Letters from the Falling Sky

Author's Note: Possibly two more chapters after this one!

I like to make it an even 24.

In five more years, I'll be 24.

That's pretty legit.

Thoughts plz.

-scorpiaux

PS. The tone picks up; I promise. Everything will be clear soon.

.22.

She could see parts of the sky from her room, when she looked up from the bed. There were holes in the ceiling that her father hadn't bothered repairing, insisting instead that the weather was nice enough here, and that snow was a rarity even in winter. There was always, she presumed, the tarp. When it would rain, Kya Lynn and her mother would climb to the roof and throw the tarp over the holes. Then the room would become dry and dark, and the girl would sleep fully after a stretch of three hours in which she turned thoughts in her head. Delicate, intricate, quiet thoughts.

Tonight she heard the soft echo of her parents' voices, resonating in the hallway in front of her room. They were discussing something important; they spoke shortly, cautiously. Her father's voice would rise in the middle of a phrase, and she would hear a set of words—"year ago" or "throat" or "baby"—and then her mother would hush him, and it would drop again, barely a whisper.

Kya Lynn, almost six and a curious thing, rolled messily out of bed and rubbed her face. She let her hands fall over the bulbous scar across her throat—rubbery and jagged—before smoothing the wrinkles in her nightgown and tiptoeing gently into the hallway. Her parents' room was some four meters down, with a small, dim bathroom between. Lynnie pressed her back to the brick wall and closed her eyes. Their voices were so much clearer here.

"I don't want to talk about this now."

"We've been avoiding it for too long—"

"It's funny how you say 'avoid'..."

"I'm just saying. Don't you think it's time we faced this? I'm not being selfish, Katara...I just want this all...for your sake, mostly. We should at least be able to talk about it without you leaving or—"

"You can't give it more time, can you?" Her voice was angry now; high-pitched and shaky. Lynnie recognized the tremor in it—the way Katara's control wavered. She was weak to him, incapable, unstable. A feather on the rim of an edge; a breath threatening to collapse.

"When I see you like this, it hurts me so much," answered Aang. Lynnie heard the springs of the mattress creak; her father was standing up. "If you think I don't want to wait for you, you're wrong," he continued. "I just don't like seeing you like this. I want it the way it was. I want to know that someday you'll be able to look at me without hiding your eyes. I want us to talk again. It's been a year...maybe more...I don't know. I stopped paying attention when I saw you this way. You know this, Katara, don't you? You know this. You know more than I do that the clock stopped when you saw Kya Lynn...when you killed that woman...after you lost the baby..."

She shushed him; Lynnie heard something soft and fleshy—the 'mwah' of a kiss—wet, private. She shut her ears until she heard her mother's voice claim, in a distraught, distant tone, "I can't believe I lost it...I can't believe they took it for me. How am I supposed to...?"

She collapsed into his arms without finishing, or so Kya Lynn assumed, as the rest of the night was quiet. She did not move back to her room. Instead Lynnie found a certain comfort in the ringing emptiness of the hallway; the cool breeze that avoided her room most nights; the way she felt so small and invisible in such a large temple. She could not remember much before they moved here, except there was a large pain in her life—a sharp pain, a dense pain, an undivided pain—and since then, her life had changed forever.

The baby squirmed in one arm; a droplet of water, birthed from condensation, slid down Sokka's left knuckle from the bottle he held. Lao refused to drink. What more, he wouldn't stop crying. Someone was knocking on the door. Sokka turned, attempting to listen for some sort of announcement of identification, before Lao screamed next to his father's ear. His son took it a step further and, with his aching, teething gums, bit down on Sokka's earlobe as hard as he could.

"TOPH!" Sokka cried, pulling the boy to an arm's length. "Toph! Can you get the door?"

She answered groggily from the bedroom, "What?"

"The door!" her husband repeated, louder this time than the first. "Someone's at the door and Lao won't shut up!"

"Solicitors!" she yelled back. "I'm not answering! I'm exhausted."

Yet, Sokka felt instinctively obligated to answer, and so with a screaming baby clinging to his messy, stained kimono, he walked barefoot to the deck and opened the door to their apartment.

A girl stood there, tall but not obnoxiously so, with long straight hair and colored eyes. She was kneading her dress in her hands, and when Sokka finally asked if he could help her, she looked up before quickly looking away.

"Do you have a second?" she inquired.

He admitted flatly that he didn't; Lao screamed louder and pulled at his father's face. The girl looked at him curiously.

"I'm sorry...I've come at a bad time. I just wanted to give you this." She held out a slim scroll with elegant Earth Kingdom pendants to either side. She bowed. "I'm sorry for disturbing you. Your son is adorable—I'm sorry. Have a nice day today, sir." She tripped on the first stair on her way down, gripped the railing and held her forehead before leaving.

Sokka raised a brow, looking at the scroll in his hand. She had neglected to mention her name or what the scroll contained, but his son's bellowing had blocked Sokka's focus. He hadn't asked her. Instead he wondered to himself what all of this was about.

Lao bit his father's cheek in response to the silence, and screamed again.

"You're going to be the death of me," Sokka whispered, kissing the boy's forehead.

Lynnie's pupils were marbled, gray and a finite shade of blue, splashed in uneven blotches throughout. He remembered blankly when he first saw her, that soft expanse in his chest...the way her presence seemed to fill him. He and Katara, and Lynnie. The number three, back then, had never appealed to him more.

But since their collision with the Resistance more than a year ago, the matter had changed. Lynnie could no longer speak. The cut in her throat was too deep, and though it was unnaturally repaired with Koko's hasty, cold fingers, it was no longer fully functional. The only noises Lynnie could expel now were grunts and sharp breaths. Even Katara had given up healing attempts.

And she had been such a clever, talkative child.

It was not as though he hadn't expected this; for the longest time after reuniting with Katara, Aang had felt that they had it too good. Something was foreshadowed there. A large threat loomed over him whenever he walked around in the igloo, moving methodically from room to room, as he moved Katara's hair between his fingers as she slept, as he whispered her name when they made love. Even when they reached for each other's bodies in the night...even when she kissed his neck and spread her tongue between his lips...even in their closets moments, he felt afraid. Exposed. It had all come to him with a certain taste; something was close to erupting. He had felt helpless for weeks.

And Lynnie's small frame, thrown on the bed in such a crude manner...her white neck cleanly severed, a pool of blood over the pillow. He couldn't help himself. He had fainted, collapsed...he had seen a light then, too, and considered himself dead. But he had awaken four hours later in the same room, with Earth Kingdom security officials surrounding him, splashing cool water at his face. A man asked him if he was alright, and Aang had stood up and pushed them away. The bedding on the mattress had been removed; Katara held Lynnie in the corner with the strangest, most detached look he had seen in his life. Lynnie was sucking her thumb. Alive.

Sokka and Toph talked to police and explained, briefly, that the entire thing was a scheme. They showed them the doll and the letter, discussed the fact that Koko had a shady history anyway, and that Orabi wasn't clean either. They nodded, pointed, spoke. Aang watched dumbly and was not able to process anything. The officials agreed in the end, and apologized profusely. Although...

Although, at first, they had wanted to charge Katara for murder; after Koko had healed Lynnie to the best of her ability, Katara had killed her. What was worse: she had done it without her bending. Orabi had spread some sort of powder on Lynnie's doll that had taken her bending away for weeks. Yet Katara had picked up the vase next to the bed, crashed it to the ground, picked up the largest shard, and, with an otherworldly force, gashed at Koko's eyes. Imagine the horrified look on the officials' faces after walking in, finding half an eyeball with gel-like fluid gushing out of it...next to the corpse of a frail, bitter woman. The explanation Katara gave was flat, hideously monotonous: "Yes, I killed her. She nearly killed my daughter. Yes, I did that. Do you expect me to be sorry? Don't look at me that way."

Afterwards Fa Ling was sent to prison, and Orabi's body was slowly taken down from the ceiling, where a red ring of blood—brown on the edges—remained in the shape of his punctured back.

It was Zuko who Aang should have thanked more than anyone. After the entire ordeal was over, he invited them to the palace, where they stayed for four days before deciding where to go next. Zuko instantly released a news item to the Fire Nation: any information on the Resistance—any clue or hint, any knowledge at all—would be rewarded in gold. Domestic security forces were warned to stay on the lookout, and—based on rumors—Fa Ling has pounded relentlessly for more information. Before the team went their separate ways, Zuko placed his massive hand on Aang's shoulder and, with the warmest tone he could conjure, promised definitely, "I'm so sorry. This won't happen to you or your family again."

Aang had wished he could believe it.

"I was thinking," she started, "that we could teach her sign language."

She held a ceramic cup in her hands, fingers wrapped elegantly as ribbons of steam floated above the scalding apricot tea. Her legs were folded beneath the chair, part of her thigh exposed in the slit of the silk robe. Eye-liner blotched and messy, hair down and damp from the shower. Under other circumstances, he would have called her sexy, commented on her perfect ass or the full breasts pouring from her bra, grabbed her waist and kissed her hard. But he refrained now, and instead looked at the cup with a sad smile, blushing at his thoughts. Their love was so temporary now, filled with big gaps and exhaustion; he could sometimes hardly remember it.

"She has her own sort of sign language right now, doesn't she?" he asked the cup. "It's actually remarkable, how we understand each other so well."

Katara grunted; it sounded extremely similar to Lynnie. Cynical. "We're isolated, Aang," she said, emphasizing his name. "We've lived in this temple for nearly seven months...alone. This can't be good for her."

"You mean it can't be good for you," he replied, sounding bitter unintentionally. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"That too."

"Well."

"I just want her to be around other people," she continued, pausing long enough to blow on the tea. She had left an empty glass for him near the pot, but he hadn't poured himself any; his stomach felt shaky all morning and he didn't want to tempt it.

"Coming up here was a good idea at first, but now I feel like we're doing more harm than good...to Lynnie and to each other. Isolation is unhealthy. Running away from things is unhealthy." He looked hard at her cheek; she was holding her head with her left hand. "I feel like we're hiding, and I don't want to feel this way. I want to be able to face it...to face the loss, the anger, the people...I want to live in society without being afraid all the time, and I want Lynnie to have as good a childhood as anyone else."

"I understand."

"That's just it—you don't." She was staring at something behind him, it seemed, too anxious to look in his eyes. Then she shifted her gaze to the tea and made a face. "After Gran Gran died, I didn't let anyone in. I wouldn't even talk to Pakku...and Lynnie. Lynnie was there the whole time, trying to talk to me. She was young but so smart...maybe because of Suki. I don't know. I just remember shutting her out all the time. And now—now I want to hear her voice so badly and I can't...I can't even remember what it used to sound like...and it's my fault." She covered her mouth with her left hand. Aang watched helplessly. A pair of birds chortled in the window of the kitchen, pressing their beaks to the glass. Katara covered her eyes with the heel of her palms and sighed.

"You think it's so easy," she continued. "You think if we stay up here things will get better. Go back to normal. But they won't. We're ruining ourselves...I can't...I can't even look at you." As if on cue, she stood up, taking her tea with her, holding it with both hands, as if it would fall. He watched her back, the curve in her hips, the way she swayed when she walked. He could not format in words how much he loved her. Even in her most hostile stages towards him. Even when she trembled between sanities.

She walked outside to the largest portico. It had rained the night before, leaving small puddles of wet leaves and mud and twigs. Katara stepped on them barefoot and put her elbows over the railing of the balcony. There was a certain aura about living in the Southern Air Temple that had appealed to her when she was 14. It was the mixture of knowing this was Aang's birthplace, along with the idea that it was so close to her own home, and so ancient. It represented the lost to her—Aang's people, her mother, her father, her grandmother and, most recently, the unborn child that had died prematurely in her womb after her fight with Orabi. She still remembered the warm mass that had slowly bloomed from between her legs; a human in its form, and so small, so fragile.

Lifeless.