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Prompt: Day 5-Soulmate Marks

AN: I own nothing you recognize from your tv screens. Enjoy!

She's lived her whole life of 12 years in the Southern Water Tribe. Secure, sheltered, hidden. No one has ever put a hand near her neck, bar herself.

And yet, underneath her mother's necklace lays a scar, even though she has never been struck there in her life. At least not in this one. It's a tiny mark, negligible if you're not looking for it. She hadn't even known it existed until six years ago.

Kya hugged her tight when she showed her the scar.

"What's wrong, Mommy?"

"Nothing's wrong, sweetie. That little scar - Gran-Gran calls it the mark of the soul."

"Ooh, like Daddy's Mark of the Wise? Like that?" Smiling at her, her mother shook her head.

"No, Katara. The soul is like - well, it's like the spirit inside you. It's your power, it's who you are. And this mark will help you find the soul that matches yours."

"Like...like the matching game we play with the cards?"

"Yes, kind of like that."

"How do I find the matching card?"

"The universe will bring it to you. Don't worry." Katara jumped up, already impatient and wanting to finish this matching game.

"I'm gonna find it!" She ran out of the igloo, her mother's sweet laughter ringing at her back, and she had spent the rest of the day accosting her tribespeople, asking them if they had a mark of the soul on their neck.

When she dove into her mother's arms that night, disappointed and downcast, she had learned a few more things about her mark.

"Don't worry, love. Not everyone has one. Only very, very special people have this connection. People who were connected in a past birth. Do you remember what I told you about past births?"

"Yeah! They came before this one and we were different people. But we had...we had the same souls?"

"Good! So in a past birth, there was someone your soul loved very much, and your soul will find them in this life as well. They'll have a mark too, but you'll have to look carefully for it. And it might not look like yours."

Katara's tiny eyebrows scrunched together. "It sounds hard, Mommy. What if I can't find them?"

"You will. As I said, the universe will bring them to you. It will happen, Katara, when it's time for it to happen. I promise."

Katara had snuggled into Kya's side, the promise ringing in her ears as she dozed off.

When she reached for the necklace, sometimes she would end up accidentally pressing down on the scar. In those moments, the whites and blues of her home would fade into unfamiliar reds and greens. Well, the red wasn't unfamiliar - it was the color of the people who had killed her mother - and so those visions tended to make ice crawl up her legs, paralyzing her.

She didn't understand what she was seeing though. Flashes of something Dad had told her was called 'grass' and red swaths of thin fabric, absolutely unsuitable for the Southern Water Tribe, would dance behind her closed eyelids. She knew she had never seen them before, so why did they seem so familiar? So homely?

And sometimes she would hear things too. A lovely, high-pitched voice would ring through her ears. Sometimes it sounded playful, at other times it sounded pained. But it always shouted the same thing.

"Oh! Ma!"

A girl who missed their mother? Katara could relate to that quite well.

She didn't talk about her mark with anyone. Sokka, Dad, and Gran-Gran all knew it existed, but what was the point in discussing it? Katara hardly had a chance of finding her matching card.

When Aang had slipped from the iceberg, she had cradled him, quickly scanning for any sort of scar that was out of the ordinary. Could you blame her? This was the first time she was seeing anyone peaceful that wasn't from her tribe. She was disappointed when she couldn't see anything, but she could wait. When the time was right, her mother had said, so she would be patient.

And when the airbender offered her a chance to travel to the Northern Water Tribe to learn waterbending for real, she leaped at it. She would finally have the chance to see the world, to become a person outside of fixing igloos and mending parkas, and maybe, just maybe, to find the soul that was intertwined with her own.

And then she had seen that- that man. He had the largest scar she had ever seen. Could it be?

Their eyes met for perhaps half a second before he was grabbing her grandmother and announcing his search for the Avatar.

Well then. It better not be. He was so much older than her, and mean, and bad, and Fire Nation!

As it turned out, Zuko was really just a boy. And maybe he wasn't that mean or bad. She inched closer, placing the tips of her fingers on his scar. She wasn't sure what she expected to happen but there was no explosion. There was no vision, no splash of red or green outside of the angry scar and the crystals. There was no shouting woman. Perhaps Zuko was the one seeing it. His eyes were closed after all. She opened her mouth to ask, but then quickly closed it. Why did she care? Did she- did she want Zuko to be her match? No, of course not. And besides, Mom had said it would happen when the time was right. That could hardly be right now, in the middle of preparations for a war. She breathed a small sigh of relief and was about to uncork the vial of Spirit Water when the wall crumbled.

Zuko was that mean. He had betrayed her.

Violence truly was in his blood.

Thank La he wasn't her soulmate.

AN: will be continued during two other days of zk month! as always, i'd love to hear what you guys thought of this so do leave a comment or message me on tumblr(thebluesunflower44)

and to the people who have read my other pieces/commented/favorited/followed - you make my heart soar 3