Disclaimer: I do not own anything A:TLA =)

Zuko does not make an appearance in this one, but this one explains the break-up…and sets up their next encounter. Enjoy!

Also, I played with the ages in this universe, Sokka and Katara are not biologically related, they more or less adopted each other as siblings after they met each other. And Aang is older than Katara.

"You know something? I never knew how much weddings cost until I started planning one."

"Haha, well duh Aang, you're a guy."

"Yeah, Katara is right; men generally don't know that stuff."

"Yeah, but, apparently Meng has been planning her wedding since before she met me."

"Well duh, all girls start planning their wedding when they're little girls."

"Oh no, Yue, that is not true. I haven't been planning my wedding."

"Really Katara?! Not even a little?"

"Nope, the closest I've ever come to it was when I was actually engaged and we were planning our wedding. Once we stopped being engaged, we stopped planning a wedding. I haven't thought about it much since."

"Was this the fire guy from before?" Aang asked.

"Yep."

"You were engaged, Katara?"

"Yep. In high school, I know, pretty young. But we were in love."

"Sokka, did you know about this?" Yue demanded, rounding on Sokka.

"Yes, she told me last year."

"Aang, when did she tell you?"

"Last semester. We're very close in this lab."

Yue huffed. "It's because I'm new isn't it?"

Aang, Katara, and Sokka laughed good naturedly. Yue crossed her arms and walked out of the room, mumbling something about being out of the loop.

"Oh undergrads…" Sokka and Aang laughed together.

"Hey, don't forget I'm also an undergrad," Katara said smacking both of her graduate friends over the head.

"Never," they both chimed together.

The next day, Katara entered the lab and found Aang alone at his computer.

"Hey, Aang," she called.

"Hi, Katara!"

"What's up?"

"I wanted to ask you something, personal, if that's alright with you."

"Uh, sure, Aang, what is it?"

"Why did you and fire guy break up?"

Katara stiffened. "You mean Zuko?"

Aang nodded in affirmation and Katara sunk into a chair next to him.

"Well, I don't really know… Well, that's not true, but it's kind of hard to explain. We had several break-ups before we were finally over…but even now, we're not really…I don't know. Okay, you asked for this…are you sure?"

"Go on, I really wanna know."

"Well, we were engaged, as you know. We got engaged really early, right before my seventeenth birthday. He came to the office during my office aid period and asked if I could go with him on a short walk. While we were walking, he asked me what I would do if he gave me a ring for my birthday. I told him it depended on the purpose of the ring. And then he kneeled down in front of me, did the whole 'I'll love you til I die' bit and gave me the ring. He gave me my engagement ring and showed me the 'promise' ring he would give me in front of my parents. We didn't want them to know we were engaged. So, that's how we got engaged. After that, I would trade out my engagement ring for my promise ring in front of my parents, but everywhere else, I wore my engagement ring. We began planning our wedding; it was going to be two years after we graduated. It was going to be a winter wedding…"

Katara took a breath to compose herself.

"Anyway, our plan was to move in together after graduation, go to community college for two years, get married, and then move away to a university."

Katara looked out the window when she said this, staring at the art building of her university that was three hours away from her hometown.

"But that didn't happen. I changed everything. One day, I found out I was in the top 15% of my class, and that I could go anywhere I wanted to. I sat Zuko down, and told him that I wanted to go to a university, a real university. I told him that the only difference would be that while he was at a community school; I would be at a university. I would still live with him, I would still marry him, and I would stay in the same city as he, I just wanted to go to a university. He agreed, saying he didn't want to do anything to hold me back."

Katara grew silent and pinched the bridge of her nose; Aang laid a hand comfortingly on her knee.

"I wanted to live with him; I wanted to stay in Ba Sing Se with him. But, a week later, he broke up with me, out of the blue. I was crushed. I came here, to Omashu because I needed to get away from him, from that city, from that heartbreak. Because, even though we were broken up, we had mutual friends, and seeing each other was unavoidable. Our relationship more or less continued without a label. It was so confusing! I didn't know how to feel about him. I thought that by going to school in Omashu, I could end up getting away from him and the heartbreak. I thought it would finally put an end to us, to this confusion. But he followed me here. I texted him, the day before I was moving, asking to see him one last time before I left. He was visiting his mom over in a little village thirty minutes south of here, so he couldn't hang out. I told him that I was moving to Omashu for school, next thing I know, he's had his dad bring up all of his things. He moved in with his mom to be closer to me."

Katara paused, looking at Aang.

"Continue."

"The next day, I moved up here, we had to leave at 4 in the morning, and I was scared and sad. I mean, I was leaving my parents for the first time. Zuko knew that, and told me to text him when we left Ba Sing Se, so that he could keep me calm along the drive. I fell asleep though, and never texted him. Around noon that day, he texted me asking me how I was holding up, I told him I was freaking out. When my parents left that day, I was crying in my dorm room, and he called me five minutes after they left. He called me and told me to let him in. He stayed with me that night and the next day, helping me get used to being up here by myself.

After that, we saw each other sometimes, randomly, whenever I would get lonely, I would call him. After a while though, he stopped having time for me. And guys began asking me out. I didn't know what to tell them, was I in a relationship or wasn't I? So one day, Zuko took me to see a movie. I asked him what we were, and whether he would make me a priority in his life again."

Katara's eyes began to water.

"He said no. He was doing something important right now, trying to become an honorable man, trying to be a provider. He couldn't distract himself from that. And so, I told him that I couldn't play this game of tag with him anymore…I gave him back his promise ring – he had told me to keep my promise ring after the break-up when I tried returning the rings, he only wanted the engagement one back – and he dropped me off at my dorm."

The tears began streaming down Katara's face and Aang squeezed her knee.

"We haven't seen each other much since then. Most of the time, the only thing I know about him is that he is still alive and well. Sometimes, he'll pop up in the randomest places. Other days, I'll find out from a friend that he's in the fire nations, visiting his dad. All I know is, every time I see him, I want to ask him why we broke up, and I want to change his mind about it."

"Why do you think he broke up with you?"

"Our friends say he felt like he was 'holding me back' from my dreams. The idiot."

"Why do you say he is an idiot?"

"Because, I can achieve my dreams anywhere, I didn't need to be in Omashu to do it."

"Even though Omashu has one of the most prestigious psychology programs? Even though you're 22 and already a research assistant, office aid, and psychology tutor? Even though you have so many professor recommendations waiting for you to ask them?"

"I know all of that, don't get me wrong. I know that there are several opportunities here for me, but in Ba Sing Se, I could have had similar opportunities, and I would have had Zuko."

"But he followed you here."

"Yeah, but he still isn't mine. That fact used to hurt a lot more, but now, I think being single is what I need right now. You know?"

"Why's that?"

"To focus on school. Two young adults living together right out of high school rarely ends well."

"Fair enough, people do grow differently. The younger the people begin a relationship, the more different they become as they age. Personalities change, feelings change. That puts strain on a relationship."

"Even though I've changed, there's one thing that hasn't."

"What's that?"

"My feelings for him. In these years of being broken up, my feelings for him have never changed. I love him as much as I did when we first proclaimed our love for each other. I get that we're becoming different people, but if the love between them doesn't change, isn't that enough to make the relationship work? Isn't that enough to keep them together?"

Aang squeezed her knew again. "Only time will tell."