#sleep taking

Aang talked in his sleep.  Katara glanced from her book to look at the lanky man spread out in the bed beside her.  

“Sweetie?” she ventured.

He snorted and murmured something unintelligible.  Katara leaned over to place a kiss on his blue tattoo. The mighty Avatar, she thought, smiling to herself.  More like her goofball husband who muttered nonsense sentences while dreaming and woke up with a spring in his step to go to morning meditation.

She tried to remember if she’d always known he talked in his sleep, or if it was something she noticed only after their marriage.  When Team Avatar traveled together and camped underneath the stars, they all slept separately, and Katara usually slept next to her brother.  With Sokka, Appa, and Momo all to contend with, it was a miracle Katara ever got any sleep.  Their snores must have drowned out any soft whispers from Aang.  She only remembered hearing him yell when the nightmares became too much.

Katara grimaced.  She could still remember how he looked at her those days before the invasion, when he tried to go without sleep and practiced relentlessly—so desperate, so scared, so overwhelmed.  Just a boy carrying the weight of the entire world on his shoulders.  She looked at her husband sleeping soundly next to her. Asleep, he looked a lot like the boy he had been.

Thank the spirits the days of nightmares were behind them.

Although he looked younger when he slept, Aang had clearly grown.  His face was now a little less round and his ears a little less big.  The most striking difference was the dark stubble shadowing his jaw.  Katara rubbed her chin; it scratched a little when he kissed her, but she liked the change. Katara had a sneaking suspicion the idea to grow a beard had come from her brother, but she had always liked Aang’s hair, so she didn’t mind.

She yawned, set her book down on the bedside table, and stretched her legs beneath the blankets.  One of her feet poked out because that particular blanket was wrapped tightly around Aang’s legs. Katara wiggled her toes, chuckled to herself, and reached over to stroke the smooth skin of his scalp.

He blinked sleepily up at her.  Then his face broke into a goofy smile so full of love and adoration that her heart stuttered.

“Hey,” he murmured.

“Hey,” she whispered back.  “Think I could have some of the blankets?”

His eyes widened as he tried to untangle himself and toss the blankets over to her side of the bed.  She laughed as his arm got caught in a fold, and he jerked helplessly against the fabric.

With a few tugs from her side, Katara helped him free his arm.  Most of the blankets were now piled on top of her, and Aang propped himself up to arrange them better around her.  She grabbed his hands and kissed them.

“I’m good now.  I just wanted my feet covered,” she said with a smile.

He ducked his head bashfully and pulled one of the blankets back to his side.  “Sorry about that.  Are you ready to sleep now?”

Katara nodded, and he waved his hand, extinguishing the candles with a single bending move.  Darkness enveloped their bedroom.  She snuggled closer to him, and he tucked his arm securely around her waist.

“Were you dreaming earlier?” she asked.  “You were talking in your sleep.”

“I don’t think so.”  The sound coasted over the shell of her ear, and she shivered. “What did I say?”

Katara interlaced her fingers with his.  “I couldn’t tell.  Most of the time it’s too mumbled to understand.”

She felt the vibrations of his laughter travel through her back.  “I’ll have to work on my enunciation then.”

Maybe she responded; maybe she didn’t.  With his warmth all around her, and the darkness and quiet of the night pressing in, Katara closed her eyes, and she drifted off to sleep in her husband’s arms.

In the middle of the night, she felt him jolt.  They had rolled apart while they slept, but she felt when every muscle in his body tensed.

“Aang?” she whispered.

Deep breathing answered her question.  The part of him that touched her back arched away from her.  Katara leaned up on her elbow and reached for him in the dark.  She accidentally crashed into his face, and her fingers touched damp streaks on his skin.

“Aang, turn on the lights!”

She heard him sniff, and then the candles burst to life. He curled his face back into the pillow and wrapped his arms around his head.  Katara draped herself over his back and hugged his shoulders.  “Sweetie, it was just a dream,” she said soothingly, trailing her lips over his tattoo.  He cringed underneath her before rolling over and hugging her tightly. The tears on his cheeks smeared across her own.

Maybe the days of nightmares weren’t behind them after all.

“It’s okay,” she whispered.  “It’s okay.”

Aang took a deep breath, scrubbed away the tears, and pushed away enough to look at her properly.  He looked lost and tired and so young.

She gave him a small smile and kissed his cheek.  “Want to talk about it?”

He took a few moments to find the right words and organize the dream-thoughts, and Katara waited patiently.  “I dreamed about the past,” he murmured.  The candlelight flickered across his face, giving his pale skin an orange glow.

“I was at the Air Temples when they were attacked. Everything burned.  Everyone was—”  His voice dropped to a whisper, and he shook his head.  “So much pain.  And I—the Avatar State took over me, and I—”

Aang closed his eyes.

Once, several years ago, Aang laid her out on the grass one morning after his meditation and taught her about chakras to help her with bending and healing.  One by one, his hands floating over her, he told her about the pools of energy that flowed through her—what they represented and which emotions blocked each one.  Now, she placed her hand over Aang’s heart where the air chakra resided, the one that dealt with love and was blocked by grief.  

She kissed his forehead sweetly, trying to convey the stab of pain within her own heart in the wake of his distress.  Aang’s air chakra would probably always be turbulent, but she vowed to hold him tightly throughout the storm.  Especially on dark nights like this one, when nightmares plagued them, and their sleep was punctuated by supportive, bittersweet murmurs in the quiet.

“It’s going to be okay,” she breathed against his arrow.

Aang buried his hands in her hair and ran his fingers through it.  “I’m worried about the future.”

“How so?”

“I’m the last, Katara.  And when I’m gone—when the next Avatar has to learn airbending, there won’t be anyone to learn from.  And soon after that, after three cycles, the Avatar won’t even exist anymore.  There won’t be an Air Nation for the Avatar to be born into.  Everything . . . everything will be gone forever.”

His breath caressed her throat, and she pulled him closer, squeezing as hard as she could.  Her mouth dried; what could she say in the face of such truth?  Although the Air Acolytes adopted the lifestyle wholeheartedly, they could not truly replace the culture Aang lost.  The future he painted struck her painfully—she had always believed in the Avatar, even when the rest of the world stopped believing during Hundred Year War.  She could not imagine a world where that great power suddenly winked out or a world where another little girl couldn’t look up at the stars with hope in her heart that the Avatar would make the world a better place.

She wouldn’t let that future come to pass.

“It won’t turn out like that,” she declared.

Aang tilted his head to look at her properly, his gray eyes questioning.  She smirked at him.  “We’ll just have lots of airbender kids.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle, but the shadows didn’t quite leave his face. “It probably won’t be that simple. You’re a waterbender, but no one else in your family can bend.  And it can work the other way too.  We’ve seen so many different families in our travels—all a mix of benders and nonbenders. It’s hard to predict that kind of thing. We might not have any airbenders at all.”  

Stubborn, Katara refused to cede the point.  She knew how ridiculous that solution sounded in the wake of the seriousness of his concerns, but it was the only solution she had.  “Aunt Wu said I’d have great-grandchildren,” she declared. “Surely some of those descendants will be airbenders.”

This time Aang did laugh. “Oh, Aunt Wu.  Maybe she will be right.  She was right about you marrying a powerful bender, after all.”  His strong arms tightened around her.

Katara pushed back with a mock-shocked expression on her face. “You did listen!  You always denied it, but I knew I heard someone outside the door.  And you acted really weird afterwards.”

Aang dropped his forehead against hers.  “Don’t remind me.  I was an idiot back then.”

She laughed.  “You were. But I love you anyway.”

“I love you too.”  He took a deep breath.  “Thank you, Katara.  For always listening. “