Chapter Text
The Southern Air Temple was coming back to life. A group of Air Acolytes was living there independently, ringing its bells for daily meditations and filling its halls with talk. They were not quite self-sufficient yet, so airships from the Fire Nation and United Republic periodically dropped supplies to support the young community.
Avatar Aang traveled with his wife and younger son to visit the acolytes, so that he could celebrate the autumn feast of the dead in the place where his people had perished. Tenzin talked his girlfriend Lin Beifong into accompanying them as well. The two couples flew on their sky bison from Air Temple Island in Republic City harbor to the mountain towers above the clouds. The community greeted the two airbenders and their partners with a feast from the fall vegetable harvest.
After dinner, the children of the community took the old airbender by the hand, and involved him in their game. He played along joyfully, as if he were their own age. Their laughter reached the Avatar's family, as they looked on, his wife and son with fondness, and the metalbender with some discomfort.
Suddenly Lin blurted out, "I don't want kids."
Tenzin started, his face turning white. It was the first time he had heard her say such a thing. "Ever?" He asked.
"I don't think so," the usually confident woman looked more ill at ease than either of the other two had ever seen her.
Katara did not comment at the time, and the young couple did not say anything else, too caught up in the worries in their own heads to speak. But later, at night, the older woman sought out the younger one. She was easy to find, absently arranging and rearranging some rocks on a pavilion near the bedroom she was sharing with her boyfriend.
"Can't sleep?" Katara approached the lone figure.
"Are you disappointed in me?" Lin asked abruptly to the woman she considered a second mother, one significantly more nurturing than her own. "I can't blame you if you want grandkids. And Aang, he loves children."
"No, not really." Katara answered. "I want you to have the life you want. Tenzin, too. It's just another reason for me to be disappointed in myself."
"What do you mean?"
"I wanted a lot more than three children, you know. And if I'd been able to have more, then it wouldn't matter so much if Tenzin didn't have any children. He'd have other airbending siblings to bring it into the next generation. So it's my own failure, visited on my children. And on you as well. I'm so sorry, Lin." The healer's sincere regret came through in her voice, as she felt deeply the heartbreak she foresaw in the girl's future.
Disturbed and confused by the older woman's choice to take this burden upon herself, Lin protested, "I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong."
"Oh, I know. My brain knows it, I mean. But my heart still hurts sometimes. I miss the baby I lost, and the ones I couldn't have."
"I'm sorry." Lin answered automatically, "I didn't know…."
"It was the biggest challenge of our relationship."
"My mom told me you dumped Aang once….." The metalbender was interested to get the whole story; she believed her mother's account was probably not unbiased.
But the old lady was waving her hand as if to swat away a fly. "That wasn't over children. That was a separate issue, and in a way much easier to resolve. We forgave each other once for our mistakes, made new promises we could keep, and moved on. In fact, it strengthened our bond, and taught me a lesson I needed to learn before I could agree to marry him. But infertility is a slow-motion catastrophe, and one that necessitates at least monthly conversations for a couple of decades. It can alienate a woman from her own body, and even threaten to turn making love into a chore."
"That does sound terrible…." Lin murmured. Though she had to admit, for her, a diagnosis of infertility would be a relief, taking the burden of choice away. If she couldn't have children, then that was a very different, and, for her, easier, thing than if she chose not to.
"Maybe I should start from the beginning." Katara was settling into storytelling mode, the younger woman could tell. "Do you know the first time I came here?"
"During the war?"
"Yes. Soon after Sokka and I met Aang, and we joined his quest. Aang had just woken from his frozen sleep, and he was in denial. He didn't quite understand that his people were all gone, until he saw the evidence. When he saw his mentor Gyatso's skeleton, he went into the Avatar state. I told him, you're not alone, we're your family now, Sokka and I."
"That's sweet."
"And then the second time we came here, it was after the war. Aang hadn't really had time to grieve while we were on the run from the Fire Nation, and he was busy learning waterbending, earthbending, and firebending. But then he came here again when it was all over, and everything hit him at once. We held funeral services. He cried harder than I'd ever seen anyone cry in my life, and all I could do was hold him."
"I can't imagine….."
"We were dating by then, already in love, but we hadn't said it yet. We were so young." Katara smiled to herself. "Soon after that, we were living in Ba Sing Se for a few months, and I was working as a midwife. I had one really bad day, I think it was two miscarriages and one woman with completely unexplainable infertility, and I had the most chilling thought of my life, maybe a premonition-what if that's me someday?"
"What did you do?"
"Nothing, then. I just made a resolution inside. A desperate, misguided one, that underestimated Aang's love for me, and diminished myself as well. I decided anything would be better than causing him to grieve in that way again. Even sharing him."
"Sharing?"
"I thought it would be better if Aang impregnated other women, so that I could never be responsible for the final extinction of the airbenders."
Lin was shocked. Such an idea sounded ridiculous from the prim old lady, almost kinky. "What did he think of that?
She laughed. "He hated it! He was insulted at the very idea. But I was scared, and stupidly stubborn. For a couple of years our future became kind of taboo between us, and we just lived in the present. Then, the third time we came back here, after we broke up and got back together, after Zuko's wedding, and my father's remarriage, Aang gave me a flower."
"What kind?" Lin had been the recipient of many flowers from Tenzin over the years, and the young airbender had always enthusiastically explained the precise meanings of the blooms, according to his ancestors' traditions.
"A zenith rose."
"Eternal love." It was one of the few Tenzin had never given her. She had presumed that was because it was so rare.
"Yes. Soon after that, he built our house on Air Temple Island, and proposed. And when I accepted, it meant completely disavowing any notion of sharing. He had always wanted to spend his whole life loving only me, and I finally saw reason and let him give me my dearest, most ardent wish: marriage. In return, I promised him to take on the responsibility of mothering the next generation of the Air Nomads, and to hold on to hope that all would be well. And it was, until I lost our baby."
"That couldn't have been your fault."
"No, it wasn't." Katara agreed. "That's what I tell the women at my hospital, anyway. But what was even worse than losing our little girl, smaller than my hand, was that afterward, I was never able to conceive again."
"Is that common?"
"It does happen that way sometimes." The healer explained. "A miscarriage can cause scar tissue and make subsequent pregnancies impossible. Secondary infertility is the official diagnosis. I got a second, and a third and fourth opinion from other healers, just trying to deny the reality. But when I could deny it no longer, I had a bit of a breakdown."
"That's understandable."
"It made me doubt the very basis of our marriage. You promised me all would be well, I yelled at Aang through tears. And it will be, he answered, eventually."
"When was this?" Lin wondered. She certainly had no memory of a time when the couple had been even a little unhappy, and she had spent half her childhood on Air Temple Island.
"I had the miscarriage when Tenzin was a baby. Around the time you were born. And then the secondary infertility diagnoses came in during the two or three years after that. I had always told myself that as long as there was a chance I could give Aang at least one airbender, then I didn't have an obligation to take myself out of the picture so that he would be forced to move on. Of course, when I agreed to marry him, I also promised to put aside such thinking forever; but I was so depressed at that time I couldn't help it. I began contemplating leaving him. Or…..suicide." The old woman's voice and chin lowered, in her shame. She was not embarrassed to admit her condition anymore, but her reaction to it now felt extreme and foolish.
Lin's eyes widened in alarm. "What happened? Did you….."
"What happened was that just as I reached my lowest point, when I began making preparations to move out, Tenzin revealed himself to be an airbender." Katara smiled, recalling what was now one of the happiest memories of her life. "He was a toddler at the time. He sneezed so hard he flew into the air, and Aang laughed, and I broke down in tears. Don't you see? My love said to me, you have already given me everything I'll ever need. Our family is complete. All will be well. And it has been." Her eyes turned inward, crinkling softly as she remembered how her marriage had been revitalized once she had finally accepted her infertility. She had been afraid that without the possibility of conception, making love would feel pointless, but the opposite had happened instead: they had rediscovered the joy of their first explorations, pleasure purely for its own sake.
"Until now." Lin answered bitterly. "It really only meant kicking the can down one generation, and leaving it to Tenzin to deal with instead."
"Perhaps. That's why I wish I could have done more to take the pressure off you and my son. But truly, I did all I could." Katara held up her palms helplessly.
"Do you mean to give me some kind of suggestion?" The earthbender asked incredulously. "To tell me I should let Tenzin sleep around, if I really love him, since I don't want any kids of my own? Or break up with him?"
"Certainly not." Katara's face showed her alarm that she had been misread so extremely. "I said how wrong that idea was. I'm just telling you I understand some of your struggle right now. I know what it's like to love the last airbender. Someday, that's what Tenzin will be."
"Thanks to me." Lin's voice dripped with bitterness.
"I didn't say that." Truthfully, the waterbender was thinking more of her husband's health, the strange weakness that seemed to be slowly overtaking his body, no matter how much time she spent healing him.
"You're telling me all this to get me to have a kid I don't want, or dump him, or allow him to sleep with other women, so that your failure doesn't mean the end of the airbenders." Lin accused.
"No, that's not what I meant at all." Katara gasped, dismayed.
"You're saying that if I love Tenzin as much as you love Aang, that's what I'll do."
"Please don't put words in my mouth." The old woman replied sternly, with dignity. "I'd never tell a woman she has to have a child when she doesn't want to. I spend just as much time at the hospital helping prevent unwanted pregnancies, as I do delivering babies. I brought up my struggles to caution you away from following my path. Don't lose yourself in a fruitless attempt to save your love from inevitable grief. There's more to you and to me than just our ability to produce children, and our beloved airbenders both know that."
"But if I don't compromise in some way, then the Air Nomads will die out completely."
I suppose that will be up to Tenzin, won't it? Katara thought to herself. She knew her son. "I still have faith that all will be well. Eventually. Just like my husband promised me. Good night, Lin."
Though Aang had not heard Lin's words, Katara had told him, as she did everything. The old airbender found his son on the highest roof of the Air Temple and sat down beside him. He addressed the issue without preamble. "You know, I had the same problem."
Tenzin had enough experience taking his father's counsel that he didn't bother hiding what was on his mind. The implication surprised him, so that his brow furrowed. "Mom didn't want kids?"
"No, she did. But before I knew that, I had already decided that if she didn't, that would be fine with me. She was all I needed to be happy."
"So if I love Lin as much as you love Mom, then I should be fine, too." Tenzin concluded.
"I'm saying you should make your decision about Lin without reference to your position as the last of our kind. That's what I did."
"And that's why I'm in the position I'm in." Tenzin turned away with a grumble.
"What do you mean?"
"It wouldn't matter if I don't have any kids, if you'd had more."
"Don't blame me for what Fire Lord Sozin caused." His father admonished him, his voice as stern as it ever got.
"I'm not, I just….."
"You wish you didn't have so much pressure on you." Aang sighed. "I get it. Believe me. For what it's worth, we tried."
"What do you mean?"
"Your mother and I. We tried to have a lot more children than three. She had a miscarriage after you were born. You knew that, right?"
"You mention our sister Yangchen in prayers sometimes."
Aang nodded. "I still pray for her every night. After we lost her, we kept trying, and every month, your mom would get so upset when it didn't work." He looked away, into the distance. "She was…...in a really dark place for a while."
"What pulled her out of it?"
"You did." The Avatar grinned at his son. "When you sneezed a giant airbending woosh, and we realized we had already created all the family we needed."
Tenzin blinked back tears. What about the family I need? He wondered to himself. "How did you get through it?" He asked.
"I just followed my heart." Aang answered simply. "That's what you should do, too."
"And that means if I really love Lin, that will be enough, and I won't need to have any kids?" It was what the young man wanted to be true, more than anything, but he pushed for a more concrete answer.
"Perhaps. I felt that way myself." The old man's tone was careful. "But you're not me. Your heart might tell you something very different. Love isn't always enough."
"It was for you and Mom." Tenzin pointed out.
"No. We needed faith and hope as well." His father informed him. "The darkest moments of our relationship were the times when Katara lost hope. If I hadn't held on to it for the both of us during those times, we wouldn't have made it."
"But Lin is telling me there is no hope."
"She's telling you her limits, and you should listen." Aang corrected him. "If that means to you that there's no hope, then there's your answer."
The young man swallowed, his throat tight against accepting that as final. "What gave you hope?" He asked, grasping at straws. "Just Mom's willingness to try?"
His father shook his head. "I'm not sure if I can explain it. I just…...had this sense that all would be well. And it has been." He grinned broadly at his son, the skin around his eyes wrinkling deeply. "You're here. You're in love."
"But after me…"
"After you, who knows?" Aang smiled with a shrug. "Things will work out in the end." He kissed his son on his forehead arrow and said goodnight.
Tenzin stayed up, thinking. Whenever his father said that, his mother always responded, Things will work out because I'll make them work out. And he was nothing if not his mother's son.
When Tenzin finally flew back down to the room he was sharing with Lin, he found her in bed, the lights out. He undressed and climbed in on the other side, moving quietly so as not to disturb her.
She hadn't been asleep at all. She rolled over immediately and wrapped her arm around his waist.
"I love you, Tenz. I don't want to lose you," she whispered in the dark.
A thousand memories buried him. How could he leave his childhood playmate, his first kiss, his best friend? How could his heart ever lead him anywhere but here? Tenzin was determined to find hope, to manufacture it himself if necessary. After all, air could move rock, if it blew hard enough, long enough, couldn't it? Or maybe a mountain could redirect the course of the wind.
"You haven't lost me. I'm right here," he lifted her chin to him, exhaling.
His breath moved over Lin's lips, and she sighed. Her toned legs relaxed and opened for him, her stony hardness softening. She clung to him as if his body were about to diffuse into the sky.