Pairings: Begins with Katara/Aang and Mai/Zuko, evolves to eventual Katara/Zuko.
Chapter One:
sacrifice
It starts with a girl and ends with a girl, as most stories do. All those pretty tales about beautiful girls with shy smiles and luscious locks, with clear eyes and full hearts.
Yet this girl is not beautiful.
She smiles little, and her hair is long and lank, her eyes always hidden behind lowered lashes. As for her heart, well; nobody will ever know what lays within it.
But she is still a princess regardless. A useless, empty title now, but a princess nevertheless and as such, she has something pretty to her name.
Her father is kept away from her - far, far away in another prison, in fact - but sometimes she swears she can hear him calling out. It frightens her, not knowing whether things are real or not.
The girl standing before her is real enough, though. She has blue eyes, Azula notes; yes, very familiar blue eyes. Has she seen them before? Is the girl significant? Azula searches through the memories in the anarchy of her mind.
"Do you remember me?"
The girl's voice is quiet, not at all like the loud guards Azula is used to. They speak loudly to hide their fear of her - trying to swagger, trying to convince themselves they are unafraid and failing all the same. After all, she can always smell it, the sickly and sour aroma of sweaty fear.
Azula blinks slowly, her eyes directed at the ground. After the first cursory look at her visitor, she does not raise her eyes again.
"Do you remember me?" the girl asks again.
Azula shakes her head slowly, watching the strands sway across her eyes. The movement almost mesmerises her. She had long hair once, didn't she? Yes. Pretty hair. What happened to it?
"My name is Katara and I'm a waterbender."
Azula's arm twitches, and Katara draws back abruptly. The guards had left Azula unchained in her cell, on the basis that if she shot fire at any approaching guards, they would not be able to give her food or water. They had hoped she would have enough logic left within her to know not to burn the hands that feed her, but now Katara finds herself wishing more precautions had been taken.
However, she needn't have worried, for Azula's arm twitches merely as a reflex and nothing more. The waterbender watches, fascinated, as expressions flicker across the girl's face. A sudden rush of memories seem to deluge her, for she lets out a low wail and bends her neck so that her face is hidden from view, uneven hair swinging across her countenance. Katara cannot tell if she is furiously recalling her defeat or merely lost in tragic memories.
When she's sure Azula won't be making any hostile movements, Katara relaxes and continues.
"I found out today that we're the same age, you and I." She waits. Azula does not respond. "I couldn't believe it. You're amazing for a fourteen-year-old - your firebending is spectacular." She is not consciously complimenting the other girl; she has no desire to flatter her. Katara is only stating the facts. "How much training did they put you through?" she asks. "How hard did they push you? And - they gave you a nation to rule." They. Katara doesn't want to mention Ozai, not in front of his daughter. The spirits alone knew what it would trigger. "A nation to rule alone, at fourteen. No wonder you lost it."
Azula sits, cross-legged, in the middle of her cell, her hair still hanging in front of her unreadable face.
"I don't even know why I'm here. Just the surprise of finding out we're the same age, I guess." Katara's brow furrows. "You could have been like me." She pauses, musing. "I could have been you. It's strange, isn't it? We have nothing in common, but..." She trails off, uncertain of what she wants to say. She suddenly wonders why she even visited Azula, wonders what madness could have evoked this action. Katara doesn't see any reason to stay. Azula has barely reacted to anything she's said so far, and she can't help but think it's been a waste of both their time.
As she turns and begins to walk away, however, Azula calls out to her in a soft, ragged voice - a voice not used to talking.
"Mothers." The word hangs heavy in the air.
"What?" Katara turns, startled.
"We both have dead mothers. That's something in common, isn't it?" Azula pronounces each word precisely, without malice or anger.
It's a response, but one that hits too close to home. Katara hurries away, unable to look back.
She emerges from the dark corridors, blinking as the sunlight shines into her eyes, and bumps straight into Zuko. She gazes up at his face, so easily readable. It's no wonder Azula, so quick and clever at hiding her emotions, had always out-smarted him.
"I was just visiting your sister," she says, for lack of anything else worth mentioning.
"What?"
"Azula. I just visited her." Now she's embarrassed. If he asks why, she won't be able to answer him.
"Why?"
She sighs. "I don't know."
Zuko mulls over this and apparently decides to drop the matter, for which Katara is eternally grateful.
"I was thinking of visiting her myself," he confesses. "I know I should hate her. And I do, obviously," he adds hurriedly, as though worried that Katara will accuse him of caring too much.
"She's still your sister."
"It doesn't make her any less of a monster."
Katara shrugs and changes the topic, eager to avoid an argument; the meeting with Azula has left her feeling drained. They exchange niceties for a few moments. Zuko tells her an anecdote about Aang and him feeding the turtleducks that morning and although she laughs, she wishes Aang had thought to invite her, too. Aang's always with Zuko these days, a brothers-in-arms feeling about them.
However, she farewells him pleasantly enough and now, as she walks through the dying afternoon light, it is Zuko who ventures alone into the dark prison that holds his sister.
Katara makes her way down to the city, heading towards the markets to find some starfruit - a newly-discovered treat. She pauses, however, when she hears somebody calling her name, and turns around to see her brother running towards her.
"Katara! Dad's here!" he exclaims.
"What? Where?"
"His ship's docking right now!"
Sokka barely pauses for breath as Katara joins his side. The two of them race along past surprised faces and cluttered stalls until it all becomes a blur. They're out of the crowds now, their feet tattooing a steady beat against the footpath. And there's a sudden sharpness in the air now, a stinging saltiness, and for a moment all Katara can see is the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky and -
- and somebody's arms around her, and this is another blue she knows and loves, the blue of her tribe.
They hold onto each other for a moment, all out of breath. Hakoda is laughing and his children are gasping in deep lungfuls of the sea air.
"You're back!" Katara manages to say at last.
"Of course. Didn't you receive my message?"
Two blank stares meet his gaze.
"The messenger hawk you sent me, Sokka. I sent him back with a message saying you could expect me in the Fire Nation within the week."
"Oh, not Hawky," Sokka groans. "He goes missing for months sometimes. I think he takes holidays."
"We'll probably get the message in a year," Katara says, laughing as Sokka looks embarrassed. She doesn't mind the error though; her father's arrival has put her in an exceptionally good mood. Hakoda begins to walk towards the palace, one arm around each of his children.
"So, tell me all the news," he says.
Sokka eagerly dives into all that has happened in their father's absence. Katara is content just to listen to her father and brother. For a while she forgets why Hakoda is there. After the final battle between Ozai and Aang, Hakoda departed for the Earth Kingdom, loaded with supplies to bring the war-torn towns and villages. But now, precisely one month after his departure, he has come to take them home.
Home. If Katara was to really examine her heart and head, if she was to truly dissect her thoughts and memories and dreams, she would discover that home is everywhere now. She has friends and family in every nation.
But she does not examine her heart and she not dissect her dreams. She merely smiles at her father and, for a moment, all thoughts of her fate are forgotten.
Footsteps again.
Azula has never had visitors before, and now two in one day? Emotion stirs in her heart for the first time during her long, lonely incarceration. Perhaps the water-girl has come back, she muses.
But no. She recognises him without even having to glance up. The quiet, measured footfalls. The even breathing. The slight scent of freshly cut grass. Grass. It's been a long time since Azula last walked upon grass.
"Zuko," she says at last.
He wishes he'd never come here. His sister looks awful, gaunt and pale and sickly. It's not right. She'd always been perfect and strong and invincible and his mind can't deal with this new Azula.
"Zuko," she says, and he starts. He hadn't been certain she knew he was there. The guards had warned him she was a bit - confused, whatever that meant. He could tell they were trying to hide their disdain for her.
"Azula," he replies after a beat. Whatever happened to her favourite taunt, his childhood nickname? He cannot remember the last time she addressed him by his full name.
Zu-Zu, you don't look so good!
The words are an annoyingly faint memory in his head, as though somebody murmured to him whilst he slept and he'd woken remembering nothing but a faded dream.
"I've come to see if you're alright," he says cautiously. He hates himself sometimes for his emotional fragility, with which he manages to summon up guilt for his imprisoned sister. Guilt for the girl who tried to kill him...he amazes himself sometimes.
She lunges up and forwards suddenly, her legs uncoiling and her hands wrapping around the bars, her face inches from his. Zuko immediately shoots a long lick of fire at her; it skims across the hands holding the bars. However, realising her intentions, whatever they are, are not malevolent, he manages to kill the flames before they can reach her face. She doesn't even seem to notice, gazing at him as her hands immediately turn an aggressive scarlet colour, the heat still eating away at the flesh.
"You startled me," Zuko says accusingly, by way of apology. She ignores this, continuing to look at him as though she's never seen him before. As though any moment, she'll die or he'll die and this is the last chance she has to commit every feature of her brother to memory.
"And you," she says in a hazy sort of voice, as though she's lost in another world.
"What?"
"She has a brother too. That's what we've got in common. We've both got brothers."
Zuko is making lightning-fast connections. "Katara. The waterbender. Yes, Azula. She has an older brother too. Sokka."
"And our mothers."
Zuko stiffens.
"Mother talks to me sometimes," Azula says lucidly, evidently not noticing the sudden tension.
"Does she?" Zuko asks tautly. "What does she say?"
His sister looks up at him. Zuko realises, suddenly, that she's shorter than him. How did he never notice that before?
"Azula?" he says sharply.
Her burned fingers slowly release the bars. She withdraws back into her cell.
"Sacrifice," she murmurs. "The mother's sacrifice."
And then she abruptly turns away and does not speak for the rest of his visit.
Come eventide and Katara is relaxing in the palace gardens. It's been one month since Zuko was crowned Fire Lord and everything is perfect. It has been a month, however, of borrowed time, and Katara knows that soon she and Sokka must make their way back to the South Pole. Soon she must leave the nation into which Zuko so graciously welcomed his guests.
Easier said than done, she thinks. Sokka will not go quietly, not unless Suki goes with him. The two of them are sitting on the bank of the stream that weaves through the garden, a weeping willow's branches casting flickering shadows of dying sunlight across their smiling faces. Their heads are bent together in a secretive way; occasionally a whispered word or snatch of laughter floats across the evening breeze.
On a low stone bench beneath a plum tree sit Katara and Mai, Toph between them. Toph is delightedly handling Mai's knives, exclaiming over the workmanship. The attention has brought out the best in the usually reserved Mai, and she explains how the make of each knife subtly changes the trajectory.
Aang and Zuko are sprawled over the bank, a little ways up from Sokka and Suki, in order to give them privacy. They're feeding the turtleducks, and Katara thinks by their expressions that they're having a lazily casual conversation, not talking about anything serious or important. She wonders how Zuko's visit to Azula went.
She listens to the girls talk for a while longer, then gets to her feet and makes her way to the two boys lazing in the summer grass. The air is heady and sweet with the scent of jasmine blossoms. Aang is lying on his back, eyes closed, smiling in agreement as Zuko says something. The firebender is on his stomach, trailing one hand through the stream, his other hand propping his chin up. Aang opens his eyes as Katara approaches; the sun is setting and her shadow casts long over his face.
"Oh, hi Katara," he says amiably.
"Mind if I sit with you?"
"Sure!" Aang smiles at her as she settles beside him. "Hey, I hear you're going back to the South Pole soon," he says.
"You're coming too, right?" she asks with concern. Aang laughs.
"Of course! You'll need a ride, won't you? And Appa loves the South Pole. He gets too hot here. But we've got to do some stuff before we leave. Zuko's been telling me about these amazing underwater beaches - "
"Underwater beaches? How does that work?" Katara interrupts, and Aang grins.
"See? Exactly. We have to check it out. And there's a lion-bear sanctuary on one of the northern islands."
"You mean sanctuary from the lion-bears, right? I think we can give that one a miss."
"Well, maybe," Aang concedes, taking her hand. Katara smiles at him and they fall silent for a while, watching the turtleducks. One glides gracefully through the stream, the water fanning out behind it, and cautiously approaches Zuko's trailing hands, giving his thumb a suspicious but gentle peck. Not food. The turtleduck gives Zuko a disgusted look and paddles away, much to Aang's laughter and Zuko's amusement.
Zuko gets to his feet and says he'd promised to talk to a war minister, farewelling them before making his way back to the palace. Katara watches as he walks into the dying light, silhouetted for just a moment before the sun finally sinks. His shadow is soon joined by Mai and Toph's, and the three of them disappear into the distance.
"Hey, Aang! Race you to the palace," Sokka calls out and Aang jumps up, a glint in his eye.
"You're on!"
"No airbending!"
Aang laughs and the boys take off, racing across the lawn. Suki catches Katara's eye and grins.
"I should probably make sure Sokka doesn't give himself another concussion," she says. "I've told him a hundred times: it's a garden, there's trees, he has to watch out." She laughs and shakes her head before striding after Sokka.
And Katara stands for a moment, watching the six friends disappear into the sunset. What does fate have in store for them? Where will they go, what will they do when this over? She wants to ask them to wait just a moment, to pause so she can paint a picture, capture them forever, before they are all swept their separate ways like boats against an eternal tide.
Instead she shivers in the darkening dusk and hurries across the lawn.
She catches up to Zuko just near one of the courtyard entrances; he looks displeased.
"I thought you had to meet with a minister," she says and he sighs.
"I cancelled it. I've just received news of a report from my advisor that needs urgent attention." Zuko holds up a battered-looking scroll. "I was planning to spend some time with Mai later," he adds with exasperation.
"Well," Katara says diplomatically,"life is all about sacrifice."
Zuko's fingers twitch. He opens his mouth, then closes it again.
"How did your visit with Azula go?" he says glibly, instead of whatever he was going to say. Katara frowns.
"Alright, I guess."
"She didn't try to kill you?"
"No," Katara says. "She...she seemed to be really..." She throws her hands into the air, unable to think of an appropriate word. "I don't know. She barely spoke the entire time. In fact, I think she only said one word."
"And what word was that?" Zuko asks. Katara hesitates.
"She said...she said 'mothers'. I'd asked her what we had in common... Oh, that's right. She said more than that. She said our mothers were both dead." Katara frowns. "I wonder how she knew..."
"She said my mother was dead?"
Sometimes, impossibly, Katara forgets that Azula and Zuko share the same parents. Impossible, to think they are related. Two polar opposites, forced to share their lives and parents and the blood running through their veins.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to - " she begins, but Zuko waves her apology away as if it's an annoying wasp.
"Forget it. It was a lie, anyway."
"Azula lied?"
"Azula always lies."
Why would she lie to me about your mother being dead? But the question remains silent on Katara's reluctant lips, and besides, Zuko has since caught sight of an advisor ahead and is hurrying to meet them. She gazes after him, for a moment all thoughts of her future driven from her mind.