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The bed was empty and cold. Katara woke up to the icy sheets and had to shut her eyes against tears.
Her husband was out on the balcony, standing on the railing and staring out listelessly into the city below them. In the early days of their relationship, she would say his name in hopes of chasing him down off there and back into whatever their living quarters at the time happened to be. But she quickly learned that silence was the better option.
Aang was one hundred and fifteen when it started. When he would leave in the middle of the night and stand on the railing or the roof or the window sill and stare. It was around the time that the serious negotations had started to wane, and they had time to exist as people, not vessels of ideologies and promises. Now Aang was one hundred and thirty, but no matter his age, when he stood there, Katara knew he was twelve all over again.
When they were younger and she had learned not to say his name, she would pull him down and he would reply numbly for the next few days. It stopped when she tried to pull him down a few weeks after they got married. Because she pulled, and he jumped.
Aang fell and didn’t bother trying to bend for what felt like enternity, until at last he cushioned himself on a plane of air and stood, hovering above the city and below Katara’s reach. She’d asked him afterwards, while she tried not to scream and beg, why he’d done that.
“I love you,” Aang muttered. Then he went to bed with no further discussion. It had taken Katara several years after the fact to understand the rest of what he was saying: “I love you, but there are some things you will never understand.” Katara could concede that while she had known unbearable pain, it was nothing to whatever churned and whirled instead that mind of his.
She wondered, often, what he thought of when he stared out into the invisble element of his long lost people. Perhaps that was the best word for them, invisble - ghosts that he and Appa alone could chase and love and grieve. How horrifying it must be to him, to not only grieve for loved ones but know that so few did.
Katara didn’t understand, but she prayed, as she watched him, that whatever he thought of and did on the balcony railing, it eased his pain.
Eventually, Aang came down. He turned, and his face flushed with relief at seeing Katara’s.
“I’m still here,” she told him when she held out her hand, though she dared not speak outloud.
“Please stay,” Aang replied when he took it.
“Always,” as she lead him back to bed.