[FIC] The Thin Line (2/2)
Title: The Thin Line
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairing: (unresolved) Zutara, Maiko, Katara/OMC, OFC/(different)OMC, mentions of Taang and Sukka
Wordcount: 1521
Warnings: character deaths (both OCs and canon characters)
Summary: Post series; AU for most of season three. Sometimes, the happy ending doesn't come right away.
AN: There are several time-skips in this part, but it's pretty clear when one happens and how much time has passed.
At seventeen Zuko leans closer to Mai, and their lips meet.
The hand that touched his cheek was cool. No one had touched his scar since he’d received it. The blue eyes clearly expressed their owner’s willingness to help him, and all he could think of was “why?”
Why did she want to help him, after all of the horrible things he’d done to her and her friends? Yes, they’d discovered something they had in common, but that couldn’t be her only reason. What did she see in him that he’d missed somehow?
Zuko jerks back. Mai stares at him in confusion before quickly regaining her composure and her eternally bored expression.
“Something wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” Zuko lies. Then he kisses her again.
--------
At forty Zuko is numb as he hears his sixteen-year-old daughter tell her mother about the waterbender she has fallen in love with. Because no matter what the council might say to the contrary, as a girl Princess Ursa has no obligations to the Fire Nation when it comes to marriage. She is allowed, technically, to love whoever she wants. And so she falls in love with a man from the Southern Water Tribes. It is only life’s perfect irony, or perhaps one of the many spirits, that ensures that the man she falls in love with is in fact Katara’s son.
It was said, not only by Katara but later, that Ursa looked like her father. Apparently the princess was like the Fire Lord in more than looks.
But Ursa is blissfully unaware of all of this. “And his eyes, Mother, are just the purest blue! Like the heart of a flame,” she says dreamily, not knowing that both of her parents’ hearts are breaking; Zuko’s from his daughter’s words and the memories they inspire, Mai’s from the look on Zuko’s face.
--------
Katara does not have to force a smile as Kinen describes the girl he met at the Solstice Festival. She feels that she has always known this would happen, and cannot help but be happy for her son. She giggles as Sunen slaps his son on the back and says something about a “talk.”
It is strange, perhaps, when she realizes that Kinen looks more like her than he looks like his father. He acts like her too.
--------
Zuko fights the urge to smile as his fourteen-year-old son, Kuzon, pulls the hair of Aang and Toph’s thirteen-year-old daughter Yangchen. The Fire Nation’s crown prince is smacked with a gust of air for his audacity.
The Fire Lord can see the future of their interactions, and he feels that they will be a good match. Unlike his father more nearly twenty years ago, Kuzon is not restricted by any laws with regards to his eventual marriage. That much Zuko has finally managed to get the council to agree to, even if it is too late for him.
Ursa rushes into the garden, her face bright with joy. She is seventeen now, and though Zuko has avoided the thought, he knows what the blue pendant she wears around her neck means.
--------
It shouldn’t be this way, Katara thinks for a moment, and yet she knows it is far too late for things to change.
Kinen is almost twenty, and today he is marrying the princess of the Fire Nation.
Katara is happy for her son; she likes Ursa and knows that the two love each other with all of their hearts. They deserve the happiness they will have, the happiness that eluded his mother and her father.
Yet as she sees the two of them together, she keeps thinking that the colors are reversed: the man should have the dark hair and golden eyes; the girl should be tan-skinned with eyes of blue. But that is not how things are, nor shall they ever be that way.
Katara loves her husband, but she can’t help but notice that while she and Sunen have only Kinen, there are two boys sitting beside Zuko and Mai, sharing their features.
--------
It is the hardest news Zuko has ever had to give. He wishes he could ask someone else to tell her, but he knows that Ursa would be even more upset if he did that.
They were married for only six months.
Mai holds her daughter as she sobs, wishing (and not for the first time) that things were not as they were. Zuko continues to explain, repeating the tale the Earth Kingdom messenger told him less than an hour ago.
Kinen was on his way to Ba Sing Se for a diplomatic mission. It was to have been a mark of the Fire Lord’s trust in his son-in-law. Instead his ship was attacked by pirates, and though another ship rushed to the scene to help, they were too late. Kinen is dead, Ursa is a widow at eighteen, and Zuko wonders if anything will ever work out like it should.
--------
Katara’s only comfort comes several months later, in the form of a blue-eyed grandson. Ursa names him after her husband; there was never any question of the child’s name. And then Ursa does something her mother-in-law did not expect.
“Can I come live with you in the South Pole?”
Katara stares blankly at the young woman. The golden eyes are pleading, in a face so like her father’s that the waterbender knows she will not be able to deny this request. Sunen will not be happy. Zuko will not be happy. Mai… well, Mai is likely to understand more than either of their husbands.
“Yes,” she whispers, still looking at her grandson. “When you are well again, you can come live with us.”
He will be a waterbender. She knows this; never mind that his mother is a non-bender and of Fire Nation descent. This Kinen, like his father, will be a waterbender, and he will learn from the best teacher the South Pole has to offer. She promises that, even though he is too young to understand such promises. Ursa understands, and she agrees.
--------
Zuko feels old. He is justified; the Great War has been over for nearly fifty years. Kuzon is married to Yangchen, and they have five children. Zuko shouldn’t have favorites, but he does: the eldest boy, named for a long-dead uncle. Zuko’s second son, Issei, acts as representative of their nation in the Earth King’s court. Ursa married again when her son was five and had three daughters with her second husband.
Mai is dead, having succumbed to an illness at the age of forty-eight. Zuko stayed by her side the entire time. Now he has, against custom, seen Kuzon crowned Fire Lord. Normally the next Fire Lord is not crowned until the previous one is deceased, but Zuko does not intend to die in the Fire Nation. Even though it was something he decided at seventeen, the idea stuck with him all these years.
He doesn’t know why it took him so long to do this. This is something he’s wanted ever since he was a boy, ever since… but no, he learned long ago not to dwell on that.
He crushes the letter in his hand, the letter that arrived only a week before. It was in Ursa’s handwriting, telling him that her youngest daughter has just given birth to twins: a boy and a girl named Zuko and Katara. That is not his daughter’s only news; she also writes that Sunen has died.
Zuko almost hates himself for only going to her now that Sunen is dead. It is the night of Ursa’s birth all over again, and yet he prays this time it will end differently. The situation is different, and they are different. Why shouldn’t the ending be different too?
--------
Katara is sixty-five. Her hair is no longer dark brown but gray, and her skin is wrinkled. She has seen her grandson grow up; she taught him everything she knew about waterbending. She expects him to do the same for the blue-eyed little girl he now holds, his niece. For, as she knew when she first held her grandson, Katara knows that her namesake will be a waterbender. That the little girl’s twin will be a firebender she knows with equal certainty, despite the skipped generations.
Another woman of the tribe enters the tent and whispers something to Ursa, who stares at the woman in surprise before thanking her. Ursa turned to Katara, who she still calls “Mom”, and motions for the older woman to follow her outside.
Until now, Katara could list the greatest joys in her life on one hand. The sorrows would take many pages, the freshest being the death of Sunen. She did love her husband, no matter what anyone else might have thought. But her first and truest love was a man she knew better as a boy. Even as he stands before her now, shivering in the climate much colder than what he is accustomed to, she does not see the aged, gray-haired and bearded Fire Lord.
She sees the boy, just as he sees the girl.
At long last, it is enough.
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairing: (unresolved) Zutara, Maiko, Katara/OMC, OFC/(different)OMC, mentions of Taang and Sukka
Wordcount: 1521
Warnings: character deaths (both OCs and canon characters)
Summary: Post series; AU for most of season three. Sometimes, the happy ending doesn't come right away.
AN: There are several time-skips in this part, but it's pretty clear when one happens and how much time has passed.
At seventeen Zuko leans closer to Mai, and their lips meet.
The hand that touched his cheek was cool. No one had touched his scar since he’d received it. The blue eyes clearly expressed their owner’s willingness to help him, and all he could think of was “why?”
Why did she want to help him, after all of the horrible things he’d done to her and her friends? Yes, they’d discovered something they had in common, but that couldn’t be her only reason. What did she see in him that he’d missed somehow?
Zuko jerks back. Mai stares at him in confusion before quickly regaining her composure and her eternally bored expression.
“Something wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” Zuko lies. Then he kisses her again.
--------
At forty Zuko is numb as he hears his sixteen-year-old daughter tell her mother about the waterbender she has fallen in love with. Because no matter what the council might say to the contrary, as a girl Princess Ursa has no obligations to the Fire Nation when it comes to marriage. She is allowed, technically, to love whoever she wants. And so she falls in love with a man from the Southern Water Tribes. It is only life’s perfect irony, or perhaps one of the many spirits, that ensures that the man she falls in love with is in fact Katara’s son.
It was said, not only by Katara but later, that Ursa looked like her father. Apparently the princess was like the Fire Lord in more than looks.
But Ursa is blissfully unaware of all of this. “And his eyes, Mother, are just the purest blue! Like the heart of a flame,” she says dreamily, not knowing that both of her parents’ hearts are breaking; Zuko’s from his daughter’s words and the memories they inspire, Mai’s from the look on Zuko’s face.
--------
Katara does not have to force a smile as Kinen describes the girl he met at the Solstice Festival. She feels that she has always known this would happen, and cannot help but be happy for her son. She giggles as Sunen slaps his son on the back and says something about a “talk.”
It is strange, perhaps, when she realizes that Kinen looks more like her than he looks like his father. He acts like her too.
--------
Zuko fights the urge to smile as his fourteen-year-old son, Kuzon, pulls the hair of Aang and Toph’s thirteen-year-old daughter Yangchen. The Fire Nation’s crown prince is smacked with a gust of air for his audacity.
The Fire Lord can see the future of their interactions, and he feels that they will be a good match. Unlike his father more nearly twenty years ago, Kuzon is not restricted by any laws with regards to his eventual marriage. That much Zuko has finally managed to get the council to agree to, even if it is too late for him.
Ursa rushes into the garden, her face bright with joy. She is seventeen now, and though Zuko has avoided the thought, he knows what the blue pendant she wears around her neck means.
--------
It shouldn’t be this way, Katara thinks for a moment, and yet she knows it is far too late for things to change.
Kinen is almost twenty, and today he is marrying the princess of the Fire Nation.
Katara is happy for her son; she likes Ursa and knows that the two love each other with all of their hearts. They deserve the happiness they will have, the happiness that eluded his mother and her father.
Yet as she sees the two of them together, she keeps thinking that the colors are reversed: the man should have the dark hair and golden eyes; the girl should be tan-skinned with eyes of blue. But that is not how things are, nor shall they ever be that way.
Katara loves her husband, but she can’t help but notice that while she and Sunen have only Kinen, there are two boys sitting beside Zuko and Mai, sharing their features.
--------
It is the hardest news Zuko has ever had to give. He wishes he could ask someone else to tell her, but he knows that Ursa would be even more upset if he did that.
They were married for only six months.
Mai holds her daughter as she sobs, wishing (and not for the first time) that things were not as they were. Zuko continues to explain, repeating the tale the Earth Kingdom messenger told him less than an hour ago.
Kinen was on his way to Ba Sing Se for a diplomatic mission. It was to have been a mark of the Fire Lord’s trust in his son-in-law. Instead his ship was attacked by pirates, and though another ship rushed to the scene to help, they were too late. Kinen is dead, Ursa is a widow at eighteen, and Zuko wonders if anything will ever work out like it should.
--------
Katara’s only comfort comes several months later, in the form of a blue-eyed grandson. Ursa names him after her husband; there was never any question of the child’s name. And then Ursa does something her mother-in-law did not expect.
“Can I come live with you in the South Pole?”
Katara stares blankly at the young woman. The golden eyes are pleading, in a face so like her father’s that the waterbender knows she will not be able to deny this request. Sunen will not be happy. Zuko will not be happy. Mai… well, Mai is likely to understand more than either of their husbands.
“Yes,” she whispers, still looking at her grandson. “When you are well again, you can come live with us.”
He will be a waterbender. She knows this; never mind that his mother is a non-bender and of Fire Nation descent. This Kinen, like his father, will be a waterbender, and he will learn from the best teacher the South Pole has to offer. She promises that, even though he is too young to understand such promises. Ursa understands, and she agrees.
--------
Zuko feels old. He is justified; the Great War has been over for nearly fifty years. Kuzon is married to Yangchen, and they have five children. Zuko shouldn’t have favorites, but he does: the eldest boy, named for a long-dead uncle. Zuko’s second son, Issei, acts as representative of their nation in the Earth King’s court. Ursa married again when her son was five and had three daughters with her second husband.
Mai is dead, having succumbed to an illness at the age of forty-eight. Zuko stayed by her side the entire time. Now he has, against custom, seen Kuzon crowned Fire Lord. Normally the next Fire Lord is not crowned until the previous one is deceased, but Zuko does not intend to die in the Fire Nation. Even though it was something he decided at seventeen, the idea stuck with him all these years.
He doesn’t know why it took him so long to do this. This is something he’s wanted ever since he was a boy, ever since… but no, he learned long ago not to dwell on that.
He crushes the letter in his hand, the letter that arrived only a week before. It was in Ursa’s handwriting, telling him that her youngest daughter has just given birth to twins: a boy and a girl named Zuko and Katara. That is not his daughter’s only news; she also writes that Sunen has died.
Zuko almost hates himself for only going to her now that Sunen is dead. It is the night of Ursa’s birth all over again, and yet he prays this time it will end differently. The situation is different, and they are different. Why shouldn’t the ending be different too?
--------
Katara is sixty-five. Her hair is no longer dark brown but gray, and her skin is wrinkled. She has seen her grandson grow up; she taught him everything she knew about waterbending. She expects him to do the same for the blue-eyed little girl he now holds, his niece. For, as she knew when she first held her grandson, Katara knows that her namesake will be a waterbender. That the little girl’s twin will be a firebender she knows with equal certainty, despite the skipped generations.
Another woman of the tribe enters the tent and whispers something to Ursa, who stares at the woman in surprise before thanking her. Ursa turned to Katara, who she still calls “Mom”, and motions for the older woman to follow her outside.
Until now, Katara could list the greatest joys in her life on one hand. The sorrows would take many pages, the freshest being the death of Sunen. She did love her husband, no matter what anyone else might have thought. But her first and truest love was a man she knew better as a boy. Even as he stands before her now, shivering in the climate much colder than what he is accustomed to, she does not see the aged, gray-haired and bearded Fire Lord.
She sees the boy, just as he sees the girl.
At long last, it is enough.