#kataang week 2020

[justoceanmyth]

sorry if this is too personal but i noticed quite a few of ur atla fics are labeled as mystery works and are not able to be read?? if i may ask, what happened??

Hi there! No worries, it's not super personal at all - mainly I'm just tired of the atla fandom at-large, and feeling burned out on it. I split my reply into two sections, so that you can see the reasoning, if that's what you're interested in, or you can see how I did it (as it's a method I recommend as a third option that's neither deleting a work on ao3 nor orphaning it). Why: The latest stuff with kataang week has just solidified my feeling burnt out and alienated from the atla fandom at large. With the live action, and the influx of fans, it feels like the fandom is spinning its wheels in the same attitudes I saw in 2020 - ship wars, accusative toxicity of the "I saw Goody Proctor with the devil!" type, and a general lack of maturity in the responses and discussion of the canon. The actions surrounding the kataang week drama have been filled with bad-faith unwillingness to accept responsibility for actions which have resulted in a ton of harassment, and accusations of gatekeeping flying around, so I wanted to create some distance for myself. It's not an environment I want to engage with any longer. At the same time however, I was already considering this move to just allow myself a fresh-er start in writing other things that I feel passionate about. While I know you're asking from a genuine place, I want it out there in writing that the latest events were just the straw that broke the camel's back on a move that I've been considering for a while. How: Now, the works are mystery and unable to be read because they've been put in a collection type that's typically used for exchanges - the label is "unrevealed" and it's in collection settings, along with the little box that marks the works in the collection as anonymous (which hides the works from your works list on your profile but not your stats page). I didn't want to delete my works, since this is just about me wanting to be distanced from the fandom for a while, and I didn't want to orphan anything either, since I still like a lot of what I've written for the fandom. I didn't hide (I'm pretty sure), any works that I wrote with the intent of being a gift for someone else, or anything f/f that I wrote. Doing it this way prevented it from breaking any bookmarks (though they obviously show up at the moment as "mystery work by anon"), and assuming the site doesn't glitch, that will be restored when I take the works out of the collection. In the time before that happens, if you, or anyone else wants to read a particular work - shoot me a dm or ask off anon and I'll either pull it out of the collection for a little while, or I'd be happy to directly send a copy of the downloaded fic. I don't want to "punish" or upset anyone who enjoys my work, but I need a little space at the moment.

[the-power-of-stuff]

Happy New Year!! I’m come bearing fic!

Those of you who’ve been following me a while know that I’ve been working on a fic for the past 2+ years called “the words to keep you” which was originally meant for the Sukka Week 2020 prompt “Marry Me.” Well, I set a goal of finishing that fic by the end of this year, and friends, IT IS WRITTEN! 

It’s still being beta read right now but I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on the first chapter already, so I thought publishing it would be a fun way to ring in the new year. 🥳🥂

So, without further ado...

the words to keep you

Chapter: 1/12

Rating: M (for mild sexual content in just a couple chapters; chapter 1 is rated T for some light references to alcohol and sexual humor)

Genre: Romance 

Relationship: Sukka, plus some minor Kataang and Maiko

Summary: It's been five years since Sokka and Suki's fraught breakup. They haven't seen each other since then, but when Aang and Katara get married, the wedding provides the perfect venue for a long-awaited reunion. It doesn't take long for old feelings to rekindle, except reconciling isn't quite as simple as it may at first seem, and now Sokka and Suki have to figure out if it's even possible to find their way back to each other.

-------

The bedroom doors slammed open with a crash, and Sokka hurled himself upright, yelping and grabbing for a weapon that wasn’t there.

“No more sleeping, it’s wedding time!” Aang’s cheerful voice cried, reverberating endlessly off the walls and directly into Sokka’s brain. Aang swept through the room on his air scooter, whipping the sheets around in his wake, before zooming back out into the hallway with a triumphant cackle.

Sokka buried his head in both hands, attempting to chase away the sudden pounding in his brain. Perhaps that fifth glass of cactus soju last night had been a poor decision after all.

“Ngh!” Sokka grumbled incoherently, throwing himself back onto his pillows. Judging by the pale pink light now emblazoning its way into Sokka’s eye sockets, it couldn’t be much later than sunrise. There was absolutely no need for him to be conscious yet.

He’d just pulled the sheets back over his face when he heard the distinctive pounding of a particularly broody pair of feet.

“Sokka!” came Zuko’s sharp command. “Wake up, it’s time to get ready.”

“Look, it’s barely daylight outside. We’ve got, what, seven hours? At least? You’ve gotta let a guy get his beauty rest!”

Suddenly the sheets were gone, and Zuko was glaring down at Sokka from the side of the bed. His red-rimmed eyes seemed to say, “If I have to be awake right now, then so do you, and I’m infuriatingly awake right now.” Elsewhere in the house, they could hear Aang’s unrestrained hooting as he doubtless scaled every wall in the house on his windball of torture.

“Ughhhfine!” Sokka sat up. “But you better have some secret Uncle Iroh hangover cure-all tea recipe stored away in that royal braincase of yours.”

“I’m not the one who insisted on playing Extreme Cactus Liar’s Dice Death Match or whatever you called it to prove that you’re a better liar than me.”

“No,” Sokka agreed, shoving past Zuko to get to the bowl of water on the other side of the room. “But you’re the reasonable one who knows better and should have stopped me.” And then he dove face-first into the bowl.

continue on AO3

[rms10]

Wow. That's too bad. I watched the entire show in the 2020 Netflix renaissance blissfully unaware of all the shipping issues around it. It was only after I'd watched the entire show (binged it over 3 weeks) that I engaged with the general fandom, and ran right into a wall of 15 year old leftover (ongoing I suppose) shipping wars with it. It didn't ruin any of it for me, but it really does seem silly and pointless.

Kataang was very obvious from the start and throughout watching it in a modern streaming form. I get how people could ponder the possibilities throughout it's run live in weekly installments, and months between seasons, but watching it straight without any kind of preconceptions and the outcome isn't in doubt.

While I wasn't surprised by various fanon popular ships, it really did come as a complete surprise the amount of unnecessary vitriol around that particular ship. I still don't think I understand why it's there, and why people don't just go enjoy their fanon ships in peace and leave other people alone. I guess I'll never understand it, but I do understand that toxicity in the ATLA fandom chases people out of it, and that's really unfortunate for such a wonderful show.

How my obsession with shipping spoiled Avatar: The Last Airbender for me.

I'm an OG Avatar fan. I watched the show when it first aired in February of 2005. I was 15 years old.

Right away, I knew Aang and Katara were gonna be a thing. It was so obvious, and it only became more obvious as Season 1 went on. More so in Season 2 and Season 3. The show never let you forget about it, as even outside of overtly Kataang-centric episodes like The Fortuneteller and The Cave of Two Lovers, they kept bringing it up in some form or another.

Unfortunately, Zutara was a thing, and they never shut up about it. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they insisted up and down that Zuko and Katara were meant to be together. I was a Zutara shipper for a short time, and I admit that I thought it would be canon too in the weeks leading up to Crossroads of Destiny. After the Season 2 finale, I went with the flow, and sided with Kataang... and that's where the problems began to really start.

You see, the Zutara fandom got really toxic right after Season 2 ended. Kataang fans like myself didn't appreciate it, and before I knew it... watching Avatar: The Last Airbender was no longer about just enjoying the show. It was about winning. Just so we could gloat when Zutara inevitably lost.

I could no longer just watch the show and relax. I was on the edge of my seat during each episode, keeping a sharp eye out for the slightest hint of Kataang, and spent the weeks between each episode arguing with strangers online about shipping, trying to convince a brick wall that it was not made of steel... if you will indulge me the metaphor.

In short, shipping wars sucked all the joy of watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. By engaging in shipping wars with rabid Zutarians, I kind of ruined the show for myself. Not entirely my fault, because the Zutara fans back then were easily-triggered bullies who just would not stop, which made it hard to ignore them... but nonetheless, I feel like all of us should've ignored them. Their ship was never going to be canon, everyone knew it after Crossroads of Destiny. All except for this toxic vocal minority whose enjoyment of the show hinged on whether or not their ship became canon.

Unfortunately, some Kataangers (such as myself) got so upset about it (and so obsessed with it) that our enjoyment of the show also hinged on our ship being canon.

How bad was it? Bad enough that I can no longer call Avatar: The Last Airbender my favorite show of all time. Why? Because the experience of watching it the first time was STRESSFUL. So stressful, in fact, that I usually can't go back and watch it again.

Compare that to other shows I've watched... like Hilda, on Netflix. That was a very relaxing show to watch the first time around, and because of that I feel like I can go back and watch it whenever. But Avatar, sadly, only brings back memories of stress and anxiety... stemming from an unhealthy obsession with something stupid.

P.S. Why the hell did we ever call it "Kataang"? Who is the IDIOT that came up with that name? I always thought that was a stupid name for our ship. Why not "Aangtara" or "Kataraang"?

[theteashopgirl]

Kataang family by @/Getawaystickss on Instagram. Posted here with the artist’s permission. Please reblog, do not repost. 

[lhsketches]

✨ Baby, you’re my forever girl ✨

(Avatar Sideblog: @guccigaang​ )

[kataang-week]

Special thanks to Mod Atarah ( @mindatworkk​ ) for the lovely gifset!

What is Kataang Week?

Kataang Week is when we, as a corner of the fandom, celebrate the ship Kataang! The prompts for Kataang Week 2020 were selected through three rounds of voting over the last few weeks and all prompts were submitted by Tumblr users.

Cool, when is it?

Summer Kataang Week 2020 starts on Monday, July 27th - just under five weeks from today - and ends on Monday, August 3rd.  

How do I participate?

The most common ways to participate are by creating art or writing a fic and posting it online. Some people try and create something for every day while others only fill one or two prompts.  

As always, we want to reassure you that it’s perfectly okay not to do every prompt! We just hope to have lovely pieces to share on each day.

But I can’t draw or write!

That’s totally fine - there are more ways to participate! You can sing a song, create a graphic, write a poem - just about anything really. You can also show your support by reblogging and liking other people’s contributions.

What are the prompts?

The following will be the running order for Kataang Week 2020:

Keeping Warm - Monday July 27th

Soft - Tuesday July 28th

Blood/Wounds - Wednesday July 29th

PDA (Public Displays of Affection) - Thursday July 30th

Heritage/Responsibilities - Friday July 31st

Napping - Saturday August 1st

The Red Thread of Fate - Sunday August 2nd

Free Day - Monday August 3rd

*Due to a four-way tie in the final round of voting, I have paired those prompts instead of further delaying preparation.  As a result, we have Blood & Wounds sharing a day, as well as Heritage & Responsibilities.   You can incorporate one or both prompts for each day. And I am also doing this because I see no advantage to any additional rounds of voting and further delays.

**And as always, there is a Free Day at the end of the week.  You can use this day to post anything you’d like!  It can be a prompt that didn’t receive enough votes or something you’ve been wanting to work on, anything goes!

How should I tag my work?

The easiest way for us to find your work so we can reblog it to this blog is by using the tag “kataang week”. Using “kataang” and “kataangtag” also help. You must tag one of the three in your first five tags otherwise it doesn’t appear in the search.

Sometimes even properly tagged posts may not appear when we search the tags, so if you do not see your content reblogged, please let us know.

Once we’ve reblogged it to this blog we add our own tags (a prompt tag and a user tag) for easy organization.  This means we can find all the work for one prompt or all the work from one user in one easy click (this also means that if you have changed your username since participating last year you need to let us know so we can update your tag!).

Can I post my stuff other places online too?

Of course you can!

Why five weeks?  Is that enough time?

Traditionally, we like to provide our content creators seven weeks (for the seven prompts) to create quality content. Kataang Week is also traditionally held in the last week of July.  

The delays in voting and preparations falls entirely on me (Mod Dan) and I apologize for not having everything ready for the seven week mark.

If you are unable to complete a prompt in time, please do not fret.  You can alert this blog by mentioning it in your post (ex. @kataang-week​ ) or messaging one of the mods and your content will still be shared even if it is a week (or a month - or sometimes more!) late.

We also like to post WIP for Kataang Week and encourage everyone else to do so as well - we reblog it here for motivation!

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, don’t hesitate to send an ask. Don’t forget to reblog this as well to help spread the word!

Good luck, Kataangers, and happy content creating! :) - The Mods

[dumbdraws]

slightly late art for @kataang-week 2020! I figured their wedding would be the best place for a little pda <3

[eevylynn]

Day 4 of Kataang Week 2020 - PDA

[nalalunaart]

Kataang week 2020 days 2 and 4: Soft and Public Display of Affection

Inspired by episode 14 of book 1, “ The Fortuneteller”! I guess sometimes Aang and Katara just felt like shouting their love to the world, and why not do it through bending?

PS: I have never worked on a comic or something as big as this. Any reblogs and likes are appretiated! I trully understand and worship who can do a bunch of these in a consistent style. Seriously guys, you are gods!

PS 2: This can be better seen on Instagram. Pleeease check out, same handle over there!

Please do not repost! Reblog instead!

[dearestpartnerofgreatness]

Kataang Week headcanons pls? Specifically post-war?

Happy Kataang Week! I have written some post-war headcanons for Kataang in the past (can be found here) but am always open to writing more! 

After Katara’s had a looooong day, Aang will patiently detangle her hair for her before bedtime. He’s also quite adept at braiding & doing her hair loopies in the mornings when she’s running late

Katara works very hard to find ways to adjust traditional Water Tribe recipes to be vegetarian-friendly 

When Katara gets a little TOO heated during a diplomacy meeting, Aang knows how to calm her down, defend her position in a way the other side will understand, and/or propose a compromise if necessary

They are THAT couple when it comes to PDA: holding hands, cuddling, forehead/cheek kisses, pet names, etc. 

The day Aang took Katara for a ride on his glider and they somehow were able to kiss mid-flight without crashing into anything sent the press into a frenzy for WEEKS 

Mutual tsking over each other for not eating properly/hydrating/overdoing it on the bending practice--they are both such nurturing souls, they often forget to take care of themselves, so it’s a blessing they have each other 

Katara loves how no matter how old he gets or what important journey they’re on, Aang always finds the time to have fun--footraces down the beach, picking her bunches of wildflowers, instigating snowball fights or games of I Spy

Every year on their anniversary, they go penguin sledding to commemorate their first non-date date 

King Bumi sneakily tricks them into participating in an onstage adaptation of the legend of the Cave of Two Lovers for Omashu’s annual Festival of Remembrance--it’s about halfway through Act II when Sokka finally realizes exactly how they made it out of the cave way back when... 

[kyu-gsoo]

Love heals all wounds

For Kataang Week 2020.

Day 3: Blood/Wounds

Words: 1256 words

Summary: Katara deals with Aang’s wounds and opens up about one of her own.

Author’s note: Not really happy with this because I know I can fine-tune it more, but I’m posting it before I chicken out and lose the momentum of my writing.

Katara doesn’t know why she’s so angry. It’s not like they were new to being ambushed in broad daylight. They’d experienced so many during the war that they'd learned when to expect surprise attacks. 

“How could they even think to attack us? You’d think stopping the war would give them a blaring, red sign not to mess with us.” She’s pulling at her waterpouch, clearly irritated that their journey was interrupted. 

“Katara, they’re the bad guys,” Sokka asserts. “It’s just what they do. And it was kind of fun whooping their asses, come on.” He sets his boomerang carefully on his back, where it belongs. “Almost like old times.”

Truthfully, the perpetrators weren’t too much to handle. Aang and the two Watertribe siblings weren’t strangers to people of the rebellion anyway, since more than a handful still believed that Ozai should have remained the Firelord. But alas, a few knives and smoke bombs were no match for the Avatar, his Waterbending master, and the only male Kyoshi warrior to have existed. Katara guesses she’s just frustrated that they’d have to deal with fighting so early into their trip. She wanted to get back home to the Southern Watertribe as fast as she could, but from where she’s standing, she could still see the smoke from the Fire Nation capital. 

Aang walks up to her right as Sokka starts to gather their belongings that had fallen from Appa’s saddle. “Hey, do we have time? There are some berries here, I’m just gonna go pluck some for Appa.”

“Thanks Sokka,” Aang calls out as the elder makes himself busy. He turns to Katara. “Sweetie, my back’s a little sticky. Can you check—”

But Katara’s hands are already pushing him to lie on the ground before he finishes his sentence. “Don’t try to get up. You’re hurt.”

Her eyes are wide with fear, clearly on red alert as she inspects the blood on his back. He’s hurt, she repeats in her head. He’d been hurt and she hadn’t realized. How could she let that slip past her? She checks for the source of the wound, pulling frantically at his robes, and sighs in relief when she finds a shallow cut at the back of his bicep.

She bends the water from her pouch and immediately gets to work. She thinks about how he could bleed so much from a small cut. It rouses so much sudden fury within her, she gets more and more aggressive in her healing as she thinks about the blood. Aang’s blood.

“Katara?” Aang questions as he rises to a sitting position. He looks so confused. “It’s just a cut.” He sounds like he’s trying to console a child, and she hates it. “Nothing too deep, and not much blood either.”

But that’s the thing. The first time it had happened, there was no blood at all. Just his cold, lifeless body draped in her arms. The blood she sees today only reminds her that he’s human. Fragile. He could so easily slip away from her grasp.

It takes a while, because she has to shake the thought off, but she nods in reply. Even then she doesn’t stop trying to close the wound with her healing. Though it’s hard to focus with her vision blurred.

Aang lifts a hand to her own, closing his fingers around the back of one of her palms. There’s debris on his hands from lying on the ground. Gently, he asks, “Sweetie, why are you crying?”

She flinches as if he’d struck her, stopping her healing at once and letting the water fall between them. Both their clothing is soaked, but that comes secondary to Aang as he watches Katara’s face crumple in a split second. She snatches her hands back and sobs into them, giving into all of her emotions.

Though he doesn’t understand, he brings her into his arms all the same. The tone he uses when he asks her what’s wrong breaks her heart. “You’re only sixteen,” she whimpers pathetically, as if that explains everything.

It doesn’t.

“Yes,” he affirms, but he still can’t make sense of what’s gotten her so shaken. “And you’re barely eighteen.”

Katara gulps. It makes her feel so hollow to have to say what she’s going to say, knowing that he can’t do anything to abate these fears. The almighty Avatar could bring peace and restore balance, defeat the once ruthless Firelord, end the century long war, but cannot wash away the worries of a teenage girl. She knows this without a doubt because her fear is inevitable, and will happen one way or another.

Except this fear feels more like a wound, like she’s punctured a lung. When Azula struck Aang that day, she must have struck some part of Katara, too. Because she feels like she's bleeding all over inside. And she feels this way every time she sees the love of her life hurt in any shape or form.

She looks at him, torn. But she says the words anyway. “I can’t watch you die again. I can’t. It’ll destroy me.”

His eyes soften then, smiling at her. She doesn’t understand how he can feel so at peace in this moment, when she’d just spoken her greatest fear into the world.

Aang pushes her hair out of her face and wipes at her tears. It makes her feel loved, but it doesn’t stop the shaking in her hands in the slightest. “You won’t have to,” he says at long last. 

“How could you possibly say that? You can’t know, Aang, how you’ll—” She can’t even say it. The thought of it, of having to see him cold and still and helpless in her arms yet again makes her want to vomit. 

“I know because you’re Katara, the world’s greatest healer.”

“I’m not—” But he cuts her off before she can finish.

“You’re the only healer to have brought me back from the dead. To have brought back any Avatar from the dead.” He holds both her hands in his. “And you’ll always be by my side to save me. Like you did that day, and today.” He says it so simply, in the way that he always does. “Why would I have to worry?”

He kisses the apple of her left cheek, framing her face in his palms. “What do you have to worry, when you hold these abilities?” She sniffles but it comes out more like a laugh, feeling the anxiety dwindle. “Katara,” Aang starts more resolutely, “We’re not running on borrowed time. Trust me when I say I’ll be staying with you for a long, long time. You couldn’t rid yourself of me if you tried.”

“I love you,” she says, because that’s all she can fathom as the reassurance settles in her calming heart. Perhaps she’d underestimated the mighty Avatar’s abilities. He was capable of chasing her fears away after all.

“I love you, too,” he says, kissing her.

They bask in each other’s embrace, contented, before Aang breaks the silence once again. “And I know you, Sweetie.” She looks up at his gray eyes. “If I even thought about leaving before my time, you’d drag my soul back here from the Spirit world yourself.”

She lets herself laugh then. “Don’t make me do it again.”

“Do what again?” comes Sokka’s voice. He turns to them with a handful of berries and makes a wretched sound, covering his eyes exaggeratedly. “Ugh! Oogies!”

[christykia]

Kataang Week day 2 Soft.

Late coloring and late post XD. My lineart for this one wasn’t that late though. Not to make promises (because I usually don’t keep them :’) ) but I should finish day 4, hopefully sometime soon. Meanwhile if you want to dive back to my art for last year’s Kataang week click here 

[fangirl-screaming]

Kataang Week ~ The Red String of Fate

[koala-otter]

Kataang Week Day 2: Soft

for @kataang-week day 2!

Prompt: Soft Summary: Katara’s got soft hands, Toph pointed out. Yes, it’s her special seaweed lotion, Aang agreed. But wait, how does Aang know about her lotion? Katara asked. Only Toph would find out. Words: 1k+

this will probably be my only submission for kataang week. takes place sometime during book 2!

“You know, Katara and I might fight a lot, but she is good for healing,” Toph said, slapping her newly-unbruised shin. “Her hands are so soft.”

Aang nodded from beside her, where he was waiting for his own turn for healing while Katara gathered more clean water from the stream only a few feet away. “They are. It’s her special seaweed lotion from the Southern Water Tribe.”

“How do you know about my special seaweed lotion?” 

Aang looked up to find Katara watching him, her expression equal parts touched and bemused. 

“I, uh—”

 His mind went blank. Or, scratch that, it was suddenly full, and he was having trouble sorting through thoughts of “a great romance” and “a very powerful bender” to find any semblance of a coherent thought. Over and over, all he could picture was Katara disappearing behind Aunt Wu’s door, and himself eavesdropping as she had her fortune told. It should have been so easy, producing another story. Hadn’t she talked to literally anyone else about her lotion? Anyone where his presence wasn’t a major invasion of Katara’s privacy?

“Twinkletoes? Hello?”

He came back to himself to the sound—and feeling—of Toph knocking on his head with her fist. 

“Ow, Toph,” he said, waving her off. He rubbed the back of his head and looked up to see Katara still watching him curiously. “I guess I must have heard you talking to Sokka about it at some point,” he said with what he hoped was a convincing chuckle. 

Katara smiled at him and shrugged. “Guess so,” she said.

But Sokka wasn’t so ready to move on.

“Are you kidding?” he asked from the bank where he was still trying to catch a fish. He waved his pole in the air. “I don’t talk about that kind of stuff.”

Katara paused as she knelt down next to Aang. “What kind of stuff, exactly?” she asked challengingly.

Sokka shrugged a full-body shrug, his shoulders rising exaggeratedly around his ears. “You know, creams, ointments, lotions. That kind of stuff.”

Katara’s hands landed on her hips. “This from the guy who wears makeup.”

“One could call it warrior paint,” Sokka said pointedly, “but yes, I did wear makeup on Kyoshi Island.” He held his index finger in the air. “So you know it’s true when I say you and I have never talked about your seaweed lotion.”

“I can’t even remember how we ended up talking about this,” Katara said by way of admitting defeat. She bent the clean water she had gathered out of its jug and began her healing work on Aang’s shoulder.

He exhaled with relief, both at her words, and at the sensation of the water relaxing his overworked muscles.

“I do,” Toph said, now sprawled out on the grass. “We were talking about how Aang knew about your seaweed lotion.”

Aang’s breath snagged on its inhale. “Thanks, Toph,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, any chance to see you squirm, Twinkletoes,” she said, patting his hand assuredly.

“It’s just funny, because I ran out of it weeks ago,” Katara said absentmindedly, her glowing hands moving down Aang’s back. “Were you with me when I was looking for it at the Northern Water Tribe?”

“Probably,” Aang said noncommittally.

“Hmm, no, that doesn’t make sense,” Katara continued thoughtfully, “because you were training with Pakku.” She paused, and the only sound for a while was the light hum of the healing water. Then she laughed. “I don’t know why, but the only person I remember talking to about it is Aunt Wu, and I know you weren’t there for that.”

Aang’s eyes widened in response, and he forced out a laugh. “Yeah, I definitely wasn’t there.”

Toph grunted from her position in the grass.

Katara shrugged. “Weird I can’t remember.” She smiled and dropped her hands. “How does your shoulder feel?”

Aang tested it cautiously, rotating his arm first in a clockwise motion, then counter-clockwise. He beamed up at Katara. “Feels great!” he said brightly. “Thanks, Katara.”

Katara smiled back at him and nodded. “What about you, Toph?” she asked, rising from the ground. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take a look at your feet?”

Toph shook her head. “No, thanks.”

“And I can’t convince you to go easier on Aang?” 

“This lily-liver?” Toph’s arm shot out and hit Aang squarely on the shoulder, the same one that had just been healed, sending him spilling onto the ground. “How else is he going to learn to be an earthbender?”

Katara winced at the sight. “Right,” she said slowly. “Well, I’ll be in the water if you need me.”

Toph waited for Katara to disappear over the bank of the stream before pulling Aang back up by his collar. 

“Liar,” she said accusingly. 

“Toph, you don’t understand,” Aang said in a rush.

“What I understand is that you lied about listening to Katara talk to this Wu lady,” Toph replied. She let him go, and Aang nearly dropped to the ground again but for his airbender reflexes.

“Can you please lower your voice?” Aang whispered hoarsely, looking over at Sokka to see whether he was listening. The other boy was still focused on his fishing pole.

“Sure,” Toph said, kicking at the ground. A low rumble traveled under the earth and stopped abruptly in front of Aang, a projection of rock shooting out from under his feet. He leapt into the air to avoid it. “As soon as you tell me why.”

Aang looked pained as he floated back down to the ground. “I wasn’t supposed to hear it,” he said guiltily. His head fell to face the earth. “I heard Katara getting her fortune told, and I heard some stuff that I thought was about me. That I thought meant we would be together one day.”

Toph stopped, the rock that had plunged through the grass suddenly sinking once more underground. The wind had gone quiet in her ears. “So?”

Aang turned away from her. He shuffled his feet. “She’d be upset if she knew I listened. And—” He sighed. “Aunt Wu said we shape our own destinies. All of that stuff she told Katara, it might not be true.”

The grass felt lush under Toph’s feet. She dug a toe into the dirt beneath it. “I knew you liked Katara,” she said, “but I didn’t know you liked her that much.”

“I love her,” Aang said simply. 

Toph’s eyebrows rose beneath her bangs, though she quickly schooled her expression to something more neutral. She crossed her arms. Her feet told her that Sokka was still on the grassy bank, sitting as still as he ever did. Her ears told her that Katara was in the water, a series of regular splashes revealing she was practicing the same form she’d been teaching Aang the day before. She grinned. 

“I wouldn’t worry about all that, if I were you.”

“What?”

Toph waited. The wind picked back up.

“Like I said before,” she started, listening for the shift that would tell her Aang had turned back around, “Katara and I fight a lot, but I know her.” She grinned when she knew she had his attention. “You know what she cares about more than anything else in the world?”

Aang shook his head, and then realized Toph couldn’t see him. “No.”

“You, Twinkletoes.”

Toph felt the uptick in his heartbeat.

“Really?” he asked happily. “You think so?”

“Now don’t get all soft on me,” Toph said, putting her hand out to stop him. “But I know so.” She smiled as she felt Aang rise from his sagging posture. 

“Thanks, Toph,” he said, moving so quickly to hug her that she barely had a moment to react.

“All right, all right,” she said, letting his arms stay wrapped around her for a moment. “I think we’ve done enough rock-chucking for today.” She grabbed Aang’s arm and started pulling him behind her toward the bank. “I’m going to bug Sokka, and you probably have some more training to do.” Dropping Aang’s arm, she cupped her hands around her mouth and practically roared, “Katara! He’s all yours!”

“Toph! You’re scaring all the fish away!” Sokka wailed.

“Yeah, right, like they weren’t scared by your terrible skills already.”

Katara paused her bending to wave at them. “Come on, Aang! Let’s go over the eel sequence again.”

“Go on, Twinkletoes,” Toph said, pounding on his back one last time for good measure. 

Sokka grumbled something about the quality of his bait.

Aang grinned. “I owe you one,” he said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Toph said with a grin of her own, dropping down to sit next to Sokka, “you’ll more than make up for it in your training tomorrow.” 

Aang’s smile faltered, but never one to dwell on the future, it took very little time for him to respond to Katara’s call, and soon enough he was racing down the side of the bank and into the water, Toph smiling and listening all along.

[avrelia]

A quiet conversation between Aang and Katara about the future - and the past that made some futures impossible

I was writing it for the Kataang week 2020 - Day 5, Heritage. But where is Kataang week, and where am I now? And why did it took me so long to write a rather short fic? Because, I guess. Anyway, here it is. 

@kataang-week

[its-an-iiiusion]

oh dear

did y’all really need to put kataang week the same week as zutara week? was that something that needed to happen in 2020? y’all couldn’t just idk pick any other 7 days of the year?

Edit: apparently tag reading is no longer common in tumblr culture: this is a lighthearted concern of the overlap of the two weeks and not an issue with either one existing. I'd seen zutara week announced first this year, thus the above followed. While I can't understand feeling the need to dedicate energy to being anti any ship instead of using it to make more of your own fan content, I do support expressing your frustrations however is healthiest. Cursing me out may not be the healthiest. I wish everyone a joyus zutaraang week this coming July and hope it can remain civil.