Letters from the Trade Winds
Letters from the Falling Sky
Summary: "Katara felt helpless. Aang didn't know he had a daughter." Things more complex than the war had finally torn them apart. In isolation, they take out their brushes, regret the past, and write. Kataang, Tokka. Rated M.
Author's Note: This chapter was the hardest to start and one of the hardest to finish. It's super long and, for reasons unknown to me, I just didn't feel right writing it. It was just difficult! As a warning, it's also pretty creepy, but hopefully none of you will be horrified enough to stop reading.
I'd like to mention that about half of the "creepy facts" in this fiction are taken from stories that actually occurred in my cultural community. Yes sir—this stuff actually happens—it's real!
Again I thank my dedicated reviewers and encourage those of you who just read to share your thoughts with me. Tell me what your favorite line was, how you felt when you finished the chapter, what you want me to change or add later on…stuff like that. I'm always happy to hear it!
This chapter: Pay attention to the reoccurring stone/apple image.
And of course, as always, happy reading!
-scorpiored112
.5.
She groped around stupidly in the darkness of their bedroom, feeling for her daughter's face. Still half asleep, still groggy. Kya Lynn's cheek felt so small and perfect in her hand—Katara had to sigh to herself, relieved to find her here, breathing and living, on the tiny mattress next to her own.
Another dream. More recollections. Gran Gran's death had awakened so many sensations that had lay dormant before. They woke up and danced in her mind whenever she drifted off to sleep.
She dreamt of her grandmother. Sometimes she dreamt of her parents laughing and kissing and fussing over every little detail being flawless. In her dreams they were not dead. They were alive and young and still in love.
She often saw Toph—or, more so, a paler version of Toph—resting in an igloo, complaining about her condition. It was Sokka's scroll that had affirmed this dream to be a reality. They would be coming soon for an overdue healing session.
Sometimes, more often than not, Katara saw the Avatar on top of her trembling frame, holding her wrists down over her head, breathing into her neck, murmuring words of encouragement and protection—their last night. The night she had given herself to him.
The night their hearts had beat together.
The night Kya Lynn was conceived.
As it goes, she always had to wake up to see if it was real—if it had happened. And the proof slept in the same room, oblivious to her mothers troubles.
She's such a beautiful little girl, Katara thought to herself, still trying to open her eyes.
Kya Lynn's face was warm and smooth against her fingers. It reminded Katara suddenly of a fresh apple—picked from a tree, still balmy because of the sun, delicate because if the skin was penetrated, all of the juices would rot away. And inside there is a precious seed. Inside there is a soul who laughs just like Aang used to.
She was too sleepy to start hating herself again, but she couldn't help it. Why did Lynnie have to look exactly like him?
Gran Gran had told her once that you could measure a wife's love for her husband by their first child. If it looked like the father, then the wife loved him and would love him forever. If the first child looked like the mother, than the wife only loved herself and didn't think her hubby attractive. Predominantly, the baby's looks were based on adoration for one another, but little else.
Katara, blushing at this, pulled her fingers through Kya Lynn's hair, the only indication that the girl was hers just as much as she was Aang's. She was always amazed at how identical their curly waves were—how precisely similar, in texture and feel and shade. She remembered faintly that Aang's hair was course and dark.
Kya's eyes fluttered open. She looked up wordlessly from her spot.
They said nothing. The girl had grown used to Katara's stares and no longer protested them. She knew the woman had recently become a more detached type of person. She knew that Katara saw Aang in her eyes—in her face and on her skin.
"Go back to sleep, darling," Katara ordered after a moment of stillness. "I'm sorry I woke you—go back to sleep now, Lynnie."
Kya Lynn sat up and drew her knees to her chest. Her little stuffed bison sat nobly at her side. Aang's spitting image.
"Go back to sleep," the waterbender stated a little louder, suddenly bothered by Kya Lynn's appearance.
The girl asked quietly, "Did you have a nightmare, Mama?"
Katara frowned expressionlessly.
"That's why you wake up every night, isn't it?"
"Lynnie—"
"I have nightmares too," the girl admitted, and then added, so that Katara could barely hear, "I told you to call me Kya."
"It's nothing. I'm sorry. Go back to sleep."
The tone was recognizable. Cold and metallic and sure. Her mother often flipped like this. One minute she was whispering "darling" and "dearest" while brushing her hair or dressing her, the next minute she was spitting out cold, frigid words, and narrowing her eyes and grimacing.
And she had heard that tone so clearly before, when Katara had screeched into the night just days ago, breathing as shallowly as she could, "While my father was being assassinated—you were holding me down and doing me! Get your filthy hands off of me! Leave me alone!"
But Kya Lynn was only four years old and while she was a clever girl, she wasn't a psychologist. She didn't know what this meant and doubted it had anything to do with her.
Her daughter asked, ignoring the fact that Katara had already fallen back on her mattress, "What did you dream about?"
"Nothing. Go to sleep, Lynnie."
"Kya."
"It's late," her mother fused lazily. "Please go back to bed. I promise I won't wake you again."
Katara wasn't looking at her. She was lying on her side, closing her eyes and talking to the wall. The fatigue was brushing against her skin—drawing into her bones like a stream of ice. Days without sleep had left her limbs weak and useless.
So it came as a surprise when Kya Lynn suddenly appeared in front of her, cuddling into the blankets and nuzzling against her mother's chest. It was enough to make the healer gasp slightly while making room. Lynnie was so quick, but always such a hassle.
"Are you sure you want to sleep here?" her mother asked greedily, rubbing her forehead. "It's kind of small."
"It'll be okay, Mama. I want to be next to you."
Katara bit her lip.
"Will you tell me about your dreams?" Kya Lynn inquired into the woman's neck. "And about why you scream and talk sometimes? And the story of how I was born and how Gran Gran said it was lucky and how my eyes were silver? And what Baba said in the thirty letters he sent the other day?"
She could hear the smile in Kya's voice, the exuberance and care she took when she spoke. So articulate…and for some reason, so foreign. "That's a lot, Lynnie. I don't know if we have time."
"Is Baba coming home?"
"I don't know. Maybe." She didn't want to make any promises. She didn't want to tell her daughter anything concerning the airbender who had sent her all those letters just a day ago. She hadn't read them out loud. She had read them silently to herself in Gran Gran's room.
"Is Sokka coming too?"
Katara opened her eyes. "Who told you about Sokka?" And then she added, because she was honestly shocked, "Dearest, how do you know all of this?"
"Can we visit Kyoshi sometime?"
"Lynnie!"
"What?"
"How do you—who told you about…" She sighed desperately and repeated, "Lynnie, how do you know all of this?"
Her daughter pressed closer to her. "I don't know. I just kind of…remember it."
Again there was a silence. Kya Lynn didn't add anything and Katara did push her to. There was something ominous about their igloo—something beating and throbbing around their bodies, in their blankets, over their identical heads.
Katara stated finally, ignoring the feeling of being watched, "Kyoshi Island is in the Earth Kingdom."
"I know," Kya Lynn replied tediously. "South of Ba Sing Sei, created by Avatar Kyoshi, who broke it away from the main land." She paused and took a deep, reflective breath. "I don't know why, Mama. But I remember it. Is that weird?"
"Maybe, darling. Maybe it's a little weird."
"I miss Sokka."
Her mother laughed. While it wasn't bitter, it certainly had a mocking ring to it. "Please, dear—you've never seen him before. And call him Uncle Sokka, if you have to bring him up."
Kya Lynn said, with just as bitter of a laugh, "Katara—he's not my uncle."
Her mother looked down at her, startled and suddenly anxious. Something was wrong. Kya had never referred to her by her first name, and she knew very well (thanks to Gran Gran) that Sokka was her brother. There was some sort of invisible presence in the room—in her daughter—that seemed to engorge her senses as well as her words.
"Wait—what did you just call me?"
And suddenly the child began crying. Though it was subtle, her body was trembling, shuddering violently against her mother's chest.
"Lynnie—calm down, darling, calm down! Goodness—what's wrong with you?"
The girl asked forcefully, through the sobs and screams, "Do you know how they killed me, Katara? Do you know how they did it?"
"What on earth are you talking about?" Katara exclaimed quietly, turning her daughter's face in her hands. Kya Lynn sat up, still wavering and weeping, and clung to Katara's shoulders. Her voice became louder. More sure—more articulate.
"They slit my throat, Katara—right here. Do you see it? It's probably gone." She wasn't looking at her mother when she traced the imaginary scar. She was looking through her, eyes wide but somehow also narrow, contorting her face in the darkness and making the strangest noises either had yet to hear. "And did you know," she continued confidently, wiping her eyes and shaking, "I barely saw it coming! Katara—look at me! Look at me! They've killed me, Katara! On the day before my wedding—they came in and killed me. How is that lucky? Why should I be born with silver eyes?"
"Oh God," Katara muttered, covering her mouth. "Oh God." She touched her daughter's forehead. When the girl looked up her face was paled and hollow. She no longer felt like an apple. She felt like a stone. "Oh God—Suki?"
"Kya—call me Kya," the child screeched, grimacing. "Call me Kya—after my mother-in-law—for heaven's sake!"
"Oh God."
Katara didn't know what to feel. She wondered how she hadn't noticed it before. The day Kya Lynn had been conceived was the same day Suki had been murdered—it had all been planned out in such a perfect way.
She knew reincarnation wasn't restricted to the Avatar. It happened all over. Brown hair and pale skin. While she looked a little like Suki, she had always had the former bride's skill—her quick movements and her fiery spirit. Her spunk. Gran Gran had said once, long ago, that it usually took a good four years for children to remember—if they ever did—who they had been in a past life.
When Kya Lynn's weeping finally slowed down, she straightened herself and wiped her eyes again, looking at her mother with a strange expression. "It is so hard," she admitted, as if just dawning upon the fact, "to live two lives like this."
"You'll end up forgetting," Katara stated absentmindedly. And though it sounded mean and rather unconcerned, they both knew it was the truth. The memory wouldn't last. Eventually Suki would drift away and Kya Lynn would remain Kya Lynn—a witty tribal child who took life as it came.
Katara touched the girl's shoulder and held her close. Her daughter felt so pathetic and fragile, and it hurt Katara to find that she was still shaking. "It'll be okay, darling," she whispered awkwardly. Who would have thought, she wondered quietly to herself. Who would have thought.
Katara asked delicately into her hair, because she knew she needed to, "Who did it, Suki? How did they kill you?"
Kya Lynn cleared her throat and coughed into their blanket.
"Suki?"
"Two men," the girl recalled, bunching her shoulders. "They had serrated knives. I can barely remember them. But I know they were there for us. They knew who we were."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean they weren't looking for Aang," Lynnie answered flatly. "They were there for me and Hakoda. They must have recognized us as leaders from the Boiling Rock all that while ago."
"The Fire Nation prison?"
"Yes."
"But…" Katara shook her head, as if the physical activity would help bring the thoughts back to her. This new fact, for some reason, did not process. "But—the resistance…I thought they only wanted the Avatar."
Kya Lynn paused and turned around to look at Katara's face. Her eyes were conspicuously silver. "They're after anyone who opposed the Fire Nation under Ozai. But I doubt they're a big enough group to take on the Avatar. They killed us because they saw us as easy targets,"—her fists tightened here and her teeth rubbed against each other when she continued—"they did it to scare you guys, to tear you apart." And then the girl diverted her gaze and turned her attention to Aang's thirty perfect scrolls, kept in a pile on Katara's desk. "I see they've succeeded," she murmured faintly.
The sky falls in pieces. But when the world ends, it happens all at once.
"Katara?"
"Oh God."
The healer slapped her hands to her face. Perhaps it was seeing her daughter talk with such obscure knowledge. Perhaps it was the fact that, by mentioning the resistance, Katara had remembered her daughter's father, as well as her own father. What a stupid mistake Sokka had made by blaming Aang! All that while four years ago, they were after Suki and Hakoda.
"It's not your fault," Kya Lynn whispered. "Katara, it'll be okay."
"No..." Katara murmured "No! I'm such a damn idiot! How could I have let this happen?" She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "All this time…it was planned. It was a waste!"
"It's not your fault." The girl's tiny hands wrapped around her mother's shoulders. Kya Lynn's soft voice chirped, "Mama, you're scaring me."
Katara wiped her dry eyes with the heel of her palm. She sighed and held Kya Lynn close and muttered honestly, "I don't know what to call you anymore. This is so hard for me."
"Call me Kya, like I told you when Gran Gran died."
And just like that, the deep voice and the trembling were gone. Kya Lynn stared up at her mother with large, guiltless eyes and a blank expression. It had only been a passion. A state. Maybe it would come back, but they both hoped it wouldn't.
Katara stared into the wall of their igloo. "Kya," she whispered. "That was my mother's name." She was silent for a moment, trying to reminisce her own mother's face. Tonight, though she had yet to cry, Katara had released so much, and suddenly felt the need to start a fresh page. She needed to admit. "I'm sorry, Lynnie," she murmured with a sigh, "I—I just can't. It's too hard. I can't do it." She paused, feeling her daughter's enthusiasm die out. "But you know," her mother scolded, trying to smile, "I've always liked the name Lynnie. I've always called you that. And, to be honest, darling, I think it's grown on you."
"Yeah?"
"Sure," the healer started, laughing. "Lynnie. It's such a pretty name. It's beautiful."
"Pakku says it's plain," Kya Lynn whispered, obviously hurt. "He says it's as common as Lei."
"It is common," Katara replied evenly, making a mental note to straighten her grandfather's manners. "But it's special. It fits you." She hugged her daughter closer. For the first time in weeks, both of them were laughing.
When the fit of giggles settled, Katara looked at her daughter. "Lynnie," she started, "I need to ask you a favor."
"What kind of favor?"
"Please, darling—don't call me Katara anymore. Call me Mama, like you always do."
"I never called you Katara," the girl returned innocently, playing with the buttons on her mother's robe. "That's only what grown ups call you."
Katara blinked. Whatever manifestation that had proved itself to be Suki had left her daughter's body—memories and screams and terrors and all.
"Is Baba coming back?"
"Yes," Katara answered impulsively. "Yes, he's coming back, dearest. And so is your uncle, and an old friend of ours."
Kya Lynn sensed as though she had just excelled in making an intricate business deal with her mother and nodded off to sleep without further protest. No more interruptions from Suki, no more ghosts from Gran Gran. Just Kya Lynn and her tiny bison in the middle of an igloo, breathing and living and there.
Katara, meanwhile, walked into the study and picked up the letter she had received from Sokka and Toph. Sleep was gone and, as she knew from experience, probably wouldn't come back. From the way the letter read, her brother and his invalid would be arriving first.
Then she opened one of the thirty scrolls from Aang and squinted to read it. A line in the middle said, taken purely out of context, I just felt as though I was never going to see you again. And every day it was only getting worse. It was a feeling, Katara. A stupid impulse that I am still ashamed of.
Another line, again out of context, I never wanted you to pay for my mistakes.
Three words on a line by themselves, I love you.
Another three. I'm coming back.
She had begun to see Aang in a new light. He was not the traitor that Sokka had made him out to be. No—she could no longer deny it. When she had slept with him four years ago she had done it because she loved him, because she had wanted to, because she had wanted him.
Because, no matter what had happened in the reception room, she knew now that it was not Aang's fault. She knew she had let anger and sadness get in the way of their adoration for each other—for the possessive love that he had sprawled before them. For everything.
When his thirty scrolls had come in she had dreaded his arrival. But now, so early that it was still dark outside, she waited eagerly for him to come back and take her. To pull her out of her desperation like he had done when he had escaped from that iceberg ten years ago.
Love—in its purest form—is like an apple. Because if the skin is penetrated, all of the juices rot away. But inside there is a seed. It grows no matter what happens to the fruit because it is as strong as a silver stone, and just as hard to break.