I do not own Avatar: The Legend of Aang, if I did a lot of things would be different XD I own nothing in this fanfiction except the idea of the plot (and even then, someone might've thought of this before me XD I don't know, I didn't check) No money or profit is being made from this fanfiction.

I'm sorry for the truely awful first draft of this chapter, I was in a very uninspired state of mind at that time due to my favourite character dying in another series... It was kind of like Jet all over again XD Hopefully this revised chapter will be a lot better than before.

Katara watched the waves crashing against the shore, her head resting on her arms which were wrapped around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest. Since her fight with Azula and Aang's defeat of Fire Lord Ozai, she had found herself spending a lot more time dwelling on the past, something she'd been mostly too busy to do when she and the others were still focused on stopping the Fire Nation. Tears began to sting her eyes as she remembered, for what felt like the millionth time, what was probably the worst moment in her life after her mother dying.

'I'll be fine...'

His last words rang in her ears, circling in her head, echoing over and over, louder and louder, until she felt like her head and heart were going to burst. She couldn't take it anymore. Silent tears began to roll down her cheeks as she remembered Toph's sad whisper of, 'He's lying.'

'Katara?'

She jumped and hurridly wiped her eyes as Sokka approached, watching his sister warily; he knew that since their defeat of the Fire Lord a year ago, Katara hadn't been her usual self. Of course, for the first few months after Aang took away Ozai's bending, she'd been as happy as everyone else, rejoicing along with everyone else, but as time had passed, she had withdrawn into herself, spending more and more time alone, and when they were together, Sokka ausually got the feeling that Katara's mind was elsewhere. She'd also started having nightmartes in the fast three months, waking up in tears, too distraught to speak, let alone repeat her dreams to anyone. At these times, it was all Sokka and Hakoda could do to comfort her until her sobbing ceased and she fell back into a restless sleep.

Sokka knew, however, what was behind all of this.

'Were you thinking about him again?' he asked, quietly.

Katara nodded silently. Sokka sighed and sat down next to his beloved sibling, putting an arm around her shoulders and doing his best to comfort her. He knew that, now she had nothing like fighting Ozai to occupy her mind, she had been thinking about the past a lot more. At first, he'd wondered if she had been thinking about their mother, which she no doubt was, but he had quickly realized that his mother wasn't the cause of Katara's sadness. Several times, when she had woken in the middle of the night crying, as Hakoda held her in his arms, gently rocking her and whispering soothing words in her ear, when she had stopped crying and was almost asleep again, she had started repeating one name over and over. Jet.

'I know you miss him,' was all Sokka could say to try and ease his sister's pain.

'I don't know why I'm crying,' Katara tried to rationalize, wiping her eyes again as fresh tears threatened to spill forth. 'He was a monster. He tried to kill everyone in that villiage. He used me. Even when we were in Ba Sing Se, I couldn't bring myself to trust him again... But I just can't stop loving him.'

'I know.'

-.-.-

Something had been bothering Aang for a while now. He had returned to Yu Dao several times since the whole incident, but he had not once seen Smellerbee or Longshot. Sneers had informed him that he too hadn't seen his former comrades in a while. Apparently, they were off in their old forest home, working on some kind of new villiage, as they had been for several months. According to him, Smellerbee and the other Freedom Fighters had only shown up in Yu Dao to protest against the Fire Nation, and now that that conflict was all but resolved, they hadn't returned.

Aang couldn't help wondering why, after putting up such a fight to rid Yu Dao of the Fire Nation and then finally accepting that Yu Dao would become a joint Fire and Earth Kingdom villiage, had they left to catty on making their own villiage? He wanted to get to the bottom of this, which meant that he would have to find Smellerbee or Longshot and talk to them... On second thoughts, Longshot probably wouldn't do much talking.

-.-.-

'We're going where!?' Sokka cried.

'The Freedom Fighter's old forest,' Aang repeated.

'Why are you dragging us along?' Sokka whined. 'Look, there's meat here!'

Aang decided that bringing this up during one of his frequent meals with Sokka and Kataa probably wasn't the best idea.

'Sokka, please. We're a team... I might need your help.'

'With what?'

'I'm not sure. I just get the feeling that something strange is going on, and something tells me that I'll need you two with me.'

'I really don't think we should go, Aang,' Sokka said, firmly.

'Why are you so against this, Sokka?'

Sokka said nothing but glanced at Katara, who was staring at her bowl of stewed sea prunes silently.

'Oh! I'm so sorry, Katara,' Aang suddenly realized that he had probably made a huge faux pas. 'I completely forgot, I'm so sorry.'

'I'm fine,' Katara said a tad defensively, looking up frm her sea prunes. 'Why do you think I'd have a problem going there? When do we set out?'

Sokka and Aang exchanged a look; they both knew that Katara would likely find it difficult returning to Jet's old home, but it didn't look like she was in any hurry to admit it and would probably reject any offers for her to stay behind.

Constructive crit is more than welcome. Unconstructive crit will just be ignored XD