Letters from the Falling Sky

Author's Note: I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your continued support and critiques.

To answer a few questions since I can never do so with the volumes of reviews/messages:

1. Katara lost her second child to Orabi. No, he didn't rape her, although he was attempting to. However, if you're pregnant and you get a beating, there's a pretty good chance you'll lose the baby.

2. Fa Ling is in jail and yes, she did have a serious relationship with Orabi before he died.

3. IT IS GOING TO GET BETTER I PROMISE ASDFGHJKL! You impatient kids! All I hear is how this is soooo depressing but sooo good...I PROMISE that it will end happily. I don't know what else I can do to assure you that this is my plan. If you're good, I might even throw in a pseudo-lemon, by which I mean, an extremely dirty and well described scene that also symbolizes something much larger. Oooo...tasty.

4. I realize that I haven't been capitalizing 'The Resistance" and I apologize!

Uh...a few more chapters after this one? I don't even know where I'm ending it. Teeeheeee...BUT IT'S ENDING SOON. Because I'm torturing you all with my update speed...I'm sorry this is short. I just want you to know that I'm still alive and that I love you enough to update. Kay thanks bye.

Much candy-coated love,

scorpiaux

.23.

That night, it rained. Lightning flashed in thin, crooked strokes; thunder crashed and moaned and cried; Lynnie stared at her tarp-covered ceiling in silent terror. In the next room, Katara and Aang argued. The storm was loud though, and Lynnie couldn't hear them clearly.

She had a feeling inside her heart—something deep, and bright—that things were soon to change. She had felt this yesterday when she choked out a word almost incidentally: 'Mama.' Her mother's eyes had lit up. "Did you hear it?" she said to Aang. "Darling, say it again! Say it again like you just did!" Aang hadn't heard, and didn't believe, and in his state of melancholy depression he ignored Katara's attempts to force the child to utter the term again. After a solid twenty-five minutes, Katara gave up, and went to the study, where she spent most of her time these days.

Perhaps she had imagined it.

Tonight, Lynnie shut her eyes tightly and concentrated on her throat. There was a thick block there—layers of scar tissue, but it felt more like a brick or a chunk of wood. She wasn't sure how she had said 'Mama' yesterday—whenever she tried before (God, how she tried!), the effort usually backfired. Lynnie found this to be exciting and scary and wondered if she would be able to do it again. She hadn't seen Katara that happy since Gran Gran was alive, and even then, only in instances, in pauses, in the time it took for her to turn her neck towards her daughter, smile, and then turn her attention elsewhere.

Around the breakfast table, in the kitchen, Katara poured Lynnie a glass of tea and stirred in two spoonfuls of cane sugar. Lynnie held the cup tightly with sticky small fingers. Katara also poured herself a glass and left an empty one for Aang near the near-empty pot.

Katara watched her daughter drink. Lynnie smiled and breathed in sharply. It created a grinding wheeze that forced Katara's eyes to water. But instead of turning away like she usually did, she held the girl's gaze.

"I heard you, darling, yesterday. I heard you say 'Mama,' and I know if you try you can say it again."

'Mama' had renewed something in Katara that had lain dormant for longer than she had liked. It was the same feeling that bad bloomed in her heart when she met Aang in her youth. After losing everything, after tasting the bitter fists of death and gloom and depression, after being buried alive with self-pity and remorse: a flicker, a flame, an ideal. Back then, the Avatar had given her hope. Today, his daughter.

Kya Lynn grunted and looked down.

"Look at me, dearest," Katara ordered, lifting the child's face with both hands. "You're my only hope for anything good now. My little light. Everything and anything good happens to me because of you." Kya Lynn looked at her mother confusedly. They didn't speak much in the temple; it was her Baba who paid the most attention to her. "I love you so much, darling," Katara continued. "So, so much...I didn't realize it when you were born because I was selfish...I wanted your Baba to come back and take some of the blame. You know, everyone treated me like some...like some cheap whore." She figured there was no harm since Lynnie couldn't speak anyway. She was practically an adult, with all the things she'd been through. Katara hesitated. "Imagine, coming back with a child and without a husband. It was unheard of...and I hated you when I should have hated myself. I should have done something productive in his time away...but all of that doesn't matter." She wiped her eyes. "I love you, my darling. And if I say 'I love you' everyday, a thousand times a day, for a thousand years, it wouldn't be enough...they should have stabbed me, for God's sake." She stopped and sighed deeply; Lynnie imitated the action and grinned. Her baby teeth had fallen out and there were awkward gaps and jagged new teeth in her mouth. Katara smiled back and suppressed the cries in her throat. "You are so beautiful, Kya," she whispered, pulling her daughter to her chest. "You are gorgeous. You are the most beautiful thing to ever have happened to me."

Aang was on the highest balcony of the temple when he noticed a little dot moving hazily along the horizon. He could tell that it was a balloon, and with his experience he also knew it was an Earth Kingdom one. After the war, the art of flight was distributed to the other nations, and so it was not uncommon to see a few Earth Kingdom or Water Tribe balloons gliding smoothly in the clouds.

But none of them had ever come this close to the temple, nor approached this quickly.

He had yet to drink his tea, and decided it was better if he didn't disturb Katara this morning. There was little they said to one another these days that wasn't in the form of an argument or a reprimand. Or, in Katara's case, a cleverly disguised snide remark in the shape of something less threatening. God. She could even make a cough sound like a string of swears. He envied the ease with which she argued; he envied their life before the fall of Ozai.

The dot had come into full view now; Aang nervously picked up a twig and stripped it of its bark slowly. It was, in fact, an Earth Kingdom balloon, and a particularly nice one. Aang peered over curiously and waited for the balloon to come closer.

Was it surprise, or excitement, or relief that flooded him when he recognized Toph and Sokka in the basket of the machine? Possibly an oblong mixture of all three. He waved at them frantically and, though he wasn't sure why, felt hot tears sting at his eyes.