(Zutara) Hold it Gently; My Heart Burns For You

The Avatar Returns - Part One

Aang is everything Katara imagined of an airbender. Carefree as the breeze with an open, quick face. Quick to crooked smiles, quick to genuine laughs that tip his head back so far, his blue arrow disappears from sight. He's joyful and sincere, no storm inside his lithe, agile body.

Naturally, the children of the village love him. He's fourteen but basically a taller, gliding version of them. But it goes deeper. Over the few days he and his bison, Appa, rest, the elders nod their heads to his enthusiastic waves. The women on the dig team wave prettily back when he stops by during work hours. Katara's chest swelled with pride the first time his face opened in awe as she emerged from beneath the ice.

"An Ice Carver? That sounds amazing. It's so daring and brave, it's incredible, it's courageous, it's... What is it, Katara?"

Every morning for the next week, he's there. Her stories of being under the ice never change, but he's wide-eyed and listening each time she recounts the few feet of ice she was able to carve through that shift. Ice Carving is a new phenomenon to him. When she first tried to explain he thought she was referring to swimming beneath the floes, citing how that made sense for her, being a Waterbender.

Sokka doesn't like him, and she's sure when he realises how much the young boys like spending their off time playing with Aang instead of practicing their spear thrusts, he doubles their training regime out of spite. How he loves to lord over Aang how his magical flying bison has yet to magically fly. When he found them penguin sledding for the fourth time, he was quick to derisively tell his flying sister joke again.

"You're right, Sokka! She's gotten so much better. The air she's catching almost beats mine!"

Sokka scowled, huffing, "Great. You're an airbender, Katara's a waterbender. Together you can just waste time all day long!" before stomping off to go hunting.

Good thing he did. In the same breath of laughter, Aang asks why she never uses the snow to help her go higher the same way he does with the air. She's so used to not being proud of her bending, Aang asking her so openly brings her up short. It's no fun for her to talk about how lonely she feels in her own tribe. It's worse when he suggests leaving to look for a teacher.

"This isn't right. A waterbender needs to master water. What about the North Pole? There's another Water Tribe up there, right? Maybe they have waterbenders who could teach you."

"Maybe, but we haven't had contact with our sister tribe in a long time. It's not exactly "turn right at the second glacier". It's on the other side of the world."

It's hard being so different from her family. It's even harder when Aang gives her the chance she's been waiting for to go, and she knows she can't.

Aang is young, but he's wise enough to let the subject drop, and they go back to sledding.

Her days begin to pass quicker. The cold doesn't bite quite the same. The warmth in her chest fuels her bone axe swings because she knows an afternoon of sledding with Aang, giggling with the children, and stories of a world beyond her pole waits for her. It gives new purpose to the work, fills her with a sweet ache as she realises she'd forgotten what the laughter of her tribe sounded like. If she were a powerful enough bender, she'd freeze time, put aside her own dreams and let her tribe live in this wonderful peace forever.

It all comes crashing down when Aang convinces her to explore the wrecked Fire Nation ship with him. He'd been obsessed with it the whole week, ever since he caught sight of it when they strayed a little too far atop their penguins. She knew going along with him was a bad idea, but the idea of him going alone was even worse.

Swallowing her fear, she didn't try to stop him. This time she followed him towards the wreckage, hiding her shaking hands behind her back, blaming the cold when Aang looked at her curiously. He thinks he convinces her with some pithy spiel about bending being about letting go of fear. It's because she's afraid she goes after him.