Disclaimer: I do not own Zuko, Sokka, Aang or Katara. They belong to Mike and Brian, Avatar God-s. However, Baby Ursa and Little Aang are mine, I just stole their names.
He did not wear his scarlet cloak
For blood and wine are red;
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead.
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde
Under the soft, alien light of autumn's moon, her umber hair gleams dully as she makes her way through the grove of ghostly naked trees. Her feet, bare, crunch quietly on the fallen foliage; leaves that were once green but have died and now blaze like the colours of a flame.
The brook burbles sluggishly, as bitterly cold as the breeze that swoops through the tree's bare branches and rustles the dry grass. She settles herself on a wide, flat stone, letting her crimson skirts billow around her like petals of a rose. She watches the stars circle over their canvass of midnight while she waits.
It's not long until he joins her, moving silently through the grove until he comes to sit behind her, kissing her neck gently and listening to her sigh. His calloused hands rub along the skin on her arms and raise goose bumps; she gasps when his hands slide to cup her breasts. He whispers secrets in her ear, his voice as soft as the autumn breeze and she leans back against him, letting her eyes fall closed as he rubs his hands over the minute swelling in her belly.
It's his son she's carrying, he insists. It's been his son all along. They'll name him Aang, in memory of the friend they lost during the Great War. He will be ruler of his father's lands.
She smiles at this notion and tilts her head upward so that he may kiss her and his hands go to her thighs, and when he touches her she curls her toes in ecstasy.
Love me, she commands, and he does, sweetly, beneath that gentle autumn moon.
-
When Aang is born, his father is present, clutching his wife's hand as she shrieks and wails and sobs. She only cries harder when her tiny son is presented to her and he opens those little eyes for the first time; they glimmer softy, framed by thick black lashes, his irises as deep cerulean as his mother's.
Zuko touches Katara's face in gesture of tenderness and his other hand does to stroke along his son's tiny skull, still damp with blood and afterbirth. He has never felt so proud as he does today, watching his son and his wife stare into one another's eyes in utter astonishment. He only feels envious that Katara has never looked at him in such a way; that she has never gazed at him in utter amazement the way she does now at her son.
He supposes this is because he did not erupt from inside of her.
Katara turns her tear-filled eyes to her husband and whispers to him that he might smell his son's breath.
It smells like nothing, she informs him, her voice quivering. He's never had anything to eat. It smells like life. That is the smell of life.
This is when Zuko begins to cry, holding his wife and son in his arms.
-
In the wintertime, only a year after Aang's birth, Katara feels a gentle kick from inside her belly and holds herself tightly, yelling joyously for Zuko to come. They spend the night belly to belly, Zuko stroking her stomach and crooning, waiting for the baby to kick for him; when it does he is so comically shocked that Katara falls into a bout of hysterical laughter. When she has to run for the bathroom on account that she laughed too hard, Zuko finds that he can join her in her hysteria.
When summer comes in that same year, Katara wakes screaming during the night, lathered in her own blood, stricken with a familiar pain racking her body. Zuko, terrified, runs for the aid of a nurse, only to return to find Katara holding something tiny and lifeless in her arms, howling.
It is that summer that his wife knows the pain of losing a child.
-
Zuko is smug when his son sets the curtains alight for the first time. The boy is barely walking and already he is producing flame from the tips of her chubby little fingers; Zuko is so pleased that he carts Aang around the palace until they find Katara, who is bewildered into silence when Zuko places Aang on the ground and commands him to set the rug on fire.
She is even more astonished when Aang does so.
For weeks Zuko enjoys rubbing in the fact that their only child can Bend flame, in between teaching his son not to set furniture (or people, for that matter) on fire.
However, both parents are alarmed when they find baby Aang playing with the water in the duck pond without even touching it; creating waves, in fact, while the ducks bob along the surface, quacking in alarm.
The tiny boy grins cheekily up at his pale-faced parents and shrieks that the ducks are surfing, Mama!
Katara announces that she may have to sit down and Zuko collapses into a dead faint.
-
It's not long until the boy discovers that he can use his newfound talents to create mischief; Zuko and Katara have a wonderful time teaching their son that wetting servants is bad, and that setting Uncle Sokka - who is visiting as the Ambassador for the Southern Water Tribe - on fire is bad. So is tearing up chunks of earth and hurling them at Daddy when he does not allow his son to eat a third cake; as well as blowing up the robes of the High Priest when he is trying to make a prayer in the Temple of Agni.
It's also not long until Katara falls pregnant for a third time.
Aang is fascinated by the fact that there is a little person growing inside of Mama. He likes to run his fat little fingers over her protruding navel and knows that sometimes, if he's lucky, Baby will kick for him. He decides that it will be a sister and that he will be the Best Big Brother in the Whole World. He urges Mama to hurry up and have his sister so that he may play with her.
He throws a tantrum when Zuko explains that Mama can't do that, Baby has to decide when it's time to come out into the world for herself. Aang turns his fury on Baby, yelling for her not to be naughty and HURRY UP.
Katara smiles slyly and tells Aang that if he's not naughty, maybe Baby will copy him.
The next few months are peaceful, until Katara is murdered.
-
It's a cold night in midwinter when Zuko finds his wife. She is splayed on the floor of his chambers, her belly heavily swollen with child and splattered with gore. Her thick chestnut hair is plastered to her scalp with tacky, clotting blood. Beside her, the vial of water she carries with her is smashed to pieces on the terracotta tiles.
Zuko drops to his knees beside her and howls.
His hands knot his hair and he presses his face into her bloodied breasts, sobs wracking his body, peculiar, animalistic sounds escaping from his mouth. He screams curses and holds her limp body to his chest-
And realises with a jolt that she is still breathing.
His cries are cut off abruptly and he lays her gently on the ground, staring at her on shocked silence, completely at a loss of what to do. He opens his mouth to call for help but no sound will come.
This is when Aang slides out from under the bed, blinking bewilderedly.
Zuko yells something incoherent and his son runs to him, quivering, twisting his pudgy hands in his Daddy's crimson robe. Mama's not dead, he tells his Da, but the bad man wanted her to be.
Zuko strokes his hand through his son's raven hair and kisses his head. It's okay now, you're safe, baby. Please, now, go get a nurse, he instructs his son.
Aang shakes his head. I can fix it.
And he goes to his mother's side, barely two years of age, and his hands glow with luminous water and he presses them on Mama's heart. Zuko watches in utter amazement, his hands going to grab his son away, his legs telling him to run for help…but he cannot tear his eyes from his baby.
Come on, Mama, Aang is whispering. Mama, please, I want to help, please…Mama, let me help, please Mama….
And of a sudden her eyes flicker open and she stirs.
Mama….let me help…Aang is crying against her breast when she sits up and encircles him with her arms, smothering him with a kiss and holding him tight. When Zuko opens his mouth to sob, she pulls him to her his kisses his mouth.
I'm okay.
Aang touches his mother's mouth with his little hand. Did I help, Mama?
Katara kisses his fingers. Yes. Yes, baby. I love you, my darling.
And Zuko can only watch them and hold on to his wife, hoping that one day he'll be able to become as much of a man as his son is.
-
When Katara births Ursa the following spring, both son and husband are present, clinging to her hands as she pushes and heaves and bellows like a moose-bear in a fit of rage. She only cries harder when her baby girl is laid in her arms and opens her little eyes, framed with thick black lashes; her irises are as golden as those of her father. Zuko lays one of his calloused hands on her tiny, bald skull and Aang touches Ursa's soft little ears, still damp with blood and afterbirth. Both males can only watch as an infinite look passes between mother and daughter, not only a look of amazement but a look of utter adoration, for a mother may bond with her daughter more so than her son.
Katara turns her gaze to her son and her husband and asks if they may smell Ursa's breath.
It's the smell if life, she whispers.
But when his son does not smell his sister's breath but instead kisses her rosy little lips, laying his fat little toddler's hand on her soft cheek, Zuko begins to cry, holding his family in his arms.