This is it, darling readers. The last missing moment. Enjoy.

During "Sozin's Comet, Part 4"

Aang's new room was just as small as his old room at the Southern Air Temple. It had been used as servant's quarters before Azula, apparently, had banished almost the entire staff. But, despite the room being about half the size of a closet in the Earth King's palace, it was comfortable. His sheets were adequately soft, pillows firm but forgiving, just as he liked them. And best of all, the sheets weren't silk. No more reminders of himself wreathed in fake fire on that Ember Island stage.

Then again, Aang had won. He had actually won. He didn't need to be afraid of Ozai anymore.

He didn't need to be afraid of anything anymore. Everything was coming to an end. The war, the suffering, and, of course, the mystery of where he stood with Katara.

He sat down on the edge of his bed just as Katara entered the room. She smiled at him, and if Aang didn't know any better he'd say she was nervous. She had just faced down an utterly amoral Fire Princess and lived to tell the tale, and she was nervous talking to him? Aang didn't know whether to take this as a good sign.

Aang took her in as she sat down next to him. Her clothes smelled strongly of ash and less strongly of blood. Her hair was lank and disheveled, not the girlish smoothness of their early journeys nor the wild, beautiful tangle she'd worn post-invasion. Even in the darkness of the Fire Nation palace in the middle of the night, he could see bags under her eyes. Aang guessed that, between overthrowing the Fire Lord and, presumably, looking for him after he disappeared on that lion-turtle, she'd gotten one night's worth of sleep in the last three.

And yet, Katara was making the time to talk to him. To let me down easy, Aang tried to tell himself. Even if she did like him before Ember Island, he'd certainly done away with any chance he had with her when he had kissed her on that balcony. Stupid! He shouted at himself, as he had multiple times a day since it had happened. Might as well start with addressing that.

"I'm really sorry about what happened at the play," Aang mumbled, staring at his bare feet, which swung lazily over the foot of the bed. His shoes had been a casualty of the battle of the century, and a thin, wispy burn forked across the top of his left foot to show for it.

"Aang, look at me," Katara said. Aang obliged, a little embarrassed that he hadn't been able to summon the courage to look her in the eyes while he apologized. He had just fought the Fire Lord, and now he was scared of the girl he'd been traveling with for months?

"It was stupid of me to kiss you out of the blue like that...or I guess it wasn't out of the blue, we were talking about the invasion, but either way," Aang rambled. "I'm sorry. It was dumb and wrong. And I'm sorry for yelling at you when we were all talking about whether I should kill Ozai. You were just trying to help. You're always helping me, and I took it for granted."

"It's okay," Katara said quickly, flatly. Aang couldn't tell if her tone meant she hadn't really forgiven him, or whether she just wanted him to move on to...what he really wanted to say. What he really could say, now that the war was over.

"Aang, I want you to tell me how you feel." Well, that put an end to that mystery.

"Don't you already know?" Aang asked, a bit rueful. But he swallowed his fear. He had been ready to confess his feelings to her at several points on their journey. On the Serpent's Pass, before he had trained with Guru Pathik, before the invasion, on Ember Island...why was it so hard now?

Because she can reject me, and she no longer has the war as an excuse to soften the blow, Aang thought.

But that was a possibility he had to face, too. And, if he had to let her go, he would. He was Avatar Aang. It was his duty.

"I know, but I want you to say it," Katara pushed. She put a hand on his shoulder. "Say it," she repeated.

Aang took a deep breath. "I… I love you," he said simply. Wasn't that enough? Did she want him to elaborate? Katara looked at him, smiling.

Wait, she was smiling? Did this mean-

"Go on," she prodded.

"You're kind, and you're compassionate, and really, really pretty, but that's the least of it," Aang said, the words flowing out of him like a creek. He thought back to Guru Pathik, how he had said that unblocking chakras was like clearing a creek. This, technically, would be bringing back exactly the type of clogging weeds that Pathik had warned him about. But Aang didn't care. This different creek needed to be cleared, too. It had been dammed up for too long for the sake of the world. Katara had asked him to let this creek flow, and he would. For her.

"When I don't have the world to worry about, my mind goes to you," Aang continued. "And sometimes when I am supposed to be worrying about the world, I still think about you. You've been there for me every step, every day of this journey. And, maybe you don't feel the same way about me, maybe you're just been so good to me because that's just the person you are for everyone, which is another thing I love about you, but if you don't...if you don't feel the same way about me, that's okay," Aang finished before he could lose whatever shred of passion and maturity he had built up. "But you asked me to say it, now I've said it."

Katara was just looking at him, still silently smiling. She moved her hand off his shoulder, brushing gently down his arm and intertwining her fingers with his. She scooted closer to him, closing the awkward foot or so that separated them.

Somehow, despite the new closeness and despite all her smiling (which she was still doing-what was with that?), Aang was now more sure than ever that she was going to reject him. "Really, it's okay," Aang said insistently, almost aggressively mature. "I can be a brother. As long as we're good. As long as you don't hate me for making things really weird."

Katara ran her thumb along his knuckles. "Okay, Aang," she said, her voice not a whisper, but soft enough for it to feel like her words would only be for him, even if they were surrounded by dozens of people. "Is it my turn?"

Aang snickered. "You asked me to talk! It can be your turn whenever you want!"

"Okay, then," Katara giggled. "I think...I love you too."

Delight sputtered in one of Aang's chakras (he had already forgotten which one corresponded with what emotion, but whatever). Then he processed that she had said 'I think'. No, he thought, dread replacing the brief spurt of delight.

"You think?" Aang asked, trying to sound as gentle as she'd been with him, and not indignant. Surely she hadn't gotten him to pour his heart out to her to reject him this cruelly, right? Right?

"When I said I was confused on Ember Island," Katara said, knitting their fingers more firmly together. "I meant it. But that doesn't tell the whole story."

Aang resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He was still pretty new at this, but he was almost positive eye-rolling in courtship was a major no-no. "So what is the whole story?"

"When we first met, you were a funny, sweet little kid. But, even then, you were my window to a world beyond the South Pole. I don't think I've ever really thanked you for that."

"Because there's no need to," Aang said gallantly.

"Yes, there is," Katara said seriously, looking him dead in the eyes. "I was ready to live out the rest of my life in a hut, either marry someone much older than me if they ever returned from the war, or wait ten years or so until I had to marry someone who I had seen getting their diaper changed. And, obviously I would've never, ever learned real waterbending."

"I can't imagine you without waterbending now," Aang said. "It seems like years ago when you could barely bend a puddle!"

"Don't remind me," Katara grumbled. But, again she moved her thumb along his hand. He was quickly beginning to like that. A lot. He hoped this was indication that there would be more where that came from in the future.

"But now you're the best waterbender in the world!"

"Well, I don't know about that."

"I know about that," Aang said, his voice coming out deep and smooth, like it had been in that candlelit cave. Just her, him, and a crowd of shy Fire Nation schoolchildren. But really, just her and him.

"Agree to disagree," Katara said, blushing (yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, blushing). "But anyways, as the months went on, as I got to know you more and more, I started seeing you as an Avatar, not a kid."

"Well, I am a kid," Aang said, worried. He hadn't wanted to be consumed by his role as the Avatar. It had been why he ran away from the Air Temple in the first place. Had he failed in this personal mission?

"Let me finish, Aang," Katara said lightly. "All those things you said about me, I learned a lot of it from you. All those towns we visited, you'd do anything to help them without a second thought. You were growing up, and I started to really love the person you were growing into."

"I had to help them. They needed me, and I already failed them all once by running away when I learned I was the Avatar," Aang said glumly.

"Don't start with that," Katara chided protectively. "I think you have officially made up for everything you did in the past, all those things that weren't your fault anyways."

"If you say so," Aang joked. Now that he thought about it, she was absolutely right. He had gotten his honor back. He had atoned for his mistakes, and the mistakes of Roku before him. The world could celebrate the Avatar again.

"But I think I first started thinking of you in the same way you thought of me after Ba Sing Se," Katara said. "That day, we all lost our Avatar, but I lost you, and if it had just been the Avatar that was gone, our effort would've been crippled, but we would've persevered. I would've persevered. But Aang, you're not just the Avatar. You're you. And if I had lost you, I don't know what I would've done."

Aang put his other hand on top of Katara's, inadvertently showing off yet another burn, this one relatively mild, but corkscrewing all the way from his wrist to his elbow, in a perverted echo of his tattoos. "You're gonna need a healing session," she said tracing his burn with a cool finger.

"Once you're through with everyone else. And yourself," Aang reminded her. She always tended to forget about her own needs when there were others suffering. It was a very airbender-like side of her. Aang loved it.

"I'll live," Katara said.

"I know you'll live," Aang said, cheekily repeating her words to Zuko. She flicked his unburnt wrist with a finger, but immediately retook his hand. Aang smiled widely. She could barely break their contact for long enough to punish him for teasing her.

"So what does this mean, then? For us?" Aang asked. Not that her confessions hadn't been everything he'd dreamed of for months. But he was still confused. People could feel things and still not be together, Aang remembered, thinking of Sokka and Yue.

Katara leaned down, putting her head on his shoulder as she'd done those couple times before when he felt like they might be close to...maybe...broaching this subject. On the beach, training, a few days after Hama. At the Western Temple, the morning after Zuko joined them. It was different now. It felt even better now. Even though her hair really did smell of ash, Aang leaned in too, resting his cheek against the crown of her head.

But then she lifted herself off his shoulder (about an eternity too soon, if you asked Aang). "I think it means we know how we feel," Katara said, her face morphing back into that soft smile, her eyes bluer and more alive than he'd seen them in months, or maybe ever. "I think it means we see where those feelings take us."

Aang was still confused. Did she want to be his girlfriend? Was she explicitly avoiding using that word, meaning she wasn't ready for that? Aang wished mastering the thirty-six levels of airbending included a secret thirty-seventh level, an ancient airbender technique for translating the words of women.

"So it means...you want to be together?" Aang asked, not to force her to say something honor-binding or anything like that, but a large part of him did want her to come out and say it. He supposed it was greedy. She had already basically confirmed her feelings a thousand times over in the last few minutes. But, just as she had needed to hear him say his truth, he needed to hear her say she loved him in this way, wanted to be with him in this way.

Katara kissed his cheek. Nothing they hadn't done before, nothing overly romantic, but it still made Aang feel like electricity was surging through his veins again. Exhilarating. Like he was holding lightning in the fingers that were intertwined with Katara's. "Yes, Aang. I want to be with you. But I want to keep this between you and me, at least for a little bit. Let's take things a little slow."

Aang nodded. "We don't have any reason to rush anymore. We have all the time in the rest of our-" Aang stopped himself before he could freak her out with some kind of premature marriage proposal. Baby, you're my forever girl, he recalled saying in one of his pre-invasion fever dreams. "We can take it slow," Aang said, regaining his flirting footing.

"I love you, Aang," Katara said, so simply it was like she had been saying it for decades, not minutes. She stood up, releasing his hands slowly, sliding her fingers across his one last time as she let go. Aang savored the contact, rueing how quickly his nerves seemed to forget the feeling of her skin on his. But then he remembered all they had said, the promises, spoken and unspoken. He didn't have to try to hold on to every touch and every hug anymore (though he probably still would). There would be plenty more to come.

"I love you too, Katara," Aang whispered, his voice almost breaking. She walked down the hallway back to her room, and he listened to her soft boots echo on the marble floor until the only sound was air going into his nose and out of his mouth, his breaths full and free.

For the last time, I promised good Kataang, and I hope I delivered. Say what you will about the romantic side of their relationship being a little uncomfortable early on, in season 3, and especially by the last shot of the series, they reach OTP. That teashop kiss was perfection. I wouldn't dare try to upstage it with one of my own. I never wanted this fic to be a pairing/ship fic, I wanted to really try and fill in those few gaps in the plot, places the show didn't have time to fill in themselves. Those places were few and far between, which is why I'm ending this fic at 20 chapters.

But there's really not much analysis to offer with this chapter, so what I'll offer instead is my sincerest gratitude. When I posted the first chapter of this fic, it was really intended as a challenge for myself as a writer. I wanted to take this show that I loved and put my own mark on it, while staying as faithful to the plot, characters, and tone as possible. I never imagined this would get the level of support that it did, and I would certainly not have kept going all the way to 20 chapters without all the favorites and comments. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to every single one of you readers.

As for what's next for me in terms of fanfics, I really don't know. More ATLA is certainly an option, although my other passion is Star Wars, so I might try and cook something up for that universe. Either way, this fic has been a journey and I'm so, so thankful that you all decided to take it with me.

Flameo, hotmen,

- Stotle