sleep

summary: Kataang, OneShot Series (1/5): Once – enraged, unraveled – I start walking around the apartment. You are at your desk when I come to you. I touch your shoulders; you are not startled. Toph has taught you how to anticipate – with accuracy – the steps of an intruder, and my drunken gait is no mystery. I haven't touched you in months.

reviews always appreciated; this is part 1 of a 5 part series; so much of katara and aang's relationship is peaches & cream; i like writing stories that explore the darker, complex parts; this first installment is sad, but the next one will be more steam, less sap; xoxo to my loyal readers & all the new ones :) happy reading - scorpiaux

The summer after the war, I lose all sleep. July nights are agonizing, twitching naps. In August, my legs kick at nightmares; my eyes have staring matches with every star in the sky. I wake up panting. In tears. Sweat-drenched, shivering. Drool-encrusted. As wide-awake as if the sun burns inside me.

Here is the sun in my eyes, bright as a burning yolk. Sweet round citrus fruit. Grape candy. White core of a lit match. I begin to imagine my parents, young and alive, and hold conversations with them. Whenever Momo leaps on my shoulder, I scream and toss him. The vibrations in the ground from Toph's bending throw me into hysterical laughing fits. Five new silver hairs spring from my temples. I am seventeen. Sokka pulls them out for me, concerned, one by one, and asks if I've considered an apothecary.

You and I are not together. Just friends. We are being responsible. The world is a mess and every white-haired man in politics needs your attention. You very suddenly no longer want mine. You are exhausted, too, and I am sleepless and rebuffed.

I blow hair from my face, direct it at you. Blow raspberries. Snap my fingers. The mania of being awake has freed me from all social convention. But whenever you look up, you look past me, eyes red at the rims like mine. You feel sorry for me – you all do, you and Sokka and Toph – because my roles have switched from caregiver to caretaker so quickly, and none of you know where to put your hands.

"Aang loves me," I say to you when we are alone. "Aang is into me like you wouldn't believe. But we are friends. Lust friends." You laugh in a worried way. Later I hear you ask Sokka if I should go see a healer.

"She is a healer," Sokka snaps back. "She's just not sleeping well because our schedules changed. Things are calm now. She's used to the nomad life. That's all."

"That's not it," you return, sucking air between your teeth, frustrated with him. "She keeps using the third person."

"That's what you're worried about?" he laughs. "Her grammar?"

After hearing this, I am determined. I turn on every fan. I put cold towels under my neck. I spend the day bending until my muscles and limbs are aching. I swallow so much chamomile tea that I throw up. In order not to embarrass myself anymore, I stop talking to all of you. You especially. I can't use third person if I am being quiet. I try sleeping with more clothes. Then, with less. Then naked, with nothing at all.

Here is the night like a fleece blanket covering the earth. Here is the black, black welcome, arms outstretched to me. I am running into the horizon to reach it. It shuts me out. It turns its cold black back to me. It says my name in a language I don't understand.

In the hot night, I imagine Zuko's scar, his face folding inside out so that all his body is a wrangled mass of burnt flesh. But his eye is restored now, sparkling gold like a coin. He attaches a telescope to this coin, looks out from his ship for the woman who birthed him.

Another night, Sokka and I are kids. He hurls a snowball at me and knocks my teeth into the snow. I pick them up and plant them. A pink tree sprouts and takes root overnight. In it, growing in a cocoon, is my mother.

We are on our hands and knees, badger moles behind us, and Toph is leading us into the light. A long tunnel gets longer still. Something tugs at my belly like an umbilical cord, preventing me from moving further. We stay put. When it falls dark inside this cave, you kiss me, your mouth hot and bright. You become the sun. You touch my chest and my heart escapes my chest to be with your hand.

Once – enraged, unraveled – I start walking around the apartment. You are at your desk when I come to you. I touch your shoulders; you are not startled. Toph has taught you how to anticipate – with accuracy – the steps of an intruder, and my drunken gait is no mystery. I haven't touched you in months since Ozai fell, since our celebratory drinks and hugs and laughing with the now-dazzling world. But you stiffen now; you sigh as if a fly has landed in your cup. I spin on my heels and start back.

"Katara," you say. "Wait."

When I look at you again, you have the open-mouthed expression of a child. I am manic, awake as ever. But I have forgotten I am wearing nothing, and I am too tired to be embarrassed. We stare at one another until you stand. You take a step toward me and give me your hand.

"Let's go back to your bed," you suggest quietly. "Maybe you just need a buddy."

"No funny business."

"Aang wouldn't dream of it," you say. Then, after a pause, "Well, he has. But not tonight."

You curl behind me and kiss my neck, my hair. You kiss me and kiss me. You kiss my shoulder until I can't feel your mouth on my body anymore, until you have become my body. I count and lose count, somehow reciting the alphabet in a loop.

"Go to sleep," you say between kisses. "Sleep, sleep."

In a purple sea, my father's boat is hurling toward a wave. The wave swallows them in a gyre. My father cannot bend himself out; his crew scatters like sardines in the path of a shark. Behind the wave is you, five years old, playing with your boats in a tub, the monks washing you. You splash the suds from around you. You gurgle and reach for me. I take you out of the water, dry your naked behind with my hair. From another angle, you are Sokka, and I am my mother.

When I turn to you and kiss your mouth, you stop cold. I kiss you with my tongue, with my teeth. You take your hands off me. You say, "Katara, no funny business, remember?"

But I am naked, and we are alone, and for the first time I feel selfish, lonely. You are my best friend. You don't have a choice. You are going to be mine forever, the way no one has ever been mine. I climb on top of you and kiss you again, pull your lips between mine.

You are swimming alongside me; the whales are beneath us, air erupting from their heads. The air becomes a tornado and we ride these airwaves up to the temple. You find Gyatso's skeleton and you weep until your entire frame heaves. I hold you, pull you back together. I kiss your shoulders until you cannot feel my mouth, until I have become your body. We throw their caskets into the tornados – the people we love – and they are sucked back into the whales, into the sea, our first home.

Your body is so warm that it breaks me into a sweat. In your sharp cheeks, glistening with sweat now, I see the outline of the man you are becoming. "I'm lucid," I explain. "This isn't a dream. I know it's not."

"It's not," you confirm, fighting the urge to thrust against me. You are in shorts. When I pulled your shirt off of you, you refused to remove them. "This is reality."

I reach into your pants and you dodge me. "I'm – don't, don't do that."

"Please."

"Take advantage of you like this? Never," you say, and it is loud. You're shouting. You move me off you with an unnatural ease. It didn't occur to me that my weeks without sleep would make me lose so much weight. "You're going crazy," you cry, your voice breaking. "I am worried about you like you wouldn't believe. I spend my nights writing letters to scientists and healers all over the world. I can't get any sleep myself because I feel guilty when I do. I would never – I would never take advantage of you like this."

I am sobbing as you're yelling. My nose is running into my whimpering mouth. I am on my back and the tears reach my earlobes.

I want my mother and I want you to deliver her to me. The war ended and she was supposed to come back. I want my igloo in the South Pole. I want my girlhood – the collection of fishhooks I stole from Sokka, my favorite penguin toy, my lacey hair bands. The pitch-black dusk. My mother's five-bean soup and bread. My grandmother's low lullabies. I want the bleach-white mornings of the tundra, every snowflake a mirror to the sun. I am a selfish child, on my back, looking at you through the blur of my anger, naked and shaking.

Here is the new alliance with the Fire Nation, negating our suffering. Turning a fresh leaf, a new chapter in which my family is broken and we still march ceaselessly forward. At least in the war we could mourn, we could grieve. Here you are playing advocate – again – and ambassador – as always. Rejecting me for my own good. Refusing to be only mine. Your balance breaking me.