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She and Aang were locked in a routine and a boring one at that.
Katara didn't want to admit it. But more than 10 years had passed since the end of Fire Lord Ozai's reign. In that time span, Aang had developed a very set schedule as the Avatar, and the rest of them - Katara included - had developed their schedules around Aang.
Aang had saved the world, and the kings of the world showed their gratitude by accommodating him.
Katara was grateful, and she loved her husband. Yet, something wasn't right because Katara was pretty certain being in love with someone was supposed to make those the ruts and routines bearable.
Sometimes, while Katara sat behind Aang in the saddle on top of Appa, their routine was so unbearable that she wanted to scream.
~~
After he'd joined the Avatar, Zuko thought his time of being a horrible person was behind him.
He was turning over a new leaf, making amends with his one time enemy, and generally trying to be a good person. Surely that was incompatible with being the selfish jerk he had been.
And oh, he'd had everyone fooled.
The first clue that he was, in fact, still a terrible person, came when he started to notice the feelings he had for Katara. You couldn't be a good person and covet the girlfriend of someone who trusted you with as fully as Aang did.
But years passed, and Zuko refused to react to the lust he had for Katara, and he thought he was doing a good job of hiding how he felt. He even made it through all the proper motions at Katara and Aang's wedding.
Then he began to notice that the nervous excitement and guilt he felt around Katara was present and accounted for around Aang as well, to a degree that couldn't be blamed solely on his lust for Aang's wife.
It took him a while to figure out what that meant, but once he did, he felt even worse about his betrayal than before.
~~
Katara had a habit of twirling the pendant of her necklace in the minutes late at night, after they pulled apart and scooted to their own sides of the bed. Aang had become good enough of an earthbender that he could feel it through the floor, almost as well as Toph could have.
He knew that Katara had been feeling restless lately, even if he couldn't quite pinpoint the reason why.
"We were on a pretty wild adventure for a long time, Aang. Maybe ten years isn't long enough to adjust to losing that adventure," Sokka suggested.
But that didn't help Aang, because Aang knew Sokka was talking about himself, not about Katara.
Something else was wrong. Yet when he asked her, all she did was squeeze the necklace tighter and press her lips tightly together, before assuring him that everything was fine.
But that was the problem, because things used to be much better than fine between them.
~~
Her husband was enjoying a very routine post-dinner firebending workout with Zuko, when the realization hit Katara.
The missing part she'd been searching for, and the longing she could never quite place, suddenly made perfect sense, as she watched her husband and their friend move together.
Their actions were nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing new took place that was any different from any other of the hundreds of times she had watched the two firebenders work together. The cloth clung to Zuko's skin as tightly as it always had, and as loosely on Aang as was his habit. The afternoon was the same as any other, minus the addition of one very important realization.
Aang and Zuko danced together when they used their firebending, and more than anything, Katara wanted to move with them - with both of them. Not separately, but together.
Ten years worth of carefully constructed habits that defined her life with Aang shattered like icicles in the aftermath of Katara's realization. Aang and Zuko continued their dance, oblivious to the life-altering shreds hanging in the balance that Katara pulled silently to herself. Today was not the day to share her knowledge with Aang or Zuko.
But Katara knew she couldn't hold back forever. She finally saw a way out of the routine she and Aang had made their life into, and she wouldn't turn her back on that realization.
As she twirled the pendant of her necklace, she hoped it was a path that Aang and Zuko would agree to.