Title: rabbit heart
Author: andromeda3116/cupid-painted-blind
Rating: K+, for somewhat mature subject matter
Genre: Romance, General
Characters/Pairings: Katara, Mai, Suki, Aang, Sokka; Mai/Katara
Summary: No one would call it fate, and Katara thinks that's what she likes about it.
Notes: I almost didn't post this, but decided on it anyway. Title is from the song "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" by Florence + the Machine, and although the story of the aurora is made up, the names of the gods and goddesses are all taken from real Inuit mythology.

this is a gift
(it comes with a price)

Returning to the Southern Water Tribe is like falling into a dream.

There's a rudimentary city set up, and while it's nothing compared to the sparkling Northern city, it's growing. All of the waterbenders are from the North, except for two young children who have only recently manifested talent (the twins Malina and Anningan) and while Pakku does teach Malina along with her brother, she suspects that it's somewhat insincere. She doesn't fail to notice that Gran-Gran has taken up watching the bending lessons, and although everyone seems to think that it's because she's just so in love with her old flame that she wants to watch him, Katara knows better.

Gran-Gran is making him keep to his promise to teach Malina the same things he teaches Anningan.

Thanks to the returning warriors and an influx of citizens from Kyoshi (brought with Suki, no doubt), there's a reasonable marketplace, and within a few weeks of the first peace summit, merchant ships from the Fire Nation arrive. It's a nice gesture from Zuko; the Water Tribe is proud, and refused to accept reparations, so he sent merchants instead. Diplomacy, she thinks, and suspects that the idea was Mai's. It's pure politics, but it's still nice.

The people take to treating her like a princess, which might be a holdover from the Northern tribe, or it might be a gesture of genuine respect; she can't be sure. Her father is obviously uncomfortable with all the sudden attention, and chooses to spend most of his days at the shore, hunting or cleaning the catches or anything except walk around the slowly-growing city.

Everyone expects Sokka to step up as the next-in-line after their father, but she doesn't know if he wants it. He likes being home, but he looks north with faraway eyes and seems more concerned with building the city than with helping the people. While he plots and builds, she takes to walking through the streets, talking to people, getting their opinions on what the Water Tribe should do; she notices that there's still seething discontent at the Fire Nation, but it cools a little more every time another ship comes in, with much-needed supplies and trinkents that make the people feel more like a part of the world again.

Aang keeps telling her that she shouldn't stay, that they need to move on, but Katara wants to stay. Her home is finally becoming something again, like the way it used to be, in her mother's and Gran-Gran's stories, and she's aching to help her people now.

And - they like her. The more she talks to them, the more she brings up their concerns with the council, the more she gives and reaches out and helps, the more they talk about her, the more they say things like maybe Hakoda should name his daughter as his successor instead of his son.

The thought of being cheftian scares her as much as it exhilarates her.

It's Suki who points out the glaring flaw in her plan.

"Aang can't stay here," she says, hands on her hips. "He doesn't eat meat, and your cuisine is based on meat."

"There's plenty of food," she replies immediately, a little embarrassed that she hadn't even thought of this before. "The market is full of food he can eat."

"Expensive food," Suki counters, taking a seat. "And anyway, he's a nomad. Haven't you noticed how antsy he's been?"

"I have," she lies, "but - this is my home. I can't just leave it, not while my people need me."

Suki just looks at her.

"I can't stay here," he says fervently, and she stares hard at her hands. Part of her wants to scream at him to just go if staying here is that awful, part of her wants to go along with him, but most of her is just relieved that he brought it up first.

"And I can't leave," she says, but he catches her by the hand and looks imploringly into her eyes.

"Why not? You could come with me," he says quietly, "and we could travel the world together. Doesn't that sound fun?"

"It does," she replies slowly, "but I have an obligation to my people."

"What about me?" he asks, dropping her hand, and she sighs.

"Look around you," she breathes. "You remember what this place was like before - now, we're finally growing and the world is listening to us, but it's all so fragile. Half the people still hate the Fire Nation, and there are hardly any benders. My people need me, Aang. Who else will speak for them? Sokka? He spends all his time planning out the details of the city, but he's said himself that he's not sure he can be what they need. He wants to go to Kyoshi with Suki, and - how could I stand in his way? After all he's done for me, us? Aang, I'm sorry," she says, stepping back, "but I can't leave."

He looks away, dejected, and her heart aches for him - but only a little. She's sure this is the right thing, she just wishes that she didn't have to choose.

"What about what I need?" he asks, and then shakes his head. "That... came out badly," he corrects himself, and then rubs his head. "Maybe... we could compromise - " he starts, but she shakes her head.

"The Southern Water Tribe has done nothing but compromise. They're sick of it, and I won't ask it of them."

"So, that's it," he says, and looks at her like he's begging her to tell him he's wrong. "I can't stay and you can't leave. That's it."

She swallows hard and turns away. "Yeah," she replies. "I guess that's it."

He leaves; she doesn't cry.

"So, love fails to conquer all," Sokka muses, three days after Aang leaves, and Katara shrugs.

"I think it's too early to tell."

"No," he replies, and glances at her. "It's not."

A week after Aang leaves, she's startled out of bending practice by a Kyoshi Warrior who - she realizes about ten seconds after the other girl lets out a cry and hugs her tightly around the middle - turns out to be Ty Lee.

"You and Aang broke up?" she cries, and Katara gapes at her. She is actually crying. "But - but - he was so - and you were all - how could this happen?" she wails, and Katara winces at the pitch of her voice. Somewhere vaguely off to her left, a dog starts barking.

"It just - does, sometimes," she replies, and heaves a sigh. "He couldn't stay, and I couldn't leave. It was nobody's fault."

"But love is supposed to conquer all," Ty Lee implores, grabbing her by the shoulders and looking at her with huge eyes, "you're supposed to be all happy and married and having flying babies and everything but you stayed here instead and that's not how it's supposed to be!"

"Okay, first off," she starts, wrenching herself from Ty Lee's hands. "I'm barely sixteen. There weren't going to be any flying babies any time soon. Second... Ty Lee, sometimes these things happen," she says firmly, and realizes that she's lecturing someone older and - theoretically - more experienced than her on the rigors of relationships and why they fail, when she only has one (rather lopsided) relationship under her belt. "I stayed here because my people need me. Aang is needed elsewhere. That's just how it is."

"Ignore her," a dark voice says from behind her, and she almost jumps out of her skin - it's Mai. "She's been hitting the rice wine a little heavily," Mai says under her breath, and Katara nods understandingly.

"When did you get here?" she asks, and Mai glances at her while Ty Lee wails into a (very confused) dog's fur. Mai is, Katara notices, wearing green instead of red, and it suddenly occurs to her that perhaps Ty Lee's panic attack wasn't entirely caused by her and Aang's break-up.

"A few minutes ago, the same time the rest of the warriors did," Mai explains, and then rolls her eyes. "You're about to ask why I'm not with Zuko, aren't you?"

"Um, well," she replies awkwardly, because, well, she was. "Kinda."

"It occurred to me that the Fire Nation was not where I wanted to spend the rest of my life," Mai answers easily, like she's said it a thousand times before and still doesn't quite believe it herself.

"Do you miss him?" she asks sympathetically, and Mai raises an eyebrow.

"Do you?"

"Who, Zuko?" she replies dumbly, and thinks about it. "A little, I guess? I miss Toph and Iroh, too... we should invite them down for a - "

"No," Mai says sharply, cutting her off and then rolling her eyes again. "I meant Aang."

"Oh," she replies, and then, before she can catch herself - "Not really."

Mai nods slowly and folds her hands into her sleeves. "You know," she says quietly, "everyone said it was fate."

"Fate?" she repeats critically, and then laughs. "Why, because you knew each other when you were kids? That's not fate, that's just circumstance."

Mai glances at her, and smiles, just a little.

She shows the Kyoshi Warriors to their rooms, in the upper levels of the main hall, and although Mai seems leery of sleeping in a room made out of ice, she doesn't complain, which is nice of her.

She does, however, ask, "How do you stand it?" and Katara shrugs.

"You get used to it. Tiger-seal furs are really warm."

Mai sits down on the bed (small enough to be cozy but large enough to spread out, with a frame made of ice and a bed of packed straw wrapped into a dense matress with strips of linen and fur; she made this one herself and she's damn proud of it) and smooths a hand over the fur. "What do you do in winter?" she asks slowly. "I've heard the sun doesn't rise for three months."

Katara takes a seat next to her and leans back on the bed. "Here on the coast, it's more like one month," she explains. "At the actual pole, the sun doesn't rise for four months, but nothing stays there except a couple of penguin flocks. And... it's not bad," she says thoughtfully. "It's actually pretty nice," she adds, with a smile. "Everyone's sleep cycles get messed up, which means that there's always someone awake and cooking somewhere, and the older people will gather all the children into the main hut and tell stories and play games to keep them occupied. Plus, you get to see the aurora."

"The what?" Mai asks, little smile falling off her face at the unfamiliar word. Katara glances at her.

"You've never heard of the aurora?" she asks incredulously, and then grins. "Well, it's almost winter, so you'll be able to see it if you stay for a couple of weeks. It happens mostly in the change of seasons."

"But what is it?"

Katara smiles broadly. "It's the pathway to heaven," she replies. "You have to see it to understand."

"Against all odds... I kind of like it here," Mai says abruptly, running her hands over a pelt in the marketplace (far from the Fire Nation section), and Katara turns to her.

"That's good?" she replies uncertainly, and Mai smiles genuinely at her.

"It is."

"Zuko would hate it here," Mai says quietly, looking into the weak, mid-afternoon sunset, and then turns to her. "I think that's part of what I like about it. Is that strange?"

"No," Katara replies, taking a seat next to her and handing her a bowl of stew that she looks at critically. "Just try it," she says, exasperated, "you might actually like it. And I don't think it's weird at all."

Mai takes a tentative sip of the stew and makes a face, but eats it anyway. "It's better than Sokka's cooking," she explains, and Katara laughs.

"Everything's better than Sokka's cooking," she says, "but thanks for the compliment."

They sit in silence for a long moment, and then Mai glances at her. "He's going to ask her to marry him, isn't he?" she asks, and it sounds almost bitter. Katara understands; even though she knows that ending her relationship was ultimately the right thing, it still stings to see her brother and Suki so happy together, and to wonder why their story had a happy ending but hers didn't.

"Yes," she answers. "He's waiting for the first aurora, though. He says that he's waiting for the right moment, but I think he just wants to talk to Mom about it."

Mai stares at her blankly. "Your mother is dead," she says bluntly, and Katara glances at her. Once, that sort of statement, in that sort of tone, would have made her fly off the handle with rage, but - she's laid that demon to rest, and besides, she knows Mai well enough now to know she doesn't mean anything by it.

"She is. That's why he's waiting for the aurora. It's the pathway to heaven," she says, by way of explanation, and then lays down on her back, staring into the darkening sky. "Sokka has a bunch of theories about what it really is, he insists that it's not really the road to the afterlife," she sighs, "but I like thinking of it that way, you know? It's nice, to imagine that Mom is out there, watching me, even if... well, even if she isn't."

"Isn't it nicer to believe that she reincarnated?" Mai asks, and she shakes her head.

"No," she replies in a small voice. "That's worse, that's so much worse. It would mean that she's really gone." She sits up, agitated, and turns to Mai, desperately hoping that she'll understand. "Aang always pushed for me to accept that everyone reincarnates and that's the Way of Things, but I - do you understand?" she asks. "I - she's dead, and I know that, but if her spirit was born into someone else, then - that person isn't my mother. Maybe that person has the same spirit, but..." she trails off, and turns away, but Mai nods.

"It's not the same."

"No," she says slowly, "it just isn't. Aang never understood that. He thought it would be comforting, to tell me that she reincarnated into someone else, and I couldn't - I could never explain it to him. I can barely explain it to myself." She looks away, into the expanse of ice and snow stretching out below her, the ever-growing city that she chose over the Avatar. No one understood that, either. She's beginning to think that it's just her that no one understands, not just these few things about her.

"Well," Mai replies, setting her empty bowl down beside her. "I understand."

She glances at her. "You do?"

Mai nods. "It's hollow," she says distantly. "Iroh - and Zuko, now - espouse the same views, and it always struck me as - hollow," she says, a touch lamely, like there's more she wants to say but doesn't know how. "You get one life as yourself, and then you reincarnate into someone entirely new, with none of the things that make you who you are. So it's not really you at all, just... someone else who wears your spirit."

"I don't like it," Katara says firmly, looking up at the sky. "I don't like it at all."

"Me either," Mai replies, and smiles a bit.

"You told me that everyone thought you and Zuko were fate," she says, watching the ghost of her breath rise toward the stars. Neither of them are ready to go in, in spite of the cold and the darkness. "Does that mean you believe in fate?"

"I did," Mai replies, tugging her coat around her tighter. "But if that was my fate..."

"It wasn't good enough?" she suggests, and Mai laughs bitterly.

"He was the Fire Lord," Mai says desperately. "How could I ever claim that he wasn't good enough?"

"But he wasn't," Katara says, and Mai shakes her head.

"It just wasn't - what I wanted," she breathes, and then turns, a rare vulnerability in her eyes. "What if that was my fate and I threw it away? What then?"

Katara watches her in the gloom for a long moment, and feels a kinship to the noblewoman-turned-Kyoshi Warrior that she never would have expected. It's the same question she's asked herself for almost two weeks now - Aang talked about her like she was his destiny, called her his forever girl, and what if he was right? It's not what she wants, but what if she doesn't have a choice? "I don't know," she answers honestly.

Instead of looking at Mai - there's too much reflected there that she doesn't want to face - she watches the stars, brilliant and glittering in the sky, and looks for the constellations she learned as a child. There's the wash of the spirit's paintbrush, a white glow above her head, and there's the polar bear with her cub, and there's the hunter with his kill, and there's Sedna falling from the boat - all the constellations that her mother taught her, unique to the southern hemisphere. It's one of the things she missed most on her travels around the world.

"I don't know," she repeats slowly, staring hard at the constellation of the bear cub, "but I think I prefer it this way."

Four nights later, she runs into Mai's room and drags the other girl out of bed.

"This had better be good," Mai growls, and Katara smiles, tugging on her hand like a child.

"It's the first aurora," she explains, tugging her (wrapped in her blanket) through the halls, toward the square where people are gathering to watch. It's so late at night that it's actually morning, but she doesn't care. It's not only the first aurora of the season, but it's also the first one that she's seen since she's returned to the tribe, and she won't miss it for the world.

"There you are," Sokka says, running through the halls from the direction of her room. "I thought you were asleep!"

"No, but I was telling Mai about it before," she explains, as they all rush for the square, "and I had to make sure she saw it."

Mai stops at the door and gasps, the sleep fading from her face as she sees the green and blue lights dancing in the sky. Katara grins, and reaches out to her.

"Come on," she says quietly. "You have to hear the story."

"Story?" she asks, stepping into the strange light that's bathing the square. People are talking, but in hushed tones, as Gran-Gran makes her way to the front of the crowd - as the oldest member of the Southern Tribe, it's her story to tell. "What is the story?"

"You'll see," she replies, tugging Mai through the throng of people until they're at the front, next to Suki and Sokka (and a very sleepy Ty Lee). She looks at her grandmother and smiles.

"In ancient times," Gran-Gran begins, and a solemn hush falls over the crowd, "spirits wandered the world after death, looking endlessly for the paradise that the gods had promised them. Few managed to find their way, and the many who didn't slowly became angry with the apparently-broken promise that they had been given. Finally, an old, angry spirit attacked and killed the daughter of the sun goddess Malina, and she turned away from the Earth in anger, forcing the spirits - and the people living on the world - to endure a month of darkness. Her brother Anningan, the moon god, decided to do something about the problem, and, with the help of Torgarsuk, the god of the sky, and Sedna, the goddess of the sea, they painted a road that led from the Earth to heaven, so that the lost spirits may find their way to their reward. When the spirits found it, they rejoiced, and were so happy that they began to dance on their way to the afterlife. This, we see and call the Aurora: the dancing-spirit road."

The crowd cheers, and Katara is surprised to see Mai watching Gran-Gran intently. After the applause dies down, she tilts her head. "What happened to the dead girl?" she asks, sounding more alive than Katara has ever heard her. Gran-Gran turns to her politely, and she explains. "The sun goddess's daughter. What happened to her?"

Gran-Gran smiles, and points to a constellation. "Torgarsuk placed her in the winter stars, where she would be safe from the angry spirit, who he placed in the summer stars, where Malina can watch him and make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else."

"You like it?" Katara asks, as Mai watches the lights, a strange smile on her face.

"It's interesting," she replies, "and different. I've never heard anything like it."

"The Southern Water Tribe is unique," she says, pulling her coat tighter around her. "That's one of the things I love about it."

"Me too," Mai says quietly. "It's nothing like the Fire Nation."

The next night, she walks outside an hour or two before dawn, and finds Mai sitting on a bench by the frozen fountain in the square, watching the skies as the lights dance.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asks, sitting next to her, and Mai shakes her head.

"Woke up," she replies. "We're leaving today."

"I know."

They sit in the cold silence for a while, and then Mai glances at her. "I don't want to go," she says, in a strange voice. "I thought I would. I almost didn't come because I thought there would be nothing for me here, but now I don't want to leave."

"You're always welcome to come back," she says slowly, and doesn't want to examine why it's making her sadder to see Mai looking forlornly at the aurora than it did to see Aang hang in head in sorrow when he had to leave - why it hurts more to watch Mai leave than it did Aang. She wants to say that it's because Mai, unique among all the people she's met, understands and accepts without asking anything of her, but that doesn't fully explain it all. "Our doors are always open."

"I used to think the Water Tribe was full of savages," Mai says quietly. "That's what I was taught. I thought - why would anyone want to live here? But now..."

"It has a charm all of its own," she finishes for her, and Mai glances at her.

"It has more charm than anywhere else I've been. Even if it's freezing."

"It's worth it," she says, laughing a bit. "And you do get used to it."

Mai smiles. "Thank you," she says quietly, and Katara starts.

"For what?"

"For making me get up yesterday," Mai starts, and then tilts her head, "and for giving me a place to stay. And... everything. I thank you."

Katara shrugs in a fair attempt at nonchalance, and a blush threatens to creep up her neck. "It was just... I mean... It was no trouble," she says hesitantly, and almost immediately wants to smack herself. She doesn't have any idea what to say now, what to do. She doesn't want to leave, but she's afraid of staying.

"For what it's worth, I think you made the right decision," Mai says quietly. "I would have chosen the Water Tribe over the Avatar, if I had been in your position."

"You're probably the only one," she replies, drawing her knees up to her chest.

"Maybe," Mai says, "but I still think you were right."

"Even if Aang was my fated love?" she asks, a bit cynically and a bit desperately. Mai nods.

"Even if," she replies softly, and cups her cheek in one cold, pale hand. "But I don't believe in fate anymore."

"Me either," Katara says, and leans forward a little. It's half a dare and half a wish; she's curious and scared and uncertain, but Mai understands and she's beautiful in a porcelain-pale way and it's wrong but she's done the wrong thing before, and if it's a mistake, then she thinks that maybe it's a mistake worth making. Their eyes meet, and the moment stretches thin between them. She thinks she can see a thousand splintered possibilities reflected in Mai's almost-gold eyes, a thousand different ways this could end, and some of them are happy endings and some of them are tragedies, but they all start right here.

In the end, it's Mai who takes the initiative, and leans forward to kiss her.

No one would call it fate, and Katara thinks that's what she likes about it.