Pirate Love (kataang story)

Close Calls

Aang felt horrible for Katara. First, she had lost her parents to some pirates a few years ago, now she lost her last surviving family member and her good friend who he imagined was like a sister of sorts to her. He too had lost his parents, but Katara just kept losing the ones she loved. It was heartbreaking to see her like this.

But, knowing that it wouldn't do her any good to keep thinking these thoughts, he focused all of his energy into holding her tightly as she cried into his shoulder. Normally, he would have enjoyed having her this close, but now was not the time to be thinking of such things. Katara needed him, and he would be there for her as long as she needed.

"I'm so sorry, Katara," he murmured to her as she continued wetting his shoulder, feeling all the pain she felt from the loss of her parents come back with a vengeance as it combined with the pain of losing the closest thing she had to a family.

Katara didn't say anything back. She couldn't. This was not how she had expected her day to go. They were supposed to finish their target and go chase their next one. It was never supposed to come to this. And yet, the only thing that kept Katara from completely losing it was Aang. His strong arms wrapped around her and his soothing voice in her ear helped her more than he likely knew. It still wasn't enough, however, as nothing could make up for the loss of her family.

After a few more moments of making the poor airbender's clothes wet with her tears, they heard a familiar voice behind them.

"Hey, what are you crying about, Katara?"

A snort could be heard behind them, the person's voice smug as they remarked. "What doesn't she cry about?"

Aang and Katara immediately stopped everything as they heard these voices behind them. No, it couldn't be… There was no way that it was…

Looking over their shoulders, the two couldn't help but gasp in disbelief as they looked upon the familiar forms of Sokka and Toph, both of them standing there with looks that matched their voices as they looked down upon the two.

Katara couldn't hold back a bright smile. "Sokka! Toph!" Immediately springing up from the ground, she launched herself towards her friends and tackled them in a hug, taking them both greatly by surprise as they staggered back.

"Okay… We, uh… missed you too, Katara," Sokka chuckled awkwardly and patted her on the back as she squeezed them tighter.

"Sugar Queen," Toph choked out from Katara's rather solid hug. "Can't… breathe!"

Realizing that she was hurting her friend, she pulled away from the hug as Aang walked up next to her, a smile on his face from seeing that their friends were indeed okay. "Well, you two gave us quite a scare. What happened?"

A confused look once again overtook Sokka's face. "What do you mean?" he asked as he scratched his head.

Katara couldn't help but roll her eyes. "Oh, I don't know, Sokka. Maybe we got worried because the enemy ship blew up and we thought that you were still on there when it happened?" she sarcastically asked, making Sokka smile sheepishly as he finally understood what had been going through their minds.

"Oh. Sorry about that," he smiled apologetically. "It didn't take us long to do her job, so once we finished, we were working on getting the gold off of the ship when we found some blasting jelly."