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Avatar Aang is twelve— nearly thirteen— when he strips Fire Lord Ozai of his bending and saves the world.
It’s a heavy burden to bear, the title of savior of the Four Nations. He hadn’t wanted this destiny, but it was thrust upon him anyways, and he’d followed through the best way he could. And it had all worked out in the end, hadn’t it? He didn’t have to let Katara go. He mastered the Avatar state. He didn’t have to take a life.
The rest of his life stretches out before him, picturesque and perfect. Him and Katara, traveling the world, happy and together and whole. Five years go by that way. Through every up and down, she’s there for him, and he’s there for her.
Avatar Aang is seventeen— nearly eighteen— when he proposes.
Katara says no.
-
The immediate aftermath is the hardest part. He offers her the necklace, she says no, and he doesn’t know what else to do but run away. He throws the necklace at her feet, grabs his glider, takes to the sky. If he doesn’t, he thinks he’ll start crying and never stop.
He doesn’t expect her to be gone by the time he returns, but she is, and he has no idea where she could’ve gone. All of her things have disappeared from the Air Temple compound. Her side of the bed is made smooth and flat, like she wasn’t ever there at all.
He alternates between crying and panicking and feeling so hysterical that he's calm. He doesn’t know what he did wrong, but it was obviously something very major or she wouldn’t have just disappeared . Katara doesn’t do that. Katara is steady, soothing, calm, like the repetitive waves of the ocean.
Aang loves Katara, and Katara loves him, and they are happy together on Air Temple Island. They are happy together in this life.
Right?
-
Aang thinks, long and hard, about where she could have gone, and eventually, it hits him like a ton of bricks to the chest. She must be at home, in the Southern Water Tribe, he thinks. Neither Katara or himself have been back there in years, but it doesn’t matter. All her family is there— Sokka and her father and her grandmother— so it’s worth a shot.
He wants to climb on Appa and go as soon as he figures it out. He’s aching to fix his mistake. But he can’t. She left for a reason, even if he can’t figure out what that reason is. So instead of going, he simply writes her a letter.
It takes him a million tries— he doesn’t know how to start a sentence. Doesn’t even know what to say. His hand that holds the brush is shaking so badly that everytime he puts it to paper, it’s illegible. He pens something down eventually, can’t remember for the life of him what it says. He prays to the spirits that it conveys everything he’s feeling anyways.
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
-
It’s in his blood to soar around in the sky, to flit from place to place. But she’s the one he comes back to every time. And without her, he’s like a kite without a string. There’s nothing left to tether him to the earth.
-
Katara doesn’t reply for nearly two months. Aang knows, because he’s counted. He hasn’t been sleeping. Hasn’t been eating. He’s skipped out on all of his responsibilities, and there’s a stack of letters piling up on the side table in his bedroom. He ignores them all because none of them are from the one person who truly matters.
He can't think of anything that isn't her. He replays the moment where he proposed, and over again in his head. He combs through five years of memories for any sort of sign to figure out what went wrong, but he comes up short every. Single. Time.
This can't be it. He doesn't know what he's done. He doesn't know what to do now, without her. His loneliness is vast, and wide, and he feels the distinct lack of her presence so acutely it's like a gaping wound on his chest.
-
A response finally comes, one uneventful afternoon. It's strapped to the leg of a messenger hawk, and it startles him so badly that he nearly singes the hawk’s feathers with firebending.
It almost hurts to hope— but who else could this letter be from? The seal is blue with the Water Tribe symbol, and he doesn’t want to open it. He can’t open it.
He opens it, eventually, after staring at the seal for so long it burns into its retinas. The response is short, but it isn’t an outright rejection, and that alone is enough to release some of the tension from his body. He feels dizzy with excitement. He can fix this. He can go to her, she’s asking for him, and he can fix this, and everything will be okay.
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
-
It takes a week to get from Republic City to the Southern Water Tribe.
Aang hasn’t been here in almost three years, not since the whole mess with the Northern oil refinery. Katara hadn’t wanted to come back after that visit, so they didn’t.
He still remembers where Sokka’s house is, though. He’s not sure exactly where Katara is staying, but it doesn’t matter. Sokka’s house is as good a place to start as any.
Appa lands in the street, and Aang is tripping over his own two feet in his haste to get to Sokka’s front door. He nearly knocks the door down until Sokka wrenches it open, looking completely disgruntled.
“What do you wa— oh. Oh. Aang? What are you doing here?” Sokka asks, and he looks completely flabbergasted. Aang grins sheepishly.
“Katara wrote me,” he explains. “She said to come down here so we could talk.”
Sokka blinks. Once, twice. His expression is completely blank. “Huh,” he says thoughtfully. “She didn’t mention any of that to me.”
Aang feels the bottom of his stomach fall out. “She didn’t?” he asks. That doesn’t bode well, and suddenly he’s sick with nerves. What if she didn’t want to see him after all? What if this is it, and she’s going to reject him permanently? What if, what if, what if—
He doesn’t hear her arrive until Sokka starts talking to someone over his shoulder. He turns around so fast he nearly gives himself whiplash, and then—
And then—
She’s standing there, wrapped in a blue parka, a hesitant expression on her face. She’s so beautiful. He’s missed her so much .
“Katara,” he breathes, and he can’t stop staring, because she’s here, and she’s real, and she’s perfect. He’s in love with her.
“Hi, Aang,” Katara whispers, and he can barely hear her but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, because he’s moving forwards to wrap her in his arms and oh.
“I missed you,” Aang he. His voice cracks, and tears are streaming down his face. “I missed you.”
She hugs him tighter, and Aang lets himself believe that everything is okay.
-
The calm is temporary. It doesn't last.
-
I don’t want to marry you. I don’t think I can.
There's a pause- it's heavy with pain and words he thinks were better off left unsaid.
You’re my best friend and I’m in love with you. I would do anything for you.
But not this.
He burns all over.
No. Not this.
-
It’s over. It’s well and truly over.
He doesn’t understand— he doesn’t want to understand.
She’s Katara. She’s his forever girl, he loves her more than he's ever loved anything and it still wasn’t enough.
He doesn’t know what to do now. He doesn’t know where to go. His heart is in shambles. His head is pounding. The betrothal necklace sits heavy in his pocket like a stone. Sometimes he takes it out and stares at it blankly.
Wasn’t I enough for you?
You make me so happy. Do I not make you happy?
Appa lands somewhere in the western Earth Kingdom. Aang doesn’t know where, and he doesn’t particularly care. He feels hollow, like someone’s emptied out his insides with a spoon. It hits him then, that he is completely and totally alone, and the thought of it makes his breath come short and fast.
What am I supposed to do now?
-
The title of savior of the Four Nations is a heavy burden to bear, but it carries less weight than his other mantle.
The last airbender.
He doesn't like to think about it, but this burden is his and his alone. He’s the only one in the entire world who can airbend, he’s the only one who remembers the traditions and stories and games and history. The temples lie empty, and they’ll probably stay that way for years to come, if not forever. The rituals are disappearing. His culture is effectively dead.
And yeah, the Air Acolytes exist, but eventually, they won’t be enough either. Because all they know is what he tells them, and what little they could salvage from the ruins. It isn’t enough. It will never be enough.
His existence— it isn’t the same as it was before the iceberg. He is here, he is alive, he is the last airbender and the savior of the world, but all of this isn’t the same as truly belonging— to his people, to his culture, to those who have the song of the wind in their blood. It isn’t the same, and he hates it. He is alone, effectively, and he’s realizing that now.
Katara is gone from him, disappeared like a leaf on an autumn breeze. And without her, he doesn’t have anyone to return to at the end of the day. What will he do now? Where will he go next? How will he wake up tomorrow morning and continue to carry this on his back?
He’s the last of his people, the last of his culture— it all rests on his shoulders. He doesn’t belong anywhere anymore; he’s a relic from a dead age.
Without Katara, he doesn’t have a home. And that’s what terrifies him the most.
-
Aang drifts, for a while. Him and Appa fly anywhere and everywhere the wind takes them.
It’s all meaningless. He feels like he’s just going through the motions; no real destination, no real purpose.
It’s not even about Katara, at this point. He misses her and loves her so much, it’s true, but this gaping chasm inside him— this emptiness, this horrible black hole— it’s more than that. This feeling is more than sadness over the loss of her love; it's the stark realization that he has nothing. No one to go back to, nothing to build a future with.
He burns with sorrow and fear and it's too much, too much feeling. It eats him up inside because it's not meant to be this way. He’s not meant to be this way. Anger, resentment, hate— they’re all supposed to be poison. But they linger in the back of his mind as he reclines on Appa’s back and mourns.
I don’t exist at all, anymore.
I am alone.
The Air Nomad teachings had emphasized freedom and detachment, but they’d also emphasized the importance of what was sacred— heart and life and the wind blowing through the sky. You cannot stay in the air forever, Monk Gyatso used to tell him. We have to come back down to earth eventually. That’s why we have the sacred temples— a refuge for any Air Nomad, always and no matter what .
Aang’s life before the iceberg is gone. Obliterated, smashed to smithereens by a tyrant who thought himself too mighty for the constraints of power. And he’s known that, known it ever since he went back to the Southern Air Temple after years of being away and saw nothing but bones and all of his grief laid out in front of him.
But he’d thought—
He’d wanted—
His old life was gone, so he’d created something else that was sacred, that day. When Katara had called him out of the Avatar state, said that she and Sokka were his family now—
He doesn’t want to think about it. If he thinks about it, he’ll have to ask himself if the past five years were an illusion. If he made it all up in his head. If he was just holding on to her so tightly because he was deathly afraid of the alternative and—
He knows, now, what he has to do.
“Appa,” he says, and his voice is hoarse from disuse and grief. “Appa, let’s go to the Eastern Air Temple.”
-
It looks the same way as it did when he left it.
The towers and the statues and the bridges that stretch across the buildings. Appa lands on one of the balconies, and when Aang floats off of his back and onto the sacred space of the temple floor, he takes a minute to just let himself be. The ghosts are pressing in on him from all sides. He inhales, and then exhales, and tries to let them float away on the gale that echoes through the Air Temple.
It doesn’t work.
“Hello, Avatar Aang,” says a lilting voice from behind him. It startles Aang so badly that he jumps a foot in the air before coming back down to earth. But it’s just Guru Pathik, looking exactly as wizened as he did five years ago.
“Guru Pathik,” Aang huffs. “You scared me.”
Guru Pathik smiles crookedly. “Yes, I thought so.” He makes a come hither gesture with his hands. “I expect we have much to talk about.”
“Yeah,” Aang says. “Yeah, I think we do.”
-
The guru takes him to the chakra pools, the same ones from a lifetime ago. He offers Aang some onion and banana juice. And then he waits for Aang to start talking.
“Do you remember, five years ago,” Aang finally chokes out, after the silence stretches on for minutes and the only sound that can be heard is the bubbling of water in the pools. “When you helped me unlock my heart chakra, and you told me to let go of my grief, and that my place in this world— my love for my people and my culture— it was all reborn in Katara?”
Pathik takes a sip of his onion and banana juice. “I do recall, yes.”
Aang inhales shakily. “I don’t think it worked,” he says. “Because the one person, the one person in the whole entire world, the one who was all I had left— she doesn’t want me anymore. And I feel this ache in my chest for something that’s gone and— and I don’t know what to do.”
He’s crying again, as if that hasn’t been the only thing that he’s been doing for days. He doesn’t know how to express the enormity of what he’s feeling. It spills from his eyes in the form of tears, and it falls from his mouth in a stream of words, incoherent and heavy with the weight of his grief. The weight of his loss. What else can he do?
Nothing to go back to, no one to build a future with.
“If Katara doesn’t want to be with me anymore,” he whispers, and finally he’s voicing the truth that he’s always been so scared to say aloud. Even before he proposed and she said no, it lurked in the back of his mind, ever present and all knowing. “Then that’s it. There’s nothing for me to go back to at the end of the day. I’m so homesick for something that’s been dead for a century. And I thought Katara and I would make everything alright together. But we didn’t.”
Pathik stares at Aang wordlessly as he wipes his eyes. “Do you remember, all those years ago,” Pathik says, and his voice is soft and lilting. “When I told you that you needed to let go of your earthly attachments to access the Avatar state?”
Aang sniffs, surprised at the change of subject. “Yeah,” he croaks. “But I didn’t have to do it like that, in the end. Even after Azula shot me with lightning and relocked my chakra.”
The guru looks at him consideringly. “Holding on so tightly to things makes us who we are,” he says. “We saw that, with your heart chakra. You were able to hold on to new love, and let go of your grief.”
“Yes,” Aang says, even though he’s not sure where this is going. “But it didn’t work, because I still feel— I still feel this way.”
Pathik smiles sadly. “Let me tell you this, Avatar Aang,” he says. “Your grief will never go away. You must learn to live with it. You must accept the fact that it happened, that it is a part of you, now and forever.”
Aang inhales sharply. He doesn’t want to hear that. He doesn’t think he can keep living like this anymore. His life is divided into sections, now. Before the iceberg and after the iceberg. With Katara and without. “That can’t be true,” he says, and his voice is desperate. “That can’t be true, because when I was with Katara I didn’t feel this way, I was so happy—”
“Were you?” the guru asks, one bushy eyebrow raised. “Were you happy, or were you hiding it?”
Aang’s mouth falls open, but no words come out. It's just one sentence, but it cuts him to his core, settles in the gaping wound Katara has left in his chest and stays there.
Was he happy, or was he hiding it?
He can hear Katara’s voice in his head. 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.
It’s not you. It’s not. It’s me, and only me, and only I can fix it.
Oh.
Oh.
They are entirely too similar in their grief. He can see that now, and it’s unpleasant, like a punch to the gut. Each of them hiding in the other’s hurt, and neither of them wanting to admit to it. How could he not see it? He'd wanted to be with her, he'd wanted to make her happy—
“The world is like a river, ever flowing,” says Guru Pathik, and Aang is startled back into himself. This is the present. This is his new reality. “The current will always bring us to the shores we need to reach.”
“The current,” Aang murmurs. His head is spinning; he is dazed.
The only thing he can think about is Katara, Katara, Katara. Because he failed her, he realizes, and it stings, because that was the one thing he'd never wanted to do.
Over the course of five years, they failed each other.
“How do I ride the current?” But even as Aang asks Guru Pathik the question, he already knows the answer.
He has to let go.
It’s not you. It’s not. It’s me, and only me, and only I can fix it.
“Only when you let go,” Guru Pathik intones. “Only when you let go can you become whole; only when you let go can you take what truly matters and use it to reconcile your past and your future. Only after letting go can you keep what’s real.”
Just like a river. It all comes back eventually. Don’t force it.
-
Aang closes his eyes against the stare of the guru, retreats into himself and thinks.
He is afraid. He can admit that now. He is afraid, and he has been ever since he came out of the iceberg. Five years ago he’d felt utterly alone, so he’d reached out and grasped what he could, kept his fists closed tight to his chest. And that was important— he needed to do that to defeat Ozai, to end that threat without taking a life, to stay true to his past and who he is at his core. But afterwards— afterwards, he’d needed to let go, to feel the truths of the world and to heal , but he couldn’t, because he’d been so scared to be alone. He’d been afraid of the future, of the burden that was up to him and only him, and so he’d clung to Katara like she was a lifeline and he was drowning.
But no one person can fix this for him, no one person can make him become whole. Only after letting go can you reconcile your past in your future. Only after letting go can you keep what’s real.
You cannot stay in the air forever , Monk Gyatso’s voice says in his mind. He can picture his old mentor smiling at him over a tray of fruit tarts, but instead of bringing pain, the memory only makes him smile.
I may not be able to stay in the air forever, Aang thinks, and for a moment, just a moment, he feels completely whole. I may not be able to stay in the air forever, but that doesn’t mean I have to be afraid of what will happen when I land.
-
When he opens his eyes, the world is clearer. It’s like the sun has peeked out from behind the clouds after a rainy, hazy day. Guru Pathik is watching him, a curious expression on his face.
One moment passes, then two. In the space between heartbeats, he feels alive. He is not whole. He can see that now. But he is real, and he exists.
“I want to carry on my people’s traditions,” Aang says, and it feels right. It feels solid and warm and real in his chest. “I want to be someone they can be proud of. I want to build a legacy. I want to heal, and I want to be happy and healthy and whole.”
Guru Pathik’s face breaks out into a proud, proud grin. “Well, Avatar Aang,” he says. “I hope you achieve everything you hope for and more.”
-
Aang flies away from the Eastern Air Temple on Appa’s back. He feels a thousand times heavier and a thousand times lighter.
It will never go away. He knows that now. But with time, he can stop feeling so afraid. He can carve out a place for himself in this new era. He did it before, when he looked a tyrant in the eye and changed the world. And he will do it again, and again, and again, as many times as it takes, because he’s still here, and that’s what’s important.
He is the last airbender, but he is also Aang. His future is not something for him to fear.
-
Katara,
First off, I think I owe you an apology. I understand, now, what you were trying to tell me that day at the South Pole. It’s a long story, but I went to Guru Pathik, and he helped me a lot.
I still care about you so much. I love you more than I think I’ve ever loved anything. But you and I— we still have a lot of growing up to do, you know? It’s like you said. Five years have gone by and everything’s changed but us. We’re still just two kids during wartime, hanging on to old hurts.
When I talked to Guru Pathik, he told me that this grief we feel, it will never truly go away. We just have to learn to live with it, and honestly, neither of us were doing a very good job of that when we were together. I definitely wasn’t, even if I couldn’t see it at the time.
Things are different now, though. I want to keep my people’s legacy alive without fear of failing, and I know you want to help rebuild the South. You’re the best waterbender down there, after all. Don’t tell Pakku I said that.
Katara— I think that in order to heal, I have to let you go. So this is me, letting you go.
I just want you to know that you’re so incredibly special to me, okay? You saved me from the iceberg, and you kept saving me, again and again during the five years that we were together. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
If you ever need anything, I’m only a messenger hawk away. You’re still my best friend and my forever girl, even if we don’t have a forever.
I hope you find what you’re looking for. I hope you get to heal and be happy and whole.
All my love,
Aang