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trans_92011-03-27 10:09 pm
jesushasayak.livejournal.com) wrote in trans_92011-03-27 10:09 pm
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Paper Cranes [open]
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.
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.
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Marco eyed Momo - just how many weird flying animals did this guy have - before staring at Aang in mock horror. "Oh no. You're just like Cassie. A bald, wacko Cassie."
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Says the guy from the book series."Who's Cassie?"
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Shut up they're totally real and not for children, okay?!"Friend from home. She used to be here too, but Stacy repodded her a while back. She like, makes hugging trees and saving the animals her mission in life."
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There was slight confusion.
"I don't know what hugging trees would do, though. Hugging animals, maybe," he said, still playing with Momo.
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He went on, "People can't live on a barren world, and people are what we're fighting for."
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He lay back down again on the duck, swinging his legs over the edge.
"The spirits are tied to nature and feel the pain of a forest burning. I've seen the moon spirit die and the effect it had on the world, and if not for a friend giving her life to save it, our world would have been doomed before the Ohm ever came and our very human war would've been lost. It's my job to save both, not a luxury. If one or the other suffers, I've failed them both."
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"Do I tell them they're worth less than a human life?" Aang asked, gesturing to the two animals, one of which nuzzled against Appa's head-fur affectionately.
He went on, "Life rarely gives you such black and white choices, between one thing or another. When it does, there's usually a third option. The third option usually involves a sacrifice of some kind. From yourself."
"So I'd probably die somehow," Aang said casually. "Like all the times I've died before. Doing all I can to save both anyway."
He seemed to mean it, too, although his legs never stopped kicking casually over the edge of the pier.
"Like I said, it's my job. I have to protect both when I can. It doesn't mean saving a forest over a human life--forests can still grow back from the seeds--but it does mean not letting too much of the world burn. There has to be balance."
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Aang sat up.
"All choices have to be balanced, at least for someone like me. Sometimes that means saving the many and not the one and sometimes that means saving the one and not the many. Sometimes that means risking myself to save them all. Sometimes it mean taking chances that could lead to worse things that are gambles to get a better outcome."
There was something in Aang's voice and eyes that suddenly very, very old.
"People do die in war, and I know this because of a stupid choice I made when I was 12-years-old, and scared, and how scared I was wasn't an excuse for that choice."
Do not talk to him about hard choices, Marco.
"You're lecturing someone who already understands this, and has had to learn this every life for a thousand lifetimes, that has to carry the burden of their choices not just to the end of their lives, but into the next life."
Aang sucked in a deep breath, than blurted out, "Basically, what I'm saying is: I know. And even knowing all that, it was still my job to save everyone and everything. It still is now."
Do you get it now, Marco? He's not saying that it isn't impossible, he's saying that he's expected to do the impossible.
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Although he still found the idea of someone having the job of saving 'everything' completely ridiculous.
"Sooooooo, you're not a god, and yet you're responsible for everyone and everything?" Marco said instead. "Remind me to blame you the next time my mom kills a house plan then. Cause dude, saving that thing was so your job."
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One had to wonder how he wasn't a quivering, nervous wreck under that kind of pressure.
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Aang took in a deep breath and looked at the fake sky.
"I've learned to live with being the Avatar. It's who I am--I've accepted it. It was never a choice, though. Neither was having to stop the war--and neither was fighting in this one. Sometimes people just get chosen for things and don't have any say in who or what they have to be."
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Except Marco didn't exactly want to clue Aang onto that fact.
"Tough break, man," he said instead, aiming to keep casual. "Not fighting is way more fun. Also has less risk of dying, which is always a bonus."
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