Zuko was sitting in his theory of bending class, trying not to fall asleep of boredom even though the lesson had barely started. Iroh was a great teacher but those history classes were just a waste of Zuko's time. He should be learning how to fight, not how some stupid earth benders had learned to move blocks by watching some animals.
"It is important to not only focus on your own element, but to also respect benders from other cultures. Combined, your powers can become even stronger and help you understand how the different powers can work together in one person, as in the Avatar."
Yeah, right, that was so important for Zuko, seeing as he was not the Avatar nor had the intention of ever being associated with him.
"Therefore, I will be pairing you off with someone who possesses a different ability than you so you can work on this assignment together."
What? He hated group work, but this took it to another level. Working together with some meditating airbender bloke or a silly earthbender girl who had nothing better to do than turning rocks into pretty shapes? Or even worse, one of those stuck-up waterbenders who had nothing better to do than proving again and again how much above everything else they were? No, thank you.
"Zuko" He looked up when he heard Iroh call out his name. "Your partner will be Katara."
Katara? He didn't even know her but that name sounded like -
A girl wearing the typical blue clothing of the Water Tribes stood up and walked over to take the empty seat next to him. Was that... the girl, Sokka's sister, who had healed his eye back at the party and he had never talked to again since? Katara. The name suited her somehow.
"Well, I guess I'll be stuck with you for the next couple of weeks then," Zuko said, although he had to admit the usual venom in his voice was lacking. She'd been nice enough last time. Hopefully, it would remain that way and she wouldn't bother him too much. He didn't have many reasons to be positive about this though because ultimately, all people turned out to be idiots.
"So I was thinking," Katara started and spread her notes on the wooden library table. "Our assignment is to compare the main features of our bending techniques and try to outline similarities which we could use to invent ways of making our bending work together." She pointed out one of the first pages of her notes, which held drawings of a series of waterbending poses.
"Those are some exercises that waterbenders practice with right when we start training. I thought that might be useful?" She looked at Zuko who didn't respond. He hadn't said anything to her yet today, not even a greeting.
"Or do you have a better idea?" she added, getting increasingly insecure because of his continuing silence. Yesterday in class, he had simply nodded when she's suggested to meet in the library today to begin working on their project and then proceeded to ignore her for the last few minutes of the lesson.
"Look," she said, suddenly annoyed by his blank and seemingly bored face. "I know it's not ideal that the two of us have to work together and I'd for sure prefer to have a different partner who would pretend to even be remotely interested in what I have to say, but I'm stuck with you now, so can you at least either try to help or let me do my work in peace without you staring at me like I'm saying the most stupid stuff you've ever heard?"
His facial expression didn't change at all when he said: "Show me the moves."
"What?" Katara was still recovering from her little outburst.
Zuko tapped on one of the papers she had laid out. "Show me this one."
"In here? But there's not even any water in here, how am I supposed to – "
"I don't want you to show me your surely remarkable bending skills. I want you to go through the movements as if you were practicing them."
This guy was so weird. Well, at least he seemed to be over his silent phase and was talking to her now. Katara got up and smoothed both hands over the front of her waterbending robe before getting into position. She went through the motions slowly, just like she'd done it years ago with Master Pakku. When she was finished, she stood around awkwardly, blushing a little under Zuko's thoughtful gaze.
"I think we will be able to work with that," he said finally.
Wow, that's great that you are able to work with me. How nice of you to appreciate my efforts.
Instead of letting her negative thoughts escape, she smiled at Zuko and sat back down. "So how do you think we can use this for the assignment."
"I wouldn't bother with that assignment too much."
Katara wanted to protest, after all their tasks were pretty clear, but Zuko just looked at her with a raised eyebrow as if he expected another outburst, so she kept her mouth shut.
"I don't really think writing an essay is the point of all this," Zuko continued after a while when she didn't respond. "Sure, Iroh needs something to grade us by, but I believe the purpose of this is more to bring different benders together and all that shit he is preaching the whole time. We could probably be talking about similar ways of building houses or making robes and Iroh will be over the moon because obviously our spirits connected on a deeper level or some other bullshit like that."
"So you want to talk about houses or robes of all things?"
"Of course not, how boring would that be?" Zuko nodded towards her papers. "These poses look really similar to those in simple firebending exercises. We could try to find a way of connecting them so they could, theoretically, be used in training for both kinds of bending."
"And you think that could actually work?" The prospect of having an idea what to work on made Katara fidget in her chair. "Fire and water are complete opposites though. I'm not sure how they could ever fit together."
"That's where most people start going wrong." Zuko took a pencil out of his bag and pulled her papers closer. Katara watched him draw all the symbols representing the four elements. Instead of being separated by clear lines like they were in all of her school books, these symbols were intertwined with each other, blurring together and wouldn't be complete on their own.
"When I was younger, Iroh used to explain to me that no element can exist on its own. Even if they seem to be 'complete opposites', as you say, the belong together and complement each other. None can exist without the others. Fire and water are in a constant fight. One burns, the other cools. One gets his power from the sun, the other from the moon. Like some people say, fire destroys and water heals. It's all about perspective."
Katara couldn't do anything but stare at Zuko in awe. "Wow, that was… beautiful. Inspiring. I never thought –"
"Yeah, don't start getting all gooey eyed and spread shit about how I'm actually a sappy, misunderstood romantic at heart. That's just the stuff Iroh wants to hear, so you can write that down for the oh so important assignment and then forget I ever said it."
Katara didn't get Zuko at all. How could he talk so openly and with so much conviction about something and the next second shut down completely and declare in was all nonsense? "That would be good for the first task of finding similarities in our bending," she just said in the end. "What about the ways to make our bending work together?"
"We'll think about that next time. Tomorrow at the same time on the practice pitch, bring those papers." With that, Zuko got up in a swift motion and strode away. Katara watched his retreating back and sighed. There could've definitely been someone easier to work with but she felt like she would have learned a lot by the end of this project.
Zuko was pacing his room nervously for almost half an hour now. He didn't even know why he was nervous. He'd never been nervous to go to school before.
Deep down, he knew it was because of Katara and that stupid project. He wondered if Iroh had paired them up on purpose to make Zuko's life even worse than it already was. It would be just another one of Iroh's cruel plans that he pretended were just 'tries to help Zuko'. Yeah, right.
Zuko had been pondering over that project for a while. Today's meeting with Katara had been quite successful. She was a little too loud and curious for his liking, but he found that, surprisingly, he didn't mind all that much. She was smart enough for it to be not a total pain working with her. And her idea of using bending exercises for beginners was actually pretty good.
Zuko had been trying to find a firebending equivalent to the waterbending she had shown him for a while now. There were several similar movements, but they were not the same and Zuko didn't know how much he could change them so that they were still going to work.
There was no use thinking it over too much though. As much as he hated it, he'd just need to wait and see if it was going to work. Tomorrow, when they would meet again. He would be spending far more time with her than he'd usually like to spend in the company of other human beings. Let's hope she wouldn't test his patience too much so he wouldn't need to snap. Considering she was a water bender, that was a lot to ask, but Iroh had told him as a child that he should always believe the best in strangers. That was stupid advice, but maybe this once, it would be worth it to try in order to let him sleep better tonight.
