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

notes: subtitled, how not to build a healthy relationship. here's looking at you, katara and aang.

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"You're coming with me, right?"

Katara knew it would come to this eventually. But even as Aang looks at her, his wide grey eyes hopeful and expectant, she feels the wrong words forming on her lips. "I don't know, Aang. I'd like to, but I'd also like to visit the South Pole again. I want to see my family."

A shadow darkens his face for just an instant, because he doesn't have a family anymore, and she feels a pang of guilt for reminding him of that—he is the last airbender, after all—but she stands firm.

She wants to see her family again, to see the home that still calls her soul sometimes, to see if she still fits there, in the cold and the ice and the tundra, before she decides what to do with the next steps of her days.

The darkness is pushed back by a grin as Aang agrees. "We can go penguin sledding! I need to talk to the Southern Water Tribe, anyway. They lost so much in the war. And after that, we can leave again. It'll be great, Katara. We'll fly around and see the world like we've done this past year. Only we won't be fighting a war anymore—we'll be helping people make peace!"

Katara's heart twists. He has so much hope, this boy, and it's heartbreaking that she can see it because she's the one her friends tease for having that fault in abundance.

She smiles back at him and they head to their own rooms to pack their bags.

When they fly again, they head south.

On the morning of their departure from the walled city, Iroh bids them farewell with his usual smile. He tucks gifts for Katara's father and grandparents into their packs and hugs both her and Aang before they climb up on Appa's back.

Appa's saddle is familiar and sun-worn. It smells of warm air and sky bison and Katara doesn't realize it until they're a few hours into their flight, surrounded by sun and sky and the ever-present wind that comes with traveling on Appa, but it feels empty now, when it's just her and Aang.

It's never been just the two of them. Their friends were always with them before now.

Momo still chitters around when he's not napping in the full sunshine, but he doesn't count, not really.

For the length of the first afternoon, after Aang has exhausted himself by pointing out anything on their horizon he finds interesting, the two of them sit side by side on Appa's head in silence. Aang holds the reins and the quiet between them is companionable.

The closed, defined space between them feels safe, even, amidst the rushing winds.

Aang sits beside her, elbow barely touching her arm, and his gaze is far off, beyond Appa, toward the edge of the land. Even sitting, he is like the winds, always moving. His toe taps gently, his fingers wobble around the reins.

He is an airbender through and through, even though he can bend all four elements—five, if Katara counts the energybending he used to immobilize Ozai.

Katara wonders, looking out over the land below them, green and distant and ever-stretching, if Aang would consider his energybending as thick with conflict as her bloodbending.

She closes her eyes to the bright sun; she doesn't think so.

He sees it as a peaceful resolution—he didn't kill Ozai, after all.

But the ability to take someone's bending away—and to give it, just the same?—perhaps that is a power just as dread and mighty as the ability to reach into someone's body and bend their life to her will.

But perhaps not.

Aang sits up on his heels beside her and points to a clearing in the woods. "Let's camp there tonight."

Katara agrees and leaves her thoughts behind in favor of the everyday tasks of setting up camp, making dinner, and settling Appa down for the night.

The habit is comforting now that her world has lost another layer of purpose and structure, for now the world is saved and she drifts in a sea of her own making.

Aang chatters throughout most of their evening, talking again about the day's travels, and gives her a quick kiss goodnight before they settle into their blankets by the fire for sleep.

Nearby, Aang falls asleep quickly, but Katara spends a long time awake, staring up at the moon and stars.

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Katara blinks awake to morning sun before Aang the next day. Without Zuko to drag him, protesting, to early-morning firebending practice, Aang appreciates his sleep.

In the morning veil of insect-hums, Katara makes breakfast. The rice porridge bubbles hot and thick over the fire and she digs into one of their bags to find some sweetened dried fruit she'd stowed away for mornings like this, mornings of quiet and hope when she wants to do something nice for Aang.

It's not egg custard, but it's what she can do, for now.

After Aang awakens, they eat their porridge and drink their tea and climb back up on Appa.

As they travel together, she finds that this is the start of most of their days.

The journey from Ba Sing Se toward the South Pole passes smoothly, for the most part. Aang makes it fun, with airbending tricks and unbridled enthusiasm for each place Appa comes to rest for the night.

In most of the towns where they stop, Aang is greeted with praise. He is the Avatar, the world's savior. Katara and Aang hear murmurs of discontentment, undercurrents of rancor, but mostly people are pleased.

They just want to be left alone and the naysayers are a minority, although they are sometimes a vocal one.

Just like when they first came to Kyoshi Island, Aang revels in the praise. He airbends, poses for portraits, kisses babies' heads that are as bald as his own.

He loves people and he always leaves a place feeling as though they've made new friends.

Katara hugs him and smiles along as he talks about the people they've left behind each day for colder southern stars.

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As they travel, Katara notices that little things start to bother her.

She realizes, a few towns in, that Aang never introduces her to the people they talk to. If someone asks, his face lights up, as if in pleased surprise, and he says, "Oh! This is Katara. She's a waterbending master."

Sometimes he grins sheepishly and adds, "She's my girlfriend."

But he never makes a move to introduce her first; he only does it if people ask.

Often enough, they do, but otherwise Aang is content to soak up the praise on his own while Katara demurs in the background.

"Why are you sad, Katara?" Aang asks one day while they visit a town in the southern Earth Kingdom.

"I just—" She begins to tell him, but then she remembers Kyoshi Island and bites her tongue. He's sweet, her boyfriend, but his apologies there haven't translated into any change in his behavior. She should tell him, probably. But not today, not when there is bright sunshine above them and a marketplace full of baubles to browse. She doesn't want to fight or to hurt him. "I'm not sad," she says instead.

Aang twists his fingers in with hers and turns to the next person who stops them on the street with a wide smile.

Katara doesn't say anything, but it rankles.

And it rankles that on nights after he lets her fall to the background, he still assumes he has the right to kiss her.

Their kisses are never quite as long as at the goodbye tea with their friends in Ba Sing Se. She'd felt a little odd after that. Aang is only twelve, after all. And she's—well, she's only fourteen, but she's almost fifteen, and she's starting to wonder if maybe this boy who at once thinks she's the moon and stars and sun and takes her for granted like the daily gift of sunlight, if maybe he might be too much of a boy, after all.

Doubts flit through her mind sometimes, and vague discomfort joins the butterflies in her stomach when Aang sends shy smiles her way after he kisses her, and it's like an itching under her skin, a feeling of not knowing. A feeling of not being where she fits but not knowing where to go.

She likes Aang—he's a sweet boy and sometimes she thinks she could love him forever, because he is ancient but he makes her feel young, and she is young but most of the time she feels so ancient—but she's still confused.

But habit is powerful and Aang is energetic, so Katara lets herself get swept up into their travels.

Weeks pass, and they follow the paths of the birds—Sokka had told her about those, the seasonal migrations that birds of the northern regions make towards the south each year—information he'd gleaned from Wan Shi Tong's library before the entire thing fell to bits, and she still hates to think of that terrible collapse of sand and murderous owl-spirit—until they surpass them, dip below the places most birds go, and dive on Appa's back into snow.

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tbc.