Chapter Text
102 AG
Year of the Dog
Gaoling, The Earth Kingdom
He should’ve known Toph wouldn’t be great at this.
“Um,” she says after he tearfully spills the story to her, “there, there?” She awkwardly pats his shoulder a few times.
They’re in one of the many private gardens on the Beifong estate seated side by side on a stone bench, and even the smell of the fresh spring blooms can’t pull him out of the dark chasm he’s in.
Aang sniffles. The worst part is that all he wants right now is Katara’s comfort. Even before she was his girlfriend, she always seemed to know how to make him feel better.
“I just don’t understand what I did wrong,” he says. “Did she ever say anything to you?”
“Not to me,” Toph answers, seemingly more confident with answering direct questions than trying to handle his emotional state.
“But we both heard Aunt Wu’s prophecy!” he bursts.
“What prophecy?”
“That Katara is destined to marry a powerful bender!” Aang tells her. “That’s supposed to be me .”
Toph snorts. “ I’m a powerful bender,” she says, “Zuko is a powerful bender. Huu is a powerful bender. Heck, even Azula is a powerful bender. How many powerful benders did we meet while traveling? That’s not much of a prophecy, that’s just some half-decent guesswork.”
“But--but--” Aang stutters before he recovers himself. “We love each other,” he says quietly. “Prophecies aside, shouldn’t that be enough?”
Toph sighs and leans back, propping her head up with her arms. “You’re asking the wrong person for relationship advice.”
Aang groans. “But what do I do? I mean, we don’t really argue ever, so--”
“Wait,” Toph interrupts, “You guys never fought? You never, ever, once, in two years argued with Katara? The stubborn capital of the world Katara? The Katara who can hold a grudge longer than the spirits? That Katara?”
Aang stares back. “I mean, not really?”
Toph’s silence sounds damning.
“Okay, what ?” Aang asks.
“Nothing,” Toph says quickly. Too quickly. “It just--um. It just doesn’t seem like her, is all.”
“Well, you guys never got along really well,” Aang says, unthinking. He winces, correcting himself before Toph can let loose. “Sorry, that isn’t true.”
Toph replies, “At the beginning, yeah. That’s what happens when opposing personalities collide.” She huffs a breath. “But that doesn’t mean we didn’t eventually come to an understanding. That only comes with fighting .”
Aang nods. “But… me and Katara didn’t need to fight because we aren’t opposing personalities.”
Toph sighs. “Look, Aang, I’ll indulge whatever breakup talk you want, but I’m not going to sit here and lie to you.”
That startles him. “I’d never ask you to lie.”
“You wouldn’t ask me to lie,” Toph says, “but I think there’s still a part of you that’s always scared to hear a hard truth.”
He turns eagerly towards her. “No, please tell me what you want to say.”
Toph doesn’t move, just turns her head. “Okay, you really want to know?”
Aang nods. “ Yes .”
She sits forward once more. “Alright then. I have two words: Yon. Rha.”
Aang hasn’t heard that name since Katara took Zuko off on that ill-advised revenge mission. “What about it?”
“Do you not remember how all that went down? Katara never forgave him, much to your chagrin.”
“But she never killed him.”
“That’s not the point,” Toph replies. “She needed a type of closure that you can’t understand.”
“Hey, I can understand loss better than almost anyone,” Aang says defensively. And that’s another thing, isn’t it? Another deep ache that he thought he could shoulder with her--she’s the last waterbender of the South. He’s the last airbender. The pain of losing his people is a wound that will never heal over, but sharing that with Katara felt--
It felt at least like he wasn’t so alone.
“Not saying you can’t,” Toph says, holding her hands up. “But you and Katara are just different.”
“Why is that a bad thing?”
“It’s not, so long as you can fight and come to an understanding. If you never fought, then…” Toph shrugs and flops back down on the bench. “Like I said, I’m not the romantic type. I’ve got nothing aside from saying ‘It sucks it didn’t work out.’ You both are my friends. I never want to see either of you get hurt.”
Aang mulls over Toph’s words. Would fighting with Katara have made anything better? He can’t think of anything he would’ve argued with her about, though. They traveled together, helped people after the war, started restoring the Northern Air Temple, and Katara always seemed happy. It was… it was perfect . What could he ever have fought her on?
“Do you think--” He swallows. “Do you think I could fix it?”
Toph shrugs again. “You should ask someone who’s been through at least one breakup. Which, you know, I haven’t been.”
“But I want to hear what you think, Toph.”
Her eyes close and she smiles softly. “I don’t think the problem was with you fighting with her. I think she never wanted to fight with you.”
That makes Aang come up short. She never… wanted to fight him?
“Sugar Queen’s opinionated,” Toph says, “but she’s always been softer with you. There’s no way some stuff didn’t build up if she wasn’t yelling at you about it at least once.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Aang says slowly.
“At the end of the day, the only person who knows why she did it is Katara. You could just ask her.”
Aang feels another stab of longing for the days when he could’ve asked Katara anything. Now there’s another sting of sadness that he feels hesitation, trepidation, dread at ever speaking to Katara again.
He’ll never be able to forget the slow, dawning look of horror on her face as his earnest question sunk in.
Her decisive rejection.
No, Aang. I can’t marry you.
I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore.
Her immediate flight back to the South Pole.
Not a word from her since.
He’s tried very hard to not think about it too much, and if he does, he has to consider it in the context that this is just a small hiccup. A bump in the road on the way to their destiny. She’s his forever girl, after all.
He’d always thought she felt the same. It’s--
If he hasn’t been taking her feelings into account, then--
“I’ll give her space,” he says finally. “She--that’s what she must have wanted.” It feels like a knife to his belly to say it, to let the girl he loves go.
(But isn’t that what everyone has told him all along?)
He still has a long way to go.
Toph grins. “Probably a good call, Twinkle Toes.”
Aang doesn’t stay long in Gaoling. Toph offers her company if he wants it, but for the first time in his life, he’d rather be alone. He, Appa, and Momo travel around the Earth Kingdom solo for a few weeks, helping where he can and settling disputes wherever he goes. He starts and discards no less than seven different letters to Katara, each sounding worse than the last until he balls them up in frustration and sets them ablaze.
He makes one last stop in Kyoshi. Suki is gone--at the South Pole, apparently, and Aang is absurdly jealous for a few heated moments. He wants to go to the South Pole. He wants to go see Sokka and Suki and--
He breathes. Once more.
Release.
The knot of tension eases, and leaves behind a stinging memory. He isn’t normally like this. He doesn’t get jealous like that.
Jealousy is a shadow of anger.
Monk Gyatso’s voice is still fresh in his mind. He fears the day he might lose it.
The flashes of anger and impatience confirm his next destination for him, and before long he touches down inside the Caldera in the Fire Nation capital.
When he arrives, Zuko is in a meeting with his Ministry. The attendants who’d received him offer to fetch the Fire Lord right away, but Aang gently declines, saying that he’s happy to wait until Zuko is finished. They offer refreshments that Aang is all too happy to partake in; he’s soon seated in a tearoom with a plate of spicy eggplant dumplings and a pot of oolong tea.
He’s finished about half the plate of dumplings when the door to the tearoom slides open, revealing a frazzled Fire Lord. His topknot is a bit messy, his longer hair spilling out of the bun and falling over his forehead and cheeks. He’s dressed down compared to when Aang saw him last--the formal robes with the massive, spiked epaulettes have been replaced with more sedate outfit. Still befitting of a sovereign of a nation, the richly dyed red and maroon silk and chirimen is accented with gold thread. At his shoulders are leather pauldrons, finely trimmed with gold, and matched to the gauntlets on his forearms.
Aang says, a little blunt, “Zuko, you look tired .”
Surprisingly, Zuko barks out a laugh. “You have no idea.” He drops down cross-legged across from Aang at the table. “Mind if I have some of your tea?”
Aang pushes both the tea and the dumplings across the tabletop. “An airbender never turns away a hungry or parched guest.”
That earns him a small smile. “Thanks.” He takes a spare cup and pours himself a serving and takes a deep pull. “So what brings you to the Fire Nation?” Zuko asks as he places his cup back on the table.
Aang feels a blush rising. “Well, I’m sure you heard about me and Katara…”
Zuko nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry. Breakups aren’t fun.”
“Understatement,” Aang says. “Toph said something that made me think. Well,” he amends, “she said a lot of things that made me think. But she said that I should talk to someone who’s been through a breakup.”
Zuko reaches for a dumpling. “So you’re here for sage relationship advice and not to visit your dear, dear friend?”
“No, of course I’m here to see you too!”
“I’m just kidding.” Zuko takes a bite of dumpling before reaching up to fully remove his topknot and shake his hair out. “I’m dying to hear something that isn’t how crappy the Fire Nation economy currently is and why it’s all my fault, so please continue.”
Aang gives him the broad strokes--two years of what he thought was perfection, followed by the proposal that went sour, and Katara’s silence after going back to the South Pole without him. He doesn’t cry this time (much, anyway). It’s less fresh than it was when he’d first spilled the details to Toph, and the sharp pain has shifted to a broad tenderness, like a bad sunburn that screams if he moves wrong.
Zuko listens mostly without comment, refilling his tea twice and finishing off the last of the dumplings before Aang finally finishes.
“Talking to Toph helped,” Aang says. “There were a lot of things about our relationship that I just never realized. But I think we can work. Later on, I mean. After this blows over.”
It’s admittedly an oversimplification to say this will blow over, but there’s a degree of comfort that comes with thinking that everything can go back to the way it was. He nearly shakes himself--no, not like before, but… better. Give Katara more space to be herself. He knows he can do it. He just hopes that Katara realizes it eventually, too.
“Aang, I’m not sure this is just going to blow over,” Zuko says, disrupting Aang’s reverie.
“Why not?” he asks. “Did Katara say something to you? I know you guys wrote to each other.”
Zuko shakes his head. “She never said anything to me about you. Not like that, anyway. It was mostly Fire Lord stuff she was helping me with, like suggesting policy changes and initiatives that--” he shakes his head. “Not important now.
“It sounds to me like Katara hit a breaking point,” Zuko says, “where she just couldn’t be with you anymore.”
Aang flinches.
“I know it sounds harsh,” Zuko says, sympathy warming his tone, “but if she’s hit one, I don’t know if you’re going to be able to talk her out of it, or wait until it ‘blows over.’”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’m the same way,” Zuko says. “It’s like when I was with Mai. It got to a point that I just couldn’t be with her anymore. We didn’t fit, not like we had before.” He chuckles a little. “If we ever actually fit as well as I remember is up for debate.
“It was over long before I found out about her family trying to have me killed,” he says, so offhand that it breaks Aang’s heart a little bit, “but that was just throwing dirt on an already buried coffin.”
“There has to be hope,” Aang says, aware that his voice sounds a little desperate but unable to help it. “I love her. I love her so much. I never wanted to hurt her, not ever. That has to mean something.”
Zuko says, “Sure it does, but you’re fourteen.”
“So?”
Zuko looks at him as though the answer is obvious. “ So the girl I thought I was in love with when I was fourteen lied to me about her family’s involvement in trying to assassinate me and starting a coup, so yeah, I’d say maybe my judgement wasn’t that great.”
“My judgement is just fine!” Aang defends.
“In some things,” Zuko says carefully. He runs a hand through his hair once. “You can’t really be in a relationship unless your partner is one hundred percent with you, and it sounds like Katara is absolutely not .”
Aang somehow hadn’t realized until this moment how much he’d held onto Aunt Wu’s prediction as gospel. Toph had poked holes in it, but once Zuko puts it in those words, it’s almost as though he can feel himself deflating.
Katara isn’t with him. She wasn’t with him.
Not in the way that would’ve mattered. Not in the way that would’ve made them last.
You will marry a powerful bender.
Aang believes in destiny. He’s the Avatar--of course he believes in destiny. But--
For the first time, he thinks that perhaps he isn’t Katara’s. Perhaps she isn’t his.
That realization is like raking a hot coal over his skin, like taking a spear to the chest, like dropping into the ocean and realizing he can’t swim or bend.
She’s been his foundation since he came out of the iceberg. She’s been his sanctuary since he found out the Air Nomads had been wiped out. He’s been dependent on her for so much--taking care of him, teaching him waterbending, being his romantic partner--and now that foundation, that sanctuary, is gone. It might never be replaced.
“It’s hard,” Zuko acknowledges. “Believe me, I know; but it will get easier.”
Despite considering that he’d had this destiny thing wrong after all, there’s still only one thing in his mind. “I just want her back.”
Zuko looks down at his tea. “Then you might have to wait for her to start that conversation.” He takes another sip of the oolong. “You’re welcome to stay,” he says. “As long as you need it, you’ll have a place here.”
Aang nods slightly. “I might stay for a little while, but…”
Zuko silently watches Aang struggle with himself for a few silent moments before he finishes, “I might go back to the Northern Air Temple.”
Where everything went wrong. Where Katara decided they were finished. They’d been in the midst of planning the restoration--with the Mechanist’s help, along with Teo, Pipsqueak, and the Duke--when he’d proposed. He’d thought it would be romantic, proposing in the middle of planning their future together. Where they’d start the new Air Nation.
He sighs. Regardless, he would like to see the temples restored. It’d be silly to run from that goal now when the plans are already in place, some of the renovations already started.
Zuko nods. “That sounds like a great idea,” he says softly. “If you need any help with it, you only need to ask.”
The thoughtful words aren’t empty--Aang knows that if he really needed it, Zuko would show up himself to help repair the temples that his ancestors once raided.
(And that’s something rather strange and wonderful all at once. Zuko’s family line is soaked in airbender blood, but here he is now offering to help rebuild what was destroyed.)
Aang floats himself up and over the table and deposits himself next to Zuko to give his friend a hug. “Thanks, Zuko.”
Zuko tenses, but only for a moment before relaxing and returning it.
“Yeah, Aang,” he answers softly. “Anytime.”