31_days | [June 29th] [Avatar: The Last Airbender] [Selfish]

Title: Selfish
Day/Theme: June 27 - For once, I didn't disengage
Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Character/Pairing: Katara (Aang/Katara)
Rating: G/PG
Note: This story is a companion to my post for the 26th of this month ("The past is another land"). It is Katara's point of view of the same situation described from Aang's side in the companion. Though I hadn't originally planned it this way, there will be three stories in this set (this is 2/3), and the last one will be posted tomorrow ("A little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now").

“For once, I didn't disengage.”

The man she was marrying was kind, brave, gentle, thoughtful, honest, and everything she could have ever wanted in a husband and lifelong companion. He fought in the war against the Fire Nation, gave her whatever she wanted, knew what she wanted, and never failed to make her smile when she was sad, give her sound advice when she needed it, or peaceably coexist with her in good times and bad. He had only a single failing which he could never change, regardless of how he tried.

He wasn’t Aang.

Katara knew it was a foolish, even selfish, sentiment, to be holding onto Aang, and to even hold it against him that he had needed to spend the last few years sacrificing his life to the reconstruction of a world which wasn’t really even his. It did not, however, keep her from wishing he would just come and reason with her father, who had insisted that it was time for her to marry. She liked the man well enough to accept his courtship, and then the eventual proposal of marriage; liked him well enough to get to know his family, to be affectionate, kind, and genuine. She just didn’t love him like she loved Aang, and knew in her heart that much could not, and would not, ever change.

Aang finally kept his word and returned, a futile effort to change what Katara had finally submitted herself to. The moment he had seen her, spoken with her, she had felt him surrender any claim he had hoped to have on her heart, and she did nothing to encourage him again. He promised to return again for the wedding, and left her with the rising sun and a falling heart.

He still loved her, just as she still loved him. She wouldn’t give up on that love, as long as she lived, but she wouldn’t—couldn’t—be with him. Not with the promise of marriage binding her to a man who had once served under Aang; had gone to prison for his Avatar. Her Avatar. The one he would never be.

She knew it was unfair all around, but she didn’t change things for the sake of a futile effort of the heart. Aang would still spend the rest of his life rebuilding the world and the harmony of the world’s remaining three nations. The Water Tribe still needed her to teach young waterbenders and maintain the precarious balance which had finally been achieved. They were not meant to be together, no matter how fervently they had hoped when they were young, idealistic, and endlessly in love.

That love hadn’t faded, merely failed to overcome their separate fates. Katara’s idealism of love had been forever crushed, revealing the true, lackluster nature of love. Simply because she loved Aang, and he loved her, didn’t mean they could shirk duties and ignore the call of their destiny. She needed someone who could stand with her, provide for her as she fulfilled her duty to her people, and be her strength; a vessel which could contain all of her. He needed someone who could stay with him as he flitted through this foreign world, bend with the wanderlust which was a part of his nature, and be his conscience; a leaf on the breezes of his whimsy. Aang could not give her the stability her nature yearned for, and she could not give him the freedoms his deepest soul wished for. The incompatibility between the two of them would keep them apart in lieu of those with whom they were better suited.

But Katara would never return Aang’s heart to him, and could never ask him for hers.