Avatar: Reborn in Ice and Blood

Chapter 113 113

In the evening, they return to the house Ba Sing Se provided for them as guests of the king who has no time for them. Kaito comes with them, and it is Katara who asks him the question that has been on her mind for a while now.

"Why did you stay behind in Omashu when you left immediately afterwards as well? Why not come with us?"

Kaito pauses in preparing the tea. He puts the pot down, having poured none. He looks at her, meeting her eyes, searching for something. Katara has never seen him give that look to someone. The scrutiny is uncomfortable.

"I'll be honest with you. I was lying to myself, and because of it… to all of you," Katara listens to that quiet certainty and thinks that the lump forming in her throat isn't going to be small, "I wasn't alright. I was in a pretty bad place, actually, and some days I still am. That was my way of retreating because a dam had to break at some point and I didn't want to be around you or anyone when it did. I don't confront my own… misery. I run from it. I distract myself. That is part of what I am doing here."

Katara was right. She swallows, hard. It also stings a little, this truth. He didn't want to be around them for when he would finally break down. Like he didn't think they could handle it.

Sokka has frozen, looking at Kaito wide-eyed. Katara thinks this will be good for him also, to see that his friend, his gifted, clever, easy-going friend is not all-powerful, is actually quietly miserable.

Aang himself is crying already, silently. Tears rolling down his cheeks as wide grey eyes stare at Kaito. It is even more painful to watch that, and Katara can feel heat behind her eyes in sympathy. She blinks and doesn't allow the tears to form.

Toph remains politely still and silent.

Kaito draws Aang, who is already sitting very close to him, in by the shoulders, smiling a small, complicated smile. There's a little pain in there, some true fondness and concern. "Finding meaning in life is harder for some than for others. I can keep going, I can do what needs to be done, but that doesn't have to mean much when I fail to see the point some days.

People help. You guys help, just by being here. I can believe in people. Not in some spiritual balance, no gods or big saviours, but people because it is the smallest things people do that cheer me up, that help me get up and stay up."

Katara watches Aang wind his fingers into Kaito's tunic and hold on tight. Her heart breaks a little at the sight. "I do what I want to when I want to. The school project is a great one, and I always enjoy getting up for it. Annoying Dionu and Gorou makes my day very entertaining. Meeting you guys again is just great. And meeting you, Toph, has been a pleasure."

Then, one-handed, Kaito takes up the tea pot and pours into the arranged cups.

"I'm aware that this is sudden," and he looks down at Aang, "And painful for you too," he – without self-consciousness, without realising how strange it might look to the others, – kisses the top of Aang's bald head. Katara tries to steady her internal balance, sent reeling at the gesture. It was so much like that of a parent, too much like that of a parent that she-

"The truth is that I am very good at pretending. When you bury something, neither you nor others can see it, but that doesn't mean it isn't still there, you just have to dig it up again."

Katara reaches out for her tea, uncertain of what to do or say. What do you say to that?

"Why were… or are you unhappy?" Toph asks, hands around her cup, face hidden behind her bangs.

Right. Maybe you just ask a question that might help. Katara should've thought of that. Toph can be such a wellspring of surprising compassion from one so brash and tough and hard-on-the-outside.

"Hm…" Kaito says, pressing a cup into Aang's hand, who looks a little dazed and off-balance. He sits up a little and brings his other hand to the warmth.

"It's not easy to answer. I was very aware very young and was often treated like I didn't know what I was talking about or what was good for me, but that soon changed when Pakku became my teacher. He was… the kind of teacher who wants to make himself obsolete. The kind you won't need anymore when he's done with you.

And while I had that, had some respect from my peers, there was little they could give me by way of companionship. The others know that I'm friends with Arnook, the Northern Watertribe's leader. He's at least twenty years older than me. It was a little lonely, which is still painful to admit. But when I became Yue's guard, after some time, we grew close.

We were friends. Still are, if you count the Moon capable of friendship," he pauses, to look at Sokka, who is staring at his feet. "That's not all, of course. Things are always more complicated than that."

"Sounds like me," Toph says and Katara freezes. How is that like Toph? "I was always alone and even as the Blind Bandit I had no friends." The tone is easy, cheerful as ever, but.

"Not even my mother would listen to what I wanted, for my own protection. Because I'm blind and a girl and must be weak. Now it's different."

And then Kaito does the most astonishing thing of all things he's done that day. Aloof, cool, touch-emotions-and-die Kaito shuffles closer to Toph and very slowly reaches out to wrap his big brown hands around Toph's smaller white ones that are still holding the tea. And Toph, who is the same way, lets him.

Katara feels like she's been punched in the gut, all surprise and no air.

Kaito says nothing, just holds Toph's hands. Katara can see ripples in the tea that betray the trembles.

Finally, after what seems like several minutes, Toph shifts and Kaito's hands slip away from hers, smoothly shifting into crossing his legs in his previous seat. He glances at them, at Sokka who has raised his head to stare, still wide-eyed, like he can't believe this is happening, Katara whose heart is beating heavy and quick in her chest, her hands aching to reach out and touch.

Touch gently, healing some of that hurt. But Toph is prickly on the best of days. That she allows Kaito to touch her, even only like that is a small miracle. And then Kaito looks at Aang, who is looking between Kaito and Toph with something like awe.

As much as Katara dislikes it, this admiration Aang has for Kaito, she can admit, just this once, that he did well.

"Did you know that to be courageous, you have to be vulnerable?" Kaito asks. "One of the women at the school told me. And she's right. To go into a fight knowing you could get hurt, or lose or even die is courageous because of those things. And to share your burdens with others to lighten them maybe, that requires you to be honest and open and say things that are painful to say because they are true and nobody is perfect. There is no such thing as perfection for humans. Then it need not grow further, change no more. That is death. To strive for perfection is to strive for death."

Katara scrambles, wanting to fill the silence, fitting that into her brain and blurts, "But what about bending? We want it to be perfect."

And that is when Kaito smiles at her, and she doesn't know what it means, but it feels like praise, which is strange, she-

"We do, don't we? My answer to that is that there is no perfect way to bend. There are ones for specific purposes and some techniques are easier than others to do in a certain way.

If perfection in bending is to do certain movements with ease, then it is achievable, and yet it is then still then end of that striving. And you may be content with that. Or, as is often the case, you turn to another movement and practise it until you can do that one with ease.

And when you have mastered all forms, what do you do? You try something new. And that has no perfection, does it? It's new, there is no comparison for it until you make enough of it. In other words, until you decide you are done, there is always something new."

Kaito takes his tea then, and adds, "Perfection is like beauty, always subjective."

...

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