Realizing Aang was the Avatar, Katara and Sokka continued to travel with him across the world as he mastered the remaining elements, earth and fire. She became Aang's waterbending instructor after their departure from the Northern Water Tribe, replacing Master Pakku, who had instructed them during their time there. Her mastery of water made her a formidable asset to the group. The siblings' assistance helped Aang halt the Fire Nation's ambitions of world domination, ending the century=long war, and finally restoring balance to the world.
The murder of her mother and the later departure of her warrior father left Katara feeling traumatized and alone. Though she was cared for by Kanna, she invariably found herself filling the mother role left behind by Kya, even to her own older brother. Katara soon took on many of the responsibilities expected of an adult and quickly became independent and strong-willed. Morally and emotionally driven, she developed a great sense of justice and compassion for others, becoming fiercely protective of those in need.
After the Hundred Year War ended, Katara and Aang began a close romantic relationship that eventually led to marriage and raised a family with three children: Burni, a nonbender who gained the ability to airbend later in life, Kya, a waterbender, and Tenzin, an airbender. Later in life, Katara became highly regarded as a master waterbender, and even said to be the best healer in the world. After Aang's passing, she became Avatar Korra's waterbending teacher and helped her to recover physically from her ordeal with the Red Lotus.
Katara had a warm, compassionate, and caring personality and often acted as a motherly figure to the group, something that often irritated the rebellious Toph. She displayed deep affection for those she traveled with and was fiercely protective whenever their safety was threatened. Her inner strength kept Aang and their friends together through their most difficult experiences, even in the absence of parental figures. While the team traveled through the Si Wong Desert, she was able to hold the group together in its most desperate moments. She had a soft spot for children, giving a portion of her food to a little boy in Jang Hui and went as far to defend Tom-Tom, despite the fact that he was from the Fire Nation and that everyone else, with the exception of Aang, was distrustful of him for it. This was because when Katara was a young girl, her mother was killed in a Fire Nation raid, an event which had a tremendous impact on her life and arguably shaped her into the person she became. According to Sokka, she largely prevented their family from falling apart and took on many responsibilities to the point where she filled the void left by their mother, so much that he pictured her in place of their mother.
Overall, Katara is often
marked by a fierce determination to aid others and herself stated that
she would never turn away from people who need her help, even if she had
other priorities at the moment. According to Sokka, she was
rather optimist. Placing her whole heart in whatever affairs she had,
she was often easily reduced to tears. She was even willing to defend
Fire Nation civilians, such as when she helped the village of Jang Hui,
and fought her former teacher Hama who was from the Southern Water Tribe
to defend the Fire Nation village she was living in. This strong desire
often frustrated others, particularly Sokka.
Katara was marked
by a fierce desire to learn waterbending, viewing it as a part of her
and her culture that needed to be expressed. She may have viewed it as a
hope for rebuilding her tribe and saw her mother's sacrifice not only
to save a daughter but what she represented, their own bending style.
Her enthusiasm for waterbending caused her to constantly train herself
in the art despite she originally did not have a teacher and learnt
whatever little she could with great ambition, ignoring the criticism of
Sokka. Her pride and strong mind caused conflict with the
traditions of the Northern Water Tribe, which forbade women from
learning combat focused waterbending. She became overjoyed when she
finally found a master to teach her formally Like her brother, father,
and grandparents, Katara was resourceful and very capable to adapt to
her environment. Having quickly and exemplary advanced under the
tutelage of Master Pakku, he stated that she accomplished this due to
her fierce determination, passion and hard work.
Katara was
portrayed as the most mature member of the group, rarely taking part in
Sokka and Aang's goofy pranks and Toph's less silly ones, though she did
have a sense of humor. She was a bit of a stickler for morality, even
to the point of causing Sokka and Aang to faint from shock when she
stated she wanted to pull a scam, as she had berated Toph for scamming
people. Her loss was part of what drove her in her fight against the
Fire Nation, although she did not exhibit as much outward prejudice as
her brother. Although Sokka told Toph that Katara could be a pain and
would get "involved and in-your-business", she is understanding of other
people's privacy, continually scolding her brother for snooping around
Hama's inn and rummaging through her personal belongings.
On the other hand, Katara could be overly domineering. For all her kindness, she was sometimes self-righteous, had a nasty temper, and could be fierce when provoked. With lack of sleep, this side of her can quickly become more apparent She was also set in her ideals and frequently refused to relent on her views in the face of opposition. Combined with her strong sense of compassion, this gave Katara a strong sense of justice and she would run headlong into often dangerous situations to help others, which was best illustrated when she faked to be an earthbender to mix with innocent earthbenders in the prison rig when she was not a fighter yet challenged at the greatest waterbending instructor in the Northern Tribe for forbid women from learning combat focused waterbending, and destroying factories for the severe contamination at Jang Hui while she infiltrated to the Fire Nation. Her short temper had frequently clashed with others; she showed open, but short-lived, jealousy of Aang's talent, and was frequently perturbed by Toph's confrontational and rebellious nature.
Despite being one of the more compassionate members of the group, Katara was one of the least willing to let go of a grudge, especially against those who she felt had betrayed her trust. She held a considerable grudge against those who had threatened Aang or done things she considered morally wrong. Upon her re-encounter with Jet, Katara reacted hostilely at the mere sight of him. For a while, she was argumentative with her father because she felt that he had abandoned her and Sokka when he left to fight in the War. At the Western Air Temple, she showed outright hostility toward Zuko and threatened to kill him if he slipped back to his old ways, being harsh and unforgiving of Zuko even long after he had joined Team Avatar and gained the trust of everyone else. However, this could be because Zuko's betrayal of her at Ba Sing Se was far more personal than his betrayal of anyone else. However, Katara was sometimes willing to give people second chances. With much reluctance, she allowed Jet to guide Team Avatar to Appa, and appeared to be saddened by his death. Also, she offered to try and heal Zuko's scar when they were enemies. Eventually, even after his betrayal, she decided to forgive him and embraced him as a friend after he helped her find the man who killed her mother.
The loss of her mother at the hands of the Fire Nation caused Katara to be strongly express her emotions about that day to her teammates, bringing up the topic in situations that tested the feelings of both her friends and herself, reinforcing her relationship with her mother, albeit indirectly. Occasionally, this fervor also blinded her from the fact that the people around her too suffered from similar experiences and events that equally impacted them. An example of this was when Katara described her mother as just hers and without giving a second thought that she was Sokka's as well, or when the waterbender told her brother that he did not love their mother the way she did after Sokka tried to stop Katara from tracking Kya's murderer, greatly upsetting him. When she got the chance to exert her revenge against the commander she believed was the killer, Katara was willing to use bloodbending against him, ignoring Aang's advice to forgive rather than take revenge. She deeply regretted her actions after realizing she had bloodbent the wrong man, although she was not above planning to kill the murderer, only for her self-conscience to stop her from almost executing him, understanding that violence was not the answer.
Motherly and feminine as she might be, Katara was not afraid to go beyond her feminine looks and way of being to achieve what she wanted. When she and Toph were denied entrance to a rowdy pub because the both of them were girls, they dressed up as boys. Katara, in particular, showed her masculine side when wanting to ride the pub's mechanized bull; being even willing to start an all-out brawl with some of the guys there who mocked her ability to stay on the bull. The whole thing ended with Toph dragging Katara away before things came to a head. The two later went to a spa and reflected on how being a girl was not so bad at all.
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