disclaimer: it's all bryke's, except what's not.

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ii. underwater

s2, ba sing se.

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Katara picks her way through the crowded streets of Ba Sing Se's Upper Ring as she walks back to the house from her errand, grumbling to herself. It should have been Sokka, really, who ran this errand, because he was the one who bought the shoes in the first place. It's not her fault he misjudged his shoe size in his enthusiasm about the exposed contrasting stitching. She shouldn't be the one who has to return the shoes. (She does, however, refuse to buy him new ones. She will not risk buying the wrong size because she doesn't want to have to run this return errand again.)

Appa's missing. King Kuei doesn't believe them that there's a war going on. Katara shifts her shoulders slightly as she walks, now that her hands are free of her package, trying to convince the tight knot of tension that permanently dwells in the middle of her back to dispel.

There are other priorities besides Sokka's shoes and so she fumes silently while she walks. The day sits grey around her, the white houses that sparkle in the sunshine now blending in with the dingy atmosphere.

Katara looks around her and suppresses a shudder. She quickens her pace; suddenly, she just wants to get home to her friends.

Ba Sing Se is often sunny, although sometimes the wind blows through the streets and whips leaves and loose awnings free. But today, everyone seems to be feeling the clouds' effects, from the merchant shouting at his assistant to the child crying beside her doll that she'd dropped in the dirt.

And of course it would be just Katara's luck that on a day like today, she runs across Prince Zuko, of all people.

He looks different—so different that she doesn't recognize him at first. He's much skinnier, and his ponytail is gone in favor of hair that's growing in from being shorn, only just more than moonpeach fuzz. He's wearing just-above-ragged Earth Kingdom clothes and a wide-brimmed hat.

The edge of the market area is full of people, and Katara looks up from navigating the street's transition from cobbled to dirt road at just the right time and in just the right angle to see Zuko's scar.

Then she does a double take, and then she puts the rest of the picture together.

Zuko is here, in the city, and he must be hunting for Aang.

He's only a few feet from her when her surprise makes her stop short, and then his arm bumps against her. She could let him pass, walk on quickly, and he might not notice; after all, the air hums with the sounds of vendors and flies alike.

She should let him pass, probably.

Instead, her near-shouted, "Hey!" trills from her throat more squeakily than she had intended.

If Zuko hears her, he doesn't give any indication, but then she grabs his shirt at the shoulder, plucks at the coarse material, and the banished prince turns to look at her, really look at her.

His golden eyes widen, and his hands fumble with his grip on the twine-wrapped package he's holding.

"What are you doing here?" she demands in a hiss, leaning in so she can be heard while half-pushing him toward the edge of the street.

Zuko scowls at her and yanks his arm free from her grasp. "None of your business!" he hisses back.

"Yes, it is!" Katara insists. "I have my friends to protect."

"If you have your friends to protect," Zuko sneers, "why did you stop me? I didn't even see you."

"Some hunter you are," Katara scoffs, crossing her arms and frowning at him, "if you didn't even see me in this crowd."

Zuko sighs, rolls his eyes under the shadow of his hat, exasperated. "I wasn't looking for you," he grunts, shifting the twine-tied wooden box under one of his arms and tapping his fingers along its edge, a grating beat. "I was running an errand."

"Buying war supplies?"

"Buying tea leaves. And it's still not any of your business," Zuko grumbles, scowling at her again.

The scowl distorts his face, makes the scar seem more prominent. In the course of her few interactions with the haughty prince, Katara has come to accept it as part of his face, the face of the enemy, part of her visual definition of Zuko. Now, when he glowers at her like that, her mind stutters to the idea that the scar makes him look like some sort of small, angry deity. An insulted demigod, fallen from the heights and forced to live with peasants.

And utterly disgusted by it.

"You've never let our lives not be your business," she retorts, and taps her foot on the dirt, ending up with a dusty shoe for her irritation.

That pauses him for a moment, and his glower softens, in degrees. "That's because—" He swallows, looks for words. "Oh, you wouldn't understand!"

"I wouldn't understand that you have it out for me and my friends all for your country that's killed all of our families? I wouldn't understand that you're just a puppet doing whatever you're told to do without thinking of what it might mean? What exactly wouldn't I understand?"

His eyes and nostrils flare, and his next words come out through gritted teeth. "Like. I. Said."

Katara looks around and realizes that they are standing near the bridge she and Toph crossed on their way to and from the spa. Inspiration strikes.

"I've seen people tossed off of this bridge before," she says. "Would you like to join them? They survived, of course, but they spent some time underwater to help them learn a lesson first."

Zuko's eyes narrow. "Were you the one that did it?"

"No, but I could do it."

"You could," he acknowledges, and that's more credit than he gave her at the North Pole, and a small part of her is pleased by that, even as she is very, very tempted by the current flowing beneath them. "But then my uncle's tea would be ruined and you'd hate to break his heart, wouldn't you?"

His words are sarcastic, but Katara is surprised to hear what sounds like genuine care underlying them. Zuko loves his uncle, and even if there's not much else she cares to give him credit for, she will give him credit for that. She understands that, the love of family.

And something like pity coils inside her as she imagines Iroh waiting in some squalid apartment for Zuko to return. Zuko isn't dressed like a prince any longer, and how much of their reduced circumstances' coin has been spent on that tea? Zuko was in the Upper Ring for his shopping, after all, and he isn't dressed like he normally lives here.

"So go then," she says, straightening her shoulders. "And stay away from us!"

Zuko only glares at her more, then adjusts the tea-box with determination and stalks away.

Katara stays standing on the bridge for a long moment, watching his skinny form leave her behind a pounding footstep at a time.

The grey skies stay for the rest of the day, and Sokka is disappointed that she didn't bring home new shoes for him.

"I told you I wasn't going to do that," Katara says.

"But, sis, you could have!" Sokka protests from across the room, where Aang is spinning marbles in an air current and Sokka is trying to knock them out of orbit with his boomerang.

Katara could have bought him new shoes, yes. But she could have done a lot of things today, and she didn't.