for zutara month 2017, days eleven + twelve + fifteen, painted lady + blue spirit + unmasked

i am still incredibly bitter about how katara was treated post atla finale and here's where i die on that hill.

For years everything feels like a paper lantern. Delicate and full of light and waiting for the right disaster. Katara cannot remember a world without a war. Peace isn't something she recognizes the feel of in her mouth. This new world, this paper lantern world, she wants to set it on fire.

On a warm spring day, four years after Sozin's Comet, she does. Katara takes a match to her life and laughs as the whole thing collapses in on itself.

"No," she says. Steam rises from her cup of ginseng and she takes a slow sip. Iroh's taste, as always, proves impeccable. Next time she writes him she will have to thank him for his thoughtfulness.

Across the table, an array of emotions click across Aang's face with the precision of one of the Mechanist's new clocks. What he settles on is a kind of amused benevolence. "You don't want to see the Western Air Temple?" he asks. "I promise they repaired all the damage."

In so many ways, he's grown up. They would consider him a man in her tribe. Who else in the world can say they have overthrown a tyrant, ended a hundred year war, restored some semblance of balance? None. Yet when she looks at him now—at the winsome smile on his lips, at the sparkle of his grey eyes in the midafternoon light, at the way he waits for her to give in—and she finds that he still feels like a child to her.

This is not fair to either of them.

"I am not going because I will be helping with the drought in Republic City," she says. All of this has been calculated long in advance. Planned down to the tea in her hands that she lifts for another sip. One way or another she will break his heart. Inevitable. Yet she wants to do so gently.

Only she does not expect what he says next. How the casual tone of his voice makes it all the more cruel until she must sorrow or rage. Because what he says is, "Katara, they don't need you."

Cold pricks the back of her neck and she sets down the teacup with enough force that tea sloshes over the side. Ignoring the burn on her hand, she stares him down with blue eyes that are no longer distant or kind. "They don't need me?" she asks. Years of sitting quietly on the sidelines, always watching and listening because no one wanted her to act or speak, seethe up in her like so much poison. "Why? Because I'm not you?"

To his credit, he flinches back from her as though suddenly realizing the depth of his error. "No," he says. "No, I just meant that there are enough waterbenders in the region already to deal with the issue. That's why I didn't go."

Lifting her chin, she says, "Then I will be helping the Fire Nation barrier islands deal with monsoon season."

Blinking, he gestures helplessly toward the crystalline skies outside the temple. "Monsoon season isn't for another month and evacuation preparations are already underway."

"Then," she says implacably, "I will be helping the Northern Water Tribe with their integration of female benders."

Aang's mouth opens. Closes. Sputters. "That's ridiculous." Leaning toward her, he says gently, like it will make everything better, "There are already several masters working on the integration. You know that."

"None of them are women."

Frustration makes him rub his hand over his head. The blue arrow, symbol of all that he is and all that he must be, seems to taunt her. "Katara, I don't understand where this is coming from. Why don't you want to come with me to the Western Air Temple?"

"Because you are not the world," Katara says, "and the world needs me."

Restless girl, they call her, because she carries no map and yet she's always searching. When she left the temple she carried only her waterskin and her mother's necklace. It's all she needs. Everything else she can trade for with her skills in healing and waterbending. By the time she reaches the Fire Nation, monsoon season is long passed, and she finds herself purchasing a cloak to help with the chilly nights.

Former soldiers turned bandits prey upon a village in the outer reaches of the barrier islands. The people are frightened. The children are sick. The village is dying. Katara heals for a warm meal and a cot.

Villagers tell her that the bandits come in from the ocean. These barrier islands are important, rich with volcanic soil, but they are isolated. Easy prey. Any who try to take the boats out are killed. It has been months since they last had contact with the mainland. Help is not coming.

So Katara wraps herself in her cloak, paints her face, and walks out onto the ocean beneath a rising moon. Bandits flee from her slender form and she follows them. Waves crush their boats and shove them to an abandoned island. They sit upon the shore, retching sea water and trembling with their near escape, frightened of a spirit that reminds them of the old tales.

There's little hardship in this. She left her name behind at the temple. 'Katara of the Southern Water Tribe' has too long meant 'Katara of Avatar Aang'. One day she will go back to the temple and take up her name again. But for now, she takes on the name they give her in the border isles.

Painted Lady, they whisper when she steps onto their islands. She smiles. Does not confirm or deny. Not unless there is trouble. Too often, there is trouble. Villagers tell her of it over the fire and look to her with hope in embers. When they do, she smiles again and drops her cloak to reveal the red swirling down her arms. They reach for her with trembling hands and whisper, Painted Lady.

And she laughs, and catches their hands, and says, "I am no goddess." Sometimes they even believe her.

Months pass. Before she had been restless. Helping where she could but it had felt damning because he was right. No one needed her. Or maybe what they needed was not what she could give.

But this harsh land claimed her the moment she set foot on its volcanic soil—so different from the ice of her home—and maybe it should not surprise her that she stays. Her wandering has purpose now. The Fire Nation has deep scars and a wariness of the rest of the world. If they cannot trust the Avatar or the fledgling United Republic, then they can trust her.

Slowly she works her way inland. Fights bandits, heals plagues, offers the compassion that's as much part of her as her blood.

Finally she comes to a river valley. Their eyes spark with vague recognition but for once there is no hope. Yet welcome is offered in the great hall at the very center of town.

Quietly she takes in the gathered crowd. The food is of good quality, the valley is rich in resources, the people are well dressed. Yet there are few young men. Older men are likely to have a lost limb or blinded eye as not. All of them carry the look of those who've been beaten down for too long to think of rising up now. It's a look she recognizes.

The fires roar until she has to bind up her hair and ignore the sticky damp of sweat at her temples. Her cloak falls to the hard packed dirt of the hall floor. Eyes fasten on her arms.

"Is it true?" a young woman asks. "Are you her?"

"Am I who?"

Murmurs follow this. An old woman seizes the younger by the elbow, as if to hold her back, the the young woman shakes her off and steps forward. There's no hope in her eyes. Only desperation. "They say there is a spirit who wanders our Nation. She protects and heals our people. They call her the Painted Lady." Firelight glitters on the woman's wet cheeks. Maybe she's been crying since before she began to speak but her voice is steady. "We need her."

"I am her."

That is all she needs to say before the people rush forward. Stories spill out like they are afraid she will stop them if they do not get it out quickly enough. Their town has suffered. It is a feud. Two noble families. Centuries. All the young men sent off to war. Months ago all their young boys taken. Word sent to the capital, to the Fire Lord, but they cannot imagine if their messenger even got out.

Later, she stands by the river. It's not just ruminating for a plan that keeps her awake. It's the mention of the Fire Lord.

Reconnaissance shows that the first family is currently in the capital. Currying favor, the whispers of the servants suggest, in hopes of wiping out the other family. It is the second family that has taken the hostages. Bargaining chips against potential reinforcements from the capital. It is the smart thing to do and yet it is their undoing.

Underneath the full moon she feels the power singing in her veins. Breaking into the fortified complex is nothing. Water and blood answer to her call in equal measure. Bought soldiers crumple before her. Servants hide. The family sneers, then trembles, then cowers.

In her warpaint she is something more than human.

The dungeons are nearly empty. She blinks and walks down them, water curled around her in a threatening silver whip. Quiet voices echo in her ears and she pauses. Closer now, moving steady and silent, water curling tighter around her.

Round the corner she sees young boys hurrying into a passage. It's small, half hidden, some kind of escape tunnel for the family that even now hides several floors above them. She blinks. The boys do not stop in their escape and she does not try to stop them.

A blade touches her throat.

Sucking in a breath, she reaches instinctively for her attacker's blood. Before she can fully grasp control she hears a voice. "What is a waterbender doing in the Fire Nation?"

Flame catching wood, rough and easy, familiar in all the right ways. "Zuko?" she breaths. She thinks maybe she's imagining things because how could he be here, in the dungeons of a noble family, freeing children who would be pawns. Then she thinks how could he not be here.

"Katara?"

It's been so long since anyone called her by that name. Katara. Almost she resents answering to it but answer she does. "Yes."

Slowly he draws the blade away from her throat. It did not leave so much as a scratch but she imagines she can still feel it's cool press. Forcing the air from her lungs, she finally looks over her shoulder, catches sight of a mask. The colors of her nation stare back at her, painted over the tusks and horns of a demon face, and she blinks in surprise.

"They're out," he says. A gloved hand touches the small of her back. "We should go."

She nods and turns back to the half hidden escape route. All the boys have disappeared into its darkness. Lips pulling into a grimace, she ducks into the tunnel and hears him follow her. Something grates behind them. Perhaps the mechanism that covers this route when not in use. Then the hand is back on her, urging her along, and she tries not to focus on the warmth bleeding into her skin that contrasts with the chill of the earth around them.

Long minutes pass in nearly absolute silence. She keeps a hand out to glance against the walls. At several points that is all that keeps her from missing a sharp turn. Finally there's a ghostly silver light ahead. Eagerly she rushes forward until she spills out into a small clearing surrounded by gentle foothills.

Two dozen boys, ranging in age from six to sixteen, stand in a loose ring. Perhaps none of them saw her in the dark of the dungeons because they gape in surprise. They don't have long to react.

Zuko gestures for them to cluster up and then starts down a path that none of them had noticed. The boys follow him, giving her curious looks as they pass, and she waits. Instinctively she knows that Zuko means for her to take up the rear. A waterbender on a full moon night can do so much. He's one of the few people in the world who knows exactly how much. Of course she watches their collective back.

For nearly an hour they pick their way through the hills and gullies. The moon has begun to drop toward the horizon when finally they reach the river and Zuko gestures for a halt. Several of the boys show signs of injury as well as exhaustion and hunger.

Power still floods her veins. It's easy to summon up water from the river and walk toward one of the younger boys who holds his arm to his chest.

One of the oldest boys steps forward, jaw jutted forward in challenge, and says, "Who are you?" He's effectively blocked her path. A thin sheen of sweat covers his brow. Maybe from their hurried march. But more likely, she thinks, from the fear of her and the water coiled round her.

"You stupid, Zhan?" one of the other boys asks. "Can't you see the marks?" Red streaking across her cheeks, her arms, her chest. The one unmistakable sign of the spirit who's mantle she's taken. "That's the Painted Lady!"

Zhan's cheeks flush. "I..." His eyes dart over her and then he takes a half step back. "I didn't mean..."

"I know," she says. Gentle. "You meant to protect them."

The boy she'd meant to tend comes to her, instead, looking up at her with the faltering stoicism of the very young. "Can you fix?" he asks. He holds up his arm. A deep cut adorns it, red at the edges, and she feels anger flare in her gut. But she does not let that come through in her face.

Kneeling, she portions out some of the water and settles it over the cut. It glows as she pours her will into it. The boy's arm heals easily. Knitting together beneath her experienced hands. When finally she lifts her hands away it's as if the wound had never been. She allows herself a smile at the boy's complete wonder. More children rush to her begging for her aide and she gives it.

Only once the last scrape has been healed does she give in to the temptation. Looking over her shoulder, she sees that mask once more, hiding any hint of what Zuko's thinking. That reckoning, she thinks, is yet to come.

Fire burns in a small pit. They brought the boys home and then, with the same instinctive understanding that made them so deadly on the battlefield together, disappeared into the hills. Zuko has not removed his mask. She has not removed her cloak. It feels a bit like a standoff.

"You're the Painted Lady." No question. Only a statement of fact. "And you've been here, in my country, for the last year."

She bites the inside of her cheek and debates how to answer. As if there's a choice. There never has been. "Yes." Because they've always been honest with each other. And that's still the same, at least.

Exhaling in a way that's not quite a sigh, he reaches up and pulls of the mask, letting it drop to the forest floor carelessly. With his free hand he rubs at the back of his neck. "I should've expected that," he admits. "When I first heard the rumors. Spirits don't just show up and starts fixing the problems of the far provinces. You do."

"I didn't for years," she says. Thinks of all the good she could've done if only she'd refused the gilded life offered to her. Ordered for her, really, when she thinks of how everyone had expected her to be with Aang. But that's not an excuse. How easy it had been to walk away in the end.

Zuko snorts. "It was only a matter of time."

Which isn't what she expects him to say. Not at all. "It certainly took everyone else by surprise," she says. There are scrolls in the bottom of her traveling back that attest to it.

Golden eyes meet hers across the fire and he smiles. "Katara, you never turn your back on people who need you."

Before, she'd thought that she would have to ask if he was upset. It felt like there would be a reckoning because she had disappeared for a year and a half, because she broke the Avatar's heart, because she came into Zuko's country to mete out justice. How could there not be a reckoning?

Now she understands that they've long moved past ideas of reckonings.

Four days into their journey back to the capital, they pause atop a volcanic ride, and he runs callused fingertips over her arm. "It's not paint," he notes. There's only a hint of surprise in his voice.

Before they had left the river valley she scrubbed her face clean of the red paint she used to mark herself for battle. The red swirls on her arms had remained. "They're tattoos," she says. "A man did them for me in a village on the border islands."

It'd been the twentieth village she had helped in the guise of the Painted Lady. She'd come back streaked with saltwater and blood. Triumphant and terrible. Paint smudged away and the tattoo master had looked at her with no judgment, only kindness, as he offered to make the marks permanent. part of her had wondered if that would be alright. If she could truly be the Painted Lady. But she thought of all the villages that yet needed her and she lifted her chin and she accepted his offer.

Zuko nods, though he knows none of this, and says, "They suit you. The mark of a compassionate warrior."

The words feel like an echo and she's reaching for him before she can stop herself. Palm laid flat against his cheek, she feels the coarse skin of his burn, and murmurs, "The mark of a banished prince." Maybe it was intentional because one side of his mouth quirks up into a half smile. Her other hand goes to the scar hidden beneath his clothing. "The mark of a true king."

Beneath her palm, his heartbeat picks up and his lungs surge with an unusually deep breath. One of his hands covers hers where it rests on his chest. It's warm and despite years of kingship has lost none of it's rough strength.

"Katara," he says. "Come back with me."

They are a day's journey from Caldera City and the Palace. If she returns, there will be questions and reunions and arguments. Returning means rejoining the world. Maybe she is fierce and whole in her own skill again, maybe he says her name with the same gentle reverence he always has, maybe it would not be so bad to go back.

"Why?" she asks.

Stepping closer to her, he reaches up to weave his fingers into her dark hair. "Because the world needs you." His thumbs brush along her jaw and tenderly tip her head up. "Because my country needs you." His breath is hot along her lips as he bends down. Though his hold is firm, she could pull away if she wanted, and he gives her this moment to decide. "Because I need you."

Katara surges up into him. They kiss, brave and messy and wild, like they're going to make up for all the years apart. Peace is still not something she recognizes in her mouth but she thinks, she hopes, that it might feel something like this.