He was running again. It was the first thing that came to mind – an accusation, a judgment of his character and a terrible synopsis of his flaws. As if Aang were that simple – a runner. As if she was that simple to take all the complexities of a person and limit it to one description. Even after all these years, she was still doing it. The Fire Nation was evil. Her father deserted them. Aang was a runner.

Sniffling against the cold stinging her face, she tried to think. When Aang left just then, surely he just intended to return to the village. A chill gripped her, despite the warm furs wrapping her. What if Aang left the South Pole? What if he ran away forever – from her?

Taking advantage of her surroundings she lured a nearby penguin to her and slid down the gradually declining hill towards the village. The pre-storm wind began to kick up the snow, blinding her with its whiteness and crusting her eyelashes with ice.

He was sitting on Appa when she found him.

"Aang. Aang, please don't go." Despite her stubbornness, she could not keep the sad desperation out of her tone.

His gray eyes looked down at her with surprise. His mouth remained slightly ajar, and yet he looked as if he held his breath.

"I mean." Katara hesitated, her pride puffing up with the growing expectation on his face. "I mean, what about our village? They will be hurt if you leave now."

Disappointment creased his face before it slid into coolness. "I won't leave, Katara," Aang said quietly. Her heart broke at the tone he used for her name. Had he ever said her name in quite that way before? It was distant and chilly and lacked all the intimacy they shared the past two years. It was as if he denied knowing her at all.

"I will not dishonor this tribe by leaving in the middle of peace talks," he said. "I'm just going to take a ride on Appa."

"But there's a storm coming. Aang, it's not –"

"Oh." He looked dismayed by this. "Then I'll be back in less than an hour. Is that all right?"

Katara could only nod. The storm would fully arrive around mid-afternoon and the morning was not yet over.

"Come on, Appa," he said to his flying bison companion, "yip yip."

Katara let him go. She could not decide how to feel – heartbroken, furious, ashamed?

"Where's Aang going?" Sokka said from behind her.

"He's leaving." In the corner of her eye she saw Sokka react to the intensity in her voice by taking a step back.

"Wait, he's leaving for good or?"

"No. Just –" Her body crumbled to the ground and she sobbed. Sokka was immediately at her side, a gentle hand on her shoulder before she fell against him in tears. "Oh, Sokka."

Her older brother – afraid that this would cause some sort of rumor to circle the village – led her into their nearby igloo and let her cry it out. She felt bad for him – she knew how much he hated getting involved in their relationship. But she needed someone to talk to.

The warmth and familiar smell of cooking and animals furs inside the igloo did nothing to soothe her. "We fought," she began, her voice quivering with emotion. "He started it. He accused me of cheating and then, and then I said such awful things to him." She shook her head roughly, hair loops slapping against her face. "There's always something getting in the way."

Sokka leaned forward to hear over the wind scattering white through their village. It deafened everything inside, and the fire shivered light along the walls.

"There's always something getting through." Breath formed evanescent pockets in the air. "But it's not me. It's just – it has to be his fault, doesn't it?" Hesitation and doubt filled her eyes. "It's him. He completely misinterpreted everything."

"Maybe it's not a matter of who's at fault," Sokka said after a long pause. "Sometimes, sometimes things happen, bad things, and there's no one to blame."

Katara shook her head. "There's always someone at fault, Sokka. Our mother died because of the Fire Nation. Our father had to leave us because of the Fire Nation. Combustion Man nearly killed us because of Zuko, Aang almost... because of Azula –" Katara dropped her face into her hands.

Sokka reached forward and squeezed her shoulder. "You know that's not true in all cases, Katara. Would you say it's..." Sokka glanced around wildly for inspiration. "Oh! Would you say it's Aang's fault that he got stuck in that iceberg for a hundred years?"

"No, of course not." How could she? If she were in Aang's position, Katara would have probably run too, particularly if she had to be taken from her family. Instead her family had been taken away from her. She could never say Aang was to blame.

She couldn't imagine what it must have been like, stuck in a storm like the one building outside, plunged into the sea, then losing consciousness and ... waking up a hundred years later, everyone she knew already gone, and Katara left wholly alone.

"Does Aang know about the storm coming?" Sokka asked. "Katara, does Aang know about the storm?"

"He should be back in an hour, that's what he told me." Drying her tears, she stood up. "Come on, we've still got work to do by tomorrow."

"But –"

"I'm fine, Sokka. I've been able to work and move on with more heartache than this."

Sokka frowned, but he did not comment.

By one o'clock, Katara was so antsy that Sokka banished her from their igloo. "Go see Aang."

"I can't do that. Besides," she fished for an excuse, "we still have more work and planning to do."

"Like?"

"Like preparing the government building for the festival and banquet." She paused, feeling rather satisfied with her on-the-spot invention.

"We're doing that tomorrow with Ikue and his family." Sokka sighed and pressed his fingers against his temples. "At the very least, you should go give Aang some of our stew and an extra sleeping bag. You don't want him to go cold and hungry, do you?"

"Oh, no." What kind of girlfriend was she? Then she remembered; she might not be his girlfriend any longer.

Seeing the tears forming, Sokka shoved a small, sealed pot at his sister and then messily rolled up a sleeping bag before pressing it into her arms. "At the very least, say it was from me, okay?"

Swirls of snowflakes fell against her face and drizzled white against her dark hair when she stepped outside. Katara wished that she had thought to pull her hood up to protect herself against the chill, but if she were to do it now it would only dump the iciness down the back of her dress. Shivers dressed in pain rolled down her body as her feet crunched and broke against the thickening snow. It was almost nice to feel something after the numbness of that morning.

She arrived sooner than she expected and wished. Taking a deep breath, she moved forward, willing herself to at least give the stew to him before it went cold. Grasping the outside of the igloo where Aang temporarily resided, she bent to untie the fur entrance when someone else exited it.

"If you need anything else, Avatar Aang," the person, whom she could now identify as Ikue, one of the male hunters of the village, yelled over the shrieking winds, "please, do not hesitate to come to my family's – Ah! Katara."

Katara nearly lost her balance when he backed into her. She could now see into the igloo, and what she saw thoroughly dismayed her. Against the far wall of the igloo was at least a dozen sleeping bags, and around the fire in the center were several pots in varying sizes, all steaming pleasantly with the promise of warm food. Her small sacrifice of snow-cabbage stew and an old sleeping bag looked like a mere afterthought in comparison.
Aang's eyes focused on her when Ikue said her name. That small contact was too much for her, and Katara dropped her head, blushing guiltily.

It took a few seconds to realize that Ikue was talking to her. "—you tomorrow."

"Uh, yes," Katara answered. Aang was biting his lip, trying to hold back a smile. The edges of his lips turned up, trying to fight the oppression of their owner.

When Ikue walked away, Aang stood to the side, a clear indication that she should enter. It was too late to turn back now, and with a racing heart Katara entered the igloo.

Within a moment the wind was nearly silenced. Katara gripped her pot and sleeping bag against her absurd desire to rip the fur entrance open again, just for the wind to fill the uncomfortable quiet.

"This is from Sokka and me." She put the pot on the floor, noticing with a scowl that theirs was one of the smaller ones. Why hadn't Sokka given her the bigger pot? "And this – this is an extra sleeping bag. It gets really cold during storms." She realized she sounded like an idiot and shut up.

Still, only silence. Katara felt that Aang was waiting for her to look at him before he spoke, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. "Well, that's all," she said. Involuntarily she glanced up to find her watching her with a solemn expression, and she cursed herself for even that small second of eye contact. Like the other fights in the past, once they were back in each other's presence, she could never remember why exactly they were upset with each other. As much as she strained to remember, the fight and the reasoning for the pain would hardly ever reemerge, as was the case now.

"Katara, I think we should talk about this."

"Okay," she said softly. After all, what was there really to talk about? The only thing that she could think of now was that she loved him. What else was there to say?

Aang sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Look, I didn't mean –"

The heavy moose-orca flap shuddered then flapped open. "Avatar Aang, my family wishes to—"

Katara closed her eyes, the fight she so willed to forget flooding her mind with the untimely arrival of Retto.

"Katara," Retto said, surprised. He was leaning on a walking stick, holding a pot twice the size of hers with one hand and balancing a sleeping bag against his stick with the other. Retto blushed suddenly, looking from the Avatar to her and back again. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting—"

"No." The two of them spoke at the same time, and blushing, turned their heads away, affirming with their redness that Retto was indeed interrupting them.

"I actually was just leaving." Katara bent down and placed her sleeping bag against the stack. "Have a good night, Aang."

She let Retto move past her to present his gifts to the Avatar. As she was securing the flap, she thought she saw Aang pick up her sleeping bag from the pile and place it gently next to his.