change of fate

Goodbye

The next letter comes as the leaves begin to turn colors.

The air had started to taste like change a month ago. And every day the crept by further and further into the chill was another that the dread built.

He should have written by now. There should have been something. Summer had come and ended and as the next season bloomed around her, Katara could only hope more and more desperately that each passing day would bring even a whisper.

The words that finally find her are not a whisper but an anguished cry.

Ursa reads them with shaking hands and a trembling voice that she strains to keep in check. The letter is from Iroh. He leaves out the details that he more than certainly had not been spared in the official report. He tells them only that Lu Ten is gone. That the wall has refused to fall. That even writting this letter was almost too much to bear and that he will return home.

Ursa reads them this. Azula, Zuko, and Katara.

Azula scoffs at her Uncle's weakness. Her cruel words and sneering looks are a mask that she wears expertly. Katara can see the cracks thought. That the only man who at every occasion had treated Azula like a child to be nurtured was gone. And that it hurt her somewhere she wasn't proud of to mourn that loss.

Zuko makes no attempt at disguising his grief. He's wholly honest in the look of shattered loss on his face. Lu Ten, who had cried the first time he held the infant Zuko in his arms. Lu Ten, who taught him bending and how to weild dual swords and public speech. Lu Ten, gone, dead in a crater at the base of that wall barely a body.

Katara- Katara can't feel for what feels like centuries. She can't breath, can't see, can't feel. Her world boils down to Ursa's words echoing in her ears only slightly louder than the roar of her own blood rushing.

He's gone. Lu Ten is gone. He's never coming back, she'll never see him again. Just as she'll never see her mom or her dad or Sokka or Gran Gran or her Uncle Bato. Everyone she care about has left her. Everyone she's ever known have disappeared. Dead. Gone. Not even a Goodbye to savor.

She's so utterly alone. So completely isolated.

She doesn't realize that she's crying until Ursa has her bundled up in her robes. Tears silently streak down Katara's face carving into her cheeks. Ursa rocks her back and forth and hushes her and smoothes her hair down. Ursa holds her but Katara barley feels her there.

What little comfort Ursa offers is cut short as Ozai marches in. His face set in scowl exaggerated by the cut of his beard. Ozai already knows, there is no question of that. But Ozai is a statue. A stone bust of unfeeling frigid stone that's chiseled into the shape of a man.

Its in his eyes.

They lack that spark of something that only a courpes misses. They're snake like. Sharp and predatory.

And they fall on the lump of Katara in his wife's arms.

'Pathetic.' He hisses as his face contorts into a sneer. He stalks towards them. An 'Ozai please' on Ursa's lips before he rips Katara away by her arm.

He touches her just long enough to toss her away from Ursa's warmth. Throwing her to the floor and wiping his hand on his robe like she dirtied it with her filth.

'Pull yourselves together. All of you', he snaps.

Azula straightened the moment he entered. Zuko takes his sister's lead, trying to force the emotion of his face. Ursa slowly stands to face him. Her eyes are sharp as she tucks her hands into her sleeves almost too slowly.

Katara stays where she is on the floor hoping he'll forget she's there.

'Firelord Azulan has summoned us at once, you will not embarrass me in his presence.' Ozai snarls at his wife. Ursa set's her jaw and stares straight ahead, refusing to look at him.

'Yes Husband.' She says, her tone almost imperceptibly mocking. Ozai's eyes narrow even more than Katara thought possible but he does not remark. Instead he turns on his heel and slithers back the way he came. Stopping only to look back at Katara like an after thought.

'You are dismissed to your rooms to wait for decisions to be made.' Then he's gone.

Ursa takes a deep breath as if she's counting in her head then follows. Azula and Zuko trailing behind her. Zuko's eyes dart hers filled with apology before he lowers them.

Katara stays on the floor motionless for another hour before she moves.