Title: It Comes With a Price

Prompt: #037 Envious

Notes: Takes place during 'Avatar Aang' at the coronation. More AANGST. Because I really, really love making him suffer for being a jerk. Ooooh yes. Suffer Aang, suffer. The title is a miniature tribute to MasakoMoonshade, who wrote Everything For a Price. It was the first Zutara fanfiction I ever read, and it was beyond amazing. One of my heroes, right there. Go check her out, she deserves the world. :)

Also, I HATE the Document Manager. HATE WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND AND TWO SUNS. MAY AGNI SMITE IT IN A VERY BLOODY AND PAINFUL WAY! It was being a pain in the you know where. I had to battle it foreeeever. Which is super sad because this is honestly one of my favorites in the entire series.

It Comes With a Price

Aang knows about sacrifice and he knows about equivalent exchange. He knows about price tags, knows about too expensives, and knows about bargaining. He knows all of these things and he knows to fault how they apply to life. Every good thing must come with a bad thing. Yin and Yang, balance. He just didn't think it applied to love.

It was foolish of him, he reflects now, to dismiss the laws of equivalent exchange as silly when it came to love. Everything came with a price. Everything. Even love. Even Katara.

Oh yes, he has her. He knows that. It is him who she pecks in public and him who she blushingly reintroduces to her father. He is her savior, her knight, her True Love. In the light of day, he is her everything. He gets all of her smiles and kind words and gentle touches. It's all his.

She kisses him again gently. "I should go congratulate Zuko," she tells him.

He beams. "Okay."

Aang watches her walk away to what could be one of his greatest friends. He watches them talk animatedly, watches them smirk (Zuko) and smile (Katara) in a way that is befitting of friends. Aang can't help but think as he watches them that the funny thing is, at first he thought that Katara was his cosmic thank-you gift for saving the world. His equivalent exchange. But she's not, he realized too late.

He smiles bitterly as Katara leans in to give the newly crowed king a tight hug. Admist the gleeful chaos of the coronation party, Avatar Aang is the only one who notices the way Zuko's lips form 'I love you' and the way Katara clutches him closer at those forbidden words.

Oh yes, Aang knows the laws. Everything comes with a price.