Nothing is on his mind, Katara. He wants to forget…
I don't own ATLA.
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Eight years ago, flashback
She had thought that it was over. The war, the suffering, the pain that they had to endure for the past couple of months. All of them had thought that peace would come after Aang had defeated Ozai.
They were wrong.
Rebellions had raged through the world, never ceasing. Battles between nations had still been erupting everywhere. The hard part had just begun.
What she had expected then was to follow Aang and restore peace. What she hadn't expected, however, was a fine morning. And a note. Nothing but a note, a missing boy, and his bison.
End flashback
Katara stared into the stars of heaven. Eight years. It had seemed like a hundred years considering how long she had missed Aang. Every sun shining day, every dark, deep night, she had thought of when she was going to see his best friend again. Messengers come every week to the South Pole, and on Katara's request, gives a weekly update on where the busy Avatar is.
She scanned through her out-to-date map that Aang had given her a long time ago. Every week she would get different locations of the Avatar's whereabouts, and he had been on the move for a long time. Omashu, ten times. The northern air temple, once. Ba Sing Se, once. The remainders of Avatar Roku's island, twice. The fire nation itself, more than fifty times. He had also been around small earth kingdom villages, the northern water tribe, and the eastern air temple. According to her knowledge and her map, Katara assumed that he had literally been everywhere.
But what piqued her curiosity was the fact that Aang had not went to the following places after eight years: the southern air temple, the Southern Water Tribe, and the cave of two lovers. Katara had thought there would be no purpose to stay there anyways, but all his routes, had circled around the cave. It would take a long time to circle around the cave, why didn't he go straight through it? That must have delayed a lot of his duties for a long time.
So, to this day, only three questions had been on her mind: When is she going to see Aang again, why he didn't go to the cave of two lovers, the Southern Air Temple, and the Southern Water Tribe. The third question was why he had circled around the cave for eight years.
Eight lonely years.