Chapter Text
The wind rushed through Appa’s fur in long, cold streams as they crossed the ocean toward the Southern Water Tribe. Evening painted the sky in soft gold and violet painted endlessly around them. The steady flap of Appa’s tail should have been calming as he drifted above the sea. The scent of salt and cold ocean only accentuated the smell of home.
Katara sat near the front of the saddle with her knees pulled to her chest, her braid whipping softly behind her. One hand rested absently against Appa’s fur. The other clutched a letter so tightly the edges had begun to curl.
“Aaaaand then maybe after we visit the South Pole,” Aang continued excitedly, “we could go straight to the Northern Air Temple! The mechanists there already said they’d help rebuild, and I thought maybe you and I could travel to all four temples together afterward. Like… together together.”
Katara barely heard him. Her eyes remained fixed on the elegant Fire Nation calligraphy spread across her lap. She felt her heart gave another helpless, dizzy little flip that caused her stomach to bounce like a bubble on the clouds with it.
Spirits. She’d read it at least ten times already. And every time she reached the end, she started over.
And over.
And over.
The parchment smelled faintly of smoke, cedar, jasmine. Something warm. Sharp. Comforting in a way that completely unraveled her.
Beside her, Aang kept talking with breathless certainty.
“We could stay at the Eastern Air Temple for a while too! I think the nomads would’ve really liked you. And when everything settles down, maybe we could even travel to all four nations together first, you know? Like a real peace tour—”
Katara hummed absentmindedly as her fingers tightened slightly around the page. A familiar exhaustion settled quietly into her chest. Not anger. Not even irritation anymore. Just tiredness.
Aang always spoke about the future like it was already decided. Like she was simply expected to follow along smiling while he painted pictures around her. Their life. Their travels. Their future children. Their destiny.
He said it all so sweetly that it almost made her feel guilty for flinching from it. But he never asked what she wanted. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered.
And somewhere along the line, Katara had stopped trying to explain herself. Because every conversation somehow became about reassuring Aang. About protecting his feelings. About gently redirecting him instead of speaking plainly.
Her eyes drifted back to the letter. Immediately, warmth bloomed through her chest, down to her core, and back up to flush her cheeks. This was different.
A helpless smile tugged at her lips.
Sokka noticed instantly. A groan filtered through the air as he muttered. “Oh no,”
Katara jolted slightly and folded the letter halfway shut. “What?”
“That face…” Sokka pointed out.
“What face?”
“The face you make when you’re ‘secretly’ thinking of some massive, hunky heartthrob... or what you believe is a heartthrob… The last time I saw you with that look on your face was when we were staying with Jett and his gang two years ago.” He pointed accusingly. There was a look of sheer disgust on his face.
“I do not have a face that says that.” She deadpanned. Her tone flatlined as her brow simply went limp.
“You absolutely do. You look like Momo when he saw the Earth Kingdom’s largest moon peach.” Sokka exclaimed.
Aang leaned back in the flyer’s seat and smiled over his shoulder. “Come on, Sokka. I’m sure she’s just overwhelmed with emotions because she’s finally on her way back home after so long.”
He paused and blinked before rubbing the bright blue arrow tattoo on his head. “Huh… Has… Has it been two or four years? I was fourteen when you broke me out of the iceberg…” He counted on his fingers. “And I’m sixteen now… Yeah! Two years! That’s a long time to be away from home, isn’t it?”
He finally turned to face Katara and Sokka, and caught a glimpse of the letter in Katara’s lap. He leaned over almost comically, nearly hovering at a full horizontal angle to read. “What’s that?”
Katara’s stomach dropped and she plastered the letter to her chest protectively. A nervous scowl settled on her lip. “Nothing!”
Sokka gasped dramatically, plastering his hand to his mouth. “It’s a secret letter!”
Katara’s face flatlined again as she turned to her brother. “No shit, and water makes things wet. What does it matter?” she shouted. “It’s private!”
“That confirms it’s juicy,” Sokka cooed like a pigeon-dove.
A near volcanic blush exploded across Katara’s cheeks as she shrieked indignantly. “Juicy? Juicy! What kind of harbor-market love pamphlet do you think I read? I’ll have you know this is just… poetry!”
Sokka wiggled his little finger in his ear and flicked a crumb of wax off the side of the saddle. “Uh-huh, and Love Amongst the Dragons was the leading stage play for the past ten years.”
A loud snort escaped Aang’s nose and Katara rolled her eyes. She looked back down before either of them could notice just how hard her pulse was pounding and scooted to the other side of the saddle to get some space. Once she was nestled next to her bag, she plastered the letter gently against her lap and began to read again.
Katara,
I tried to say this before you left, but every time I looked at you, my brain stopped working. Which is frustrating, because I’m the Fire Lord now and people apparently expect me to be capable of basic conversation.
Katara pressed her lips together hard to suppress a laugh. Across from her, Sokka narrowed his eyes suspiciously. She glanced at him and raised an eyebrow.
“Can I help you?”
Sokka huffed and crossed his arms. “No. Can I help you? You’ve been reading that letter for the past three days…”
Aang cocked his head in confusion. “She has?”
Katara rolled her eyes for what felt like the millionth time since they left the Fire Nation. “That doesn’t even make sense in this context…” She turned back to the letter and scoot further down so her knees could cover her face.
I don’t really know how to do this. Mai once told me that when you care about someone, you should either say it clearly or leave them alone. Since leaving you alone has proven completely impossible, I guess this is me trying the first option.
Her chest tightened as she read the paragraph again. Not painfully. Just… full. Too full. Like Momo after he found a whole storage of moon peaches and has to be carried like a ball because his stomach distended.
When I was younger, I thought love was something you earned by becoming useful enough. Strong enough. Quiet enough. Honorable enough. My father made affection feel conditional, and for a long time I believed everyone else worked that way too.
Then I met you.
Katara swallowed hard. The sounds of the ocean blurred faintly below only to be replaced by the roar of the waves crashing in her inner ear from her blood pounding.
You were angry at me. Agni, you had every reason to be. After everything I did, everything my family did, how I chased you all for a whole year before finally begging for forgiveness and join you all. But even when you hated me, you still expected me to be better. No one had ever done that before.
You saw the worst parts of me and somehow still believed there was something worth saving underneath. I think that terrified me more than Azula ever did.
A shaky breath escaped her before she could stop it. Because she remembered. Zuko standing beneath the crystal catacombs trembling with conflict. Zuko sitting beside her beneath the stars at Ember Island, quieter and gentler than she thought he knew how to be. How he had taken lightning for her without a second thought. How he looked at her before and after it was all over like she was something precious.
Not something owed to him. Something chosen. Tui and La… how had she never realized that look before?
“The war and the threat of the world ending probably had something to do with it,” she thought.
She was so lost in her own thoughts and the letter that she hadn’t even noticed that Aang had started yet another one-sided conversation with her.
“—and maybe eventually we could bring kids to the temples too!” He chimed excitedly. “They should grow up knowing all the nations.”
Katara blinked slowly and pulled her focus abruptly from the letter. “Children?”
The word landed strangely in her chest. Not because it was unpleasant. But because Aang spoke about it like it was inevitable. Like her life had already been written.
It caused a pit to form in her stomach. A pit filled with spider-snakes that writhed and twisted against each other, desperate to escape the dark hollow opening beneath her ribs. The feeling spread slowly, cold and heavy, crawling through her chest until even breathing felt difficult.
Because she should have been happy. Shouldn’t she?
The war was over. They had survived. Aang was smiling at her like the future was already written in sunlight.
So why did it suddenly feel like someone had wrapped icy fingers around her heart?
“Aang,” she said softly.
He either didn’t hear her or simply barreled past it.
“We could see the Northern Water Tribe first,” he continued, already talking with his hands. “Then maybe travel through the Earth Kingdom again without, y’know, being hunted this time. And after that—”
“Aang.”
“—and Appa could finally fly somewhere because we want to, not because the world is ending—”
“Aang!” she nearly barked.
That finally stopped him. He blinked, smile still lingering as though he’d only just realized she hadn’t been smiling back. “Yeah?”
Katara folded the letter carefully before answering, buying herself another second. Another breath. “That sounds… really far away.”
His smile faltered slightly only to be replaced by a lopsided grin and a laugh. “Well, yeah, obviously not tomorrow.”
“I mean…” She searched for gentler words. “I think maybe right now I just want to go home for a little while. Be with Dad and Gran-Gran. Figure out what my life looks like after all this.”
Aang stared at her like a confused poodle-pony. Not upset. Just very confused. Like the possibility had genuinely never occurred to him that she would want to spend more than a few days in the Southern Water Tribe before gallivanting off again on another adventure.
“But we already know what your life looks like,” he said with a small laugh. A wide, innocent smile nearly split his face in half. “You’ll be with me!”
Something in Katara’s chest quietly sank. Not dramatic. Not shattering. More like watching a paper lantern slowly flood and become waterlogged before sinking to the depths of a pond somewhere.
Just the slow, awful feeling of realizing someone had been making plans for her future without ever asking what she wanted. The agonizing realization that he still wasn’t listening. Again.
She smiled anyway because it was easier. “We’ll see,” she said gently. “I just want to get home and rest for now.”
She looked back down at the letter and nearly sighed when breathing felt easy again.
I don’t know what happens next.
You’re returning home. I’m staying in a city that still smells like smoke and war. Half the world probably expects us to hate each other again by winter.
But I know this. The thought of you leaving in the morning makes me feel like the sun has stopped shining- No. It feels like the moon itself has fallen from the night sky and plunged into the sea.
Katara’s heart stumbled violently and she had to press the heel of her hand against her mouth to keep from gasping or sighing… again… despite having read this thing ten or so times already-
“Fuck! When did I turn into a fourteen-year-old girl again?” She scolded herself mentally. “Ugh! Why isn’t that part easier to read?”
She bit her lip and continued reading like a girl with a polar-puppy crush.
You once told me that hope isn’t something people wait for. It’s something they make. I think I’ve spent most of my life surviving instead of living.
And then somewhere between fighting beside you and arguing with you and watching you threaten people twice your size, I started wanting things again.
Stupid things.
Peaceful things.
Like hearing you laugh in the next room. Or making tea with you without someone trying to assassinate us. Or seeing what your face does when you’re genuinely happy.
Katara’s eyes burned suddenly. Because no one had ever loved her quietly before. No one had ever loved her carefully.
Aang loved like a wildfire sometimes: bright and consuming and overwhelming.
But this… These were the words of someone who loved like someone holding a wounded bird in both hands. Terrified of hurting it.
I don’t expect anything from you. You don’t owe me your feelings because I wrote them down first. I just needed you to know that whatever future you choose… if there’s any part of it that wants me in it, I would spend the rest of my life grateful for the chance.
—Zuko
Below the signature, squeezed awkwardly into the corner, was one final line.
P.S. Sokka absolutely knows. I can feel it somehow. It might be deep down in the part of his being that isn’t driven by his carnivore instinct to demolish any and all meat within a five click radius, but it’s there. He’s going to be unbearable about this.
Katara let out an involuntary snort of laughter.
Katara hummed absently and tightened her grip on the creased parchment in her lap. Her eyes drifted down the page again as yet another stupid smile caused her lips to dip into her cheeks and create a divot of dimples.
I tried to say this when you left, but every time you looked at me I forgot how words worked.
She bit her lip to force the smile back this time. Once again, she was so enthralled in the letter that she didn’t even notice Aang was talking again. At this point, she was able to tune him out with the ease of long practice.
Sokka snorted from where he lounged against Appa’s saddle at whatever it was that Aang had said. “Aang, you’ve planned like three years of her life in the last hour.”
Aang grinned and wiggled his finger. “Ah-ah-ah! Our life.”
That managed to break her mental barrier and made something ache inside her. There had been a time she listened to every word Aang said. Back when his dreams felt bright and hopeful and impossible not to believe in. Back when she thought maybe if she just explained herself clearly enough, he would understand her too.
But somewhere along the way, Aang had stopped listening. Or maybe he only listened when the answer was what he wanted.
“Katara?”
She blinked.
Aang was smiling at her expectantly.
“What?”
“I asked if you thought the kids at the temples would call you Lady Katara or Master Katara.” He laughed lightly. “Since you’ll basically be helping me rebuild the Air Nomads.”
Sokka looked like he had licked a skink-toad. “Ewwwww! I do NOT need to hear you say how you intend on ‘rebuilding the air nomads’ with my baby sister! Keep it in your trousers, Air Boy!”
Katara couldn’t even stop the wrinkle of disgust from stealing her nose even if she tried. “Sokka… I don’t think that’s how he meant it.”
“Please, Spirits on high, don’t let that be how he meant it…” she prayed silently.
She stared at Aang for a moment. He looked so earnest. So certain. Like the future already belonged to him.
To them.
Aang blinked innocently. “Meant what?”
A deep, gurgling burp escaped Sokka’s mouth. “Oh, thank Tui and La… not that… I thought I was about to end the air bender lineage for a moment…”
Katara brushed her thumb against the edge of Zuko’s letter to calm her nerves, and her stomach flipped violently. She could practically hear his voice in the words. Quiet. Careful. Honest in a way that made her chest hurt.
There was a brief pause before Aang tilted his head curiously again. “Sooooo who’s it from?”
“Aang, we literally just went over that,” Sokka deadpanned as he picked underneath his nails with his boomerang. “If she doesn’t wanna tell us, she doesn’t have to tell us. Let the lady have some privacy.”
Aang blushed and turned around fully in his spot to yelp at Sokka. “I’m just curious is all!”
Below them, the ocean glittered like melted silver beneath the setting sun. She remembered the moment Zuko slipped the note into her bag. So quick she almost missed it. Just a brush of his fingers against canvas while Aang and Sokka loaded supplies. Then his eyes met her’s across the courtyard. Nervous. The Fire Lord of all people looking nervous. Her heart somersaulted all over again.
Katara looked away toward the horizon, unable to stop the smile spreading across her lips now.