actually112: (Being the Avatar is heavy stuff)
Aang ([personal profile] actually112) wrote in [community profile] thecapitol2014-10-03 12:00 am

I have regained my breath

Who| Aang and YOU
What| He's fresh out of the arena and he's a little ball of sad.
Where| Training Center; Roof, D4 suite, and everywhere else
When| Late 11th week of the mall arena.
Warnings/Notes| Sadness, references to child death, references to fictional genocide

D4 Suite

Aang woke up being able to hear again. There was no hole in his chest, and he could breathe.

He felt dead inside.

Dying was horrible. He could feel it--his soul, the Avatar spirit battering his chest, trying to escape, but trapped. He could feel himself dying in a way he wasn't meant to, without moving on to someone else. Would the Avatar cycle have been over had they let him stay dead, or would the Avatar spirit escape again once his body rotted and split open to allow it out?

Maybe it had moved on after the darkness overtook him. Maybe, for the briefest moment, he had been a waterbender baby. And then maybe he had died in his new mother's arms.

He staggers into the common area, blankly looking around, not looking all there. His legs feel wrong. His arms feel wrong. His lungs and ears feel wrong. Everything is wrong.

The Roof

It didn't take him long to realize that the autumnal equinox had come and gone. He was 113. It had been 101 years since the Air Nomads were wiped from the earth. Here, in this place of color and strange machines, after watching people die and suffer, without even the wind to whistle in his ears and guide him, he has never felt so alone.

He goes up. He finds stairs, and he goes up until he can't go up anymore. To the roof. The wind blows around him, but it doesn't speak to him like it should. He sits on the ground, overlooking all the towering buildings, buildings full of people who had laughed as they observed his suffering.

He sits down, hugs his knees, and lets tears flow silently down his face. Nothing. His struggles had been for nothing.

Aang takes a deep breath as the wind blows away his tears, and begins to sing. Those who observed him humming on Zuko's chest as he died would recognize the melody, but none of the lyrics are translated like everything else is. That is because there aren't lyrics--he lets out noises from deep in his chest, from high in his throat, making sounds that humans can't make without practice. He's imitating the wind, with its wails and puffs and whistles and moans. The lyrics are nonsense, and yet they mean everything to Aang.

It's the wind. It's all he has left of his people now.

Everywhere

After his grieving, it hits him that he's alive. And so will everyone else be.

His face is a little blotchy, but to hell with that. He's exploring, getting lost, getting found again, wandering into random districts and finding the common area and climbing onto dummies in the training area.

He is looking for friends, old and new and potential.

He doesn't have the Air Nomads, but he has them.
ka_sera_sera: (old general lookup shadowed)

[personal profile] ka_sera_sera 2014-10-10 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's not so different. Look in that cabinet over there," he says, waving toward it. "See if you can find anything calling itself tea. How are you used to making it?" Give him something to focus on, something definite and familiar to do. Then Roland will try to decide if asking about the boy's troubles might do him any good.
ka_sera_sera: (old general listening windswept squint)

[personal profile] ka_sera_sera 2014-10-13 02:03 pm (UTC)(link)
"Probably ought to smell it. Or maybe I ought to." He holds out his hand for the bowl. It's not impossible the boy doesn't know what certain other types of herbs might smell like. Well. Roland wants to, anyway. "How would you make tea with leaves like this? Talk me through it, and I'll show you how to adapt it to this." Because no one should have to live in Panem without knowing how to make comfort-tea.
ka_sera_sera: (old general look right profile)

[personal profile] ka_sera_sera 2014-10-16 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
"Sounds fine. Would you find a kettle for me? Or a pot, barring that?" He waits a moment, smelling the contents of the bowl, and then in a very casual, so-how-about-that-weather-today voice, says: "Is your spirit back where it ought to be?"
ka_sera_sera: (old general considering lookdown)

[personal profile] ka_sera_sera 2014-10-16 01:08 pm (UTC)(link)
"You're the one who told me the kettle you needed," he points out, blandly. "Do you think it's okay?"

The bit about the baby - he'd like dearly to ask about that, because it seems so different from what he'd been raised to believe happened to the ka after a body dies, and different from the two major religions he knows some little about. With a sliver of regret, Roland shuts his curiosity away. The boy might answer if Roland asks, in this state, but that does not mean that he should.

He sets the lid back on the bowl, setting it aside. "Anything that can be done to help it settle?"
ka_sera_sera: (old general look down talking)

[personal profile] ka_sera_sera 2014-10-17 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
Roland nods, squatting for a second to maneuver the right sized pot out from one of the lower cabinets. "Hasn't happened to you before, has it?" Doing this without any of the other pots falling out takes some attention. Perhaps not as much attention as Roland is giving it, but some sorts of questions are best asked so. "Least, not in quite this way."
Edited 2014-10-17 02:24 (UTC)
ka_sera_sera: (old general listening headtilt)

[personal profile] ka_sera_sera 2014-10-17 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, there's the answer to the question he'd earlier decided not to ask. Roland successfully retrieves the pot, standing and setting it on the stove. He sighs. "The longer you stay here," he begins, slow and reluctant, "the more that'll happen. Every arena, unless you 'win'." He lets that sit a moment, watching the boy with a good deal of sympathy. Tea ought to wait a moment, probably, until he knows what sort of reaction that news is going to get.
ka_sera_sera: (old general squint bright)

[personal profile] ka_sera_sera 2014-10-20 01:19 pm (UTC)(link)
"Would you?" He picks up the pot again, taking it to the sink to fill it with water. "Don't expect many here to appreciate that."

What exactly is it, Roland wonders, that he's trying to do? Is he trying to convince this child to kill? Or worse, to admit that the longer he spends as a tribute, the more those high ideals may fade? Roland sighs, setting the pot back on the stove, shaking his head. "Cry your pardon. We all have our own ways of dealing with this place."