Title: A Lesson in Remembrance
Author: RedNovember
Word Count: 506
Warnings: Aangst (literally)
Challenge: #19 Lessons (for theavatar100)

A Lesson in Remembrance

She doesn't know he's watching. She doesn't know that everything she does, everything she says, everything she touches, he memorizes and commits to his memory. He tries to remember her scent, her voice, her laughter, her utter essence that he wants to wrap himself in. He tries so hard to cement her in his mind, so that when he dies, and is reborn again, he might have just an tickling, faint memory of this beautiful girl that he once loved in a past life.

He knows it's all useless.

How many lovers has the Avatar had? How many wives and husbands? How many children has he fathered and mothered? How many friends has he forgotten and outlived?

Even though every waking moment he spends around her, he drinks her in, feels her smile like the sun on his skin, he knows that the minute the life leaves this growing body of his, and he is reborn yet again, the name Katara will no longer mean a thing to him.

She won't exist in his memory. Her effortless grace, her affectionate teasing, her bright but oh-so-brief life, he will eventually forget. As he has forgotten all his other painfully short existences. He will die, come back, and he will not remember his wife, his children, his family.

People might remember. They might remember how that wonderful Avatar Aang had fallen in love with a beautiful Water bender, last in her tribe, and they'd had a progeny of beautiful children. Just as they spoke of Avatar Roku's grandchildren, and Avatar Kyoshi's elderly husband who had passed away from heartache not a day after Kyoshi had died at a venerable old age of seventy-eight. Kyoshi's grandchildren still lived on in the form of the women warriors and other villagers on the Island.

My grandchildren? He thought. I've probably even seen some of them while I was walking through Kyoshi. That girl there, that man there. Maybe they were my descendents. Maybe they shared my blood. Maybe once upon a time, I loved them.

It made him ache, the absence of so many thousands of years of loved ones living and dying and loving without his knowledge. How many times had he changed a diaper before? How many times had he smiled shyly at an attractive girl whom he would eventually woo and marry? How many times had he fallen in love before?

Let this be a lesson to you, Aang though to himself. Let this ache in your chest teach you the painful realities of love. It ends with death, and no amount of your foolish efforts to remember her will do anything to change that.

Then she smiled (sobeautifullynaïve) at him, and asked, "What's wrong, Aang?"

"Nothing," he smiled back, ignoring the invisible teacher in him chastising him for making yet another mistake in the never-ending pain of life, death, and love. He blew those worrisome thoughts from his head like insignificant puffs of air, floating above him, disappearing into the wide blue sky.

Comments: Inspired by an Avatar Challenge that Red Hawk K'sani had in her profile (many thanks), even though I deviated from the guidelines and can't technically call it an answer to that challenge. But I also incoporated it into Challenge #19: Lessons, at the LJ community theavatar100. The challenge was issued by dungeonwriter (hotspur on fanfictionNET).

Oh, Oh! I also forgot to tell you that my previous oneshot, "Rebirth" (chapter 2) won theavata100 contest! yay! Well that was actually awhile ago, but still.

I am usually a Z/K shipper, but I decided to take an oppurtunity to explore the canon realms of A/K. I've learned some things, but am still decidedly Z/K, do not worry, my readers. I just wanted to try it out.

Music: Lord of the Rings Return of the King Soundtrack (beautiful)