-Water-
"Kill me, Avatar."
"Why?" he had asked finally, about five years into the tradition. The knowing smirk had flitted across Ozai's face, and he'd leaned back, meeting Aang's eyes, reminding him again (always) of the connection they shared.
"You don't even have a guess?" he'd asked in his silky smooth voice that grated against Aang's nerves like sandpaper.
"I don't understand why anyone would choose death when they could have life." At seventeen, he'd still meant it.
"Then you're a fool," Ozai had said, and that had been the end of the conversation for another year.
At twenty, he understood.
Katara's first child had been born still and silent, much as Yue had been, but they had been in the South Pole, and that night as Aang laid his first child into the cold water to join her ancestors he'd heard Sokka screaming at the night sky, though the moon had been hidden by clouds as a weeping maiden hides her face in her hands.
That year he met Ozai's eyes and didn't need to ask why.
For the seven years after that, Aang had come to Ozai's prison cell and met his eyes for a specific reason. He still didn't know why he'd started the tradition, but now it had a clear purpose: penance.
At twelve, taking a life for any purpose had seemed abhorrent, evil and wrong. His friends ate meat, and that was their choice, but to him all life was sacred. He'd borne more on his thin shoulders than most men ever do, but he'd never been truly alone, and he'd never felt life to be a burden, much less one too heavy to bear. But as he said goodbye to his daughter, he'd felt a desire, stronger than any he'd ever felt, to follow her under the water, and take a different, more final journey to the spirit world.
The strength of the desire, much less the existence of it, frightened him, and he'd clutched Katara to him tightly. Later as they worked through their grief she whispered to him that she'd felt the same desire when her mother died, and he felt a little better.
But looking into Ozai's eyes all he could remember was the feeling of drowning; drowning and being glad of it.
He went hunting with Sokka and Hakoda once, after his second child, a boy, had been born healthy and screaming. He watched as the two men worked together to corral a turtle-seal away from the herd and then spear it. Sokka missed the vital spot he'd been aiming for and the animal cried out in pain. Aang's heart constricted to hear it, but what stole his breath was the answering look of pain on Hakoda's face, and he watched in awe as the man knelt tenderly next to the dying creature and slit its throat, apologizing for its unnecessary suffering as he did so. When it was dead father and son formally thanked the animal for its sacrifice and promised it that its flesh would nourish and enrich the lives of their clan, that its hide would be used to keep their people warm, and that its shell and bones would not go to waste.
Aang didn't eat any of it, but he felt less horrified watching the others do so than he normally did.