Author's Note: Happy Thanksgiving folks! Hope you had a safe warm day. I'll be posting three chapters today; the final two and the epilogue will be in the near future. It's taking a little work to make them finish satisfyingly. Read, review, let me know what you think! Thank you for being here in the first place. ATLA owned by MDD and BK.

After: The Headband

Sometimes, when Aang was feeling melancholy or nostalgic, he would imagine how different his life would have been if Katara, Sokka, and Toph had been alive one hundred years ago. Circumstance and this war had brought the group together. Would their connection be as strong if they didn't have the fate of the world binding them to each other?

Sokka was an easy one. Although he hadn't taken to Aang immediately, he had warmed up eventually, and Aang felt a deep connection with him. His intelligence impressed Aang, as well as his perseverance and his ability to adapt to any situation. His sense of humor kept Aang in stitches, and Sokka was typically up for the kind of antics that Aang always felt helped pass the time as they traveled from one location to the next. He was one of Aang's closest and most treasured friends, including the ones he had grown up with one hundred years before. Given that Sokka would have had no reason to be initially suspicious of him without a war to make him that way, Aang was sure that he and Sokka would have become fast friends.

Toph represented a lot of attitudes and mindsets that Aang found opposite to his character, but in the end, he always felt that she was a good balance for him. She was blunt and gruff, but compassionate. Sometimes she needed as much sense knocked into her as she was willing to knock into others, but it was rare to find someone who could admit their mistakes as willingly as Toph did. She was funny and ferocious and Aang couldn't ask for a better person to stand beside him in a battle.

Aang knew in the marrow of his bones that he would love Katara in any time, whether it was a hundred years ago or a thousand years in the future. They had a connection that transcended time. The feeling that had sprung to life within him when he had opened his eyes in her arms for the first time couldn't have been called love, not then. But a thin thread had been forged between them, arcing its way through the air from his heart to hers, binding them to one another, growing stronger with every passing day, until he could no longer imagine or even want to imagine a time when he had lived his life without her. He had never met someone like Katara. She was patient and kind. She was fierce and powerful. She had a stubborn streak a mile wide. She had a temper like a Komodo-rhino. She was beautiful, strong. Everything.

And tonight, only hours before, he had held her in his arms, and danced with her the way he might have if it was one hundred years before. The memory of her body against his, of her lips passing within inches of his, of that wide smile she had given him as they spun and flipped and danced their way across the floor would be a memory that kept him buoyed against the grievances of this war for the weeks to come. It hadn't just been lip-service when he had told her that it was just her and him. At that moment, the room may as well have been empty but for the two of them.

He turned to his left, rolling over in his bedroll, to face Katara. She lay beside him, a few feet away, asleep, but restless. He wondered if she was having a nightmare.

As if in answer to his question, Katara sat bolt upright next to him. Her eyes were wide, but clouded with exhaustion.

"Are you alright?" Aang asked, sitting up on his bedroll.

She didn't answer, breathing heavily.

He scooted over to her, putting his hand lightly on her back. "Katara," he said gently. "Did you have a bad dream?"

She nodded blearily, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

Her voice was gravelly from sleep and confusion. "There was a weird dark… blob. It vibrated and churned. It was so weird." She turned to him. "It tried to eat you."

He made a face. "Gross," he said. "Did you save me?"

"No. I couldn't get to you. You were making like a buffer or… something. A wall of air, I don't know. You wouldn't let me near you, like you were holding me at an arm's length."

Aang frowned.

"You tried to fight it by yourself," Katara continued slowly, "but it absorbed you, just ate you right up, and there was nothing I could do. And then it ate Sokka, and Toph, and it was coming for me- and then I woke up."

"It was just a dream," Aang said comfortingly. "Don't worry. Your help will always be appreciated if we're ever fighting blob monsters. Or anything, really." He rubbed her back softly.

"I don't know how much I'd be able to help you," she said. "I wasn't doing so well in that fight. And you weren't letting me help you, anyway," she muttered. "It's like you don't want my help anymore. In dreams, or in real life."

Aang thought about that quietly for a moment. His defeat in Ba Sing Se had been humiliating; it was true that he had been keeping Katara and her brother and Toph at a distance. First, when he had woken up after his coma, and secondly, when he had wandered off on his own to attend a Fire Nation school. It wasn't that he didn't want their help, though. At first, after he had woken up, he thought that he could save them by keeping them as far from the war, from fighting, as he could. But that mistake had almost cost him his life, and Aang was a quick study. He believed he wouldn't make that mistake again, but now it was clear that she had been stung by the fact that he had wandered off from the group in that Fire Nation village.

He didn't regret his time at the Fire Nation school, but he never wanted to hurt her. Although he had learned a great deal and was unquestionably thrilled at the events that had taken place following his time there, Aang could now see how this looked to her. Like he was leaving her behind. Like he was keeping them separate.

That was the last thing he wanted. He didn't want them to be separate... he just wanted Katara to be safe. Katara, and Sokka, and Toph. But one of the hardest lessons this war was teaching him was that he couldn't do everything by himself. Try though he might, sooner or later, one of them might get hurt, but it was a risk they all had to take if they stood any chance of ending this war. It caused a churning in his stomach, and clenched a fist around his heart, but they had a job to do. When the war was over, when the fighting stopped and the fate of the world didn't hang on every step they took, maybe things would be different, but for now, he had to set his feelings aside. No matter how much apprehension it caused him.

"I was an idiot," he said finally. "I don't know why I thought I could go off by myself." He chuckled, blushing, and rubbed the back of his head, a strange new sensation due to the growth of his hair. "I'd still be frozen in an iceberg without you. I won't make that mistake again."

"That's good," Katara answered, her voice gravelly as she lay back down. "'Cause then I'd have no one to dance with." She covered herself with her blankets. "That was fun," she sighed.

He smiled softly and lay down as well, eyes to the stars above. "Yea, it was," he said. He turned to her, watching the even rising of her chest as she breathed in and out.

Her hand reached across the open space between them, and came to rest lightly in his. She gave him a soft smile, her eyes still closed. The expression was still gently gracing her features as she slipped into sleep, and Aang followed her soon after.