Aang stirred –footsteps, fire nation he thought, prepping to jump into action to protect his friends – but no, it was only the wind as it crept unseen between the shadows that the moon cast down between the cracks in the boards. It was a small room below-deck, small enough for Aang to observe in one glance from his roost in the coarse bedding that was Appa's tail. He liked places like this, he felt, for a moment at least, that he was back at the southern air temple, nestled snug in his cell; he could feel the natural rhythm of the ocean beneath him and he could almost hear Gyatso… Gyatso. He still struggled with that, with the guilt of what he had done. He still had nightmares, nightmares so real he could've sworn he had lived them in another life before, but maybe he had. He was the Avatar after all.
Aang rolled over and tried to fall back asleep, but something was nagging him. Something in the dark recesses of his mind where all of his fears festered, where the Fire Lord sat on his throne high above Aang and mocked his incompetence, where he watched the world he'd failed to protect burn, where he held Katara with the fear that he would lose her; a fear that had been prodded, prodded with a red hot brand and burned into the forefront of his focus by the same nightmare he had had over and over since dusk several days ago.
It would rear its ugly head in the early hours of the morning, just before daybreak, and it would stay until after the orange glow on the horizon had manifested in all its beauty. It was just Aang, and Katara far away and out of reach. She was in danger, the abject terror was strewn like corpse-maggots across her face and she threw up her arms to protect herself. Silence. Then a hurricane-roar flooded his mind and her scream rode in on it, it rode within it and it was it. Her scream was all that existed and it gashed him like no fire-nation blade ever could. It gouged straight to his core and twisted in sharp shaking rhythms till his entire heart was an indistinguishable mush. And then it stopped. As suddenly as it began, it was gone. And with it, so was Katara.
That was the same nightmare that Aang had been awoken from. He checked as he always did to make sure she was where she always was – curled up under Appa's side. To his relief, she was there. But still he was concerned. Nights like this he couldn't shake the feeling he was going to lose her, that he was going to be where he couldn't protect her, and in an instant, she would be gone. Forever.
Aang wanted to say something, anything, just to wake her, to hear her voice, to know she cared. He wanted to so badly, but he just couldn't bring himself to. She needed her sleep and to wake her would be selfish. But he was feeling selfish right at that moment.
"Katara, are you awake"
It was hardly more than a murmur, a gentle breath into a still night, but she stirred.
"Is everything alright, Aang?"
"I had a nightmare"
Aang lowered his head in shame. He sounded so weak, so childish. He would have to defeat the Fire Lord yet he was still being defeated by the creations of his own mind.
"Do you wanna talk about it?"
Yes, he wanted to say, and so much more, but he couldn't.
"No, I just need some air, go back to sleep"
Aang slid off Appa's tail and scaled the wooden ladder to the upper deck. The oak rods were rough and splintery under his grasp. Still, it was almost comforting; it reminded him it was real – he was real.
Although it was not cold out in the open, the light breeze brushed off the blanket of warmth Aang had carried up with him. He liked it though, liked the way it pushed all the nightmares and horrors awaiting him in his future to the back of his mind. It was refreshing, like a spring rain before the summer drought.
He stood there, arms draped over the railing and watched the waves pulsate below him. He watched with intent, as if he were searching for something in particular, but in fact, he was not searching as much as he was observing. He knew the answers to his problems did not lie in the crests below him; he knew the distant current was no wiser to his fate than he was already, but in the waves he found life. They, like a living organism, twisted and tugged like limbs on an animal; they rose and fell like the chest of a child deep in slumber – a peaceful rest without disturbance, just as the mirror-like waves were without disturbance and reflected his ragged image back at him.
Aang did not hate the boy below him; no, he pitied him. He empathized with his struggles and with the heavy bags under his eyes – he understood the great weight they carried. He understood that baggage; he too understood that mirrors did not reflect with perfect clarity or truth. He recognized the deception in their crevices between crests, he knew that the waves never revealed their whole depths and, like mirrors, they would only tell the half-truth of what was exposed to the world to see. And within, Aang saw a twelve year old child burdened by the century of guilt he had never lived to experience.
He wasn't alone on the deck. He knew not how long she had stood there, silent and patient, listening intently to the piercing screams erupting in his mind – screams that never knew a world beyond his cranium existed, and so they would continue to live in their blissful ignorance. No words were ever spoken, never, yet still communication existed; communication so profound that it transcended the limitations that speech inherently bound its servants with. Aang needed no words, the comfort he craved was there, and that was all he really needed – to know that she cared, to know that she, Katara, was truly awake to his suffering.