“Senlin?” Asked Katara with a quizzical look, clearly unsure as to why Lee would want to go to such a seemingly insignificant town- Aang felt the same.
“Yeah, it's supposed to have spiritual, uh, stuff going on. And the avatar is supposed to be the bridge between our world and the spirit world, right?” Said Lee, not meeting Katara’s gaze.
Aang was confused about their course of action after Lee’s suggestion, since they'd been travelling together for almost a month now and he had not betrayed them, but he also hadn't really proved he could be trustworthy other than not killing them in their sleep. The airbender already trusted him because of a deep, spiritual feeling he had, but he figured Katara and Sokka might still be apprehensive to go a bit out of their way just to go to a mysterious, apparently haunted, island. Yet, the boy was pleasantly surprised.
“Okay then, spirits, avatar- sounds legit. According to the map, it should be just a little to the west from here.” Sokka nodded at Lee, who seemed startled that Sokka was on board with his plan so easily.
“... Uh, yeah.” Lee agreed, actually looking… A little disappointed? Why would he be sad that they trusted him enough to travel to a scary island with him? “Are you sure? It's a bit out of our way and it's kind of a weak lead…”.
“We trust you, and if it's a bust we're not going to blame you; so far this entire trip has been one failure after another.” Comforted Katara with a kind smile, patting Lee's shoulder, before climbing up onto Appa’s head to steer.
About 2 hours later a small island came into view, not at all like Kyoshi, it was mostly wildlife and had a tiny section lit up. Aang assumed that that section was the village of Senlin, though it looked pretty ramshackle like it had been destroyed and rebuilt several times, and asked Katara to land a little outside of it since something felt… Off about the woods. Sure enough, when they landed, Aang stepped out and realised that a large chunk of what had been a forest was now in splinters, completely destroyed and charred down to nothing. No wonder the spirits were restless here; their home had been destroyed!
“No…” Aang basically whispered, standing on the clearing and surveying the atrocity that had befallen these woods. “Who would do this?!”.
“Fire Nation.” Sokka said, pointing at the burns littering the ground and the ash covering almost the entire clearing.
Aang felt terrible. The avatar would have stopped this, Arianna would have stopped this but he'd run off and left her to die- unknowingly but still. And now he couldn't even find the new avatar to guide, the person who was supposed to deal with this kind of stuff. Because now this forest was gone forever, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Aang, look!” Katara gestured towards something on the ground that Aang had just assumed to be broken chunks of trees, but on closer inspection they were acorns. “They're everywhere, so one day this forest will grow back, okay?”.
“Okay.” the airbender sniffled, not even realising he'd been crying until the the tears reached his chin. He still didn't feel good about it but he was a little more hopeful.
Meanwhile Lee look extremely uncomfortable, guilty even. Aang assumed it was because his nation had been the one to destroy the forest, but there was some deeper issue that Aang couldn't diagnose. He never had gotten round to asking the firebender what had been up with him on Kyoshi, which he was now feeling guilty about. If something was bothering Lee Aang should be there to help him in any way he was able.
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Zuko and his three companions entered Senlin with as little ruckus as possible, not wanting to antagonise the villagers. Well, the firebender would have been more than happy to make them enemies if it meant they got to leave earlier, but he chose not to tell his group that since he had technically been the one to suggest they come here. Though he actually wasn't the one to suggest it originally, that had been Kyoshi, and the only reason he even brought it up with his group was because he was completely terrified of his past life and didn't want to enrage her. But, again, he didn't tell the others that since they'd either think he was crazy or figure out he was that avatar.
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Avatar Zuko
FanfictionAU where Aang was never the avatar, and the airbending avatar had died in the Fire Nation attack. The next two avatars also both died without consequence, no one even realising who they were until, 16 years ago, the Fire Prince was born as the avata...
