Chapter Text
An abundance of sounds surrounded Aang. Ceramic chimed. Cups knocked against wood. The wind chimes gave off a gentle ringing with every slight movement.
But louder than anything else were the chatter and laughter of his friends.
Aang let their words, pauses, and intonations pass through him, but he didn't participate in the conversation himself, playing with Momo and creating tiny spheres of air with airbending above the fluffy carpet.
A year had passed since their victory in the war. And today, after all this time, they had finally gathered together again at the Jasmine Dragon tea shop, owned by Iroh.
The scents of bergamot, mint, jasmine – of course – and cedar lingered in the air.
Aang should have felt the coziness and warmth soothing his skin, the joy of being reunited with them wrapping itself around his heart. But there was only exhaustion, dragging his entire being downward.
At first, he actively pretended to participate in the conversation, sharing news, making jokes, listening attentively, and picking at the surface of the table with his finger, but eventually he ran out of energy and switched his attention to Momo, moving onto the floor so he'd have an excuse to be quiet.
Soon, he'd have to leave, so his friends wouldn't start wondering about his silence.
Aang had long since learned that three worried glances from Katara were the limit, after which a conversation was almost guaranteed to follow.
If Sokka made a joke and got no reaction from him, that was a warning sign, and Sokka would inevitably ask Aang what was wrong.
If Toph raised her eyebrows twice in silent question, that was the signal to get out of there immediately, otherwise she'd poke him with a finger and loudly announce that he was being unusually quiet.
There was no limit to Zuko's glances, but if he started darting his eyes toward Aang and gradually acquired an increasingly puppy-like expression, it meant that sooner or later someone would notice, and he would awkwardly gesture toward Aang.
As for the others – Suki, Mai, and Iroh – Aang didn't know them nearly as well, and the feeling was mutual, so they weren't a threat.
By now, Aang had already caught Katara turning toward him twice, noticed Sokka's furrowed brow and his uncharacteristic focus on Aang, and decided that it was probably time to go.
Aang deliberately stretched and yawned widely, slowly straightened to his feet, and, at the perfect volume, announced, “Sorry, but I'm getting kind of tired,” interrupting their discussion, and cast a sharp glance over their faces – not their eyes – they hadn't been surprised.
“If you don't mind, I'm going to bed.” He demonstratively rubbed his eyelids.
Zuko gave a curt nod. Iroh clattered dishes in the kitchen as he brewed another pot of tea. Mai blinked indifferently.
Toph shrugged unconcernedly. “Just go already, speedy legs. If you can't fall asleep without a bedtime story, that's not my problem,” she said, waving a hand in front of his eyes.
Aang decided that leaving immediately would be too hasty, and that it would be better to exchange a few more words first. “Even if you could read, I'd be afraid to ask you for something like that,” he grinned, his skin pulling unpleasantly tight. “You'd definitely pick something more elaborate.”
“For example, a detailed description of how the human body works,” Katara added, taking a dignified sip of tea.
Toph snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know, that's actually a good idea.”
“Thanks to you two, I can now perfectly picture Toph reading Aang something like that while he's trying to fall asleep,” Sokka muttered.
Aang shook his head. “Me too, so before it's too late...” He pointed his thumb somewhere behind him.
Sokka tensed strangely, as though he were preparing to jump to his feet for some reason.
“Sweet dreams, Aang,” Katara said softly, and Suki echoed her a moment later, flashing him a peace sign.
The monk smiled with the corner of his mouth, grabbed his staff, and, tossing over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow!” made his way toward the exit at an easy pace.
Toward the balcony – for him, everything was an exit.
Already outside, he caught Mai's dry voice from the corner of his ear. “I take it doors aren't exactly popular among airbenders?” A few chuckles followed.
“At least not with Aang,” Toph replied.
With a gust of wind, he jumped onto the roof, then another, a third, yet another one higher up, a fifth off to the side, and finally managed to let out a slow, drawn-out breath.
He sat down in his familiar lotus position, resting his glider across his knees.
Aang couldn't remember when being around his friends had become so difficult for him. Or why. At some point, he'd simply noticed that it had.
But he had a pretty good idea how it had started. First came the thoughts. So many of them. It seemed as though they were eating his mind alive. Wrong, uncomfortable, and unfair to the Avatar. Dark, oppressive, and joyless to Aang.
Alongside them came the ever-present, profound exhaustion. His head felt heavy, his body motionless and pathetic. Every day, he struggled to get up from Appa's warm side. But he couldn't afford to be lazy, so he continued training day and night.
Then he started talking less, laughing less, and smiling less. Things he'd once done without thinking had suddenly become incredibly difficult and exhausting, more draining than several sparring sessions a day without a break.
It was frustrating.
And perhaps it was the most obvious sign.
He touched the beaded amulet. From where he sat, he had a view of the square with its fountain, the surrounding lanterns reflected in rippling patterns across the water.
Just a few hours ago, the place had been full of people, food stalls, and stands selling elaborate souvenirs, but now only a few solitary passersby remained.
So his friends noticed. They often tried to draw him into conversation, cheer him up, make him laugh, coax him into talking about his feelings, but...
A nocturnal bird hooted, its wings rustling as it flew over his head.
The next symptom was strange, all-consuming, something that completely enveloped him... Numbness. That was what he called it.
And he simply felt... Nothing. How could he talk about feelings that weren't there?
Aang knew he should have been troubled by such silence inside himself, but he didn't care. So he simply accepted it.
Aang noticed an elderly man toss a coin into the fountain, and the wind carried the man's whispered wish to his ears, a plea for his children and grandchildren to be safe and well. Aang detachedly thought that because he'd heard it, the old man's wish wouldn't come true.
Because when the numbness came, the fear, anger, shame, grief, and guilt went away.
Everything that had suffocated him, torn him apart, and broken him for so long. The phantom grip around his throat, the hurricane of thoughts in his head pounding toward a migraine, the dull ache in his solar plexus.
He had to pay for the emptiness with sparkling laughter, warming smiles, and soothing joy, but Aang was satisfied with the price.
Of course, the people closest to him kept trying even then.
But he learned very quickly how to shape his words so they would feel better. How to stretch his lips in just the right way so they reflected the expression expected of him. How to laugh sincerely enough that they would pick up on his falsehood and never realize it was fake.
Eventually, they stopped trying to get through to him, although after seeing them today, he wasn't sure for how long.
And again, Aang should have been surprised – or even frightened – by how easily he'd mastered the skill.
But he felt nothing.
Around the same time, however, Aang discovered something else. He had no name for it, and his tongue refused to call it a symptom, but to him it was simply another strange thing he'd noted.
Aang stared at his staff, running his fingers along the shaft, searching for imperfections. There were none, of course, because it had been made by a brilliant inventor, Teo's father, and was still fairly new.
He exhaled. It had become unbelievably difficult for him to look people in the eyes.
Into Katara's shining blue. Sokka's intelligent blue gaze. Toph's steel-gray eyes. Zuko's molten-gold irises.
Whenever Aang met their eyes—eye to eye—full of concern, trust, and boundless love, his heart clenched painfully and his breath caught, while the numbness that had enveloped him rapidly began to melt away. And an avalanche of buried emotions and feelings threatened to swallow him whole, knock him off his feet, and break his spine.
He wasn't ready to let go of the numbness. To him, it had become a relief, an escape from the storm of sensations he'd been drowning in before.
With this silence in his chest, he had defeated Ozai. With this emptiness inside, he could continue maintaining the fragile peace and balance. With this numbness, he no longer threatened to hurt his friends with his unstable moods, and this was the only way he had been able to function ever since.
Aang knew, understood with crystal clarity, that the moment the numbness disappeared...
He would drown.
In grief.
For Gyatso.
His mentor, the person who had been closer to him than anyone. The man who had raised him from infancy, baked him the most delicious pies, told him stories from his life, celebrated his first word, his first step, his first airbending form. The man who knew him inside and out like no one else in the world. The man who had been everything to him.
For every monk and nun whose voices he had heard and listened to since infancy, whose teachings and guidance he had absorbed like a mother's milk—a mother he had never had. The people who had taught him to read and count, taught him their philosophy, explained things he didn't understand. The people who had comforted him when he'd accidentally stepped on some little creature's tail and become frightened that he'd hurt it. The people who had respected and loved him simply because he was himself, and no matter what he felt.
For every child in the nurseries and children's rooms of the temples, so charming and innocent. The children he had told silly stories to just to make them laugh, whose laughter and babbling he had loved listening to, whose footsteps in the corridors he had listened for so he could play tag or hide-and-seek, leap out from around a corner, scoop them up, and spin them around in his arms.
For his fellow airbender friends, the ones he'd grown up with, the ones he'd learned to bend alongside, the ones with whom he'd studied the most boring scrolls on the basic sciences. Among whom he had been the first to earn his master tattoos, and who had applauded the loudest at the ceremony where he received them.
For the friends and acquaintances from other nations whom he had met during his travels with Gyatso, exchanging names and jokes and finding common ground as they learned about one another's traditions.
For every sky bison, lemur, and unique plant life that had been destroyed across the lands of each temple, whose beauty and scent no one – not even him – would ever see or smell again.
Sometimes Aang wondered if there was anyone in the world whose losses could compare to his, but he quickly pushed the thought away.
The memory of them hung over him like storm clouds, threatening to burst into rain at any moment. Whenever some stray memory of his old life flickered beneath his eyelids, his soul tore itself into tiny pieces all over again.
The taste of ash lingered on his tongue, his eyes burned mercilessly, and all he wanted was to curl into a ball and howl like a wounded animal. And stay that way forever...
But now, that deafening ache for them had contracted, dried up, leaving behind nothing but an eternal echo.
Aang tightened his grip on the shaft of his glider.
He...
Didn't want to feel it again.
But the moment the numbness faded...
He would choke.
On guilt.
For every life cut short by the war while he had been lounging inside an iceberg. For every couple left broken by the death of their other half. For every mother or father who had lost a child. For every child left without a mother or father, or without either of them. For every family that had lost a loved one. For every life he had accidentally taken in the heat of battle.
Aang wasn't naive. People were fragile.
Every time he deflected an attack from a Fire Nation soldier, one of them took their final breath. Someone was buried beneath snow, water, or earth. Blown away by the wind, the element of pacifists. Suffered injuries incompatible with life. And died.
It had been self-defense. But he had taken lives, and that was a fact. Not deliberately. Not intentionally. And still, he had no excuse.
Before, he'd tried not to think about it, and he'd been so successful that he genuinely hadn't.
But when the emotions quieted, he found himself alone with his mind. All he had left was to think.
And Aang thought that once the silence in his chest filled with sound...
He would burn.
With shame.
For continuing to run away.
At first, he'd run from his duty, from his friends, from his ththoughts.
Now he was running from himself, from his own feelings, and Aang understood that perfectly.
He understood it and didn't want to stop.
He raised his gray, monotonous gaze toward the starry sky. Yue was gone.
The people who had previously wandered past the fountain had dispersed, returning to their warm homes. Even the candles in the lanterns had burned themselves out.
It was dark and quiet.
Aang ran his knuckles along the staff. His old glider surfaced in his memory, made by the monks specifically for him, fitted to his height and weight. He went over the unique nicks and tiny cracks it had acquired through countless adventures and scrapes. He used to miss it. Now...
The numbness was salvation for Aang. A gift he had no intention of renouncing.
Because of his feelings, he had run away a hundred and one years ago.
Because of his anger, he had deliberately killed an innocent creature and nearly taken the lives of the sandbenders.
Because of his fear, he had refused to let Katara go, died, and nearly doomed the world.
Emotions got in the way. Because of his emotions, he made mistakes. Because of them, he couldn't breathe.
But when the numbness came... Everything became easier.