A/N: Your inevitable reaction, I'm sure, is, "Finally!" Yeah, I agree. Sorry! I was working at a summer camp. Nonetheless, thanks for sticking with me, and...sorry if you're upset by what you're about to read.

Chapter 7

Suki's eyes welled with tears. "Aang...I'm so sorry."

Fear tightened his chest and caused everything besides his wife and newborn child to become insignificant. He turned to run into the bedroom from which Suki had just emerged, but found that the hallway was stretching farther and farther. He tried to run faster, but halted abruptly when Ozai's face suddenly loomed before him.

"This isn't possible," he breathed in shock.

"Oh, it is," replied the enormous face with a malicious smirk. "I'm greater than you, Avatar, and now I've taken away the things dearest to you."

Anger replaced the fear in Aang. "Get out of my way!" He ran swiftly forward, but the floor opened beneath him, and he fell, flailing in panic in the darkness. All he could hear was the wind whipping about his clothes and Ozai's never-ending laughter...

...

Aang gasped and jerked forward from fitful slumber, chest heaving and soaked with perspiration. Realizing he'd been dreaming, he sighed and covered his face with his hands. He slowly sank back down and rolled over to go back to sleep, when his face crinkled in confusion. He felt the crevices in the sheets and sat up to see if Katara was in the bedroom. Finding that she was not, Aang stood and stumbled through the house as he yawned and rubbed his eyes.

"Katara?"

Worried now, he decided to check outside. He stepped out the front door, shivered, and rubbed his arms, regretting that he was only wearing pants. He called Katara's name again, met once more with silence.

Fully awake and frightened for his wife's safety, Aang began to run around the small island, all the while yelling for the waterbender. He tripped over vegetation in his hurry and whipped his head around every which way. Every branch and bush seemed to be her, and the trees seemed to wave at him in mockery, but minutes passed without his finding her.

Running out of places to look, he rushed to the dock, but stopped just before placing a foot on the wood when he saw a small, dark figure rocking back-and-forth at the end of the wooden platform.

He could tell it was Katara, so his first reaction was relief, but when he realized why she was rocking, his chest constricted. She had come to the water because she needed the comfort, and the element would provide a little of it. She needed reassurance because she had finally broken down.

The past few months had been rough, and Aang's recurring nightmare kept reminding him why. He couldn't get that memory—that awful image—out of his head. He couldn't forget Suki's expression as she'd walked out of the room to tell him. He would always remember running from her—toward his wife—before she'd finished speaking, hoping against hope that this was all some sick joke. Hoping that he would soon be hearing the cries of his first child. Instead, he'd walked in to hear his wife's. Instead, he'd entered to find a small, wrapped bundle laying atop the chest near the bed. He didn't open it at first, but, hours later, when his exhausted wife had fallen asleep, he had gently peeled away the layers and wept at the sight of his stillborn son.

Katara didn't talk much after that. She simply roamed the house or sat silently, often staring at nothing in the distance. It pained Aang to see her as such, and it hurt to mourn in solitude. He didn't know if she'd cried anymore, but he had sobbed alone more than once.

Aang made it his top priority to help Katara, cooking the food, doing the housework, and talking to whoever came to the house so she wouldn't have to. This had gone on for several months, and it seemed that, now, the full impact of their loss seemed to have hit his broken wife.

Eyes welling with tears, Aang walked slowly to his crying wife. He sat next to her on the end of the dock, his feet dangling in the water, and wrapped his arms around her, and it stayed like that for some time. When Katara became quiet, Aang did not speak, having decided he would let her be the first, and simply brushed the hair from her wet face and rubbed the tears from her cheeks. He removed his arms from her torso, and both stared into the glistening water, the lights of Republic City twinkling in the distance, until she eventually spoke.

"I'm sorry."

Aang looked at her in shock.

Katara turned to look at him as her chin began to tremble. "I'm so sorry, Aang." She broke down again, and Aang held her once more.

"Don't say that," he replied fervently. "I never blamed you. None of this was your fault." He took hold of her face in his palms and spoke with sincerity. "I love you. I love you so much."

Katara buried her face in his chest and continued to cry, and as Aang stroked her long, dark waves of hair, he hurt for her.

After a while, the only sound was the ocean beating upon itself, and Aang suspected that Katara was weary. "Come on," he whispered gently. "Let's go." He stood and helped her up, and the two walked hand-in-hand in silence to the house.

As Aang drifted to sleep that night, he was confident that the healing had finally begun. And he knew that now, finally, they could heal together.