Carved In Rock || ATLA

Smells Like Teen Spirit

The Desert

"I'm worse at what I do best and for this gift, I feel blessed. Our little group has always been and always will until the end." - Nirvana

🌊🏔🔥🌪

He was gone.

Appa was really gone.

It was her fault.

"How could you let them take Appa?" Aang raged at Toph, jabbing her in the chest with his staff as she stumbled backward. She had just let the sandbenders take him like he didn't mean a damn thing in the world. "Why didn't you stop them?"

"I couldn't!" Toph defended herself. Her normal fight was gone as the guilt continued to eat her alive. "The library was sinking! You guys were still inside and..."

"You could've come to get us." Aang cut her off. "I could've saved him!"

"I can hardly feel any vibrations out here. The sandbenders snuck up on us when we were sleeping and there wasn't time for..."

"You were sleeping? Even better!" The monk snapped. "We were busy risking our lives while you were sleeping! You know what I think really happened? You just didn't care! You never liked Appa! You wanted him gone!"

"Aang, that's enough." Aelita muscled her way between the two, pushing Toph towards Sokka and Aang to Katara. "That's not fair and you know it. Toph did all she could, she saved our lives."

"Don't act so fucking innocent!" Aang immediately sized up his partner, showing a side of him no one knew existed. "What happened to the plan? You, Katara, and Zei were supposed to get out. Had you just done what you were supposed to then you could've stopped them from taking Appa. But no, what were you doing? Standing around being useless while even more people died and my best friend was taken. This is your fault too!"

"Aang please." Katara reached for the monk, wishing she could do anything to make things better. "Fighting like this won't help Appa."

Sokka took Aelita by her arm and pulled her away from Aang, noticing her face noticeably lighter than normal. "Don't listen to him." He said quietly while his sister tried to calm their friend down. "You did everything you could." He tried to assure her. "First, we need to focus on getting out of the desert alive before we can help anyone."

"That's all any of you guys care about, yourselves!" Aang huffed, jerking out of Katara's grasp. "You don't care whether Appa is okay or not!"

"We're all concerned but..."

Aang snapped his glider open and ignored Katara's words. "I'm going after Appa."

The airbender took to the sky and glided away despite his friend's objections below, eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of the bison or the sandbenders.

Katara sighed and tried her best to ignore the hopelessness she felt. Toph could barely see, Aelita looked worse than she did even after having her arm broken, and unfortunately, her brother couldn't hide the panic in his eyes. "We'd better start walking." She said after a moment, reaching out to take Toph's hand so she could help guide her along. "We're the only people who know about the solar eclipse. We have to get that information to Ba Sing Se."

Without a clue where the hell they really were Katara picked a direction and started walking, Toph not objecting at all. Mushu crawled up his humans leg to wrap himself around her shoulders, licking her cheek softly to try and help. Sokka knew it was bad when she didn't move, didn't flinch, and didn't even acknowledge the little creature's existence.

"Hey, we've gotta get moving." He said as she reached for her hand.

Aelita flinched away from his touch, wrapping her arms around herself. "Yeah, okay." She said in a dead tone, her eyes full of darkness.