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Chapter Text

Katara wasn’t sure why she’d woken up.

She could usually sleep through the night without interruption, but now she was inexplicably awake, staring at the ornate ceiling of a guest bedroom in the Fire Nation’s royal palace.

Katara tossed and turned for several minutes in an attempt to fall back asleep, to no avail. Sighing in defeat, she threw the soft comforter off of her and sat up, scratching irritably at her scalp.

Might as well get a glass of water.

Katara stood, grabbing a silken red robe that lay draped over a gilded armchair and putting it on over her nightdress, tying the golden sash tightly around her waist.

Perhaps it was the grandiosity of the Fire Nation’s royal city that was unsettling her. The group had only stayed here one other time—in the days immediately following Ozai’s defeat—and then, they were much too exhausted by the fight and the prospect of the war finally being over to care much about their accommodations. Now, they were several months into the Harmony Restoration Movement, and had stopped at the Fire Nation for a few days to discuss how the relocation of the colonies was progressing.

Everything in the royal city seemed so self-indulgent, from the architecture to the food. Katara had thought Ba Sing Se’s upper ring was bad—but then she discovered that most of the Fire Nation royals refused to sully their shoes by walking on the pavement, instead insisting to be carried around in palanquins. The very thought brought bile up in her throat—people of the Fire Nation lived hedonistically while her tribe struggled and scraped for years just to feed its small number of members. Zuko insisted that things were changing, but that it had to be done slowly so as to not upset the populace.

Katara shook her head in an attempt to banish the negative thoughts as she left the bedroom and walked down the dim, torch-lit hallway of the palace’s guest wing. Forgiveness was a much harder thing than a certain “wise” airbender made it seem. The many years of terror and rage that she felt at any mention of the Fire Nation seemed as though they had manifested into an insurmountable wall, and she wasn’t sure she could ever fully overcome those emotions. But she was trying—and Uncle Iroh and Zuko were living proof that good people were to be found anywhere.

She was so lost in thought that she nearly walked by Aang’s room without noticing his door was ajar. She walked up to the doorway, peering into the dark shadows of the room, and the empty, tousled bedsheets were proof that she wasn’t the only person having trouble sleeping.

Curious, the goal of water forgotten, Katara continued to walk while keeping an eye out for where the missing Avatar could have gone. After some time, she came across a door that led to the large balcony that wrapped around the rear side of the palace. Taking a chance, she opened the door and peered around in the dark night.

Sure enough, she saw the shadowy silhouette of said Avatar, sitting motionless a ways down on the balcony. It was hard to tell from the distance she was at, but he appeared to be meditating. Katara briefly considered not disturbing him, but something about the way he was sitting urged her to draw nearer.

She approached Aang quietly, doing her best to emulate an airbender with light steps, although she knew he’d hear her anyway. He stayed completely still as she finally reached his side—he was seated with his legs crossed, as he usually did while meditating, but the position of his hands was unfamiliar to her. He held his right hand over his heart, his index finger and thumb touching loosely while the other hand rested over his knee. His posture was hunched, his face neither a picture of calm serenity nor concentration—rather, it was drawn, with his eyes screwed shut and his brows furrowed.

Katara sat next to him, folding her legs in a mirror image of Aang’s, her knee centimeters from his. Her hands fell loosely in her lap as she tilted her head up, looking up to the clear, starry sky. The night was warm, but a mild wind was blowing, ruffling the sleeves of her robe and her loose hair around her.

They sat that way together for a while, neither of them speaking or moving. After some time, Aang’s hand dropped and he looked up at the sky with her.

“Hi, Katara.”

His voice was low and withdrawn, so unlike his usual lighthearted tone. Katara looked at her boyfriend sadly, placing a hand gently on his bare back.

“Aang, what’s wrong?”

His eyes met hers, and his were endless pools of unfathomable emotion. In the distance, there was the crowing of a messenger hawk.

“It was a year ago today,” he said quietly, “that you found me in the iceberg.”

She hadn’t even realized. They’d been so busy helping move the colonies that keeping track of the days was more of a chore than anything else. Katara didn’t immediately know where he was going with his statement, so she remained silent, her hand rubbing slow circles on his back.

“In a way, that was one of the best days of my life. I met Sokka, and you,” he attempted a small, sad smile, “but that was also the day I lost everything. Everyone passed a long time before then, but…that was the day it became real for me.”

Of course. Aang had gone about the entire day as a beacon of light and optimism as usual, and even as well as Katara knew him, she hadn’t noticed that anything was awry. But then again, few people could conceal their grief as well as Aang.

“I was okay, I think, for most of the day, but…” Aang trailed off, his voice catching on the last word and head hanging, tattooed hands clutching at his knees desperately.

In that moment, Katara felt the weight of every one of his one hundred thirteen years. She knew grief—remembered its cruel, heart-wrenching grip on her young heart as she sobbed into the furs on her parents’ bed, inhaling her mother’s scent deeply before it faded into the crisp smell of the ice. She remembered the day her father left the village—remembered furiously bending large chunks of snow at the Fire Nation ship wreckage outside her village, tears freezing on her face as she yelled and yelled until Sokka finally found her. She remembered white-hot anger as she stared down her mother’s assailant, remembered the chill of rain on her face before she froze it to a standstill and nearly sullied her hands with murder.

She would always remember.

She could only imagine how heavy that sorrow would be if it were multiplied exponentially and encompassed everyone she’d ever known and loved. If it were Katara in Aang’s place, it surely would have destroyed her long before now. And although she was here with him now, her hand on the unusually cool skin of his back, it felt as though she was a million miles away, unable to penetrate the depths of his loss.

It was a sick irony that he had to spend this day amongst the descendants of they who took everything from him.

But even as Katara looked at him now, wishing she knew the right words to say but knowing that none would ever be enough, she knew that he held no animosity toward the people of the Fire Nation. Aang, whose heart was full to the brim with compassion and selflessness, had no capacity for such enmity. She hoped she could be more like him one day.

Aang’s head had tilted toward the night sky, his expression wistful, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“The Air Nomads had a lot of lore about stars,” Aang said slowly, voice a little more than a whisper. “It was said that the first airbenders could achieve a spiritual enlightenment so great that they could surpass even the Spirit World, and instead became lights in the sky, to guide future Air Nomads on their travels when the world went dark at night.”

It went quiet for a moment as Aang sniffled, dragging his arm across his eyes.

“When I was younger, before all of the Avatar stuff, I had a good friend at the Southern Air Temple—his name was Pasang. He was a little older than me, so he helped me work on my forms outside of my actual training. I guess you could say he was like a big brother to me.”

“One night, we were just laying outside the Air Temple, looking up at the stars and giving them names. Do you see that one there, the really bright one?” Aang asked, pointing upwards in a general direction. Katara simply nodded, fearing that if she spoke she might ruin the moment.

“We named that one Tenzin.” Aang smiled a little at that. Katara did too, shifting a little closer to Aang and laying her head on his shoulder. She reached for Aang’s hand, interlacing her fingers with his and giving it an encouraging squeeze to continue.

“Anyway, that night I had an idea. We were airbenders, so why not just fly up into the sky with the stars and try to touch them, to become like the old airbenders? We would be the most enlightened Air Nomads around!” Aang chuckled sadly. “Pasang thought it was a great idea, even though I eventually figured out that he was just humoring me.”

“So, on nights like this, when the sky was clear and we had nothing else to do, we would fly up toward the stars together. We would fly higher and higher, until the air became freezing cold and it was getting hard to breathe. Then we’d dive back to the ground, laughing and swearing that we would get higher next time.”

The wind picked up, toying with Katara’s hair. She heard the words that he left unspoken at the end of his story: I miss them. I miss all of them, every day.

“Sometimes, just being out in the wind helps,” Aang said, almost to himself, as if he were tentatively sharing a dark secret. “If I’m quiet enough…I feel like I can almost hear their voices on the breeze.”

The chirruping of the cricket-cicadas became audible as Aang fell silent again. Katara lifted her head to look at him, and if it were any darker she would have missed the drying trails of tears on his face. The space around her heart tightened, and in that moment she would have given anything and everything to recover everything that was taken from him—just to see his easy laugh, to feel his infectious joy. 

Struck with an idea, Katara stood up suddenly. “I’ll be right back,” she promised in response to Aang’s look of confusion, and walked back into the palace hallway. The torches helped guide her to her destination—Aang’s room. 

After a minute or two of stumbling around in the darkened room, cursing her inability to light her way with firebending, she found what she was looking for and returned to the balcony. Aang, again, sat with his eyes closed, but this time his arms lay relaxed on his knees and his head was still tilted toward the sky.

Katara looked at the staff in her hand, trying to decide what to say—and instead simply stamped the staff smartly on the floor of the stone balcony, the blue sails opening up with a sharp snap.

Aang jumped at the familiar sound, looking slowly from the staff back to Katara, his face adorably puzzled.

“I could never, ever hope to fill the space left by everyone that you’ve lost,” Katara began, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. “I can’t even imagine what it must be like to lose your entire world all at once, and to be the only piece of it left.” 

The wind gained more strength, whipping her silk robe around her as she spoke.  “But I told you once that we’re your family now—and I mean that, for the rest of our lives, and even hopefully in our next.”

Katara stood straighter and looked directly at Aang. “I’ll fly to the stars with you.”

His eyes shone in the darkness, and all at once, the wind stilled. In one moment, she was clutching Aang’s staff in her hand, staring back at him, willing him to feel the strength of her love for him—and in the next, she was being enveloped in a bone-crushing hug, the staff clattering to the ground in her surprise.

He’s getting so tall, she thought, letting her tears flow freely as she returned his embrace. Where his head once rested against her shoulder, it now rested atop it, at the same level as her own.

“Yeah,” Aang said, voice thick with emotion, laughing even as he cried. “Let’s do it.” 

They stayed like that for a while, until Aang’s grip loosened and his sniffling ceased. He pulled back, wiping at his eyes again and shaking his head a few times. Katara rubbed his shoulders sympathetically, and he offered her a watery smile in return.

“So, how are we going to do this?” Katara asked as she released him and picked up the open glider. “Wait—will I be too heavy for you to fly both of us?” she asked with sudden concern, brows furrowed as she straightened up.

Aang raised an eyebrow, amused at the fact that she’d clearly forgotten how often he carried people to safety on his staff. “No, Katara. You won’t be too heavy,” he replied, voice still a little scratchy.

Katara blushed sheepishly in response, looking away and mumbling, “just making sure” under her breath. When she looked back at Aang, he was smiling—genuinely this time, looking at her like she was the only other person in the world.

“I’m so lucky that I met you,” he said, in that way that he said such things and left her speechless. Katara leaned over and touched his forehead with hers briefly, wishing she could articulate everything that he meant to her.

Aang wrapped his hand on the handhold and placed one foot on a rung. “How about you stand on that rung and I stand on this one?” he suggested, pointing to the foot rung closest to her as he held up the other side of the glider. “It’ll be a little unstable, so, uh…we’ll probably have to hold on to each other…if that’s okay.” Aang rubbed the back of his neck bashfully. Despite having been in a relationship for a few months now, he still sometimes became that young twelve-year-old boy again at the prospect of intimate physical contact with her.

Katara, feeling bold, responded simply by stepping up on the rung, grabbing the handhold, and wrapping an arm around Aang’s waist. He jumped, almost   imperceptibly, but otherwise didn’t react—obviously trying to play it cool—and placed his own arm on her waist.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I’m ready, sweetie.”

The grin that split Aang’s face at her new use of the team of endearment could have melted even Ozai’s heart. “Okay, then. One, two…” and they shot straight up in the air before he reached three. Katara shrieked his name in surprise and he just laughed, doing loops and twirls on the way up until she was laughing in delight with him.

In that moment, spinning and spiraling toward the stars, they weren’t the last airbender and the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. They weren’t the Avatar and the daughter of a chief, and they weren’t the kids who ended a hundred year war. They were just Katara and Aang.

Chapter Text

“…and her vitamins are in the medicine cabinet, and her bedtime is at 9 o’clock sharp—don’t let her negotiate with you, she’s tricky. Did I forget anything? Where in the world are my keys?”

Aang watched as the frazzled businessowner walked back and forth through her living room, spurting out instructions to him left and right while she turned over couch cushions and looked under rugs for said keys. He looked down at the young girl, Kya—the spitting image of her mother, Katara—who he was to be babysitting for the next three days. She was staring resolutely forward, rocking on her heels with her hands behind her back. At first glance, it looked like she was just toying with the end of her shirt, but a sudden glint of shiny metal told Aang otherwise.

He attempted to clear his throat inconspicuously, trying to get Katara to look in his direction without alerting Kya. When she did, Aang jerked his head in Kya’s direction and then turned away, whistling innocently.

“Kya!” Katara admonished, marching over to her young daughter and crouching down to her level. “Give them here,” she ordered, holding her hand out for the keys. Her jig up, Kya handed them over with a defeated sigh, and then looked up at her mother with big, sad blue eyes.

“Will you come back?” Kya asked forlornly, pulling on a lock of her long hair.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Katara breathed, placing two hands on either side of Kya’s face, their dark skin blending into one another’s. “Of course I’ll come back. It’s only for a couple of days, and you’ll have Aang here to play with.”

Kya looked dubiously up at Aang, who affected his friendliest smile.

“I’ll be here before you know it, okay? I’ll miss you, my little penguin.” Katara touched and nuzzled Kya’s nose with her own as the girl giggled.

“I’ll miss you too, mommy.”

Katara dropped a kiss to Kya’s forehead before she straightened and laid a warm hand on Aang’s shoulder.

“Thank you so much for doing this so last minute,” Katara said gratefully, sweeping her dark hair out of her eyes. “It was nice to meet you, Aang. Take care of my girl.”

She was disarmingly beautiful, and Aang had to swallow thickly before responding. “Likewise. And no need to worry, Kya will be nothing but safe with me.”

She smiled—and swept out into the night, navy coat fluttering behind her.

“What is this?” Kya asked, face scrunched in disgust as she looked into the steaming bowl Aang had served her. He’d had to come so late that he had no time to prepare a meal, and had instead ordered takeout.

“Oh, it’s delicious! It’s tofu stew, one of my favorites.”

“Tofu?” Kya made an exaggerated gagging sound and pushed the bowl away. “No thanks.” She made a show of snatching some jerky off of a jar on the counter, and then marched to her bedroom, closing her door forcefully behind her.

The following night and day passed without much fanfare. Kya completely ignored the porridge Aang prepared for her for breakfast, and when she returned from school she shut herself in her room and refused to come out. He eventually tried to see if she’d come out, but she was already asleep in her bed.

This morning, however, Aang had been able to lure Kya from her room with the scent of snowberry hotcakes. She ate quietly at the farthest seat from him that she could find, watching him carefully over her plate.

“How did you sleep, Kya?” Aang asked brightly after several minutes of awkward silence.

No response.

Aang sighed. He was usually so good with children—they almost always took an instant liking to him. This girl was going to be a tough nut to crack.

“It snowed a lot last night,” Aang observed, mostly to himself, looking beyond Kya and out the window.

“Really?”

It was the first word he’d heard the girl speak since the night he arrived. Kya suddenly jumped up from the table and ran up to the window, standing on her toes to get a better view.

Sensing her obvious excitement, Aang took his chance. “Do you want to go play in the snow after we finish breakfast?”

He accepted her tiny smile and nod in response as his first win for the weekend.

“It’s perfect!” Aang declared as Kya pushed a final stone into the face of the snowman they’d been building. She stepped back and placed her hands on her hips, obviously pleased with her handiwork despite the snowman’s lopsided grin. “Your mother didn’t tell me that you were an artist!”

Kya deflated a little at his comment, biting her lip. “We always build a snowman together for the first snow of winter,” she said sadly, looking to the ground.

Aang bent down until he caught her eye. “You miss her a lot, huh?”

“Yeah.” Kya kicked at the snow with a powder blue boot and rubbed at her reddening nose with a gloved hand, trying to hide the fact that she was sniffling.

“Well, I think that means we have to make a whole family of snowmen for her to come home to. How does that sound?”

Kya’s face lit up as if he’d offered her a precious gift.

Aang grinned back, her sudden delight infectious. “Well, I’m gonna go find some more stones around back, and you get some sticks, okay?” Aang instructed. She nodded, scurrying off toward the large maple tree in the yard.

See, that wasn’t so hard, he thought to himself as he picked through the snow. Just a little sad about being away from her mom is all.

“I hope you found some great sticks!” he called out a few minutes later, hands full of stones as he rounded the side of the house. “We’ve got our work cut out for us!”

There was no response, and he returned to the front yard to find it empty.

“Kya?” Aang said loudly. “Where’d you go?” He dropped the stones in a pile in the snow, and jogged up the stairs and into the house. He called her name and checked every room, but there was no sign of the girl. Heart pounding, he walked swiftly back out into the yard, hoping he’d just missed her somehow—but it was still quiet.

“Kya?” he called out again, trying to hold the rising sensation of panic at bay. How could he lose his charge in less than five minutes?

“Kya, where—ah!” and he promptly fell face-first into the snow.

Aang heard a peal of poorly-concealed laughter coming from the bushes by the house, and in that moment he knew he had been bested by a snowball.

Brushing the residual snow out of his mussed hair, he bent down and formed a nice little snowball of his own.

“I wonder where Kya could be,” Aang said in a comically loud voice as he crunched through the snow. “She’s not in the house, she’s not behind the tree; I wonder if she’s…here!” Aang lobbed the snowball gently at the bushes with his last word, which sent Kya bolting out, shrieking and giggling.

“This means war!” he declared, dropping down and beginning to pile up snow into a makeshift wall.

“Better watch your back!” she laughed, making her own pile of snowball ammo. She grinned cheekily at him, and Aang’s heart swelled.

Katara unlocked her front door and stumbled through it, her luggage crashing across the threshold behind her. Her flight had been delayed, and she’d gotten home from her business trip much later than expected. She was desperately missing Kya—this was the longest they’d been separated since her birth—and she shrugged her coat off, leaving it to drop unceremoniously on the floor as she went in search of her daughter.

She nearly walked straight past the living room, sure that Kya would already be in bed, but stopped when she noticed the TV on at a low volume.

The two were sprawled across a bed of blankets on the floor, fast asleep. Warmth bloomed in her heart as she noticed that Kya was curled up fast asleep on Aang’s chest, one of his arms wrapped protectively around her.

“Would you like to be her nanny?” Katara blurted out several weeks later. Aang blinked, stunned, and stopped short. He was in the middle of carrying a sleeping Kya to her room, and her head lolled on his shoulder at the sudden movement but she did not wake.

“I’m sorry, I know that was forward of me. You probably have plenty of other kids you like to babysit, but—well, Kya just adores you, and I could really use the help around here. We even have a spare bedroom, if…” Katara trailed off, biting her lip anxiously as she realized exactly what she was asking of him. She held her breath.

“I would love to,” he replied, the light from the fireplace dancing in his eyes. “She’s an amazing girl.”

Katara got the distinct feeling that he wasn’t just talking about Kya.

Chapter Text

“Wait.”

That one word hung in the air, enshrouding the atmosphere in its heavy implications, weighing down two motionless figures that stood on a cobblestone residential street. 

Around them, the rain fell. Katara usually loved rain—she loved the way it dared to fall no matter who or what was below it. Now, the icy dampness sent chills up and down her spine. Strands of hair clung to her face and her toes had long since gone numb, but she stood rooted to the spot.

Aang’s hand tightened on the brass doorknob he was holding. His shoulders sagged, his body betraying a heartbreaking remorse that he would not speak aloud. He turned—as she knew he would—and faced her.

Water dripped from the ends of his dark, tousled hair. He looked at her as if he knew exactly what she was going to say, and was already dreading every word.

“After all these years, after everything we’ve been through together…you’re really just going to walk away?”

Her accusatory question rang in her own ears, and Aang flinched as if he’d been burned.

“This is the way it has to be,” he replied in a low voice, nearly inaudible over the thunderous rainstorm. “You know that.”

“No, I don’t!” she cried, stamping a foot down in frustration. “How can you throw this all away? You’re such a—”

Whatever she’d intended to say next was lost as she was abruptly silenced by his lips on hers. They’d kissed countless times before, but the practiced familiarity of this kiss was marred by a desperate finality. Her heart thudded and her stomach dropped and his hands on her face were warm despite the rain.

“I’m sorry,” he said when they finally pulled away, touching his forehead to hers.

And then—he was gone.

Katara sank to the ground, clutching herself and sobbing bitterly, tears and rain alike spattering on her clothes.                                                                       

“Cut!”

Under normal circumstances she would have reacted immediately to that one word, unconsciously relaxing her posture and listening for feedback or further instruction. As it was, however, she remained on the ground with her head bowed for several seconds after the manufactured rainfall had been stopped.

“That was fantastic, you two! I knew that doing one more take was the right idea. You guys really brought it home this time, I tell you. This is going to be our money shot!”

The director continued to babble on excitedly as he stepped onto the set, Aang returning from behind the door he’d just entered and accepting a towel the director offered him. The two talked animatedly about the scene while Katara slowly stood up, shaken from her reverie by a warm towel draped over her shoulders.

Katara offered distant smiles and nods to the crew as she retreated to her trailer, intending to shower immediately in the hopes of shaking off the melancholic feeling that had overtaken her. She stood under the burning water for a long time, the steam beginning to make her heady just as she heard a knock on the trailer door.

She dried off quickly and yanked on a robe, peering out of the small window of the trailer door to see Aang’s friendly face. She liked working with Aang; his natural charm and easy smiles made every scene feel like a conversation with a friend.

“Hey, Aang,” she greeted as she opened the door, leaning on the side of the doorway.

“Hey, Katara,” Aang said warmly, clearly having just cleaned up himself. “I just wanted to see if you were alright—you looked a little out of it after that last scene.”

As he spoke, she saw herself as a child running after her father in the rain, crying and tripping over her shoelaces as he gave her one last hug before leaving for his deployment—the last time she ever saw him.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Just got a little caught up in the scene, I guess.”

He gave her a scrutinizing look, but thankfully didn’t press the issue.

“Some of the cast members want go to get some drinks tonight,” he said instead. “You should come, if you’re not doing anything else.”

Katara considered for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

A few hours later and a couple drinks in found Katara doubled over laughing as Aang recounted the time he and fellow castmember Jet had pranked the crew by mooning the cameras in the middle of a scene.

“The both of you are entirely too much,” Katara said, catching her breath as Aang grinned.

“What’s life without a little fun? Speaking of which—” Aang set his empty glass down on the bar and made for the dance floor, before turning around and offering a hand to Katara, a buoyant smile on his face.

“Dance with me?”

The excuses spilled out of Katara’s mouth like water: “oh, I can’t—I’m not really a good dancer…”

Aang didn’t even bother to respond, and just looked at her pointedly while continuing to hold his hand out to her. She shook her head at his determination and took his hand with a smile of her own.

“Okay.”

They kissed again that night, after the thud of the music and the drinks had loosened the reins on their better judgment. This was not the dramatic, rehearsed kiss in an artificial downpour. This was the clumsy meeting of inebriated lips on the dance floor, imperfect and somehow more intimate than any scene they’d done together.

And later, when they went back to his place and his lips skimmed her neck and his hand gripped her hip, the crying little girl in the rain was forgotten for a while.