A/N: Post-war Kataang oneshot, set before The Promise (borne out of wondering about the first time Katara and Aang rose his glider together, as in the comic).

Katara wasn't sure why she'd woken up.

She could usually sleep through the night without interruption, but now she was inexplicably awake, staring at the ornate ceiling of a guest bedroom in the Fire Nation's royal palace.

Katara tossed and turned for several minutes in an attempt to fall back asleep, to no avail. Sighing in defeat, she threw the soft comforter off of her and sat up, scratching irritably at her scalp.

Might as well get a glass of water.

Katara stood, grabbing a silken red robe that lay draped over a gilded armchair and putting it on over her nightdress, tying the golden sash tightly around her waist.

Perhaps it was the grandiosity of the Fire Nation's royal city that was unsettling her. The group had only stayed here one other time—in the days immediately following Ozai's defeat—and then, they were much too exhausted by the fight and the prospect of the war finally being over to care much about their accommodations. Now, they were several months into the Harmony Restoration Movement, and had stopped at the Fire Nation for a few days to discuss how the relocation of the colonies was progressing.

Everything in the royal city seemed so self-indulgent, from the architecture to the food. Katara had thought Ba Sing Se's upper ring was bad—but then she discovered that most of the Fire Nation royals refused to sully their shoes by walking on the pavement, instead insisting to be carried around in palanquins. The very thought brought bile up in her throat—people of the Fire Nation lived hedonistically while her tribe struggled and scraped for years just to feed its small number of members. Zuko insisted that things were changing, but that it had to be done slowly so as to not upset the populace.

Katara shook her head in an attempt to banish the negative thoughts as she left the bedroom and walked down the dim, torch-lit hallway of the palace's guest wing. Forgiveness was a much harder thing than a certain "wise" airbender made it seem. The many years of terror and rage that she felt at any mention of the Fire Nation seemed as though they had manifested into an insurmountable wall, and she wasn't sure she could ever fully overcome those emotions. But she was trying—and Uncle Iroh and Zuko were living proof that good people were to be found anywhere.

She was so lost in thought that she nearly walked by Aang's room without noticing his door was ajar. She walked up to the doorway, peering into the dark shadows of the room, and the empty, tousled bedsheets were proof that she wasn't the only person having trouble sleeping.

Curious, the goal of water forgotten, Katara continued to walk while keeping an eye out for where the missing Avatar could have gone. After some time, she came across a door that led to the large balcony that wrapped around the rear side of the palace. Taking a chance, she opened the door and peered around in the dark night.

Sure enough, she saw the shadowy silhouette of said Avatar, sitting motionless a ways down on the balcony. It was hard to tell from the distance she was at, but he appeared to be meditating. Katara briefly considered not disturbing him, but something about the way he was sitting urged her to draw nearer.

She approached Aang quietly, doing her best to emulate an airbender with light steps, although she knew he'd hear her anyway. He stayed completely still as she finally reached his side—he was seated with his legs crossed, as he usually did while meditating, but the position of his hands was unfamiliar to her. He held his right hand over his heart, his index finger and thumb touching loosely while the other hand rested over his knee. His posture was hunched, his face neither a picture of calm serenity nor concentration—rather, it was drawn, with his eyes screwed shut and his brows furrowed.

Katara sat next to him, folding her legs in a mirror image of Aang's, her knee centimeters from his. Her hands fell loosely in her lap as she tilted her head up, looking up to the clear, starry sky. The night was warm, but a mild wind was blowing, ruffling the sleeves of her robe and her loose hair around her.

They sat that way together for a while, neither of them speaking or moving. After some time, Aang's hand dropped and he looked up at the sky with her.

"Hi, Katara."

His voice was low and withdrawn, so unlike his usual lighthearted tone. Katara looked at her boyfriend sadly, placing a hand gently on his bare back.

"Aang, what's wrong?"

His eyes met hers, and his were endless pools of unfathomable emotion. In the distance, there was the crowing of a messenger hawk.

"It was a year ago today," he said quietly, "that you found me in the iceberg."

She hadn't even realized. They'd been so busy helping move the colonies that keeping track of the days was more of a chore than anything else. Katara didn't immediately know where he was going with his statement, so she remained silent, her hand rubbing slow circles on his back.

"In a way, that was one of the best days of my life. I met Sokka, and you," he attempted a small, sad smile, "but that was also the day I lost everything. Everyone passed a long time before then, but…that was the day it became real for me."

Of course. Aang had gone about the entire day as a beacon of light and optimism as usual, and even as well as Katara knew him, she hadn't noticed that anything was awry. But then again, few people could conceal their grief as well as Aang.

"I was okay, I think, for most of the day, but…" Aang trailed off, his voice catching on the last word and head hanging, tattooed hands clutching at his knees desperately.

In that moment, Katara felt the weight of every one of his one hundred thirteen years. She knew grief—remembered its cruel, heart-wrenching grip on her young heart as she sobbed into the furs on her parents' bed, inhaling her mother's scent deeply before it faded into the crisp smell of the ice. She remembered the day her father left the village—remembered furiously bending large chunks of snow at the Fire Nation ship wreckage outside her village, tears freezing on her face as she yelled and yelled until Sokka finally found her. She remembered white-hot anger as she stared down her mother's assailant, remembered the chill of rain on her face before she froze it to a standstill and nearly sullied her hands with murder.

She would always remember.

She could only imagine how heavy that sorrow would be if it were multiplied exponentially and encompassed everyone she'd ever known and loved. If it were Katara in Aang's place, it surely would have destroyed her long before now. And although she was here with him now, her hand on the unusually cool skin of his back, it felt as though she was a million miles away, unable to penetrate the depths of his loss.

It was a sick irony that he had to spend this day amongst the descendants of they who took everything from him.

But even as Katara looked at him now, wishing she knew the right words to say but knowing that none would ever be enough, she knew that he held no animosity toward the people of the Fire Nation. Aang, whose heart was full to the brim with compassion and selflessness, had no capacity for such enmity. She hoped she could be more like him one day.

Aang's head had tilted toward the night sky, his expression wistful, his eyes glassy with unshed tears.

"The Air Nomads had a lot of lore about stars," Aang said slowly, voice a little more than a whisper. "It was said that the first airbenders could achieve a spiritual enlightenment so great that they could surpass even the Spirit World, and instead became lights in the sky, to guide future Air Nomads on their travels when the world went dark at night."

It went quiet for a moment as Aang sniffled, dragging his arm across his eyes.

"When I was younger, before all of the Avatar stuff, I had a good friend at the Southern Air Temple—his name was Pasang. He was a little older than me, so he helped me work on my forms outside of my actual training. I guess you could say he was like a big brother to me."

"One night, we were just laying outside the Air Temple, looking up at the stars and giving them names. Do you see that one there, the really bright one?" Aang asked, pointing upwards in a general direction. Katara simply nodded, fearing that if she spoke she might ruin the moment.

"We named that one Tenzin." Aang smiled a little at that. Katara did too, shifting a little closer to Aang and laying her head on his shoulder. She reached for Aang's hand, interlacing her fingers with his and giving it an encouraging squeeze to continue.

"Anyway, that night I had an idea. We were airbenders, so why not just fly up into the sky with the stars and try to touch them, to become like the old airbenders? We would be the most enlightened Air Nomads around!" Aang chuckled sadly. "Pasang thought it was a great idea, even though I eventually figured out that he was just humoring me."

"So, on nights like this, when the sky was clear and we had nothing else to do, we would fly up toward the stars together. We would fly higher and higher, until the air became freezing cold and it was getting hard to breathe. Then we'd dive back to the ground, laughing and swearing that we would get higher next time."

The wind picked up, toying with Katara's hair. She heard the words that he left unspoken at the end of his story: I miss them. I miss all of them, every day.

"Sometimes, just being out in the wind helps," Aang said, almost to himself, as if he were tentatively sharing a dark secret. "If I'm quiet enough…I feel like I can almost hear their voices on the breeze."

The chirruping of the cricket-cicadas became audible as Aang fell silent again. Katara lifted her head to look at him, and if it were any darker she would have missed the drying trails of tears on his face. The space around her heart tightened, and in that moment she would have given anything and everything to recover everything that was taken from him—just to see his easy laugh, to feel his infectious joy.

Struck with an idea, Katara stood up suddenly. "I'll be right back," she promised in response to Aang's look of confusion, and walked back into the palace hallway. The torches helped guide her to her destination—Aang's room.

After a minute or two of stumbling around in the darkened room, cursing her inability to light her way with firebending, she found what she was looking for and returned to the balcony. Aang, again, sat with his eyes closed, but this time his arms lay relaxed on his knees and his head was still tilted toward the sky.

Katara looked at the staff in her hand, trying to decide what to say—and instead simply stamped the staff smartly on the floor of the stone balcony, the blue sails opening up with a sharp snap.

Aang jumped at the familiar sound, looking slowly from the staff back to Katara, his face adorably puzzled.

"I could never, ever hope to fill the space left by everyone that you've lost," Katara began, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. "I can't even imagine what it must be like to lose your entire world all at once, and to be the only piece of it left."

The wind gained more strength, whipping her silk robe around her as she spoke. "But I told you once that we're your family now—and I mean that, for the rest of our lives, and even hopefully in our next."

Katara stood straighter and looked directly at Aang. "I'll fly to the stars with you."

His eyes shone in the darkness, and all at once, the wind stilled. In one moment, she was clutching Aang's staff in her hand, staring back at him, willing him to feel the strength of her love for him—and in the next, she was being enveloped in a bone-crushing hug, the staff clattering to the ground in her surprise.

He's getting so tall, she thought, letting her tears flow freely as she returned his embrace. Where his head once rested against her shoulder, it now rested atop it, at the same level as her own.

"Yeah," Aang said, voice thick with emotion, laughing even as he cried. "Let's do it."

They stayed like that for a while, until Aang's grip loosened and his sniffling ceased. He pulled back, wiping at his eyes again and shaking his head a few times. Katara rubbed his shoulders sympathetically, and he offered her a watery smile in return.

"So, how are we going to do this?" Katara asked as she released him and picked up the open glider. "Wait—will I be too heavy for you to fly both of us?" she asked with sudden concern, brows furrowed as she straightened up.

Aang raised an eyebrow, amused at the fact that she'd clearly forgotten how often he carried people to safety on his staff. "No, Katara. You won't be too heavy," he replied, voice still a little scratchy.

Katara blushed sheepishly in response, looking away and mumbling, "just making sure" under her breath. When she looked back at Aang, he was smiling—genuinely this time, looking at her like she was the only other person in the world.

"I'm so lucky that I met you," he said, in that way that he said such things and left her speechless. Katara leaned over and touched his forehead with hers briefly, wishing she could articulate everything that he meant to her.

Aang wrapped his hand on the handhold and placed one foot on a rung. "How about you stand on that rung and I stand on this one?" he suggested, pointing to the foot rung closest to her as he held up the other side of the glider. "It'll be a little unstable, so, uh…we'll probably have to hold on to each other…if that's okay." Aang rubbed the back of his neck bashfully. Despite having been in a relationship for a few months now, he still sometimes became that young twelve-year-old boy again at the prospect of intimate physical contact with her.

Katara, feeling bold, responded simply by stepping up on the rung, grabbing the handhold, and wrapping an arm around Aang's waist. He jumped, almost imperceptibly, but otherwise didn't react—obviously trying to play it cool—and placed his own arm on her waist.

"Ready?" he asked.

"I'm ready, sweetie."

The grin that split Aang's face at her new use of the team of endearment could have melted even Ozai's heart. "Okay, then. One, two…" and they shot straight up in the air before he reached three. Katara shrieked his name in surprise and he just laughed, doing loops and twirls on the way up until she was laughing in delight with him.

In that moment, spinning and spiraling toward the stars, they weren't the last airbender and the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. They weren't the Avatar and the daughter of a chief, and they weren't the kids who ended a hundred year war. They were just Katara and Aang.