Title- Connection
Author- Melon
Rating- K+
Summary- The battle is over, the Fire Lord and the Phoenix King have been defeated, Zuko will be crowned in a few days' time and the world is at peace. But there are still one or two things that need to be resolved...

A/N- You may consider this a follow-up to Pas de Deux, my response to the Day 3 prompt. If you missed that, don't worry, it's not necessary to figure out what's going on (but if you want to go back and read it, you totally should ~*shameless self-promotion*~). This story does assume that the events in that story happened, however.

As I am not satisfied with how my original response to Day 5 was shaping up, I am counting this story, therefore, as a response to both Day 5 and Day 6, as it deals with both candles and healing. My original response to Day 5 will be published later, once I am happy with it, but it's just not going to be done in time for Kataang Week, so you'll have to be content with this.

Days 5 & 6: Candles & Healing

When they had first returned to the Fire Nation capitol on the morning after Sozin's Comet, Katara had offered to heal his injuries. Aang had declined. This was partly because he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the nearest bed and not wake up for... oh, about another century sounded good. He also knew that Sokka and Zuko's injuries were much more serious, and it was better for her to spend her energy mending a broken bone and making sure Zuko suffered no lasting ill effects from his encounter with Azula's deadly lightning. Aang's multitude of cuts and bruises could wait.

The Fire sages had showed them all to unoccupied rooms in the palace so they could rest. Aang didn't pay much attention to where the others were being led- he was too weary to do anything more than focus on staying upright- but he assumed they had rooms of their own nearby. For his part, as soon as the door was closed behind him, Aang tumbled into bed. It didn't matter even slightly that it wasn't even noon and sun was streaming through the windows. He had been awake (excluding his meditative state while consulting with past Avatars, which certainly didn't count) for several days and been through the fight of his life. He couldn't have kept his eyes open another minute if he'd tried.

He fell deeply asleep almost instantly, and for the first time in a long time, had no unpleasant dreams.

It was many hours later that a soft tapping followed by the creak of the door sliding back woke him.

Aang rolled over onto his back before sitting up, rubbing blearily at his eyes and wincing faintly as the motion stretched his overtaxed muscles. Night had fallen and the only illumination in the room came from a single candle that vaguely outlined the shape of the bearer, who had turned around to slide the door closed again.

"Who's there?" he asked softly, slightly disoriented from his abrupt awakening.

"Just me," Katara said in an equally soft tone, turning around to face him.

She bore a candle in one hand and a bowl of water in the other, and a towel was draped over her forearm. As she moved, the candle illuminated her face properly, and Aang was reminded sharply of their experience in the Cave of Two Lovers. At the memory, a pang of love so strong it actually left him breathless surged up inside him. He could only stare at her, dumbstruck with helpless adoration, as she crossed the room to sit beside him on the enormous mattress.

She set the bowl of water on the nightstand beside them, and laid the candle beside it so that it cast a dim glow over the scene. Aang, still half-asleep and as overwhelmed by her as ever, thought dizzily that the soft light made the large room feel small and the space between them intimate. His world had shrunk, limited to the little circle of light thrown out by the candle.

"It's nighttime," he observed nonsensically.

She grinned at him, shaking her head in amusement. "It's after midnight," she said. "You slept all day."

He wrinkled his nose unhappily. There had been things he'd meant to do, and he'd planned to talk to Zuko, too... Suki had told him that the young prince had finally figured out what Aang had known almost since Zuko had joined them: he was destined to take his father's place on the throne and guide the Fire Nation out of this dark and troubled period. The war was over, but he knew there was so much to do to make sure the Fire Nation was stabilized, if they wanted to make peace last, and...

No. He wasn't going to worry about it tonight. He would be doing the Avatar thing for the rest of his life. Tonight, though, he had accomplished the great task set before him. The Avatar could rest, and he could just be Aang for a little while and not think about anything worldly or dangerous. He was alone with Katara for the first time since their conversation on the beach just over a week ago, and he reveled in the opportunity to have her all to himself for a little while.

He took a good look at her then, and realized that she looked more haggard than she had when they had been reunited that morning. "You look tired," he observed.

She shrugged. "I didn't get a lot of sleep today," she said. "I needed to look after Sokka's leg and follow up with Zuko and Suki had all kinds of cuts everywhere and... there was just a lot of work to do. That's why it took me so long to get around to healing you like I promised. Sorry."

He looked at her with some concern. "Are you sure?" he asked. "You don't need to heal me right now if you're tired. I can-"

"No!" she blurted out, unexpectedly loudly. He stared and she blushed. In a quieter tone, she repeated: "No. I want to."

Well, who was he to argue? He wasn't really that eager to pass up the chance to spend time with her, anyway.

She lifted the water tidily from the bowl with a smooth arch of her wrist as he was musing on this, and pressed it to the first of his injuries she could reach, an angry black-purple bruise on his shoulder nearest her. The pure, shimmering light of the water as she infused it with her chi joined the warm candlelight and made the room just a tad brighter.

Gradually, she worked her way across all the easily accessible parts of his body. Neither of them spoke much, aside from an occasional brief question from Katara about what else hurt, and his simple responses. Aang felt further comfort and relief wash over him with every burn that healed, every cut that was knit back together, every bruise that was wiped away. He had slept for so long, but he hadn't really felt rested until now, with her soft hands working their magic across his body. He nearly wilted back into sleep as her healing washed over him.

Aang might have been relaxed, but he failed to notice that Katara was not so complacent. Her hands, now with only a thin film of water coating her palms, drew across the skin of his back in long strokes and eased the general soreness that had built up in his muscles from a long and strenuous fight. Despite how gently she was tending to him, however, her expression was pensive as she stared intently at the back of his head, and her teeth worried at her lip nervously.

When she was finished at last with her healing, her hand lingered for just a moment on the smooth skin to the left of his lightning scar.

"Thank you, Katara," he said, turning to smile at her. To his surprise, her expression was awfully grim considering they had just done what they set out to do all those months ago. His smile dimmed a little as he looked at her in concern. "Hey, are you okay?"

She stared at him intently for a few moments more, and Aang was left half-panicking that he'd somehow said something wrong again. Then she grabbed him and hugged him so tightly even he couldn't draw a full breath. He put his arms around her in turn, holding onto her with the slow, extended relief that the fight of their lives was over. "I'm sorry I wasn't there," she said. Her mouth was right next to his ear and he could feel her warm breath against his neck and she was so close and he had to focus hard for her words to make it to his brain as anything more than random sound. Once he'd managed to get his head out of the fog her sudden proximity had put him in, he understood immediately what she was talking about. He had been surprised- not necessarily pleasantly so- to hear that she had chosen to go with Zuko to face Azula rather than coming to meet up with him.

"I wanted to be there," she said. "I always thought you and I would fight Ozai together."

"I kind of did, too," he responded, and he felt her tense up in response. Immediately, her arms dropped away from him and she sat back, peering into his eyes. Aang felt a fleeting sense of that foot-in-mouth panic again, but Katara pressed determinedly on with what she was saying before it could take hold.

"But I knew Zuko would need me here and I- well, I had kind of a score to settle with Azula."

Aang's brows drew together as he pondered that. He knew Katara didn't like Azula any more than the rest of them did, and he knew how good she could be at holding grudges, but he couldn't think of any reason why Katara should have a specific account to settle with the other girl. "What do you mean?"

Katara took a shaky breath. "She almost killed someone very special to me," she said.

Did she mean-? But no, she couldn't possibly...?

She didn't seem to know what to do with her hands. They were fiddling around in her lap as she looked down with a blush, fretting over whatever it was she was trying to tell him. He spoke her name quietly, questioningly.

Without looking up, she continued, "Do you remember what you told me a couple weeks ago? About... how you feel about me?"

Aang's pulse suddenly tripled and he felt his palms start to sweat. He tried to tell himself to calm down. This couldn't be what he thought. There was no way Katara had decided to have this conversation now, of all times. It had to be the romantic atmosphere created by the candlelight tricking him into misunderstanding where she was going. She had told him she was confused, she had rejected him and pushed him away, and it had just about broken his heart, even if it was his own stupid fault for pressuring her. And she'd made it clear later that, although he was incredibly important to her, she didn't know if she wanted a closer relationship with him.

If she really was bringing it up again, when it had been her request to table the whole thing in the first place... Well, he wasn't sure whether he should be optimistic or bracing himself to be crushed again.

"Um, yeah?" he replied tentatively.

One hand came up and tangled into the disordered curls of her hair, playing with the ends in that nervous habit of hers that he couldn't help but find adorable but conversely hated to see because it invariably meant she was uncomfortable or upset.

"I just... um."

She was looking anywhere but at him, and it was making him nervous. Well- more nervous. If this was her leading up to telling him she had feelings for him, too, wouldn't she at least be able to look him in the eye?

Katara let out a frustrated huff of breath, as if she had realized she was dithering, and removed her hands from her hair only for them to ball up in her lap once more. "I was just wondering if that's still true?" she asked, her words all coming out in an anxious rush. At last, those blue eyes flicked up to meet his and Aang was surprised to see that she wasn't just nervous- she was terrified. It suddenly occurred to him that the outcome of this conversation was very important to her, and although he was afraid to get his hopes too high (after all, he'd read her wrong too many times before), he couldn't help but think that it seemed to suggest that maybe she...?

He reached out and covered her tense fists with his own hands. "Of course," he said. "I love you, don't I? That doesn't just go away overnight."

All that nervous panic left her expression in an instant, and Aang had only a moments warning before her hands framed his face and her lips came crashing down on his.

Even as he reacted to her kiss, lips moving against hers instinctively, his mind was still trying desperately to catch up. He felt as if he'd missed a step somewhere, because he honestly could not comprehend the idea of Katara kissing him. In his mind it always seemed to work the other way around, and he was freaking out a little because spirits help him, what was he supposed to do with his hands?!

Her lips were chapped and his were too (there had been so much fire), and he could feel her fingers trembling against his cheeks even as she eagerly explored her lips with her own, and neither of them had much kissing experience, and he couldn't seem to wrap his mind around what was going on, but as far as Aang was concerned, it was perfect. When their lips separated at last, her hands dropped from his face and one of them- to his utter distraction and delight- rested for a few moments against the bare skin of his chest as she offered him the most adorably shy smile he'd ever seen.

"Katara," he breathed out, aware that he couldn't stop grinning.

She blushed bright enough for it to be apparent even by candlelight, and her smile widened even as she cut her eyes to the side bashfully.

He reached out with trembling fingers and brushed aside the strands of her hair that had fallen over her cheek. He couldn't have said why, but the impulse was there and he just went with it. At the gesture, Katara looked back up at him.

"I love you, too," she said. Simply, as if it were to be taken for granted (he could never take her heart for granted!), and when she looked at him like that, with her whole heart in her eyes, he couldn't doubt her. His stomach seemed to have been filled with buttermoths and his own heartbeat was still thundering in his ears, but Katara loved him.

Katara loved him.

Katara loved him!

It occurred to him eventually that he hadn't actually said anything in response when she started to look nervous again. Words. Right. He needed to say something and stop sitting here grinning like an idiot because that was bound to freak her out but what could he say? He seemed to be completely incapable of stringing together a sentence. Oh no, please let this not be a repeat of his bumbling in the Cave of Two Lovers...!

Deciding that words weren't really working for him right now, he kissed her again. It was short, not much more than a peck, really, but in his opinion it got the message across rather nicely.

When he leaned back, she looked so sweetly bemused and happy and he was ridiculously pleased with himself for putting that look on her face. In fact, he would have been pretty happy if she always looked like that, just recently kissed.

Which brought his mind around to a rather important point: what now?

"Does this mean that we're-?" Together, he meant to finish, but he didn't want to assume to much. Assuming things was what had gotten him into such a mess with her on Ember Island and he wasn't about to make that mistake again. "I... um... well, what does this mean?" he finished lamely.

She smiled at his fumbling, but didn't laugh, for which he was grateful. "I'm not sure," she said. "But I know what I'd like it to mean."

"What's that?"

"Aang, would you like to be my boyfriend?" she asked. There was pink in her cheeks again and even though she was still disheveled from her battle the day before she was so pretty he almost couldn't stand it. He almost couldn't wrap his mind around what she had asked him.

Almost.

"Yes," he said quickly, so quickly that she really did laugh this time.

Her laughter was interrupted with a jaw-cracking yawn. "I'm exhausted," she sighed, looking thoroughly put out.

"You need to rest," Aang said sympathetically. Katara had gone through just as much as he had, and if she hadn't slept... well, he was amazed she'd even had the energy left to heal him!

She nodded reluctantly. "I guess," she said. "I suppose that means I should-" She gestured vaguely at the door, an unconscious pout on her face.

It dawned on him that she didn't really want to leave. It took him only a moment to decide that he really didn't want her to leave, either. "Come here," he said. He swung his legs back onto the bed and scooted over to make room for her. Katara only hesitated a moment before taking over the space he had vacated. They both laid down and Aang pulled the covers up over them both.

To his astonishment, she closed the gap between their bodies and snuggled up close against his side. Her head rested on his shoulder and he could smell the odd combination of battle-smoke and the flowery soap she used to wash her hair as she settled in against him. He wrapped one arm around her, currently having a hard time believing that this was real and not just an especially vivid dream. She yawned widely again.

"You'll have to tell me all about what happened with Ozai tomorrow," she said. "Sokka told me all about what he saw, but... well..."

"Sokka," Aang finished for her.

She giggled, and with her pressed so close to him, he felt it resonate right through his chest. "Yes," she said, as he closed his eyes in bliss.

"I'll tell you everything," he promised her.

He felt her nod. "Love you," she murmured sleepily, and it just about made his heart stop. He wouldn't ever get tired of hearing that, not even if he lived another hundred years!

"I love you, too," he whispered softly, unable to resist kissing her forehead.

Even as close to sleep as she was, Katara smiled.

Maybe he should have walked her back to her room for the night, or offered to sleep on the chair that occupied the corner of the room. Maybe he should have done a lot of things besides curling up with his girlfriend (his girlfriend!) to get a few more hours sleep in her arms, but Aang did not particularly care. There would be plenty of time tomorrow to worry about protocol and politics and extremely tall, possibly protective Water Tribe fathers.

At that moment, Aang was exactly where he wanted to be.