#who on earth is still using the hamas excuse
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#who on earth is still using the hamas excuse#palestine#free palestine#gaza#gaza strip#middle east#free gaza#israel#fuck israel
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Don't you think there's better ways of showing support for Palestinians/Israeli Christians than by perpetuating the "Jesus was Palestinian" myth that people constantly try and use to deny Jewish indigeneity. Allegory or not, it's not a great look for someone who purports to be against that kind of erasure and supercessionism. Also, having 1 line about how his death was the Empire's fault so don't blame the Jews is meaningless when in this allegory, the Empire (Israeli government) *is* Jewish
(anyone curious about what anon's referring to, I believe it's my poem here)
Hey there anon, thank you for your feedback. In this situation where various marginalized peoples are being pitted against each other (and/or conflated with political groups), I've been struggling to make sure my words don't add to the misinformation and harm. So whenever someone takes the time to remind me of that danger, I'll take the time to re-examine my words — even if I end up standing by them, as I mostly do in this case.
I can't promise to say and do all the perfect things, because there isn't time to waste getting my words just right before saying something — people are dying right now (and yes, anon, that includes those Israelis who are still hostages of Hamas, who are also endangered by Israel's continued attacks.)
I have been spending much of my free time these past few months learning more about Israel and Palestine, and I still don't feel I'm even close to knowing enough! But I've listened to those who are actually in the midst of the violence who say that all of us across the world must join their cry now, not letting our ignorance be an excuse. That means there have been a few things I've said that I then had to re-consider after learning more.
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Just a few days ago, I was actually trying to look into the origins of the statement that "Jesus was a Palestinian Jew." (Btw if anyone knows the origins of this statement, please hit me up!)
Arguments against it note that the term "Palestinian" didn't exist in Jesus' day. Looking into the accuracy of that statement is still on my to-do list; I did skim over this article calling it a myth but yeah, still digging. Regardless, sure, I don't think Jesus called himself a Palestinian in his lifetime.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the statement is useless, however. I do very much believe that if Jesus were born today, in the same place, he'd be born to a Jewish Palestinian family, not an Israeli one.
That does not erase his Jewishness; it confirms God's "preferential option for the poor," God's choice to side with and become one with the most oppressed and discarded. It also does not assert that Jewish persons don't "belong" in the region — only that the modern nation/colony Israel isn't necessary for them to live and thrive there.
All that said, if anyone has more info on the statement that "Jesus was a Palestinian" — its origins, how it's been used over the years — I would absolutely like to examine it further. For now, I stand by the phrase, with an openness to re-considering that with further education.
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I feel more confident in talking about Empire — how I used it in my poem, versus how you've interpreted it. I'm genuinely grateful to you for bringing your reading of it to my attention, because it's shown me that my words weren't clear enough there!
In these verses from my poem:
"...And now, as then, some may blame Jesus’s death
on his own Jewish people — but
resist this lie! Now as then
the crime is Empire’s
and those of us who would cast stones
should ponder first what our nations gain
from genocide. ..."
You interpret Empire as being Israel.
My intention was that Empire with a capital E is a much larger network of all imperial forces on earth. Israel is entangled in that, and directly backed and funded by those forces. My own country, the United States, is one of the nations at the helm of Empire.
So when I talk of Empire being to blame, I'm not saying just Israel — honestly, I'm personally more concerned with the US's complicity, because I feel as a US citizen I can help demand they stop.
So I'm going to rework that bit to better express what I mean by Empire, so it doesn't sound like I'm focusing only on Israel. Empire is so much bigger than any one state, colony, or government.
...
Okay, I'm out of steam. I'm going to link a few pieces that have been helping me frame all that's going on right now to resist pitting marginalized groups against each other:
This art piece naming "contradicting truths"
This article by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg also naming seemingly contradictory truths
Since I didn't really get deep into this part of your ask, I also appreciate this article discussing the question of indigeneity. It discards the "need" to figure out "who was there first" in favor of exploring intersecting histories.
Oh also, because you claim that the Israeli government "is Jewish," I think discussions on how Israel isn't actually a safe haven for all Jews, only those that fit into their goals, are vital.
#chatting tag#idk how to word this but. like.#what's happening right now is both NOT complex: we MUST side with Palestine.#and also very very complex with a need for nuance and context.#both and not either or#does that make sense?....
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Is the Hamas torture video post true? I can't find anything other than an ADL post
I haven’t and I refuse to post or link to any of the videos, so I’m not really sure which “torture video post” you’re talking about, unless you mean this post or maybe this one
At any rate, I have unfortunately seen at least two such videos (mostly because of how Twitter no longer labels graphic content/violence), and it was before I was fully aware of what was actually happening in Gaza. The first video showed young women being dragged and paraded through the streets by Hamas. Some of the women were dead, and the ones who were alive had very clearly been raped and their clothes were all bloody between the legs. The other video I watched showed a family that was taken hostage, and then abruptly they murdered an 18yr old girl in front of her parents and her little sister. I “saw” other videos, but LOL, I’m ex military, but I’ve been shot at, at close range several times before (not while I was in the military), so I tend to be a bit squeamish around real/realistic depictions of death — so I let the video and audio play, but I looked away and had a friend more or less describe what was happening to me, only looking at the screen myself periodically.
Look, I wholeheartedly believe that decolonization always has and always will require violence. Things are absolutely no different with Palestine freeing themselves from Israeli oppression. I get that, okay?
SN: now feels like a particularly good time for this warning: be wary of anyone suddenly stressing “peaceful nonviolent resistance”.
I’m sorry, but rape, torture and intentionally murdering children and disabled people is kinda a bright red line for me. It’s an indelible line that I cannot cross. And I won’t defend it, I won’t excuse it, I won’t ignore it, and I won’t pretend that war crimes like rape are just the cost of doing business.
Let’s do a thought experiment: pick whatever’s most important to you, something (you think) you’re willing to die for - maybe it’s LGBTQ rights, or Black liberation, Climate Change, or whatever. You get the idea. If someone said to you, “Hey, we may be forced to kill some people to achieve our goals and gain our freedom,” maybe you’d be down with that. But if they said that rape would be required, would you still be cool with that? If they told you that killing children and the elderly was a part of the plan, could they still count on your unwavering support?
And to be super clear here: please let’s not pretend that the IDF hasn’t done some of the exact same things to Palestinian civilians that Hamas has done to Israeli civilians. Israel is currently bombing the fuck out of Palestinian hospitals, UN schools in Gaza, and turning off water on children, the sick + disabled, and the elderly. You would have to be the biggest most gullible fool on earth to believe that all of the apartment buildings that the IDF has leveled to the ground in Gaza, had zero innocent people inside them.
So I guess in the end, all I’m saying is, regardless of which side you choose to support, we must always always draw the line at war crimes.
And a friendly reminder: Hamas ≠ Palestine
Another friendly reminder: you can be pro-Palestinian without being antisemitic.
One more friendly reminder: Hamas would not be nearly as strong as it is today if Benjamin Netanyahu hadn’t repeatedly propped them up over the years, to keep the Palestinian people from becoming united.
And one final warning for anyone reading this: Elon Musk has all but eliminated the part of Twitter that used to block misinformation from being posted. Therefore you’re going to see A LOT of rightwing, anti-Palestinian + anti-Ukrainian propaganda. Please don’t fall for it. Check and double check the sources.
And as always, TERFs dni
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Ivy League in League with Hamas
I hope Columbia students are as dedicated to their studies as they are to LARPing. I doubt it. They seem to not know much of anything. Portraying aggressive foes of Israel confirms such. Refusing to move from ground that was never theirs shows commitment to the cause.
College brats crave pretending they’re something other than political science majors doomed to beg Joe Biden for debt evasion. A university that wanted to continue to pretend to be taken seriously would deny outdoor squatters the right to Sha Na Na presale access codes.
Instead, expect a flurry of senior theses based on how leaving plants unwatered in an Amsterdam Avenue apartment for three or four days allowed the non-Israel parts of the Middle East to finally prosper. This is the school where a showy phony lied about being raped so she’d have an excuse to drag a mattress around campus as a regrettable standard of performance art, which makes today’s showy truancy unsurprising.
Acting violent while pretending to not be reflects a wholesale refusal to interact with reality. True cosplayers act just like their beloved terror cause. Man, they are focused on playing along. Their habit of harassing Jews shows solidarity. Claiming they were the victims all along is what the keffiyeh represents.
Tom Wolfe’s ghost has never been busier. Earth’s most entitled brats throwing a tantrum while camping on Manhattan’s Ivy League grounds to show fondness for an invading terror squad means he’s still releasing novels a page at a time as news reports.
A Peoples’ University doesn’t sound quite elite. Those seizing land are presumably honoring prominent Democratic activist Jim Jones’s naming conventions without realizing it. Like every other contemptible notion that preening quad radicals believe, the inadvertent hilarity stems from their patent ignorance. While it’d be nice if they were informed, the rest of us can use the laughs. What are they supposed to do during college: learn?
The sort of students you’re glad you never drank with get to pretend they’re doing something righteous with a lawn campout. Guilt over unbelievable privilege leads to fretting about the less fortunate. Enrolling in a moral vacuum prompts sympathy for terror instead of victims.
Columbia students think The Diary of Anne Frank has a happy ending. Confused reading list participants know what they would’ve done during World War II, namely defend Normandy from invaders. The claim that 2020’s city torchers were the equivalent of Allied soldiers got sillier just when you thought that was impossible.
These advanced times sure are unenlightened, at least for those at the costliest and therefore best colleges. Society regresses without learning from primitive times. Let’s say there’s precedent involving campus radicals defending terror movements. Collegiate nitwits once again romanticize ghastly assaults against decent people in respectable societies. A useful degree would feature learning how many of them are not.
Praising the terror side is how the smuggest brats from your high school class battle for the underprivileged. Hamas engages in rather intense bullying they’d surely condemn if it involved misgendering. Total non-anti-Semites just happen to be ganging up on the one Jewish state. Tormenters get every last detail wrong, including which side features people who want to be left alone.
Students fume about a sliver of land that at its narrowest is smaller than the island upon which Columbia lies is long. It’s not just the lack of real estate that makes Israel an underdog.
The one Middle East country that would tolerate idling undergraduate uselessness can afford to on account of that whole natural rights bit. Citizens could claim it was awful without consequence. Go ahead and hold a pride parade in Tel Aviv. I’d envision a permit tie-up for anyone trying the same in Gaza. Rather confused observers add exercising the right to self-defense to their appalling list of reasons they loathe Jews.
Idle grifters with student IDs get to pretend they’re standing up for a noble cause. The side against Israel is way less nicer, and underdevelopment must be the fault of oppression. That sort of logic is common amongst attendees at more prestigious schools. Ignoring what happened at the music festival to people about the same age helps maintain consistency.
The Morningside Heights campus of Hamas University is a popular study abroad program. But enrollees can only harvest so much knowledge. An internship would help. They can learn from their heroes. Columbia campers should transfer to Gaza colleges. There’s a hospital on every corner, which means there must be at least that many schools. You know it’s bad when the rest of 2024 New York City seems sane by comparison.
Class is boring. Learn about the real world out on the Columbia quadrangle. It sure is fun camping out while shrieking insults at civilization. Real-world experience is supposed to be school’s goal. Professional terrorists blaming success is the default Columbia student ideology in practice. Feeling insulated on campus leads to guilty role play. Flaunt uselessness in the name of awfulness. This is the best time to dine at Katz’s, as none of the uneducated students will be there.
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Since I'm going insane from pointlessly arguing with braindead people and propagandists on here, I'm just gonna give my ten cents and leave this conversation, maybe even the site for a little.
I want Israel to stop murdering civilians.
It's as easy as that. Just stop.
All the defendants of the undeniable genocide I've argued with over the last days and weeks had very little of an excuse really, I believe that comes from them knowing that the sole and only reason for what is happening in !Palestine! and what Israel is doing there comes from their tora saying that it's their "promised land" and they have any right to own it.
Excuses were, for example, that Hamas started it; alright, even if, that doesn't make the murder of children and civilians less horrifying and doesn't say anything.
It was originally Israel and Palestinians are the settlers; what the fuck is your point here even if that was true?
And to the "promised land" thing:
We, as humans, are nothing more than a disease. A virus destroying our host we called earth. I, as many others, wish we could rise to be more, but I don't think we ever will surely are not right now. You religious people's fragile egos just can't handle the meaninglessness that is our existence, but it is the truth, sorry to tell you.
Religion is stupid and dangerous and if you still believe in your imaginary friend and what he promised to you, you are either too indoctrinated, too stupid or too narrow-minded to think outside of the box beaten into your head.
It's a relic of a past when people thought the sun was circling the earth and thunder was the wrath of some superior being, that we are the center of everything, when in fact we are riding a tiny crumb of dust through a incomprehensibly large universe.
Before you cry out "antisemitism", I don't care what bedtime story your parents told you, I don't differentiate in "Jew", "Muslim" or "Christian", I just call it religious and I will still treat you like a human being and in no way different than any other person. Same goes for your place of birth by the way. Idgaf if you are from the US, Spain, Japan or the fuckin south pole and I surely don't care for your skin color.
Some of you people on the other hand treat people as subhuman or as someone who doesn't belong somewhere based on their religion or origin, since YOUR religion or YOUR leader says so, e.g. christian crusades, diverse acts of terror, the colonization of America or recently Russia or Israel.
That's where I draw the line and if you defend that, you are not only stupid, but unnecessarily supporting ruthless murder and I will stop treating you as a human being.
My opposition against Israel is not a thing about religion. They made it a thing about religion by painting the star on their flag and setting it equal to Judaism to make it easier to scream "antisemitism" towards any critic. It's about people being treated terribly and being killed for absolutely nothing while having no options to flee or surrender.
Nothing matters.
The universe doesn't even notice us in the slightest.
The earth still turns and it will keep rotating around the sun.
Those deaths mean nothing. Israel means nothing. Judaism means nothing. Humanity means nothing.
They are dying for absolutely nothing.
Just stop.
Not just Israel, but all wars, all unnecessary violence.
It's all pointless.
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What are your top ten favorite scenes in Avatar the Last Airbender?
Thank you so much for the ask!!! Oh my god. This so hard, I've never thought of individual scenes as top favorites but I've tried my best and narrowed it down I think?
Katara v Pakku 'You can't knock me down!': So I watched Avatar when it was first airing as a kid, there weren't many dark-skinned main characters around, especially not girls who fight and certainly not against sexist men who try to stop people from learning. So when I saw this scene, I was at the edge of my seat, it taught me a lot about bravery and I still cheer and clap for Katara when I re-watch the fight.
Sokka throughout The Fortuneteller: I'm an atheist and people didn't exactly take kindly to that when I was a kid & I was infamous as the 'weird kid who probably has no morals'. So seeing Sokka outwardly express skepticism about the spirits & 'higher powers' was very comforting.
Sokka inventing the air balloon solution: I think it was one of the first scenes where I really started liking Sokka. The thing about hot air actually made me read my school textbooks & google stuff to figure out how air currents work, so that helped me with a few science classes about molecules.
Aang in The Storm: It was one of our first glimpses into how he felt about running away, the guilt, the sadness, the pain of being the last of your people with no one to turn to and thinking its all your fault.
Toph fighting the Earth Rumble goons when Aang & her dad are watching: The way she moves is so freaking cool!!! It was her showing exactly how capable she is, she isn't kidding when she says she's the world's best earthbender because yeah, who the heck else could do what she does???
Hama's flashback: Once again I watched this show as a kid, so this was the first time i got confronted with the fact that there will never be a 'perfectly good' or 'perfectly bad' side. People are complicated & I understand what pushed Hama to do what she did but that doesn't excuse it so in that vein;
Katara sucking the water out of the field to fight Hama: It's just badass even if it is angsty.
Aang pulling Ozai down by his beard and encasing him in rock: I mean-- like that is just objectively cool and very embarrassing for the 40-something year old guy. Aang was in top form.
Zuko in the bunker with Ozai: I don't watch too many new cartoons but I don't think any show has ever so explicitly called out the abuser and made sure the abuser is acknowledged as unforgivable. It really put into light for me a lot of things about child-parent relationships, what its supposed to be (forever angry at Boku No Hero Academia for using their Zuko-based character to forgive and redeem his abuser, lf you don't know anything about BNHA this means nothing to you jbcfjhbh sorry).
Yuekka last kiss: They're the ship that first introduced me to tragic romances,. My heart was broken and I kept waiting the entire 3 seasons down to the last episode for Yue to make a return and say "hey guys! so I'm a spirit I'm alive!". I still like it because idk I love angst a lot and the whole story of a princess finding glimpses of freedom in a boy who's traveled the world and yearning for it gets to me.
I'm not remembering other scenes that may have had more impact on me just yet, but a few honorable mentions; Ran and Shao's dance(I LOVE DRAGONS 100/10 they make everything better always), Zuko in the Cooler, Sokka and the cactus juice, Aang's anxiety episode.
Thank you again for asking! This was so fun to do~~
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i still think that the israeli reps statement in the security council was absolutly wilding so im gonna try to sum up the wild parts, i recommend watching the first 42 minutes of statements, i cant recommend watching the next however many minutes where the israeli rep is speaking for Fun but watching it for education is of value
this is mr israel. i will be calling him mr israel because i legitimatly dont know any of these representatives names. also; the israeli holocaust memorial has said that the yellow star of david was a bad call when they made a show of putting it on last meeting okay thats the context
"while hamas must be held fully accountable, there is another body, sadly, that is complicit: the UN"
it is at this time where the wack shit starts, at around 50 minutes in and after 10 minutes of already absolute bullshit, its almost amazing
mr israel says that for years hes warned the council of the briefings they receive, such as from the director general of WHO who opened this meeting, the commissioner general of UNRWA, the under-secretary-general of OCHA, and the UN secretary general, calling them libellous organizations
mr israel claims that these people and/or organizations are lying
"the WHO is the organization that supplies the UN with these so called facts, excuse me, WHO is it that supplies them with these so called facts?"
mr israel claims that the UN doesnt receive information from unbiast third party sources and that all information concerning this situation is coming from hamas and not "international UN employees" on the ground in gaza
the camera cuts to the director general of the world health organization who does not seem particularly happy. this note was included because i think the camera person is the funniest person on earth
mr israel reiterates that all facets of gaza is controlled by hamas*, saying; "every number from the so called ministry of health" is hamas
mr israel continues "many UNRWA workers are themselves members of hamas" and that; "the time has come to bust the myth of UN supplied facts" while putting quotation marks on "facts"
"many ambulance drivers are hamas members, local contributors to international media are hamas members." he then implies that the new york times and reuters photojournalists who reported on the initial october 7th attack were in fact a part of the attack and on hamas' side, something both publications have denied
mr israel puts doubt upon the two briefers of the meeting (the director general of WHO and the director general of the palestinian red crescent), arguing that Dr Tedros of the WHO should have spoken about hamas using hospitals and bases and saying that it is bias that there is no israeli representative from the israeli red cross
"mr jilani why dont you tell the council about the ambulances that hamas abuses for transporting terrorists and weapons, or is this an inconvenient truth that you choose to stay silent about?" note: the camera cuts to the screen mr jilani the director general of the palestinian red crescent is on, he is shaking his head
his statement continues for 10 more minutes but this is the most interesting part and frankly i cant stand listening to the rest of it a second time
* hamas is the government in gaza, this is true, however the health ministry has never contributed false numbers according to several third party enquiries as confirmed when us president joe biden put doubt on the health ministry last month
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I beg you to research the matter with Palestine further, because the children who are being torn to shreds have nothing to do with Hamas. The infants who died during this Israeli genocide did not order Hamas to counter against their oppressors. The little boy who was saving up to buy his own bed, the older brother sobbing because he can't find his little brother, the father digging with bloody hands in rubble screaming for his children, the doctor who broke down screaming when she realized her daughter was on the stretcher that had been rushed in: they had nothing to do with Hamas. Palestinians did not ask Hamas to attack Israel, yet Israel has chosen to use the attack as an excuse to wipe out innocent civilians, women, men, children, infants, babies still in the womb, because they want the resources in the earth that Gaza sits on. A quick Google search, three minutes of comprehensive reading, will show you I'm right. And if after everything you still think genocide is okay, then there's something deeply and fundamentaly wrong with you. This has nothing to do with the Holocaust or antisemitism, one genocide does not justify another.
I researched and it's not Israel desiring a genocide but a fact that this is a war where bad things happen. People who are demonizing Israel as bein genocide happy forget how Hamas runs the place. Seriously, Israel for the most part do not want genocide. You can claim a ceasefire can change things when Hamas has done shit over and over again. Seriously, you guys want to blame everything on Israel and always downplay how Hamas has had their hand in shit. And interesting ehough Hamas kills it's own citizens without hesistation. Stfu you black and white mentality dumbass. I see it for what it is which is Israel is doing something they don't want to do but have to but it's a case of war is hell and sadly it will always come with sad consequences. People trying to keep war clean are naive to what war comes with.
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Ezra Klein: Israel is giving Hamas what it wants
Klein:
Israel’s 9/11 — that’s been the refrain. And I fear that analogy carries more truth than the people making it want it to. Because what was 9/11? It was an attack that drowned an entire country — our country, my country, America — in terror and in rage. It drove us mad with fear.
And in response, we shredded our own liberties. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Our response to 9/11 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It made us weaker. It made us poorer. It made us hated around the world. We didn’t pull our forces out of Afghanistan until 2021, 20 years later. And when we left, we did so in humiliation and catastrophe and defeat, abandoning the country to the Taliban.
Our politics still haven’t recovered from the ravages of that era. It was, in large part, the invasion of Iraq that discredited the Republican Party’s leadership class, leading directly to the rise of Donald Trump. 9/11 created a permission structure in American politics to do incredibly stupid brutal things, and we are still paying the costs. Perhaps we always will be.
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I think vengeance is a legitimate and even necessary goal here. It cannot be safe to murder Israeli civilians. But vengeance cannot be the only goal. Israelis, no less than Palestinians, deserve peace and security. Those need to be considerations, too. And that requires considering things.
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The brutal facts of the occupation, the architecture of control, and humiliation, and checkpoints and work permits and blockades that Palestinians live under, it does not justify Hamas’s murders. But it helps explain Hamas’s strength, its persistent appeal to at least some of the Palestinian people. Hamas is built on Palestinian despair. And if you radically increase Palestinian fury and despair, if you create a new wave, a new generation of fathers who lost their sons, and brothers who lost their sisters, and people now dedicated to revenge, have you actually made Israel safer, or have you made Hamas or something like it stronger?
Hardliners feed on each other. Hamas’s political strength has been an excellent excuse for Netanyahu’s government to abandon even the pretense of a real peace process. If Hamas is on the other side of the table, then there can be no peace process because there is no partner for peace. Israel is right that it cannot make peace with Hamas, that Hamas’s actual aim is Israel’s eradication.
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Hamas and its backers in Iran want this war. They fear the normalization of Israel’s relations with the rest of the Middle East. The misery of the Gazans is and always has been their strength/
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We’ve spent decades testing the proposition of whether inflicting more punishment on the Palestinians will strengthen the moderates or the extremists in their midst. The answer is known.
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If you loathe Hamas, and you should loathe Hamas, you should assume that the place they’re trying to lead us is not where we should be trying to go. If you don’t think Netanyahu’s rule has made Israel safer, or more united, or closer to a resolution of the fundamental threats that face it — and it hasn’t — you should not yourself be cowed into trusting his instincts in this moment. That’s a lesson Americans learned, or should have learned, from 9/11, the one we have to pass on now.
Terrorists want you to act in a haze of fury and fear. The only antidote is to open yourself to criticism and second-guessing.
…
There is no country in the world that would not hunt Hamas’s leaders to the ends of the Earth right now if their savagery had been visited upon them. And that is to say nothing of the hostages Hamas is still holding captive. But the idea that you’ll destroy Hamas this way, I doubt it, particularly if this becomes not just a generational trauma for ordinary Israelis, but also for Gazans, with thousands dead and who knows how many maimed and homeless and displaced.
…
The hardliners make each other stronger. Is it possible for the peacemakers to do the same?
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VAYAKHEL
By Ezra
March 7th, 2024
In five parts.
א
In my early teens I wore a gold star of David necklace at all times, which my grandfather gave me. It wasn’t an heirloom. It was new and shiny. For me, it was a symbol of my connection to my grandfather and to Judaism. It was also, on one level, a symbol of the state of Israel, and that was fine with me. Throughout my teenage years I subscribed to a fairly uncomplicated Zionism. I understood the state of Israel to be necessary for Jewish survival, and I didn’t look much into the details. The concept of Israel was just one of the notes in the stately concerto of American Jewish life. My necklace was very dear to me. My grandfather was old, and had narrowly escaped the Holocaust.
I no longer have the necklace. I misplaced it at some point in my teens. My shame and dismay at losing the necklace was overwhelming. I didn’t mention it to anyone. I just privately carried my sense of myself as a fuck-up who loses important things, who didn’t deserve jewelry. Instead of the necklace, I wore the shame of having lost the necklace, under my shirt, over my heart.
But I also knew that it was just a piece of gold jewelry, nothing more.
ב
Our parasha this week is largely a description of the building of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in which God has promised to dwell, the ritual center of the first Jewish community, the group of escaped slaves walking through the wilderness on their way to a promised land. The meticulous instructions were already given in a previous parsha, weeks ago. But now they are carried out, in just as meticulous detail, every necessary action reiterated, but this time in the past tense instead of the future tense.
Every generation of this book’s readers asks the same question: why this repetition? It is almost comical. The most detailed and, let’s be honest, boring description of anything in the Bible, and it’s all repeated a second time. But Gertrude Stein comes to mind. “There is no such thing as repetition,” she wrote. “Only insistence.” And each insistence is its own. Each insistence comes at a different time, in an altered context.
The contextual change between the instructions for the Mishkan in parashat Trumah and the building of the Mishkan in parashat Vayakhel is earth-shattering. In between the two, the Israelites build and worship an idol, the Golden Calf. The people’s first collective sin. Moses intercedes with our infuriated God and obtains communal divine forgiveness. He goes back up the mountain and encounters God even more intimately and intensely. Some new relationship between God and the people has been established, but the Israelites are reeling from shame. Can the national spiritual mission really just continue as if nothing has happened?
Our parasha is not a repetition of the details of the Mishkan, but an insistence. We have failed tremendously, in some ways irreparably. And yet the work we have to do is still not done: the work of building a home for God in the physical world
ג
Never in my life have I seen the Jewish people so deeply morally degraded as we are now. Israel has responded to the horrific October Hamas attacks with months of overwhelming violence and destruction, killing tens of thousands of people with no clear positive result. Opportunities to bring hostages home safely in exchange for a cease-fire have been repeatedly refused. I do not absolve Hamas for the atrocities they’ve committed. Neither can I excuse Israel’s atrocities, far greater in scope and human impact. We are watching some of the most terrible humanitarian crimes ever committed by Jews in Jewish history.
This is a spiritual crisis for the Jewish people. It involves us all whether we like it or not. The monstrous acts in Gaza are grievous sins of the Jewish collective.
But these sins are being committed by the state of Israel. Jews are not the same entity as the state of Israel. The distinction is crucial and it must be crystal clear. The tendency to equate all Jews with the state of Israel can and does cause deadly anti-Semitism. And there has been an enormous uprising of Jewish dissent against the state of Israel’s ongoing moral travesties.
And yet the symbol I wore on a gold chain over my heart as a teenager is also on the tanks that roll through Gaza, killing civilians and destroying their homes.
ד
Jewelry is a mysteriously persistent motif in this part of the book of Exodus. The Golden Calf is built with contributions of jewelry, gold earrings are melted down to build the idol. After the people are punished, jewelry appears again. God tells Moses that the Israelites will still go to the Promised Land, but God will not go there with them. This is when the enormity of their sin really seems to register with the people.
וַיִּשְׁמַ֣ע הָעָ֗ם אֶת־הַדָּבָ֥ר הָרָ֛ע הַזֶּ֖ה וַיִּתְאַבָּ֑לוּ וְלֹא־שָׁ֛תוּ אִ֥ישׁ עֶדְי֖וֹ עָלָֽיו׃
When the people heard this terrible thing
they went into mourning,
and no one wore his jewelry.
Jewelry is emphasized in three successive verses. Next God commands them not to wear the jewelry, though they’ve already removed it. And then the situation is grimly, insistently summarized: the children of Israel stripped themselves, vayitnatzlu, of their jewelry. This is the same word that was repeatedly used to describe the Israelites’ acquisition of the wealth of their enslavers in Egypt.
Some legitimate splendor has been lost. The jewelry they once deserved and triumphantly wore has become unacceptable. They’ve given up any claim to splendor, to a narrative of beauty and victory. They’ve chosen the path of disgrace, and now they can see it. They feel like fuck-ups who don’t deserve jewelry.
There is a well-known midrashic tradition that women did not participate in the Golden Calf. It is based on two verses in the Golden Calf narrative: first Aaron asks the people to give him the gold earrings in the ears of their wives and children, but the next verse says that they “broke off the gold rings that were in their own ears and brought them to Aaron.” Aaron addressed only the men, and they gave the rings from their own ears, not their wives’. The midrash hears this as female refusal to participate.
In contrast, this week’s parsha has an unusual emphasis on female participation. In the narrative of the communal contribution to building the Mishkan, women are specifically mentioned four times. And the first thing they contribute is their jewelry.
וַיָּבֹ֥אוּ הָאֲנָשִׁ֖ים עַל־הַנָּשִׁ֑ים כֹּ֣ל ׀ נְדִ֣יב לֵ֗ב הֵ֠בִ֠יאוּ חָ֣ח וָנֶ֜זֶם וְטַבַּ֤עַת וְכוּמָז֙ כׇּל־כְּלִ֣י זָהָ֔ב
“The men came in addition to the women; anyone whose heart moved them brought brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants —gold objects of all kinds…”
Rashi, commenting on this verse, cites the Talmud, which identifies the last item, “pendants,” chumaz, as referring to gold jewelry women wore on their private parts. They even gave their clit rings to make a home for God.
It’s not the jewelry, then, that God rejects. Not the gold. It’s that you can’t decorate yourself in gold if you’re going to spit in God’s face. It is an insult to wear a Star of David while you’re murdering the poor. Such a symbol becomes a disgrace.
In contrast, the clit ring of a righteous woman is welcomed as part of the glorification of the Holy One on earth.
ה
It is my practice to pray once a day. There are three daily prayer services, but I pray just one each day, whichever one I am able to. I talk to God, the infinity that causes existence, as if we knew each other.
Weekday prayer always includes prayers for forgiveness for sin, most of which are spoken in the first person plural. “Slach lanu avinu ki chatanu,” we say. “Forgive us, our father, because we have sinned.” No matter how much the state of Israel is on my mind these days when I think of Jewish sins, the prayer is not “they have sinned.” It is “we have sinned.” Praying for forgiveness collectively, as a unified people, means that I can’t ignore the worst actions of my fellow Jews. I cannot dissociate from those actions or fully disown them. The consequences of those actions implicate me. They demand some response.
After the Golden Calf crisis, Moses’ first act of leadership, the first verb ascribed to him, is the name of our parasha, “Vayakhel.”
וַיַּקְהֵ֣ל מֹשֶׁ֗ה אֶֽת־כׇּל־עֲדַ֛ת בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֑ם אֵ֚לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֔ים אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּ֥ה ה’ לַעֲשֹׂ֥ת אֹתָֽם׃
Moses then congregated the whole Israelite community and said to them: These are the things that Hashem has commanded you to do.
Vayakhel, he congregated them. The word is from “kahal,” community. He treated the people as a single entity. He didn’t divide the Israelites into those who sinned and those who abstained. What they needed to move forward after a disastrous national failure was to think of themselves as one group, with important work ahead of them. They are told to observe Shabbat, and then they are asked to contribute gifts to the building of the Mishkan.
Not everyone committed the sin. But everyone is called on to heal it.
Living my comfortable American life, reading the news, seeing the images of mass starvation, bodies blown apart, neighborhoods turned to rubble, I have felt so powerless to respond. But this is incorrect. Being powerless to prevent destruction is very different than being powerless to respond to it.
The Jewish people have the work of rebuilding ahead of us, the work of healing the damage we have done. Everyone is invited to contribute to that healing. Anyone whose heart moves them.
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SMART BOMB
The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis
By Christopher Smart
December 5, 2023
WORLD'S FIRST WHALE-ATHON RECORD BROKEN!!
Well Wilson, you could be right, the big, colorful whale at 9th South and 11th East could be the coolest thing in the City of Salt. But already the news media has labeled it “the whale at 9th and 9th” — demonstrably inaccurate. It's as bad as not being able to distinguish Kimball Jct. from Park City. But we digress. It took Stephen Kesler three years to design and build the full-size — 23-foot — humpback that's been breaching in the center of the roundabout since April 2022. It's called “Out of the Blue” and oddly has become a sports venue. In October four dudes made headlines by running a marathon around the whale. We are not making this up. Wyn Barnett, Jackson Bradshaw, Evan Service and Caleb Leftwich ran 630 laps around it — 26.2 miles. It was the first Whale-athon in the world. Sure, it sounds nuts but they did make history. Wait there's more: Last week Allie Kolaski ran 800 laps — 30 miles — as training for an ultra-marathon. Great, but not everyone wanted a whale there. One group sought a giant gnome sculpture to grace the roundabout. Yes Wilson, that would be weird. The gnome people are not giving up. They place little gnomes around the whale because they are spirits of the earth — or something. Keep a lookout for the world's first Gnome-athon.
SAVING GREAT SALT LAKE
DON'T LOOK AT THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
The Utah State Legislature is saving Great Salt Lake! They instituted the Agricultural Water Optimization Program to save water northern Utah farmers take from the Bear River. Grants to save water can amount to $1 million. But oops, the state didn't collect data to see if any water was saved at all. Well as Utah Jazz fans like to say, there's always next year. The Leg is also considering the Bear River Development Project to build a huge reservoir to keep Bear River water from flowing to Great Salt Lake. Well Wilson, it's what they call reverse logic. Lawmakers even took a helicopter ride over the lake to be sure it is shrinking. And golly sakes, it is. They are very detail oriented. The Great Salt Lake drought contingency plan would seek voluntary water transfers; would report annually how much water the lake should have; and impose a $75 fee for each acre-foot used by secondary water suppliers — agricultural would be exempt. What! Alfalfa farmers suck a lot of water out of the Bear. One-third of Utah's alfalfa crop goes to China. Yes Wilson, it is like shipping Great Salt Lake to Asia. At this rate, scientists say, the lake will disappear in five years. By then Utah lawmakers might have a better plan.
DON'T SAY PALESTINIAN — OR YOU COULD GET F#%&*
You better not utter anything about Israel and Hamas or you could get the axe. Listen to this: Mehdi Hasan's Sunday political talk show on MSNBC got canned. Hasan, a Muslim, was critical of Israel for the war in Gaza. Welcome to the new McCarthy era. Other public figures who have been dumped for their views on Gaza include Melissa Barrera, Susan Sarandon, Bella Hadid, Mia Khalifa and the list goes on and on. Don't they know real Americans support Israel in the aftermath of the massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas militants. Still, employees, students and others have suffered for voicing their opinions as some 15,000 Palestinians have been killed during the ongoing bombing of Gaza. So, of course Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered Florida public universities to disband campus groups associated with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Free speech — not exactly. It's reminiscent of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's Red Scare and the mass hysteria in the 1950s over the perceived threat of communism. Anyone accused of being a communist was in for a very bad time. Palestinian supporters best not post on line. Yes Wilson, it does seem like Palestinians and Israelis will keep killing each other until they're all dead. Still, there is never an excuse for harming non-combatants, period.
Post script — That's a wrap for another festive week here at Smart Bomb where we keep track of history in the making so you don't have to. The U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives was a collaborator in then-president Donald J. Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and remain in power. Now that is history. A hundred years from now they'll be talking about Mike Johnson, the evangelical backbencher who could look through a keyhole with both eyes at he same time. Life is not fair: The Florida State football team went undefeated in the ACC and was denied a position in the College Football Playoffs. Here's what Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell said about the selection committee: “#$%& &$# &%$#@&.” OpenAI's Sam Altman was fired from the artificial intelligence company but returned as a mastermind who seems less concerned with the dangers of A.I. than turning a billion bucks or two. What's more important, saving humanity or making a killing. And then there is this: The Oxford University Press has selected “Rizz as its “Word of the Year.” It's a slang term that refers to someone’s “ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.” Well yes, Wilson, everyone knows you and the band have plenty of rizz — or something that rhymes with it.
Well hell it's hard to be upbeat, Wilson, when there's people killing each other all over the place. Seems like the history of humankind is filled with war and death and the killing of innocents. Give the band some coffee and take us out with something to remember:
There's a graveyard by the station
Where the girls wear nylon skirts and
Sandals from Hungary
The boys ride their Riga 1's
Upon the little hill
Such sadness and grief
The trees die standing
That's where we made our trysts
And struggled with our guns
Would you still love me
If the clocks could go backwards
The girls would fill with blood and
The grass would be green again
Remember the dead
They were so great
Some of them
Where do the boys lie
Mud mud mud
How does the grass grow
Blood blood blood
I gaze in defeat
At the stars in the night
The light in my life burnt away
There will be no tomorrow
Then you sigh in your sleep
And meaning returns with the day
Where do the boys lie
Mud mud mud
How does the grass grow
Blood blood blood
(How Does the Grass Grow — David Bowie)
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Ice Queen
Click here to read the full fic on AO3!
After the borders were tacked down, and things returned slowly back to normal, the mundane aspects of life started to bubble back up. Thuy was off with her group, still working on the brand new world that opened in seemingly random points around the world. The Earth Empire was restructuring, a delightful task full of awkward meetings and forgotten names on Katara’s end, and so they were all expecting new ambassadors.
Zuko had to return to the palace for that. They had discussed for days what to do about Izumi, wondering what the best course of action was. Katara decided to meet her appointment in the new central palace in Republic City, figuring that Izumi could more easily spend time with her father should the need arise.
Not that they could figure out what was going on with their five-year-old since the news broke.
“Auntie!” Kya bellowed as she ran through the wide entry hall. Her small voice bounced off the cool marble and echoed in the empty space. Sokka and Suki followed; Sokka’s arm was thrown nervously over Suki’s shoulders.
“Hello dear one.” Katara murmured as Kya ran into her, putting her small arms around Katara’s hips. Her niece was the spitting image of Sokka, with only the faint reddish hue in her hair linking her to Suki. It made her heart ache sometimes, seeing the South Pole face and saying her mother’s name.
It was in these moments that she was relieved Kya had been born first, securing Sokka’s claim to the name.
“Can we practice now?” Kya asked excitedly.
“Don’t you want to see Izumi?” Katara asked curiously, too quick to think.
Kya’s face smoothed and she stepped back.
“Oh. Right. Sure.” She said and darted past Katara into the palace.
“She’s been really excited about this trip.” Suki said, looking after her daughter’s retreating form.
“Should we really be doing all this formal stuff so soon?” Sokka interjected and Suki sighed heavily.
“She’s a Waterbender. Everyone knows it and they’re asking questions.” Katara answered.
“I seem to recall someone being extremely pissed off about forced expectations and public announcements.” Sokka countered.
Katara gave him a stern look but he didn’t budge.
“I’m not taking her away or anything. She’ll just have to come for training sometimes, which of course means you both will be staying.” Katara glanced over at Suki, who smiled. “And if she chooses not to be my heir later on, then we figure something else out. It’s up to her.”
“How is Izumi taking it?” Suki asked.
Katara looked back over her shoulder, as if her daughter would appear.
“Zuko thinks she’s a late bloomer, but I know. I don’t know if that makes things worse or not.” She said and then sighed, turning back. “She’s not really talking about it.”
“And Lu Ten?” Suki inquired.
“He’s definitely a Firebender, but no fire yet. Which is a blessing I think.” Katara shook her head and shrugged.
“We’re doing the best we can.” She added.
“You think this would be easy, since we saved the world twice.” Sokka muttered.
“It is what it is.” Katara said, waving her hand in an attempt to dispel the lingering mood. “I’ve got some tea waiting.”
Kya, having forgotten her earlier disappointment, ran screaming through the halls with Izumi, two Swamp Tribe children, and a North Pole boy. Katara kept her amusement to herself as she watched the flinching security guards as something crashed in their earpieces. With the carnage, she assumed the younger brother of the Swamp Tribe matriarch was babysitting this time.
“So I assume I’m keeping my appointment?” Sokka asked as he plucked a red bean bun from the platter. Now deeply in their thirties, Katara had hoped he would stop eating like a child but half of the bun was shoved unceremoniously into his mouth.
“Nepotism at its finest.” Katara said as an answer. “No one else really wanted to go, seeing how Zuko spends most of his time here and the Prime Minister is kind of…”
“Dull.” Suki finished for her and Katara pointed back at her.
“I really liked that other guy.” Sokka said, taking a drink from his mug.
“Sato? Very nice man. His son Hiroshi always played so well with Izumi. Maybe next time.” Katara said and sat back. The banality relaxed her, and she wished her work would go no further than this.
“I’ve finalized my schedule with Dong-Lee and dad, and nothing has really changed.” Katara continued.
“Still ignoring him?” Sokka asked.
“I’m not ignoring him.” Katara snapped. “I just think he needs to spend a little more time at the South Pole. With the people he actually represents.”
“Malina really isn't all that bad.” Sokka said and Katara glared at him. He responded by shoving the other half of the bun into his mouth.
“Look, the point is, the Earth Empire has finally selected their ambassador and he’s arriving tomorrow. There’s going to be a big, fancy dinner and I’ll introduce Kya as my heir.” Katara said.
“So where’s dad?” Sokka asked, his mouth still mostly full.
Katara slammed a hand on the table. “This isn’t about dad!”
“He’s on the triumvirate.” Suki said gently.
“And I am the head.” Katara retorted. Shaking her head, she deflated. “He’s flying up this evening. I figured he would’ve told you.”
“We haven’t caught up in a bit. Did you see what’s happening in the news right now?” Sokka replied and Katara snorted. For weeks there had been almost nothing talked about that wasn’t related to the spirits.
A knock at the door made them all turn.
“Come in.” Katara called. The door opened and a guard poked her head in.
“Excuse me, your Majesty, but Prince Lu Ten has woken up from his nap.” She said.
Sokka jumped up, shoving the back of Suki’s chair as he moved.
“Hey!” Suki exclaimed with a laugh. “You can’t monopolize all of the baby time!”
“Those freaky twins aren’t here, so I’m taking what I can get.” Sokka yelled back, sliding past the flustered guard to run into the hall.
After everyone was unpacked, and had a proper lunch, Sokka and Suki took Izumi and Lu Ten out into the gardens for a walk. Katara and Kya then made their way down to the practice grounds. The talk of her dad and growing stress of the next few days weighed on Katara and she hoped that this moment with her niece would cheer her.
The sun was shining, and it was a crisp day that she cherished in the early spring. The sea was a few miles away from the palace, but the building was situated atop a bending made hill so Katara could see ripples of blue-gray between the skyscrapers. A particularly strong breeze would occasionally bring the scent of salt water to her doorstep.
Kya held Katara’s hand as they walked over the small footbridge to the flat square. The training ground was covered in soft gravel and bordered by channels of water. It was a place they could all practice together, though more recently it was used to smooth out Toph’s plans for her new sport.
“Auntie?” Kya asked as they walked onto the gravel.
“Yes dear?”
“Is Uncle going to teach Izumi firebending?”
Anxiety plucked at a tendon in the back of Katara’s neck.
“Izumi isn’t a Firebender, sweetie.”
“Uncle says you don’t know yet.”
“Well…” Katara drifted, letting go of Kya’s hand and looking off into the empty air. “Your uncle didn’t have a strong spark at Izumi’s age, but he still had one. Izumi doesn’t, and that’s okay.”
“But how do you know? Is it because you’re a Waterbender?”
“I think so.”
“Will you teach me?”
“In time.”
“Auntie?”
“Yes dear?”
“Who taught you waterbending?”
Katara’s entire neck spasmed and her shoulders shot up to her ears. Muttering nonsense under her breath, she called some of the water from the channels and smoothed out the knots in her muscles.
Kya, her mother, had been there when Katara found her first instructor. It was Kya’s blood that Katara used in her final test with Hama.
“An elder taught me.” Katara said, using a truth to blur the unsaid horror. “She lives in a village somewhere in the South Pole now.”
It went against everything she had ever been taught to even consider killing Hama. Revenge took more than it gave, and Hama was not only an elder, but the only other South Pole Waterbender alive. She had returned Hama to the South Pole under heavy guard and with charms a Kyoshi Warrior had picked up from a guru in the Earth Kingdom. Hama had promised no further violence, being overcome with the promise of going home. She did not return to her village, to Katara’s village, but she was taken back home.
Kya had been buried at the prison, with hopes that she would be returned as well.
They were still waiting.
“Auntie?” Kya asked cautiously.
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Katara said brightly. “Did you say something?”
“Were you thinking about the war?” Kya asked and Katara flinched.
“Why do you say that?” She questioned.
“Papa looks like that too sometimes.” Kya answered.
“I’m fine sweetie.” Katara forced a smile and juggled three balls made of water. “Ready to practice?”
They practiced for a couple of hours before Kya inevitably got tired and asked to get a drink. By then, Sokka and Suki returned and Katara had to finish business of her own. Dong-Lee, the Swamp Tribe matriarch, was waiting for her with a dense looking folder.
The afternoon wound down that way, with Sokka making a call to Zuko about their next meeting. Suki took charge of all the children currently in the palace, telling stories and generally keeping the chaos relegated to one room. By dinner, most of them had calmed. Just in time for Hakoda to arrive.
Although completely expected, Katara still grumbled as Malina stepped into the main hall.
“Gran-Gran!” Kya and Izumi both yelled and Malina knelt down to hug them both.
“You’re going to pull something Tara.” Sokka said, keeping his voice low, and patting her upper back firmly.
“Shut up.” Katara grumbled, idly twisting the anchor bead of one hair loop.
“Oh look-” Sokka started just as Katara registered the third figure coming into view.
“Bato!” Katara said, her voice amplified by surprise.
Bato dropped his shoulder bag and strode forward, his arms open. Katara met him and they embraced each other tightly.
“What are you doing here?” Katara asked as they stepped apart.
“Can I not come pay homage to my queen?” Bato said with feigned shock. Katara laughed and swatted at him.
“If your father insists on sending me all over the frozen blue yonder doing his dirty work, I deserve the perk of visiting the High Queen in her fancy new palace in Republic City.” He explained.
“Good to see you Bato.” Sokka said and the two men hugged with the same type of loving force.
“Young man, fatherhood looks good on you.” Bato said, holding the back of Sokka’s head and pressing their foreheads together.
Sokka smiled, his eyes squeezing shut and a pin prick of water poked out the corner.
“Is Zuko not here?” Hakoda asked from behind them.
“His court is in session to approve the new Earth Empire ambassador.” Sokka said, moving off to the side. He stood between Katara and Malina, but that still put her in Hakoda’s line of sight.
“Daddy is going to bring me a present when he comes back.” Izumi interjected and Hakoda chuckled as he bent down.
“Oh is he now? I guess I better give you my present first!” He huffed as he stood up, swinging Izumi into the air.
“How are you Katara?” Malina asked softly. Katara watched her father carry Izumi, with Kya hopping at his side.
“I’m fine.” She said tersely and started walking. “Dinner is nearly ready.”
“That was ice cold.” Sokka said, jogging up to walk with her. Katara snapped sharply, sending sparks of frost into the air.
“Don’t you forget it.” She retorted.
“It’s okay that she’s not mom.” Sokka said.
“No Sokka, it’s not.” Katara replied, her words clipped short.
Despite their political positions, they took their dinner in the private family room, away from the other tribal members. Even with the separation, politics still dominated the table conversation.
“Who is the Fire Nation sending out?” Bato asked. Katara settled in her chair with Lu Ten wriggling in her lap. He had begun refusing the high chair, but was still too small for a booster. So Katara had to feed him while her own food cooled just out of reach.
“Zuko has made his appointments but the ministers have to approve them as well. I like the lady he sent to Ba Sing Se though, so I don’t see that changing.” She replied.
“Ugh, remember the ambassador last year? What a piece of work.” Sokka grunted, reaching over to cut Kya’s food. She fussed, insisting that she could do it herself, while Izumi smiled demurely with her chopsticks in hand. The mixed menu was always a struggle, and Izumi was leaning more toward Fire Nation fare while Kya was used to the knives and spoons of the South Pole.
“Who is going from us to Ba Sing Se?” Malina asked, of no one in particular.
“I have always wanted to do some proper travelling.” Bato said. “More than just the horrible marching in the war.”
“That might be pushing it.” Katara said. “Dong-Lee’s sister is going to Ba Sing Se, and I’m sending Hahn to Omashu.”
“HAHN?” Sokka cut hard and the knife in his hand went skidding across the plate. With a huff, Kya pulled her plate back and started sawing the meat with her own knife.
“Two ambassadors?” Suki asked.
“Omashu is the largest seat of power in the south, and it makes sense to have people in both places. Kuei won’t let the Fire Nation send more than one though.” Katara said.
“But why Hahn?” Sokka demanded.
“He’s grown up a lot, Sokka.” Katara said, sounding tired. “And no one could accuse me of favoritism since you hate his guts.”
“Fine.” Sokka said forcefully. Suki leaned over and rubbed his upper back.
“Paw-Paw, look what Auntie taught me!” Kya said suddenly. Everyone looked just as Kya levitated the tea from her cup, pushing it high above her head.
“Careful!” Katara warned.
“Mo-om! Kya shouldn’t play with her food!” Izumi said.
“I’m not playing, it’s waterbending.” Kya stated.
“That’s very nice Kya.” Hakoda said carefully. “But let’s make sure not to drop it.”
“I won’t!” Kya fussed.
“Even if I do-” Sokka took a finger and moved it toward Kya. “This?”
Cold tea fell on Kya’s head, causing her to burst into tears and Izumi started pummeling Sokka’s arm.
“Izumi! We don’t hit!” Katara jostled Lu Ten, who was still eating peacefully, as she tried to get up.
“Don’t be mean to Kya!” Izumi yelled while Sokka chuckled. Suki bit her trembling lip as she used her napkin to mop up as much tea as she could.
“That’s enough!” Katara said, keeping one hand on Lu Ten - who was starting to fuss - and using the other to bend away the tea.
“Izumi, go to your room!” Katara said.
“Katara, it’s fine.” Sokka said.
“Don’t tell me how to parent!” She snapped.
Sokka leaned back, holding up his hand.
Izumi, sniffling, stomped out of the room.
“I didn’t mean to get her in trouble.” Kya murmured.
“You didn’t.” Katara sighed.
“Kat, how about I take Lu Ten so you can eat?” Hakoda, suddenly at her side, asked.
Katara whirled around, grabbing hold of Lu Ten with both hands.
“I certainly don’t need your help.” She said sharply.
Hakoda’s eyes went hard but he didn’t move.
“I raised two children, Katara, I know what I’m doing.” He said.
“When? When mom was still alive and Gran-Gran lived with us? Or after you went off to fight, taking mom with you and leaving us behind? Or was it after mom died and you decided to stay in the North Pole to court a new woman?” Katara shot back. “Because it certainly seems like Gran-Gran raised two more children after you abandoned yours.”
“And where’s your husband then? He’s not here to raise them himself.” Hakoda said darkly.
“Zuko is the Fire Lord! And, if you really want to get technical about it, dad, he’s a five hour flight from here to the middle of the spirits be-damned palace!” Katara shouted. “Now sit down before I decide to make Bato the new chief of the South Pole and kick you out of my home.”
Turning on her heel, Katara shifted Lu Ten onto her hip and walked out the dining room. Ice crunched under her feet, grinding into her soles like diamonds. Goosebumps rippled on Lu Ten’s arms and Katara let out a worried breath as she moved down the hall to the bedrooms.
“I’m sorry baby-boo.” She whispered, kissing Lu Ten’s chubby cheek. “Let’s go call daddy.”
Katara grabbed a phone and went into Izumi’s room, letting her talk to Zuko first. Izumi immediately related what had happened at dinner, telling him all about Katara’s unfairness and tyrannical rule. Then, letting Izumi go back to dinner, Katara stayed in her daughter’s bedroom, letting Lu Ten play on the floor beside her while she talked.
“So what else happened?” Zuko asked.
“I got into a fight with my dad.” Katara answered.
“I know all about that.” Zuko said and she snorted.
“I just don’t get him.” Katara said with a sigh.
“Well of course. You lived with him for the first six of years of your life, while only being conscious of it for two, three years tops. Then he went off to fight when he was younger than you are now. He came back to his children being adults, and one of them bonded to the ocean spirit.” Zuko replied. Katara patted Lu Ten’s diapered backside while she listened. They were nearly done potty training, but it was a busy time and accidents happen. Lu Ten grumbled at the attention, pushing himself up to rummage through Izumi’s things.
“So you’re saying I should just forgive him?” Katara asked.
“I am the last person to ask about forgiving fathers.” Zuko quipped. “But more I’m just trying to break through your stubborn insistence to be mad at him.”
“I want to be mad at him?”
“Yes.”
“Zuko!”
“Katara, you know this. We’ve talked about it in therapy. If you feel like you’re justified in being mad at someone, it means you can get away with being mean to them.” Zuko replied calmly.
“I do have a right to be mad!” Katara countered.
“I agree. But do you think Dr. Matsuzawa would think you’re handling this in a healthy and loving manner?” He questioned.
“Mmmmm.” Katara rolled her discontent in the back of her throat. Lu Ten repeated the noise, bouncing up and down as he did.
“Let’s talk about Izumi.” Zuko said, his tone shifting.
“What do you mean?” Katara asked.
“You don’t normally blow up at the kids.” He clarified.
“Yeah.” The pit of her stomach twisted, shooting sour bile into her throat.
Zuko kept quiet, giving her space to process her words.
“I’m just worried about her.” Katara said.
“Why?”
“Why?” She repeated, incredulous.
“Yeah, why are you worried about her? Has she said anything?” Zuko asked.
“Well, no. Not yet.” Katara admitted.
“Izumi and Kya adore each other. I don’t think she’s jealous.” Zuko said.
“I don’t know.” Katara said.
“Are you jealous?” Zuko questioned gently.
Katara sat up, her stomach wrenching horribly.
“What?” She asked.
Zuko didn’t reply right away, but sighed.
“I’ve been trying to find a way to talk to you about this, and now probably isn’t the best time to bring it up.” He said.
“Well you brought it up!” Katara said sharply.
“Katara.”
“You think I’m jealous that Sokka had a Waterbender and I didn’t?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? You’re weird about Kya.”
“How am I weird about her?”
“You nearly never say her name!” Zuko stated. “Maybe you’re not jealous but maybe you want Izumi to be, so you can have an excuse.”
“How can you say that?” Katara gasped.
“Katara, this isn’t an accusation. I think you’re hurting, a lot. The spirit world thing got us away from it all, but now we’re back. And there’s a little girl named after your mom, needing to learn waterbending, when you don’t really have the best experiences in your own instruction.” Zuko explained carefully. “I went through something similar with my firebending.”
“Zuko…” Katara whispered. Her throat tightened as her nose went numb and started to run.
“I’m coming home.” Zuko said softly.
“No, Zuko, you have things to do.” Katara said.
“I’ve already approved the ambassador, the ministers can handle the next part.” Zuko said dismissively.
“You can’t keep running from the palace. It’s pissing a lot of people off.” Katara said, sniffing and rubbing her weeping eyes with the heel of her hand.
“So what? What are they gonna do, depose me? None of these governors want to go up against me, my father is rattling around in a prison, Azula is quite happy in rehab, and Iroh is convalescent. Unless they want to go on a search for Ursa on their own, they’ve got no one to replace me.” Zuko scoffed. “Plus, Thuy likes me.”
“Having the Avatar in your pocket sure is handy.” Katara murmured.
“Thuy?” Lu Ten chirped, tottling back with his arms full of Izumi’s dolls. He held out one hand, dropping most of the dolls, and reached for the phone.
“Thuy?” He repeated and Katara laughed.
“It’s daddy.” She said.
“Daddy!” Lu Ten said excitedly, dropping all the dolls, and starting to bounce again.
“May I talk to my beloved youngest child?” Zuko asked. Katara laughed again and handed the phone over. Lu Ten took it with both hands, pressing it to the side of his face. A couple of the buttons beeped.
“Daddy coming home?” Lu Ten asked. Pushing herself back to lean against Izumi’s bed, Katara watched as Lu Ten babbled into the phone.
She wasn’t looking forward to their time apart.
With the call done, Katara gave Lu Ten a bath and put him to bed. Assigning a guard to act as a baby monitor, she then went in search of Izumi.
The residential wing of the palace was small compared to the rooms she kept in the North Pole and in the Fire Nation, but it was still much bigger than what she had grown up with. Being back in Republic City, Katara almost wondered if she was expecting her old college dorm. She hadn’t even returned to the campus, though they were certainly bothering her about it, but her mind kept returning to the uniform, beige buildings, relics of the war.
This palace was made with snow white marble, iron colored lumber from the Fire Nation, and miles of Omashu crystal to remind her of ice. The rooms were a mix of styles, some with low furniture and some with the more modern style of ornate desks and heavy pieces meant to be dusted, not moved.
Going through the rooms on the main floor, Katara found them all empty.
Not wanting to try the other bedrooms, she descended into the basement. This was the space Sokka had designed, and sure enough, it was where everyone important was hiding.
Sokka had built a pillow fort in the theater, a trail of popcorn leading to the draped blankets. An animated movie Katara vaguely remembered played on the large screen and she could hear both Izumi and Kya giggling. Deciding to leave them to it, Katara retreated.
With Zuko’s flight still hours away, Katara puttered around. She made more tea, put on a hoodie, and meandered out to the main courtyard to look at the stars. The sky was different here than the North Pole, and neither was at all like the sky in the South Pole.
Pulling her legs up higher on the lounge chair, Katara reached underneath for a folded blanket. She often spent nights out here and the staff was good about leaving cushions and blankets about for her. Folding herself over the arm was difficult with her tea in her other hand and Katara strained to reach.
“Let me.” A man’s voice said and the mug left her grip.
“Thanks.” She muttered, leaning further over and finally grabbing the blanket. As her hand folded over the fabric, the voice registered, and Katara looked down while she spread the blanket over her legs.
“Here you go.” Bato said, handing back her mug. Katara took it, holding it in her lap with both hands wrapped around it.
“Did you come to scold me?” Katara asked.
“You’re a grown woman.” Bato said with a grunt, sitting down in the grass beside her. “I want to make sure you still know your stars.”
Tilting her head back, Katara gazed at the stars.
“I’d rather you scold me.” She groaned.
“Really?”
“No.”
“I’ve already yelled at Hakoda.”
Katara rolled her head to the side to look at Bato, but he was still looking up at the sky himself.
“At dad?” She asked.
“You weren’t totally wrong Katara. He wasn’t around, even if he hated being away from you and Sokka, it doesn’t change the truth. Trying to pretend that he was still a dad is his way of telling you that he didn’t want to leave in the first place.” Bato explained. “But it doesn’t fix anything.”
“But I shouldn’t have said what I said.” Katara admitted.
“Sure, but where do you think you got your temper? It wasn’t your mother.” Bato scoffed.
“I never asked you about her.” Katara said softly, rolling onto her side to look at him better.
“Sokka did, but I wasn’t sure you would.” He replied.
“Will you tell me?” Katara asked.
“Of course.”
~
Banging rattled the thin door frame and Bato jolted upright, still tangled in his blankets and furs. As the banging continued, he clawed his way to freedom and shoved his arms back into the longjohns he was wearing. Moving from his bedroom in the back, he paused for a moment to put his feet into his unlaced boots before heading to the front door.
He yanked the shuttering door open, swearing in the bright summer sun.
“May you and your namesakes drown for a thousand cycles.” Bato growled.
“Oh come on Bato, too much sleep is bad for your health!” Hakoda said briskly.
“Did Kanna kick you out again?” Bato asked. He moved sleepily back to his bedroom, letting Hakoda close the door and follow. Kicking off his shoes, Bato began picking through the pile next to his bed while Hakoda leaned in the open door frame.
“She was up late for a birth.” Hakoda said, avoiding the truth. Bato found his pants, pulled them on, and then searched for his parka. When he found it, he shook it out sharply.
“Is Kya up yet?” Bato inquired, pulling the parka over his head.
“That’s why I’m getting you. You know her father hates me.” Hakoda said.
Bato straightened his parka and avoided his friend’s gaze.
He couldn’t put into words what his life was like at the time. His parents had died last winter when there was another outbreak of tuberculosis. There were relatives he could have stayed with, or even gone to live with Hakoda and Kanna. Instead he chose to stay in his family’s house. They weren’t adults yet, but life on the ice and a blockade cutting them off from the rest of the world, it wasn’t like there was enough room for a childhood.
Hakoda was trying, and so was Kya. They had grown up together; all of the children in the village had grown up together, but it was different for the three of them. Bato had known they all loved each other, but two summers ago, he found out that Hakoda loved Kya differently, and it made him feel strange.
But it was difficult not to love Kya, in one form or another.
Bato punished Hakoda by forcing him to wait as he got ready. Bato dressed properly, shaved, and put together a meager breakfast. Ever the spoiled one, Hakoda bemoaned the bland food, which got Bato in for whatever Kanna had bubbling away on her stove that day.
Being back at Kanna’s wasted another hour and finally, finally, they were out on their own.
Bato was sent to get Kya and he grinned weakly under her father’s glare. Whatever he had against Hakoda, Bato was sure it was both misunderstood and completely deserved.
“Ah Bato, I wish we were children again.” Kya said, hanging off of his shoulder. “I miss penguin sledding.”
“You know, I think there’s an old canoe out back of my house. My dad and I were supposed to mend it this summer.” Bato said.
“We can’t go fishing in a broken canoe.” Hakoda stated.
“But we might be able to go sledding.” Bato countered.
The sledding worked, but somehow Hakoda decided that what they really ought to do was hitch a polar bear dog to the sled and really get going. Figuring they wouldn’t even get close to a den, Bato agreed.
This resulted in them running full-tilt through the snow away from a pack of polar bear pups with their milk teeth still in.
Wanting to hide their injuries, Hakoda then decided it would be a good idea to sift through Kanna’s unguents while she was sleeping.
That turned into Hakoda and Bato being temporarily blinded and Kya laughing so hard she fell into a slush pit at the coast line.
From there, they all piled into Bato’s bathroom, sectioning off the shower stall for Kya while he and Hakoda squeezed into the tub.
The room was covered in clean, but cracked, white tile squares. Steam filled the space, making their vision foggy even after clearing away the odd unguents.
This was the pair he had done his ice dodging with. All of their parents had been alive and watched proudly as they completed the ritual. Hakoda was the brave, Kya was the wise, and he was the trusted. It felt like their fate had been sealed then, and Bato relaxed into the grip of it. When Hakoda’s father died in a fishing accident, he went right back into the sea to make sure he was taking care of his mother. Kya always knew how to draw Bato out when he was pulling away. It was how they would always be.
“What do you think will happen in the future?” Bato asked, watching the steam curl within itself.
“How far are we talking?” Hakoda asked in reply.
“Ten years.” Bato answered.
“Hopefully this war will be over.” Kya remarked. The sound of the water hitting her skin sounded different than the tile. It was a sound Bato hadn’t heard in his house for many months.
“I hope to have children.” Hakoda said.
“Oh?” Kya intoned, turning off the faucets. She stayed behind her curtain, and Bato heard the splash of water as she wrung out her hair.
Hakoda looked away and Bato chuckled.
“What if the war is still going on?” Bato asked.
“Well, we’ll have to fight in it I suppose.” Kya said dreamily.
“How do you figure?” Hakoda asked sharply, sitting up so quickly the water sloshed over the side.
“If you want to have children, you’re okay raising them in a world like this? Where we can’t even trade up north anymore for fresh food?” Kya asked. “No one’s buying our fish, the Waterbenders have already gone off to fight and none of them have come back, and we don’t even have a local hospital.”
“But there’s so much to lose if we enlist. There’s no guarantee it’ll turn out in our favor.” Hakoda said.
“And here I thought you earned the mark of the brave.” Kya chided.
“So are you not having children until the war is done?” Bato asked.
“I think if I married the right man, I’d have to win a war for my children.” She answered.
Hakoda, sinking back into the tub, sighed happily with a smile.
~
Katara looked at the cold remains of her tea as Bato’s words swirled in her head. She didn’t see any of her mother in Malina, and she couldn’t work out if that made her happy or not. Perhaps Malina was the type of woman Kya would have picked out for Hakoda herself, someone to comfort him, not challenge him.
“Losing Kya is different for your father and me. We all got separated, so I keep thinking Kya’s just waiting in an Earth Kingdom city somewhere, waiting for us to find her.” Bato added.
“I know where she is.” Katara murmured.
“I know. And it kills me that you do.” Bato said. “Your mother didn’t deserve any of this. She deserved to see her children grow up and to meet her grandchildren. She shouldn’t have a namesake yet.”
“So what about dad?” Katara asked.
“Hakoda deserves peace. If you hadn’t gone through what you did, I would say he deserves to reunite with his children and live comfortably to grow old and fat. But you also deserve a father not blunted by years of imprisonment.” Bato shook his head, now looking at the ground. “You both deserve better but there is no substitution.”
Briefly, Katara thought about Noriko, but banished the seed before it could plant itself in her mind.
“What do I do then?” She questioned.
“My advice? Start over. Your father is a good man, and he loves you very much. We went away because we really thought we were going to protect you, to save you. He never wants to be far from you.” Bato said.
“Then why does he only ever stay with Malina? He was barely in the South Pole until I ordered him to go back.” Katara said sharply, her anger returning faster than she expected.
“You were supposed to be in the North Pole more than you were, remember? But someone decided they were better off traveling with the Avatar, or hiding out in the Fire Nation. Places your father couldn’t easily get to.” Bato said. “And how often did you want to see Malina when you were home?”
“Mmmm.” Katara grumbled, assenting to his point.
“Zuko is coming, correct?” Bato asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be glad to see him again. I haven’t had the chance to really talk to him.” Bato stood and stretched his back. Katara could hear the succession of pops from his joints.
“I think you’ll like him.” Katara said.
“Really? The son of the man who slaughtered my people? Who kept medicine from our village and killed my parents? You think I’ll like the Fire Lord, hmm?” Bato asked casually. Katara sat up, alarmed, and tried to see Bato’s face in the dark.
“Most of all, Katara, I think you need to understand just how much Hakoda is willing to deal with because of how much he loves you.” Bato said. “I hear that your husband is a good man, and I trust that you wouldn’t marry an evil person. But we have suffered differently, you and I. And I don’t have love to help me forgive as easily.”
Without another word, Bato turned and walked back to the palace, leaving Katara alone in the dark. Revenge was not sought in their tribe. Harming another person meant weakening the community. But there was still the matter of justice. Bato would not hold Zuko accountable for the sins of his father, but politics changed things. Katara understood that, and she understood Bato knew the difference as well. His hostility toward the Fire Lord was not the neutral friendliness he used to talk about her husband.
Hakoda had only ever fought with her about politics when he learned of her relationship with Zuko.
Heading back inside herself, Katara went straight to her private rooms. She showered and took extra care with her routine, wasting more of her time before Zuko arrived. Brushing out her hair, Katara’s shoulders sank seeing the wide swaths of black in her normal brown. The past two years had been exhausting beyond a physical way and had tapped into her spiritual reserves. So much had changed, but there was still that feeling of loss over what had been left behind or broken.
Very similar to how she felt at the end of the war.
While smoothing lotion into her arms and legs, Katara took a moment to examine the scars. She remembered Zuko’s fingers tracing them years ago, his pale skin somehow paler than the raised lines on her body.
Standing in the mirror, Katara saw the other scars that sank into her body. The stretch marks that rippled over her stomach and down her thighs. Ebony threads were like embroidery over her dark skin making no pattern but beautiful still.
Pulling on a robe, Katara tied the belt and walked silently to the bed. Purple sheets, made of silk to protect her hair and cool to the touch. There were places in the midlands of the Earth Empire that considered purple dye to belong to the royals. Apparently King Bumi was fond of it, mixing it with the typical green attire of Earth Kingdom citizens.
Katara just loved the blend of red and blue.
Sliding into bed, she shivered as her damp and lotioned legs brushed against the sheets. Tucking herself in, Katara shuddered deeply once and then relaxed. She thought for a moment that she was jealous, but not about Sokka or Kya specifically. Katara had hated everything she and Zuko had to go through in order to even have this place. She hated the schedule and the weeks away from her children and husband, or missing just Zuko.
If the world hadn’t been placed in peril yet again, they may never have won this small victory in the first place.
So in a way, Katara was bitter that she hadn’t earned any sort of simple ending. Her father, Sokka, even Thuy were uncomplicated by their relationships. Either no one was high enough or, as it was for Thuy, the Avatar was someone who could simply do whatever they wished.
A life where she graduated from medical school, became a doctor, and lived with her little family back in the South Pole would never happen. Instead, she had to worry about her daughter’s inheritance, take on her niece as her heir, and run three different nations while also sitting as the lady of another ruler.
And Thuy. Of course, she always had a duty to her Avatar.
Picking up her phone, Katara scrolled through the messages to see if there was any update from Zuko. The flight app showed his plane still in the air, but near enough to Republic City. With almost a decade of ruling as a monarch, her social media was limited, but it was still nice to see what her friends were up to.
Jinora’s daughter Bumi was in elementary school and had bonded with her Sky Bison. Ikki had adopted another flying lemur, bringing her total up to four. Meelo, while not specifically posting about it, was still living near the rehab center where Azula was staying. He was actually incredibly helpful, despite the strange stories Rohan had told her. Meelo seemed to care a lot about Azula and brought his trained, monastic calmness with him when he visited her.
Rohan was on radio silence, again, as they were doing something mysterious out at the Eastern Air Temple.
Thuy’s new account for “the family” was called The Dream Tweem, tweaking the pronunciation of Thuy’s name for the pun. It made Katara snort every time she saw it.
The Dream Tweem was heading to a remote village tucked somewhere in the Xishaan mountains. Jae-hwan, despite his numerous trips with Thuy, was still not a fan of the cold and there were plenty of pictures of him dealing with snow.
Just as Katara was flicking through the album, she got a video call.
“Good evening Auntie!” Thuy said cheerfully.
“Is that Lady Katara?” Suzu’s voice came from behind Thuy and Katara watched her push her shoulder back.
“The kids are in bed!” Thuy said sharply.
“You’re lying!” Suzu retorted and shoved Thuy’s face aside. Katara laughed as she watched the excitement drain from Sula’s face.
“Hello Fire Lady.” Suzu said sadly.
“I’m sorry Suzu, had I known Thuy was going to call, I’d have collected the children.”
“It’s fine.” Suzu replied, dragging the last word out on a sigh while she slunk of view.
“Have you met the ambassador yet?” Thuy asked, her face returning to the screen.
“He comes in tomorrow.” Katara said, shaking her head.
“Oh, Zuko got his then right?”
“Blazes, how can you just call him that?” Zula asked.
“Because my parents weren’t crazy Fire Nation royalists?” Thuy asked, annoyed and confused.
“Are you talking to Auntie?” Jae-hwan came from over Thuy, pushing down on her head.
“Auntie, it’s cold!” He whined.
“I’m not you’re Auntie.” Katara said. “And your mother would lose her mind if she heard you whine like that.”
“Don’t tell mom.” Jae-hwan said quickly.
“I have Toph on speed dial.” Katara warned.
Thuy shoved Jae-hwan off her and sat up, looking at him offscreen.
“You know, sifu says you can’t be cold if you’re practicing.” She said and then laughed as Jae-hwan made an unseen gesture.
“Am I going to hear from Aktuk or Tashi?” Katara asked.
“They’ve gone on ahead to scout since they can handle the cold better.” Thuy said.
“Excuse me?” Zula interjected and Thuy rolled her eyes.
“My apologies madam inner fire.” She said sarcastically.
“Did you call for a reason Thuy?” Katara asked.
“Oh, right. I was wondering if you’ve done any more research on the energybending thing. Tashi and I were talking about it, after that spirit debacle, but we don’t know if we should try again.” Thuy said.
Katara was silent for a moment and Thuy was also still, looking perfectly innocent.
“Where in the mountains are you going Thuy?” She asked.
“A village.”
“What village?”
“A…. mountainous one?”
“Thuy, are you looking for the guardians?”
“Okay so, remember, you can’t really tell me what to do anymore now that I’m a fully awakened Avatar!”
“Thuy! We were all going to go once Iroh recovered!”
“I am so close Auntie! Tashi and I feel really good about this one.” Thuy began but stopped as Katara sat up.
“We don’t know anything about the lion turtles. It could be dangerous!” Katara said.
“Mister Whiskers isn’t even freaking out a little.” Thuy said, trying to calm her down.
“That’s probably because she’s brumating, let’s be real.” Jae-hwan muttered.
“Oh, big word from the street urchin.” Suzu said with what passed for friendly mocking between them.
“I am a Beifong you horrendous little bit-” Jae-hwan’s voice was cut off as Thuy stepped away.
“Are any of you taking this seriously?” Katara asked.
“Auntie, we just came off a world saving mission. We know the stakes. I don’t think anyone else expects to find anything, so they’re doing, whatever. But Tashi and I can feel something out here.” Thuy said.
“Well, don’t poke around there for too long. We’ll go to Ember Island this summer. You and I already know something is out there and we can go as a family.” Katara urged gently.
Thuy smiled and nodded.
“You know, my parents are getting kind of jealous.” She said.
Katara’s breath slowed from the coincidence.
“Oh?” She asked.
“It’s not a big deal, considering how we view family in the Swamp. But it is weird for them to have me be so distant.” Thuy said.
“Comes with being the Avatar I suppose.” Katara agreed.
“We all have things to deal with. Good thing they had other kids.” Thuy said jokingly.
Remembering what Bato said about substitutions, Katara stayed quiet.
“We won’t stay long. I promise.” Thuy said, taking her silence as a reproach.
“Be safe.” Katara said.
“We will Auntie. I love you.” Thuy said.
“I love you. Give the others my love as well.” Katara said.
“Of course Auntie. Good night!” Thuy said.
Before she ended the call, Katara could hear the chorus of other voices wishing her goodnight.
Laying back, Katara held her phone to her chest.
Thuy called her Auntie, but she had become more like a little sister. Thuy had picked her from the very beginning and nothing over the years could change her mind. From every bad mood to times of no communication, Thuy never wavered in her loyalty to Katara.
Her family was such a complex thing.
Katara found a video channel about an unseen man who made knives from all sorts of materials. Hours in, and in the middle of a video about making a knife from smoke, her bedroom door opened slowly.
“Katara?” Zuko called out softly.
Half-asleep, Katara roused and sat up. Her body was warmer now and her robe slipped off one shoulder from her movement. Zuko paused as he stepped in, light burning in his palm.
“Well.” He said with enough interest that Katara felt her pulse quicken. She laughed and straightened out her robe.
“Oh don’t go through the trouble on my account.” Zuko said, walking to the bed.
“Did you just get in?” Katara asked.
Zuko extinguished his flame as he put a knee on the bed, propelling himself into her arms.
“Yes. I went to check on the children first.” He said, his voice muffled as he pressed his face into the dip of her shoulder.
“Are they asleep?” She asked. She felt him begin to untie the belt and she chuckled.
“They were when I left.” Zuko said, sitting back now to properly attend the knot.
“I thought we were going to have a big talk.” Katara said as Zuko loosened the knot and undid the belt. He slid his hands through the small gap of the robe and around to her waist.
“You distracted me.” He said.
“By sitting here?” Katara asked and giggled as Zuko pulled her closer.
“Exactly. You know how beautiful you are, how dare you be visible when we have serious things to discuss?”
“You’re impossible.” There was laughter in her voice and Katara knew Zuko was smiling in the dark.
“I’m not sitting here flaunting such allure as if it weren’t enough to declare war.”
“War, sir?”
“War, my lady, and while I shall put up an earnest fight,” Zuko moved her, laying her back down as he straddled her and began unbuttoning his shirt. “I do believe you will best me yet again.”
“Oh but darling,” Katara said demurely, her fingers plucking at his belt buckle. “You may certainly try.”
And while she wished for light to see him, there had been enough years between them that she knew his body by heart.
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#zutara#fanfiction#jax writes#modern au#the fic that prompts built#i wrote 24 pages and none of it works for the prompt
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The Israeli-Palestine conflict
*for the disclaimer - this message was written by an Israeli citizen who is following what happens in Gaza closely from news all over the world*
Thank you for reading this message. I will start with the fact that I’m not going to refer to the start of the conflict (who the land belongs to, who was here first) because it’s not relevant to the point that I’m trying to get to.
This message talks about the present-day - Israel is a state, Gaza is not. Israel is a democracy, Gaza is being controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization.
Those are facts and you can look them up at Google if you don’t believe me.
Okay so - let’s talk about the present conflict, “Shomer Hachomot”.
It all started with what happened in Jerusalem. Frankly, I’m not going to get into this either because you can look at this both ways but I will say this - nobody shot anybody just because they were in a certain place. Jerusalem is a very complicated story and I’ll admit I didn’t really dig about what happened there.
The fact is that after what happened in Jerusalem a group of Israeli-Arabs radicals who lived their whole life in peace with their neighborhoods, Israeli-Jews, made violent acts across the mixed cities (Lod, Ramle, Jerusalem, Haifa)... Cities that just a couple of days before were safe and happy for both sides became war zones - Arabs (again, radicals, there are a lot of Arabs that are against the way others act) lit things on fire, broke things across the city, tried and killed a citizen that was on his way home and made a lot of damage both to the city but more importantly to the trust of their neighborhoods who did nothing wrong.
Just for those who don’t understand how bad things got - my father bought a week before everything went down in Ramle meat from a nice Arab man who gave coffee and a warm welcome as my father was new to his shop. I used to get into Umm al-Fahm, An Arab village, to buy stuff.
Now people are afraid to walk the street - a jew that lived all his life in that mixed city was killed when he drove through it, people broke his window, took him out of his car and hit him with a brick to his head and he died. Murdered.
So, as “support” Hamas started firing rockets from Gaza to Israel and that’s how “Shomer Hachomot” - the current operation started.
Now, the drill is this - Hamas is firing rockets at the citizens of Israel. Israel tells them to stop and if they don’t they fire in Gaza and that’s the part you need to read closely.
Israel is not firing at civilians. It’s a fact and if you don’t believe me you can look at videos such as https://www.facebook.com/ynetnews/posts/10159905254995572
Translation: “Check if there are any children here.”
“There are kids here, they are moving fast.”
“Wow, we think there are kids here. We are stopping this.”
“Right? there is a big one and a couple of small ones.”
“We are suspecting that there are kids and we will not do it, we wouldn’t risk their life.”
“Yes.”
So, why Israel was planning to fire in that place in the first place? Simple this is the point that I feel that most of the world doesn’t understand.
When Israel fires at Gaza it doesn’t aim at civilians. Hamas is firing missiles and building headquarters where the civilians are so when Israel will come and kill Hamas members the citizens will be in the crossfire as well and then they would say “Israel is killing civilians!”
Now you would say “this is not an excuse they are still firing at civilians!”
Wrong.
Israel is giving a couple of hours’ notice before they are attacking a building with civilians in it. Just a couple of days ago a big news tour was brought down - one of the reporters, from the Gaza side, who worked there wrote a breaking story about how they got a short notice, about how he couldn’t get most of the things he holds dear out. About how people that are leaving there are homeless.
What he ‘forgot’ to say was that the building was the headquarters of Hamas, and they were the target of this Israeli raid. All the citizens by the way are well and alive because, as I said, Israel always tells beforehand so that people wouldn’t get hurt.
A couple of days ago we saw the picture and video of a young girl (6) that was rescued from the distraction of her home after an Israeli raid destroyed a building close to hers. Tragic.
Again what the media left out was that Hamas build tunnels underneath the city so he could hide from civilians and Israelis alike and when Israel destroyed a building that was related to Hamas the tunnels underneath collapsed which, unexpectedly, led to homes of innocent civilians collapsing as well - hence what happened with this 6-year-old.
Israel doesn’t want innocent civilians to be killed and there was no way to know this would happen - a thing that Israel by the way said and apologized for as it was not planned to happened.
I don’t remember when but sometime in this operation a rocket that was fired from Gaza and was supposed to lend in Israel landed in Gaza and killed kids. Do you know what the media in Gaza did?
That’s right kids - they took pictures and posted that Israeli rid killed those kids. Because that’s easy to blame the enemy when the whole world thinks it’s their fault anyway so why not make things worst?
Another point that makes people hate Israel is the Iron Dome. Fewer people in Israel are getting killed because of that - for those who don’t know what the Iron Dome is, it’s “is a mobile all-weather air defense system[8] developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries.[7] The system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) to 70 kilometers (43 mi) away and whose trajectory would take them to an Israeli populated area.[9][10]” (taken from Wikipedia)
That is the face of Israel - defend and protect citizens while Hamas is doing everything he can to attack Israeli citizens without thinking twice about the life of people in Gaza.
Funny story, did you know that Israel gives Gaza food, fuel, electricity, medicine, aid, money, and far more? Every month? Yes, taxes from people like me and my friends go to Gaza to help them. My money goes to help Gaza citizens, my government tries to help Gaza citizens and it’s been happening for the last 20 years.
Now let’s talk about what happened world-wild. When things are bad for Israel do you know who the rest of the world blames? Jewish people.
Notice how from anti-Israeli the hate became to be anti-Semite. In London, my favorite place on earth, people called out to “rape all the Jewish girls.”
In Montreal people are looking to find Jewish houses to attack the people in the house, my friend told me that she knows a girl our age that is afraid to go out of the house. They called a mutual friend of hers who is Christian to threaten her if she doesn’t give them her location so they could hurt her friend. Only a month ago a citizen from my city was murdered in the US for being Jewish. He was there to celebrate the wedding of his family and was murdered. For being Jewish.
Believe me when I say that non of the citizens of Israel are happy for how people in Gaza are suffering. It’s awful. But, and it’s a big but, it’s not Israel’s fault it’s Hamas. So yes, #freeGazafromHamas is the hashtag that needs to go around, it doesn’t have to be Israel VS Gaza, us or them, life if not black and white, it needs to be #IstandwithIsrael while also saying #freeGazafromHamas.
To sum up - please read more than one source and don’t believe everything that the media is saying. I know it became a trend to hate Israel because a lot of celebrities see what’s on the media and decided not to question anything and hate a country that is just trying to protect itself.
And please, god please, stop hating Jewish people who have nothing to do with what happens in the middle east.
If you have any more questions or if you want to make a civil conversation you can always write me <3
#israel#standwithus#conflict#standwithisrael#gaza#טאמבלר#ישראל#freegazafromhamas#stop the hate#jewish#Jewish people
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This is a bit random but if characters from your fics lived in the Atla universe what element would they bend? Personally I think Lily would still have all her powers which would result in people thinking she's the avatar even though she's not, Obito would be a firebender, Minato an airbender and Lenin dearest would be a waterbender/bloodbender/maybe the avatar?. This is just the vibe I get tho-
Who needs bullet points when we can do a far too thought out AU that spans multiple fandoms/recursive works that will never happen?
More to the point, elements in AtLA is a mix of personality (we see earth benders as often brash and stubborn, water benders as adaptive, etc.) but also simply genetics. So, while I get that’s kind of the point of this post, it’s a bit weird to me to assign an element solely on personality.
So with that, let’s get started.
The Setting
Just to make things fun let’s make our AU take place sometime between Sozin’s first comet and Roku’s death and Aang awakening from that iceberg. The air benders have been wiped out, seemingly with no survivors, the South Pole has been invaded and the water benders from there captured and brought back to the Fire Nation, many of the colonies in the Earth Kingdom have been established, but the North Pole and great cities in the Earth Kingdom still stand.
The Avatar hasn’t been missing for one-hundred years yet, but he’s been missing for decades and people are coming around to the idea that maybe he’s really not going to show up.
Wizard Lenin/Tom Riddle
In this AU we’ll give Tom Riddle a slightly more traditional shitty background. Since we can’t really have a Tom in the AtLA universe he’s going to have the AtLA generic equivalent name that canon even jokes about: Lee. Lee is the mixed heritage son of a Fire Nation lord and a water bender from the south pole who grows up in a Fire Nation orphanage. And yes, this does happen in the absolute worst way you can possibly imagine, one of the imprisoned water benders from the south pole is raped.
As for Tom (Lee, you get the idea) arriving at an orphanage instead of being imprisoned/taken in as a son, well I’ll leave that to imagination but we can imagine a relatively compassionate guard, a dash of luck, or perhaps someone being an idiot and thinking “oh just dump it in an orphanage, there’s no way it will turn into a water bender too”
So, Tom grows up in an orphanage and looks just a bit... different from everyone else and is clearly not purely from the fire nation. I’m imagining much darker skin (and POC Tom Riddle is the weirdest thing in the world to contemplate, but here we are) and the pale blue eyes.
Tom grows up, dreaming probably of entering the military and winning himself glory, prestige, honor, and clawing out of this impoverished life he was born into. He undoubtedly desperately hopes he’s a fire bender, as not only is it cool but they have the best chance of making it in the world, and probably stays up late for many nights fruitlessly attempting to shoot fire out of his hands.
Unfortunately for Tom, sometime when he’s probably around eight or so, turns out he’s actually a water bender. Naturally, Tom has a huge meltdown and existential crisis as this means something’s terribly terribly wrong. More, all his hopes are ruined, as while a non-bender can make it a bender who is not a fire bender is a foreigner and traitor to the state.
Tom runs away and being a precocious child is able to make it on his own and about the country probably pulling off Toph-like scams. Eventually he runs into a much younger Hama who has just escaped prison and not yet started on her scary old lady adventures of imprisoning random villagers in caves. Hama goes, “of course, yes my child, I knew your mother” and gives Tom the whole horrible rape tale along with “I will teach you everything I know including my scary blood bending”. So Tom learns scary blood bending, probably stays with Hama a few years, and then realizes Hama isn’t going anywhere.
Hama’s content kidnapping random people into caves. At this point, angry and suddenly very pro-water bender Tom wants to murder the Fire Lord and his entire goddamn family and put himself in charge. Go big or go home, am I right?
So Tom leaves, Hama probably saying, “Come back any time, my beautiful murder child” and probably goes exploring the world in search of how the hell he’s going to bring down the Fire Lord. He also probably murders his entire father’s family and steals all his money, but that’s a different story. I imagine he goes to the North Pole where he learns that, as much of a water bender as he is, that he’s the son of someone from the Fire Nation closes pretty much every door to him. He’ll always be an outsider and the North Pole is very frosty towards him.
According to Hama, the South Pole is in shambles, so Tom probably doesn’t even bother going.
So Tom probably goes and bums around the Earth Kingdom, loitering in Ba Sing Se and Omashu, looking for that damned Spirit Library in the desert, etc. for a good number of years as he works to perfect his water bending and make himself an instrument of death.
And then he meets an alien and everything changes.
Lily
Tom probably manages to wander around the spirit world at one point in his late teens and probably almost gets eaten by something terrifying. While he learns much it’s not really anything useful and is more in the “too cosmic horror for Tom” variety. More than that though, something follows him back out.
When he comes to back in the real world there’s this thing sitting next to him that looks enough like a person but also like someone told a gifted artist what humans look like and they got it mostly right but also went a little nuts. It’s a girl, a few years younger than him, who has flaming red hair, absurdly green eyes, pale skin, and facial features he can’t recognize for the life of him (Lily still looking western in this to up the ante of ‘she’s an alien folks’).
Tom sacrifices his dinner to it and hopes it doesn’t eat him.
It explains that it’s a tourist from another dimension, beyond even the Spirit World, and that it’s come to see what the mortal world is all about. Tom is naturally very weirded out but at this point decides to roll with it.
Except it doesn’t leave and clearly expects Tom to play tour guide.
He does, reluctantly, because he doesn’t want to be eaten but he also sort of gets used to the thing. Then, one day, it starts bending multiple elements with utter ease and Tom is at first flabbergasted and horrified (only to remember that spirits can do what they want and aren’t like lowly mortals who can only bend one element) and then he gets the idea.
The Avatar, lazy bastard that he is (and Tom might be a little more than slightly bitter that he himself is not the Avatar), appears to be MIA and not coming back any time soon. The entire world it seems is waiting for the Avatar to come and save them. But, Tom says to himself, who needs the Avatar when you can just have an Avatar. An Avatar and, of course, her water bending master.
Thus, the scheme is set, Tom will teach this weird alien thing how to a) act like a goddamn human in public and b) water bending and together they will pretend she’s the Avatar and got lost in the spirit world a few decades ago (which accounts for the youthful age and the weird appearance) and use this to gain allies, topple the Fire Nation, and eventually give the throne to Tom.
Lily, who doesn’t know the difference between being a tourist and taking over a nation, goes along but is basically this story’s answer to Uncle Iroh always getting distracted by Pai Sho.
Haru/Dead Last
Given that they’re in the Earth Kingdom, and that Lee picks up water bending insultingly quickly which makes Tom fume in rage, they go to pick up an earth bending master/spread the word that the Avatar has returned from her multiple decades long vacation.
Along the way they probably run into Haru, who is the world’s most useless excuse for an Earth Bender. As always, he’s so average looking you can barely remember what he looks like beyond “generic earth bender”.
They probably watch him for two seconds, Lily asks if this is it, and Tom Riddle says, “what a joke”.
Minato Namikaze
Given that all the air benders are dead we’re going to make Minato a very talented earth bender (it is also very weird to imagine a dark haired/dark eyed Minato, but I suppose we’re going to roll with it). This also, to me, does fit his personality a little better as while he is a leaf on the wind kind of guy he also does dig his heels in and get very stubborn now and then.
Minato’s young, younger than Tom (Lee), but he’s incredibly talented and clever. To keep his shinobi background mostly in tact I imagine that Minato is a swiftly rising member of the Dai Li, stationed in Ba Sing Se, but who occasionally goes on intelligence missions to the other feudal powers in the Earth Kingdom.
So I imagine Lily and Tom run into him unnervingly frequently, probably first meeting him off duty in Omashu where he does his “extremely polite and friendly local guide” routine to show the pair the city (never mind that Tom insists he’s been to Omashu plenty of times goddammit). Despite this, Lily and Minato become friends, Lily easily confessing she’s the Avatar (which Minato at first thinks is a joke, even if she looks strange, then goes ‘oh my god, it’s not a joke).
Eventually Minato is stationed to spy on them under the guise of teaching Lily earth bending. So he joins the gang. Tom, who knows exactly what’s going on, is not amused while Lily is just happy to collect another friend who will actually play Pai Sho with her.
Kushina Uzumaki
Kushina is a earth bender, hands down. I debated making her a water bender (because whirlpool) but that personality is just pure earth bender material. Besides, I can just picture her so easily coming from Kyoshi.
So Kushina’s an earth bending Kyoshi warrior, who while ten times as powerful as Minato, also lacks any of his control or cleverness. Kushina has undoubtedly left Kyoshi, abandoning their neutrality, to join the war and kick some fire bender ass.
She does this but along the way frequently runs into the gang where she annoys the ever loving shit out of Minato (her new rival) and claims that Avatar Lily is her new idol.
Rabbit
Rabbit is a mysterious spirit from Lily’s past that she refuses to talk about except in the darkest of terms promising doom and destruction the likes of which the world has never seen.
No one knows how to react to this. Or what a plain old ‘rabbit’ even is.
Tobirama Senju
Because no story’s not complete without Tobirama, I imagine he’s a stuffy waterbender and scholar from the North Pole who Tom is miffed at as the man refused to teach him even more water bending. Tobirama naturally feels that the day he teaches a blatant spy is the day he goes and drowns himself.
Later, when Tom has picked up the Avatar and Tom rubs it in his face, Tobirama probably reluctantly spends a day or so teaching them something/fighting off the hordes of Fire Nation soldiers on their tale (it’s not Avatar if the gang isn’t constantly chased by fire benders).
Obito Uchiha
Obito is the answer to a fire bending instructor. Obito’s a firebender and the youngest son of a wealthy Fire Nation lord. However, Obito’s the black sheep of the family that everyone hates, a late bloomer when it comes to his bending, and is seen as bringing dishonor on the family.
Itching to prove himself, Obito becomes a soldier and goes to the Earth Kingdom, and eventually decides the best way to earn recognition and restore his honor is to capture the newly resurrected Avatar. Congratulations, Obito, you’re this story’s Zuko.
Obito, while not the most talented fire bender at first (though as he gets older he gets dangerously good at it) is extremely clever and becomes the largest threat to the gang.
That said, Obito actually does grow to like Lily quite a bit and begins to realize honor doesn’t actually mean that much to him and he doesn’t even really like his family. He doesn’t even dislike the concept of the Avatar and thinks the world probably does need one right about now.
So after a whole bunch of chasing them around the globe, thinking about his family, and being forced to almost kill the Avatar now and then he eventually defects and volunteers himself as fire bending instructor.
This is met with suspicion on all sides but he and Lily are bros so he wins.
Avatar Roku
Needing to pick up air bending, Lily probably fakes it until she makes it for a while, but eventually runs into Avatar Roku’s wandering spirit taking vacation from an ice cube.
He’s alarmed, but Aang’s trapped in ice, so if someone’s going to substitute then great.
To everyone else it just looks like Lily’s constantly talking to herself, playing Pai Sho with herself, and miraculously picks up air bending out of absolutely nowhere.
Also anyone close to Lee probably figures out she’s not really human/the avatar at this point, but they’ll take what they can get.
And This All Results In
Lily learns all the elements, there’s probably some big battle, then Lily gives some ridiculous speech about world peace that has nothing to do with anything and while the Fire Nation is defeated, Tom is not in fact made Fire Lord and remains merely the Avatar’s humble water bending instructor.
Instead, if he’s alive at this point, the crown goes to Iroh and he’s given a council of angry Earth Kingdom people who tell him to behave or else. We can give Iroh niceish things sometimes. That, or, hilariously, Obito becomes hokage/Fire Lord being distantly in line for the throne and doesn’t even know how that happened or what his life even is right now.
The colonies are the same mess in canon so something like Republic City probably eventually comes about.
Still, there’s peace, and probably statues to the gang all over the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes (while the Fire Nation grumbles and remembers the good old days when they controlled the world).
And then Aang eventually wakes up extremely confused and confronts Avatar Lily noting, “Hey, I’m the actual Avatar” and Lily after a suspiciously blank pause explains, “I said an Avatar, never said I was the Avatar”
So, that’s that. If anyone wants other specific characters added into this mess feel free to comment.
#ask#anon#avatar the last airbender#lily and the art of being sisyphus#minato namikaze and the destroyer of worlds#crossover#fusion
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'Cause I Was Just Thirteen (when I got my first taste of danger)
@cubedleo this isn’t what you’ve been waiting for but it’s somethin’ sjdjb
A/N: I was trying to write the Spirit Sokka AU but my brain wouldn’t let me until I finished this,,, so. AO3 link!!
Summary:
“We’re just kids.”
“Are we?” Sokka asks, and the silence stretches between them.
(The answer is yes, but it’s easier to pretend they grew up a long time ago than admit they’re just broken children trying to fix a broken world)
When Sokka was twelve years old he carved a promise to be a warrior into a block of ice.
It took him an hour to chop out the crude symbols with the tip of his boomerang, and when he was done he was sweating, and his arm ached. War was in his blood, it was his main drive, his life.
He never understood the people who didn’t want to fight.
(Later in his life, he would meet a boy with a scarred face and a girl with dangerous eyes, and he’d know that in a different life, that could’ve been him and his sister)
(The desire to fight would all but fizzle out at that realization)
There are few people left in the world who weren’t raised for war.
Bumi is one of them, and so is Aang. Sokka can see it in the way they speak, the way they move. The way they don’t shy away from fire or loud adventures that draw attention. He can see it in their smiles, wide and fearless and kind.
Bumi and Aang weren’t born into a world of destruction and stifling fear.
(Maybe that’s why Aang looks so much more hurt by the charred forests and waves of injured troops finally coming home)
(Sokka hurts too, but he’s tired)
(He’s so tired)
When the war ends, Sokka breathes for the first time in his life.
It’s like a wave of exhaustion hits him all at once, and if Suki hadn’t been supporting him and his broken leg, he would have crashed to the ground.
“We won,” Katara whispers.
No one cheers. No one smiles.
Slowly, Zuko stands, Katara’s hand hovers next to his hip and the second scar his family gave him. He holds a hand out to Aang, his face stone.
Aang doesn’t shake his hand or nod back grimly. He launches himself at Zuko and laughs with so much relief in his voice it reminds Sokka just how young he is.
(Aang wasn’t raised for war, but he was shoved into the middle with no warning, and expected to fix it)
Zuko shudders and stumbles, and Katara catches him and Aang before they all fall.
Sokka watches her, his baby sister, and realizes she’s been catching people her entire life. His eyes go blurry, and he staggers out of Suki’s grip to grab her shoulders and crush her against his chest.
“You made it,” he says into her hair.
Katara starts to cry.
Sokka isn’t sure how long they stand there after Toph burrows her way between them all and Suki wraps her arms as far as they can reach over the group, but it’s long enough for his leg to scream painfully in protest, and the weight on his chest to return.
Because it isn’t over yet.
Sokka looks down at his friends- his family , and realizes with a shaking breath that the war might be over, but the fight is far from done.
***
Getting used to a post-war world is more difficult than Sokka could have imagined.
For Toph, it’s not very hard. She was raised sheltered, and even despite her attempts to shun that lifestyle, she was never exposed to the loss of war or the scar it left.
Sokka is proud of Aang and Katara, who despite everything, held onto their wonder and inner light.
(the nights he spent pouring over strategies and plotting routes, burying evidence of scorch marks from around their campsite, the days he spent cracking jokes and letting them take out their frustrations on him through light hearted teasing paid off, and he’s so, so proud)
Suki was always an optimist, and Sokka is grateful for her every day, especially at night when he feels the guilt and fear grip his heart and threaten to undo him.
(She holds him and they whisper uncertainties and reassurances to each other until the sun rises)
Sometimes, though, Sokka just wants someone who understands what it’s like to live with what feels like the weight of his people on his shoulders, who knows what it means to grow up training every day for a fight he never asked for.
He finds himself sitting with Zuko more and more often after the war is over.
“Do you think they can ever really forget?” Zuko asks, watching a group of kids fly kites in the courtyard a ways away from where they sit.
“Them?” Sokka shrugs. “Yeah, they’ll forget. They’re just kids.”
Zuko’s eyebrows lower into something sad. “We’re just kids.”
“Are we?” Sokka asks, and the silence stretches between them
(The answer is yes, but it’s easier to pretend they grew up a long time ago than admit they’re just broken children trying to fix a broken world)
***
Hakoda is by no means old, even though his eyes crinkles at the corners and his hair is lined with wisps of white from years of stress, but war takes its toll on everyone, and the warrior has seen too many battles.
He walks with a permanent limp now, and when he asks Sokka to succeed him as chief of the Southern Water Tribe, he favors his right leg.
Sokka is eighteen, the same age his father was when he took charge, technically a full fledged adult now. But the sag in Sokka’s shoulders and the numbness in his eyes didn’t appear on his father until Kya died. His father grew up in a war just like he did, but he didn’t fight in it until Sokka was twelve.
There’s guilt in Hakoda’s eyes, so Sokka doesn’t stop himself from grinning and accepting happily, erasing any sign of the aching exhaustion off his face.
“Is this really what you want?” Katara asks him later, staring into the fire that crackles quietly between them.
Sokka wants to ask her if she’s ever asked Aang that, or Zuko. He wants to tell her he doesn’t have a choice, none of them ever had a choice.
Instead, he smiles. “Well, yeah! I was getting tired of Zuko being the only royal one.”
He can see it in Katara’s face, that she doesn’t believe him.
(But the war is over, the war is over so she lets him lie, the war is over and the worry lines on her forehead are slowly going away)
(Sokka knows now, more than ever, that the war isn’t really over)
(He lets her believe it is)
***
Sokka is at another meeting, another day long discussion of how to achieve peace when the sight of fire and red emblems still scares children, when all that conceals Ozai’s fallen statue in Omashu is a large, green canopy, when Sokka’s people are still scavenging for any food they can find, when Aang is still the only Air Nomad left.
Sokka forces himself to sit straight instead of prop his head on his hand and roll his eyes at Aang as the Earth Nation ambassador goes on and on.
Usually, Toph would be here to cut in with some crude one liner to break up the tension, and Katara would take notes for him when his mind wandered. Usually Suki would squeeze his hand under the table to keep him present.
But this is a closed meeting, as stupid as that is, and only recognised officials are allowed inside.
Zuko sits next to him, hands folded on the table, the epitome of royalty. Even Aang, who’d gotten such a sugar rush from his fourteenth birthday the day before that he tried to teach Momo to swordfight, sits stoically and nods along to the speech that’s been going on for an hour.
“-focusing our rebuilding efforts at this time on Ba Sing Se would be our smartest move,” the ambassador finally finishes.
Sokka raises an eyebrow. “Rebuilding what part?”
“Excuse me?”
“In your entire drawl you didn’t mention the outer rings of Ba Sing Se once. Do you really think we should spend more time and money on a rich inner ring that thrives off the other citizens' poverty?”
Aang looks surprised, like he’s trying to walk back through the meeting to figure out why he missed that. Zuko nods. “I spent time in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se personally, ambassador. I agree that you should be putting your main focus on the people there.”
If the ambassador were a firebender, he’d be blowing smoke out of his ears. “All due respect Fire Lord, but you’d really take the side of a chief of the most desolate land in the world over mine? A non-bender no less?”
Sokka’s wolf tail flips over his head as a rush of hot hair whips past him, from the Fire Lord and Avatar respectively. Aang is standing, his staff in his hand, and Zuko’s hands are clenched, his eyes flashing a warning.
Sokka holds up a hand, and Aang sits down, Zuko relaxes slightly.
(Because he might not be able to do the things they can, he might not have their power, but he does have their respect)
“You forget, ambassador,” Sokka says coolly, “that your king himself is a non-bender, and a personal friend.”
The underlying threat is understood loud and clear, and the ambassador sits down.
The discussion goes on, and Sokka has the taste of bile in his throat for the rest of the meeting.
It isn’t the first time he’s been disliked, like not being able to bend somehow makes him unfit. He sees the looks people give him when he walks alongside Aang on the street instead of behind him, when he tousles the great Toph Beifong’s hair or spars with the Fire Lord, when he teases his sister in public.
It isn’t the first time he’s been disliked for being a non-bender, but it’s the first time someone has said it to his face, in front of his allies. It’s the first time he’s heard the disdain voiced, and the ambassadors words cut sharp like a wip.
(The bile returns later, when he realizes his mind changed the title ‘family’ to ‘ally’)
***
The first thing Sokka does as the official Chief of the South is make plans for a memorial to commemorate the men lost in the fight, and the waterbenders lost in Ozai’s attempts to make sure that his grandfather's plan worked, that the Avatar wouldn’t survive.
(Sokka and Zuko find the place where the waterbenders were held a few weeks later, an entire underground fortress of cages)
(Every cage is full except one, there are no survivors)
(Sokka stares at Hama’s empty cage and forgives her)
It’s Katara’s idea to make the old Fire Nation warship part of the memorial, and with Toph’s help, the two of them build a statue that intertwines with the tarnished red flags and snow beaten metal. It means remembrance and hope.
Sokka’s tears freeze on his flushed cheeks when it’s finished.
“You know,” he tells Zuko the first time the Fire Lord sees it, “that ship isn’t all bad memories. It’s the reason we met.”
Zuko scoffs. “I thought that was a bad memory?”
“Funny how things can grow, isn’t it?”
Zuko has never looked more thankful than in that moment, and that night, sleepily sipping wine while Toph snores in his lap with her feet propped against Suki, watching Aang and Katara dance around the fire, he tells him so.
Sokka smiles, and looks around at his family. It seems like a lifetime ago when all he had was gran gran and Katara.
(Funny, how things can grow)
***
Rebuilding the South is… not easy.
Even with the men home from war, the South’s trade systems and outreach to the other nations had been completely demolished in the war.
The North, despite all its talk about rebuilding its sister tribe, does very little in the way of help.
The Northerners who moved with Sokka’s grandfather are angry, and a group of them plan to sail back to the North to convince them to bring aid.
Sokka lets them, and the day after they leave a blizzard hits the South.
Only four of the seven return.
(After the funerals, Sokka stands on the wall of ice surrounding their village and begs the moon for an explanation until his throat is sore and his voice is hoarse and raspy)
(She never answers)
***
Aang shows up one day, bouncing on his toes and grinning so brightly it hurts Sokka’s eyes, and tells him they’re taking a vacation.
Sokka has things to do, responsibilities and work that he can’t just blow (ha) off, and he just about says so when Appa roars, and Sokka remembers a time when he didn’t have to be chief or have the weight of his entire tribe on his shoulders.
(Somehow, the weight of the world felt lighter than this)
(Maybe because he grew up carrying it, or maybe because he never did, he only ever carried his friends)
Hakoda agrees easily to take over the Chief’s duties for the time being, and Sokka sees relief in his eyes when Sokka picks Aang up in a hug, and the two run off to the flying bison waiting for them.
Sokka sits in the saddle and stares at the back of Aang’s head, and tries to remember what it felt like when this was his life.
“Aang? Do you ever… miss when it was just us?”
The way Aang’s shoulders slump tells Sokka everything, and the younger boy nods. “Sometimes.”
(Sokka climbs up next to Aang and wraps his arms around his shoulders, and takes the reins when Aang turns to bury himself in Sokka’s shirt, because being Chief is hard, but being the Avatar is infinitely harder)
They meet at the Western Air Temple, because that was the first time they were all together.
Usually, there would be workers milling about, restoring all they can, but Aang got them to take the day off.
Katara hugs them both when they arrive. She cups Sokka’s face with her hands and squints at him like she knows he’s hiding something, and it takes all Sokka has not to crumble.
“Move aside!” Toph shouts, not giving Katara a chance to listen before she slides the stone under her out of the way. Toph punches Sokka’s arm hard, enough to make him wince, and then she drags both him and Aang into a bone crushing hug that they barely get out of alive.
Zuko laughs at them both, which is a welcome sound. Sokka only ever heard him laugh a few times during the war, and even fewer when they were all still navigating the new world. He steps forward and bows to Sokka, “Chief.”
Sokka doubles his dramatics when he bows back, “Fire Lord.”
Zuko snorts and stands. He pulls Aang into a side hug, and grips Sokka’s forearm. “It’s been too long.”
“The South Pole isn’t exactly a short walk away from the Fire Nation.”
“No,” Zuko smiles. “I guess I’ll have to plan more diplomatic meetings.”
Sokka groans.
Suki is a lot gentler in her hello, kissing Aang’s cheek and squeezing his shoulder, then wrapping herself around Sokka where she’ll stay for the better part of their meetup.
“Look at us,” she says, and she’s beautiful. “We’ve all changed so much.”
(Sokka hates how as the others smile, his stomach churns)
***
The anniversary of the end of the Hundred Year War is filled with celebrations, the steps of Zuko’s palace are transformed into a festival, a symbol of the Fire Nation opening its gates with kindness for the first time in a century.
Important people from every nation attend, and Zuko works with the Earth Kingdom to pay travel costs for as many citizens as possible, especially children.
Sokka has never seen so much food.
His stomach growls and his mouth waters, and Katara laughs at him when he’s led off to be formally introduced instead of being allowed to eat until he bursts.
Katara falls into step next to him, and Sokka takes a few seconds to take in how amazing she looks.
Her travels with Aang aren’t rushed or secret anymore, her eyes are brighter than he ever remembers seeing them, and she wears the Air Nomad cuffs Aang gave to her on her last birthday, a green headband holds her hair in place, and Sokka recognizes it as Toph’s. She kept the light-weight red shoes from their time hiding in the Fire Nation, and her blue dress has been altered to handle the hot climate most of the world shares right now.
Sokka thinks she’s the only one who could pull off wearing an outfit that includes all four nations, and he thinks she looks happy.
“I love you, you know,” He tells her, because he hasn’t seen her in months, because he missed her.
(He won’t admit it, but Sokka is still getting used to not having his sister at his side. His whole life, she’s been there. There’s something missing in him when she’s not)
Katara looks surprised for a moment, and then she smiles, and slips under Sokka’s arm, leaning against his side. “I love you too.”
Eventually, Sokka gets to eat, and relax, even if it’s only for a moment.
He watches Aang and Toph laugh at something Momo is doing as he devours a leg of meat he can’t name, and the sound of people enjoying themselves fills his ears.
Sokka had spent so much time staring at plans and treaties, organizing trades, building houses in the South, teaching people to fish and wash fur, that he hadn’t stopped once to look around him.
He’d spent so much time trying to heal the world, he never realized it was working.
(He loses his appetite then, but he still dances with Toph until his feet hurt, and he still tries to play Airball with Aang again, and he still smiles, and he still laughs)
(Because maybe he spent so much time trying to heal the world, that he hadn’t realized he was healing himself too)
***
People have tried to assassinate Zuko before. Sokka gets a letter from Toph (from Iroh, really, but they all pretend he’s not the one she dictates to) explaining a failed attempt in great detail at least once a month.
Toph finds it hilarious, but that’s because she’s there to take down the guy before they even make it into the palace.
Sokka finds it terrifying, because he’s halfway across the world with no way of helping.
It’s one of those sunny days that makes Sokka glad to be in the Fire Nation, and he’s sparring with Zuko, and for once, he might be winning.
Zuko’s dual swords clash against his singular one, and the two grunt as they both try to gain the upper hand. Sokka smirks and sweeps his foot out, tripping Zuko and knocking him onto his back. “Ha! I win!”
He reaches out to help Zuko up, fully intent on bragging for the rest of the day.
“Zuko move!” Toph shouts suddenly, and it scares Sokka so bad his instincts kick in, and he drags Zuko back to the ground, rolling away as a spike of ice longer than his wingspan flies through the air right where his head used to be.
Zuko breathes heavily under him, and Sokka slowly lifts himself off the ground, staying crouched as he scans the area.
Toph is on her feet, Katara at her side with a hand on her shoulder, and Aang is rushing forward, pulling Zuko to stand.
“Just so we’re clear, that wasn’t you, Katara, right?” Sokka asks, pulling his boomerang off his hip stealthily.
“What? No!”
“Didn’t think so,” Sokka says under his breath, and whips around to throw his boomerang towards Zuko and Aang.
Aang yelps and ducks behind Zuko, and there’s the sound of metal hitting something soft, and a loud ‘oof’.
Sokka barely has time to move before a wave of water forms a tiny tsunami in his direction. “Zuko, you need to get inside!”
People had tried to assassinate Zuko before, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for the assassin to be from a different nation, though most of them were firebenders, loyal to Ozai.
Sokka realizes too late that this one being a waterbender is no coincidence.
His legs are swept out from under him and he hits the ground with a grunt. He’d slipped on ice like an amatuer. Sokka pushes himself up, reaching for his sword, and is met face to face with the assassin.
His eyes widen. “Nia?”
She snarls at him and yanks him into a choke hold, Sokka watches as his friends circle her.
“Let him go,” Zuko says, and it's only because Sokka knows him that he hears the tremor in his voice. “This is about me and you.”
“You think I’m here for the Fire Lord?” Nia spits, tightening her grip on Sokka’s neck. “I couldn’t care less about you or your people.”
And oh. Sokka should have known. He should have known because he knows Nia, he knows what she’s been through, what she’s lost. “This is about your sister.”
Nia’s breath quickens in his ear and she snarls. “You sent her back to the North, she died on that ship!”
Sokka should tell her it’s not his fault, but he doesn’t, because it is.
(He learned a long time ago that when you’re a leader, everything is your fault)
“You’re weak,” Nia continues, and Sokka can see Toph stiffen in the corner of his eye.
Katara’s glare is sharp. “Leave him alone. What happened to your sister was an accident!”
“It never should have happened!” Nia shouts, and her voice softens when he talks to Sokka’s sister. “If you were Chief, it wouldn’t have happened.”
For a moment, no one does anything. Everyone is still, frozen in a stunned and confused silence. Finally, Aang says, “What does that mean?”
“Our leader should be a bender! You and your father have made us weak! I saw it when I moved to the South!” Nia yanks on Sokka’s head, cutting off his airway with her grip. “With you gone, a bender will be in charge, as it should be.”
Sokka gasps on air, and closes his eyes.
That’s it. That’s always been it. Sokka can’t bend, which makes him less, which makes him weak.
History will remember the Avatar, and his three masters. History won’t remember Sokka.
(History has never remembered non-benders before)
(The world may have changed, but it hasn’t changed that much)
Maybe it would be better, with Katara as chief. She’s cool headed and smart, she pays attention in meetings, she’s respectful and kind and responsible.
Ever since they were kids, Katara has been everything Sokka is not.
Sokka coughs as a rush of air fills his lungs, and he grabs at the closest thing to him, which happens to be Aang’s hand, and holds tight. Zuko is holding his shoulders, searching his eyes for something Sokka isn’t sure is there. Katara has an arm around his back, and Toph is squating next to Zuko.
“Nia?”
No one answers, and Sokka understands. They caught her. She’ll be shipped back to the South for a trial. A trial Sokka will have to rule over.
(He’ll have to banish her, he knows. He knows and he hates it because she’s a child)
(She’s a child who was raised for war, and when it was won, she found another one to fight)
(Sokka knows, he knows and he understands)
His shoulders start to shake, the mask he’d been wearing for so long starts to shatter, and the hands holding him tighten, Toph says, “You’re not weak.”
“I would hate to be a chief,” Katara assures him.
But none of them say anything about Nia, and none of them try to stop his tears.
(Because in a world where children fight the battles, who really wins?)
***
Sokka is accompanied by his friends when he returns home, which sounds a lot better than saying he’s bringing back the Fire Lord, the Avatar, and the two most powerful water and earthbenders in the world.
He’s welcomed back with open arms.
The South has grown, refugees of the Water Tribe are returning home, the warriors are all home, the children are growing up on their own terms.
Hakoda tells him they found a place for Nia in the North, a school for kids who’d been traumatized by the war or the resulting events after it ended, and Sokka is so relieved that he spends the rest of the day letting Aang drag him penguin sledding and teaching Toph and Suki to spear fish.
They have a feast, and it’s the first time Sokka laughs in a long time. Aang doesn’t let go of his arm the entire time, and Zuko promises another spar.
Sokka isn’t perfect, and he isn’t all powerful. But when he looks at the shining, beautiful, alive faces of his family and his people, he knows he’s not weak, and he knows eventually, they’ll be okay.
When Sokka was twelve years old he carved a promise to be a warrior into a block of ice.
Now Sokka is nineteen, and he carves his name into a tiny corner of the icy memorial, right above Katara’s, to the left of Zuko’s, to the right of Toph’s crude fist print, and just above Aang’s.
Sokka was raised for war.
He held his sobbing sister as his father explained that the Fire Nation killed his mother. He watched the warriors ships sail away without him. He spent years teaching himself to fight so he could protect his family.
He was the newly redeemed Fire Prince’s first friend and the first (honorary) male Kyoshi Warrior. He fell in love with the Moon Spirit and crafted a sword from meteorite. He taught the first metalbender it’s okay to cry. He taught the Avatar how to deal with nightmares.
Sokka was raised for war. He was raised in fear and hate. He was raised to fight.
As the years go by, there are more people in the world who aren’t raised for war.
Sokka can see it in the way they speak, the way they move. The way they don’t shy away from fire or loud adventures that draw attention. He can see it in their smiles, wide and fearless and kind, and with those new faces and new hope, Sokka learns to forget.
(Of course he does, he was just a kid, and he learns to stop pretending he grew up a long time ago and admit he was just a broken child trying to fix a broken world)
(They all were)
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kya lives??
ok this was totally random but, what if Kya was alive still? The events of the raid on the Southern Water Tribe still occur but Kya isn’t killed, she’s captured.
Azulon starts raiding the STW because he believes the avatar died during the Air Nation Genocide and reincarnated as a waterbender. Therefore, it is in his best interest to find the avatar and capture them. If he kills them then he’ll have to search the earth kingdom and they are still slowly gaining territory. It’s not feasible to begin capturing earthbenders and not have the resources to contain them away from coal and earth. Do they have the wood for that?
So when the Southern Raiders attack the STW when Hakoda is chief, they capture Kya as the last waterbender. They would keep her alive but barely in a private prison made specifically for her. Hama was most likely in her early 20s when she was captured and she seems to be in her late 70s when we see her in season 3. She was the only survivor from the larger camps. I think they would add her cell near the capital prison that help Iroh but close to underground tunnels that are apart of the palace so Azulon is able to extract information and potentially use her power for himself (if he believes she is the avatar).
Hakoda is dead set on revenge but Bato has to hold him back. Hakoda’s grief I think would be the same as before but he hates himself for letting Kya suffer. He should have been able to protect her.
Sokka and Katara don’t know for sure if their mother is alive, but from Kanna’s stories of Hama they assume she had died. It’s worse when they grow up and hear the horror stories of what happens to water benders when they are captured by pirates or the Fire Nation. The siblings assume their mother suffered through dehumanizing torture and died in a cell without her family and no hope of going home. It would increase their rage against the fire nation and the ability to bring up their mother is worse. Her name is associated to what could happen to Katara when she find out she is a waterbender. This would hinder her ability to train because she knows her mother had to suffer because of her.
I think her fight with Master Pakku would be very different because she will yell at him that her mother suffered in the Fire Nation prisons because her daughter was a waterbender and he doesn’t care enough to help defend the female students. I would assume the NWT will also hear the same horror stories because of trade networks. At least from Kyoshi Island and other island villages that need resources.
Now for Kya’s escape. This happens during the Day of Black Sun after Zuko stands up to his father, He would have a plan with his war balloon when he wrote his letter to Mai suggesting this was planned ahead. I’ve always headcannoned that Zuko brought with him a big bag of gold incase he needed to bribe or buy anything of importance. While he ran from the treasury, to break his uncle out, he is cornered by guard and has to change direction. This leads him to Kya’s hidden cell. He doesn’t know who she is but recognizes that she is Water Tribe. He decides to free her, because she reminds him of his mother. Kya doesn’t know who he is, but he’s busting her out (blue spirit style ;D ) so she trusts him enough to get her out. Once they reach the war balloon, cue the awkward conversation.
Kya ask’s him who he is, and Zuko tells her he used to be the crown prince and he wants to help the avatar defeat his father. Kya tells him that she was captured from the SWT as the last waterbender and then Zuko realizes that this is Katara and Sokka’s mom (holy shit right). Then things get even more awkward when Zuko tells her that he knows her kids, and might have accidentally been chasing her kids for the last few months. This will not settle well with Kya but I think sharing war stories with one other during their flight will warm Kya up to Zuko. She recognizes the fact that he his an abuse victim (it’s clear from the way he handles himself and the multiple scars/ bruises he has). I sense bonding while and at one point his scar will definitely be brought up. It’s a lot easier for Zuko to open up because Kya is very similar to Ursa, she is nurturing, kind, and sacrificed herself for her children. She feels safe to him.
Once they reach the Western Air Temple, Zuko will set up camp and find the TOAD. Yes, the toad is still here and he practices what he’s going to say to said toad. When Kya finds him after cleaning up, she decides to give him some pointers on how to introduce himself. She tells him, why not explain why you were chasing them in the first place, but Zuko will not agree because he doesn’t want to give excuses for his actions. This will make Kya tear up, she is very proud of her adopted child. So they both wait for the Gaang, Kya hiding while Zuko introduces himself until Toph notices that there is another heartbeat. Zuko assumes the group think’s that he was going to try and capture them again and freaks out, Kya recognizes this and goes to help him. This blows her cover and she sees her kids for the first time in 5-6 years. Very tearful reunion, both Siblings don’t know how to feel about this. Zuko who chased them around the world and helped kill Aang, but who also saved Aang once and brought back their Mother. This would help Zuko intergrate more and avoid burning Toph’s feet. But, the siblings spend a lot of time with their mother so Zuko bonds with Toph and Aang instead. This would help establish their relationship for The Firebending Masters and expand upon Zuko and Aang’s friendship.
The Boiling Rock would be the same episode except once they come back we have SWT family reunion. This would be very hard for both Toph, Aang, Zuko, and all the other people in the Temple. Everyone is happy that Kya and Hakoda are here and they’re a family again but it hurts so much. Toph wishes her parents cared about her, Aang misses Gyatso and the Air Nomads, Zuko wishes he had loving parents (Ursa is dead in this au), The Duke misses the freedom fighters, Teo and Haru both miss their dads. It’s a very bittersweet moment and Zuko has to leave early because he has a lot of unpleasant memories that are brought up. Toph goes to comfort him because she can relate to parents that don’t believe in her.
Zuko is terrified of Hakoda. Toph, Kya, and Hakoda notice and know exactly why. It’s hard to bring up without causing him to spiral so Hakoda decided to talk to him alone during dinner to reassure him that he will not hurt him or his own children. It’s your standard Zuko and Hakoda bonding. This will end up with the SWT parents pseudo adopting the rest of the Gaang.
Suki and Kya bonding over their dudes. They would also share their experiences in prison, helping each other cope with the trauma they’ve been through. Suki and Hakoda have a lot of things in common and hit it off really well.
They will get separated once Azula finds them but instead of finding who killed them Katara and Zuko find the people responsible for taking her mother away. Then we have Katara and Zuko bonding (no shipping this is pure gen. besides Sukka). We stan a healthy ride or die friendship.
This was kind random but I thought it would be an interesting idea. I only thought of this for the Kya and Zuko bonding. I swear to god, Kya and Hakoda would totally adopt the feral firebending child.
#atla#kya lives au#alternate universe#kya is alive and had adopted the gaang#but she adopts zuko first#then toph and aang#she is a warrior and a mother#kya and sokka are actually very similar#hakoda and suki friendship rights#they would be the scariest daughter-in-law and father duo#swt fam are pure af
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