Chapter Text
The wind chapped Katara’s face and filled her lungs with the sharp smells of all things free and cold—fresh pine from ancient trees that cradled but never bowed to heaps of snow and crisp gusts that licked the mountain peaks and blew in the face of danger. It brushed against the grass and played across the valley in gentle howls of laughter that drew a smile to her lips despite the frustration simmering just under her skin.
Katara slowly exhaled. The river— her river—swelled and threatened to overflow with fresh melt from the mountains. It babbled to her like an old friend trading her its secrets, and it flowed to her will just as readily and naturally as her blood flowed through her body.
Easy now , she chided herself when her water-whip snapped harder than she intended. Just a little bit longer. Can’t let them know that you know they’re here—
A twig snapped. Katara’s back tingled. She growled out of her reverie and nearly lost her focus.
Those thrice-damned eyes were on her again. They were as curious and probing as ever, and when the trees moved when the wind didn’t, Katara knew she wasn’t alone.
Her insides laughed for her, and she struggled not to preen. Her stalker was nearby. Very nearby.
Oh , how she had waited for this.
It’s about time you showed up.
Hiding her smile in a smirk, Katara stilled her katas like she did every day—like how her stalker would recognize. She kept an air of unknowing as she released her stream of bending water. It splashed into the river, and Katara, without missing a beat, jumped in after it. The water was freezing , but she had gone ice-plunging with the boys of her tribe and won enough times to not be bothered by it.
Katara sank to the pebbled river-bottom. She pressed herself into the corner of the river’s wall and braced herself against the current that would have washed her away if she were a weaker woman. The sun was high in the cloudless sky, but the white froth atop the churning water gave her ample cover.
She waterbended a sphere for air around herself, and then she waited.
It was a long while, but a shadow eventually appeared above her.
Katara grinned. There you are.
The shadow grew lighter and darker as the figure—the person who had stalked her to her river in her secret cove to watch her waterbend for weeks —repeatedly crouched and stood where Katara had just been.
They were looking for her.
Good. Katara clenched her fists and tried to stem the heat in her blood as the creep paced up and down the shoreline. Just a little closer…
The shadow stilled and grew the darkest it had gotten yet. The figure was crouching so close to the water that Katara could’ve made out a facial feature or two if she cared.
That’s when she struck. Katara plunged upwards with a burst of waterbending that would have sent her airborne if the stranger’s weight wasn’t there to stop her.
Her target’s surprised yelp rang loud in her ears as she grabbed them. The two of them rolled in the grass for several yards in a wet tangle of limbs. They grappled all the way. Katara struggled to brace herself without loosening her grip. She had miscalculated the size of her stalker. She was expecting a man, but she was rolling with someone barely as big as her and nearly as light as the air itself.
The stranger maneuvered like they were used to escaping these kinds of close-quarter encounters. It was all Katara could do to keep them from darting away; they slipped around like water between her fingers.
But Katara had grown up with a big brother, and she almost laughed when she felt with what ease she pinned the stranger down.
Sokka would have been proud.
“ Finally. ” Katara laughed as the haze of a catch-well-caught clouded over her. Loose strands of hair stuck to her face in wet clumps, and her clothes were so full of water that they weighed her down. The chill rippling gooseflesh across her skin and numbing the tips of her fingers brought her senses to alert and the world around her into stark relief. Katara would have shivered if victory wasn’t flushing her full of adrenaline. “Can’t run from me, now, creep . I don’t know who you think you are, but if you think you can just—”
Katara swallowed her next words.
Her captive wasn’t a man. He barely looked like he could even think of being a creep.
His stare had felt like a sabretooth-mooselion’s, but he was just a boy . He was maybe a half-head shorter and a year younger than herself.
He struggled for only a second; he froze the instant he realized that his escape wasn’t an immediate option. His eyes widened, his breathing turned shallow, and his heart went from fast to supersonic so suddenly that its frantic thudding echoed into Katara’s palms from where she held him down.
Katara stared. Eyes as grey as a wolf’s coat stared back at her.
The boy shrunk under her attention like a meadowmole beneath an eaglehawk. He shivered but not from the cold—he wasn’t even wearing a shirt—, and he whimpered a small sound that struck a crack into her heart. His trembling showed no sign of stopping and shook up her arms from where she pressed his shoulders to the dirt, and he pressed himself even further down, desperate to put distance between them and trying to become one with the ground.
The wind picked up like it was about to storm even though the sky was clear.
That was when Katara finally noticed the splay of brightly colored feathers on the grass about the boy’s shoulders and head.
Wings...
Those were wings.
Those wings were the boy’s.
The boy’s wings.
The boy had wings.
Katara didn’t mean to shout and didn’t realize she had until her voice echoed back to her. “ You have wings! ”
The boy cringed from her volume and curled ever further into himself. Katara was sitting on his middle with her hands tacking his shoulders to the ground, so his hands were just free enough to curl up to his chest in fists. He would have curled his legs up, too, if she didn’t have them hooked with her own. His head sank to his shoulders like a turtle retreating into a shell that wasn’t there. He swallowed so thickly that she could see his throat bob.
Then she saw his lip tremble.
Katara let up her grip a bit. The winged-boy took the opportunity of extra movement to curl-up some more and to adjust the wing that was starting to bend at an odd angle.
He spoke, and Katara nearly fell back. His voice oozed into her ears like a song around an open fire.
“...S-Sorry,” he mumbled. “Sorry...Sorry...”
He shrunk ever further. Katara’s jaw dropped ever wider.
“Oh...Oh, no, it’s—it’s okay. You’re not—I mean, I didn’t know you were, y’know, and I was just bending and I thought you—but you aren’t —but that doesn’t make sense either because the Fire Nation and there’s not any...any...”
Katara shifted her weight and bit her lip. She froze when even that small movement made his eyes gloss over with tears. His hands trembled and tightened their fists, and the pure, unfiltered terror he leaked into the air had a dozen pairs of hands squeezing her heart and lungs into dust.
Instinct kicked in, and Katara’s voice became as soft as his hiccup made her insides. “Hey, hey, hey, shhhhh ...,” she cooed. “Easy, easy. Shhh ...It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” She slowly— very slowly as not to startle him—released his shoulders and leaned back. “ Shhhhh , shhh , shhh …It’s okay. It’s okay. Shhh ...I’m not going to hurt you.”
The boy— the skybender —beneath her tucked into himself as soon as the opportunity was presented. He eyed her warily, though he seemed to have been tamed by something she said or did. Katara smiled in what she hoped he would see as a non-threatening gesture, and she held her hands out, palms up.
“See? I’m not going to hurt you.” She slowly uncrossed her legs from his and prayed he wouldn’t bolt. He didn’t move, though he looked at her like she was trying to convince him that the sky wasn’t blue. “I’m going to get up now, okay? Is that okay? If I move?”
He blinked several times, even more confused and processing her words like they were a new flavor of some food he had never tasted.
“Up?”
A chill danced up Katara’s neck and warmed the pit of her belly. His voice was like a song—like the air was happy to carry his words and garnished them especially for him. The element’s love for its master—its last master—bled into every part of her.
Katara swallowed, and though there was quiet for an awkward moment, it wasn’t silent.
“Y—Y-Yeah. I mean, yes. Up. Yes, up. Is up okay?”
He nodded very, very slowly; Katara got off him even slower. She sat at his side and kept her hands in front of her with her palms up. He sat up after a long second, and Katara bent down a bit, putting her eye-level just below his, to make herself less threatening. A mountain rolled off her shoulders when he relaxed a fraction of a fraction.
That’s when she finally got a good look at him. The skybender wore no shirt or shoes, but he didn’t look worse for wear without them. He wore dark pants that looked more like abused burlap than cloth but reminded her of how Gran-Gran described the skybenders’ flowing robes in the stories. On his right forearm was a wrapping of bandages from his palm to a few inches before his elbow. He clutched it to his chest—which was also wrapped in something like bandages around his upper torso—, but he protected it like it was something precious rather than something wounded.
His arrowed tattoos wound around his limbs and head and were a striking shade of blue that Katara had never seen before. She almost got a sense of deja vu from looking at them. Their color was not of this world or reality.
His wings— Spirits , he had wings —, though splayed rather large when he was down, were nearly flat against his back now. They, too, were a color her mind struggled to process and place. If she looked away and looked back, her mind had already tossed aside the anomaly as a hallucination before being affronted by its beauty again. The feathers were plush and soft on her eyes, and she could only imagine how soft they were to the touch. Orange ombre dark at his shoulder and lighter towards tips that she could no longer see took her breath away.
And then there were his eyes again. They were steely grey like blades clashing, and they glanced about her just as sharply, though they were warm and inviting like his every look was a shy hug.
“Um...hello.” Katara waved her fingers. The skybender flinched but didn’t move away. She shifted for an awkward second before tapping her chest and speaking slowly. “My name is Katara.”
The skybender cocked his head like a hound to a high pitch. He gave her a curious glance-over but otherwise didn’t react.
Katara’s smile faded. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying. Do you.”
It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t get an answer. Although, at the change of her tone to something teetering on sad, he did perk up a bit. He looked around, searching for what was making her upset, but he looked not like he was hoping to brace himself from the danger but rather like he was preparing to fend it off.
If she didn’t know any better, Katara would have thought he was being protective. She smiled a bit at the thought, and she smiled even wider when the ghosted shadow of a smile tugged the corners of his lips, too.
Katara shifted so she sat on her knees. They sat in silence. The wind was lazy but blowing in every direction at once, and Katara couldn’t shield herself from its gentle breezes no matter how she turned.
The boy kept rubbing the bandages on his forearm and palm and looking her up and down like this would be the only time he would ever see her. He shifted just as much as her, and Katara tried her best not to gawk too openly at his wings when they fluttered and shifted with him.
After another shiver, Katara had enough of the cold. She bent the water out of her clothes and hair and fed it back into the river with a move so second-nature that she hardly thought about it.
The skybender gasped so loudly that it startled her. His smile could melt the glacier Katara grew up on, and his giddy laugh punched the wind out of her while also making her feel whole—like he had just charged into her with a hug after searching his whole life to find her.
His eyes met hers again, and his shyness settled back over his features and curled him into himself. His eyes were pleading and glancing at her hands like he couldn’t control where he looked.
“Tideteller?” the boy said in a tone like a question.
“Tideteller? Oh, well, technically, yeah, but no one’s called waterbending that in centuries—” He looked at her a little lost, and Katara cleared her throat. Small words. “I mean, yes. Yes, tideteller.”
The boy nodded like he was telling someone she couldn’t see that he was right, but his eyes still found their way to her hands.
Katara prayed to every spirit she could think of. She had no idea what the hell to do. There was a living, breathing skybender right in front of her, and she didn’t want to—
“Aang.”
Katara shook herself. “What?”
The skybender tapped his chest again. “Aang. Skybender Aang.” He hesitated and glanced at her hands again before extending his own bandaged one, palm up. He looked suddenly nervous. “Tideteller?”
Aang. Katara rolled his name over her mind and tucked it into her memory so that she may remember it even if this was all a dream. She tapped her chest. “Katara. Tideteller Katara.” She extended her hand as he had, and she didn’t expect or understand why the small gesture made Aang as giddy as it did. She didn’t question it, though.
“Katara…” Aang looked away in thought. He subconsciously folded into a crossed-legged position, but his shoulders sagged in a relaxed way that let Katara breathe again. He still kept his bandaged arm close and protected against his center. He held his chin in his hand. “Katara…” He perked up like a child with a new toy, and, based on his expression, Katara couldn’t believe that he hadn’t known her his whole life. “Katara!”
Katara laughed, and Aang looked at her like he was witnessing a miracle. “It’s nice to meet you too, Aang.”
Aang blushed as she said his name, and Katara would be damned if it wasn’t the cutest thing she had ever seen.
“Can you…,” Katara began, choosing her words carefully, “Can Aang understand Katara?”
Aang paused and thought before shrugging a so-so motion. “Eh. Small spoke.” He pinched his thumb and first finger together. “ Much small spoke.”
His voice had something like an accent that wasn’t quite an accent, and Katara never wanted to hear more of something in her entire life.
She gesticulated to make up for words that she didn’t know if he knew or not. “Was Aang watching Katara?”
Aang blushed again. He looked away, suddenly finding the grass very interesting. He fiddled a loose fold on his abused pants and made a gentle hush sound as he adjusted his weight and his wings. “...Maybe.”
Katara cocked her head to make it known that she was asking a question. “Why?”
Aang blushed even harder , and Katara, as a healer, habitually worried for his health. “...nhy,” he mumbled.
Katara leaned closer. Aang’s head sank between his shoulders, and he fiddled faster with the fold in his pants as he met her eyes.
Katara struggled to simplify her words. “Can you—Can Aang spoke again?”
Aang swallowed. “K’tara...shiny…” He tapped his throat and pointed to the water. “...lots of with water, too.”
It was Katara’s turn to blush, and she struggled so very hard not to laugh. The winged skybender—a living relic of a people honored and revered as almost demigods in the thousand years since their slaughter—had stalked her for near months because he liked her mother’s shiny necklace and the shiny ripples of the water she bended.
“Well,” she paused to clear her throat and swallow her laugh. Thankfully, Aang didn’t notice, “Well, there’s no need for Aang to hide. Katara doesn’t bite. Does Aang want to sit here and watch Katara?”
It took Aang a minute to process so many words, but the moment he understood, his smile nearly blinded her. His wings fluttered so quickly that he nearly left the ground. “Yes! Much yes! Much!”
Katara struggled to hold back her laugh again, but she couldn’t stop a grin. Aang smiled wider, and his eyes got even wider as she rolled her wrist and called the water out of the river to flow between herself and her new friend. She molded it into a small globe and angled it just right so that it projected the suns’ rays in a thousand fractals of light. Even the smooth stone of her mother’s polished betrothal necklace gleamed in the reflection.
Aang pawed the ground with his unbandaged arm and stared in absolute awe. His wings unfurled into a feathered display of warm colors—reminding her of sunsets over calm ocean waters—before curling flush against his back again. Katara had to remind herself to keep her focus when they did. His wingspan was massive , but it made sense that it would be if his wings truly were able to hold him aloft.
Katara bent the water into a pyramid that yielded a rainbow. Aang was beside himself with joy.
Katara relaxed and tried not to preen too much when Aang scooted closer to her. She couldn’t help but feel a little proud of being able to earn his trust so easily. Although, it was probably more to the credit of Aang wanting her trust long before they officially met.
She twirled the water around his head in an overhead flare. His laugh danced about her as her thoughts were already making plans to meet him by the river tomorrow.
Aang leaned to keep the water as close to his face as possible, and he didn’t realize he was leaning too much until he fell forward. He plunged face-first through the water and severed Katara’s connection to it. He had scooted so close to her at that point that both himself and Katara’s lap got soaked, but Katara caught the two of them before they fell flat on the grass.
Aang sheepishly looked up at her. His wings drooped like the ears of a polarbeardog, and his eyes were just as effective.
“Sorry, K’tara…”
Katara didn’t try to hide it anymore. She laughed long and loud, full and hearty, and she welcomed how much it hurt. She struggled not to buckle over, especially with Aang in her arms, but she couldn’t stop the stream of giggles that rippled into her attempts to breathe.
...She didn’t see the way Aang lost his breath and melted to ooze in her arms. Her shining smile lit up his world like nothing had ever done before, no matter how far or how long he searched, and it warmed him from head to toe like he knew nothing else ever could. And when her peels of laughter grew tired and heavy with joy that pooled into her eyes—her eyes that were looking at and drawing joy from him —he felt like he was flying the closest to the sun that he had ever gotten, and he wanted nothing more than to fly as close to her as he could.
His palm throbbed, and he struggled not to itch it through its wrappings. The beautiful tideteller— Katara —had dusted out one of the holes in his soul that had festered for a thousand years, Aang would have cried and begged her to fill it if he wasn’t smiling so much, too.
Though, he couldn’t stop his eyes from glossing over with hot tears when she waved her hand— that hand—and telled the water off of them. He could see it even clearer at this distance. It glowed on her palm even though it wasn’t visible on her skin yet.
She stood and extended it to him. He stared up at her for the longest time, unable to move.
Then she reached for his hand and took it herself, and she brought him to his feet. Her palm felt oddly warm in his, and he shivered when he felt the connection there. Katara didn’t seem to notice what the feeling was from when she felt it herself. She just smiled some more.
And then, with her hand holding his, Katara pulled him into a hug.
Her arms wrapped around him. Aang shifted and tried not to jump into her touch when she brushed his wings. Her hug was shy but welcoming, an unspoken question of sorts. An open door. An invitation.
She pulled away sooner than he would have liked. Her words reached him like she was speaking to him through water. “Sorry...e e m...lke...Aang...n e eded one.”
His vision grew as blurry as if he truly was underwater. And when next her arms wrapped around him—a complete stranger to her even though she was so much a part of him—Aang held her back just as tightly and let his tears fall.
She held his hand, almost subconsciously, for the rest of their time together, just talking and learning off of each other. She didn’t even notice when he shyly held her tighter. She just scooted closer.
Aang itched his wrapped palm out of habit rather than need and didn’t let himself cry until Katara left an hour later as the sun was setting. He didn’t understand what she said in parting, but her voice was hopeful and her last hug felt like a promise.
Aang sat at the riverside with the wind curling around him like an excited old friend ready to carry his secrets.
He cried some more when his palm no longer itched, and he held it to his heart like he might brand himself the feeling of finally being found after being lost for a thousand years.