Eye of the Storm
Zuko found Mae throwing knives at a practice dummy in her room. He cleared his throat. She looked around in surprise. "What?"
"I just wanted to see you." Zuko said. He presented the flowers. Mae looked at them as if they really were a jar of slugs. "What's this for?"
"I guess I miss you."
"You guess?"
"I mean I miss you."
She took the flowers.
The Avatar arrived at the Fire Nation palace on Sala, a beautiful young female flying bison. She was black with white arrows; the youngest in the only herd of flying bison in the world, and she was Aang's first choice after it was decided that Appa was getting too old to fly around the world. Though a strong flyer, she was over eager, particularly in landing.
Aang stood on Sala's massive head, holding the reigns. He was nearly thirty by now, and was finally starting to look his age. It was the wisdom in his eyes; the perpetual laughter that had once been in them, making them seem like the eyes of a child, was long gone, though they still smiled. His hair had grown down to his shoulder blades, but was now tied up tightly.
"Hold on, kids!" Aang bellowed as Sala went in for the landing. The two eldest, Sokka's daughter Tanaka, and his own, Kiki, held on tight to their little brothers. Lee shrieked and giggled as Sala descended too quickly. Aang's heart warmed. Now there was a true Air-bender: someone who loved the feeling of falling through nothing.
Once the bison was firmly on the ground, Sokka and Suki jumped down and began helping the children. Aang floated down in his usual way, but this time with his toddler son in one arm. Lee laughed merrily again, making Aang laugh. The older kids shot off into the gardens in a racing game. Zuko dodged through them on his way to the adults.
After their greetings, Zuko smiled at the baby in his friend's arms.
"This must be Lee." He said. Katara had kept the baby with her the past summer. This was the first she let him go. Zuko gave the baby a half bow, "I'm very pleased to meet you, first son of the Avatar." Then to Aang he asked, "Is he an Air-bender like you or a water bender like Kiki and his mom?"
"We don't know yet." Aang said, then he added under his breath, so as not to offend the child who was squirming to get out of his arms, "He's a late bloomer."
Zuko chuckled, "Most of us great men are." He told the boy, holding his eyes in a steady stare. The baby stared back, transfixed by the hideous scar on the smiling-man's face before he, too, smiled big, showing tiny teeth, and laughed joyfully. Zuko felt pleased; he certainly hadn't won the hearts of the other children so fast.
Aang laughed and put the boy down. On wobbly legs, the child headed after his older sister and cousins. Aang turned serious eyes on his friend, "How is Mae?" he asked. It had been several months since the two got to talk about this, Aang's latest FixFixFix Project: Zuko and Mae's love life.
Zuko smiled, because on perfect queue Mae breezed into the garden. Aang hadn't seen her in years—she'd been living in the southern palace at the sea. Aang blinked in surprise—if ever he thought about her, he remembered a bored-looking girl whose hair hung in her face. Now her hair was up, revealing her face. She was glowing, smiling. She was pretty!
She came to stand beside her husband, who put an arm around her waist, drawing Aang's attention there, where her stomach was round.
Aang's jaw dropped to the ground. His eyes went round. He took a step back.
"ZUKO!" He cried. The happy couple laughed as the Avatar launched several feet above their heads and then drifted back down. He grabbed the Fire Lord's hand and shook it vigorously, "Congratulations!" Then he turned and called Sokka and Suki over from where they were chasing after the kids to keep them from drowning in the pond. Their reaction was very similar to Aang, if not ten-fold because they hadn't known about Aang's attempts to help Zuko repair his broken marriage.
Hours later, the two stood side by side in a Fighting game. They faced a horde of dirt mounds powered by earth benders perched on the walls of the pit. The tiles hanging on one side beneath the seats of the audience said that they were tied. Sokka rang a bell and screamed, "FINAL DEATH!"
The audience went wild. What the two had meant to be a little sparing match between the two of them had turned into a full-blown spectacle; the entire palace was here to see. Even the servants.
For this reason ,they could no longer go against each other—it would present the wrong image. Zuko had enough trouble keeping his people satisfied. Going head-to-head with the Avatar and losing, even in a mock game, wouldn't help—winning would only make things exponentially worse.
So they hired the Earth benders.
"It'll be like the old days." Sokka had said. It had all been his idea, really. "Like when we trained for the war. Oh, and I'm holding bets, so I told the Earth Benders to make it interesting. Good luck"
Zuko had no idea who in their right mind would bet against the Avatar, for goodness sake the man had taken awaythe bending of the most powerful fire bender in the world when he was just sixteen! But then Zuko saw the arena; there were sixteen Earth Benders that would be hurling mountains at them under orders to make it interesting.
And interesting it was.
Several times Zuko was nearly squished like a bug. Once he was nearly buried alive in a monstrous rock-slide that he'd brought on himself by shooting lightening at the on-coming horde of solid-rock ogres. He got the ever-loving life bolder-punched out of him too many times to count.
Somehow, though, the two had managed to tie the score against their earthy enemies. When Sokka rang the bell and the final match began, a gargantuan fist of rock nearly squashed the two of them length-wise into little plate-sized circles of crunched up human. Aang blew them both out of the way just in time. Jumping to his feet, he got the idea.
"Zuko!" He'd called. "Dui Bi!"
Duh.
Zuko couldn't believe he'd forgotten it for this long. But then, he had reasons to think of that fighting style in a way that totally didn't call Aang to mind. He nodded, falling into the proper stance, and began. The two of them kicked ass after that, and won the match easily.
In a lurch, all of the dirt mounds snapped back into the earth, leaving the ground of the pit smooth, even without a pebble, and the Avatar and Fire Lord side by side in the final stance of the fight.
The crowd went wild.
"Daddy, that was soooooo cool!" Kiki cried, running to jump up into Aang's arms when they came inside. Once there, she shrieked and leapt out of them again, "Ew, sweaty!" She screamed. Trailing in behind her were the other children and Sokka, who was counting his money happily. He'd made quiet a lot.
"That was incredible, you two." He said. "I liked how you waited until the last match to unleash the power of Dui Bi. It really emphasized that, while the nations are independently strong, they are stronger together."
Aang and Zuko traded a look, and decided not to admit that they had simply just forgotten that move until then or else they'd have used it much faster.
"Look what I can do!" Kiki squealed. She was doing one of the water-bending moves she'd seen her father do, though it was on a significantly smaller scale. For one thing, it was only the water from a single cup that she used (as opposed to the nearby river that Aang had drawn from) and instead of a fifty-foot high beast of rock, it was her baby brother, Lee.
The water hit him in the face and knocked him backwards.
"Kiki!" Aang reprimanded, but he didn't get any further than that in his scolding because Lee, who'd suffered no injuries because he'd only landed on his hind side, picked himself back up and did the move back.
But with fire.
Aang stopped scolding.
Sokka stopped counting his money.
Zuko stopped smiling.
Not realizing anything was wrong, little Lee kept throwing fire at his sister—little tendrils that burned out without reaching her. He shrieked with laughter and preened with pride every time he did it. Kiki sat looking at him in silence, knowing, in all of her five years, that something was wrong.
Aang looked from his son to Zuko. It was the look of one friend to another, meant to be a shared look of confusion, but when he saw Zuko's face—and the dawning guilt there, Aang understood.
Zuko never took his eyes off the little boy—the little boy who now so obviously had black hair not because it ran in Katara's family like Katara told anyone who asked, but because Zuko had dark hair. Who was fire bending because Zuko was a fire bender. Who name was Lee because it was Zuko's middle name.
He must have felt Aang's eyes on him, because he finally tore his own away from Lee—his illegitimate son—and met Aang's eyes. Breath escaped him noisily. He moved his mouth as if speaking, but no words came out.
Aang couldn't move as the full realization of it all crashed down around him.
He'd been with her. She'd been with him—the idea made Aang's stomach flop. Quick math proved it. Katara's last visit here was when it happened. Unbidden, the memory of walking in on Zuko and Mae—Mae who Zuko recently confided in him hadn't been with him for eight years! It hadn't been Mae at all. It'd been Katara. It had to have been.
How had he not realized it then?
"Aang, I—" Zuko started, but Aang held up a hand, backed out of the room, turned when he reached the door and ran.
Snapping his staff into flight-mode, Aang took to the air blindly for the tears that blurred his vision. He had to get away. He couldn't look at him—his so called friend. He flew straight to Sala. He was going home. He had to talk to Katara.
Back in the room, Lee was still spurting his tiny flames and Zuko was sunk onto a chair with his face in his hands. Sokka wasn't moving. He had utterly no idea what to do.
"Where'd Daddy go?" Kiki asked. Sokka snapped out of it and looked at his niece. "He's, um, well—he had something to do. Why don't you go find Aunt Suki?"
"Okay." She said. She took her brother's hand and they left. Sokka turned to Zuko.
"What where you thinking?" He asked plainly and simply.
Zuko didn't lift his head, but his answer was an explosion. "We weren't, that was the problem! We—we never wanted to hurt anyone we just-" Zuko stood, punched the wall.
Sokka was putting things together in his head. "This has been going on for a while hasn't it?" He asked.
"Not for years." Zuko said.
"But it started a long time ago." Sokka said steadily. Zuko took a deep breath, nodded. "Before we even won the war."
Sokka's knees went weak. He hadn't expected it to have been thatlong. "What?" he asked.
"Nothing happened until after…" Zuko's voice trailed off. He finished with his voice leaden with guilt, "until after we were both married."
Sokka exploded at this; throwing his arms around, and shouting. "If you had feelings before you got married then why didn't you just get married?"
"I asked her!" Zuko shouted back. "She wouldn't—I thought she didn't love me until…" He didn't finish.
Sokka was shaking his head. "Do you have any idea what it will look like when the world finds out that the Avatar's wife wasn't faithful to him? Do you have any idea what will happen when they find out that it was the Fire Lord she slept around with?"
"It won't come to any of that." Zuko promised.
The Southern Air Temple was as glorious as it had been in Aang's childhood over a hundred years ago. It pulsed with life. Monks grew fields of fruit trees and ran one of the only four air bending schools in the world. Katara worked in this school during the summers, teaching history. She was a brilliant story teller, and held her students captivated until the end of every lesson. She was in the middle of one such story when the unmistakable sound of Sala coming in for a landing caught her attention.
Closing the book, Katara hurried to the window to have a look. It was Sala. Her heart lodged in her throat—something terrible had happened, she just knew it; there was no other reason for them to return so soon.
"Read the rest of the chapter in silence, please," Katara instructed the class as she hurried out of the school house. Aang was already walking her way. He was alone and he was upset.
Katara swallowed dryly and closed her eyes. She knew it had been a bad idea to let Lee go to the Fire Nation. She braced herself for what was coming and opened her eyes. Aang was as silent as the grave, shaking his head; his eyebrows were low but arched like when he was angry.
"Aang, what is it?" She asked. It was too much of a habit. She had to pretend like nothing was wrong, even when she knew there was. Aang closed his eyes as if she'd just pushed a knife further into his heart. "How could you?" he asked.
A million answers, excuses, reasons, came to mind, but all she could say was, "How could I what?"
Aang's muscles tensed. The wood of his staff creaked in his hand. "You know what!" He shouted. Katara jumped. He'd never shouted at her in anger before. Ever. It was enough to break her silly habit of denial. Her back straightened. "I'm sorry, Aang. I'm so sorry!"
"My son?" he asked, slapping a hand to his chest. "You let me believe he was my son?"
"Aang-"
"Why not just tell me, Katara? Why didn't you just end it? Why did you make me believe—"
"I couldn't tell you—"
"You could have!" He shouted. The school house window was full of the bald heads of the air-bending students curiously seeing what the shouting was all about. Although his anger was unlike anything he had ever felt it wasn't enough to erase his avatar need to maintain peace. Likewise, Katara's motherly instincts to protect children at all costs kept her from taking advantage of Aang's sudden silence.
For the next intense few minutes, they only starred into each other's burning eyes. Aang's injury from her betrayal and his anger for her lies put the same kind of flickering light in the avatar's blue eyes that had so captivated Katara in Zuko's, but it's affect was as different as the emotions behind it. Zuko's eyes danced with barely-controlled love. Aang's was dancing with barely-controlled rage.
Katara's remorse for his pain and defensiveness for her actions made her eyes solid blocks of impenetrable ice that reflected the fire in the avatar's eyes. Taking a deep breath that was loud enough to break the tensioned silence, Katara turned and walked to Sala.
Aang flew ahead of her and took his seat at the reigns. They took to the air the second Katara was on board. The usual cleansing sensation of air whipping through his clothes did nothing for Aang. He felt nothing. It was all he could do to keep out of the avatar state.
Katara was only waiting until Sala was at cruising speed and altitude to talk. This was it. The time was now. She would say all that she'd wanted to say since the first time Lee looked up at her with his amber eyes.
"The first thing you have to understand is that the river brought us here." Katara said.
"Oh the river—Don't talk to me about the river!" Aang shouted. "So you think water tribe philosophy is going to help me right now Katara? I'm the avatar—my destiny doesn't follow a river!" His eyes and tattoos flashed, the avatar state was triggered by his rupturing emotions, but the light vanished a minute later as Aang allowed the air to take away the top layer of his anger and it became controllable once again.
Katara was impressed. That was some serious control.
"You are such a great man, Aang," Katara said, the first tears flowing down her cheeks, "you're the most powerful bender there is; that's what I love about you and that's why I married you—that and because I was angry. I was angry at Zuko for marrying Mae instead of me."
Aang turned around and Katara saw more hurt on his face than she could have ever imagined. "I was rebound?" Aang abandoned the reigns to stand over Katara. "Are you saying it was all a game—a sick game to get at Zuko, that's all our life together has been?"
This time, Aang's eyes and tattoos began to glow and he couldn't stop them. The avatar state took over. Sala had never been exposed to such power. She bucked wildly.
The avatar was already floating, but Katara was catapulted into the cloudy sky. Her scream was lost on the wild bison's slipstream, but the Avatar was already moving to catch her. She was weightless in a matter of seconds and falling—falling fast for the jagged earth below—but before Aang could catch her, she acted quickly, pulling all the clouds in reach—a good four kilometers in diameter—into a pool big enough to catch her. She tucked into a cannon ball and struck the water-bulb at terminal velocity, sinking to its heart. The water came to life under her command and lifted her in a spinning vortex back to the avatar's eye-level.
He didn't ask if she was alright; the avatar didn't speak in this state unless it was direly important. Katara still couldn't help taking it a little personally. She glowered. "You were not rebound, Aang!" she shouted. "I loved you!
Aang blinked, and slowly came out of the avatar state but remained floating by employing an air vortex similar to Katara's water. Tears were running down his face.
"I still love you Katara." He said. "Have I not given you enough? What is it that you were looking for with him? Passion? Where you bored, did you need drama? A palace to live in? What?"
Katara gasped. "How dare you? I didn't mean for any of this to happen!"
"Then why did it happen?" Aang shouted. "Don't you have any self-control?"
"Well excuse us for not being the avatar!" Katara shrieked. Below, the school children were looking up, pointing and shouting, but neither Katara nor Aang noticed.
"I have always loved Zuko." Katara said firmly. It felt good to say it out loud. She did so a few more times. "I love him—and he loves me—our love is like a wild fire that can't be controlled. We've tried, but we just can't. Look, I'm sorry it had to happen this way—but I'm not sorry it happened. I'll never be sorry for following my heart!"
"What about the lies Katara? I don't care if you love him or if he still loves you—how could you lie to me for so long? It was you wasn't it? That morning I came into his room, the last time you were in the Fire Nation?"
"I almost told you then—but we couldn't risk starting a war. It just seemed easier not to say anything."
"You have no idea, Katara-no idea-how easy it could have been if you had told me the truth in the beginning!"
"I have never lied to you. You just never asked!"
"You let me believe—that's worse than lying, Katara!"
"I'm sorry!"
"I can't be around you right now." Aang said.
Sala crash-landed outside Zuko's palace a day after Lee first bent fire. Zuko was the first to meet him, rushing down the steep steps so fast that it forced Sokka to take them two at a time, backwards as he tried to keep Zuko away from the avatar—the pair of them meeting so soon was just a bad idea as far the water-triber was concerned.
"Get out of the way," Aang called at Sokka.
"Aang, let me explain!" Zuko called desperately.
Sokka stepped aside before he killed himself with a misstep and allowed the avatar and the fire lord to meet half-way down the steps.
"Do you still love her?" Aang asked directly.
"What?" Zuko asked wildly. Aang's reserve was more frightening than the avatar-wrath he'd been expecting. He gulped. Did he?
"Do you?" Aang asked. "I need to know!"
"I—I don't know." Zuko said with painful honesty. "I want to say no. But I can't honestly say how I'll feel if I see her again. I might fall in love with her again. I might just be angry with her—How could she give birth to the heir to my nation without telling me?"
A long silence stretched into a full minute of the two men communicating with one long stare. Aang could see it in his eyes; Zuko was speaking nothing but the truth; the man wasn't, at the moment, attached to Katara (at least no more than he was attached to Mae at the moment), and he was angry at Katara for lying about Lee.
"She only lied to you in order to lie to me." Aang said.
"She lied to both of us," Zuko said.
"Yes, but she lied more to me-"
"Hey do you want to fight about it?" Zuko asked.
Aang was surprised by the fierce tone, but found a hint of humor in Zuko's eyes—very faint, but there. Aang almost felt like smiling. Instead, his shoulders sagged and a very weary sigh slipped out of his mouth as the avatar revealed how truly tired he was at that moment.
"I have a lot on my mind—I can't even think straight right now. I don't even know where to go."
"Stay with me and Suki," Sokka offered.
Aang flinched and shook his head. "I'm sorry—but I really can't be near—"
"So stay here—it's not like I don't have room." Zuko said.
As strange as it was, it didn't sound like a bad idea. Aang didn't know if it was because he'd already forgiven the fire-lord, or maybe, on some level, he just wanted to keep an eye on him, in case Katara came looking for him.
The rain came down with determination in each drop. Aang never felt as far from home as he did in a rain storm in Zuko's palace. At the Poles, a little rain enlivened the people. Here in the capital city of the Fire Nation, everyone grew grouchy, closed their windows and doors, and didn't leave their houses until it stopped.
Aang was spared from the duties of a visiting avatar. Zuko made it clear that his visitor was simply a wealthy bison herder named Aang this time. He wasn't bothered; there wasn't a lot of things going on here in the winter. He spent his days with the blankets pulled over his head trying to forget what he knew.
It was the third week of his misery when he remembered what his old soul buddy had told him about living with the moles. To truly forget was impossible. It looked like he was just going to have to learn to live with a knife in his back.
He got out of the bed, waking MoMo, who had eaten himself into a mini-coma as he always did when he lived in this palace. The monkey lemur chattered and pulled the covers back over his head.
Aang needed air. He threw the shutters open. The rain flecked his face and stirred his senses. He grimaced. He could do without the water. With an arch of his arm, he prevented the rain from coming inside. The air was thick and sharp with a biting cold; exactly what his deprived lungs needed.
Movement caught Aang's eye below. Squinting through the veils of rain, he realized what he was looking at. The resolute outline of Toph, perched on a bolder of her creation. She was soaked to the bone, looked like she had been out there since the first drop fell, just sitting and looking around.
Her hair had been beaten out of its usual folded-up-do and hang down in sopping tendrils that clung to the thick, firm muscles of her back and hips that deprived her waist of the soft feminine curve. He thought at first that she was doing it again, that thing where she pretended she could see—but then he realized that in a rain storm, Toph could see. The vibrations of each rain drop hitting the surface of an object allowed Toph to see in finer detail than any other time.
As Aang watched, she rose from the boulder as if inspired—still completely unaware that she was being watched, and perhaps bold because of it-and began swaying and twirling. At first it was nothing special, just idle movement to take in the feeling of the rain on her skin, but then it became one deliberate movement after the next. She was dancing the _, a traditional dance of the earth kingdom; something she had been taught in her strict life as a pampered daughter of the wealthy.
She knew the dance well, and he could tell by the way she moved that it was her favorite. It was Aang's as well, as far as Earth Kingdom dances went. It just didn't look right without a partner. He barely knew what he was doing as he leapt lightly out of the window and cushioned his two story drop with rising air that slowed his fall.
The rain eagerly soaked into every inch of his new bison wool tunic—he'd finally been able to master the skill of waxing the wool as he twisted it into yarn, making the clothing less itchy. Despite it's built in water-proofing, Aang was as wet as a fish by the time he got across the courtyard.
Toph was either too distracted by the vibration of the rain, or too lost in the dance to notice his light steps across the flooded flagstones. He stopped just out of arms reach, still unnoticed. Up close, he could see through the beige and pale green fabric of her clothing. Her skin was nothing but goose-pimples in the freezing water and her breasts were very defined.
"I didn't know you danced." Aang said.
She jumped back, both feet leaving the ground and splashing back into the inch of ground water streaming across the courtyard, toward the gutter where a mother turtle-duck was floating past with her young on some type of adventure out of the garden, since for the moment all the world was a pond.
"Sorry to scare you." Aang said, spitting out the water that streamed from his nose into his mouth as he talked. He was breathing heavily for some reason. It was one part the chill of the rain and another part something else.
"I didn't see you there."
"You're supposed to see everything," Aang said with his first smile in weeks. "Isn't that how it works? You see it first and then you let me stumble around in the dark until I crash into it, and then we pretend I saw it all along."
She smiled and laughed once before it became a shiver. "It's warmer if we dance." She said.
Aang nodded. She stepped up to his side and took position, but she wasn't looking forward as she was meant too. She was looking at Aang. "I didn't know you grew your hair out so long."
"I told you."
"I forgot. I see what I saw years ago, the last time you were caught in the rain with me. I don't alter these pictures to fit with the present. They're too special."
Aang looked down at her, blinking and squinting as the rain messed with his eyelashes. With her hair plastered to her forehead like it was, he couldn't see anything of her eyes, but she was still beautiful somehow. Her pearly skin dimpled twice in each cheek when she smiled like this, showing both rows of perfect teeth between peach colored lips.
She bit her lower lip as she listened up at him. "I see you." She said.
Aang's arm closed around her straight waist and he pulled her body up against his for a kiss. There difference in height was such that her head was tilted as far back as it would go and he was stooping for his lips to meet hers as he cupped her face. The rain found new tracks to stream down as each contour and crest of her face was tasted by his lips.
If they weren't going to dance to keep warm then there was no reason to stay outside in the cold rain. Aang swept her up bridal style and carried her back through the window. Within moments, two dark stains marked where they stood dripping on the rug. A few moments after that, the water in the discarded clothing slowly spread to other parts of the rug, the bed, the soft couch were they were forgotten for a few hours.
Whether they were meant to be only friends or not; it wasn't that way any longer. Toph had stopped him once when her last freezing garment was peeled from her skin. "You aren't doing this because you're mad at her are you?"
"Who—oh," he laughed. Toph laughed too; she couldn't believe he had actually forgotten his wife for a second. His hands were bringing her skin to life in places that no one else had touched; her bare stomach, and waist, hips and thighs-"No," he promised, "I'm doing this because this is the way the mountain formed."
Toph giggled, and slid her hands up the rippling muscles of his arms to twist her wrists together behind his neck. His nose pressed against hers and his loose wet hair tickled her face and neck. "I don't know. We were pretty set in our ways to be just friends."
Aang laughed, his hot breath flowering across the skin on her right breast. "I've never met a mountain I couldn't move."
The feeling of rightness that encompassed the view of the world from their bed put them both in a drunken stupor for the rest of the day and well into the morning. Because her brain was unable to perceive the change from day into night and vice versa, it had always been difficult for Toph to fall sleep. With Aang as a pillow, sleep was the thing she wanted to stay away. She kept herself up by humming different songs, her light thin fingers taping out the rhythm on Aang's abdominal muscles. The first time she did it, she found that he was ticklish there, and just had to torture him for a minute or two instead, but her power over him was matched when he found that she was ticklish on her lower back and waist. It became a tickle war until she pinned him beneath her on the floor and they forgot what they were doing for a while.
Zuko didn't knock because he was supposed to not have a reason to; his bold, bashing, and loud entrance had been meant to startle the avatar out of the miserable coma he had probably slipped into again. He found the bed empty, unmade and severely tussled. Heaps of laundry lay scattered around the room. Though it had been raining all night, the window was wide open; the curtains were still stained by the rain as they fluttered in the breeze of the clear morning.
"Hel—lo—o," Zuko said, his enthusiasm dying quickly as he met the catastrophe scene. With a scramble of elbows and knees on hardwood, Aang sat up from the floor on the other side of the bed. His hair was tangled as if it had gone un-brushed for a couple of days. Zuko would have taken it for a bad sign if, during Aang's scramble to sit up and greet his visitor, a girl hadn't gasped, shrieked and then jerked the sheet from the bed with one powerful pull.
"Uh," was all Zuko could think to say.
Aang rubbed sleep out of his eyes, looked around the floor at his feet, found something, shook it out and stepped into his pants. "Zuko, this—it all just sort of happened. I—"
Zuko was laughing. He waved Aang excuses aside, doubled over for a minute, and then straightened to wipe his eyes and get enough breath to speak. "Listen, so long as that's not Mae, I think we'll be all right."
Aang flinched and drummed his fingers on his hip. "Um.." he said as if thinking fast. Zuko's eyes widened, but a heel attached to a sturdy little leg came up to meet the avatar's upper thigh, and Aang whelmed in pain. "Joking! It was a joke!"
Zuko laughed again. "You know better than to mess with Rock Fist. How are you this morning, Toph?"
"Great, thanks," Toph said from out of sight.
"Good." Zuko scratched the back of his head. "Well, I'll, uh, leave you two to it."
He slipped out of the room like smoke, the click of the latch virtually the only proof that he had gone. Toph pressed her ear to the floor to make sure his footsteps moved away from the door. Once they were gone, she covered her mouth to stifle a loud giggle. "That was embarrassing!"
Aang sank to his knees and then lowered himself on top of her. "He didn't see anything."
"He saw the state of this room. It can't be good."
Aang smiled into the crook of her neck. "Oh it was good."
"Stop it," Toph said, failing to sound too demanding. "We have to get dressed. You have someone to talk to."
Aang stopped all that he was doing and then groaned as he rolled onto his back. "You're going to make me be honorable and understanding aren't you?"
"I can't make you do anything that you were going to do anyway."
He sighed. "I want you to come with me."
Toph was surprised enough to sit up, but it was too early for something like that, so she found Aang's stomach and rested there for a minute instead. "Is that a good idea?"
He ran his hand up and down her arm. "She won't try to kill you or anything; I don't think."
Toph snorted. Aang kissed the top of her head. "The biggest thing Katara was upset about when I found out was that I would be alone. She would have left me a long time ago if I had just told her that I'll always have you." Although what he said was over-all a positive thing, his voice still broke as he remembered what he had thought was the happiest years of his marriage—all of it a lie; her way of passing time as she stayed with her charity case.
Toph pulled his head up to kiss him in a way that pushed the sadness away. Then he rested her forehead on his lower lip, her warm breath tickling his neck. "Don't think of it like that," she said. "You had a real marriage, with real love, but it ended, like all good things do."
Aang pushed his eyebrows low over his eyes as he looked down at her. "Some good things never end; look at this."
Toph smiled and readjusted herself over him so that all of her facial features were in line with his. "I never said this was a good thing. You've been nothing but trouble for me since the day we found each other." Then before Aang could kiss her, she stood up, taking the sheet with her in case someone else thought it would be contusive to burst into the room. Aang let his head drop back onto the floor and rubbed his face.
Aang touched down in a foot of dry snow outside of the ice-cottage. He had every right to just enter the house, but knocking felt more appropriate. Three short raps on the wooden door left his frozen knuckles stinging. There was a pause before the door opened. Katara looked guilty but proud. It would never cease to amaze the avatar how such conflicting emotions could share equal parts of her face, but then again, she was a water bender truly and deeply in love with a fire bender.
As this revelation came to him, he couldn't help but smile. The expression confused her. "Hello Aang," she said softly.
"Daddy?" Kiki asked from within the house. The pitter-patter of running feet preceded the ball of energy that was his daughter, who came crashing out of the house, into the snow and up his legs into his arms.
Aang lost his breath as her little arms closed tightly around him in a strong hug. His heart twisted and he squeezed her back, tears springing to his eyes. He'd had no idea how much he'd missed his children until that moment.
"Hi, Keek," he said happily, "I love you."
"I love you too Daddy," she said, without thought or wonder as to why he was expressing such a sentiment so randomly. He laughed.
"I'm sorry I didn't see you for so long," he said.
"Where did you go?"
"I was staying at the Fire Lord's Palace," he answered, meeting Katara's eye over Kiki's little shoulder. Katara's eyes widened, and her hand went to the necklace at her throat.
"Where's your little brother?" Aang asked her daughter.
"Taking a nap," Kiki answered.
"Good," he said giving her one final squeeze. "You should be too. Let me and Mommy talk, okay?"
"Okay," she said. Before leaping out of his arms, she pecked him on the cheek. Katara ran her thin fingers through Kiki's hair as she passed her back into the house.
"You were staying with him?" Katara asked. She sounded breathless. "Why him?"
Aang planted his staff between his feet and leaned against it like a walking stick as he took a moment to consider exactly how to say it. "I already told you," he said, "I don't care if he loves you or you love him. He's still one of my best friends."
Tears of relief were in her eyes but they couldn't fall, not yet. She had too many questions and apologies to make. "How can you be so—so forgiving?"
"I'm the avatar," he said with a smile. While it was as good a reason as any, she wasn't going to let him get away with that excuse. At her look, his playful smile sobered, and his Adam's apple moved slowly up and down his throat as he swallowed, "and…I get it. I understand what you were going through all these years."
Her eyebrows moved closer together. "What do you mean?"
"Can I come inside? It's kind of a long story."
Katara sat in dumbfounded silence. Her bewilderment was due partly to the fact that Aang and both the children were home, but the house was completely silent when such a phenomenon had never happened before, and partly because of what her husband was telling her.
"You're with Bright Eyes? And Bright Eyes is Toph?"
Aang couldn't conceal utter joy as he thought about it. He nodded. "I know it's crazy—and it's all my fault. If I had only embraced my destiny when I first learned I was the avatar over a century ago, I could have spared you years of the inner torment of being married to the wrong man and her a lifetime of loneliness…"
Katara saw tender love and heartache on the avatar's face as he contemplated his hand in Toph's pain, and her own confusion. In that moment, Katara forgave him—hearing he'd been with Toph had angered her like an injured snow tiger-bear—but that soft look on his matured face drove home what he was trying to tell her. He loved Toph as deeply as she loved Zuko. Putting herself in his shoes, she finally saw how weak she'd been, and how telling the truth could have solved everyone's problems sooner.
She took his hand, gasping, with tears in her eyes. "Will you ever forgive me, Aang? For lying to you?"
"Only if you forgive me for not telling you sooner about Bright Eyes."
"No, stop. You were right in concealing that to a wife you believed loved you. I should have told you about Zuko—I shouldn't have used you. It was wrong."
"It couldn't have been all wrong. We did get Kiki out of it." Aang said with his old twinkling smile. He squeezed her hand and kissed the knuckles. "You are forgiven."
They sat in silence for a few moments, soaking in the full disclosure between them. It was their first true moment of complete intimacy between them, and it was platonic. It was as it should have always been.
"What now?" she asked. Aang didn't need her to clarify.
"A girl needs her mother. You know that more than anyone. I'll visit Keek as often as you allow."
"You can come whenever you want."
Aang smiled in appreciation, and then added somewhat hesitantly. "And, you know, a boy needs his father…his real father."
Katara drew in a deep breath at the mention of Lee and his father. She almost couldn't look Aang in the eye, but at last she did—it was so much easier now that all the truths were out there. She felt like she had her old friend back.
"I don't think he'll ever want to talk to me again."
"What makes you say that?"
"I lied to him about the heir to his kingdom! He has every right to have me killed for treason!"
Aang actually laughed. "I don't think it'll come to that. And it isn't as bad as you think. Lee is still young. If you act quickly, there will be a day when he won't be able to remember being anything other than the Prince of the Fire Nation."
Aang could see it in Katara's eyes. That was exactly what she feared. She didn't want her children to have that life, what she thought of as a cage.
"Katara," Aang said seriously, meeting her eye and holding it with all the authority and wisdom of an avatar. "Not every prince has it as bad as Zuko did—not if they follow their destinies, as he learned to do. Lee's has been written, and he is the prince who will continue Zuko's good work in maintaining harmony in the nations of the world. The sooner you allow him to embrace that, the easier his life will be. I promise."
"I know you are right…but…" Tears were in her eyes, and she didn't finish speaking her fear. Instead, she dried her face and nodded curtly, business-like. "We will move to the Fire Nation."
"Mae's gone," Toph said by way of announcing her presence in Zuko's garden. He was pretending to meditate on a rock. Really all that was happening was that he was sitting perfectly still, and obsessing over the fact that he was a father, no better than his own; a two year old son who didn't even know him, another one on the way he didn't feel anything for…okay, that wasn't true—he still couldn't wait to see the little person that would be half him, half Mae—but his excitement in the matter had been severly injured in learning that it wasn't his first creation. What he could feel for it now was only…mild excitement, more like a deep curiousity. After admitting this to Sokka, he was informed that this was typical for men and for second children,
"But just you wait until you hold him or her in yours arms. Then you'll find it."
"Find what?"
"The love—and it'll punch you harder than Toph ever could, I promise you that, so be prepared."
Sokka had eased Zuko, but his troubles were not over, and it was precisely because of what Toph had just said. Mae was gone, and she'd left no note or word as to where she'd went, where she'd taken his second heir.
"I know," Zuko said. He didn't move anything but his lips, but his voice was as unsteady as if he'd spoken during jumping jacks. "This is such a mess!"
"Why did she leave?"
"She heard about Lee…she must be so mad at me. I have to find her."
"She's not mad," a new voice said.
Zuko's breath left his body in an audible whoosh and he twisted to see behind him. Toph was not alone. Katara—a few years older, wiser, and more beautiful—was standing in the archway with Lee on her hip, and a letter with Mae's seal in her hand. They were both dressed in Fire Nation clothes.
He'd admitted to the avatar that he didn't know if he still loved her.
He didn't.
But in the next three seconds, he fell in love with her again.
"I just wanted you to officially meet your son," she said hesitantly.
His heart picked up speed like an ostrich-horse running in place for a minute, building up speed before shooting off at amazing speeds. His breath was uneasy because of it, and his face didn't know if it should laugh or cry. He slid off the rock and went to her.
She would forever amaze him with her ability to steal his heart so swiftly, with so few words and that one look—a look that said he was strong enough to do anything.
Toph grinned as the fire lord's hurried steps gave her enough vibrations by which to see at least the first kiss of their reunion; the last footfall outlined Katara's face in Zuko's hands, and their lips together.
The next step was a few wet sounding moments later, and it was taken by both of them at the same time. Lee was on Zuko's hip, and Katara was on his arm. It was the first step of their destiny together.
A subtle waft of air was the giveaway, but Toph was a few surprises away from learning to read that sign. Aang's hand rested on her shoulder before his dainty toes touched down behind her. She jumped. The footsteps of the fire lord and his family were fading around the corner. Toph turned and punched Aang—he caught her fist in his palm and closed cool fingers around her knuckles,
"Miss me?" he asked.
She stepped into the crook of his arm, between him and his staff. "It was bound to happen sooner or later."
"What was?"
"With all the destinies the life of an avatar touches—one of them was bound to collide with yours, get tangled."
Aang chuckled. He loved the imagery. "It reminds me of the mail shuts in Ba Sing Se. Putting it like that, this whole thing was fun!"
"But now it's over, and I like it. Like getting my feet on the ground after flying."
Aang kissed her cheekbone.
"It feels good," she said.
He did it again. She laughed, "Not that,"
"Then what?" he asked, idly smelling her hair and pressing his lips against her head. She ran a finger along his stomach and pressed his bellybutton, making him jump slightly from the ticklishness. "Finding my destiny—let's not lose it again, okay?"
Aang was still smiling, because her light little fingers were still tickling him. "Deal," he promised.
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