Chapter 20

"Aang?"

Aang squinted into the sun. No, not the sun.

He blinked again. The blinding light coalesced into flames licking the air from the edge of a squat bowl. A whale oil lamp.

His eyes were so sensitive. Probably not surprising since they had been shut for…

He didn't know how long.

"You're awake," Katara said tearfully.

After a few more blinks, Aang could see clearly. Pelts of seal and buffalo yak lined walls made from stacked blocks of ice. Several small tables holding the whale oil lamp and bowls and other implements were pushed against the walls. On the far end of the room was an arched doorway with the heavy curtain of animal furs pulled shut.

He lay in a bed, his body cocooned in seal furs above and below. Katara was kneeling beside him, the soft glow of lamplight surrounding her body like a halo. Several strands of hair had escaped her braid and hung dull and lank. Her ocean-blue tunic was rumpled, as if she had worn it and slept in it for days.

But what caught Aang's attention was her face. Grief rimmed her eyes and despair glistened on her cheeks, but her face was radiant with joy.

"Katara," he croaked through the gravelly dryness of his throat.

Her hands cradled his face, holding him like she never wanted to let go. She gazed at him in wonder as she caressed his cheek with her thumb. "Aang…" she whispered. "You're really awake."

He cleared his throat and tried to speak again. "How long was I out?"

"Three days."

Three days. Three days that must have felt like three years to Katara, as she once again watched over his unconscious body, never knowing when he would wake up. If he would wake up.

Aang reached up and folded his fingers around her hands where they lay against his face. The last thing he had seen before closing his eyes, before earthbending had consumed his attention, was Katara dragging herself over the ice, her leg run through with a bloody spike.

His eyes widened. "Your leg—"

Katara shook her head. "My leg is fine. It's a little stiff, but I was able to heal it most of the way."

She had made it out of the caves. They both had. And she was the one who had saved him.

"You're safe," he said. He leaned his cheek into her hand. The warmth of her palm grounded him. They were finally connected to each other again, after so many months of being broken apart.

Without thinking, Aang stroked the back of her hand, a gesture that came so naturally. "You saved me," he said.

He was about to ask about what had happened to Takit and Sakari when Katara brought his hand to her face with a choked cry. She pressed his fingers to her nose and her lips. Her face crumpled, and her shoulders shook with silent sobs. Even after her tears subsided, she still hung on to him.

A familiar stab of guilt spiked through Aang's heart. Katara was hurting—again—because of him. "I'm all right," he said, even though he wasn't entirely sure this was true. He didn't know what lay under the blankets of animal pelts that covered him from the chest down, leaving his arms and shoulders bare. But he was alive. "I'm all right," he repeated.

She looked at him then, still clutching his hand to her face. Grief shrouded her like a shadow, just as raw and aching as it was two years ago, when she cared for his broken body in a muted red room of a Fire Nation ship. But instead of shoving down his guilt and muffling it into silence, instead of turning his eyes away, Aang met her gaze.

"Our love was reborn in your love for your friends. In your love for Katara," Gyatso had told him in the dream-state of his unconscious mind. "That's why you're having such a hard time forgiving yourself.

Letting go of Katara completely isn't what I need to do, Aang thought.

"Let out your blame, and let it go," his friend—his father—had said. "Forgive yourself, Aang."

Aang finally understood what he needed to do to let the past go. He let out the blame that was weighing him down, and he released that poison from his spirit.

And he was able to forgive himself.

The terror and the pain that haunted Katara's eyes didn't change. But Aang loosened his grip from around his guilt—he realized, now, that he was the one holding his guilt captive, not the other way around—and let it begin to drift away. Letting go of his self-blame, letting go of the past. Setting the past apart from the present.

Aang unfurled his fingers from where Katara clasped them against her mouth. This time, when he drew his fingers down her cheek, he wasn't trying to soothe her worries away. He wasn't trying to frantically smooth over the echoes of the past, pushing the pain roiling in both of them down below the surface, where it would only continue to brew and fester.

This time, he was simply being present for her. No longer weighed down by guilt, his fingers floated freely over her cheek and across her chin. He comforted her without trying to conceal his own shame, without trying to ease his own conscience.

But seeing Katara hurting like this still made his heart ache.

Aang started to caress her chin before he realized that even though she held his hand, she probably didn't want him to touch her. Not like this. It was too easy to fall back into old patterns when he was so close to Katara. But just because she worried about him didn't mean she wanted his love. He had gotten that message loud and clear when she broke up with him four months ago, and again and again over the past few days.

Sure enough, when his thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, she sucked in a breath between her teeth.

But to his surprise, she didn't pull away.

Aang froze. He was torn between knowing he should back off and wanting her to give him a sign.

With the barest downward tilt of her head, Katara's lips grazed his fingers, hovering like the delicate wings of a butterfly. The wisps of her breath were hot against his skin. He laid his fingertips on the soft velvet of her lips—carefully, gently, as if he was touching a cherished treasure. When she didn't move away, he slowly traced the curve of her lower lip.

Katara drew in an uneven breath. Her lips fluttered around his fingertips, a flicker of movement so brief that Aang thought he was imagining it. But then she kissed the tips of his fingers again. She moved over his knuckles, dusting kisses shy and tender over the arch of his fingers.

And then his hands were framing her face and her fingers were clutching his shoulders and her lips were burning against his mouth.

Kissing Katara breathed life into Aang and took his breath away. The love he had held close to his heart, the love he had tried to forget, flared up bright and new. Six months ago, she left him, and he fell apart at the seams. Now, she was reaching inside him and knitting him back together.

Their kisses were hungry and gasping and breathless. Desperate. Like they had been starving for water and were finally allowed to drink.

He couldn't get enough of Katara, and he wanted more. He wanted her closer. From the way she slipped her hands behind his bare back, fingers grasping at his shoulder blades, so did she.

Aang wrapped his arms around her waist and hauled her into the bed—or tried to. A sudden pain lanced through his belly. He cried out, his muscles turning into water.

"Oh no," Katara gasped. She unwound herself from him and yanked back the blankets, revealing his midsection wrapped in bandages.

The spear of ice in his gut, the desperate battle against Sakari and her ice daggers, his life draining out onto the frozen ground, the discovery of earth far below the ice shelf—everything came rushing back to him.

"I'm okay," Aang said, even though his panting was now from pain instead of passion.

But Katara had already covered his bandaged wound with bending water, her face tight with concentration. The painful throbbing eased into something much more tolerable. It wasn't until he laid back down in bed that he realized how much he had tensed up around his middle.

Once Katara was finished healing him—for now—she discarded the bending water into a jug. Then she sat and stared at his bandaged torso with distant eyes.

"I'm sorry, Aang," she said.

"Don't be sorry," Aang protested, absently trailing his fingers down her arm. "It's not your fault. I…got a little carried away."

When he realized what he was doing, he let his hand drop, still not quite sure of where they stood. But Katara caught his hand before it fell to the bed. She hooked their fingers together.

Katara shook her head. "No, it's not that."

Aang waited for her to explain.

She didn't.

But she didn't let go of his hand, either.

He was about to ask her what she meant when she took a deep breath.

"I tried to stay away from you, Aang," she said as her thumb rubbed anxious circles over his knuckle. "I tried so hard. But I can't." When she turned to him, her eyes were shining with tears and stricken with guilt. "I can't do it. I can't stay away from you."

"Why…" He swallowed against the sinking feeling in his stomach. "Why would you want to stay away from me?"

"I needed to let you go," she said, her voice beginning to crack, "so you wouldn't get hurt."

Even though the room inside the igloo was warm, Aang's body went cold. "What do you mean?"

"I needed to let you go, because you wouldn't let me go," she said, her sobs choking up her words. "Because you couldn't!"

Aang didn't know how to respond. Did Katara believe that he would have to let her go someday?

The thought chilled him to the bone, considering how close he had come to doing just that.

But it had been six months since she had locked him out of her life, and four months since she had broken up with him. He had only come to the misguided conclusion that he needed to let her go a few days ago.

So how did Katara figure out that he was going to let her go before he had actually decided to do so?

"I'm not sure I understand," he said.

Katara took in a shaky breath and dashed away her tears with the heel of her palm. "Do you remember when I first asked you about attachments?"

Aang furrowed his brow, even more confused now. "Um, yeah. I think it was the first time you saw me meditating. You were curious about—"

"No, I mean last year. It was the day we met with Takit at the tea house near the university. The day he gave you his painting of you and the Air Acolytes meditating together."

Oh.

Oh no.

That was the day Katara had asked him about attachments as they stood in front of a war monument in Ba Sing Se, the flames and the crystals of the sculpture dragging him down into the night he died in the crystal catacombs.

"When Air Nomads let go of attachments, were some of their attachments the people they loved?" Katara had asked as he stood there transfixed, unable to look away from the monument.

Because of his guilt, her questions about attachments had made him deeply uncomfortable.

"What does it mean to let go of someone you love?" she had asked in a trembling voice.

Because of his guilt, he had acted like he had something to hide. He had given her the vaguest answer he could.

"Letting go of someone means you stop holding on," he had said as he held on to her, clinging to her more tightly than ever. "Even if it means giving them up."

Now he understood what she had thought he was telling her—that he was going to give her up someday.

"I wish I had never followed you out to the balcony that day," she had told him as they stood surrounded by the ocean and the sky. "I wish we had been friends from the beginning. Nothing more."

The words Katara had spoken to him on the docks of Hai Bian, the words that had shattered his heart, took on a new, terrible meaning.

"So that's why you broke up with me," Aang said. "You thought I was going to let you go from my life. You thought that I was going to leave you someday."

Nausea twisted his stomach, but it had nothing to do with the ragged hole in his middle. The disastrous consequences of the guilt that had wormed into his heart, eating away at his spirit, were only starting to become clear.

Katara sniffled, her eyes darting away from his face. "But you will, won't you? Sooner or later, you're going to have to let me go."

The enormity of the mess Aang found himself needing to unravel settled over him like a weight. He asked Katara to help him sit up. She rolled up several blankets and propped them between the icy wall of the igloo and his back. The topic of attachments and Air Nomad spirituality was complex and sometimes hard to explain. This was not a subject he could easily talk about while lying on his back.

He shifted his body against the mound of blankets until he found a position that didn't put too much stress on his wound. Katara moved next to him on the bed, pulling her injured leg awkwardly behind her. But she didn't nestle into him like he'd hoped she would. Instead, she sat facing him with her legs tucked under and her hands in her lap. But she didn't keep herself completely distant—her thigh pressed up against his in a burning line of contact.

Aang racked his brain, trying to figure out how to begin a conversation about spiritual attachments. Maybe he could talk about what it meant to cling too tightly to something or someone. Or maybe acceptance was a better place to start. But Aang was probably not the best person for this task—wrestling with his guilt for so long had warped his own understanding of attachment. He wished Monk Pasang was here. The elder monk had a knack for explaining complicated ideas in a way that made them seem as simple as counting beads on a string.

But Monk Pasang wasn't here anymore. He was gone, just like Gyatso. Just like the rest of the Air Nomads.

There was no one else.

No one but Aang.

"Aang?"

Katara's voice lifted him out of his melancholy thoughts. He blinked slowly, trying to clear away the hollow ache of loneliness that smothered his chest. Katara started to reach out her hand, but she stopped, hesitant. Aang closed the distance between them and clasped their hands together, reveling at the feel of her slender fingers folded within his palm. Their hands fit together like two halves of a circle, her yin to his yang. Two parts of a whole, linked together at last.

Aang took a few careful breaths to center himself. Then he was ready to talk.

But Katara spoke first.

"I found out about airbenders and attachments," she said abruptly. Her fingers twitched in his hand, and she avoided his gaze. "I found out from Takit."

Aang gaped at her. This was not at all what he expected to hear from her. Nor did he expect her to act like he wouldn't approve of what she had done.

"I met with Takit at the tea house, back in Ba Sing Se," she went on. "On my own. I didn't tell you about it because I had to find out for myself. I needed to find out from someone who would tell me the truth."

The truth? Aang wondered, even more confused than before. What does she mean, the truth?

"Do you remember the day I was supposed to meet with Yura, a waterbender healer from the Northern Water Tribe?" she said.

"How was your afternoon? Did you have a good time meeting up with Yura?" he had asked her on that warm spring day.

"It was good," was all she had said, from where she was snuggled into his neck.

"But I didn't meet with Yura," she continued. "I met with Takit, instead."

Aang was too dumbfounded to speak. Why would she meet with Takit without telling me? What did she want to talk to him about that she couldn't ask me?

"You—you lied to me?"

"I'm sorry, Aang. I'm sorry for lying to you," Katara said. Her fingers curled up within his hand, like she wanted to shrink back from him. Tears spilled down her face. "And I'm even more sorry for being the one to drag you down!"

She pulled her hand away and covered her mouth. Her sobs came from deep within her chest, from a place of unspoken anguish. Aang could only watch her cry, as he reeled from confusion and no small sense of betrayal.

Eventually, her crying faded into sniffles. The link they had shared with their hands was broken, and the space between them was wider than ever.

"You said you learned the truth about airbenders and attachments from Takit," Aang said quietly. "Why did you go to him, Katara? Why didn't you ask me?"

Katara looked down at her hands, which lay folded together in her lap. "You wouldn't talk to me about attachments, even when I asked you," she replied. "So I went to Takit because he studies lost cultures, and because he was a virtual stranger. He had no reason to keep the truth from me."

But instead of making him angry, her answer saddened him. This was yet another way his guilty actions, which had seemed so insignificant at the time, had twisted their relationship.

"And now I get why you didn't want me to know how attachments affect Air Nomads," she said. "You wanted to marry me. But you didn't want me to know that marriage was an attachment, and that attachments weaken your spirituality. Because I wanted to marry you, too. You wanted to make me happy. You didn't want me to know what marrying you would do to you.

"That's why I couldn't talk to you. Not about this. You wouldn't give me a straight answer when I asked you about attachments. How was I supposed to believe anything you said about marriage and spirituality? That's when I knew you would say anything to make me happy—even if it hurt you."

Katara's words hit too close to home. Because Aang had hidden the truth from her—the decision behind his failure in Ba Sing Se, all the times he had been hurt but didn't want her to worry. The half-truths that weren't quite lies, but they weren't the whole truth, either. He hadn't wanted her to hurt any more than she already was when she worried about him. He had wanted to make her happy.

Then Aang remembered something the monks used to say. Even the smallest actions can alter the course of the strongest current. And now, the course of their relationship had ended with a hole torn into Aang's belly and the broken pieces of Katara's trust.

Even so, Aang couldn't help getting defensive. "But Katara, what marriage does to my spirituality is for me to worry about," he protested. "I wouldn't lie to you about that."

"Then why didn't you want to talk to me about letting go of attachments?" she demanded in frustration. "Why didn't you tell me that getting married would weaken your spirituality and hurt your airbending?"

Aang stared at her, not understanding what he had just heard. "Getting married would do what?"

"Takit told me that spirituality and airbending are connected," Katara said. "If an Air Nomad's spiritual life suffers, their airbending will suffer, too." She was finally looking at him now, her eyes searching his face. "It's true, isn't it?"

Aang was more used to thinking about his people's spirituality as a practice of detaching themselves from the world to free their spirits. But Katara was not wrong, because the reverse was also true. He had learned about the fate of Jesa, an Air Nomad nun, from one of his rare conversations with Avatar Kyoshi. Jesa, who was also Kyoshi's mother, had left her Air Temple to join a gang of criminals. Worldly attachments and concerns soon consumed her, and she lost many of her airbending abilities.

He nodded reluctantly. "Yes. That is true." Then he frowned. "But I don't think marriage would affect my spiritual practices to the point of losing my airbending."

"How do you know that?" Katara countered. "It wasn't your people's tradition to marry. And the Air Nomads who did get married were the ones who took a spouse from one of the other nations. They left the Air Temples to live with their new family."

Aang nodded again, but he didn't see her point.

"But they didn't return, did they? You told me so yourself. Do you remember?"

He did remember. It was the day she had asked him about Air Nomads who had married and left the Air Temples. It was the same day she was supposed to see Yura—but had met with Takit instead. Six months later, she was asking the same questions again. But this time, she was asking without hiding her reasons and he was answering without veiling the truth.

"No, they didn't return," he said, shaking his head. "In my life before the iceberg, I remember one or two Air Nomads at my temple who married and left. Their sky bisons went with them, so they could have come back anytime. But they never did."

"Why didn't they come back, Aang? What happened to them?"

"They left to start a life with their new families. They probably had to let go of their old life so they could—"

"No, that's not what I mean," Katara said, shaking her head. "What happened to their airbending, Aang?"

Aang opened his mouth to speak, but he had no answer.

"Did they lose their airbending?" she pressed. "Was that why they didn't come back? Did it hurt too much to remember what they had lost? Or was it because they didn't feel like there was a place for them anymore?"

"I…I don't know," Aang said helplessly. "After they left, people only talked about them now and then, mostly to say how much they were missed, or about the letters they wrote saying how happy they were with their new lives. But I don't know anything more than that."

Silence filled the space between them.

"Many of the records in the Air Temples were destroyed in Sozin's attacks," Aang said eventually. "Scholars are still going through the scrolls and books that are left. Some of them mention that Air Nomads occasionally married someone from another nation. As far as I know, none of them say anything about what happened to their airbending.

"But many of the scrolls talk about attachments," he went on. "Attachments tether us to the world, and my people practiced letting go of those attachments. The Air Nomads who detached themselves from the world were able to set their spirits free. They lived like the wind, and some of them could even fly."

Aang gazed at his hands where they lay in his lap, the only hands left in the world that still bore blue arrows. What he was about to say next would not reassure Katara, but he had to tell her because she deserved to know. He had forgiven himself and let go of his self-blame. It was time to stop holding back around Katara.

"Air Nomads who became too involved in the world were weighed down by their attachments," he said. "Avatar Kyoshi's mother was an Air Nomad who joined a group of criminals, and her airbending suffered because of that. And according to legend, airbenders were able to fly until they bonded with sky bisons. After they made it a tradition to form attachments to sky bisons, they lost their ability to fly."

"So letting go of attachments can make airbenders more powerful," Katara said slowly, "and forming attachments can make airbenders weaker."

Aang nodded. "It's more complicated than that, but our airbending can definitely be affected by the people and things that attach us to the world."

"And marriage is an attachment, right?"

"Right."

"Your people didn't marry each other, and they lived apart from their partners. So they wouldn't become too attached to each other. Right?"

Aang saw where Katara's train of thought was going, and he dreaded where it would take them. But he reluctantly said, "Right."

Katara absently rubbed the trim of her tunic between her fingers. "That's why I had to stay away from you, Aang," she said anxiously. "You wanted to marry me, but I didn't want to be an attachment in your life. If you lost any part of your airbending because of me, if you got hurt because of me, if you…" Her voice hitched, her words locking up in a small sob.

Her hand went to her throat, and she drew a shuddering breath. "If you died, Aang…" She crumpled the hem of her tunic in her other hand. "I would never be able to live with myself," she said hoarsely.

"We don't have to get married, then," Aang said quickly. "I can come visit you in the South Pole sometimes. We don't have to live with each other, but we can still see each other. Just like my people used to do. That way, we won't even have to take the chance of putting my airbending at risk. You won't have to stay away from me anymore."

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop himself. What am I saying? Just because she kissed me doesn't mean she wants me in her life again.

"I don't want that kind of life, Aang," she said, shaking her head adamantly.

Of course she doesn't, he thought. He wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. Why am I such an idiot?

She looked at him then, her eyes suddenly fierce. "I can't stay away from you, Aang. Not anymore. The spirits know I've tried."

Aang went still, his heart in his throat.

"If I can't stay away from you, then I want to spend my life with you," she said. "Together. Not apart."

Her words stole the air from his lungs.

I want to spend my life with you.

He almost didn't hear what she said next.

"Listen to me, talking like you still want anything to do with me," Katara said, turning away with a bitter laugh. "You must think I'm—"

"Katara." Aang wrapped his fingers around her hands, stopping her in mid-sentence. She looked up at him, her face shining with tears and astonishment. "Katara, I want you in my life." Without taking his eyes off hers, he brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into her fingers. "I want nothing more than to spend every day by your side."

"Aang…" Katara whispered, her voice filled with awe and gratitude and…something else. Something heavy. Something that cut her deep. But her hands touching his face made him forget what it was, her breath trembling over his lips made him forget he'd even noticed, and her mouth consuming his made him forget everything.

If their first kiss was a taste of water, this kiss was a drink from a torrent. Aang wanted Katara, and Katara wanted Aang. There was no longer any question. The connection between them deepened even further with every dip of the tongue, with every breath they shared. Her hands burned against his skin as they slid over his bare chest. Her fingers trailed up his neck and behind his head, drawing tantalizing lines in their wake.

Aang drank from Katara, from lips soft and wet. Instead of sating his thirst, her sweetness only inflamed the fire boiling within him. His hands moved in urgent strokes down her spine and skimmed the curves of her waist. The dull pain in his middle was only a faint memory. His entire body burned to close the space between them.

His hands tightened around Katara's hips, guiding her as she shifted herself onto him. She had only just straddled him when she broke their kiss with a gasp.

"Are you okay?" Aang asked with alarm. "What's wrong?"

Katara pivoted off him and stretched out her leg. She rubbed her calf and winced. "My leg." When Aang continued to gaze at her with concern, she said, "It's okay. I'll be fine."

He laid a hand on her arm. "We've both been injured pretty badly," he said. The nagging discomfort in his belly had bloomed into barbs of pain. "Maybe we should take it easy for now."

Katara seemed to deflate with the same disappointment that dampened his own spirit. But it was probably for the best. Even though they had wanted each other for so long, they'd only just closed the rift that had kept them apart.

Aang held his arm wide in invitation. Katara snuggled into his shoulder and leaned her head against his cheek as he curled his arm around her. They sat together in cozy silence, soaking up the togetherness that had been missing from their lives for so long.

He was trailing his fingers down the soft slope of her neck when she said, "Aang, I want to spend my life with you."

"Mmm." He buried his nose in her hair, surrounding himself with her scent. She had already said that once, but he didn't mind if she said it again. In fact, she could say it ten thousand times and he would never get tired of hearing those words.

"But even if we don't get married, as long as we're in each other's lives, the attachment between us will only grow stronger, won't it?" she continued. "What if…" Her hand resting on his shoulder gave an involuntary twitch. "What if I really am dragging you down?"

Aang grasped her hand and held her to his chest. His treasure, clasped against his heart. "Katara, I don't—"

"That would make me selfish, wouldn't it?"

The hard edge in her words, the words she used to accuse herself, cut him to his heart.

"How can I love you and be happy, knowing that your airbending could fail one day because of me? That you could get hurt because of me?"

Cold dread seized his chest. Was Katara about to tell him that she couldn't be with him, after all?

But she was still nestled against his neck. And she didn't pull her hand away.

"I can't stay away from you, Aang. I want to be with you." Katara laced their fingers together where they were clasped over his chest. "I want you." She brought their hands to her lips and kissed his blue arrow. "I want you more than anything."

Trembling, she cradled his hand against her cheek. "Even if wanting you makes me the most selfish person alive," she whispered.

The guilt that hung heavy in her voice pierced Aang to the core. He knew that guilt. That guilt had chained his own heart, filled him with shame for years. He had only learned to release that guilt just moments ago, and he had only just begun to heal.

He had to help Katara find a way to release her guilt, her self-blame, just as he had.

Aang tightened his arm around her shoulders. "I'll find out whether or not marriage will weaken my airbending. I'll do it even if it means I have to take apart the Air Temples stone by stone."

A few beats of silence. "What if you never find the answer?" she said in a small voice.

His eyes dropped to where his hand was pressed against Katara's cheek. The slender line of blue curving over his wrist and down his arm seemed even more lonely than before. His people—who had once been living, breathing Air Nomads—were nothing more than a relic now, distant memories trapped in scrolls, many of them eaten away by spider moths or burned by fire into ash. He might never find the answer he was looking for. Spending a life together with Katara might be happy at first, but spending a lifetime watching guilt shrivel her spirit—that thought filled him with an anguish that twisted bone deep.

Not for the first time, he wished that Monk Gyatso or Pasang or even Tashi were here. He wished he had someone he could talk to. Someone who he could turn to for answers.

And then he remembered that he did.

"Katara," he said, excited by the prospect of hitting upon the perfect solution. "I can ask my past lives. The ones who were airbenders. They might know something."

Aang consulted his past lives for wisdom and advice regarding his duties as the Avatar, and he reserved this privilege for problems he couldn't figure out on his own. Except for Roku, they were more mentors than friends. He talked to Roku the most and only occasionally turned to Kyoshi or Kuruk.

Yangchen, however, was the one he spoke with the least. Seeing another airbender again, when that airbender was only a ghost of his past self and a reminder of what he had lost, filled him with longing and grief. Even though his heart leaped with joy at being with another airbender again, he also felt his sorrow reflected in her. After he left Yangchen's presence, his footsteps would ring hollow, like the echoes of solitary footfalls in an empty Air Temple. This feeling would follow him for weeks.

So he avoided talking to Yangchen unless he had no other choice, just like he had several days ago.

But Aang would have to meet with her again. Yangchen and the other airbenders who were his past lives. He had never met the rest of them—he'd never had any reason to. Until now, any questions he'd had about Air Nomads of the past were questions they could not answer. Because those questions were about the people who he had left behind, about whether any Air Nomads had escaped the genocide, and about the holes in his own memory.

"What if you find out that it's true?" Katara asked. She was curled up against him under his arm in a ball of apprehension. "What if our attachment growing stronger really does mean that your airbending will grow weaker?"

Aang brought their clasped hands to his chest and rubbed his other hand over her arm in a reassuring rhythm. "Whatever the answer is, we'll be able to handle it. We'll figure it out." He pressed a kiss into her hair. "I promise," he said, although he had no idea how he would do any of those things. If loving Katara the way he wanted to love her meant that he would start to lose his airbending skills, what was he going to do? Would he be forced to choose between Katara and another aspect of himself once again?

But the worry that he might have to choose between Katara and his airbending reminded him of a conversation he'd once had in an overgrown grove on the back of a lion turtle.

"Many great and wise Air Nomads have detached themselves and achieved spiritual enlightenment, but the Avatar can never do it. Because your sole duty is to the world," Yangchen had told him, her words as heavy as the duty that lay on his shoulders.

"Katara," he said, his spirits lifting as he realized what Yangchen's observation could mean. "The night before I had to face Ozai, Avatar Yangchen told me something important. She said that because I'm the Avatar, I can never completely detach myself from the world. So that means all of the airbender Avatars before me were attached to the world, too. And they didn't lose their airbending!"

He was about to go on, but something stopped him. "Although…" he mumbled as another realization dawned on him.

Katara tensed under his arm. "Although what?"

"I've never talked to the other airbenders. The ones who were my past lives," Aang said sheepishly. "I've only ever talked to Yangchen. Even then, I don't know if her attachments to the world weakened her airbending at all." Then he mustered up all the confidence he could. "I don't think she was affected, though. She was still a powerful Avatar anyway."

"I don't know," Katara said, chewing her lip. "Being involved in the problems of the world because that's your job is one thing. I feel like being married, being attached to a person is different. Not only that…marriage would be another attachment on top of everything else."

Aang rubbed her arm briskly, as if he could scrub away her misgivings. "I'll talk to them. I'll talk to my past lives," he promised her. "But whatever happens, no matter what the answer is, we'll find a way. We'll figure it out."

His words seemed to reassure Katara, who softened beneath his arm. "You're right," she murmured. "We'll figure it out, somehow."

He continued to stroke her arm in soothing encouragement as she slowly let herself trust the optimism in his words about the future. Optimism that he tried to feel even as doubt niggled away at him.

"Even if having an attachment to me hurts your airbending, we'll find a way around it," she went on, though it sounded like she was talking to herself, now. Convincing herself. "We have to. We have to find a way, so that choosing attachment doesn't end up kill—doesn't end up dragging you down."

"No, Aang!" Guru Pathik sprang to his feet and followed Aang to the edge of the roof. "By choosing attachment, you have locked the chakra," the old guru said. "If you leave now, you won't be able to go into the Avatar State at all!"

The hand rubbing her arm faltered.

"You know, there's something I've been meaning to ask you," Katara said. "When we were in Ba Sing Se last summer, I tried to leave you. But I couldn't. Not until I saw you…" She pinched her eyes shut, her breath hissing through her teeth, as if she was in pain.

After a moment, she gathered herself together. "Not until I saw you burn my ribbon, the night before I left. Or what I thought was my ribbon," she said quickly, as if she wanted the words to leave her mouth without thinking about what they meant.

Aang stood with Katara in the snow fields. She was hunched over with her arms folded tightly across her middle. She stared at the length of black-and-white cloth in his hand like it was a snake about to strike. "So you didn't burn my ribbon?" she had asked in a harsh whisper.

Now everything made sense. After she had locked him out of her room, it took her two months to finally leave him. Two long, torturous months. Since the day she left him for the South Pole, he had lain awake at night, wondering why two months and what he could have done differently to entice her to stay.

Katara had only left Ba Sing Se after she thought he'd burned her ribbon. After she believed that he had finally purged her presence from his heart, when she herself could not muster up the will to do the same with him.

"So I've been wondering…what did you burn, Aang?"

Aang sat in a room bathed in dark purple twilight, holding a flame in one hand and a blood-stained cloth in the other. Preparing to burn away the guilt that chained him to the past and threatened to drown him.

Except that burning the bloodied bandage hadn't set him free. Burning away the evidence of his guilt had driven the wedge between him and Katara even deeper and split them apart.

Aang's hand fell away from her arm and dropped onto the bed.

It was time to tell Katara about the blood-stained bandages he had squirreled away, hidden from her eyes. To tell her the real reason why he had deflected her questions about attachments. To tell her about the decision he had made at the Eastern Air Temple—the decision that had ended with his death.

It was time for Aang to tell her everything.

Author's note: BIG THANKS to itsmoonpeaches for her amazing beta reading and her feedback on this chapter ❤️

I'm working on the very last chapter right now, which means that the final chapter count is coming in at 25 chapters.

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The next update will be on THURSDAY, December 1. After that, the rest of the chapters will be posted every week on Thursdays.

If you enjoyed this chapter, I would love to hear your thoughts! 💖