i. a powerful bender

The heat had been incredible.

The flames had roared higher than the roofs of palace buildings, singeing their lacquered wood and tile; scraps of scorched debris dropped on the violent, haphazard breezes of Azula's flames to litter the endless ground that lay between Katara and Zuko, who was blocking his sister's attacks with poise and efficacy, never moving position.

The heat had rendered Katara, standing some distance behind him, immobile. It had leeched water and salt from her body and the loss of such essentials made her realize—again—what having an opposite element meant, how it felt—it felt like being useless. She'd stood in a fighting stance for about a minute before realizing that there was not enough water in the air, ground, or drainage systems to quench the volumes of deadly fire produced with such force by the two children of the Fire Lord. She could do nothing to help; she would only be able to defend herself should something go wrong, and even then, she would most likely die.

Of course, she had had to help, in the end. Flash and crackle and another kind of screeching terror—Zuko leaping, parallel to the ground, like he had been when he'd pushed her out of the way of falling rock in the Western Air Temple, no, she hadn't forgotten. Being saved was a hollowed-gut feeling, a limb-numbed and impotent anger that she wouldn't ever forget.

And as it turned out, she wasn't useless against Azula's searing, nonsensical rage. The anger had been too big for the lady Fire Lord, and she'd tripped over it; Azula had missed the water beneath her, hadn't taken seriously the chains, hadn't been able to dig for a way out in that muck of thought and desire and desperation that had churned in her head for days, months? who knew.

But even then, so close to blue death and with Zuko twitching in the corner of her eye, the residual heat of his and his sister's death match pressed down on Katara, the weight of a thousand suicide-saves. Her arms had ached sharply when she'd pulled on Azula's new shackles. Her hands had cradled Zuko's shaggy head, pressed hesitantly to his heart. A first thought: he channeled it correctly. Another thought: he is warm.

He'd thanked her; she'd cried; she'd released him immediately as they stood and only kept one hand on his shoulder while the other burned at her side. Azula swore, screamed and screamed.

Toph, Suki, and Sokka had found them first, four hours later, and Katara had been glad for it. It was a story she had to practice before telling Aang.

Pale sun filtered through the stitching that held her tent together, flashing in her peripheral vision like lightning or those flying fire insects that live in the humider Fire Nation islands. The tent was well-made once, long ago, but age dried and cracked the skins, and the sun leeched suppleness from them, eliciting gaps between the thread that likely hadn't been, before.

Katara often woke slowly in this season, when the sun was a near-constant shine. Summer peaked yesterday in the South Pole, and so began the countdown of shorter days, longer nights, and a gradual increase in walkable ice. She preferred the deep winter darkness, which was like walking through a dream.

Dreaming of Azula and Zuko's Agni Kai. She'd been having strangely vivid dreams recently, ones that startled her awake or sent her reeling. Now, she felt strangely hollow.

Next to her was no one, so she stretched hard, enjoying the strain. Aang was in the Earth Kingdom, talking to some governors about ceding land to his newest idea, a neutral city with an elected government. It was one of his better big dreams, and Katara was happy it seems to be going well, but he was frequently frustrated: the Avatar's pleasure rested in quick compromise and easy solutions, which were rarely the business of political leaders so close, still, to war.

She dressed quickly; her fire had gone out in the night, and layers of blankets and the peeking sun were the only sources of warmth in her tent. Long sleeves and pants, boots, tunic, sealskin parka dyed brilliant polar-sky blue. She wrapped her hair in a string of leather gifted to her once by Ty Lee at a celebration in the Fire Nation.

Last year, she'd taken out her hair ornaments, brushed out the loops, and received instead of the bride's ceremonial hair-cutting the warrior's ceremonial shave—on the underside of her neck, at the direction of her father the chief, who seemed intent on behaving as contrarily from Master Pakku as he could for as long as the latter was helping him rebuild the tribe and flirting with his mother. She still shaved it. It made her feel lighter.

Dried fruit from Zuko—he always sent baskets of the stuff on her birthdays, enough for years at a time—and dried meat cured by Sokka last year. She gnawed on a strip of it as she pushed open the tent flap and blinked the inevitable sun-tears away and greeted another morning alone on the outskirts of the capital city of the South Pole.

Warriors and waterbending masters were given almost deific deference in the South as soon as they came to join the tribe, and as such it became Katara's assumed right as waterbending heroine of the War of a Hundred Years to pack herself away for a couple of weeks during the summer and just be alone. She started a couple of years ago, when de-colonizing corps from the Fire Nation arrived to help undo the awful work they'd done. Rebuilding continued at a good clip in the South Pole, now. The capital was a true city, modeled on the buildings the tribe lost generations ago. And Katara enjoyed her time alone, or with Aang if he was there, practicing her bending with a freedom of movement she rarely enjoyed anymore as her father's second-in-command.

She was halfway through her morning forms when a messenger announced his presence with a shout from above the hill, dotted already with several penguins. Like them, the messenger waddled down the snow, careful not to trip in the presence of the master whose peace he disturbed. Katara released the snow she'd been manipulating into tiny spheres, and they exploded with amusing abandon.

Katara held in a rather mean laugh upon recognizing the messenger: a Fire Nation corpsman, obviously un-used to the snow. The de-colonizing 'troops' wore official pins and uniform caps, but the corps was made up of teenagers—the occasional wealthy conscientious objectors during the last years of the war, or those who had been too young for conscription—who signed up to bring home a good paycheck, to travel the world, or to assuage their national guilt. She guessed this one, with his eager clomping gait across the snow, was the latter kind.

"Master Katara," he said with a Fire Nation bow, "I have a message for you."

She tried to smile at him benevolently and took the slim scroll. "Just call me 'Katara.' I wasn't aware my father was using you all as messenger hawks."

The corpsman looked no more than sixteen and put her in mind instantly of Zuko, in those first days at the Western Air Temple, with an awkward laugh. "I, ah, volunteered."

"Sure. Thanks." He likely heard the Avatar might be sharing her tent—it was common knowledge, and often marketable knowledge for the village children, who plied the de-colonizers for all the spending money they could, now that there were actually things to buy in the Southern Water Tribe. No Avatar here, sorry. Just me.

He was dawdling—waiting for her to read the message. It unraveled neatly in her palm to reveal an unfamiliar hand, very neat and slightly foreign in its phrasing. She scanned it quickly.

Ah. From the Beifong estate.

Ah.

Katara rolled it back up. "Thank you," she said. "Has anyone else in the vill—town received this?" She corrected herself; it wasn't the small, poor hamlet of her childhood anymore, which was objectively good and subjectively quite sad. It was no wonder that Sokka spent his summers away.

"No, the hawk delivered just this one, for you."

Nothing addressed to Aang. That meant he'd probably seen Toph already and was no making his way to the Fire Nation, where he'd be meeting with Zuko. "Message received," she told him somewhat wryly. "Since you're in the business of delivering, would you tell Chief Hakoda that I'll need to take the ship to the northeast Earth Kingdom?"

"Of course. What manner of ship?"

She eyed him impatiently. One of the warships. I'm going to launch a full assault. "I'll go on the next cargo ship. There's one due out this afternoon. An oil ship." One of their first, and soon to be most profitable, ventures. Aang didn't like the drilling—said it disrupted 'things,' which presumably means 'spirit things' or 'balance things' in Avatar-speak. But Aang, as Hakoda liked to point out, did not have to keep a nation on its feet. Negotiations about reparations were still slow six years after the war's end, although Zuko said time and again that he'd push for them to go faster; even the Fire Lord could only do so much. Or at least, even a Fire Lord like Zuko could only do so much.

"Of course," the corpsman said again, bowing. "I hope it wasn't bad news."

She turned away from him, a little petulant that her week away from tribal business has been cut short, and got to work taking her tent down. That depends on how much you liked Toph's mother.

After a quick meeting with her father and a quicker note to Sokka, who was spending the summer on Kyoshi Island, Katara packed herself into one of the few cabins in the cargo ship and pestered the captain to leave ahead of time.

Maybe it was for the best that her alone time had been cut short; she did have work to do, particularly on the trade agreement with the Earth Kingdom islands that had proclaimed autonomy after the close of the war. Tricky, that; it wouldn't do to make the Earth Kingdom proper angry, but Katara could easily see a future in which the mercurial royal family no longer held sway in commercial matters, anyway. The governors were vying for more power all the time. What good was it to sign a treaty 'in perpetuity' when the world was changing so fast?

Plus, she hadn't even read the damn thing yet.

So she set to work in the weak light offered by her cabin's single glassed-in porthole, saving her few candles for the night, when it would be much colder and their warm orangey light would be more appreciated. This, she reflected wryly, was what her traveling life was like now: no more running in hunger and fear, but slow movement towards an agreeable end. No more making paragraphs of world history—more scribbling in the margins of someone else's choice.

She remembered, suddenly, the six months or so after the war, in which she and Aang, rootless, had stayed in the Fire Nation to assist Zuko and petition for the restoration of their homes.

Zuko came frequently to find her in those last months in the palace, as he was getting ready for his coronation and began to lead rebuilding commissions, planning councils, de-occupation committees, reparations negotiations. Katara sat on those meetings, too, with her father, when he was there, and other world leaders. She remembered standing as she talked, as she always did when she was particularly animated. She remembered catching Zuko's eye upon sitting back down and feeling oddly gratified when he smiled or winked or rolled his eyes in response.

She was told, and soon realized herself, that she was good at politics—that she enjoyed it. She could argue hard and hold court. Her legendary status obligated people to listen to otherwise would not, but her fire reeled them in after. She'd made good deals for her home and for the colonial Fire Nation population, who had been roundly ousted from their former holdings. Whispers claimed she was too much a 'friend to the Fire Nation' until she'd made a (very public) speech about being a friend to the 'people of the Fire Nation—the ones I met in the war, who helped us survive while we were being hunted.'

Zuko had half-joked about hiring her as an adviser; she herself entertained the idea of becoming an ambassador to the Fire Nation. Her father, frowning, had expressly forbid it. "You belong home," he said. "We need you more than he does."

She hadn't asked about ambassadorship to the Northern Water Tribe or to the Earth Kingdom, she realized later. But to be honest, she wasn't interested in working in the trumped-up court of King Kuei or joining the misogynists in the North. She could have done real good in the Fire Nation, working with Zuko for her country. Better, certainly, than their current ambassador—Koronok—who was about as competent at the job as Momo would have been.

Outside of their meetings, Zuko had often invited her to walk around the palace grounds, up on the rooftops, through the servants' corridors. They'd talked—frequently about Azula, who was barely taking food and terrifying her guards. More frequently about Aang, who as ambassador of all that was good and light was busier even than Zuko in those odd days after the fighting had finished.

The forthcoming Fire Lord had been as soft-eyed as Katara was, it seemed, about the Avatar who was their good friend. "I couldn't do what he's done," he said to her in rasps. "I couldn't stomach it. I don't know how he didn't kill Ozai." The unspoken thing: I would have killed Ozai.

It's good you didn't have to. "Aang's always been like that. Since I met him, anyway." A year ago, was it then? More? Fourteen had gone by so fast, and she had already become old and creaky, shriveled with hunger and sinewy with necessary muscle. Hakoda had been plying her with blubbered jerky since he'd come for the meetings.

She'd thought about it—about Aang. "Being good isn't all there is, though. Aang is wonderful—sparkling. But he's got his flaws. He judges quickly. People. Actions. He's still got to grow up."

Zuko had been running his hand down the cool wall of the wine cellar. They'd traveled further below ground during the summer to escape the heat of the Fire Nation's rainy season, which was the kind of heat that oppressed. "But he's good."

She'd shrugged. "Avatars aren't 'good' by definition; from what I've heard, a lot of them were a real pain. Aang is 'good' because he's a kid, a nice kid, and because it was the way he was raised to be. He's still young, even after everything. He'll change."

He'd looked at her strangely. "You're young, too."

"I'm getting older," she'd said, remembering suddenly and bizarrely when he'd saved her the first time, by pushing her out of the way of falling rock at the Western Air Temple, and the way they'd landed: his chest on her back, his arms square, his fingers curling at the slope of her breasts. Somehow, it hadn't happened so fast that she'd missed the placement of his fingers.

Zuko, not seeing her expression, had snorted, and said, "And you were never as nice."

Now, Katara set down her pen and scrubbed at her eyes, feeling the unwelcome burn of forthcoming tears. What was wrong with her today? Prickly and restless. Gut-empty. She'd dreamed last night of lightning tracing a path across the sea, spreading from Fire Nation to Earth Kingdom to the sky and back down to an iceberg where the boy Avatar sat in hibernation, a hundred years late to life. It had split the ice and killed him where he lay, and Katara had watched it from above, unable to move until the sky let her go and she plummeted into the cold black water below.

The air on deck was bracing and at the ship's back; they were nearly out to open sea already, and the harbor of her home was barely a white glimmer on the horizon. It smelled like oil, slick and perfumey. The ocean was a forbidding dark blue, and the color gave her energy. Marshaling a power she hadn't felt in quite a while, Katara shifted into a mobile stance, one foot in front of the other. She raised her hands above her head and felt the infinite volumes beneath her, and all the life therein. She waited until something surged in her blood, and then, and then. She moved.

The ship surged forward.

The next night at sea, Katara woke up with pain and blood and cursed herself for forgetting. Working quickly, she took water from the basin in the corner and soaked the violent evidence on the ship's blankets; stripped and did the same with her wrappings. Naked in the candlelight of her cabin she paced, massaging herself with healing hands.

Twenty, she thought. This was the eighth year of her bleeding. Old, according to the Water Tribes. Well into marriageability and further into mother-potential, which she'd gained to her dubious celebration in the easier years before joining Aang. Gran-Gran had smiled at her with quite obvious pain and only later told her gravely that it was good all the men were gone, and better that she had learned what it was like to live in a world without them.

It came to her unbidden: I'll save you from the pirates.

How could a girl not be conscious of such things as years and body-feeling when surrounded by a horde of pirate men and a flinty teenage royal whose eyes held only single-minded fierceness?

She had shivered then. Caught.

The night before he'd left for the Earth Kingdom, Aang had been tracing arrows on her arms. "Katara," he said carefully, "Why do you make that motion? Every time, after."

She should have known he'd notice and ask. He was the Avatar; he would be able to feel all kinds of bending, the senses of them, the aches. Katara was happy to be on her stomach, furs and seal skins draped over her lower half, her head cushioned by Aang's leg, her face turned away from him. "It's a contraceptive bending move," she answered flatly.

"I thought so. Where'd you learn that?"

She thought about saying 'Hama,' just to see him jump—but something kept her from being awful. "The healing women know all sorts of in-body bending. In some ways, it's just like removing poison—you use the contaminated water as a medium, and you can trace where it's been and wash it out from there."

His hand stilled. "Like poison?"

"In theory—it's not a perfect comparison, obviously," she said, smiling up at him in presumed reassurance.

Aang's face, for once, had been hard to read. "Ah."

"Well—I assumed that pregnancy was something we'd talk about first, before actually letting it happen," she reasoned, drawing herself up to look at him fully. She saw Aang's eyes glide over her shoulders and torso and blushed, oddly enough. She'd been so comfortable—now, she took one of the skins and wrapped it over her shoulders.

"At some point, we should," he said, all easy smiles again. "When you're ready. It think I'm ready."

"Thanks, Aang."

He'd kissed her. And that night, in a half-sleep haze, she'd thought she had a swollen belly, and that her arms were covered in a thousand blue arrows pointing up, to her eyes, around her skull. When she'd stretched her hand out to the other side of the pallet her fingers had touched Aang's lips, where light shone so bright as to wake her up with a gasp, jolting upright in the unloving snow of the South Pole, fifty feet from her home, bare feet aching with cold, her hand outstretched to grasp nothing at all.

There was a pleasant anonymity in traveling alone. Wearing a simple brown coat now rather than her signifying parka, Katara bid goodbye to the ship captain, who thanked her expressively for the bending that had saved them half a week of travel, and quickly boarded a train to Ba Sing Se.

She nevertheless caught curious looks on her public car. A de-colonizing corpsman seemed to recognize her and quickly began whispering to his compatriot. They were both decked in expensive-looking maroon robes that wouldn't have lasted two days in the poles. Katara felt a wave of gratefulness for the corpsmembers at her home. She should have gotten that messenger's name before she left—reached out to his family—thanked him. Something.

The trade agreement was still half-unread, but she dared not unfurl it here. Politics in the Earth Kingdom were sticky, and it was better that people guess at who she was rather than her give any confirmation. She leaned against the window instead, watching the fields and villages pass by.

Her car emptied with every stop in the Lower and Middle rings, and by the time they reached the Upper Ring, she was certain all of her fellow travelers had a good idea of who she was. Standing as gracefully as possible under the weight of a dozen gazes, Katara drew her coat a little closer and hooked her bag—the same she'd traveled with when she was fifteen—under her arm. It still smelled a bit like Appa, which was as comforting as it was disgusting.

"Excuse me," she said to the corpsmen, whose legs blocked the aisle. Unfortunately, they took her politeness as regard, and one sprang to his feet and bowed low.

"Master Katara, it is our pleasure to welcome you to the Earth Kingdom," he murmured. "Here on business?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. He had the oily manner of a Fire Nation nobleman's son. "Just visiting, thank you."

"We miss you in the Fire Nation," he said—to her consternation, following her down the aisle. "Do you plan on visiting again soon?"

She handed her ticket stub to the collector and disembarked quickly. The corpsman stayed behind, obviously wanting to curry favor but not to have to catch another train to do so. Katara smiled tightly at him. "I have no plans to visit the Fire Nation at the moment," she said, "but I do miss it. What was your name?"

"Oh—Kazuro." He bowed again, narrowly missing the collector's hat. Katara grinned. "I'm sorry to be so forward. It's an honor to have shared a car with one of our Fire Lord's good friends—and a friend to the people of the Fire Nation."

The way he stressed 'people' made her blush. "Thank you, Kazuro. I'm glad to see corpsmen doing good work here in Ba Sing Se." In the Upper Ring, where it's evidently least needed, but still.

Kazuro seemed thrilled by this commendation, and speechless; Katara took the advantage while she had it and turned away, winding through the crowds in the station and turning left down a heavily-decorated street, at the end of which, she remembered, the Beifong estate lay.

"It was the most amazing fight I've ever seen. Awesome. Awe-inspiring. Big. Hot. I don't know."

Toph snickered, her feet on one of her estate's nicest outdoor tables. "'Big' and 'hot?' My kind of fight."

"Toph!"

The sun hung light over Ba Sing Se. Katara hadn't felt sun-warm in months—since some kind of commemorative ceremony elsewhere in the Earth kingdom last year, where Toph had gotten roundly drunk and put Sokka in a headlock for the better part of an hour. At the reception-cum-afterparty, she and Aang had climbed to the roof of the host's building and surveyed Ba Sing Se from above. Aang had told her stories of Bumi's latest exploits. She'd laughed and held his hand throughout. It had been one of their best nights together.

"You're usually more descriptive than that," Toph admonished.

"Hey, you know what? It was a long trip here, and I bended half the way." Katara poured herself another cup of cold barley tea. "It's funny you ask, actually. I thought about it again recently."

Toph fell quiet for a moment; she'd been that way over the past day, since the ceremony casting her mother's spirit to rest. "You and Zuko never really talked about it again, after we found you," she said slowly, "but I've been wondering. He did—he did throw himself in front of lightning for you, didn't he? The way you two said it at the time was like, 'oh, no big deal,' but that's…something."

Katara nodded. "It was something."

Toph looked at her expectantly; she grimaced. "Azula shifted her stance at the last minute and cast it at me. He ran and—and—" Something faltered in her mouth: tongue or teeth or air. "And he nearly gallantry'd himself to death. I was terrified. I could have killed him myself."

"I would have gotten to him first. He still hasn't paid me back in full for burning my feet."

Katara giggled—she'd missed the machismo, the ridiculousness, of Toph. "You're still holding that grudge?"

Toph looked indignant. "Katara! You're getting on me about grudge-holding? Way to call the kettle black."

Katara grimaced. "Fair point."

They lapsed into silence again; a servant appeared silently at Toph's elbow with a tray of some snack or another, which neither of them touched. Katara hadn't seen Toph eating much since she'd arrived the previous day. The ceremony casting her mother's spirit to rest had been this morning and Toph had stood next to her father in solemn quiet, toes shifting in the dirt. Her father had kept his head down for the entire ceremony and left almost as soon as it was completed. Toph hadn't seemed surprised by it, but hadn't explained it, either.

The next question Katara phrased carefully. "Have you heard from any of the others?"

"Suki and your dumb brother sent their condolences and their 'love'—ew—and I haven't heard anything from Sparky or your dumb boyfriend."

"Why are all the ones in connection with me 'dumb?'"

Toph shrugged. "Bad taste."

Katara steadfastly ignored this and sucked down the last dregs of her tea, remembering again how Zuko had punched a hole in Azula's defenses and sent her spinning to the ground. "I guess Suki can't travel right now, while she's pregnant," she reasoned.

"Can't or wont," Toph said sourly.

Katara eyed her friend warily; her distaste of Suki was hard to hear, sometimes, and her admiration for Sokka—only guessed at, but difficult to discount—was hard to bear. "I'm a healer. It would be a little different. And thankfully, it's not the case."

Toph scowled. "No little Airbenders?"

Katara choked on laughter, or panic. "Not any time soon, no."

"He's the Avatar," Toph said, and Katara was not quite sure what that meant. "Has he asked yet?"

And just like that: they plunge into uncomfortable territory. Katara refilled her cup again. "Well—no, not as such."

"Don't tell me you haven't—"

"Of course we have," Katara said, testier than she'd meant to, and Toph's mixed look of glee and disgust made her snort. "But again, I'm a healer, and we've been perfectly open about, um, not reproducing."

"Yet."

"Yet," Katara allowed. "We maybe don't see eye to eye on it."

"Yet."

"Yet."

Suddenly earnest, Toph removed her feet from the table and leaned forward. "Sugar Queen. That's going to be really tough for you two."

"Is this just hitting you now?" Katara frowned at her teacup. "It's been four years. I never thought he'd want to…I understand it's his people he's thinking of, and how—I mean, it's his dream to have a family again."

Toph's milky eyes flicked up. Eerie, how they could find Katara's immediately, as if she could feel gazes in her toes. "He does have a family. If he should have learned anything, it's that the kind of bending you do doesn't matter."

Impossibly, Toph sounded fairly hurt. Katara swallowed hard. "I know. But he feels pressure to restore balance in that way."

"In using you as a brood mare?"

It was so blunt, and so hurtful, and so honest, that Katara nearly cracked her teacup. "He doesn't think of it that way. It would be a family. And an honor. And why are we talking about this?"

Toph sat back again and crossed her ankles on the table. She looked angry. "Because I can tell something's bothering you. It was a lucky guess what."

Katara grumbled unintelligibly; Toph rapped her knuckles on the table in sharp reprimand. "I don't wanna pressure you, Sweetness. But. You're not a means to an end."

Did that make her the end in question? "Thanks, Toph." She'd almost been the end of him already: when he gave up his training with Guru Pathik just because he could not let her go. When he could not control the Avatar state because the image of her ticked through his brain in consistent flashes. In the crystal catacombs below Ba Sing Se.

It has special properties, so I've been saving it for something very important.

Toph clucked. "My parents haven't been sleeping in the same room for two years now," she said without preamble, flexing her toes on the table, tea sitting listless in her hand.

Katara felt herself frown. "How do you know?"

A wry smile. "The feet never lie."

"Do you think…" Was separation common in the Earth Kingdom? The things she hadn't learned while traveling the world. "Do you think he's in love with someone else?"

"I think she was," Toph said. "I don't think he was ever really in love with her in the first place. I don't know where he goes. But he comes back happier, so I don't really care. Keeps him off my back," she sniffed, unconvincingly.

Katara watched her carefully, but Toph only swirled the tea in her cup. Downed it in one gulp.

"I guess," her blind friend said quietly, "some people don't need other people."

"Do you?"

Slowly, Toph shook her head. "No. But that doesn't mean I don't like having someone around." She licked her lips. "Thanks for coming, Katara."

"Of course I came." Katara said it without thinking, but it was true—she hadn't given it a second thought. Maybe it was a product of her own selfishness, and of wanting to get out of the South Pole while the eternal daytime stretched on. But maybe it was also because it was Toph. "You know, I realized today that your corps members are a little higher-class than ours. Ba Sing Se must be a cushy post."

Toph groaned, seriousness forgotten. "You have no idea how many of them come up here asking about donations for the Lower Ring. 'For rebuilding the Kingdom.' It's like they don't know who I am."

"They probably just want to get a look at you. One almost followed me off the train yesterday."

"They are grasping little assholes, aren't they?" Toph shook her head. "With the best intentions, but still. What were we doing at that age, I ask you?"

"Toph, you are that age."

"Makes it even worse! I was out saving the damn world when they were drooling on their moms' blouses, and now they're coming around here fawning over me with all their drippy Fire Nation guilt." She looked up. "You hungry?"

Katara smiled secretly. Get Toph angry and you get Toph happy. "Sure."

"Good. I'm starving. Let's go to Iroh's."

"Oho—my favorite customer."

He smiled at them, humble old dragon in a teamaker's apron, accompanied by one of Toph's family's servants, who had run along with them according to custom and had been too slow to announce them, and looked vexed by it.

Iroh spread his arms wide. "My dear, I must offer my most sincere condolences. Your family has been good to the city as it rebuilds. I apologize for not attending the ceremony this morning."

Toph shook her head. "It was family only, old man. There's nothing to apologize for. And I've brought you a gift, anyway." She nudged Katara.

Iroh smiled at her like some benevolent old god, and Katara felt herself flush with happiness. He enfolded her in a hug so warm it nearly elicited tears and then released her, a hand on her shoulder, where it rested with comforting heaviness. "Master Katara, you are more beautiful than ever before," he said. "The South Pole must miss your light."

She blushed truly now. "General, you're too kind. It's so good to see you."

"You know," Iroh said gravely, "I, too, have a gift for you. It came only this morning, but I think you'll both be happy to see it. Would you have a seat here? I'll bring it out."

He directed them to a low table in a private corner, but of course Toph wasn't one to wait. "A gift?" She perked up and slammed her right foot down. A slow smile spread across her face and Katara was pleased by the change; Toph looked beautiful, her dark hair gleaming, her grin confident and pleased. Iron chuckled gently as she shouted, "Hell yes! Come out from there—stop hiding!"

And there he was.

Fire Lord Zuko stepped from, of all the unregal places, the kitchen door, with an equally-pleased smile on his face and his eyes focused on the earthbender who'd launched herself forward to hug him in greeting. Iroh stood by Katara and laughed at their exchange of hair-pulling and jokes; Katara could only smile. She could not stop. Warmth pooled in her stomach and moved quickly to her throat, where it hung, a netted shout.

He'd grown his hair out a little longer, enough for the royal topknot, but it was slung low today, tied back simply, likely for the journey here. He wore plain Fire Nation clothing of dark maroon and black, and the only signal of his rank and title was the crest of his nation, embroidered in golden thread, on his vest. He could have been a corpsman for all anyone knew, save for the scar, and for the sharp line of his jaw that marked him as a son of that cursed blood.

She hadn't seen him in over a year. The last letter she'd written had been months ago. And so she hadn't expected the aching joy at seeing his face again, her greatest friend and enemy.

Toph let up and gave Iroh flack about not keeping her "in the loop," leaving Zuko's gold-lit eyes to fall on Katara. He stepped forward and hugged her. She found herself flinging her arms around his neck. "Hey, Katara."

He was gripping her tightly and muffled by her shoulder. "Hi."

The contact was brief; they released shortly afterwards, and Iroh had them all sitting down, and tea was poured, and Toph praised its quality, which made Iroh beam.

They had been planning to deliver their condolences to Toph later in the day and had been happy to find out Katara was also present, Iroh said. "My nephew was coming to visit me anyway. It was a coincidence of fate. I am glad to see you at this difficult time."

To which Toph, ever with a stiff upper lip, had merely shrugged. "It's not so bad. Katara's been my whipping post."

"Excuse you, I—"

"I know, you bended your way across the world to see me," Toph said in mock-disdain, flapping a hand. "Wah."

Iroh chuckled. "And likely spared the captain several days' work. I understand you have done good work at home," he said warmly to Katara. "I would like to visit sometime, if I may."

"Any time you like! We don't have much to offer for tourism," she added quickly, "not yet, but I—and I know that my dad, too—I'd be more than happy to show you everything."

"You have much to see in the South Pole!" Iron admonished. "The spirits are more active at the poles than anywhere else I know except for the great swamplands. And I would like to see the place where you found the Avatar."

Hakoda had been all for monetizing that particular spot; people with the money to do so would come from all over the world to see the place where the first Avatar in a century had woken from icy slumber with a bright smile and an inquiry about penguin sledding. Katara didn't have a problem with it, but Aang, when consulted, thought it was 'cheap'—and to tell the truth, Katara didn't remember exactly where the place was. Some iceberg, Sokka had said when asked, in precisely the same tone that had led her to crack the ice out of fury in the first place.

"Of all people, you deserve to see it," Katara said, ignoring her mental image of Aang's boy-frown. "Both of you."

Zuko sighed. "I don't know," he said. "The spirits wouldn't like me there."

"Nephew, I'm not sure the spirits would like you anywhere."

"Uncle!"

"Doesn't the Fire Lord carry some weight with the Spirit World?" Katara joked.

Iron gravely shook his head. "I have told them all some very unfortunate stories."

Katara and Toph laughed; Zuko looked put-upon.

They spoke for a while longer, of nothing in particular: the war and rebuilding, Toph's bending battles, Katara's home, Aang's business all over the world. Iroh grunted his approval for the idea of the neutral city. "That, I hope, you are involved in, nephew."

Zuko sighed. "It's become the bane of my existence at home. Everyone wants the territory to come from the Fire Nation, or at least some of the outer islands. The nobles aren't happy about it."

"Why not let the people in the contested areas decide?" Katara asked. "Self-determination. There's no reason for us to be steadfast to our own nations forever. Not anymore."

"Before the war, it was common practice to live in other nations for a time," Iroh said. "Usually, people returned to their homes, particularly if they were benders. The cultural differences are, after all, great. But traveling to, and even making a home in another nation was almost expected."

"It'll take a while for people to reach that level of comfort again," Toph said, with rare gravity. "But I do like the idea. The soil felt different everywhere we went, when we were running away from you two delinquents. That was amazing for me."

Zuko grinned, a little painfully. "See? It was good for you. I did it on purpose. For your education."

Katara snorted, but spared him. It'd been too long since she'd last seen him to be unkind now.

When the sky turned black at last and the insects started singing from the windows, Iroh stood. The tea shop was quite empty, Katara realized, save for Toph's poor servant, who looked to be asleep at the table opposite them. "I regret I cannot stay with you longer," Iroh said, busying himself with something just behind the partition to the kitchen. "I am planning an expansion of my shop! It has quite exhausted my attention. Please accept these with my best wishes. Nephew, are you staying?"

"For a little while. I'll see you above soon, Uncle."

Iroh insisted they wait to open the gifts until he was gone. Katara and Toph slipped open their lovely lacquered boxes, Toph barely disguising her eagerness.

They were full of beautiful-smelling tea, with instructions for boiling and steeping carefully handwritten. And a note.

I have never thanked you for foiling all my nephew's most foolish plans, plucky Master. Please know, as I know, that he feels the absence of you and your friends more than he might say—but all of us who lack your pleasant company are at a loss. The luckiest in the world, then, must be the seals, penguins, and sea prunes of the South Pole!

It is my hope that before too long I will share a cup of this exquisite tea with you. Until then, it is with my best wishes that I say again, thank you, and take good care.

—Iroh

It was a precious sentiment and a perfect one. Zuko read Iroh's own message to Toph, which was shorter and funnier than Katara's but no less wonderful. Katara demurred when Toph asked her hear hers.

"It's private."

"You just read mine! Being blind is so unfair."

Katara sighed and made sure to read it in the most expressionless possible voice. It didn't help; the caught warmth in her throat rose to her mouth again. She chanced a glance upward upon finishing: Zuko was staring out a window, into the night sky.

Toph blinked a couple of times. "I didn't know you and Iroh were so close."

"That's the thing," Katara said, still clutching the box. "We're not, really."

Zuko walked them home. Toph bid them good night at the door to the Beifong estate, telling them to 'prepare' for a 'beastly day' tomorrow—"You don't even want to know what I have planned, now that I know you're both here"—and Katara walked with Zuko to the gates.

The night was cool and below the house, the lower rings glowed. Zuko leaned against the earthen wall, absently scratching the back of his head, and Katara clucked her tongue to muster the courage to ask what she'd meant to, all night long.

"Why didn't Aang come with you?"

Zuko looked surprised when he turned to her. "He didn't write? We got Toph's message when he was in the Fire Nation, but he said he'd already scheduled a meeting with some Northern Water Tribe officials that he couldn't miss."

He hadn't written her anything about that. "I believe it. The Northern Tribe is difficult. But still—he didn't come for Toph?"

Zuko looked down at her. "A neutral city sounds like a paradise after a hundred years of war. I can understand how he sets his priorities. I'm sure he'll come give her condolences afterwards."

His tone of light admonishment irked. "When was the last time we saw each other?" she demanded. "You're taller."

"You're not." He smirked, and for a moment she was fourteen again, blushing angry and ready to fight him. "It's been over a year, I think. Since that thing at the South Pole."

"Right. When you had to borrow my father's parka."

"I'd forgotten how damn cold it is there," he defended. "Not that Chief Hakoda didn't let me forget it. I don't know how you stand it. Don't your eyes freeze?"

"Not if you blink," she said seriously.

He snorted. Very un-royal. "Well in any case, it's been a while. I'm sorry. Can't go on many jaunts as Fire Lord. But anyway, don't be angry at Aang."

She ignored that. "What is being Fire Lord even for, if you can't go on 'jaunts'?" She smirked at him. "Just slip on a mask, sneak over the back wall, hop through the trees, board a ship, and sail. I know you know the way."

"Yeah—due south." Zuko laughed. "That's a long trip, and not much of a vacation: freezing to death right now would still put Azula on the throne. Why don't you come visit me instead?"

Good question. Katara hummed, wondering why he hadn't changed the line of succession yet. "My job. And Aang, I guess. The South Pole is kind of his home base now. And we're still rebuilding."

"You could bring Aang with you. A nice couple's retreat."

"He visits you enough as it is," she said, bumping him with her elbow. "It's unfair. Why didn't Mai come with you?"

Zuko set his jaw; it was a moment before he responded. "I didn't tell you, did I? She left the Fire Nation."

"She what?"

"She left the Fire Nation. Went to join Ty Lee, who's doing whatever she's doing. It was amicable," he said hurriedly. "Tough. But amicable. It actually began happening about two years ago, and we just held on for as long as we could. I couldn't give her the time we needed. She couldn't give me the leeway I needed. It was all written from the beginning of the whole thing. And I think," he added with a little blush, "she and Ty Lee may be together."

"You sound like your uncle," Katara chided. "Those things aren't determined by fate. It sounds like you both made your choices." The look on his face—irritated, resigned, a little wistful—had her relenting immediately. "I'm sorry, though. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," he said, and sounded honest about it. The wind blew a couple locks of hair in front of his face. His scar, in the moonlight, rippled like melted candle wax. "How are you?"

She hadn't realized she'd been frowning. "I'm fine."

Of course she'd come to admire Zuko—physically—

She choked on the word when Toph, the next night, asked.

It had indeed been a 'beastly' day, with rock-sliding and near constant sparring and only a trip to the tea shop for a bit of Iroh's mercy; Toph seemed elated to have Sparky and Sweetness back with her, and wanted to keep them busy, and to keep herself busy. By sunset, Zuko was kissing Toph on the head and giving Katara a little salute and telling them both he'd see them tomorrow before he met with the Earth Kingdom governors and left to resume his domestic duties as Fire Lord.

But, yes, of course. She'd been fourteen, and she'd hated him with a kind of ferocity that had to have been tinged with some self-denial, and then he'd saved her life twice by placing his body directly in line of her own personal danger. Such actions continuously put his body next to hers for comparison and elimination. Such actions kept them close.

But so often during that year of horror, Katara had been conscious of bodies. How could she not become aware of the fact of her physical form when all she did was run and fight and grow and shrink—constantly moving, constantly shifting, over the course of a year? And while she grew, so did her brother, and so did Aang, whose body roiled with energy so intense that sometimes she could not stand to sense him. And as she'd come to know herself, her power, she could feel the thrum of blood beneath the skins of her closest friends if she tried.

If she tried.

Now, she and Toph were drinking a spicy spirit Zuko had gifted them with a roll of his eyes, saying, "It's really from Uncle. He thinks you should lighten up," and Katara could feel her own blood rushing. It was good; it was strong. The drink made Katara feel pleasantly mannish, knocking it back. She did so now.

"Like after the lightning. I could sense his blood better, after that," she told Toph. "I can—every time I heal someone, I get a sense of their blood. But after something like that, you can't…you can't not understand his blood. Know it."

"That's not what I'm asking," Toph said. "I'm not asking about his creepy blood. I'm asking if you ever wanted to sneak into his room at night."

Katara leveled her with a Look only to remember, for whatever time, that Looks did not work on Toph. She tried to channel it through her voice: "Only to kill him."

Toph's laughter was raucous in the quiet dark. Two Beifong bodyguards, quite uselessly, came fists-a-clenched, and soon retreated to their posts.

Zuko had been a good sport that day, as he always was with Toph. He'd played and competed and eaten with abandon; sparred with Katara like they were back in training before Sozin's comet, and joked with her about Sokka's life as a married man, and—consciously, it seemed, after last night's conversation—did not ask much about Aang. Katara wondered what he and Aang talked about, when they were together in the Fire Nation. If they talked about her.

She was rambling now. "Aunt Wu—this was before you joined us, Toph, but Aunt Wu was a fortuneteller—she told me that I would marry a powerful bender."

Toph sat up. "Are you telling me that you're getting married? You and Twinkletoes?"

"I can't see it ending any other way."

"See it ending? See what, ending? Are you breaking up? I thought you were getting married."

"Will you slow down?" Katara nibbled on her bottom lip. "You were right about making things clear with Aang. I should leave the South Pole for a little while."

Toph sat back again, cream eyes turned to the ceiling, not asking the question: 'What's going on with you?' but substituting another: "Why do you want to leave?"

Why, indeed? It felt unfair to have to stay, that was why. She was lonely, that was why. "I feel a little restless."

Toph hummed. "I'll come with you, if you want."

"You'll take that back in the morning. We made terrible travel companions."

"That was three years ago," Toph had said, emptying her cup. "You're older now, and less annoying."

Katara threw her cup and ducked when Toph threw it back, and laughed when it shattered. Older now. What Zuko had said in the wine cellar three years back, in that musty cool place where the promises of hazy sweetness had laid ready in their racks like open legs, when Zuko had said it there it had had the cadence of a poem: "You're young, too."

You're young, too/You young two/You, young, too.

Her blood hummed.

That night, staring at the ceiling of her lavish room in the Beifong estate, her mind buzzing with pleasant sweetness and her lips slightly swollen from spice and drink, Katara let herself think of Jet.

That had been another shocking awareness of body, of closeness and heat. Stepping lightly over Aang and Sokka to meet him outside. Climbing to his treehouse; being overwhelmed. Touched and talked to like an adult. Fingers on her neck. Palms on her waist. And she'd grasped his shaggy hair, which had smelled like woodsmoke, and her own fingers hadn't trembled when she'd reached to unhook the bone clasps of her tunic. She'd been wearing so many layers—stupid, a kid from the Poles sweating to death in the light of all those fires. Jet hadn't laughed at her but had looked at her like he'd glimpsed something very suddenly—that piece of grass discarded from his pliable lips, his mouth open a little, his sharp eyes curbed by whatever he found in the space between her chin and her clavicles.

At Lake Laogai, her fingers on his temples. He'd stared at her after, in awe and fright of her mind-half-reading, and his eyes had rested at that same space.

She'd kissed a dead man. That was something. That was fleeting, that rush of blood and heat.

Katara longed suddenly to make an imprint on something. It had been a long time since she'd moved her body in violence or love. Aang felt a long way away, and the nights they shared felt further. Twenty. Twenty to his eager eighteen. How could she feel like an old woman already? How much blood could one lose before all the vibrant red light life goes with it and then—and then?

Azula was sobbing, drooling, shooting fire. The fingers that had just tried to take the life of her brother were screwed useless by chains. White-blinding horror.

To her frank horror, Katara was crying. She pressed her eyes shut.

Imagine Fire Lord Zuko with his face at the window just there, to her left, waiting like he had been waiting outside of her tent all those years ago. I know how to find him.

His long hair loose. Strong shoulders propelling him up and over and there he is, sitting next to her, still waiting. He'd crouched like that, ready and watchful, when they'd gone to avenge her mother and she'd forced the man who was not Yon Rha down by the force of his own body. Zuko had never asked her about it, though she was sure he knew what it was.

And then something happens—something unseeable, but something like the way Jet's eyes got bigger and lovelier all those years ago, and they would murmur words and then, somehow, he'd bend to skim his lips on hers, and his hands would go around her head and hips.

She caught Zuko looking at her once during that trip, when she was guiding Appa for the second sleepless night. Looking at her unseeably like that, with golden eyes too serious, and she'd ignored it so steadily, so well, thinking first, we have to find Yon Rha.

Katara sat up suddenly; blinked around her room for a moment; ignored the tide of feeling that pushed at the top of her throat again; and did not sigh to find that she had been dozing. Outside, the stars pushed their light through the dark sky's fabric and the moon shone wide and open. Full moon. Blood moon. Katara closed her eyes and let Yue's light wash over her forehead and willed herself to not think of Jet, of Zuko, or of Aang. Sometimes, if she concentrated, she could feel cool fingers over her brow. Sometimes, if she concentrated, she thought she could feel all the water in the world, like she could kill the living universe with a tug of her quivery fingers.

The moon is my friend and I am alive.

Zuko found her the next morning, while Toph was still sleeping off the liquor. She was drinking strong tea in the garden, watching sparrowkeets swing gracefully by to pluck fall fruits from hardy stems.

He cleared his throat, making her jump. "Good morning."

"Morning. You're early—Toph's still sleeping."

"I'm not surprised." He sat next to her on the bench. His hair was loose, brushing the tips of his shoulders, messy and dignified. "Are you going back home soon? I'd imagine you're busy since Sokka's at Kyoshi."

"I am. Busy, I mean. I was thinking of not going home right away, though, if I can help it."

Zuko didn't react immediately; he only sat back and put his arm along the bench. The bend of his forearm brushed against her shoulder. "Why not?"

"Well." She didn't exactly have an answer yet. "There's a bit of negotiating to be done with the autonomous Earth territories. It might be better just to go speak with them, now that I'm in the area."

"That's a long trip, even so," he observed. "You and Aang will miss each other if he goes back to the Southern Water Tribe after the North."

Katara blushed without quite knowing why. "That is true."

She felt his gaze on her. She watched the sparrowkeets. "Are you two, um…doing okay?"

Zuko sounded as if he would rather ask any other question. She met his eyes. "Why are you asking?"

"You don't sound excited to go see him again."

"He's only been gone for two weeks," she said dryly. "We don't have to be at each other's side constantly, you know. We are, in fact, self-sufficient."

"Okay, okay." He held a hand up in supplication. "The two of you just seem…" He surveyed her. "Different. Now."

Katara remembered with viciousness the way Aang's fingers had stilled on her arm when she'd said 'poison.' "We may be having a slight disagreement. But it's more of a not-talking-about-it thing than an actual argument."

"Sounds healthy."

She shot him a glare that she faintly hoped could turn him to ice. "He's a professional mediator. We'll work it out."

Zuko chuckled at that and—to her complete shock—fingered a coil of her hair. "I like the cut," he said absently. "How long have you had it this way?"

"It's a warrior's shave," she said. "Tradition would have indicated that by this age I'd have cut my hair as a bride. Dad thought it would make more sense if I went through this ceremony, instead."

"The Avatar is not a forthcoming suitor?"

He was teasing, she knew, but the question still made something in her bubble up. She looked at him shrewdly. "You've talked to him about this, haven't you?"

Zuko's smile was wan. "Guilty. He visits more than you do, remember?"

She huffed. "I don't suppose I can ask you what he says."

"I'm more interested in what you have to say."

She swallowed her tea in a Tophlike gulp before answering. "Toph used the phrase 'brood mare' yesterday." Zuko winced. "He's not that bad about it," she said. "But in some ways it does feel like that's a condition of marriage. And I'm not a mother, Zuko, not yet. Not at all."

"But you want to be a wife?"

Aang looked at her so shiningly and the world was hers there, with him: he loved her beyond even her own comprehension, like she'd done him some ultimate good, when all she could think of sometimes were the myriad ways she'd done him wrong. And some other times, she thought of how lovely it might be to be just alone. I guess some people don't need other people.

Zuko was still looking at her, and he looked torn. "I'm sorry. I was just curious. You two seemed to be so constant, while the rest of us fluctuated. Sokka and Suki having a baby; Toph doing who knows what with who knows who; Mai and me. You and Aang seemed a done deal."

"And now you're already talking about us in the past tense."

Zuko groaned.

Katara laughed lightly. "It's okay. You wouldn't be you if you didn't stick your foot in your mouth. I think…I think I need to think. And I think Aang does, too, even if he doesn't realize it."

"So you'll institute a forced separation by going to the Earth territories?"

"Where would you have me go instead?"

He stared at her, and the nagging pressure at her throat increased. His lips were pressed thin, the Fire Lord's, and she could remember the way they trembled in pain and horror at the sight of his sister writhing and screaming on the ground, chained to a drainage grate, prisoner to madness and to him. In his last letter, he'd written, 'Azula can recognize me now. But she refuses to speak to me. Uncle says to give it time, but I'm not sure how long she can stay like this without it becoming permanent. Six years is long already.'

Zuko cleared his throat. "You can come visit the Fire Nation, if you want," he said quietly. "We miss you there."

So the corpsman had said. It's an honor to have shared a car with one of the Fire Lord's good friends. Katara looked away from Zuko and watched a sparrowkeet make away with a wizened plum. "How is Azula?"

Zuko withdrew his arm from behind her and clasped his hands over his knees. "Like I said. We miss you there."

She saw the bones in his wrist shift. "I'll come by after I visit the autonomous islands," she said. "It's not a far journey. I can take one of the commercial ships."

Zuko looked up again, and something in his face made him look sixteen. "Do you have to do your negotiations first? If you want to come to the Fire Nation now, you can just join me on my way back. Toph can come, too, if she wants."

She stared at him. "Weren't you just admonishing me for not going home straightaway to see Aang?"

He shrugged, a little insolent. Katara glared at him. He was right; it made more sense to just go back with him, if she was going at all. "When do you leave?"

Zuko grinned like he'd already won. He had. "In three hours. I have a quick meeting first, but I'll come back and get you."

"I can make my way to the ports myself."

"Nonsense. You're a guest of the Fire Nation now." He stood, still grinning. He looked like a teenager again. He looked happy. "You'll need a proper escort."