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When Katara is fourteen, a fortune teller looks her in the eye and says, I see that you will marry a great and powerful bender.
Five years later, the Avatar asks her to marry him.
Katara says no.
-
The setting sun over Ba Sing Se is beautiful. It shines over the houses in the Inner Ring and the boy standing in front of her, bathing everything in soft pink light.
The war is over. It still feels foreign to say. The war that’s lasted for a hundred years, that’s wreaked havoc and caused destruction across all four nations, the war that took her mother — it’s done. The fighting’s stopped, there’s a new Fire Lord, and there is peace.
She is happy, she thinks. She is happy here in Ba Sing Se, celebrating all of the efforts her and her friends have made over the course of the past year. And she is happy when she looks over at the boy beside her, radiant in the light. He is the savior of the world, but he is so much more than that. It’s Aang, her Aang. So she hugs him, and then — it feels almost inevitable, really — she leans in for a kiss.
He reciprocates, like she knew he would, and as they’re kissing under the orange clouds of the Ba Sing Se sky, something slots into place in her chest like a key turning in a lock.
It feels like something she chose. It feels right. It feels like home.
-
It’s not that Katara doesn’t love Aang. She does. She loves him so much that it makes her ache inside, and she would do anything, be anyone, to make him happy.
But she cannot do this.
Aang offers her a betrothal necklace and the promise of a happy future together, the promise of being the Avatar’s wife, and as much as she wants to say yes, as much as she wants to accept, she cannot. The words stick in her throat and she can’t force them out even though she so badly wants to.
“Why? ” Aang cries. He’s devastated by her refusal, that much is clear, and it’s breaking her apart inside to hear it because it’s Aang. This boy, her boy, the one she knows inside and out. The one who knows her just as well. The one she’d give up anything for because of the way his eyes sparkle when he sees her. The one she’s saved countless times. The one who’s always saved her back. She can’t say yes. She can’t say yes. Why can’t she say yes?
“I don’t know,” says Katara, her voice a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know. I would do anything for you, Aang, I would, but I can’t— I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I can’t.”
She expects him to rage and yell, or at the very least plead for an answer she cannot give, but instead, he throws the betrothal necklace at her feet and walks away.
The earth is crumbling around her feet. Something in her chest is fracturing irreparably. Katara doesn’t even know why.
-
She doesn’t bother waiting for the ferry to get off of Air Temple Island. She packs up what little she possesses and walks down to the dock at the edge of the island. When she steps out onto the water, it freezes at her touch— this is her element, after all, and it follows the call of her bones like no other— and then she’s walking across the sea to the docks of Republic City. And while she’s torn up inside about who she’s leaving behind, there isn’t a single part of her that mourns the loss of the island. It had never felt like home the way that it should, maybe because home was already the Southern Water Tribe or the evening sky on Appa’s back or Aang’s arms after a long day.
It doesn’t occur to her that she’s crying until she gets to the other side and realizes that the taste of salt on her tongue is not just from the sea.
-
The journey home is a long one, and Katara spends a good portion of it in tears. The other passengers on the ship avoid her with very obvious suspicion, and she can’t exactly blame them. If she were anyone else, she’d exercise caution around the crazy crying lady as well.
When Katara isn’t crying, she’s thinking. Long journeys are also good for introspection, as it turns out, and she thinks she has a lot of introspection to do.
Here is what Katara knows:
She loves Aang. There’s no doubt about that.
Aang asked her to marry him. Five years together and they had talked about marriage a few times, but never excessively in depth. It had always been assumed, she supposes, that they would get married eventually. That she would tie herself to Aang and become the Avatar’s wife.
But—
But—
There’s something about it that doesn’t sit right with her. She thinks about Aang and she thinks about being his wife, the Avatar’s wife, and the ideas are two completely separate entities she cannot quite wrap her head around. It’s suffocating, almost, the idea of forever being tied to a person larger than life itself. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that she can’t do it.
Here is another thing Katara knows, even though it makes her stomach turn to admit it:
She looks in the mirror sometimes and it hits her like a slap in the face that five years have gone by. Five years have gone by and she’s not fourteen anymore, she’s nineteen years old and nothing has changed. She’s not a child anymore— she hasn’t been, not for a long time, even when she was fourteen and found a boy in an iceberg— and yet there are days where it feels like that’s all she is. She’s angry and hurting and she’s stuck in limbo. Stuck in the space between something and nothing. Some days would go by where she’d look at Aang’s face (but it wouldn’t be his face that she saw, not really) and she’d think, why am I keeping myself here?
It’s because she loves him, of course.
Is that enough?
The ship pulls into the harbor.
-
The world at peace is a vast place, full of endless possibilities. After the war ends, life finds a new rhythm. Sokka goes back to the Southern Water Tribe to prepare for his role as chief. Suki and Zuko go back to the Fire Nation, where Zuko will take on his role as Fire Lord and Suki will act as his head of security. Toph decides she will start a metal bending school on the outskirts of the Earth Kingdom, and draws up elaborate plans with Iroh in the back room of the Jasmine Dragon.
Aang and Katara end up right where they started: on Appa’s back, flying over an open sea.
They go to all of the places Aang wanted to see, before he got stuck in an iceberg for a century. They ride the elephant koi at Kyoshi Island. They travel to the furthest islands of the Fire Nation to look at humming bird-bats and whale-sharks. They go to the Outer Ring of Ba Sing Se to look at the zoo Aang built with his own two hands.
They fly to the Air Temples to look for what remains of Aang’s people.
It’s great fun, for the most part. Katara loves Aang, and Aang loves her, and that’s really all there is to it. Sometimes, on the way, they will come across people who need their help— Avatar business, Aang always says with a smile— and they will work together to fix problems, to help those in need. After all, Katara never turns her back on people who need her, and so many need her. She heals and fights and has fun with Aang and she is so, so content to roam around the world and do what she can. She could do this forever, she thinks. Her and Aang and Appa against the world.
A year after the war ends, Aang and Katara are called back to Ba Sing Se.
Everything changes.
-
There is no one to greet her at the port.
Katara knows she shouldn’t be surprised by this. It’s not like she’d told anyone she was coming, it’s not like they even knew to expect her, but it stings a little all the same. She’d forgotten, in the time that she’d been away, how much her little home had changed. It’s not so little anymore. The igloo where she was born and raised, where her mother lived and died, where she first brought an airbender she’d discovered on the open sea— it’s gone now, replaced by huge structures of ice and snow, white and glistening like the others around it. The walls outside the city are huge. Not as grand as the North’s, mind you, but they are big and foreboding and it rankles Katara’s skin just a little bit to see them.
It’s her own fault, she supposes, for not being here to help with the reconstruction efforts. Katara can count the number of times that she’s been home since the war ended on one hand. She’d been busy with Aang, flying around the globe on Appa’s back, watching him solve disputes and trying to lend a hand where she could, usually through cooking or cleaning or providing a listening ear. But if she’d known that in the span of five years, the place she considered home would turn into something unrecognizable, she might’ve made more of an effort.
The walk from the port to Sokka’s house is long. These streets and buildings are unfamiliar, but eventually she finds herself in an area that she can recognize, and she finds the house shortly after that. She knocks once, twice, and is about to knock a third time when the door flies open to reveal a very disgruntled Sokka.
“Katara?” he says, like he can’t quite believe his eyes. “What are you—” But he doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because Katara’s flinging herself through the doorway and into his arms. She’s crying again, she realizes, and she doesn’t even care.
“I missed you,” she says, because she has, and she hadn’t realized until now just how much.
Sokka hugs her back tightly. “I missed you too,” he says. He’s taller now, and his voice is deeper, and the thought brings a new wave of tears because spirits , she’s missed so much. “But seriously, Katara, what are you doing here?”
Katara pulls back to look at him. “It’s kind of a long story.”
Sokka looks down at her seriously. “I have time.”
She tells him the whole tale over sea prunes and five-flavor soup. He doesn’t say anything after she finishes, just looks at her in silence for a long time.
“Well,” Katara says, her annoyance getting the best of her. “Spit it out.”
“I just—” he starts, then stops and runs a hand over his face. “Why, Katara? Aang asked you to marry him, and you left, but you haven’t said why. Was he treating you poorly? I’ll kick his ass from here to the Spirit World if he was.”
“No!” Katara cries, horrified at the insinuation. “Aang couldn’t even kill a fly— he would never —”
“So then what?” Sokka snaps. “You’re not making any sense! It’s been over a year since the last time you visited! We hear from you once every few months, never anything more than a cursory everything’s fine, hugs and kisses, and then suddenly you’re here and you’re crying and saying that Aang proposed and you said no! What am I supposed to think? Because everything is obviously not fine, hugs and kisses, so either you’re lying or something bad happened and—”
“I couldn’t do it!” Katara explodes. The pot of five-flavor soup explodes, icy broth flying everywhere, and Sokka is gawking at her with wide eyes. She hasn’t accidentally caused an explosion since they were fourteen and fifteen and found a boy under the sea.
Katara puts her head in her hands. “He asked me, and I wanted to say yes, I did, but I just couldn’t do it.”
Silence. And then, “why?”
Katara laughs, and it’s a jagged, awful sound. “I don’t know.”
-
The Harmony Restoration Movement is a good idea, and why Zuko is withdrawing his support of it, Katara does not know. Yu Dao is a powder keg nearing explosion, and his dithering is only making things worse. She doesn’t realize how much worse until the Earth King’s forces are marching against the Fire Lord’s, and Aang enters the Avatar State, and everything basically goes to shit.
She does not realize why Zuko stood up for what he did until much later, when she sees the mixed Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation families and thinks, Oh . This is what the world could be if we tried hard enough.
Aang disagrees, so she bites her tongue and tells him to do what he thinks is right, because she is sure that he will come to the correct decision in the end. He does, eventually, and it makes Katara happy to think that he took her advice. That means something, doesn’t it? She’s his confidante; she’s the one whose shoulders he rests on after a long day. It’s nice to be needed. Makes her feel special.
-
Her conversation with Sokka has left her with a bad taste in her mouth and a heavy heart. She doesn’t know why she can’t verbalize this feeling— it’s twisted and ugly and awful and it sits in her stomach like a stone. She knows, doesn’t she? She knows deep down why she couldn’t say yes, why she couldn’t marry Aang like she knew she should have.
Katara stays locked in the guest room of Sokka’s house for seven days. She comes out only to eat and drink and use the bathroom, and only when no one else is at home. She’s mourning something that’s dead and gone, and no one knows it but her. Her father and Gran-Gran and Pakku come by— Katara knows, she can hear them— and they whisper with Sokka outside her door. She should go out and explain herself, she thinks. She has a lot to say, and even more to apologize for. But she can’t.
She’s nineteen years old and floundering under the weight of tradition and expectation and shame. Nothing has changed and yet everything has, because it’s been years, and she can’t stop hurting people. She closes her eyes and she sees Aang throwing a necklace at her feet. She closes her eyes and she sees her mother’s body in the snow. She closes her eyes and she sees Yon Rha begging for mercy. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t say yes and she couldn’t stay behind and she couldn’t kill the man who killed her mother and she can’t grow beyond this hurt that lives inside of her, try as she might.
Katara is a master waterbender. Her hands can hurt and heal in equal measure. She wields her element with deadly precision and beautiful grace and she can best anyone from here to the North Pole, but she can’t fix this thing inside of her enough to just fucking settle down on Air Temple Island with the man-boy-god that she loves. She can’t even speak the words out loud.
Why can’t I marry you?
I love you.
Is that not enough?
-
It’s funny, because the role Katara thought she could’ve been content in forever soon begins to go stale, like a sweet bun left out for too long. Time crawls forward, and suddenly, it just isn’t enough. Her and Aang travel. He settles disputes and she helps him and he doles out advice and she helps him and he changes the world and she helps him and as time goes on, she is no longer referred to as Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. They call her Master Katara, the Avatar’s girlfriend. The Avatar’s waterbending teacher. The Avatar’s traveling companion.
It rankles.
Sometimes, at nights when she lies awake in her bedroll next to Aang, one of his arms thrown casually across her stomach, her head pillowed on his chest, she thinks of her mother. What would her mother say if she saw her now? She likes to think she’d be proud. But sometimes, Katara’s not sure if she’s proud of herself.
What is there to be proud of?
She thought she could fix it this way. She thought, all those years ago when she kissed Aang under the pink clouds in Ba Sing Se, when everything just clicked, that she had filled that hole, that yawning chasm where her mother rests in her chest. That space she has to fill by being the Avatar’s girlfriend and the last bender from the Southern Water Tribe and a million other mantles that are crushing her under their weight.
She couldn’t do it by staying angry at Zuko. She couldn’t do it by sparing Yon Rha. She thought she could do it this way, by being with Aang and loving him and walking the fine line between not enough and just barely but —
She couldn’t.
How much of herself is she willing to lose to fix this?
Katara isn’t sure.
-
An entire week goes by before Katara has the energy to get up and walk into the kitchen. Sokka isn’t home today, and her father hasn’t stopped by yet- instead, her Gran-Gran is hunched over the stove, stirring another pot of five flavor soup. Katara hesitates at the threshold of the kitchen for a second too long, and Kanna turns around and notices her. Her whole face lights up, and Katara is hit with a wave of emotion.
“Katara!” Kanna says. She’s smiling softly, her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Welcome home, my child.” She’s holding her arms out, and the last vestiges of Katara’s composure crumble. She’s weeping as she runs across the kitchen and envelops herself into her grandmother’s arms.
“Gran-gran,” she cries. Her sobs shake the empty cavity of her chest, and it’s exhausting, because how can she not be cried out by now? She’s just spent days feeling emptiness and nothing at all, but a single look from her grandmother has reduced her to tears. She’s tired. She’s so tired. “Gran-gran, I missed you.”
“I know, my child,” Kanna whispers. Her presence is solid and reassuring, and it tethers Katara to the earth even though she feels as though she could float away with the slightest breeze. Her gran-gran strokes her hair, and Katara cries harder, because she may be nineteen now but in her grandmother’s arms she feels like she’s eight and they’ve just sent her mother out to sea.
“It’s alright, Katara,” Kanna says. Her voice is steady and smooth like a rolling wave. “It’s alright.”
After Katara’s sobs have subsided, Kanna serves her a bowl of soup and gestures for her to take a seat at the kitchen table. Katara obliges, and doesn’t mind the fact that the soup scalds her throat on the way down. The air in the kitchen is heavy with the weight of words unsaid.
Kanna is the first one to break the silence. “I’m proud of you, you know,” she says.
Katara gawks at her. Out of all the things she’d been expecting her grandmother to say, that certainly was not one of them. The guilt that lives within her these days rises to the forefront of her mind. “Thank you,” she whispers. “But I don’t deserve that.”
Kanna glares at her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Katara,” she says. “Of course you do. Pakku told what he knew about your adventures, you know. He said that you’re the finest waterbending master he’s ever met. He said that you took down the Fire Princess. He said that you are brave, and clever, and courageous. I’m proud of you, and your mother would be too.”
Katara buries her head in her hands. “It’s been five years, Gran-Gran,” she says. “Pakku doesn’t know everything.” She should explain herself, she thinks. She owes her grandmother an apology, or at least the the truth, but it feels like words cannot breach this silence. Words can’t explain how she feels like she’s falling through the floor with no safety net to catch her. Words can’t explain why she left Aang even though she loves him more than she’s ever loved anyone. Words can’t explain the humiliation that crawls up her throat when her grandmother looks at her so tenderly and says she’s proud of her. She hasn’t earned that. Years ago, after she’d first mastered waterbending and brought the Avatar back to life, she might have been able to accept the compliment. Today, she cannot.
Silence falls again over the kitchen.
Kanna reaches out with a withered hand and places it gently over her granddaughter’s. “Why don’t you catch me up?” she says gently. Her eyes are open and honest. Katara feels tears spring to her eyes again at the sight. She can do this. She has to do this.
“I—” she starts. Clears her throat. Her hands are shaking. “Aang proposed. I said no. I just— I couldn’t marry him, Gran-Gran. I wanted to. But I couldn’t.”
Understanding flashes on Kanna’s face. “Did you love him?”’
Katara can feel her face crumple. “Of course I did,” she says. “I just— he asked me, and as much as I wanted to say yes, I knew deep down that I couldn’t do it. But I don’t understand why. I love him! Why couldn’t that be enough? I just— I don’t want to feel like this forever, Gran-gran! I feel so lost, and angry, and I’m stuck, and I don’t even know why!”
“Oh, Katara,” Kanna says. Her voice is sad, but also knowing, and Katara feels foolish. Of course her gran-gran would understand. After all, did she not leave a man that she loved for similar reasons? Kanna gets up from her seat to walk around the table and take her granddaughter into her arms again. “Katara, it’s okay . Listen to me. Listen to me.”
Katara wipes at her eyes and looks up at her grandmother. Her face is serious, wrinkled with age. It’s not often that Kanna looks like her eighty-five years of life have caught up with her, but right now, she seems to be as old and timeless as the ice shelves that surround the city. “Did you know,” Kanna begins, “that I have loved Pakku since I was sixteen years old?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
“He gave me the necklace you wear right now, and he told me that he loved me, and I did love him back. But I left him anyways, because the life he was offering me— well, it wasn’t something that I wanted. Do you understand?”
Katara pauses. Does she understand? She thinks she might. It hurts to think about, but this is a truth she needs to acknowledge. Aang had been larger than life. She had loved him anyways. “I understand that,” Katara says shakily. “I do. But- there’s more to it than that, Gran-gran. I wanted to say yes. But I couldn’t, and I hurt him, I hurt him so bad, I didn’t mean to, I keep hurting people, and I keep on hurting myself—”
“It may not have been the right thing for you,” Kanna says. “But you are not weak for wanting it anyways.”
-
You know I love you, right?
Gray eyes widen with surprise, and then they crinkle into a smile, wide and unabashed.
‘Course I do. I love you too, you know.
Yeah. I know.
-
The process of putting herself back together starts like this:
Katara leaves Sokka’s house for the first time in a week and goes to the bending school where Pakku teaches. He’s holding a class today, teaching the young waterbenders from the North and the few from the South how to move with the water as if it’s an extension of their limbs. She pauses at the entrance of the building. It’s a grand thing, ridiculously ornate, with large ice gates and turrets and an open courtyard with pools of water for practicing. It looks like a carbon copy of the North’s and there’s a tiny part of Katara that hates it. She can’t help but feel, as she stands here in a place she didn’t get to help rebuild, that the old ways are gone. There is nothing left of the Southern Water Tribe but her, their last bender, and even she doesn’t bend like the old Southern Masters used to.
The only thing she ever got to learn from a Southern Master is something too horrible to name, and that’s it. That is the Southern legacy.
Katara swallows back the bile that’s risen in her throat and moves forwards, in toward the training area. Pakku is guiding the handful of children in a kata. Katara settles next to the nearest child, a small girl with two braids tumbling down her back, and starts going through the motions. If Pakku notices, he doesn’t say anything, just continues the movements, flowing easily from form to form. It’s only when they’ve all finished that Pakku calls her name.
“Glad to see you’ve joined us,” he says in that dry way of his. “Would you like to put on a demonstration with me? I assume that you’ve kept up your training while you’ve been away.”
Katara squints. “More or less,” she says coolly, even though she hasn’t sparred with anyone in ages. Aang wasn’t really one for it, preferred to do fun tricks and training exercises instead.
Pakku takes her noncommittal response as a yes, and shifts into fighting stance. He barely gives her a second to respond before he sends a blade of ice straight for her head. Katara stifles a yelp and shifts it before it can reach her, moves it around her like a stream and blasts him in the chest. Then they’re off, volleying ice darts and sending waves at each other, and Katara can’t help but think of a time that feels like ages ago, when a girl challenged a Master to a fight and came out better off.
She ducks to avoid a water whip and then slides across the ice, using a move she modified from Toph to raise a line of ice chunks from the ground and knock Pakku off balance. She streams the water from the two reflecting pools behind her and lashes them forwards like two jets of fire. That move she came up with after sparring Zuko, eons ago.
Even though she can tell that he’s caught off guard by these new moves, Pakku still gives as good as he gets, and she has to skate away on a halfpipe of ice to avoid the blast of water he sends her way. They continue sparring for minutes, and Katara can feel something inside of her waking up. She’s sweating and out of breath, but as she moves with her element, she feels as if she’s coming alive.
The spar ends when Katara uses a modified airbending move to knock Pakku off his feet and raises spikes of ice from the ground to keep him there. She lets out a delighted laugh at the expression on his face— her first one in what feels like a very long time— and turns around at the sound of a cheer rising from the students behind her. With a start, she realizes that Sokka is standing there, a soft expression on his face, egging the students on. Overwhelmed, she presses a hand to her face. Pakku is congratulating her with a wry, “Welcome back, Master Katara,” and her brother is cheering her on, and for a second, everything seems alright.
-
Katara leaves the training area after making a tentative promise to Pakku to be back soon. Sokka slings an arm around her shoulder and together, they walk back towards his house. It’s quiet between them for a moment. All around, the streets are filled with people going about their day. Someone is selling seal jerky at the corner. Mothers and children are walking hand in hand towards the market. There are men huddled in groups in front of the storefronts, laughing and gossiping, even if they pretend that they’re not. It’s not what it used to be. Not before they left with Aang the first time, or not even what it looked like before her mother died. But there is something here— contentment, maybe, or the stubborn revival of something that the world tried its best to stamp out. Katara doesn’t recognize it, but she thinks that maybe, she might like to.
“I’m glad to see you out of the house,” Sokka says.
“It was about time,” Katara hums. Then she stops, and turns to face him. She should do this now, before she chickens out. “I— Sokka— I’m really sorry.”
Sokka blinks, surprised. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he says.
Katara scoffs. “That’s just not true,” she says, because it’s not. But that’s just like Sokka, her big brother, who always has her back even when she deserves it the least. “I— I’m sorry for not talking to you, and for not coming home to help rebuild, even though I know I should’ve. And I’m sorry for finally coming home after years of being away and being so upset by the changes that I stunk up your guest room for a week.”
“Katara, don’t,” says Sokka, eyes understanding and so, so kind. “You don’t need to apologize for any of that. Seriously. I figured you were just doing what you needed to do to be happy.”
“No,” says Katara emphatically, shaking her head, and spirits damn it, her eyes are welling up with tears again. “No, listen. I didn’t come home because I was just— I was scared, Sokka. I didn’t realize it at the time because I was with Aang and I loved him but— I spent five years traveling the world with him because I loved, him, yeah, but I didn’t want to come home and face the alternative.”
Sokka’s expression has gone unreadable, suddenly. “Scared of what?”
Katara closes her eyes, and a few tears spill down her cheeks. She sees herself, eight years old and running. She sees herself, finding a boy in an iceberg and just knowing that this changes everything. She sees herself standing over a monster and choosing to turn around and walk away. “She’s not coming back,” she whispers, and her voice is soft and paper thin. “We ended the war, but it didn’t even matter, because she’s not coming back and I was the last one, I was the only bender and she died for me—”
“Oh, Katara,” Sokka says, and his voice cracks like it did when he was fifteen. He grabs her and pulls her into a hug, tight and secure. She falls apart, completely and totally, and it’s almost ironic because she thought she was starting to do the opposite. And now the truth is out, and it’s as brittle and ugly as it was when she was keeping it locked inside her heart. She hadn’t wanted to deal with it— hadn’t wanted to confront the grief, hadn’t wanted to come home and be the only shoulders bearing an ancient legacy, so she’d done a million other things instead, and none of it worked.
And Aang— Aang, the Avatar, whom she’d loved so dearly— she’d left him like it was nothing.
“Something is wrong with me,” she whispers.
Sokka jerks back like he’d been burned. “You take that back,” he says indignantly, and then he grabs her shoulders and gives her a shake, just for good measure. “You take that back right now. Nothing is wrong with you. You’re just human. And I know you think you have to be strong all the time, that you have to be there for everyone and not let anyone be there for you, but that’s just not true. You’re my sister, and you’re home, now, and I’m here for you. Okay? We’re all here for you.”
“Okay,” Katara says. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” And for the first time, she thinks that it might be.
-
Dream-Katara loves the feeling of soaring sunshine and the wind in her hair. Dream-Katara loves to fly. Dream-Katara looks over, and Aang is always there, flying next to her, laughing as he careens through the sky on his glider.
Come on, Katara, he calls, and he’s not the Avatar in this moment, he’s just Aang. Come on, Katara, catch up.
I’m coming, Dream-Katara tries to say, but when she opens her mouth, no words come out. And then something is horribly, terribly wrong, because she’s not flying anymore, she’s falling, and falling, and falling, and right before she hits the ground, she can hear her mother.
Come on, Katara, her mother says, but her voice is not laughing. She sounds cold, and hard, and mean. That isn’t her mother. It can’t be.
Come on, Katara. Catch up.
She always wakes up crying.
-
In the end, there’s nothing left for Katara to do but adjust. She can’t stay cooped up in Sokka’s guest room forever, she reasons. She has to find other things to do.
So she throws herself into the process of relearning the streets of her home. She starts showing up at the bending school to teach a few times a week, and to her surprise, she finds that she actually enjoys it.
There are seven students- four are from the North, but there are three who are Southern, through and through. Katara feels a connection to the Southern students, so intense that it startles her. She can see herself in them, she supposes. Tiny and bright eyed and eager to learn. One of the students, a little girl named Aima, latches onto her like an elbow leech and doesn’t let go. The feeling is mutual- even though she shouldn’t, Katara finds herself paying extra attention to Aima over the others, and one day, Aima even shows up to class with her hair styled like Katara’s, loopies and all.
The sight of it makes Katara’s heart fill up with an emotion she can’t quite name, and she has to close her eyes against the sudden wave of tears that spring to the surface.
“Look, Master Katara,” Aima chirps. “We match!”
Katara smiles. “We certainly do, Aima,” she says. “You have very good taste.”
“I want to do my hair like that, Master Katara,” says another student named Sedna. “Help me do my hair like that!”
Then all the children are calling her name, clamoring for her to braid loopies into their hair, even the little boys. And so Katara finds herself spending that morning’s lesson braiding back each child’s hair, twisting it into fine loops and pinning them in place. Pakku shows up an hour later to find them all laughing and chattering on the training floor, as Katara tells stories and braids hair and bends little blocks of ice into fun shapes.
She hasn’t smiled this widely in ages. It’s something she could probably get used to.
-
The desire to take flight at a moment’s notice does not exist in Katara’s blood the way it does in Aang’s. So it’s a relief when Aang suggests that they stay in Cranefish Town for a bit after the whole ordeal with Liling and the bender supremacist movement.
“This town needs you,” she tells him as they stroll through what will later become the busiest port in the world.
“It needs us,” Aang corrects her, and she smiles widely, rests her head on his shoulder. Maybe this can be home. Maybe she can find peace here, with him, creating a life in a modern city.
They build a life there in Cranefish Town, which is soon renamed Republic City, because Cranefish Town is a horrible name. Aang works with the business council and the factory owners to create what is sure to be the most modern city in the world. Katara watches him with pride and helps when she’s needed. Offers sage advice. Helps set up a hospital clinic.
They build Air Temple Island together with Toph, who’s taken a break from her metalbending academy in Yu Dao. Her and Aang clear the land with earthbending until it’s suitable for construction. Aang designs the buildings after Air Nomad landmarks and Toph helps him raise them like it’s nothing. Once everything is set up nice and neat, the Air Acolytes come. They fill the halls of the temples with ancient texts and traditions, and Aang is so pleased to see his culture slowly come alive again. Katara is happier for him than she could have ever thought possible, so she deals with it when the Acolytes refer to her as the Avatar’s girlfriend, like she doesn’t have her own name.
They still travel on Appa, occasionally— Aang will be called to the Fire Nation or to the Earth Kingdom or even sometimes to the Water Tribes— and they get to meet up with old friends and solve disputes.
Just like the old days, he’ll say cheerily, and it makes him happy, so Katara swallows back her misgivings and complaints and follows. Besides, she likes traveling. She sees Zuko, and Toph, and sometimes Suki, and that’s good enough for her. She hasn’t been home in years. They’re simply too busy. It doesn’t matter. Republic City is her home now anyways, she thinks. Republic City, and Air Temple Island, and Aang.
If she thinks about it too hard, it rings hollow. So Katara doesn’t think about it.
-
The best part about keeping busy, Katara thinks, is that she doesn’t have to deal with her other problems.
A few weeks after she’d left Air Temple Island and started settling into life back home— because the tribe is starting to become home again, even though it hadn’t been for so long— she’d received a letter. It arrived by messenger hawk, and it had an Air Nomad seal on it. She hadn’t opened it; she was too scared of the consequences. After all, there was only one reason why a letter with that kind of seal would come addressed to her and only her.
The letter had become buried under a million other things that Katara had brought to Sokka’s spare bedroom, and as she adjusted and started teaching at the bending school, she’d forgotten about it. Until now, a month and a half later, when things have finally settled into a steady kind of rhythm.
The thought of talking to Aang again makes Katara’s stomach hurt. She loves him so much. But she cannot marry him.
It may not have been the right thing for you, but you are not weak for wanting it anyways, her gran-gran’s voice says in her mind.
It isn’t his fault. He’s always been so good to her, ever since she pulled him out of that iceberg. But if she marries him, she would be marrying more than just Aang. She’d be marrying the Avatar, and all of the responsibility that comes with that. For a while, she’d thought that was what she’d wanted— a future with him on Air Temple Island, building Republic City and rebuilding the world. If she was with him, she would not have to come home and deal with the legacy of her tribe, the legacy of her mother. She could be married to him and have his children and create a life; be a paragon of peace after wartime. She could’ve let Aang soothe her over the course of their years together, the way the sea slowly smooths out jagged rocks.
To take that happiness— it would be so easy, and no one would deny it from her.
But she’s never been one to take the easy route, has she? The Southern Water Tribe is just as important to her as he is— maybe even more so. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, but now that she’s home— now that she’s talking to her gran-gran and Sokka and her father again, now that she’s teaching students like Aima at the school, now that she gets to help rebuild— she knows.
She’s creating something here. Something that is hers to have and hold forever, something she gets to etch out in the ice and stone. Something that will allow her to make her mother’s sacrifice worth it, something that will let her heal.
This happiness is not easy. She hasn’t reached it yet. But it is still solely and uniquely hers, even if she’s only halfway there, and that makes it all the more important.
It’s time, she thinks. It’s time to open the letter.
-
Katara,
I don’t understand why
I’m so angry and upset
I don’t know what I did to make you leave. But whatever it is, I’m so sorry, and I want to make it right. Please write me back. I want to fix this. I love you, and I miss you, and I’m sorry.
Aang
She reads his words, over and over again, and it’s like the wound has been torn open anew.
-
Aang,
I owe you a thousand apologies
I don’t know how to explain it
Come visit me, okay? I’ll be waiting. We can talk.
I miss you too.
Katara
-
Katara is walking back to Sokka’s house after an afternoon at the bending school when she sees Appa soaring through the sky. The sight of it makes her stomach drop, and then she’s sprinting down the snowy sidewalk, elbowing people out of the way. She needs to go home now.
She arrives at Sokka’s house, panting and out of breath, only to see that Aang has beaten her there. He’s standing on the front steps with Sokka, who has his arms crossed and a distinctly confused expression on his face. Sokka spots her first, and he waves to her frantically. Damn it.
“Katara,” he calls. “Katara, Aang is here.”
“I see that, Sokka, thank you,” Katara says. Her voice comes out squeakier than she wants it to, and she winces, then turns to look at Aang head on.
He looks awful, and it hits her like a thousand ice needles to the chest. There are dark circles under his eyes, and a slouch to his posture that wasn’t there before. Katara’s seen Aang a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, but he’s never looked this haggard before. Not even after Azula shot him with lightning and she brought him back to life.
“Katara,” he breathes, and he’s just staring at her like she’s the rain after a season of drought. Like he’s never seen her before. Like she’s more precious than any other metal on earth.
“Hi, Aang,” Katara says, and it’s a miracle he can hear her. Her voice is barely louder than a whisper. There’s a flurry of movement, then: Aang drops his staff, jumps over the porch steps, and is on her in a second, pulling her into his arms and holding her tight. She throws her arms around him and buries her head in the junction of his neck and shoulder.
“I missed you,” Aang says. His voice cracks. She thinks he might be crying. “I missed you.”
Katara just squeezes him tighter.
-
They sit on the porch in silence for a while.
She can feel the weight of Aang’s gaze on her. It makes her want to cry, because she thinks that she might break his heart. She’s certainly torn her own in two.
“I didn’t think you’d just leave,” Aang says eventually. “That afternoon. After I— you know. After that happened, and I left. I came home and you weren’t there.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Katara says. “I should’ve stayed and talked it out with you. That’s what we do, we talk it out.”
“Yeah,” Aang says. He’s smiling softly, because that’s just who he is. Soft boy, soft voice, soft touch. Tender sparks in his eyes when he looks at her. Katara aches with it, because it should be enough— she wants it to be enough— but it isn’t. “We’re talking about it now, so I guess it’s fine.”
Katara lets out a little huff of laughter. “It’s not, though,” she says. “It’s really, really not.”
Another silence falls. Katara closes her eyes and just exists in this moment for a second. When she opens them again, everything will be completely and irrevocably different.
“I don’t want to marry you,” she finally says. “I don’t think I can.”
Aang inhales sharply. “What— what do you mean?” he asks. She cannot turn and look at him. It will hurt them both too much.
“You are so special to me, Aang,” Katara whispers. “You— I love you so much it’s like a physical weight in my chest. But I don’t want to become your wife.”
“Why,” Aang says, and it’s not so much a question as it is a demand. He asked her the same question months ago, and she couldn’t answer it. But now she can, and he needs to hear it.
“I am nineteen years old,” Katara says. Her voice is shaking, and she has to fight to steady it. “I am nineteen years old, and I have no idea who I am. And that isn’t your fault at all, believe me it’s not, but we’ve been together for five years and sometimes it feels like I’m still fourteen and trying to stop a war.”
“I don’t understand,” Aang says. She looks at him then, finally, and it hits her that he really doesn’t. She can’t hold it against him. She didn’t understand for a long time either.
“How did you see the rest of our lives playing out, Aang?” she asks him.
He swallows hard. “I thought we would get married. I thought we’d get married and have children, a waterbender and an airbender, and I thought we would travel the world and be happy. I thought we were in love and that we’d stay that way.”
Katara is crying now in earnest. His vision of the future— Tui and La, if only it could be that simple . “I thought that was what I wanted too,” she sniffs. “And then you asked me to marry you, and it was like— spirits, I don’t know if I can explain it. I just— I thought being with you could make me feel whole, that it could fix me. And then you proposed, and I realized that wasn’t true.”
“You’re not making sense, Katara,” Aang says, exasperated. He’s crying too. “You don’t need fixing. You’re perfect just the way you are and I love you.”
“I love you too,” Katara says. It’s the truth, after all, and he should know that. “But when we were together, I threw myself into being yours, yours, yours, there for you always, and I forgot who I was and what I needed. And then you offered to make it permanent and I couldn’t accept.”
“I never asked you to do any of that! I thought we were good, I thought this was what you wanted!” Aang cries, his hands thrown up in the air, and she can see his frustration rising. “Help me understand. What did I do wrong? I won’t do it again.”
Katara buries her head in her hands. “It’s not you. It’s not. It’s me, and only me, and only I can fix it—”
“Oh, great,” Aang snarls, and she knows well and truly that his temper is holding on by a thread. It should make her want to snap back. Instead, she just feels worse. “Use the oldest line in the book, why don’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” Katara sobs. “I am so, so sorry.” How can she express to him that she realized that the world moved on without her? The world moved on and healed but she didn’t because she was too busy focusing on him, and it’s not his fault, but she can’t marry him.
Aang stands up. The motion is sudden, and Katara has a sinking feeling that this is it. He will walk out of her life and she will never see him again, but she doesn’t want that at all.
“I have to go,” Aang says, and his voice is choked, like he’s barely keeping himself together.
“Wait,” she gasps frantically. He can't go right now. He has to let her explain, she has to make him see— “Wait, wait, let me explain it to you better, you have to let me tell you—”
“You’ve explained yourself perfectly,” Aang says. His expression is totally blank, and that’s what stings the most. She’s always been able to read him like a book. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and he does it proudly. But right now, she can’t tell what he’s thinking at all and it hurts. “I can’t give you what you want. That’s okay.”
“You’re my best friend and I’m in love you,” she whispers. “I would do anything for you.”
“Not this, though.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement, flat and dull and dead.
Katara can only shake her head. “Not this.”
He leaves without another word, and Katara can only sit there and watch.
-
You’re my forever girl.
Oh, am I really?
Duh. Who else would it be?
Hmm. Well, Meng from the fortuneteller’s village was really into you. And remember Koko from Kyoshi? Or what about— Aang! Aang, don’t poke me, it tickles—
Laughter gets cut off by a kiss.
It’s always gonna be you, Katara. Always.
-
Katara lies in her bed that night in Sokka’s guest room and talks to her mother.
It’s something she used to do when she was younger, right after Kya’s death. Hold little conversations in her mind. She hasn’t done it in a while, though— she hasn’t wanted to. Her guilt and grief made it so hard to think about Kya, to think about what she gave up so Katara could live. But she thinks she might be ready now. And she really, really misses her mother.
Hi, Mom, she whispers. Her voice is steady. Hi. It’s been a while.
I broke up with Aang tonight. For real. And it hurts so badly and I can’t heal it, but I think it was something I needed to do.
I just— I didn’t like thinking about you for a really long time, you know? Your sacrifice, what you did for me— it eats me alive some nights, and I thought I was making it better, but it was just making things worse.
Sokka said to me, the other day— he said that I don’t have to be strong all the time, that he’s here to help and so is Dad and Gran-Gran and the rest of the tribe. Spirits, Mom, you would be so proud of Sokka if you could see him now. He’s going to be a brilliant chief one day, I just know it. But I’m getting side tracked.
I should’ve let Aang in, I think. I should’ve talked to him about it. Maybe I wouldn’t be here now if I had. But I didn’t, and now I’ve gotta do it on my own.
Maybe that’s for the best. I’m the only one who can fix me.
I want to make you proud. I came home so I could make you proud.
Mom, I don’t know if you’re out there. But I know that you’d hate to see me like this, sad and alone and afraid, so I want you to know that I’m working on it, okay? I’m healing. And it’s tiring, and hard, and there are days like today where it feels like the world is ending, but it’s getting better. I’m getting better. Not good enough, yet, but it’s okay. Because I’m still here, aren’t I? And maybe that’s all that matters.
I love you, Mom, Katara whispers into the dark. Her eyes are fluttering shut. It’s time for her to get some rest.
I love you. Goodnight.