Chapter 21: Unpacking Baggage

They were only about three more days out from the South Pole, Hakoda's navigator estimated. The daily regattas had shortened the usual travel time by about a fourth. It was getting much colder; Katara had to wear her parka during their afternoon rides on Appa, and Aang had switched to a long-sleeved outfit. They brought a quilt up too, in case it got so cold they needed to cuddle under it.

"I can't wait to get to your village." Aang enthused, settling next to her on the saddle, after Appa had started cruising. "I'm looking forward to spending time with your people, getting to know your family and culture. That reminds me, what are the traditional Southern Water Tribe customs for courtship that we told your dad we would follow?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "I guess we really do have to talk about this, don't we."

"I just don't want to make a big mistake without knowing it."

"Yeah, I understand." She took a deep breath. "Fine, here are Chief Hakoda's rules for dating. No sex. That's the big one. Clothes stay on. No sleeping in the same bed. Or even laying down together. No being alone in the same room after dark. And remember, at the South Pole, for several months of the year, nights last up to 18 hours, and it's too cold to spend much time outdoors."

"Is kissing allowed?" Aang asked. That was his biggest concern. Complying with a prohibition on kissing would not be remotely practicable.

"Yes. But that's about it."

He shrugged. "Well, we'd already agreed to take things slowly anyway. And the funny thing is, I think we've mostly followed those rules without knowing it all along. We slept near each other outdoors, but never in the same room, unless Sokka was there too, and then it was usually just a barn or a cave."

She gave him a funny look. "I was just thinking how we've already broken all of those rules. Except the big one, of course."

"Well, waterbending practice..." He admitted with a smirk.

She returned his knowing look, thinking of his little bathing suit. "Yeah. Hard to do with clothes on."

"But I'm not remembering a time when we slept..." He trailed off, confused.

"It was when you were unconscious."

"Oh."

"I used to lay down next to you sometimes." She looked down. "Some nights it was the only way I could fall asleep, with my hand on your chest. I told myself If I could feel you breathing, then I would automatically wake up if I felt you stop. Although I was so tired, I might have slept through it. And I probably wouldn't have known what to do if you had stopped."

"Now I'm really mad at myself for sleeping through all that." He tried to lighten the tone, but didn't succeed.

"And I kissed you a couple times." She confessed, looking away, her voice soft. "I thought it might wake you up, like in a story."

"I wish that had worked. I don't understand why it didn't. I would have thought, if anything would have brought me back, that would have been it." He paused, trying to remember. "Did I ever thank you for the way you took care of me then?"

"Sort of. You acknowledged it. I knew you were grateful. When you woke up, you were just so upset about everyone thinking you were dead, that kind of had all your attention."

"Wow." He was floored by how thoroughly he'd disregarded her, and at the very time when she'd done so much for him. "I was a big jerk. I'm sorry, that was really selfish of me." It was not enough of an apology, not even close.

"You were traumatized. We all were."

"That's no excuse. I should have—I should have—" Aang looked around as if the clouds would help him complete his thought. "I can't even think of anything big enough I could have done to thank you. I owe you my life. I owe you everything."

She looked down. His earnestness was too much for her. "I mean, I was trying to save myself too. I knew the whole world was depending on you, and I knew how much it would hurt me if I lost you. I was the only one who knew anything about healing, the only one I trusted to take care of you. I just did what I had to."

"Don't minimize what you did," he insisted. "It was a huge deal. I was out for weeks, and you kept me alive. You kept me in this world."

"I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"It's like there's this whole part of our relationship that I wasn't there for." He realized. "I need to understand what happened and what it was like for you. We have to talk about it at some point, don't we?"

"No, we really don't." Katara answered firmly.

"Katara-"

She cut him off. "Can you bring me down to my dad's boat?" Her voice and face were blank.

Aang stared back at her for a long moment, until he thought if he didn't do as she asked, she would just jump into the sea and water bend herself onto the ship. He didn't want to create a scene, so he nodded and moved to Appa's head to steer him down.

It was useless. There was no way he'd be able to sleep. Aang couldn't stop thinking about Katara shutting him out, refusing to talk, the cold, uncompromising way she had silently insisted on ending their flight early. He shouldn't have tried to make her talk about something she didn't want to talk about. She would tell him when she was ready, and if it took years, that was fine. But he needed to apologize for pushing her if he was going to get any sleep at all.

He went to the deck of the ship and dove into the water, parting it so that it didn't even make a splash. He swam across to Hakoda's ship, pushing himself with a current. Then he bent the water into a pillar, elevating him onto the deck. There was only one man on night watch, and he was on the opposite side of the ship. Aang blew his clothes dry and went down into the cabin. He knew which room was Katara's from a tour they'd done at the beginning of the voyage. Her door was unlocked.

She sat up in bed as soon as he opened the door. "Aang?"

"Yeah. I couldn't sleep."

"Me neither."

He sat down on the bed next to her. "I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry for pushing you to talk about when I was unconscious. It's ok if you're not ready. Obviously it was a really hard time for you."

"No, you were right." She sighed. "I'm sorry I shut down like that. We do have to talk about it sometime, and since I don't think I'm ever going to feel really ready, it might as well be now."

"Ok." There was a pause as neither one knew exactly how to begin. Aang didn't know what to ask, and Katara didn't know what he wanted to know. Words did not seem like enough. "What if you show me what it was like?" he proposed.

"You mean like reenact it? Pretend you're unconscious now?"

"I guess so."

She paused. "Ok. Fine." She stood up and flicked the blankets and sheets to the bottom of the bed. "Lay down. You have to be totally limp."

He lay on the bed. It was still warm from her body. He tried to relax and pretend to be asleep. She moved his arms to his sides and sat down beside him.

"You can keep your shirt on now, but I guess you know that back then you were shirtless all the time. Except for bandages. You woke up that way." Katara crossed one of his arms over his chest, then pushed him away from her by the shoulder. "I had to roll you to your side so I could get to your back to work on healing you." She touched the center of his back, where his scar was. After a moment like that, she let him shift onto his back again.

"I had to move your limbs so you wouldn't get stiff." She moved each arm in circles, working the elbow and wrist joints. Then each leg, stretching them in every direction, massaging the muscles. She even flexed his fingers and toes for him. It was an involved process, and took a while.

She was slipping into a different state of mind, he could tell. Her movements were matter-of-fact, efficient, almost brisk, but not without some gentleness. She was utterly comfortable with his body as an object, he realized. There was an intimacy in the way she touched him, but one he felt oddly absent from. She knew his body and how it worked, but he hadn't been there when she had gained that knowledge. It was almost like finding out that someone had learned all his secrets from spying on him. It would have felt wrong and humiliating, except that it was his best friend, and they were secrets he would have gladly shared with her anyway, and she had used them to save him.

"How often did you do this?" Aang asked.

"Two or three times a day."

"I had to prop you up with pillows to feed you." She demonstrated, putting her arm around his shoulders to pull him upright. He remembered to relax his neck muscles, which made his head bob to the side, so that she had to adjust him again. "Broth or milk by the spoonful. Sometimes at first it would run down your chin so I had to close your mouth and massage your neck until you swallowed. After a while I figured out how to waterbend it just far enough down your throat so it would go down." She demonstrated with a little water from her basin. He thought it would make him gag, but it didn't.

She pulled out the pillows so that he was flat on his back again. "When I slept next to you, it was like this." She lay on her side, her body close enough to his arm to feel her heat, but without touching. She set her hand flat in the center of his chest, and they both breathed there for a few moments. Slowly, he felt her relax, and he did too. It would have been easy for them both to fall asleep there, but Aang knew that was not a good idea if he didn't want Katara's father or brother to catch him in her room in the morning.

He turned his head to look at her, so close beside him on the pillow, her eyes closed. "What about when you kissed me?"

She opened her eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, why not?"

She sat up and then leaned down over him, hands on either side of his shoulders, her hair falling to one side and brushing his cheek.

"Eyes closed." She reminded him.

Her kiss was three seconds of silky, pillowy softness. His bottom lip between hers, slight pressure and a quick release of air. Exactly the kind of sweet, chaste kiss that might have woken an enchanted sleeper in a story. He opened his eyes and looked at her, imagining waking up to the sight of her leaning over him like this. If only it had happened that way. He could feel a smile starting, and he was about to say what he was thinking, when she looked away and cut him off.

"That wasn't the only time I kissed you. The other one was different. Remember, you can't respond."

Aang shut his eyes again and waited. He heard her take a deep breath. She put one hand behind his head and pushed her mouth firmly against his. Four, five times she worked her taut lips over and around his slack ones, each time a little more forcefully. She caught his top lip between hers and pulled on it. Their teeth bumped together awkwardly. He could feel her growing frustration and desperation, which created a matching alarm in him. She was trying to shock him into consciousness, she was searching for him inside his frozen body. It was a struggle to keep himself still, as he could feel her emotions becoming heightened, and he longed to hold her and reassure her. But he knew his job was to remain unresponsive; that was how she had asked him to be here for her now. He anchored himself in his trust for her.

Suddenly she stopped and turned away from him, curling herself into a ball. "I'm sorry." Her shoulders were trembling as if she might be crying.

Hearing her apologize made him ache. He knew it was a violation, kissing someone who could not consent, but he didn't feel violated. He just felt sad, seeing how his injury and infirmity had affected her, was still affecting her.

He sat up and wrapped his arms around her as she stayed in her ball. "It's ok," he whispered. He made soothing sounds and stroked her hair. After a few minutes, she uncurled her legs and returned the hug, still hiding her face from him.

He felt responsible for upsetting her so much. "I'm sorry for pushing you to talk about this."

"No, that wasn't it." Katara finally pulled away to look at him. "You were right. This had to happen eventually."

"Thank you for helping me understand what that time was like for you."

She finally felt able to put it into words. "The worst part was just the helplessness. You were helpless, and I was helpless to fix you. I did everything I could, everything I knew how to do, and it wasn't enough. The time just dragged on and on and you were still gone. And it felt like the longer you were gone, the less likely that you'd ever come back."

"A situation like that calls for a totally different level of strength and emotional endurance. Not many people can handle something like that. You're an even more amazing person than I thought."

She seemed to disregard his compliment as she went on. "And the second worst part was just how much I missed you. My best friend. I wanted to talk to you and have you talk back. I wanted your goofy smile."

"I would have felt the same. I'm sure I did, wherever I was."

She looked down. "You better go back to your room before the sun comes up."

He kissed her on the forehead, and sneaked out the door.

In the morning, Aang let Katara win the regatta. After they'd caught up the third ship and eaten lunch with Sokka's crew, he and Katara flew away on Appa and floated above the cold, choppy sea.

"So was that our first fight?" Aang asked, settling in next to her under a quilt.

"I guess so. Our first fight since becoming a couple anyway."

"I'd say we got through it pretty well."

"Yeah." She leaned her shoulder into his, and he took the invitation and wrapped his arm around her.

"I feel so much closer to you, and I didn't think that was possible." he marveled. "It's like there was a barrier between us that I didn't even know was there, and now it's gone."

"I think I feel that too—except I knew the barrier was there. Thanks for kind of bulldozing us through it."

"Sifu Toph would be proud. That was some emotional earth bending right there."

She laughed. "I guess you're right. But we don't have to tell her, do we?"

"Of course not." They sat contentedly for a minute, until Aang brought up something he'd been wondering about all morning. "Is it ok if I ask-I'm a little confused. You kissed me when I was unconscious, but then months later, the night of the play, you didn't want me to kiss you. You said it was because you weren't ready, but-"

"I wasn't ready for either of those kisses." Katara clarified. "When you were unconscious, I did something I wasn't ready for because it was the only thing I could think of to do to bring you back. I was willing to cross a line, and use myself and your feelings for me to help you get better, to win the war. It scared me."

"I understand that. I know a little about fear and desperation motivating misguided kisses." He quirked a smile at her, and then ventured another question. "What about when I kissed you during the invasion? I guess you weren't ready for that either."

"Well, no, I wasn't-it was certainly a surprise for me—but I also didn't want it to stop." She stole a sheepish glance at him under her lashes. He felt vindicated: he'd known she'd liked it. She went on. "I don't think any of us were ready for anything that happened that day. But maybe that's a proof that being ready doesn't matter that much."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, this feels like a very adult relationship, doesn't it? And we are only 15 and 13. We aren't ready for it, but we're doing it anyway, because we just couldn't resist. Denying how we feel would be too hard. We just wanted to be together so much we couldn't wait until we were ready."

"Yeah, I think that's true. Sorry to bug you again about those two old kisses."

"No, they were fair questions."

"So, before we got sidetracked unpacking some serious baggage, we were talking about the Southern Water Tribe courtship customs and your dad's expectations." Aang changed the subject, or brought it back. "And I just realized we broke the rules last night. Well, mostly me, I'm the one who came to your room."

"There was a reason I declined to commit to following those rules." Katara said in her 'I told you so' voice. "I just object to the idea of anyone but us setting the boundaries of our relationship."

"Yeah, I get that, and I'm 100% with you in theory, but I said to your dad 'We'll do our best...'" He trailed off guiltily.

"You didn't even know what we were talking about."

"Yeah, I was aware of that, and I thought the sentiment was vague enough to give me some wiggle room. I mean, I guess I was doing my best to be a good boyfriend, trying to end our fight. I only broke the rule because I couldn't spend one more minute thinking about you being mad at me, so in that sense I was doing my best." Aang rationalized.

"It's so funny that you care more about my dad's rules than I do."

"I just don't want to be the cause of a fight between you and your dad. Between the two of us, we have exactly one living parent, and it doesn't make any sense to alienate him just to prove a point. It's not like we're starving for time together."

"You're right." she gave in. "It's sweet of you to care so much about my family. If it makes any difference, my dad basically knew that I slept next to you—or at least in the same room-when you were unconscious, and he didn't say anything about it then."

"I don't think that counts as him giving me permission to sneak into your room last night. Of course it was different then, I was unconscious."

"And no threat to my virtue." she said ironically.

"But now I am?"

"Oh, yes. You are." She assured him.

"Is that a good thing?"

"I think it is. It wouldn't be worth dating a guy who wasn't. But my dad might not agree. What if we just throw out all of the rules except the two biggest ones, and say that is our way of doing our best?"

"And which ones are those?"

"No sex, and clothes stay on. With an exception for water bending practice. The other rules are really just making sure there are no opportunities for those two to get broken anyway."

"Ok. That makes sense."

"The courtship customs also call for a kind of check-in at the one year mark, so that might be a time when we could...reevaluate whether these rules need to be changed."

Aang's eyes widened a little when he understood what she was implying. Then he gulped, and breathed, "Ok."

One corner of Katara's lips lifted at his reaction. Then she stretched. "Are you as tired as I am?"

"So tired!"

"Want to take a nap?"

"Kinda. Did you just change the rules for us so we could take a nap up here?"

"Maybe." she admitted with a shrug.

They lay down, assuming a similar position to the one they'd been in the night before, only a little closer. Katara rested her head on Aang's shoulder as a pillow, and his left arm draped around her shoulders. Her hand lay on his chest, and his hand on hers. With nothing left to drag them down, they floated off to sleep.

Note: yes, Katara also would have changed Aang's diaper while he was unconscious. (Or maybe if Sokka was a super A+ friend and brother, he might have taken responsibility for that. Maybe.) I chose to follow the lead of the show and pretend that unconscious people don't have bathroom needs, to save them both (but especially Aang) the humiliation. I didn't think talking about that would serve any purpose in the story.

A note on ages: Aang and Katara are supposed to be 12 and 14 during the action of the show, which takes place over the course of a year. I take that to mean that they are 12 and 14 when the show begins, and each has a birthday over the course of that year, which they forget to celebrate, or celebrate off screen, so that they're 13 and 15 when the show ends, and this scene takes place only a few weeks later.

Next chapter: The South Pole. Subscribe for an update on Fridays.