Survive, Strive and Succeed
Aang looks up at the person who sits next to him, but snaps his head back to the ground a second later as he sees it's Katara.
"Are you alright Aang?" she asks as she places a hand on his shoulder, "You've seemed down lately."
Biting his bottom lip, Aang shrugs her touch off before crossing his arms and saying, "What do you mean? I'm fine." He inwardly curses on how easily she always seems to read him; it's so unfair. He can barely keep tabs on her emotions, how can she so easily see through him?
"Please don't lie to me."
Her voice is soft and pleading, and the airbender sighs before relaxing his tense body language; he turns to her with big grey eyes. He's met with big, welcoming blue ones. He decides to come clean and tell her because he knows if he can trust anyone it's her.
"I'm scared," he says simply, "What If I can't do anything right? What if I fail, Katara?"
They sit in silence for a little bit, and she replaces her hand on his shoulder; he doesn't make a move to shove her off this time.
"There's this weird saying at my tribe," she begins suddenly, whispering so that Aang has to lean towards her to hear; "It's simple really; sink or swim."
He looks up with knotted eyebrows, silently asking for an explanation.
"When mother leopard-seal pups go swimming with their babies for the first time, they just push them in."
"They push their own babies in? Just like that?" Aang asks in slight disbelief.
Katara nods and smiles; "Without any training, they're just shoved in ice-cold water."
Aang is silent, so she continues; "From that, my tribe made that saying of sink or swim. You succeed and find yourself gliding through the water or you don't and you give up and drown."
He gulps and looks down at his feet again and almost jumps as Katara squeezes his shoulder.
"Ask me about what happens to the baby pups," she cajoles.
Even as he wonders where she's going with this, he follows along and asks, "What happens to the babies when they're pushed to their doom?"
"They swim of course," Katara grins wide and Aang blinks in shock.
"Really?"
"Yes, really," she says as she tucks her elbow in to knock shoulders; "Every one of those fat blobs with little flippers I've ever seen gets the hang of it. From the help of the others around and its natural instinct to live, they all make it."
Aang grins and is about to thank her, but she's talking again.
"But you," she says in a different, indistinguishable tone, "I know you'll be different."
He gulps in sudden apprehension; all the hope he had suddenly seemed to have plummets to his feet. But then she's unexpectedly pulling him into a hug.
"I think you won't sink or swim; you're going to fly," she whispers gently into his ear.
He smiles against her neck and hugs her back, his hope renewed and expanded.
Days and weeks later, when she rushes up to him and they collide into each other, arms and fingers grasping for the other, he whispers, "I flew, Katara, I flew."
She can't say anything; she's sobbing in relief.
AN: I was thinking Katara, in all her speeches of hope glory, would sometime give Aang a little lesson on inner-strength. I don't know exactly where this is in the time-line, I made it vague so it could fit really anywhere :P I like to think it's in the first season, when he's still in total strife about being the Avatar. I actually like this one; what did you guys think of it? Mind telling me in a review?