Work Text:
They made their way back to camp in silence, no one sure what to say. If they'd expected anything from that encounter, it was some crazed priest, probably Fire Nation.
The girl's ghost had looked so sad.
Just before they went into camp, Ryo paused. Touma stopped by his side, looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and then nudged Xiu. Xiu just rolled his eyes - like anything anyone could say was going to help after what they'd seen. Sometimes you didn't need words.
So he stepped around his cousin to Ryo's other side, slung one arm around his shoulder and used the other hand to ruffle the Avatar's hair like he was one of his little brothers. "C'mon, man. It won't do any good standing around here."
Touma took it as a cue to head in, and called out to their makeshift army as he walked into the firelight just as if they hadn't seen the sentries letting them pass.
***
"So." He settled himself by Ryo, holding out one of the bowls he was carrying. "You gonna eat, or not?"
He ignored the bear-tiger's snuffling, except for lifting the bowls higher.
"Blaze, knock it off." Ryo glared out of the corner of his eye for a minute before sighing and taking the bowl. "It would've been easier if it were... I don't know. Human stuff? I haven't dealt much with the Spirit World side of things, and when I have it's been nature spirits. Peaceful nature spirits. I have no idea where to start dealing with this."
A snort from the other side of the fire drew both sets of eyes to Touma. "Find out what happened, genius. Look," he held up his hands, warding off their glares, "she freaked me out as much as you two, but at least I didn't stop using my brain. Did you see the wreck of that village behind her? Or the dead soldiers?"
"What do you mean, dead soldiers?" Ryo asked, and he looked as confused as Xiu felt.
Touma was looking between the two of them like he couldn't believe they hadn't noticed this. "The girl wasn't just standing there cursing us - I'm not even sure she was cursing us, and not someone she was seeing. The valley's empty in our time, but there was a village where she was standing, and there had been a battle. Which, okay, the Fire Nation has been fighting in this area for a long time, but it still seems a little weird, right?"
Xiu just shook his head. "Seriously? I was a little busy freaking out, man. You don't usually walk into an empty field and get hijacked by the Spirit World, you know. First time anything like that's happened to me..." his eyes narrowed, staring at his cousin's slightly guilty expression, "but not you, huh. And you were going to share that when, exactly?"
Touma shrugged. "The last time anyone even talked about my airbending, we had the Temple fiasco. You think I wanted to go through something like that again?" He threw another batch of sticks in the fire, and kicked a straggler in to join the mess.
Ryo looked up, sharply. "Dead soldiers... did you see any villagers?"
Touma and Xiu broke off, a brief relieved look passing between them. "None. It was almost like the place got cleared out before the soldiers arrived, a lot of loose stuff that had been dropped, tracks heading out towards the mountains, that sort of thing? No one that wasn't wearing a uniform."
"Okay. Okay, we can work with that. Right? I mean, a battle where none of the civilians got injured, that sounds like they had warning. That would be the sort of thing people would remember."
As he caught on, Xiu nodded. "So we ask around back at our village, see if anyone there knows anything. And if they don't, maybe somebody else will." He grinned. "Time to hit the road again, huh?"
Touma rolled his eyes. "Not now we're not! I need to get some sleep, even if you don't. And you're going to need to get some more food."
Xiu looked down with narrowed eyes at that, and into the perfectly innocent expression of a tiger-bear sprawled at his feet, a bowl almost hidden beneath one massive paw. He shoved one massive shoulder half-halfheartedly as he retrieved the bowl. "Come on, Blaze. Aren't you ever gonna knock that off?!"
Ryo just laughed. "No way, man. You are forever the purveyor of noodles around here. Should've stayed off that roof from the start."
Xiu grinned as he got up to fetch another bowl. "What, and miss out on your company? Nah. Besides, it was the only escape route available. We were running out of roof."
Touma flopped backwards, stretching out by the fire. "I should've watched my temper, is what should have happened. But you can't change the past."
"I wouldn't want to anyway. Well. Not the recent past, anyway. And the distant stuff..." Ryo trailed off, looking up at the stars. His chopsticks twirled absently in the noodles, and Blaze's eyes followed them lazily.
"Can't do anything about that, man. Except lay the spirits to rest. C'mon, it'll work out." Xiu said quietly, returning with his own bowl and pointedly sitting on the opposite side from Blaze. The tiger-bear snuffed in the uninterested way of cats, but one eye remained open and fixed on the bowl.
"I hope it will. I mean... even if we find out what happened, we don't know that it'll help. I'm not sure we can, either - if none of us understood what she was saying, how is she supposed to understand us?"
Looking up at the stars meant that he missed Touma's frustrated look, and the way Xiu shrugged at him. "I don't know. Isn't there some Avatar power that covers that?"
Xiu snorted. "Sure, man. We would've been standing there with no idea what she was even saying, if he could do that."
"Actually.." Ryo scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "It kind of took me by surprise, but I just remembered something one of my teachers at the Temple said, when I was learning Airbending. When it's their turn in the cycle, if they've got the right area but they're not sure which kid is the new Avatar, they give it a bunch of toys and things, right? And the one who picks the old Avatar's things out of it is the right kid."
Xiu stared, eyebrows threatening to vanish into his hair. "So some part of you remembers past Avatar stuff, and you just can't remember it? That's just a little freaky, don't you think?"
"Are you kidding me?" Touma snorted, tossing a stick over at Xiu. "Think about it, man. The Avatar's been around for how long? Always the next element over, half the time 'he' is a she? They'd go crazy if they had to consciously remember every single life. I'm getting a headache thinking about that."
"Now that you mention it..." Ryo shook his head. "I guess I get to practice my meditation too? 'Hey past lives - anyone care to come and translate for this lady for me?' I'm going to look like an idiot to myself." Standing, he nudged Blaze when he rumbled a complaint. "Hey, you've got all that fur. I'm not sleeping outside, even with the fire. See you guys in the morning."