I own no part of Avatar: Fanfiction only.

My Heart in My Pocket

When he couldn't sleep, he watched her sleep. It afforded him a much craved opportunity to simply look at her without the awkwardness of her looking back-love her with his eyes in ways he couldn't negotiate with his words while she was awake. He watched as shadows and light moved across her skin: caressed her cheek, traced the arch of her brow, followed the curves of collarbone, hip, and thigh. This nocturnal observation had become routine pastime over the past seven years of diplomatic missions, and relaxed his mind, heart, body, and soul in a way that even his spiritual meditation could not achieve.

Finally, mercifully, sleep came. It would be a long day tomorrow-they would be visiting her family at the South Pole, and the visits had become increasingly tense. Before each visit, he always dreamed of the days after his defeat of Fire Lord Ozai, and after all this time, Zuko's long ago advice still haunted him

After the hard-fought victory over Ozai, Katara had returned to the Earth Kingdom with a broken Zuko to find Aang exhausted nearly to death. When he saw her leap down from Appa, relief at her safe return flooded his mind and he collapsed into her arms in a near faint. Apparently the nerve that had kept him upright for the two days it took them to return had been entirely fueled by anxiety for her safety. For three days, he woke only briefly, and each time, she was there, crouched over him, knitting broken bones and charred skin back into a whole. When finally he woke, his first impression was of the smell of her, warmth and saltwater and jasmine tea. When he opened his eyes, she was there with her face nuzzled down into the crook of his neck, her breath caressing his bare chest and her hair spread over his pillow. He closed his eyes in bliss and reveled in the warmth of her pressed to his side, the weight of her arm on her chest, and her hand resting over his heart, ensuring that it was still beating. As his eyes wandered through the half twilight that slanted through the room, he realized that they weren't alone. Katara's right arm extended across the cool smooth floor boards so that her right hand rested on the heart of her other patient, reassuring her that Zuko's heart continued to beat as well. Aang's eyes followed the lines scorch marks that could only have come from a direct attach by Azula up to his hooded eyes.

"You're a lucky man, Avatar." Aang flicked his eyes up to meet Zuko's golden gaze. "She hasn't left your side for three days and won't allow anyone else to touch you. Uncle finally had to force her to drink a special tea to make her sleep."

Aang carefully turned the arm that Katara had snuggled into to slide his hand up over her hip to her waist. A small flame of jealousy flickered in his chest when he saw her hand stretched out to Zuko's heart as well, and part of him needed to remind Zuko that she was his. Although he had been careful not to disturb her, she shifted in her sleep, sliding her thigh over his and burrowing closer to him. For a moment, the room tilted. Rising pleasure and warmth caused by her nearness and the intimacy of her body pressed against his contrasted with the deep aches of his flesh . . . it was almost more than he could process all at once. Aang sighed deeply with equal measures of pain, exhaustion, and contentment.

"I know . . . I can't bear to be away from her, but I know that is what will happen more and more now. I can't figure out a way to balance the demands of being Avatar with the weight of her in my heart. It's not fair to expect her to follow me while I sort out the mess that is left of our world, but I don't think I can go on without her. She's the only thing that keeps me going-she's what I fight for."

"Does she know that?"

Aang considered the question while he tried to flex shoulders cramped from days in the same position on the floor. "Before I left, I tried to tell her-I told her that I loved her, but it was a disaster. I can't bear to lose her . . . the thought of not having her by my side every day makes my stomach turn. Air Nomads are very particular about their mates-marriage is considered an eternal joining of souls that will continue into the next life. Many of our people never married because they never found their twin soul-the one that completed them. Once we fall in love with someone, it is spiritual and absolute-we don't move on. In the next life, we will seek out our twin soul again-maybe that's why none of the Air Nomad Avatars ever married-it was too much of a selfish attachment. I'd rather watch her start a life with someone else and be able to keep her close than to risk losing my twin soul because she didn't feel the same way I do in this life."

"How can you say that? How can that not be killing you right now to even consider it? When I joined your group, she threatened to kill me should anything happen to you, and I have no doubt that nothing would have stopped her. Not even Azula could have stood in her way if she was trying to reach you. I know that she loves you."

"I had hoped so . . . but I'm not sure that she knows it, and that's what really matters."

Their whispers had woken their healer, and Katara took a deep breath as she stretched, unconsciously pressing even deeper against Aang. His stomach swooped, and he involuntarily pulled her tight against him and squeezed her waist. Katara went rigid and sat bolt upright.

"You're awake!" She pressed her hands to his face and delivered a hard but chaste kiss, and he could feel the wetness of her tears on his own cheeks. A snort from Zuko reminded her of her other patient. "You're both awake!"

"No kiss for me?" Katara blushed and rolled her eyes at Zuko.

Katara sat back on her heels and Aang was able to take her fully in. Her eyes were smudged with exhaustion; gashes and burns were tattooed across her skin as well, reminders of the battle with Azula. Aang couldn't stop himself-he reached up and gently stroked a particularly deep cut that ran from her brow to her jaw. His voice rasped, "What has she done to you? Are you alright?"

Katara cradled his hand against her cheek. "I'm fine thanks to this idiot." She cast an exasperated but affectionate scowl at Zuko. "He took the lightning bolt meant for me full on-that's why it took us so long to get back from the Fire Nation. I was sure I was going to lose him on the way, so we had to stop every few hours so I could continue trying to repair the damage. For a while after I arrived, I was sure I was going to lose you both." Katara stood up and busied herself with tea and bandages and ointments so they couldn't see the tears that had started to flow.

"Then he has my eternal gratitude, and I will be always in his debt."

Zuko's eyes snapped back to Aang. He quietly answered, "I think that liberating the Fire Nation from my father, ending 100 years of war and bloodshed, and helping restore balance to the world more than compensates. If you want to settle our debt, take care of her-make her happy," Zuko nodded at Katara's trembling back. "If you hadn't sent her with me, Azula would have slaughtered me. You need to tell her-you need to make her understand or it will destroy you both." Zuko rose silently and padded from the room on bare feet.

Aang slowly rose, careful to not disturb the dressings that supported broken ribs and raw burns. He stiffly moved across the room to lace his arms around Katara's waist and rest his head against the back of her shoulder. He tried to dismiss the way she stiffened at his touch. He pressed his eyes shut and implored the spirits to give him the strength to accept how she felt for him. Aang tightened this arms around her waist and took a deep breath of her scent before he tried to speak.

"Don't cry, Katara, it's over."

A deep, shuddering breath wracked her frame as she tried to bring her tears under control. Another deep breath, and she allowed herself to melt back into him, tipping her head to rest against his. "I know, but there's still so much more to do. When you collapsed, I was sure you were dead-I've been holding my breath ever since." After a pause, she asked, "What will you do now?"

"What I must." Aang shifted their weight into one of his hips to draw her imperceptibly closer. "There are years of diplomacy ahead of me to create balance in the world-I will never be free from my responsibilities as Avatar." Through a long pause, he slid a hand up her bare arm and smoothed a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Afraid to hear her answer, he softly asked, "What will you do now?"

Surprised, she turned in his arms to face him, eyes flashing in defiance. "What I must. When I drug you out of the crystal caverns of Ba Sing Se, I was frantic-I would have freely given my soul to the spirits if it would have restarted your heart and opened your eyes. When you sent me away to the Fire Nation with Zuko-Zuko!-I thought every moment of turning back. I was terrified of leaving you alone to face Ozai by yourself."

Becoming frustrated, Aang's voice rose. "But I couldn't have fought Ozai and protected you at the same time-I had to do it alone! I thought you would be safer with Zu-"

"I know!" She broke through his arms and started pacing the floor, her voice rising with anger. "And all the time I struggled to heal Zuko and keep him alive, I hated myself for not being here to heal you-who was going to take care of you while I tended to Zuko!"

"But without Zuko, the Fire Nat-" Katara cut him off with an exasperated snort and a roll of the eyes.

"I think we've all worried about the well-being of the fire nation quite enough. They can be rebuilt-who's going to rebuild me if I lose you!"

Brought up short, Aang's heart threatened to beat a hole through his chest. "What do you mean?"

"Years of diplomacy-it will never end! How often have we tried diplomacy and ended up running for our lives with one person or another shooting fire or lightning at us?"

An icy weight dropped into the bottom of Aang's stomach and he sagged against the wall in defeat. She was done. "It's really over-you're going to leave." Aang slid to the floor and slammed his head against the wall, eyes clamped shut against the sting of tears. You're going to leave me, he thought. Years spent without her loomed before him . . . what was the point? "If you were going to leave anyway, why did you bother bringing me back? You're right-it probably will never end. I'll spend the rest of my life making up for my cowardice, trying to piece back together a world that fell apart because I failed to save it from Sozin. You should go home to your family-this will never end for me. There is more destruction than I can fix in a single lifetime-I'll be dealing with this for every lifetime for all of eternity!" Bitter tears escaped from his lashes as he struggled to accept the finality of it-she couldn't bear to go on like this, and why should she? For him?

The floor boards creaked as she paced back to him, and she blocked the waning light from the windows as her shadow fell over him. "Aang . . . Aang, look at me." He gasped in a deep breath and tried to calm himself. This is why he couldn't unlock that final chakra-he was too weak to let her go. This is why the monks had tried to hard to teach him detachment-to ensure that he would be able to continue on and place the needs of the people he must serve before his own desires. Aang raised his eyes to meet hers. "That's not what I meant at all." Katara kneeled on the floor next to Aang and laid her hand over his heart.

"What do you mean?"

"I meant that if I lose you, there will be nothing left for me. When we are separated, all I can think about is how I can get back to you. When I know you are heading into battle alone, I can't breathe! No-this won't ever end-not in this lifetime! I realized all the way back in the South Pole, and confirmed it in Ba Sing Se, and thought I would die from knowing it in the Fire Nation . . . if your purpose is to maintain the balance of the world by serving as the Avatar, my purpose is to be at your side!" And she kissed him again, but this time with heat and hunger and need that stole his breath and set his entire body aflame with the wanting of her and made him tremble with the rekindled hope that she would stay. He tentatively reached out and wound her fingers in her hair, still loose from sleep, and she softly moaned against his mouth.

"Are you saying that you will stay? But I thought you weren't sure how you felt about me."

"It took me some time to realize it, to understand it, to accept it, but I think I've always loved you. Since the day we pulled you from the ice, I haven't been able to let you go. I was afraid to say it out loud and make it real when there was a possibility that you wouldn't come back."

"Is it real now?"

"It has always been real."

Seven years later, it seemed that they were still always running. Only Katara had stayed by his side all this time, and he had come to rely on her for her counsel and her ability to find the humanity in the chaos around them as they sped from crisis to crisis. While he knew that she loved him, after all this time, still she was not his wife. At night, while they talked at the fire, she snuggled into his arms and he lived for the nights when she fell asleep there. They found comfort in one another's embrace, and she welcomed his kisses, but still she was not his wife. So he spent his days relying on her wisdom and support, his evenings in winning her smile and making her laugh, and his nights aching for her while the moonlight touched her when he dared not to. As the world around them settled into an orderly rhythm, he found himself in ever-increasing turmoil.

Every time they returned to the South Pole, Aang was greeted with her father's bitter disapproval. This time, Katara's father confronted the two of them with two fistfuls of betrothal offers for Katara. She was sought after by families from the Southern Tribe as the last southern water bender, by families of the northern tribe who admired her spirit and mastery of the element, and by families all over the world for her close association with the Avatar.

"Damn you, Aang! If you will not have her, then let her go so she can have real life!" was the accusation he had flung at Aang as Katara awkwardly gave the usual reason she could not accept a betrothal: her work with Aang was not yet done. In silence, Aang had straightened his back, shouldered his bag, and walked out of the hut towards Appa. For all these years, he had carried in his pocket the betrothal necklace he had made from a strip of ancient Air Nomad silk and a pendant he had bent from a chunk of the same meteorite as Sokka's sword once he had mastered metal bending. Never had the moment been right enough-always someone else's need, someone else's crisis had pushed back his own betrothal offer. Every day, his fingers smoothed the ancient silk; the meteorite metal was polished to a high shine from years of being turned over in his fingers.

Moments later, he heard the snow crunch beneath Katara's feet as she raced to catch up with him. His strides had become longer over time, and he now stood a few inches taller than her-she now had to run to keep up with him. His heart ached, and he refused to slow his pace. In frustration, Katara jabbed at the snow, and a plinth of ice rose up before Aang, nearly slamming into his face.

"Stop!" Fuming, Aang stood stubbornly in place, his nose nearly brushing the ice and tingling as it seemed to radiate cold. When she reached him, she grabbed the fur sleeve of his parka and whirled him around. "You know that's not how I feel."

In shame, Aang dropped his gaze and toed the chunks of snow their passage had kicked up. "Is that what you want? Do you want to settle down and start a family, because you know I can't-"

"I know. I would never ask you to shirk your responsibilities!"

"But is that what you want!" Aang roared in frustration. He could see villagers from the corner of his eye stop and stare at the two of them. He suspected that it had become idle talk in the village that while the Avatar would not take Katara for his wife, neither would he permit her to take a husband. It was becoming a bit of a scandal after all these years, and he knew that the whispers and the sly sneers of her people also suggested that her virtue was beyond repair in their eyes as well.

Katara reached out and placed a gloved hand on his sleeve. "All I have ever wanted was to be with you-and that's where I will always stay." After a few moments of tense silence, broken only by the arctic wind, Katara asked, "What do you want Aang? No one ever really asks you what you want, do they?"

"I want to shirk my responsibilities! I want a home and a family! I want my beautiful wife in my bed! But I'll be damned if I can see a way to have it!" Aang rounded on his heel and crashed face first into the plinth of ice. Roaring in frustration, he sent a blast of flame that melted it in an instant, and he continued his march toward the air bison.

Far behind him, the wind nearly stole her words as Katara softly asked, "Do you want to marry me?"

Aang dropped his pack in the snow at Appa's feet and bent a wave of ice, riding it back to Katara's side in an instant. He gathered her into his arms and lifted her off her feet into a bruising kiss. "Yes, I want you! I've wanted you since the first time I opened my eyes and saw you! But how can I have you when I have no home to offer you and nothing before me but an endless string of obligations? How can I explain to your father that I want nothing more than to give you everything he wants for you, but not the means to do it? How can I tell the chief of your tribe that I'm the most powerful man on the planet, but the thought of letting you start a life with someone else makes me want to lay down at his feet and die? How can I tell your family that I dread every time we come to visit because this might be the time you decide to stay? How can I look your father in the eye when he has offer after offer for your hand when I've been carrying my betrothal offer in my pocket for seven years? And how can you possibly not know that?" He pressed her to him, panting in suppressed rage and frustration, and kissed her harder this time, both hungry for her and daring her to refuse him. She responded eagerly, wrapping both arms around his neck and deepening the kiss. He tore her away, and holding her by both arms, demanded, "How can you not know how much I love you? After all this time, how do you honestly not know? How can they not see it?"

Aang turned on his heel and strode back to Appa, fully intending to leave her in the snow. How could she not know how he burned for her? How he ached to touch her every night? How much he loathed himself for being the Avatar-for not being a man that could provide a home for her? The shame that burned inside him when he heard the whispers that extended far beyond the Southern Water Tribe. He wasn't a child anymore-of course he wanted her!

Katara stood rooted in the swirling snow, watching his retreating back in shock. The tundra was very wide and very empty, swept white by the blistering cold, and the stares boring into her back were very hot. There was not a single doubt in her mind that every word Aang had flung at her had traveled through the crystalline air on the wind to every ear in the village. Aside from the shame that was sliding down her back in beads of cold sweat, she was shocked at the magnitude of Aang's rage. It was so rare that her sweet-tempered, peace-loving, attentive air bender lost his temper at all, little lone indulged in a standing rage in full public view, and on her behalf, no less. Through her own shock and anger, she realized that she rather liked it, this outburst of passion from Aang. Bending her own wave of ice, she sped ahead of him and whipped into his path.

"Which pocket?" she demanded.

"What?"

"Which pocket have you carried it in for seven years-I want to know!"

This brought him up short. With extreme difficulty, he straightened his back and clenched and unclenched his hands, clearly stalling as he decided what to do. Closing his eyes and struggling to slow his breath, he reached into his parka to the pocket next to his ribs that laid hidden under the capuce of his air nomad robes. She heard the delicate fabric tear as he fumbled in his fur-lined gloves to extract the necklace. In frustration, he ripped off the gloves and tried again.

When his hand reemerged, it held a delicate band of saffron silk with a carefully wrought pendant. With his empty hand, he created a filigree of ice beneath the betrothal necklace and then carefully bent the air to carry it to her. Holding his uncertain gaze, she reached out and lifted the necklace from the shimmering ice. She knew that the saffron silk was precious to him, taken from the robes he wore when he fled the air temple. It was an artifact of his childhood, woven by hands long dead in a temple long silent and cold. Intricately bent into the pendant were the symbols for all four nations-truly, a gift that was carefully planned to honor the traditions of both her people and his, but which would leave no doubt at all as to whom it had come from. A lovingly, painstakingly created statement that would declare that she belonged to him-that she was the beloved wife of the Avatar.

"This is exceptionally beautiful-why have you kept this from me? Why would you carry this in your pocket for all these years and never ask me?"

Aang dropped his gaze to the snow again, low enough that she could see much of the arrow tattoo that crested his head beneath the hood of his parka. His anger was spent, and his answer was so quiet, she barely heard it. "Because of everything I just told you. Just like any other Air Nomad, I have no home besides the ground beneath my feet. I have nothing to offer you, no bed to lay you in, no cradle to lay our children in. My life is traveling from crisis to crisis, tending to the needs of others to the point that I must neglect your needs and the desires of my own heart. I am ashamed of my own selfishness, that I cannot let you go, even when I know there must be a better life for you here in your tribe. I am ashamed that I have needed you with me, even when strangers whisper and assume I have taken your virtue and honor. I have no family and no name to give you you-you and Sokka and Toph, and even Zuko, who tried so ardently to destroy me, are the only family I have had for so long. And I am ashamed to have the power of the Avatar, and still be so completely crippled by the thought that you would say no that I have never been able to summon the courage to ask you."

Frozen in place, Aang was unable to meet her eyes. The wind was picking up, and it carried crystals of ice that scraped their skin raw like sand, so he squeezed his eyes closed in agony and self-loathing and he waited. He did not hear her move, but he felt soft, warm hands under the hood of his parka find the back of his neck, and she pulled his face to hers so that their hoods met and formed a warm, dark shield from the mounting storm around them.

"Do you want to marry me?"

Exasperated Aang glared at Katara and hissed, "Yes! Isn't that what . . . I just told you why I can't . . ." Katara gently pulled her hands from behind his neck, trailing fingertips across his cheeks to the edge of her own hood, and pulling back the collar of her parka, revealed his betrothal necklace already hanging around her throat. He reached out one tentative finger and stroked the saffron silk and the heavy pendant already warm from her body.

"I have often dreamed of seeing that around your neck-sometimes when you didn't know I was looking at you, I would try to imagine what it would look like there. I could never believe that you would truly consent to being my wife, so for all these years, it has been nothing more than a dream. To have you at my side has been the one thing I have ever wanted for myself from the moment you woke me from the ice, and it has always seemed the one thing I never had the right to ask of you. There is nothing that would bring me greater joy and peace than if you would be my wife."

"In my heart, I already am." After a soft kiss, Katara narrowed her eyes. "But before we go, I have a few choice words for my father." And before he could stop her, she was bending a wave of ice at breakneck speed back to the village.

Surprised and speechless, Aang absently scratched the ear of the patiently waiting air bison. "Ah . . . I think we'll wait here."