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Of Dancing and Laughter

Summary:

After fleeing the Fire Navy ships, Sorey, Lailah and Mikleo take shelter for the night in what was once the Southern Air Temple. Though they can't stay, maybe they can bring a little more life and light to the forgotten ruins.

(Also, Sorey just wants to try on Lailah's heels.)

Too bad the temple isn't as abandoned as they thought.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Of Dancing and Laughter

Chapter Text

Lailah decided it was probably some kind of divine fortune that they managed to find the Southern Air Temple when they did. She is sure that otherwise, they would have continued flying until the Fire Nation found them or Atakk became too tired. 

Sorey was the first to slide down from the dragon's saddle and onto the outdoor frontcourt of the Southern Air Temple. His booted feet hit greyscale stone; his eyes swept over the crumbling architecture. He seemed at once to be filled with as much awe as dismay. 

“Isn’t this supposed to be a temple?”

Lailah slid down after Mikleo, cradling in her arms the bundle of supplies she had stuffed into Atakk’s saddlebags. A shake traveled down the dragon’s form, starting from his nose and rolling down to his tail. He flapped his wings once, then twice, and promptly sat. His nose bowed towards his flank, teeth picking and itching at where one of the buckles latched around his stomach.

Lailah made a soft sound. “Yes. And for all intents and purposes, it still is.”

“But it’s…” Mikleo’s voice drifted off. His brow pinched tightly. “…desecrated.”

Lailah’s mouth pressed to a tight line. “Yes.” She readjusted the bundle in her arms. “Ever since the airbenders fell to the Fire Nation, well…I’m afraid the temple has had no one to care for it.”

Sorey’s shoulders tensed. “That’s awful…”

“It is,” Lailah agreed. “But that also means our job to bring balance is doubly as important as it should be.”

“Y-yeah. I guess so.”

Lailah stepped forward, heels clicking against the stone. “Come with me. We’re going to set up camp.”


As Sorey gathered firewood from lower on the island, Mikleo located three sleeping mats, and Lailah found a few stone hall benches that she instructed the boys to drag over once they returned. In a few moments, the crumbling side entryway began to look like something livable--comfortable, even. 

Lailah arranged the kindling in the center of a loose circle of stones when Sorey approached her.

“Lailah?”

“Yes, Sorey?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Lailah hummed an absent-minded affirmative. Her fiddling finished, she snapped her fingers and lit the kindle. She rocked back to view her two charges. 

Much to her amusement, Sorey looked to Mikleo at his side with a sheepish glance. Mikleo shrugged back to him, and Sorey turned to Lailah again. His cheeks were dusted an adorable red. “How, uh…how can you walk in those heels all the time? Don’t they hurt?”

“Oh!” Lailah laughed. She rose to her feet and looked down to the scarlet pair she liked to call her ‘statement’ heels. “Not at all! They’re quite comfortable, actually. Heels can be, you know, after you’ve broken them in.”

Mikleo’s eyes brightened; in the campfire light, his violet eyes were painted like a beautiful sunset. He leaned forward. “I saw you wear them back at the South Pole on the ice!”

“Well, yes. I wear them everywhere.”

“But on the ice?” Mikleo stressed. “I was surprised you didn’t fall!”

“Oh, that makes two of us!” Lailah giggled. She raised a hand to her cheek. “I kept thinking I would slip while I was there. It was rather hard to keep my balance.”

“Really?” Sorey’s eyes grew round. “But you didn’t look like you were worried about falling.”

Mikleo crossed his arms over his chest. “You made it look so easy.”

Lailah tittered with pleased laughter. She leaned back and pressed both of her hands to her cheeks and turned away. “Oh, you boys are both so sweet! Why, thank you! How flattering!”

“But really,” Mikleo hummed. He lifted an ungloved hand to his chin. “How do you do it? That’s an impressive skill.”

“It's helped me train my focus when I firebend.” Lailah smiled. “Balance is very important when controlling fire, after all.”

“Gramps used to say the same thing when he was teaching me,” Sorey breathed with big eyes. His gaze darted down to the red heels Lailah had on her feet, and then back up to her face. He bit his lip, and after a brief bout of hesitation, burst out another question with youthful and unabashed eagerness, “Would you mind if I tried…?”

“Oh! Not at all!” Lailah clapped her hands. 

Mikleo balked. “Sorey, what?”

But Sorey was already taking off his heavy winter coat and boots. He shivered when his bare feet hit the chilled tiles of the Southern Air Temple, but his grin remained wide on his face. “C’mon, Mikleo! You can’t tell me you don’t want to try it! Not even a little bit?”

A pinched frown spread across Mikleo’s red face. He didn’t say a word but kept his arms resolutely crossed over his chest.

Lailah brought over a low and unbroken bench from the hall to sit on before she slid her heels off. The shoes clacked against one another when she held them out. The other firebender sat down beside her, quick to stuff his feet in them. 

“They’re a little tight,” Sorey said with a wince once they were on. But he looked down at the heels and moved his feet back and forth to watch the way their red surface shined in the firelight. 

“My feet are most likely a little smaller than yours,” Lailah hummed, watching his face. Her smile widened. “But as long as they fit, you should be good to try walking in them! Why don’t you give it a go?”

“He’s going to trip.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right.” Lailah stood up. Her bare feet quietly clapped against the dusty stone. She turned to Sorey and held out her hands. “Here, let me help you stand.”

Sorey took her hands with a quiet thanks. After a beat, Lailah pulled him upright. Almost immediately, Sorey wobbled.

“Whoa!” He clung tighter to her hands. “Oof! My toes!”

Lailah giggled. She didn't move as he leaned on her. “It’s a bit different, isn’t it?”

“It kinda hurts.”

“It’s probably because my shoes are a bit small for you. Do you think you can walk?”

“I--I’ll try.”

Mikleo shook his head as he watched Sorey take tentative and slow steps with Lailah’s bracing support. Together, the two began to orbit the campfire. It almost looked like they were dancing.

“If only the world could see their Avatar now,” Mikleo murmured lowly, dryly. “Felled by a pair of heels, of all things.”

“Hey…” Sorey called to him; Lailah tried not to laugh. The young man pulled away from her, one arm held out as he attempted to walk on his own around the fire. “…I actually haven’t fallen, you know.”

“Yet.”

Sorey let go of Lailah’s hand. “See? I’m doing just fine.”

“Remarkable.”

“Thank you.”

Lailah giggled. She came to a stop by her bench and clapped her hands together, watching as Sorey made another careful circle. “How do you feel?”

“My feet hurt,” he laughed. “But I think I’m getting the hang of it!”

The brunet walked around once more. Before he started his next lap, however, Sorey changed direction. His green eyes were bright and mischievous, pinned on Mikleo, and Lailah tried not to giggle as she watched him reach for the crossed arms in front of his best friend’s chest.

Mikleo’s face burned red. The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “Sorey…” he said; his voice dipped low.

“C’mon, Mikleo! I think I’m getting the hang of it!” Sorey’s grin was cheeky and warm. When Mikleo pulled back, his face turning an even brighter shade of crimson, the brunet bowed. He placed a hand to his chest and held the other out. “May I have this dance?”

Lailah clapped her hands together.

Mikleo rolled his eyes. He kept his amethyst gaze resolutely on the temple wall as he slid his hand into Sorey’s. “Yes,” he sighed with faux great effort. “I suppose you can.”

“Yes!” Sorey cheered and he squeezed hard. He leaned back, stepped once and then twice--and all of a sudden, his face paled. The heel of Lailah’s shoe caught on a crumbling edge of a tile and without stability, he lost balance, falling backward, slipping--

Lailah jerked forward, but Mikleo was faster.

He held tight to the hand Sorey already was holding and leaned forward. His arm snatched around Sorey’s waist as Sorey bent backward. Immediately, he could feel his friend’s weight fall into the curve of his embrace. With no control at all, Sorey’s left foot kicked out, pointing to the ceiling.

Mikleo stared down at the wide-eyed Sorey in his hold.

Lailah gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my…” 

If it had looked like Sorey and Lailah were dancing earlier around the campfire, it seemed as if Sorey and Mikleo had been caught in an intimate tango.

“I-I’m sorry!” Sorey’s face turned beet red. He released both hands from Mikleo to cover his own face.

Mikleo stuttered, eyes wide.

And then--after a moment--his shoulders trembled. His hold on Sorey shook. 

Mikleo laughed.

The sound echoed far and wide down the halls, bouncing off of broken walls and dead columns. Lailah wondered if she was half-imagining how the old desecrated temple now seemed to breathe again with new life, or if that was just an effect of the flickering firelight, licking upwards at the sky.

Chapter 2: Of Questions and Home

Summary:

Apparently, the Southern Air Temple Sorey, Mikleo, and Lailah decided to squat in for the night isn’t as deserted and abandoned as they thought.

Notes:

i ended up deciding to tack on this oneshot onto "Of Dancing and Laughter" since it takes place pretty much immediately afterwards. it made no sense to have a different fic entirely when these two bits are so intricately tied together events/content-wise

that being said, however, enjoy finally seeing Zaveid and Eizen!! (which has been teased about in the other shorts, but here they are finally, before you, in written form)

Chapter Text

“Mikleo?”

A whisper in the night, hushed and quick. Mikleo squeezed open one eye and then two. With a sigh, he turned over on his bedroll to meet a pair of bright green eyes peering back at him in the dark. “What, Sorey?”

Sorey swallowed. His shoulders curled in, rounding his blanket under his chin. “…can I ask you a question?”

“Are you suddenly under the impression you can’t?”

A frown crossed Sorey’s features. It blinked away with his next earnest gaze to his best friend lying beside him. “I don’t know.”

Green peered at amethyst for a long stretch of time, before Sorey finally shifted and spoke again. “So, can I ask it?”

Mikleo sighed again. “Sure.”

“Would you go back? Right now? If you could?”

The question, somehow, was exactly what Mikleo had thought it would be. He feigned a modest bit of surprise. “What, home? To the South Pole?”

“Yeah,” Sorey rasped. Something in his eyes seemed to shine somehow, even in the shadow of the temple hall at the cusp of night. “I mean, I know you’re worried about your mom and all after everything that happened. And Gramps and Master Uno. And everyone else. So…I don’t know. I was wondering if you wanted to go back to make sure they were okay—”

“—no.” 

Mikleo’s voice was quiet, too, but sure. He lifted his eyes from the grey stone underneath their roll pillows. Green met assured amethyst. “You know I wouldn’t, Sorey.”

Sorey exhaled slowly. “But…”

“You can’t go home. Why should I?”

“Because the people we love are there and we don’t even know how they’re doing. How your mother is doing. And it’s…it’s home .”

A beat of silence sat, bitter and heavy. Mikleo reached up to his neck and wrapped a hand around the crude pendant always there. “So are you, Sorey.”

Sorey’s eyes stayed for a long moment on his best friend’s face. Then, finally, something folded between his eyebrows. He ducked his head into his mat and pulled his blanket over his face. “Th-thank you,” came a muffled, tight voice. “You’re home too, okay?”

“Yeah,” Mikleo murmured. He didn’t dare take his eyes away from the small tuft of brown hair he could see peeking up from the blanket’s end. “I know.”

His hand squeezed the necklace before he let it go. His arm stretched out into the space between them, the chill of the temple air at night making the pale, short hair on his arms stand on end. 

Mikleo didn’t have to wait long before a tanned hand peeked out from the blanket beside him and reached for his own.

Their fingers found every space in between each other to weave, to have, and to hold.

They didn’t let go until they had fallen asleep.


Mikleo didn’t know what he expected to happen when he wandered away from camp the following morning. He hadn’t intended to go far; he had woken up before Lailah and Sorey and had thought there must be something else he could do with this chunk of idle time other than lie there. And there was this tempting opportunity in the shadows of the halls behind them, leading further into the air temple, and Mikleo—who has never really been able to explore ruins like this before—was helpless to resist.

In hindsight, he should’ve known better than to think he could leave Sorey alone for more than a handful of minutes without him getting into some kind of trouble.

As soon as the tall, muraled walls of the temple began to shake under the tremors of a heavy impact, Mikleo groaned and cursed under his breath. He dug his sealskin boots into the floor, spun, and ran back the way he had come.

What Mikleo didn’t expect was the fact it was actually Lailah who had gotten herself in trouble.

The courtyard wasn’t as peaceful and homey as they had made it last night. The bench they had dragged over was now overturned, ashen logs from their campfire scattering soot across cracked stone tiles and over Sorey himself, who—though sitting upright—blearily seemed like he was waking up and wasn’t sure what had nearly thrown asunder his sleeping roll while he was still lying in it. 

“You think we’re just gonna let you take an innocent water tribe kid as a prisoner? Think again, Fire Nation!” 

Another crash and gust of wind, and Lailah gracefully landed on her feet near the entrance of the rightmost hall Mikleo had wandered down. Her sea-green gaze was fixed on her assailants—which, Mikleo had alarmingly realized half a second later was, indeed, plural. Two balls of fire hovered above her hands for the two individuals further down the center hall.

“You will regret thinking you’d ever be safe to rest here,” one of the strangers, a broad-shouldered blond, growled. The man then stomped his foot and a chunk of earth rose into the air in front of his chest. With a thrust of his fist, he launched it towards her. 

Lailah effortlessly side-stepped, punching a burst of fire at the stone to blow it away from her and the remains of their camp where Sorey still sat behind her. 

Immediately, the other bender with long, pale hair and bronze skin, darted forward. He leaped down from the fallen column he had stood on, a gust of wind at his back shoving him forward with unnatural speed that Mikleo knew shouldn’t be possible. 

An airbender? An actually alive airbender?!

Belatedly, Mikleo realized the man was holding a staff like an extension of his arm. Lailah gracefully spun out of reach of its swinging arc, just as the earthbender shoved a foot into the stone and tossed his hands out, flexing his fingers in rapid succession.

Mikleo heard the crunch of earth rising to obey him before he saw it, widening out into four slats that boxed Lailah within them. She didn’t scream; she didn’t cry out. But the small break in her cool, determined composure on her face as soon as she realized her hands were pinned to her sides and she couldn’t pull them above the earthen slabs was enough to stir Mikleo into motion.

The airbender laughed, one hand on his hip, the other wrapped around his staff he leaned on like a third leg. “Nice! Got ‘er good, Eizen!” he said, eyes on his friend and not on the waterbender running rapidly up to his side.

His mistake.

“You idiots!” Mikleo shouted.

But when he swung his fist, the man still—somehow—impossibly, even without looking at him, neatly dodged, pivoting around Mikleo’s arm. Mikleo caught a brief glance of raised eyebrows and a mildly impressed look on that bronze face, before he decided to smash that smug face in with a kick.

The airbender caught his ankle before it rose above his chest. With a slow drag of amber eyes, he followed the twitching line of Mikleo’s leg up to his face.

“Who’re you? Another water tribe kid?”

“Not a prisoner,” Mikleo hissed. “Whatever the hell you think is going on here is all wrong . Let us go!”

“Us?” 

The man’s thin eyebrow shot higher at the same time as Sorey shouted, “Mikleo! Lailah!” and ran over.

Lailah reacted first, her head whipping around. The long tail of her hair, too, was caught under the stone walls trapping her, pinned to her back. A flicker of pain crossed her face at the tug, but she shouted regardless, “Sorey! No prune-quats! Opposite of prune-quats! Un-prune-quats!”

Sorey stumbled to a halt a few feet away, fisted hands at the level of his chest.

“Un-prune-quats?” the airbender mumbled. He released Mikleo’s ankle, and Mikleo would have taken the opportunity to swing at him again, if he didn’t see the confused look the man sent his earthbending friend still half-cloaked in the shadow of the hallway.

The blond—Eizen, Mikleo remembered him being called—sighed and slowly stepped forward. “You. Child. You said you’re not prisoners?”

Mikleo’s face burned. “I have a name. It’s Mikleo! I’m one of the last waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe and no, I’m not a prisoner. Neither is Sorey. Lailah is helping us; she’s not what you think she is! None of this is!” 

The long-haired man whistled. He bent over and Mikleo immediately hated him for casting him under such a towering shadow. “No kidding? Shorty here’s a waterbender?”

“Zaveid, stop it.” Eizen scolded, now within arm’s reach. To Mikleo’s dismay, however, he crossed his arms over his chest instead of releasing Lailah. His green eyes scoured over Sorey before looking to Mikleo and frowning. “All right. I admit it: perhaps we reacted without fully understanding your situation. But you cannot blame us when who we see camping out in the ruins of an air temple is a highly dressed representative of the Fire Nation with two young water tribe boys.”

Mikleo grudgingly supposed that was…some semblance of fair. 

“Please. Let her go. Lailah’s not a soldier; she’s a Fire Sage.” Sorey stepped forward, joining Mikleo’s side.

“Fire Sage?” 

There was something sharp in the way both Eizen and Zaveid snapped their heads around to look at Sorey that alarmed Mikleo. Fear trickled down his spine until he reminded himself that these two had been ready to charge in at their defense even as strangers upon the idea Lailah was taking them in as prisoners.

“No kidding?” Zaveid murmured.

Eizen looked to Lailah.

Sorey nodded and before Mikleo could stop him, added, “I’m the Avatar.”

Both Eizen and Zaveid jerked to stare at Sorey again. Mikleo had a split moment to entertain the both amused and hopeful idea that they were getting whiplash from the amount of back-and-forth, until Eizen lowly repeated, “The Avatar.”

When Sorey hesitantly nodded, Zaveid lost it.

He bent over, pressed his wide hands on his knees, and laughed. “Oh, man! Yeah, Eizen!” he chortled in between his mad, hiccuping fits. “You’re not completely unlucky. At least you didn’t trigger that glowy, weird Avatar state or whatever!”

Sorey, Mikleo, and Lailah looked at each other. At least two out of the three could shrug uselessly.


Mikleo wondered what in all his sixteen years of living he did to deserve a nagging airbender at his back as he tried to pack up camp. After munching on blubbered seal jerky for a morning meal, Sorey and Lailah had wandered to find Atakk and ready him for their flight north, leaving him with the mundane task of tending to their bedrolls and other food supplies. 

This apparently included dealing with curious, long-haired strangers who thought themselves above wearing a shirt.

“Yo. Can I ask you another question?”

Mikleo sighed through his teeth. “Nothing’s stopped you yet.”

“What’s with that weird thing around your neck?”

Mikleo didn’t finish tying his bedroll. His motions stopped, fingers frozen loosely around the ties. Quickly, he snapped his head around. His eyes lit upon Zaveid behind him, lounging on the bench Lailah had dragged over the other night, only to be upended this morning in their fight. The airbender had turned it back right side up and sat his chin in his hand, elbow propped up on a bent knee.

Mikleo’s hand went to his pendant in question. His fingers tightened around the crudely carved, cool stone. “It’s not a ‘thing.’ It’s a necklace.”

Zaveid scoffed. He pushed himself to his feet and slid his hands into the pockets of his very Earth Kingdom-looking trousers. He didn’t even look like an air nomad. But Mikleo supposed he wasn’t in a place to criticize him when his own best friend covered up his heritage in a similar fashion. “Oh, well excuse me. What, was it made by a three-year-old?”

“An eight-year-old, actually.”

Zaveid’s foot hung suspended in the air; a sauntered step half-taken. His expression lit up like a dawning realization had just occurred to him. 

“No. Shut up.”

Zaveid straightened and shrugged with a smug grin. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought something.”

“And since when is that a crime?”

Mikleo made a great show of rolling his eyes and adjusted the strap of Zenrus’ packed bag he threw over his shoulder. He rose to his feet. “I may have only had the displeasure of knowing you since this morning when you and that earthbending friend of yours decided it was a good idea to—”

“—boyfriend, actually—”

Mikleo tried not to let his cheeks burn at the word; he wasn’t sure why it affected him so. It shouldn’t. “—whatever. My point is: I don’t need to have known you a lifetime to know that everything you do do manages to sound like a crime.”

Eizen, stand-offishly reclining a handful of yards away, snorted.

Zaveid at least had the decency to look mildly offended. “Hey, now. Not everything I do’s bad.”

“Says the guy who has already outrightly denied teaching the Avatar how to airbend, despite being, quite possibly, one of the last remaining airbenders alive!

A shadow crossed Zaveid’s face. It was full of so much, maybe too much—a myriad of emotions and thoughts and feelings Mikleo couldn’t begin to describe—and Mikleo had thought he had been able to read him so easily before, but it became clear as Zaveid turned away that what he saw was just the tip of the iceberg.

Mikleo was very familiar with icebergs. 

“Listen, Shorty—”

“—it’s Mikleo—”

“—I’ve already got a commitment I can’t, and won’t, not ever, back out of,” Zaveid murmured. Mikleo almost wondered if he misheard him because his voice dropped too low, but when he caught the man’s fervent glance to Eizen, who no longer seemed to be paying attention, understanding dawned. “I’m not in a place right now to take on a student, even if it is the Avatar.”

Mikleo looked away. He squeezed the bag’s strap tight with both hands.

“But don’t say I didn’t do nuthin’ for ya.” Zaveid turned and sent him a grin over his muscled shoulder. “I told ya already, didn’t I? I ain’t the last airbender. There’s a few more of us out there, trying to make do and survive even when the world thinks we’re dead. Find Dezel in Omashu. He’ll be an even better teach for the kid than I would.” 

“Yeah. I remember,” Mikleo mumbled. “I just don’t get it.”

“What’s not to get?”

Mikleo gestured up to the ruins all around them with one hand. “This was your people’s home once, right? If there are other surviving air nomads like you said, then don’t you guys want to restore it? Don’t you want to gather together and rebuild everything the Fire Nation thought they took from you all?”

Zaveid chuckled. He ruffled Mikleo’s hair, which was not invited, and Mikleo squawked, trying to set his chestnut bangs right. 

“That doesn’t answer my question!” Mikleo huffed.

“Yeah, well, maybe there’s not one single, easy answer.”

Mikleo snapped his gaze up to meet Zaveid’s humbled gaze.

Zaveid shrugged and looked away. “There’s a bunch of reasons I think we’re not ready to return. I mean, if the Fire Nation knew we were alive, and we had put ourselves all in one spot, then that’d make what little of us are left into a pretty easy target. Right?” 

“W-well, I guess…but…”

“Maybe once the war is over and we don’t have to fear for our lives, then…but in the meanwhile, it’s not like a building or a location is what makes a place a home. Y’know?”

Slowly, Mikleo folded his hand around the pendant dangling from his throat. Soft, campfire-warm memories from last night of a hand interwoven with his own returned and with them, Mikleo could feel all the tension still building in his shoulders and over his collar release. He sighed and let go of any final grudges he held against this man and his boyfriend clearly just trying to make their own way through a war-ravaged world.

“I think we’re a lot alike, you and I,” Zaveid muttered.

Mikleo scoffed and let his hand fall to his side. “Yeah, right. Gross. Don’t make me barf.”

Still. 

When Sorey and Lailah finally returned, it was worth suffering Zaveid’s annoying presence to see both Zaveid and Eizen have hilariously slack looks of dumb shock on their faces as they saw the giant black dragon they flew in on.

Notes:

March 7? Nooooooo I said March 9 right? Right??

Sorry it's a few days late, pfffft. I had a lot of work to finish. Got it done. Finally came back to this to revise and post.

Thanks to everyone still reading! I hope you enjoy these slightly romantic shenanigans! We'll jump ahead for the next bit, which will be far more dramatic a scene! Hope you enjoy what comes March 21!