Path Ahead

Refuge

After much discussion, they had decided to take the shortest and least populated route to the Eastern Air Temple, cutting west across the ocean. Aang was back in his traditional place on Appa's head, guiding them. With the absence of three people and their gear, Appa was able to carry them all again, and for longer periods. After all, Iroh had dropped quite a bit of weight during his incarceration, and having just escaped from prison, he had no belongings.

Aang knew that Sokka would have preferred to fly east, skirting the edge of the Earth Kingdom. He was probably hoping to find Suki before reaching the Eastern Air Temple, but the others had prevailed upon him. Ever since the fall of Ba Sing Se, they couldn't really count on finding friendly settlements in the Earth Kingdom, and they had no way of knowing where Fire Nation military presence might be. All in all, it was safer to cross the water as quickly as possible, stopping at remote islands along the way. This meant they had to travel for most of each day because such islands were few and far between, so Aang was not training much during this time. He knew he'd have to make up for it later, but in the meantime, he enjoyed the rest.

It was not, however, very much fun for most of the group. Toph constantly griped about not being able to see anything during the long hours of travel, and Iroh, as a new flyer, was not faring much better. Zuko occasionally snapped at both of them as they tried his patience, and Sokka draped over the saddle in an attitude that alternately conveyed boredom and annoyance.

Despite all this, Aang was enjoying the trip well enough. He was happy to have the constant companionship of his bison once more and to be spared the effort of flying his glider all this distance. Besides, Katara sometimes climbed up to join him, probably to escape the drama unfolding within the confines of the saddle. As it happened, she was with him near the end of their second day of travel, as the towers of the Eastern Air Temple emerged out of the clouds in front of them.

"Oh, Aang!" she gasped. "It's beautiful. And huge!" Aang had to agree that - from this distance, at least - the temple was indeed beautiful. The buildings had somehow remained mostly intact through the decades of neglect. He knew from his recent visit that there were plenty of cracks inside, and the local vegetation was trying to take over some areas, but it seemed to be in the best condition of all the temples. Well, best original condition, he amended. The new residents of the Northern Air Temple had restored the place pretty well, even though they'd made some changes that Aang hadn't been happy about at first.

"It was the largest of the temples," he said aloud. "I might decide to live here after this is all over."

"You wouldn't go back home?" Katara sounded surprised, and it occurred to Aang that he'd never really asked her what she would want to do if he succeeded in bringing the war to an end. She would probably want to return to the South Pole. Her home and family were there, and he couldn't take those from her today any more than he could have on the day they met. On the other hand, he didn't think he'd be able to live there permanently. As the Avatar, he was bound to be needed throughout the world from time to time, and the poles were just too remote to make that practical. What would that mean for their relationship?

Slow down, Aang reined in his thoughts. We've been a couple for what, a week? Let's just take things one step at a time.

"I guess I might go back for a little while," he conceded. "Maybe clean things up a little, make some kind of memorial, I don't know. It's just too hard to get to for me to live there forever. Easy to defend, sure, but hard to entertain guests." Or raise a family, he added internally, but he didn't want to frighten her with such ideas at this point. It hadn't escaped his notice that if there were going to be more airbenders in the world, he would have to produce them, but until she made a similar observation, he wasn't going to mention it.