Soldier's Boy
Eight

On cue, a voice yelled, "LOOK OUT!" and the head of one of the statues crashed inward, barely missing Katara and Aang and nearly crushing Kouji, who was luckily fast enough to shatter it into sand.

"Kouji!" Lee cried, and ran to try and dig him out.

Teo and the others were coughing, but Kouji was only buried up to his knees in the remnants of the projectile, and he got free quickly enough with Lee's help.

"Are you okay?" he asked, worried.

The boy nodded shakily, clinging to him as the dust cleared and other men approached. Lee glared at them on principal, since it was their fault Kouji had almost gotten crushed. "What the doodle?" exclaimed the man in the lead. Patches of his eyebrows were gone, and he had three artificial fingers on his left hand. "Don't you know enough to stay away from construction sites?"

"Maybe you should give more than two seconds' warning before using your wrecking balls to make sure no one who doesn't know it's a construction site didn't wander in. It's not exactly marked with massive bright pink signs," Lee snapped back.

The man looked puzzled. "I thought everyone knew to stay away. We're building a new bath house!" In the back of the group, Teo slapped his palm against his forehead.

"Yeah, well — " Before Lee could finish his retort, Aang, furious, cut in.

"Do you know what you did? You just destroyed something sacred! For a stupid bath house!"

"Well, people around here are starting to stink!" was the reply.

"This whole place stinks!" the Avatar shouted, and knocked the wrecking ball off the side of the temple with a furious blast of wind. "This is a sacred temple. You can't treat it this way. I've seen it when the monks were here, I know what it's supposed to be like."

"The monks?" the man said, startled. "But— you're twelve."

Teo wheeled up then. "Dad," he said, "he's the Avatar. He used to come here a hundred years ago."

Jiro looked from the chair-bound boy to the bushy-bearded man. "...I guess Teo takes after his mom?" he said to Lee quietly.

"Yeah, guess so."

"What are you doing?" Aang went on, made even more furious by the interruption. "Who said you could be here?" He advanced on the man angrily.

The man turned away thoughtfully. "Doing here? Hmm... a long time ago — but not a hundred years," he was quick to add, "my people became refugees after a terrible flood." He moved behind his son, resting his hands on the back of the chair. "My infant son, Teo, was badly hurt—" So that was why he was in the chair. "— and lost his mother." The man paused to control his emotions, then went on, "I needed somewhere to rebuild, and I stumbled across this place. Couldn't believe it! Everywhere, pictures of flying people! But empty. Nobody home!" He was accompanying all his words with gestures, almost like an interpretive dance. "Then I came across these fan-like contraptions!"

"Our gliders," Aang supplied, folding his arms. He still looked unhappy.

Lee, too, looked upset, and seemed restless — the only thing keeping him there was that he wasn't entirely sure of the bearded man's sanity and wanted to be certain Kouji would be safe if he did something unpredictable.

"Yes," the man agreed, flapping his hands. "Little light flying machines! They gave me an idea: build a new life for my son in the air! There, everyone would be on equal ground! ...So to speak." Kouji's eyes were shining. This, apparently, was heaven to him. "We're just in the process of improving what's already here," Teo's father went on, "and after all, isn't that what Nature does?"

"Nature knows where to stop," Aang said. But it seemed most of his rage had died away, at least.

"I guess that's true," the man admitted. "Unfortunately, progress has a way of... getting away from us." He looked down, and then abruptly up. "Look at the time!" he said, pointing some candles. "Come! The pulley system must be oiled before dawn!" It was as though he'd never been distracted by Aang's anger.

"Wait, how can you tell the time from that thing?" Sokka asked staring at the candles. "The notches all look the same."

"The candle will tell us," the man explained, drawing closer to the Water Tribesman. "Watch." On cue, the candle popped four times.

"You put spark powder in the candle!" the fifteen-year-old said, delighted.

"Four flashes," the man said. "So it's exactly four hours past mid-day, or," and here he turned to Sokka, "as I call it, four o'candle!"

Sokka laughed. Lee and Katara exchanged a long look and simultaneously rolled their eyes.

"If you like that," Teo's father went on, you ought to see my finger-safe knife sharpener!" He raised the hand with the wooden fingers. "Only took me three tries to get it right." He pulled the fingers out of their casing and tossed them to Sokka as he passed by.

Sokka yelped and stared at them in shock. "Follow me!" the man told him, gesturing.

As the Water Tribesman followed, Teo wheeled over to the rest of the group. "Hey, Aang," he said. "I want to show you something."

"Okay," the Avatar said, a little doubtfully, wondering what "improvement" Teo had in mind this time.

"I like him," Kouji said softly to Lee as they brought up the rear of the group Teo was leading further into the temple. "Yui gets like that sometimes."

Lee nodded, absently, frowning at the floor.

"I just can't get over it," Aang was saying. "There's not a single thing that's the same."

"I don't know about that. The temple might be different," Teo replied, stopping his chair and reaching over the side to scoop a black-and-white furred hermit crab off the floor, "but the creatures that live here are probably direct descendents of the ones that lived here a long time ago." He passed the crab to Katara.

"You're right," Katara said, petting the crab. "They're kind of keepers of the temple's origins." She passed it along to Aang, who smiled a little, letting it crawl from one of his hands to the other.

"Besides," Teo went on brightly (did he have no negative emotions? Kouji wondered), "there's one part of the temple that hasn't changed at all!" He quickly led them to a large wooden door with what seemed to be a very complicated lock on it.

"Hey!" Katara said. "It's just like the one in the other air temple!"

Someday, Lee thought, only half paying attention, I have really got to find out about what those three got up to before they found us.

Kouji wasn't paying attention at all, running from one side of the hall to the other, trying to climb up the wall so he could see out the window. He actually made it almost to one before he realised he didn't have any actual handholds and slid back down with a soft yelp. The fact that Lee didn't tell him to calm down and stop running around before he broke his neck showed just how preoccupied he was.

Teo laughed at Kouji before he continued on with what he'd been saying before — he'd been talking about the door and the room beyond. "I always wondered what it was like in there."

"Aang?" Katara asked softly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This is the last part of the temple that's the same as it was. I want it to stay that way."

Teo looked briefly like a kicked hedge-puppy, but he rallied quickly. "I completely understand," he said. "I just wanted you to know it was here."

"Thanks," Aang said, and turned and walked away.

The rest of the group followed, Kouji still trying to see out the windows — or maybe he was just trying to see if he could climb the walls again. No such luck.

Lee lagged behind, lost in whatever dark thoughts had been taking him more and more often over the past few weeks.

Kouji couldn't help but notice this, and as Aang and Teo tried to convince Katara to have a go on a glider, he fell back to walk with Lee. Hesitantly, he reached for his surrogate brother's hand.

He jumped a little, coming back to himself. "...You've been staring at those gliders since we first saw them. Aren't you going to try?"

"I can try later," Kouji replied, looking up at him.

"Go ahead. I'll stay here and watch," he urged, with a sort of attempt at a smile.

The boy hesitated. "Are you sure...?"

Lee nodded.

Kouji hugged him, then ran to catch up with the others. "I'll come too!" he said.

When the others tried to persuade Lee to go up as well, he shook his head, and informed them, with a wry smile, that he didn't trust his weight to anything smaller than he was — while the glider certainly took up more space, it weighed a good deal less. "I'll just watch."

"...Maybe I should just sit with Lee," Katara said, nervous again.

"Come on, Katara," Kouji urged with a grin. "It'll be fun!"

"I-I don't know..." But, after several more minutes of coaxing, they had her clutching a glider on the edge of one of the flat courtyards in the temple, quivering a little with nervousness.

Kouji stood just behind her, holding a glider of his own as Teo explained how the gliders worked to them.

When asked if she was ready, Katara squeaked out a denial. Before she could change her mind again, Lee gently shoved her off the balcony. She shrieked.

"That was mean, Lee!" Kouji grinned at him, then leapt over himself; Teo was right behind him, to serve as a spotter for the pair of novices.

Aang spent a few seconds asking Lee one last time if he wanted to join them, then gave in and flew off himself to join the others. It was hard to tell who was enjoying themselves more, the air-mad Kouji or the previously reticent Katara.

When they came in for a landing, Aang told Teo he'd let them in the locked room now, if he really wanted to see what was inside. "Great!" Teo exclaimed as Kouji managed a controlled crash, softening the impact with earthbending.

"You okay?" Lee asked him, immediately, as Katara shouted down, slightly panicked, for landing instructions.

Kouji couldn't answer him for a few minutes, he was laughing so hard. However, the laughter was probably an affirmative. Lee relaxed, Aang and Teo talked Katara down, and they all headed for the door again.

"I can't believe I'm finally going to see what's inside!" the older boy exclaimed happily to Katara as Kouji bounced from foot to foot, as excited as Teo.

Lee hung back a little, trying not to get lost in thought again and kill the mood, as Aang shot twin streams of air into either side of the intricate piping. Three disks turned over, each emitting a soft jet of air, and then the door swung open.

Kouji gasped and stepped back, bumping into Lee as he took in everything inside — weapons of all kinds and, in the middle of the room, something shrouded in red and bearing the black emblem of the Fire Nation.

The teenager's fists were clenched and his face had gone several shades paler, as he stared at that emblem.

Finally, Aang broke the silence. "This is a nightmare."

Before Lee or Kouji could speak, Teo's father did, from behind them. "You don't understand—" he began.

"You're making weapons for the Fire Nation!" Aang shot back, spinning around and glaring at him.

"You make weapons for the Fire Nation?" Sokka spat, less than half a second later.

Teo was as surprised as the rest of them. "Explain all this!" he demanded of his father. "Now!"

"It was about a year after we moved here," the Mechanist said. "Fire Nation soldiers found our settlement. You were too young to remember this, Teo. They were going to destroy everything! Burn it to the ground! I pleaded with them, I begged them to spare us! They asked what I had to offer."

Kouji's hand found Lee's, and he squeezed it.

Lee was careful not to squeeze back, afraid he'd hurt Kouji if he tried. "And this was all you had," he said, almost inaudibly.

The Mechanist didn't hear him, but he said, "I offered... my services," regardless. The look on Teo's face was one of mingled shock and horror, and his eyes filled with tears as his father went on, "You must understand, I did this for you!"

The chair-bound teenager turned away from his father.

Lee stared emptily at the emblem on the covered objects as the others stared after the sadly departing Mechanist.

"Lee," Kouji hissed.

He jumped. "What?"

"They'll start asking questions if they notice." Which meant Kouji had — but then again, the boy already knew he was a firebender.

"R-right," he said.

"We need to find out when their next visit is," Aang said, quietly. "And figure out a way to stop them.

Almost desperately, Lee threw himself into this idea. "There's a place down the mountain a little ways where a small group — maybe even just one person — could hold off a much larger one for at least fifteen, twenty minutes, depending on how much range their weapons have and how good they are. I could stall them, when you figure that out."

"I'll go too," Kouji said quietly. "We can't let them get their hands on this stuff."

So, you are a traitor as well, Admiral Zhao's voice rang in his ears. Kouji didn't flinch. The words had been meant for Lee, true, but Kouji was just as much a citizen as his surrogate brother — and he had nearly been killed despite that just for being the wrong kind of bender. As far as the boy was concerned, he had no homeland.

Lee and, surprisingly, Sokka, both shook their heads. Sokka jumped in to give his reason first. "You're an earthbender, Kouji. We want you up here, so you can drop boulders and stuff and maybe strengthen a couple of the walls so they don't bring this whole place down on our heads."

Try as he might, Kouji couldn't think of a solid counter to that argument. None of the refugees seemed to be benders.

Aang consulted with Teo quickly, then the two of them went off to talk to the Mechanist. They were present for his meeting with his rude, demanding contact. Aang, unable to stand it, interfered and chased the contact away. He and Teo then went to consult with Sokka, Katara, Lee, and Kouji, and informed them that they had hours to prepare at best, and their only real advantage was their airpower. All of them sprang into action.

Lee, remembering the promise he'd made on the volcano, made sure to let Kouji know before he set off down the mountain to take his position. The Mechanist offered an unfinished invention — a balloon with a basket underneath. Sokka helped him perfect it, and, by the time the soldiers got there, they were just barely ready.

Kouji stood at the ready, his bare feet firmly planted on the ground. "I... I can feel something," he reported to Katara. "I think it's them." No question about who them was.

"Okay," she said. On a prearranged signal, all those comfortable and skilled with the gliders took off. Katara and an extra supply of projectiles went up on Appa. They worked to beat the soldiers back.

And then came the tanks. Even when dislodged from the cliffs, they simply shot out another grappling hook and began the climb again.

"Well, fine!" snarled Kouji, sweating visibly. One by one, he shot pillars out from the snow-covered ground as the tanks made it to horizontal land, trying to knock them off the mountain.

Katara and Aang together took care of several of the other tanks, once they got horizontal.

And then the war balloon arrived, magnificent, and dropped four large bags of slime on the invaders. They dropped something else, something metal, and a massive explosion ripped the air, sending out dense clouds of brown-black smoke.

The resultant shockwave threw Kouji off his feet; he didn't get back up.

Katara ran to him while Aang flew off to rescue the Mechanist and Sokka from the rapidly sinking war balloon. "Kouji!"

It was a moment before he answered her. "Think I need... t'get a teacher," he mumbled.

"You and Aang'll get one, after we leave the North Pole," she promised. She then helped him inside to a bed to rest from all the work he'd done during the fighting. It wasn't until she tried to get some food in him that the boy balked.

"Where's Lee? S'he back yet?"

"I'll go look for him as soon as I'm done here with you," she promised. "Eat."

He made a face at her, but dug in with his usual gusto. When she was satisfied he would stay put, finish his food, and then get some rest, she left the temple to go find his brother. He tried to stay awake, but when he finished his meal, Kouji slipped soundly asleep.

By the time he woke up, Lee had been found and was asleep or unconscious — it was hard to tell from that angle, and he was definitely bandaged in several places — in another bed that had been squeezed into the room.

Without a second thought, Kouji slipped from his bed, wobbled slightly, and made a drunken path to Lee's. A slight hesitation to re-orient himself, and then he climbed in next to him. About ten minutes later, the older boy moaned and stirred a little.

"Lee?" Kouji asked, his voice soft enough that he wouldn't wake the other if he was, in fact, not awakening.

His eyes flickered open. "...nngh...?"

The boy's smile widened. "S'just me."

"Nngh." He started to sit up, very quickly figured out this was a bad idea, and sank back.

The smile slipped. "How bad is it?" he asked.

"Hurts. But don't think I got run over by a tank?" he managed to get out.

"Need anything? Water, food?"

He thought a moment, then shook his head. "Not right now."

"'Kay." Kouji laid back down, fighting the urge to move closer to his brother — night on the mountains was cold, especially this close to the North Pole, but he'd rather not hurt Lee more.

The older boy sold this dilemma neatly by painfully scooting a little closer himself — apparently, he was cold, too, enough that it was worth increasing the pain to be a little warmer.

Remembering Ichiro's bitter complaints over the years past, especially in the coldest parts of winter, Kouji rolled away. "I'll be right back," he promised Lee. quickly padding to his bed. Again he weaved like a man drunk; confused, he looked down at his feet, which were swathed in bandages. Oh. He stripped the bed of blankets and made his way back, covering the teenager and then crawling back underneath the covers to curl against Lee.

"What happened?" Lee had noticed the bandages.

"I'm not sure," Kouji admitted. They'd been put on his feet at some point while he slept.

"Frostbite," Katara said from the doorway. "Glad you two're awake. We're leaving as soon as you're stable enough, Lee."

"Stable? Katara, what—?" Kouji began.

"He's going to be fine," she assured him. "I just want to wait a few more days to make sure nothing gets torn back open when we move him."

He was being shielded again, Kouji realised. With a sigh, he nestled deep into the blankets, trying not to jar Lee too much.

Current Location: my bed
Current Mood: full of dread
Tags: au, avatar, fanfic, soldier's boy

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