It Was in Me

air temples

5. air temples - i finally realized, all of this time / it was in me / all along, it was in me

Faded. That was the word. Everything about the Northern Air Temple was... faded.

The murals had grown softer, paint peeling and splintered with jagged cracks. The walls were crumbling in many rooms, the insertion of metal pipes drastically changing the infrastructure. Spaces that had once been full of people, full of life, were abandoned. Desolate. Empty.

Aang's memories were so - so vibrant in his mind. And now, the present simply... paled in comparison.

Faded. Everything had faded.

His chest was tight.

"Aang? Can I come in?"

Aang blinked upon hearing his name, turning around to see that Teo had wheeled up behind him. His new friend had come to a stop beneath a fractured wooden doorframe. "Uh... sure?" he finally answered. "I don't think you need my permission, though."

Teo shrugged as he rolled inside. "You seemed lost in thought. I didn't want to startle you."

Aang flushed. He'd definitely been caught up in the past. Or maybe he'd been agonizing over the present. Was there a difference? "Oh."

Teo laughed. "Nothing wrong with being easy to read. My father tells me I'm the same."

Aang smiled. "I guess it's not too bad, then. Having anything in common with you is a plus."

It was Teo's turn for his face to redden. "Wow. Me, having something in common with the Avatar?" He shook his head, feigning awe. "That's incredible. I've never felt so cool."

Aang rolled his eyes, grinning. "As if you didn't almost out-glide me all of a few hours ago."

"'Almost'?" Teo repeated, eyes twinkling with mischief. "I seem to recall that I did out-glide you, Avatar."

Aang laughed, tilting his head to the side. "Then I guess we'll just have to organize an official rematch, won't we?"

"I'll pencil it into my schedule. Hope you're ready to lose again."

"Ooh, fighting words." Aang winked at him. "Don't count your pickens before they hatch." A beat passed, and he shook his head, realizing Teo had probably not tracked him down for small talk. "Sorry. I kind of took us on a tangent there. Was there a specific reason you were looking for me?"

Teo blinked. "Yes. Right." He jutted his thumb behind them. "There's something I want to show you in my room. I think it might... mean something to you."

Aang frowned. "Should we get Katara and Sokka?"

Teo shook his head. "No. It won't matter to them." He hesitated, amending, "I mean, we can get them if you want, of course. It's just -" Teo huffed. "Sorry. I didn't think..." He met Aang's eyes, and his next words made Aang's entire body tense. "I found something from your people. The airbenders. I thought you might want to see it... in private."

Aang swallowed hard, blinking back tears he both did and didn't understand. "Thank you," he whispered after a pause. He cleared his throat. "I really appreciate that." He gestured to the door. "Lead the way?"

Teo nodded, and when he steered himself out the room, Aang followed.

"I found it recently," Teo explained as he directed Aang through the temple. "Completely on accident, too. I had to get up super early one morning to help my dad with some work, so I wasn't even half-awake when I got into my chair. I was pulling my hair up, but apparently I'd forgotten to lock the brakes, because gravity rolled me backwards with a little extra force into the corner of my room."

Aang's eyes widened. "Wait, are you -"

"Oh, I'm fine," Teo reassured him with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I took way harder hits than that when I was first learning how to land with my glider."

Aang laughed. "Yeah, landing is a lot easier when you can use airbending as a cushion."

Teo sighed dramatically. "If only! I have to rely on favorable air currents and precise mathematical angles."

Aang winked at him. "Which goes to show how brilliant you are, since you now land so effortlessly."

Teo snorted. "Trial and error, Aang. Trial and error." He gave him a crooked smile. "And all the math, too." He paused, rolling to a stop. "Okay. We're here."

The room wasn't too different from how Aang remembered the sleeping quarters of the Northern Air Temple to be. Minimalistic, yet comforting. Aang noticed there were a few mechanical gadgets scattered about the place that hadn't been there a century ago, as well as a wooden desk with smudged blueprints resting atop it.

Teo must have realized what he was looking at, as his face went scarlet and he immediately flipped the sketches over. "Sorry. They're nowhere near as good as my dad's yet."

Aang wanted to protest that Teo's designs were fine and he didn't want to compare them to his father's anyway, but his voice vanished as Teo pointed to an open corner of his bedroom. A small space to the left of his friend's sleeping arrangements.

"My chair knocked a brick loose that morning," Teo explained, continuing the story he'd started in the hall. "At first, I thought it was just because the temple is old." He wheeled over to the corner, running his hand over a stone slightly lighter than the rest. Indiscernible to someone not looking for it. "But when I tried to fix it..." Teo slid the brick out of the wall. In the space left open behind it were...

Scrolls?

"I found these," Teo finished, pulling out three sheets of rolled-up parchment with his other hand and offering them to Aang. "I think they were made by the airbenders who used to live here." He paused. "Your people, I mean."

Aang accepted the scrolls with shaking hands. The edges of the papers had yellowed with time, age making them thin and fragile, but overall the pages were well-preserved.

Aang carefully unrolled each sheet, smoothing them out flat atop Teo's desk. They were... Pictures.

Art.

Two were drawn by young boys, Aang presumed, based on the inexperience and bright hues of the art style. One was of a grinning sky bison, and the other was a color-coded collage of the symbols for the four elements. Both images radiated childlike glee.

The third was much neater, painted by the hand of someone gifted with a brush. It depicted the Air Nomads' tattooing ceremony, Aang realized, where an unidentified airbender was being given their arrows and granted the title of an airbending master. Everything about the picture was - was vibrant, from the sky blue arrows to the warm tones of the monks' orange robes, each detail bursting with memories of a peaceful time long since passed.

Aang hadn't realized he was crying until Teo began to frantically ask if he was okay.

"I'm fine," Aang reassured his friend, voice steadier than he expected it to be. He wiped his eyes, but tears continued to silently fall. "I just..." He glanced down at the three artworks a second time before turning around to crush Teo in a hug. The young mechanic seemed shocked, but soon returned the embrace.

"Thank you," Aang whispered, his face nestled in Teo's shoulder. "For keeping them alive."

Teo squeezed Aang tighter. "I owe them everything. We wouldn't have survived without this temple."

The Northern Air Temple. Full of secrets and surprises. A painful past, a painful present, yet nonetheless possessing a hopeful future.

Faded, Aang had called it.

No. No, it wasn't faded. He'd been wrong. The temple was vibrant. Bursting with colors contained behind gray stone walls. The temple was scarred, maybe. Aang couldn't deny that. Bruised, even. Beaten and broken and blistered.

But not faded.

Vibrant.

~*~

no i don't have a teoaang agenda why do you ask?? i hope to see you tomorrow for day 6 - grief. (also can y'all believe aang week is almost finished?? i need a whole aang year smh.) thank you for reading!