this one's for all the kataang shippers that got a little sad every time they saw absolute husband aang slander in a zutara fanfic.
OR: the common zutara trope of "zuko helps katara escape an unhealthy relationship with aang" is flipped entirely and completely on its head.
...
The liveliness of this mountaintop temple was nothing like the cold quiet that she had felt in Zuko’s castle these last few years. After she and her friends had saved the world, ending the Fire Lord’s reign, Katara had found herself at a crossroads. Although it made the most sense, she couldn’t bring herself to return back home, to the Southern Water Tribe. The memories were… too much.
Sokka had extended an offer for her to join him at the Northern Water Tribe, where he planned to find a teacher to aid him in mastering the traditional non-bending fighting styles of their people, but Katara just couldn’t bring herself to go back there, either. Toph and Aang were both headed to reconstruct important cultural monuments destroyed during the war, including the Air temples. She had considered coming with them, she really had, but ultimately… she made a different choice.
...
So she had stayed with Zuko.
Through his breakup with Mai, she had been the one he came to.
Through his first year as the Fire Lord, she was at his side. Attended every meeting, talked through his ideas, dragged him out to social events when he felt so in over his head that he would sit paralyzed in his room. That closeness had turned into something else the first night that he had kissed her.
...
And after what felt like years of quiet complacency and mild agreement, Katara felt her temper awaken, flicker. She calmed herself, reasoned that she didn’t know what he was doing with them. He could be checking for threats on her life, for poison sealed into an envelope. She held fast onto that tiny scrap of belief that he was still the man she had married, trusted, loved and been loved by.
Until that last thread of hope and trust was pulled taunt and then snapped entirely when Katara slipped into his office and found them.
There were entire drawers of letters with her name on them.
...
Her attention drifted to the bottom of the bag. To Aang's scrolls. The ones she still hadn’t let herself read.
...
Katara,
How’s the fire palace? Started any underground dance clubs yet? I guess they’d be pretty tricky to start right under the nose of the new Fire Lord. Is Zuko adjusting well? I’m a bit worried about the burden of dismantling an entire empire falling squarely on his shoulders. Do you think I should head back, stick around for some peacekeeping? Give me any reason to come to be with you help, and I will.
Yours, Aang.
...
(Fire Lady) Katara,
I heard by word of mouth from a few Fire Nation travellers that passed through the Western Air Temple that you and Zuko had gotten married. Congratulations are in order, of course, but… Sokka, Toph, your dad and I never got our invitations. Was it a Fire-Nation-only event, or something? Your dad is pretty broken up about it. Sokka and I tried to console him, but he’s fairly upset, and honestly? I’m worried about you, Katara. This doesn't seem like you. You don’t sound like yourself.
Yours, always, Aang
...
She selected a third scroll, dated only a month before.
Katara,
I can’t deny that I’m concerned about how you’re doing. Especially considering that the Katara I know would never shut down every single opportunity to see her friends. We don’t mean to be overbearing, but we love you. So much. If all the new duties that come with being wife to the Fire Lord are too much, please, please, talk to any of us. Talk to me. I care about you, Katara, I always have, and I miss my best friend.
Forever yours, Aang.
Katara slid the scroll closed before her tears could drop onto it, and she quietly packed the papers away. She reached up, rubbing those tears away furiously the way she did as a child whenever Sokka called her a crybaby. The attempt to hold the tsunami of emotion back was fruitless. She doubled over, shoulders shaking with sobs.
She knew where she would go once the cargo ship reached the land.
˗ˏˋ fic summary: ˎˊ˗
i feel like a lot of people have wondered how different atla as a whole would be if aang had been older, so in this au, aang was frozen at age 16! naturally, i just had to flip aang being after katara from day one to katara now having a crush on aang from the very beginning. essentially, to recap. ATLA aang aged up AU fic. kataang. where she falls first, and he falls harder. also, cmon. i just had to write a new version of the scene where zuko and aang meet. zuko: you? you’re just a teenager! aang: s-…so are you…?
˗ˏˋ sneak peak: ˎˊ˗
In the middle of a field of lavender-lilies, possibly the most sleep-inducing meadow in all of the continent, surrounded by two soundly snoring siblings, the last Airbender found himself entirely and utterly awake. Worse still, rather than snatching scraps of rest from the unforgiving night, he found himself contemplating whether he had the basic common sense to even call himself worthy of the title of Avatar.
On second thought, Aang mused, the sleep deprivation might definitely be making me a bit dramatic.
Aang hadn’t necessarily ever considered himself to be the brightest in the trio of travellers- that title almost certainly went to either Katara or Sokka, both brilliant in their own respective rights, and yet, he couldn’t help but think himself utterly stupid as he flashed back to the moments in which Madame Wu had given him his fortune. He told himself that he wasn’t sure why he had asked about a girl in his reading, but he was at least bright enough to know that that wasn’t exactly the truth either.
Katara. Each time he drifted off into sleep for a few precious moments, he saw her there, stark against the dying embers of the volcano’s rage, as if the flames that had lined her silhouette had emblazoned her image directly onto his eyelids in that instant. Katara. He let his head roll to the side a bit, just enough so that Katara’s sleeping form drifted into his peripheral vision. A soft breeze passed between the two, carrying with it her scent of sea salt, linen, and snowberries.
He blushed when, through his sleepless haze, he registered that his own hands had called the wind.
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
˗ˏˋ the teenager in the iceberg ˎˊ˗
˗ˏˋ an author's note: ˎˊ˗
hi lovelies:))) to tide you over, here's a little snippet from the next chapter of TTITI<3 i know that it's been ages, but life gets in the way, you know? i won't make any promises, because i don't want to disappoint anyone, but i do want to get better at making space for the things i love doing this year, and writing is absolutely one of those things for me:)
just stuck a spiderman sticker on my laptop and i am now patiently waiting for the nerdy boys with curly hair and glasses to flock to me.
might f around and write a kataang fic that flips the usual zutara trope of "zuko helps katara escape a failing relationship with aang" would anybody be interested? 😳
--- can you see me using everything to hold back? ---
She strode up to the imposing wooden double doors, trying to psych herself up for the conversation she had ahead. Katara inhaled sharply, exhaling with a slow hand moment in an attempt at self- soothing. Before she had managed to work up the nerve to reach for the iron knocker, the door swung open of its own accord, accompanied by a sharp burst of air that admittedly caught her off guard.
“Katara!”
And there he was.
“Aang,” she said, and the word felt like such a relief.
“I haven’t seen you in, well, ages.” He tipped his head slightly to the side, looking her up and down, concern painted all over his face. “You want to come inside? I just put on a pot of Uncle Iroh’s tea.”
She smiled again, but it felt weak, unconvincing. “That’d be lovely.” She followed his retreating figure into the temple. After the war had ended, Toph and Aang had both temporarily moved between temples, trying to restore them so that they could become livable once more. Even if there were no more air nomads any more, Aang had reasoned that the monks would have wanted their temples to be used as a sanctuary for those in need, and so they had become ways to house those who were displaced by the war or simply had too many bad memories to return home.
Katara only knew this from word-of-mouth. She had never before seen the air temples restored to their former glory firsthand, and the sight had knocked the wind out of her when she had finished her long and arduous climb up the mountain. Spires shot up through the clouds, with smaller buildings clustered all around them. Bridges extended across to neighbouring mountain peaks, and the entirety of the village was painted in shades of blue and gold. Although there weren’t air nomads flying overhead, as she imagined there would have been over a century ago, she noted that the village was surprisingly energized, with people coming in and out of their homes, a bustling street market and winged lemurs catching breezes overhead.
---
pov: all of aang's friends, past lives, and the entirety of the citizens of every single nation trying to convince him to just straight up murder the fire lord
i think the idea that everyone else knew aang was in love with katara far before she did is such a funny and under-explored trope.
‿︵‿︵‿୨ ୧‿︵‿︵‿
“Aang? In love with you?” Sokka pondered it for a moment. “I mean, it checks out.”
“I-” Katara frowned, flustered by the second confirmation that day. “I didn’t say love .”
“I know.” Sokka shrugged. “But I did. C’mon, Katara, did you not see the way he looked at you when he got out of that iceberg?”
“Yeah, and I saw the way he looked at all those girls on Kyoshi, and that fire nation girl he danced with, and-”
Sokka cut her off with a single hand to the face. “Jet. Haru.”
“Touché.”
“To be honest, I always assumed he did and you knew, but just chose to skip around it to protect your friendship.” Sokka shrugged.
“I just- it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. He’d just gotten out of an iceberg, he was so busy with everything. And he can just be so confusing. I feel like we never got the timing right. I mean, I thought that maybe something would happen after he got back from defeating the fire lord- I thought that once it was out of the way, we could be something, but…” She let out a soft sigh. “I guess not.”
“Katara.” Sokka awkwardly patted her back. “There, there.”
She shot him a glare.
gnawing at the bars of my enclosure rn
I finished these two sketches too!
art credits<3: @l-a-l-o-u
i present- "you with the dark curls, you with the watercolor eyes"
years ago, the spirits tui and la split the earth between the sky and the sea. however, they did not lose all hope for the rejoining of earth's peoples- tui blessed one avian a generation with the gifts of the mighty avatar, while la carefully selected one siren to grow into the role of the painted lady. the two were their little sliver of hope- hope that one day, the siren and the air-rider would fulfill their destiny, would find a way to reunite the tribes, would be able to root out the poison seeping through the land.
OR: a KATAANG AU where aang is a winged avian and katara is a siren!!!
the following are excerpts from this in-progress work: <3
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
Avatar Aang had been told time and time again that to venture across the surface of the sea when the moon had risen and claimed what rightfully belonged to it was to sign your own death certificate.
And yet, he found himself here, at the water’s edge, skipping stones, lost in thought.
To be the Avatar had once meant something, years before. Before the four tribes had separated, scattered to the ends of the earth. Those who formed fire itself chased the other tribes from the surface lands, those who could move rock and metal burrowed underground, those who flowed with the air sent ships with great sails across the sea until they reached towering mountain spires.
Those who bent water, who bent blood… they retreated to the depths of the sea, and with time, they became a part of it. Legend told of the way in which the Water tribes had adapted, two legs smoothed into razor sharp scales and voices twisted into something dark and luring.
Now, they were the monsters known as sirens.
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
As if in answer, the winds of the sea whispered back his own song, the melody made haunted. He made to turn himself away, to find shelter for the night, but that very whispering gave him pause. There was a different quality about it, something feminine, not simply his own voice reflected back. His instincts told him to duck, to crawl, and he did, bracing himself against a stone at the beach’s edge. The sound was louder here. He turned around the rock, wincing in anticipation…
…Only to be met with the sight of the most beautiful woman he had ever had the pleasure of seeing. He understood all at once why so many men had fallen prey to the charms of the siren.
For this girl to even gift him a wayward glance, he would build a temple. A religion.
She looked like a painting come to life, a sculpture kissed by the spirits themselves.
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
“I thought that sirens made a point of dragging Airriders to the depths of the ocean long before either party exchanged names.”
“Did you truly think so little of me?”
“The legends seem to think very little of you, at least. Me? I’m still making up my mind.” Aang tossed her a teasing grin.
“You seem fairly calm for a man who believes his fate to be sealed.” Katara raised her eyebrows, crossing her slender arms over one another.
“If my destiny is to spend the last few moments of my life at the side of such a lovely enchantress, who am I to fight it?”
“Handsome and a charmer. Is that your plan, to lull and seduce me into a sense of false security so that you can send a blast of air at my gills and leave me stranded in the bay?”
“If I’m remembering correctly, you are meant to be the lulling seductress of the two of us.”
⁎⁺˳ ✧༚ ˎˊ˗ ♡ ˗ˏˋയ ✩
He smiled down at her, reaching out to take her hand in his and press his lips against her perfect skin. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Katara.”
She pushed herself up off of her elbows, reaching up to brush her lips against his cheek. “The pleasure has been all mine, Airrider Aang.” With that, she slipped back under the waves of the sea, and Aang was left to wonder if the entire exchange of words had been nothing more than the spirited imaginings of a madman stranded and drowned at sea.
call me lady whistledown the way i be writing fanfiction secretly and telling no one irl out of shame
Hi! Idk if you remember but you messaged me a couple of weeks ago about my fic regarding the rebellion in the Court of Nightmares. Well, after talking to you and some other people I decided to finally post it. So yeah! Just wanted to let you know(:
I'm technologically challenged, so I don't have it in me to fiddle around with a link that will show up in an ask box. But I pinned the first chapter to my blog, so if you click on my page you'll see it there. Okay bye!! 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼
omg i DO remember!!!! ah i'm gonna go check it out asap that's so exciting🤭
and kudos to you for deciding to post it!! it always takes courage to post something you've worked hard at so it's absolutely sick that you ended up uploading it even after being a bit unsure:)<3
hi!!! i'm quill 🕯an a03 writer trying to figure out an entirely new platform!!she/her
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