A/N: Much thanks to chromeknickers, AnnaAza, and Boogum for their reviews!
"I wanted to do it. I wanted to take out all my anger at him, but I couldn't. I don't know if it's because I'm too weak to do it or because I'm strong enough not to."
It comes spewing out like a fountain. Would her mother be proud of her restraint, or disappointed that her murder hadn't been avenged? She isn't sure. She'll never be sure.
"You did the right thing. Forgiveness is the first step you have to take to begin healing," Aang says, but she's looking in another direction. Zuko is posed a few feet away, awkward and vulnerable, like a newborn puppy-seal.
"I didn't forgive him," Katara admits. "I'll never forgive him." There is a limit to her mercy- that man is a monster, an unrepentant one out to save his hide. He deserves no better.
She walks up to Zuko and smiles, tentatively. "But I am ready to forgive you," she says, flinging her arms around his neck, inhaling the warm, musky scent of his hair- after a shocked second, he responds in kind, resting his hands on her waist. There's a thousand messages she wants to convey through that embrace- thanks for everything; it's all okay between us; a touch of I'm sorry.
Because she was the first to trust him underneath Ba Sing Se, and he repaid her concern by stabbing her in the back. He spent years hunting Aang for his own selfish purposes. That can't be erased or denied- it's indelible ink on their history. But she realizes that she isn't angry with him anymore for it- there's no point to being angry with him for it. He did wrong and wants to repent and the world is still somehow spinning on its axis.
They break apart- he looks relieved, as though an enormous burden has just been lifted from his shoulders. And for the first time in months, there is calm in her heart.