milliways_bar | 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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Like a phantom pain, Malu feels the flames licking at her back, the backs of her arms and legs all over again. Its all she can do not to look over her shoulder just to be sure.

She nods. She doesn't trust herself to speak without crying.

He shut his eyes tight, for a moment, then decided she deserved for him to face her, instead of hiding or turning away or...or running.

Tears started to pour down his face, and he wasn't one for gestures of honor, or dramatics, but he took those last few steps forward, and it was almost like he fell midstep, down into a bow, hands and head pressed to the floor in a gesture of humility, and apology.

A gesture of shame.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I failed you and everyone else. I'm sorry!"

There's no disguising the pure, naked shock on Malu's face when Aang - the Avatar - bows on the floor in front of her and apologizes. For a moment she doesn't know what to do, how to react.

Then she crouches down, lays a hand on his shoulder.

"It- it's all right." The words don't come easily, but they come. Malu knows she has to say them, needs to. "I forgive you."

He had failed countless people. Maybe he would have died if he'd stayed, but maybe not. He'd never know now.

The whole world had suffered. Katara and Sokka's mother had died, Jet and his freedom fighters had lost their families, all over the world people had lost their homes, their freedom, people they'd loved.

But it was different, looking on the faces of the people who'd suffered a few generations later.

She had died--had burned--directly because of him, because they'd been looking for him.

He didn't stand, barely sat up, sniffing miserably, his face blotchy, as he looked up at her.

"I'm--I just--I--"

No. No, excuses.

All he could do was close his eyes again and lean into her hand as tears plopped onto his pants.

And there was still that joy, mixed in with the guilt and shame and despair, at seeing one of his people again, dead or not, but it was like a candle flickering in a cavernous, windy room.

"I guess you already know who I am, huh," he choked out, trying to make conversation past the crying.

She nods. "I know."

And because its only fair, "My name is Malu."

"Aang. I'm Aang."

He was still sitting there looking miserable and he didn't intend on moving anytime soon. Being miserable made him into a lump.

Another nod. Malu changed her position so she was sitting in front of him on the floor.

She doesn't know what else to say. So she just sits there, with him, her hand on his shoulder.

Its the only thing she can think of to do.

He started rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. Since he wasn't wearing a shirt, it wasn't that effective.

"Sorry," he said, for the tears. "You're the first Air Nomad I've seen since..."

He cut himself off and sucked in a deep breath. "I didn't just run away, I want you to know that--I mean, I did but I didn't mean to be gone for so long and if I'd known what they were doing to you--to us--to our people, I would've done what I could. I--"

He needed to explain.

"I was scared, and the monks wanted to take me away from everything familiar--from my master--and they wanted me to fight and I was just--I was scared. And when I took my bison and ran, there was this storm..."

Malu doesn't say anything during his explanation; she just listens. And tries not to judge. He's the Avatar, but she also sees how young he is. He's nearly her age.

He's just a kid, like her.

"I'd have felt the same way," she comments "if they tried to take me away from Sister Lio."

"They wanted to take me away from Gyatso and there was the storm and me and Appa went down into the ocean. We would have drowned, but the Avatar Spirit came to the surface and it was instinct--I made a bubble around us and froze it. And we were frozen there for a long time. When I woke up, two Water Tribesman had broken me out of it, and a hundred years had passed. It was a blink of an eye. I was under the water and then waking up and all that time was gone. And it was too late to go back," he said. "I didn't mean to--I didn't mean for that to happen, I didn't mean for any of it, I swear."

Malu nods. "I know," she murmurs.

In his position, who says she wouldn't have done the exact same thing?

She forgave him, right? That was good. That was...

He was panicking. He wanted to run, he wanted to just run right back out the door, to the temple where Guru Pahtik was waiting.

But he had Zuko's words ringing in his ears.

("You're just avoiding responsbility. Again: I call you coward! You just want to live in a dream world, just like uncle does. The world doesn't work that way; nothing falls into place neatly. You can't even take responsbility for your actions. A spirit did it-- through you, huh? Coward. Filthy, lying coward!")

So he stayed, but he couldn't trust his legs to move, to get him up to a seat, so he just sat there.

"Did--was--how bad--? Is there a chance anyone got away? That they could have hidden somewhere? Nobody knows anything--Airbenders are almost legends to some people--just stories."

"It was...bad," Malu answers honestly. "From what I heard the Fire Nation attacked the Western Temple first, then spread out to get the rest of us. I didn't see what happened at the Eastern temple; one of the sisters hid me in the caves below."

She shakes her head in response to his second question. "I don't know, Aang. The Fire Nation was pretty thorough in hunting us down."

Mopeage. Big-time mopeage.

He went quiet. He was out of "I'm sorry"s and wanted to run off, but he wasn't going to be a coward and do that.

Not again.

"There's still hope, Aang," Malu says quietly after a little while. "You're still alive. And if there are any Airbenders out there...maybe they don't know that they're Airbenders, well...they'll need a teacher, won't they?"

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

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