Here's The Maang One. Three Chapters for this one. I will do an Epilogue also. Enjoy!!
"Katara? Katara, where are you? Are you ok?" Aang shouted as he noticed the double doors and made his way onto the natural garden. She was using her water whip to enlarge the trickle of water sliding down the wall.
Resigned he followed the path of energy that led to her. She was preoccupied with the wall fountains. Her concentration focused on the tiny stream that was struggling through it's cracked surface. Steeling himself he cleared his throat loudly. Her whip went wild and he ducked to avoid being injured.
"Oh Aang, I'm so sorry. You startled me."
"Same here. What are you doing?" His eyes racked her form for scratches or injuries of any kind. Satisfied she was alright he took up a similar stance and bended in rhythm with her. "Why are we doing this?"
She stopped long enough to bestow a smile on him. "Typical Aang helping with out asking why. You're too nice for you own good," she said sweetly. The comment popped out of her mouth before she really had a chance to think of the wisdom of flirting with him at this tenuous stage.
She flushed red which looked very becoming on her cinnamon skin.
"Yeah, you know me." He replied awkwardly. He was apprehensive. By his very nature he hated confrontations. He avoided them unless he had no other resort. He was actually a little mad at Mai for forcing him into this position. Didn't she see that he had made his choice. He wanted her and no talk was going to change that. 'At least I don't think it will.'
"I wanted to talk to you." He feared opening up to Katara. She still had the power to hurt him whether he wanted to admit it or not.
The seriousness of those words faded their carefree moment and she stopped bending altogether. "What about? I thought we finished…um talking."
Feeling more awkward than he ever felt since he'd been twelve, he focused his sight to her left. In reality he had no clue how to talk to her anymore. Using the pretense of making a base for the fountain he looked away. "Katara, I wanted to apologize for last night," he regained his composure a bit once her cerulean eyes were hidden from his view.
"Aang, it would be easier to talk to you if you looked at me," she reprimanded gently.
His breath caught in his throat. Her earnest face was turned at an alarmingly close angle. Aang had forgotten how beautiful Katara was. "What was that about last night?" she asked.
It was now or never. If he wanted to put this whole ugly business behind them he would have to stop being squeamish. "Last night I didn't really listen to you. I heard you but I don't take anything you said into account."
The crushed look on her face nearly made him run out in a panic. Mai was wrong this had bad idea written all over it.
"Oh? So you didn't listen to anything I said."
'How was it possible for her to make me feel guiltier than I already do?'
"Yes. No... I mean. Let me start over." Letting go of the breath he had unknowingly been holding, he exhaled, "I heard everything you said but I just wasn't too interested in listening."
She was torn between confusion and hurt and told him so, "I see."
Her answer disturbed something in him. "I didn't do it on purpose. I just wasn't prepared for everything you were saying so I pushed it aside," he said defensively.
"So you were just being you and avoiding it."
Her victimized tone was beginning to grate on his nerves. It was odd because Mai had said the exact same thing earlier but hers had been a gentle nudge. While Katara's felt like a shove. "I'm sorry that bothers you but that's why I'm here now to really hear you out." He knew he said the wrong thing the moment the words escaped his mouth.
"You're gonna hear me out? How generous of you to take time and come here to talk to me. I feel so honored." She remarked acidly.
"That's not what I meant. Don't twist my words." A coil of heat was rapidly unraveling within him.
"Don't do me any favors if there's something you feel we need to talk about spit it out." Katara replied.
The heat continued unfurling like a volcano waking from a long slumber. This was why he hated confrontations they only led to negative feelings. He knew he was on slippery footing, this could go one of two ways. 'Nice and neat or mean and sloppy.'
Katara's heart dropped into her stomach waiting for whatever bomb he was going to drop on her.
"Mai and I were talking and…" Katara just stood there waiting.
"She said some things that I hadn't really thought of. She made me see that I never really listened to you. I heard everything you said but I was so wrapped up in what was done to me I didn't bother to think about what you might have been going through alone at the Fire Nation," the white knuckled grip on his staff showing how difficult it was for him to have told her that.
"Aang, you don't have to do this…"
"Please Katara. Let me get this out. I need to get this out." He turned away from her, his tattoos flaring then returning to normal, "I was hurt that you were unfaithful but that wasn't what broke me. It was the fact that you didn't trust me. That you felt you had to protect me like if I was still twelve."
"I didn't realize---I never thought of you that way. How could I after what we've been through?" She knew she mothered him and he had always been a good sport about it. She had no idea it had bothered him so much but then this had never been brought up before. "But I did have to protect you, you have no idea what they were planning, and Zuko and I---"
He was spoiling for a fight as evidenced by the severe expression settling on his features, "you're not my mother!" he shouted angrily. "Stop treating me like I'm your kid. Why didn't you do that to Zuko, huh?"
"Because he didn't act like one." She shouted back and clasped her hands over her mouth horrified she had risen to his bait and let her temper fly. "Aang, I didn't mean that."
His gaze was cold and cynical, it was the look he'd given her at the palace when she had touched his arm to restrain him. "Then why did you say it? Deep down that's how you see me, like some pesky little brother. How could you stand to let me touch you?"
She blushed crimson as all the times his hands had explored her flashed through her mind. "Aang, I gave myself only to you, how could you think that?" She asked stricken.
He advanced on her his staff falling by the wayside. "I was good enough when we were alone but I wasn't man enough apparently whenever we were in public, you were always trying to shield me. You were always acting and speaking for me. I didn't mind at first since I was so young but it never changed."
"I didn't realize you felt like that. Why didn't you tell me?" She asked.
"I don't know why. The war had been looming over us for so long …" he was so tired of going round and round. Mai had been wrong in this aspect. There really was nothing left to talk to with Katara.
"Aang everything I ever did was for you."
"Don't patronize me. Everything? That's why you kept stonewalling me? Why you always ran from any serious conversation. Don't you remember Ember Island? Whenever you felt cornered or I demanded any kind of definitive answer you took off." He accused shattering chunks of wall and releasing mini rivers all around them.
"Ember Island was a horrible time for me. Or do you not recall the reenactment of watching you be fried a second time, of watching you fall to Ozai and praying to every spirit that it wasn't your future being foretold. I had to distance myself. I would have died alongside you if I hadn't." She threw it in his face and for a moment he resembled the old Aang. The one that laughed and was still a bit of a goofball.
His features instantly shuttered and it seemed as if what she had seen was an illusion. "You're right, it's what I do. I believe in forgiving others and giving them a choice to redeem themselves. And you know what, it takes more courage to be willing to let it blow up in your face than yelling at someone until you're drained. To pray that all the anger you've been holding in has finally gone away."
"There's so much I should have told you. So much that I messed up that I wish I could take back. I wish you had never discovered what it felt to love someone other than me."
She turned away from him and he fought the compulsion to pull her into his arms. That was not his job anymore and truthfully it hurt to think that whenever she cried again it would be because of him. That was not the memory he had wanted to leave.
"I loved you with everything I had. I built my world around you and after your little escapade with Zuko I was willing to let it go and move on but then I found out you thought you were in love."
Katara had never felt that much disappointment radiating off one person. "But I wasn't. I made a really big mistake and now I know that I've only loved you," she implored him but whatever leverage she had thought she had was evaporating.
He scoffed and nailed her with that dark gaze, "It's been a year no more than a year. You're telling me that after all this nonsense you're still in love with me and I'm supposed to do what with it?"
"You're not obligated to do anything. I don't want to burden you. Its just something I needed to tell you. Don't you think it hurts me to see you so in love with Mai." Katara burst out.
Aang's eyes widened and the stormy color was never more evident that now, "don't bring her into this. She had nothing to do with us."
Katara laughed but it was high and entirely without amusement, "she has everything to do with us. Why can't you really tell me how you feel? Why was she able to make you stay here in the temples but I wasn't? Why does she have robes that were meant for me and are used as an engagement present?"
"Because at some point in between all the bad something good came out. I found out how easy it was too fall in love again. She never pushed me Katara. She never made do anything I didn't want to. She let me do things when I was ready. If I want to talk about something she didn't pester me the way you did. That's why." He shouted as three of the fountains exploded and they were showered in stone.
"If I hadn't pushed you we would still be all over the world barely able to master water bending. The whole world would have burned if I hadn't pushed you," she declared hands firmly on her hips.
"Do you honestly believe that I haven't known what my destiny and that job entailed. I've known years before I was supposed to know. I needed to be a kid if only to keep my sanity. I won't lie I'm glad you pushed me because it focused your attention on me. I loved it and flourished in it but now it burns and stings."
He blindly stared out past her, his eyes burning with unshed tears. "All along you knew and you used me as your personal security blanket. When I needed you most you weren't there for me."
"Aang, I tried but I couldn't let you place me over what you needed to do." Katara hugged herself but the cold seeped into her bones. He had been her source of fire for so long and now he was withdrawing it and she couldn't blame him.
"The night I went missing, did you look for me? Ignoring the pain you caused me and whatever I may have caused you by refusing to see your concerns was easy. It was nearly impossible to just forgive you. It would have been only too easy to let you run back to me with no questions asked. I wasn't lying when I said that doing nothing was easy. "
She nodded unable to say anything past the lump in her throat.
"I woke up alone with only Momo for company and when I returned from defeating Ozai I was greeted not by you but by your brother. You still haven't realized why I can't be with you have you?"
"Then tell me." Katara begged envisioning fixing him like she had before.
The tears had ceased flowing and only their trails were left on his smooth face. "You had a choice and even back then you chose Zuko. I will always wonder in the back of my mind whether you are telling me the whole truth or if you're holding something back. If someday you'll wonder if you made the right decision."
He dug his hands through his hair in exasperation.
"We kissed at Ba Sing Se and I will remember that kiss for the rest of my life. I had thought all along that we would be together. I thought you had accepted what my duties were. I can't be with you at all times and I think that's what you need. I can't give you that and a year ago I would have wanted to try but that time is now past."
He froze the water spilling around him and gently patched the holes he had made earlier. "Some part of me will always love you because it is ingrained in me as deeply as my own heartbeat but that bond was severed and it cannot grow back."
Katara wondered if he could see the heart he had ripped out of her. "I would have learned to live as your wife. Yours not the avatar's, we've grown up apart but those are the consequences of my foolishness. Mai warned me that I needed to trust my heart and not my head," she smiled but it was flat. "She was right."
"Katara, I'm sorry it had to end this way. I cannot go back to how we were and somehow I don't think you will ever forgive yourself." They looked at each other both saying unspoken goodbyes. "I've made my life here with Mai and I wish to be with her for whatever there is left of it. I can only hope she wishes the same. "
"She does Aang, how could she not." Katara uttered embracing him one last time as her lover, "I'll always love you Aang and I wish you happy."
"Thank you, I wish you the very best too."
He left her in the ruined garden and she cried until she was empty and could cry no more. "Sadly that was you, Aang."