disclaimer: it's all bryke's, except what's not.

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There is time enough for anything in the vast expanse of peace.

Time stretches on after the war, hanging like a speck of sand in an hourglass, with an endless supply of grains to follow it.

It's relief, a sort of heady fullness, that makes each day where there is no war seem precious and also endless.

Katara realizes, one sunny afternoon drinking tea at Iroh's shop, alone beside a low table that stretches beside her, that this is what it means to be young.

They have never had that opportunity before, not since they were children. It's frightening and she feels ill at ease in her skin.

She hasn't been young in nearly a decade.

Katara sets down her teacup with care but doesn't release it from the curl of her fingertips. The china is beautiful. The china is worn. Iroh sets out new cups for his paying customers, but for his guests—his friends—his growing brood of surrogate grandchildren from nations he once fought to extinguish—he brings out older cups, ones whose edges are not quite cracked, that have stories to tell.

She and her friends are not quite cracked around the edges, not yet.

Katara looks at the teacup, resting in the afternoon sun. She has seen exquisite things—in the Earth King's palace, in the Bei Fongs' estate, in the Fire Lord's halls (distantly, as seen in a dream through the wreckage and smoke of war)—and they do not impress her beyond their craftsmanship, their artistry. But this teacup warms her heart, sends a feeling of familiarity through her veins.

It was here during the war.

And it survives afterward.

And so will they, in time.

Katara squints her eyes so that she can only see the blue-and-white blur that is the teacup she now holds in her fingers, solitary amidst sun-sparks. She is an artist herself, and she recognizes skill when she sees it, but all that glitters holds no claim to her heart beyond the sparkling of the ocean.

Katara peels her fingertips away from the smooth, lacquered surface and breathes deeply.

The sun is hot and still and she is used to that from her travels. She finds a certain enjoyment in sunshine. Memories of cold, of freshness and frost-tinged breaths and days-long blizzards when all the world is white never quite leave the back of her mind, but she questions their comfort now.

She doesn't know if she can return to home and hearth after what she has seen and done, after what war has done to her. She doesn't know if it will be asked of her, when it comes to that. Aang is here with her in Ba Sing Se—they are the last of their friends to leave. Even Zuko and Mai have already returned to the Fire Nation, because Zuko has a country to run.

But Aang—Aang has the world at his feet and he doesn't know where to start his explorations.

So they linger on Iroh's hospitality, she and he, and Katara knows from the way Aang looks at her what he expects.

They will travel the world together. They will solve the world's problems. They will marry, someday. There will be children, someday. (There is an Air Nation to rebuild, after all.)

But for now, Aang only wants to be free. And he is, for this brief moment. He is only twelve, and he thinks that he has cast the world's weight from his shoulders because he has disabled former Fire Lord Ozai and placed the usurper's son on the throne. But he is the Avatar, and his duty will follow him for the rest of his life.

The Fire Nation, officially, is no longer a threat to the world.

The Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes, the Air Nation—the last airbender—they are free to rebuild, to restore, without tyrannical interference.

But it will not be as easy as that, and despite the lazy calm of heat that stifles her fears, tamps them down into deeper, more recessed parts of her heart, Katara knows that the calm will not last, because rebuilding after a century of oppression will not be easy.

People are not all as forgiving, or as tolerant, as Aang.

Katara sits alone on the balcony and watches the busy streets below her. She can't make out individual voices from here, and the people going about their business blend into a background hum.

After the remaining tea has gone cold in the teapot, Aang comes for her. The sun has long passed the noontide mark but has not yet settled into the golden slant of late afternoon.

In the heat of the day, Katara walks with Aang through the streets of Ba Sing Se.

They walk down to the Middle Ring, and its name is true in more ways than one. Here, divided opinions rattle about like the scattered pig-chicken feathers that follow an escaped fowl from one of the merchants' pens.

Aang hears the crowing praise: he is the Avatar and the world is saved.

Katara hears the muttered discontent: the world is left more of a mess than it was, and people want the Fire Nation to suffer.

Her first inkling that Aang hears the negative, too, comes when he squeezes her hand a little tighter after a cloth merchant mock-whispers a particularly nasty barb about Aang's weakness for not killing Ozai.

Aang begins to turn, his fingers tight around hers, to open his mouth to confront the merchant, but Katara tightens her grip, too. "Aang, don't. It's what he wants."

"But Katara—"

"Please." She makes her expression hard, because he needs to learn. People won't be won by midafternoon arguments when their minds are clearly set against him, and the marketplace is no place for the Avatar State.

Aang falters, and a little bit of the light fades from his eyes. "Okay."

They walk on, and hear the merchant behind them. "Look at the Avatar, letting his little girlfriend boss him around."

Another voice says, "Who lets a kid like him make important decisions, anyway?"

"Keep walking, Aang." He is a feeble presence by her side now, a confused, sad boy. She squeezes his hand again, for encouragement.

He smiles, just a little.

He smiles for her.

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Back at the tea shop, they drink tea with Iroh and talk.

"Even though the war's over, people still hate the Fire Nation."

Aang's eyes are wide and worried when he speaks. His tea—a new blend Iroh insists they try; "good for the heart," he says—is nearly untouched and his fingertips fidget as if he wants to bend air, bend something, make a movement that will make things right.

But it's not as simple as that.

Across the tea table from the young, eager, zealous Avatar—and these are all good traits, in their place, Katara thinks as she catalogues them in her mind—the old man Iroh sits. He is calm in contrast to Aang's inner storm, the worries that have crisscrossed his face in wrinkles masked behind peaceful joviality.

A Fire Nation general dressed in Earth Kingdom green.

A teashop proprietor.

And a friend.

As a friend, Iroh does his best to break the news gently to Aang.

"It was a long war," Iroh sighs. "It will take more than defeating Ozai to put the world at right."

Aang's brow crinkles. "I know," he says. "I know that, but shouldn't people be thankful, at least? To me, to us, for everything we've done to save them? Instead, they're just—they just act like they want another war! Like they don't want to settle down and be happy again."

"A sword drawn for war is not so easily sheathed." Iroh raises his brow over his cup of tea as he sips. "The people need time, Aang."

Time is what Aang has the most of, out of any of them. He is the youngest and at the same time he is the oldest, with lifetimes stretching behind him and ahead of him. Time is all the Avatar has, it seems.

But Aang is young, still, despite everything, and impatient. "How can I give them time?" he asks. "I want to solve things. I thought ending the war would. How can I make sure people don't start another war?"

"You can't." Katara joins the conversation. "You can't make people do anything, Aang. But you can talk to them. Travel. Make peace where you can." She peels a smile from her lips and says, "Remember the Great Divide, how you helped the warring clans make peace?"

Aang brightens. "Yeah. Yeah, I can do that again."

"Not everybody wants a war, Aang," Katara says. No one should, not after they've lived one for their entire lives, but no one knows quite what to make of peace.

Iroh agrees with a warm laugh. "I used to be a general, and look at me now, serving tea instead of waging war."

The late summer air is heavy and still, their host's geniality flickering between them. Iroh holds out the teapot. "Would you like another cup?"

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tbc.