Down the dark halls Ursa raced, her hair streaming out behind her as the tapestries of fire and lords, too blurred to be distinct, rose up from their awnings to grab at her arms. Ursa panted, yet managed to keep running without the familiar burn of pain in her lungs to hobble her. The floor was dark and made no sound when her feet touched it, yet it still swam like silk under her legs as she continued to race.

On and on she went, and up and down, came her arms, rowing against the red fabric that sought to touch them, thin sticks of white that rose and fell in her line of sight like sputtering candle flames, too weak to fight back against the surrounding dark.

Then there were tugs at her hair, small, unmistakable hands, no bigger than Kiyi's, yet the voice that accompanied them was years out of date, falling into the same, sickly croon that had haunted her for months, ever since her first daughter had tracked her down and held her up against the wall of her new home.

'Stay, Mother, stay. You love me enough to do that, don't you?'

Ursa gasped, froze, and tripped as the tapestries wove round her wrist and manacled her to the walls. She was stretched thin between the halls she had once pretended to own, walking through them as though Ozai was far, far behind, and now here she was, dangling like a loose thread. She narrowed her eyes and tried to peer into the gloom. Something was there, shifting in the dark.

'That's a charming face you have there,' came a new voice, deep and purposeful. It made the familiar fear creep though her, the fear that was always awoken at the sound of Ozai's voice, no matter how far she had left him behind in the past. 'Far better, I must say, than my mother's work. She should have kept it.'

Yes, there was definitely something there in the dark. And it was slithering closer.

Ursa woke up with a start.

'What's wrong?' her husband asked her, in the morning.

'Is something bothering you?' her son asked, over lunch.

'Mummy!' Kiyi demanded in the afternoon, cheeks puffed out. 'You're not paying attention!'

'Sorry darling,' Ursa said softly, placing the brush down on the table with a gentle clink. And felt guilty, in a strange haunting way, when Kiyi looked instantly appeased. 'Why don't you show me again?'

Kiyi grinned and punched the air, a wide arc of flame sprouting from fist. Ursa smiled and made all the necessary noises, cooed and clapped and stifled the unease inside her at the fact that she had managed to produce three firebenders, despite the fact that her Grandfather 's ancestry had produced no such spark for her or her father. She might write Zuko and Azula off as being products of the Royal Family's natural talent, but Kiyi, she could not.

She forced the smile up on her lips and tried to forget all the times Azula had stopped showing off for her and whether it was then that she showed more interest in taming her daughter's hair than her spirit. And she watched now at how Kiyi's smile stretched wide and delighted when Zuko helped correct her stance, how he taught her wide, flowing movements that he called the 'dancing dragon.'

'That's such a cool name,' Kiyi chirped enthusiastically. 'And it looks so pretty!'

He gave an awkward smile. 'I'm glad someone seems to think so.'

Ursa's smile turned more real, more solid at the sight. She hadn't failed. Not entirely. One of the children she had abandoned under Ozai's care hadn't withered away. Now if only she could believe that one day Azula would return to her, similarly unscathed. But she doubted it.

Ursa dreamed of fire that night, fire painted blue, like the water that had lapped at the roots of the Mother of all Faces.

'Give it back!' she called up at the impassive spirit. 'Give it all back!'

There was no answer and Ursa woke in a sweat, in a tumble of sheets that were wrapped around her like the tapestries that had caught her in the nightmare before had been. Her husband was at her side, his body uncommonly still, no snore escaping his form, and when she turned to check on him, that familiar rise of breath that Ursa had lain beside, night after night, was missing. She gripped his hand tight, in a panic as his face suddenly soared up out the gloom in front of her, suspended by the coil of shadows from the ceiling and the insect-like legs that waved and clung to the wall.

And then she screamed.

Her husband's face smiled back.

Notes: If you haven't read 'The Search', 'Smoke And Shadow' and 'North And South' comics, you might be a little lost, as this fic refers to some of the events that happen in them. I, myself have seen various opinions about the comics, which I get. I have a fair few, myself.

However, I will say this: I adored the 'North And South' series and it did everything I hoped and more with the depiction of Katara's character. Especially her struggle to reconcile her nostalgia and feelings associated with her mother, to the change her father and the Southern Water tribe was going through. It felt very real to me. This story, I guess, is sort of like an ode to that comic, and perhaps Katara in general.