milliways_bar | Re-Entrance [under new munagement. Have read RPs with the old Aang. Poke me if I forget something]

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Re-Entrance [under new munagement. Have read RPs with the old Aang. Poke me if I forget something]

If Aang were the type to keep a journal, a sampling of entries would have sounded like this:

Day One (Post-iceburg)

Have been freed from iceburg where I was apparently trapped for a hundred years by a pretty girl. Hundred years = bad. Pretty girl = good. Pretty girl's brother = funny-looking when covered in bison snot.

Now: penguin-sledding with pretty girl! Yey!

Day Five

Sokka in a dress. Ahaha.

Day Fifteen

Sliding around Omashu still fun!

Day Sixteen

Bumi also still crazy. But it's okay because he's a genius!

Day Twenty-six

Getting stuck in caves = not always a bad thing

Which leads up to what today's imaginary entry in Aang's imaginary journal would read...

Day Thirty-Something...I think.

Need real food. Onion and banana juice is not real food, no matter how "spiritually sustaining" Guru Pahtick claims it is. Suspect that he, like most old people I've ever met, is slightly crazy. Still not fully realized Avatar yet.

Now he'd have something else to add to that imaginary entry: Went to bar, because he stumbled in barefoot and half-asleep, rubbing at his eyes, after a night of strange dreams involving connected pools of water filled with onions and bananas.

His stomach spoke first, growling loudly, and then he spoke next, deliriously happy: "Real food!"

And ran over to the bar.

Welcome back to Milliways, you bald little monkey.

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It's probably unconscious, but the metal in his hands, heated and twisted and bent is starting to twist into the triple-tipped flame of the Fire Nation. Much of Zuko's masochism is subconscious; he's not even looking at it! He's looking at Aang.

"Nobody wants to see cowchicken-chested brats running about, though. Get a damn shirt," Zuko says, before he realizes what the Avatar's staring at.

He does not commewnt on that he hasn't seen the Avatar in a while and that made him perfectly happy, or that Katara and Toph are here.

Well, Aang had been perfectly content not to see Zuko gunning behind him too.

Though he'd trade Zuko over Azula any day--he was easier to beat.

"There aren't any rules against it. And not having a shirt doesn't count as naked because I still have pants."

For now. Come the spring, with the outside being warmer, he was probably going to spend a lot of time splashing around in the lake.

Closing his hands over his metalwork, Zuko puts it back in it's box, letting it lay flat and cool there. He's not letting you look at his stuff! Die in a fire!

"...Fine. You'll just give the rats ego -- someone worse built then they are in the bar!" Zuko snaps. Yes, it's been that kind of holiday season, where one stoops to petty remarks about appearance.

Pretty bad, um, considering. How's that whole log in your eye, Zuko? In the SCARRED AND MANGLED eye?

But all he gave in response was a raise of his eyebrow and: "I'm twelve."

"I'm sure they'll take what they can get."

He's been having a rough month. ... ...wait, when is he not?

Never?

Aang was quiet for a moment, and even though he figured it would get Zuko snapping that it wasn't his business, he asked, "Is your uncle...is he okay?"

The old man had helped them up north after all.

But he was almost definitely positive he'd get some form of 'That's not your business!'

Actually, Zuko's groaning. "He's healing. He's in no danger."

And that's all he's saying. He could add what he said to Katara -- we didn't need your damn help! -- but he decieds not to.

And Aang would have argue that it wasn't his help that had been offered--it had been Katara's.

"...Good." Aang certainly didn't trust the Dragon of the West any more than he trusted Zuko, but there was a nobility--a strength of character about him.

Awkward silence.

"So...are you still going to chase after me? Outside?"

What? He'd like to know, and he hasn't seen Zuko for ages.

Zuko's eyes are up and on him for a very long time. Just a really. long. time. Laden with uncomfortable. That sort of silence.

The silence usually followed by some sort of attack. Even Zuko's dogs-- laying not far away-- perk up at the abrupt tension.

"Are you such a fool..." Zuko finally hisses, voice taut with rage, "That you would dare ask that?"

"...II'lll take that as a yes."

Apparently his uncle nearly dying during the chase hadn't been enough to turn him aside. Hokay.

Although probably nothing would, would it. Aang had a mental flash of himself as an old man, hobbling along with a cane, looking behind as a toothless, grey-haired Zuko hobbled after him.

Smoke hissed through Zuko's teeth as he snorted, and then says, "I will not be dissuaded! I am not going to live the rest of my life, never seeing my home. Never forget that-- as long as you are free, I will pursue. I will not give up. I will go home with honor."

Some day, he may regret that monologue. Today, though, is not that day.

Aang was just quiet for a moment, thoughtful.

And maybe a little sad.

After the silence, he said, "You never did answer my question. The one I asked after you got me out of Zhao's fortress."

He wanted to know.

Zuko's eyes narrowed, molten gold roiling beyond the lid, maimed and unmaimed. He does not like the Avatar speaking so freely.

He does not like the question of friendship.

"You are twice the fool I thought you were, Avatar. You got an answer-- it is simply one that doesn't please you."

Of course he didn't like Aang speaking freely. He would prefer him going "mmph mmph!" from behind a gag, bound and on a ship headed back to the Fire Nation.

"No," he said. "I asked again, because I hoped for change--I always do."

A shrug.

Well, those were some wasted cookies.

"I'm sorry you can't go home." And he was.

You know, there were just some things you didn't say to Zuko and expect to walk away from. There was an abrupt flash of hand, fist and flame swinging out.

Bar rules? Whoops? Forgot those in five seconds!

You know? He honestly hadn't been expecting it. Anger, certainly, but he thought that the rules...

"Waugh!"

Not expecting it and unprepared were two very different things though. He had the reflexes of a Waterbending master, Katara had said, and a circular blast of air met the flames and made them dissipate, and he jumped backwards, up on a table, trying to get away.

"I was apologizing!"

Zuko knows the rules; his girlfriend is security. He also knows that he's about to follow Aang up another table.

"Apologizing!? APOLOGIZING!? So you want to take credit now? For keeping me banished?!"

Zuko's got -- really selective hearing. Really. Selective. Hearing.

"No! I just meant that I wish you could go home!" he said, arms raised, ready to take another blow. "If there was any other way than me being imprisoned for the rest of my life, I'd try to help you get back."

Not everyone wished ill on their enemies.

"Your sentiment is meaningless!" Zuko snaps back, his eyes bright; he was just 'home' with the Wells, saw family-- a real family-- held a little baby girl, ate and laughed and--
Maybe you'll find some Earth Kingdom family to adopt you?
He wanted to be sick, and he didn't even know why.
I want father to not think I'm worthless.
"Anyone can say they'll do something-- say they feel a certain way! You're nothing but a liar, Avatar!" he shouts at him. "It's easy to tell someone you feel something you don't! Honorless Airbender! Twisting and turning, you double back on the truth -- you don't care at all!"

"Except that I'm not lying!"

And he wasn't. Toph could tell Zuko. He meant every word of it.

"I know how awful it must be for you, and even though you've chased me, and fought me, and captured me, and captured my friends, and tied them to trees, I know you did all that for a good reason."

Backhanded! Zuko hears his sins listed off. "You would do the same! If it would take you back, you would do the same!"

He can't believe he wouldn't. He won't.

"No. I wouldn't. If I was just an Air Nomad, maybe. But I'm not."

He had a duty not just to his people, not just to his home, lost now to time and decay, but to the world, and that, at least, was something he understand, regardless of all his doubt and mistakes.

He hopped down from the table.

"Nobody deserves to not be able to go home--believe me, I know. But at least you might be able to go home again someday--my home is gone--because of your people. And a lot of people don't have homes anymore, don't have families. I'm not doing this to just--make your life miserable or something, I'm trying to make everyone's lives better. Including the lives of people in the Fire Nation--if there's no war, then they won't keep sending people off to never come home again."

Whether they were soldiers or Fire Nation princes.

"You are delusional! Savior of the world, Balance? It's all a lie, Avatar! You don't know anything! You don't-- even think-- what it'll be like. What'll happen when my Father falls, fool? Do you think there aren't a hundred vipers in his court who won't take up the sword? Or my sister? What do you think she'll do if she attains the throne?" he cuts the air with his hand, flame still streaming from his fingertips with the motion.

"And what about the rest of the world? Do you think they'll leave us alone once you've brought my people to their knees, destoryed their strength, shattered a fleet or army or two?" His eyes were blazing, and the air was hot, so very-- very-- hot.

His teeth are white when they're bared in a snarl. "Or did you forget the North, and what you did there. Do you think you won't do it again? Won't have to? This is war, and if you think you can bring balance to the world without bringing us as low in recompsense for a high as we have gone, you are are ten times the fool! End your life and hope you come out smarter in the next!"

"I'll stop the war, and when your sister and the other people hungry for power try to rise up in court, I'll stop them, just like I did for the Earth King," Aang said, starting to get angry under the calm of his voice. "If I stop the war and I have to fight the Earth Kingdom or the Water Tribes to protect your people, then I will."

A pause. "And I can stop your people without fighting a whole army or destroying another fleet. I have a way."

He wasn't going to tell Zuko what it was, of course.

But that was the beauty of the eclipse--all the Firebenders powerless so that he didn't need to hurt them to make it happen.

"I'm not a lie."

A coward, once, maybe.

"Everything you promise is false," Zuko says, his body tense. "You're a lie, balance is not happening, not ever--! You don't -- you can't -- make a world exist like that! You're just another power, like everything else!"
Yin and yang; Moon and Sun; Boy and Wolf-- balance was hard.

Re-Entrance [under new munagement. Have read RPs with the old Aang. Poke me if I forget something]

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