Regret

The Firelady

Katara age 21 the present( seven years after war has ended) ;

      I wander the many halls of the fire nation palace gazing up at the portraits. I stop in front of a particular portrait; Fire Lord Sozin. I feel the back of my neck erupt in goosebumps. If there was any portrait I hated more it was this one. He was a horrible person, who started a terrible war. The war that would take away my mother and put so many through so much suffering. I thought of Aang, and the genocide he experienced. Now the man that was responsible for all this was hanging on the wall of a palace. His palace. Every day I walked by it, the more out of place I felt. Of course I couldn't ask Zuko to take it down. Believe me I've tried, but I got the answer that I expected; "It's important to keep this up not only for Fire Nation history, but as a reminder to the world of the atrocity that we went through."

Although it was Zuko who had told me these words, it wasn't my husband's, he was merely a parrot, repeating what his advisors had told him. I knew they had a point, but maybe a museum would best fit these portraits, not my house. My house. And to think after everything the fire nation did, I'd be living in the fire nation palace. For some reason my mind trailed off to the Ember Island Play me and Zuko had seen for our second anniversary. I was only eighteen then, and I was still pretty young. The play was called "Forbidden Love" and me and Zuko were excited to see it.

Although we knew the ember island players weren't the best, the company got taken over by the same theater company that former Fire Lady Ursa used to be apart of. We had high hopes, especially since the play was about our love life. The play however was abismal. First off many things were wrong, for one, I didn't forgive Zuko until a week before the war ended. I get for the sake of play they had to show some mutual build up, but truth be told I hated Zuko before we went to find the southern raiders. So many things were inaccurate. Many "scenes" with Jet and Haru were replaced with Zuko. So many with Aang... In the play me and Zuko kissed in the cave of two lovers (which didn't make sense, since he was in the earth kingdom at the time). Almost any intimate moment I had with a boy ever, was replaced by me and Zuko, which seriously messed up the plot.

The worst by far was the way our relationship was portrayed. It was so bad in fact, Zuko permanently disbanded the Ember Island Players. Normally a silly play wouldn't get to us, but they crossed a line. Our relationship was portrayed as a colonizer-slave relationship. It was horrible to think, but even worse to think that was how some people saw us. Zuko the fire nation colonizer, and me the water tribe peasant, who fell for the man whose family destroyed my village. That day a lump in my throat formed that would never truly leave.

The ember island players always exaggerated everything, but everything they said had some truth to it. Was that my relationship with Zuko? I thought about this every single time I walked down this palace that never truly felt mine. Every time I had a gold pin shoved into my hair, every time I felt I was going to suffocate in the fire nation heat, every time I wished things had been different..

I walked away from Sozin's portrait. It always put me in a bad mood and filled my mind with crazy ideas. As I kept on walking down I stopped at a family portrait. I immediately recognized a little boy with a ponytail. A little boy with no scar either. I grazed a finger softly over his face, before looking up. He had one hand on his shoulder, the hand of the former firelord Ozai. He had his arm around Fire Lady Ursa's waist. I looked up at her and was almost taken aback. I never realized how similar we looked.

Our hair was identical, the same tight updo with a gold pin stabbing it in place. We wore nearly identical dresses, traditional fire nation of course, an extremely tight fitting and uncomfortable fire nation dress I should say. Without my mother's necklace, you wouldn't even be able to tell I was water tribe, which was probably on purpose I suppose. The only other thing that may have gave me away were my eyes. I gazed up to Ursa's eyes. They were the same soft orange eyes Zuko had, except they bore so much sadness.

It was strange, from afar away you could clearly see Ursa was smiling, holding a baby Azula in one arm, and the other wrapped around Ozai's waist. Yet as you got closer you can really see the despair in Ursa's eyes. She was putting up a front. I slowly backed away from their portrait. I was starting to see too many similarities between Ursa and I.