A/N: I have not published anything on this site in 3 years! Now, I return to the scene with an Avatar fanfic. I do not own Avatar.

Kataang. My retelling of the end of Sozin's Comet.

Aang knew life.

He knew how the mangoes grew from tiny seeds into great, bountiful trees.

He watched rivulets become streams become lakes, and empty into rivers empty into oceans.

He knew how baby bison grew to be big and strong and proud, like Appa. He knew where they came from, and what happened when they could no longer fly.

He knew how a child came into the world, kicking and screaming.

He had unlocked his chakras and felt the freeing force of chi flow through his core; he had felt the release of fear, grief and shame.

Inside him, the elements taught him more of life's wonders: air taught him creativity and flexibility, water taught him grace and of energy's flow, earth rigidity and substance, and fire, drive and intensity.

Aang considered himself alive in most of the ways that counted, except one.

Katara was confused, and without her, he was not alive. She, for whom he had fought Fire Lord Ozai, looked at him and blushed. She, the first face he had seen in a hundred years of icy imprisonment, had let him kiss her. She took care of him, and missed him when he left. But she was confused.

Aang attended the mandatory meetings. He listened attentively, or at least, pretended to, while entertaining Momo with balls of air and string beads at his feet. He showed his face in every corner of the Fire Nation, spreading hope and detaining rebels with Zuko, before heading to Ba Sing Se. But Katara spent her time healing the wounded and the ill, and he had not seen her since Zuko's coronation. And she was still confused. And that hurt him more than anything Ozai had done to him, because he loved her more than the whole wide world.