Just Reflecting

Summary: Kataang, OneShot. "He had always assumed there was a better reason for her constant staring, aside from nonexistent vanity. Maybe the mirror reminded her of something lost and gone, far away and terrible."

A/N: Watermelon seeds can be purchased at your local foreign food shops, preferably from an Arabic place. They slow roast them and you can crack them between your teeth to get to the meat inside—believe me when I tell you that they are absolutely delicious! Not a day goes by without me eating an entire cup of them.

Feedback spelled backwards is kcabdeef. -scorpiaux

In the mornings, Katara spent an average of one hour to one hour and a half in front of the mirror. The evenings boasted anywhere from thirty minutes to forty minutes, depending. And then there were the middle-of-the-night visits, too, which always varied.

Personally, Aang didn't mind. He liked it when Katara emerged from the bathroom looking fabulously fine.

In a twisted way, it brought him pride to know that his wife took care to present herself. He liked it even more when Katara suggested things for him to wear, and told him how she wanted his beard shaved, and added that these certain boots matched this certain outfit, and so on.

But Aang oftentimes wondered why it took so long. Katara never over-did the makeup or the hair; to the contrary, most of her styles looked beautiful simply because they were plain. It was as though her peasantry exemplified her beauty—highlighted it as something different and exotic.

He also wondered why she closed the door. Why she didn't let him in no matter how much he complained of his need to use the restroom.

He wondered why it was always so quiet on the other end of the wall.

And Aang was a clever young man. He had always assumed there was a better reason for her constant staring, aside from nonexistent vanity. Maybe the mirror reminded her of something lost and gone, far away and terrible. Or maybe she didn't use the mirror at all—maybe she just sat on the edge of the sink and read something. Or strew herself inside the bathtub for no particular reason at all.

But then, why wouldn't she let him in?

During an August evening, Katara emerged from her typical thirty to forty minute stay in the bathroom and joined him on the balcony that branched from their sleeping quarters. There were two chairs there, as well as a little table with a bowl of watermelon seeds, and a lantern that was fabled to ward away mosquitowasps.

"Finally!" Aang joked, elbowing her side. "You always take so long in there."

She shrugged and cracked a few watermelon seeds between her teeth, smirking at him. "And you always complain about it."

"I guess I do," he admitted. "But I'm starting to think that it just stems from curiosity." His tone dropped a little then; he looked at her with a sincere sort of ingenuity. "It's been eating away at me forever. What exactly do you do in there?"

To his surprise, Katara giggled and shot him a playful glance. "What does it matter?" she asked back.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. What am I supposed to say?"

"Answer me straightforwardly," he prodded, smiling. "Give me your routine."

Though they had been married for an entire year, Katara couldn't help but blush and turn her face. "It's not important," she promised coyly. "Next time I'm in there, I'll leave the door open for you. It's not like it's anything bad." She paused and reached for another handful of watermelon seeds. "Really, Aang. I can't answer you straightforwardly because I don't know what takes so long. I get caught up in my reflection sometimes, I guess."

And the matter was left at that.

The next morning, Katara did leave her bathroom door open, but she spent only ten minutes in the bathroom—the whole while with Aang at the doorway. Her eyes would flash in his direction sometimes, catching his gaze and simpering. She finished applying her eyeliner and facial aloe lotion and then smoothed her kimono over her knees, smiled at him, and stood up from the mirror.

Aang exclaimed, frowning, "You have to do more than that!" He crossed his arms. "That wasn't even ten minutes!"

Katara shrugged. "That's all I do, usually."

"Usually?"

"Yes, usually."

"What about the un-usually days?"

"You mean without you standing there?"

Aang nodded and joined her at the balcony, where they spent a considerable fraction of their mornings and afternoons. It had become in an inborn habit, but they both loved it. The busy Ba Sing Sei streets underneath provided a perfect background to their voices, without deafening them.

And Katara, he realized, looked absolutely dazed this morning. He wondered if this was because of his observance. Suddenly he felt like a spy, and so instead of watching the twitching muscles around her lips, he took to observing his boots.

"Do you want the actual answer," Katara started, "or the vain one?"

Aang replied evenly, "Whichever you want," and then hesitated, wondering if he again sounded overbearing. "Whatever you want to tell me."

"You have the right to know," she returned, sounding a little unsettled. Then she touched his shoulder and he turned to her; she leaned forward and engaged him in a sort of confidential stare. She started, "I like things to be perfect, you know? I mean, we're married, and you're the Avatar." She grinned with the corner of her mouth and cupped his face in her hand. "I like to be perfect for you, and that takes a while."

"That's the vain one?" he asked, plucking her hand off of his cheek and kissing it.

"Yes."

"I don't think it's vain at all."

Katara withdrew her hand and drew her knees to her chest, a habit that still managed to make her look like a confused, conflicted 14-year-old. "And I try to remember how my mother's face used to look like. It was a village...we didn't have fancy painters or anything. All I can rely on is my memory now. And my image of her started fading the day she died."

Katara turned away from him, facing the busy streets beneath. A vendor was screaming advertisements about his fabled lamps, said to ward off mosquitowasps and spiderbees and any other pest imaginable to man. Katara could nearly see these pests here, eating her memory away.

"I made a sort of calculation to remember it. Her face was narrow, and her hair straighter than mine, and her skin was a bit lighter...and her smile..." Katara sent her gaze to the bowl of watermelon seeds. "Her smile would crack open so quickly—it was so easy to make her laugh."

Aang, who was at loss for words, did what he thought was best, and said nothing. He allowed silence to consume him, wondering if he ever did the same with his face and Monk Gyatso's, though there was no blood relation. He realized in that very instant that there was still so many layers of Katara that he had yet to be exposed to.

Minutes passed and they sat there in respective silence, just reflecting.