Work Text:
Aang carried them all out of there—little Tenzin swaddled on his back and Bumi and Kya cradled against his front. One of Aang’s arms was badly fractured by the wrist. Katara was pretty sure his shoulder, at that angle, was partially dislocated, too. He hid his wince in a laugh when Kya whimpered and held onto him tighter.
Suki took little Tenzin from his makeshift wrap—the babe was crying but otherwise okay, to Katara’s every relief.
Katara was planning a million miles an hour as she assessed her husband and children. Bumi and Kya were filthy but favored no injury and showed no wound. Aang, on the other hand, looked like he had thrown himself over a bomb from how badly his robes—or, what was left of them—were singed and torn. He trembled like an engine missing a bolt and about to break apart.
Her children flinched and instinctively held onto their father even tighter once the sounds of the outside came crashing down on them. Katara, already fisting gauze in one hand and healing water in the other, gave her brother a look , and Sokka, cooing gently, tried to encourage the toddlers from Aang’s arms.
Aang was on the brink of collapse. Katara needed to heal him.
It was only with his careful airbending that he spared his kids from hearing his wheezing.
Aang stopped Sokka’s attempts. The kids had enough of people taking them away for the day. He needed them to go on their own.
“Hey, what—,” Aang gritted his teeth and pursed his lips, hiding a cough into a slurred sound like he was clearing his throat. It didn’t help that Kya hiccuped in the same moment and tightened her death grip on her father’s neck. Aang held her closer on instinct—her and Bumi—and smiled into her hair so she felt it. Only then did he give Sokka his attention. “What do ya think you’re doing, trying to take my munchkins from me, eh?”
Sokka slumped, immediately seeing through Aang’s facade. Behind him, Toph’s clenched fists ground metal on metal to resist the urge to smack her former student.
Aang felt Katara’s glare and heard what was left of her heart break as she moved closer, fighting the urge to hold her family like she was fighting to keep a tsunami away.
Sokka tried again. “Aang— ”
Aang ignored him. “What do you say, guys?” he asked the shivering, dust-coated bundles trying so desperately to hide in his robes. Aang smiled, ignoring even the thick beads of sweat rolling past his temple and trembling jaw. “You wanna go with Uncle Sokka for a bit?”
The suggestion made Bumi hold such a tight fistful of Aang’s collar that it threatened to cut off his air, and Kya shook her head so hard and so fast that it threatened to come off her shoulders.
“Nonononono!”
“Wanna...W-Wanna stay with D-Daddy…”
Aang’s heart broke not too unlike how the Uprisers cracked four of his ribs.
Katara’s eyes were a threat and a plea— begging him. Aang would have wondered why she hadn’t talked yet if he didn’t see the tremble in her lip.
She was struggling not to cry.
And they promised not to cry in front of the kids.
Suki stepped forward, just behind Sokka’s shoulder. She opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself when the children whimpered and curled ever closer. They were wired and on edge with the raw chill of fight or flight; instinct made them desperate to cling to the only warmth—the only safety —they could feel.
Aang nudged them higher so the blood leaking from his abdomen wouldn’t taint them. A shiver wracked him from head to toe, speeding his breathing and kicking his heart into overdrive.
A quiet hush of metal on metal. “Twinkletoes…”
Bumi and Kya mumbled some more.
His kids were terrified—His wife equally so.
Aang laughed.
It was a broken, wet sound, but it warmed the air’s tension just as his laugh always did. Even the sirens, shouts, and grindings of earthbending as Toph’s teams worked to rescue evidence and enemies from the crumbling warehouse were drowned out by the familiar sound.
Katara stepped forward. A lecture sat on her tongue and a thousand desperate pleas clouded her eyes.
Kya’s voice was a squeak. “D-Don’t go, Daddy…”
Katara gave him a look that held more than one meaning.
Aang gave her one back—that he hoped was reassuring—before he turned back to their kids.
“ Shhhhh , shhh , shhh …It’s okay, guys. It’s okay... shhh …I won’t be gone long. I just gotta go annoy Mama and do some boring grown-up things for a little bit. And I need to change my clothes—we all do. That sewer was a stinky, stinky place, wasn’t it?” He nudged Kya with his face, and he peeled her away enough from his neck to give her cheek a playful kiss and to give her terrified eyes a smile to look at. “Kya, I think you’re the stinkiest of us all, little lady.”
Kya held their eye-contact just as resolutely as she held onto his neck. Aang smiled wider, and his daughter had no choice but to do the same.
The smallest giggle escaped her, like a shaft of light peeked through a barely opened door. “...Daddy’s stinkier.”
Aang looked appalled and gasped just as comically even though the sudden intake of air nearly sent him into a fit. “Me? Stinkier than you ? I think not, little lady.”
His efforts won him a shy smile that was missing two baby teeth. “Daddy the stinkiest.”
“ Not-ugh .”
“Yeah-huh.”
Aang rolled his eyes and didn’t stop smiling. “Well, I see who you take after. I’ll never win with you, now, will I?”
Kya laughed a little more.
Bumi wasn’t swayed in the least. He held on to where Kya had let go. His voice was strained like a squeak of rubber on tile, thinned so taut that it threatened to break.
“It was scary down there…”
Aang’s smile almost faltered, and it would have if Kya—her confidence crawling back enough to pull away one hand to suck her thumb and rest her head contently on his partially dislocated shoulder—wasn’t looking at him.
Aang shook like a stone building about to collapse. His face was paler. His robes were darker and so wet in some places that crimson beaded little pools on the fabric’s weave.
Sokka moved behind him. Suki stepped to Aang’s side where his shoulder was shifted at a strange angle. They both opened their arms—just a bit—expecting him to fall but ready to catch him.
But Aang would sooner die on his own two feet before he fell with his kids in his arms.
“Oh, Boom-Boom…,” Aang cooed. Bumi shook and bit his lip so hard that Aang feared it would bleed. He kissed his son’s hair and the darkening bruise on his forehead—the reminder of one of the Uprisers hitting Bumi with a baton—like the gesture might somehow be a bandage. “It’s okay, bud. I know it was scary. I was scared! But you two were so, so brave.”
“You…” Bumi angled his head to look up at the kind smile eager to greet him. Aang’s heart broke a little more. The vulnerability in those little eyes should be a crime. “Daddy was scared, too?”
“Are you kidding? Of course I was! Did you see how big those bad guys were? I thought I was in big trouble until you two brave warriors stepped in.” Aang’s knee threatened to give. Suki stepped a little closer with Toph right behind her. Gauze hit the ground as Katara tried and failed to hide her panic, but she was before her family in an instant. Aang gave her a look , ignored the scalding one he got in return, and turned his attention to their daughter. “Kya, you held your baby brother and did the waterwhip with one hand. One hand! Not even Mommy could do that when she was your age. And I’ll never forget the look on that bad man’s face when you kicked him in the shin, Bumi. He looked like you threw a boulder at him.”
A shy blush colored Bumi’s wet cheeks. The deathgrip on Aang’s collar loosened a bit. “He was gonna hurt Sissy…”
“But he didn’t, thanks to you. I’m so, so proud of you two. Mama is, too.” Aang trembled all the more, but his eyes were laughing and his smile carried a thousand reassurances when he looked at Katara. “Aren’t you, sweetie?”
Katara swallowed twice before she tamed her worry enough to keep it out of her voice. She kissed her children not nearly enough for her heart to stop racing, and her hands, once rubbing their backs like she did when they had nightmares, secretly wound under them to support their weights. Katara was still kissing their heads when she mumbled in a voice as soft as chalk dust but as firm as plated armor. “ Very proud.”
Kya, one thumb in her mouth, didn’t move from her bed of robes and Daddy-shoulder as she found a handhold in her mother’s dress. Katara jumped on the chance to kiss her face. Kya smiled and squished her cheek—rounded from a gentle smile—to her mother’s. Quiet pride leaked into Kya’s words. “...I didn’t even cry when he hurted my hands with the rope.”
“Me neither!” Bumi piped up from his new position, relaxed and cradling himself in the dip of Aang’s other shoulder. Katara kissed him, too, and, if he weren’t struggling to stay conscious, she would have taken Aang out at his knees and strapped the stubborn brat to the nearest table so she could heal the blood oozing from his abdomen and onto her hand.
“Did you hear that, Uncle Sokka?” Aang said. “Two big bag guys and rope, and they didn’t even cry!”
Sokka smiled, looking as tired as Aang felt. “That’s quite impressive, little warriors.”
The kids blushed. Aang kissed their cheeks with sloppily raspberries until they laughed.
Aang laughed, too.
He was shaking even harder, now.
Katara gave him a look that he couldn’t tear away from. She wasn’t pleased in the least by the answer Aang’s look gave her in return, but she went along with it, nonetheless.
“Why don’t you two tell Uncle Sokka about your brave story? You know how much he loves those kinds of things. He tells you them all the time. He’ll tell everyone about how brave you two were.” Bumi and Kya giggled and held him tighter—not in fear or like he was the only thing keeping them from falling, but in a hug.
Behind them, Aang gave Katara another look .
Hurricanes killed fewer men than her returned look was capable of.
But, nonetheless, she understood. Something worse than sadness weighed down her movements as she pulled away, just a bit, and steeled herself in a subtle bending stance.
“Come on, Trouble and Mayhem, off to Uncle Sokka you go.” Aang motioned with his chin for Sokka to come forward. “Daddy’s gotta go do boring adult stuff for a little bit.”
“Cuz you're the Avatar?” Kya mumbled around her thumb.
“A bit, yes. But I won’t be long. I promise.”
Aang was just about to hand them off when Bumi spoke. “...When will you be Daddy again?”
Aang stopped shaking. He nudged both of his kids higher up on his chest so he could look them in the eye. He ignored Katara’s whine—so desperate it was audible—just as easily as he ignored the torn muscles bleeding even more of his life into his robes.
“Boom-Boom, I am always —I will always, always, always, always and forever be your and Kya’s and Tenzin’s daddy.” Aang coughed and hid it in the red fabric of his clothes. Katara looked ready to step closer. Aang silently shook his head. He didn’t stop smiling. “Daddy was the one who threw the rock at the bad man right? And gave him to Auntie Toph?”
“...Yeah.”
“And daddy was the one who carried you three out of there, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And who’s talking to you right now? Daddy or the Avatar?”
“Daddy.”
“That’s right. And your Daddy won’t ever, ever let any bad men hurt you. C’mere.” He gave them both cheek kisses, and they released his robes to touch his face. Aang nuzzled them as gently as he spoke. “I love you.”
“Love you more.”
“Impossible.” He gently kissed them again and gave Katara a final look as he handed their kids over to Sokka. “Uncle Sokka, be a pal and take these two hooligans for a bath and some ice cream. I have to bug their mama for a while. Make sure Kya scrubs behind her ears.”
In the pass-off, the kids’ attention on their father blinded them from seeing his blood being bent out of their clothes. Aang curled his arm over his abdomen just as the spot became warm and wet again.
Kya puffed her cheeks. “ Daddy! ”
Bumi giggled at her, welcoming the laugh-slap-fight his sister met him with. Aang kissed Katara’s brow and patted Sokka’s shoulder before the warrior walked off with the kids.
Katara immediately started her pat-down. Her worry was palpable and thick like frozen gel in her voice. “Aang—”
“ Wait ,” he hissed.
Katara, very ready to argue, looked beyond his shoulder and pulled her finger off the trigger of her lecture. Bumi and Kya were looking at them from over Sokka’s shoulder. Katara waited, frozen more than anything as she was torn between her promise to her husband and her worry for his well-being.
They had promised not to bleed in front of the kids.
Aang kissed her brow in a sweet-looking way—like how he did every night when he got home.
Two seconds later, the door was shut on the osctrichhorse cart. Six seconds later, it was turned around a corner.
Katara had no sooner glanced at the back wheel of the cart than her husband’s limp weight collapsed into a trembling puddle of whimpers, winces, and soft cries in her arms.
Aang smiled against her shoulder. Wet heat seeped from his clothes into hers.
Katara held him as tightly as she dared and shouted for a bunch of things Aang couldn’t make out. He couldn’t hear anything outside of Katara’s racing heart and the quiver in her voice (that only he could ever hear).
She held him, and he held her, too. His fractured arm didn’t scream nearly as loudly or as angrily at him as she did.
“Aang, don’t you dare move another muscle. Do you hear me?”
He laughed—the brat actually laughed . “It’s...It’s hard...not to hear you, sweetie.”
“Aang, this is serious. You’re hurt , damn you, and this isn’t the time to be cracking jokes.”
He laughed again . “I...disagree. It’s the exact...exact time to be.”
“Shut up.” Katara hesitated, glancing about for the supplies she was waiting for, but kissed him, nonetheless. “Just shut up and stay still so I can heal you and be mad at you later.” His eyes met hers. He was still smiling. She kissed him again.
“So…,” He paused to cough, “...So it’s a date?”
Despite herself, Katara laughed.
Aang smiled. She kissed him again.
The lasting images of his family’s grim faces were crushed under the renewed memories of their smiles. He danced the line of unconsciousness, but he forced himself awake until Katara healed him enough to be satisfied, for the moment, that her husband was out of immediate peril.
His adoptive family gave him an earful—Toph promised to kill him later, and Suki promised to hold him down while she did it. They both gave him a hug and laughed, despite themselves, when he said he looked forward to it.
Besides, they should have known he wouldn’t die from a rescue mission of this kind.
He and Katara had, after all, promised not to die in front of the kids.