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It starts with the little things.
Like when Katara laughs, she ducks her chin down and brings a hand shyly to her mouth in the most adorable way. Aang has always loved the blush that always makes its way to her cheeks, like a daisy in bloom. He knows her laugh like his own heartbeat, having memorized when she needs to take a breath, when the rhythm of it hiccups halfway through. There is a sweet consistency in knowing what reaches her funny bone. It’s a pattern he has grown to study and master over the years with the first girl he ever got to love — a girl he loves still.
But when he can make Azula laugh, really laugh, she throws her head back and brings a hand to her chest like she’s unknowingly trying to hold the joy coming out from inside of her before it leaves. Suddenly she becomes this unapologetically sunny thing in front of him and it always feels like he’s just conquered a kingdom, brought the world’s most indesctructible army to its knees. She makes him work for it, and he has no doubt she always will. But when her eyes start to crinkle with a smile, he knows he wants to live another fifty years in the hopes of seeing it again.
When Toph asks him one drunken night on the balcony of some Earth Kingdom tavern, his mouth runs dry. They were alone while the others kept themselves busy downstairs with more drinks and dancing. The earthbender had seized the opportunity to corner him like it had been on everyone’s minds for a while but only she was brave enough to ask.
“So, Twinkletoes? Which one of them do you love? I mean, really love?”
Aang shakes his head, gathering his thoughts before answering. " Really love. What does that mean? How is anyone supposed to know?”
Top shrugs, the beer in her hand sloshing around at the movement. “I don’t know. I guess when you think about the both of them, is there one you really can’t live without?”
What a silly question , he thinks.
Katara had explored the world with him. They fought side by side for years, their movements designed to follow the other. Without her, he wouldn’t have even come close to becoming the Avatar the world needed. She healed him, nurtured him, followed him to the ends of the earth. To not have Katara was an impossibility. He was sure his twelve-year-old self would have found her in any universe, in any form. Katara was his best friend. His lover, at least for a time. Living without her was out of the question.
Azula was a completely different story. She had chased him around the world, cornered him in caves for battles he saw in his nightmares for years after the war. He can still remember the way her golden eyes widened when sparks of lightning stretched from the tips of her fingers and met his back, right between his shoulder blades. His enemy’s blood, his only daughter, the heir to the throne that wiped out his entire nation.
If he looks too quickly, he sees Ozai in the sharpness of her jaw when she’s angry. Just the thought makes his blood feel as cold and heavy as steel.
He summarizes his thoughts in a slight frenzy to Toph, who gives him a pointed look. “Then why are you confused? Katara is the good guy in your story and Azula is the villain that reminds you of her evil overlord dad. Pretty easy to tell which one you love.”
Aang’s mouth twists into a sad smile. He shakes his head gently.
“Ah, but you have to understand,” he replies. “Right after I see Ozai in her, I see Zuko. They have the same eyes. When I looked at her for the first time after Sozin’s comet with all those chains holding her down…” his voice falters.
After all the things Aang has seen, few things are too difficult to say out loud. The image of a too-young Azula thrashing, screaming blue fire and crying for her father is one of them.
“When I saw her there, I saw the fate that Zuko escaped, all because he had love. From Iroh, from his mother, from us.” Aang shakes his head again, this time a little stronger. “All Azula had for love was the twisted attention Ozai gave her as a child. What else was she supposed to become?”
Aang takes one of the half-empty bottles of water strewn on the balcony floor and takes a sip. Toph raises her glass and does the same before leaning back into her chair.
“So you feel bad for Princess. She’s all damaged goods or whatever.” Toph waves a careless hand at this, though she is a little careful not to sound too spiteful in front of the Avatar. “Still. Pity isn’t love.”
Aang frowns, the chill in the air making itself known on his skin.
He thinks of the first time he realized he loved Azula.
They were camped out in Zuko’s office while the Fire Lord was in a meeting with some tradesmen — her laying on the sofa and reading from a bundle of scrolls that rested on her stomach, him on the floor next to her with his own scroll in hand and a killer migraine.
Aang let out a heavy sigh. “You know, I don’t think Air Nation politics were ever this… messy.” He leaned his head back, letting the back of it rest on a soft pillow.
Azula snickered. “No, I would suppose not. I’d wager to bet Guru Laghima wouldn’t be too happy about all these arguments about who gets what trade route.” She let out a yawn, her legs stretching to the end of the sofa near where Aang’s head lay. His eyes were closed as he listened to her talk.
“I’m starting to like his philosophy about being one people rather than individual selves. All this business with redrawing borders is getting tiresome and terribly annoying.”
Aang’s eyes flew open in surprise before he turned his head to take a good look at Azula. She had already returned to her previous position, eyes scanning a new scroll with undivided focus.
He raised a curious eyebrow in her direction. “How do you know about Guru Laghima?”
“You mentioned him once during dinner, and I was certain I remembered the name from one of the books I saw Uncle read in the library when I was a child. I searched the royal archives until I found some old half-burnt book on Air Nation poetry and philosophy,” she said nonchalantly. “Much of the information had been erased but there was enough to read between the lines.”
The Avatar remained silent for a beat. Another.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
“Did… did you read the poetry?” he asked, his voice small. All of a sudden he was a kid again, asking Master Gyatso for just one more story before he had to go to sleep.
Azula shrugged, casually opening a new scroll without glancing at him. “Mm-hmm. I’ve seen better, but I thought the one about the-”
“The flowers-”
“-flowers and the strong autumn wind was a fairly well-written love letter.”
Aang’s breath hitched. Without even a second of thought, he turned towards Azula and grabbed the scroll out of her hand, dropping it on the carpet.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “I was reading that, you know.”
“I know.” He looked down at her and he could have sworn he felt a gust of wind pass through him, right through the middle of his chest. His eyes traced the slope of her nose, the fullness of her lips, the pure power behind her eyes.
He looked away, trying to recover from whatever had taken hold of him, but Azula turned his chin back towards her with her fingers. Her thumb grazed his lips.
He raised his hand to cup hers, warm and gentle against his cheek. They said nothing.
Then, to exhibit the divine craftsmanship of some god or another, Azula smiled. A real tender smile, like she had known all along the gravity of what she does to him but is kind enough not to speak of it.
Just then, it’s like his spirit bowed. It has never ceased to fold in her presence.
Who was he in the face of a woman who could knock the breath out of his lungs with one smile? What choice did he have in the face of all that?
Aang turns his head to Toph. “No, no… Pity isn’t love.” He closes his eyes, sweet images playing behind his eyes. “Curiosity and attention. That’s love.”
Toph glances at him intently before turning away with a shake of her head. “So you love her. Big deal. You love Sugar Queen too. What’s the difference? ”
Aang grimaces, shaken out of his saccharine stupor by the one question he had been trying to avoid for months. He was relatively guilt-free as he technically wasn’t with either woman, but the weight of his shared history with Katara and all his thoughts about Azula have been nothing short of crushing.
He rubs his eyes, trying to put all his energy into answering the question once and for all.
Katara… Katara is home. When he kisses her, he can taste all the nights they spent around the campfire laughing with their friends, back when they were just kids trying to survive. She smells like the swell of the sea, the comfort after an intense fight. He loves the blaze of determination in her eyes when she bends and the gentleness in them when she comforts him. They know each other like they know their respective elements — completely and without question.
“I guess…” Aang begins. “I guess the way I love Katara feels warm. It’s soothing. She makes me feel twelve years old again, falling in love for the first time.” He smiles at the thought of what he and Katara used to look like, small little things trying to save the world.
“And Azula?” Toph asks expectantly.
A deep, crushing feeling wraps its hand around his heart at the mere mention of her name. Azula isn’t the relief after a near brush with death — she is the fight itself, the very thick of it. The adrenaline, the shortness of breath, the electricity in the air. Breathing is second priority when her lips are on his. She is incredibly methodical and somehow unpredictable and loving her feels like hunger. There has never been anyone like her before and he wants to be her first and only explorer. He aches to get under her skin, to find out what makes her make which noise in the back of her throat, to make her double over in laughter.
She is a million contradictions: wild and composed, tender and scathing, cold and passionate. A blade wielded in such glorious blue flame that even the deepest cut wouldn’t matter as long as it meant he got to touch her.
“Azula?” He tastes her name in his mouth. Like honey. Like fire coursing through his body and erupting from his hands for the very first time. “Loving her burns.”
Toph is silent for a moment as they listen to the sound of leaves rattling in the wind. Aang thinks of the Air Nomad poem then, and of Azula’s voice reciting the words to him in bed after he had begged to hear it from her for a week straight.
“Women, lovely flowers that bloom and quickly fade;
Flowery faces, in full flush, lovely as dreams.
When flowers burst open they grow heavy with passion
But once they fall, no one speak of them again .”
“There, are you happy?” she had said, eyes shining with the moonlight’s kiss. Aang shook his head and she sighed, continuing on.
“Even if I were a god you’d be on my mind.
I sit beneath the lamp, a skinny monk chanting love songs.
The fierce autumn wind nearly blows me over
And my heart is choked with thick clouds.”
Azula had let out a laugh at the dumfounded look on his face, but he was too enraptured to notice. As he studied her face, he imagined what the rest of the world must’ve thought of her. They believed her to be a sharp and heavy thing. A wildling begrudgingly tamed.
Looking at her then with the light of the moon carving out the line of her jaw, he saw who she really was. A girl planted in unforgiving soil without the warmth of the sun. Watered and watered again until love felt more like rotting. And yet, a fire lily in bloom. A fire lily in bloom despite, despite, despite .
Unaware of the memory that had just taken root inside his chest, Toph sighs, choosing her next words carefully.
“That kind of love sounds painful, Aang. Is it even worth it?”
“You don’t get it,” he says gently. He doesn't blame her.
She turns her head in his direction. “What don’t I get?”
Aang smiles, a man resigned. “I love her so much I can’t see past it.”
The silence hangs in the air, the breeze stilling at the Avatar’s confession.
“I want Katara to be loved. I care that she’s loved.” Home and hearth, that woman. Aang lets out a low chuckle. “But I don’t really need to be the one that gets to love her like that, y’know? As long as she’s happy, I’m sated.” He thinks again of the children they once were. The children they no longer are.
They had won the war and done their best to wipe their hands of it. They had loved and moved on, but the love still lives there — just not in the way he had hoped it would when he was twelve.
Aang sighs. “But when it comes to Azula…”
His voice drops with a deepness that wasn’t there before. “Oh god, I want to love her the best. It’s like- like this sick need to lay myself down and show her: 'I could love you better than anyone. Watch me give up the whole world for you. Who else can do that?’”
Aang finishes his drink with a grimace. “It’s dangerous. All-consuming. Selfish. But what can I do? She’s everything. The whole damn thing.”
He inwardly chides himself for sharing too much too quickly with such desperation in his voice. Aang casts a look at Toph in fear of what is sure to be her most blistering comment yet.
Her chest moves up and down in even breaths, and Aang thinks he hears a quiet snore. The earthbender is asleep.
The Avatar leans back into his chair in relief, the sticky heat of the moment starting to leave beads of sweat down his back. He watches in silence as the trees bow in the wind, almost as if trying to kiss the wildflowers growing from the earth.
“The whole world, huh?” a low voice behind him calls out. Aang’s whole body freezes.
It’s then, and only then, that he notices that the loud music and movement from below has completely stopped. All this time, he had been speaking to a surprised audience of one.
Aang sinks into his chair with a groan. Azula laughs lightly as she leans against the balcony doorway. His heart flutters at the sound, but it is no match for the deep heat that now occupies his face.
She saunters over towards the edge of the balcony, elbows resting against its wooden frame as she looks out into the dark trees in front of them.
“One woman for the whole world isn’t quite the deal you think it is, Avatar.”
His gray eyes take this opportunity to roam all over her body carefully before settling on the nape of her neck. It wouldn’t have mattered if a league of Dai Li soldiers were to stand between them. He knows deep down he would defeat them all just to press his lips there, even for just a second.
Azula turns towards him and he tries for a grin, but it only meets his eyes halfway. “Sure it is,” Aang replies. “It is when that one woman is the whole world.”
She shakes her head, clearly amused by his boyish romanticism. She walks over to him and he straightens up just in time for her to take a seat on his lap.
Azula holds his face in her hands and stares deeply, gold against silver. Whether she was trying to sniff out lies in his eyes or daring him to see the truth in hers, he could not tell.
Without a word, she kisses him, and it blows him over. A tree bowing in the wind. A man resigned.