Disclaimer: I don't own, and the world is probably really grateful.
Starring: Katara
Author's Note: Just studying the relationships between characters and their mothers.
Summary: The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. - Rajneesh
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Katara finds that, as she ages, she is losing the memory of her mother's face. She knows that if she looks into a reflective surface Kya is there, in her eyes and smooth forehead, in the glint of a smile and curve of a cheek. Her voice of her mother is gone, but lingers in her mind like the lazy connection she has to the tides – the knowledge that it is there but the inability to firmly grasp it between her fingers leaves her frustrated. She remembers the words, the lessons, the firm kindness that kept her from killing Sokka with her poor waterbending. Water, she was told by Gran-Gran, is as restless as the wind. It keeps moving beneath the surface and gives life to everything it touches, just as it can drown it all away. Water was a quiet strength unless it was pushed, much like a mother's love. It was why Katara stood there at the riverbank and whispered her prayers to Yue in hopes of gaining some sort of peace that the Moon Spirit had embodied before Zhao.
The baby kicks and Katara absently strokes her abdomen.
Katara cannot remember her mother and fears that she will make an inadequate one in a few months time. She knows how to love fiercely, that is after all how she has loved everyone from her travels. Her stitches have improved (Sokka now leaves all of his ruined leggings and tunics at her doorstep when they are in the same vicinity), and after the course of her adventures, her abilities with a soup pot are unrivalled. But in the depths of her heart she feels unprepared for this moment.
The water is cool at her fingertips and the baby rolls within the womb, as it tends to do when she bends her element. Tossing the sphere idly between her hands she widens her stance and moves through the basics movements and her eyes remained fixated on the moon above her and ruminates on Sokka's words.
He knows without words of her concern, as he should as her brother. He has been proudly carving spears and boomerangs with blunted edges for his niece or nephew to use since the moment she told him her news. He laughs with Toph about the names that Katara should name the child, tells stories to Aang that are the livelihood of their tribe and scowls at the lack of material to make a proper Southern infant sling.
"I only remember you washing my socks and making sea prunes. I remember you sinking ships to keep us safe and worrying about money to get us through to the next market. I remember you trying to keep the peace when you should have been laughing and goofing off. You already know this. This baby of yours doesn't change anything," he said as he fitted some sling material around her shoulders. "So stop worrying and relax."
But Katara has seen what a rag-tag bunch of seemingly insignificant children can do and know that he is wrong. Her child will change the world in its own way, just as she and Sokka have done. Just like water moves, so will she, and the river continues to flow to the ocean, her child will know of her stories and learn of the difference between right and wrong.
Kya's face may be lost to her but her legacy is not.