Disclaimer: I own nothing but the conceits and headcanon.
Notes: Assume each season of AtLA is a year, not just a few months.
Notes2: I want you to imagine that the Tortallan universe is on one hemisphere of the planet and the Avatar one is on the other.
Notes3: Shorter than usual because I'm coming up on the end and I didn't want another ridiculously short epilogue. Sorry, but this story has no finesse.
It was a few weeks, but word abruptly reached the palace that Queen Thayet had returned to Corus with minimal fanfare and was making her way home. Alanna was relieved as she hurried out to the courtyard to meet her friend and Queen. She smiled as Jon visibly resisted pulling his wife off her horse, knowing he had to maintain appearances. The children weren't so restrained as they galloped up to their father, barely checking in the appropriate bows and curtsy. The Lioness was curious to note, however, there was a figure in blue toward the back of the group that she didn't recognise.
A shout from high above reached their ears. "Katara!"
Heads snapped around as the form of Prince Zuko literally jumped off the tower. Alanna stifled a scream, then felt her jaw drop in amazement as he used his fire power to push his fall within reach of a window ledge, which he caught and swung off of, sending him acrobatically flying over to a flagpole, landed on the roof of a lower level with a somersault, springing to his feet, racing along the pointed ridge of the roof as though it were perfectly flat ground, then flung himself into the air, lofting his body with his fire again as he hit the next level down at a run.
"Zuko!" exclaimed the young woman in blue. She was off her horse and racing toward the prince in an instant. Then suddenly water surged out of the moat, and Alanna watched as Katara somehow used it to both slide and fling herself upward simultaneously, like a boat on the crest of a wave, but this one made of ice. She catapulted onto the roof and the pair embraced tightly.
"Looks like we both have a lot to tell," Thayet said. "We'd only just managed to determine that she had been travelling with other people."
Alanna glanced at her. "As far as we understood, it was most likely impossible for her to have survived the storm."
An excited exclamation from the roof brought her attention back, a flash of silver in the young woman's hair catching her attention. The couple were now clearly a couple as the hug had turned to an enthusiastic kiss. "Oh dear," Jonathan murmured.
"Oh?" Thayet asked.
"They had apparently been hiding the relationship to keep Aang on an even keel," Jonathan said. "He's just proposed, and she accepted."
Alanna had heard from Sokka about Aang's romantic aspirations for Katara and had equally determined that the Avatar was a nice kid, but needed some seasoning, unlike Zuko who reminded her of Alex with the sheer grace with which he took to swordplay. That just meant she was in agreement with Jon, though. No one wanted to deal with an immature, overpowered mage having a fit over his erstwhile true love choosing someone else.
A sudden rise in the wind was their only warning before a hurricane struck. Everyone dove for cover, the horses panicked (Alanna found herself wishing she could join them) and Aang was there, eyes and tattoos glowing, fire beginning to spark into being around his hands and a section of the courtyard raising him up into the air with a rumble.
As they watched, Katara shouted something to Aang, reaching out to him. The boy jerked away from her, shouting something back that made the young woman flinch. Toph's voice, her words in the tongue of the foreigners, but clearly cursing, launched herself toward the boy, encasing him in stone, clearly trying to restrain him long enough to talk him down.
With a gesture, the Avatar sent the blind girl flying through the air. Katara responded with water, catching Toph, starting to put her down, when Aang's temper got the better of him again. Alanna threw out a hand, using her gift to catch and cushion Toph as she fell again. Looking back at the roof, Alanna saw that Katara and Zuko were now clinging to the roof, trying not to be blown off by the winds at Aang's command.
"Enough!" Numair's voice echoed across the courtyard. Black-coloured magic settled over every nook and cranny, halting Aang's tantrum dead in its tracks, freezing everyone in place. "You will come with me right now," he informed the Avatar. The boy was clearly reaching for his power, but Numair ruthlessly used his skills with wild magic to shut off Aang's connection, wrapping him in a bubble of power and then storming off.
Toph said sardonically, "And now you know why we tended to baby him." She walked forward, and with a few sharp gestures reset the cobbles, dropped the raised column of dirt and stone back into the earth, and clearly resealed the displaced stone facing of the palace.
Katara and Zuko descended from the roof. She spoke, and Zuko translated. "I can't believe it," she had said. "I knew he'd be upset, but I didn't think he'd react like . . . like that."
The young woman looked shaken and said something, reaching for the combs in her hair. Sokka and Suki had arrived at the courtyard in the meanwhile and Suki's hands flashed out, grabbing Katara's, stopping her from what was clearly an attempt to removed the combs. Zuko said something, causing Sokka to shake his head in negation and seem to scold the pair.
Toph loudly added something in an acerbic tone of voice, then joined Alanna, Jon and Thayet. "They're just talking Katara and Zuko out of becoming unbetrothed. Thanks for the save," she said to Alanna.
"You're welcome," Alanna told her. "Why would they change their minds?" she asked the blind teen.
Making a face, Toph said, "Katara and Zuko are both really really dutiful. They'd been hiding it from everyone to avoid distracting Aang in the final months before the arrival of the comet. Katara's always babied Aang too, trying to keep him happy, talking him down when he pitched a fit over something. This time she couldn't talk him down, and she feels like she failed at her job. If they weren't betrothed anymore, Aang can still feel like he has a chance and he won't be upset. Zuko's probably just concerned about Aang being able to beat his dad. If Ozai is anything like Azula, he'd be able to set Aang off and distract him just by bringing up Katara and Zuko."
Aang was furious beyond words. Katara was his. She'd been there for him and he'd told her again and again that he liked her and they'd kissed in the tunnel to Omashu and he'd kissed her again before the Day of the Black Sun, she knew how he felt!
He was still fuming when Numair sharply set him down, now inside the mage's tower, and snapped, "What in the Gods' names was that?" With a gesture black fire crawled up the walls and Aang realised that the things Numair called wards, designed to keep magic contained, were now up.
"How could she? How could they? They both knew how I felt about her-"
"It doesn't matter what anyone knew, that was unacceptable." snapped the mage. "I know it hurts when someone you care for-"
Why was everyone always minimising how he felt? "I love her!" Aang shouted.
Eyes darkened with anger of his own, Numair grated out, "That is actually immaterial," he said. "The point is that you ignored every single thing we talked about, every discussion about how to separate how you feel from how you react, every moment of meditation on your friends. You want them to stop being afraid? You want them to stop worrying that you'll hurt them because they did something you don't like? You learn how to put that feeling aside, use your words and if necessary sublimate that feeling into something practical. You do not use your power against your friends in a tantrum!"
"A tantrum?" Aang reared back at the word. Like a baby?
Numair interrupted. "Had you exchanged any promises with her? Had she made any promises to you?"
"She'd promised to be there for me," Aang said. "I thought she meant . . . when we kissed in the tunnel to Omashu she seemed like she felt the same."
"When was this?" Numair asked. There was something about the way the man was looking at Aang that made the Avatar uncomfortable.
"A year ago? Year and a half?" Aang said a little hesitantly.
Numair fixed him with a glare. "Had either of you discussed this since? A relationship isn't based on how one person feels, it's based on both, and in order to know that you both have to discuss how you feel about each other. If you only make assumptions you're both headed for trouble." The tall man took a few steps closer to Aang. "But, as I said, your hurt feelings are not the point. The point is that you didn't speak with her, you simply leapt headfirst into your hurt and actually attacked the woman you claim to love. You attacked Toph when she tried to stop you from causing harm and if it were not for Alanna's intervention your friend could have been very seriously injured."
Aang felt himself stop dead as his mind replayed the events of a few moments before. Asking Katara how she could dare to be with Zuko (as though it were his choice who she chose to be with), Toph telling him to simmer down because he was causing structural damage to the palace (he could have hurt someone in the building), and then to his appalled shame, blasting Toph away and even preventing Katara from helping their friend.
Perhaps it was the fact that he could no longer use losing someone as an excuse, perhaps it was that, unlike when he'd lost it over Appa in the Si Wong Desert, someone had called him on his actions, maybe even just that Numair's lessons in self-control and using meditation as self-examination was finally taking hold in some small way, but Aang felt something in his mind flip around and resettle. It was a feeling he'd had before - being told he was the Avatar which made sense of things he'd felt before, being told a hundred years had passed but not really feeling it until he saw the skeleton that was once Gyatso and those meditations with Guru Pathik which now felt like they belonged to another life.
"That was what it meant," he said, not realising he was speaking aloud.
"What it meant?" Numair's voice startled him.
Aang turned back to him. "When Guru Pathik tried to teach me how to control the Avatar state he helped me unlock my chakras, helping me face fears and . . . and acknowledge the people that I love. But the last one was letting go. It didn't make sense to me. If you love somebody then you love them. It doesn't go away. Katara said once that it wasn't about no longer loving someone but about being able to step away from them. It . . . it made more sense when she said it that way but . . . I think I get it now."
"There's a saying here," Numair said. "If you love something let it go. If it returns it's yours, but if it does not, it never was."
Aang thought about hanging on. Thought about constantly telling people how things ought to be just because they were different from the way he once knew them. He thought about Zuko clinging so desperately to a picture of his family in his head that he did something painfully stupid and illogical under Ba Sing Se and Katara seeking vengeance for her mother and Sokka trying to protect Suki from everything and nothing on the Serpent's Pass because he couldn't let go of Yue. He thought of Chin the Conqueror who couldn't let go of his pride and Hei Bai who hadn't been able to let go of his anger. He though of Roku and how deeply the Avatar had loved his friend Sozin, unable to do what was either necessary or to let go of his misplaced guilt when he told Aang that the airbender was inheriting Roku's failure, as though showing mercy once and not being one of the great spirits was a deep personal flaw.
He thought of a story he'd been told about a young Arram Draper who'd had to accept that he would never be that ever again. Who'd had to accept that his power meant that he had a responsibility of self-control if nothing else, but that his curiosity and work ethic meant that he bore even more responsibility to use his power in a moral way, because he'd learned so much that an ill-controlled thought now had even more chance to wreak havoc than before he'd learned control.
Aang swore once again that he'd learn that control. He had a responsibility and a power and Gyatso would have been so disappointed in him. "Should I apologise right now?" he asked Numair, "Or wait until Sokka's not about to yell at me before I can say anything?"
Despite how horrified Katara was at how Aang had turned on her and Zuko when he'd found out about them, it was so very good to see their little family was still intact. It was also good to finally be able to communicate with Thayet, who it turned out was a queen, and to have some understanding of what was happening. Her friends had refused to leave her side, so she had an interpreter wherever she went.
Jasson was delightedly telling everyone all about Katara's fight with the kidnappers, who seemed to have taken the princes and princess as political hostages, which at least cleared up the whys of those events, something Katara very much enjoyed knowing. "And then she used the water to just . . . wap!" exclaimed Jasson, gesturing wildly.
"She's very good at that," Zuko said to the boy. "She's one of the few people I've seen fight my sister to a standstill, and Azula's one of the most dangerous benders in the Fire Nation."
"Then you must be really good," Liam said. "'Cause you're older and stuff."
Katara saw Zuko's wince and wasn't able to interrupt before he said, "Actually, she's better than I am. She's a prodigy - gifted - and I'm . . . not."
"You're a very gifted swordsman," Katara corrected him tartly. "Frankly, I also think you're a better bender than you think you are too." She read his look which was saying that he was thinking of that . . . thing that said he was Zuko's father. "And your father is," she stopped herself, glancing at the too-interested children. "Many bad words I'm not repeating in polite company."
"Ain't that the truth," Suki muttered, accompanied by noises of agreement from the others.
The warrior woman Alanna had arrived as they were talking and laughed. "I'll have to remember that one," she said as Zuko finished translating Katara's words to the listening children.
Aang came around the corner of the palace then, far enough away that Katara decided she could pretend she hadn't noticed him and said to Alanna, "So, Zuko said that you used your . . . magic, your Gift to heal him and the others from the kesu root."
Alanna frowned a little. "Yes. My Gift is a healing Gift, as well as the other things one can normally do with magic." She looked slightly puzzled about where Katara was going with it.
"I was wondering," Katara said, keeping an eye on Aang's slow approach and hoping she'd be done asking before Aang got too close for her to keep pretending she hadn't seen him. "Whether there was some way for you to teach me. At least to see if I could get . . . better. I was so upset at the Northern Tribe when they wouldn't allow me to learn combat bending, that when I was finally able to I didn't take the chance to learn healing as well as I should have."
The woman with the orange hair nodded slowly. "And now that you've faced times when knowing more healing would have been useful you're regretting it," she said with a voice that spoke of experiencing the same thing.
Katara shrugged, tilting her had in acknowledgement. "Pretty much. It's not that I hadn't wanted to heal, but it was so important to prove to Pakku that I could keep up, that I was as good or better than his male students."
"Well, you're one better than me," Alanna said wryly. "I just wanted to go on adventures so much and not have the Gift at all that I ignored it until one of my friends died, and even then I didn't do anything until Jon - King Jonathan - was dying himself." She smiled. "Well then, why don't we head to the healers' wing of the palace and see whether there's anything I can help you with, at least until Numair's able to cast that translation spell of his."
They left, Katara carefully not sighing with relief as they avoided Aang. Zuko still knew and cocked an eyebrow at her. Katara leaned into him a little and said. "I know. I know we should talk to him. I just . . . I can't right now. Finding out you were all okay should have been happy. Instead he's so . . ."
"I know," Zuko said. "But we're going to have to eventually. He was really upset, and he and Sokka were the only ones who thought you weren't dead."
She nodded, but still pulled him forward to question Alanna about how healing with magic worked.
Toph muttered something about babying Aang again and was sharply poked by Suki, with whom she had a rapid-fire argument that was too quiet for Katara to hear but ended in Toph subsiding grumpily.
In the end, they had only a half an hour before the sorcerer Numair arrived with Aang. It had been a massively interesting and informative half hour and Katara was regretful about stopping her lesson as well as worried about what Aang would say.
"I'm sorry," Aang told her looking ashamed. For once, Katara was genuinely mindful of the fact that Toph said that they'd babied Aang and kept herself still, refusing to give in to wide, grey eyes of the boy who'd saved so many lives, who'd had such a hard beginning and who'd brought to much hope to so many people.
Zuko and Suki grabbed ahold of Toph and Sokka, clearly restraining them from getting in the middle of things. Well, Suki was whispering to Toph and Zuko was half-wrestling with Sokka, a hand over her brother's mouth to keep him from interrupting. It was an odd counterpoint to her and Aang.
Aang swallowed. "I thought . . . I guess I thought that telling you how I felt and . . . and all the stuff with Aunt Wu and in the tunnels was enough. That it meant you . . . that we'd be together." He glanced away, a little petulant as he said, "Aunt Wu said that I could shape my own destiny."
"Oh, Aang," Katara told him with a sigh. "You can shape it, but that's different from controlling it. Everyone shapes their own destinies and sometimes the shape you're aiming for isn't going to fit with someone else's. She told me I'd marry a powerful bender, and when Sokka pointed out how powerful you were, yes, I thought about it." Aang's head snapped up and he stared at her hopefully. "But you recall that she said the village wouldn't be destroyed and it wasn't, we all still had to stop the volcano from destroying it. You may be the most powerful bender in the world, Aang, but you're not the only powerful bender. And despite what Zuko may or may not believe-"
The Avatar's mouth quirked wryly. "Oh, I know he's a powerful firebender."
They both turned to look at Zuko fondly as he blushed and stammered something about not being that strong. Sokka stopped wriggling long enough to roll his eyes and Toph and Suki just looked aggravated. "Aang, I'm sorry we didn't talk to you about it," she said. "That was wrong, but I just didn't . . . you were having enough trouble with what you're going to do about the Fire Lord I didn't think it would help any if you were distracted. And," Katara admitted, ashamed, "I hate hurting you so much that I guess we hurt you by trying to avoid it."
"You mean you were worried I'd have a tantrum again," Aang said. "I . . . Numair pointed out that I've been acting like a big baby, screaming and having a fit every time something goes wrong. I needed to grow up."
It was true, and yet Katara hated to lose that happy boy who'd reminded her of joy and laughter. "Just don't forget how to have fun," she told him. "I think we all needed to remember that sometimes and you brought that back."
"You can't fight firebenders with fun," Zuko and Sokka groused like the killjoys they both could be.
Katara exchanged a smile with Aang. "Maybe we should try it sometime," they chorused, recalling a school and an illegal dance in a cave.
"Sokka's just a bad influence on you," Katara told her betrothed.
Zuko's face was a study of internal conflict that set the two to giggling. Aang turned back to her. "I . . . I'll figure out how to . . . how to let it go," he said to her. "And I really am sorry. For yelling, for trying to hurt you and for scaring everyone so much they wouldn't actually tell me things I need to know."
"I forgive you," Katara said. "But Aang, I can't do it again. Not this easily."
He took a deep breath and nodded solemnly. "I understand and thank you." She opened her arms and they hugged, Katara wondering when it was that Aang had gone from child to teenager, and whether her father felt this way about her.
"Now the hard part," Katara told him when they let go, "You have to apologise to Toph."
Aang paled. "Do you think I could just bribe her with something?" he whispered to Katara.
"No," Toph told him bluntly. "You're also way behind on your training Twinkletoes, so get moving because you'd better get on with some serious earthbending."
Looking a combination of exasperated and terrified, Aang half-sulked out of the room while Katara was led aside to undergo the spell that let her instantly learn the language of this land of Tortall.
After they'd briefly tested it to be sure it had taken - it had - Katara was able to curl up with Zuko in a dark room and nurse her headache while cuddling the man she was engaged to. All in all, not the worst day she'd ever had.