"So, why did you come here?" Katara asked, "and how did you get up?"
"The answer to the second question is that I climbed into a cave and listened to the wind to find the exit the answer to the first might be a little… off putting"
"What, are you from the fire nation, here to capture the Aang?" Sokka joked, biting into an apple. Hao didn't answer, his head downcast. Noticing this, Sokka's mouth hang wide open, a piece of the fruit falling out, "fire nation? Really?! I knew we shouldn't trust you!"
He pulled his club up, the apple falling to the ground.
Hao raised his hands in surrender, "it is true, I was sent into exile to find the avatar by my former captain but… well, I saw the truth"
"The truth?" Katara asked.
"Yes, the truth. When I came here, I saw bodies, children's bodies and no air nomad weapons in sight, all the weapons were from the fire nation. They told us this was a Great War between two armies on equal footing but what I saw here changed all that. I realized that our war was not a righteous one. I could've continued to search for you, ignore my air bending, hide it from everyone but that didn't feel right. Could I really have returned to the army after witnessing this? After burying the helpless children that that very army burned to death? No… I couldn't" Hao gripped his cloth shirt, his knuckles whitened as he stared into the distance, "these people… they were innocent and now I am a part of them. I chose to learn from them, not just bending but their other teachings too. I gave up meat, not that I could've found any around here, and I studied, I learned, I became, over the last six months"
"But you are fire nation, how can we trust you?" Sokka asked, club still tightly clutched.
"I had fire nation friends back in the day, Kuzan was the best, we got in so much trouble together", Aang smiled, thinking back on the good times which were his childhood, before the genocide. Actually, that raised the question-, "how did you survive anyways? You don't seem older than 12 and yet, you have seen what this temple had been all those years ago…"
"I was frozen, in ice and in time" Aang explained, "I was in a storm, a big one, there was a rush of power and- the next thing I remember, Sokka and Katara stood before me, a hundred years in the future and now… now everyone is gone. We two are the last air benders. What say you, you come with us and I train you in airbending?"
"He just admitted that he is fire nation", Sokka hissed, "We can't trust a word he says. We don't even know his name"
"We should at least give him a chance, 'even the most disgusting roachrat-"
"Deserves compassion', the teachings of monk Tau" Hao completed, "And the name is Hao"
"You know your stuff… You have really been studying here for six months, no breaks for fun? Have you ever tried air ball? I see the game field right over there", Aang dragged him towards the wooden polls a few hundred meters away. They played air ball for the next hour. Hao found it an effective way of training his airbending, reflexes and nimbleness and it was just plain fun.
Aang later guided him to a storage room, which he had passed multiple times, ignoring it for it had nothing but useless staffs in them, much like the one that Aang carried, "These staffs act as an airbending focus as well as our gliders. We can jump high, we can float but to truly fly, you have to use one of these", he revealed the mechanism to extend the wings and Hao spent the evening practicing flying. There was a rush to it not unlike ostrich horse riding but a thousand times better. He crashed a few times but eventually, he managed to create the currents beneath the wings to boost him up. Aang and Hao raced a few times. It wasn't even close, Aang was a tattooed master and Hao was a humble novice but it was still extremely fun. Sokka's worry seemed to ease as he watched the two airbenders race along the winding towers, laughing, having fun. It didn't fully keep his suspicion at bay, he was a very untrusting person, especially since his mother and many of his friends had been ripped away from him by the fire nation, but it helped.
"So, Hao, do you have any insights on the fire nation's next movements?", Sokka asked, "You were in their army, right? Are there any big raids planned on anywhere… y'know important?"
"You are asking if they will raid the southern water tribe again, aren't you? Well, I have good news and bad news. Good news, as far as I know, no raids on the southern water tribe are planned, bad news? That intel is almost seven months old. A lot can change in just one month, much less seven of them but -good news again- it is unlikely that they will go to the southern water tribe, they have their hands full with the earth kingdom and water tribe raiders operating near the earth kingdom. Last I heard of it, the southern water tribe posed no threat to the fire nation"
"Raiders? Where?!", Sokka asked with an interested look on his face.
"A little west of Si Wong desert, why?"
"Our father and the rest of the tribe's man left the village to fight the fire nation", Katara explained, "We haven't heard anything of them but if they are still raiding, then that means that at least they are alive"
"Oh, they are alive and a real pain in the fire navy's buttocks too", Hao chuckled, "I never encountered them, I was stationed on the earth kingdom mainland, not in the navy, I fought earthbenders, not Raiders"