"Ah, the new one… but in Fire Nation clothes. That's odd. I thought she was from the Earth Kingdom."
"You know how it works—here, you look how you feel, and I guess in the end, she felt more Fire than Earth."
"But she doesn't look vicious…"
"Not everyone in the Fire Nation is vicious. And quiet down, I think she's waking up."
Lady Ursa sat up slowly, fully expecting to feel a sharp, burning pain, but none came. She instead forced her amber eyes to focus on the seemingly transparent woman smiling sadly down at her.
"Welcome," the strange lady said, offering a blue-covered hand to shake (Ursa felt like she should honor her fiery blood and be repulsed, but she couldn't bring herself to.) "I'm impressed by how quickly you woke up. Most of the newcomers sleep in denial for a long time before allowing themselves to wake."
Ursa allowed herself a small glow of pride—at least, in death, she was above denial—before shifting back to the more pressing matter. "Where am I?" she asked dazedly. She tried to find an answer in her surroundings—a cocky Water Tribe boy nearby and countless others faded into the hazy, blank background—but it was all too distorted to process.
The boy's mouth seemed ready to spit out a snarky reply, but the woman swiftly answered before he could. "You're in the Spirit World," she said calmly. "A part of it, anyway."
"The more exciting part is reserved for the special spirits," the boy added with a bitter shake of the head. "No one's special here. Not even if you died fighting that stupid Admir—"
"Hahn," the woman reproached. "That's not how you greet a lady. Give her some time to adjust, and then you can complain to her, if she wants to hear it."
Hahn rolled his eyes, clearly used to this argument, but he left them alone all the same.
"Sorry about him," the woman said. "He used to be a lot worse, if you can believe it."
The two women shared a mindless laugh before Ursa's memories caught up with her, like a nightmare you thought you'd forgotten suddenly coming back to you.
Ursa didn't voice a word of these memories, but that didn't seem to make a difference to her friend. "You can't win, can you?" she said, thoughtfully tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "Either you think about your life and you feel sad, or you don't think about your life and you feel nothing at all."
Ursa felt like she should have some wise reply to follow that—something to show that she knew just what the woman meant—but her usually quick-thinking mind was failing her at the moment, probably due to the bursts of fire that kept flashing before her eyes.
"It's alright," the woman said when Ursa remained silent. "You don't have to talk yet. Just focus on making yourself comfortable. Most of the people here like to stick with their home nations, but you can stay wherever you like, really. If you want to talk to me again, my name is Kya."
Once Ursa was settled, she didn't immediately gravitate back over to Kya. She tried to give the others a chance, but found no luck. There was that familiar-looking admiral in red uniform that she did not want to get reacquainted with; there was an Earth Kingdom boy dressed in a bandit's clothes who kept glaring at her, like he expected her to pounce at any moment; then there was a large group of monks, nuns, and even kids, all of whom stirred a rush of guilt in Ursa's stomach whenever she looked at them.
The fact that Kya was just the easiest to talk to also contributed to it. She was by far the most patient woman Ursa had ever met. You'd expect more people to be patient in the afterlife—it wasn't like they had anywhere to go—but sometimes not even the powers of nature could make someone accept their state.
"Were you married?" was one of the first questions Ursa found herself asking, likely because her own ex-husband had been on her mind so much.
"Yes, to a man named Hakoda," Kya said, subconsciously touching the deep blue choker around her neck. Then, correctly predicting Ursa's next question, she added, "We had two kids: a boy and a girl."
This information struck Ursa oddly, making her realize how similar she and her friend seemed, and yet, based on Kya's content face as she spoke of her family, how different they were as well.
"What were they like?" Ursa asked.
"Oh, the oldest… his name was Sokka. He was a bit silly, really. He once got a fishhook stuck in his hand—which happened pretty often in our Water Tribe, but he made it unique by trying to get it out with another fishhook," Kya said with a wistful laugh. "But that's not all there was to him. He was rather clever when it really counted.
"And Katara… she could be a complete sweetheart, but if you got on her bad side, she wouldn't hesitate to—" Kya stopped for a moment, seeming to internally struggle, before deciding to go on. "She… she was a Waterbender. We didn't expect it, at first. None of us were Waterbenders anymore. At first we saw hints of it in little things, like building a snowman better than everyone else, but then one day, she got really mad at Sokka and accidentally… well, you get the idea. There was no denying it after that."
Ursa could tell from the look on Kya's face that this newfound ability had only been unsettling because of the circumstances, not because her daughter had ever purposefully abused it, but the words stung all the same.
"You must have been strong—must be strong, I mean," Ursa said after a moment, "for making it through all that with your family still intact. I know the Fire Nation can't have made it easy."
What Ursa meant was my family can't have made it easy, but she didn't say it. Her and Kya hadn't discussed her history with the Fire Nation once, but right then, they didn't need to.
Things changed when Ursa decided to give her other dead peers a second chance.
After all, she'd have to spend eternity with them, so why not confront them before they made too many hasty assumptions about her? She hadn't thought that getting to know people would at all alter her friendly routine with Kya (exchanging random stories, mostly Kya's but with a few silly tales from Ursa mixed in; never pushing for anything too personal).
But Ursa just had to talk to those red-clad spirits before she lost the nerve. She still remembered, painfully, how easily the denial of letting a fire simmer could blow up in your face.
The reunion had started well enough—or at least, as well as Ursa had expected. There were disapproving glares followed by satisfied gloats (Thank Agni, looks like you finally got what you deserve), but Ursa could deal with that. She wasn't afraid to throw it right back at them (You're in the same boat as me right now, so I'd think twice before going on about what I deserve). No, the real problem started when she found someone who wouldn't give her the evil eye.
He didn't look exactly as she remembered. Instead of the embroidered uniform and stuffy top-knot she had last seen him in, he wore some tattered, casual robes she vaguely remembered him wearing on their family vacations to Ember Island. But it was unmistakably the same boy: same polite demeanor, same handsome face with his father's eyes. They always could see right through you, but never in an unkindly way.
"L—Lu… Lu Ten?" Ursa stuttered. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, but she wasn't—just unprepared.
"Hello, Lady Ursa," he said, so simply that you'd think his father had just invited his sister-in-law over for tea.
"I…" Ursa changed her mind about what to say next several times. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Lu Ten; it was just the memories he brought back. She didn't know if she should apologize for helping his uncle steal his father's rightful place on the throne, or tell him how he had been right about Azula all along, or cry about how desperately she wished she had the full story to share with him.
In the end, she took a page out of her brother-in-law's book and started with the basics: "Why don't we just sit down and talk?"
When Ursa walked back over to her familiar corner, her eyes held a faint crinkle of wiped away tears, but the rest of her face was clear.
Seeing Kya sitting there, Ursa realized she could easily worm her way out of this. In fact, she could probably ignore the tearstains altogether and Kya would willingly play along, act like she'd never seen them at all.
But it wouldn't feel right. Ursa had had her fair share of lies in her life, and she wasn't going to lead the same path in the afterlife. Kya deserved better than that.
Your life story sounds all the more depressing when you say it aloud like that, and maybe if she could still feel pain and her companion wasn't as kind as Kya, Ursa wouldn't have even been able to finish, but somehow, luck working on her side for the first time, she was.
Still, talking about someone like Azula caused inevitable pain—or what would have been pain for the living (I tried to get through to her, and make sure she wasn't inheriting too much of her father's ways. But my main priority was giving Zuko the love he lacked, and I'm ashamed to say that I kind of let Azula fall through the cracks).
But her life in the Fire Nation—that was something she'd cried about and felt shame for countless times before. What was harder was digging up her second life, the one she hadn't allowed herself to think about.
For my crime, I was banished. I spent years in the Earth Kingdom with a fake name. The only things I knew about my family were things I learned from the townspeople who spoke of them, but given the remote place Ozai had sent me to, they weren't very knowledgeable.
It was years after when it happened. I'd spent what felt like forever trying to rebuild my life and wondering what had become of my children—Zuko, the sweet one I'd left behind, and Azula, the one I'd left behind long before. I was walking in suppressed shame until the day the sun went away.
Have you ever heard of such a thing? Perhaps they had some other version of it in the Water Tribe. The sun was just suddenly blocked. I'd never been a Firebender, but I didn't have to be to realize what this meant for Firebenders.
When it was over, I thought, that was it. That was the biggest connection I'd felt with the Fire Nation in years, and I wasn't sure if I was happy or sad about that. I tried to go on like I was just another unaffected Earth Kingdom citizen. Then he… Ozai… he showed up.
I'd run through this scenario in my head many times before, but none of that could have prepared me for the real thing. He wasn't himself. He was furious… and he'd always kind of been like that, but he'd always been controlled, in his own twisted way. Then, Ozai was staring at me with completely unrestrained rage.
I still don't know the full story. He just started spitting out cryptic blame… this is all your fault, I should've known he'd always be your son, I should've taken care of the problem when I had the chance… but oh, don't you worry! This crime won't go unpunished! He may have escaped, but I… I have an even better way to punish him.
It took a long time for Ursa to stop shaking, but Kya held her steady throughout it all, whispering her own crimes. She told of how she'd lied to the world, how she too had left her family to fend for themselves, how she had no idea if they'd even survived the war.
Their transparent bodies stayed intertwined like that, the woman who had died for her denial and the other woman who had died for her lies. And though those wounds had stayed with them in the afterlife, they somehow found solace in seeing one another's, coming together as two sides of the same coin.