Paper Cranes [open]

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

It was just for practice, and also something to distract himself and pass the time. It was almost meditative, after all.

Not that he was feeling as sad anymore. Life happened, there were hurts that were just part of it all. He was human so he could feel them and understand them, so he could know heartbreak just as well as love, calm just as well as anger, sadness just as well as happiness. He was human so he'd make choices he wasn't sure were right that he had to live with, so he could be hurt and wonder if it was right to feel that way.

Aang had come to accept that, so now he was just distracting himself. He'd managed to find paper--real paper--from Weapons and Possessions. It was rice paper, in a wide variety of colors, and he sitting against Appa in his Sensorium and folding it into a wide variety of animals.

Some were pretty good, depending on how long he'd actually bothered to practice doing that kind of animals. Others...well they were almost recognizably animals.

"What do you think, Appa? What does it look like to you?"

Appa grunted a long groaning sound, and Aang scratched his head.

"Actually, it's supposed to be a bison like you, not a boarcupine. But I guess it's a boarcupine now!"

He smiled and placed it down with the others and picked up his birds (most of them cranes) and started making them dance in the air over his head, which was the real point of all this. Airbending practice. Fine control was something he could always use work on and making the little paper birds fly overheard was fun.

Comments

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"Impressive," Cargn said, laughing slightly at the display.

He willed a chair into existence across from Aang and took a seat. Sometimes, the Sensoriums were quite convenient.

"How have you been?" he asked. "I admit I haven't had much time to catch up with you since you've gotten back."

His work on the Map hadn't helped his socialization time, either.

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"I needed to spend some time just with Appa," Aang said, patting the great beast's side. "I feel a little better now. Almost."

He went on, "I think, after everything, I needed the rest."

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"Good," Cargn replied with a chuckle. "A sullen demeanor doesn't suit you."

He picks up another piece of paper, and begins folding that one as well.

"I hadn't had the chance to mention the last time we spoke, but I've taken on an apprentice since you've been gone."

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"Really? Who?"

A pause.

"Are you teaching them to be mysterious? I bet that takes a lot of practice."

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"As studious as she is," Cargn laughed, "I don't think Miku could manage to pull off the same air of mystery as I."

"You would probably enjoy speaking with her, though. She has a very bright outlook on things, despite her issues with her abilities."

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"I think I'd like to meet her then," Aang said with a smile. "And I understand what it feels to be a little scared of what you can do."

He'd had this issue with his Firebending and fearing the Avatar State itself. It'd taken him some time to make peace with himself and all that he could do.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"She has made great progress, however," he notes. "Slowly but surely she is beginning to understand the more advanced techniques of controlling her powers. In time, she will have little to fear."

He was indeed rather proud of what she'd learned (even if she didn't always keep up with her practice).

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"Do you like teaching her?" Aang asked. "It seems to have brought you some happiness, too."

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"It is not something I often do," he said. "I oversaw the training of a number of initiates when I was a part of my Chapter's Librarium, but those training regimens were...well. Let us just say that few make it through alive."

When your job was to protect a galaxy spanning empire from soul devouring demons, your selection process tends to be rather strict.

"It is nice not having to be concerned about whether or not your pupil will survive."

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"Your ways back home always sound so harsh. It must be a relief to be able to live differently here."

Aang went on, "Even though you still choose to hide all you know, knowing that lives hang in the balance."

It was still said gently, gently, but after the last mission and what they'd found out...

He had some questions for his friend.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes.

Honestly, he's always been surprised people don't ask him more questions, really.

"Speak your mind, then. I respect you enough to give you what answers I can."

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"How much do you actually know?"

It was even more than what he knew, he knew that much.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"Many possibilities, mostly. Paths the future can take."

That was typically how precognition worked in his world, really. It was just a matter of figuring out how to get one of the more favorable possibilities to come about.

"A number of solid truths as well, which let me know I have chosen the proper path."

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"Just telling people at the wrong times could affect those paths, couldn't they. They could make some choices we might need to make impossible."

His past lives had taught him things about the many paths life could take, the way choices could influence the future. It was an easy jump in logic to make.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"True enough," he replies. "Most people, particularly those in situations as dire as this, often act in haste. To secure the opportunity they believe to be in front of them."

His face lowers slightly.

"I have considered all possibilities in which I have revealed everything I know. I have looked to each of those possible paths."

"In each one, my action would lead to our true path being cut off from us. Often, by our deaths."

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"So you know things we should do. And you can guide us, but if you just tell everyone you know all the possible futures and tell them exactly what happens and what they should do, we'll probably all die."

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"A dilemma often carried by those in such a position as I."

Not that he regrets it. He knows he was given this gift for a purpose from a higher power.

It is merely his task to play the role given to him.

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"But we can ask you sometimes for what you know and sometimes it'll be the right question at the right time, and you can tell us."

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"Of course," he said thoughtfully. "All will be revealed in time. But that doesn't mean it comes unbidden."

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"There are people that aren't going to trust you, or think that you have our best interests at heart," Aang said quietly.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"That is something I can live with."

It's something he's lived with for the past eight centuries, after all.

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

"I know, but that will make things more complicated," Aang said, rubbing his chin.

Oddly, he said nothing about not trusting him himself.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

Cargn laughs.

"Complicated I can deal with. The Inquisition often has to deal with people believing they don't have their best interests in mind."

Of course, it's true that a good number of Inquisitor's don't, but that's just the get-the-bad-guys-at-all-costs kind of guys.

[jesushasayak.livejournal.com]

Important question: "What can you tell me about my missing time? Right now?"

A pause. "And does it have anything to do with the crews from the ship that weren't Daligig that were on that planet first? Does it have anything to do with the way that planet was...familiar to me? Like I'd been there before?"

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

"It does," he said. "As I have said before, there have been previous crews."

He just never said who was on them.