The Meaning of Forever

A Secret Calling

Chapter 1/?

By Paperkat

01/26/08

Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender

This story is an attempt to break the writer's block I'm having with my Transformers fic. Hopefully it will work.

Story Synopsis

Just because the war is over doesn't mean the story ends. Mainly Katara and Zuko centric.

Chapter Synopsis

Katara gets called to court.

&

Katara looked out over the wide expanse of the Southern Ocean before her. The water was calm and flat with only the occasional sealcat to break its peaceful surface. It was summer now, and the weather was mild enough for the earth to poke through and the planting to begin. It was the only time of the year Toph would visit them in the South Pole, as the rest of the year was 'just muddled mush' to her senses.

The Master Waterbender smiled thinking of her friend, her sister in everything but blood. It had been two years since Toph had come to visit and a year since Katara had visited the Earth Kingdom, but well trained ribbon hawks carried messages between them often enough that the time spent apart from her Earthbending sister didn't seem that grievously long.

It had been more difficult at first, after the war had ended, for their misfit family to be separated to the four corners of the world. Though they had spent less than a year together in each other's constant company it had felt more like a lifetime. All of the life lessons that Katara held near to her heart had been learned during that time, with that family, and even though it had been six years since the fall of Fire Lord Ozai, Katara's heart still ached with longing for that family.

"Master Katara! Master Katara!" Katara turned in time to catch Juri as he came tumbling up the slope towards her. Before she could ask any questions the small boy caught his breath and continued. "Master Katara, there's trouble in the village!"

The child's eyes were so earnestly frightened that Katara didn't ask any questions. "Hold on to me," she commanded softly while pressing Juri to her back supporting leg. With only a slight swinging motion of her arms, hands shaped like claws at her hips, Katara gathered the moister in the soggy summer soil and formed an ice sled beneath their feet. With a thought and a push Katara rocketed them down the slope towards the village, her arms alternating back and forth generating motion and momentum. Though the village didn't seem to be any worse for wear than she had left it this morning, Katara didn't immediately take that as a good sign. Their village had grown quite a bit since the war and there should have been people milling about completing their chores, but she saw none.

With Juri clutching her leg with all his small might, Katara used her balance and grace to weave her way through the buildings towards the village center, spewing mud and moisture in every direction in her haste. Before they cleared the War Lodge, Katara could hear her brother screeching in his high, almost feminine wail that let her know that the only thing in the village in danger at the moment was Sokka's dignity.

"Get off of me, you flying fire menace!"

When Katara finally came to a stop just outside the village center she was greeted with the sight of her brother frantically waving his boomerang over his head at the bird of prey perched there. The messenger hawk seemed quite unaffected as it lazily ducked under each of Sokka's wild swings. Katara's pounding heart slowed to a more normal pace, only slightly annoyed that her brother had caused her unintentional panic.

"Sokka, stop antagonizing the poor thing," Katara chastised after she thanked Juriand sent him on to his mother who was watching the village War Hero wail and stomp his feet in a very un-warrior-like fashion. The rest of the village was here also with ill conceal snickers of pure amusement. Katara shooed them away and back to their chores as she would children. In fact most of them were children. With the war over and families reunited, the Southern Pole's population had more than tripled in the last six years.

"Me!" Sokka demanded hotly, momentarily forgetting about the bird on his shoulder to glare at his sister. "All I was trying to do was to take the stupid bird's, stupid message!"

"I tried to stop him," Suki sighed, her day old son that Katara had delivered herself, swaddled and sleeping in her arms.

"Suki!" Sokka yelled in genuine panic. "Why are you outside?! Why are you walking?! Why are you outside and walking with my son! And will someone get this bird off of me!"

Katara shared a look with her sister-in-law, one that they had shared many times before in these four years. He's your bother, Suki's eyes told her, and Katara's would laugh back, Yeah, but you married him. The Kyoshi warrior sighed in defeat and retreated towards the lodge she shared with her husband. Katara pitied her only in that she knew first hand how Sokka's loving care could be downright smothering if not tempered with distraction.

"Sokka stand still," Katara commanded softly as she approached the stand meant for the massager hawk. Although glowering, her brother stood perfectly still even as the raptor briefly dug its talons in deeper before launching itself into the air. With two great beats of its wings the hawk covered the distance and gracefully alighted on the ornately carved perch.

"Man," Sokka pouted, as he repeatedly patted his head, neck and shoulders looking for evidence of blood. "I hate it when these things come to visit."

Katara only smiled indulgently as she cautiously approached the hawk. Though she didn't have her brother's awful tract record with the winged massagers, she knew better than to assume that a trained hawk was a completely tame one. Katara offered the bird some dried seal meat as she would one of Toph's red ribbon hawks, but the fire nation raptor shunned the offering before impatiently turning on the perch and presenting the scroll compartment on its back.

"Even their birds think they're too good for us," Sokka grumbled half-heartedly when he joined his sister's side.

"It's probably trained not to accept food from anyone except its master, Sokka, to keep it from being tempted out of its cargo." Katara reasoned as she carefully released the compartment's bindings and pulled it from the hawk.

"Whatever," Sokka scoffed. "Hey, didn't you tell Suki to lie down for the next couple of days? I mean she did just give life to my son, shouldn't that mean that she should, I don't know, maybe stop moving or something?"

"Hn... what?" Katara was forced to ask, as her attention had been completely adsorbed by the brief message contained on the parchment.

"Is something wrong?" Sokka asked, all of his earlier buffoonery had completely melted away and was replaced by not only a concerned brother, but also a trained warrior.

"Oh, nothing," Katara responded lightly, hoping that Sokka would just leave it at that, but her brother knew her too well. He stood their waiting, his blue eyes drilling into her.

"No really, it's just that…" Katara's thoughts trailed away as she struggled to come up with a believable story. "I'm concerned about Iroh," she blurted out so unexpectedly that her eyes widened to match her brothers with surprise.

"Why?" Sokka asked, his wariness turning to concern, and Katara winced with guilt. "Does it say that he's ill?"

"No, it's more about what it doesn't say," Katara told him truthfully, as the single line of text was cryptic at best if not very direct. When Sokka crossed his arms, Katara knew that she wasn't going to get out of this without an explanation.

"Well, you know how Iroh is," she began, turning away and hanging her head slightly to hide her half-truths behind her hair. "When he writes it's like a mini novel, right down to what's pissed Zuko off lately. This just isn't like him," she said as she waving the small single leaf of parchment too quickly for her brother to catch the seal under the short note. Iroh would have never sent a personal message signed with an official family seal.

"Well, being Fire Lord has got to be keeping him busy," Sokka told her softly, placing his hands on her shoulders. His easy comfort only made Katara cringe further. "And with negotiations between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom still so unstable, he probably just didn't have time to write anymore."

"Maybe," Katara said softly, silently cursing her brother for his timely and unwelcome logic.

"Go visit him."

Katara whorled around in shock. "What?"

"Go visit Iroh," he continued with a shrug. "The baby's here, so you don't have to worry about that anymore. It's planting season, and you hate planting season, and besides if you don't go you'll just worry about it until you make me crazy and I send you away. So just go."

"When did you get to be so wise?" Katara asked her brother, giving him a hug.

"Oh, about 30 seconds after I found out I was going to be a dad."

"After you passed out you mean."

"Yeah, after that."

Four days later found Katara sailing to Kyoshi Island where she planed to book passage on a Fire Nation trading vessel headed back home. She would have left sooner, but Gran Gran had insisted that she stay for the Sun Ceremony and at least the first day of the Planting Festival afterwards. As the only water bender and consequently the only water bending Master in the South Pole it was expected of her to perform certain ceremonial duties, even though most of them had to be modified to accommodate the fact that she was a girl. She simply wasn't going to greet the summer sun bare-chested with a seal kill at her feet.

Though the note that had prompted this trip had no deadline or timetable Katara felt a certain amount of urgency. Katara pulled the parchment from her sleeve and read it again just to be certain she hadn't missed anything.

I think it is time you visited.

There wasn't a true signature, just a seal, but it was unmistakable; a firebird pressed into expensive ebony wax with a dusting of real gold over the figure of the phoenix. Katara sighed, tucking the note away and hoped she wasn't about to make a great fool of herself for something that could possibly be nothing at all. But what could she do? It wasn't wise to cross a Princess of Fire, especially when that same woman held a debt that had yet to be repaid.

What could Mai possibly want with her?

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I respond best to constructive critique and cookies, not flames.