Disclaimer: I'm not sure why I feel like I have to put this at the beginning of every one of my drabbles, but I do. So let it here-to-forth be decreed, that I do not own, and never shall own any rights to Avatar: The Last Airbender.
There she stood, on the docks, waiting for the last ray of sun to disappear beyond the horizon. Held in her hands were the many fragments of his picture, and a brown box. Everything he ever gave to her she kept in that box. She couldn't keep them anymore, the memories they held were too painful.
So here she was, standing on the dock, in the same place she was one…two…three…four…five years ago. That was when he died. She was going to do it this year, she had told herself. Yet, in this same position, she began to have second thoughts.
She had tried to cry on this day five years ago, but no tears would come to her eyes. When she was first informed of his death, she felt a mixture of emotions. Anger, shock, solitude, sorrow, helplessness; yet she couldn't cry.
They told her it was an assassin, but she knew better. He was strong, even for one so old as he was. She didn't take it well at all, but surprisingly, she couldn't cry. She couldn't cry then, and she couldn't cry now.
Looking below her on the docks, she saw the blue water of the Fire Nation churning. There was a storm coming. She could feel it. Opening the lid, she saw what she had not seen in many years.
Her engagement necklace, much like her mothers. I wanted to keep some traditions, he had told her. A portrait of them together, she came home from her nation to find it cracked. His royal crown. The mirror he bought her for their first wedding anniversary. And the thing that would be the hardest to let go was at the very bottom. The scrap of cloth from the robe he was wearing that day. Embroidered on it were their symbols; his a bright orange flame bird, and hers, a deep blue koi fish.
She had to do it, sooner or later. Now was the time. Closing the lid over the box, trapping its contents inside for ever more, she placed a kiss on his picture. Sliding her gnarled feet closer to the edge of the pier, Katara dropped the box into the water. As her silver hair whipped around her face, she watched the box float away into the sunset.
In the Fire Nation they burn their dead and send the ashes into the wind. But in the Water Tribes, it was custom to send them off to sea. Only now, as her husband's memories floated off into the horizon, could she finally feel as if he was no longer with her. I love you, Zuko, she thought as the box bobbed in the churning sea water.
She sits among the pieces
Broken glass and photographs
Reluctantly releases
The last of what was her past.
--Garth Brooks: 'The Storm'
A/N: Okay, so this might be a long Author's Note. (That's what A/N means!!) When I was little and musically uneducated...I used to love country music. Especially Garth Brooks. Bear with me, okay, this has a point! So, I was listening to my iPod one day and this song came on and I listened to it like 50 million times in a row and then I had an epiphany to write a drabble based off of the song. So if anyone out there is feeling brave enough to explore the world we call "Country Music" I would strongly suggest listening to 'The Storm' or any other Garth Brooks song for that matter.
Wow, that wasn't nearly as long as I thought it was going to be...
