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“Maybe I can get some of my overdue paperwork done while in the bardo, Katara,” Aang joked, feeling the burden of years leaning on him like an old and insistent friend. “I still haven’t finished all the forms that I owe to the Chairman yet.”
“Sokka would surely appreciate it, but you have somewhat more important business to take care of,” his wife replied, tending to the kettle of tea with sun-tanned hands. Age had not dimmed the youthful brightness of her eyes, not the snarky love which crept into her voice upon the mention of her brother. “He will have to understand that reincarnating is a bit of a chore.”
Aang looked through the window in the monastic cell which they had built in the Potala mountains, just a short ways away from the Southern Air Temple. Sometimes they could hear the blowing of horns, the bellowing of flying bison, and hymns sung for Aang’s safe passage into the Avatar’s next life. But right now the wind was blowing a little too loudly, and the bright light of the sun hurt his eyes, so he crawled back to the bedroll in the warm place next to the dim embers of the fireplace.
“What do you think she’ll be like?” Aang asked, after a moment of hard breathing. “—and I’m sure that my next life will be a she. I can feel it in my bones. Will she be born in the Northern or Southern Water tribe? Or will she be born outside it somehow, like in Republic City?”
“That’s up for you to decide, love,” his wife and companion said, pouring out another cup of tea for him. He picked it up and drank slowly, painfully at first, but the hot liquid eased his throat a little, and he lay back down.
“Like she would want me to make any more decisions for her,” Aang groaned with a long roll of his eyes. “If only I’d had a little more time. Just a little more time. I could have done so much more for her and this world. I could have got to the bottom of why Airbending is still screwed up, why it was only Tenzin who figured it out, even after we spent years training with our children and others. I could have—”
The coughing fit that came this time endured far longer than the last, punishing him for taking too much pleasure in rambling his captive audience. He reached for his bending to steady his breath and ease the pressure put on his diaphragm, the air eventually complying with him. He took a long and shuddering breath, and looked up at his wife again.
“You could have what, dear?”
“Sorry,” the old man wheezed. “I could have spent the time I had better than I did. That’s all.”
Katara wiped the sweat away from his forehead and smiled as it sizzled on the stones next to them.
“There’s nothing to apologize for, Aang. You did all that you could in this life for her and for the next generation. She will understand that.”
“No,” Aang said, digging his fingers in the rock and trying to pull himself up. “Even like this, there must be something I can do. I’ll send another letter, or maybe jot some notes down, or…”
Katara put a finger to his lips, the scars from old wounds trailing up her arms and neck. She said to him kindly, “Maybe tomorrow, Aang. You should get some sleep now before those air bison wake up and start complaining about breakfast.”
“They’re just hungry,” the old air nomad replied, feeling as childish as he had when she had first unearthed him from the ice. “You can’t blame them for making noise about it.”
“Just like Bumi when he was a child. Always complaining about this or that thing. Sometimes, it’s just nice to enjoy the moment. Go with the flow,” his wife replied, gesticulating with the globule of water she held in her hands.
Aang laughed at the dumb pun, and felt another wave of exhaustion crash over his prone body. Would there be a tomorrow for him? Or would he wake up in the intermediate realm, the place his ancestors had called the bardo—or more accurately, the bardo of dying, as his soul passed from his physical body and into the samsaric ocean once again, adrift until it found a new body to inhabit. Master Gyatso had once taught him not to fear death and dying, that they were all phenomena as empty of true essence as anything else in this world.
But Aang had loved the world, had loved all the strange and wonderful things in it, and now he was wholly unready to bid it goodbye—even as mortal sickness consumed his frail, old body. It felt almost selfish to die, especially while so many people that he loved were still trapped on the other side. What would Sokka or Toph say if they saw him so low? What would the Fire Lord Zuko say if he saw Aang, the last airbender of his generation, unable to take even a single breath?
“I want to say something,” Aang finally muttered, the night air stinging his dry eyes. “But I don’t know what to say anymore, love.”
His wife squeezed his hand as he began to feel the crushing weight of years on his eyelids once again, “Oh, but you have. You already said all that you needed to, Aang.”
“What?”
She smiled, the brilliance of arctic snow in the morning.
“Love,” Katara said, kissing him softly. “That’s all we need.”