This chapter has mature content!
…..
The door of the cottage creaked slightly as Aang pushed it open. He leaned his glider against the wall, removed his shoes, and stepped onto the stone tile of the entryway, taking note of the vibrations radiating from the various parts of the house. Momo was trying to catch something small, a cricket, maybe, in another room.
"Toph is still out," he remarked to Katara, who was hanging up her satchel by the entrance. "I guess her date went well."
Katara's lips twisted into a knowing smile. "Yeah, I'll bet it did."
Aang raised his eyebrows. "She told me she was going on a date but she wasn't especially forthcoming about the details—do you know who she's seeing?" he asked her.
Katara bent over to remove her boots. "His name is Tianyu. Toph met him last time she was in town. He's a professional bending fighter with big muscles and a sentimental side." She shot him a smirk.
Despite their differences, and some of their similarities, Toph and Katara had maintained a close emotional bond over the years in which they had known each other. Katara was one of the only people Toph would ever open up to about her love life, and Aang understood that Katara had come to appreciate Toph's perceptiveness and manner of cutting directly to the chase when it came to the waterbender's own personal dilemmas.
He chuckled. "She's going to eat him alive, isn't she?"
Katara nodded matter-of-factly as she turned to walk up the stairs.
"I'm glad she's getting out and seeing people, though," she said. "It's a good distraction for her, at least. She's been a little down ever since she and Satoru called it quits."
Aang skated his palm over the smooth wood of the bannister as he followed Katara upstairs. Once Toph and Satoru, the tall engineer in charge of Republic City's crystal refinery, had finally given up their will-they-won't-they dance and admitted their feelings for one another, Aang had, perhaps naively, expected them to be together for good.
"It's too bad they didn't work out," he mused, "I know they really cared about each other."
"Yeah…" Katara sighed, "it's not always enough, I suppose."
Stepping through the doorway to their bedroom, Aang directed tiny flames into each of the bedside lamps, then unfastened his cloak and pulled it from his broad shoulders. He walked over to the closet to hang it up, and when he turned back to Katara she was working her fingers through her braid, releasing it into waves of dark brown that tumbled down her back.
"I need a bath," she groaned.
"I'll heat it up for you, it'll be faster," Aang offered. Their otherwise fairly rustic cottage was equipped with a contraption that provided heated running water in the bathroom, courtesy of Sokka's tinkering, but it was an early prototype and took a while to warm enough water to fill the entire tub.
"That would be amazing, thank you," Katara said, reaching for her comb.
Aang left her to her untangling and made his way into the bathroom. Kneeling by the tub, he turned the faucet knob until a vigorous stream of water poured into the large stone basin. He focused his chi in one palm and brought it to the faucet, heating the water to steaming as it flowed over his hand. His other hand moved the water in the tub in an unhurried swirl, ensuring an even temperature.
The focus and repetition made drawing a bath an almost meditative exercise. He inhaled deeply, the moist, warm air rising from the tub suffusing his lungs. The bath was about half full when he realized that Katara had come to the doorway and was standing there silently. Aang turned his head and saw her leaning against the frame, arms crossed at her waist, naked, watching him. He would have thought her eyes were closed but for the barest suggestion of crystal blue through her lashes.
He felt her gaze on him as his eyes followed the tilted curve of her hips, traced the plush contours of her breasts, and skimmed across expanses of smooth skin. They had been having sex for over a year now, so the sight of her nude form wasn't strictly new, but something about the casual way she was standing there, half asleep and completely exposed, tugged at his heart at the same time as it sent blood rushing south. Ever since they had taken the final few steps toward physical intimacy, Aang was humbled by how much Katara trusted him, and a little awed that he got to be the one she allowed to see her in her most essential, unguarded state.
He dragged his attention back to the bath with enormous difficulty, clenching his teeth and focusing on keeping his breathing even, keeping the water steaming over his palm, keeping the contents of the basin sloshing gently back and forth. When the bathtub was full and at the comfortably scalding temperature he knew she liked, he turned off the tap and bent his hands dry. Aang rose from his knees and started to walk past Katara out the door, but before he could leave, she reached out a hand and rested her fingertips lightly on his chest.
"You're so good to me," she whispered. The adoration in her cerulean eyes melted something deep within him.
Aang wet his lips with his tongue. "Oh, this?" he gestured to the bath with one hand while the other flew to the back of his neck. "This is easy for me, I—" he stopped when he noticed her shaking her head, a faint smile on her face.
"You don't have to minimize it, love. Even the little things add up."
"Well… you deserve it," he said, plainly.
Katara's smile grew a shade brighter. A little dazed, Aang brushed her hair off one shoulder and leaned down to place a lingering kiss at the crook of her neck. He heard her exhale through her mouth, and tasted the salt of the sweat that had long since dried on her skin. He straightened, and saw that her face was tilted up toward him. Her pink lips were still slightly parted and her eyelids had slid shut. Spirits. Desperately resisting the urge to start something he couldn't finish, he tore his gaze from her mouth and cleared his throat.
"Enjoy your bath," he murmured, gliding past her out the door, which he closed behind him. Alone in the bedroom, Aang took a few slow breaths to expel some of the restless energy humming through his body, then stripped off the remainder of his formal robes. He selected a clean pair of loose pants from a drawer and pulled them on before climbing into bed. Leaning back against the headboard, he reached over to the bedside table for the book he had been reading that week. He couldn't seem to recall what it was about, at the moment. When he opened to the page he had bookmarked, his eyes scanned the same few sentences over and over again, not processing any of the words. Aang blinked rapidly to clear the persistent afterimage of Katara as he had left her in the bathroom just a few moments ago. He had wanted to place his hand on the back of her neck and tilt her head gently for better access to her succulent mouth. He would pull her flush against him, she would bring her hands up to cup his face, and—no! He had to be responsible. She was obviously exhausted. He needed to leave her alone, to just let her wash up and go to sleep. He couldn't let on how much he wanted to touch her tonight; she already felt bad about needing to stay late at the hospital and he didn't want to burden her with having to turn him down.
Aang squinted intently at his book and forced himself to read the words on the page, one after another. He was finally able to remember the topic of the book; it was a rather dry history of a territory in the northern Earth Kingdom. Good.
He was flipping back through the pages, trying to re-familiarize himself with the names of the region's local nobility some four hundred years ago when he heard the sloshing of water through the bathroom door. A few moments later, the handle turned and Katara emerged, padding across the room toward the bed. She lifted the corner of the sheets and slid under them, pressing herself up against him. She had bent most of the bath water off her body and out of her hair, but her skin was still warm and humid.
Aang wrapped an arm around her shoulder and tucked a glossy strand of hair behind her ear.
"Feel better?" he asked.
"Yeah. Much better," Katara said in an oddly breathy voice. She reached out a hand and coaxed his face toward her, kissing his lower lip. Aang's mouth moved against hers and his arm tightened around her instinctively. No, he chided himself again. Responsible. Tired. Sleeping.
Katara pushed herself up off the bed slightly and suddenly she was halfway on top of him, leaving languid kisses on his cheeks, his jaw, his neck. Aang stifled a moan.
Don't touch her, don't touch her, don't…
"Touch me," she breathed. Aang's brain short-circuited.
He hesitated, a few inches of air between his hands and her waist.
Noting his reticence, Katara leaned back, separating her bare chest from his. "Unless you don't want to? I'm sorry, of course we can just—"
"I absolutely want to, Katara, Spirits, I just…" he scrubbed a hand across his face. "I thought you might be too tired. You were practically asleep before."
Her eyes glimmered and narrowed in anticipated triumph before she returned her lips to their exploration of the underside of his jaw. Aang groaned low in his throat. It felt like little embers were radiating outward across his skin from wherever she kissed him.
"You should… get… some rest?" he said, not even half-heartedly, having lost the ability to make it sound like a statement.
"Nooo. We can sleep in, I'm not working tomorrow until evening," she pointed out, and he heard the grin in her voice.
"Katara… what were you doing in that bath?"
She emitted a low, mischievous giggle. His eyes widened. The mental image of Katara working herself up in the hot bath instantly burned away any vestiges of his restraint. Her fingers found the waistband of his loose trousers and gave an experimental tug. Aang sighed theatrically.
"I don't know why I even bother putting on pants. You win. You're going to be so tired in the morning."
Katara sat up, her grin blooming wider across her face.
"Help me out here, then."
Aang laughed aloud at Katara's impatience as she struggled to slide his pants down over his hips. He pushed his feet into the mattress and lifted his hips to give her a fighting chance. Soon his clothing was a distant memory flung across the room, and the devastatingly beautiful woman with whom he shared a bed was surveying him with lust dark in her eyes.
She held his gaze as she trailed a warm hand down his chest, past his stomach, to wrap her fingers deliberately around his hardening length. He sighed her name as she began to stroke him, feeling the pressure rising low in his belly.
Then, impulsively, he put a hand over hers to still the motions.
Aang swallowed. "Wait, can I— I want to taste you."
Katara's eyes flicked to their hands, then back to his face, her expression heavy with unconcealed desire. She nodded once before leaning down to meld her lips to his, her soft hair falling around both their faces. As her tongue probed the inside of his mouth, Aang grasped her shoulder and carefully maneuvered her so that her back was against the bed. Hovering over her, forearms pressed into the mattress on either side of her head, he delivered one last kiss to her flushed lips before beginning a slow, purposeful foray down her body. Her skin was so soft under his mouth. When he lingered at her breasts, her breathing began to turn ragged and she brought her fingers to dust up and down the tattooed line at the back of his head, sending ripples of sensation through his frame.
Aang drew this part out, a gradual, pleasurable torture, describing wordlessly how much he loved her body. He ran his tongue along the indentation that appeared in her torso when she arched her back slightly, extending from just under her breasts down to her navel. He bit the velvet skin overlying hard muscle just inside her hipbone, and Katara whimpered. He slid down a bit further and hovered there for a moment, his breath intentionally hot between her legs. He looked up to meet her eyes, waiting.
"Yes," she said, hoarsely.
He dipped his head and savored the quiet noise she made as he pressed his tongue flat to her center.
After several minutes of his enthusiastic yet precise attentions, Katara was panting and writhing beneath him. She cried out his name as she came apart under his mouth, the muscles of her abdomen clenching and unclenching in rapid succession. She had barely caught her breath before she was pulling him up her body, pressing her lips to his almost frantically, nipping his neck, and telling him that she wanted, no, needed him inside her. He obliged willingly, gratefully, lining himself up with her entrance and pressing into her in one steady motion. The sensation drew a gasp from both their throats. Aang kissed Katara with a kind of sacred reverence. Her mouth opened for him immediately, her tongue sliding against his. He was home.
As they found a familiar rhythm, everywhere his body touched hers felt like it was on fire. The individual brain cell that was not consumed by Katara's beauty, her heat, her scent, her voice like spice and honey moaning words of love and encouragement, was thankful that Toph had not returned for the evening. The earthbender would almost certainly have had something to say about their volume.
Eventually, each of them found their peak in the other's arms, her hands clutching the back of his neck, his fingertips digging into the flesh of her thigh slung over his shoulder. As the crashing wave of his climax subsided, he peppered her face with light kisses, tasting the fresh perspiration on her brow. He reluctantly extricated himself from her embrace and flopped down bonelessly beside her. She tucked herself against his side, her breaths evening gradually along with his. He ran his fingernails slowly up and down her spine.
"Mmmm," she hummed, the sound vibrating through his chest.
"Yeah," was all he could manage.
"I love you very, very much," Katara told him, softly.
"I love you too, Katara. Always." He extinguished the bedside lamps with a wave of his hand.
As his eyes adjusted to the dark, the outlines of the bedroom emerged in the faint light cast by the moon. Aang could hear the soothing rumble of waves on the beach. Wrapped in a sense of total serenity, he closed his eyes and sank into the comfort of Katara's warmth beside him and her quiet breaths mingling with the sounds of the ocean outside their cottage.
He thought she might have drifted off, until he heard a muffled, "Aang?"
"Yeah?"
"I really am sorry. About missing our date. I know you were looking forward to it as much as I was. I'll figure out how to make up for it."
He shifted, attempting to shake off the sleep that had been starting to saturate his mind. He hadn't realized this was still troubling her.
"Oh, love, it's alright with me that we didn't make it to the show." Aang tried to make out her features in the darkness. "I'm not upset with you. You saved someone's life, for Spirits' sake. That's so much more important than some play."
"I recognize that, but… even if it's for a good reason, I don't like letting you down," she said.
There was a long pause as Aang's stomach dropped with the realization of how agonizingly familiar that sentiment was to him.
"Katara, I—I know how you feel."
Aang propped himself back against the pillows, sitting up a bit to light the lamp at his bedside. The little flame cast them both in a soft orange glow.
He regarded Katara intently. "I appreciate that you're feeling this way… and, I can't let you lie here and apologize for this without acknowledging how often I do the same thing to you."
They were both unusually busy people, but Aang's duties as the Avatar were on a different level altogether. At any given time, his presence was being requested in five different places across the globe all at once and sticky situations, whether violent or diplomatic, could take weeks to calm down, let alone come to a permanent resolution. He had had to learn very quickly which circumstances actually necessitated his full attention, and which ones could be settled with a carefully-worded letter. He and Katara traveled together most of the time, but sometimes separation was unavoidable. Once, Aang had planned to accompany Katara to visit her family in the South Pole. Then, the day before they were due to leave, someone tried to assassinate the Earth King. He had found her passage on a ship headed south (he had to take Appa to fly to Ba Sing Se, after all) and had uttered an unbroken stream of remorse as they waited on the pier before its departure. Katara had stood there, trying and failing to look less disappointed than she actually was. She had forgiven him eventually, but he had felt like a real ass.
Katara was quiet for a minute. "You always try to make it up to me," she said in a small voice.
He did try. What he wanted above all else was to spend his time with her, going on adventures, making her laugh, making love, sparring with her, anything. He worked to claw back precious days and hours from a world that would swallow all his life and ask for more but when he couldn't do that to his satisfaction he looked for other ways to show her how much he cared. Notes tucked into nooks and crannies around the house for her to find when he was away, or hidden in her luggage when she was traveling and he couldn't follow. (He had been positively overjoyed when he began to discover the messages she started leaving in return.) A yellowed waterbending scroll, found at an antiques market, with a new technique for them to practice when they were together again. A hot bath drawn after a long day.
"I do, Katara, and I want it to be enough, but I hate that I can't always be there for you."
Katara bit her lip, her gaze on him like it was penetrating into his soul. She pushed herself up on one elbow to meet his eye level, and extended a hand to place it over his heart. "I always knew this would be a part of being with you. It is hard sometimes, I won't deny that, but it's… you're… enough. I see you, Aang. Getting to love you, and be loved by you, is enough." He covered her hand with his own larger one and squeezed her fingers, a lump forming in his throat, momentarily lost for words.
For a minute it was just them, the beating of his heart beneath both of their hands, and the rhythmic sound of the surf meeting the beach before washing back toward the sea. Before he could find language profound enough to express his gratitude for her, Katara made a tsk noise with her tongue. "I don't know how you managed to turn this from me apologizing to you apologizing." She raised an eyebrow at him. He shrugged a little sheepishly.
"Anyway… I think it's all about finding balance," she continued, "which seems to be the case with most things, doesn't it?" She smiled, and Aang chuckled softly.
"It really does."
"Mostly I'm just glad we can talk about this stuff, so we can stay on the same page," Katara mused. She slipped her hand out of his so that she could snuggle herself back against his body. "It's important to me that—" she trailed off, chewing the inside of her cheek. "I love you. What we have is… it's everything to me. I could never have imagined anything like it. I never want to take it for granted."
Aang nodded slowly, feeling almost drunk off the intimacy of the moment. After six years of their relationship, he was still floored by the intensity of his love for her, and the fact that she returned it in full force. "You're my whole world," he told her, fervently. "This thing between us—you've told me before that you believe it was fate that we found each other, and I think you're right. This feels so special."
To his surprise, Katara's brow furrowed a little. "Do you get it, though?" she prodded. "Nothing and nobody could convince me that it wasn't literally my destiny to find you, to love you. But we're still people."
Two people, trying to find their way in a complicated world, one that demanded more from them than it did from most. Aang thought of Toph and Satoru—they had been in love, had seemed truly happy for a time. But a sequence of miscommunications and mismatched expectations had led to hurt feelings and a wall of resentment that neither had been able to climb.
More than anyone else in the universe, Katara was the person who saw him as he was. So many people expected him to be so many things, but she made him feel like he was allowed to be, well, human. As predetermined as their romance sometimes seemed, they were together because they made the fundamentally human choice every day to love and support each other, to compromise and communicate and forgive. This was what she was asking him to recognize.
"I understand," Aang said, finally. "I want to build something that lasts, with you. I know it will take a lot of work. But it's work I want to do. I—I rely on you, Katara."
Katara's expression drifted into something impossibly tender. "I feel exactly the same way. I need you, love." She cupped his cheek with her palm. "I need you like I need to breathe."
They stared at each other, overcome by the depth of their feelings. There were times when Aang thought he could almost see the bond between them, a series of shining threads connecting his heart to hers.
"Can you promise to tell me if you ever feel like I'm taking you for granted?" he asked, after a long moment.
"I promise. Will you promise me the same?"
"Yes." Aang smiled. "Avatar's promise."
"You take that back, those are worthless," Katara retorted, her lips quirking at the edges.
He laughed. Now that he thought about it, that phrase did tend to precede situations in which he was… less than true to his word. "Ok. Fair point. How about an Aang promise?"
"Much better," she said, reaching up to kiss him before settling her head back on his shoulder.
There was silence for a few moments. Aang was thinking. "You know what you could do to make this evening up to me?" he asked.
"What, sweetie?" Katara looked up at him, her eyes wide, apologetic.
"You can allow me to make us a picnic lunch tomorrow and come with me out to our island in the bay."
Katara bit her lower lip like she was afraid she might cry. "I would really like that."
He pressed his lips to her forehead. "It's a date."
Aang again extinguished the light and guided them back down into a more horizontal position. Tucked under his arm, Katara fell soundly asleep within the minute. He gazed at her through half-lidded eyes, following the curve of her cheek, the line of her brow, the soft point of her nose. He lifted his free arm and ran his fingernails lightly through the fine hairs at the edge of her temple. Katara hummed a single tone and pressed in closer to him in her sleep. His heart very nearly exploded. He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a breath through his nose, overwhelmed by the affection flooding his chest.
Aang drifted off himself several minutes later, wondering vaguely, drowsily, at what he had done to deserve this woman. In his dreams that night, his mind reached tendrils into the future, and it was Katara all the way through.
…..
They woke late, as promised, to the mid-morning sun illuminating motes of dust that glittered along leisurely currents of air through their room. A few pelican-gulls cried out the arrival of the new day. They whiled away the remainder of the morning in a languid exploration of each other's' bodies, murmuring sweet words into the other's skin until the growling of a stomach (neither was sure whose) made them both snicker.
"Alright, beautiful," Aang patted Katara fondly on the rear, "I'm going to go make us some lunch."
Aang threw on some clothes and tramped downstairs to assemble a picnic basket. As he was rummaging around in the pantry, he heard the front door open and then close again. Toph shouted a quick greeting before heading straight upstairs to the guest room.
Soon, probably after a brief interrogation of Toph, Katara joined him in the kitchen, her thick chestnut hair pulled half up, the rest flowing loose down her back. Then they were soaring, Appa's swift shadow the only interruption to the shimmering of the waters beneath them. Aang steered the sky bison toward an island close to the city, one with dense copses of leafy trees and rocky cliffs that rose out of the blue-green waters of the bay. This island, "our island", was one of the first spots Aang and Katara had visited here, back when Republic City was still called Cranefish Town. It had since become a regular retreat for the two of them, whenever they needed a peaceful and private refuge from the commotion of the city.
It was also the island upon which Aang was trying to convince the City Council to let him establish an air temple. The land that had been sacred to the Air Nomads for hundreds of years was now buried under the dusty, cobbled streets of the city, but this island seemed a good alternative. It felt so right to him, building a temple here. A place where growing numbers of acolytes could gather and study, where his peoples' way of life could be sustained even as it was integrated into the pulsing heart of the modern era. There were a number of frustrating reasons for certain Council members' opposition to the idea, but the ones that bothered him the most were ones that sprung from total ignorance or even outright bigotry, borne of a hundred years of Fire Nation propaganda about the Air Nomad culture. He didn't know what he would do without his friends to back him up. Nothing good, probably. But this was important to him, and he held out hope that the Council would come around.
When they landed, Katara led Aang to her newest favorite spot, in the dappled shade of a large elm tree, and they arranged their picnic on the blanket they had brought with them. It was a stunningly gorgeous day—the vast blue sky was studded with only a few small, puffy clouds, and a warm breeze just barely rustled their clothing as they talked and ate and lounged, the city's dramatic skyline on full display across the water.
Aang watched as Katara plucked a single, wide blade of grass and maneuvered it carefully to pin it between the sides of her thumbs.
"Ty Lee showed me how to do this a while ago." She brought her thumbs to her mouth and blew, producing a faint high-pitched squeak. She looked at Aang for approval, smiling proudly.
He smirked and selected his own piece of grass, deftly slipping it into position and blowing on it, eliciting a much louder, cleaner honk. Katara's face fell.
He laughed. "It's ok, I encountered grass before I was fourteen."
Katara glared at him. She focused her eyes on a spot just above his head, then lifted one hand with her fingers splayed out. When she snapped her fingers shut, twisting her wrist, something close to a liter of water came crashing down on Aang's head. He spluttered and instinctively looked upward to find the source of the water but saw nothing except open air. Once he realized what she'd managed to do, he grinned at her despite the water still dripping down his face.
"That was good!" he exclaimed, genuinely impressed.
Katara was deeply smug.
"You'll have to teach me how to do that sometime," Aang said. "I've never seen anyone pull that much water out of the air at once."
"In your dreams," she responded. "You can't fool me. If you manage it, if, I'll be the first person you use it against."
He couldn't argue with that.
What he could do was bring his fists together at the center of his chest and create a burst of air outwards from his body, which dried him completely and sent most of the water to splatter Katara instead.
"Why you little—" she snarled, already shifting her weight to lunge at him.
He took off, cackling wildly.
Aang darted through the woods, weaving in and out of patches of yellow sunlight. Katara was hot on his heels at first, but nobody can catch an airbender. Their shouts and laughter mingled with the lively chirping of songbirds flitting in the canopy above. He broke out of the trees into a clearing, enjoying the comfortable lead he had on her, pulling the fresh air deep into his lungs as he sprinted across the grass. Just as he began to turn his neck to see how far ahead he had gotten, he felt himself falling abruptly forward and it was all he could do to bring his hands up to stop himself from eating dirt.
"What in the—" he started, as a shadow fell over him. He twisted upward to see his girlfriend standing with her hands on her hips and looking far too pleased with herself at having frozen his foot securely to the ground.
"No fair," Aang pouted, turning the ice around his toes back to water as Katara crouched down to put her grinning face inches from his.
"You were airbending," she shrugged.
"Was not!"
"You're always airbending, sweetie," Katara admonished him gently, extending a hand to pull him into a sitting position.
"That's not—" he began, but was immediately silenced by Katara's firm kiss.
More than happy to give up the "argument," Aang smiled against her lips and tangled his fingers in her hair. Katara sighed into his mouth as they became nothing more than a confusion of limbs and tongues and heartbeats, sitting there on the grass underneath the sun. Spirits, if this wasn't bliss then what was? The combination of adrenaline coursing through his body from the chase, the pocket of laughter still frothing in his chest, and Katara's blazing touch all over him was making him delirious. Aang felt his breath hitch.
Suddenly, Katara was sitting back, palms splayed on his chest, eyes widened in one of the most vulnerable expressions he had ever seen on her face. "Aang—did you just—"
A voice, his own, echoed in his ears. Marry me, Katara.
Crap.
He stared back at her, mouth hanging slightly agape in shock at his tongue's sudden betrayal.
It wasn't as though he didn't want to ask her to marry him.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
They had been attached at the hip for years. And lately, they had both been putting out more feelers, circling ever closer to actually making it official. He had even stood on a cliff outside Republic City and watched a messenger hawk fly due South, carrying a letter addressed to Chief Hakoda and his mother, Kanna. The crux of the letter's contents had felt risky but honest. Both of you know and love Katara, and I count myself lucky every day to do so as well. With this in mind, I hope you'll understand that if I ask anyone other than Katara for permission to marry her I'll wind up in another iceberg. So, I sincerely apologize for not seeking your permission. It would mean the world to me, though, if I could have your blessing.
A handful of anxious weeks later, he had received a response, the last line of which he had read over and over, rubbing away the blur welling in his eyes with the heel of his hand. Katara will have the final say, but don't think I'm speaking too soon when I say I look forward to welcoming you officially into our family, son.
But he had wanted to do it right.
He had meant to pick her a bouquet of flowers and bring her to a private room at the best restaurant in the city.
He had meant to watch the candlelight flicker in her eyes and to slowly remove from his pocket the gemstone pendant, crafted after a short detour on his last visit to Omashu, that at this moment lay hidden instead at the back of the drawer in his bedside table. He had meant to tell her to cup her hands around it to show her how it glowed blue-white in the dark.
He had meant to take both of her hands in his and tell her that he would be lost without her. That when she had found him in the ice she had made him, a small boy who had just been stripped of everything and everyone he'd ever known, feel like he truly belonged. Tell her how extraordinary, how incredible that was. How incredible she was. That he owed her his life a hundred times over and that he knew he could never really repay that but that maybe, if he could try to make her happy for the rest of their lives, it could be a start. Tell her how proud he was of her and all she had accomplished, and how much he looked forward to seeing her shine even brighter in the years to come. That his greatest wish was to be by her side for all of the peaks and valleys of life, and that he knew more surely than he knew anything that if they were together they could traverse any terrain that lay ahead.
That he knew it wasn't always easy to be with him, that he had responsibilities most people didn't, ones that sometimes put his life and the lives of those he cared about in danger. That the Avatar had to belong to the world, but that the part of him that was just him, just Aang, belonged entirely to her.
But without his permission, his earth-shattering love for her had seeped through the barrier between his inner thoughts and the outside world, made porous by the sweet intoxication of her affections, and had decided for him. She knew what he had said, that much was written all over her face. He wasn't about to brush it off or take it back. He met her gaze, sheepishly, hopefully. After a painfully long moment, he found his voice again.
"Will you? Marry me?"
Katara's smile was like the surface of the ocean sparkling under a beam of light breaking through the clouds. She shifted forward in his lap, wrapping her arms around his torso and squeezing him tight. She spoke into his ear, and to his unending relief he could hear the joy that permeated her voice when she said: "Of course, my love."
The sense of happiness and relief that pulsed through Aang's being was so great that a giggle bubbled out of him involuntarily. The vibrations made Katara start laughing too, and pressed together as tightly as they were neither of them could stop, passing the giddy laughter back and forth. They toppled over, Aang onto his back and Katara on top of him, neither of them sure exactly why they were laughing but each utterly powerless to stem the tide. Their mirth eventually petered out simply because they had both run out of breath. Katara buried her face in his neck.
"You want this, for real?" Aang said softly.
He could feel her lips curve upward against his skin.
"I want this. I want you."
He grinned, his mind still reeling, the corners of his eyes pricking out of sheer elation. He was going to marry the love of his life; his heart, his soul, his strength. The new, golden reality of it trickled through his veins.
"It's not how I was going to ask you, though… I had a whole plan and everything," he murmured, staring up at the sky. "You ruined it."
"I ruined it?" she lifted her head and raised an eyebrow, incredulous.
"When you kissed me like that."
Katara looked at him thoughtfully, then extended her index finger and ran it lightly across his lower lip. She swept her hair deliberately to one side of their faces, leaned down, and captured his lips in a kiss that was so gentle yet so possessive he felt a shiver run across his shoulders.
He felt the swirling possibilities of destiny snap into place then, ringing with the force. He would build a temple on this island, a monument to his people past and present and yet to come, City Council be damned. He and Katara would live there, raise a family. And he would tell her, he resolved. All those things he needed her to know, exactly how important she was to him. He would shout, whisper, sing them in a thousand ways, in words, in touch, in laughter and love and care and consideration. She wanted him, for always, just as he wanted her. Someday, maybe, this fact would cease to shock wonder into his heart, but he didn't think so. Their future stretched out ahead of them, as expansive and varied and formidable as the ocean. Together they would sail boldly into that distance; together they were invincible.
…..
Author's Note: :')
Thanks for reading! Please leave a review and let me know what you think!
…..
Post-credits scene:
Aang: "Is Katara here?"
Sokka, loudly enjoying some stew: "No, she just left for the Tophspital."
"The what?"
"The Tophspital."
Aang rolls his eyes: "It's Katara's hospital, Sokka."
"Oh yeah? Then why isn't there a statue of her in the lobby?"
Aang freezes his stew solid.
"Hey! Get back here! I'm eating this! Aang!"
