Hello, Wheel_of_Argos here with my first Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic! I've wanted to write a platonic soulmate AU for this fandom ever since I read one; it's just so perfect. I would say this work will probably be influenced by all of them, including:
painted through a dream by somethingyousaid (izquierda16)
illustrate the remnants of the life i used to live by WitchofEndor
Unwanted Friends by FoiblePNoteworthy
The Family You Choose by TunaFishChris
In The Garden Light At Dawn by Rosemary_and_Geraniums (only read this one if you want to cry)
Just to clear up things, the way soulmates and marks work in this AU is that all soulmates are platonic, though it is not uncommon for two soulmates to end up marrying. People know they are soulmates through an image on their skin, which represents each soulmate. A monochromatic mark appears whenever a soulmate is conceived and the pain of larger injuries can be felt through them. A person can know for sure if another is their soulmate through touching their mark on that person's skin; if they are soulmates then the mark's color will fill in.
If you have any questions, please comment!
The Antarctic is not an easy place to live. It tests those who dare to call it home, takes the weak and unlucky and sees if its inhabitants will turn for warmer land. But to those who pass its trials, it lavishes unlikely gifts, rewards that only those who've tasted the bitter salt of survival would call sweet. It grants strength, for only the strong would survive its trials. It grants humility, for through witnessing the never-ending forces of nature its people know that land can be claimed but not conquered. It grants community, for the only way to survive is to rely on others.
Through these hardships, undeniable connections are formed and given the utmost respect. Those of blood and friendship strengthen from how all must band together to survive. It is among the gravest of crimes to injure or kill a member of the family or tribe. And for a culture that already holds such bonds in esteem, there is no doubt that a family claimed by the soul would be held in equal or even greater regard.
Hours of grunts and moans and screams abruptly ended, replaced with young cries, strong for the small body but weak when met with the howling Antarctic winds. The skin of the birthing hut was pushed aside as a strapping, handsome, excited, and above all worried man rushed in.
"Kya! Are you okay?! Is the baby okay?!"
"Hush, Hakoda!" an older woman scolded even as the new mother giggled at her husband. "She just gave birth. She needs to rest."
"Yes, mother," the chieftain responded instinctively, but his action of moving closer to his wife betrayed his words. Kanna got ready to scold him again, but the amused smile of her daughter-in-law made her release it with a huff.
"Say hello to our son, Hakoda," Kya said gently, shifting her hold so the man could see the boy's pink, wrinkled face. Her rocking arms had quieted the babe's cries somewhat, but he was still very much announcing his life to the world. Her hold also made it clear she wasn't letting anyone else hold her baby for a good while so Hakoda settled for touching the back of his finger against the baby's smooth, small cheek. The crying eased off as the baby pouted at Hakoda.
"What should we name him?" Kya asked. Hakoda looked at her in surprise.
"Don't give me that, darling," Kya scoffed, knowing her husband's thoughts. "He's our son, he'll survive the first month. He'll receive his name officially then, but I want to call him it at home."
Hakoda smiled besottedly at his wife even as all the male names he had thought over their past year of marriage (and lifetime of liking and then loving Kya) fled his mind. None of them seemed right for their son, this loud child that was already looking around him with innocent curiosity. Not the name of his brave father or clever grandfather or even Nanuk, which had always sounded nice to him. None of them fit this child in the slightest; he needed a name that was his own, that he would grow into and shape for future generations by how he lived.
He started with an open mouth and a breath, shaped by the press of tongue against teeth and flesh, then drew it down with and stubborn jut of his lower jaw, yet keeping his mouth open, free to speak and to share.
"Sokka" was what his mouth shaped and his voice said. "Sokka," he repeated, already loving the sound and how it seemed to settle on the brow of their son, who was gazing at him with bright eyes.
"Sokka," Kya tested, nodding with a wondrously soft smile on her face. "Welcome to the Southern Water Tribe, Sokka. Welcome to our family."
"Okay, enough of this mushy tradition breaking," Kanna's voice came from the side where both new parents had forgotten she was, making them startle and turn to her with sheepish grins. She jerked to her chin to motion at Kya, "You. You need to rest, you're barely keeping yourself awake as is. Hakoda and I will take good care of my grandson."
Reluctantly, Kya handed Sokka over to her eager husband, checking how he held their boy with a critical eye before finally settling down and instantly falling asleep. Hakoda's eyes spent the next few minutes going back and forth indecisively from gazing with wonder and adoration at his wife and son while Kanna moved around the hut cleaning up from the labor. Normally, she would have snapped at her son to help his aging mother, but she supposed she could excuse his absentmindedness for this. When she finished cleaning and putting away everything she could without disturbing Kya, she sat down next to her son and got her first good look at her grandson.
He was pink and wrinkly as expected, with a smooth head that would soon be full of hair if what she remembered from Hakoda's infancy said anything. His bright blue eyes were open and looking around at anything it could see, though often came back around to his father.
His father, who was acting in a way that would completely decimate the image he had established of a noble and dignified chief. He cooed and smiled with chuckles that slipped into giggles as he danced his fingers above Sokka, occasionally diving in to poke him gently with a single digit. Sokka watched the wiggling fingers rapturously, letting out his own little giggles and squeals with each poke. Finally, the baby decided enough was enough and wiggled in his blanket, managing to free one arm from the cloths confines. Hakoda let his hand freeze with awed delight when Sokka managed to lightly grasp a single finger, giving weak tugs that Hakoda let draw his hand in until it rested on top of Sokka. Kanna gasped and Hakoda looked at his mother with curiosity and a bit of alarm only to find her looking at Sokka with a smile threatening to break out across her face.
"His arm," was all she said.
Confused, Hakoda looked at the small arm that peeked out of the blankets. It took a moment and a slightly different angle to see what his mother had seen, but when he did, his breath caught.
There, lining the skin from Sokka's wrist to the middle of his forearm, lay three soul marks. The first lay over the cluster of blue veins in the bend of the wrist, an arrow made of clouds. The second fell between the other two, two swords (no, the warrior within Hakoda thought, those are twin swords) lit aflame with fire that somehow failed to alarm Hakoda even when he realized they lifted in what could be seen as the fire nation insignia. The third rested in the center of his forearm, a simple but deadly fan with a razor's edge. It struck him as familiar, but the kind of distant familiarity that would never be remembered without further hint.
"There's space for more," his mother noted, and Hakoda felt like crying.
A few years before the war began, before the air nomad genocide, the number of children with soulmates began to decrease. It had been a warning, those of today now understood, but one no one realized until it was far too late to do anything but fight back. The numbers had only continued to lower as the war dragged on, until less than a tenth of the population had soul marks, and often not more than one or two. To already have three at his birth, three soulmates already in existence, the spirits had blessed Sokka. Hakoda had thought his heart couldn't swell anymore than it already had, yet it grew even bigger. Somewhere out there, there were three people who would love Sokka as much as Sokka loved them, so much so they could become a family regardless of blood. One day, hopefully, Hakoda would meet three more people he could care for like his own sons or daughters, if they'd let him. But for today, he would settle for holding Sokka close and raising him first to be a boy who knew he was loved and then to be a fine young man.
"Indeed," he answer his mother, even if she hadn't asked a question, before giving all focus once again to his son. "You are very beloved, Sokka. I hope you always remember that."
The Fire Nation is a bountiful land, with soil enriched by the volcanic ash and warm seas where a multitude of aquatic life thrive. It's no wonder why, despite the ever-present danger of volcanic eruptions, people thousands of years ago decided to settle there. Some communities are small, limited by resources, and others are large, so large they must be provided for through other communities. But everyone holds a strong sense of pride in their land and people.
Over a century ago, before Sozin began to whisper pretty lies and half-truths into the ears of his people, there had been balance of loyalty. It was honorable to be loyal equally to your family, blood and bonded, and to the Fire lord – though loyalty does not always mean taking their side. But spurred on by greed and lies, the nation began a war with no reason but senseless conquest. All too soon, rebellions and deserters began popping up one after the other, led and strengthened by men and women of the fire nation who would not believe the lies for they knew the truth, told to them by their soulmates of other nationalities. And so Sozin began his lies afresh, whispering to his people of the disloyalty of soulmates who did not hail from their own lands. But who would believe this, when soulmates were chosen by the soul, a blessing from the spirits themselves? And so Sozin used the rebellious he'd captured and found their soulmates, imprisoned them until they fell mad and paraded them before the people, showing how these "savages" had managed to lead their former countrymen astray.
It took time, a decade at least, but it worked. The Fire Nation began to fear those who bore cursed foreign marks, who could be led astray by the savages who held a grip on their soul. Even as the number of soul marked children decreased, those misfortunate enough to have this connection abroad (at least those with marks that left little room for doubt) would be turned in by their neighbors, friends, even their own family. A foreign mark became nearly synonymous for traitor.
And still Sozin wasn't satisfied. He could never outright destroy the loyalty between soulmates, not when it had been ingrained in humankind since before history. So, he belittled it, and found no better fuel than the fear he had already sown. The people lost faith in the sanctity of a soul bond, led by more whispered lies to believe soulmates were less a surety and more a suggestion, one that was often correct but inferior to the authority of the Fire Lord, who carried out the will of Agni himself.
A hundred years of lies, whispered by Sozin and his descendants, and soul mates were a shadow of what they had been, darkened by the shadow of the Fire Lord.
Ursa did not let herself relax after the final push. She held out her arms, demanding wordlessly for her child since she still could not speak through her ragged breaths. She knew that all too soon, Ozai would receive word of the end of her labor and come; she wanted every moment she could squeeze out with her child until that happened.
"Congratulations on your baby boy," the head midwife said as she handed over the wrapped bundle. Ursa brought him to her chest, arms instinctively moving to cradle her son safely as she sought his face. Brilliant golden eyes blinked at her, pure and innocent as only a baby's could be. Black hair already sprouted from his head, just enough to cover it in a soft fuzz that she gently ran her hand over. Baby fat clung to his cheeks, shaping his face and making his button nose even more adorable. When Ursa gave into the urge to boop that small nose, he giggled and reached for her finger with both hands, grabbing it and stubbornly refusing to let go, not that Ursa minded. He was perfect.
"Zuko," she decided, for though the name secretly gave honor to Avatar Roku, it was also its own, something her baby boy could grow into. Call it a mother's instinct, but she knew that Zuko would one day become a man the likes of which the world had never seen. This precious child could never become like his father, Ursa was certain.
Tired of her finger, Zuko released his grip and waved his hands around excitedly, dislodging the blanket in the process. That was fine, it wasn't like they were in the South Pole or anything; a little outside air couldn't hurt him. But the flailing did reveal something else, something which made her gasp and jerk her head to see the midwives who were whispering in a cluster.
Her heart sank, they had seen it.
In the middle of Zuko's chest, just where he himself could spot once he could move his head to look down, lay a single soul mark. A beautiful, d(95)ning arrow of clouds that adorned her son's body like the treasure it was. Had Zuko's father been anyone else, Ursa's would be whole-heartedly rejoicing at her boy's fortune for since no airbenders existed, it could be argued to be the mark of a fellow countryman. But Ozai would care not what Zuko's soul mark was, only that he had it in the first place. She knew Ozai saw soul marks as a mark of split loyalty, of disloyalty to the Fire Lord, and she feared what he would do when he learned Zuko had one.
Trembling, Ursa clutched Zuko to her chest, wondering if this would be the first and last time she held her son.
Footsteps announced his approach, for Ozai never saw the need for stealth or subtlety as prince of the Fire Nation, and Ursa's mind spiraled as she looked desperately for an answer that would save her baby. The opening door sounded just like when that imperial soldier had entered her family's house and declared her marriage to Prince Ozai the order of the Fire Lord.
"Well!" Ozai snapped in the silence that followed.
"Princess Ursa has safely delivered the prince," the head midwife gathered her courage to speak. She kept her bloodstained hands firmly behind her back where Ozai could not spot them. Ozai finally looked at the child in Ursa's arms, the slightest appeasement settling in his gaze for what Ursa believed to be delivering him a son and heir. It made her sick, but perhaps she could use that appeasement to save her son's life.
"If my lord would allow," she said, breathing lessons from years of singing on stage the only reason her voice kept steady. "I would like to name him Zuko."
"Very well," he hummed in dismissal. Ursa felt sweet hope upon her tongue, perhaps he would leave without finding Zuko's- "Any soul marks?"
Bitterness, the bitterness of fear that held her tongue. The silence stretched and Ozai narrowed his eyes.
"One," she admitted, knowing it would be far worse if he heard it from someone else. His eyes narrowed further, anger bending his brow. Ursa unconsciously clutched her baby tighter, making him cry. The noise echoed through the room and the anger entered Ozai's eyes.
In two strides Ozai crossed the room and plucked Zuko from Ursa's grasp, holding him incorrectly by the armpits and making him cry harder. A glance at Zuko's chest, just enough to see that soul mark there, and he marched for the open window, which Ursa remembered one of the midwives had opened because the room was getting too hot.
"No! Please!" Ursa begged. "He will be loyal; his mark will mean nothing!"
"Oh, really?" Ozai said lightly, like it was hardly a question at all. But at least he stopped moving closer to the window. "And how can you ensure that?"
Common sense says that if Ursa hadn't come up with an idea in the minutes she had before Ozai's arrival, she wasn't gonna come up with one now. But in reality, common sense often falls short, especially when pitted against the protectiveness of a mother. Ursa was not a saint, she knew this. She'd survived her marriage and the palace by playing their games: a guileless face, deep pockets, and a few drops of poison slipped into the drink of disguised assassins, mostly enough to knock out, sometimes enough to kill. Unlike the majority of the Fire Nation, Ursa had grown up to stories told by her mother and grandmother, about the Avatar and world before the war. She knew what soulmates used to mean to the Fire Nation and held them in the same regard. She knew that this person was to be Zuko's family, who would love him like a brother or sister in a way the royal family never could. But Ursa was a selfish woman and was ready to rip that away from her son and his soulmates if it meant Zuko lived.
"If he has no mark, he will never know his soulmate."
Ozai raised an eyebrow, intrigued.