Chapter Text
“Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.”
Katara arrives late, because of course she does. When does she ever do anything right?
Sokka greets her by the door with a harried expression, his suit jacket unbuttoned, pushed open by the stretch of his arms, reaching out to her. When she walks up to him, he grabs her shoulders. His fingers are shaking, and for the first time, her low-lying, simmering panic pushes itself to the forefront, and she can barely hear him over the ringing in her ears.
“We’re fucked,” he says, agitated. If he weren’t clinging to her, she knows he’d be pacing. “We’re fucking fucked. Malina is screaming her head off inside, and it’s my fucking fault.”
Katara’s hands find his elbows. She swallows heavily. “W-Why do you say that? What happened?”
“He fucking dropped out, Katara. He said he can’t do the wedding anymore!”
“Dad?” she asks, paling. But she already knows.
“No! Aang!”
It starts weeks earlier than that, actually, but the course is decided the moment she looks at him, the moment he looks back at her.
Her family sits at a large table in the center of the restaurant, a popular, fancy-ish Water Tribe joint her brother recommended. From the podium, she can see him and Suki sipping from glasses of wine at one end of their table, and her father and Malina at the other end, chatting amongst themselves. When her dad spots her, he waves her over with a broad grin. “Katara, over here!”
She steels herself, clinging to her purse strap. She takes a breath.
There’s a free seat towards the middle of the table. She walks over to it, and stretches her lips as wide as she can once her family stands up to greet her. Katara presses kisses to Suki and Sokka’s cheeks, and allows Malina and her father to hug her tightly. She can’t help but notice a familiar scent wafting from Malina’s hair, and tells her so, making sure to phrase it like a compliment.
“Oh!” She smiles, abashed, touching the nape of her neck. “It’s called Abbess. It’s supposed to smell like sea salt and coconut! Do you really like it?”
Katara smiles back and nods her head, swallowing bile.
That was her mother’s perfume.
It’s only when she sits down that she sees him— an Air Nomad man, pale, tattooed, his head shaven, looking at her rather awkwardly. Handsome.
Sokka grins in the wake of an introduction. “Katara, this is Aang, a friend of mine from the gym. Aang, this is my sister, Katara.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” he says, holding a hand out. His voice is lovely. A deep, pleasant tenor that settles sweetly into her stomach.
She shakes his hand, smiling a bit more genuinely. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Aang.”
Everyone else sits, and the waitress comes round to take their orders. Very quickly, the conversation turns towards her father and Malina’s upcoming wedding, which Katara survives through frequent sips of wine. Through the corner of her eye, she can see Suki shoot her quick, sympathetic glances.
“We’ve decided not to make it traditionally Water Tribe,” Malina says. Her fingers flutter to her naked throat. “After all, Hakoda and I are from different ends of the world, and even though the North and South are sister-tribes, we’re still so different in so many ways. We thought it would be easier to just divorce from tradition entirely.”
“So, what do you want to do?” Suki asks.
“Well,” her father starts. “Malina liked the idea of a combination of things. A—“
“Fusion wedding,” she finishes. “Something to pull from all Nations, just like Republic City! I thought the idea was very patriotic.”
Patriotic. Katara almost snorts into her glass. None of them are even from Republic City.
“I think that’s cool,” Sokka says, which— of course he does. Her ever-enterprising brother. “I was happy to help you both out with that, by the way.”
“What do you mean?” Katara asks.
He gives her a smug look before gesturing to Aang. “Why do you think I invited him?”
“Because he’s your friend?”
“Because he’s a monk, genius. He works on Air Temple Island.”
Katara’s mouth rounds. She’s not entirely sure why she’s shocked. Aang being a monk seems rather obvious, now, given the shaved head and tattoos, but she supposes it must be his age. Every Air Nomad monk she’s met— of which there hasn’t been many, admittedly— has been old, gray, and wizened.
And, objectively, she thinks, glancing at him. Gray eyes flick away. Not as good-looking.
Suki gasps delightedly. “Are you going to officiate the wedding?”
He bashfully rubs the back of his neck. “Not exactly? People typically like Air Nomad blessings for good luck, so… that’s what I’m doing.”
“I didn’t know Air Nomads believed in weddings,” Katara says.
“We’re not opposed or anything, just not as orthodox about it as other Nations. Plenty of Air Nomads get married, but the ones who don’t work at the Temples or take vows.”
“Did you take one?”
He looks at her, startled. Katara flushes, afraid she’s crossed some sort of line, but he ultimately nods. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I did. When I was sixteen.”
The waitress finally arrives with their food, cutting off any reply she might’ve hoped to give him. When Sokka’s arctic hen is placed in front of him, though, he snorts and sends her a wry, teasing look.
“Why are you asking Aang about his vows, Katara? Were you hoping he’d give you a shot? Didn’t you have a hard enough time dating Jet?”
Their father and Suki growl, “Sokka!” at the same time that Katara spits an acidic, “Fuck you!” to him and jumps up from her seat. Her brother instinctively reaches out to her, laughing through an apology, but Katara slaps his hand away and storms out of the restaurant, ignoring the waves of shocked faces that follow her.
Shivering, wrathful, she stomps over to the brick-wall exterior of the restaurant and rests her forehead against it, inhaling the lingering, stale odor of cigarette smoke, wishing she had one, herself. Wishing she smoked.
Already, shame over her childish display is beginning to creep up on her, but she stubbornly ignores it. She refuses to apologize. She’s gone almost thirty years never apologizing to Sokka for anything, and she’s not going to start now, especially when he was the asshole first.
She’s so resolute about this that when she hears soft footsteps approaching her— unmistakably male— she scowls darkly. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I don’t care if you want to apologize, Sokka. You can go fuck—“
She glances up, freezes. Aang smirks down at her, his tattooed hands shoved into his black slacks, a restrained laugh dancing around the lines of his mouth.
“Not Sokka,” he tells her.
She snorts. “I gathered.”
“I’m sorry he was being a jerk. You didn’t deserve that. You were just curious.”
Katara blushes again, starkly reminded of what prompted her fit in the first place. “Look,” she stammers, turning her back against the wall. “I obviously wasn’t trying to— I wasn’t—“
“I know,” he interrupts mildly. “You were being curious. It’s not a big deal. Lots of people have misconceptions about Air Nomads.”
“I bet you think I’m ignorant.”
Aang rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. “Katara, how many times do I have to call you curious before it sinks in that I wasn’t offended? You’re fine.”
She smiles, relieved, and he smiles back. His eyes look almost blue under the dim street lamps, but they sparkle with a friendly light. Bright and speckled, like stars.
Katara sighs and looks to them, hesitating for a moment, before— “Malina probably thinks I did this on purpose.”
“What? Make your brother provoke you?”
“No.” She hides another smile. She enjoys his persistence in absolving her. “This. Throwing a fit. Isolating myself.”
“You don’t like her?”
“I don’t… not like her,” she admits. “But it’s hard. This whole thing is weird. I mean, three years ago my mom was still—“
Alive, hangs in the air between them. She can’t bring herself to say it, doesn’t have the strength, but Aang can hear it all the same.
“I understand,” he says quietly. “I never knew my parents, personally. I was raised by the monks. But I was becoming friends with Sokka when your mother passed. She sounded lovely.”
“She was lovely.” Katara reaches up and fingers her necklace. She doesn’t know why she’s talking about this with him, but she can’t seem to stop. It must be because she wants to give it life, her grief, if only for a moment. “Anyway, Malina can tell I still miss her, that I’m— bothered about the engagement. It happened too soon.”
“Do you resent it?”
She shrugs.
“I’m not sure I can blame you if you do. Change is hard. Change after loss is even harder.”
Katara tips a dry look up at him. “Which enlightened mind did you pull that from?”
“My own.” He taps the side of his head with his finger. “I invented it, myself. I welcome you to praise me and my infinite wisdom.”
She laughs, a burst of sound in the still air, and he grins, leaning his shoulder against the wall, gazing at her. Something about his posture is so relaxed, so open. An invitation. She can see why Sokka— normally so reticent and suspicious— became friends with him.
Unfortunately, he ruins it.
“Can I ask who that Jet guy is, by the way?”
Katara groans loudly. “No!”
“Oh, come on! You got so angry just at the mention of his name.”
“Shouldn’t that tell you something about how much I want to talk about this, then?”
“Yes,” he says slowly, then winks at her. “But I’m curious. Tell me.”
Katara puts on a scowl, but her mouth trembles with the urge to laugh. Whatever, she thinks. Compared to their last topic, this is hardly a big deal. “He’s my ex.”
“I guessed. A bad one?”
“Horrible.”
“Was it serious?”
She huffs, crossing her arms. “He didn’t think so. But we dated for four years.”
“Four years,” Aang breathes. “That’s a long time for casual.”
“Tell me about it.”
He affects a shrug, his broad shoulders lifting slightly. She notices the exposed skin of his throat, and the way his orange button-down shirt rests against it; a stunning contrast of color. “That’s his loss,” he tells her, and smiles, close-mouthed, genuine, when she flushes again.
“Are you gonna head inside, now?” he asks.
Katara shakes her head. “I need another moment before I can withstand Sokka’s lame groveling.”
He laughs. “Alright. I’ll let them know you’ll be in shortly, though.”
“Thank you, Aang.”
His silver eyes hold her own. “Of course.”
True to form, Sokka begins his groveling almost as soon as she steps back into the restaurant. Katara takes it mostly in stride, stubbornly ignoring his attempts to appease her— until he promises to pay for her food. That, she knows, means her brother is being absolutely sincere. Katara rewards him for it with a smile and quick, conciliatory peck to the cheek. He grins at Suki with triumph.
The rest of the dinner passes by smoothly, and the conversation turns to more safer avenues. Aang talks about his childhood in the Southern Air Temple, while Sokka and Suki regale Malina with the story of their disastrous first meeting. When Aang asks her, rather abruptly, what she does for a living, Katara tells him she’s finishing her residency at Republic City Hospital. Malina decides to interject, then, with a comment about how her brother used to work at the same hospital before getting fired. No one asks why.
By 8 o’clock, their bill is paid and they all begin to leave the table. Katara follows Sokka and Suki out after having accepted a ride home from them— she took a train to the restaurant— but before she can walk out the door, a brief touch to her wrist stops her in place. She turns to see Aang, holding a napkin out to her with a sheepish look on his face.
“I, uh—“ He rubs the back of his neck. A nervous tick, apparently. “I wanted to give you this. In case… In case you ever find yourself in need of someone to talk to.”
Slowly, Katara takes it from him, quickly scanning the soft, quick scribbles that make up his handwriting. It’s the address to Air Temple Island.
“Thank you,” she says, glancing up at him, hesitant. Aang only nods, appearing as though he wants to add something else— apologize for his presumption, maybe— but after a beat, he turns on his heel and strides towards the bathrooms. Katara’s gaze lingers on his back, confused, but before long, she’s leaving, too, rushing to catch up with Suki.
“What took you so long,” her sister-in-law asks.
Katara shrugs. She’s not sure why, but Aang’s note is something she wants to keep private. To herself. “I had to pee.”
“Yeah, you did drink a lot of wine. Is that why you didn’t take your car?”
“I knew I needed some liquid courage to get through today,” she mutters.
Suki snorts, then turns her eyes to her husband’s back. Sokka walks ahead of them at a steady pace, car keys jangling from his long fingers. Her red lips curl into an impish smile.
“Can I tell you something you can never tell your brother?”
“Of course.”
She looks at her and playfully raises her eyebrows. “Don’t you think that monk was kinda…?”
Katara barks out a laugh, delighted, before looping her arm through Suki’s. She sighs, and she’s adult enough to admit that it might be a little wistful.
“So hot,” she agrees fervently. “So, so hot. Spirits.”