So cold my hair is frozen,

[actually112]

Who| Aang and Steve; Aang and Roland
What| Aang broke curfew. Now is a perfect time to scold him/sit down and discuss being frozen in ice for a few generations.
Where| District 4 suite
When| Monday, Oct. 27th
Warnings/Notes| References to war, descriptions of recent violence against children

Aang can't say he had no way of predicting this would happen. He shouldn't have listened to Gary, but he did, now he pays the consequences.

He can't help but think this is excessive, though.

He's been spending all day just using the suite as his personal gym. He's abandoned having a shirt, instead walking around with only pants and using every surface as exercise equipment. Crunches, push ups, katas, balances--whatever he can think of, he's doing, because he has so much pent up energy and he just wants to run around outside.

He hasn't even broken a sweat yet, but it doesn't look like he should exercise. He has a big purple bruise on his cheek and more bruises on his abdomen and along the side of his ribs. It looks a little gruesome, but he hardly notices. Coming from a world where people can literally kick boulders at you, a few bruises is just another Tuesday.

Comments

[ka_sera_sera]

Hard to miss the restless boy hopping back and forth around the living room. Not too hard to guess, though, exactly why he's doing it. Little as the capitol wants news of things like curfews and the breaking thereof to get to the city's population, within the tribute tower, gossip travels.

Roland lets himself into the suite and, instead of heading to his room as he'd originally planned, wanders over to lean on the back of a couch and watch Aang. He's been a little curious about this ever since seeing those exercises the boy does in the mornings, and now is as good a time as any to ask. "Where'd you train? Or how, I should say." In his world, the where of it might tell him all he needed to know. Always odd when he forgets that things like that are no longer the case.

[actually112]

"How? By bending, usually." He switches from push ups to squats, not even pausing between the two to catch his breath. He's breathing just fine, actually. "But I can't bend here, so I'm just doing all the strength training and katas you need to do without the bending. I hope I'm not falling out of practice."

He's only just beginning to sweat a little, but he still doesn't seem out of breath. He tilts his head to look at Roland while he keeps squatting. "Do they have bending where you come from?"

[ka_sera_sera]

"Not the way you mean it, I think." Given what he's seeing now Roland could make a good wager at what it is, at least generally speaking. "Some kind of fighting, isn't it? Few other reasons you'd keep practice with moves like that."

[actually112]

"Well, a lot of people use it for fighting, but it's more than that."

Fifteen hot squats, sixteen hot squats, seventeen hot squats...

"It's... I guess you can think of it as another limb? It's a way that you interact with the world. A bender bends the elements around them."

[ka_sera_sera]

Watching Aang's giving him the urge to move, himself. This is unfortunate, as to Roland movement means walking, traveling, seldom stopping in any one place for more than a few nights. Moving on. He may have to start inventing exercises like the ones he's seeing now just to shake the itch off.

"Afraid I still don't quite understand. If it's one of those abilities some of us can no longer do here - is it a kind of magic?"

[actually112]

That's what movement generally means to Aang, too. Luckily, training can take the edge off of it.

"Weeeeell... it's not magic, but it looks that way if you've never seen it before." Sokka had been calling it magic for days before he got used to Aang and Katara bending all around him. "It's... it's like using the energy in your body to move the elements around you. Like with airbending, you move the air."

[ka_sera_sera]

He nods, gaze going distant as he tries to imagine it. "I'd like to see it some day."

He says it almost without thinking, but he never will see any such thing, will he? And it's likely - not inevitable, but quite likely - that Aang won't, either.

Well. Nothing for it, is there? Not yet.

"And you do it like that?" He nods at Aang and whatever it is he's currently doing. "Is it helping settle you at all?"

[actually112]

"I'll show it to you. It's wonderful."

Aang has faith that he'll see it again. It's inside him, humming through his chi paths, even if the paths are all gunked up by the Capitol. It makes him appreciate bending so much more, to be in a place without it, to have his abilities handicapped. He misses it. It feels like he's had a limb removed sometimes, and he's waiting for a chance to get to to grow back.

Aang bounces into a standing position from his squats, giving a soft giggle. "No. Most people don't bend by squatting. There's more... motion. Unless you're really good at it." He swirls his arms, and the motion travels to his body, the whole thing moving in a circular path. "Like right now, I'd be airbending if I could."

[ka_sera_sera]

At the giggle Roland's expression warms just a little. This tower - hell, the whole twisted nation - is not a place where children should be. Even children who are so clearly trained, as Aang is. But still, sometimes it's... nice. Refreshing.

He breaks from those thoughts, instead analyzing the movement of Aang's arms. "And what would you do with it? Easy to 'bend' air to fight. But what else?"

[actually112]

"Well, there are lots of things you can do with airbending!" He starts making gestures with his arms again, but this time, he's making his hand fly through the air like a plane. "You can bend the wind currents so you can glide on them, you could use it to play music, you could use it to jump higher or run faster, you can make little drafts to move things around..."

Another giggle, this one fond and nostalgic. "When we played Pai Sho, my master used to bend air under the table so my robs would get in my face, then he'd switch our pieces when I couldn't see."

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland listens closely, imagining each example as Aang mentions them. "Certainly seems to work much differently than magic," he says, more musing to himself than asking. "More powerful, too. Your master - did he have any hand in training you?" Master, after all, could mean anything. When talking to someone from another world, assume nothing. Difficult to truly do, but Roland tries.

[actually112]

"Yep! That's what masters do where I come from."

He's heard 'master' used to refer to people who could be more accurately described as bosses, jailers, owners, that sort of thing, but the vast majority of the time, people are referring to their sifu.

"All the monks teach airbender boys, but once you get good enough, you usually have one master who takes care of most of the training."

[ka_sera_sera]

"Training you seem to be keeping up with quite well." Roland looks around the room, eying the places the boy's been and whatever marks his activities might have made. "Is being kept in here truly so bad?"

[actually112]

"I don't like being kept in one place. There's no room to move around." And that's not even getting into how his very culture is about freedom and it's been stripped from him.

Speaking of, now seems like a good time to start squats.

"At least it's just supposed to last a day. I'd go crazy otherwise."

[ka_sera_sera]

"Nothing I can do to tire you out a little?" A day, lighter than Roland was expecting - makes sense, though. Just long enough to make the point for them. That this is what every day could be like, if they chose it. If the tributes don't play nice.

Nothing for it - yet - and so Roland is playing nice. And in the mean time, Panem's little displays of control go unremarked upon. Won't do any good to point it out, nor to talk about it, certainly not to the already restless boy in front of him.

"Just watching you there's like to give me an itch." He twitches his shoulders, a jerking, restless gesture. "Might have to start doing forms myself, if you keep this up all day."

[actually112]

"We can do forms together if you want."

Aang feels like he's going to vibrate out of control. Whose idea was it to use house arrest as a punishment? It was a light punishment, but it didn't feel like one to a hyperactive child.

"Or we can do something else. Do you feel like doing something else?" Please distract him, Roland. He's going crazy.

[ka_sera_sera]

That much is very clear. "Sparring could use up some of that energy. How much of that did your master teach you?" Odd to ask that of a child he has little intent to teach, to offer the practice as though the boy were one of his fellows trying to find distraction during the war.

Not so strange now he's thought of it that way. Everything they do in this place is a distraction.

"Or is it your mind that needs the work? Riddling may do for a little while."

[actually112]

"He taught me everything I know about airbending. I know enough to get these--" he gestures to his tattoos, "--so he's taught me a lot."

He smiles widely at Roland, bright and perky and still practically vibrating with energy. "Riddles or sparring both sound fun!"

fadey fade

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland looks over the tattoos, filing away their purpose, then over at the boy again. He snorts. Enough energy there to outrun even him, probably. "We'll start with the body. Think if I tried to have you sit for riddling - or even stand - you might explode. Come on, let's try and move a little more out of the way."

[aboveangrybees]

Word travels enough for Steve to have heard that people in in the district four suit tried to break curfew, enough to know it didn't go well for those who tried to break it. Steve heard Aang's name mentioned and knew he had to stop by and check if the rumors were true.

He likes the strange child, doesn't like the idea of him being hurt. Well, 113 is a bit old to be called a child, but even Steve knows that years passed and years lived are not the same thing.

His eyebrows go up at seeing all the bruises littering Aang, but how the kid seems disinclined to sit still. He has enough mind to try and hide his frown at Aang's beating before catching the kid's attention.

"Anyone ever compare you to a monkey before?"

[actually112]

It doesn't even occur to Aang that the bruises might be upsetting for some of his older friends. Bruises are just a part of life for him. Even airbenders will end up bruised all over from routine training: it's just something you get used to.

"Yep! Lots of times." The consensus is that he's closest to a flying monkey. The little kind that likes to glide on the air and grab bad toupees off of heads in city streets.

As if to prove the comparison even more apt, as he finishes his crunch set, he arches his back downwards, bracing himself on the floor with his palms and lifting himself up. He curls his legs, pushing himself off the ground, and for a moment he's only touching the floor with his hands before he bounces off his palms and lands on the arm of a couch, curling up and smiling at Steve like nothing happened. Even the most mundane things are acrobatic for this kid. "What's up?"

[aboveangrybees]

Yeah, this kid was definitely a monkey. Though Steve admires the strength and agility the kid has and practices, it's not something he sees in a lot of adults, some in kids, but only those with the dedication. Steve, himself, has to do a lot more training here to keep his body in peek shape, not having the serum fully active enough to ensure it for him, but for Aang, it seems to come naturally.

Steve gives a small shake of the head and an amused smile at the display. "Not much, heard you were under house arrest, thought I'd come visit a fellow old man."

[actually112]

If asked, Aang would blame his airbender heritage. All airbenders were supposed to be able to run around like little monkeys. To be fair, though, that's due to the fact that they all need to learn a very particular kind of martial art from birth and even by airbender standards, Aang is maneuverable.

Aang giggles softly at being called an old man, if only because it's kind of true, and hunches over to give an exaggerated old man voice to say, "All these whippersnappers running around get to you too, huh?" Of course, Aang can't keep up the old man act for long, because he bursts into little giggles.