Everybody thought the first time Aang had entered the terrifying Avatar State was the day he saved the lives of his wife and brother in law, way down south in the frigid waters of the Southern Water Tribe. Everybody thought that was the first time he had ever experienced the rush of power, the wisdom of all of the past Avatars before him rush through his twelve year old body. And Aang certainly gave them no reason to believe anything else, anything at all.
But there had been more than another time he had felt the totally encompassing power of his past lives take over his small body, a time he was so ashamed about he refused to talk about it to anybody. It was his dirty little secret, one that not even his wife of nearly forty-six years knew about.
At least, that was, until now.
The early morning rays of the rising sun danced across his wife's face as Aang watched her sleep peacefully, his eyes following the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. As she slept, he reached out a shaking hand to brush strands of gray hair out of her face, gently caressing her wrinkled skin. Katara shifted in her sleep, breathing in deeply with a contented smile. His own labored breathing sounded weak and shaky compared to her strong, healthy inhales and exhales.
A lot had changed since the day they had first met, that was for sure, appearances being only one thing.
As the years went on, they aged together, teasing one another about finding gray hairs, wrinkles in each other's skin, and various signs that they were growing old. Many years had passed since Katara's long, dark brown hair had faded into a light grey, and his own beard had grown thick streaks of the same color mixed with the previous dark brown. Laugh lines and crinkles from squinting into the sun lined each other's faces, and they certainly were not the youthful benders they were when they married. But Aang thought that Katara had never looked more beautiful to him than she did now.
Though she was older than him physically by almost two whole years, mentally, Aang was nearly 98 years her superior. And it was finally catching up to him. Aang was no fool, and knew that Katara's health was flourishing as his own diminished steadily. He knew that it was only a matter of time before his soul became ready to be reincarnated into the next Avatar in the cycle. He had kept it waiting far too long as it was already by getting frozen in ice for nearly a hundred years.
Next to him, his wife stirred sleepily, her deep blue eyes fluttering open to meet his, and making his heart race as much as it had when they were kids. A tender smile tugged at the corners of Aang's lips as she pulled herself up to plant a gentle kiss on them. He closed his eyes with a happy sigh as he hugged the love of his life close to his feeble chest.
"Morning sweetie," he whispered hoarsely to her, pressing a kiss to the top of her gray head, inhaling in her unique scent, trying to press it into his memory forever. Something felt very off to him for some reason today, and he tried to push the nagging feeling of his time running out very quickly to the back of his mind. He didn't want to think about that right now.
"Morning, love," Katara beamed up at her husband, running her hand up and down the familiar baldness of his head, feeling the slight ridges of his tattoo where it travelled down his head and onto the rest of his back. She probably could draw her husband's figure with her eyes closed, as she knew it so well.
"I was thinking," Aang started, clearing his throat to try to steady it. "Let's have a lazy day together." Katara's whole face lit up at the prospect, and he had to suppress a bemused chuckle at her childlike behavior.
"Sounds positively wonderful," she kissed the tip of his nose before scooting out of bed. "I'll get started on breakfast for the two of us." Aang watched her move out of the room, somehow managing to maintain the grace she had decades ago. He felt slightly envious of her obvious health as he struggled to stand, breathing shallowly as he leaned on his walking stick, which had at one time been his faithful glider before its reassignment.
It was a torturous, mildly painful limp down the hallway for him, and by the time he'd reached the kitchen table Katara had their meal ready and waiting for him. She waited patiently for him to lower himself into his chair less than gracefully, and then they both ate in a comfortable silence. When they were done, Katara cleared the table, and Aang stood and started to make his way into the living room.
That was the beginning of the end.
Aang faltered, freezing midstep, his staff falling with a thud to the wooden floor. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he could hear Katara calling his name, asking if he was alright, but he couldn't find the will to answer her. He felt a strong tug on his very soul as it tried to leave his body. It was not until he was halfway gone did he snap out of it, pulling himself back into his body with a gasp, coming back to himself with a sharp pain in his knee and his body on all fours on the floor, his wife trying to pull his unresponsive body into an upright position.
"I'm okay," he gasped, reaching out to clasp her by the shoulders from where she knelt, turning her to face him. Her terror filled eyes met his own weary ones and she seemed to relax a little bit. "I'm okay."
With her help, he managed to make it over to the couch and sit down, sighing heavily and closing his eyes for a moment. When he again opened them, his wife was staring at him in concern, and he gave her a weak smile.
"Do you know how much I love you?" he asked her absentmindedly, relishing in the way her eyes lit up as he spoke, loving the emotion her blue eyes conveyed towards him.
"Now that you mention it, I think you've mentioned it once or twice," she joked, sinking down into the couch next to him and drawing him closer to her side. Her warmth was comforting to Aang.
Suddenly, he felt it again, an invisible, yet powerful force trying to pull his very being from his body, urging him to let go and move on. It took Aang greater will this time to pull back, and when he was, his wife was looking at him with an unreadable look in her eyes.
Aang swallowed, not wanting to even talk about what he now knew was happening, lest it happen faster than it had to. His mind swung around violently for something else to talk about, and he blurted out the first thing that popped into it.
"Did I ever tell you the story of my first time in the Avatar State?" he asked her.
Katara looked at him quizzically, wondering what he was playing at. "Aang, I was there, remember?" Aang smiled wryly, shaking his head in amusement as she looked extremely puzzled.
"You all thought that was the first time, but in truth, it was the third time,"
"What?" Katara wondered, looking up at her husband. "Tell me!"
Aang laughed, lacing his fingers with her own as he began to speak. "Well, the second time was when Appa and I ended up frozen in ice, but the first time happened back when my people were still alive…"
At the Southern Air Temple, winter had finally arrived. The windy, echoing mountain ranges where the temple was situated were covered with dense layers of snow that lay in thick, white clumps on the frozen ground. Rising above the mournful calls of the wind as it swirled through the wilderness and inside of the wide, echoing halls of the monastery were gleeful cries of the Airbender children that lived there, shrill and laughter filled.
A small group of boys, the oldest somewhere around fifteen or sixteen and the youngest about ten or eleven, were playing a game of airball, balancing precariously on thin wooden spikes as they blasted balls of air at each other. Sometimes, an unlucky fellow would lose his balance and fall, but more times than not they were able to remain standing in their positions. They were having a blast… literally.
In the not so distant distance, watching from the eves of one of the halls was Aang, who gazed longingly at his old friends, wishing he could play with them as well. But, he knew he was not wanted. He hadn't been wanted for any of their old games ever since he had been told of his identity as the Avatar.
The Avatar. Aang used to associate that word with somebody older and powerful, the very essence of a world leader. But, now he was the Avatar, which just didn't make sense to him. He didn't feel old or wise or powerful…he just felt like Aang, and he wished everybody could see that.
"Aang?" He turned around to come face to face with his favorite person at the temple; Monk Gyatso. Aang thought of the man like the father he never had, the brother he wished he had, and his best friend. With Gyatso with him, the two were unstoppable. "Is something wrong?"
"No," Aang said quickly, breaking his gaze from his mentor's, guilty about lying so blatantly.
"Aang-" he cut him off before he could speak, ignoring how rude he was acting.
"I'm fine, really Gyatso, I promise." When the older monk didn't look like he believed him, Aang grasped wildly for a subject change. "Have you heard anything about when I'm supposed to start training with you again?"
A few hours ago, Aang had overheard a heated discussion between Gyatso and the other three elder monks of the temple. What he had heard had made his heart sink. Because of his close bond with Gyatso, the other monks wanted to send Aang away to a different temple, worried that his affection for the elder monk would affect his training. That was all Aang could bear to hear, and he had rushed away trying not to cry, and failing. But, Gyatso had no idea that he had overheard his private conversation, and was oblivious to the boy's discomfort.
"Actually, Aang… the other Monks and I were talking, and we have decided that you are going to go to the Western Air Temple to train there." Aang's world seemed to blur around him, Monk Gyatso's words fading as the blood pounded in his ears.
No, this couldn't be right. Monk Gyatso was supposed to fight for him to stay with him, wasn't he? Didn't he love him at all? Aang turned his face away from Gyatso, his face screwing up with the effort of not letting the tears that filled his eyes spill onto his cheeks. He took several deep breaths, trying and failing to calm himself down, but feeling an uncomfortable pressure begin to build inside of him.
"Don't you love me?" Aang choked out, his knuckles turning white as he grasped the railing tightly, blinking furiously and refusing to meet Gyatso's gaze. "Don't you want me?"
"Aang-" he cut him off.
"No, you don't, do you! You don't want me! I bet you never even did." Aang was screaming now, tears pouring down his face through his closed eyes, feeling a breeze wash over him, rustling his clothing. He felt as if he was losing control of his emotions, of his body, and it terrified him. Gasping, Aang felt his knees buckle and hit the cold, stone ground as his body slipped out of his control.
All of a sudden, a blinding light took over Aang's world, and eerie calm washing over him and wiping his young face clean of any emotion. Aang couldn't seem himself, but if he could he would have been terrified. His master tattoos, which he had only received less than a year prior, were glowing whiter than the moon, as were his eyes. As Monk Gyatso watched in horror and sadness, Aang rose above the ground, encompassed in a screaming cyclone of air.
Throughout the temple was chaos. The children were panicking, their screams of fear and running footsteps as they fled from the growing storm drowned out by the shrieking wind. The older monks were herding them inside of the buildings, trying to keep them safe, but Monk Gyatso stayed with Aang.
He stayed with him until the glowing disappeared with the cyclone of air, and was the one that caught Aang as he fell, unconscious, out of the sky. He was the one that held him close when Aang started to cry out of sheer terror and sadness, and the one to take him back to his room to sleep it off.
Gyatso didn't know that was the last time he would ever see Aang again. When he came to talk to him later that night, lightning illuminated the empty bed, with only a note on top. Feeling his heart stop, Gyatso turned to the window, where a horrible storm was brewing, knowing Aang was out in the middle of it, and there was nothing he could do to save him.
"Well, you know what happened after I ran away," Aang chuckled weakly, feeling a sort of dull numbness begin to take over his entire body. He knew that his time was almost up, but he had one more thing to ask his wife before he could let go.
"Katara?" She looked down at her husband, stroking his cheek as he gazed at her with tear filled eyes. Despite being nearly as old as she was physically, she could almost see the terrified little boy she had found in the iceberg looking up at her for guidance. "Do you think he'll forgive me?"
She knew instantly that he was talking about Gyatso. "Of course he will, Aang. He loved you, loves you so much. And nothing would ever change that, ever," Katara pressed a gentle kiss to his temple, breathing in his unique scent. "Just like I will always love you, no matter what." Her eyes watered as she pressed herself closer to her beloved.
Aang let out a shaky breath, gripping her arm with his wrinkled hand desperately. "Katara, I'm ready to see him. He's coming for me." At these words, she felt tears spill over onto her cheeks, and she let out a small sob, pressing her lips to his for a brief moment.
"Go to him, sweetie, it's okay now," she whispered, watching his eyes flutter shut. "I love you so, so much."
Aang exhaled for the last time, his words a whisper floating on the wind. "I love you too."
And then he was gone. And at that moment, in the Southern Water tribe, a woman who had been in labor for nearly 24 hours now gave birth to a healthy, screaming baby girl with piercing blue eyes and a shocking maturity about her.
The next thing he knew, he was back at the Southern Air Temple, overlooking the sprawling stretches of snow covered mountains. Everything was bathed in a sort of golden light, washing over everything and warming Aang to his core. It was just like he remembered it was supposed to be, not in the state of ruin it was in when he visited it with Katara and her late brother, Sokka.
Before he could dwell too much on that fact, a growling from behind him made him spin around, and what he saw made tears come to his eyes. "Appa!" he sobbed, flinging himself at his bison, who had been dead for nearly twenty years. "I missed you so much, buddy." Appa grunted, closing his eyes in bliss, happy to be reunited with his long-time companion. He could have stayed there forever, if it wasn't for the cheers and applause that suddenly surrounded him.
He spun around, his jaw nearly dropping to the floor. Standing in front of him were all of his people, all young and in his prime. And, standing in front of them all like a beacon of hope was him… Gyatso.
Aang was running at him before he was even conscious of making the decision to leap forward. He crashed into his mentor, knocking him over with the force of his hug. Around them, the Airbenders laughed merrily, cheering for their long lost hero as he reunited with his family.
"Gyatso…I'm so sorry," Aang finally said, climbing to his feet and pulling the monk up to his own. In response, Gyatso pulled Aang in for another, more gentle hug, and whispered in his ear.
"It changed nothing, Aang. I have loved you from the moment I met you as a tiny little scrap of a baby. And I will never stop. We are so proud of you, Aang."
"But…I abandoned you all. It's my fault that you all died-"
"Stop it, Aang," Jinju spoke up from the back, no longer a dirty little kid but a distinguished young man with his tattoos standing proudly on his body. "It's all in the past."
For the first time since he had woken up in Katara's arms in the South Pole, Aang finally felt completely and totally free, surrounded by his people who he had loved so much and hadn't had a chance to say goodbye to. No more guilt. No more anger. Just love.
All in all, it was a good forty years wait before his beloved wife finally made her way here to join him again, riddled with dozens of stories about his family and friends to tell him. And finally, Aang had all that he had ever wanted in one place, together, forever.