Pro-Bending Circuit | Round Two

Team & Position: Laogai Lion Vultures, waterbender

Story Prompt: Write about your character(s) finding out he/she/they are going to have a baby (pregnancy or adoption) or finding a baby

Prompts Used: (color) white | (character) Sokka | (song) What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

Bonus: Use of my element (water) | Submitted in the first week

Word Count: 1,209

Summary: I've been re-reading some favourite novels from English lit classes back in my uni days and rediscovered the joy of rich prose! This story is inspired by What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong and how both the Eastern and Western philosophical and literary traditions have connoted the idea of water. Plus Zutara, of course. Credit for the title goes to Mr Bruce Lee.

Be Water, My Friend, Be Water

Spring-summer is the male season of the sun, warmth and dryness.

Autumn-winter is the female season of the moon, coolness, fertility, and moisture.

As is often the case in times of unpredictability and turmoil, people make impulsive decisions. It's hard to think of consequences beyond the closeness of your likely imminent death. Sokka didn't spare a thought for his cholesterol as he gorged himself on the rare occasion that food was plenty; his skin melting away in the wake of Sozin's Comet was a far more immediate health concern. Iroh didn't worry over his aching joints and unsteady heart rate; his niece's lightning was a nearer risk and more deadly by half.

Katara and Zuko didn't spare a thought for what can be born of desperate, comfort-seeking passion. At first it was secret, something tangible to cling to when the weighty waves in their dreams dragged them down to cold depths. Then it was tentative. Then it was bold. It was taking lightning to the chest and healing wounds none but a master could.

They never worried about those stolen hours, tumbling over the falls without danger of shattering on the rocks below.

They didn't need to.

Until they did.

Water will bend and strike. It may free as well as claim.

trees of green

Her grandmother was disappointed, resigned.

Her father broke between twin oceans of disbelief and dismay. Even half a world away.

Iroh could speak only of the challenges ahead.

Suki couldn't stand the tension.

Toph was relentless.

Sokka, in a towering fury.

Aang was soundly discouraged…

They were yet to tell their respective nations.

But in the solitude of the new Fire Lord's chambers, under the soft stillness of Yue's white light, Zuko rested his head against Katara's stomach and listened to his future take root and grow.

In the tsunami and the hurricane lives water's bleak power to destroy.

red roses too

'No!'

'Katara—'

'No, Sokka.' Anger sloshes, red hot and boiling. 'I don't want to hear you bring it up ever again!'

'Hey, don't shoot the messenger…' Somewhere, water is dripping. 'That didn't come out right!'

'… Dad? Dad told you to ask me about— Dad wants me to get rid of it?!'

Betrayal is hot like tea sipped too soon. Something so soothing and comforting and reliable, lashing out viper-fast.

Sokka sees it break: his sister's faith in their father.

'No, not… like that.' He is flustered now, more so than usual. 'He's just worried about you.'

'It's not his choice!'

He takes her by the shoulders and holds together the girl sorrow attempts to shake apart. 'No, it's not.' Their father would support her, once he arrived and saw... 'If it's— if it's any consolation, I can't wait to meet him… her… it?'

Her tears flow like rain down a fragile glass pane. 'But you were so mad…'

'Yeah, at Zuko.' Where was that sister-corrupting jerkbender? 'You better not have healed his bruises.'

'Bruise. You only gave him one. You had cuts, welts, and burns—'

'Ahem.'

Sokka's idea of himself is the clearest pool of colourless rainwater. Katara sees him for what he is and for what he tries to be.

'So… you don't hate me?'

Sokka grins because he doesn't. He grins because he will love his sister til her dying breath. He grins because, despite the unconventional circumstances, his sister is exactly the sort of person any child would be blessed to call parent. 'I guess not. But I'll love you doubly if you get Zuko to order the kitchen staff to make five-flavour soup.'

Man is seventy-five percent water. It is his genesis.

skies of blue

Zuko has ordered his room redecorated. A political move for the upcoming peace summit.

Fire Nation reds adorn the whitewashed walls with tapestries of flame. Earth Kingdom browns, stoic in the timber of the furniture. Air Nomad yellows and oranges highlight the embroidery of a chaise lounge by the door. And Water Tribe blues hang like the sky in the fabric of his four-poster bed.

The Fire Lord rests his chin on the waterbender's stomach. 'What do you want to do about her?'

Ice seizes her, cold as the waters of the South. 'What do you mean?'

He smooths the silk over her stomach. 'Right now, she's just… ours. But once she's here… she'll belong to them, too.'

Katara doesn't ask which of them he means. 'She'll be your heir.' She whispers the words condensing between them like a gathering storm. 'Illegitimate.'

Can eyes of fire probe like the curious tide? 'She doesn't have to be.'

I must first accept myself by, like water, flowing with and not against my nature

they'll learn much more than I'll never know

The Fire Lord's bedroom has become a fertile flood plain. Hope grows here. In the candlelight-thrown shadows are the whispers of now for a child of soon.

A lazy chuckle escapes the new Fire Lord.

'What?'

'Nothing.'

Curiosity may have killed the cat owl, but Katara is no feline. 'Tell me.'

Zuko glances down at the girl spilling over his torso. 'She won't be born to a world at war,' he explains, the very idea gleaming brightly. 'Think about it.'

Katara thought.

Their daughter wouldn't lose a parent to the fires of war. She wouldn't walk under the uncertainty of a future made up of days rather than years. Safety from the nightmares that had haunted her parents is assured. Their child wouldn't be born to a world at war.

'We could make the world better for her. You're the Fire Lord! And I'm…'

He glances at the side table where the engraved necklace waits, white and blue and red.

'A master waterbender,' Zuko prompts, curling her hair around his fingers. 'A representative of your people.'

The waters of change can be as stubborn as the deluge over a waterfall, or as pliable as liquid in a jar. Or the heavens can open and flood the land. Life-giving ends and beginnings.

'Only if you want to,' he reiterates. 'It should be your choice.' The almost unnoticeable curve of her belly is warmer than the rest of her. 'You know mine.'

She has to ask. She has to know. 'Do you only want to... because I'm… because of her?'

He can't quite meet her gaze, lest she see it. 'No.'

But she sees it.

'Oh.' She sees it in the smiles and comfortable silences and trailing touch that wakes her each morning now. 'Oh.'

'I don't expect you to — you know — return the feeling, or anything.'

'No, no… I didn't realise.' She is grinning, not with anything as mundane as her mouth. Her whole body, from crowning chakra to her feet's soles, beams; a small simmer over a low flame.

'Our families would have… mixed reactions.'

'To say the least.'

She frowns. 'Your nation…'

'They'll get used to it.'

'My nation!'

'It doesn't matter what they think,' he reminds her.

She lays her head back against Zuko's collarbone and thinks on engraved necklaces. 'What you're really saying…' she confides to the moon and the duvet. And the firebender beneath her. 'Me too.'

He exhales against the top of her head. Words escape the Fire Lord after that; they trickle on rapids down river. Beneath his hand on Katara's side, a pressure blesses the night.