Kataang Week 2013

A/N: Katara-centric with touches of Kataang

I won't be able to post this on the correct date, so I apologize for posting it early! This is the last of the Kataang prompts that I had written out beforehand, but I'll probably be going back to finish them up at a later date.

Thanks for reading.

Theme 6: Healing

She remembers the day like it was yesterday: little Kya, wide-eyed and hopeful, holding up an injured sparrow-dove, so certain that her mother could make it all better. She remembers how her little smile fell, and how tears spilled from her eyes, each a tiny crystal.

A large part of its wing severed, there was nothing Katara could do for the bird. And so she and Kya wrapped its wing, and set it in a box, giving it comfortable grass to sit on, feeding it and providing it with water over the next few days.

"I can't mend everything," she told her daughter as they patted down broken earth.

It's with years of motherhood that Katara comes to realize the truth of her own words.

There are some things she cannot heal.

There's no remedy for a 13-year-old's broken heart, the first chip of many. She can't erase scars, though Aang was always quick to tell her that he didn't mind his one bit. And she can't mend things that weren't broken in the first place: she recalls her son, tugging on her skirt, asking her to "fix him" as he watched his sister and younger brother engaged in bending training.

But it's not long before a heart pieces itself together, brandishing a gleaming sword, prepared for battle once more. Scars fade. Confidence grows.

For some ailments, time is the best healer.

And sometimes, time is the one to wield the knife.

Time doesn't fill her empty house. It doesn't bring back the patter of tiny feet across the living room floor, and it doesn't restore the echo of their voices, bouncing through the walls of their house.

Time can heal and numb the pain, but she feels as though it has only taken from her and given nothing in return.

As the hands of time swept round the face of the clock, they swept away her youth, her friends, her family, and her husband. She wakes in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, replaying the sound of his laugh over and over, reminding herself how his hand held hers just so, adamant not to lose these memories of him too.

She finds other things to smile about. Autumn leaves on a crisp breeze remind her of lighter days. Her grandchildren come to visit her, and there's the girl with bright blue eyes, with an ambition like fire, and a stubbornness like the earth itself. But the days go on and loneliness still clings to her limbs, each step heavy, each step tired. It does not yield to water from any oasis. She cannot stop it.

And Katara is left with an ache that neither she nor time can fully heal.