Aang woke up in the middle of an abandoned fire nation ship thinking he was back in the war.

“Appa!” he cried out mid-sleep, the first living thing he remembered. Half awake and half senseless, the world he awoke in was just a sea of crushing, ice cold fog. He was lying on cold, hard metal that groaned under his back, and he thought he was trapped.

Use your senses, Aang thought quickly. Wind whipped in a cacophany of sound through the ship’s holes. Katara’s bag of travel food, seaweed and dried fish cakes, was propped under his head as a hard, makeshift pillow. He was one second away from bolting from explosives before he remembered he had checked every possible corner for traps. Plus he had an intact rocket flare from Sokka stored in his robes in case of trouble. Appa’s big soft snores beside him reminded him to breathe.

32 years old and he was sent back into a flight of panic over surroundings that his 12 year old self would have laughed at. His neck hurt.

But now all inventory was accounted for, including Appa. The poor buddy was out cold, rolled lazily over with his belly exposed. Aang scooted closer to his bison and rubbed a hand through his fluff. He was just glad he didn’t wake him up. Appa had flown nearly ten hours straight. He wasn’t as spry as he once was. Not like when they were kids, when leagues between nations were nothing, and the whole world was small.

Aang half figured he’d be greying by now, too, if he ever grew out his hair again. He thought of Tenzin, the boy’s soft mop of black hair bobbing through the snow, wondering if he was worried, asking for his papa. Wondering if Katara was worried, too, but reassuring Tenzin with hugs.

This was a mission Aang had to do alone. They took a trip South to see his family-in-laws, in the interim. Katara and their boy would stay with the tribe.

“Take Appa, at least.” Katara begged.

“You think I’d make it without him?” Aang smiled, a sadness there.

Katara laughed through her tears before hugging him tight. “Never.”

And she had given him the sack of provisions, one last kiss, and he was off, flying across the fjords of the Southern Water Tribe to find what last he could of the Fire Nation’s secrets, if they were sleeping under the ice.

Three things were clear. Fire Nation weapons were still being tested and developed. A united republic was nearing on impossible to defend. And Firelord Zuko was about to lose his mind to the pressure if Aang didn’t try _something_.

Diplomacy was a nice thought, quickly soured, when the nation leaders were insisting on sticking to old habits. _That_ round table meeting ended only in headache. A united city state, they all argued, would be a failure from the start.

Most nations pointed fingers at each other, mistrustful for various reasons. But that was before reports flooded in that new, modern Fire Nation incendiaries were discovered across the map inside several shipping vessels. Why they were stored inside them and when, nobody had a clue. And Zuko had, for turn of phrase, taken all the heat for it. The Fire Nation had a precedent for artillery.

Of course the Firelord had never known, otherwise he’d have crushed the operation on sight. “Lay low,” he had told Aang. “Look across the Southern Water Tribe. Trust me on this, be discreet.”

As discreet as a flying bison over a fjord could be, so they searched. Finding all the vintage fire nation ships was a fair start to the mystery. If Aang could trace their sailing pattern, maybe an underground operation would reveal itself. The Southern Water Tribe was vulnerably small, still, and might not have detected an infiltration of black market weapons, even after one hundred years.

Aang woke Appa up with a scratch under his chin. They gathered their things before moving out to find another ship made of bones.

And Aang sighed with a sad resignation that for as long as he lived, the war was _never_ over.