[June 26th] [Avatar: The Last Airbender] [Regret]

[echoinautumn.livejournal.com]

Title: Regret
Day/Theme: June 26 - The past is another land
Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Character/Pairing: Aang-centric; Aang/Katara
Rating: 10+

 “The past is another land.”

 The wind is sharp and biting as it rushes around him, the hair which has grown over the last few months is finally long enough to be caught up in the gales he produces as he freefalls toward the slick rocks, barely catching himself in time by bending an updraft to propel himself away from their jagged promises of a quick, albeit painful, end. He has been telling himself for years that regret won’t change things now—that things are as they are and he must accept them and try to move on. He rockets over the churning waters with careless abandon of his personal safety, twisting and turning over and between storm-swollen waves. A deep part of him tugs at his soul, urging him to be safe. He is the Avatar, and he mustn’t be so foolish as to walk the shaky line of life and death without concern as to which way he sways.

The stubble from forgetting to shave for several days further ages him, though it has only been six years since he finally defeated the Fire Lord with a naïve ignorance of the duties which would consume the rest of his life. Perhaps he had thought that he would finally be normal again after the Fire Lord was gone, but when Fire Lord Ozai was replaced by Fire Lord Zuko, chaos broke out across the world. The Earth Kingdom demanded war reparations. The Water Tribes demanded full access to Fire Nation records—to hold war trials against Fire Nation commanders and soldiers who hadn’t really had much to do with the orders they had been given. Aang had been forced to spend the last half-decade sorting out the diplomatic problems Zuko faced as Fire Lord. Katara and Sokka had returned to the South Pole to rebuild and negotiate the interests of the Water Tribes with Aang’s assurances that he would visit. The intimately private farewell he had given to Katara had been full of promises he didn’t think would become empty at the time.

Before he had been able to realize otherwise, though, he hadn’t seen Katara in a month, a season, a year. When the news travelled his way finally, two and a half years after the end of their travels together, he discovered that Katara was not only being courted by a Water Tribe warrior but already promised to him. Aang had dropped everything to find her, but their reunion had been curt and thick with uncomfortable silences; the result of his shattered promises. It was then that he knew had lost her heart and left the next morning at sunrise with another promise that he would return, but this time for her wedding.

When lightning strikes the water near him, he curves up to the sky as though daring the heavens to take him. His eyes close and swerves back toward the cliff, pushing the painful memories back into the past in which they belong. When he lands, it is on the wall of Zuko’s palace and everyone pretends not to notice the Avatar as he reenters the palace—and his new world—with false composure.