Soldier's Boy

Nineteen

Lee was not the last to wake that morning, as not long after the sun rose, Kouji was shaking him gently.  "Come on, Lee, we have to pack before Sokka gets up."

"Mmph…? Oh, dammit…" I overslept… Groggy, he sat up. "What's going on?"

Kouji sat back on his haunches and grinned at him.  "We're leaving today.  We all get to pick little vacation spots before the next leg of our journey.  If we're all ready to go by the time Sokka gets up, that's one last thing for him to bitch about."

Still half-asleep, Lee just blinked at him blearily, not quite grasping what he was saying. "…huh?"

Kouji shook his head.  "We're leaving.  All six of us.  You too."

That was easier. Short, simple sentences. "Oh."

The younger boy took his arm and pulled.  "Come on, get up."

"Okay, okay, I'm up, I'm up, stop pulling."

Kouji promptly let go and turned to his bedroll, which had somehow turned into a tangled nest in the hours Lee had slept, and tried to get it into manageable order.  Lee extracted himself from his own bedroll — a difficult task, it had managed to get all twisted over the last few hours, too — after about five minutes of struggling, then set about rolling it back up and helping pack up the rest of camp.  When they finished, Kouji moved slightly away and again started trying to adapt Katara's water whip to the dirt he'd collected while they waited for Sokka to wake up.

After ten minutes, bored, Toph threw Sokka into the air. "Time to go."

Laughing, Kouji put the dirt away  and went to untangle the Water Tribesman.  "Who's slowing who down now?" he asked teasingly.

Sokka grumbled something inarticulate in response; fifteen minutes after that, they were in the air and heading for the spot Aang had picked.  Lee, now no longer groggy, was a little bewildered that they were bringing him along. It would've been easy to leave him there — if Kouji hadn't woken him, he probably would've slept another hour or so.

"Hey, Lee," said his brother, taking the map from Sokka and moving it where Zuko could see.  "You haven't picked a spot yet."

"I'll go last," he said. "Let everyone else pick, first."  Obediently, Kouji passed the map over to Katara.

"Here it is!" Aang said, turning Appa into a sharp dive.  By now used to the sudden manoeuvres, none of the original four had any problems holding on; Toph, already having a firm grip on the side of the saddle, came out okay as well.  They landed in the middle of nowhere, on an arid, dry patch of land.

A gleeful, giddy Kouji bounced off of Appa before Lee could grab his collar.

"What's out here, anyway?" Sokka grumbled.

"A lot, actually," Toph informed them. "There's hundreds of little—"

"Shh," Aang cut her off, producing a flute from under his shirt. "I know you can see underground, but don't ruin the surprise. Just watch." He blew a tone on his flute, and a rodent popped up and matched the tone exactly.

"That's neat!" exclaimed Kouji, putting his hand on the ground and closing his eyes.  Toph had been working with both him and Aang on seeing with earthbending; Kouji, having developed a version of that trick during the winter, had a little more luck with it than Aang did.  Even Lee, in the background, leaning against Appa and not playing with Not Fluffy, seemed amused.

Aang grinned and repeated the trick several more times. "I'm putting an orchestra together!"

"An orchestra, huh?" Sokka said, derisively. "Well la-dee-da."

Three rodents popped up to match his tones.

Kouji giggled as Momo darted into the hole after one of them, trying to catch it.  As Aang continued to play his flute, the lemur chased after each singing gopher as it popped up.  The group was highly amused, save for Sokka.

"This is great and all, but don't we have more important things to worry about?" the Water Tribe warrior said, stopping Aang's flute with a finger. "We should be making plans."

"Party pooper," muttered Kouji as Toph pointed out that the current plan was to pick mini-vacations.

"There's no time for vacations," Sokka snapped.

"I'm learning the elements as fast as I can," Aang said. "I practice hard every day with Toph and Katara. I've been training my arrow off."

"Yeah," Katara said, quick to leap to Aang's defence. "What's wrong with having a little fun in our downtime?"

Kouji wandered back to Lee, sighing.  "Here they go again," he muttered.

Ah.  So that was what last night's argument had been about.

Lee tuned them out, leaning against Appa with his eyes closed. "Whose turn is it next?" he asked his brother in an undertone.

"Katara's," Kouji answered.  "Mine probably will be the last one, I want to see Ba Sing Se."

Lee nodded, while Aang showed Katara a map and had her point out the site she wanted to visit.

Kouji raised an eyebrow when Aang used the word "pristine" to describe her chosen site, then all boarded the sky bison to head to Misty Palms Oasis.

When they got there, they found that the natural iceberg that was supposed to be there was almost completely melted.

"Must've changed ownership since I was here…" Aang said, a little nervously, looking around.

As the sextet walked inside, the sign fell to the ground just behind them.  Kouji yelped in surprise and all but jumped on Lee, who fingered the hilts of his swords, not liking the look of the town, or the skinny men, wrapped up in gauze, leaning against the wall of one of the buildings.

"I don't like the way they're watching us," Lee whispered back, following Aang and the others into the building.

"Just don't start anything, and they'll leave us alone," was the quiet reply.  However, Kouji didn't seem to like the way they were being watched either, as his hand slipped into his brother's.

The building proved to be some kind of restaurant. A man at the bar was ordering a mango drink of some kind. Lee watched the bartender make it, fingering his sword hilts in a different way than before.

"Wow," Kouji whispered.  "He was so fast…"

"I don't see anything wrong with having one of those fruity beverages while we plan our strategy," Sokka said, then pushed through the others to dart at the bar. Lee was half a step behind him, too busy asking the bartender if he could try to pay attention to the man from earlier spilling his drink all over Aang.  Kouji was bright red — Sokka's push had thrown Toph into him — and thus not paying attention either; the bartender, fed up with Lee pestering him, let him help out with making his friends' drinks.

Kouji took both his and his brother's, then waited for the oldest boy to rejoin their group.  Lee seemed more interested in making the drinks than actually drinking his, and so hung out behind the bar while the others talked with the man — who turned out to be a professor from the University in Ba Sing Se, searching for a legendary library somewhere in the desert.

As the man explained to Toph why he was looking for this particular library, it became clear that Sokka was getting more and more intrigued by it.

"Wan Shi Tong and his knowledge-seekers collected books from all over the world," said the professor, taking a picture from his tunic and unrolling it so they could see, "and put them on display for mankind to read, so that we might better ourselves."

"If this place has books from all over the world, do you think they've got info on the Fire Nation?" Sokka asked. "A map, maybe?"

"I wouldn't know," the professor replied.  "But if such a thing exists, it's in Wan Shi Tong's library."

"If?  If?" Kouji sputtered quietly, where the professor couldn't hear him.  "Of course such a thing exists!  Walk into any colony and take one!"

The others ignored him — Aang, Katara, and Toph were distracted by Sokka's overdramatic declaration that his mini-vacation would be to the library, and Lee was still eagerly helping make drinks.

Toph demanded to know when her turn would be, and Sokka told her she would have had to have been part of the group for longer before she qualified.  Kouji kicked him.  "Ow!" he yelped, glaring at the youngest boy.

Kouji glared right back, then said to Toph, "You can go after Sokka gets his turn.  Then Lee can go,  then me."  He glared at Sokka again.

"Of course," said the professor, completely oblivious to the byplay between the children, "there's the matter of finding it.  I've made several trips into the Si Wong Desert and almost died each time.  I'm afraid that desert's impossible to cross."

Aang and Sokka exchanged a grin. "Professor, would you like to see our sky bison?" the older boy asked.

"A sky bison!?" the older man exclaimed, his eyes widening.  "You actually have one?"

"Yeah, he's outside," Aang said, gleefully.

Knowing where this was going, Kouji ran over to pull Lee away from the bar.

"Is it time to go?" the older boy asked. If they left me here, it wouldn't be so bad…

"Yeah," Kouji told him.  "Sokka's picked his spot.  We're going to some kind of ancient mystic library so he can get a map of the Fire Nation."

"Why don't we just get one from one of the colonies?"

"I think he forgot about us," was the reply.  "Professor Absent-Minded over there seems to have forgotten the colonies themselves exist."  Kouji rolled his eyes.  "'If such a thing exists', who the hell does he think this country has been fighting for a century?"

Lee sighed. "All right then." Reluctantly, he cleaned off his swords and came around the bar. "Let's get this over with."

They slipped outside after the others to find Appa growling and edging away from the sand people.  "Sandbenders!" cried the professor, running to chase them away from the bison.  "Shoo!  Away from the bison!"  The group cleared off on a kind of sand barge.

As Aang and Katara helped the professor aboard, Kouji muttered to Lee, "Sand people are easily startled, but will soon return — and in greater numbers."

Lee rolled his eyes and clambered up. Within moments, they were flying over the desert.  Seated up front with Aang, the professor — as it turned out, his name was Zéi - crawled forward on Appa's head to talk to the bison.  Kouji sulked a little.  "He's so pre-occupied with Aang and Appa," the boy said.  "I can't even ask him about the wall."

"He'll calm down eventually," Lee assured him, as the professor told Momo to shush and Aang commented that it shouldn't be too hard to find a place like that huge library out here.

Hours later, Kouji said, "I blame you."

"Me? What did I do?" Aang asked.

"You're the one who said it wouldn't be hard to find!  The spirits of irony heard you."

"There it is!" Toph suddenly shouted.

Almost as a unit, everyone moved to the side of the bison to see… nothing but desert.  All eyes turned to the girl.

"That's what it will sound like when one of you spots it," she informed them, sarcastically, waving a hand in front of her face.

Kouji groaned and curled up as far away from everyone else as he could.  "I'm sunburned," he complained.

Lee pulled off his own shirt to try and rig some kind of headscarf that would at least shield the back of Kouji's neck. The weeks he'd spent drilling and not stopping enough for food or rest while Toph was teaching Kouji and Aang were starting to show. All of his ribs were plainly visible.  Kouji made a muffled noise of protest and, once the headscarf was rigged, crawled across the bison to dig through the food supplies and bring some back to his brother.

"We should save those," Lee pointed out. "We don't know when we'll be able to stop and get more. Or who will accept Water Tribe money for it."

Kouji stared at him.  "Eat.  You're way too thin."

"Huh?" Lee looked down and poked at his side. "…Oh. Hadn't noticed."

"Eat!" insisted the youngest boy.

Before Lee could reply, Sokka finally spotted it — or the top of it, anyway. Most of the library was buried under the sand , as they discovered soon after landing Appa.  Professor Zéi went into hysterics.  "The library is buried?" he cried.  "My life's ambition is now full of sand!"

In an abrupt — yet oddly familiar — change of mood, he pulled a trowel out of… somewhere and declared, "Well, time to start excavating."

Toph slammed a hand into the tower. "Actually, that won't be necessary. The inside seems to be completely intact. And it's huge."

"That fox-thingy went in through a window," Sokka added. "I say we climb up there and give it a look."

"I say you guys go ahead without me," Toph said.

Kouji blinked as he paused in his attempt to figure out who Zéi reminded him of.  "You sure?"

"I've held books before," Toph said airily, "and, I gotta tell you, they don't exactly do it for me."

"Okay," he replied, flushing again.

Sokka produced a rope, and threw it up to the window for everyone to climb. Lee grabbed Kouji's collar when it looked like he planned on trying to climb without it. "Use the rope."

"Lee, I don't need to—"

"Humour me."

Kouji made a face at him and shimmied up the rope; Lee followed, going up last.

Sure enough, as Toph had promised them, the inside of the library below their tower-window entrance was enormous.  Enraptured, Zéi declared that the spirit had spared no expense, and demanded the children look at the buttresses.  Sokka, Aang, and Kouji all burst into quiet giggles.  "What's so funny?" the man asked them.

"Nothing," Aang assured him. "We just like architecture."

Lee shot a look down at Kouji. He hadn't been paying attention to Zei, and had missed the joke.

"Buttresses," Kouji said to him, giggling again.

Lee snorted and rolled his eyes.

Finally they reached the bottom floor of the library, and Zéi continued to go on about the beauty of the library.

Loudly.

The children all stared at him, and Zéi cut himself off.  "Eh… nice… owl."

As if on cue, something rustled on one end of the bridge they'd landed on. Sokka grabbed Katara, Aang the professor, and Lee his brother, and they all darted to shelter behind columns at the other end.  A giant owl came walking down a corridor, and Kouji's eyes went wide.  He opened his mouth to say something, but quickly covered it with his hand before he could.

The owl examined their rope, then turned his head all the way around to stare in their direction. "I know you're back there."

Kouji pressed his face into Lee's tunic, then heard the professor's voice.  "Hello!" he cried.  "I'm Professor Zéi!"

Kouji shuddered.  What if the giant owl wasn't friendly?

Lee gently stroked his hair, holding him close, eyeing the owl surreptitiously and trying to gauge his chances if it came to a fight.

"You should leave the way you came," the giant owl told Zéi, when he'd finished introducing himself.

"I'm for that," whispered the ten-year-old, clinging tighter to Zuko when the owl mentioned making Zéi a stuffed head of anthropology.

The others came out from behind their columns, hoping to save Zei's neck. "Are you the spirit who brought this library to the physical world?" Sokka asked.

"Indeed," the owl said. "I am Wan Shi Tong, He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things. And you are obviously humans. Which, by the way, are no longer permitted in my study."

"Too bad, S-Sokka," said Kouji, finally coming out.  "Guess w-we should go."

"What do you have against humans?" Aang asked, as Lee shepherded Kouji over to the rope. He'd stay behind and rearguard the others, but he wanted his brother out as soon as possible.  Kouji started to climb as Wan Shi Tong explained to Aang why humans were no longer permitted in the library.  At the mention of a firebender, his grip slipped and he fell on top of Lee.  Lee, not expecting this, was knocked backward off his feet, seeing stars when his head hit the railing.

Kouji scrambled off of him.  "I'm sorry!  I'm sorry!" he said to his brother, hovering worriedly.  "Are you all right?"

"Uh-huh," he mumbled, blinking to try and clear his vision. "You?"

"Y-yeah.  Sorry, didn't expect to hear…"  Kouji's voice trailed off.

Lee nodded, winced when that made his head pound harder, and sat up. "Hands okay?"

"Yeah.  Maybe I should just go up the wall."

"How are you gonna get to it from here?" Lee asked, reasonably, given that they were on a stone bridge at least twenty feet from the nearest wall.

"Jump," Kouji replied.

"No."

Without warning, Wan Shi Tong towered over them.  "And what knowledge will you present to me?" he asked the boys.  Kouji shrieked and nearly launched himself off the bridge.

"My brother's leaving," Lee said, reaching for and missing Kouji's collar.

"Wh-what he said," Kouji stammered, stark white.  "B-bye now."  He lunged for the rope and started climbing.  Faster.  Toph and Appa were waiting for him outside, the former talking softly to the latter.  As soon as Kouji reached the end of the window, he slid down the side of the tower, using earthbending to control his descent.  He was still shaking when he hit the sand at last.

"What's wrong?" Toph asked, interrupting herself.

"Y-you never mentioned a g-giant owl," Kouji told her, trying to control himself.

"Oh."

Shuddering, the boy crawled into Appa's saddle, determined to stay put until he stopped trembling.  They sat in silence for a while, then Toph suddenly shouted, "Kouji, help me! The library's sinking!"  Without stopping to ask questions, Kouji vaulted over the side of the bison and ran to help Toph hold it up;  even the two of them working together, however, couldn't stop it.

And then, to make matters worse, the sandbenders came back, surrounding Appa.

"What is it now? Who's there?" Toph called, panicked — she couldn't see as well in the desert.

"Sand people!" Kouji cried, turning away from the sinking library to drag up a load of sand.  "Get away from him!" he cried, unconsciously going through Katara's water whip motions as one of the sandbenders landed.  To his surprise, he caught the shrouded figure across the chest and knocked him flying.

"Kouji, it's sinking faster!" Toph yelped, panicking.

"Sozin's balls!"  Kouji turned back to the library to hold it up again.  "Appa!  Yip-yip!  Yip-yip!"  The bison moaned and tried to fly free, but the sandbenders tied him up too quickly.  "GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Kouji screamed a second time, letting go to let his sand whip fly two more times before one of the sandbenders caught him in the eyes with a blast of sand.

Yelling something her parents would definitely not be pleased to learn she knew, Toph redoubled her efforts to keep the library above ground.

Clawing at his eyes, Kouji managed to get the vision back in one of them — using earthbending for sight on sand was useless — just in time to see them making away with their bison.  "No!  Appa!"

"Kouji, I need you!" Toph yelled. "I'm losing it!"

Tears cleaning the rest of the grit from his eyes, Kouji ran back to help Toph hold it up again.  His legs were shaking from the strain.  "I c-can't do it much l-longer!"

Fortunately, he didn't have to. The others, clinging to Aang and his glider, shot up out of the tower. "You can let go now," Toph told him, taking her own advice and falling backwards.

"We got it!" Sokka informed them excitedly. "There's a solar eclipse coming. The Fire Nation's in trouble now!"

"So are we," said Kouji softly, before curling up and passing out.

Current Location: my desk
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Remember the Name - Fort Minor
Tags: au, avatar, fanfic, soldier's boy

(Leave a comment)