Note: The prompt for this chapter is Free Day, so it is something that I came up with without a formal prompt. This is the final chapter to this story. I hope you've enjoyed it thus far and thank you to those who have made it here!
Meeting
It started with a promise on a solemn night, under the light of star-studded heavens. Katara remembered that she had been alone, a completely different person, in a period so far behind her that the edges of it blurred into oblivion.
She recalled copper skin, glistening whitecaps rolling gracefully against the coastline. The stench of caught fish baking in their baskets in the sunlight, and how the two of them would crinkle their noses at them.
Most of all she remembered the months, the year, she had tried to save him. It had been the year the life she wished for them became an unfeasible one.
The elders found them sparring in the maze of the stalks of bamboo around the estate. It had been the dead of night. They had never been spotted before. However, once they caught the eye of a single earth element sage, it was all over and there was no turning back.
They separated them with force, boulders of earth rising between them. She could not bend it back for she was not a user herself, but Kun did. He tried, but there was a knife to her neck.
Katara remembered watching him being taken away, his back to her as he stumbled up the steps and through the archway.
The sages tried to kill her that night, but she found a way. She tossed, she toiled, she threw dirt in their faces. It should have been impossible, but it felt as if there was someone looking out for her as she ran through the forest. Stripes of bamboo shadows ran across her body as she sprinted through to the other side.
Gales whistled at her back, urging her forward, and she heard a whisper like a charm. She knew the spirits guided her.
She only looked over her shoulder once when the moon was high in the sky and the night was old. She could never return to their town, lest she risk her life and his.
So, she did the best thing she could.
"I promise I'll find you," she vowed unto the wind. "I'll find you again and again, and I won't let the world break you."
She was the only one that could bring him back, and the spirits listened.
There was something hard and uncomfortable digging into Katara's back. If there was roaring in her ears, there was pounding in her skull. Pain spiked behind her eyes. She groaned and shifted her weight. She heard someone let out a surprised gasp above her, and at that moment her eyes snapped open.
She blinked a few times, attempting to get the blurred shape above her to sharpen. The outline of her brother's concerned face came into view, and then everything slid into focus. His azure eyes were wide, and he frowned. She could just make out other shapes emerging around her.
"Katara?" Sokka asked, voice sounding smaller than she remembered. "Are you okay? What happened?"
Katara sat up gingerly, placing a hand on her forehead. She grimaced. "I'm fine Sokka," she grumbled and batted away Sokka's waiting hand. She glanced around what looked to be the same palace courtyard she had been in a while ago. It felt like days, weeks even. But, as she saw her friends flit between her and another person that that fallen onto the ground, she realized that that could not have been possible. She saw the thin streaks of blood on her bare arm and the half-moon crests where the spirit in Aang's body had pierced her with his nails.
It had only been minutes since she was last here.
Her breath stuttered when she noticed exactly what she was doing there, why she was where she was. Without warning, she scrambled to her feet. She ignored Sokka's protests and the way that Suki yelped from his side as she tried to lend her assistance.
Both of them hastily followed her the few feet it took to reach Toph and Zuko, the latter of which was patting the cheek of the unconscious figure they were trying to awaken. She saw dusty yellow robes, a wooden beaded necklace with an Air Nomad symbol that was askew. Her heart dropped.
Katara broke through them, and she did not even bother to acknowledge the annoyed huff Toph sent her way. She saw him…Aang. Just there, lying boneless on the cobbles. He was pale, his lips partially agape, head tilted to the side. It was as if he had been sapped of all color, as if he was gone.
Katara sank to her knees.
"Aang," she whispered as the name hitched in her throat. She placed her hands on his face, caressing it between her shaking palms. She pushed her ear to his chest, trembling harder when she could hear nothing. Not the steady thump of a heartbeat, not the rise and fall of breath.
She lost him. She lost him, and all she could think of was the fact that she had failed.
"No," she choked out. The tears came, dripped to the bottom of her chin, and dribbled onto his cheek. "This isn't fair."
She barely registered the silhouettes of her friends crowding around her, the way they shuddered too. After a hundred years of war and now with the peace they had worked so hard to achieve, it ended with a catastrophe anyway.
She bent over and gathered Aang close. She held him and her hold on him grew tight and desperate.
It was so silent and there was nothing, and she wanted more than anything else to turn back time.
"Hm," a soft tone came. It was next to her.
She felt a murmur of a gasp against her skin, just close enough to the shell of her ear so that she heard it too. Katara stilled. She did not dare peel herself away, for fear of breaking the cautiously hopeful spell.
The words flowed out of her mouth without any thought. "Are you there?" she called wistfully for him, just above a whisper, just enough so he could hear. "I've missed you."
Only when Aang muttered back, "I'm here," did she pull away. Only then did she look into his starbright eyes, the same radiant silver as a galaxy shining on a clear midnight. She looked at him and he looked at her, and she knew that they understood. That they were souls that remembered.
There was laughing and obnoxious crying, clapping, and yelling, but they were together at last. The throngs of people did not return until Fire Lord Zuko commanded them to, and the questions only arrived if they wanted them to be answered.
It was time for rest, for peace. No silence would break them apart, and no more impending threats. For now, at least, it was their moment of freedom to be themselves.
And as the days went by, as the preparations for true reconciliation and unification were well underway, Katara found herself staring out onto the black sand beaches of Ember Island. She watched as the waves crashed against the sandy shore, as the waters smoothed out the stones. A familiar warmth crept up her toes as she waded through the sea water. Even when much of the world was preparing for autumn, she marveled at the fact that the Fire Nation remained in a perpetual summertime.
"It's just a short pit stop," Zuko had informed them. "I figured we needed a break…you know…before we have to head out to Ba Sing Se to speak with the Earth King. We're staying with Uncle. I can't wait to see how his tea shop has been doing since he went back."
A 'pit stop', as Zuko called it, was really a bit of a vacation. Katara did not mind though, and neither did the others, especially Sokka. ("Finally, some time to relax and order some servants around to make me an all-you-can-eat buffet!") She supposed that he had not had much time to enjoy himself for a while because of his recovering leg even if she did heal him as much as she could. Toph's additional enthusiasm did not help. Though, she was grateful that Suki was there to rein them in if things got too out of hand.
Katara admired the way the grains of sand trickled in between her toes. She had taken off her shoes and left them near a palm tree, opting to walk on the beach in her Water Tribe clothing.
Twilight bloomed on the horizon, light blue with flecks of orange and yellow decorating the undersides of feathery clouds.
She could not help but think of a different sky she had seen back when she was entrapped in the world in between worlds, where there was a sunset and a balcony and Iroh's tea shop. She wondered if perhaps, that could be real.
"Do you want to go inside?" asked Aang from behind her. She blinked when she saw him appear at her side. He was only wearing a pair of dark trousers. "It's been a long day of traveling here."
She giggled then at the absurdity of it all.
Aang tilted his head. "What is it?" he asked, confused.
Katara shook her head. "Nothing," she replied. "It's just that…I feel like you've said something similar before."
He raised an eyebrow at her, but all she did was take his hand and bring him closer to her so that they were both standing in the shallows of the cool water.
Katara stared at the way their fingers intertwined, the way he seemed to flush at her touch. She tried not to think about how she was probably pink with embarrassment as well. She felt it in how her face heated.
She cleared her throat. "You saw something too," she started with some hesitancy, "You saw something when you were trapped there, didn't you? A vision?" She knew that she did not have to explain what 'there' was.
He looked at her now, his gaze intense. He did not let go of her hand. "When I switched places with Vaatu in the Tree of Time I saw visions of the past…things I regret that I couldn't stop," he said. "It was all the things I thought of when I was taking away Ozai's bending. It's the reason why Vaatu could take over. A tiny part of him is in my Avatar spirit, like a tiny part of my Avatar spirit is in him."
She squeezed his hand. "But you overcame it," she remarked.
Aang let out a slow breath. "I did," he agreed, "but only because of you. You saved me."
Katara smiled and turned so that they were both fully facing each other. The current swished at her feet. "We saved each other," she said. For a moment, she paused, thinking of how to word what she would say next. But she felt the surety in the way his hand pressed against hers. It was all she needed.
"Do you think…do you think those visions we saw…do you think that some of them could've been the future?" she asked, biting her bottom lip.
When Aang studied her, it was as if he had a certain realization settle over him, a composure that Katara longed to feel. Perhaps, she wondered, if this was only something a person who had many past lives could be so confident about.
"I think that place showed us different parts of our lives," he said. "I was told once that time is an illusion. Maybe what the tree showed me and what you saw…maybe they were the past, present, and future. Maybe whatever you saw is something that will happen."
Katara found that Aang was most beautiful to her when he was himself, when he was telling his truth and no one else's. And at that moment, as the humid breeze wavered through her clothes, her hair, she saw his truth right in front of her.
She had not yet told him what she had seen, and perhaps she never would, but it was the way he spoke to her. It was the kind words and the gentle gestures. It was the way he tried to understand what she was asking.
Aang did not know what she had seen, but he could tell that she wanted what she had seen to be true, and that was what mattered the most.
Katara cupped his cheek and her lips brushed against it. She moved with all the quietness in the world until his lips were on hers. They melted into each other.
On the sands of the beach and the sands of lifetimes, they finally met again. It was a meeting, a wish fulfilled. Life after life, until then. They found each other once more in a place where the ocean met the sky, and where their hearts remembered their promise.
