Chapter 4: Acceptance

Day one:

Sokka and Aang began their search late in the day, and were already quite exhausted. Nonetheless, the hope of finding Katara drove them to search the entrance and the area surrounding it. Appa flew relatively close to the surface so that Sokka and Aang could have a better look at each chunk of ice, each body in the water.

Aang thought of how Sokka hadn't wanted him to have to see them. And, in truth, Sokka was not wrong; it was disturbing to see so many bodies floating in the water. At first, Aang thought several of them could still be alive, and convinced a wary Sokka to let them go check. Sokka did not particularly seem to care if the Fire Nation soldiers were alive or dead, and seemed to prefer to just leave them to die if they had miraculously survived. "Don't forget that it's Katara we're looking for. Don't get sidetracked," he warned Aang. Aang understood−but he couldn't just let someone die if he could help them. In his eyes, that would make him at least partially responsible for their death. To say nothing of his own Ocean Spirit-induced hand in the death and destruction.

Ultimately, it didn't matter, because each body that Aang had thought might still be alive was dead after all. Looking for Katara was a grim task, and with each body Aang saw he felt sicker. Sokka would occasionally ask him if he was alright and Aang would nod, but in truth, he felt his previous optimism fading with each body he saw. So many people…how could Katara have survived this?

Eventually, it was too dark to see, and Aang and Sokka were tired. They hadn't really slept since before the invasion, several days ago. They reluctantly returned to the city and went to a fitful and unfulfilling sleep.

They would search again the next day.

Day two:

Aang and Sokka woke up around dawn, still tired, but energized by the need to find Katara. They set out with Appa and began their search again. Not long after they took to the sky, they saw several Northern Water Tribe boats join them. This was the group of people that Master Pakku had recruited to help search for Katara. Around midday, Sokka and Aang had Appa fly beside the ship. Aang and Sokka hopped over and approached Pakku.

"Wow," Aang said to Master Pakku. "This is a lot of people−they're all here to help look for Katara?"

Pakku nodded. "She left quite the impression on the Tribe."

"Master Pakku? Thanks…you know, for coming out here to help find my sister. We really need the help," Sokka admitted. They'd had no luck finding Katara the previous day. With the help of the other tribesmen, though, they could cover more ground. Aang and Sokka both felt more hopeful than they had before.

But even with the help of the other tribesmen, the day gave into night too quickly, and they again had to return empty-handed.

Day three:

Sokka and Aang set out to find Katara once again. This time they moved a little bit slower as they woke up, as they got onto Appa. Sokka wanted to attribute it only to the fact that they hadn't gotten a good night's sleep since before the Fire Nation's attack, before Katara disappeared, but he knew that that wasn't all. The truth was that they were slowly beginning to realize that they wouldn't find her. Sokka tried to believe they would, if only for Aang's sake, but the more he looked, the less he believed that she could be alive. Come on universe, just grant me this. Please bring my sister back to me.

There was an awkward silence between Sokka and Aang throughout the day. Several times one of them would try to initiate a conversation, but it would only last a couple minutes at most before they grew silent again. Sokka wondered if Aang had the same thoughts on his mind.

Once again, they returned empty-handed.

Day four:

For some reason, when Aang woke up on the fourth day of their search, he was more certain that Katara was alive than ever. He eagerly woke up Sokka, and leaped onto Appa with renewed enthusiasm.

Today, we ARE going to find Katara.

He initiated conversation with Sokka, who responded to any topic Aang gave him. He wasn't as optimistic as Aang was, but still, seeing the twelve year old resuming his usually cheerful disposition somehow lightened Sokka's own mood. He still had Yue and Katara on his mind, but for a few precious hours, it almost felt normal. Just him and Aang talking and telling a few jokes. Though they were still searching, the search somehow felt far away.

Those hours were done soon enough, and despite Aang's optimism, the day still ended sourly.

They still hadn't found Katara.

Where are you?

Day five:

On the fifth day, Sokka and Aang both woke up slowly, exhaustion and despair catching up to them. They were truly beginning to see that, no matter how much they wanted to believe that Katara was still alive, it was more likely that she really was gone.

Adding to the bad news was that the tribesmen that had been helping them look for Katara would be ending their search in two days−one week after Katara had gone missing. "Chief Arnook believes that if Katara can't be found within a week, then there is nothing to be found," Pakku explained. The old man looked older than he had just a week before. "There are more people out now that most of the wounded are taken care of, and perhaps that may help, but…"

"You don't think Katara is out there," Sokka stated. Aang, Pakku, and Sokka stood by silently for a moment before Pakku spoke again.

"It was unlikely that she survived the wave to begin with. And it would be impossible for her to survive an entire week alone out here. If we can't find her in the next few days, then it's time for us to accept the loss and move on. And it would be wise for you to do the same."

Aang's eyes widened. "You want us to give up?! We can't do that, we can't abandon Katara−"

"Aang," Sokka put his hand on Aang's shoulder, and Aang looked to him. "Pakku is right. We don't even know if she's alive…if we do find her, it might just be…" Her remains. "If we don't find anything soon, we have to call the search off. We can't stay here looking for her forever." Sokka sighed, looking pained. "You know I want to find her. But…if we can't, then we need to accept it and move on. You still have to save the world, Aang. Katara believed in you, and so do I. But you can't do that here." And this place has become painful.

Aang looked like he'd argue for a moment before he deflated. "Fine," he relented. "But we still have a few more days."

Sokka nodded. "We're still looking. If she is out there, we'll find her."

They looked harder than ever, going further past the city into the wide ocean. They saw nothing still. Aang struggled with exhaustion, his eyes closing against his will. Several times Aang would feel weightless and suddenly wake up, realizing that he had fallen asleep for at least a few seconds. Sokka noticed and eventually told him to just take a nap.

"You haven't been getting much sleep, have you? I know you're tired. Just go to sleep, Aang. You need it."

"But Katara−"

"No offense, Aang, but you aren't very useful falling asleep every few seconds. Just take a nap. I've got this covered. If I find her, I'll wake you up, okay?"

Eventually, Aang woke up, better rested. Sokka hadn't found Katara.

By the end of the day, even Aang was starting to give up hope of finding her.

Day six:

On the sixth day of the search, Aang and Sokka hung back, staying closer to the tribesmen and their boats than they had on previous days.

"Maybe we missed something closer to the city's entrance," Sokka explained, though his tone indicated his weariness. "We've been going so far out, away from the city. We've actually gone further than the wave probably went. But if Katara was alive, if she had any control of where she was going, she would have tried to get back to the city. So…maybe she's actually close to the entrance. We could've passed her every day without noticing, especially if she was under any ice or snow."

Aang wasn't sure that he really believed that, but he figured it couldn't hurt to go back and check the entrance area again. After all, they hadn't had any luck further out.

Aang and Sokka continued looking for Katara throughout the day. Aang used his bending to lift and move ice to check if Katara could have gotten trapped under any. Of course not, he thought. Katara could've handled that anyways, unless…

If I do find her, it may just be…

Aang tried to put it out of his mind. His own insistence that Katara was alive was like a wall in his mind, acceptance battering against his denial.

Eventually, the wall had to give.

Aang was lifting snow out of the way, checking the entrance of the city in the last hours of daylight, when he saw a familiar figure leaving one of the search boats.

Katara.

"Katara!" Aang dropped the snow he'd been bending, leaping over to Katara and enveloping her into an uncomfortably tight hug. "I'm so glad you're alright! Sokka and I were so scared when we couldn't find you, and we've been looking, and everyone's telling us you're dead, but you're okay and−"

"Um…I'm sorry, but…" the girl's voice said into Aang's ear. Not Katara's voice. Aang withdrew from the unreturned hug, stepping away in shock.

Not Katara.

It wasn't Katara.

The girl's resemblance to Katara was striking, but now that Aang saw her up close, he saw the slight difference in her coloring, and the difference in her face's shape. And her voice was far to mellow to belong to Katara. "Oh," he said simply. He hung his head, frowning. His shoulders slumped, and Aang felt the sting of defeat. He'd really thought it was Katara. "I'm sorry, I thought you were Katara…"

The girl winced, grimacing sympathetically. "That's alright. I'm sorry I got your hopes up…" The girl was blushing, but it wasn't a happy blush. She looked genuinely apologetic, though she hadn't done anything wrong.

"No," Aang told her. "That's not your fault. I just…saw you. You actually look a lot like her. I assumed you were her without thinking…"

"I get it. You just…wished she was here, and when you saw me, you hoped so much…"

Aang nodded glumly. "Yeah." They were quiet for a moment, and Aang couldn't stand it. Not Katara, not Katara, not Katara. "So you've been out here with the search boats?" he finally said, just to break the silence. He'd always been a good conversationalist, but now he found he wasn't sure what to say.

Not-Katara nodded. "This is only my second day out here, though. I would've come before, but I was busy in the healing huts."

"You're a healer?" Aang inquired.

"Yeah. Actually, I healed your friend's wrist the other day."

"You're the one that healed Sokka?" Seeing her nod, Aang offered her a small smile. "Thanks for healing him." It had been his fault that Sokka was injured. Knowing that this was the person who had helped fix it, Aang felt grateful. "Katara's a healer, too." Aang looked away from the girl again.

Not-Katara nodded. "Yeah, I know. She's amazing." She blushed again. "I mean, I've only seen her at one healing session, and that was just a lesson, so it wasn't much. But Katara is, well, she's amazing and perfect and strong." The girl grimaced, covering her face with her hand. "What I mean to say is, she's sort of my hero. I admire her." She was younger than Katara, Aang realized.

He nodded. "Yeah…Katara is amazing…" A slightly dreamy expression appeared on Aang's face as he thought of her. "You know she's the last waterbender of her tribe? And she was willing to go all the way across the world to learn waterbending. And she taught herself along the way."

Not-Katara nodded. "Yeah. And then Master Pakku said no, and she challenged him. I watched her duel with him−that was amazing! She taught herself all of that?"

Aang nodded. "Yeah. And, you know, she was a better waterbender than me. You should've seen her wipe out Prince Zuko in one move."

The girl looked down. "I wish I was more like her," she quietly admitted. "I always wanted to learn real waterbending, but I'm a girl…I mean, obviously I'm a girl…I hope it's obvious; that is, I hope I don't look like a boy. Not that there's anything wrong with being aboy—or that I'm insulting Katara! She was really pretty…um…" She looked at Aang, who was actually fighting off a small smile as he listened to her.

"So you don't just want to heal, either?" It reminded him of Katara, but the more he talked to this girl, the more he saw the huge differences between them.

"I like healing, I really do. But I've always wanted to actually help fight, too. Maybe then there would be fewer people hurt…and killed if they had more help…" She was looking down now, but Aang could still see her pained expression. Her eyes were wet.

"You lost someone in the battle, didn't you?" he guessed.

She slowly nodded. "My father and my brothers were all out there. And I was just stuck in the healing huts, wondering if any of them would return injured, or worse, not return at all." She took a shuddering breath and let it out. "Saroda…he didn't make it. And I just wonder…could I have made any difference if I was out there with him?"

"You can't think like that," Aang told her. "I know it's tempting to try and take the blame for bad things happening to your loved ones…but it wasn't your fault. And there's no guarantee that he'd have lived if you were there. Maybe he would have died anyways. Or you'd have died instead of him. Maybe both of you would have died, and then what?" He went quiet for a second as he remembered telling Katara about his last days before the iceberg while they were in that cave. He remembered blaming himself for all that had happened to the world since he'd disappeared. "You know, I sometimes feel responsible for what happened to the Air Nomads. I figured…maybe if I'd been there, I could've saved them and stopped this war before it started. But Katara pointed out that I'd have probably just died with them…and then the situation would all just be worse. So…don't dwell on whether you could have saved him. You'll just drive yourself crazy. Just…accept it, mourn him, and move on. I'm sure that's what your brother would have wanted you to do."

They were both quiet for a moment as they both processed what Aang had said. The girl frowned, looking out to the moon, while Aang thought about Katara. Just…accept it, mourn him, and move on. I'm sure that's what your brother would have wanted you to do. Was it time for him to accept that Katara was gone? All this time, he'd been clinging to the hope that Katara was still alive somewhere, but after six days of looking for her, they hadn't even had the slightest hint that she had even survived the wave. Tomorrow is the last day of looking for her…are we really going to find her? Is there anything left to find at all?

"Thanks, Avatar," the girl said after a few minutes. "I…it's still sort of a shock. Saroda has always been there, and now he's…but you're right. He wouldn't want me to torture myself with what-if's."

"No problem," Aang told her. "But please, just call me Aang." He wondered if he'd ever really get used to people calling him Avatar. "What's your name?" I can't just keep calling you Not-Katara.

"Senirra," she told him. They were quiet again for a few moments. "When you told me to accept my brother's death," she said quietly. "You were talking about Katara, too, weren't you?"

Aang didn't say anything for so long, it seemed that he wasn't going to answer. Senirra awkwardly looked around, and almost walked away when Aang finally answered. "Yeah. I was talking about Katara, too."

In a way, it felt sort of liberating. Ever since Sokka had told him that Katara was missing, Aang had stubbornly clung to the possibility that she was still alive. He had hung onto it for nearly a week now, as they searched and searched, and found nothing. In truth, it had all been very exhausting and frustrating, but Aang had held onto this small chance that Katara would be out there, that he would find her, that they could be together again. That things could go back to the way they were before the siege. Aang had built his wall of denial so high, no ladder, no rope, not even an airship could let acceptance get through. Then Senirra, with her almost creepy resemblance to Katara, had shown up and blasted through that wall.

"Don't get me wrong," Aang continued. "I would be happy beyond words if we do find Katara, but…if we don't, then I guess I'll just have to accept it. Katara wouldn't want me spend the rest of my life caught up over her."

"For what it's worth," Senirra said. "I hope you get some sort of miracle and she shows up tomorrow."

Aang offered her a smile. "Thanks."

He returned to Sokka, who told him, of course, that they hadn't found Katara.

Tomorrow is the last day.

Day seven:

"Aang…are you sure you want to come?" Sokka looked concerned. "It's just…"

"It's the last day," Aang said. "I know. And I know we probably won't find her. But we promised we'd look together. If we can't find her today…"

"Then we'll still have each other." Sokka nodded. "Alright." He sighed. "Let's do this. Appa, yip yip!"

They searched, and searched, and searched. All day, they looked. They didn't bother staying close to the water today. They mostly just flew around up high. Mostly, it was just Aang and Sokka talking. Aang has finally accepted that she's gone, Sokka realized. It both relieved Sokka, and made him sad. Sad, because it pretty much confirmed that Katara was gone; if even Aang couldn't see her miraculously showing up, then there was no hope to be had. But then…he had already realized this several days ago. But Sokka also felt relief. At least that was one difficult conversation he didn't need to have with Aang.

The day went by slowly, and as painful as it was, it was also sort of peaceful. Calming. At one point Aang started talking about all sorts of spirit mumbo jumbo, talking about life and death, and his beliefs. Sokka didn't really understand half of it, but when he looked down to the ocean, which was sparkling orange and pink from the setting sun, and saw a group of seal-dolphins leaping out of the water, he thought maybe he understood a little of what Aang meant. He thought about Katara−the ocean would be her final resting place. Would she like that, he wondered? Would she have appreciated being with her element forever? Did she die fast? Sokka hoped so. He hoped that she was at peace. He thought of Yue, ascending to the sky, glowing as the new Moon Spirit. Katara wasn't a spirit, he knew, but he still saw her in the ocean, large blue eyes gleaming. As he looked down to the ocean, he somehow appreciated that it was there she had died. Her element. Sokka's throat hurt and he felt tears in his eyes. He missed her, he would always miss her. And eventually, he was going to have to tell Dad how he had failed to protect her.

But for now, looking into the deep blue ocean, he felt oddly at peace.

The two boys waited, watching the sun set. Eventually, they headed back to the city. This would be the last time. Their search was over.

They lied around that night, neither one making any effort to go to sleep.

"Hey, Sokka?"

"Yeah?"

"I miss Katara."

"Me too."

"You know, I actually had a crush on her."

"What?" Sokka looked over to Aang, who gave a nervous chuckle. It was dark, but Sokka was certain that Aang was blushing. He thought back to when he'd seen them together (it all seemed so long ago…). "Wow," he said, thinking of the love-struck expressions Aang had rather frequently shot his sister. "It all seems so obvious now. How did I not notice this before?"

"I don't know," Aang shrugged. "I don't think Katara ever really noticed. I guess that's okay. I loved her as a friend…and I guess now I'll never know if it could've been more."

"She was your first crush, wasn't she?"
"Yeah. I…never thought it would end like this."

"I know. Katara's always been there for me…I never wanted to think of a world without her." The room grew quiet again. "You know, our mother died when we were really young. And it was…hard. But Katara, she really stepped up. She took over all the duties Mom had, and she was there for me, and now…the truth is, sometimes I can't even remember what my mother looked like. And when I try to think of her, I see Katara instead."

Aang nodded. "Yeah…she was my family, too." He rolled over, closer to Sokka.

"Do you want to sleep, or do you want to keep talking?"

Aang took a minute to answer. "Do you have any good memories of her before I met her?"

"Of course. You know, I'm not the only one who did stupid, embarrassing things as a kid. Like, there was this one time where she freaked out the entire village when she…"

Aang smiled, lying next to Sokka, listening to his stories of when Katara was little. He was certain, now…

We'll be okay, Katara.

Making progress. We'll be back to Zutara stuff next chapter.

Also, note of OCs. I hope this OC wasn't too much of a pain. I know opinions on OCs varies wildly. I'm sorry if the inclusion of some OCs bugs you, but they will be fairly minor in this fic. A few will pop up here and there, but this is, primarily, a Zutara fic.