Letters from the Falling Sky

Summary: "Katara felt helpless. Aang didn't know he had a daughter." Things more complex than the war had finally torn them apart. In isolation, they take out their brushes, regret the past, and write. Kataang, Tokka. Rated M.

Disclaimer: Because I haven't been doing these...Eh... Avatar isn't mine (and yes, the "eh" was completely necessary).

Author's note: Rule of Life Number pi/3: It's so hard to write romance when you're dealing with miserable little boys who disgust you. (No offense to my precious, handsome Male readers!) Yet, Lady readers, I'm sick of breeding stalkers. And I'm sure more than half of you know what I mean.

ANYWAY! There's a lot of adult content in his chapter, and I apologize in advanced. But we all need to remember that Aang is only about 22 at the moment here, and when he left Katara he was 18. So, during that time (ages 18, 19, 20, 21, and some of 22, too, for those who are mathematically challenged, such as myself). Katara needed to have some sort of effect on him. You'll know what I mean in about 7 minutes, depending on your reading speeds.

Another little cliff hanger, hanging from a cliff.

Much love for belated Valentines!

-scorpiaux

.15.

Aang's head was throbbing with a sleek uncertainty. His hands were shaking. When he tried to open the box, his fingers slipped with perspiration, and he wiped them on the fabric over his thighs distractedly.

Katara, meanwhile, watched him with patience, legs folded neatly over the mattress, with some lopsided expression that expressed contentment and distress.

"Katara," he started, his voice faltering.

Her presence on their travels made him think of sex, which bothered him because he already knew what they were both familiar with, and the very notion of intercourse was years out of the picture. But still Aang found himself thinking of it. A lot. Sometimes, much, much more than necessary.

Honestly, he didn't really know when he started the necklace project. In retrospect, he likes to tell himself that he started it on the day he woke up in her arms some years ago, completely oblivious to the new world around him and the new adventures that awaited him there. He saw her and the inspiration just struck like a match in a dry cave.

Even after the Avatar discounts, Aang still had to scrape up what he could to make the necklace memorable. The stone cost a good 480 some gold pieces, and the leather choker—made from actual cow-hippo hide—cost another 100 some pieces. And the carving tools were another sum of money on their own, as earthbending would only bring him blunt details here. Not to mention the bribes Sokka and Toph took to keep the project a secret.

He sits there now with a goofy grin and a chisel, indenting the splashes of water on the rim of his esteemed stone, when all of a sudden he hears Katara grunting to climb up on Appa's back. And his position—sitting there on the saddle with carving tools askew—makes him question his luck.

Without thinking, he throws a blanket over the project and pretends to be sleeping on it.

"Hey," she says, a little puzzled at the awkward shapes underneath the cloth. Her brows furrow in curiosity as she lifts the corner of the sheet. "Whatcha up to?"

He slaps her hand and then grabs it, as if preventing a murder from taking place. He answers, much louder than necessary, "NOTHING!" and turns his attention to her eyes.

Katara's irises look to be glowing in the red darkness of sunset. There is a fierce blue spark in them that beckons to him, calls him out, kisses him, caresses him, beats him, contorts him in any shape Katara fancies. And all of it squeezes into his head and empties him out—makes him think of absolutely nothing but her. Katara.

And sex.

"Okay," she laughs, about as naïve as a child in a war zone. "I just came up to check on you. You know. See what you're doing." She sits next to him and places her warm, confident fingers in his hands, making a face. "You seem a little jumpy tonight."

Aang laughs but, once more, it's loud and obnoxious. He coughs and falters on his words, then clears his throat and gins stupidly. Her gaze captures him again. "Your...eyes," he says instead. "Your eyes are so..."

She smiles.

"So..." A thousand adjectives run through his mind at that instant. Beautiful? Too cliché. Awe-inspiring? He'd sound like a dork. Wondrous? Well, maybe. Captivating? Yes! Captivating. Her eyes are absolutely captivating. He decides to go with this one.

But still, he can't ignore the first adjective that comes to mind. His mouth—an idiotic heap of bubbling hormones—utters the first adjective he thought of, instead of the nicer-sounding one. "So...sexy."

His voice resonates. He wonders if sunsets were always this silent.

Katara is taken aback by this new piece of information. Her expression shadows over curiously. Sexy? She had never heard him say it out loud with such a sureness. Of course, the notion was implied. Aang would have to think that she was sexy. She thought he was sexy, after all. And the feeling had a right to be mutual.

But...

"Sexy?"

He nods unsurely, touching the back of his neck in a small fit of anxious passion. His voice cracks when he repeats, "Uh, very—very...um—sexy."

"Yeah?"

Her eyes beckon to him again, glimmer in the dimness of the lighting, pull him in. "Yes," he answers, smirking. "Sexy."

Alcohol is a funny, fickle thing. Aang adored it for a little more than a week until he remembered that drinking was something Monk Gyatso wouldn't approve of. But now his love for fine wines returns momentarily, and he drinks Momo's weight in red Passion-Blossom Wine, imported all the way from the Fire Nation.

The woman that sits next to him is twirling around in her bar stool. There are men in the background. The band is playing music. Katara is somewhere miles away. So is Sokka. So is Toph. And Aang is sitting here under the pressure of knowing that he is responsible for the death of two innocent civilians. He hasn't shaved his head in months.

"Hey," says the woman, touching his shoulder. He is too drowsy to look up.

She pulls his face towards hers with perfectly manicured fingers. Katara never did her fingernails. They were always bitten to the skin, a little red, a little boyish. He loved them.

This woman's eyes are a dark color—black or brown, Aang can't tell. Everyone seems to be laughing. "You look lonely," she continues, running a finger through his hair. "Come on. I have a room upstairs."

"I'm fine," Aang mumbles grumpily, slapping her hands away from his long, dark hair. "Besides, I don't have any money."

His attitude changes after four more drinks. He calls the woman a whore and follows her up the stairs with a small box thumping against his thigh in his pants pocket.

It is too dark for the woman to see his arrow, and his hair was in the way, mostly. But when he takes off his shirt, she can spot the marks immediately. She gasps in horror and pulls her naked body away from him, covering herself with the sweat-stained blanket.

"You're the Avatar!" she screeches accusingly, pointing to him. "Why didn't you tell me? What's wrong with you?"

His tongue feels heavy. "What...do you mean?"

"You're the most powerful being in the universe!" Her eyes narrow. "You were trying to ...to kill me! To seduce me and then do away with me! I can't believe you!"

"But...you..." Aang falls face first into the mattress before he can finish. The drunkenness consumes him—spits him into a torrent of sleep, washes into his bones. He thinks of Katara again.

The woman puts on her clothes when she sees him collapse. She looks at him pathetically. Then she sees the bulge in his pocket and walks over to it, reaching inside with the intention of taking whatever's there.

He feels her fingers. Something inside Aang snaps.

His voice is suddenly clear. "Don't touch that!" His eyes flash open and he grabs her hand. He throws her against the wall of the dingy room. He stands up. It's the first time in his life he has ever hurt a woman.

Later that night he looks at the small, ornate box in his hands and begins crying uncontrollably. A few men from the bar spot him sitting there on the curb and shake their heads in pity, wondering which girl it was, and when, and where, and why the Avatar is howling and moaning over a small, shiny piece of jewelry.

Mostly they wonder what happened to the whore named Ming Mei.

Aang finds himself compelled to write to her, so he does. Thirty perfect letters—but not a single one sent. Then he finds himself compelled to contact her, so he does. Rides Appa half way to the South Pole—but then vomits all over his belongings. He can't do it, so he turns back.

Then he finds himself compelled to sleep with her—not even just with her, with anyone, with anything. It's only natural. He is still young. But like the rest, he can't bring himself to do it. Countless women threw themselves at his feet: naked, half-clothed, needy, haughty, wanting, with the simple request, "Take me! I'm yours!". And he would undress himself sometimes. And he would unbuckle their frog buttons and kiss the expanse of their necks. But at the point of entry he would freeze and evade, and make up an excuse, and then vomit some more. It was during these months that Aang became very sick and lost a lot of weight, and gained the reputation of a sad, unexperienced boy when it came to adultery.

After a while the women would only mock him. He remembers a specific experience where a young woman—some twenty years old—had captured him alone on an estate balcony during a peace-keeping meeting. She was wearing a robe, and he was outside getting some fresh air. He learned later that she had been a councilman's wife.

Smalltalk turned into a laughing fit. "I'm sorry," she stated after thoroughly confusing him. "It's just...I've heard hilarious things about you, Avatar. It's not my place to sit here and recite them, but..."

"But what?"

He turned his face when she revealed her naked breasts to him, opening the robe at an angle, smirking. And he tried to walk away when she nearly placed her breast in his palm. But then she grabbed the back of his shoulder and apologized and explained her tearful story of how lonely she was and how she needed someone and how she adored his courage and bravery and how sorry she was and how embarrassed she felt and...

Aang stopped listening until she groped at his groin with her left hand.

Then he leaped back and pulled her fingers away, unfathomably disgusted. He asked crossly, throwing her hand back at her, "What on earth is wrong with you?!"

"What's wrong with you?" she asked back, crossing her arms. "You have the world's women at your disposal, and yet all you can do is run around acting pious all the time."

"That's no excuse to grab me," Aang fused lazily for lack of a better comeback.

She shrugged and smirked again. "I was just checking," she said mischievously, as if talking to an idiot child, "to see if there was anything there."

"The days I spent without you were torture," he recalled grimly, looking into her as if she was the world's treasure. She could see the hurt in his eyes then, the sadness that had swallowed him. It upset her to unbelievable levels. "There was so much I lost then...so much I learned."

She looked down. "I know. I learned a lot too."

"You did?"

"Yes." She was watching the box in his hands—the designs on the sides, and the golden hinges in the back. She remembered it vaguely...Aang had bought it a long time ago, and when she had asked him what it was for, he had lied and said that it was for a woman beggar they had met earlier in the day. "To give her something nice," he had promised, sweating.

"Like what?" he prodded, because it only seemed fitting.

Katara shrugged and rubbed her upper arm anxiously, trying to think of the words to describe her lonely years here, away from him, and the pain of seeing Lynnie grow up with his gray, storm-cloud eyes, and her pale complexion, and her wit...and now, finally, the airbending. It was too much, Katara thought, to spill to Aang in Gran Gran's room at that exact moment. She shrugged again. "I don't know," she admitted. "When the...when the fight happened, with my dad...and Suki...I thought it was good if I left you. I thought it would be great to never see you again." She shook her head and laughed sadly a little bit, recollecting. "You know, Aang...I convinced myself that...if you were gone—away from me, forever—then I'd have other things to look forward to in life, besides death, and war, and the resistance."

Aang nodded with a grave, disrupted understanding, moving the box around in his palm.

"And I did!" she nearly shouted, making him jump back. "I had tons of stuff to look forward to! I mean, I had suitors coming left and right, and Gran Gran was doing fine raising Lynnie alone. I didn't have many friends, but I was a great top healer for a while, and I taught little kids how to waterbend, too. It was...nice."

Katara paused to take a breath. She noticed the hurt shade over his face—the darkness underneath his eyes from hearing her happiness while he was away.

"But that's it," she corrected, making him look up again. She pulled a strand of hair through her fingers and tinkered with it, avoiding eye contact. "It was nice," she stated, "but it wasn't perfect. It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't..." She paused. "I don't know, 'awe-inspiring,' or anything." Katara laughed a little at the sound of the word and rolled her shoulders back. "Kind of dorky, I know. But, you know what I mean. It wasn't wondrous or captivating or..."

He opened the box after she trailed off and smirked behind the lid. "It wasn't sexy, either," he said, snickering a little to himself, and the very essence of the word—the way it filled the room with a softer, freer air—made Katara laugh out loud until her ribs shook, and she called his name out with childish teasing.

"Aang!" she laughed. "Oh, goodness." And she wiped her cheek and opened her eyes from the fit.

Then she saw what the prized box had been holding the entire time.