1.
He was born in a rush of sweet pain and strangled breaths, and then he was there, tiny and alive in her arms, crying with his tiny, wide-open baby mouth.
"Aang," she gasped, her chest heaving with the struggle to return to operating for only one. She peered into his grey eyes and almost cried. "Oh, my God, he's beautiful."
"He is," her husband agreed, and he reached out to the baby. She nodded as much as she could and allowed him to lift him out of her arms and up to his face. "Aang."
The handmaid stepped forward and motioned to the monk who stood silently at her side. "He needs to—"
"I know."
Her husband placed the baby gently in the monk's hands. She felt her breath run dry, this was the moment she would know, the moment she had been thinking about from the second she had felt the burst of life bloom in her stomach all those months ago. She grasped at the damp sheets below her, and willed her son to be ordinary.
"He's an airbender," the monk said.
She watched her husband's face: the smile of pride, the wet eyes of sorrow. She felt it on her own face. She reached for the baby, and the monk oblidged.
"You will see him again," the monk said. "Just as soon as his training is complete."
But it won't be the same, she wanted to cry. She would never be able to make up for those lost years. Nor would he.
Hugging the baby to her chest, she thought about how the monks were thought to be so wise.
How wise could they be if their wisdom brought about such cold agony?
2.
She was a happy woman. For one year she mourned exclusively, and then inexplicitly, she brightened. She was young. She was madley in love with her husband. The sky was beautiful and so was she. She would get through the sorrow.
The letter came while she was with her friend. It arrived with a bow tied neatly at the top. Her friend looked over it. "It's from the Air Temple," her friend said. "That's funny. They've never sent me an update, and my Tong is two years older than your Aang."
She stood and ran from the room.
Alone in her house, she opened it.
I regret this letter not reaching you sooner; it seems somehow the writing of this letter to you was overlooked. With great pride and joy, I write to tell you that your son Aang is the Avatar
She dropped it right then, four years of repressed sadness rushing to her like water from a dam long held.
Avatar Aang—how had she, his own mother, not felt it inside of her? Had he always been the Avatar, from the moment he had begun deep in the flat plane of her stomach? Or had it been the timing of his birth, synced with the death of Avatar Roku, that sent the spirit spiraling through her son's tiny frame?
She did not know.
But she knew this: war was descending, and her son was Avatar.
Throwing the parchment aside, she laid down and wept for all he would have to do.
3.
They came in the dead of night to her home. She was not an airbender, or a fighter, for that matter. Her husband told her to stay where she was. She looked out the window, at the light, at the flames.
Her son was gone. She had cried for days when she heard—not by letter, either, but by rumors, gossip, the word on the street. The Avatar was missing. He had run away. She chopped her hair off and asked to return to the days where he was safe in her, and she was the world.
Now she leaned her head on the frame of the window and thanked everything there was to thank: her son was to be spared.
A scream, a crash—the house had been entered. The world was dying. It was going up in flames. She wondered if anything at all would rise from the ashes.
The door flung open. A Firenation soldier, a smile playing devilishly on his lips. She raised her hands, although she had no air to fight with, nor any skill to control.
She barely felt the fire as it slashed through her heart.
Aang, she thought, and then she was but a ghost in the wind.
A/N: Reviews would be most appreciated! I hope she didn't come across as too weepy. That was my one concern.