Ok, I was going to give it to you guys as a surprise but since you're all trying to fry me. (Just kidding) This will be a Kataang, Maiko ending.
I admit I did flesh out Mai and Aang's relationship a bit more than I had planned but this was my original storyline. Keep in mind Aang had never told Mai he loves her and she hasn't told him. They thought it and people have said it but they've never declared it to each other.
As for the first part being Kataang and the second part being Maang, it was for a reason.
Each girl is one side of Aang and only til the end can he figure out which girl he truly loves. So at the end both will come together to make him whole.
Sorry if I mislead anybody but it had to have a twist otherwise it would be like every Aang forgives Katara story. She had to see that she just couldn't expect him to choose her because she had been his first love. People change especially when they've been hurt so deeply.
Sadly I speak from personal experience also according to every Avatar quiz I've taken I'm an airbender so I tend to make my characters avoid painful things and just go around them.
Sorry. Enjoy. I will end a 30 chapters. So two to go. Whoo!!
Yes, there will be an alternate ending for you Maang shippers. I couldn't resist.
After what seemed like hours of crying Mai felt a lot better. Her gaze rested on the moon lilies in their pots and she smiled fondly remembering who had first given them to her.
Thinking about Aang after her talk with Zuko made her frown. 'Had Aang's talk with Katara been as cathartic as hers had been with Zuko?'
She recalled how he had returned rather quickly. Sure to her at the time it had appeared to be an eternity but it couldn't have been more than an hour at most. 'Aang had apparently also resurrected Zuko so how much time could he have spent with Katara?'
Puzzled she pulled herself together. She stopped long enough to clean up her face so as not to alarm him. He wasn't in his room so she began a thorough search through the temple. She encountered Suki feeding Appa but no Aang. The other members of the group were spaced out cleaning and fixing the temple.
"Um…Toph?" Mai asked waiting for the earthbender to finish patching up the hole in the wall in what used to be Sokka's room.
The blind girl didn't acknowledge her at first but once she finished plugging up the wall she answered, "If you're looking for Aang, he's in the north tower. That's where I saw him headed last." Toph grunted as the final block of wall seamlessly joined the old wall.
"Thanks."
"No prob. When you see him, tell him to get his keister down here. I can't do everything and its his temple." Toph huffed as another part of the wall merged with the original structure.
"Sure, I will let him know." Mai mockingly saluted leaving Toph to finish the repairs.
She wrapped her robe a little tighter around her as she climbed up higher. She had never been this far into her home and she hoped she was going in the right direction. She almost missed the steps to the North Tower, of course they weren't really steps anymore. They were little more than rubble.
'He must have glided up there somehow.' Annoyed at being thwarted Mai turned back the way she came. She had almost reached the mouth of the corridor but a sudden idea came to her. She analyzed the angle of the remaining steps and reached into her sleeve.
She threw several of her larger weapons into the jagged steps and clambered up on them. It took several attempts but she finally made it to a portion large enough to continue without them. She cautiously placed her weight on the step satisfied it would hold she made quick work of the rest.
She reverently stepped into the room, her dark eyes becoming accustomed to the bright light as she searched for his figure. She spotted him on a dais overlooking a sharp drop into the canyon below. The window threw blinding amounts of light illuminating him.
Mai softly padded to him but she needn't have bothered. Aang was deep in meditation and she knew from experience that it would take a lot to pull him from it. The dais was large and she gulped and scooted onto it. Her fear of heights coming back in a rapid whoosh.
"What's wrong?" he asked not moving from his position.
"I was about to ask you the same thing." She said inching just a tiny bit closer to him.
"I'm fine. How did it go with Zuko?" Thinking better about it he said, "you don't have to answer that."
She smirked, "it went fine but you're not up here because of Zuko, are you?"
He put his hands in his lap and opened his eyes, " How did you know?"
She cupped his chin and turned his face to hers, "I've been living with you for over a year, this is the first time you've actually used any of the towers."
He grinned sheepishly, "Dead giveaway, huh?"
"I have a feeling my talk with Zuko was much better resolved than yours with Katara, am I right?"
He faced away from her but she just grabbed his chin again, "whatever is bothering you still needs to be out in the open if our relationship is to have any chance."
"I know, I know." He jumped down from the dais and helped her down. Mai sat on the edge of it watching as he struggled with controlling his temper.
"You're doing it again." she said matter of factly. He raised an eyebrow waiting for her to finish her statement. "You're acting like an airbender. You need to stop evading and confront this."
"What do you want me to confront? Why she cheated? I know that. Why she felt she couldn't tell me instead of running to Zuko? I know that too. It's been a year, Mai actually its been a year and some months and now she tells me she's still in love with me. What am I supposed to do with that? I'm rebuilding my life. Why is she so intent on bringing it crashing back down?" He tirade slammed the windows and door forcibly plunging them into darkness.
A small flame grew to life in his palm but even in the shadowy light Mai could see the torture he was going through, "Those are you things that you should be asking her, not me."
"I don't want to. I don't care about her answers anymore." He said annoyed at his outburst.
"Obviously you do, otherwise you wouldn't be hiding up here." Mai leapt from her spot and clutched his shoulders forcing him to look at her. "Get out your anger so you can move on."
"But I'm not angry. I don't know what I am." He placed the flame on a torch examining it as it came to life. "It just feels unfair you know. I've loved her since I was twelve. I risked everything for her and it didn't make a difference she still treated me like a kid and left me at the first sign of conflict."
"Aang, I can't tell you what Katara went through, but I can tell you what probably happened. She had nobody to confide in and as angry as I was about it I kinda understand. She wasn't raised like you or I or even Zuko. We all understood about duty and what it does to our lives."
Mai paused wondering if she was getting through. "Maybe all she needed was reassurance. Sometimes that's all you need. Aang, if you have ever loved me or her in anyway you owe it to her to hear her out. You need to have her hear you out as well. Everything you just told me, you have to tell her."
Aang wrapped her in his arms burying his nose in her hair. "Thank you."
Feeling she had cried enough for the rest of the year, Mai untangled him from her and shooed him to the door. "Go and be brutally honest with yourself about what you really want."
He slipped onto his ball and zoomed out of the room. Mai sat back on the dais and looked into the abyss. She sat back and meditated as Aang had taught her.
'Everything happens for a reason,' she thought.
