lucky one
When the baby comes home, they crouch by his bedside and watch him for as long as their attention spans will allow. Their mother stands by, ready to slap away any wayward hand that reaches for him. He is small and new and wrinkly, and he smells fresh as the new day. They give each other conspiratorial looks and when their mother looks away, the quickly reach into the crib and touch his tiny hand with their fingers. In their room that night, Kya whispers, "He's so soft," and Bumi whispers back, "Maybe he'll be an airbender."
They look at each other, tucked into their beds, and agree that that must never happen.
.
When the baby is one, he begins to walk, his fat little feet touching the dewy grass, his hand tucked safely into Bumi's. Kya waterbends shapes before him to motivate him to keep walking. They both agree that now the baby can walk, they will be able to have fun with him.
"We can play with the lemurs now," Bumi says, "and hide and seek, but we won't be able to go far because he'll be scared. Maybe not hide and seek, then. Maybe something else."
Kya taps the baby's nose playfully and it wrinkles up as he fights a sneeze. They smile at each other.
"How cute," Kya says.
The baby sneezes and flies back four feet, landing on the grass, giggling. Their blood runs cold. All thoughts of lemurs and hide and seek vanish in the blink of an eye. They quietly carry the baby back into the house. When their father asks them if they want to play with him, they say no and leave his presence as fast as they can.
Late at night, Kya thinks she can hear Bumi cry quietly into his pillow and pretends she doesn't.
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When the baby turns three, they have a birthday for him, and their parents' friends come and bring their children. There's a lot of screaming and laughing and playing. Bumi and Kya receive presents too, even though it isn't their birthday. They play in the courtyard with all their new things. The baby comes waddling toward them, reaching for their toys, and they let him play with them because it's his birthday and they are supposed to be nice to him today. Their cousin, Yue observes him from where the older children are standing, because older children don't play the same way they do.
"Have you been able to tell whether he's an airbender yet?" Yue asks.
They pretend to be too busy playing. Yue sees through their act and asks again, louder, so that they have to answer. Bumi nudges Kya. Kya says, "No, not yet. He might not even be a bender. We just don't know. He's still a baby."
"He's not a baby," Yue says. "He's old enough for you to be able to tell."
"No, no," Kya insists. "I didn't start bending until I was four."
They leave quickly, taking the baby with them, praying he doesn't do anything to blow their cover. Inside, where the adults are talking, their father wonders why they've come in.
"We got bored," Bumi says quickly, and they disappear into their room and don't emerge until it's time to say goodbye to the guests.
.
When the baby is five, they agree it's time to stop calling him baby, because he hates it, and also because they need to address their problem, and they can't do that when how they label him brings back memories of soft skin and the smell of newness.
"We have to talk to you about something very important," they say to him, and he sits on the edge of his bed, rubbing his eyes. It's late, but they couldn't risk their parents overhearing. "It's about your bending. You have to keep it a secret. It's very important."
The ba—Tenzin blinks up at them confusedly but nods and does not question them.
Kya feels as though she has to explain something, at least, so she says, "Being an airbender is not like being a waterbender. It's very different. It's important that you don't bend. Try to focus on other things. Like the leaves. Or cake. Okay?"
He nods again. His eyes are wide and scared. Bumi kisses his face and they tuck him back into bed. When they go back into their room, they don't talk for a long time, until, when the sun is coming up and chasing away the darkness of night, Bumi whispers, "He still smells new," and the silence that follows swallows them whole.
.
When Tenzin is six, he starts to ask questions. They skirt around it for as long as they can but the day comes when he won't take no for an answer so they sit him down and tell him a story.
Once upon a time there was a boy named Aang. Just like Daddy. He was a very happy boy. And he was an airbender. Back then, it was nothing to be proud of, because there were a lot of airbenders. But one day, Aang was bad, and then to punish him, the spirits killed all of the airbenders, except for Aang, so he could be alone and he didn't have a brother and sister like you do to make you feel better, he was very alone and very sad. The end.
Tenzin listens intently. They don't want to look at each other because if they do, Tenzin will know they are lying, so they stare at him resolutely until he drops his gaze to the grass.
"What did he do that was bad?" he asks quietly.
Bumi nudges Kya and Kya says, "He didn't listen to his brother and sister's warning not to airbend. That was a very bad thing that he did."
Tenzin's eyes snap back to them, cool and grey, just like their father's. "You said he didn't have a brother and sister."
Kya realizes her mistake and balks. Bumi steps in quickly and says, "Of course, he didn't, after the spirits killed them. Weren't you listening at all?"
Tenzin looks back down at the floor and they exchange the briefest of glances. Their father comes outside and asks, "What are you three talking about, all huddled up like that?"
"We're telling Tenzin a story," Kya says.
Their father smiles wanly and wanders back inside. When they turn to look at Tenzin, he is gone.
.
When Tenzin is seven, they catch him airbending in the garden, behind the tall oak tree. They hide behind some bushes and watch him try to manipulate a current but his hands are clumsy, his movements nowhere as flexible as their father's. They watch him until he gets tired and goes back inside. They stay out in the bushes until the sun sets and their father comes out to look for them. Kya pretends not to notice that Bumi's eyes are puffy, or that her own throat has been closed by something big and round that won't go down no matter how many times she tries to swallow.
.
When Tenzin is eight, they stay up all night in their room, staring at the ceiling, each aware that the other is awake. They think, eight years is a long time to keep a secret. They are both tired, the kind of tired that sleep does nothing for. Bumi whispers, "What now?" into the silence of the room, knowing that Kya is awake and can hear him, but Kya cannot respond.
"I wish we had never met him," Bumi says, but they both know it's a lie. They have told a lot of lies now, to their parents, to their friends, to Tenzin, but they love him and they are tired.
"Maybe we should stop," Kya says after a long beat. They both understand the implications of such a decision. They understand that their father won't be their father anymore, but Tenzin's father, Tenzin's teacher, Tenzin's everything. The sun comes up and pushes the darkness into the corners of their room, and in the next room Tenzin sleeps soundly, or maybe he's airbending in secret like he always does now, and Kya and Bumi make an important decision.
They go into Tenzin's room because they can't wait and they wake him up and hug him. They both start to cry, and they both try to hide it, and Tenzin starts to cry too.
"Are we orphans?" he asks, bewildered. "Are Mom and Daddy gone? Is that why you're crying?"
"No, stupid," Kya says. "You can tell Daddy you're an airbender now. The spirits won't punish you. We just talked to them and they said it's okay."
Tenzin's crying immediately turns into laughter. "I can?"
Kya and Bumi sleep like logs until noon.
.
When Tenzin is nine, they are treated like criminals. Their father won't look at them. Their mother's eyes well up with tears and they are afraid because she only bothers with tears when she is angry. They try to explain that they made an important decision and it was the right one but they won't be heard. Tenzin doesn't play with them anymore. He has "a lot to catch up on".
Their uncle Sokka comes to visit unexpectedly and stays with them in their room even though he has his own room ready for him. Sometime in the night, he says, "I understand why you did what you did," and they both cry and slide off their beds, onto his mattress on the floor, and he holds them until they fall asleep.
The next morning, their parents are their parents again, and Sokka gives them a conspiratorial wink as he sets off for home after lunch.
.
When Tenzin is ten, he is never home. Their father whisks him away to visit the air temples, and the Earth Kingdom, and Ba Sing Se, and all the places he went to when he was a young man. They wait diligently every week for a letter from Tenzin telling them of his travels, and his studies, and all the history he is learning of, and it's written in his clumsy hand, words spelled badly and paper stained with berry juice because he wasn't careful. They stay awake at night and whisper about all the things they would do if they were airbenders. Kya tries to imagine what Bumi feels like, because at least she's a bender, and he's even more of a disappointment than she is.
"He's so lucky," Bumi says.
"Yeah," Kya says, touching the big letters on the paper Tenzin had written them, and she thinks if she tries hard enough, she can still smell the baby.
.
When Tenzin is twelve, he stays at home for a period of several weeks while their father settles something in the city. This is the most they have seen of their brother in a long time. He is taller, leaner, his head shaved, his voice cracking. For a while, they don't know what to do with him. They sit with him in the garden and watch as he demonstrates all his new airbending moves and clap at the right times. He gives a deep bow to acknowledge their applause.
"That's pretty impressive," Bumi says.
"Thank you," Tenzin replies.
Silence. Kya waterbends the drink in her hand and splashes Bumi in the face to break the strange tension between them. Bumi jumps to his feet and demands a brawl. They're bumped and bruised and laughing on the grass when they realize Tenzin isn't with them anymore. He'd gone to his room to meditate. They peek in through the gap he left between the door and the doorframe and look at his serene face.
"He's boring now," Kya says, pouting.
Bumi whispers, almost breathes, "He looks just like Dad."
.
When Tenzin is thirteen, Bumi goes away for military school. They have a goodbye party for him at a restaurant in the city and get appropriately drunk. Kya hands Tenzin a bottle of something hard but Tenzin doesn't want any.
"What the hell?" Bumi yells. "It's a party!"
"I'm good," Tenzin says.
"No way, you can't be sober at my going away party!" Bumi grabs the bottle out of Kya's hands and shoves it into Tenzin's face. "Drink!"
"No, I don't want to," Tenzin says.
"Come on, don't be such a bore."
"Tenzin, just have a sip," Kya says. "Just be cool, for once."
"Have a drink, damn it, I'm leaving!"
"No, I don't want to drink, just leave me alone."
Bumi throws the bottle against the wall. It shatters, the alcohol spilling everywhere. Shards of glass fly toward the party but Tenzin pushes them back with a burst of fresh air.
"Oh, yeah, you saved the day!" Bumi screams. His eyes are cloudy, shiny, his hands clenched into fists at his side. "Great job, hero! Great job, baby! You've saved us all, you've saved the Air Nation!"
"You're drunk," Tenzin says, quietly, calmly.
"What does that matter? What does it matter that I'm drunk?" Bumi sways and takes a seat at the head of the table. Their friends watch with wide eyes. They're making a scene but Bumi's too drunk to care and Kya's too drunk to stop him. Tenzin looks between them, waiting, wondering, they don't know. They don't care.
"Yeah, Dad's not here to see you, he's not here to watch you meditate and airbend your way out of this," Bumi slurs. "You can drink. You can fuck. You can cry. He can't see you. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?"
Tenzin leaves the restaurant. In the aftermath of being billed for damages and stumbling home, and blinding headaches and flinching from the sun, they realize what they've done, and they crawl into Tenzin's room and find him flipping through ancient texts they're not allowed to touch.
Tenzin looks at them expectantly. They don't know what to say.
"I can do what I want," Tenzin says when the silence stretches. "I do what I want," he corrects himself.
They look at each other through a haze of pain and dry mouths and bloodshot eyes. They want to apologize but the words won't come out. Tenzin goes back to his reading, and they leave his room trailing shame behind them that seems to burn the very ground they step on.
Bumi leaves for school after dinner. Kya sees him off on the docks in the city.
"I hope you're happy, leaving me alone with Tenzin," she says.
"What the hell else am I supposed to do?" Bumi asks hopelessly. "I'm no bender. I can't just sit around. I have to do something to—" He stops abruptly, but they both know the end of the sentence is "to be enough for him."
"I know," Kya says. "I just wish he'd go away."
They both know it's a lie. Tenzin is different now, but not so different that they can't see the baby sneezing and falling back on the grass when they look at him. Kya hugs Bumi goodbye. They both pretend not to see one another cry.
.
When Tenzin is fourteen, Kya decides to leave home. They have a goodbye party for her at a different restaurant, to be sure, and Bumi comes dressed in his uniform. They spend hours making fun of him and his new haircut. Tenzin drinks a bottle of beer and disappears with Lin somewhere. Everyone gets drunk and Kya and Bumi sit back in their seats and feel five years old.
"Is he with Lin now, or with with Lin?" Bumi asks.
Kya shrugs. "Who cares?"
"You don't know?"
"I don't see much of him anymore."
Bumi nods. His eyes aren't as cloudy as they would normally be at this juncture. He must be building a tolerance, Kya thinks to herself. Military school is good for something after all.
"Where are you going?" Bumi asks her.
"Haven't decided yet."
"Kya," he says in a different voice, one that makes her look at him, really look at him. She sees tan lines on his forehead from where his cap normally covers his skin and a scar on his cheek that is new, and muscles built to fill the holes that bending never will. "I left because I had to, same as you're doing right now. To escape. But I can't escape Tenzin. You won't be able to either."
Kya knows but she doesn't want to admit it. She doesn't have to. She gets uproariously drunk and passes out, and Bumi carries her back to their old room. He sleeps on the floor because the mattress is too soft compared to what he's gotten used to. In the morning, she says goodbye to her family and gets ready to leave.
Tenzin walks her to the docks in complete silence, mostly because she's too hungover to talk, but also because there isn't much to say. He walks with assurance and certainty, a calmness about him that she never sees anywhere else. She wonders if that is how she would have been if she was an airbender. She wonders about a lot of things.
Suddenly, she's seized by an urge to say something, anything, even though what will follow will probably be her breakfast. "Look," she says forcefully, grabbing the edge of his orange sleeve and stopping him. "Bumi and I aren't shit. You're just good. It's the luck of the draw."
"I know," Tenzin says, looking surprised.
"No, you don't," she insists. He can't know and still have that calm look on his stupid face. She feels her eyes fill with tears but she doesn't want to cry. Her ride's leaving soon. She has to go. "Look, he's always wanted an airbender. Always. You know how much you mean to him, don't you? Don't you?"
"You mean a lot to him too, Kya. So does Bumi. We're his children. It doesn't matter who's an airbender and who's not a bender at all."
Kya's eyes are filled with tears and through that foggy film she sees Tenzin as he is for the first time: still that naïve child, still blind to the facts. He's taller than she is now and his voice is deeper and he's capable of creating a hurricane simply because he wants to but he's still a baby. Still the baby. And she doesn't want to make him understand anymore. Maybe ignorance is better. So she backs up and blinks her tears away.
"Of course," she says, and she kisses him goodbye and gets on the ship, off to the great unknown.
.
When Tenzin is sixteen, he becomes an airbending master, and they watch as his father inks his skin. Tenzin clutches at his robes and pretends to feel no pain but when Kya offers him her hand, he holds on so tightly that she's afraid he'll cut off circulation.
"You're ugly now," Bumi says, running a hand through his own full head of hair.
"You weren't so pretty when you had to cut it short for military school," Tenzin retorts, and Kya snorts.
"Guys, come on," their father says. "You're breaking my concentration. Do you want these tattoos done right or not?"
Kya and Bumi share a look. "Not," they both shout, and Tenzin groans.
After the ceremony, Bumi's hammered and Kya's well on her way, and Tenzin makes eyes at Lin and it's gross.
"What do you even see in her?" Bumi asks in what he thinks is a whisper but is really a shout, and Lin gives him a glare that should turn her to stone.
Kya laughs long and hard. "She's exactly Tenzin's type. Snooty to the extreme."
"Shut up," Tenzin hisses, his face beet red. "You're embarrassing me. I'm out of here."
"No, wait," Kya says, reaching out for him quickly. She gives Bumi a quick look and he sobers up considerably. Tenzin waits, the way he always does, with patience and serenity, clear eyed and ready.
Kya nudges Bumi and Bumi says, "We're sorry, Tenzin. We've been sorry all this time. It's been eating us alive."
Tenzin pretends not to know what they're talking about because that's what he's been doing his entire life and that pretending has become a habit, and the habit has become a part of him.
"You're the lucky one," Kya says. "You're golden. We weren't. We aren't. We can't be like that, even though we try."
"You're golden too," Tenzin says, ignoring their snorts of derision. "No, you are. Just, you're golden in a different way. That's all."
They look at each other. His words have closed a door that they had been painfully aware was open. Maybe it wasn't the "You're forgiven," they had been looking for but it was good enough. They breathe sighs of relief and give Tenzin hugs and slobbery kisses, and when he wrestles away from their grasp and runs off to make sure Lin didn't notice any of it, they sit down and pass a bottle between them.
After a long silence, Bumi says, "Golden," and snorts so loudly that people stop to look at them. "I wish my commanding officer could hear that."
"I could cut a piece of myself off and pay my rent with it," Kya says.
They laugh. The bottle is empty. Bumi sets it down. They've grown up enough to know that being special in your own way is bullshit but they hope he's right. They really hope he's right.
.
When Tenzin is thirty-four, their father dies. His body is cremated and scattered amongst the winds. They watch the ashes fade into the air and keep a silent vigil the whole night. Tenzin doesn't speak for several days. They find him meditating in the temple on the island just outside of the city where he lives. It's a strange place to live. Kya misses the crowded cities she runs through and Bumi misses the battlefield. Tenzin seems at home here, though, so they say nothing. They are given rooms facing the statue built in their father's honor and try not to look at it. After the first night, Kya goes into Bumi's room and sets her mat on the floor.
"Can you imagine Tenzin raising kids here?" Bumi asks. "It's like a museum."
"If they're airbenders, they'll be able to take it," Kya says. "They'll be able to take anything."
The room feels chilly and different. All the rooms are like that here. They try to sleep but don't, and the hyperawareness of the absence of their father never really goes away.
"I'm sorry," Tenzin tells them over dinner that none of them can stomach.
"What, for your cooking?" Bumi says.
They laugh, but it sounds a little weak.
"No, for Dad," Tenzin says. "I mean, I'm sorry for our loss. Everyone's been saying sorry to me but I haven't had a chance to say it to you."
Kya starts to wave away his apology when he stands up abruptly and says, "No, please. Listen. I'm sorry. He was your father too." There is nothing there of the man Aang raised; the quiet, the calm, it's gone. His words ring in the silence that follows until he says it again, louder, clearer, with more urgency, "He was your father too."
He takes his seat and resumes his meal with shaking fingers but he doesn't eat any of it, just pushes his food around the plate. They realize their hands are shaking too. Bumi whispers, "Thank you," in a voice that quivers and quakes. Kya cannot speak at all.
They stay a few days at the temple, and then Kya packs her bags and moves south, to her mother, and Bumi goes back to the barracks. Tenzin sees them off. He's taller than them both, with a long beard and his tattoos that are conspicuous on the cream colored skin of his head. They don't look at him. He reminds them so much of their father.
"Please come and visit me," he tells them. "I can't leave as often as I'd like, since I'm on the council now."
"Of course," they say.
They hug him and watch as he walks away, orange robes fluttering behind him, catching the wind they wished they could command.
They hug each other goodbye. Bumi looks different from when he was younger, his face more grizzled, his eyes darker, and Kya's hair is greying and there are some very suspicious wrinkles forming on her upper lip that she doesn't like thinking about, but when they look at each other, they see late nights spent worrying and whispering, they see fear and insecurity, they see love, they see children.
"He turned out alright, didn't he?" Bumi asks, and Kya says, "Yeah. Alright."
Bumi's ship is the first to sail, and Kya watches him go with a smile and a wave, and then it's her turn.
.
When Tenzin is forty-three, they go to visit him and welcome his firstborn. He names her Jinora, and her eyes are a chocolate brown. They coo and sing to the baby, and when they leave the room to give Tenzin time with his wife, they hold each other and try very hard not to cry.
They cry anyway. It's pathetic, but so are they, and they know it, and they cry about that too.
.