Work Text:
One of his favorite things about the Northern Air Temple was the altitude. The temple stood high on steep slopes, and the valley was low. Perfect for his current preferred pastime.
Leaping from the spire, Tenzin took off on his glider. He searched for a private spot with a decent, open valley. It didn't have to be big; it just needed to be wide enough to navigate between the rock towers. And he was pretty good at that.
He passed over a decent valley that looked especially low and wide enough. Now he just needed more altitude.
Tenzin circled the spot, spiraling upward past the clouds, until the air started to feel thin in his lungs. His eyes watered, and his chest tightened. Despair bubbled up from his gut and caught in his throat. He gritted his teeth as he pushed himself to go higher still, until something in him told him this was enough.
He closed his glider and began his descent.
His heart pounded as the air stung his face. In this moment of free fall, he should be able to let go of everything. That was the whole point of this exercise for him. Forget everything and succumb to the whims of nature. Whatever responsibilities he had didn't matter right now. Whatever was causing these feelings of anger and sorrow now didn't matter.
The rocky towers and their valleys came into view. They looked like small cracks expanding as he approached, much like the cracks in the sanity he felt was slipping away. If he could just let go — why couldn't he let go?
He was getting close now. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to three. He airbent the staff to deploy its wings, but something was caught in one of them. He started spinning quickly out of control.
The ground was approaching quickly as he struggled to unfold the remaining wing. The slot was thin, and his fingernail kept slipping past the brace.
He fought off the panic as a flood of regrets came over him. The desire to fulfill his father's dreams, to see his family again, to have his own family one day, and to teach the next Avatar—it all hung in the air around him, falling with him, about to be scattered among the rocks and gone forever.
Click!
He felt the mechanism fall back into place as his fingernail managed to take hold and bend the brace back. With not a second to spare, he deployed the wing and positioned his glider behind his back, pushing off the ground with a tumultuous force of wind from his feet. He took off back into the air.
Blinking his eyes, a wave of awe and thrill washed over him. Tears were wicked away by the breeze as he laughed in disbelief, which quickly turned to sobs. He had almost lost everything. He was supposed to be a source of hope. Instead, he was about to be a source of grief and sorrow for everyone who cared about him.
He wiped his eyes with his arm, shaking off the thoughts and emotions surrounding what could have been. What mattered now was that he was alive and breathing with a renewed determination to fulfill the roles that were given to him the day he was born. He wasn't going to let his father nor the world down.