Chapter Text
When Aang was a child in the Western Air Temple, he talked to his best friend in whistle-speak all the time.
He asked him how his day was. He asked him if he liked the temple. He asked him if his siblings were as nice as the older boys who Aang had to share his room with.
Appa never heard him. Skybison didn’t understand whistle-speak. Appa just licked him sometimes and hugged him with two or four of his legs if he liked the tune his sky-rider was singing.
And while he wasn’t alone when he was with his buddy, Aang had never felt more lonely.
/Are you there? You’re right there . I’m here. I’m right here ./
His buddy’s silence made Aang’s chest ring hollow and ache in the worst ways. His shoulders curled to his ears. His songs bounced off Appa like he had a shield.
After his first un-returned /I love you/, Aang crawled onto Appa’s head and refused to let go. He clung to his tiny horns and buried his tears in Appa’s fur. He only moved to a different spot when Appa whined and wanted to lick him. He even stayed on when he stole Appa extra treats—Gyatso said he was very skilled and that he might even earn his master’s marks in a few years—by hugging his neck with his legs and airbending the whole bushel of apples to him.
Appa would lick him happily, but his happiness felt superficial and just out of reach.
/I love you, Still./
Appa still didn’t hear him.
Aang didn’t understand it. Appa was a baby, but even the other children in the nursery talked in whistle-speak before normal speech. They could understand it even sooner. Whistle-speak was their winds. It was instinct. Every airbender was born with it. Every airbender was born into it. And it was their most precious part of themselves.
Whistle-speak was an emotion. A fleeting moment. A part of a person trapped in time and turbulence to deliver feelings so deeply that it could hug around someone’s soul and warm them from head to toe.
But Aang couldn’t give Appa his words without words. He couldn’t let him feel how much he loved him.
Aang promised to find a way. He could give him his words without words without whistle-speak. He was sure that he could. He just had to try not to cry as much in the meantime. Appa didn’t like it when he cried. Appa trotted him to Gyatso before his first sob broke, and his master patted his back and calmed him before Aang’s heart could start to really hurt.
Gyatso couldn’t convince him to come off, though. Nor could the nuns who watched him as a baby. Even the newly-blued masters couldn’t tug or airbend them apart.
Aang softly hiccuped when the older boys taunted him for it. He clung tighter, trembling a little, and wished he could hide in Appa’s fur. Their words hit hard, but their whistle-speak hit him even harder. Their winds couldn’t be ignored or told to go away. The wind never listened. It only spoke.
Appa smacked his tail at them, and his wind couldn’t be ignored, either.
Aang stuck his tongue out at every single one of them and the dust clouds they left behind. He even stuck his tongue out at Appa’s mama when she growled at Aang to get off. Appa bared his teeth and tried to growl, too, but he was too small. They both held their heads high, though, as he trotted away.
Aang smiled and rubbed his wet cheeks. Appa was his best friend.
His best friend.
His.
Aang’s.
Nobody else’s.
He was never letting him go.
He just wished that he could tell him. He just wished that Appa would break his silence.
/Are you there?/
He wished that Appa could hear him.
He held Appa’s fur tighter. Appa licked him and walked him to food and brought him to water before Aang even realized that he was hungry or thirsty.
Gyatso tried to explain that the skybison couldn’t know whistle-speak because they didn’t need it.
Aang asked Gyatso why, and Gyatso just smiled and gave him a gift. Aang believed him, nonetheless, but he was still a bit scared.
Appa licked him again. Aang crawled off his buddy and tucked his new bison-whistle in the hidden pocket in his robes. He trusted his mentor. He trusted him as much as his winds. Gyatso held his hand, and they walked away.
Aang looked back for his buddy, but Appa was already trotting at his side. His best friend rubbed his furry head against his cheek before Aang could think to pet him. Aang giggled and held a handful of his fur. He would never let him go.
...But then the sandbenders happened. And then the end of the war. And now Appa was taking care of a family that had been waiting a hundred years for him.
Aang still whistle-speaks to his best friend, even though Appa never answers.
He asks him how his day was. He asks him if he likes the palace. He asks him if his new family is as sweet and kind as his.
/I love you, Still./
Appa didn’t respond like always.
Aang wishes that he hadn't left the bison-whistle his master had made for him in his room when he ran away. He had his other from his travels tucked into the secret pocket of his robes, but its weight never felt quite right. The whistle didn’t feel quite right at all , but it seemed to be the only way to speak to his buddy.
The whistle was silent. Aang didn’t like silence. His skin crawled whenever he played it. It’s air felt numb and lifeless even though it came from his own lungs. It turned his winds into spoken silence that made the world feel crooked. Like he was lost and no one was looking for him.
Like he was being left behind.
He was calling for his best friend with a void for a voice, and it felt so inherently wrong.
The silence from the bison-whistle reminded him of home in the worst ways. The voices of the faces from a lifetime ago were growing quieter and quieter in his memory. The soft words of his mentor that were almost fatherly, the prideful boasts of the newly-blued masters who showed him off to their friendly rivals once he became the youngest newly-blued of them all, the nostalgic song of the old nun who cared for him as a child...
Aang’s throat tightened. Something tugged his gut and made him curl up until he was as small as he felt.
He could hardly remember their voices. Barely even their names. Even the warmth of their whistle-speak was washed away in dull-grey in the attic of his mind.
One of his hands fisted Appa’s fur without Aang knowing. The coarse hairs were familiar and comforting like nothing else was anymore. They cradled his earliest memories and reminded him that those good times actually happened.
Something heavy sat on Aang’s shoulders and weighed him into the dirt, but Appa licked him before he could cry. A giant paw pulled him close and nearly crushed him against his face.
/Are you there, Soft?/
Aang smiled as the familiar winds of his family curled around him.
/I’m here./
And that’s how his family found him after Zuko came out of his meeting.
/What took you all so long?/
Toph and Sokka laughed, Katara awwed, and Zuko shook his head with a smile.
Appa didn’t want to share at first, but they all dogpiled onto Aang and laid in the sun like they did during the war.
Appa grumbled and still didn’t want to let him go, but Aang’s family weren’t going to let him go, either.
...But, one day, Aang did go. He went by himself into the woods to greet the first sunny days of spring.
He was halfway back to the palace when an echo broke his peace.
/Are you there?/
Aang spun around so quickly that he nearly fell flat.
The whistle-speak rang distant and high-pitched. A cry from far beyond the mountain. Its lyrics were icy fingers numb and black from frostbite—the ghostly touch of nails gliding up his back.
The song in his ears curled its winds around him like a hand reaching out of the dark. It was small, unsure—
/Are you there?/
—like when he was a boy in the Southern Air Temple and in the woods without a partner.
Aang’s shoulders curled to his ears.
One of his family was alone.
/I’m here./
He rushed his wordless words in warm gales to hug his wayward loved one. He rushed his sprint even faster as he commanded the air to aid his haste.
If only he had his glider.
/Are you there?/
If only Zuko had told him sooner.
/I’m here./
Aang is out of breath and tired as he gets closer to his family.
His heart aches some more.
He thinks they are alone.
/I’m here./
Azula always lies.
And Aang doesn’t see the danger until she smirks.
He tries to step back, further into the cave, but there are four more laughs behind him.
Azula braids whistle-speak with something that isn’t an ocarina, and her winds curl around him like a lasso.
/Oh, there you are./
Aang’s blood would have run cold if Azula’s winds weren’t so warm. They’re smooth and oddly soft like the scales of a batviper winding up his leg. His stitched-up heart welcomes them all the same, and his panic grows damp and fuzzy under the weight of her melody’s calm.
Her lyrics dig under his skin. His shoulders curl to his ears.
The inky blackness smells his blood in the water, and it dances around his heels like a pet eager to play with its master.
/Are you there?/
He freezes again, and even the breath from his closing airway is cold. Her lyrics are concerned and filled with sorrow like they were fighting back tears. They remind him of Katara. Instinct pulls his attention in every direction to look for her, and it blooms fresh adrenaline when he can’t find her.
/I’m—
Azula hits him where one of his arrows curl around his arm. Her sisters hit him more. Cold like ink dripped into a pool of water branches frozen webs under the medals of his mastery. She rips his elements away from him, and his past lives blur behind dirty glass.
She lets him still move, though. Not that it helps him. His insides are more slush than bone.
/Are you there?/
Her song is playful and satisfied to the brim; his mind thinks the day is hot and his friends are too lazy to play.
Aang’s lip trembles. His throat tightens. Grey memories are ripped out of the sacred chest in his mind and brought into visceral clarity.
They make him feel everything until he feels nothing, and that’s when it really starts to hurt.
/Are you there?/
She always asks him when he closes his eyes. She doesn’t want him to pass out. She wants to hold him at arm’s-length and dangle his winds in front of his face. She wants to taunt him with his whistle-speak from her crude metal flute.
The thing looks industrial. It reminds Aang of the war and the things he tries to forget about it. She could play it like a professional, but she and her sisters force their blows just to watch him squirm.
They steal the voices of his family.
They make his people scream.
Pins and needles fill Aang’s chest, and liquid heat sears his eyes. He feels their horror as his own. He feels their every dying breath in his gasps. He screams so loud that he deafens himself, but the scrape of his brow on the cave floor makes more of a sound than him.
Aang didn’t understand. The wind wasn’t hers. Its songs weren’t something that could be captured and tamed and used .
But Azula had put his winds on a leash. She had made them lie .
Her lyrics tack him down like a needle through a butterfly all while making his arms itch for a hug.
/Are you there?/
Aang’s cheek kisses cold earth while his arms debate whether or not to pick him up off of the ground. Wordless words pile into wordless sobs that choke the base of his throat. A whimper slips through the cracks.
Azula laughs.
And she gets four more in response.
They dance around him to the tune of his people’s screams. The voices of faces from a lifetime ago claw his chest bloody, and they rip off the patch his family had stitched for him.
The pit is starved and bigger than ever.
He hears his friends who snuck around with him and never let each other get caught. He hears the newly-blued masters who lifted him onto their shoulders when he got his tattoos. He hears the elderly nun who nursed him as a child in the Western Air Temple and gave him his whistle-speak name...
We need you, Aang. Are you there? We need you. Are you there?
/Are you there?/
His throat runs dry. His cheeks run wet.
Azula’s next winds are slow, almost tender. She lazily sinks her fangs into where she had peeled him raw, and she lances him with just as much venom as she did in Ba Sing Se.
She sounds almost like Gyatso.
/I love you, Soft./
Aang’s shoulders shake. His soul bleeds.
/Are you there?/
His first sob breaks him into a kneel. His second brings him to his knees. And he is surrounded by cold laughter and something heavy, an iron net, just as he forgets how to breathe.
His shattered heart weeps .
/Are you there?/
They tie him down and take special care to bind his chest so tightly that he can only breathe spoonfuls of air. Aang writhes like a newborn badgermole grabbed by its scruff and held high off the earth it had been born to command.
Everything is dark. Everything hurts . His voice abandons him after the second bolt of lightning.
Azula takes her time. She bites away at him until they no longer have to hold him down.
They drag him outside by his robes and shove him to the ground. Azula’s satisfaction is nearly palpable when his chest meets the dirt with a pained sound. Aang shivers and heaves for breath, and every inhale grates his ears with the scratchy sound of sandpaper on stone.
Azula’s foot finds its home between his shoulders and squeezes the last fragments of air out of his empty lungs. She presses harder, hoping for a wheeze. He feels her disappointment when all he gives her is something that sounds like a cough.
She spits his title and talks some more. She threatens his family—his brothers, his sisters, and Katara.
Aang grinds his teeth. His blood runs hot. He pushes against her, even though he can barely push his chest up to steal a glancing breath, just so she can see his snarl.
She digs her knee into his back until he can’t breathe entirely. Aang gasps on nothing, desperate and writhing as he is cut from his element, and the wind flurries around him like it shares his panic. She holds it there and relishes his empty gulps for air like his pain was to her as food and water were to every living thing.
The seconds tick by in small centuries. The faces of his family tick through his mind’s eye in so much time lost.
His body begs for air. He opens his mouth in a silent cry.
And Aang gets four responses.
/Looking for you./
/Are you okay?/
/Love you, Soft./
/I’m here./
Aang smiles so hard that it hurts his bruising cheek. He would have laughed if he could.
His family was here . They were looking for him. Their winds were honest. Their winds were warm . And they curled around him just like they always had.
He goes to respond—
Azula laughs.
Aang’s lip trembles some more, and even the blood in his lungs runs cold.
He can’t make a sound. She doesn’t give him any air. His voice is as dead as his people.
His family is further away now. Their songs disappear beyond the mountain—taking their winds with them and singing, without him.
I’m here.
Azula holds his face and presses his cheek into the dirt. Chilly panic writhes in his belly like an animal in a too-small cage that was quickly filling with water. Aang struggles for all he is worth, but he can’t move. He can’t breathe . Tears run over his lip and mix salt with copper in his mouth.
I-I’m here.
His family’s silence hums cold and mocking in his ears. Aang tries to swallow. He almost chokes. More like a hiccup. Their silence presses a boot on his throat just as Azula presses his face harder into the dirt.
His stomach lifted like he was falling. His skin raced over with the same feeling.
He was falling away and falling apart.
He was being left behind.
I’m here...
Azula laughs just as coldly as the ground beneath him feels. Her knee digs in so hard that his ribs feel like they’re bowing.
/Are you there?/
They taunt him with his people’s voices as his vision fades. Stolen winds hug him with hope and rip off of him in screams so much that his head spins and his heart forgets how to beat. They dunk him in and out of icy water, and he prays they would just keep him under.
They had ripped away his winds. They had ripped away his family.
Like when the Avatar took Gyatso.
Like when the Fire Nation took his home.
He opens his mouth to cry out. Silence filled his lungs, and silence is all that comes out of him. His chest tightens like he’s drowning.
Azula presses her knee harder to tear out his silence in muted songs just like she tore out his people’s screams from her metal flute.
Aang was peeled raw and torn bloody, and the pit was swallowing him whole.
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here—
Azula’s laugh bleeds into the air like ink onto something sacred. She pats his wet cheek.
“Are you there, little bird?”
I’m here…’m right…’m right here...
Aang’s head is filled with cotton and his vision is black with spots when the ground shakes. The silence is blown away so furiously that it makes his ears ring.
It’s Appa who finds him first.
More earth churns, and Azula is vaulted off his back.
It’s Toph who finds him next.
Murder is in Katara’s shout. The promise for pain is in Zuko’s curse. The guarantee of slaughter is in Sokka’s battlecry.
The four of them chase after the devils who hurt their family, but Appa stays huddled around Aang’s limp form. He groans and rumbles and paws the ground in his desperation to get his sky-rider to move.
Toph, being able to feel Aang’s condition, is the one to call off the attack. They sprint to his side, even though they were no more than a few yards away, and Appa only growls for a second before allowing them closer.
Their bloodlust turns to panic as soon as Aang remembers how to breathe. The ropes are gone, his wrists are red, and the whole of him makes them contemplate murder again.
They hug him tight and hold him close like their arms might somehow be bandages, and they speak softly their small assurances and loving coos.
Aang clutches their clothes like his life depends on it. He trembles so hard that he shakes them all. He weeps, but he is quiet. Not even his wet hiccups make a sound. They hold him tighter. Appa licks his shoulder.
Azula and her sisters escape, but they could care less at the moment. Sokka and Zuko tear their shirts for bandages, Katara stems Aang’s bleeding where it’s worst, and Toph braces herself as he squeezes her hand numb.
Aang stares at everything and nothing as he holds his other hand out, but Appa’s nose is there before the trembling limb can fall.
They all have a million questions.
They all agree not to ask them.
On the way back to the palace, Aang sits on the cradle of Appa’s neck and hugs him like he otherwise might fall into something worse than death.
He still hasn’t said a word. That’s when his family knew something was worse than wrong.
He doesn’t respond to words, so they try whistling instead.
/Are you there, Soft?/
Are you there?
His eyes are wide and vacant. He trembles harder. His tears flow faster. They get their answer.
Aang fists handfuls of Appa’s fur—his knuckles white and bandaged and shaking—and he refuses to let go.
The sounds of his family’s hearts breaking are the only noises to break his silence.