Chapter Text
“Do you think something is going on between Mom and Dad and Uncle Zuko?” Kya asked, apparently out of the blue.
It was an absurdly beautiful spring day on Air Temple Island, which was why Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin were all enjoying the sunshine on one of its many tree-lined, sheltered beaches. At least, that was why their father told them they should go outside. Their mother, more frank and straightforward, had shooed them out of the house because the Fire Lord was visiting Republic City and they wanted to catch up with their old friend in peace.
Tenzin, all of thirteen and already more serious than their father the Avatar, glanced up from the book of Air Nomad lore he was reading (but if he thought she didn’t know about the epics and dramas that Uncle Zuko brought from the Fire Nation and Tenzin sometimes hid inside his history tomes and philosophy scrolls, he needed to think again). “You mean you think they’re planning something?”
Kya, fifteen years old and already a woman of the world, let the water she had been bending into funny animal shapes splash back into the inlet and scoffed at his naïveté. “No, I mean I think there’s something going on. Between them.”
Up until now, Bumi hadn’t paused in his steady routine of throwing his knife at a tree, going to pull it out, going back to stand at a distance, and throwing it again. (Whoosh, thunk, skitter skitter, softer thunk, skitter skitter, whoosh. It was becoming quite irritating.) But Kya’s last statement caught his attention enough that when he let go of the knife, it went flying into the bushes with a crash instead of thunking into the tree. After a moment of stunned silence, he started laughing uproariously.
Tenzin chose to ignore him, which was becoming his default approach to Bumi. “That’s ridiculous,” he said to Kya, already turning red with indignation or embarrassment or both. “With both of them?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But… but Dad is married to Mom, and Uncle Zuko is married to Aunt Mai.”
Kya gave him her best contemptuous look, like he was the most unintelligent creature ever to crawl out of the primordial muck (which, to be fair, was how she looked at him most of the time… but even more so now). “So?” Hadn’t he ever heard of affairs?
“So… Dad and Uncle Zuko both like women.”
“People can like both,” Kya said authoritatively. “Avatar Kyoshi did.”
Bumi still hadn’t stopped laughing. Kya was starting to worry that he would run out of air and Tenzin would have to resuscitate him… which he would, if reluctantly.
“Okay, suppose that’s true. What’s your proof about the three of them?”
“Well, Mom and Dad are always going to visit Uncle Zuko in the Fire Nation. Sometimes just one of them, sometimes both. But they almost never take us with them.”
“Of course not, because we have to go to school!”
“Even in the summer, though, they go without us.”
“They do take us on vacation to Ember Island…”
“What, every couple of years? And they still send us off to amuse ourselves while they ‘catch up with’ Uncle Zuko at the beach house.”
“Sometimes grown-ups like to talk without kids around,” Tenzin said knowingly, as if he spoke from personal experience.
“Maybe. But haven’t you noticed how much they all touch each other when they’re together? All of them, not just Mom and Dad.”
“And spirits know they’re oogie enough on their own,” Bumi put in, having finally stopped laughing.
Tenzin thought about it and squirmed a little, probably unconsciously. “They have been friends for a long time,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, but they’re not that physically affectionate with Auntie Toph.” She hated being called that, but Aang and Katara insisted on the respectful title, at least when referring to her in her absence.
“I’d like to see anyone try to be physically affectionate with Auntie Toph,” Bumi commented.
“They do show physical affection with Uncle Sokka,” Tenzin pointed out.
“I very much hope there’s nothing going on there…” said Bumi.
“Gross, Bumi,” Kya said with a curl of her lip.
Tenzin gave Bumi a contemptuous look that, with some work, could almost rival Kya’s, but otherwise didn’t lower himself to respond.
“And yeah, they do touch Uncle Sokka a lot, but it’s different,” Kya continued. “There’s a lot of elbowing and light shoving and acting like… you know, like siblings. Not putting hands on each other’s hands and shoulders and sitting really close and leaning into each other. When they touch Uncle Sokka, it’s playful; with Zuko it’s more… tender.”
Bumi and Tenzin both shuddered: a rare show of unity.
“Please never use that word again,” Bumi implored. “It just makes me think of… slow-cooked meat.”
“Or injuries,” Tenzin added. “Bruises. Swollen flesh.”
Kya snorted and Bumi guffawed. “Tenzin, I hope I never hear you use those words again,” said Kya.
When Tenzin figured out what they were laughing about, he turned very, very red.
“I still think this is all very circumstantial,” he protested after they all got themselves more or less under control.
“What, you want me to have eyewitness evidence?”
“Oh, sun, moon, and sky bison,” said Bumi, shuddering again. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Even Tenzin.”
“Fuck you, Bumi,” said Tenzin, still red and getting redder.
Kya gasped, while Bumi started laughing again. “Where did you hear that word, young man?” Kya demanded with mock outrage. “Mom would clean your mouth out with saltwater.”
“Oh, we all know it was Toph,” said Bumi. “Mom and Dad can never make her keep it clean around us. Or her own kids, for that matter.”
“Uncle Zuko says it too, when he thinks we can’t hear him,” Tenzin said defensively. “So does Mom.”
“Dad still just says monkeyfeathers,” Bumi scoffed. “Unbelievable.”
There was a lull in the conversation and Kya went back to bending animal shapes out of the creek water. She made a dragon to look like Druk, whom she desperately wanted to be able to ride, but who was just as uncomfortable and prickly around everyone as his master—everyone except Aang and Katara, that is.
“Oh shit,” said Kya abruptly, letting the shape collapse and fall back into the stream (Tenzin muttered something about washing out her mouth). “What if Zuko is my dad?”
Bumi paused before he ended up throwing the knife into the bushes again. “Your dad specifically?”
Kya gave him another one of her patented you’re an idiot looks. “Well, he obviously couldn’t be Tenzin’s dad. And I just can’t imagine him being related to you.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Bumi acknowledged.
“Really, Kya?” Tenzin asked in his best disapproving-and-more-mature-than-you voice. “You think you’re the Fire Lord’s secret illegitimate daughter? Are you sure you haven’t been reading too many of those Fire Nation drama scrolls?”
“Oh, piss off. We all know you read more of them than I do.”
“I do not!”
“What’s inside that book, Tenzin?”
“Nothing!” he protested, turning it upside down to shake out the pages. But his face turned red enough that Kya knew it was just a matter of luck that he was innocent today. “And I still think you’re letting your imagination run away with you.”
Kya huffed in frustration. “You know what? I’m going to prove it. I’m going to get conclusive proof that something is going on.”
“How? By spying on them?” Tenzin asked disdainfully.
“Yes! I’m going to watch them after they send us to bed and I’m going to prove that something is up.”
All three of them acted perfectly innocent at dinner and through the long conversation that followed, over tea for Aang, Kya, and Tenzin and brandy for Zuko and Katara—and, after some wheedling and a reluctant surrender, for Bumi (“but only half a glass!” Katara insisted sternly).
Zuko asked about their studies; Bumi and Kya answered perfunctorily, and Bumi professed his interest in joining the United Forces after he turned eighteen in two months. Aang and Katara pointedly said nothing; it was a point of contention within the family. Zuko politely raised his eyebrows (no, eyebrow, singular; it was easy to forget if you weren’t really looking) and said, “Ah. Well, the United Republic will be lucky to have you.” Aang gave him a look of utter betrayal, to which Zuko responded with a puzzled frown. Clearly they were going to have a talk later (before or after other… activities?, Kya wondered).
Of course, when Zuko asked Tenzin about his studies, the teachers’ pet engaged him and Aang in a long discussion of the history and philosophy behind Air Nomad customs around the separation of the sexes. Kya watched the adults like a hawk when the topic of same-sex relationships inevitably came up (and something tightened in her chest thinking about the way her stomach flipped whenever she saw Lin Beifong, and how much it hurt to watch her moon after Tenzin, that prematurely middle-aged stick in the mud).
“The Air Nomads were always the most open-minded,” said Zuko, who of course knew as much as Aang did about Air Nomad culture because of all his years spent hunting the Avatar (and probably knew more about their history and literature). “There was a period of Fire Nation history when it was customary for young noblemen to be mentored in statecraft and the fighting arts by an older male lover… but it came to be seen as exploitative and fell into disfavor even before Sozin’s day.”
“What about relationships between two men of the same age?” Kya asked suddenly, breaking a long silence. “Or two women?”
Zuko looked surprised at who had spoken, but he answered her question as graciously as he had Tenzin’s. “Azulon outlawed relations between men—punishable by imprisonment for the lower classes and banishment for the nobility. Between women… no one ever cared as much, either in the days when the lover-mentor relationship was sacred or when it was forbidden. That said… after Azulon made the law about men, it became much harder to find the old romantic dramas and erotic poetry about love between women.”
“And it became treasonous to mention the very popular rumor that Fire Lord Sozin and Avatar Roku were more than just great friends in their youth,” Aang contributed, looking over at Zuko with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. The look Zuko returned to him seemed to be a warning glare—at least Kya thought it was a glare; his scar did make it look like he was always glaring—and did he just shake his head slightly?
Kya shot a very significant I told you something was up look at Tenzin—who gave an uncertain frown in return—before she turned back toward Zuko. “But you changed that, right?”
“Yes… quietly. With all the other changes I’d been forcing on my people, I didn’t want it to become another matter of controversy. Or a way for traditionalists to claim that I’m undermining the moral character of the nation as well as its defense and economy…”
Kya wasn’t entirely satisfied, but she didn’t really want to get into an argument with the Fire Lord about taking a public stand for what was right… especially one who had survived so many insults, minor uprisings, and assassination attempts for doing just that. “What about in the Water Tribe?” she asked her mother.
“Oh! In the Southern Water Tribe, it’s always been… an accepted fact of life, but not one that anyone talks about much. As long as you marry and have children, everyone looks the other way if you also have a lover of the same sex. It’s not nearly as big a scandal as adultery where there’s a possibility of… er… uncertain paternity.”
Funny she should mention that… thought Kya. “But it’s different in the North?”
“Gender roles are far more rigid there. But it is possible for someone who’s born female to live as a man, becoming a warrior and taking a wife—or for someone born male to live as a woman, becoming a healer if she’s a bender, and a wife to a man who will have her.”
“So… Grandpa Pakku would have been willing to teach you combat bending if you had worn trousers and a wolf-tail and given a man’s name?”
“Yes. But I didn’t know that at the time… and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been willing to lie about who I was to learn what I had a right to know.”
“I didn’t think you were this interested in comparative anthropology, Kya,” her father (or was he?) remarked with gentle amusement.
Tenzin coughed politely; Bumi smirked. Kya glared at both of them. “I’m not uninterested.”
“Curiosity should be encouraged, at whatever age it emerges,” Zuko said mildly. He probably intended the remark to be neutral and inoffensive, but Kya’s cheeks burned at the condescension, and the implicit comparison with Tenzin (and probably Izumi, too; she was just as serious and studious. Why didn’t Tenzin go after her instead of Lin, who had an actual personality?).
Katara looked over at Kya with a sympathetic wince; she was no doubt long accustomed to Zuko’s lack of tact. “Shouldn’t you kids be in bed by now?” she asked abruptly.
Tenzin immediately stood up to take his cup and the teapot to the kitchen—and collected Aang’s and Kya’s cups while he was at it. Complete kiss-up, Kya thought contemptuously.
Kya made a token protest so that her parents wouldn’t suspect how eagerly she had been waiting for them to dismiss their children: “Why do we have to go to bed when you’re probably going to stay up for another two hours?”
“Because growing teenagers need their sleep, that’s why,” said Katara.
“And we might go to bed soon, too,” said Aang with a yawn.
Tenzin came back in and dutifully hugged both of his parents good night. When he said good night to Uncle Zuko, the latter returned the wish with a companionable shoulder-squeeze.
“Good night, all,” said Bumi. “Two more months and you won’t be telling me when to go to bed…”
“Ah, but your sergeant will,” Zuko said dryly.
Bumi laughed. “Still better than my mother.”
“See how you feel about that after a week in the army,” Katara said icily.
Kya was the last to say good night, submitting herself to her parents’ hugs with feigned teenage reluctance.
“You know, you could go to university, here or in Ba Sing Se or even the Caldera, and research all the nations’ customs about same-sex relationships,” said Zuko, by way of encouragement. “You could become a scholar, and publish books with what you discover.”
“Is that just your disappointment I’m hearing—that you had to become Fire Lord instead of the world’s foremost expert in Avatar Studies?” Aang ribbed him with a sly smile.
Zuko chuckled, which was a rare enough sound that Kya startled. It sounded even more hoarse and rusty than his voice usually did, as if he was out of practice. She found herself forgiving him for his unwitting condescension, and maybe thinking she wouldn’t mind if he was her… No, Tenzin was right (for once); I have been reading too many Fire Nation dramas.
That didn’t mean she was abandoning her plan to gather substantiation for her suspicions, however.
She got ready for bed, making sure she neither rushed nor dawdled; she wanted to take about the same amount of time that she usually did. But after brushing her teeth and washing her face, she didn’t change into her nightgown; she just turned off the light, put her shoes back on, and climbed out through her window. (It was something she did often enough when sneaking out to meet her friends from school to go drink or smoke on the beach.)
She hid among the trees at a distance from the house where she could see the windows both of her parents’ room and of the living room where they had been talking. She had still heard the sounds of conversation and occasional laughter (even that strange rusty sound from Zuko) while she had been washing up, and sure enough, the lights were still on in the living room, but were not yet lit in her parents’ bedroom. So they were still just talking, for now.
She felt her eyelids drooping while she watched the windows for any change, so she kept herself awake by bending droplets of nighttime dew from the leaves and grass around her, swirling it around her fingers, making it into a bracelet, then three rings, then a thin glove…
Finally the lights dimmed and extinguished in the living room. She held her breath, watching two windows alternately: her parents’ bedroom, and the guest room in the men’s dormitory where Zuko was (supposedly) staying. The light came on in her parents’ room first; of course it would, it was closer. So she would watch Zuko’s room, and if the lights didn’t come on there, she would get closer to her parents’ window to try to see, or hear, how many people were in there. And possibly (though the thought made her insides squirm) what they were doing. Though of course if she got any sort of visual confirmation she would stop watching immediately! She didn’t need a whole album of those images burned into her brain.
Not long after, she saw a light in the men’s dormitory. Disappointment deflated her ribcage like a balloon; she felt a strange hollowness in her stomach. Why are you disappointed? she scolded herself. You should be relieved that your parents aren’t having a weird three-way affair with their friend who you’ve called ‘Uncle’ since childhood. Definitely reading too many drama scrolls…
But this wasn’t conclusive, she realized; one of her parents might have retired to their room, while the other went with Zuko to his. She would be even more horrified if only one of them was having an affair with him; the idea of them sharing this strange transgression was far more palatable than the idea of one of them betraying the other. Still, maybe they only… transgressed one at a time, albeit with the other’s knowledge.
So she crept along the line of trees toward the men’s dormitory, very carefully trying not to rustle too many leaves or break any branches. But how could she get close enough to the window to see or hear anything without being seen herself? She’d have to crawl along the ground below the eyeline from the window…
Oh fuck. The White Lotus guards. They would certainly notice something like that, and assume someone was trying to assassinate the Fire Lord.
While she dithered in the trees, the lights went off in both her parents’ bedroom and Zuko’s guest room.
She had one last, desperate, not very good idea: climb back in through her window, creep very, very quietly down the hall to her parents’ room, wait until sounds of moving around stopped or snoring started, then open the door very, very quietly and see how many people were in the bed. If it was only one, she could infer where the other had gone.
So that’s what she did, because she felt too committed to give up now. Had the floorboards always been this creaky? Fortunately, no one opened a door to investigate the telltale creaks; maybe they sounded louder to her because of her nerves. She sat down next to her parents’ door to listen and wait.
If she’d thought it would be easy to tell what she was hearing, she was very wrong. That slight rustling noise—was that hoarse breathing? Someone shifting or turning over—in sleep, or while trying to reach it? Curtains blowing in the breeze? She had no idea how to tell whether it was safe to open the door and look.
She waited anyway, hoping that the unmistakable sound of snoring would be her cue… but even if it meant one person was asleep, what if there was someone else in the room who wasn’t? (Well, if her fa— if Aang was snoring, Katara would surely elbow him awake to tell him to turn onto his side.)
After some minutes—Kya had no idea how many—her eyes started drooping closed again, and she still hadn’t heard anything that assured her the person (or people) inside was (were) asleep. She had to face the fact that tonight had been a bust (as her more fashionable school friends might say). But she resolved to try again tomorrow night.