Chapter 1

There're footsteps. He's discovered Monk Gyatso's corpse, found the carcasses of the Fire Nation soldiers. He's accepted he's the last of his people.

Still, Aang spins around with blatant hope blooming in his chest. Only, it's not an air bender.

The figure is young but clearly a woman, not a girl like Katara. Katara who is off getting supplies with Sokka. Katara who has the same dark skin and clear blue eyes as this woman does.

They stare at each other for a single moment, Aang with his staff half way between being raised and half way between lowered, the woman with her hands up and water pooling at the edge of her flask. He can feel her eyes scan over him in the same manner he does hers. She's, she's clearly Water Tribe. And she's a water bender too! That's it, they're sorted! If they bring the woman along, they won't have to go to the Northern Water Tribe and can spend a bit longer seeing the sights, finding the animals, like… like the ring-tailed flying lemurs. The only thing that seems to have survived the Fire Nation's attack.

Aang's breath gets caught in his throat and his eyes burn again as he desperately tries to push the thought down.

"Are you a water bender?!"

"I- yes? I am. Are you an air bender?"

I

Lu Ten wakes up. He doesn't expect to, not after the way the rocks has crushed his body. Not after the way the avalanche had rocketed towards him and his division, the earth-bending filth who were so determined to cling to their outdated ways. No, Lu Ten hadn't expected to wake up.

The pain (the breath-stealing, heart-burning, mind-searing pain) isn't a shock. His whole body feels as if it has been pulverised, trampled by a Komodo rhino and left with the broken bones. It is a miracle he can feel his legs. If he can feel them, that means there's the slightest chance he could walk again. Even if those boulders had been so large, so daunting, refusing to be blasted away even by his strongest fire-punches-

"Calm down, soldier, you're not on the battlefield anymore." The accent is not Fire Nation. While not too worrisome given the colonies, it still doesn't change he fact he is in the presence of an unknown, injured to the point he cannot defend himself. His legs are broken, that much he can tell by the fact that, when he moves them, they call out in pain, refuse and rebel against his intentions. He is a sitting turtleduck and the only reassurance he has that he won't be further harmed is the knowledge his captor/healer could have already done so.

"Don't move your legs, or your right arm. They're broken and in make-shift casts at the moment. Drink this, it'll help with the pain."

He cannot see much in this darkness, only the vague shape of the woman that attends to him. A cup, carved wood with the edges sanded down, is pressed to his lips and Lu Ten drinks up the liquid as the desert does; greedily, unsatisfied.

"Sleep. Recover your strength."

Sitting on the floor of the Southern Air Temple, the very one they have spent the last five months in without so much as a hint at any other human life, Alasie watches as Aang the air bender (the avatar? She dares not ask yet) makes a glass marble spin about above his hands, weaving back and forth between his fingers. Alasie has responded in kind, water spilling around her own hands, seeping in and out like a meandering river, slow and steady and controlled.

Lu Ten sits beside her, fire in his palm and disbelief in his eyes. She's not surprised. Part of her feels as if this is all some unexpected dream, as if she will wake up and it will all have been nought but a figment of her imagination.

But, despite the lack of any kind of air bending presence in the world for near a hundred years, Aang sits before them. He's watching the water in her palm, the fire that snakes between Lu Ten's fingers with wide grey eyes and twitching fingers. He's caught his marble now, rolling it between forefinger and thumb.

"So, I need a water bending teacher and a fire bending teacher-" Bingo.

Alasie says nothing for it is not her decision to make. They have a plan, a way of stopping the war, a deadline that is fast approaching with the impending return of the comet. It had all bee Lu's idea. She is just here to help, to heal. To be a friend. So, she looks to her closest companion, keeping one ear focused on the avatar as he continues to waffle on, hastily explaining himself.

Lu Ten looks as if he has been hit rather sharply over the head, as if he is struggling to wrap the concept of a living avatar around his world-wide view. Around his plans. There is an awful, awkward silence that lingers between them as hey look between one another; Aang with naked hope in his eyes; Alasie with what she prays is soft understanding; Lu Ten with the same shrewd calculation that's been present ever since he turned his back on the things he has been taught.

"Alasie is no water bending master. She's self-taught, so you will still have to travel North. I… I am a fire bending master, however. If it is what you want, Avatar Aang, then I would be honoured to be your teacher."

II

His saviour is a savage.

Lu Ten watches her with cautious eyes, watches the water that responds to her every gesture. He is not the only patient here, though he is the only Fire Nation national. All the others are Earth Kingdom, one a soldier, the rest refugees.

He watches as his saviour sees to them all, treats them equally, the soldier and the screaming child receiving the same treatment. Glowing water covers their cuts, their bumps and bruises, dissolving all the discolouration from the skin, smoothing on the cut until only a neat scar remains.

What is different is that none of the others are as injured as he; they are not required to stay within this little farmhouse, are offered well-wishes in their travels as the savage leads them to the door.

It is only once the room is empty that she returns to him.

"Good morning. It is good to see you are awake. You have a broken femur in your right leg, the same in your left but with the additional bonus of a broken fibula. Do not remove the casts; they are the only thing keeping your bones in position as they heal. As for your arm, it's the radius that's broken. Coupled with your bruised ribs, you won't be getting up for a while." She wrings out a rag here, water droplets trickling down the edges of the cloth before she places it atop his head. The relief that sweeps through him at the cool touch is as uncomfortably well-received as it is unnatural. Given the current temperature of the room, the bowl water should not have been this cold which means the woman is bending near him.

"My name is Alasie. I'm a trained healer from the Northern Water Tribe which means when I say you'll probably be able to walk on these legs in two weeks, it's a pretty accurate estimation. Do you have a name, soldier?"

Her words are not reassuring. Though it is known that water is the only element with the ability to heal injuries and sickness, Lu Ten has little trust in what the savages probably pass as an education. He has even less trust in the woman's ability to keep her mouth shut should she find out that the Prince of the Fire Nation is who occupies her farmhouse.

"Lee. My name is Lee." There. Can't get any more basic than that name. Lee also comes with the additional benefit of not belonging to one nation in particular. While Lu Ten's colouring is painfully obvious, that does not necessitate his homeland. Though it pains him to reflect on the early days on the crusade, he is no fool; he knows exactly what the older generation of fire-benders got up to in the Earth Kingdom villages they conquered. It is not unusual to see children and young adults with fire nation colouring, dressed in the peasant clothing of the Earth Kingdom. It is an uncomfortable truth, but one that serves to keep him alive in this moment.

Alasie the savage trained healer hums, summoning up a shallow blob of water that snakes through the air towards his right leg. He tenses in spit of himself as the liquid wraps around his thigh, ready for the pain. Instead, it is a delightful coolness that seeps into his skin, that smooths his aches and pains.

"I will try fetching you more medicine, but, for now, your recovery is looking promising, Lee."

"Katara! Katara, look! I've got a water bending teacher and a fire bending master to teach me!"

Sokka spits out the handful of nuts he'd been inhaling. As her brother hacks and coughs away in the background, Katara shoots to her feet as worry burns through her, all too aware of just what Aang has said. A water bending teacher is great, better than she could have ever hoped for.

In truth, Katara had been under the impression that she'd never get to leave the South Pole, would forever be doomed to bending water with only her own self-made, jerky movements to rely on. Getting to leave, getting the travel the world with Aang the actual Avatar (and her brother but that's hardly exciting) is a dream come true. She hadn't dared to hope that they'd meet a water bender before they reached the North Pole.

That's not the part that worries her. It's the 'fire bending master' part that she's feeling sick over.

"Aang! You can't trust them! A fire bender!" Sokka makes a series of vague gestures that she's relatively sure is suppose to express the fire bender's untrustworthiness. "A master fire bender!"

An adult fire bender.

Katara shrinks into herself at the sight of the two people that stand beside Aang, even if part of her longs desperately to go and speak with the woman who is clearly Water Tribe. They're adults; it's clear in the curves the woman possesses, the broad stretch of the man's shoulders, the thinness of their faces. The woman is smiling, her fingers linked with the man's, her other hand offering them a smooth wave. The man doesn't smile, but nor does he frown. Instead, he looks upon them with curious eyes before he turns back to Aang.

"Please tell me you have some form of adult supervision," he says and his voice is deep. Are they supposed to travel with adults? It makes perfect sense that the people to teach Aang the elements would be adults; mastering an element takes time, after all, and people grow as time passes. Katara has just never equated the concept of adults to the idea of one joining their group. Sure, they've only been on their own for three days, but it'd been three days of freedom.

On the other hand, she won't have to be in charge of everything anymore.

"We do now!" Aang chirps, bouncing forwards and grinning up at the man, as if he's not within two feet of a dangerous fire bender. Said dangerous fire bender claps the Avatar on the shoulder, flicking his ear in the process. He then turns to the woman who looks at him with a stern, serious face.

"Lu Ten, I do believe we've just adopted three kids."

Sokka chokes again, waving his arms around rapidly and loudly proclaiming that they 'have a dad' and 'don't need adopting, thank you very much'. 'Lu Ten' ignores him, gives them both a glance over with brilliant amber eyes, before he turns back to the woman.

"Best to get some practice in for the future then, Alasie."

Katara's not to sure what that's supposed to mean, but from the stunned look on the woman, Alasie's face, that's probably for the best.

I honestly don't know if I'll ever write more for this, (it's just a lot of drabble really) but here you go.

Tsume
xxx