a/n: I'm actually going to write a small series. :D Yay!
This will be a collection of oneshots centered around different characters and different things they wish they had said, but didn't.
First up, Katara.

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F I V E T H I N G S

i s h o u l d h a v e s a i d

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For the first time in my life, the world was made of ice. It was frozen and harsh and bitter and everything the South Pole was to others, but not to me.

Until now.

A lot of the snow had been melted away by rage and hatred that knew nothing of reason, of peace, but the air was cold. The frigid wind stung my eyes as I stared blankly at the arm resting lazily in the entryway to our home. It was limp and familiar, with a hand I'd held countless times.

But it was different, somehow.

It was much paler than I remembered, with dark splatters of a color I hadn't known until it poked its fingers into everything and ripped it all apart.

I vaguely recall Gran Gran pulling me into the back of the hut, the lines on her face deepening as fear dripped from her eyes. I was young, and did not understand. I knew that I was frightened, and I knew that outside, people were dying. But I could not comprehend why mother wasn't back yet, why I was suddenly unable to cry, or why the arm in the doorway wasn't enveloping me in a hug.

Frost had edged its way into the corners of my eyes, blurring my vision and making my head ache. It was cold. So, so cold. Why was it so cold, if there was so much fire?

Gran Gran started to hum the same tune mother would lull us to sleep with every night. (Sokka would whine, saying that it wasn't right for a warrior to listen to lullabies, but I would look over and see him fall backwards into a dream.) The night before, mother and father had been talking to the other grown-ups after dinner, and I had taken advantage of their conversation to stay up late playing soldier with Sokka and Kaila, a friend from infancy. Just as Kaila and I were about to ambush Sokka and his troop of penguins, mother's angry voice had lifted me up and put me to bed.

It was then that I threw my first tantrum.

("No, little Katara? Sweet Katara? Good Katara?")

Little Katara clumsily threw a ball of snow at her mother's hip.

Sweet Katara tossed angry, seven-year-old insults at her mother's face.

Good Katara shouted an arrow stringed with words at her mother's heart:

"I hate you!"

Rip.

"I wish you were dead!"

Tear.

"I never want to see you again!"

Burn.

The memory startled me. Why wasn't mommy back yet?

I tore myself from the iron grip my grandmother had me in, and quickly clamored over to the arm that shouldn't have been so familiar, but was. I ignored the frantic calls and trembling voices that had once been strong. All I could see was the discarded arm, and the person who was attached to it.

"Mom?"

She didn't move.

"Mommy?"

Why wasn't she moving?

"Mommy!"

She was gone, gone, gone, and it was still cold, cold, cold. I stood there, shivering in my parka, frozen to the floor. She wasn't smiling, she wasn't singing, she wasn't even here. That wasn't my mother. My mother was happy and lively and warm like the sun that we could never quite reach, even if we stood on our tippy-toes. This shell of a woman was icy and ashen and dead.

So where was she, then?

Where was my mother?

I had something to tell her, something important that she was too busy for during breakfast. I needed to tell her! She needed to know!

"I need to tell you sorry, mom." Tiny series of noises marched out of my throat and around the body in front of me in a disorganized mess of letters that tripped and stumbled as they progressed. "'Cause I am."

The savages outside set my whole life aflame.

"I'm sorry."