Summary: Inara never expected to become the ship's de-facto mother. She knows who is at her shuttle door by the sound of their knocks.
Disclaimer: Neither Avatar: The Last Airbender nor Firefly belong to me – I'm just playing with them for fun and definitely not for profit. And I promise to put them back (mostly) intact.
Edited 12/26 for a few grammar errors and better spacing
Tea
Inara knows who is at her shuttle's door by the sound of their knock (or, in Mal's case, by their lack of one). And it seems that despite Kaylee's soft spot for their newest passengers and River's strange connection with them and, at least in the case of the boys, the hero-worship in their eyes for Zoe, Inara has become the de-facto mother on board and when she's on ship the knocks at her door have become increasingly common.
The small monk-boy's knocks are hesitant, shaking, and when she opens the door for him he comes spilling into the room and into her arms like she's a tether in a sandstorm. The first time it happened she was surprised – she would have expected him to turn to River instead since their experiences are so similar. But she made him tea and sat and listened when he spoke of the world he'd left behind and held him when he cried and realized that maybe she could understand better than River what it felt like to have to tear yourself away from your roots. Now, he comes to her often after his nightmares, and Inara reminds herself that wars are fought at many different levels and that it's so unfair, and at once so necessary, that so much rests on this young boy and his lost knowledge. So she holds him and strokes his bald head and lets him cry into her robes until he's spent his grief, then listens to his nightmares and sometimes, rarely, tells him some of her own so he knows he's not alone in this world.
Katara's knocks are gentle, yet forceful, much like the girl herself. She doesn't come to visit as often as the rest, and when she does it is usually to complain about the boys or to ask Inara to help her with her hair. The ice-girl's beauty seems to grow daily, and Inara has a small unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach that she might be jealous of the girl in a few years' time. But she's still just a child, so Inara braids her hair and listens to her complain about her brother's pig-headedness and Toph's refusal to help out in the kitchen and Aang's childishness and Zuko's latest temper tantrum. When the rant is over and Katara slumps with completed catharsis, Inara begins to tell the ice-girl about a few of the things she learned about boys and men and girls and women when she was a child herself, and Katara soaks up that information as quickly and easily as she does any other. It's hard for Inara to stop the slight smile on her face the next day when Sokka backs down from an argument and Toph helps with the dishes and Aang sits for a few hours in quiet meditation and Zuko nearly bowls Inara over in the hallway as he hurries away from Katara with a blush covering his cheeks. She will probably be jealous of Katara in a few years, Inara knows, but for now the girl's victories are a confirmation of Inara's skills.
Sokka's knocks are strong and sure, and often strategically timed to happen right in the middle of one of Inara's relaxing sponge baths. Inara's not quite sure how he does it, but occasionally she's tempted to call him in without ending her bath early just to see what he would do. But although he's older and wiser and probably the most balanced of all their new passengers, Inara doesn't fraternize with crew, or passengers, and definitely not with children. Which he still is. Just. Barely. So she sighs and puts on her shirt and answers the door, and never misses how his eyes inevitably dart to the still steaming water basin on her soiree as he enters.
Despite the interruptions, his visits are, for her, the most relaxing of the new passengers. He sometimes complains about his sister, but with a sarcastic fondness that leaves her smiling into her tea cup and she knows it's just him blowing off steam and doesn't require any response. Just as often, he comes with a book or a poem or a schematic design edged with Kaylee's notes and they talk about philosophy and mechanics and occasionally love, and Inara smiles and remembers fondly what it was like to be a teenager with her whole life ahead of her. Sometimes they talk late into the evenings, and Mal inevitably barges in at these times, then looks bewildered when he finds the two drinking tea, playing mah jong and discussing the various incarnations of the virtuous lady in the poems of the Shi Jing. And of course Inara gives the captain a tongue lashing that leaves him meekly slinking out of her shuttle, and she and Sokka share a conspiratorial grin before returning to their tea and game and conversation.
When the blind girl knocks, Inara thinks that the metal of her shuttle door will cave in under the force of it. It's hard not to like Toph, Inara realizes the first time the girl comes to visit. The girl is so comfortable with herself, so in control, so unafraid to voice her opinions and let the world know exactly what she's feeling. Inara is almost a little bit jealous of that freedom, having trained herself to be a student of the human emotion and how to manipulate it to her advantage, which often involves hiding her own feelings under a graceful facade. Toph reminds her of Kaylee, so innocent and open and truthful. But where Kaylee has chosen an innocent trust in the world around her, Toph remains cynical and this puzzles Inara until she realizes how Toph sees the world and how she knows when people are lying or happy or nervous just from the subtle changes in the way they breath and the way their hearts beat. And once again Inara feels a little stab of jealousy for one of Serenity's new passengers, because how much easier would her job be if she could read people the way Toph does? Usually, though, Toph comes to her to get away from the others. Inara knows the girl views her shuttle as a sanctuary of sorts.
"It's too loud out there," she'll say, on days that Kaylee is holding Serenity together with duct tape and it feels as though the floors are going to shake out from under them. "I need somewhere that's muted." And she'll make herself at home amongst Inara's silk bedclothes and wash herself with the scented water that Inara brings out.
Once she came and asked Inara if she was pretty. "Not that it matters, really," she mumbled as if it were an afterthought. "But I feel the way all the boys get when Katara or you or Zoe come around, and their hearts never speed up like that when it's just me." It's the closest Inara has ever seen her to breaking into tears, and she quickly kneels in front of the girl and holds her face in her hands, forcing sightless eyes to look up from the floor.
"Honey, you're beautiful," she tells her, in all sincerity. "But you're young, and they're young, and they have no idea what they want and neither do you." And then Inara breaks a cardinal rule and leans forward to give Toph a chaste kiss on the mouth. "I could make you up, if you want, but you don't need it. You're perfect the way you are."
She's not expecting the hard slug on the arm, so she falls sideways in an undignified heap. When she recovers her composure, Toph is smiling broadly again. "Thanks, Powderpuff," she says. "Maybe someday when I'm older. Now, I know you have some tea around here – why do you offer it to Sokka and not to me?"
Inara's eyebrows raise at the name 'powderpuff'', but she's heard Toph call her companions worse and takes it as the term of affection its meant to be. Although she never does get a chance to do Toph's makeup, she does get to hear about her first kiss and winds up being the one to lecture Toph on the birds and the bees and how boys especially can pose a threat to a girl's plans for her future. And even though Toph claims to not want to hear about it, she listens with a big grin on her face as she sits on the bed, legs swinging as she sips her tea.
Inara knows Zuko is outside her door long before he ever knocks. She can hear him pacing on the metal grating for some time before the first hesitant taps on her shuttle door. The first time it happened, she thought she might invite him inside after he'd paced for the better part of an hour, but when she opened the shuttle door he looked at her with shell-shocked eyes and stuttered something about a mid-night stroll before running away. So the next time she waits for him to knock, and eventually he does, and she invites him inside with a gentle smile. She learns from that first time that baby steps are the only way to reach him. He nearly bolts the first time she offers him tea, so she pours him lemon water instead and sometimes they just sit in silence, or she plays the koto as he sits back against the pillows and lets a little bit of that ever-present tension leave him. He reveals one night that he can play the tsungi horn, so she picks one up while she's planet-side and asks him to play with her the next time he visits. He's surprisingly good, and she sings a soft lullaby she learned once as a child as they play an ancient tune together. She's startled to look up and see a tear rolling down from his good eye.
"Uncle used to sing that song," is all he says when she asks what's wrong, and then he flees her shuttle and doesn't come back for a few weeks and when he does he only collapses into her arms and cries into her red silk dress. She holds him and strokes his hair, which has gotten so much longer in such a short time, and sings another song she learned long ago about a lost boy finding his way home after years amongst the stars.
"Can… can I make us some tea?" he asks, when his tears are spent, and Inara can't help but hurt when she notices that only one side of his face is wet. She wants to do unspeakable things to whoever took away this boy's ability to cry properly, but instead she nods and shows him where she keeps her kettle and cups and leaves. She wonders if he'll talk this time, but all he says is "I can never go home. Not like the boy in that song." She can't help but notice the precise way in which he prepares the tea, the refined angle of his wrist as he stirs the leaves and the careful positioning of his hands as he fills both their cups. His form is nearly as practiced as her own, and as she accepts the cup from him with as much ceremony as he presents it, she can't help but think that he's right. The White Dragon tea is only prepared in such a way on one world that she knows of, and this poor scarred boy before her can never go back as long as Huo Corporation controls that world.
A/N: I recently discovered the awesomeness that is Avatar, and can't help but write some fic for it since it is amazing! This is part of a larger AU verse I'm working on because there really should be more Avatar/Firefly fusions out there in the world. Hope you enjoyed it and hopefully there will be more coming (though not necessarily soon – real life often intervenes and this next month is busier than most).