Carved In Rock || ATLA

The Ghost Of You

The Library Finale

"And all the things that you never ever told me, and all the smiles that are ever going to haunt me. Never coming home, never coming home. Could I? Should I? And all the wounds that are ever gonna scar me, for all the ghosts that are never gonna..." - My Chemical Romance

Warning: This chapter may contain graphic depictions of violence that may be upsetting to some, reader discretion is advised.

🌊🏔🔥🌪

For the first time in a long time, seeds of hope began to swell in Aang's chest. Maybe he wasn't the last airbender.

"It's here." He chuckled on the floor, a tome older than he was with yellowing pages opened in his lap. "I knew it. Aelita!"

"Yes?" She replied as she slid down the tall ladder she had been using to browse.

"When Katara and Sokka took me back to the Southern Air Temple, I shut down after I found Gyatso. Katara helped me out of the spirit state and it finally hit me what all really happened while I was on ice. The entire temple was in ruins, so I assumed everything was lost and I was too drained to look around and see if I was wrong. But then I found this." He pointed to the book he was holding. "This is a record of everyone who was ever born at the Southern Air Temple. Look!" His fingers grazed the text. "There's my name."

"Damn." She whispered under her breath, in awe of the fact that her friend was genuinely holding a piece of history. "Zei would lose his mind if he saw this, this is a real relic. What are all those numbers?" She pointed to the figures by Aang's name. "Your birthdate?"

"Only the first one." He smiled. "The rest are coordinates, departures, and return dates. My people were nomads, but we kept careful records of our journeys and where they took us. Like that one." He pointed to the set of numbers grouped next to his name. "Those are the coordinates of Omashu. That was the first time I met Bumi."

"That's amazing Aang." The Akira returned her friend's smile, happy he found a moment of peace he deserved.

"That's not the real amazing part. Look at some of these numbers." His fingers moved to several on the current page before flipping it and pointing to several more. "Those are departure dates. What's missing?"

"I'm not sure."

"A return date! And see, we know when Sozin launched his first attack on the air temples, starting with mine. Some of these departures were just days before the comet came, some are even from that morning. That means some nomads weren't at the temple. Do you know what that means?"

"Aang..." Her heart broke when she realized where this was going.

"It means they could've survived! They wouldn't have been there on the day of the attacks, and I don't know all of these locations off the top of my head but I do remember the coordinates of every temple and a lot of these aren't the other temples. My people would've never launched a counterattack or sought the Fire Nation out, they would've gone into hiding! They would've tried to find other survivors and disappear until they knew airbenders were no longer being persecuted, except that hasn't happened yet. And here." He picked up a scroll he had already studied. "It's believed due to our deep spirituality Air Nomads lived life spans much longer than that of the average person, with multiple documented cases of monks living well past a century, Guru Laghiama living to be almost a hundred and twenty years old."

"I know Aang but..."

"So there's a chance there may be a handful of the original airbenders still alive! And even if some have passed from old age, they still might have had children and some of those kids could be airbenders!" Aang lifted himself on a ball of moving currents and closed the scroll, tucking it into his robes, practically bouncing with excitement. "I can find them Aelita! I can rebuild the Air Nation! I..."