Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to Avatar: the Last Airbender. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.

Her Healing Embrace

She found Aang in a distant corner of the practice yard, where the shadows of the two nearest walls converged, thickening as the sun proceeded toward the horizon. Legs crossed and back flat against the ground, he rested there with his eyes closed to the world and his hands folded neatly over his bare chest.

He smiled before she reached him. "Katara," he said without opening his eyes. He wriggled his toes at her. He was very sweaty, she noted, with dirt caked into the sweat, and small wonder, lying as he was in the dirt, sweat drying out, chest working like a slowing bellows.

Katara crouched down in the dirt beside him. Low on his chest, a red stripe which followed the curve of his ribs: there would be a nasty bruise there later, a dark one that would ache whenever he stretched, hands knotted and arms over his head, chest pulling out as the muscles went tight. Lightly she touched her fingertips to the coming bruise.

"Did the big, bad Avatar take a pounding?"

Aang laughed, then broke off laughing to groan, the sound of it rising from low in his gut. He flattened his hands across his ribs as if to hold them down. "The big, bad Avatar got his butt whupped," he said.

"Poor baby," Katara said, lavishing him with doe eyes. "Sifu Toph is so mean to you."

"She promised me a beating after last time," he confessed. "I just didn't realize she meant a beating."

"We've known Toph for how long?"

"Yeah," said Aang. "That was kind of dumb."

"Well," Katara said, smiling down at him, "so long as you can admit it."

Aang smiled up at her, that same sweet, quiet smile he had first shown her years before, as they drifted through the arctic sea on the back of a sky bison (of all things): Katara and the strange boy she found within and freed from the ice, and Sokka snoring at her back.

Very gently she cupped his forehead, stroking her fingers across his brow. Aang closed his eyes and turned his head into her touch. His breath tickled her wrist, hot and a little damp. His fingers fluttered against his chest.

There was a certain deliberate stiffness to the way he held his back, flat there in the dirt. A telling rigidity in the folding of his legs.

Katara slapped his side and said, "Up!" as Aang hissed his way through a feeling, "Monkey feathers!"

She wriggled her fingers at him. "Magic fingers," she said. "I heal all wounds."

Aang sat upright, but not without groaning and flashing puppy eyes, all gooey and wet. Katara was immune; her heart was cold, colder even than the ice of the South Pole.

"This might hurt a little at first," she said as she seated herself neatly in the dust behind him. "But I'm sure you can take it, a big, strong Avatar like you."

"That's me," said Aang. "Tough guy."

Katara dug her thumbs into his lower back and Aang sucked in a breath, hard and sharp.

She worked at the muscles there for a moment or two, and knew she'd done well when the breath and the fight went out of him. Aang's head fell forward; his shoulders went down, the blades sliding out like wings from his spine, which curved beneath her hands. She worked her way up his back, fingers picking nimbly at the muscles, writing out the tension with her palms and a bit of water to ease the way.

Katara touched the scar at the midpoint of his back, just off-center of his spine. Pink now more than red, as the scar tissue aged. She wondered if it would go white along the edges. She wondered if it would always pain him.

His back flexed beneath her hands, his shoulders rising and falling back down again, the lean muscles rippling beneath his skin. Katara flattened her hands across his shoulder blades. His skin was warm and sticky with sweat, now drying.

Aang took in a breath, then let it go.

"How do you feel?" she said, lining her thumbs up with his spine. His shoulders were broader now, the line of his throat more defined. She pressed close to him, leaning in to whisper theatrically into his ear: "Is the magic working?"

His laugh echoed through her fingers; it shivered through her chest. Aang craned his neck to peek over his shoulder at her: bright grey eyes lined with stubby eyelashes, the skin at the corners folded just so. He smiled.

"Your touch heals all wounds," he told her.

Katara buried her face in his shoulder.

"What?" Aang said. "What? Did I say something wrong?"

His skin shivered beneath her cheek as he turned, his hand rising up to touch her shoulder. His fingers were lean, but strong, and the sweep of his thumb over her skin made her shiver, too.

"Sweet-talker," she said.

Katara slid her hand down the length of his back, over spine and scar and heated skin. Aang sucked in another breath, his skin trembling at her touch.

Late afternoon had fallen onto the practice yard. Without the walls, the sun sank ever lower; within, the shadows yawned ever darker. In the corner where the shadows were deepest and the air coolest, Katara brushed her lips first across Aang's shoulder, then the line of his jaw, then the puckered corner of his mouth, which opened beneath her kiss.

Aang turned to her, long legs unfolding as he rose to meet her. He ran his hand up her arm and over the curve of her shoulder, sweeping up the soft and bending curve to cup her nape. He tasted of salt and faintly of earth.

"Oh, wow," Aang said. "This is definitely working."

Katara laughed into his mouth. She wound her arms around him, her fingers knotting together at his back, and drew him down into her embrace.

"Let's take a look at that rib," she said.

This story was originally posted at livejournal on 08/24/2009 for the 08/20/2009 prompt for Kataang Week (Summer 2009 Edition), "skin."

I have no idea why I forgot to crosspost this to FFN. Because I was embarrassed? Probably because I'm a doofus. That would make the most sense.