So this is a re-do of an Avatar fanfiction I wrote many years ago and deleted out of embarrassment. The shame is gone and my crazed fandom attitude is back, so I hope y'all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Also, I own none of the characters.
oOo
"Oh, no you don't!" Letting a laugh roll form my throat, I swung my fist outwards and watched the ball of sparkling water fly. It narrowly missed its target-Aang-and soared straight towards Sokka, who was sunbathing on the other side of a small tree nearby.
The waterball hit him square in the ponytail, knocking him off the rock he was laying on.
Sputtering, Sokka sat up and wrung his hair out. "What on Earth are you two d-"
Another ball of water hit him, right in the face, and he floundered around in the mud while Aang and I laughed.
"Sorry!" I said, not sounding very sorry. We'd been playing waterball; it involved running around and waterbending, trying to flatten one another with balls of water bent from the river nearby. It was a lot of fun, but apparently only for the waterbenders around here.
"Can't a man ever sunbathe in peace?" Still huffing and fidgeting with his hair, Sokka stood from his sunning spot and flopped down a ways away. "All of your waterbending is depriving me of my beauty rest."
"You're such a girl," sighed Toph, stretching out on her own sunning rock and closing her eyes.
The sun baked our campsite.
It was a little over three years since Sozin's Comet came; Aang had just turned sixteen and was in the middle of a huge growth spurt. He'd grown several inches, so he was finally taller than I was (if only by an inch). I was well into my seventeenth year, Toph still in her fifteenth and Sokka in his nineteenth.
There wasn't a single moment I'd ever take back, even though all of us went our separate ways after the war ended.
Toph went back to Gaoling, her hometown, to make amends with her parents. She didn't stay (due to them being crazy and trying to smother her freedom again) and went on to teach metalbending lessons at an earthbending school in a neighboring town. In my personal opinion, it didn't help her big ego, but she wasn't ever less of our friend.
Since the men of our tribe had returned, Sokka went to live in Kyoshi to be nearer to Suki-and they were already talking about an engagement. I thought it was sweet, but not having my big brother around to constantly be stupid and make bad jokes was really odd.
As for me and Aang? After spending a good amount of time running back and forth from the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom on official Avatar business, we went back to the Southern Water Tribe. I missed home and Aang wanted to stay with me (that, and he didn't have anywhere else to call home). Though I loved being back with my home tribe, it was difficult adjusting.
I was so used to being so free, waking up early and jumping on Appa and riding to another part of the world. Sometimes there wasn't a destination in mind. Sometimes there was. It didn't matter, as long as we were moving, and that was the hardest part of finally going back home.
We couldn't settle down.
We'd stay there for a few weeks, but every so often I'd find myself wandering to Appa's stable and Aang would be there, too, and we'd just leave. We'd go somewhere new and spend a few days there, and then go somewhere else. We'd visit Toph for a while, then Sokka, and then stay for a bit in the Fire Nation with Firelord Zuko and Mai.
Eventually, we'd always return to the Southern Tribe. Aang knew it was my home and he just went wherever I went. It was brave of him, especially since I knew he found it hard settling there. It was cold in the South Pole so we were used to wearing many layers of fur, but-especially in the wintertime-it looked near impossible to airbend well when you're waddling around in fifteen layers of fur.
At any rate, late in the summer that year, Aang and I both agreed that we needed a break—a long one. We hopped on Appa and took off, wanting to round everyone from our old group up. Zuko couldn't go, of course, since he was the new Firelord. Sokka managed to tear himself away from Suki, though, and Toph was happy to come with us. We went on a little vacation.
So there we were, up in the mountains in the far eastern reaches of the Earth Kingdom, spending time together, the four of us, just like the good old days.
"Come on, Sokka." Aang leapt up and appeared in the tree above Sokka's new napping spot, hanging from a branch by his legs. "Just because you're afraid of getting wet doesn't mean you have to ruin our fun."
"I'm not ruining anything. I'm just saying-AUHHK!" Sokka sputtered as I splashed him again. "Katara," he whined, trying to wipe water his clothes as Aang dropped down next to him. "That was my favorite shirt."
Appa let out an amused grunt and ran his sticky tongue over Sokka, just getting the shirt grosser.
"Oh fine, crybaby." Only pausing to smirk in his direction, I went over and took Aang's hand. "Come on; Mr. Prim and Proper is afraid of getting wet."
"Okay!" Aang immediately jumped excitedly and started dragging me away towards the trees. "There's a waterfall nearby we can play in! I'll take you."
I smiled. Even though he was older than he was when we first met, he was never less excitable and carefree.
We'd been together ever since the war ended. It felt like having a pressure that I didn't know was there relieved from my chest: stress, responsibility, fear, surviving. Having someone there for me that I could actually talk to and be with like that was more than I could ever ask for. I'm sure he felt that way, too. Well, not only was he an amazing friend, he was the sweetest boyfriend a girl could ask for.
We picked our way through the forest, holding hands and careful not to step on the bright purple creeper berries growing in the moss. It was a beautiful day out; the sun shone bright, the air was warm, and birds fluttered up ahead, not worrying about rapidly approaching autumn. The sound of rushing water melted in with the noise of the forest, and it all brought on terrible nostalgia for the times when we lived that way.
I knew I shouldn't miss those days. The war was a terrible thing to go through, especially when you were directly responsible to have it won, but still. I missed it.
"I see it!" Aang's voice interrupted my wandering thoughts and he tugged my hand. "Come on."
He practically skipped through the trees and suddenly, we were standing on the edge of a small cliff. A river ran like liquid silver next to us and fell off the cliff in a rainbow of mist down into the pond below. The plants seemed greener than I'd ever seen them, the water bluer than blue and everything was just so-
"CANNONBALL!" Aang stripped down to his trunks and barreled over the edge before I even knew what he was doing. When he hit, the splash was almost as high as the cliff.
I could beat that.
Shrugging my robe off and tucking in the top I used for swimming, I took a few steps backwards and launched myself into the open air.
My body was weightless for a second before it hit the water, and with the help of a little sneaky bending, my splash was twenty feet higher than Aang's.
"You cheated," he insisted, grinning, and floated up onto his back, hands behind his head. Momo flew down from the top of the small bluff and sat on Aang's stomach, chittering happily and cleaning his ears.
Although it took a few moments to let fuzzy joy bring my senses back, when I took a little extra time to look around, something caught my eye.
"Hey, Aang," I called, eyes fixated outwards. When I got his attention, I pointed. "Do you see that?"
Following my finger, Aang's eyes slid over the horizon and back up, settling on a column of smoke curling up from the base of a nearby mountain. There was nothing overly menacing about it, but having grown up in the war with the Fire Nation, my brain always raced to the worst conclusions.
"I see it." Aang shielded his eyes from the sun, squinting out at the smoke. After a second, he took his hand away and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "It's probably just a campfire. Nomads come this far east sometimes; Chameleon Bay is only ten or twenty miles from here. Maybe we should go down there tomorrow and say hi."
Not bothering to stifle my laughter, I reached out to put my arms around his shoulders. "That's incredibly sweet of you to think about them, but if they made the effort to come all this way into the wilderness, they would probably appreciate if we just let them be."
Aang took the opportunity of my embrace to tuck his own arms around me and bury his face in my dripping hair. Even though I couldn't see his face, I could feel his smile against my neck.
My concern over the campfire smoke melted away. Aang was special like that; he sensed whenever I was upset or concerned—even about the smallest thing—and managed to make it feel alright again. Maybe it was just him, or maybe it was one of the perks of being so close to someone like that, but either way, it made me love him even more.
We splashed around in the waterfall for a while like that, sometimes practicing waterbending, sometimes floating on our backs with our arms linked, sometimes just goofing around and playing as though we weren't almost adults.
When the sun was on its way back to the horizon, Aang and I finally dragged ourselves out of the water and tugged the rest of our clothes back on. Both of us were laughing when we stumbled back into camp, forgetting to even dry ourselves off.
"Well, look what the deer-cat dragged in," Sokka said, shoving his hand into a bowl of mystery snacks and stuffing some into his mouth. "You guys look like drowned rats."
With a flex of my wrist, the water flew off and my hair fluffed out with static. "You're one to talk, Sokka; it looks like a whole tree shook its leaves and branches out into your hair."
A few feet away, Toph giggled a little and propped her feet up on a rock warmed by the fire they'd built.
"Stop laughing at me!" Sokka snapped, frantically swiping at the debris in his hair.
"What?" The earthbender's voice was too innocent. "I can't even see what you're talking about."
Something about it, though, made me think she had something to do with it, but no one really paid any more attention to Sokka and his attempts to primp himself.
Aang and I went over to the others and sat in front of the fire, ankles crossed and our shoulders brushing together. Every time we showed any sort of affection towards each other, Sokka would pretend to be violently sick and try to complain to Toph, who had no idea what was going on. She just picked her nose innocently as Sokka flailed around.
Both of them were easy to ignore as I leaned into Aang, eyes closed and head jammed full of thoughts, feeling like three years before was three days before, missing when we did that every night, feeling how lucky I was but somehow felt my life in the Southern Tribe was incomplete. I understood it and didn't understand it at the same time.
Despite all that, I couldn't imagine life any different than I had it; I had everything I ever wanted. The war was over and my dad was back at the tribe. Even with Sokka's obnoxious sarcasm and Toph's strangely manly and egotistical arrogance, they were more than I could ever hope for. My life was perfect, and I owed nearly every bit of happiness I had to Aang. He'd become my world.
Not wanting to mentally withdrawal myself from the night, I forced myself to pay attention, took my head off Aang's shoulder, and attempted to be a bigger part of the conversation.
"…tried to make one from wood, but it looked terrible." Sokka, apparently in the middle of a story, pulled something from his pocket and held it up for the group to see.
It was a misshapen circle of wood hooked to a blue cord.
"…That's supposed to be a betrothal necklace?" Aang asked after a minute, sounding genuinely confused.
"I know, right?" replied Sokka in frustration. He glared at the necklace for another moment before shoving it back into his pocket. "Suki would never say yes to a stupid necklace like that."
"Of course she would," I comforted him, knowing girls—and knowing Suki—I couldn't imagine her saying no because the necklace was weird-looking.
"Well, I hope so, but I'm still going to fix it before actually asking. Anyways, what about yours?"
I blinked. "My what?"
Sokka leaned backwards, picking his teeth with a twig. "Your betrothal necklace."
Unsure of how to respond, I glanced at Aang sitting next to me. Instead of mirroring my uncertainty, all that was on Aang's face was the pink tinge of embarrassment.
"I..." he started, rubbing the back of his head under the gaze of all his friends. "...wasn't going to ask quite yet?"
Trying desperately to hide my disappointment, I began to reassure Aang, but Toph interrupted.
"He's lying," she said casually, and she took a sip of tea.
"Toph!" Aang declared, looking hurt. When the earthbender didn't reply, he turned to me. "Well I wasn't really... I was still going to... The, um, necklace isn't done, but I—"
Toph cleared her throat loudly. Although she hadn't said anything that time, everybody knew by the lifted corner of her mouth that she knew Aang was lying again.
"Don't be rude, Toph," I told her in an attempted stern voice, but it betrayed my wariness. Looking at Aang, it was difficult to tell exactly what he was thinking, but the subject was one that was unspoken, yet bore weight on us as a couple. I didn't bring it up because he didn't.
When Toph had the good graces not to say anything on the subject again and Aang and I could not find anything else to say, Sokka saved the day by shrugging as nonchalantly as possible.
"I didn't mean to freak you guys out," he said, leaning back with his hands behind his neck. "Mom and Dad didn't get married until they were in their twenties, so whatever." After pausing for only a second, Sokka punched Toph's arm.
"Sorry," Toph echoed immediately, but she actually sounded like she meant it. Her blind eyes blinked up at the dusky sky, and she smiled. "Maybe I'm just happy for you two. I wish I could feel that kind of affection towards someone."
At first, I thought the earthbender was joking, but then the corner of her mouth twitched downwards, faltering her effortless façade. Although everyone pretended not to notice, it made my upset towards her lessen.
The four of us spent several hours around our campfire, recalling stories from the war and playing sporadic games of Pi Sho, even though none of us knew how to play very well. At one point, Aang put on a spectacular display of firebending, reminding me again how powerful he was. It was no wonder he defeated Fire Lord Ozai.
The moon had long been over the horizon when Toph and Sokka passed out, both leaning on the same rock and breathing in bugs with every snore.
"I guess we should go to sleep, too," I noted, standing and stretching my stiff legs. Sleep was working its way inside of me, making my muscles weak and my eyelids heavy. If I tried spending another ten minutes awake, I'd end up like Toph and Sokka, sprawled out on rocks without so much as a pillow under their heads.
Aang helped me unpack our sleeping packs from Appa's saddle, and we spread them on the ground next to one another.
"It feels good to be back with everyone," Aang yawned, turning onto his side and pulling the blanket up to his chest. "I wish we could always do this."
I reached over and slipped my fingers around his. "Me, too. It's nice being surrounded by people who really care about you."
The only response I got was Aang's squeezing my hand, and we drifted off to sleep.
oOo
oOo
Team Avatar woke with the sun the next day, squinting happily in the yellow light of morning. Sokka, who'd spent the whole night propped up on a boulder, moaned and groaned all through breakfast.
"Oh, stop whining already," Toph inhaled her breakfast in three bites. "Just get up and walk it off. Sleeping on a rock can't kill you."
Sokka twisted uncomfortably, pushing gingerly on his spine as though it was broken. "You wouldn't know; you practically are a rock. Your bed at home is probably a rock. You probably brush your teeth with a rock."
"We get it, Sokka," I snorted, tying my hair up behind my head. Mostly out of mockery, I added, "You could take the day off and rest your feeble bones, if you'd like."
"No, no." He, too, tied back his hair in its usual ponytail. "I wouldn't dare leave you three to have all the fun without me. What's on the agenda for today, anyways?"
"Well, we were th—"
The ground beneath us suddenly heaved and a terrible roar that only lasted a few seconds split the air. Ears ringing, I stumbled dizzily over to Aang and Toph, who were on an immediate alert. Sokka had his sword out and pointed it in all different directions, nearly slicing Appa in the nose.
"What was that?" I exclaimed, taking a moment to locate my pouch of bending water.
Aang, frozen in a wide earthbending stance, glanced around. "…An earthquake?"
"That was no earthquake."
Without further explanation, Toph grabbed onto Sokka and me and started running at unreasonable speeds downhill, perpendicular to the steep side of the mountain we were so close to.
Aang followed, as silent and swift as a gust of wind. "Toph, where are you going?" he shouted, just as another boom shook the mountain. It was more violent and deafening than the last one, which made me think whatever caused it was getting closer.
"Toph, where—oof"
Toph stopped, grabbing onto our shirts as we nearly barreled over the side of a cliff.
"That," she said, pointing downwards through a low-hanging cloud.
I instinctively took Aang's arm as we strained to see through the haze. Down on the ground, a shape loomed in the shadow of the mountain. There was a longer part with a heavy-looking end standing at a 45-degree angle from the ground. "What…?" I saw the shape become a little clearer as the long part creaked into motion. A flicker of orange light appeared on the shape, but I wasn't the one to speak next.
"It's a catapult," Sokka whispered, blood draining from his face.
It was a catapult, and its blazing cargo was pointed directly at us.