As Katara ran from the defenses down to her post in the Oasis, she couldn't help but curse herself for a coward.
Content warnings: Dark themes, references to one of the toughest ATLA episodes, shoddy Google translations. Excerpted from the same WIP as yesterday's Hidden Identity.
December 3rd – Storm
"WATASHITACHIHA RIYŪ O OTAGAU KOTODE WA ARIMASEN."
Katara frowned. "What was that?"
Zuko sighed, turning towards her and leaning in close, the better to shout through the scarf protecting his face from the pelting snow. "Ours is not to question why. It's from a poem that we had to memorize at the Academy."
She leaned in even closer, reaching out and pulling him towards her, so that their backs and the hoods of their parkas shielded their words from the wind. "We're out here in the middle of nowhere, Zhao the Butcher bearing down on us and several members of the Royal Family, no idea what's happening back in Iqaluit, and you're reciting poetry?!"
Zuko shrugged. "What, would you prefer that I start mumbling the mangled lyrics of songs I won't admit that I can't remember?"
She gave him a light swat on the arm. She knew he couldn't feel it through his clothes, she could barely feel it through her glove, but something lit up in the corners of his eyes, even the dead one, something that set off a warm tingling sensation in the depths of her soul, and she was glad she had done it, glad for reasons she couldn't possibly begin to describe.
"Leave my brother out of this," she said, smiling from ear-to-ear, despite the horror that could arrive at any moment.
"Gladly," he replied, and something clicked and quivered inside of her, something that made it feel as if the vicious winter storm raging all around them wasn't quite so bitter and cold after all.
As if for a moment, she was just a girl, standing beside a boy that she had a nascent crush on.
But then he sighed and reached to his left side and his katana hissed out of its scabbard. Lighting crackled overhead, and Katara looked away, not wanting to see how the pitch-black steel of the blade drank in even the strongest and brightest of light.
"You better get inside," he said, leaning in still closer, until his nose was brushing against her ear and she could feel his breath on her cheek. "If Aang doesn't end his spirit walk soon, you're going to be our last line of defense."
She screwed her eyes shut. She told herself it was because they were cold. "You don't think you can hold, do you?"
"No." She heard his shrug in his tone. "If the weather would let up long enough to get the powder dry, maybe, but the muskets won't fire in this, so it'll be down to swords and knives and bending, and then it's just a matter of how many bodies Zhao wants to throw at us."
She didn't have to point out that they were well aware of the answer to that, so she didn't. She had seen the fighting on the first day of the siege, seen how aggressive Zhao's attacks were, how heedless he was of casualties, how hard he worked to earn the title of Butcher.
She had watched firsthand as he had proved, over and over again, that the lives of his own soldiers meant as little to him as the lives of his enemies.
She opened her eyes, turned her head, not much, but enough, enough so that their noses were touching at the tips. "But you're still going to fight."
Even Zuko's dead eye looked sad and forlorn. Somewhere, deep down inside, a voice tried to remind her of when she had thought that eye looked menacing, cruel, cold. She kicked that voice in the throat, the better to hear Zuko's words.
"Well, the other part of the poem is, Ours is but to do or die."
She reached out, laid a gloved hand on his chest. "Riyū mae no eiyo, eh?" It was the only Nihongo phrase she had managed to master by now, not least because Zuko said it so often. Honor before reason.
She watched as his mouth bent into a smile underneath his scarf and made no attempt to stop the fluttering in her heart. "Soshite fumeiyo no mae no shi." And death before dishonor. The ritual response, the battle cry of the Fire Nation.
"Well," she said, "at least this time, you won't have to wonder why."
He shook his head, the tip of his nose brushing back-and-forth across her own. "No, Katara, I won't."
There was so much more to do, so much more to say, but they didn't have the time, he was right, she was the last line of defense for Aang and Yue and the Queen and the Oasis, so she needed to get down there and stand her post, and quickly, now.
But not yet.
She acted before her inner doubts could think to stop her, pulling the scarf down from her face. She popped up on her toes, pressed her lips into his cheek, his scarred cheek, she didn't even think twice, kissing his scar, his face, long and warm and soft before pulling away, winking, and putting her scarf back in place as she raced for the door to the Oasis.
She cursed herself for cowardice every step of the way.
So, forgot to make mention something yesterday, that being what hanafuda is. Basically, hanfuda are a kind of playing cards that have been used in Japan since roughly the sixteenth/seventeenth century. There are a number of different games you can play with them, and they're still very popular in Japan. How did I find out about them? Basically, I have a piece of original work in which one of the characters is from Kyoto, Japan, and their father works for Nintendo. I was fleshing out that particular backstory, which involved some research into Nintendo itself, at which point I found out that the company started out a loooong time ago making and selling hanafuda cards and other traditional Japanese games. Curious, I ended up looking into hanafuda, and found the cards the games you play with them really, really interesting, which in turn led me to thinking about how Zuko would do at card games. I couldn't help but think that Zuko would be, like, great at card games. A card game, unlike, say, Pai Sho, requires a willingness to take risks, and many card games actually punish overthinking your actions and your strategies. A game like Pai Sho requires the player to sit back, sip some tea, and carefully consider every single move, while most card games require you to go with your gut most of the time. Zuko tends to go with his gut, he's pretty good at keeping a blank face, thus, he's a surprisingly good card player. Then I imagined Zuko sitting on a log by a fire on an ice cold winter's day, teaching Sokka hanafuda and just beating the snot out of the guy while Katara gives Aang waterbending lessons in the background, and that is literally where this whole WIP started.
Hi! Welcome to how my mind works! Every single story I've ever written comes either from a Wikipedia crawl that ended up in a weird place, from a conversation with my wife, or a from some evening when my wife and I were snuggled on the couch, the kid's asleep, and I'm legit narrating a Wiki-crawl, because we're weird like that. Love you, babe!
Also, apologies to the 125 million speakers of Japanese (in my fics, the Fire Nation speaks Japanese), many of whom use this site. Sadly, I don't have the guts to ask any of the five fluent speakers I know to do quick translations for me, so I have to use Google Translate. Sorry! Don't hate me!
This is getting too long. Moving on! In tomorrow's episode, Zuko confronts the fact that, as a general rule, the only thing two teenaged siblings can easily agree on is that their parents are kind of dumb. Stay tuned!