Exposition alert! ;p

Kataang, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and all characters in the show owned by the epic Mike & Bryan, and Nick. Everything else is mine :)

Please enjoy!

Friday's class went almost the same as the one before. Aang helped her when Akash was busy. Again, she fell off Maya a few times. The third time, she felt herself slipping and caught herself before she could fall. "Good job," Aang had said to her. She had no idea why she felt so proud.

She talked to a few of the other riders. Sabbi, the girl Akash had scolded for not tightening the girth, was very friendly to her. She was fairly new to riding as well, only four months into the class. "It'll get easier once you learn to communicate with the horses. Sorry, that probably sounded silly." Katara disagreed. It sounded extremely reasonable, she assured the blond girl.

For the next week, Katara would take care of Maya and wait until Aang was finished with Appa, and then the two of them would walk home. (It turned out that the route to their houses was the same for half the journey. When they reached the fork they'd both wave to each other and continue on.) Katara found out that Aang didn't live far from her, but it was far enough across town that he went to a different school than she did. Katara didn't have a lot of friends at school, aside from Suki and Haru, so her chats with Aang were welcome comforts.

Two weeks after their first walk home, Aang paused a few feet from the split. "Hey, I've got an idea. Do you wanna hang out at my house today?"

"Sure. I'll have to call my dad though." She pulled her cell phone out of her messenger bag and hit the speed-dial for her house. After getting permission from her dad, she grinned at Aang and he led her to his house.

"Gyatso? I'm home!" Aang called, letting Katara in the door of the big two-story house.

"Did you have a fun lesson?" asked a man, coming into the front hall. He had short dark hair and friendly eyes that matched his smile.

"A lot," said Aang, nodding. "Gyatso, this is Katara, the girl that started taking classes a few weeks ago? Katara, this is Gyatso."

"Ah, Katara," he shook her hand with another bright smile. "It's very nice to meet you. From what Aang tells me, you enjoy horses as much as he does."

"Well, I don't know as much about them, but I've liked horses since I was a kid. They're pretty amazing creatures."

"Yes, they are." There seemed to be something underplayed in his sentence.

Katara missed the pointed headshake Aang aimed at Gyatso. She looked up when he cleared his throat. "We're gonna go hang out for a bit." He took her hand and began to lead her up the stairs.

"It was nice meeting you, Gyatso," Katara called down.

"A pleasure to meet you too, Katara," was the reply.

"Sorry about that," Aang murmured to her while they climbed the stairs. "He says some strange things sometimes."

"Don't worry about it," she said. "My brother's much weirder than that." Aang chuckled. Katara looked around, taking in her surroundings. The walls were painted in terracotta, giving the house a sort of tribal feel. Katara looked ahead as Aang opened the door to his bedroom. When she passed across the doorway, she grinned at the sight.

His bedroom was painted in light blue and tan, and splashes of white peeked out from several corners. Paintings of mountains hung on one wall, next to a gigantic window with huge white drapes, pulled back to let in the spring sunshine. A four-poster bed was across from the window. Along the third wall was a built-in bookshelf, stocked full of books and several photos. On the top shelf was a boom box and stacks of CDs. It was a simple room, with lots of open space.

Katara walked through the room, exploring everything in sight. Aang stood, a little awkwardly, by the door. "It's not much," he began.

"It's awesome," said Katara, turning to smile at him. "I wish my room was like this. It's like I'm floating in clouds or up in the mountains."

"That's why I like it," said Aang, flopping down in a beanbag.

A few minutes passed where they simply talked about random things, what had been going on at their schools, etc. When they seemed to have reached the end of the topic, Katara said, "Gyatso's pretty nice to let me stay over, even without notice."

"Yeah. I probably should have called first, but it sort of slipped my mind. And he's not the type to get mad about that sort of thing."

She nodded and looked out the window at the widespread backyard. "Well, he seems like a really great dad."

"Gyatso isn't my dad."

Katara froze. She turned to look at Aang, who was sitting on his bed, staring at the pillows. "Oh. I … " She wasn't sure how to respond.

"He's my godfather. Both my parents died when I was a kid."

"Oh," she said again. "I'm sorry." She walked over to the bed and sat beside him. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No, it's fine. You didn't know." He paused and studied her. "My real dad died during 9-11. He was working in one of the Twin Towers when they crashed … I was seven. I don't really remember him and I didn't understand a lot of what was going on, so it didn't really click until later.

Mom had to find a job to earn enough money, so she started traveling. Gyatso was an old family friend and she left me with him while she traveled around the country. It turns out that the reason she didn't have a lot of money was because she had cancer … and it wasn't curable. She died when I was eleven."

"Aang," she whispered. "I'm so sorry." She scooted closer and put her arms around him as comfort.

He hugged her back. "It's okay. I didn't really know either of them very well. It's almost better that way."

There was silence for a few seconds after they pulled away. Then Katara said, "My mom died when I was six." Aang looked up, surprised, and she explained, "It was really late at night and everyone was asleep. But I woke up and heard a noise from the other side of the house. I got up to figure out who it was. I got scared when I saw this … person in the living room, so I ran to get mom and dad. Dad took me and Sokka and got us out. I thought mom had come with us, but dad had to go back and get her. Sokka and I followed and … " She took a deep breath. "Whoever had been in the house had killed her. They didn't steal anything, they didn't destroy anything, they just took away our mom and left."

Now Aang's arms were around her. "I'm sorry, Katara. You must really miss her."

"I do." She gave him a bittersweet smile. "But I have dad and Sokka."

"And I have Gyatso. So I guess things are okay, huh?"

"I guess." Another pause, in which they both simply looked at each other.

Aang gave a sudden, short chuckle. "Well, this isn't exactly how I imagined us hanging out would be."

"Yeah, definitely not. How did we get on this subject?"

"No idea. You wanna forget about it?"

"Not completely." A second later, Katara realized what she'd just said, and blushed. If Aang noticed, he didn't show it. She glanced around, trying to find another topic before he did notice. "What kind of music do you like?" she asked, walking over to the bookshelf to examine the CDs.

"All sorts," he answered, joining her. "Trance, Rock, New Age … " He shrugged. "Not the usual type of stuff." He seemed a bit embarrassed.

"You have this?" asked Katara, pulling a CD out. "I've been trying to find this one for ages!"

"You can borrow it if you want." He smiled.

"Thanks! Can we listen to it now?"

"Sure."

And that's how they spent the rest of the afternoon: sitting in his room, listening to CDs and just talking. He invited her to stay for dinner, but she declined. "Maybe next time," she told him with a grin.

Katara caught herself humming as she opened the front door of her house twenty minutes later. Her dad looked up and smiled.

"Have fun at Aang's?" he asked, looking up from where he sat in the armchair in the living room.

"Yup," she said, heading for the stairs to put her book-bag in her room. "He's a lot of fun to talk to."

"Who is?" asked Sokka, meeting her halfway down the stairs.

"Aang," she replied cheerfully, not seeing the slightly annoyed look on her brother's face. "He's in my classes and he's really nice."

"Uh huh. And you went over to his house?" Now he was following her to her room.

"Yup. He likes a lot of the same stuff I like. And he's so much fun. We never run out of things to talk about." She knew Sokka could care less, but she was giddy with happiness, for reasons that weren't even clear to her. "He gets me, you know?"

Suspicion and annoyance entered Sokka's voice. "Yeah. The same way Jet 'got' you?"

Katara stiffened. She turned slowly to face her brother, who was glowering at her from the doorway. "That was different," she hissed from between clenched teeth.

"Not from how I see it." He still maintained a tough, almost threatening voice, despite the look she was giving him. "Katara, what do you really know about this kid?"

"I know that we're friends, and that he's sweet, and caring — "

"Which were all the things you thought Jet was until he dumped you for Miss Captain-of-the-Cheer-Squad Jin."

"Sokka, I told you never to bring that up!" she shot back, unable to hide a grimace. Jet had really hurt her. Jin was nothing but a popular pretty girl anyway.

"How do you know this guy won't turn out to be like him?"

"Because he's not like that!" She turned away.

Sokka stared at her for a few seconds and his expression suddenly softened. "I just don't want to see you get hurt again." Katara looked back up, a small smile on her face. Sokka continued, "And I really don't want to have to drive all the way across town to search for some jerk that hurt my baby sister."

"You're such a idiot," she sniffed, throwing a small round pillow at him. He caught it, grinned, and threw it back at her. Catching it, she stood up. "Besides, you shouldn't be worrying. Aang's my friend. The Jet Situation won't repeat. It's not like I like him or anything." She punctuated this with an eye roll.

Now back to his teasing self, Sokka grinned. "Yeah. You keep telling yourself that."

"Get out, before I throw something heavy at you," she advised, only half-joking.

Grinning, he began to turn. "Hey," he called as he left. "Suki's gonna be over in twenty, so if you and she wanna hang out, it better not interfere with our study time." The door shut.

"Sokka actually studying?" she asked her reflection over the dresser. "No way am I missing this!" She glanced at the closed door and then looked back at the mirror-Katara. "And he was only ragging me about Aang. I mean, me and Aang? Please. Not gonna happen." Somehow, her mirror-self didn't seem convinced.

I cannot believe I wrote implied Jet/Jin. I'm awesome XD

I loved writing Aang and Katara's conversation.

There's even fluffier stuff to come! Please review! :)