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The story almost always starts the same way.
A boy, frozen in ice. A girl, filled with hope. Their paths cross when she finds him in the ice. They save each other. And then, they save the world.
Sometimes the boy is frozen at twelve, sometimes he's older. The girl is usually a little older than him, but sometimes she is younger, or the same age as him.
Most of the time, she is the one to find him. She breaks the ice he has been trapped in for a century and saves him. Sometimes her brother is with her. Sometimes her father or grandmother. Other times, she is alone. On a rare occasion, the boy breaks himself out and finds her.
Always, when they meet, they form an instant connection.
The key to the story is that the frozen boy and the hopeful girl will always find each other. Their souls destined to meet, calling out to each other no matter how the other details go.
There are times they fail to save the world, but at least they fail together. More frequently, they succeed, though never without tough losses along the way. More than once, the boy dies in the girl's arms.
But there are those rare instances. Rare, unfortunate universes, where the gap of a century between their births stops them from meeting at all. A slight change— a small, insignificant choice that destroys their fate, and the fate of the world.
The boy sleeps in or gets distracted. He gets invited to play with the friends who had shunned him before. He doesn't overhear the monks and their plans for him. He doesn't run away just yet.
His mentor, his airbending master, flees with him later that night, refusing to let the other monks separate them. They run. The master can fight the storm better than the boy could. There is no ice to trap them. No ice to save them.
The boy and his mentor flee into the mountains. They're not there when the air temples are attacked, when all their people are killed. Hearing of the tragedy, they escape further south.
Perhaps it is fate that pulls the boy to the Southern Water Tribe, even if it is a hundred years too early. They ask the chief of one of the villages to hide them. There is some reluctance, fear of the Fire Nation's retribution. They're only granted sanctuary after they reveal the boy's identity, though they are told to hide it as much as possible from that point forward.
Aang was feeling restless, pacing around the small ice hut they had been given. He knew Gyatso was upset, though he also knew his master tried his best to hide it from him. Even now, the old man was relentlessly positive, telling Aang to focus on the good in their lives. To count their blessings even as they mourned their people.
But Aang was struggling. There was a constant ache in his chest. He wanted to go home, to go back to how things had been before. But they had heard the stories and had even seen the smoke from afar. There was no home to go back to.
The Southern Water Tribe wasn't all bad. Aang liked parts of it. But there was something that kept nagging at him, like something he was forgetting. A thought, a wisp of a memory that flitted away the moment his mind came too close to it.
Aang closed his eyes. The image was so clear, it was like he was looking through a window. Two large blue eyes staring at him, two strands of hair blowing in the breeze. The girl's lips forming a sound— his name?
"Aang, you will wear a hole into the ice if you keep pacing like that." Gyatso said as he entered the hut. He took in Aang's face, a slight frown appearing on his own. "What's the matter?"
Aang opened his eyes, giving Gyatso a desperate look. "I… I don't know. I keep having this dream, I think it might be something important."
Gyatso nodded, taking a seat and looking at him, settling into listen. Aang felt a sense of relief at the serious expression on the man's face. He was glad that Gyatso took him seriously even when he knew he wasn't making much sense. He really felt like this could be important. Maybe it was an Avatar thing, something that could help them. Aang took a deep breath, then continued.
"I keep seeing this girl, she's clearly from the Water Tribe— she has blue eyes and hair a little like this," Aang gestured next to his face, still continuing to pace. "And I thought maybe I was meant to meet her here, but I've looked all over the village and I didn't see her."
Gyatso took this all in quietly, then he spoke softly. "There are other villages scattered around Southern Water Tribe. It's possible she could be elsewhere."
"Can we look for her?" Aang asked, his voice quietly hopeful.
Gyato's answering frown dampened some of that hope. "Perhaps. But it would draw attention to us. It might be unwise."
The disappointment stung. "I think she could be really important, someone I have to meet," he tried.
His mentor stared out the window at the snow, clearly pondering this. "Perhaps. But it could also just be a dream. Or perhaps a vision of one of your past lives."
Aang sighed, running a hand over his head. He still didn't know how to feel about being the Avatar. So far, it had only ruined things for him. But that didn't stop him from feeling like this vision was something. He glimpsed the blue of her eyes every time he closed his own.
After a long stretch of silence, Gyatso spoke again. "I will talk to the chief and ask if he can help us safely visit the other villages," he said slowly, holding up a hand when he saw the grin grow on Aang's face. "Don't get too excited, Aang. If the chief says it's too dangerous I will heed his advice."
The man got to his feet, slowly walking over to Aang and putting a hand on his shoulder. "Keeping you safe is the most important thing," he said softly. "But if you think this girl is important, we will try to find her."
And so the young avatar and his mentor search, visiting all the small, scattered villages on the South Pole. But no matter how much they look, they never find the girl the avatar had dreamed of. Despite their care, word starts to spread. The idea of the last airbender starts giving hope to the people of the Water Tribe. Before long, the waterbenders offer to train him, to help him prepare to save the world.
Unfortunately, word spreads faster than anyone could have guessed. It only takes weeks for the Fire Nation to send a fleet to the Southern Tribe.
It only takes minutes for the boy to die.
Before his death, the avatar saves the villages from further harm, he and his mentor defend the tribe against the invasion as long as they could.
But in the end, the boy's story ends there.
His final thought is of blue eyes.
A hundred years pass and the Fire Nation conquers more and more of the world. They find the new Avatar in the Northern Water Tribe a few years after the previous one perishes in the snow.
What happens to her is unknown.
A mystery, sometimes speculated over in hushed whispers in quiet rooms decades later. But more often ignored. There is not much room to ponder on such things when one is struggling to survive every day.
Without a force able to stop them, the Fire Nation colonizes most of the Earth Kingdom and all of the Norther Water Tribe. They control the Southern Water Tribe too, but find nothing of real worth there to stake a claim on. Instead of occupying the land, they send ships every few months, troops to intimidate, to take what little the people there have and then leave again.
It is a comparatively peaceful existence.
A young girl is born in the tribe, the first waterbender in years. Simultaneously a glimpse of hope for her people and a terrifying prospect for her mother and brother.
The girl's father died fighting before she was even born.
The girl is bright, quick, and uniquely alone. Urged to hide her bending from anyone. Isolated, trapped.
Hopeful.
As a young girl, she is enthralled by stories about the Avatar. The brave boy who came to her people, who protected them against the Fire Nation even if it meant his own end. The boy and his mentor fought hard, taking down a few Fire Nation ships in the process. The remnants of the iron hulls are still there, abandoned on the ice. The girl visits them often even though she's not allowed.
The story of the Avatar gives her hope.
But as she grows older and learns more about the war. As she is forced to hide herself more and more as the Fire Nation searches for remaining waterbenders. Her hope slowly dwindles until it goes out like a candle flame.
Katara could already hear Sokka's berating voice lecturing her about going out on her own again, but she couldn't help it. Sometimes she just needed to get away from everything and everyone.
And she was careful, most of the time.
In the early light of dawn, Katara took Sokka's fishing boat went out onto the sea, paddling through the water on her own as she had done dozens of time before. If she occasionally used a little waterbending to speed herself along, there wasn't anyone there to see it besides the tiger seals lounging on the ice.
Katara looked out over the still blue sea, exhaling a small sigh of relief. It was nice to be out here, away from the small hut she lived in, away from her mother's worried eyes. Katara lowered the oar, letting the boat float on the water for a moment as she listened to the soft noise of the sea lapping against the boat's hull.
As much as she loved her family and village, she sometimes felt more at home in the water like this. Surrounded by her element. Something drew her out here more and more. It was hard to resist the pull.
A fish swam by the boat and Katara watched it for a moment, the graceful movements of the fins mesmerizing her. For a second, she had the strange urge to jump into the freezing water, to feel it surround her and crystallize around her as ice.
She shook her head and picked up the paddle again. She didn't have much time before they would go looking for her, she had to make the most of it. She made a mental note to catch some fish on the way back. It was always easier to deal with Sokka's anger when she brought food as a peace offering.
The boat glided over the still water as Katara maneuvered it through the ice with ease. She wasn't really thinking about where she was going, her mind blissfully blank as she focused on steering the ship and feeling the water around her.
Oftentimes when she went out on her own like this, she would stop somewhere to practice her bending. It was forbidden and a part of her knew it was stupid, but she had to. It was a part of who she was. She never told Sokka or her mother about it, but she knew they knew.
Other times, she went to a different spot. Instead of stopping at a sheltered place to practice her bending, the boat brought Katara to a large iceberg, coming to a stop in front of it as if having a mind of its own. Katara had seen it before— had been here before. And every time she looked up at the towering ice, she felt the same strange pull.
The urge to break the ice, to find look for something or someone deep inside it.
Katara reached her hand out towards the iceberg, her fingers trembling inside her gloves. She had never dared to try, no matter how strong the urge was. It was risky, unnecessarily so. It could draw attention of anyone nearby.
But when Katara briefly closed her eyes she pictured a beautiful blue glow so clearly, she expected it to still be there when she opened them again. Her heart gave a little lurch of longing and before she knew what she was doing, she was clambering out of the boat and onto the ice.
Taking a shaking breath, the girl looked around. There was nothing nearby. Just her, water and ice. The last Fire Nation ships had left only a week ago, it would be a long time before they sent more.
Katara focused her gaze on the iceberg again, staring intently at the glinting surface. Then she slowly pulled off her glove, extending her hand forward. She moved her arm upwards and sliced it down in a powerful move.
The reaction was instant. The iceberg cracking almost like it wanted to break. It split open slowly with a groaning sound, followed by a crack like thunder. Ice and snow crashed into the sea and causing waves to splash against Katara and her boat. Distantly, she could hear the alarmed cries of the tiger seals as they fled away from the crashing ice.
Katara didn't move even when the chunk of ice she was standing on threatened to throw her into the ocean. She stared at the water under the ice, willing it to glow— to show her something, the thing her heart was calling out for.
But as the sea slowly settled and the waves came to a stop, there was nothing in the water but a deep, dark blue.
Katara sank to her knees, tears falling from her eyes onto the frozen ground. She had been wrong. She had thought she no longer had hope. But a part of her that she didn't understand had been sure she would find something here. Her dreams had been filled with a blue glow and snippets of laughter and her boat brought her to this place over and over again.
But there was nothing there.
Nothing that could fill the hole in her heart.
Nothing that could give her hope again.
It was late when the girl returned home. She didn't bring fish. She quietly listened to the admonishments, the reminders to stay home and stay safe. As if safe still existed in their world.
That night when she went to bed, there was nothing in her dreams. A deep blue nothing. Like the ocean down below.