Shameless Plug: I started adding my fan art to Tumblr! Under CoyoteLemon, like all my accounts.

CH 25 |

Aang's morning meditation flowed deeper that usual in the chilly autumn sunrise. Atop the apartment roof, he took in his fears.

I am afraid my friends will be hurt by helping me.

Aang ruminated on the roots of this fear. I am afraid because I care so deeply for them all. Does this mean I should not care for others? Is it helpful to avoid relationships to keep my chakra unblocked? No, he'd decided. He tried avoiding relationships with others for years, and not only had it done nothing to assuage his fears, but it also made it much harder for him to negotiate his own inner peace while feeling so alone. The real fear here is letting go of my control. Having people you love in your life means opening yourself to more possibilities of feeling pain when they suffer. You do not get to decide when or if they feel pain, just as they do not get to decide it for you. Love is not about preventing the complexities of life from happening—it's about being there for each other when they do. Aang sighed with satisfaction. Yes, it was scary to love people—but worth it.

The sky was showing the first streaks of yellow dawn mixing with the deep blues of the fading evening as he considered his guilts.

Restoring balance in the world will mean the liberation of colonies from the Fire Nation. People are going to get hurt on both sides. Accepting this makes me responsible.

As the Avatar, the effects of conflicts would always be his responsibility. They always had been, Aang tried to remind himself. Somewhere deep within, there were connections to 1,000 lifetimes bearing the losses and hurts of the world's people. He could do it again in this lifetime and would continue to do it for every lifetime thereafter. The thought was less encouraging, realizing that in no reincarnation would he ever get to simply be, but was instead doomed to an endless cycle of mastering the elements, using them with force as a mediatory being forevermore. Meh, close enough for now. Let's move on.

Fear and guilt were often interlinked with one's shame and Aang was no exception to that rule.

I am ashamed of running for so long. How many people were hurt during the time I've wasted?

Was this guilt? Fear? Shame? A little of all, I suppose. In the same way, being able to accept his guilt also meant he could embrace his shames. I can't change the mistakes that I've made in the past, but I can learn from them and try again. What have I learned? Running doesn't solve problems, but it can compound them and make them worse. Running prevents positive attachments that help you heal. You didn't run from Katara, and you shouldn't. Don't let your shame push her away. The realization flitted across his brain and stunned him. Another deep sigh of relief.

The first tendrils of sunrise began to twinkle along his bare shoulders when he began to contemplate grief. What loss or sadness blocked him of late?

I grieve the loss of my friend. I don't know when I gave up on Azula, but once I believed I could help fix the broken inside her. He thought of the really good times with her, when they were each other's person—the two of them against the whole world:

Azula scoffing and rolling her eyes at the (her words) "culture of naivety" she observed when they journeyed to the restored Southern Air Temple—then rescinding all her criticisms after her first slice of fruit pie and lavishing the entire Air Nation with praise of the highest order and nearly weeping when Aang informed her that most of the best fruits at the temple were now extinct on account of the genocide. This was also the first time he'd ever had his hand bitten by another human being as he tried to take a bite of her slice.

Talks about history, philosophy, and math that went late into the night. Neither child was particularly keen on re-visiting their pasts, and both were intelligent enough to glean from each other's small mentions of loss that their relationship was about escaping their grief, not healing it. So instead, the fed each other's intellect, read all the books, sat for hours on Appa's back arguing over their shoddy laptop and their self-assigned "Daily Physics Challenge."

Innocent-enough explorations of hand holds, touches, kisses. At the beginning, none of it was for hurt or power as it had been since she'd tracked him down in Yu Dao a year ago. At first it was purely academic on Azula's part (or so she believed): learning how to kiss a boy "the right way" by using her friend that would be completely honest about her technique. For Aang, it was the pure experience of onsetting puberty (any and all consequences unable to compute when brain power is fogged by pretty girl who wants to kiss.)

A few evenings prior, Katara had questioned why he was really keeping her at arms distance. Was his grief over his broken relationship with Azula preventing him from giving all of himself to a new beginning? yes. Was he hoping he could repair a possible romantic relationship with his old friend? NO. The resounding response from his own consciousness helped him sigh with relief. Suddenly, he realized he could be sad about Azula and wish that he still had their friendship while simultaneously giving himself to Katara and finding new happiness. He could let go of his grief without giving up on the idea that Azula was beyond help. None of his feelings had to be mutually exclusive.

He was just beginning to move into his contemplation of truth and lies when Katara's shriek jolted him into panic. "AAAANGG GET DOWN HERE! QUICK!"

"Katara!? What's wrong?! Are you okay!?" The normally graceful airbender all but tumbled down the spiral staircase and into their living room. Sokka and Toph laughed from the couch. Sokka was nonchalantly laying his head in Toph's lap as they settled in to watch the unfolding of inevitable kataang antics.

"Stay there! Don't move!" Katara yelled excitedly. Aang was still confused and in fighting stance, convinced he was missing some unexplained threat. "Okay, Momo! Show Daddy what you showed me!" Katara crooned gleefully. Momo chittered as he climbed up on top of her head and launched himself across the room, performing a wobbly little glide before plowing into Aang's chest. "Momo!" Aang cooed, cradling the lemur. "You flew! Sort of! I'M SO PROUD OF YOU!" Katara and Aang practically pranced around their furry baby.

"Spirits, Sokka. It's starting to get nauseating." Toph complained. Sokka had already returned to his phone, trying to filter out the sound of his sister starting sentences that his best friend could easily finish. It was like listening to the words of the same person tumbling out of two sets of mouths.

"Right?!" he laughed. "I'm starting to consider throwing them in the loft together and moving downstairs with you."

"Okay. We can do that." Toph replied a little too eagerly. Sokka raised an eyebrow up at her. "What? No, I was joking. That would be even weirder than this nonsense—" he gestured without looking at his sister's besotted face, who was now whipping eggs as Momo's reward while Aang balanced him on his hip like a toddler and theorized about how the two of them would teach the lemur to use the potty.

"Ha! You say that now. What're you going to do when you go upstairs to get your laptop and find them doing it?" Toph chuckled darkly as the brother choked on his coffee. "Well, that's not gonna happen. Katara's practically a nun." Toph laughed even louder. "—and Aang's a monk, right? And you've been sharing a room with him for two years? How's that monk life?"

Shared porn collection. "Eww you're right…Alright, I suppose it's time to have some conversations. Hey! You Two! Are you guys dating now…or?"

Toph quickly put her feet on the ground, reveling wickedly at Katara and Aang's sudden bashfulness.

"No!"

Yes!" They said simultaneously, then glanced at each other, faces reddening. "Wait, wut?" Katara asked him, eggs burning on the stovetop. "Oh, did I not ask you yet?" asked Aang, cocky. "Will you go on a date with me?" She was going to say yes, of course, but thought she'd reel in some of that over-confidence oozing off him.

Putting her hands on her hips, she poked at his shoulder with a spatula. "I thought were just "friends who kiss"?" she asked with air quotes.

She was successful—his cocky grin melted into something a little more sheepish and his free hand flew to the back of his neck. "We are! But I thought maybe we could be friends who kiss and sometimes go on dates?"

"You're right. This is nauseating." Sokka whispered to Toph.

"I wish you could feel this. The tension is hilarious right now." She whispered back, wriggling her feet in delight. "How do you feel other people's tension? What does that feel like?" he asked, tilting his head to regard her, still in her lap. She considered it for a moment and then took his hand. "They feel like this" she said and rolled her thumb from flat in his palm to the tip of her fingernail so that it created a rolling sensation that crested into a single point. It was like the sensation was connected to other nerves throughout his body. He felt rolls of stimulation behind his navel and chills penetrating through to his spine. "WOAH. You can feel that!?" Toph also felt his heart rate explode, choking her response.

They hadn't realized that Katara and Aang had stopped talking and were now looking at the brother curled up in the earthbender's lap, rubbing each other's palms and whispering with each other.

"..The fuck is this?" Katara asked.

"Yeah…" Aang agreed suspiciously. "When did we get a couch?"