I’m Here
The airbenders had a secret, beautiful-sounding, wordless-word language, and Aang is a lonely lil bird after he becomes the last airbender. ...so the Gaang improvises.
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A/N: A lil Gaang-love hurt/comfort/FLUFF one-shot because Aang needs a hug, and the Gaang will start taking people out at the knees to give him one.
Rating: G (H for hugs)
Words: 3,491
ArchiveOfOurOwn
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When Aang was a boy in the Southern Air Temple, he talked with his friends in whistle-speak all the time.
They sang challenges over gales when they surfed around with their gliders, they stitched banter out of wind when they raced their bison, and they bled joyful congratulations and soft comforts into the air when words failed—when babies were born or when elders died.
He and his friends often used it to sneak around the temple. They channeled winds so high-pitched that the elders, sleeping or not, couldn’t hear them. Two tunes were a gusted high-five, and eight lifts and two pauses were a jest and a smack on the back. It was even their calling card on hot days when they were too lazy to move from their sunning spots or their bison’s backs to find each other to play. The passing breeze carried their conversations and their laughs, and it curled warmly around them with memories of good times.
But, sometimes, when he was without a partner in the woods, Aang whistled a whirlwind that echoed across the canyon.
/I’m here./
And then he waited. And someone, somewhere, would always call back. Sometimes it was to chastise him for wandering too far, and sometimes it was to make fun of him for being so scared. He didn’t care, though. Their winds wound around him and comforted him all the same.
He hated silence. Mostly because he was so used to hearing his friends and Gyatso speaking or whistle-speaking all the time that, when it was quiet, it felt like he was alone in the world. Like something was missing.
Like he had been forgotten.
He wasn’t the only one, though. All airbenders didn't like to be alone, to an extent. Nomads migrated together.
...But then the storm happened. And the Fire Nation. And now he was fighting a war he was a hundred years late for.
But even now he finds himself doing it on instinct. Sometimes it’s when they’re lounging as they set up camp, and other times it’s when he goes off on his own to collect kindling. Usually, it’s when he lounges on Appa’s head with his eyes on the sky, and the wordless words burning at the back of his mind spill out in braided winds.
His friends don’t notice the pain pinching his face whenever he catches himself doing it. And they couldn’t possibly feel his heart cringing—frozen—before convincing itself to keep beating. His family adores his whistle-speak, though he doesn’t tell them what it really is. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Whistle-speak was never about talking.
They say it sounds beautiful, like the wind itself was singing. They ask him on occasion—many, many occasions—to do it, just because it was pretty.
It gets harder to hide how sad it makes him. But he would have preferred the sad feeling to what came when sadness became easy to bear.
He starts to feel nothing for the wind that carries his words without words.
Just thinking about it made his eyes sting.
Aang loves his friends, his new family. He loves the smiles his whistle-speak puts on their faces—even Zuko’s face, once he joins them. He loves the relaxed atmosphere brought on like a spell as the winds wind around them, too.
But he hates the pit each lyric digs deeper into his chest. The emptiness consumes him in pieces, and it only grows deeper with each note he sings. Because although he loves what they sow on his new family, his heart always bleeds into his winds those questions that never get answers—and that never will.
/I’m here. Where are you? I’m here. Are you there? I’m right here./
Aang doesn’t stop doing it, even though the silence yawns wider and wider every time. He does it without thinking when he’s alone, on instinct when it feels like his back is facing the void.
/I’m here./
His shoulders curl to his ears, and he waits for minutes at a time. It’s only when he starts worrying why faces from a lifetime ago aren’t answering him that he remembers. He grips his staff tighter and shuffles away. He kicks the dead leaves even though their crunching screech raked across his ears. Even they are better than silence. He whistles softly between each step.
Sometimes he whistles things that Gyatso often did. Whistle-speak wasn’t as individual as a person’s voice, and if he bent the air just right, he could almost pretend it was his old master’s. He did it just to hear it. Just a familiar security.
/Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you, Soft. I thought I might find you here. Are you alright?/
He keeps doing it even after it loses its ability to make him cry.
The Gaang eventually catches on, but not until after the war. Not until after Appa starts calling for other bison and looking sad, one day leaving them for several weeks and coming home with two other bison. His family had all guessed what Appa’s calls were for, so they weren’t surprised when he came home with friends.
But Aang had always felt not as alone since Appa was alone with him. And after his buddy comes home with other bison and he hears them ‘talking’ softly to one another late at night when all else is quiet and he is alone in his bed, Aang finds himself whistling a broken tune. Even Momo finds more of his own after searching hard enough.
Now, he was truly alone. And the silence is deafening.
That’s when his new family notices something isn’t right. It gets eerily quiet, and they can’t find him one day. They split and search for him.
It’s Sokka who finds him.
He finds Aang sitting on a branch high up in a large, ancient tree. The young Avatar is hugging one of his knees while the other leg dangles, and he is whistling. The whistle is soft and soothing on Sokka’s ears even though the sound somehow carries for miles.
After a few seconds of whistle-music, Aang stops, waiting expectantly. He swings his dangling leg to tic off the seconds.
Sokka waits to see what the airbender paused for. After a near minute, a bird somewhere deeper in the forest chirps and tweets, not holding a candle to the melodic sounds Aang can make, and after a few seconds, it stops, waiting.
And then Aang whistles again. And then he waits.
And then the bird sings again. And then it waits.
The back and forth goes on for a while, and Sokka thinks Aang’s gone crazy.
But then, when next the bird sings and Aang prepares to answer, another bird cuts him off.
Aang flinches like the newcomer had smacked him in the face. Sokka winces along with him, and Aang hugs his leg a little tighter, hiding the lower half of his face behind his knee. His shoulders curl to his ears. His leg stops swinging.
The two birds call to each other, singing together, without him. They harmonize like it was the most natural thing in the world, knowing the lyric and rhyme of their shared song so well that they don’t need to take pauses in their duet. They fly further and further away, taking their songs with them, now that they’ve found each other.
Their chirps fade and die somewhere beyond the mountain, though their last notes echo like footprints left in their wake.
And then it’s quiet. It’s quiet for a while. It’s almost creepily quiet without the birds or Aang making any music. Sokka could’ve sworn he heard his heart beating. Even the wind died, and the trees were all still.
And then, like a beaten animal approaching its master, Aang whistles again, just a few notes. Hardly a song. More like a call. A plea.
His whistle carries loud and far, but just like the birds, it disappears into the mountains.
And then he waits.
And he waits.
And he waits.
He waits so long that Sokka starts to shift and sweat. Gravity itself was growing heavier in the quiet.
Aang waits some more.
Sokka’s lungs suddenly feel three sizes too small, and his heart falls somewhere by his stomach. That moment is when he realizes that Aang’s whistles are more than just the melodies of pretty songs. They’re the lyrics as well.
He knows this because, when next Aang whistles, the sound is wet and choppy as his shoulders shake and he hugs both of his knees to his chest. His lyrics are so raw and broken and desperate that it makes Sokka’s chest cave-in like they were strikes from a metal pole to his sternum. Aang’s whistle was a universal sound, as unmistakable as a smile was for happiness or tears for sadness—a wolf’s howl after being separated from its pack.
/I’m here./
Sokka doesn’t know how Aang wants to mourn since he went out of his way to be alone, so he leaves him to get back to the others.
And as he leaves, more whistles and long pauses follow behind him, like the mournful wails from the creatures in the sad stories told by tribesmen who’ve been at sea for too long.
...The group discusses this finding, and Zuko, who studied air nomads in his quest to capture the Avatar, pieces everything together. They are all heartbroken and think back on every time Aang had whistled and how much they liked the sound and how they even sometimes asked him to do it. They all feel horrible.
But Katara has a plan, and Sokka has the brainpower to make it work.
So over the next few weeks, Katara and Toph follow close behind Aang whenever he wanders off. They study his songs, and Toph, having the best ears of all of them, can pinpoint almost every note that he makes. When they rejoin the others, Katara makes little ice vases and bends water atop them to emulate the whistles, and Toph is the gauge by which the pitch is corrected. They do this as well as they can for as many notes as they can (also trying to write down Aang’s songs like sheet music, but it is very difficult).
Once they have enough data, Sokka spends several weeks, as often as he can with Zuko’s assistance whenever the Firelord has time, whittling the sizes, diameters, and depths of the correct notes into a type of ocarina. He makes one for each of them. Every ocarina is about the size of their palm and is given a little personalized flair that Sokka is quite proud of.
They spend weeks and weeks practicing Aang’s songs. They dodge him and collaborate their schedules like they were planning to invade the Fire Nation while undercover all over again.
And then, one day, they master a few of his songs. They’re not nearly as flowing or clear or beautiful as Aang’s whistle-speak (Zuko said that’s what it was called)—and the sounds don’t carry nearly as far—but they were as good as they could get. It was, after all, impossible to capture the songs of the wind unless you were born of them.
...And not too long after comes the day to surprise him.
Aang is up in his tree again, singing and waiting, when, from out of nowhere, there comes a response.
He damn near breaks his face as he falls from his branch to the ground. He slips on the dead leaves and falls three more times as he scrambles to stand.
Aang’s pulse pounds so loud in his ears that each thump feels like an earthbender somewhere is lifting and dropping a mountain. He has no idea what the whistle-speak said, so he asks, on impulse, one of the same questions he had been singing since he woke up in the South Pole.
/Are you here?/
And he gets four responses.
/I miss you./
/I’m here./
/Where are you?/
/I’m here./
And Aang’s heart throws itself so hard and so fast against the cage of his chest that it felt like it might burst out of his torso.
He chases their sounds, whistle-speaking like he was talking a million miles an hour—
He skids to a stop when he sees them.
He stares, and they stare back.
He is still high on adrenaline and frozen in place when he notices the small blanket they were sitting on. And the tea and small fire pit. And the few bits of burning incense—incense that he hadn’t smelled since a lifetime ago.
His confusion is nearing critical mass, but then Katara plays her ocarina.
And Aang freezes, his breath leaving him like he had just been thrust under icy water.
There’s an awkward pause as he doesn’t respond, but then Sokka plays the same notes that Katara had.
And then Toph.
And then Zuko.
And each lyric plucks Aang’s heart in his chest.
/I’m here./ they all say.
Aang only makes it three steps towards them, his shaking legs not letting him run over and hug them before his first sob breaks him into a kneel. The next brings him to his knees, and he is surrounded by warmth and kind voices just as he learns to breathe again.
And he weeps.
He weeps so hard that even the presence of his past lives at the edge of his mind is somber and sad.
But his family holds him closer, holds him tighter, and they each tell him that he is theirs and that they will never let him go. They won’t let him drown in the silence anymore.
They eventually break apart, and Zuko places something in his hand as Aang chases away the last of his tears. It’s an ocarina. The wood is smooth and the whittling is sloppy, but the focus put into each cut is clear and shakily sanded as carefully as one could.
It has a messy, squiggled air nomad crest carved onto its front, and on the underside, protected under a thick coating of lacquer, are the names of his family in four sets of handwriting that he recognized. And there’s a message, right beneath, in Sokka’s nearly illegible but very carefully carved font.
/We’re here./
Aang vaults himself into his big brother’s arms.
Sokka pats his back and tries to hide from the others how tightly he returns his hug.
There’s tea and more talk, and Toph asks Aang to teach them the ‘whistle-speak’ like she was asking him to share the code to unlock some large safe. Aang just smiles and asks them to teach him since he didn’t know how to work this thing.
He doesn’t need to learn, but he wants to. He wants to learn and have them share as much with him as he with them. He wants them to learn together in that moment.
And so, Aang teaches his family the language of the wind, the whistle-speak of his people.
The silence becomes a passing thought like a fading bad dream.
And when next Aang is by himself and feels that inky blackness winding around him like chains and sinking into his racing heart like claws, he swallows dryly, scared like he was about to jump from a cliff without his glider, and he whistles.
His lyrics are weak and timid in the night air, but they carry far because they came from an airbender’s lungs.
/I’m here./
There’s a long beat of silence, but then, in the distance, there comes an answer. It’s incredibly high and scratchy because whoever was making it was blowing their lungs out trying to make the sound travel as far as possible, but it was a response, nonetheless.
Then there is another, a little further to the left. And then another. And then another, close by.
/Oh, there you are./
/I’m here./
/Where are you?/
/Looking for you./
Something blossoms in his chest. It’s warm like he’s never felt before. It makes him feel all fuzzy inside.
Aang whistles again.
/I love you./
He gets four immediate responses—one now much closer than before.
And there are no pauses in their group duet.
/I love you./
/Are okay?/
/You okay, Soft./
/Find you here./
He is laughing and crying when Katara—the closest whistle—appears at his side, looking concerned. She doesn’t get more than three doting questions in before Aang is hugging her and drowning his jumbles of tearful laughs into her dress.
The others whistle more—high, fluttering sounds concerned with the lack of Aang’s response. Katara one-handed whistles back a choppy response.
/I’m here. Soft okay./
She hugs him tighter and rubs his back. Aang melts into her until even his legs give. Katara kneels with him on the ground, and she pulls him deeper into the protective circle of her arms, guiding his head to her shoulder and rocking them as she fills his ears with gentle words and soft coos. He is laughing and crying so hard that he can’t speak, and his grip becomes desperate like he thought she would be ripped away from him.
Katara holds him closer. She fists handfuls of his robes like she was silently promising to never let him go. She kisses the dip of his neck and shoulder, and, for the first time, whistles without her ocarina.
/I’m here./
Aang cries harder and for a while before he stops, not because he wanted to or because he had emptied all that he was feeling but because his body had nothing left to give. But by that time, his family had whistled demanding their location, and Katara had vaguely answered one-handedly. Everyone is there as he chokes down his final sobs. He just smiles, now, utterly exhausted.
They sit on their knees and hug him until their legs tingle numbly. Aang is too exhausted to walk when they get up, so Zuko crouches and makes a ‘come on’ motion with his hands behind his back.
/I’m here, Soft./
Aang’s smile is tired but blinding as he crawls onto his Sifu Hotman’s back and latches on like a koalapanda. He doesn’t have the strength to form words. When he tries, it’s a gargled hum.
He whistles.
/You’re here./
Zuko laughs and pats his leg.
And Aang gets four responses.
/I love you./ they all say.
Aang closes his eyes and hangs his arms over Zuko’s chest. Katara and Toph hold his fingers in a gentle grip to remind him that they were there. Sokka walks behind him with his hands on Aang’s shoulders—patting and rubbing his back intermittently—, and when Aang teeters dangerously on unconsciousness, Sokka is half-keeping him pushed up on Zuko’s back.
And on the way back to camp, his family practices a little whistle-speak conversation without their ocarinas. Aang didn’t know they had been practicing such a skill, and he doesn’t question the choppiness in their winds (the sounds are almost scratchy because they were blowing and not bending the air, but he could not give any less of a damn. They curled around him just the same).
Aang gently, tiredly, chimes into their conversation, forcing himself awake, even though he couldn’t even force his eyes open, so he doesn’t miss a single lyric.
...They keep the whistle-speak their little secret for the longest time—years and years—, but when their kids all learn it with their own ocarinas, their offspring exploit it as much as they can.
And their collective parents are driven crazy by the antics they accomplish with it.
Except for Aang.
The once boy now man lets them get away with anything short of a felony. He even plays dumb when Katara demands that he at least try to stop Bumi the next time the toddler tries to raise hell with his sister and little Lin.
Aang nods his head but crosses his fingers, and he couldn’t care less about that little guilt as he sits on the roof and listens to the whistle-speak of their little ones’ conspiring. Their plotting reminds him so much of him and his friends when he was a boy—the time gray and faded in his mind like a past life—that it nearly pains him from how happy it makes him.
And then, one night, little Tenzin is awake. And he is alone.
/I’m here./
His shaky whistle is wet and high-pitched like a choked whimper.
/I’m here. I’m here./
And Aang is at his side in an instant. He hushes and coos him, easing away his little tears and rocking him in the protective circle of his arms. Small hands curl chubby fingers into his robes like his son thought his father would be ripped away from him.
Aang smiles and soothes him to the tune of a whistled lullaby, gentle winds curling around them.
/I’m here./
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I think imma make a part II because everyone ALWAYS needs more hugs
Bonus Point about whistle-speak
PREVIEW OF PART II: “Are You There?”
PART II: Are You There?
