A/N: Bonus chapter!
This was a later addition to the story and I originally debated whether or not to include it, but I've always loved epilogues just for getting that snapshot of what the future might look like. As we all know, the end of a story is never really the end.
Thanks so much for reading, and see you at the end!
Epilogue
The sky was dark and heavy overhead. It threatened rain, but hadn't yet fallen.
As she passed under the pillared archway, the paint of the gold and crimson overhang peeling with years of wear, she noticed the dusty streets of the small village were nearly empty. All apparently taking shelter against the coming storm.
However, she spied one vendor standing under his makeshift stall. Though he had his back turned, already in the process of packing up his meager collection of old vegetables, she approached.
The man didn't even look up. "We're closed," he said gruffly. "Or didn't you see the weather?"
"I'm… not looking to buy anything," she said.
The man did glance up then—perhaps surprised to hear an unfamiliar voice in these parts. As his eyes fell on her, they narrowed.
A light breeze whispered along the street, ruffling the hood of her cloak, and somewhere she heard the dissonant jingle of an old wind chime.
Katara had worn the cloak, one she had bought at another Fire Nation village, to avoid attracting attention, but now she reached up to pull the hood back slightly, just enough he could see her face.
"I'm looking for someone," she said. "A former soldier, Yon Rha."
The man eyed her, still with that same suspicion. His eyes shifted briefly to the beads in her hair, then her blue eyes, before he warily returned to pulling produce from the display to place in a sack. "Yon Rha. Yeah, I knew the man. Lived just out of town—but you won't find him. Old scarecrow up and ditched his old bag of a mother ages ago. Only wonder is that he didn't do it sooner—probably living it up on Ember Island right now." He picked up what looked like an old knotted tuber stained with dirt, and placed it into the sack with the rest. "What do you want with him?"
"Can you point me to where he lived?" Katara asked.
The man didn't meet her eyes, and now his hands were moving more quickly, almost hurling the onion-leeks and carrot-squash into the bag in a rush to get them put away, not seeming to care if they were bruised.
"He was the only soldier of the Southern Raiders around here," he said, almost defensively. "Kept to himself, no friends."
It occurred to Katara that, in such a small, isolated village so far from the bustling trade of the port towns, where foreigners must be rare, if the villagers were in general aware of Yon Rha's role as a captain in the war, there may be whispers of why a member of the Water Tribes would be passing through. Perhaps she ought to have disguised herself better—but, she supposed there was no helping it now.
"I'm not planning to stay long," Katara said. "I just have some business with his mother, if she's there."
The man snorted. "Good luck with that." He jerked his chin toward the south. "That way. Just follow the path, and you'll get there eventually. Just be ready, the woman's a crocodile-lion if there ever was one. She'll chase you out with a butcher knife."
Katara folded her hands together and bowed her head in what she hoped approximated a Fire Nation sign of thanks. Then she turned away.
However, just as the man was about to throw in the last of a few sickly yellowed turnip-beets, Katara stopped.
"Actually," she said. "I think I would like to buy a few things. If you can spare them."
Katara descended down a long series of stone steps, which turned to a winding dirt path. She had not been here in three years—yet the place felt familiar, as often as she had visited it in her dreams.
A light drizzle began to fall, turning quickly to rain. She tugged her hood further down, then touched the inside pockets of her cloak, to ensure she had all the items she intended to bring. She gripped the buckled, bubbling skin of her scarred wrist with her good hand—trying to give herself courage.
Katara finally drew to a stop beside an old, rickety house overlooking a gently curving river below. Out front wildflowers grew in patches, next to a series of broken and decayed half-height fences. They enclosed what might have once been a garden, but had now been choked out with weeds.
Katara approached the door, old and sagging in its frame. She took a breath—but before she could raise her hand to rap on the wood, the door suddenly swung outward. Katara had to take a rapid step back, out from under the overhang and back out into the rain, to avoid being clobbered in the face.
"Who's there?" demanded a scratching, grating voice. "What do you want? If you think you're going to steal from an old woman, think again. I'll send you to the spirit world with a face even your own mother won't recognize."
Katara raised a hand in what she hoped would be taken as a peaceful gesture. In spite of the rain, she pulled back her hood. The rain was heavy now, soaking through her hair, and dripping down her jaw, over her mother's necklace and down to her collar.
"Are you… Yon Rha's mother?" she asked.
The woman snorted and spat. "So what if I am? That good-for-nothing lout ran off on me years ago. Left his own old ailing mother to fend for herself. So much for honor. Even worse than his father."
Katara hesitated. The woman stood in the shadow of the overhang, and the driving rain made it difficult to see her properly, even at this distance. And yet—Katara didn't think she had ever seen a woman so repulsive. Many of her teeth appeared to be missing, her jowls hanging loosely around a neck of folded skin. A single enormous mole stuck out between the cascading wrinkles on her forehead.
Yet, in spite of all that, she could have been beautiful had there been a hint of kindness in her face. But her eyes were narrow and beady, lips half curled with an expression of permanent disgust.
Katara took a step forward. "May I… come in for a moment?"
The woman spat again, this time directly at Katara's feet. "And have you get your muddy paws all over my clean floors? Shoo, you Water Tribe pond scum. Go back wherever you came from."
Katara took a deep, steadying breath, then stepped forward again, just under the overhang. With a pull of her fingers, she drew the water away from her damp clothes, and away from her shoes, sending it to fall back into the rain outside.
"I don't mean to be long. I… just have something I need to tell you."
The woman watched her with narrowed eyes, the dark irises sparking with sudden greedy interest. "Well," she said after a moment. "Supposing you're no thief—I guess I can let you in for a minute. If you agree to do a few chores for me. I'm an old woman, it's the least you could do."
Katara dipped her head very slightly in acceptance, and the woman turned, shambling on inside without so much as a respectful Fire Nation bow. Katara drew in a short breath, tasting the familiar cool damp of the rain on the air, before she followed.
Whatever the woman might have said about her floors, they were anything but clean. Dirt streaked the boards from one side to the other, and some were coming loose, with gaps between them so wide it was a wonder the woman hadn't tripped and fallen into the hearth, which was set in a corner toward the back. An unpleasant odor met Katara's nostrils—like rotting wood, and perhaps the excrement of small animals. As her eyes drifted toward the corner, where stood a low cabinet, its old surface chipped and scratched beneath layers of dust, she glimpsed a rat-shrew scurry behind it.
The old woman shuffled over to a fire pit in the corner, where a tea kettle hung over an open flame. She poured herself a cup, then went to sit at a low table nearby, on the only cushion in the room. She eyed Katara over the steam of her tea, as though daring her to ask for some.
Katara took another step into the room. With no proper place to sit, she remained standing awkwardly for a moment, before at last she sank carefully down to her knees a little ways back from the table. She folded her hands together in front of her, the good hand over the bad.
"I'm sorry," Katara began, "to have to tell you this, but—your son… Yon Rha… he's dead."
Silence, for a moment.
"I'm sorry," she added softly.
Katara couldn't look at the woman's face as she spoke, and found herself staring at the fire instead, the kettle trembling above it. She imagined briefly pressing her bad hand to its blistering surface—it had to be less painful than this. But she had put it off for too long.
Katara pressed on into the silence, "I know, because—"
The woman sneered suddenly, spitting a wad of phlegm onto the grimy wood floor. "Serves him right, the bum. I would've done it myself if I'd known the ungrateful toad he'd turn out to be."
Katara didn't react, for a moment. However, something seemed to constrict uncomfortably in her stomach.
Keeping her voice even, polite, Katara tried to continue, "He didn't abandon you. He—"
"What did he do then?" the woman went on, mouth twisted with contempt. "Get himself mugged on the way back from market? Useless boy, all that fancy training with the navy, all for nothing. He might as well have deserted, for all the glory he brought the family."
Katara stared back at her. She searched the woman's face, for anything that might have been remorse, or pain.
But the woman only took a sniff at her tea, and took a sip. Then her beady eyes shifted back to Katara. "Well, pest, are you going to do those chores, or aren't you?"
The script Katara had planned seemed rather pointless now, but she reached into a pouch strapped under her cloak anyway. She opened the clasp, then withdrew several small items. The few vegetables she had bought at the market, along with a short square of wood with a row of holes along its surface. And, of course, the sticks of incense.
"I will," she said. "But first… I'd like to pay my respects. If that's all right."
The woman's old cracked lips curled. "Do whatever you want," she said, waving a dismissive hand. "Just don't expect me to get down on my knees and cry."
Katara went to the hearth—though the entire room was dingy and ill cared for, she guessed that would be the most honored place in a Fire Nation home. However, as she produced a small cloth, spreading it over a spot on the nearby mat and setting the incense holder on top of it, she paused, and her eyes scanned the room again.
"You wouldn't…" Katara began. "Have a picture of him somewhere, or…?"
The woman shrugged indifferently. "Used to keep way too many in that cabinet over there. Painted by my husband himself—one of my husband's hobbies, which he decided was more important than distinguishing himself in the war. Just as well the old bag of bones died young. I burned what I found of them years ago, but I suppose I might have missed something."
Katara carefully set each of the vegetables on the cloth next to the bowl. Then she turned and approached the cabinet.
She pulled open one of the drawers first—but as the woman had promised, most of it had been cleaned out, and she spotted what looked like scorch marks, as though she had burned them right inside. Katara knelt down then and opened the other two drawers below. At last she circled around behind, peering down into the crack behind it. Something scurried again in the dark.
She was just about to pull away, giving it up, but as she squinted into the shadows one more time, she caught sight of something—what looked like an uneven bit of dirt, protruding slightly from between an old gap in the floorboards.
The crack behind the cabinet was too narrow to properly fit her left arm at this angle, and so, pushing back her cloak from the scarred mass of her right arm, Katara pressed herself as close to the mold-stained wall as she could, reaching for it. She could have reached with waterbending—but if there was any paper there, she didn't want to risk washing off the ink.
She stretched, the tips of her fingers fumbling the edge of what looked like no more than a dirt knot—but then she felt it give slightly, and as she tugged, hard, the object came away in her hand to reveal beneath the dirt something crumpled, the color of cream, protected for years in the wide gap in the floorboards.
Katara stood up, carefully unfolding the bit of parchment. Some of the dirt on the back flaked off onto the floor.
It was indeed a sketched portrait of Yon Rha, though she could only tell from the label scribbled along the side. Though the brush strokes appeared hasty, and the black ink of his hair and face were hard to make out through the cracks where the paper had been bent, she thought his face looked young. Maybe fifteen or sixteen, the Fire Nation armor visible around his neck perhaps only newly broken in. Even though he wasn't smiling—she supposed most soldiers that age would be trying to look tough and serious—the artist, his father, had managed to capture a certain sparkle in his eye. Young and ambitious and excited for the future.
Katara turned back briefly, to find the woman openly staring at the mass of melted, deformed skin of Katara's arm. Her nose was visibly wrinkled with revulsion.
Katara turned and approached the hearth again. Kneeling, she smoothed out the crinkled parchment as best she could, before she carefully leaned the portrait against the side of the slightly raised lip. That done, she reached into the satchel at her waist again, and produced two of the incense sticks. Using the fire beneath the kettle, she lit each in turn, then carefully placed them in the holes of the wooden incense burner. The ends glowed brightly in the dim room, and smoke wafted toward the ceiling. The woody scent was strangely gentle, relaxing, and she folded her hands together, bowing her head in respect.
Katara had asked Zuko to show her the proper Fire Nation ritual for honoring the dead. Zuko had explained how often favorite foods were offered, as a symbol of the hope that they may experience times of plenty, wherever their spirit may now reside—even though the vegetables weren't in the best condition, Katara had tried to choose some of the same things she had seen him carrying that day. The scent of incense was meant to calm the agitated spirit of the dead, and purify the surroundings, as well as bring peace to the spirits of those who still lived. She hadn't been sure she would be allowed to pay her respects, but she had wanted to make sure she wouldn't do anything disrespectful by accident—she was glad now she had learned it all so well.
At last she opened her eyes, to gaze up at the picture again, a young man once full of promise. She wondered if he had ever questioned what he was asked to do as a soldier. If there had been a time in his youth when it had kept him up at night. If so, at what point he had become hardened to it all, to all feeling.
"Well," drawled the old woman. "If you're satisfied. About those chores…"
Katara walked on a way from the house, after having finished all the tasks the woman had asked for and then some—the rain had lightened back to barely a drizzle, and Katara didn't bother to pull her hood back up. Instead, as she passed by the weed-infested remains of the garden, she stopped some distance beyond its border, and looked back at the old house.
Inside her cloak, her bad hand touched the folded parchment on the inside pocket of her cloak. She would have left it, but she was sure it would have simply been set to fire, too. Katara had left the vegetables—she wondered now if the basket Yon Rha had been carrying had been meant for her. She ought to have them, if she wanted them, even if she was more likely to dump them with the other rotting refuse out back.
Katara had been prepared to confess—she'd braced herself to be screamed at, amid wails and tears of anguish. Maybe even attacked, or hurled out the door. To feel brought down on her head all the wrath and hate that a person could muster, when someone took away a person they loved.
This, somehow, was worse.
The rain began to pick up again, and she raised her hood once more, and stepped away, back down the winding path through the rain.
"Have you heard anything?"
Maybe Katara already knew she shouldn't ask. She had asked before, and before that, and before that. And as far as she could tell, she was only twisting the knife, deeper and harder. Yet, she couldn't seem to help herself.
Zuko didn't look at her, as he stood on one of many balconies around the Fire Nation palace, hands resting against the railing. He had been about to retire for the night, and so now he wore regular clothes rather than the heavy robes of the Fire Lord, the five-pointed headpiece stowed away, his topknot unadorned. Katara had arrived so late she had expected to be escorted to one of the guest rooms—but as apparently Zuko expected to be tied up in meetings all the next day, he had requested she meet him now instead.
Zuko gazed up at the night sky above, the stars half obscured by cloud cover. And he sighed deeply.
"...No," he said at last. "Nothing. I've asked June to search for her using a scent sample, I've had the servants comb her former rooms for clues, anything that might have been hers that might tell us something about where she came from or might have gone. I've tried to track down relatives of Avatar Roku, I've talked to fortune tellers."
Zuko shook his head. "Father keeps hinting he knows something, and I've offered to give him whatever he wants within reason, threatened him, begged him—but I'm not even sure he actually knows anything. I don't even know if she's still alive."
Katara, standing beside him by the railing, placed a supportive hand on his arm—she didn't notice immediately that she had reflexively put out her bad arm, until his eyes wandered down to it. He didn't look away immediately, as the others might have done—who even now avoided it. When his eyes rose to meet hers briefly, unshed tears glimmered in his good eye. After a moment, he looked back out to the sky, and wiped at his eye with his thumb.
Zuko had grown noticeably older in the past few years. His shoulders slightly broader, his face more angular. But even as he grew to look more like his father every day, there was more kindness in his eyes alone than Ozai could have mustered in a hundred years.
Which was perhaps why it hurt all the more. Katara would never forget the day she lost her mother—but for Zuko, it was like it was happening over and over again, day after day. Hoping to finally find her, only to see that hope quashed, then have it renewed again. It was a neverending torture she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy, let alone one of her closest friends. It was partly why she visited the palace as often as she tried to; even though Zuko was usually busy with Fire Lord business, and she didn't really have a real reason for coming here, she just wanted to make sure he was all right, that he had the support of those who understood how he felt.
"Tell me if you uncover anything," she said. "Anything at all. I'll come, and help anyway I can, Zuko."
She could only imagine the happiness of such a reunion—and if it could still happen, she knew it would be worth all the pain now. She only wished somehow they could be certain, that that hope would be rewarded.
Of course, if she was found, there would also be a reckoning to pay. Katara very much doubted Zuko's mother would sit back at a table drinking tea, more interested in wheedling chores off a stranger than paying proper respects to her lost child—Katara wondered if the woman would let her burn incense with her. She hoped so, but if there was pain and rage and tears, she would take that too, and welcome it.
Zuko nodded once in gratitude. "Thank you for all you've done," he said in a low rasp. "I know—how you've traveled all around the islands, helping the poorer villages. Many of my people's lives are better for what you've been doing."
Katara smiled a little. "I wouldn't want to be doing anything else." After her healing training at the North Pole, she had spent most of her time in the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, seeking out those who were struggling to survive, who were beaten down by their circumstances or by bullies that wanted to take advantage of them. She didn't know how lasting her efforts would be, but she intended to revisit many of the places she had already been again, to keep working on them, until it really did make a difference.
Katara had not had to take decisive action again, as she had in the palace courtyard—she had met some truly despicable people who had done and continued to do terrible things, yet there always seemed to be another way, and she was grateful for it. But she also knew she hadn't yet seen the poorest, most corrupt parts of the Fire Nation and the vast Earth Kingdom, and the deeper she ventured, the more dangerous it would be, and the more chance she would have to act in order to protect the people who needed protecting. But she wouldn't turn away—those were the places that needed help the most, and she wouldn't turn her back on them, no matter the heaviness, or the nightmares that followed.
But for now the thought of taking on the burden of the souls of the greedy Earth Kingdom soldiers who robbed poor farmers on their way from one village to another and called it protection, trying to understand them, care about them, was enough to make her try her absolute hardest to spare their lives. As long as they were alive, she was free to hate them all she wanted.
Zuko was watching her with an expression hard to read, and for a moment she was afraid he was reading these twisted thoughts, as Aang was wont to do on the brief occasions they had met again—but then his eyes dropped briefly, before returning to the sky.
"You don't need to worry about me, Katara," he said suddenly into the quiet. "I know I may never find her, and I accept that. When I came back to the Fire Nation after Ba Sing Se with Azula, I thought I was getting what I wanted—I thought I was getting my family back. But it's all of you who are my family. And that's enough."
"And Mai," Katara added, with a hint of a grin.
"And Mai," he amended. He half looked away, a sliver of heat rising in his face.
The two had been married nearly a year now, after a few rocky times and even a temporary breakup, yet sometimes Zuko still managed to get that half embarrassed, half pleased look of a boy with his first girlfriend.
However, after a moment of trying not to smile, he glanced her way, then away again, suddenly uncomfortable.
Somehow, Katara wasn't sure how, everyone in Team Avatar knew the awkwardness that had gone on—that was still technically going on—between her and Aang. Zuko had even asked about it once, in a roundabout kind of way. She expected that was why Zuko didn't talk about married life around her much—as though she might envy the fact that his life was moving ahead in a way that hers wasn't.
She wished she could say he was being oversensitive, but she couldn't entirely deny that it was still a question that chased itself around in her mind. The decision she might have made then, could still make—the possibilities of the future she was turning away from. How often these days, as she traveled on her own, she would lie awake at night, wondering what Aang was doing, and if he was missing her as much as she missed him.
But Aang was busy doing what Avatars did, keeping the peace where he could, and Katara would be soon venturing into even darker, deadlier places, trying to find the most helpless, those in greatest need. She would be taking risks that, were she and Aang bound together more closely, it wouldn't be fair to take. This was her path, for now—and she would walk it, whatever else she might be losing.
"Are you okay, Katara?"
She blinked and glanced sideways, to see Zuko watching her out of the corner of his scarred eye.
Katara's hands had folded themselves together on the railing in front of her. At last she answered with a smile, "No, Zuko, I'm not. But I'll do my best anyway." She added, "And speaking of Mai, I guess I shouldn't keep you any longer."
"Shall I call a servant to escort you to your room?" Zuko asked.
"I'll just take the one I usually use, if that's all right," Katara answered. "There's… somewhere I need to visit first anyway."
"Right," Zuko said, and she guessed he knew where she meant to go. "Well… good night then. I hope you'll stick around tomorrow. You should come have supper with Mai and I, Ty Lee and some of the other Kyoshi Warriors are supposed to be visiting—I miss having them as guards, we barely see them now. I'll have the cooks prepare something for you."
"Thanks," Katara said with a smile. "I'd like that."
She hugged him briefly, and as they went inside, she watched him head off in the direction of the royal bedchambers, the Fire Lord's rooms, but also where all the members of the royal family slept—where she knew Zuko and Azula had once stayed as children.
She turned away, back down the hall.
Katara navigated the long, wide corridors with practiced ease. Many times had she walked this particular route—lined with pillars of crimson and gold, torches flickering over the walls above her head.
At last she turned a final corner, and she came to a stop before a familiar wall. She turned to face it, and tilted her head back.
The portraits of the Fire Lords were, as always, enormous. They stretched to the high ceiling above, and even if she had stood level with the bottom of them, she wouldn't have come up to their ankles.
There was Sozin, a scroll in one hand, a flaming comet shooting by above, and Azulon, standing on the back of a turtle, a sun ringed in black behind his head. And Ozai of course, with his black flames and the pipes and gears of Fire Nation war machines.
Zuko had held off commissioning his own portrait—he had wanted a few more years of reign, for the chance to prove what his greatest legacies would be. Katara liked to imagine it might have symbols of all the nations, and perhaps even the clouds of the air nomads, to symbolize his friendship with the Avatar and all the world. However, even so, there was another portrait after Ozai. Just as tall as the others.
Katara gazed up at Azula, looking noticeably younger than the Fire Lords of the past, both hands raised with flames curling above them, tinged blue. More blue flames burned behind her, signifying her mastery over fire, while small figures in green and black, the Dai Li, stood just in front of her feet, before a crumbling wall—her conquering of Ba Sing Se.
It had been Zuko's idea to commission the work done, going against any and all advice of his advisors. There was no reason to recognize Azula's brief reign, especially as she had never even been officially coronated. She had been his enemy, his rival for the throne—but he'd had it done anyway.
Azula didn't look how she had in the end—instead her hair was set perfectly, bangs crisp and even, her eyes sharp and keen and intimidating.
Katara, as she always did, felt tears sting her eyes. Once she would have turned away—preferred to see Azula, and Yon Rha too, forgotten by time, as punishment for the things they had done. Many had suffered because of the choices they had made—including Katara herself, including people she loved, and she would never forget that.
But she would remember them—see them, try to understand them—even if she was the only one who did. Perhaps because she was the only one who would.
Katara wiped the tears from her eyes, the rough patch of her burned fingers brushing at her skin. Before she turned away, heading off to the guest rooms.
A/N: And, there it is. The end.
This has been a bit of an unusual project for me in that the concept and full first draft came together pretty quickly. It's technically a second draft, as I did quite a bit of rewriting from the first draft, though again I might come back to rework a few things later, particularly this epilogue.
As for Aang and Katara and whether they get together—so, theoretically I was going to leave that to you all to decide, though I'll admit for some reason my brain started outlining a sequel (which I don't have any concrete plans for writing at the moment), so there's that. My thinking would be that they get together in their late twenties/early thirties, but as a result of marrying so late they only have Bumi and Kya and no Tenzin.
Originally I was going to say that means Korra has no airbending master, hence Amon wins and the airbenders never come back, and everything is horrible. But. I mean, if we could shuffle the pieces around and get Katara where Yakone is at the right time, I'd say we could save Korra after all. (Although given I tend to picture this happening near Aang in some way, the subsequent drama and trust issues may mean it's not immediately the happy ending for everybody. And there's apparently Vaatu to consider.) Also, in case you were wondering about what happens with Zuko's mother—my thinking is, given that Ozai likely would have no reason for cooperating with Zuko or giving him any clue to Ursa's location without Azula, that Zuko only comes across the letter among Ozai's hidden things that leads him to Hira'a many years later, well after Ursa has already passed away of old age as Noriko, without having gotten her memories back. (I know, I'm a horrible person, I'm sorry.)
I also just want to say—I'm not advocating Katara's conclusion at the end of this story, nor am I condemning it. I just wanted to explore one particular way events could have gone, if Katara had made a different decision. I'm sure everyone has their own idea on the way things could have ended up—but the thing that kept sticking out in my mind was the effect it would have on Katara's own sense of identity. Storm!Katara has done things and will do things that canon Katara never would, and while she'll never know that, like Aang and Ozai, she could have defeated Azula without killing her, she may also face situations where she can do good for people in ways canon Katara couldn't or wouldn't. Her life going forward is likely to be far more turbulent, and full of burden and pain, but she's also gained a different kind of compassion as well.
Well then, thanks so much for reading! If you have a moment, let me know what you thought! I really enjoyed this project, and I think it's starting to help me get a better grasp on writing the ATLA characters. If you'd like to check out any more of my Avatar work, I currently have a short-ish story posted here on ffnet, a post-Smoke and Shadow throwback to The Southern Raiders in which Zuko asks Katara to help him go after Azula. (It has some thematic overlap to this story here, though if I'm ever able to finish the Part 2, the focus will be quite a bit different, including bloodbending. However, it's still a work in progress at the moment.) Oh, and I also have an unhealthy addiction to making Distorted Reality (ie, evil Katara) comics.
Thanks so much again, and hope you all have a great year!
—Rocket
Posted 11/4/22