Chapter Text
The muffled sounds of Katara tidying up the kitchen stirred Aang from his slumber beneath pale orange sheets. A familiar clink of glasses and plates echoed like notes in the morning air; they were perfectly in tune with Katara’s humming of a traditional Water Tribe melody. Aang smiled. The stairwell filtered the sounds just enough to remove the harshness of the clinks and taps, making the sounds more reassuring than grating. Or, it could be that these sounds were reassuring because of the familiarity of them within their small Republic City house. These sounds were a key part of the soundtrack to his life with Katara.
Usually, Aang was listening to her hum in the kitchen during the second meditation of his day. However, as of late, he was sleeping for far longer than his wife. This was a new habit of his, something that ran in contradiction to the preceding decades in which she was the late riser. When she had worried over his new sleep routine, fearful that he was catching ill, he had eased her tension with the simple answer that his Avatar duties were finally catching up to him and were taking a greater toll on him than they had in the past. She had seemed appeased by that answer and didn’t push the topic more. But, his answer was only half the truth.
Aang rolled over onto his back, opening his eyes to trace the shadows on their pale blue ceiling. He had painted the ceiling blue for Katara only days after they moved in. He could still envision himself, holding her by the waist, whispering to her about how the color reminded him of the snow in the South and that he hoped it would give her peace. The kisses she then showered him with told him it meant so much more to her than simply a bit of peace. She loved it. Zuko too once commented that he loved the sentiment of it, and with a chuckle he added that he preferred their blue ceiling to the cold chill of the south pole. But they both knew they would put up with any bit of cold to be with Katara.
He took a deep breath and shivered. Even though his ability to regulate his own body temperature had long been second nature to him, lately he found himself needing to focus more on his breathing in the morning in order to warm himself up. In fact, if he was willing to admit it, he had to focus a bit harder with all aspects of his bending to achieve even half the force he had just a year ago.
He focused on the silence, breathing in and out. In and out. The fire within him purred warmer until it felt like the normal hum, like the roar of a dragon. No, wait, that roar was actually from a dragon outside.
Aang sat up in bed as Druk’s long tail fluttered into view of the window. Katara stilled in the kitchen. She must have heard Druk as well. With effort, Aang rose from the bed, his legs were sore from yesterdays practice with Tenzin. Practice, turned race. Which of course Aang won as his son was far more focused on practice than Aang ever was. Aang always wondered who Tenzin got his seriousness from. Even Katara, for all her maternal instinct, wasn’t quite as serious as Tenzin.
Aang stood by the window, placing a hand on his lower back to rub out a sore spot. He watched as Druk lowered his head, letting Zuko hop off as Katara hurried out to greet him. She stopped a polite distance away to glance around the courtyard.
On Air Temple Island they were secluded from the rest of Republic City. They got their privacy here, something they all too often had to fight for. However, years of hiding their relationship made it only natural to check on your surroundings before embracing your secret lover. Surely no one could see them here, and even if they did, the triad had agreed that it wouldn’t be all too surprising to see old friends embrace in greeting.
Katara put her arms around Zuko, burying her face into his shoulder as she hugged him, their gray hair near identical in shade. The color was a distinct indicator of the passage of time, their hair now mostly grey with highlights of white. Katara still had a few strands of her beautiful brown left, but soon she would be as silver as the full moon. Zuko, however, was now fully gray. Someone had recently commented on how the gray of Zuko’s top knot reminded them of Uncle Iroh. When he heard that, Zuko eyes were momentarily dark with despair before he chuckled and with an almost private smile, said “It’s an honor to be told I look anything like Uncle.” Perhaps, it had been Sokka who had made that comment.
Aang’s gaze dropped down to the way Zuko’s hands held Katara’s back in the embrace. Zuko’s hands were almost hungry in how they pressed against the fabric of her shirt, bunching up the blue cloth between his fingers. Aang’s own fingertips tingled from recalling that exact same sensation against his own hands. Whenever he returned from a trip, he would gripped her just the same. His fingers would be pressed against the ridge of her lower back, placed firmly over toned muscles that sloped into the indent of her spine. He would graze his thumb against the smooth rise of her hip. He almost longed to be the one running his hand against her back at this second. Or perhaps, he rather be her, and tangle his fingers in Zuko’s silky hair, his arms pressed against the muscles of Zuko’s shoulders. No matter his age, Zuko has always been toned from head to toe and he prided himself in it. Aang wondered how late into his life Zuko would keep those muscles so firm. He wished he could count more decades with Zuko and Katara. He wanted to watch them age further in his arms as he had done for so long now. He could almost imagine them, decades from now, hair as white as snow, skin softened and wrinkled by time; Zuko and Katara still interlocked as they were right now. Without him.
That’s strange, Aang frowned as he realized his thoughts were edged with jealousy. For years he felt nothing but compersion whenever he saw Katara and Zuko together (aside from their moments of teasing). There was nothing to be jealous about in their relationship and yet, he felt a deepening twinge in his gut as he watched them. It was definitely jealous desire.
He wanted to be the one running his hand against their backs, cupping his hand against their necks, and looking into their eyes with a smile that was echoed back from the core of their being. The jealousy was not rising from a lack of receiving such interactions, for he had received plenty in his own turn, but it rose from a place of dark fear. A sense of knowing, a sense that all too soon he would no longer be able to touch them, to cherish them, to whisper praise and love into their ears and raise goosebumps on their necks.
For every morning that grew harder, and every day he lacked desire to complete his Avatar duties, a sense of worry and a cold chill had begun to fill him. He knew what was causing these feelings and what was making it harder to bend as easily as he had long been able to. He knew what was happening to him and he meditated on it for the last few weeks, trying to bring himself to peace. But no amount of meditation would keep quite the small jealous cowfrog within him. No matter how many times he pushed his face into his hands and reminded himself how lucky he was to have two lovers, who in the end will always have each other even long after he was gone, the jealous cowfrog still croaked.
The truth is, Aang was starting to sense that he won’t survive his sixties. A fact which he was in the process of accepting, but still struggled to fully affirm in his heart. No length of mediation had yet quieted the jealous cowfrog that croaked within him and stop him from asking the spirits to let him have the same amount of years left with Zuko and Katara as they would certainly have with each other. He would tell himself that he should feel lucky to have found them. And he did feel incredibly lucky, especially when he reminded himself that the spirits blessed him with the security that neither Katara nor Zuko would ever be alone or without love. Katara had their children, she had her village, and she would have Zuko. Zuko had his daughter, her own wife, and Katara. He was thankful for that. So, so thankful. But no degree of thankfulness would ever fully quench the jealously in him that Zuko and Katara will spend a few more decades together. It wasn’t that Aang wanted to spend more time with just Katara or just Zuko. No, what he wanted was to be with both of them for years, decades, even centuries to come. He was jealous of the almost guaranteed longevity of their time with each other, and disappointed that sooner rather than later he simply wouldn’t be able to physically stay with them any longer. In some moments of reflection, he even felt frustrated with his own body for not being able to hold out longer. But having been locked in the Avatar State for a hundred year had taken its toll on him, and he had begun to pay the price.
Zuko released Katara, and the two turned to walk into the house. Zuko looked back a Druk, saying something to the Dragon before following Katara inside. Their movement shook Aang from the jealousy engulfing him.
No, he reminded himself, no matter how I feel, I need to cherish my time with them. He was an air nomad after all. Air nomads were accepting of death and life’s impermanence as death is simply a part of the cycle of life. He was also the Avatar, destined to be reborn, and luckily for his future self, he was married to the best water bender teacher around.
He turned from the window, his quickness returning to him with childish glee as he headed down the stairs to make some not-too-funny quip to Katara and Zuko. A comment that would get a pity chuckle from Katara, and an eye roll from Zuko. If time was short, then he wanted to make it sweet with them.