2. Ether

Iroh set his teacup onto the table with a soft clink. He and Katara sat across from one another at a low table, the remains of their breakfast scattered between them.

"You haven't been getting much sleep lately," he said. "Are you sure you are not hearing things?"

"I know what I heard," insisted Katara. "I don't care if the guards didn't hear it; it was there. And there's no way you can explain away the smell. People don't hallucinate smells like that."

"I disagree. I used to smell bananas during my headaches as a younger man, but to my disappointment, they were never anywhere to be found."

He chuckled to himself. Katara narrowed her eyes and the corners of her mouth twitched downward.

"I believe you, though," Iroh hastily added.

She sighed and smoothed down her tunic with both hands. "I know, I'm sorry- I feel like everyone's been looking at me like I'm crazy. One of the guards actually told me I was being hysterical."

"Ah. I'd wondered how Corporal Teng managed to get frozen to the door."

"I unfroze him! After a while."

He waved his hand. "He is a good man, but he is not quick to understand subtleties. And I think what we are dealing with in here runs far deeper than what Teng can or cannot hear. Tea?"

She nodded, and he refilled her cup.

"Are you sure no one can overhear us?" she asked.

He topped off his own cup and set the teapot on a pile of unfurled scrolls. "There is no one here but the two of us. And if someone were to try and listen in, I think they would need to be wood-benders. The walls are very thick."

"Good."

Iroh swirled the tea in his glass, watching it as the stray leaves collided with one another. One stem floated straight up for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the glass. Iroh frowned.

"At this point, neither of us can answer why my nephew cannot wake. But there is one mystery I think you alone can help me solve."

Her grip tightened on her cup. "Oh? What's that?"

"How did you know my nephew was in danger when we had not yet allowed the news to escape the palace walls?"

She remembered how she'd forced her way into the palace, waterbending a path through it when she'd been denied passage and gathering a huge crowd of pursuers in the process. She'd practically broken down the door to Zuko's room and demanded to be allowed to heal him. It had taken Iroh himself to quell the guard and order the gaping doctors to stand aside and let her work. She'd thought it odd then that he did not ask how she knew Zuko was in danger, but had been thankful for it. There were few things in the world she wanted to do less than to explain herself out of that situation. Particularly when there were so many people present. Her dreams, and Zuko's presence in them, were her own.

"I hope you can forgive an old man's curiosity. Anything you could share on this subject can only be helpful. Even that which seems most fleeting."

She let her cup go and put her hands in her lap. "Are you asking me about my dreams?"

"Am I?"

At least there was no one else around to overhear, she thought. "Dreams are important to us. The Water Tribes, I mean. You probably already knew that, though."

"On the occasion that I have been fortunate enough to greet the dawn with a member of your tribe, we have discussed the subject."

"I-" she closed her mouth and frowned. "What do you mean by 'greet the dawn?' Wait, no, never mind. I don't want to know."

Iroh chuckled. She took a long drink of her tea, which had finally cooled enough to drink. It was delicate and grassy. She lowered her half-drained cup and cradled it in her lap.

"The first time I had one I woke up knowing that he was in danger." She winced. "Okay, that sounds like something out of a romance scroll. But I don't know how else to put it."

Iroh nodded gravely, but she saw a twinkle in his eye. "There is no shame in referencing the classics when one is at a loss for words."

"They're always the same," she continued. "I'm in this swamp. It's sort of like Foggy Swamp, with big, thick, old trees and vines everywhere. It always feels like I've been there before. Even the first time. Like..." she searched for an appropriate comparison. "Like going to Gran-Gran's tent, I guess, or one of the old settlements back home. I hear someone calling to me, and I know for sure that it's Zuko. And I know he's in trouble. Even if I can't hear him very well. I look for him, but I can't find him because of the fog or it's too dark under the trees or... something. There's always something. But I don't give up, because he wouldn't, if it were me. Then, when I feel like I'm getting close, I know someone's behind me. I know, like I know that it's Zuko who's trying to find me. But I can't turn around. Then I wake up."

Iroh shuddered. "That is... most unsettling."

Katara drained the last of her tea and set the glass on the table. She laid her hands one across the other and thought about how it felt in her dreams when she almost reached him, only to be yanked back to the waking world as if by a long rope. "Sometimes I think I see him. But he's always insubstantial. Like he's made of smoke. It's hard to explain."

"I am wondering. Can you bend in these dreams?"

"No. Not even a water whip. Why?"

Iroh sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I am not sure my nephew ever told you this, but many years ago, when I was... an angrier person, I spent a great deal of time in the Spirit World." He smiled and raised both bushy eyebrows. "I was not always so wise and judicious."

Katara rolled her eyes and laughed. "That's hard to believe."

"It's true! I am far more of a dragon now than I ever pretended to be in my youth. The Spirit World has a way of changing a person." He tucked his hands into his sleeves and grew serious again. "But this is troubling. Your description of the place you go in your dreams is too similar to my own experience as a younger man. And your strange encounter this morning has the clear stamp of a spirit on it. I am afraid that my nephew may be trapped in the Spirit World."

A shivery, tight feeling settled in her chest. She ran her fingers along the rim of her teacup, unable to sit still. All her experiences with the Spirit World had been in the context of something going horribly wrong in the physical one. Hei-Bai, the Spirit Oasis, Aang's transformation into La, the rash of disappearances all over the world in the aftermath of the Hundred Year War, all of them had succeeded in impressing upon her the serious consequences of crossing the unknowable rules that marked the boundaries of that place. A place with which she had little to no experience outside of being a witness.

In her time with Aang, Katara had seen him go into the Spirit World only a few times. It was always at a place of power, like the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole or Hei Bai's forest, or during a solstice or equinox, when the barrier between the two worlds was thin. When he entered the meditation state necessary for the crossing, he could be gone for hours, or only seconds. Time was strange there, he said. To him, his journey through the Spirit World during the Siege of the North had only taken a few hours. For her, it was nearly twenty four of them. If that were true, how long had it been for Zuko? Seconds? Minutes? Days? Years?

"We have to get him out of there," she said.

Iroh smiled. "I had hoped you would volunteer. It spares me the indignity of asking you to go in my place."

"Of course I'm volunteering," she said, briskly, then the weight of what Iroh said hit her like a wall of earth. "Wait, you're not coming?"

Iroh shook his head. The quality of his smile changed, and Katara thought she could see something wistful there. "If I leave, who will take care of the Fire Nation? The old war horses on the council who still dream of the days the Fire Nation ran the world? No; I must stay. My absence would be too tempting a target for those who dream of putting my brother back on the throne."

Or his daughter, Katara thought, but didn't say.

"Who was it that sent the assassin after my nephew? The Chief Advisor suggests that my brother's supporters had something to do with it, but I am not so sure. There are too many vipers here who would see my nephew fail based on his actions during the war alone. The one who did it disappeared in the crowd. I cannot tell you how much I..."

His smile faltered. For the first time, Katara realized how many more lines had appeared on Iroh's face since the last time she saw him, at the dedication of the Southern Waterbending Academy. Then, he had been as boisterous and excitable as he'd always been, peddling tea and flirting with anyone who stopped to sample his wares. Master Pakku had been singularly displeased at his ability to charm Gran-Gran. Lately, though, all Iroh had was edicts, politics, and worry.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Zuko is as good as my son. I would do anything to help him. But I cannot do this. If I do, everything he has worked for could be burnt to ashes."

Katara bit her lip, released it. "How am I going to get there without you, though? I've never been to the Spirit World on purpose before. That was always... Aang's... thing." She stopped. "Aang. I'm going to have to ask Aang to help me."

Iroh gave her a small smile. "He is, I believe, the only one who can. I would not have advised you to travel alone. The Spirit World is a dangerous place for those who are not familiar with it."

"I think I knew that was what it was going to come down to," she said. She laughed, but it was a thin sound. "I didn't think I was going to see him again so soon after... so soon."

The last time she saw Aang, he was in the South Pole. It had been snowing, and she remembered very clearly the way the snowflakes melted as they fell on his uncovered head. He hadn't looked back as he shouldered his pack and disappeared into the white air. No matter how she shouted after him.

Iroh reached across the table to pat her hand. "I know what things are like between the two of you, but I am not sorry that it has come to this. Love changes; it does not die when it has been grown in such a fertile bed as friendship."

"What? Oh. It's not like that," she said. "It'll be good to see him again. Him and Toph." She ran her fingers through her hair. It was tangled near the base of her neck; she'd have to brush it later. "Do you know what time it is? I promised I'd visit the hospital sometime today, and if I'm leaving tomorrow, I'm going to need to find a waterbender to take over for me while I'm gone. No offense, but firebenders can't exactly force food down someone's throat without destroying it in the process."

Iroh raised both his eyebrows. "None taken. You are leaving tomorrow?"

"As soon as I can. Can I borrow a messenger hawk? I'm going to need to write Aang and let him know what's up or he'll be pretty surprised to see me." She stood and brushed her blue robes free of wrinkles. "Last time I got a letter from him and Toph they were in the Earth Kingdom, so all I have to do really is tell them which port to be at when I get off the boat."

Iroh rose as well. He sidled up to Katara and gently placed a palm at the small of her back. "I have just the bird for you. He's a curious creature we found roosting in our southern farmlands, along the banks of the Kazan River. He does not answer to any name we have given him, but he is fast, and he always remembers where to go. You will like him, I think."

Her mind was awash in questions that she couldn't answer. She barely even heard Iroh going on about the finer points of hawk training and the great joy he took in visiting with certain birds. How did Zuko get stuck in the Spirit World in the first place? And why did he appear to her, of all people? The only vaguely spiritual experience she'd had in her life was seeing the ghost of her mother in Foggy Swamp, and that had turned out to be a dead tree. She remembered Yue stepping into the water of the Spirit Oasis. Even then she'd been a spectator. What could she hope to accomplish in the Spirit World?

"I don't know what he thinks I can do if I can't even bend there," she said. "If some weird monster is holding him hostage it'd make more sense for him to call to Mai. She could at least use her senbon on it."

Iroh shook his head. "Perhaps my nephew is reaching out to the only person he knows will answer."

"That doesn't make sense," she said, frowning. "You would answer him. You're the first person he'd try to reach; I know it."

"Then perhaps he tried, and that route was sealed." Iroh nodded to a passing chambermaid, who blushed and quickened her pace. "I do not pretend to understand the Spirit World. In fact, I must profess that I know very little, despite my time there. The fact remains, however, that it is you who he has called. Only he can say why."

She headed straight for the hospital after Iroh showed her the way to the aviary. The waterbenders there were pleased to see her. Shila, an older healing waterbender with streaks of grey in her black hair and no-nonsense eyes, agreed to take over Katara's duties in the palace. As thanks, Katara spent the rest of the day helping the healing waterbenders and Fire Nation doctors with their work.

Ever since the Rice Riots ended and Zuko finally accepted the offer of aid from a few of the North Pole's healing waterbenders, health care had dramatically improved as they shared their methods with the doctors in the capital. She knew from his letters that he hoped to entice more healers to the Fire Nation in hopes that they would spread their expertise to less populated areas, but it was slow work. There was still a lot of animosity between the Fire Nation and the rest of the world, especially the Water Tribes. It was a hard sell to convince prosperous healers to leave the safety of their tribe for the suspicion and sometimes outright hostility of their former enemies' home. The rancor of some of the patients she'd personally dealt with was enough to give Katara a headache. She didn't know how the old men and women in the hospital got through it every day. More than once she'd had to stop herself from using the water-whip on an old soldier who told her she was trash and more besides while she was wrist-deep in his blood. Even that wasn't nearly as bad as the ones who were afraid of her.

Sometimes, though, when one of her patients' clenched fists relaxed and their insults stilled, she thought she might understand why the waterbenders did what they did.

Back in the palace, long after the sun had withdrawn its final rays from the lip of the extinct volcano, she was saluted by servants and nobles alike as she walked the corridors to Zuko's room. Occasionally she could make out whispering after she returned their salutes with a bow of her own, but even these minor forms of disrespect were occurring with less frequency every day. She supposed her ability in keeping their Fire Lord alive took away her inborn disadvantage of being a foreigner. She snickered. Maybe Zuko would make her a noble when he woke up for services rendered to the Fire Nation in a time of crisis. The look on some of the whisperers' faces alone would be worth it.

The guards at the door, a man and a woman, saluted her and let her in as usual. Save for those two, the rest of the corridor was already deserted, as the palace doctor didn't want to risk infection through over-crowding. Katara thought that keeping people away from Zuko was no way to encourage him to come out of his coma, but she had little control over what the doctors did when she wasn't there. With that grating thought in mind, she pushed the doors open with more force than usual. She was rewarded with a wall of incense smoke so thick it made her cough.

"Are they trying to suffocate you?" she gasped.

She uncapped her hip flask and made a thin wall of water to scoop up the smoke, which she then fed into the drain of the adjoining bathroom. The offending incense sticks were soon extinguished.

"Sorry, Zuko," she said, "But enough is enough. I know this incense thing means a lot to your Fire Sages, but you're not waking up with coal miner's cough."

He didn't answer. She often did this; talked to him as if he were awake. During the winter, sometimes hunters from her tribe would bring back men or women who had fallen in the cold, who had slept during a bad fever or a snowstorm, and had not woken. Since no one in her tribe remembered that water could heal, the elder would burn certain herbs, tend to the fever or clean out wounds, and he or she would sit with the sleeping person, chanting, singing, or telling stories. When she was a child, it was Gran-Gran. Their voices, she said, would act as a guideline, like the hunters would use when the snow got too thick and they couldn't see each other in the swirling whiteness. So Katara talked. She liked to think that he could hear her. It was difficult to be around him and not speak. Her mouth always needed to be as busy as her hands.

After refilling her waterskin with water from the sink, she performed her routine checks on him. No new injuries, no bruises, he was being rotated often enough to avoid bedsores, his sheets and robes were clean, his pulse regular.

"Good. You look good. Not as good as you used to, but still, really good for someone in a coma." She winced. "Pretend you didn't hear that."

His hair was getting long. She'd liked that he'd broken with tradition and kept it short, for a Fire Lord, but it was still just long enough to put up into a topknot when the occasion called for it. She brushed the hair out of his eyes and tucked it behind his ear.

"I'm going away for a while. I know I promised a longer visit, but circumstances being what they are..." she trailed off. "Shila from the hospital said she'd look after you while I'm gone. So don't think I'm abandoning you. I don't abandon people. And I won't abandon you. I'll be back."

She watched him for a few moments. His eyes moved under his eyelids. She supposed he was dreaming, somewhere in there.

"You know those dreams we've been having? It would help if you gave me a little more details. So less mystic fog and shouting my name and more explaining next time, okay?" She paused as if waiting for response. "A map would be nice, too. Otherwise how do you expect me to rescue you?"

No answer. She lifted his wrist to her lap and laid her fingers on the hollow just under the base of his thumb. His hands had already grown soft from disuse. She still remembered the roughness of his grip as his hands closed around her wrists, how thick the pads of his fingers were on her skin. She traced his lifeline with her fingertips.

"Aang's going to help. He doesn't know it yet, but he's going to. To tell you the truth, I'm a little nervous about seeing him again. You know how bad our breakup was. The things we said to each other you can't pretend away."

His hand twitched in her lap. "I'm going to do this. I'm going to find you. Whatever stupid Spirit World demigod or fog monster or whatever has you, I'm going to take it down and bring you back. You're my..." she swallowed. "You've always trusted me when things got tough. So trust me on this. I'll find you. But I guess you already knew that."

There was a creak outside the doors, and a soft exchange of voices. Katara looked over her shoulder to see who it was, and then snatched her hand away from Zuko as fast as if he had suddenly changed into a cookfire.

"Mai!" she said, jumping to her feet. "What are you doing here? It's late."

Mai raised one silky eyebrow. "I could ask you the same thing."

The door shut behind her, throwing her into the dim glow of candlelight. Her long black hair was loose instead of up in her usual style. Katara guessed that she'd just come from her room. She thought she looked very young and elegant that way, like a glass doll, though she'd never say it aloud.

"Couldn't sleep," she lied. "You?"

The floor creaked in protest as Mai walked across it to stand beside Katara. "I came to say goodbye. Though it's not like he'll hear me, so I don't know why I'm bothering."

"What?" squeaked Katara. "You're leaving? Why?"

"I was supposed to leave a week ago, actually, but someone had to fall into a coma and make it inconvenient for me."

"Inconvenient?" Katara's voice rose an octave with each syllable of that word.

Mai rolled her eyes. "Oh, calm down. You know I wasn't implying anything."

"You shouldn't say things like that," said Katara. "It's not like he can help it."

"I know."

She wrapped her robe tighter around herself and stood still, watching Zuko breathe. He didn't seem to be bothered by the quiet, but Katara grew more uncomfortable with each passing second. She felt somehow like she was intruding on something.

"So... where are you going?" Katara asked, unable to stand it any longer.

"Not that it's any of your business, but the Earth Kingdom. I'm supposed to be negotiating a treaty with the Earth King right now. A week ago, actually. King Kuei was kind enough to put things on hold until I was ready to join him. You can't stop politics, though."

"I didn't know you were an ambassador."

"I'm not. I'm still just a plain old member of the nobility. But Zuko thinks I'm good at it for some reason."

Katara took in the placid expression on Mai's face and tried very hard not to laugh. "I can't imagine why."

"Ha ha. It gives me something to do, at least. And it means I don't have to go back home if I don't want to."

"Go home? But... why wouldn't you want to visit your family?"

Mai shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I'm going to bed now."

Katara blinked. What had just happened? "O... kay?"

Mai turned to face Katara. There was something searching about the look she gave. It was almost like being examined by a saber-tooth moose-lion after it had already eaten. You were no longer prey, so what were you?

"Take care of him," she finally said.

Katara looked at Zuko, then back at Mai. "Of course."

Mai tilted her head to one side, and gave something that was like the shadow of a smile. Katara tried to return it, but what came out was a bizarre grin that would have made a lion turtle laugh in derision. Mai, however, only nodded. Then she left. The wind from the closing doors made the candles flicker behind her.

She stood on a huge, exposed tree root, her hand resting against the trunk of the parent tree, which was thicker around the middle than six Appas. Under her bare hand she could feel age-worn bark, smooth and slick, and under that, the gentle vibration of water as it slowly climbed into the canopy. She'd never been in this particular place of what she now understood to be the Spirit World. The humidity was not as bad as it usually was, which was why, she guessed, that there was no fog. Or maybe it was that the root she stood on was tall enough that she could see the yellow horizon past the trees.

Distantly, she could see a disturbance along the treeline. She squinted her eyes and shaded them against the sun with one hand. When she understood what she was seeing, she had to look again just to be sure. And again.

A black silhouette of a man walked across the horizon as if it were a path. She knew what she was seeing was impossible, as each of his steps would take him hundreds of miles at a time, but there it was. And she knew, just as she knew her heart pumped blood and her hands bent water, that it was Zuko.

"Why me?" she shouted. "Why not your uncle, or Mai! Why not Aang! Answer me!"

'Answer me' echoed back to her five or six times before she stopped counting. Some great animal moaned somewhere below her, like a whale. For a moment, she was scared. What had she disturbed down there by shouting? The tree began to rhythmically shake. She braced her knees and slid into a bending stance. And with cold horror, she remembered that you couldn't bend in the Spirit World.

"You can't even hear me, can you? How am I supposed to find you if we can't even talk to each other?"

It seemed to come from her own head. Zuko's voice, tinny and thin, from the other end of a long tunnel, poured into her mind.

"It's always you," he said. "Wake up."

A long trail of drool followed Katara's head as she snapped awake. She wiped it from her mouth and looked around the room. Had she fallen asleep? A lone candle was still burning low in its basin. The others had burned down to their bases, and red wax had pooled all around them, some even dripping onto the floor. As her shroud of confusion lifted, she remembered that she'd laid her head down on the edge of her desk for a moment, thinking that she'd take a quick nap. Judging from the candles, her nap had been a little more than a nap. There was a crick in her neck that she knew would bother her for the rest of the day, not to mention a knot on her lower back the size of a sea plum. She put her hands on her lower back and stretched, cracking her spine. The sound made her wince. She found herself wishing for a window in her room for the hundredth time.

Sighing, she stood up and felt the underside of her eyes. They were soft and papery, like powdered silk, and a bit puffy. Ever since she'd started losing sleep to dreams, the dark circles under her eyes had become a permanent feature of her face. Healing them helped only a little. The sad thing was that she was starting to get used to existing on only a few hours of sleep a night.

The letters on her desk, at least, were mostly finished. The ones to the Southern Waterbending Academy were ready to be sealed and sent. It was mostly business: inquiries after the upcoming class, which was set to reconvene in midsummer; instructions for the skeleton crew of teachers who elected to stay during the break and take care of the school; that sort of thing. The only unfinished letter was the one to Aang. It sat halfway completed, the inkpot open, very close to where she'd been 'resting her eyes.' She thought about sitting back down to finish it, but decided that particular task could at least wait until dawn. As it was, she needed some very strong tea if she wanted to make it that far without committing grievous acts of murder.

After procuring her tea from the kitchens, she decided to pass the rest of the morning practicing her waterbending at the pond in the royal gardens. There were new buds on most of the trees that shone pale pink and silver in the moonlight. A pale streak of light was just visible over the rooftops, dotted here and there with wisps of pink clouds and the shadows of trees. It was only an hour before dawn – a boon, considering how early she was lately jerked out of sleep. Even better, the courtyard was deserted. She smiled, drained her teacup, set it on a flat, well-worn rock, then stepped onto the water.

She slowly eased herself into a half-squatting position, palms outward. The water under her feet eased down with her movements, then up again as she made a scooping motion with one hand and drew a sinuous rope of water from the pond, where it hovered between her palms.

It's always you. What did that mean? As she flowed through her forms, she couldn't keep those words from her mind. She rocked forward on one foot and let her leg stretch out behind her, lifting one arm and drawing the other back. Her water rope flattened into a ribbon and followed the motions of her hands. The water became a coil that wound around her arms. It's always you. Heat crept up her neck and onto her face. Her concentration faltered and one of her feet broke the surface of the water. She quickly righted herself, took a long, deep breath, and half-twisted her body so that her legs were bent at the knee and one arm was lifted up, palm out, and the other hovered at her waist.

There. Guide the water and let the water guide you. Don't think about anything else. But as she began a slow pushing and pulling motion with her hands and her water became a small, controlled whirlpool, she couldn't stop herself from remembering a hot fire, a cold night, and an exchange of promises.

"No," she muttered, and fanned out her fingers, causing the whirlpool to elongate.

It was useless to think about it. He'd made his choice that night, just as she'd made hers. Only one of those choices didn't work out, did it?

She slowly stretched her upper body forward and spread her arms wide, as if she were parting a curtain. Then she lowered them, crossed them, and raised them to the sky. A spectacular sheet of water shot up all around her, then fell like rain.

Whatever he meant, whatever he couldn't tell her because of interfering spirits or the weird geometry of dreams or whatever, she was going to find him. He asked her to, after all. And damned if she was going to let him down. No matter what had happened in the past.

She stood on one leg, kicking the other one as high as it could go, and the surface tension of the water strained beneath her. Then she slid like a snake back down to the water, one leg folded beneath her and the other flush against the surface, and made a long, controlled scooping motion with one arm. She did this twice more, until the surface of the pond was decidedly below the water line, then up, the water a heavy globe that stretched as she passed it from hand to hand through the final seven forms. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, then slowly brought them apart, gently siphoning the borrowed water back into the pond.

Applause echoed through the courtyard. She looked up to see Iroh standing on the nearby wooden walkway, smiling broadly at her.

"It is a joy to see a master at work." said Iroh. "But unlike some masters, you bring beauty to everything you do."

She stepped off the pond and tucked her hair loopies behind her ears. "Iroh. Hi. You startled me. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in bed?"

He held out a scroll tube and some sealing wax. "I got up early to get the dragon-hawk ready for you. He's waiting in the aviary for your letters. Are they ready?"

She grimaced. "Almost. I've got one left. Can I have a few minutes to finish it?"

"Of course. But you must join me for breakfast in return." He held up one finger. "We're having striped saba, pickled fruit, and sticky rice. And I've managed to procure the most wonderful jasmine tea..."

The rest of the morning passed quickly. After breakfast, Katara only had a half hour to give the rest of her orders to the attending physician (one of them being a prohibition on burning more than one stick of incense at a time), make sure that Shila would have everything she needed to take care of Zuko in her place, attach her letters to a strangely familiar looking dragon-hawk, and to knock on Mai's door to say her goodbyes. When no one answered, however, she opened the door to find Mai's bed made and her trunk missing. None of the servants knew where she'd gone; only that she'd left a little past midnight.

At last, she stood at the docks, ready to board the ship that would take her to the Earth Kingdom, and Aang. It was a privately-owned merchant vessel, designed for speed and safety. The captain offered her a space in his crew the second he learned she was a waterbender. She was glad to have work while she traveled. When she had nothing to do, her mind had a tendency to rob her of what little sleep she could get.

Iroh took both her hands in his and squeezed them. "Go safely, and go wisely. Remember that you hold my heart in your hands. Lovely as they are, I would like my heart to come home when you are finished with it."

She didn't quite understand what he meant, but she nodded. "I promise I'll get him back."

Iroh smiled, and tucked a strand of her hair behind one ear. "I know you will. And when you come back, we can have a real visit."

The ship left the harbor with the tide. When she arrived in her cabin, she dropped her rucksack on her bed and dug through it. Sunlight poured into her room like honey. It seemed the universe had heard her wishes for a window, for she'd been granted the rare honor of an above-deck cabin, with a large, circular window covered with thick glass. The captain had assured her that she'd gotten the cabin out of luck (the below-deck quarters were full), but Katara suspected Iroh's hand at work.

She found what she'd been looking for. It was a sheaf of letters bound in old, dark blue leather. Many of them were from Sokka during his winters in Kyoshi or Toph by way of a transcriber or her father and Gran-Gran (there were even a few from Ty Lee), but a great deal of them were from Zuko. His last letter to her was on the top of the pile, crinkled around the edges and creased and re-creased from multiple readings. She curled up in an ornate bench that sat under her window and skimmed it until she found what she was looking for.

...things are so hectic that I've been dreaming about work. Uncle says it's anxiety. He told me to talk to Mai about it, but she doesn't need my problems to deal with on top of everything that's happened lately.

Sorry I'm being so vague. I know that drives you crazy. I'll tell you anything you want when you visit. I might have a lot to tell you if I'm right about Mai. The old, bad part of me hopes that I am. At least I think it's the bad part. You would know.

Her brows furrowed and she smoothed the page. One of the things she'd always liked about Zuko (whether he was trying to knock her down or help her find her mother's killer or teach Aang how to bend fire) was his frankness. She'd never had to squeeze the truth out of him or corner him or catch him in a lie. She'd been planning to ask him exactly what he'd meant by his cryptic letter as soon as she saw him (and tease the hell out of him for it if circumstances allowed), and she was sure he would have told her the truth then.

But then the dreams started, and it was too late.

The dreams. She shifted into a better position and frowned. Zuko said in his letter that he'd begun having dreams about work. She didn't think the two of them were directly connected, but it was too much of a coincidence that he'd been having recurring dreams right before he'd started appearing in hers. Probably. She folded the letter and tossed it onto her bed. She wished she knew more about these kinds of things. Spirits, dreams, creatures that went whoosh in the night. During those long winter nights when the old women would begin telling stories, she'd dozed off more often than not. Only a few stayed with her. Arviq Dreams the World, How La Became Wrathful, Wolf and the Raven-Woman. All of them involved dreams, but none of them were very instructive on what to do if a person kept appearing in yours. Maybe she'd write Gran-Gran and ask.

Or maybe not. She stood up and brushed off her clothes. For now, there was work to do on the ship. Her dreams could wait.

Summer, ASC 100, Year of the Monkey

Katara had never seen a sky like the one that hummed above her then. She was sure that it was night, sometime a few hours before dawn, but the comet made the sky a burnished orange fringed with acidic blue. The usually gentle wind sounded like an iron brush being drug across glass.

"It looks like a nightmare," she said, and even her voice sounded somehow metallic.

Zuko grimaced. "It is."

"Even to the Fire Nation?"

"In a way it's more of a nightmare to us than the rest of the world."

Katara raised her eyebrow. "Oh?"

It took Zuko ten full seconds to realize what he'd said. "Wait! No! That's not what I meant! I was trying to say we've become something terrible, and that it's not what we really are, it's just my family, I didn't mean to imply-"

She laughed, drowning Zuko out. He stopped speaking and frowned.

"You did that on purpose."

She hugged herself and doubled over with laughter. "You are such a dork sometimes."

He mumbled something indistinct, but she was too busy being pleased with herself to care what it was. She knew him. If it was important, he'd tell her eventually.