Honestly, I didn't remember anything from the previous day. Well, most of it. As soon as Haru hauled me into the tank and directed the man who was driving it to go back, I was completely knocked out.

When I did come to my senses, even the air gave me a headache.

Get a hold of yourself. How can air give you a headache?

Damn. I messed up.

Katara still didn't know . . . Sokka . . .

My chest seemed to contract. Nothing wanted to go my way. It was as if my fate was literally against me.

My eyes flickered open. The first thing I saw was blue.

The blue sky.

I sat up, close to screaming. "Where am I?"

"She's awake!" I heard Katara's voice yell.

"How is she?" Sokka.

"Does she look the same?" Toph.

"I'm sorry we made you go through this," Katara said, resting a hand on my shoulder. "We're supposed to help people, and instead we messed everything up. I'm sorry."

"Katara, I have something to tell you."

"No, you don't have to say anything."

"I have to say this. It's important."

"Really. I understand," Katara smiled, "I would've done the same thing if I were you."

"No Katara please—" I tried to tell her, but she told me to rest, telling me to put the little pouch I came with under my head. As as I lay down, defeated, something crumpled under my head. There was no way I could rest with that annoying scratchy sound. I sat back up and pulled whatever was scrunching in there out and took a good look at it.

No.

They were the papers. The story. Katara and Sokka's. Mine.

It was real. I really was their sister. Except this letter? It was from my mother. Our mother. Not just a story. Azula was telling the truth.

At the end of the scroll, her name was signed, right after the last paragraph.

Katara, Sokka, my loves, if you are reading this, know that I never left you on purpose. Know that  I was forced to start over elsewhere, or Katara would be in danger. I escaped the Fire Nation in hopes that that I would see you again, which I plan on doing after this war is over. If this is in your hands, my children, understand that it was meant to be, for I left this with Gran . . . no, not your father's mother. My mother. She took care of my other daughter.

my other daughter.

I felt sick. Sick, ashamed, and betrayed. My own mother favored her first two children. I was nothing. She gave no regrets, left me no message. I was just the other daughter.

A pang to my heart made me realize.

I was always just the other daughter.

I could feel Katara's gaze on me. "Ayame, what's wrong? What are you reading?"

I flipped the page over, and there, lightly written was another message.

I know you're mad, and I know I made a mistake. I'm sorry.

I found this in Azula's room, and I know you'll need this. It's from your mother.

Zuko

I didn't realize what I was doing until Katara asked me why I was crying, and took the page out of my hands. I sat there, feeling every lie I once held on go slip from my grasp,  and I was falling. I barely heard Toph ask, "What's wrong, Sugarbreath?" I barely cared when Sokka leaned over Katara's shoulder. Her eyes didn't believe it. She was terrified.

I knew how it felt. The secrets about your mother which you once put all your faith in seemed to be the most faithless secrets of them all. I felt a sense of rejection. My own sister, tears in her eyes, stared at me with what definitely looked like disgust. My brother kept shaking his head pulling the letter of my sister's hands. They were watching me.

With hatred.

I huddled into the corner, tears slipping down my face while Toph asked why everyone was so quiet. Aang seemed to be in his own world, and Sokka?

He wanted to strangle me.

I could feel it. His eyes were narrowed at the paper, his hand constantly smoothing back his ponytail. He was jittery. At the end, he just crumpled it and threw it, the page flying away with the wind. No, I needed it. I needed to see it. 

I stood up and grabbed it before it flew out of the way, and sat down, staring at it as salty splotches of tears exploded over the words, smudging the ink. I folded the paper and set it in my bag.

My other daughter.

She called them her loves, yet she didn't mention my name unless she had to when she told the story. No my love or sweetheart or a message for me. Just the fact that she would leave me and return after the war was over. She said my children, while I was the other. She was forced to live a life with me. She loved my father, but not me. I knew what Katara and Sokka saw when they looked at me. Betrayal. A lie. Something their mother left them for. The daughter of another husband. A betrayal to their father.

I was just an accident, an obstacle. If she hadn't died along with my father, she would've left anyway like she was planning to.

I sobbed into my arms, the paper rolled up in a ball in my fist. No one bothered to care. Nothing was about me, anyway. I tried so hard to fit in, but the harder I tried the more I was left out. Was I a monster to her? A double bender? Something different? 

It started to rain. I looked up at the sky, fresh droplets of water mixing with the salty tears on my face. Why, mother? What did I ever do?

"She was taken when I was eight," Katara whispered to Sokka. "That's all I remember."

My heart broke. If there was anything left of it.

♋♋♋

Akira took a step around her bed, getting ready to sleep. Before she did, though, she made her way slowly to her daughter's room. Kya's room, where she was raised, before she left to the southern water tribe to start a new life. How happy she'd been when her daughter had returned, and how that happiness had melted away when Kya explained how she'd almost given up her life to save her daughter's even though she was nothing close to a waterbender. She was upset for leaving her husband, but Gran, the name sweet little Ayame called Akira, had smiled sadly and took her daughter's hands in hers and said, "You need to move on. Who knows if you'll ever go back? Write a letter to your children when the time is right, and it will reach them one day. They will understand. They will know why you did it."

Kya cried herself to sleep for the next few months, until she met the escapee. The Fire Nation guard. The cousin of the Fire Lord's children—at the time. Her spirits had lifted, and she'd realized that maybe starting over wasn't such a bad idea. She'd told Akira, her mother, how she felt and Akira was happy her daughter was slowly becoming healthy again.She needed to move on or she'd die of regret and unhealthiness. 

Katara and Sokka were a year apart. When Kya had left, Katara had been a year old, and Ayame had been born when Katara should've been two, Ayame being a premature baby. When Ayame turned one and Katara was three, Sokka being four and unable to remember much, Kya realized her husband was called to the Fire Nation. They were letting him off for what he'd done. Kya went after him, but as soon as she'd followed him, she'd found herself in the middle of a raid, just like the one that had taken her from Katara and Sokka. Bent on protecting her double dueler daughter who had shown unnatural dueling powers at an early age,  she gave herself up. 

Now what Akira had never told Ayame was that her father, Kaito, gave his life for Kya. He'd been betrayed, caught in the center of an ambush. Kya ran for her life, heartbroken for a second time, and kissed her mother and daughter goodbye to make one last trip home, because she did know her life was coming to an end. 

And then Akira never heard from her daughter again, not knowing if she chose to stay with her family, or she got caught on her way. She was wanted, and she could've been taken again after staying with Hakoda, her first husband, for the rest of her short life. 

But what Akira didn't even know, was that Kya had indeed returned to Hakoda after two years of marriage to Kaito only mentioning she'd escaped and come as soon as she could, living the next five years with her family, only to be caught in an unlucky raid and taken for good. Her letter to Sokka and Katara had been left with Kaito who knew the truth from the beginning, forgotten by Kya who would've gotten rid of it if she remembered, knowing it would be better if her children never met, and Hakoda never known the truth. But she did remember the first letter stored in her daughter's baby shoe, the one she'd written right before she left, broken. I will always love you, she whispered in her daughter's ear before she stuffed the letter in her shoe.

Ayame's baby shoe.