Words I've Forgotten To Say
thebluefrenchhorn
I am a believer in true love, of the invisible threads that tie us together as thin and frayed and terribly breakable they may appear to be. This is not because of the way my father gazed at my mother, and certainly not because of the way my mother gazed at my father. After all, I've long ago accepted the reality of their relationship, all that it meant to the four nations and all that it lacked for me. No, I am a believer in true love because of the quiet man with flame and smoke in his eyes that my mother would bring me to visit every summer. I am a believer in true love because of Fire Lord Zuko.
With that said, it would be a lie for me to say that I didn't grow up in a loving atmosphere. Since the very first moment I can recollect, I have always been surrounded by a plethora of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, many of them blood-related and, even more of them, a collective group of strays that my family had adopted over the years.
The environment they created—loud and chaotic and filled with such an utter reliance on kinship—was a continuity that remained throughout my life. The same can be said for the both the benefits and drawbacks to having such a large family. This meant that by the time my tenth name day had passed there were two singular truths controlling my life. The first was that I would never be lacking in a playmate. The second, that none of my possessions would ever truly be mine and mine alone.
It was also around this time that I realized that my mother didn't love my father the same way he loved her. I want to fault her for it, but I can't. Love is a fickle being and I believe she understood that more than most people did. In the end, so did I.
My father, however, didn't and it his ignorance in the face of something so evident that I will never forgive. For all that my father didn't love Kya and me nearly as much as he loved Tenzin, he was sorely unaware of his predisposition. Even now, fifty years later and understanding the reasoning behind it all, I still can't help but resent him for it. I don't think I ever won't.
People fall in and out of love, holding their partner close before casting them off. But, a child? A child asks for nothing more than love and when they are failed to be provided with that, they do not forget.
When my father failed to love me, I did not forget.
Instead, at ten years of age, I was taught the life long skill that every individual is eventually forced to learn: how to pretend that everything is alright when it is evidently not.
Of course, child-me wasn't particularly gifted in that particular skill set, so it comes as no surprise to me that Uncle Sokka was able to see right through my facade.
He had been the first one to notice. Or, at least, he had been the first one to confront me about it. I have long suspected that my mother knew far before anyone else, but she had had her own battles to fight and, ultimately, chose an entirely different way to go about it.
Uncle Sokka, however, took a much more direct approach. He had been in the South Pole, visiting us for Shalako as he did every year and leaving after the Return of the Sun festival. It was a time of great spiritual worship and giving of thanks to Tu and La. It was also one of the few times that my father was home for an extended period of time, the world seemingly being able to be put on hold for the water tribe holy month. This, too, eventually changed.
But, it hadn't yet and I was no more than a bitter ten year-old, young enough to be transparent about my emotions, yet not old enough to completely understand them. But, Uncle Sokka did or, at least, he thought he did.
He invited me to his "war room", a small igloo on the outskirts of the village, that was said to have been the meeting place for generations upon generations of southern water tribe chiefs and their top warriors. In reality, it was little more than a dilapidated structure that he had built in his youth and kept around for sentimental reasons. To my young mind, however, it seemed to be carved from the very minds of the spirits.
"I understand how you're feeling," he told me, patting the space beside him and even letting me sit on one of his favorite pelts, "I was just like you, you know? The only non-bender surrounded by some of the most powerful benders of my time. But, there's nothing wrong with being a non-bender, Bumi. We all bringing something to the table and, for us, that isn't bending, but that doesn't mean we can't contribute just as much. I became a sword master, little man." he ruffled my hair then. "I can't wait to see what you accomplish."
I smiled back at him, saying, "thank you, Uncle Sokka," and "you're so right, Uncle Sokka", and not believing any of it but saying it anyways because I didn't know how to explain to him that we weren't similar. Uncle Sokka wasn't expected to be a bender, so when he wasn't it was completely acceptable. My mother being a bender was just an added bonus. I, on the other hand, was expected to be a bender. My father was the avatar and although I hadn't quite understood what that meant at the time, I knew it made him incredibly important within the bending world. For me to not be a bender was more than unacceptable, it was a disappointment, and that was something that Uncle Sokka could never relate to.
Fire Lord Zuko, however, understood the feeling far more than most.
Since my fifth name day and Kya's third, my mother had brought us to Ember Island every year to spend our summer there.
It was there that I met Fire Lord Zuko, although for the first few years I knew him as no more than Izumi's father and the only man that could make my mother truly smile.
The first realization came rather early on and the latter happened right around my tenth name day, the time my entire life came crumbling down.
Leading up to it, my mother and father had not been on the best terms. They never fought or, at least, never fought in front of us, but they hardly talked and when they did it was my father constantly looking at my mother in befuddlement as if she was an entirely different person. In the end, I don't think he really knew her nearly as much as he believed he did. In the end, neither do I. My mother was strange like that, vocal about some of her opinions and yet deceptively silent about others. More than anything else, she was a woman of duty and it is for that very reason that I believe she had been able hide her secret beneath Kya and my noses for so long.
It was Izumi that told me. She was a quiet girl, not because she was shy, but because she only spoke when she had something to say, with a pretty smile and a sharp tongue. She was also two years my elder, a face that automatically made her insanely cool, and my best friend.
"In another world, you would have been my brother," she said bluntly, and I pulled away from the sandcastle I had been building, and turned to stare at her in abject confusion.
"What are you even talking about?"
"My father and your mother," she said, looking at me as if I was an idiot. To be fair, she wasn't entirely off the mark. "You must notice how they look at each other. My mother and I certainly have."
"Isn't your mother mad then?" I asked slowly. "Will we even be allowed to come back to visit you next summer?"
"I don't see why not. And, trust me, my mother's hardly mad," Izumi responded before she leaned in to whisper into my ear. "She likes women, my mother. I hardly think she would care if father ran off with Master Katara. Not that he would do that. My father's far too honorable to just leave mother like that."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I questioned crossly and Izumi only laughed in response.
"I forgot what a southern bumpkin you are," she said, flicking my nose, "not understanding politics and such. To leave mother would be to dishonor her and father loves her far too much to ever do such a thing."
"But, I thought you said -"
"Yes, I know what I said, and my father is in love with your mother and vice versa." she replied, interrupting me. "That, however, doesn't mean my parents don't love each other. They just care for each other like two old friends."
"Isn't that weird, though? To, you know, live with?"
"Not really. It's just the way it's always been," she said simply, turning to face me, "isn't it the same for you?"
I wasn't sure if it was. I wasn't sure of a lot of things back then, but what I was sure of was that I would never be able to look at my mother and Izumi's father ever the same, not when all of the small moments between them were suddenly given such a different meaning.
It all suddenly made sense, why my mother saved every letter Fire Lord Zuko sent to her, the lingering touches between them, and how she always seemed to glow that much brighter when she was knee-deep in the turquoise seas of the Fire Nation. My mother loved the Fire Nation and she loved its ruler and it is a type of love I don't believe I have ever seen replicated for my father. No, it is a type of love I have never seen replicated for my father.
Years later, Izumi would tell me that I should have been born a firebender. That, in that other world where we were siblings and our parents had gotten the happy ending they all deserved, I would have been a firebender.
"You have fire within your chi," you said, half drunk on sake and yet so decisively certain, believing herself infinitely deep in the face of our youth."Your soul recognizes you for what you were meant to be and yet your physical body cannot, not when fire does not run through your veins and smoke does not fill your lunges. How cruel the Spirits can be."
I hadn't known whether I believed her or not then, but a part of me imagined and wondered about another Bumi living in another world with golden eyes and fire in his hands.
Even now, I still dream of him.
Tenzin being born changed everything. Eight years younger than me and six younger than Kya, the age gap alone should have been indicative of all that was wrong with my parents relationship. It wasn't, but it should have, and everything that followed afterwards made sure of that.
While Kya and I grew up in a strange juxtaposition of Ember Island and the Southern Water Tribe, talking with Izumi in the warm months and sparring in the coldmonths, Tenzin grew up traveling around the world on a sky bison.
A part of me was jealous, not because he got the experience or even because he was airbender, but because our father had actually asked him to join him on his travels. And yet, after all this time, I wonder if Tenzin who was the unfortunate one; that in our own misfortune, Kya and I, had still escaped the burden of an entire civilization that balanced precariously upon our younger brother's shoulders.
My father may have loved Tenzin more than he loved me and Kya, but he also loved the Air Nation more than he loved anything else in this world. It's because of that, that I wonder if he ever saw Tenzin as anything more than a reflection of his past.
I don't believe he did or, at least, I don't believe he did all of the time; not when we, as children, awkward teenagers, and young adults, were no more than a echo of those that have come before us.
"You look your grandfather," Fire Lord Zuko had told me during one of the few actual conversations we ever had (it should be noted that Fire Lord Zuko was as inclined to conversation as his daughter was which meant not very much). "You have his cheekbones and his jawline. But your eyes? Those are all yours, Bumi."
I don't think he had meant much by it and, yet, like all of the cryptic words spoken from adults to me during my childhood, I couldn't help but feel as if there was more to it. That sort of feeling only comes from growing up after a war—a war my parents barely mentioned to me, yet evidently existed. A war in which my grandmother was killed and my namesake liberated the Earth Kingdom.
A war where the Fire Nation committed genocide against the Air Nomads. A war that left Fire Lord Zuko with a scar twisting across half his face that know one will ask about and no one will answer about.
At times, I feel like I'm living another's memory.
At times I wonder if Kya is just as bitter as I am.
At times, I wonder if Tenzin is too.
My mother cheated on my father. This much I knew by the time I was sixteen-years-old.
It was nearing the end of our typical summer stay on Ember Island and Izumi and I were sprawled out across the beach, thoroughly drunk. That hadn't been the first time I had gotten drunk. When you're friends with royalty and grow up in a family situation as off putting as my own, you tend to begin drinking at a young age. That night, however, was probably the drunkest I had ever been and for a good reason: Izumi had just become a firebending master.
I say firebending master tentatively because although Izumi had passed her bending trials with flying colors, as her oldest and closest friend I could confidently say that if her and her old man went head to head, Agnai Kai style, there would be nothing but a burnt crisp left of her. But, we were young and dumb and achieving mastery from a bunch of ancient sages seemed like a good of reason as any to get completely shit-faced.
Our parents apparently shared the same idea.
At least, I hope they did. It's a far easier reality to accept, more so than the premonition that lingers at the base of my throat. Not, for the sake of my father and his slate-colored eyes and wide heart that took the universe in for all that it was and still chose to love it, but for the sake of my mother and her tireless pride.
It is that very same pride that prevented her from ever leaving my father. She considered it. I know for a fact, she considered it, whether she would ever admit such a thing or not (I suspect she wouldn't). Instead, she dangled freedom before her jaws every summer, daring herself to take a bite before locking herself up in the gilded cage that the avatar's wife was to reside.
But, my mother was human.
Human's make mistakes.
Human's are selfish and twisted and put themselves first. For all that my mother resides upon a pedestal within my heart, one that is carved from the past failings of my father, I can not bring myself to accept a world in which she would revoke her vows over a glass of overflowing sake.
My mother deserved better than that.
Fire Lord Zuko deserved better than that.
So, although it pains me to admit, to not disregard it as a fluke and sweep beneath the rug the transgressions of a woman who I could never bare to cast out of the righteousness of the light, I know that the clarity in her blue eyes that I saw that night was not imagined.
My mother was many things, a cheater among the long list that I could dare compile but, before all else she was decisive. She believed in things, believed in the good of people and the evil that took root in others and La bless anyone who was foolish enough to shatter the world that she had fashioned for herself.
My father learned that the hard way on multiple occasions.
But, despite it all, he never did stop loving her.
Despite it all, I've never stopped loving him.
In a lot of ways, I'm far too much like my father. Izumi used to tell me that. Not very often, but often enough that I remember it. Of course, it's not until after my father passed that I began believing it.
To say that my father died young would be a lie. But, in many ways, that it is what it felt like. He died before his first grandchild was born. He died before he ever realized that my mother didn't love him. Most importantly, he died before I could forgive him.
He died before I could tell him, before I could drag him to the side and scream in his face, throw back at him the burden that he had placed upon my shoulders the minute I dared to be born as anything other than acceptable, to have the wind fall through my fingers with not a sense of recognition. I want to bring him to the places that had become my true home, to Ember Island and all of its ridiculous fanfare and rip it from the memories he too had collected there and tell him, tell him that mother had tried but that it hadn't been enough.
I want to tell him that I needed him, because as much as I resented him for everything that transpired so long ago, I understand.
I understand the expectations that the world placed upon his shoulders. I understand that for all that he played at being the spirits, he was a man as broken and damaged and lost as they come.
I want to tell him that watching him die hurt.
It hurt Tenzin.
It hurt Kya.
It hurt mother.
And it hurt me.
We don't get to choose who hurts us in this world, who scorns us, who drags our names through the dirt and rips our reputations to shreds only to lay their carcasses out like entrails before the sun.
What we can choose, however, is who we forgive.
What we can choose, is when we have made our peace.
I can only hope that my father has done the same.
Other Works: My other stories within the Avatar: The Last Airbender Universe include: The Great Game
