trans_9 | "If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind..." [closed]

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"If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind..." [closed]

It had taken him so long to find it, but then he hadn't really been looking. There were no mountains in the city, no places that rose high above the rest, other than the Garibah Tree. And without mountains, he hadn't expected any Air temples.

But here it was, the place where he'd grown up under Monk Gyatso's gentle guidance.

The Southern Air Temple.

It was set into its own hill, like it'd been at atop the mountain, only no rivers flowed here, no trees grew. What trees that were there were dead, but woven into the structure of the place, as they had been when they still lived. There was no smell of mountain blossoms in hanging gently in the air. It was as dead as when he'd first set foot there with Katara and Sokka, when he'd found Monk Gyatso's body.

But it was home. He felt it in the stones under his feet, in the way his voice echoed in the halls when he called out "Hellooo" ("Hello, hello ello ello lo," went his echo) exactly the same as it once did. This was his home. The exact temple, ripped from the world of the Four Nations. The only difference was that the hall of the Avatars was carved out of it, but he knew that was in the Statuary. Why they would tear the place apart he didn't know, but Aang knew by now not to question the actions of a people that didn't make sense, that he'd long since learned not to fully trust.

He would have to tell Nima. Not that she'd have the fondness of the place as him, but it was still one of the temples, and she might still want to walk the halls of this place.

It was terrible and painful and wonderful and beautiful at the same time. It left all kinds of feelings roiling in Aang's gut as he walked through from section to section of the temples, from meditation room to classroom, with Appa and Momo.

Somehow, even though the place wasn't as high up, even though the weather in the city was usually calm, the breeze was perfect here. It didn't smell right, but it felt like it should have felt.

Comforted by it, Aang sat and meditated in the place where he grew up for the first time in a long time. Momo chirped at him and Aang politely shushed him.

"Meditation time is quiet time, Momo."

For the first time in a while, he found true calm, so much so that he was able to get in touch with a part of himself he'd been struggling to get in touch with.

If anyone happened to explore the many splendored halls of his youth, the mountainside spires, the winding passageways of the temple, they would find a giant furry flying bison laying comfortably on a balcony, with a flying lemur sitting on his head, picking through his fur. Next to them both, there was a bald monk seated with his eyes closed, his tattoos glowing a gentle blue glow, robes buffeted by winds that shouldn't have even existed.

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When you need to clear your head -- or even have a breath of fresh(ish) air -- the Doctor finds he likes a good bit of exploring to get the old hearts pumping.

Anyway, it beats the sensoriums and he'd rather have a go at recycled Stacy air than recycled Stacy air moonlighting as a fresh ocean's breeze if he has any say in it. At least it's real, not an imitation. After all he's seen what an imitation can do if taken too far: it's not a pleasant sight. So no, no sensoriums, just the recycled Stacy air and him and a great big City to explore, except it's more like trying to explore, because even if he had all day, he couldn't cover every square centimeter of the city even if he tried. The Doctor starts his hike with a brisk rummage through an old set of bins that looks like it hasn't been tended to in weeks, if not months, and he has to brush aside a health covering of some furry thing to get to the U-pipe stuffed at the bottom.

Pipe now snuggled comfortably under his arm, the Doctor heads to the next interesting thing -- a giant building towering up in the distance, looking old and worn and therefore it's got so many of its own stories to tell. Worth a look.

He's surprised to find he's not the only one with that idea as he almost literally stumbles upon a human and his...friends. Big fella and a little lemury looking thing grooming Big Fella. The Doctor pauses and then remembers, right, humans. Rory had mentioned something about knocking. Or dancing a jig. Maybe a jig wouldn't be the smartest choice when there's what looks like a multi-ton alien sitting relaxed right there. Can't imagine s/he/it would be happy at a Time Lord suddenly jigging a greeting.

The Doctor settles for knocking on the wall next to him. It's old, old enough to be tempting enough to lick, and it's all rather peaceful in the way old things can be.

"Hello!" the Doctor says, adjusting the pipe from one arm to the next.

Edited 2011-06-18 13:28 (UTC)

Aang would've actually appreciated a jig in greeting. Who doesn't love dancing? Scratch that, who doesn't love dancing whose opinion is worth listening to? Because there are lots of cranky people that hate dancing, like the ones that'd been in the Fire Nation and didn't let the kids there dance, but they were cranky people, and cranky people were to be ignored. Or jigged at. Jigging at them would be funnier.

The glowing of his tattoos stopped as he came out of the trance he was in, and the bald monk turned and saw the Doctor.

It was then that the great big bison turned his attention on the doctor too, snuffling at him, as if trying to suss out his general character by smell.

"Hi!" Aang said back, just as cheerful. "I'm Aang! What's your name?"

Everyone was a potential new friend, and already he likes the look of your goofy-kinda face, Doctor. (No offense, but it is goofy. But in a nice way! Kind of like Aang's giant ears.)

The Doctor broke out into a grin of his own.

"The Doctor. Glowy one, aren't you? It works, don't worry," he reassured Aang, who obviously wasn't quite as glowy as before. "And your friends? I assume they have names too but I'm afraid I don't quite speak six legged bison. Or lemur. Not yet, anyway."

He nodded graciously over at the lemur. To his credit, he managed to stay still as the huge bison thing whuffled at him, those big nostrils flaring and he wanted to be generous and say they were at least the size of his head, if not bigger. All in all, impressive. The Doctor glanced around the the balcony. It was old, like everything else, and yet still quite solid. Big, too, obviously built for many: much more than just the three he'd found here.

Without asking, he invited himself the rest of the way in, heading toward where the three were gathered on the old cracked stones. He reached out a hand to let the animals have a closer sniff, not quite petting him. In his experience, you generally had to let them sniff because sticking your hand on them -- rather rude not to.

The Doctor turned to glance at the spacious balcony. "Old home or were you exploring?" Exploring and then sitting down for a quiet meditation session, it'd looked like from when he wandered in.

As for big ears, well. Catch him a few lives back and they could've compared notes. He supposes he can compare how unbald he is with Aang's baldness.

"This is Momo and that's Appa," he said, pointing to lemur and bison, respectively.

Said bison whuffled, decided he'd made his decision about the Doctor, and licked him with his massive, slimy tongue.

"That means he likes you!" Aang said, as if that wasn't already apparent. The more spit you got covered in, the more he liked you, Doctor! And that was a lot of spit.

"And I wasn't exploring--I already know everything that's here. This was the temple where I grew up: the Southern Air Temple. I guess Stacy saved it."

Now that Aang stood up, and grabbed the staff on the ground next to him, there were a lot of things the Doctor could possibly notice about him. One was that his left arm was covered in burn scars and then re-tattooed with the same arrow as his other arm. The other was that he favored his left leg even though nothing seemed wrong with the right, as if out of old habit.

Scars, scars, it was impolite to ask about them, of course, but the interesting thing, the very interesting thing about them is that even when people did ask, he didn't remember why they were there, or when he got the tattoo fixed. There were a lot of things Aang didn't remember, along with a few things he wished he didn't remember.

"Would you like me to show you around?"

He liked the thought of sharing him home with other people, especially now that the people that made it home weren't here. The place was far too empty for him to be comfortable walking its halls alone.

The Doctor staggered under he was still half-convinced was a drool attack.

An affectionate, bisony drool attack.

Somehow he was actually more slimy than when he’d podpopped and come to think of it, Appa really ought to be commended for that sort of thing because it was much more difficult than it looked to out-do Stacy. Overachiever on the slime front, apparently! Blinking through a mask of sticky drool, the Doctor made a face and reached up to try to wipe away a clear spot, almost as if he was used to this sort of thing. Make that partially used too: somehow he didn't make it a habit to go shoving his face into the nearest puddle of slime or slime.

The Doctor's eyes followed Aang, taking in the remnants of a scar and the limp. He didn't comment on it, instead filing it away. "A tour? I'd love a tour. Big beautiful temple and three tour guides. Lovely way to start that day!"

It didn't escape his notice that Aang didn't mention if there had been others from his world who survived with the temple. Whatever had caused the Ohm to go on their multi-dimensional, mult-temporal war had made survivors of everyone onboard the ship -- and that might not count if there were any lost still stranded back in their home universe, particularly if the Ohm hadn't been as thorough as everyone seemed to think. The Doctor gave himself a tiny shake to bring himself back to the present, aiming a smile at Aang as if they weren't standing in what could be the last piece of Aang's world left in existence. He gestured almost grandly for Aang to begin the tour.

He did, however, fish about in his pockets for a handkerchief (or several -- several would be good) to try to deal with Appa drool while he was at it and took the time to mop vainly at his face and bowtie as he fell into step next to Aang.

"It'll just be the three of us. There's some places Appa can't fit and he doesn't like small spaces."

Flying bison preferred to be outdoor animals.

"If you're the Doctor, what are you a doctor of? What do you heal?" Aang asked curiously as they started to walk.

That was impressive, the "The" in the front. Just like he was The Avatar. It implied you were the only one of something, the only one that could do certain special things. That's what a "The" did. Very powerful word sometimes "The." Sometimes a very solitary word.

Aang led the Doctor through winding hallways, that spiraled down to other hallways, with Momo trailing along. There were a lot of spirals and circles in the design of the place. They were starting outside, at the Airball court, and he wanted to show him Monk Gyatso's statue, and the many balconies, and the trees that shaded everything, even if they were dead now.

No, he supposed a big bison like that wouldn't. Easy to get stuck, nevermind overheating in that much fur.

The Doctor glanced sidelong at Aang as he proved to be very human and asked that questions. For some reason humans were all very keen on trying to narrow down what he was a Doctor of, as if you couldn't be a Doctor of whatever you put your mind to (his personal favorite).

"I like to think you don't need to heal any one thing. A bit boring, wouldn't you agree?"

He smiled at Aang, pleased he hadn't gone the route of "that's not a name".

The Doctor glanced down the corridors that branched off from one another. Most civilizations seemed to like a repeating motif and wherever Aang was from, his didn't look any different. He wished he could say the air was perfectly clear here, but with Stacy's ever present humidity, it wasn't the achingly beautiful, clean mountain air he probably could've expected. The Doctor stopped just outside the door, reaching out to touch the curves of it as if he could see all the stories an old thing like that had.

"What's that?" The Doctor pointed at what -- to him -- looked like an odd series of wood beams sprouting up from the ground.

"That's one of the Airball fields! It's a game we used to play to practice our Airbending. You balance on top of the poles and run around and have to score goals against the other side. No elbows, knees, popsies, or poofsies allowed but everything else is fair game!"

Every sport had its own ridiculous slang, didn't it? Airball was no exception.

Healing. Just like his element, Aang tended to bop back and forth, flitting from one idea to the next. Healing. That was very true, about healing any one thing.

"And I agree with you," Aang said, scritching Momo's head after the lemur briefly landed on his shoulder. "About healing. There's too much in the universe that needs it to be focused on healing just one thing."

It was a big job, but someone had to do it, take it all on themselves to run around with a staff or a sonic screwdriver and fix the world around them, didn't they? Make sure things were fair, that they were right, that the scales were balanced somehow.

"As the Avatar, it's my job to try to fix it all. I talked with my past lives but I still don't have much of an idea where to start. So far, the only thing I can think of is to just help the crew as best as I can."

Sometimes he forgot that some people didn't inherently understand what he was. But hey, nothing wrong with dropping deets about your past lives to people, right?

There weren't many places on the ship where one could assuredly be alone, but Thom had found that the City was his best chance at quiet and solitude. Gone was the frantic hunting he had done to find a place that held the answer - the Tower of High Sorcery (Aibghalien and Celena really, but you'd never get him to admit it) had saved his life, and that gave him a more relaxed air as he explored the city.

This temple reminded him of the City of the Gods, as lofty and high-reaching as he remembered it, but the architecture was more graceful. He wandered through the hallways, absorbing the silence gratefully.

Thom didn't expect to find another soul in this place, so coming on the boy and his animals made him pause for a moment. He recognized meditation when he saw it, so he did not disturb the tattooed boy. He simply focused his attention on the carvings in the temple and examined them quietly.

The glow of the tattoos dimmed.

"It's okay to talk. Though I appreciate your politeness in not interrupting."

Thom should have expected that - if someone walked into his meditation space, it would only take him seconds to notice.

"I was only observing," he said. "This place... reminds me of my world, in a way. Many things are different but the air of solitude is the same."

"It didn't used to be so secluded. It used to be very lively when people lived here, but it was a place of peace, where people sought spiritual enlightenment," Aang explained where he sat, as Momo flitted to his shoulder.

"It reminds me of a school," Thom said absently, his hand resting on the wall. "Yet another thing the Ohm have to answer for, I suppose."

Thom wanted an up-close encounter with those things, and one day he would get it. And they would not walk away.

"It was a school, and a temple, and a home all in one. We were mostly nomads, so having the temples as places we could settle if we needed to was important to us."

"Home" meant more when you weren't often there and it felt the same way every time you went back anyway.

"But the Ohm weren't responsible for making this place so empty," Aang said slowly, sadly. "My people were long gone before the Ohm ever came."

"Your people?" Thom asked.

In someone else that might have provoked an expression of sympathy. Thom was more interested in the academic standpoint, almost not seeing the young man in front of him.

"They were killed by the Fire Nation."

All of them.

"I'm the last Airbender--or at least I was, until I was brought here. The ship saved one of the nuns. Sister Nima."

There was the faintest of smiles on his face. One person in the face of all that loss didn't do much to dull the pain of it, but it helped. Yes, it certainly helped.

And it was a loss. He wasn't sure what would happen when all this was over. If the goal was to restore everything back the way it was, didn't that mean exactly that? No more Airbenders aside from the ones Stacy had picked up?

Again the proper response escaped him. "The Fire Nation - Princess Azula's Fire Nation?" Thom asked, turning away from the carvings at last to focus on Aang.

Interesting. Perhaps he would get more to her story - she was a fascinating individual.

Aang's eyes flicked up to Thom, curiously.

What did he know of Princess Azula. Was he someone that just saw the hub-bub at the meeting or was she gathering allies already?

"Yes. Although it happened long before she was born. Around a hundred years, give or take."

"She is a powerful force," Thom said, neither condemning nor exalting her presence. "Someone with that much determination shouldn't be easily cast aside."

Was Azula gathering allies, or was Thom? He saw the Princess as someone useful that he could come to make rely on him.

"She's dangerous," Aang said simply. "Not someone to turn your back to."

Maybe that was a warning. Perhaps. Maybe he was just talking about her nature.

"So are many people," Thom said. "I imagine her firebending would make her dangerous."

He was being purposefully obtuse - he knew Azula was dangerous for far more than just her firebending, but he wanted to know what this boy knew about her.

"Not just her firebending, she's dangerous. Her mind is," Aang corrected.

"I did notice she didn't seem entirely stable," Thom said. "But remarkably lucid, for someone who had been locked in the brig upon arriving."

Azula had of course downplayed her imprisonment, so Thom had no idea what she had actually done. He wouldn't put much past her though - she seemed ruthless.

"Why are you so interested in Azula?" Aang asked, though his voice wasn't as suspicious as it could be.

Easygoing monk though he was, he still wasn't the most trusting where Azula was concerned. You know how the saying goes, don't you, Thom? "Electrocute me once, shame on you, electrocute me twice, etc. etc."

Giving Azula information was dangerous, but giving information about Azula could be as well if there were any Dai Li types out there looking for a fire princess to team up with.

"She is interesting," Thom said simply. "She has a power I have never seen before. And I am nobility, where she is royalty. Why are you so interested in my interest?"

If Azula was a potential ally, he had to feel out her potential enemies. This boy didn't seem like much of an enemy, but Thom knew better than to underestimate anyone on this ship.

"Why are you interested in my interest in your interest?"

Er, wait.

"You could have asked how a hundred years had passed since all my people were gone, and how it happened before she was born, yet how I still knew Azula--" Seriously, time paradox up in your face, Thom "--you could have asked about my people, or this temple, or my world, or even just the Fire Nation itself. You could have asked a lot of things, but you wanted to know about Azula. Determined, powerful, dangerous Azula. Your words, not mine, though they are true."

Aang wasn't the most suspicious person in the world. In fact, he was incredibly trusting, especially when it came to most things, but where Azula was concerned, he and his friends were downright paranoid. The only thing worse than Azula being free was her being free to make possible powerful allies. Even in her condition, they had that to worry about.

He pointed out rationally, "If someone were to come asking you questions about someone you knew who was powerful and deceptive and manipulative, prone to making and discarding allies and using others to do terrible things, wouldn't you want to know why they were interested in that person?"

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"If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind..." [closed]

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