Sometimes you write an angsty oneshot and you post it on the internet and seven years go by and you lowkey forget about it. And then sometimes someone sends you a message threatening to commission you for a happy ending version, so you dust off your feelings and dive back in.

This picks up just as Aang returns after Kya's birth and diverges throughout their conversation, and from there on is totally different.

The breeze was pleasant and warm from the open doors, and Ursa's lilting babble was the most soothing thing in the world, and soon she found herself nodding off.

She dreamed that someone knocked on the door and said something about the Avatar. She dreamed she opened her eyes to see Aang looking at her, but then he was looking at something else and his face went very blank. She awoke and saw Zuko giving Aang his infant daughter. Aang looked thunderstruck, but Zuko's face was strangely closed as he said, "She named her Kya."

Katara sat up from her dozy slouch, and Aang looked at her with wide grey eyes. "I realized about a month after you left," she said simply. "She's nine weeks old."

She heard Zuko begin to shepherd Ursa out of the room, and the little princess protesting: "But I want to see Uncle Aang!"

"Later, honey, he needs to talk to Mommy for a while first."

The door shut out Ursa's continued objections, and she and Aang were left alone.

After a few slow beats, he breathed, "We have a daughter."

Katara steeled herself as she rose from the chair. "Yes."

"And I missed… everything."

"Yes," she agreed again, more certainly.

"Katara, I—" He choked and looked down at Kya, as pretty as a doll in his arms and just as quiet. "I'm so sorry… There's no way I can ever make this up…."

"No," she agreed again. She was still girding her heart. The moment she had avoided thinking about for all these months had arrived, and she had to say the right things now. She could be angry, she had that right, but only a little, and she had to reconcile. After what she had done she had few rights to her own feelings anymore. She would ignore that she loved him but was not in love with him. She would ignore the guilt she felt at not wanting to go to Republic City even though she had made the decision that Aang was Kya's father and that made them family, and the confusion that came with thinking that feeling was reasonable. But she could speak for Kya's sake. "Especially to her."

Aang looked at her desperately and took a halting step forward. "Do you hate me?"

She felt herself slipping further and further into something irrevocable. She swallowed down her fear and pain and spoke. "I could never hate you." That much was true. Hating Aang was out of the question.

"Then, do you forgive me?" he asked hopefully. Even holding Kya, even as a husband and father, he reminded her forcefully of his twelve-year-old self, caught in some minor wrong-doing and seeking pardon. He'd burned Sokka's seal-jerky to start the fire. He'd skipped bending practice to play with Appa and Momo. He'd missed the birth of his daughter. She remembered Zuko's comment from only a few hours before, and cringed.

"Yes, I forgive you," she said, and his face lit up.

"Thank you!" he exclaimed, an artificial gust of wind carrying him across the room. She jerked involuntarily as he took his arm away from Kya to fling around her, but the baby was safe, and calm as ever. He kissed her on the cheek, which she didn't feel as anything beyond a slight dry pressure. "Oh, Katara, I'm so happy! All three of us going home to the Temple together will be so great. Do you want to start packing in the morning, or now? I can find some luggage—"

"No," she interrupted sharply.

Aang looked at her from where he'd gone to rummage for bags in her closet, astonished. "What?" he asked thinly. "Don't you—aren't you going to…? Come back? I don't understand."

She swallowed around the lump in her throat. "Ursa's turning six next month," she explained, moving forward to take Kya out of his loose hold. "I can't leave before her birthday."

Aang frowned. "I don't understand. We're a real family now, Katara. You can't stay here. It's not fair to any of us. You said 'for a little while' six years ago. Hasn't it been 'a little while'?"

"I don't intend to stay here," she said impatiently, pausing to quell the stab of grief that struck at the back of her throat. "But I have to be at Ursa's birthday party next month. It'll take me that long to close my life here down anyway."

Aang shook his head. "But why do you need to stay? Why can't you come now? You've been here long enough, haven't you?"

"Ursa is turning six," she stressed, becoming angry at his tiresome refusal to understand. "Leaving before then would only be more cruel."

Aang was obviously still baffled. "You're not her mom, Katara. You have your own daughter now. Our daughter."

"Ursa is my daughter!" she shouted, caught in a sudden tide of anger so intense it stunned her. Aang's expression had gone wide and amazed, his mouth fallen slightly open. "I raised her, and I love her, and I made choice after choice for her, and Aang, it—it would kill me to leave her." As angry as she'd been before, now she drowned in a grief she'd kept hidden and bound all these months. The taut, indignant strength in her back dissolved and she collapsed onto a chair, Kya clutched against her chest. Despite herself, tears washed her cheeks and she was suddenly sobbing almost too hard for speech. "I can't leave her, Aang, I can't do that to a tiny innocent girl. She already lost a mother once, don't make me do that to her again, please, please, don't make me put her through what I went through..."

There was a long pause between them, during which Katara sobbed. Then Aang said, soft and puzzled, "But didn't you also make choices for me?"

"Yes," Katara moaned. "Yes, of course I did. And I should have known ages ago that I was building my own fish basket trap. There was nothing bad about marrying you, and there was nothing bad about staying to help raise Ursa, but now no matter what I do someone will get hurt and it's just—I can't leave her, Aang, I can't!"

Aang's voice was gentle and pleading, the same voice she'd heard a hundred times. "But…. What about me? What about us? It's not just that we're married now, Katara, we have a daughter. We're a family."

She closed her eyes. She had said so much already, she might as well say this too. She might as well say this last, worst thing. "There's a chance she's not yours, Aang."

His silence was beyond shocked.

She didn't speak either. There was no defense, no justification. She had no right to remind him of his words of permission before he left, the ones that allowed her a lover if she wished. Sex was one thing, a child another. She could not possibly fathom what he was thinking, what he was feeling. But she felt freed. The knot that had tied up her heart had been released and all was laid bare. The last, worst thing was said. His forgiveness, his acceptance, if he gave it, would be complete and utter. But she didn't dare expect it, didn't even hope.

The gentle gust of air that brushed past her face towards the open balcony doors signaled his exit, and Katara folded into herself and wept.

Zuko came back hours later and found her in the same position, dazed but no longer crying. "Katara," he said quietly. It had become night. She had nursed Kya a couple of times, and presumably Ursa had been put to bed already. These incidental realities passed through her mind in the same way as the bats flying past the window. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," she sighed, a couple of fresh tears wetting her cheeks. She bent them away before they fell on Kya's sleeping face.

They let the answer sit in the dark between them. The wind blew through the room from the balcony doors and Zuko moved to close them. "Aang left," he told her, and she shuddered. "I think he said he was going to one of he Air Temples, but… he wasn't very coherent." The question hung unspoken, and Katara answered it.

"I told him I couldn't leave Ursa. Effectively, I chose her over him. And… I told him Kya might not be his."

"But not… whose she might be?"

"No," she said somberly.

"Then..." He was a dark silhouette against the window, and she saw the tension in his shoulders, the hard set of his jaw. "Are you going to stay?"

The answer was easy. It was all she had wanted to say for months, for years. "Yes, I'll stay."

–

The dissolution of her marriage to Aang was gradual, painful, necessary. No fuss was made, no international scandal raised. She simply stayed in the Fire Nation, and he, after a month spent meditating at the Southern Air Temple, as that, she later learned, was where he had gone when he left her, went back to Republic City and the Temple there and resumed the life he had been living before. She wrote him many letters, which she burned instead of sending. Sokka and her family and her friends were concerned and upset, and she told them the truths that would help them understand. Ursa complained that she missed Uncle Aang. Kya grew.

He returned to the Fire Nation Palace for the first time two years after that night. He sent a letter ahead and they knew to expect him as afternoon drew on to evening. A servant brought him to the family dining room just as the meal was finishing. "Uncle Aang!" Ursa shrieked. They hadn't told her he was coming, worried that he might renege and disappoint her further. She sprinted to him, eight years old now and beginning to show the height she would someday command if her parents were anything to go by. He caught her up in a hug and twirled her around, but when he stopped he was looking at Katara, at Kya, who was two now and still calm as a pond on a windless day. She saw him swallow.

Zuko took care of greeting him, for which Katara was grateful. She took Kya into her lap and rocked back and forth while Zuko, occasionally interrupted by his eager daughter, exchanged pleasantries and casual news. It seemed an age before Aang cleared his throat and said, "Uh, Katara, could we… talk?"

It was her turn to swallow. "Of course." She stood, swinging Kya over to her hip. "The gardens?" she suggested, and Aang nodded, wide-eyed. He was as scared as her, she realized, and sympathy rose sharp.

He followed her in silence as they went outside, to one of the ornamental flower gardens, full of blooms from all over the world. The water lilies Katara had suggested all those years ago were flourishing. They walked for a time, together, in step. And then he overcame the impossible wall of silence and said, "Katara." She stopped and looked at him. It was a cloudy night, but she could see the cast of his features, drawn and tight and unhappy. He looked back at her, and she wondered what he saw. The life they were going to have together, until she made all her choices that led her to loving Ursa and leaving him? The pain of the years since then? Her betrayal? He said, haltingly, "The Acolytes—that is, I'm—listen, I can't be the—" He cursed quietly, glanced an apology at Kya, then spoke plainly. "I can't be the last Airbender in the world. I always expected that future ones would be, well, ours, but… Well. Some of the Acolytes came to me a few weeks ago and said that they would be willing, if I agreed, to, to create those new Airbenders, with me. So I wouldn't be the last. It wouldn't be about love… but…" He looked down at her beseechingly and she realized he had come back to ask her to permit this, explain it in a way he could accept, make everything alright. She saw again the child she had pulled from the ice berg and promised a family. Her heart clenched, but held together.

She sighed. "That's… a practical solution," she said, and saw the barest flicker of a smile cross his face. Her emotions were a mix of pity and love, and she tried to let them show on her own face. "If that's the way you choose to go, I wouldn't fault you. You're right, you can't be the last Airbender, and this is a way to ensure there are more. But… Aang, please, consider the possibility of love." He flinched, but she forged ahead. "You're too good of a person to go your whole life alone. You're only twenty-eight. We were so young when we decided to be together, so innocent and ignorant. Painful experiences are meant to inform life, not curtail it." He listened with his forehead furrowed, eyes intent. "If you had children with the Acolytes, you would teach them well, raise them with the precepts of the ancient teachings foremost in your mind. Perhaps that would be the way most in line with the old ways, I don't know. But would they be your family? Would you see them as sons and daughters? Would you love them?"

Silence hung between them again, but a softer one than before, more permeable. In the silence, he looked at Kya. "Can I… hold her?" he asked at last, voice wisp-thin.

"Of course." She gently handed her daughter over, and she sat placid in Aang's arms, watching him curiously. Katara's chest was full of pride and pain.

"You said there was a chance she wasn't mine… But that means there's a chance she is, right?"

"I don't know who her father is. As far as I know, it's impossible to tell. There will always be a chance she's yours."

Aang nodded, looking at the toddler intently. "Is the other chance Zuko's?" he asked.

Her breath caught. "Yes," she admitted painfully, and she'd been wrong, this was the last worst thing.

But Aang didn't lash out as she had feared he would. He nodded, and bounced Kya a little bit, and then gave her back to Katara. "Looks like she'll be a Waterbender, huh?" His voice was thick.

"Yeah," she whispered. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure she will be."

Aang left the next morning. Ursa complained that he didn't stay longer, but he had left a promise to return before long, and she was satisfied enough with that.

Time went on again, a little more lightly than before, and the girls grew and learned and laughed and gained a brother four years after Aang's reconciliatory visit. He was as cheerful a baby as Ursa had been, with feathery black hair and amber eyes, with his mother's darker skin. They named him Hiro. Ursa and Kya were overjoyed with their new brother, Katara and Zuko overwhelmed with pride at their little family.

Less than a year after that came news of Aang's marriage to an Earth Kingdom woman he had met on his travels, and less than a year after that, news of their first child, a boy they named Gyatso. And so the world started back on its path to balance.

For Katara, life went on as it ever did. Her daughters and son were healthy and strong and happy and loved each other fiercely. The fact that Hiro didn't bend bothered no one: in fact it struck Katara as appropriate. Kya's uncertain parentage was not concealed from her, but Aang showed as much love to her siblings as he did to her when he visited, just as Zuko did every day of their lives. Ursa, her dear oldest, grew so quickly it was incredible and all of a sudden she was fifteen, only one scarce year away from adulthood, skinny and grinning and funny, with Mai's raven black hair and Zuko's bright ocher eyes and every bit of Katara's heart. And one day she came to the door of Katara's office where she was writing letters during Hiro's nap and said, "Uh, Mom? Can I talk to you?"

"Of course, honey," she said. "Come on in."

Ursa did so, unusually diffident and shy.

"What's going on?" Katara asked, amused and concerned. Ursa had hit all her milestones on the path to adulthood, her first blood, her developing breasts, heartbreak come and gone, and had been very forthright about all of it, so she was sure there was nothing else about that to be talked over. Unless… Katara's eyes narrowed at her daughter's continuing silence. "Ursa, you're not pregnant, are you?"

"No! Mom! Ugh!" But her outrage overpowered her shyness and she came towards Katara's desk more comfortably.

She hadn't truly believed it, but she was still relieved to hear otherwise. She took her daughter's hand when she was near enough and murmured, "Honey, what's the matter?"

"It that—I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble—but, I heard… I heard a couple of maids talking about Kya and Hiro, and they called them 'bastards'. That's not a nice thing to say, is it?"

Katara thought of going into the nuance of the word's two meanings, one simply descriptive, one rude, but Ursa looked so troubled that she decided it could wait. "No, it's not very nice. But it's a reflection that those maids aren't very kind people, not that Kya or Hiro have done anything wrong."

Ursa nodded. "I know, I know. But… it made me wonder… Why haven't you and Dad gotten married?"

Katara blinked.

"I know it's complicated," Ursa rushed on. "You used to be married to Uncle Aang, and Dad was married to my mother, and Kya's dad being either of them and all that. But that was years ago, Mom, and Uncle Aang got married again and has his kids, and you and Dad are in love, and we're all your kids anyway, and Kya and Hiro couldn't be called bastards by stupid gossipy maids because Dad could legitimize them, and it would just be really nice, I think. Wouldn't it be nice?"

Katara stared up at her, speechless. Only after a long minute could she summon her voice. "Honey, how long have you been thinking all this?" It clearly hadn't been an idea borne just now from overhearing one unkind comment.

Ursa's face went dull red with embarrassment. "Kind of since Hiro was born."

"Three years?" Katara asked incredulously. She laughed. "Why didn't you say something before now?"

"I thought you would do it on your own! Spirits, Mom, what's wrong with you two?"

Katara only laughed harder, because, yes, Ursa was right. What was wrong with them?

That night at dinner, all five of them around the table, Ursa declared that she had an announcement. Kya looked at her big sister with intense attention, Hiro ignored them all in favor of his plate of grilled fish, and Zuko looked puzzled but willing to listen. Katara smiled at them all. "Dad, I talked to Mom about this earlier, and she thinks it's a good idea. The two of you ought to get married." Zuko froze as thoroughly as if he'd been encased in ice (a phenomenon she was highly familiar with after so many years of sparring). His eyes flicked between Ursa and Katara, then down to Kya, whose mouth had formed a little 'o' of intense eagerness and surprise. Nine years old, she was a big fan of romantic legends and the idea of weddings in general. But Katara stayed focused on Zuko, and eventually his eyes settled on her too.

"You think it's a good idea?" he asked, in a soft, intense voice.

"I think it's a great idea," she said.

"Well," he said. "Well. I happen to think so too."

"Yay!" Ursa and Kya's joy was so overpowering that it was impossible to hear who was saying what, but they got up from the table and held hands and danced in a circle while Hiro cackled and yelled and hit his chopsticks together. Katara laughed, and Zuko shifted around the table till he was next to her and kissed her so truly that she hoped it would never end.

A/N

And that's a wrap! If you like this alternate ending, check out Zutarawasrobbed's page, this is all her fault anyway, lol.

All characters are owned by Bryke, Nick, and Viacom.

E.I. signing out.