Epilogue: Four Months Later

Suki finally forgave Sokka for his transgression. She realized it was hard to move forward with Zuko while holding onto pain from her past, and if all of the other exes could get along, then she should try to get along with him.

After a few punches, Zuko decided he would allow Sokka to court his sister, but on no uncertain terms, if he ever cheated on her, Zuko would kick his ass, repeatedly.

Mai's parents were not happy to see their daughter was in a lesbian relationship with a savage; what would the neighbors think? Mai told her parents that they could go fuck themselves. Unfortunately, Tom Tom overheard and now fuck is his favorite word.

Ty Lee and Chan didn't worry about their families as Chan's father was in jail, and Ty Lee's family didn't care what she did anymore.

Aang was still avoiding going back to Gaoling, so he wouldn't have to have dinner with Toph's parents. She told him he needed to stop being a pussy.

Azula managed to get her father some perks for his effort in staving off the coup, mainly better food and a cell with more sunlight. There wasn't too much else she could get him at the prison, but every now and then, she smuggled a mini bottle of whiskey to him.

Now, she was preparing for the big test. She and Mai were on their way to meet Sokka and Katara's family.

"This will be interesting," Mai said, as they got ready to go to the port.

"At least you didn't try to kill him the last item you saw him," Azula said about Hakoda.

"Well, if I get off to a bad start, I'll just say I saved him from you."

"I'll just say you can't give him grandchildren."

"You bitch!" She wasn't sure what they would do. They could adopt or use a surrogate. Obviously Tom Tom would be too young for some time, and they could use Sokka, but Azula might object. No, she would demand something ridiculous in return.

"You ho!"

The trip to the tribe was an interesting one. Sokka and Azula enjoyed themselves quite a bit in their bedroom, but it wasn't nearly as soundproof as her bedroom in the palace. Mai and Katara learned more about their sex life than they ever needed or wanted to know.

Of course, Katara didn't get mad. She instead got even. She and Mai had sex, very loudly, while Sokka had been trying to eat breakfast. "She's gonna make me puke!"

Not willing to admit defeat, he and Azula decided to have even kinkier sex the next day. She allowed him to tie her up and punish her for various offences.

Mai decided to raise the absurdity level by introducing various toys knowing that Azula would not have any of her own.

She didn't, but she did know how to steal tomato carrots from the food supply and use them as sex toys, having even wilder sex.

By the time they got to the tribe, they were exhausted from engaging in endless, competitive, debauchery.

"It hurts to sit down," Azula complained.

"I'm sorry," Sokka told her.

"I told you to do it."

"I can't believe you let him do you in the ass," Mai told her.

"Twice," Azula countered, "and I'm paying for it now."

Katara drew the line there. "Fine, you two are the freakiest, happy!"

"Actually, that was a fun competition," Azula said. "I can't imagine Zuko and Suki being any fun."

"He would have jumped off the boat," Mai laughed. "He's such a fucking prude."

"We should tell him all about this when we get back," Azula said. "He'll probably faint!"

They got off the boat. Gran Gran, Pakku and Hakoda came out all ready to see their children and their significant others. Unexpectedly however, Aang and Suki were not with them.

"Where's Aang?" Hakoda asked.

"We broke up in February."

"What?"

"He's with Toph now."

"I'll kill him."

"I dumped him Dad, and they're still my friends."

He was disappointed. He thought his daughter would become the mother of the Air Nation.

"And where's Suki?" Gran Gran questioned.

"Um, we broke up in January," Sokka told her. "I have a new girlfriend now."

Suddenly, the three realized that two new people were in place of the people they had been expecting.

Pakku recognized Mai but not the other girl. "You're dating Mai?"

Sokka chuckled. "No. Katara is dating Mai."

"WHAT?" Hakoda yelled.

Gran Gran smacked him. "You scared me with that yell."

"I'm dating Azula."

Gran Gran was about to ask Azula who when she remembered that Azula was Zuko's sister. She almost killed the Avatar and her own brother amongst various other people. "WHAT?"

Pakku jumped. "You scared me with that yell!"

"We need to talk," Hakoda hissed.

"To whom are you speaking?" Katara asked.

He had meant both of them but "Sokka, you first."

"Whatever you have to say, you can say it now. I'm not leaving her no matter what you say anyway." Defiant!

Hakoda did not like being ignored. "I highly doubt you want her to hear what I have to say."

Sokka reluctantly went into his father's igloo.

"You're on deck," he told Katara before Pakku and Gran Gran followed him.

"Well, that could have gone worse," Azula said.

"How?" Mai asked her.

"Oh isn't that just a saying? It was pretty bad!"

Mai rolled her eyes. Idiot!

Katara did not like being outside like a child in time out. "Let's go to my igloo until they return. I refuse to stand here like I'm on punishment."

Mai took her stuff, but Azula was leaving hers there.

"Sokka lives next door, so you may as well bring your bag."

"He usually carries my stuff," Azula pouted as she grabbed her own bag.

"Have you lost your mind?" Hakoda hissed. "She almost killed you, me, her own brother, and the avatar."

"We're all still here," Sokka retorted.

"This isn't funny. My wife is dead because of what her family did."

"That's absurd and you know it. Azula was nine when Mom died. How was she responsible? She would be no more responsible than Zuko or Iroh. Iroh even commanded a lot of the murderous people that destroyed families during the war. Those villages that got burned down, the ones that orphaned the Freedom Fighters, served under Iroh. Is he responsible for every orphan?"

Pakku was quick to defend his friend. "Iroh changed. He helped end the war."

"Azula changed too, and unlike him, she didn't kill dozens of people before she did it. She was 14 when the war ended. How can you possibly hold her more accountable than the people who served who were more than thrice her age?"

"How do you know this isn't some type of trick?" Kanna questioned.

"Trick for what. To marry me so she can become the future chief's wife and steal all our whale fat?"

"This isn't a joke. If you marry her, than her bloodline will eventually rule our tribe. What would people say if the chief was a firebender?"

"Maybe the same thing they would say if the next Fire Lord is an earthbender. Zuko is with Suki now. It's a possibility, but I'd like to think that we're creating a world where people will be judged on their character and not what nation they were born into. It's that kind of racial prejudice that caused the war in the first place and it's that kind of bigotry that killed my mother.

Do you even know why the raids started again?"

"Enlighten me," Hakoda said harshly.

So Sokka did. He told his father all about Azula's kidnapping, the men who had done it, who Sokka and Hakoda both had known, how she had to kill them to survive and how her family reacted.

"I don't care what you think about her now but no child deserves that they did to her. Azulon wanted revenge and my mother paid for it. If we don't stop the hate, then we haven't learned anything. We're no better than Azulon or anyone else who decided he was avenging someone, so his actions were okay.

You can't fight darkness with more darkness. You can only fight it with light and I refuse to hate anyone for what happened in the past. I refuse to have anything to do with the kind of thinking that killed my mom."

Azula started looking for her chocolate. "Do you have any pots?"

"Yes," Katara turned to her. "We do cook food here."

"That doesn't mean you had your kitchen stuff here. It could have been wherever you used to live with Captain Baldy."

"Aang usually came here, since he had been rebuilding the temples."

"Oh. Does that mean you two did it in your bed?"

"No, not that it's your business!"

"Just wondering. I brought a new mattress."

"What?" Mai looked at her.

"I don't want to have sleep in a bed he shared with Suki."

Mai and Katara looked at each other and started cracking up. "You're joking," Mai said to her.

"No, Sokka is going to have to get it off the boat."

"You brought a mattress?" Katara questioned. "Is his bed even big enough for it? The beds here are small."

"Then he'll have to build a bigger one!"

But the beds are small because the igloos are small.

Mai shook her head. "Don't try to reason with her."

Sokka came to get his sister. "You're next."

"How did it go?"

"He's not happy, but at least Mai can't firebend."

Katara rolled her eyes. She went to meet her doom. She got to her father's house, and he was catatonic.

"What's wrong with him?"

"He didn't fare so well with your brother," Gran Gran told her. "Why don't you tell us about Mai?"

This conversation was an easier one with Hakoda out of it.

"Well, she had been dating Zuko. I had been with Aang, but none of us were really happy. I felt like Aang and I were just settling. It's not bad so why change it, but I wanted more. Mai and I became friends, often lamenting about our sorry love lives.

When Toph told me she liked Aang, I realized I didn't mind giving him away, so I did. Mai dumped Zuko soon afterwards. They had gotten into some argument over Sokka. It was really stupid, but Mai realized they weren't working at all, so she left Zuko.

Anyway, we were hanging out again and Mai kissed me. I haven't looked back, and we've been really happy together."

"Have you met her family?" Pakku asked.

"Yeah, they did not approve, but she told them off and we left."

"And have you thought about children?"

"There's adoption or surrogacy, but I'm a few years way from deciding on that. We just want to work on us at the moment."

They seemed mostly okay with it, even if Pakku kept looking at Katara's boots and not her face.

When Hakoda saw those gold eyes staring back at him, he was furious. How dare she come here? What would possess his son to date her? He wanted her gone on no uncertain terms, but after hearing Sokka defend her, he was lost.

No matter who was right or who was wrong, he chose her, and if Hakoda didn't find some way to deal with it, he was going to lose his son. He couldn't do that. Losing Kya was bad enough. He wouldn't let his son walk out of his life and way from his tribe. This is his birthright. This is where he belongs!

He forgot all about his daughter's lesbianism, or her experiential phase or whatever the fuck this is.

It wasn't until Katara left that he realized he missed the whole conversation.

Kanna looked at her son. "I haven't seen you this discombobulated in a long time."

"How could he?"

It's all he could say. Kanna rubbed his back. She knew.

Sokka's new mattress sort of fit on his bed. He put some boxes under the overflow of the mattress, so it wouldn't be so floppy. "It is comfortable," Sokka said as he lied down on his new bed."

"What did you want to do?"

"Why don't we just rest here?" he was exhausted after arguing with his father and he could use Azula's warm body pressed up to him right now.

Azula pressed her lips to his and closed her eyes.

"So on a scale of 1-10, how much does the Chief hate me?"

"Well he didn't say anything. He just stared at the wall. I think he argued with Sokka too much to remember you were here."

"So Azula was off the charts."

"Yeah."

"She always was an overachiever."

Katara snorted. "He'll come around."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. "He loves us, and I know he wants Sokka to be happy like Mom made him happy, and I think Azula's the only one who can do that for him."

"And what about us?"

"He'll babble about Aang some more, ask invasive questions about grandchildren and then he'll get over himself. I'm not promising the road will be easy, but I think we'll make it just fine."

"Do you think they're okay?" Zuko feared Azula's visiting the tribe would not be well received, by Sokka's family or anyone else there.

"I'm sure that no harm came to them."

"I'm not exactly worried about violence."

"I know, but you can't protect her from everything. She's a big girl and I think she proved she can protect herself."

"I know, but I'm still her brother."

"Yeah, I know."

Zuko decided to let Azula out of her probation contract for her 18th birthday. She had proven to his satisfaction that she had sufficiently changed and was ready to be a free person. He was, however, concerned by the shenanigans she and Sokka might engage in to celebrate. Maybe he should tell her on Ember Island, so she's out of the palace.

THE END