see. It's all like this."

He scratches out a picture in the ice wall with his staff.

"This is me."

He scratches out another picture.

"And this is him."

Are you paying attention, Sokka? There will be a test.

Sokka leans on his spear, which seemed to be out here as well. Amazing how dreams work, huh?

"I'll remember that. And I'll warn Katara and the others, too." He nods firmly, growing serious for a moment before Aang begins his drawings. Sooka leans over to watch, unable to repress a grin.

"...Are you wearing a dress? And why does the Nightmare King have such a huge mustache?"

Okay, normally, he's on the other side of this, criticizing Sokka's drawings. He frowns slightly.

"Those are my robes! And that's not a mustache, that's the stone the Nightmare King is in, with rope around it that has paper seals to keep him trapped. They're prayer seals."

There's a pause as he looks at his drawing again, and then he turns back to Sokka and adds, "There's no face actually on the stone, I just drew that so you knew it was supposed to be scary."

"Right. So. Seals that keep the Nightmare King trapped. Can those help us at all?" Sokka is switching into strategy mode. Time to figure out the enemy, his weaknesses and how to exploit them. Because he is Sokka of the Water Tribe, dammit.

"The seals are helping but they're also the problem. He has them around him."

He draws that.

"I have different ones around me."

He draws that, too.

"Where my body is, I'm trapped."

Liiiike so, Sokka.

"Even if I could get out, I can't leave where I am, or I won't be able to keep him trapped. Mine go with his."

Tada!

"The ones around me help me use the ones around him to keep him trapped where he is."

Scritch scritch goes the ice, and there's the trapping there for Sokka to see, in all it's detailed, highly scientific glory.

"The problem is that means the moment I got freed, he would be, too."

Which means they could just free him after they get rid of the guy, though, right?

"Okay...so why can't we just get rid of the Nightmare King and then free you?" He had a sinking feeling he knew what the answer would be, but it never hurt to ask, right?

"Because things go back the other way. Avatar Roku helped me figure it all out."

More drawing.

"Right now, I'm shielded, but if he gets destroyed or banished, it will hurt me, too."

Liiiike so.

He looks over at Sokka, his expression sad. "I have to stay there as long as he does, so he stays trapped. But the moment he's defeated, I'll die, Sokka. Avatar Roku says we're connected through the seals and all his pain will be my pain in an instant, and since my body's stuck in the Avatar State, it'll hurt the Avatar Spirit itself. Not enough to kill it, but enough that--"

A deep breath.

"Enough that my physical body will probably die just so it's protected. Because the alternative is this."

One last drawing, and despite just being a doodle, it's the most horrifying.

"If it doesn't die, it'll be driven crazy," he sits down on a little mound of snow, clutching his staff in his hands. "I can't let that happen."

He reaches out and slashes decisively at the doodle with his staff, and then looks at the snow, batting the staff back and forth between his hands thoughtfully.

"If it happens anyway, and I go crazy rather than die, I made Seer promise he'd kill me. I don't know if the Avatar Spirit will survive if there's no Waterbender being born for me to reincarnate to, but it would be even worse for the Avatar Spirit to go on a crazy rampage and be insane. And--and I figure even if it's the end of me, it'd be the end of me in a few reincarnations anyway, right? There'd be no Airbenders left for me to reincarnate to. This is just...happening sooner."

Even though he's avoiding Sokka's eyes, he talks about it so casually, the end of an enduring part of their world, of himself. But then their world itself has supposedly ended, hasn't it? What difference does it make now, if the Avatar dies with it?

"All the past Avatars agree with me that it's the right thing to do. We can't destroy life when we've protected it for so long, and if the Avatar itself goes out of balance, it has to end."

Sucking in a deep breath, he finally looks Sokka in the eyes, his gray-eyed gaze calm.

"I'm not scared. I know you'll be okay if you look after each other, and I know you and the others will bring our world back, and make it better without me. There was a time before the Avatar once, and now it just means there'll be a time after me."

Sokka's face grew grimmer and grimmer and grimmer as Aang explained, a horrible feeling of helpless frustration sinking into the pit of his stomach. It was like trying to figure out Azula all over again, but even worse. Because there wasn't just anger and frustration. There was helplessness, greater than anything he had felt before. His friend, his little brother, was telling him that Sokka had to let him die instead of helping him if it came down to it. He shook his head, grasping his sword. He was silent for a moment, and then spoke, quiet, almost unheard.

"If that's what you want. If that's what we have to do, then we will. But we're going to do everything we can to figure out how to get you out of there. I won't let you go without a fight, Aang. Not after everything we've been through together. You know better than to expect me to just give you up without a fight, right?" He laughed, the sound almost too loud, too grating to be real amusement.

"But...we'll do what we have to. I promise. We won't let you...we won't let you hurt anyone if that's what it comes down to."

"Seer...said, that he'd take care of things if I--if I'm going to hurt people."

If he goes crazy, if he has to be put down, they don't have to do it, they don't have to deal with that.

"But I'll fight too, to--to not have that happen."

He goes on, "Still, if I die, I don't know what will happen. I don't know if that means the Avatar Spirit will die with me, if it means it'll just float around somewhere. When our world gets restored though--" Not if. When. He's Aang. "--I might find my way back. Which means I'll need someone to help find me."

Wiping at his eyes, he smiles a small, still-hopeful smile, "Maybe, if--if that happens, I'll even be born into the Southern Water Tribe with you guys."

"You'd be the best Southern Waterbender ever." Sokka swallows, throat getting thick again as he claps Aang on the shoulder.

"I'll take care of Katara if anything happens. Don't worry about her, okay? She's got me, right? Not that she always appreciates it." He grumbles quietly. Damn kung-fu sex ninjas and their creepy cult and taking his sister away to do weird training.

"Of course you will."

Aang smiles that little wry, sideways smile of his, the one that creeps up quitewhen the two Water Tribe siblings bicker or talk about each other or act...siblingey at each other.

Then there's a cry off in the distance--another dream, another person suffering from their nightmares, and Aang looks off into the distance. His smile fades and he looks back to Sokka.

"I have to go now. Someone else needs help."

He looks like he doesn't want to.

That would be because he doesn't want to.

Sokka takes another step forward and hugs Aang again hugging the younger (not so much younger now, really) boy again, clinging to that orange and saffron robe as if it might be the last time he ever sees Aang. Which, to be honest, it might be.

"Is--" He stops, forcing back more emotion. He can't say it. But he has to.

"Is there anything...anything you want me to tell Katara for you. If...if..." He can't finish the 'if,' more tears starting to stream down his face. This wasn't fair. They'd won. They'd beaten the Fire Lord and gone back to balance and they were friends with Zuko and everything was supposed to be fine now.

But instead they were interdimensional refugees fighting for their lives in a war that dwarfed anything they'd ever known.

"I've talked to her in her dreams. She knows. I told her how much I care about her."

Tears squeeze out of Aang's eyes as he hugs Sokka back just as tightly.

"And now I told you how much I care about you, too. If I don't get to talk to Toph, tell her the same. Tell her--tell her she helped make me strong. Strong enough to do all this. Just like knowing you and Katara made me strong, too."

There's yelling again. He can't wait any longer.

He's the Avatar. He helps people.

Aang finally peels away, yanks his glider out of the snow bank he'd stuck it in and the flaps flare open.

"And Sokka?"

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