A/N: This is sorta an AU kind of thing set after the war. I think you will realize quickly what has happened.

Title: Survival
Author: Red Hawk K'sani
Word Count: 283
Warnings: Gruesome, Weird, Run-on Sentences of DOOM, Kind of sarcastic towards society's tendency to gossip and blame terrible events on certain people
Challenge: Pro-Zutara Week
Pairings: ZxK


They blame her for the Avatar's death rather than the Avatar's murderer, the Fire Lord, because she wasn't there to save the Avatar, she wasn't right there when he fell, she was supposed to love him and be his greatest companion. They say she hated the Avatar, and that she never loved him, and that she wanted to hurt him so badly that she neglected him in the final battle. They speculate that she is a selfish, evil woman who worked for the Fire Nation, and it is all her fault that the world is broken into pieces and civil war and disease and terror of being killed every single day, because she wasn't right there to save the Avatar. It is her fault that the world is dying, dead, not worth living for.

But she has a rock-hard resolve and she can stand the terrible accusations, for she knows that she was lost from the Avatar in the frenzy of battle and that she saved who she could and without her, many people would have died. It is not her fault that she did not search for the Avatar rather than helping the people at hand who were dying, calling out for help, pleading to the Spirits—and she, like a Spirit herself, healed them as best she could, selfless, draining herself to the point of absolute exhaustion.

Now, as she looks back, she realizes that the Avatar had it lucky. It's so much easier to die than to live.

And most of all, she knows that it was so worth saving him, the Fire Prince, for he may be considered evil, but with him, she knows she can survive it all.