Kouji hadn't changed out of his Earth Kingdom-style clothing for a number of reasons.  His excuse was that there was nothing in his size, but that wasn't the real reason at all.  He also eschewed the red cloaks Katara and Toph had taken to wearing when night fell, and when asked if he wanted one would snap that he wasn't cold.  He avoided everyone he could, especially Katara, which didn't seem to upset her at all. She avoided him just as much.

Toph was the only person who refused to let him sulk, or whatever it was that he was doing, which he didn't understand.  The training, yes.  The seeking him out, no.  "Why are you doing this?" he asked her one evening after she joined him at the prow of the ship.

"Because you're sulking and it's lame and it's bringing everyone else down, too," she replied immediately. "Plus, someone has to make sure you don't sulk yourself off the edge of the boat."

"I'm not sulking," he snapped, "and I'm not going to throw myself overboard.  I'm not suicidal, and I'd never do that to Yui."

"You are sulking," she snapped back, "and you're not suicidal right now, but the way your moods have been lately, you could be."

"I already told you, I wouldn't inflict that on Yui!"

"When you're basically rational? Yeah. But you're down enough to lose all rationality and be completely selfish for a minute, and that's all you need."

Kouji shook his head fiercely.  "You don't get it.  We’re twins.  What I feel, Yui does too, and vice-versa."

"Yeah, I get that," she said, folding her arms and glaring in his general direction. "Doesn't change the fact that if I leave sulky-you alone long enough to get really down, you won't lose all perspective for a minute, be completely selfish, and walk off the boat."

"It's so nice to be loved," the colonist snarled, and stalked away from the prow.

Toph followed him, and Kouji barely refrained from making an exasperated noise as he headed for the hold.  This time, Toph chose to leave him be, though experience told him she'd hunt him down in a half-hour or so.

Fifteen minutes after he'd gone to sulk alone in the dark, he heard some sort of commotion up on deck.  Curiosity cut through his desire to be alone with his angst, so he slipped out of the small space he'd curled up in and headed up top to see what was going on.  He got up there just in time to see Aang — apparently awake — faint again.

"…ouch," he commented under his breath, quickly darting to the nearest shadow to be out of Katara's way.

Toph, behind her back, gestured for him to go back belowdecks. Katara was unlikely to Ignore him if she spotted him by chance.  The boy promptly obeyed.  He had no desire to deal with an angry waterbender while surrounded by ocean.

Things were fairly quiet for a short time after that, only broken by indistinct conversation from the deck, then Katara led a once-again-conscious Aang downstairs, past where Kouji was hiding.  As soon as they were inside a room, he fled back up, preferring to keep a staircase between him and the Water Tribe girl.

Toph was following Sokka around and taunting him mercilessly — something she did whenever she wasn't occupied by Kouji.  Shaking his head, the boy wandered over to the Avatar's bison — Appa, he'd discovered, was the beast's name.  With a sigh, he sank into the thick fur and watched the activity.  The rest of the night passed quietly. Katara and Aang didn't come back upstairs, and Kouji wound up falling asleep curled up on one of Appa's legs.  Bato woke him the next morning so he could do his share of the shipbound chores, then the boy returned to the sky bison.

Toph dragged him away after a while — she'd had giant rocks dragged onto the ship so she and Kouji could practice with them. Then she, in turn, was dragged away by Sokka to help update Aang on everything he'd missed.  With nothing better to do, Kouji stayed by the rocks and tried to improve his sand whip.  Because the move was so obviously based in waterbending, Kouji chose to keep the rocks between him and anywhere Katara might possibly be.

After a few minutes, he heard Aang loudly freak out. "The world thinks I'm dead?! HOW is that good news?! That's terrible!"

The unexpected noise threw Kouji off, and his whip sliced through one of the rocks.  "Shit!"  He tried to duck out of sight as the boulder fell apart. 

"Watch it, Sunshine," Toph called in his general direction, while Sokka tried — ineffectually — to calm Aang down.

"Sorry," he muttered, turning to try and fix it — and then froze.  A fire nation ship was bearing down on them.

"I'll handle this," Aang said, opening his glider. "The Avatar is back." Then he sagged a bit, in obvious pain.

This, luckily, distracted Katara, who seemed about to go off on Kouji — the incident with the rock having reminded her he was here. "Aang, wait. Remember, they don't know we're not Fire Nation."

Sulkily, he put his glider away.

Kouji sped underneath the bison just as a huge boy named Pipsqueak and his much younger friend the Duke covered him with a large tarp; from a small gap between tarp and deck, he could see Toph, Katara, and the Avatar taking cover.  The Avatar didn't look very happy.

For a moment, everything seemed to be going fine. Kouji couldn't hear what was being said, but it appeared that Hakoda and Bato managed to snow the other ship's captain into letting them by untroubled.

Then, as the other ship's representatives were crossing back to their own vessel, Toph suddenly shot up. "They know!" she shouted, and buckled the metal deck, dislodging the ramp that had been used to bridge the gap.

Katara used waterbending to push the two ships apart, and Kouji nearly vomited as their vessel rocked.  Controlling his stomach, he shot out from underneath Appa.  Brightness caught his eyes, and he saw a fireball heading towards them.  Planting his feet as Toph had finally managed to pound into him, he managed to seize control of it and threw it to one side.

A second, however, followed hard on its heels and grazed the boat, rocking it again.

This time Kouji did throw up over the side, but as soon as he was done, he turned and shattered another rock into tinier pieces that would do less damage overall.  He coughed, spat, and settled in to wait again.

Toph took a few seconds from working with Pipsqueak to shout at him. "Go back down, you might get hit next time you have to throw up!"

Kouji snarled wordlessly, but obeyed — she was right.  He barely made it to the room where Sokka and the Avatar were, then the ship rocked again and the boy fell to his hands and knees, retching.

Aang ignored him, starting out, but Sokka restrained him. The Avatar's staff met his forehead.

"I hate boats," Kouji moaned, wiping his mouth and coughing.  His ribs ached.

The boat rocked several more times, then Aang shouted that he couldn't just stand by and do nothing, and started out.

"Aang, no!" Sokka yelled, chasing after him. Whatever he said next convinced the Avatar to come back into hiding. Sulkily, he ignored Kouji.  This was fine by the younger boy, who'd grabbed a bucket and curled up miserably in a corner.

Not long after this, with an ungodly shrieking noise, the fighting stopped, and their boat limped away.

Aang sulked himself back to his room, and Kouji came out of hiding to help clean up after the battle.  His need to be useful to the Water Tribesmen seemed to overpower his fear of Katara, at least.  Luckily, Katara seemed content to go back to her earlier pattern of pretending he didn't exist.

After a while, they stopped at a town, maybe three or four nautical miles from the blockade, to replace the supplies that had gotten lost during the fight.

"Sokka, Katara and I are gonna go try and get Aang to come get dinner with us," Toph told Kouji. "So you should stay here. Otherwise, she'll yell."

Still pale from his earlier illness, Kouji sighed.  "Can I at least get off the stupid boat?"

"We might run into you," she pointed out.

Grey eyes narrowed.  "I don't see what she's got to be so pissed about," the boy spat.  "Fine.  I'll stay on the Agni-damned boat."  He used the Fire Nation slur deliberately.

Toph didn't even blink. "I never said it was rational. She gets like this sometimes. What d'you want me to bring you?"

"Something bland."  He tugged on his ragged braid.  "Very bland."

"'Kay." She headed off to collect her other friends, and Kouji returned to Appa. 

"Y'know, sometimes I think you're the only sane person on this boat," he told the bison, stroking its head gently.

It rumbled noncomitally.

An hour or so later, Toph returned with his dinner. "Here."

"Thanks," he said, taking it from her and taking a small bite to make sure his stomach wouldn't reject it.  Fortunately, it seemed he was well past the earlier sickness.  Moments later, Katara burst onto the deck and ran up to her father.

Kouji debated slinking closer, then heard her voice drift back on the wind: "He left."  'He' could only be one person.

Kouji snuggled deeper into the bison's fur and hoped that would be enough to hide him.

Fortunately, Katara seemed preoccupied enough with arguing with her father to not take this out on Kouji.

"We're probably gonna go after him," Toph said, quietly. "Not sure whether it's better for you to come with us."

Kouji froze.  He wasn't sure either, but the thought of losing Toph just as he'd finally started bending properly was enough to make the blood drain from his face.

"Which do you want?" she asked.

"I…"  Kouji hesitated, his mind rapidly sorting through the options.

If I stay here, I won't have to worry about Katara.  I can pretend I'm Earth Kingdom.  It's all-around safer.  But I won't have anyone.  Even Bato only talks to me when I've got chores.  But if I go with them, Katara might pull an Azula on me.  Use me against Zuko.  He paused.  Assuming Zuko even cares about me anymore.  That thought hurt him, and tears started to shine in his eyes.  Roughly he wiped them away.  On the other hand, Toph talks to me.  Even outside of training.  And I can't afford to miss any more…

"I'll go," he said at last.  "But I need to ask her."

"Don't bother. I'll handle it," Toph said, curtly, then detached herself to go talk to Katara while Sokka scrambled around for supplies.

Five minutes of hissed argument later, Katara snapped at Kouji that he could come.  The boy flinched, but quickly scrambled aboard the bison, taking care to situate himself as far from the other three as he could.

For once, Toph didn't invade his personal space.

They flew all night, through a storm that blew up out of nowhere, eventually arriving on a smouldering island. Aang was asleep or unconscious on the water's edge.  Unsurprisingly, Kouji was the last one off the bison, and he remained apart from the group, watching the friends reunite.

They hugged and talked quietly for a minute, then Aang plunged the tattered remnants of his glider into the hot rock. It burned, eerily resembling the Firenation crest.

And now the Avatar finally acknowledged Kouji's presence. "He's here, too?" he asked, a little bewildered.

Toph folded her arms. "Yeah."

"Okay, then."

Katara looked irritated, but she seemed to accept Aang's decision. The five of them loaded up onto the bison again and took off.

Surprised by how readily the Avatar had accepted his presence — and not jealous at all about how close he and his friends were —  Kouji settled in to the rear of the bison, his back to the others as he stared at the island.  Unbidden, a map flashed in his memory, and his eyes went wide.  "Crescent Island," he whispered.  "But Roku's temple is…"

Gone.  But how?

"It got destroyed last winter," Sokka told him. "Long story."

"Oh."  Kouji fell silent, watching the glowing lava retreat, then he sighed and drew his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.  Cool air blew against the back of his neck, through his hair, and he shivered.

Toph tossed one of the blankets at him.

"Thanks," he mumbled, wrapping it around himself and nestling as far in as he could.  A dull ache settled into his abdomen, and now he groaned.  Of course.  It had to be now, didn't it?

"What's wrong now?" Toph asked.

His face flushed red, even though he wasn't looking at her.  "Yui."

"Nothing you can do about it here," she said, shrugging.

"Nothing I can do about it at all.  She's… she's on her… um.  Yeah."

"On her what?" Toph asked, honestly curious.

If anything, Kouji's face got even brighter red.  "You know… that thing… that girls get…?"

"What thing that girls get?"

"Th-their m-monthlies?"

"Monthly what?" Toph asked, now impatient.

"B-b-bleeding," he managed to stammer out, now the same colour as the Fire Nation flag.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," she announced, after staring at him in a few moments of irritated, confused silence.

"I don't know all the details, okay!?" Kouji exclaimed.  "Un— the general wasn't exactly forthcoming with details when he figured out why I was hurting!"

"Yeah, whatever," Toph said. Clearly, she considered the subject closed.

Flushing and in pain now, Kouji curled up on his side and pulled the blanket completely over top of him, where he tried not to break into tears.

 

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