Disclaimer: Avatar: The Last Airbender, its characters and universe belong to Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko and Nickelodeon. I'm only a fan, writing this for love of this TV show and personal pleasure.

Summary: There was an easy and simple solution to Aang's sleep deprivation predicament, and Toph is the one to point it out to Katara. Set in Nightmares and Daydreams.

A.N.: I just marathon rewatched ATLA (a few times━that's what I get for having almost no social life and a Netflix account) and I've been plagued by a couple of story ideas. As entertaining as Nightmares and Daydreams was, I couldn't help but think up a little twist in the episode in how they finally got Aang to fall asleep.

The Easy and Simple Solution

Katara sighed heavily. The whole point of getting to the rendezvous point early on was so that they wouldn't have to worry about being late for the invasion. It had seemed they'd lived endless days of journeying across the Fire Nation while following Sokka's relentlessly annoying schedule and that had actually paid off, so now all that was left for them to do was make last minute preparations and concentrate on their plan of attack.

Unfortunately all the scheduling and preparing hadn't accounted for Aang getting so bent out of shape as the invasion day loomed ever closer to them. While they'd been travelling and training things hadn't seemed so immediate, but now that they were actually there the Airbender was acutely aware of how fast they were approaching zero hour. The invasion was tomorrow and Aang had been awake for the better part of the last three days. He'd been behaving rather erratically for a few hours now and as night fell his friends were once again trying to come up with a solution for this.

Or rather, Toph and Sokka turned desperately to Katara as their last hope to end all the craziness.

"Katara, will you do something about this?" The Earthbender prodigy was normally already on the short fuse side, so this ongoing situation with Aang's insomnia and anxiety skyrocketing was really grating on her nerves, as she would inadvertently pick up on his pacing and pounding heart by her seismic perception.

"Me?" Katara said, her blue eyes widening a little in surprise. "I mean, I'd love to help, but why is this suddenly my responsibility?"

"Come on, Katara," Sokka interjected to her protesting, an almost sly smile on the corner of his mouth as he pointed a finger at her. "We all know you're the person for the job here. You're the best and the expert on all matters Aangst."

"Aangst?" Katara's wide blue eyes turned to him, one of her eyebrows rising in confusion. For a moment she wondered if Aang's craziness was rubbing off on her brother a little.

"You know, when Aang goes all dark and upset and filled with angst," Sokka explained, his teeth showing and his whole face glowing in that characteristic expression they all knew so well when he was about to pull off a particularly bad pun. "Aangst, get it?"

Toph and Katara couldn't help the urge to groan at this, but the younger girl soon ignored it and carried on. "As terrible as Sokka's pun was, he's still right," she rounded on Katara, hands on her hips and an undisguised look of irritation on her face. "And if we're not able to rest, we'll all be useless for the invasion!"

"I know, but I don't know what else I could do," the Water Tribe girl said, with something of a helpless shrug─more out of force of habit and for Sokka's benefit, as Toph wouldn't be able to see the gesture anyway. "I tried helping with yoga and meditation and that didn't work."

"There's an easy and simple solution to all this, and I can't believe you haven't thought of it yourself," Toph replied as she huffed rather impatiently.

"What are you talking about?" Katara asked, quite perplexed with her words.

"Yeah, what are you talking about?" Sokka questioned, his brows furrowing now. He was the idea guy; how was there something so easy for them to do about this that he hadn't been able to see?

"You have healing powers," Toph continued in the same exasperated tone as before as she pointed an accusing finger at the older girl, and Sokka's eyebrows cleared of their frown. "Just bend some water magic into that crazy brain of his and get him to shut down for a while so that we can all get some sleep!" She punctuated the last word with a stomp on the ground, shaking a nearby tree, upsetting Appa who roared in protest and also rattling Momo, who chirped protestingly as he flew over their heads.

"Huh," Katara said, one finger poised delicately against her chin as she looked up thoughtfully for a moment. "That might actually work."

"If it doesn't, I might have to kill him and that would really put a damper on Sokka's invasion plan and the whole defeating the Fire Lord thing," Toph grumbled sarcastically.

"Well, if anyone can do this it's you, Katara," her brother weighed in, half crossing his arms and rubbing thoughtfully at his chin with one hand. "All kidding aside now, of the three of us, you're the one who's always been able to get Aang out of the Avatar state and back from the ledge, so really you're our only hope now that he's managed to worry himself into this crazy state."

"Okay, I'll do my best," Katara said with a tentative smile.

She turned around, leaving the two of them and walking over to where the subject of their discussion was pacing restlessly by the cliff, wearing a path on the grass with the circles he'd trace with his feet.

"Aang?" She said quietly as she approached him and watched the boy start violently as he only noticed her presence when she was almost upon him. "I think there's something I could do to help you relax and get some sleep."

"Ugh Katara," Aang groaned at this, running a hand wearily over his face. "I told you, I can't sleep! The invasion is tomorrow. I don't need sleep, I need to practice."

"If you don't sleep, you won't be functioning tomorrow," she said, frowning concernedly at him. "Come on, we have to at least try something."

"But every time I try to sleep, I get these horrible nightmares and I wake up worse than before," Aang resumed his pacing around, running his hands through his hair in a frustrated gesture. "How is that supposed to help me?"

"Hey! If you two dunderheads are going to keep chattering away instead of sleeping would you at least go somewhere else so that some of us can actually get some shuteye?!" Toph shouted at them from her spot on the ground nearby, as she laid down for the night.

Katara glanced over and realized they really were too close to their friends━though Sokka didn't have any problem falling asleep as soon as he flopped down on his sleeping mat, judging by the way he had his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open as he softly snored away. But then again, Sokka never had any issues falling asleep.

"Come on," Katara sighed quietly and grabbed Aang's hand, leading him out to another part of their camp. Dealing with a crazy anxious Aang was already hard enough, she didn't want to deal with a cranky sleep-deprived Toph on top of all that so it was best if she did as asked and took them away from there.

When she thought they were at a safe distance from the others, she unceremoniously flopped Aang down on the ground by forcing her hands down on his shoulders until he came to a sitting position.

"I think I may be able to help you with some water-healing," Katara then explained to him as she kneeled down before him.

"What?" Aang quirked an eyebrow up at this. "How? Water-healing is supposed to be used when someone is injured. I'm not injured! I'm the perfect picture of health!" His twitching eye and rapid heartbeat would be indicators to the contrary, but then he wasn't exactly rational at the moment.

"You're not injured, but all this stress and sleep deprivation can't be any good for your body," Katara frowned softly at him. She hadn't anticipated Aang arguing so strongly against this idea. She'd thought he'd be relieved that they had thought up something that could help.

"You don't get it," Aang groaned once more. "I'm not prepared for the invasion! I need to train more or I won't be able to face Ozai!"

Katara sighed softly to herself. They really wouldn't get anywhere if she kept arguing with Aang about this, and clearly he was in no state to listen to reason. Deciding to stop talking and take some action already, she swiftly opened her water pouch and bent some water out to her hands. As they glowed the familiar blue, she put each hand on either side of Aang's head and looked deeply into his eyes as she let her water healing take over.

"Aang, listen to me," she said with a small encouraging smile as his face cleared of the worried frown and he just looked back at her. "You are ready. I have seen your progress and how much you've trained for this, ever since the first day we met. I know you can do this, and so does everyone else."

"You really think so?" He asked with still some uncertainty in his voice, though he seemed somewhat reassured by her words.

"I do," she nodded back at him, still working on her water-healing and smiling at him. "You're smart, brave and strong enough. You've always been one of the most powerful benders I've ever met and now you need to believe in yourself like I do. And you won't be alone, we'll do this together."

Aang smiled faintly back at her. "Thanks, Katara." His stormy grey eyes started to drift closed. "I really needed to hear this."

"You don't need to thank me. I'll always be here to help you," she said softly, moving her hands down from his head to his shoulders, still working on her healing and feeling some of the tension leave his fatigued frame.

As Katara concentrated on working on his muscles and taking the bad energy away from his body, she didn't realize Aang was actually falling asleep until he started to fall forward into her arms, his forehead leaning on her shoulder and his own arms automatically wrapping around her waist. Her kneeling position on the ground hadn't accounted for this sudden shift of weight on top of her and she gasped in surprise, the water losing the blue healing hue and dropping from her hands as she fell on her back, the two of them suddenly laying on the ground in each other's arms.

"Aang?" Katara said as she peered down into his face, but for the first since they'd gotten there he seemed so calm and peaceful that she was loathe to wake him.

"Humm," he murmured in unintelligible reply, his arms actually encircling her form closer to his chest as he sighed in his sleep.

Katara was glad the plan had worked and she'd managed to get Aang to fall into what seemed to be a peaceful sleep, but now she found herself in a bit of a predicament. How was she supposed to disentangle herself from him without waking him up? Sighing, she closed her eyes and realized just how tired she felt. She hadn't noticed that this tense situation with Aang's craziness had been wearing her down, but as she allowed herself a moment to relax now as well she could feel her muscles protesting a little.

She wasn't used to sleeping on the ground like Toph or Aang, but the more she stayed there in his arms, she was surprised to find that the warmer and more comfortable she felt. She was surrounded by him, all of her senses suddenly drowning in something she could only describe as simply Aang, and she felt herself being soothed by his mere presence and ignoring everything else in her surroundings. Privately she wondered if this was an Airbender thing, an Air nomad monk thing, an Avatar thing or then just simply an Aang thing. She suspected it was the latter.

Katara inhaled in his scent, running a hand lightly through his hair. No doubt he would be shaving it back to his characteristic bald 'do tomorrow. While it would be great that he'd be able to display his arrow proudly once more, she had to admit she was going to miss his hair.

He sighed contentedly as she kept stroking his hair softly, one of his hands gripping at her waist almost possessively, yet not without tenderness. Feeling she was also quickly falling prey to Morpheus's spell, she decided to just let go, follow his lead and sleep right there where they were.

"Good night, Aang," she whispered, kissing him lightly on the cheek and then pressing their foreheads together as she snuggled up into his arms.

"G'night," he murmured back in his sleep. Katara was almost drifting off herself when she heard him whisper, "I love you."

If she'd been fully awake, she might've wondered at the significance of those three little words spoken at that moment and what it would mean for the two of them. As sleep overtook her as they laid in each other's arms, his declaration of love for her felt just right and nothing out of the ordinary, even if she felt her own heart beating a little faster at the words and a smile formed on her lips before she also succumbed and drifted off to dream land.