eighteen: words like violence
Katara shifted uncomfortably, her knees growing damp through the cloth of her leggings and one of her feet falling asleep. Her hands idly traced circles on the beach, skimming the sides of her calves as they rotated around. The wet sand between her fingers should have been soothing, a taste of rest and relaxation she hadn't known in so long. Really, it just felt cold and wet, coarse to the touch. It seemed there was no escape for her, not right now.
What an ironic twist of fate it was, after all those years, that she was finally the one to run away from Aang.
"You're leaving tomorrow? You just got back yesterday! You can't stay with me a little longer?" she asked, ashamed of the crack in her voice, the way she had been reduced to begging. It felt they were caught in a spinning wheel, cursed to always have one foot out the door.
Despite her outburst, she wasn't facing him. She couldn't.
Maybe it wouldn't even be so bad if he at least missed her. Even when they were together, she only ever had half of his heart, at best. If he could just look at her, unflinching, and say he was glad to see her, even if only for two days, maybe it wouldn't sting so much when he turned around and left again.
She dropped the bowl she'd been washing, as she had been scrubbing the same spot for five minutes absentmindedly and was sure to start wearing down the wood grain if she wasn't careful. As she thought, she licked her lips and realized she tasted salt; funny, she hadn't even known she was crying.
Aang, ever still, ever silent, stood a few paces behind her. She didn't have turn around to know he damn well wasn't looking at her. This was his default to any struggle he knew he wasn't going to overcome. He shut down. And she couldn't take it anymore.
"Just go, Aang," she said derisively, hands curling into fists. "Don't waste my time. Don't write while you're gone." He still hadn't moved, and so she forced herself to turn around and stare him down, jaw set. "I need you to go. Please."
She was sixteen, and he fourteen. This was the first, and far from the last, of their goodbyes.
Katara bit her lip and shook her head, trying desperately to empty her mind of any thoughts of Aang. That was the whole reason she was here.
She'd taken a series of ferries and had fled to the outskirts of Jang Hui, the town where she'd played dress up as the Painted Lady during the war. She didn't know what had drawn her here specifically; maybe the grandeurized self-image she'd had was attractive right now, or maybe it was just that this was one of the furthest places she could be from the palace without leaving the country.
Whatever it was, she didn't quite know what to do with herself now that she was here. She'd come for peace and quiet, and while it was certainly quiet, she'd found no peace yet. The waterbender had holed herself up in an abandoned shack on the edge of the beachy shore that surrounded the river. It was riddled with wood rot, and the foundation was essentially nonexistent; definitely not the most glamorous of living situations, but then again, she'd survived in much worse. Any roof over her head beat being out in the open in a sleeping bag.
The sun was setting dimly in the distance; the evening sky was a dull, grayish purple, such a far cry from the dazzling oranges and pinks of the sunset sky she'd loved in the capital city. Here the night felt nearly as oppressive as the heat of the day, the stars constantly hidden behind the hazy veneer of clouds and lingering pollution. The clouds seemed to trap in the heat, too, which made it nearly impossible to sleep for someone who was already prone to wake with the moon.
Having sat here for over twenty minutes, her waterskin had slid down almost into her lap. She pushed it back into place, took a breath and stood, brushing off the damp sand from her legs and hands. It was a short walk back to her makeshift home, but she was in no hurry, strolling slowly along the bank and humming quietly to herself.
When she first heard the sound, she told herself she was just imagining things. There's no way. I'm out in the middle of nowhere, alone. Then it came to her again, louder, and she forced herself to look up, her brow already furrowed and jaw set. Her eyes confirmed what her ears had registered; it was Appa flying overhead, about a quarter of a mile away.
The waterbender steeled herself; she was not, under any circumstances, going to have a repeat of that night.
She hadn't meant to have any private conversation with him; she'd come to announce her leave of absence, and had hoped to leave it at that. But the Avatar requested to speak to her alone, and a part of her hated him for using his power over her.
"What, Aang?" she asked, her voice snapping though she hadn't intended so. Her patience wore thin, and he if he asked her again, she could make no promise to man or spirit that she wouldn't water whip him into next month. Corner her once, fine; corner her twice, he had another thing coming.
Aang's steely expression suddenly melted as three years of pain and avoidance seemed to catch up with him all at once. "I need to explain." Tears brimmed his eyes, not so wide as they were when they were children. "I took Iroh's advice, but... I think I took it too late."
"What advice? When did you talk to Iroh?"
It seemed Aang didn't care to elaborate. Instead, he told her, "The White Lotus told me for years that I should distance myself from you. From any one woman. They tried to pressure me into breaking up with you the entire time we were together."
Katara sucked in a sharp gasp, her blue eyes wide. "What? Why would they do that?" she demanded. She was still standing, and felt her body curl almost into a defensive stance, her hand twitching reflexively towards her waterskin.
"They said the best thing for my people would be for me to have children with women all over the world. That I should try to have as many airbending children as possible. They wanted me to bring the Air Nomads back from extinction, to teach Airbending to the next generation. They said that my legacy, aside from ending the hundred-year war, is to bring back the life that the war destroyed." He sighed, and she could tell he'd heard these words a hundred times over the years.
Her defenses dropped a little, and she forced herself to take a breath. "Oh, Aang," she said quietly, seeing his eyes close and his chest heave with the weight he was finally releasing.
"I struggled with it for years. I didn't want to leave you," he murmured in earnest, meeting her eyes again. "I know I did a terrible job of holding it together. But I couldn't talk with you about it. I didn't want to put pressure on you. I didn't know what to do, or who to turn to. I tried to just deal with it by myself. I was trying to buy time before I needed to start having kids."
It was as if someone had landed a blow directly to her gut. If anyone could understand resisting pressure from authority, it was Katara.
"That's why..." she couldn't bring herself to say it. That was why he'd avoided intimacy. More than that - this was what he'd been keeping from her all those years. That wall she couldn't figure out, or find a way through. "That must have been really hard." Her voice was soft, almost timid. "But it was wrong to keep that from me. You know that, don't you?"
"Iroh's advice was to choose happiness. To choose you." A pause, then, "It took me a long time, but I realized he was right."
Katara shook her head. "It wasn't fair to spring that on me. To just... propose to me, completely out of nowhere. Did you really expect me to say yes? Seriously, Aang, why would you do that to me?"
He looked taken aback by her words, which really only pushed her towards anger. "I... I chose you, Katara. I chose you over my people." Aang strode towards her, closing the distance until they were almost toe-to-toe. Instinctively she took half a step back, looking up at him derisively. She couldn't help the sweeping sensation of familiarity that overtook her as she examined his features; the sad gray eyes that had once trailed her with longing, then hidden secrets from her so carefully. His cheeks, his jaw, that had slowly emerged over the years from the roundness of his childhood. The lips she'd kissed countless many times, most lifelessly. She couldn't help but notice those lips still failed to offer her an apology.
As the Avatar took her hand, she was overcome with deja vu from two nights ago. "I chose you over the Air Nomads," he said again, holding her gaze intently. "And I chose your people. If we marry, think about what good it can do for your tribe. I know the south is struggling against the north, I know you're fighting for a voice in the world. Imagine if the chief's daughter was married to the Avatar."
She pulled her hand back from Aang's instantly, reeling as though she'd been slapped. "I don't need to marry anyone to be important, or to give my tribe a voice," she snapped, glaring up at him. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I have my own job to do. "
"That's not what I meant," Aang said quickly, holding his hands up defensively. "I just mean that, if you say yes, it can be a good thing for the people you love, too."
The waterbender crossed her arms over her chest. "That's not for you to decide." She tilted her chin up to him defiantly. "Besides, I can't live up to that, Aang - how could I possible take the place of your entire culture? You're choosing between undoing a century-old genocide, and me? That's too big of a sacrifice. I couldn't fill that void in your life, no matter how much I tried."
"I mean, any Airbending children are good, right? And it's a sacrifice either way. Asking me to give up having a family for the greater good is too much - I can't-"
"I'm not asking you to give anything up, Aang. I'm telling you that I'm not an option anymore, okay? We are not an option anymore. It's too late for that."
He seemed desperate, reaching for her hand again before she snatched it away once more. "Katara-"
"I loved you, Aang. I really did." She paused, tears stinging in her eyes and the back of her throat. She hated herself for the words she was about to speak, but he needed to hear them. "You were my hope for the world. I would have given almost anything for you, done anything to protect you. But, if it was me, I wouldn't have chosen you." The words hung in the air between them, pulsing with venom. "I would have chosen my people."
It was almost tangible, the way Aang stood frozen, a block of ice cemented to the floor of the Fire Nation palace. He closed his eyes, and she could see his jaw visibly tighten.
"Just go, Katara."
The sight of Appa made her blood boil. She couldn't make out the Avatar quite yet, and she doubted he could see her, but that didn't stop her from glaring viciously at him as he descended. Her palms itched and burned, the raging impulse to throw icicles at him barely suppressed.
"What the hell are you doing here, Aang?" she shouted, hoping the wind could carry her fury. "Who gave you the right to follow me?"
Appa's body curved upward as he began his descent, and momentarily blocked her vision. Katara ran up to the bison, ready to start yelling for all she was worth, but when he finally leveled out and gave her full view of his rider, she stopped dead in her tracks.
It took her a long moment to collect herself, to process. "What are you doing here?" she asked again, this time dumbfounded and breathless.
There was a flash of blue as he quickly jumped down from the saddle, and he'd thrown his arms around her before she even had time to register it. "Coming to check on you, that's what," Sokka laughed in her ear.
She was too confused to remember to return the hug before it was over. As he stepped back, she gave her brother a once-over; she saw that his hair was down, and windswept; he had traces of late-evening stubble on his chin, and a terrible bruise along his left arm. "How did - you're - I didn't - what- "
He held up a finger, shushing her. "I took a ship up here after I got your first letter. I got to the palace the day after you left, and it took some convincing for Aang to let me borrow Appa."
Katara shook her head. "But... but Suki-"
"There's a lot more to tell," he admitted, holding up a hand. "But I just got here. Give me a minute to stretch my legs, will ya?" he joked, making a big show of bending down to touch his toes and stretch his arms behind his back. For the first time in weeks, and with the slightest whisper of a tear in her eye, Katara smiled.
She couldn't remember the last time they'd gone night fishing - when they were kids, night fishing was really no different than day fishing, since at the poles, night and day didn't exist in the same way as it did for the rest of the world. She didn't suppose they'd ever truly fished in the dark, but they were both better shots now than they had been as kids. It was a good test of skill, if they wanted it to be; for her, she didn't care so much about catching anything as much as just getting to splash in the water with her brother.
The water was warm, but cooler than the air, and they were grateful for the refreshment it brought. Sokka hadn't had nearly as much time to adjust to the Fire Nation heat as she had, and told her that he'd complained to Appa the entire ride here. Even the winds that high up hadn't been enough to cool him down.
Sitting among a string of hazily obscured stars, the moon was nearing full, and it loomed large overhead. Maybe it was just Katara's imagination acting up, but the moon had always seemed a little closer, and a little bigger, when Sokka was around.
They caught two or three river trout, but they let them go, content with the sport of hunting in and of itself. Later she wouldn't remember what they talked about, as they'd made some silent agreement not to speak of anything serious while they played in the river. Katara did note that he nursed a flask in a way he probably thought was sneaky, but she let it go.
When finally they made their way back to the roof on stilts that Katara currently called home, Sokka built a fire while she unpacked some of her sparse food supplies to cook. She had already eaten, but Sokka had been flying nonstop for nearly a full day, and implied he might pass out and die if he didn't eat in the next twenty minutes. She chuckled at that, and a blanket of quiet settled over them, mesmerized by the glow of the flames, both deep in their own thought.
It was Sokka who eventually broke the silence. "She said no."
Katara blinked, drawn out of her own head, and looked over at her brother, face downcast and food barely touched.
She didn't have to ask. "I'm so sorry, Sokka," she replied gently. A pause, then, "why?"
He shrugged. "The Kyoshi Oath. The reason I figured she'd say no." He set his rice bowl down, and almost immediately reached for the flask at his hip again. "They swear to commit their lives to protecting the island, to following in Avatar Kyoshi's footsteps, and to let nothing get in the way of that. No marriage, no children. No ties to anything." His lips set into a hard line with those words, a trace of frustration and hurt on his tongue.
Doesn't that sound familiar, Katara thought, irritation creeping up in the back of her mind. She shoved it down; this wasn't about her.
She shifted forward on the stump she'd taken for a seat, her soft eyes watching her brother as he offered up his stifled version of a broken heart. Her thoughts skipped back to that week in his home, the turbulence that he'd seen her through, how the tides had changed. "Did you guys break up?"
His thumb circled the lip of the flask absentmindedly as he stared down at his feet, light flickering across his still, somber face. "I don't know," he admitted with a small sigh. "I mean - I think we will, but we haven't yet, exactly. I keep trying to find a way out of it, a way for this to work, but I think it's inevitable."
An owl gave a soft chirp out in the night; its echo barely whispered over them. "What do you want to do?"
Having finished off its contents, Sokka tossed his flask from his right hand to his left and reached down into his satchel, fishing around for another promising container. "No clue," he said flatly. His blue eyes honed in as he poured out some measure of alcohol into the tin flask he held, surprisingly focused for someone who had had so much to drink already. "I haven't told Dad. He'll take it as an out and I don't want to give him that yet." He knocked back another swig and used the heel of his palm to scrub away what little had escaped his mouth.
Katara gave a small sigh, her eyes downcast. "I know this isn't what you want to hear, but we can't give the Northern Tribe any opportunity to take what little we have left." She paused, gritting her teeth as she tried to speak evenly. "They sent an ambassador to the Fire Nation to babysit me. I think they're looking for an opening to grab power over us. If we show any division, we give them what they need to swoop in on us."
Sokka shook his head, staring absentmindedly out towards the river as he did so. "Dad's not gonna believe that, or at least, he won't care enough to try to stop it."
"Then it has to be you," she murmured. "I have an incredible, international platform for our tribe. But with no discernible, visible Chief people, can poke holes in anything I say or do. And you need a connection to the world outside the South Pole, a reason to leave when you want, which I can give you." She sat up a little straighter, a candlelight flickering over her head as the wheels turned. "I think we have a really good shot at this, Sokka. I think we need to accept that we were never going to go home and settle down, turn away from the world after we lost so much sweat and blood to save it. That... that life isn't meant for us. It never was."
Her brother gave an uncharacteristically defeated sigh. "Shitty pep talk, Katara," he breathed. "And, anyway, didn't you just tell me you're in love, not that long ago?"
Katara froze; she'd been hoping against hope he wouldn't bring that up. She wasn't really even sure why she'd told him to begin with. "I- I mean-"
"Who is it?" she would've expected the question to be a tease, a taunt, but instead it was strangely serious. As though he were worried about the implications of her answer.
The waterbender shook her head. She'd kept his name out of her mind for a few days now, miraculously, and it was some form of peace she was loath to part with. Instead, she opted to answer his question with a question. "Does it matter?' she shot back.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "It's literally the worst person you could have picked, isn't it?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He made a broad, sweeping gesture with his arm. "It means exactly what you said. Our lives were never going to be simple. You got a crush on the second most powerful person on the planet right after breaking up with the most powerful person on the planet."
Before she knew what she was doing, Katara had jumped to her feet. "It's not a crush!" she snapped angrily, then felt blood rush to her face a split second later.
The siblings held a hard stare for an agonizingly long minute before Sokka finally broke the silence. "Whatever it is, you can't have him, Katara."
"Trust me. I'm well aware of that," she whispered, then turned heel towards the hut and left him outside alone.
They worked together after quick apologies and quicker forgiveness in the morning, cleaning up the leftover dishes and making a paltry breakfast out of the scraps of food Katara had left. It amounted to plain, tasteless oats with random bits of berries she'd found along the riverbank that didn't look completely warped from pollution. It wasn't until after their meal that Katara finally broached the conversation.
"You're here to talk me into going back, aren't you?"
His move mimicked hers from the night before, though his was much less defensive. "You have to go back, you know that, right?"'
Her empty bowl settled down into her lap, and she fixed her gaze on it. "I know. I had promised to help Zuko find his mother. I bet he's going to do it with or without my help, especially after Roku basically drew him a map of where to go."
Sokka stared at her quizzically. "I'm not going to pretend I understand any of what you said. But, I do know that your job is really important to you, and the longer you're gone, the more it gives people a chance to undermine you." He gave her a beaming smile. "You can handle them though. You have to go back and show everyone who's boss."
She gave a small chuckle at that. "You're right. But there's one problem I don't know if I can handle, and that's Aang."
Her brother held up his hands. "Hey, I love the little guy, but if I need to go rough up your ex boyfriend, I'm not above that."
"I don't need him roughed up. I just need to be left alone." She stood up to wash the bowl in her hands.
"If you want me to talk to him, I'll talk to him," he offered, voice earnest and sincere.
"No. If he wants to keep pushing it, I'll have to face him on my own."
It didn't take long for them to pack up; she hadn't brought much with her, and neither had Sokka. Appa was quiet as they slung their baggage onto his saddle; Katara spent a few minutes scratching the highest spots she could reach to show him some love. She'd missed Aang's companions, she realized, in a way she hadn't even missed Aang himself.
When they set off, the sun was beating down on them already; Sokka took the opportunity to show her an innovation he'd created for Aang a few years ago: the saddle tent.
He'd constructed a pop-up shade that attached to the edges of Appa's saddle. Now that Appa wasn't a giant target in the sky, it wasn't as much of a risk to increase his visibility and for Aang to lose some of his. Plus, there was unlikely to be a need to hop off of him onto his glider at a moment's notice to ride into battle, the way they had done before.
She gave him an appreciative laugh and let the quiet ride overtake them for a while.
An hour or so had passed before Sokka spoke up again. "I tried telling her what you told me, you know. It didn't work. But I'm glad you told me."
Casting her gaze over toward him, her hair whipped around furiously, and she reached up to tie it back into a single bun at the nape of her neck. "The thing about one of the other warriors wanting to get married?"
He nodded. "She said that they had all made the choice when they took the oath."
"I'm sorry, Sokka," she said simply, unsure of what else to say.
"Don't be sorry. I wanted to know that I tried everything I could before we called it quits. That there was nothing else I could have done differently. You helped me do that." He frowned, thinking for a moment. "I shouldn't have said what I said yesterday."
"About what?"
"About you and Zuko," he said, and the sound of his name made her breath catch in her throat. She tried to shake it off; it was stupid, really, that it could have such a power over her. "I know he's with someone else right now. And I'm not saying you should do anything rash. But I don't think you should give up. Not before you've even put yourself out there."
She heard herself snort. "I'm not going to put myself out there. You were right, it can't happen, and I accept that. I have responsibilities to focus on, anyway."
Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder; when she looked up, her brother was giving her a soft, sad smile. "At least one of us should get to be happy. Just promise me you won't give up easy, okay? We're Water Tribe. We don't go down without a fight."
Never give up without a fight. Where had she heard that before?
She didn't know why, but his corny attempt at a pep talk - her domain, she would have to assert - hit her close to home. She found herself giving him a resolute nod without really intending to.
It was for him, more than it was for her. That's what she told herself, anyway.
"I promise."
author's note: this week marks 6 years since I lost my brother. he's been on my mind a lot the last few weeks, and so I wanted to write in some sibling love into this chapter.
On another note, I'm sorry for the Sokka/Suki sadness. I super duper ship them, and I can't make heads or tails as to why they didn't end up together in Korra or why Suki isn't really even mentioned as a part of team avatar. Obviously this isn't following canon after the ATLA finale, so you might be asking yourself, why does that matter? Dear reader, it matters because i am a masochist and i want to explore reasons i think are legitimate as to why they didn't get married and have many babies together. and also, because i want to explore what happens when these children grow up to face adult realities, when being a war hero doesn't solve your problems for you, when the stress and trauma of growing up in war doesn't magically disappear the moment the war is over. i think these are things that we really missed out on by having the show end where it did and why i would have killed for seasons 4 and 5. because the work isn't over when the war is over. the world has to rebuild, people have to reckon with a past that doesn't reflect the present, children grow up with scars and find out what new ways the world can hurt them, and how to lean on each other to make it through.
Hate to leave you on that note, but it is now my bedtime. I will see you good people next chapter. Leave me a review?