Zutara Week: Day 4: "VISIONS". ATLA canon-divergent, no-genocide, no-war, arranged marriage AU ficlet (Part I).
They first met on their wedding day, but Katara had known about the crowned prince Zuko her entire life.
Southern air-nomads had told her village many stories of the far-off countries about their sister Watertribe far up in the North, about the regal nobles of the Earth Kingdom, and the Fire Nation Royal family. Katara spent her childhood wondering what it would be like to travel like the nomads did, and at the bridge of her eighteenth winter, Katara was ready to make her case that she wanted to travel with the Southern Air Nomads to the wide Mo’Ce Sea and visit the Northern tribe… but her father and the elders had news for her instead.
She stood alone, silent before her father in all his sacred furs as chief, in the presence of her brother, her grandmother, her uncle Bato, all the familiar tribal elders… as well as a dozen honored bald guests in their delicate yellow robes.
“The temple monks have been having … visions. We cannot take their words lightly.” Chief Hakoda spoke not in their own tribe’s language, but in the common Nomadic tongue taught to them by their honored guests. He spoke it in a gruff, serious tone to his only daughter, as if acknowledging her as a young woman for the very first time. “They see much cultural tension and war between the nations in our future”.
Her father spoke, and Katara eyed the bald heads and blue arrows who sat meditatively in the corner of the next to her father … men she had seen breaking bread with her family her entire life. Their faces had never looked more sullen, apprehensive.
The hands she kept folded in front of her pinched at the fingers as she took a small breath.
“Why have they summoned me?”
Katara asked only to her father, formally, in the Nomadic language.
Chief Hakoda didn’t pause before answering.
“Their apprentice peace ambassador has made a… proposal.”
And as if he had appeared out of thin air, a young monk in yellow robes propped himself up from the sitting elders like a polarbear-mole from the snow. He walked towards Katara with a respectful bow and a wide smile and a lanky spring in his step, that seemed almost out of place in the frigid air of a tribal hut.
…Aang? Katara’s mind swam in alarm. She knew this monk. She had gone penguin-sledding with him and the tribe’s children years and years ago, back when titles like “Daughter of the Southern Watertribe Chieftain” and “Apprentice peace-keeper of the Southern Temple” seemed like ice-ages away.
What was Aang “proposing,” exactly? Suddenly, Katara imagined this young man getting down on one knee… right there in the hut… and Katara lost all her breath, her feet feeling frozen to the ground, her heart panicking.
Instead, Aang revealed a scroll from behind his robe, and unfolded it in front of her, standing between her and her father. He cleared his throat, and his smile was etched permanently while he spoke its contents. Aang’s voice had matured since she’d last seen him, Katara noted, but he still had the lilt and the lisp of his childhood self.
“The elders of all four Air Temples have unanimously agreed that my plan for a Harmony Restoration Movement lies in the strong integration between the Fire Nation, The Watertribes and the Earth Kingdom. Crowned Prince Lu Ten has offered his hand to Princess Yue of the Northern Watertribe, and Princess Azula has graciously accepted a marriage to the Earth King Kuei. The final piece to secure this Harmony Restoration Movement would be if Katara, daughter of Chieftain Hakoda of the Southern Watertribe, accepted the hand of Zuko, Crowned Prince of—“
“Wait wait—excuse me, WHAT NOW?”
Katara fiercely cut him off with his own Nomadic tongue, the language the monks had taught her people to encourage inclusivity.
“To avoid your elders’ ominous visions… I’m supposed to uproot my life to the other side of the world, and marry Prince Zuko— someone I’ve never even met!?”
Aang froze on Katara’s raised voice, like a child held speechless by his mother’s scolding.
“Well I mean… yeeeeeaaah, but Zuko’s great!” Aang attempted a smile while his lanky shoulders caved in and sank into his robes. “He’s smart, a skilled fighter, and he’s actually a pretty decent tea brewer—.”
“I don’t CARE how good his tea is; I’m not going to marry a complete stranger!”
Katara walked around Aang and faced her father, ignoring the groans of her elders as she did so, and immediately code-switched to their own native language.
“Dad, please tell me you don’t believe this!”
“We hold the air nomads’ wisdom to the highest regard, Katara. You know that.” She could see her father gripping the arms of his chieftain chair with white-knuckles, and he reverted back to the Nomadic language to prevent further disrespect from his honored guests. “Their legacy spans thousands of years before our people even set foot in this tundra. We must listen to their visions and respect their wishes if we hope to maintain peace in our world.”
“Well, THEIR VISIONS STINK!” Katara retorted in the Nomadic language, practically forgetting Aang was still standing behind her.
Katara turned to her brother, who’d gone practically mute in that hut since she arrived… and spoke in their native tongue to try and get to him.
“Sokka— you LOVE Yue! You’ve loved her for YEARS, and you wanted to carve a necklace for her on your next trip to the North! Don’t you have anything to say about this!?”
“Katara, please— not now.” Sokka muttered in their tongue, his eyes frowning and unable to look at her.
Her eyes started to glimmer with tears in disbelief, and she whipped her head back to face her father, her elders, her grandmother who sat silently as this all unfolded.
“They treat us like we’re game pieces on one of their maps!” Katara did not keep herself from voicing things in their Southern tribal tongue… things she’d been wanting to say for years. “They live up in their distant temples, and think they can fly around dictating our way of life like this… all because they have visions. They have no right!”
“Daughter, that is ENOUGH!”
Chief Hakoda slammed his cane.
Katara’s face had scrunched up from all her rage, and tears fell from her eyes.
The seconds of silence that passed between them felt like months. Years.
She had never, ever felt so distant from her own home. Her entire body had slumped into an unfamiliar weight as she stood there, alone, among her own kin.
It was Aang’s careful and boyish voice finally cut the tension.
“I… um… I see you still need some time to consider,” Aang sadly rolled up his scroll. “I’ll let the other temples know. We can always come back in a month, and see if--.”
“No— there’s no need...” Katara could feel the Nomadic words leaving her mouth, and yet she didn’t recognize her own voice as it felt almost an octave lower.
She practically felt nothing when she continued, in the Nomadic tongue, to nobody in particular:
“Whoa— are you SERIOUS!?” And Aang’s grin couldn’t help but widen into a full smile with teeth.
“Yes. I will marry Prince Zuko.”
Her voice had come like a resignation, but Aang hardly seemed to notice. The other monks seemed to catch the infectious joy that Aang had spread as they all got up and congratulated themselves, while her tribal elders and her family remained sitting stoically in their hut.
Katara turned her eyes to look at Sokka, his posture slumped and exhausted and sad, trapped in these centuries-old traditions that were weighing in his young life… and that’s when Katara knew she had done the right thing.
She needed to leave this place. She didn’t recognize what she loved about it anymore.
She needed a change of scenery, and, even if it meant marrying a foreign prince… she would find a way to reclaim that sense of freedom the the air nomads had always kept preaching to her about.
When the monks said their farewells outside of the hut, and took their leave on their gliders and majestic flying bison, Katara stood with her father. Their posture remained stiff to each other, like acquaintances rather than family.
“You did the right thing,” Hakoda remarked in his tribal tongue, his voice still gruff.
Katara took a breath, refusing to look at him.
“When am I scheduled to leave?” was all she asked, her voice still sounding distant.
“As soon as Bato informs us that the Prince succeeded in the arctic deep-dives, and the bear-elk hunt… and ice-dodging expedition.”
Katara blinked, finally turning to her father.
“He’s… going through the Southern rites of passage?”
Hakoda nodded once, but his eyes still remained on the guests as they made their farewells to the tribe.
“It was the only demand I made to the monks; I would have accepted nothing less, for my daughter.”
Katara watched the yellow robes catch the breeze with the bison in the evening sky, becoming silhouettes against the full moon.
“He did,” Hakoda’s voice was low, serious and stoic. “From what I hear, he is remarkably resilient.”
The last word made Katara’s breath get caught somewhere in her throat.
It’s was the same word her father had always, always used to describe her.
In his thick pelted cape of white southern-arctic tiger-wolf, Hakoda finally turned his head to meet Katara’s eyes and gave her a knowing, reassuring look.
He then turned away to bid farewell to the guests himself, outside of the hut, leaving his daughter alone in her thoughts.
Katara remained motionless, and her eyes moved towards the interior of the hut… and she went back inside to look at the tapestry behind her father’s Chieftain chair.
Against the small dim firelight of the hut, the figures of the centuries-tapestry seemed to dance in the cloth; it told the story of relentless young warriors with brown skin and wolf-tails, who fought against glacial beasts and protected their homeland for a thousand years.
She had only just realized that, standing almost hidden alongside the figures… were a handful of men of pale, foreign skin with the long, breezing dark hair of the Arctic seal-horse.
Before she knew it, Katara’s eyes had begun to glisten.
Perhaps, she thought, this arranged marriage to the Fire Nation was not meant to strip her of her homeland or her culture or her tribe’s legacy.
Perhaps… it was an invitation… to bring things back to how they were always meant to be.
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