thecapitol | hey brother

Who| Sam Wilson and Aang
What| bird bonding
Where| Roof of the tribute center
When| After the clandestine network post
Warnings/Notes| Mentions of death; will update others as needed!

Somehow it doesn't feel right, getting a new token, but Sam does it anyway. It'd come up a few times before he found out that Albert was alive and in District 13, and it'd look strange if he suddenly changed his mind. He's still supposed to think Albert's dead and his pin is lost.

It's different from his old one, the one he'd pinned to Albert's shoulder after he'd died, the one Albert's now holding onto for him, a promise that they'll see each other again. This one's a single falcon, wings up and talons outstretched, a dive bomb in silhouette. It's a shadow of a token, a placeholder until he gets the one that really means something back. The one that came to represent all of his friendships, the new ones he'd forged without forgetting the old - but originally was for Steve, Natasha, and Riley. Sam tries not to think about how he's now let all of them down. Dead, disappeared, and captured, some wingman he turned out to be.

And it's this kind of thing that's lead him to make sure he's not alone, lately. First being alone made it hard for him to think of reasons why he wasn't storming in to find Steve and Kurloz, and now? Now apparently being alone leads to him sitting up on the roof, staring at a falcon pin and turning it over and over in his fingers while his mind gets the best of him.

He should go inside, he knows it, and yet... he's still there, getting sad over a piece of black metal.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Aang likes to visit the roof a lot. It's high--not higher than the mountains he's used to, but high--and he can feel the wind on his scalp while he looks over the Capitol.

Today, there's already someone there.

It's easy to recognize Sam. It's even easier to recognize the posture of a sad man, lost in his own thoughts. Aang's footsteps are light, almost like he's about to float off the ground at any moment, when he approaches and stops behind Sam. Maybe he should go, but he wants to reach out, wants to do something.

"What are you looking at?"

Light footsteps or not, Sam's wound pretty tight at the moment, so he startles when he hears someone behind him. His hand moves, reaching for a weapon that isn't there, but stops before it gets halfway across his chest, when he realizes who it is.

He relaxes, the tension in his shoulders easing, as he turns around to give Aang a slightly apologetic smile.

"Guess I'm a little jumpy today." He holds up the falcon pin, offering it to Aang to look at. "It's my token."

Jumpy, huh? Aang arches an eyebrow skeptically, but he doesn't comment on it. Instead, he looks down at the pin, lifting his hands to gently run his thumb against the bird.

"Why are you looking at it?" What he really wants to ask is why it makes Sam so unhappy. He's not sure if Sam would appreciate him needling at that, though--being so close to Bucky has taught him much more about tact than he ever knew before. So instead, he asks a question that invites Sam to answer the unspoken one, but he won't force the issue if Sam doesn't want to talk about it.

There's a small, wry grin at that raised eyebrow, acknowledging that yeah, it's a little bit beyond every day jumpiness. He doesn't want to expand on it, though. Aang's a soldier, in his own way, no matter how young he is, and Sam knows he'll either get it or he won't.

"Just got it today. It's a replacement," he replies. He could leave it at that. It's the truth, even if a watered down version of it. But he knows what Aang's really asking, and he doesn't mind answering it. "I gave my first one to a friend in the arena. He didn't come back."

He states it matter-of-factly, but there's grief underneath the simplicity of his tone. It's not necessarily for Albert, who he knows now is alive - but he's not supposed to know that, and he has more than enough reasons to fuel it.

"I'm sorry."

It's never easy to lose a friend. No matter how many people you've lost, each one feels fresh. At least, that's how Aang feels when he loses people, and that's how he wants to continue to feel. He wants to know he never gets jaded to losing people he loves.

He runs the pad of his thumb along the edge of the pin, looking at the curve of feathers. "Was he the first friend of yours who didn't come back?"

"Me too," Sam agrees quietly, watching Aang look over the pin. It's never gotten easier losing someone like this - but it's gotten easier to accept sympathy for it. Or maybe Sam's just gotten older, more practiced at it.

He shakes his head at the question, swallowing a little around a harder lump of grief as it brings Natasha to his mind, even as he gives a little smile. "Nah. I've already got experience with that, here and back home, but it doesn't make it any less hard when it happens, you know?"

It's phrased as a rhetorical question, in case Aang doesn't want to really answer, but it's also a little bit of an invitation if he does know.

"I know." Aang doesn't mind answering that. Life is hard. His life has been hard. It's the truth, and he's an honest boy. He keeps his eyes on the pin, finding that it's easier to look at than at another person at the moment. "But... I think I prefer it that way. If it keeps hurting just as much, it means you're never used to it. It means that you're still loving people just as hard as you always were, no matter how many times it hurts."

Aang would far prefer being hurt than ever losing even a little bit of the love he feels for the people around him. Love is wonderful and intense, and pain has to balance it out by being just as bad as the love is good, but that's balance. That means the love has been worth it.

"Not everyone feels the same way, though. I know that."

“It’s not an easy philosophy to have,” he says, smoothing his thumb over the seam on the side of his jeans. “Sometimes it’s safer to let your heart get hard, to make sure you can't get hurt again."

He can understand that, too. There'd been a time when he thought about giving up, and even if he never had, it's not unimaginable to him that some people might just have gone through too much to see how they can keep going.

"But that's not really what I'd call living."

"No. I wouldn't call that living either."

Aang keeps looking at the pin, rubbing his thumb against it. The Avatar must be compassionate towards all people, and the only way to do that is to live with them. The Avatar must experience sadness, anger, joy, and happiness. By feeling all these emotions, it helps you understand how precious human life is, so you will do anything to protect it.

He doesn't know who said that to him or when it was, but that's what he thinks about. Pain and love are things humans have to experience to really appreciate life. Aang just wishes that there wasn't so much pain.

"Someone I knew once said something that really helped me. He told me that love is energy. Even if people die, energy can't be destroyed." He offers the pin back to Sam, finally making eye contact again. His face is calm, even if his eyes are sad. "Love is let out back into the world, and it comes back to us in all the people we meet going forward."

Aang reminds him of Kurloz and Steve sometimes, when Sam watches him like this. Like they're so much older than they really are, the reasons why sometimes Sam forgets that Initiate is barely past being a kid, that Steve is really only in his twenties. It makes him wonder what Aang's story is.

Sam takes the pin back with a smile, running his finger over the same spot that Aang had been rubbing.

"My father said something like that to me, a long time ago. There was a time when it made me really mad."

It wasn't much comfort right after his father'd been murdered, or after he'd watched Riley die, when he didn't give a shit about going forward, he just wanted them back.

"But it's something to hold on to."

"I guess I got mad, too."

Not when he was told about love as energy. When he was sitting in the ruins of an Air Nomad's hut, staring at the skeleton of his Mentor. He got angry. He raged at the thought that he was completely alone, and an entire Nation had killed his people.

"I decided to forgive instead of staying mad, though. It didn't make the sadness go away, but it made it easier to make peace."

He would always grieve for the airbenders. He would always feel their absence in his life, and a part of him would always be lonely. He can accept that. He flashes Sam a small smile. "And that makes it easier to connect with the people who inherited the love that was left behind."

hey brother

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