-1It made perfect sense.
Aang and I would seal our love with a passionate kiss after the final battle, our epic romance renowned by the entire world mere days later. Festivals would explode all over the land in bright blues and grays, portraying our story of perseverance and the kind of young love that made middle aged women and young preteens sigh in want. We would be assailed by many a surprise party days after he proposed and I would smile and laugh, hugging everyone, and kissing Aang in the doorway as the crowd counted the seconds. I would walk the room, showing off the bright ring of sapphire and diamonds. "Oh, it's so expensive!" They would cry. Well, only the best for the lovely Katara, he would say, surprising me by appearing by my side. I would wrap my arms around him and whisper 'I love you.'
We would marry in the Spring at sunset while the world is caught in the parallel of romance, and we would kiss as the moon slipped into the sky. Lights would dance in the trees and in the hands of many strangers who truly wished us good fortune. All my loved ones would be there, and I would bask in the wonderful title as the Avatar's good, beautiful, faithful, kind wife. After our honeymoon we would return to our palace in Ba Sing Se and announce that an heir was to be born. The city would simply lose its wits in delight, and my wonderful husband would stand beside me as we descended into the chaos of the crowds, kissing babies and shaking hands. And then he would kiss me and the whole world would scream our happiness, and a single tear would escape me from nostalgia of that first kiss that started it all.
Yes, this scenario made absolute, beautiful sense. Any girl in her right mind would choose such a wonderful life. A life of delicate yet delectable foods, silken clothes, fancy parties, and an adoring, world-renowned and powerful husband. And I had accepted this life as I had dreamed it. It was everything I had ever wanted. And then I felt his fire.
And it burned.
It burned my hair and my skin with first caressing tendrils, and then needful. It peeled away my clothes with gentle fingers of seductive flames, twirling my skirts and lifting my shirts. It ran its burning flame up my legs and across my stomach, holding my back as I arched it. It singed my lips with delicate passion, whirling my senses into a daze. It entered my mouth and ran into my veins, igniting my mind in a blaze of guilt, but also such wonderful love that it completely overcompensated.
After the fire faded into normalcy and the tendrils became fingers, the flame his hands, and the singe his lips, came the feeling. The feeling of his lips tracing the contours of my skin and neck hours after everyone else had drifted into the ignorant bliss of their own flawless life. His fingers twining in my hair accompanied by his form fitting into mine, keeping away the cool afterglow of the morning. His hands roaming my body, eliciting small noises of approval, causing him to smile that smile that caused me to hold him tighter. His hair tickling my breasts as we lay naked in the deep wilderness, half awake and half dreaming, but all consumed.
It was a beautiful secret, no matter how impossible, and just when I thought it could live up to the happy ending that was already planned for me, we were discovered. And just like that, everything else went up in flames.
Those beautiful paper lanterns at our wedding shriveled and rained down as ashes. The presents chose with such care lay broken and trampled by the party guests. I walk up the aisle now, not to my adoring husband, but to the execution of my future. Our home is vacant as the streets of Ba Sing Sa, once so lively with the news of my son. Good, sweet Katara is no more. Katara the harlot, the whore, the unfaithful. For the only thing as occupied as in my fantasies was my womb, and in it throbbed the tiny life of a child born of fire. A child said to be not worthy or acknowledgement, or otherwise.
Aang said so himself when he saw the swelling in my belly when our wedding was still two months away. I hadn't had the heart to tell him, but it was easy to see my body was burned beyond recognition. Oh, the things he called me, the awful, terrible, things I was accused of. Tears sped down my face in torrents of hot shame and grief. Embarrassment lit my cheeks like the burning embers of my desecrated pride, laying in tatters among them. I had ran into the trees, followed only by his screams. I had collapsed in the cave where Zuko and I had spent so many sleepless nights lost in lust. He found me there hours later, bleeding and battered. Aang had attacked him. Aang. No.
He knelt beside me and I wept, and broke. I cannot tell you for long we stayed there, but by the time I had no more tears to cry I could feel nothing. I continued to feel nothing as we moved on and the forest turned into plains, then mountains. We couldn't go into town, for both of us were so easily recognized. I remember watching a fire in Ba Sing Se from the top of a hill, and sending Zuko down to see what had happened.
We were not invited to attend Sokka's funeral, for he had perished in the fire trying to save his love Suki, who had died beside him. Now theirs was a perfect love, the kind I would have had. What a beautiful tragedy. I saw Aang's face as he spoke to the whole congregation from my hiding place in the tall trees. He spoke my name with such distaste that I looked away. I ran again. I never got to say goodbye to my own brother.
A year later Toph followed the two of them suite. A volcano threatened a small town and she stood at its brink, holding back the earth, but she could not stop the fire. It consumed her, but all the people escaped with their lives. Another beautiful story. Hers would be revered, for she was a hero. All the people wept as a statue was erected in her honor in the temple square. Another funeral I wasn't invited to. Aang looks so much older, and so very sad. But his eyes, those terrible eyes, were dead. I watched him from behind a toppled building and cried as he stood, seeming so utterly lost.
And where was Zuko through these terrible years? Holding me, caressing me, caring for our child when I was too lost in my own self to really see her, being anything and everything I could have ever asked for in a man. He wrapped me in his arms at night as I cried and buried his face in my hair. Sometimes I felt tears there too, running down my shoulders and mingling with mine. Our little girl would never know how she could have lived, if she had perhaps had lighter hair or gray eyes, or could make the trees blow on a windless day. No, she was the abominable daughter of the fickle Fire Lord and his whore, but she would never know this. How I wished some days I could escape into her world, where she could simply disappear. There were no long deceased friends, heroic brothers she would never see again, or a man she had once loved with all of her heart, but that love had burned up, like the rest of her life.
Here I sit on a ordinary day, shaded by the trees. Zuko's sleeping form is beside me, his head nestled in my lap. In his arms is our child of ten years, so beautiful and innocent, everything I used to be. Yes, maybe she could be that faithful, beautiful, kind wife that I had once almost been. Just maybe. Do I regret? Maybe. I often think of the days I could have spent with those I love. Would they still be alive if I had not been burned? Would they be with me now? Would Aang have continued to be the loving, generous man he was, instead of the heartless, cold overlord he became? Had I ruined not just my prospective life, but all the others? It is quite late now Katara. Quite late.
It had made so much sense.