She looked nothing like her father.
Blue eyes, dark brown hair, and skin that was a shade or two lighter than my own. She was a water bender; I had known ever since I'd first felt her moving the fluids that kept her alive. I named her after the woman she had inherited her eyes from. I wrapped the betrothal necklace of her great-grandmother around her wrist. I held her close as we slept under the thick furs of my birthing bed. Nothing about her screamed that she was anything but a daughter of the Southern Water Tribe.
That didn't mean I stopped looking.
Before she could talk, I would often catch her gazing at the campfires. It was as if the flames held her captive, holding her eyes like some hypnotic dance.
"I'm sorry it has to end this way, brother," she'd purred, her crooked bangs and tilted stance giving her a crazed look.
"No, you're not." The blue and orange of their flames had filled her vision, blocking out everything else with their light. A deadly dance that she could neither stop watching nor interfere with, yet at the same time so beautiful that she almost wished it would never end.
When she was seven, she'd confided in me that she hated the winter. "Can't we go with Daddy to the Fire Nation? It's always warm there!"
"What a strange thing for a water bender to say," Gran Gran had said. "How could you not love the place that gives you the most strength? The season that surrounds you in your element?"
"I love the feeling of the sun on my face," Kya had retorted, crossing her arms and giving her great-grandmother a burning glare. "And I like heat. Sometimes I wish I could swallow a fire so it could keep me warm from the inside out."
"You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun."
When she was fourteen, we went to visit the Fire Lord and celebrate the birthday of his daughter. It was hosted on Ember Island, and he had found me in a dark cove with my ankles buried in the ocean.
"You're missing the party," he'd said, his tone gentle.
"She's your daughter."
He'd sighed. "Yes, I know."
"No, you don't." I had turned, surprised to find him only inches from me. "Kya is yours."
His eyebrow had shot straight up and then come back down in the scowl I was so used to seeing. "Does he know?"
"Of course he doesn't. Do you think you would still be here if he did? That I would be here?"
He had reached for me then, pulling me into his warm embrace. "I think that we would be here, together. With our daughter."
Tears trickled down my cheeks. "I still love you."
His lips pressed into my forehead. "I still love you, too. But we have responsibilities."
I nodded against his chest. "And he needs me."
"They need you," he corrected. "Your family."
I looked up at him as he stared out at the horizon. "Do you want me to tell her?"
"Not yet. Not until you think she's ready to hear it."
It had been the week after Aang's funeral. Everyone else had left, gone back to their duties and responsibilities, but Kya had stayed, not wanting to leave her mother alone. "It's so cold down here, having somebody else around will help keep you warm!" she'd joked as we cleaned the dishes.
I had been quiet, watching my hands as they swirled the water around the wooden bowl, thinking of all the things I had accomplished with those wrinkled fingers. "You weren't his daughter, Kya."
The igloo had become deathly still. "What do you mean?"
"Aang was not your father." I could feel the tears, but was too frozen to wipe them away. "He never knew. And even if he had, he would have loved you just the same. He was always a much more forgiving person then me." I finally looked up to see her sitting on the legs that were curled under her, her expression lost.
"Who?" She turned to face me then. "Who was he?"
"Your father is Fire Lord Zuko."
She shook her head. "How could you?" she demanded. "How could you do that to him? He loved you-"
"And I loved him. I loved him the moment I broke him free from the iceberg he'd been trapped in for 100 years. I loved him when he burned my hands while learning fire bending, when he almost lost control of his Avatar state trying to save me, when he allowed Zuko to join our group after he'd betrayed us and almost killed Aang. I never stopped loving him, Kya. But what I felt for Zuko… That was real, too. We love each other, but we both knew it was a love we would have to keep to ourselves. Aang needed me as much as Zuko did, and Zuko had to marry someone for the good of his people, not his own heart."
"Does he know? About me, does he-"
"Yes. He knows. He's very proud of the woman you've become. Just as Aang was."
Kya rose slowly, her expression too dark to read clearly. "You can never tell anyone."
"How stupid do you think I am?" I'd snapped. "Zuko is the only other soul that knows."
"Then it stays that way." She walked to the flap of skins, pausing with half her hand outside. "I'm going away for a while. I don't know when I'll be back. Good luck with the next Avatar."
And that was the last time I saw my daughter.
But that doesn't mean I stopped looking.