Chapter 7

The world went black. His chest was on fire. Breath coming faster and faster and panic and clawing the ground and—

Suddenly, release. He was floating. Sweet, cool air rushed into his lungs.

The boy wasn't really floating, though. He still breathed in dust and dirt. But the bullies had backed off.

Not all of them had backed off, though. A knee still dug into his spine. Rough hands held his wrists, keeping his arms twisted behind him.

Still face-down, the boy saw two shoes scuff to a halt in front of him. Toes with long, dirty nails poked through the rotting leather. Someone grabbed his wolf tail and yanked back his head.

The leader's face leered at him from just inches away. His breath stank of onions and rotten cabbage. "Looks like I got somethin' of yers." He waggled a familiar dark blade in front of the boy's face.

The whalebone knife! The boy must have lost it when the bullies tackled him.

"Not so tough anymore, are ya?" the bully said.

The boy rolled his eyes away from the menacing mug in front of him. He stared up at the clouds. The rooflines of the tenement buildings outlined a rough rectangle of blue-and-white sky. Windows pushed open as people poked their heads out, curious to see what the ruckus was about. If the bully slit his throat, at least someone up there would witness his death.

The bully slid the edge of the blade just below the boy's nose. The boy froze out of fear and self-preservation. Then the knife glided down his cheek and over the nape of his neck. Still grabbing the boy's wolf tail, the bully jerked his head down again and shoved his face back into the dirt.

"What's this thing on top of yer head?" the bully drawled.

The bully was baiting him. The boy didn't want to satisfy him with an answer. But with the cold knife blade against his neck and his hair twisted in a painful grip, answering the question seemed like the wise thing to do.

"It-It's a wolf tail," he mumbled.

"But yer not a wolf, are ya?" the bully said in a deceptively friendly voice. "We don't have wolves around here. So I don't think you'll be needing this wolf tail of yers."

A razor-sharp edge dug into the boy's scalp. The knife began to saw back and forth. The boy screamed as the blade split his skin.

"What's going on here?" said a deep voice.

The sawing stopped and the knife clattered to the ground. A flurry of feet, scampering out of the courtyard. The boy collapsed, his bones turned to water. Relief washed over him.

Then he saw who was standing over him. Three tall figures wearing conical hats and robes of green so dark that they looked almost black. The emblem of a square within a circle was emblazoned on their chests, just like the symbol scratched into the handle of the whalebone knife. The emblem of the Earth Kingdom. Except that their emblems were not slashed through with an angry gash.

They were the Dai Li.


"So basically, pirates in the South Sea are attacking merchant ships except for the ones that belong to the Southern Water Tribe. Your dad won't allow the other nations to bring armed ships into the South Sea, so they think he's somehow supporting the pirates. Now the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom are refusing to trade with the Southern Water Tribe, which is hurting them as well, unless some kind of agreement can be reached. Does that sound about right?"

Aang sat cross-legged on a yak-hair cushion in a large tent that served as the meeting place for the trade conference. Animal pelts were stretched over driftwood poles rising vertically from the ground to form the tent walls, and another network of poles and pelts created the dome of the tent. The small opening in the roof of the dome had been uncovered to ventilate smoke from the firepit below. Rugs adorned with geometric patterns and bold colors covered the tent floor. A circle of cushions similar to Aang's ringed the center of the space, with the firepit in the middle. On the other side of the circle, sitting on her knees with her ankles tucked under, was Katara.

She nodded when Aang finished summarizing the trade problem. "That's right."

Earlier that morning, after Aang had finished his morning meditation, he scarfed down a quick breakfast of dried fruit and hard biscuits and headed to the meeting tent. He was hoping to have some time to mull over the issues involved in the trade dispute before everyone else showed up.

He had walked in to find that Katara had arrived before him. Which was surprising, because he was usually the early riser of the two.

But maybe things had changed. Just like everything else had between them.

Apparently, Katara hadn't expected to see him in the meeting tent so early, either. He assumed she still preferred to keep some distance between them, so he had taken the seat farthest away from her. But the farthest seat from Katara also happened to be on the exact opposite side of the circle—directly facing her.

They could only avoid eye contact and make stilted small talk for so long. Desperate to make conversation, Aang had started asking Katara questions about the trade dispute between the three nations. At least trade politics were a safe subject.

But once they had run out of things to say, the air grew awkward again.

Aang examined the driftwood poles that propped up the sealskin walls of the tent. He adjusted the formal cape-like robes draped over his shoulders and fingered the string of wooden beads around his neck. After a while, his neck started to ache from keeping his head turned away from Katara.

Meanwhile, Katara stared at a spot on the rug in front of her and fidgeted with the hem of her tunic.

Aang couldn't take the tension any longer. "So, uh…I'm glad I ran into you last night."

He cringed as the words left his mouth. Even Sokka would have thought that was corny.

Katara jerked her head up to look straight at him for the first time that morning. The brilliant blue of her eyes made his breath catch. "You are?" she said.

"Yeah…I am," he replied, his face growing warm. Her expression was guarded, but her eyes shone with the same eagerness he'd seen last night.

Why did I open my mouth? he wondered to himself. I have no idea where I'm going with this.

"I hope it wasn't too weird," he continued, unable to stop the words from coming out of his mouth. "I mean, it wasn't weird for me. I meant for you."

Aang wanted to smack himself. He was floundering like a silverskim fish out of water.

To his relief, Katara shook her head. "No, it wasn't," she said. Her head was down again. She examined the skirt of her tunic as she smoothed out the same spot over and over. "It wasn't weird."

Then, without lifting her head, she peered up at him through her eyelashes. "Not for me."

The look she gave him made him go still. Like she was stealing a glance at him, as if laying eyes on him was somehow forbidden. It was the kind of look, soft yet intense, that used to make his knees go weak—but it was also, oddly, full of guilt.

Aang felt it then. The pull between them, the draw of her. Katara, who filled the empty spaces of his heart. He almost stood up and crossed the circle and gathered her into his arms, just like he had the night before.

But he also knew better. Even as close as they'd been last night, Katara wasn't acting like she wanted to start up a relationship with him again. She didn't even love him anymore—though he was starting to doubt this as she continued to stare at him in a way that made his chest tighten.

He had read her wrong before, though, when he made the mistake of kissing her on Ember Island. Maybe he was reading her wrong this time, too.

It was all so confusing.

Thankfully, Aang didn't have to struggle with his confusion for long. The other parties attending the trade conference began to arrive. The tent flap pulled back to admit Hakoda, who was followed by the stooped forms of Kanna and Pakku. Next came two of the elders, Ahnah and Ikiak, who each greeted Aang with a nod. Sokka entered last, shaking the snow from his hood before stepping inside. The Water Tribers shrugged off their parkas and settled onto their cushions, occupying half of the circle in a wall of blue.

Not long afterwards, the Earth Kingdom minister of commerce marched in with his assistant. Or, at least, he tried to. As the assistant held the tent flap open for the minister, a woman in a maroon fur coat with black trim elbowed the minister aside and walked through instead. Behind her trailed two of her own assistants garbed in the same colors, though their coats were much simpler than the one worn by their mistress.

Once the Fire Nation minister and her entourage were through, the Earth Kingdom minister stalked in with his chest puffed out and his lone aide scrambling in after him. He removed his emerald-green coat with a flourish and tossed it to his assistant, who was in the middle of removing his own coat of plain green. Even though he and his assistant were the last ones to enter, the minister took his time to smooth out the wide sleeves of his robe, as if to flaunt the richly dyed fabric embellished with intricate gold stitching. He regarded the two remaining cushions in the circle with open disdain before selecting the one that he deemed dignified enough for his embroidered rear.

Meanwhile, the Fire Nation minister had arranged herself on her own seat with her hands clasped across her middle and elbows bent on either side of her. The red-and-gold shoulder piece that jutted out beyond her shoulders gave her an imposing air. This picture of perfect symmetry was made complete by the assistants who flanked her on each side.

The Water Tribers did not skimp on their finery, either. Hakoda wore a simple but formal tunic with a high collar and black and gray edges that accentuated his broad shoulders. Sokka's robes were woven with black and turquoise diamond patterns along the trim. The elder folk had bedecked their tunics with tassels, and shapes of diamonds and triangles were stitched down the front. Everyone wore jewelry of beads and whalebone around their necks and in their hair.

And then there was Katara. Now that the arrival of the others had occupied her attention, Aang could admire her openly without feeling self-conscious. Her tunic wrapped around the front and was cinched at the waist by a wide leather belt, setting off her figure in a most appealing way. Black triangles graced the white borders of her outfit, reminding him—with a pang—of her black-and-white ribbon he'd tucked away in his satchel. The short strings of blue beads dangling from her ears matched the soft shade of the pendant of her mother's necklace.

She was stunning.

Only when Hakoda called the meeting to order did Aang tear his gaze away from Katara. The Water Tribe chieftain made introductions and thanked the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation ministers of commerce, Minister Shi and Minister Tae, for making the journey to the South Pole. Then he turned the meeting over to Aang.

"This conference was called to negotiate conditions that will enable trade to resume between the Southern Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, and the Fire Nation," Aang began. "As you all know, pirates have been attacking merchant ships in the South Sea—"

"You mean pirates have been attacking merchant ships except for the ones that belong to the Southern Water Tribe," Shi, the Earth Kingdom minister, snapped. "We are here to discuss why the Southern Water Tribe is harboring pirates—" he jabbed his finger at Hakoda "—and refusing to allow our merchants to defend themselves!"

Hakoda, who was seated next to Aang, took a deep breath before answering Shi's outburst. "We are more than happy to provide an escort for your merchant ships through the South Sea," he replied evenly. "Just as we escorted your ships into harbor two days ago, without incident."

"Which placed us in a vulnerable position," said Tae, the Fire Nation minister. Her voice was delicate and cold, like the chiming of crystal bells. "The pirates clearly have a relationship with the Water Tribe. If we cannot trust you to stop the pirate attacks, why should we trust any ship that flies the Water Tribe flag?"

Hakoda remained poised in the face of the ministers' accusations, but the tendons stood out in his neck. "As I explained in our correspondence, we do not know who the pirates are or why they attack your ships and spare ours. But I believe we have shown that our fleet is more than adequate to protect your ships and deter the pirates."

Tae, despite being the smallest person in the room, somehow managed to look down her nose at the Water Tribe chieftain. "Why not hunt them down and destroy them? You have two waterbenders," she said, gesturing at Pakku and Katara. "According to the reports I've received, the pirates have no benders among them. Since the pirates do not attack your ships, you will have the element of surprise. Two master waterbenders will make short work of them."

Hakoda sighed, his shoulders drooping. He seemed to age ten years. "Minister Tae, my men are tired of fighting. We are all tired of fighting," he said. "Our tribe has suffered through one hundred years of war, and we've had but two years of peace. We do not wish for more bloodshed.

"Since the pirates apparently do not attack Water Tribe ships, we can safely escort your merchants through the South Sea and into harbor," he continued. "We can solve this issue without taking any more lives."

"I knew it!" Shi exclaimed as he slapped his knee, his long beard bobbing with excitement. "The Southern Water Tribe is colluding with the pirates. You've been protecting them all along!"

"If you won't root them out, then we'll do it for you," Tae said as she casually brushed imaginary dust off her sleeve. "A fleet of Fire Nation cruisers with a small army of firebenders should take care of the problem."

"I can't allow that," Hakoda said firmly.

She gave him a shrewd stare. "And why not? Why are you protecting the pirates? What are you hiding?"

"We are not protecting them, and we are not hiding—"

"I will make sure that King Kuei hears of this treachery!" Shi declared. "The Southern Water Tribe will not make fools of the Earth Kingdom—"

"All right, let's all take a step back and hear what Chief Hakoda has to say," Aang said, trying to raise his voice above the arguing.

"What do you care about the pirates?" Tae said, her calm veneer slipping as her words grew heated. "They're lawless thugs and a menace to us all. Our cruisers will launch a surgical strike, and then we will be out of your hair."

"Absolutely not."

"Once again, why not, when it would benefit us all—"

"Because they're working together," Shi spluttered. "The Southern Water Tribe harbors criminals!"

"—and more importantly, how will you stop us if we do?"

"Everyone, listen to me—" Aang began again.

Even though Hakoda was seated, he drew himself up to an impressive height. "Any Fire Nation military ship entering the South Sea violates the sovereignty of our waters—"

Shi slashed his hand in the air in anger. "You mean the waters of thieves and outlaws—"

"—which will be considered an act of war," Hakoda finished in a ringing voice.

"You would defend pirates to the point of declaring war?" Tae nearly screeched.

"Of course he would! Why does that surprise you—"

"EVERYONE! THAT'S ENOUGH!" Aang roared, his voice booming over the others with no small boost from airbending.

A stunned silence fell over the tent. All eyes were on Aang. He may be the Avatar, but he was also a mild-mannered fifteen-year-old Air Nomad, the last survivor of a people known for their peaceful ways. He also had a reputation for being understanding and diplomatic. So whenever he asserted his authority, especially when he was forceful about it, people were often taken aback.

"The answer is not more bloodshed," Aang said, more calmly this time. "Conflict only leads to more conflict. The war pulled the world into a cycle of violence that lasted for a hundred years. We need to break that cycle if we want to have any hope of peace."

"Avatar Aang is right," Katara said, speaking up for the first time. Hearing her voice—so clear and self-assured—warmed his heart like a fire on a cold night. When her eyes met his, the broken pieces of his life started to fall back into place. Yes, he was the Avatar, and he had gotten the meeting back under control. But with Katara having his back, he felt like he could do anything.

This was how things were supposed to be.

"Engaging the pirates in combat will only throw the South Pole into another endless cycle of fighting," Katara continued. "A peaceful resolution is what we need."

The tent was quiet as the others contemplated Aang and Katara's call for peace.

Tae folded her hands together and cleared her throat. "Since you are not willing to do anything about the pirates, Chief Hakoda, the simplest solution is for our merchants to bring their own protection with them. The presence of our warships will discourage the pirates from attacking," she said. "Then you won't have to trouble yourselves to make a show of providing an escort, and our merchant ships will not have to be kept waiting for your fleet to meet them. Why make matters more complicated than they need to be?"

Shi harrumphed under his breath. "This is exactly what we have been suggesting all along."

At first, Hakoda did not reply. His jaw clenched and his brow darkened. The tension in his face was mirrored in the expressions of all of the other Water Tribers in the tent.

Aang understood, now, why Hakoda had insisted on meeting with the ministers in the Southern Water Tribe.

"Before the war, this village had been a thriving city," Hakoda began. Though he gazed at the firepit in the middle of the circle, he seemed to be seeing not the flames, but memories of the past. "And then the Fire Nation raids came. Thousands of our men, women, and children died in the attacks. The raids were a calculated attempt to not only destroy our culture, but also eliminate our waterbenders. Any waterbender who was not killed was taken away. My daughter, Katara, is the only waterbender who survived."

Aang watched Katara carefully. Her face was a mask of barely restrained grief, and she crumpled the hem of her tunic between her fingers. He found himself wishing he had chosen to sit next to her instead of on the other side of the tent.

The Earth Kingdom minister frowned. "What does this have anything to do with—"

Hakoda held up a hand to silence him.

"Our village has been reduced to a fraction of its original size," Hakoda continued. "The hills surrounding the outskirts of the village? Those used to be our city walls. The women and children? Widows and orphans of men and women who had died in the fighting. The inlet that runs right up to the shore of the village? That's not a natural formation." He fixed his gaze on Tae, who stared straight ahead. "That's a gouge in the ice made by a Fire Nation cruiser captained by Fire Prince Zuko himself, on the day he attacked my village and my family.

"And my wife…Kya, my wife, was supposed to be here today," he said quietly. "But she's not here. She died in a raid nearly ten years ago. She told the Fire Nation commander that she was the last waterbender of our tribe, and she was killed for it. She died to protect our daughter. Once the Fire Nation believed that the last waterbender in our tribe was dead, the raids finally ended."

Hakoda fell silent. His words hung in the air, a damning rebuke of the Fire Nation's sins.

Sokka was the one who eventually broke the silence. "We knew a raid was coming whenever black snow started to fall. Ash from Fire Nation warships, mixed with ice and snow. The bitter smell of smoke burned in our lungs and made it hard to breathe. The ships would come next. We would watch the ocean, waiting for them to appear on the horizon. And they always did."

He stared at his hands, which he tightened into fists in his lap. "These are the things I will never forget for as long as I live."

Elder Ahnah lifted her weathered face and peered from under bushy white eyebrows at Tae, and then at Shi. The passage of years had faded her youth, but her eyes remained sharp. "For you, ministers, sending an armed fleet with your merchant ships is merely a solution to a trade dispute. But for us, warships in our waters mean suffering and death. Now you see why we cannot allow your warships to enter the South Sea."

Tae did not say anything in response. But Shi stuck out his chest and, with beard twitching, he said, "The Earth Kingdom has never attacked the Southern Water Tribe. You can rest assured that our warships will not bring you harm."

But Hakoda was unmoved. "The Earth Kingdom was not a friend to us, either," he said, his eyes as hard as ice. "We asked you for help as raiders burned our city and our villages. But no help came."

"We—we were fighting off the Fire Nation from our own shores, our own cities!" Shi stammered. "We had no troops to spare!"

"And yet you held off the Fire Nation for almost a century, while our tribe was nearly wiped out. With our warriors and our waterbenders, we could have combined our forces with the Earth Kingdom's army. We would have been stronger together. But the Earth Kingdom had no interest in forming an alliance with the Southern Water Tribe.

"Even so, we still sent our men to fight the Fire Nation on your soil. Water Tribe men and women even fought in the invasion on the Day of Black Sun, and we were captured when it failed. We risked our lives to defend your kingdom. Because if you lost the war, then we would lose, too. Yet you were not willing to do the same for us."

"We would have, if the Dai Li had not been concealing news of the war from King Kuei!" Shi protested. "And if Ba Sing Se had not fallen, our armies would have fought alongside yours in the invasion, and the war would have ended that day. But we couldn't. After a century of throwing themselves against the walls of the Impenetrable City, the Fire Nation finally conquered us—from the inside."

Aang dug his fingers into his knees. His breath came shallow and tight. He sat as still as possible, afraid that the slightest twitch would give him away. This was far from the first time his failures had been trotted out in front of him—the fall of Ba Sing Se, the failed invasion. He had heard the stories, told from the mouths of others, more times than he could count. How Azula and her cronies had won the Earth King's trust and captured the Avatar's friends. How the Avatar had battled her and Fire Prince Zuko and was grievously wounded, resulting in the fall of Ba Sing Se. How the Avatar had failed to defeat Ozai during the solar eclipse because of Azula's treachery.

No one blamed Aang for any of this. But that was because no one knew the truth. Not Katara or Sokka or Toph or Zuko. Even Iroh only knew a fragment of the truth. His friends thought they knew what had really happened—that Azula had killed Aang, and Katara had brought him back to life; and that Aang had never even faced the Fire Lord during the eclipse because he had decided it wasn't worth the risk.

But no one knew about the decision that lay at the root of these catastrophes. The decision that he'd made atop the roof of a pagoda under a starlit sky, when he was on the verge of unleashing the power within himself that could win the war.

His decision to save Katara.

Aang could still hear her screams as she struggled against her chains. The hazy vision of Katara shackled to the wall haunted his dreams, though not nearly as often as it had back then. She was a master waterbender, so seeing her captured with no way to escape had chilled Aang to his core. If someone had beaten her in a fight, then that meant they were capable of doing much, much worse.

He had been about to unlock his final chakra, but he couldn't just leave Katara in danger. He would never forgive himself if she was harmed. If anything happened to her, it would be his fault and his fault alone. So he had left Guru Pathik and the Avatar State to rescue her. The choice had seemed so obvious at the time.

Aang's decision to save Katara, however, had led to his death, which only multiplied tragedy and suffering—especially for Katara. He had learned, once again, how the simplest decisions caused ripples that turned into waves and drowned the whole world.

But he also knew that if he had the chance to do it all over, he would make the same choice again.

Because Katara wasn't just a girl he had feelings for. Aang was the last airbender, and he loved Katara. Everything he had lost in his people he had found again in her. She was his family. His home. She was the one thing that tethered him to the world. Letting go of his connection to her was supposed to free him. But instead, even the thought of letting her go had filled him with dread. If he had put Katara out of mind in that moment and lost her for good, he wouldn't have been free. He would have been a kite cut loose from the earth, carried away by the wind. A soul unmoored, drifting aimlessly above the world. He would have lost himself.

Aang didn't regret saving Katara. Not saving her and leaving her to her fate would have been a grave mistake. She believed in him. She trusted him with her life. Not saving her would have been the same as betraying her. If she had died, he might as well have been the one who dealt the killing blow.

What he regretted was the other side of his choice—leaving to save Katara also meant abandoning his training and letting the seventh chakra remain blocked. Not because it had been the wrong thing to do, but because he had made the choice knowing that without the Avatar State, he could lose to the enemy. And he had lost. He had lost everything.

Guilt was a funny thing. It didn't matter that he had made the only choice that he could. Guilt only cared that he had made the choice at all and punished him for it.

Aang usually bore the retelling of his failures with little more than a twinge of that guilt. He certainly didn't delve into the memory of the decision he had made at the Eastern Air Temple. That was a memory he had hidden away, as if not thinking about it would somehow make it disappear.

But that memory—and his guilt—had bobbed back up to the surface last summer. He should have known that he couldn't keep it stuffed away forever.

Katara had obviously sensed the guilt he carried with him. She had wanted to know more. But even though he had told her as much as he could without telling her everything, she still knew, somehow. Like she could see right through him. And then she had left him.

In the end, he had lost her anyway.

"What do you think, Avatar Aang? Do you agree with this course of action?"

Aang blinked. The room was blurry. He blinked again. The film of tears over his eyes melted away, and he could see once more.

"Avatar Aang?" Tae was staring expectantly at him.

"Ah…" he began. His face grew hot and his underarms dampened with sweat as the Fire Nation minister's eyes bored into him.

Aang panicked. His gaze darted from one face to the next. Everyone was staring at him. They were waiting for him to answer Tae's question. But he had been so preoccupied with his thoughts that he had missed the rest of the discussion.

His eyes landed on Katara, who was watching him as well. But unlike everyone else, she was watching him with concern. She had the crease between her eyebrows that appeared whenever she was worried about him. Did she somehow know what he'd been thinking about? She always seemed to sense what he was feeling, often before he was fully aware of it himself. And that was just one of the many reasons why he loved her.

As Aang's gaze lingered on Katara, she gave him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

Relief flooded through him. His love for her swelled so much that it made his chest ache.

"I agree," he said finally.

Tae pursed her lips in distaste—whether at his answer or at his absent-minded lapse, he couldn't be sure. But she nodded and said, "Since the Avatar feels that this is the best course of action, I will accept the consensus to…negotiate…with the pirates."

Now that Tae had agreed to the plan—she'd apparently been the last holdout—Hakoda adjourned the meeting, with plans to discuss negotiation strategies tomorrow.

People rose from their cushions and started to file out of the tent. Aang remained seated, feeling drained and lightheaded from the turmoil of both the meeting and his inner struggle. He didn't want to leave until everyone was gone. He wanted to sit for a while. He wanted to think.

Katara had reached the tent flap and was about to exit, but for some reason, she halted at the threshold. Her eyes were trained on Aang, as if she wanted to tell him something.

Part of him wanted to leap out of his seat and go to her. But he didn't.

The way she held her hand poised over the tent flap, about to leave while he stayed behind, reminded him of another time when she had left him behind—on the docks of Hai Bian.

"I wish I had never followed you out to the balcony that day."

The memory of her words pierced him again, tearing open the wound in his heart that kept trying to close, but never really healed.

Katara didn't want his company then, and she didn't seem to want it now. He didn't know what she wanted, but the ache in his heart kept him from going to her.

His heart could only take so much. He wasn't going to risk getting hurt again.

But they continued to stare at each other, silence stretching out between them. He couldn't look away. Neither, apparently, could she.

Aang swallowed. Why didn't Katara say anything? They were just looking at each other. One of them had to say something.

But what?

"Thank you—" he began.

"Aang—" she said at the same time.

They each cut off and waited for the other one to finish. Aang's heart pounded with anticipation.

The barest ghost of a smile flitted across her lips. "You're welcome," she said. Then she pushed open the tent flap, and she was gone.


After Katara left, Aang was not alone. Not yet.

Kanna was the only other person who remained in the meeting tent. Like Aang, she sat with her knees butterflied to either side with her feet tucked in and crossed at the ankles. Her back was hunched with age, making her appear smaller than she really was. She was an older version of Katara, with her white hair bound up in braided loops framing her face and a thick, proud braid trailing down her back.

Aang waited for her to shuffle to her feet, but she made no move to stand.

"You did well today, Avatar," she said.

"Thank you." He attempted a casual laugh, but it came out a nervous titter. "Um, please just call me 'Aang.' Like you always have."

Everything about this conversation was uncomfortable. Aang had, naturally, visited the Southern Water Tribe several times over the two years that he had dated Katara. Meeting Gran Gran—again—as the Avatar, a war hero, and Katara's boyfriend had been awkward. The very first time they'd met, which had begun with suspicion and disapproval and ended with banishment, had been at the forefront of his mind. And hers, apparently, as well. But in the end, his embarrassment about hiding his identity and triggering Zuko's attack on the village matched Kanna's embarrassment about inadvertently banishing the Avatar. They had both been eager to let bygones be bygones and quickly warmed up to each other after that.

Now he and Kanna had returned to the same awkward place as back then. The Southern Water Tribe was no longer home to him. Though he was still close with Sokka, his relations with Katara's family had cooled from cozy and friendly into something much more cordial. So when Aang found himself alone in the tent with Kanna, the woman who had raised Katara and who had banished him three years ago, he felt as if he was stepping on ice and trying not to slip.

Kanna had addressed him by his title—what he was to the world. Then he had asked her not to, a clumsy grasp for the familiarity they used to have when Katara was the tie that bound them together.

To his surprise, however, Kanna chuckled with genuine warmth. "I called you 'Avatar' because that's who you were today. This is the first time I've had the chance to see you in action. Katara is always talking about how you are the Avatar that our world needs. Now, I see what she means."

Aang's heart swelled with gratitude. Katara may not love him anymore, but she still spoke well of him. "Things are…different now, but in the beginning, I couldn't have done my Avatar duties without Katara or my friends. But especially Katara. She believed in me when no one else did—not even me."

"You have helped Katara grow, as well," Kanna said. "Ever since she returned home, she has been mediating disputes in the village. She makes an impression on everyone with her understanding and wisdom. I used to think her travels had changed her, but now it's clear that she has learned from you, too."

Then Kanna heaved a sigh that was laden with the weight of the years. "We have a saying in our tribe: 'When the old penguin fish eat up the sea grass in the usual places, the young ones lead them to find new feeding grounds,'" she said. "We older folk have lived a lifetime of war. It is all we know. We depend on you, Avatar Aang, and your generation to rebuild the world and safeguard the peace. Young people are the ones who are still able to dream, and you are the ones who have the passion and hope to bring those dreams to life."

She was right. Aang came from a time when all anybody knew was peace. He was the only person alive who knew what a world living in harmony—untouched by war—looked like. And even though his friends were children of war, they had their entire lives ahead of them. Decades later, in their sunset years, they would look back and remember a lifetime of peace, not war.

But even a century of peace could never erase the scars of one hundred years of violence and brutality. The ache of profound loss, the annihilation of his people, that dogged his steps—grown dull with time, but still occasionally bringing him to his knees—was testament to that. So was the charged discussion earlier that morning.

Aang studied the arrows on his hands. The marks of a living relic. His arrows were a curiosity that did not belong in this world, when they should have been commonplace. "The war ended two years ago. But it will always be a part of our lives, won't it?"

"The world feels the loss of your people deeply, young airbender," Kanna said. "Your intervention today was just a small glimpse of what we have lost."

"But I'm not just talking about my people. I'm talking about everyone. People aren't going to just forget what the war did to them." His eyes traced the borders of his arrows, where the blue ended and pale skin began. With little more than a thought, he could summon the power of the ages and make his arrows glow. But there had been a time when, instead of glowing, they had stayed blue. "And people can't pretend that the choices they made didn't hurt someone else."

Kanna gazed at him with eyes as clear as the sky and as penetrating as ice daggers. Aang had the feeling that she knew he was talking about himself, too.

She touched the betrothal necklace around her neck, the pendant gleaming with the same glassy blue as the one she had passed on to her granddaughter. "When I left my home in the Northern Water Tribe, the only thing I knew was that I wanted a different life. Not just for myself, but for my children, and my children's children. A better life, or so I had hoped.

"It was hard enough for my cousins in the South to accept me, an outsider, into their tribe. But as the raids grew more frequent and our lives revolved around preparing for the next attack, I began to question whether I had done the right thing. Was leaving my family and everyone I had ever loved worth it? Was escaping from a life of rigid expectations worth being surrounded by death and living in fear?

"When I held my son in my arms for the first time, my heart broke for him even as I was filled with indescribable joy. What kind of world had I brought him into? He deserved a life of peace, which he would have had in the North. He didn't deserve a life of war."

Kanna stared into the fire, lost in remembrance of the past. Flames danced over the pile of driftwood in the stone-lined firepit, crackling and spitting into the silence.

"We can't change the past," she said after a while. "We can't undo the things we have done and the things that others have done to us. But what we can change is how we move forward.

"We can allow the past to carry us like a river, going wherever the current takes us and eventually drowning in regret about what could have been. Or we can swim for the shore and find our own path and choose who we become."

Aang glanced down at his hands resting on his knees, the arrows pointing ahead and into the future. He couldn't let his guilt about the past drag him down anymore. He had to come to terms with the consequences of what he had done, and he had to move on.

Because not letting go of the past was throwing his life out of balance. Back in Ba Sing Se, Katara had sensed that he was holding something back, and she had stopped trusting him and eventually left him. Stewing in his guilt was making him unfocused, and he couldn't keep his mind from wandering. Meditation had become an exercise of going through the motions instead of calming him and bringing him back to his center. He was getting more and more distracted during meetings, and his inattention today would have been disastrous if Katara hadn't been there to bail him out.

Even though no one blamed him for his failures, Aang still could not forgive himself. But the current of his guilt was tossing him around and threatening to dash him against the rocks. He couldn't continue on like this. He had to find a way to move on. He had to find a way to swim to shore.

Just as Kanna had said, he couldn't change the past. He couldn't reverse the choices he had made. But he could do something about the future—the person he would become.

Kanna's words reminded him of something that Gyatso had once told him. When Aang was younger, he and his friend Gaden had swiped Monk Tashi's staff as a prank. But the dour-faced old monk had also used his staff as a walking stick. Without his staff to maintain his balance, Tashi had fallen and broken his ankle. Even after Aang and Gaden had returned the staff and apologized—and had mucked out the bison stables for a month as penance—Aang couldn't get the image of Tashi falling to the ground out of his mind. Whenever Aang saw the old monk trip or stumble, even after he had fully healed, his guilt had only deepened. Aang's guilt grew so heavy that even airball lost its appeal.

Gyatso had noticed Aang moping around and eventually divined the reason for his low spirits. "If we carry the past with us all the time, it will weigh us down," he had told Aang. "It is only when we learn to set it down that we can walk away and leave it behind."

Aang could almost hear his old mentor, his voice as kind as he was patient. But Gyatso and the rest of the Air Nomads had died one hundred years ago. His people were gone. There was no one left to talk to. No one left to guide him or share his spiritual journey. Aang's eyes grew hot with tears as the truth of being the last airbender weighed down his shoulders as it never had before.

Even though he no longer had Gyatso, he still had his friend's wisdom. Aang knew what he had to do. It was time to put the past behind him. It was time to let go of the things that connected him to the past, once and for all. The crystal catacombs. The people he had hurt.

And Katara. His unwillingness to let her go was at the root of his failure in Ba Sing Se. But he had learned from his experience. And now, it was time for Aang to do what he could not do back then, on that night at the Eastern Air Temple.

She was already lost to him, anyway. And now, he was beginning to realize that was probably for the best.

Because it was time for him to let Katara go.


Author's note: Not exactly sure when I'll post Chapter 8, but it will be in two weeks or possibly longer. But whenever I do post, it will always be on a Thursday!