A few weeks out passed Aang's funeral everything became business again. The White Lotus, no longer delegating Aang's funeral or keeping the customary vigil over his grave set out to their next task: locate the Avatar. Aang was gone, old news, the hero of the war and that harbinger of peace, and all the things they'd called him were noting more than chisel marks on the stone that sat over the place his body would lay forever.
"We're setting up home units in both the Northern and Southern Tribes," the commander said during the first meeting they held that didn't involve Aang. They'd held many of meetings before, ensuring the funeral and burial of the Avatar was in keeping with the traditions.
"Good," Sokka said simply, it seemed, because he did not know what else to say.
"We're urging all families in the area to be mindful of their children born within the month following Avatar Aang's death," he said.
It was all business. The White Lotus mourned when Aang's soul ascended and were now scurrying everywhere to find the place it landed upon falling back to earth. She knew this would happen, Aang talked of it often and in the few days before he died he urged her to realize she would spend part of her life in a world where the term "Avatar" did not apply to Aang any longer.
"When we do locate the Avatar," the commander said, "We would be most gracious and humbled, Master Katara, if you would consider training the Avatar in Waterbending once again," he said, for once his tone was not direct and military.
Katara was not surprised at the request, though even upon hearing it aloud she felt the bubbling of something rancid in her stomach. She had not just trained Aang, they'd trained alongside each other, they'd learned Waterbending together. He'd been her best friend and she alone knew the best way to teach him, that's why she became his master. Katara knew nothing of this new Avatar and yet she was called on already once again to be the master Waterbender who would instruct the Avatar as if all she had ever been to Aang was his master.
"I will consider it," was all she said.
The meeting was adjourned and Katara wanted nothing more than to retire back to her own home. Outside the Southern Tribe was sprawling. When she'd left home with Aang fifty years ago it'd been, as Sokka put it, a block of ice. Now a metropolis was blooming in the tundra and children were playing and laughing in throngs, there were shoppers, and markets. She loved the hubbub, it reminded her of her days in Ba Sing Se, but she also missed the closeness of the fifty villagers banding together to survive and the strange boy who had stumbled into the camp and changed their lives.
"You're not the only one who could do it," Sokka said, coming to her side, "There's plenty of masters, even Kya would be a good fit—"
"Kya is far too free to be shackled to a student," Katara said.
"I guess she's got too much Air Nomad in her to settle down and teach someone else," Sokka mused.
Kya had found it within herself to move back down to the South Pole and actually stay there. Katara insisted she didn't need company or a babysitter but Kya persisted, saying she wanted to study more Waterbending, learn more about the history of the South Pole, anything to keep herself down there so her mother wasn't alone.
She also knew Kya felt guilty for how things had been left with her father and how she had not gotten the message that he was sick fast enough to return in time. Her father dying had been a blow to Kya and Katara's daughter spent several days alone after the funeral.
"That all being said though," Sokka continued, "Consider it, please. It would do you good I think, to have a pupil again."
Katara knew she ultimately would train this faceless person wearing Aang's title. Aang would want her to and she knew it was expected of her by nearly everyone. But it would not be easier knowing that as she taught this person everything she had taught Aang. How many ways would the memories overlap and parallel? How badly would that hurt? She would go through the motions of training the man who became her husband, but this person would not be him.
"What is it?" Sokka asked as he pulled her to sit down on a bench in a play area for the city's children. It was beginning to snow over them while a bright sunset etched onto the horizon. Winter was beginning. "No one blames you for still mourning, I mean he wasn't just your husband, he was Aang and—"
"It's not that," Katara said, "It just—Aang told me this would happen, but feeling it is different. Everyone is—beyond Aang, they've moved on. All they care about is the Avatar, the deity, the entity, the person who gets that title. Aang is the past to them."
"Well yes," Sokka said, "They have to think that way. Aang's time is over, no one forgot him though Katara. Look around the world at the statues and murals and even the Air Acolytes. He's still here for everyone, but the new Avatar needs to be fostered. Historically, it's always the most tumultuous time in the years between Avatars—"
He stopped when Katara laughed and he made a face.
"I'm just picturing you saying that when we were kids and you hated that everyone kept telling stories about the Avatar. Now suddenly you're an Avatar expert," she smiled.
"Time changes people."
It was a cheesy line and smiled about it and hugged his little sister and kissed her forehead. The sting of it all was lessened when Katara came home to Kya cooking dinner. Seaweed stew with a side of roasted vegetables and even a fruit pie for desert. Katara wondered if Kya even noticed she'd cooked a meal lacking any meat, or perhaps it was Kya's way of coping.
They found the Avatar four years after Aang's death. Katara was skeptical at first when they came to tell her, they'd had many false starts over the years and Katara had to wonder how a family could possibly mistake a child for bending elements they shouldn't be able to. Perhaps parents wanted their children to be the Avatar. Katara would wish that upon no one.
"In the Southern Tribe in fact," Sokka said, "Her name is Korra, she's a spitfire and very, very…aware of her own abilities. Aang went out and picked his opposite."
Katara knew Tonraq. He was the one-time prince and chief-to-be in the Northern Tribe, though that information was kept quiet down here. He was the son of Yue's cousin who assumed the chiefdom when Arnook was left heirless. Under strange circumstances he found himself no more than a peasant down south with a quiet wife, Senna.
Katara entered of muttering and whispering people, and the second the door closed behind her it was silent in the room. And her eyes fell upon a small girl, baby fat still clinging to her stomach, her hair pulled back. Her face was vibrant and excited, but when she turned to Katara all that confidence went pale. Her eyes were wide in panic as she jumped to her feet and bowed to Katara.
She then looked over to the White Lotus commander who nodded to her and she took a breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them she demonstrated minor bending ability in water, fire, and earth.
"I can't really do air yet," the girl mumbled, her eyes lowering.
It was enough though. She was the first one in four years of claims to show proficiency in multiple elements. This was the Avatar's new face, for the first time in almost one hundred and seventy yeas Aang was not the Avatar. It was real now. Before her eyes were images of the boy flying on Appa, sliding in Omashu, getting chased by pirates, learning Waterbending then Earthbending, dying in her arms, playing music and dancing in the Fire Nation, then he was standing over an imprisoned Fire Lord. All of that was over now.
Katara step closer to the girl who made eye contact for the first time that day.
And Katara saw the fleeting glimpse of something hiding behind her sapphire eyes. Korra gave the slightest furrow of her brow and Katara knew that something in Korra recognized her, if only for a moment. Some part of this girl's soul knew Katara already and it had been warm and bright. It was gone in a flash and Korra was a stranger again but the split second was enough comfort for Katara.
This girl was not her husband, but a fraction of him made up all that she was. Aang was Aang but also the Avatar, and while man Aang was gone, the Avatar lived on.
As Katara walked out of the hut with a bouncing Korra beside her, she felt a fleeting glimpse of a similar instance almost seventy years ago in a much smaller village. Korra was as energetic as he had been, though far more confident. And Katara had too appreciate that.
"After we're done training today Master Katara...do think, maybe we could...go penguin sledding!" she blurted out through blushing cheeks.
And Katara banished the pang of anguish the memory brought her and smiled at the girl. She would train this girl and love her and watch her grow and spend her life protecting the small sparks of Aang that existed inside her.