This story is originally posted up on my tumblr~ which I think is documented on my profile... and if you just to laze (like me) to go do all that, its just 0bsiavatarded (second blog) so go do that if its what you're into.
Disclaimer disclaiming all rights to Avatar The Last Airbender or The Legend of Korra.
" She said she… wants to see her children."
Korra had never seen them actually look like children until this moment. Tenzin and Bumi looked up from the wooden floors of the hut as Kya released the hold she'd kept around her shoulders to smother the gasp, but the room was so quiet it seemed like the loudest thing in the room.
Ikki laid a hand on her father's hunched shoulder, "Daddy-"
Before she could say anything more, he reached up and squeezed her hand.
"Could you… Take everyone outside dear?"
Ikki bit her lip softly and nodded.
Seeing Korra help lift the elderly Pema, Ikki hugged her infant daughter closer to her chest and walked outside behind Meelo and Jinora. The little baby whimpering quietly as the play things bought or made personally with Gran Grans love vanished from sight.
Katara opened her eyes and smiled when Bumi held her door open to let his siblings in; always her polite big boy.
They filed in and kept their eyes to the ground, each cough that interrupted her open-mouthed breath was like being scolded.
How dare they fall asleep each night assuming mom would just be there in the morning. How dare they visit so little. How dare they—
Katara's laugh was still as lively as when they were little, "You three really do take after your father. That's the exact look he'd give me when he thought I was going to lecture him."
"Mother…" Tenzin placed his hand on her blanket.
Katara slowly moved her aching bones into a sitting position, making appreciative noises when her children all moved from their frozen states to help.
In the end she could only manage breathing a little better with her head slightly elevated on the pillows, but at least now she could see them better.
Katara swallowed, the saliva burning her sore throat, "Kya, Bumi, Tenzin… Look at me."
Never had they complied with their mother so fast.
All kneeling at her bedside, they didn't want to forget anything about her face, memorizing each smile line and wanting to remember each laugh that put one on her cheek.
"I love you." Katara smiled, "Each of you was a precious gift, and you filled my life with so much. You made me the happiest mother, just as your father made me the happiest wife."
Kya placed a hand on her cheek.
"You three are my greatest achievement."
Bumi balled his fists into her sheets.
"In my darkest moments as a young lady, and my silliest as this old woman I would think of you three… it was as if I had made the spirits themselves had blessed me."
Tenzin moved his hand to rest on her own, squeezing softly.
"You all are the reason I lived so long."
The tears were now falling freely from their eyes, yet Katara still smiled warmly. She had been crying for so long, she didn't want her children seeing anything but their mother's smile tonight.
"Mom, please." Bumi looked up, "Please don't go. Not yet."
"Dad waited this long," Kya mumbled, her voice captured inside the threading of her mother's gown, her shoulder wet but comfy. Kya remembered this shoulder well, she would remember it forever, "can't he wait a little longer?"
Katara nuzzled Kya's hair with her cheek, a heavy sigh escaping her lips with breathing became difficult again.
" I wanted to be with all of you forever." Katara stared blindly at the ceiling, her vision blurring, "Kids, do me a favor. You remember when we would get messages that your father would be coming home in the morning and we would all… all crowd into the bed to wait for him?"
Katara slowly scooted down to the middle of the bed. The first bed she and Aang had ever been in together, the only bed her children had all crowded together in; it had become so lonely over the years, filled only by Katara and her memories.
They all moved into the bed, positioning just as they would when they were younger; all wanting to be closer to Mommy and Daddy; Kya rested on her side and pushed her cheek back against Mommy's shoulder. Bumi laid on his back, fingers laced on his stomach, that way when Dad got home, his sides would be warmed by both parents body heat. Tenzin slipped between Bumi's and Mother's side, his arm swung across her hips and fingers curled into Kya's palm.
"We love you. So much." Tenzin whispered
Katara sighed comfortably, reaching her lips over to each of their foreheads, a tiny kiss from Mommy to give them the sweetest dreams, and only when they all closed their tired, weeping eyes and settled peacefully did she allow herself to do the same.
Katara didn't leave them until the sun peaked over the early morning ice.
—-
"Aang? … Aang are you paying attention?"
"Huh?"
Yangchen smiled, "I'll take that as a 'No' then."
The sky seemed to ripple again, and Yangchen concentrated on that certain long forgotten feeling, where her life seemed to start up just enough to flutter her heart and rush blood to her cheeks.
Aang stood up; as they had been finishing up their ritual meditations among an edge of the Spirit World, where the sky was constantly painted with bison or lemurs, " Looks like another spirit has passed on. Want to come greet them with me?"
His female companion raised her eyebrow and said what she always did, "Perhaps next time, young Airbender."
Aang grinned and made his way down the misty hilltop, following the strange excitement compelling him to show the newest human spirit somewhere nice to spend his or her days.
Yangchen interrupted his feet before they got any farther, "Oh but Aang, do be sure to bring the new spirit come next meditation."
"Really?" Aang was pleasantly surprised, as it was usually only them two or a few other air nomad spirits who meditated on this plateau, mostly because it was a place Yangchen had chosen as her spiritual rest when she had been Avatar.
The sky rippled again.
"Hurry now, their probably nervous."
Aang bowed and turned, pace quickening down the grassy path until swirls of fog completely covered him.
A little pink spirit rested in Yangchen's lap as she hummed and touched her cheek.
"Haven't felt that since Avatar Kozu's wife passed away."
—-
With each minuscule step she took, Katara became a little less nervous. The landscape stopped shifting, the darkness cleared away, her body became lighter than she'd ever felt it and suddenly there was nothing before her except a clear plain.
Except… She bit her lip again.
It was so quiet; the grass moved but there was no sound, and the only color was gray.
"Mmf…" At least she could hear the tiny noise of distress that escaped her throat.
There was also a strange tightening she couldn't explain. Looking down, Katara gasped at the skin of her aged fingers clenched tightly atop her skirt.
The loose skin was shifting and seemed to plump her hand back up. She furrowed her eyebrows and touched her face, yelping as her cheeks lost a few lines, and she pulled her hair loop just in time to see the frost fade away into its dark brown shade.
"Aa…Aang…" she gulped.
Katara looked left, "Aang…"
Then right, "Aang!"
"…Katara?"
She whipped her body around into a stance and expected the water to simply whip around as usual.
"…Katara, is it really—"
No water came to her aid, not even to her eyes. She hadn't seen that face in anything but stone and pictures and memories for some twenty years and she must've looked so haggard and crazed…
"Aang."
But she didn't care. Katara loosened her stance. She smiled so wide she was sure the wrinkles she'd lost were back and suddenly they were running towards one another.
Aang swept her up in his arms and there was color and the sound of material bunching together but the only ones that mattered were orange and yellow and blue. She squeezed her arms around his neck with the same strength she had when she was in her thirties and he'd come home early with no other reason than missing his pregnant wife.
"You always did make me feel like I was young again when we were together."
Katara mumbled right into his ear.
It sounded so beautiful he squeezed her tighter. So long without her was too long, and they had forever now, they could do what they always joked about in quiet moments alone, like spend the day just holding each other.
"What took you so long?" He mumbled right back.
Katara chuckled, "Sweetie, you should've seen the line."
Hope you enjoyed~
S.d Outty~