Prompt: Gateway

noun

a means of achieving a state or condition.

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Characters: Aang

Others: Gyatso, Appa, Roku

Gyatso should have known that Aang was listening, should have stopped the meeting and went to Aang immediately. He didn't know, though. He didn't know that Aang was listing, that the meeting would run so long, or that all that his pupil left for him would be a scroll with the message:

"Gyatso,

I don't fit in anymore, and I don't want to continue my Avatar training. It just isn't me. I'm not the bender they want me to be, that they think I am. So what if my toys told them that? I don't have it in me. So I'm leave, and I'm not coming back. I'm sorry Gyatso, I wish I had a better explanation, but that's it.

Good bye forever,

Aang."

He didn't know hat Aang would run into the storm. He didn't know that the Fire Benders would be coming as he awaited for Aang to return. Or that his final thoughts would be for the safety of his pupil.

Appa should have known that something was up, when Aang put the saddle on him and hopped onto his head, telling him to fly into the storm, to get as far away from their Air Temple home as possible. He should have done something to stop him. But he could see Aang was hurting, so he decided to go along with it. Maybe after a while, Aang would get tired of flying and return home.

The lightning was fierce and they wound up plumbeting into the icy ocean water, where they were frozen in a large sphere of ice.

Aang had been told that his responsibility was to the world and that he couldn't run away. That he had to stand and fight the dangers that were on the horizon. Even if he was untrained. They had been trying to get him to enter the "Avatar State" where he would have a connection with his past lives. He couldn't enter that state, he was too afraid.

So, he ran. Forsaking his Avatar destiney. Leaving his home. His Master Monk Gyatso. Everything behind to run and not face his destiney. And that was when he and Appa fell into the ocean. When Aang's body was under the pressure of the waves. When he was at his lowest. And then, everything was gone.

Roku should have done more to stop Sozin. But, how could he fight his closest friend? That was his mistake. His closest friend left him to die. The only one who stayed with him was Fang. And now, he was at the boarder of the end of his life, and the start of his new one. All he could do was watch and advise, when his reincarnate was ready. Sadly, watching and waiting as the world send decades paying for his mistakes.

And, that's when it happened. Roku felt himself being pulling into the body of a Living Being, his reincarnate. The Avatar State. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to advise the young monk, seeing him for only a fleeting moment before he vanished from his sight in a flash of white.