as the turn of the worlds

book one: objects in space
chapter two: rose and honey

"Diplomats! The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank."
-Montgomery Scott, Star Trek

(at the companion house)

The forced smile fell off her face the moment she ended the wave with Zhao, and she shuddered violently. How was she supposed to do this? The very thought made her skin crawl, and she wasn't entirely sure she could do her job with... him.

"Knock-knock," her door said, and she turned to see Ty Lee poking her head in, followed by Jin, a lower-ranking Companion. "I heard the Admiral is gonna visit," she said, and winced, before barging in and bouncing onto Katara's bed. "I brought Jin, since she's seen him before and she can give you pointers on, like, what to say and stuff. Not that you need help!" she corrected herself hastily. "But. Um."

"It's all right," Katara replied, forcing herself to smile, "come in. I'll make tea. Do you have any preference?"

"I just had a pot in my room," Jin said, floating serenely to the bench. Jin didn't have the status that Katara had earned, but in the two years since she had come to the Companion House, she had proven herself a natural - something about the atmosphere she brought to a room set people at ease, and her sunny personality had won her a lot of friends.

"Mm, do you have any of that rose tea?" Ty Lee asked, flopping backward onto Katara's bed. "I just love this bed. I wish I had a bed this nice."

"If you were expected to use it more often," Jin said, raising an eyebrow, "they'd give you one."

"Oh, I use it all the time, I just don't get paid for it," Ty Lee grumbled. "Which is totally unfair."

"You really don't understand the concept of tact, do you?" Katara asked, measuring out a few teaspoons of rose tea and rifling through her cabinet for sugar, surreptitiously hiding the honey as she did. Ever since she'd been furtively seeing Zuko, she'd been running out of honey at an alarming rate - he liked his tea sweet, which was amusing, yes, but it was also taxing her reserves, and she couldn't request more without having to explain why she was suddenly hemorrhaging honey. She hadn't yet come up with a good enough excuse to give Laila, so she was forced to save it for meetings only. Unfortunately, Ty Lee also liked to sweeten tea beyond reason, which was sure to cause problems soon.

"Oh, I understand it," Ty Lee chirped, "I just don't care about it."

Jin giggled behind her hand. It was frustrating, really, how cute the girl was, when she didn't even have to try. Katara was a right disaster unless she was in Companion Mode (as Mai had dubbed it early on), and could hardly be called cute, even by the most ardent of admirers - beautiful, maybe, or sexy if she was really trying, but that quality of endearing, almost-childlike appeal had always eluded her. Then again, she'd overheard Jin ranting to Suki once about how obnoxious it was to be called "cute" by a client when she was doing her best to be sexy, so maybe it was a case of the grass being greener on the other side.

"Being a Companion involves far more than just sex, Ty Lee," Katara said, trying not to make it sound like she was playing Mother to anyone. Mai in particular hated it when she did that.

"Sure, sure, there's all those classes you had to take, I know, I couldn't pass them. I could be a prostitute!" she exclaimed suddenly, jumping up, but then her face fell again. "Wait, no, I wouldn't get to choose my clients then. Hmm."

"I think you're doing pretty well for yourself," Jin said, still giggling. "Aren't you a gymnast, though? Why would you be a prostitute when you've got other marketable skills?"

"'Cause it's more fun," she replied, like it was obvious, and Katara choked on air. "What? It is. You can't tell me that getting laid all the time isn't the best part of your job!"

"I didn't know you were a gymnast," Katara said, desperately changing the subject. Ty Lee bobbed her head.

"Yeah, before the war, I wanted to join the circus, but then my parents died..." she explained, shrugging. "Anyway, I practiced all the time and drove my sisters out of their minds. It was too hard to find a job there after the war, so I came here to become a Companion, but, well, that didn't exactly work..."

"I'm sure you'll find something," Katara said soothingly, handing over a cup of tea to Ty Lee, who took a big sip and then blinked.

"D'you have honey?" she asked, and Katara tried not to wince.

"Yes, but I'm running low," she replied, "so I'm saving it for my clients."

"Speaking of," Jin said, segueing cleanly into the real topic before Ty Lee could start whining about honey, "Ty Lee told me you're seeing Zhao."

Not if I can help it, she thought, but said, "Yes, on Thursday. He's meeting me here," she added unnecessarily, and looked into her teacup as though some answer might swim out from it and dance around the edge.

"He's not so bad," Jin said, looking thoughtful. "Arrogant, but you kind of expect that from high-ranking men. Didn't you see the prince a few months ago?" she asked, and then went on anyway. "You shouldn't have anything to be afraid of, then. Just treat him like you did the prince and it'll be fine. Quick, too, I should think," she muttered, and shot Katara a smirk. "I don't think he gets out a lot, if you know what I'm saying."

"So, wait," Ty Lee started, grinning and bouncing on the bed with barely-contained glee (and spilling tea on her hand), "you mean that Zhao only gets laid when he pays for it? Oh, that's delicious!"

"What do you have against Zhao?" Katara asked, and poured herself a second cup. Ty Lee laughed.

"Nothing, really, I just think it's funny when guys have no other choice but to pay a Companion for her time."

"It's not funny," Katara said admonishingly, but Ty Lee rolled her eyes.

"It is when it's a super-high-ranking guy."

"Who doesn't have a wife or children," Jin added, giving Ty Lee a significant look, "and works in a high-stress and extremely intense job. He's lonely, and he doesn't have anyone else to turn to. People like Zhao are why we're here, Ty Lee," she said, and a stab of guilt shot through Katara. Jin was right - and seeing Zhao in her capacity as a Companion wasn't quite the same as seeing him outside of it, was it?

She just couldn't - she couldn't. Not with Zhao.

Just as she was planning to say something about Companions having choices of their own (which, in retrospect, Jin and Ty Lee probably wouldn't have understood), a knock came - at the floor-length window. She gasped; only one person ever used that to reach her. Jin and Ty Lee both heard it as well, and knew that it meant something out of the ordinary - they both turned, first to the window and then to Katara. "Uh!" she started dumbly, and then Ty Lee grinned in a purely feral way.

"Who's that?" she trilled, standing up, but Katara beat her to the window, thanking every spirit, god, and mythological hero she could think of for curtains.

"I - " she said, drawing a complete blank for an excuse. Luckily, Jin came to her rescue.

"Well, it's getting late," she said, sighing heavily. "Ty Lee, let's go. I've got loads of laundry, I'll need help getting it all done."

"Oh, no," Ty Lee cried, hands on her hips. "I want to kno - mmph!" she mumbled, as Jin clapped a hand over her mouth and began to pull her out of the room. At the door, she glanced back and mouthed I want details to Katara, who groaned. Once the door was shut, she opened the window and let a furiously blushing Zuko in.

"Sorry," he muttered, "I didn't know you had company."

"It's all right," she said, pulling the curtains to. "They're good friends, they won't spread any rumors. Well, Ty Lee might, but I don't think Jin will let her."

"Ty Lee?" he asked, looking vaguely confused. "Hua Ty Lee?"

Katara nodded, unsurprised. Ty Lee's family had been extremely high-ranking nobility before her parents had died nearly destitute - everyone had heard the scandal surrounding the Hua family's fall from grace. Of all of her sisters, Ty Lee had done noticeably best for herself.

"I used to know her," Zuko mused, sinking into the bench, "when we were kids. She was a good friend of my sister's."

"Really?" she asked, surprised at this bit - not that she would have known the royal family, but that bubbly, cheerful Ty Lee had actually been friends with the terrifying princess. "That seems... odd."

"It always did to me, too," he muttered, and began messing with her teapot. He had a way of doing that when he was nervous about something (which was, generally speaking, whenever he was around her), fidgeting with her things or with his sleeves or anything, really, he could get his hands on. She began making another pot of tea, idly wishing that she hadn't had tea with Ty Lee and Jin, or at least that Zuko had given her warning he was coming tonight. Usually, he tried to let her know when he'd show up, but she thought that something might have been bothering him, from the intense fidgeting he was doing and the way he wouldn't look at her.

"You're beginning to deplete my honey supplies," she said lightly, taking it from its hiding place and setting it on the table in front of him. He gave her a lopsided and somewhat forced smile.

"I can't help it," he replied.

They waited in silence for the water to boil, and then for the tea to steep. When she poured the tea, and he still hadn't spoken, she was starting to get uncomfortable. He was always taciturn, but this was just unlike him; he had come here for a reason, and he wasn't the sort to drop in justfor sex, especially unexpectedly, since he knew that she had clients to see and seemed diametrically opposed to walking in on her with another man. Finally, when she was about to break the silence out of sheer frustration, he spoke.

"I think my sister is plotting to kill me," he said abruptly, and she almost spilled her tea. He looked up at her, eyes blazing. "She's definitely planning something."

"Why? Do you think that, I mean," she asked, shaking her head a bit to clear it. This was a big deal - far bigger than she, a mere Companion, was prepared to handle.

"She's been in the library a lot," he said, almost caressing the teacup in his anxiety, "and I... well, I tried to pay off a servant to look into it, but they're all so afraid of her they wouldn't..." he trailed off, and looked away. "So I went in at night and... spied on her, sort of. I just wanted to see what she was so interested in," he insisted, like he was scared she'd turn on him for violating his sister's privacy. Normally, she'd take issue with it, but considering the political climate he lived in, and also considering his sister, she understood the need for it. "Anyway, she's been reading up on lines of succession and old Fire Nation law, dating back thousands of years, some of the oldest scrolls and books we have. I didn't even know some of these laws existed and I've been studying this since..." he trailed off again.

"What else?" Katara asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"She's been acting weird," he continued, draining his teacup in one large gulp and running a hand through his hair. "Friendly, which is weird for Azula. I just... I don't like it," he muttered. "She's off."

Katara set her teacup down, feeling scared and overwhelmed and wondering why Zuko had deigned to tell her this - but then, he didn't have anyone else to confide in, did he? And he certainly didn't have anyone he could trust with this kind of information, not since his uncle, the only other person he was comfortable around, had disappeared almost a week ago. He'd come to her then, as close as she had ever seen him to tears, angry and hurt that the last person he trusted had left him here - and now, this, while he was still reeling from the disappearance.

Something seemed wrong about the whole thing, though, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "She's been friendlier lately?" she asked, chewing on her lip and thinking hard about that. Why would Azula be friendly? To move suspicion away from her if she did go through with it? "Just to you, or in general?"

"In general," he replied, leaning forward eagerly. "What is it?"

"That doesn't... it doesn't feel right," she mused, looking anywhere but his eyes. "Why would she kill you?" she asked suddenly, and looked up. He made a face.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No, that's... that's just it," she said, standing in agitation. "It is obvious. Who else would kill you? If she wanted you dead, she'd be working on a scapegoat, someone she could pin... it... on..." she said slowly, the answer becoming clear. Zuko stood up as she fell into her seat.

"What?" he asked desperately, and she turned back, shakily, to the tea and poured herself another cup even though she didn't really want it.

"She doesn't want to kill you," she whispered, "don't you see?" She was horrified - this was the same type of thing that she had seen in the tribe. During the war, positions of leadership were coveted, and people had done nearly anything they could to earn power; it was one of the factors that had led to their relatively easy demise. Zhao had barely had to do anything, since the tribes were so busy tearing themselves apart. Her own father had gained power through someone else's mysterious disappearance, but he had been an only child; another tribe leader, Bato, had been killed by his brother, in an effort to remove all of the roadblocks to leadership.

"See what?" Zuko said sharply, dragging her away from the dark recesses of her memory. She looked up, straight into his eyes.

"She's going to kill your father - " Katara said, clutching her teacup hard, "and blame you." He jolted a bit at this and fell back into his seat, deep in thought. "I've seen this - I saw it a few times in the Water Tribe during the war," she breathed, and he glanced up at her - he didn't know much about the Water Tribe (nowadays, most people didn't), but he did know that she never talked about it. "It was very... cutthroat," she said, swallowing hard around the lump that had formed in her throat, "and what noble class we had was... well, they destroyed each other for power. My father..." she started, but shook her head, unwilling to dredge up that part of her past just yet. "This kind of thing happened a lot. The only thing worse than actually being murdered is being hated - murder by publicity. If the people think you killed your father for power..."

"They'll never support me," he finished, and she nodded. He cursed under his breath. "How do I stop her?"

Katara looked away. "I... don't know."

He cursed again. She tried to come up with something helpful to say, or at least something clever, and then she noticed the blinking light on the cortex - someone was trying to contact her. For a moment, she considered ignoring the wave, but then whoever it was might go to Laila, and then she would have to explain why she wasn't accepting waves all of a sudden.

"Oh, no," she muttered, and Zuko looked up, his face oddly closed.

"Someone calling?" he asked, sounding a little bitter. She looked at the ID that was blinking on the panel - it was Zhao. Zhao was trying to contact her. What could he possibly want? She'd already spoken to him once tonight, why was he calling on her again?

"It's - Zhao," she replied, hand hovering over the "accept" button.

"What's Zhao calling - oh," Zuko said uncomfortably, looking away. Katara bit her lip.

"He went to Laila," she said quietly. "I turned him down four times but he... didn't listen."

"Is that... legal?" Zuko asked, leaning against the wall beside the cortex, out of the screen's line of sight. Katara shrugged.

"It's not illegal. If Laila agrees to it, there's not much I can do," she said evenly, and for a moment, they stood in silence while she stared at the accept button like it owed her money.

"Zhao personally conquered the Water Tribe," Zuko whispered, and she swallowed hard.

"He did," she replied. Zuko nodded, and opened the window to leave.

"I'll take care of it," he said. "And - " he added, almost as an afterthought, "about Azula, don't... don't worry. I'll take care of that, too."

"Zuko - " she started, but he was gone.


(at the fire nation palace in lu'wong)

Azula was not in an especially good mood. First, her fool of an uncle had to go and disappear right when she was on the cusp of figuring out what he was studying so intently - something about a box that she'd heard rumor of but never seen - and Zhao was acting like a complete slimeball who owned her but she had to keep him on her side for the time being, and now... this.

"What are you plotting?" Zuko asked roughly, scowling at her. She sighed.

"Oh, Zuzu, sweetheart, don't you worry a thing about me," she lied, smiling brightly at him. "If I plot something, I'll be sure to let you in on it."

Never in a million years. It was only a matter of time, though, before he was out of her hair. Her pieces were moving into position on the board: Zhao was fully convinced that she was the rightful heir to the throne (if for no other reason than his delusion that she would marry him if he helped her), and all she had to do was set up all of the pawns to checkmate the king, which in this case was her father. Unfortunately, the queen was Zuko, the ever-present thorn in her side.

Not for the first time, she wished that she were an only child. It would be harder to bring Zuko down than her father - any old assassin could stick a knife in an arrogant Fire Lord's back, but Zuko was more reserved, calculating, and - until his sudden disappearance a week ago - had an old master watching his back like a hawk.

With Uncle mysteriously gone, Zuko wouldn't be as difficult to displace, but it would still be a struggle. He wasn't as smart as her, but he was hardly an idiot, and he was well-liked by the people. If she wanted to take her throne, she'd have to slaughter him in their eyes.

She'd gotten the idea from Zhao, blowing hot air about how easy the Water Tribe had fallen, how they'd fractured from within, hating their own leaders. If she killed Zuko, her people would hate her and rebel, and rebellions were tiring things - easier, then, to kill the semi-beloved (or, at least, the soundly feared) Fire Lord Ozai and pin the blame on the revered crown prince.

And now he was suspicious. She wondered vaguely who she was going to have to kill for tipping him off.

"Stop lying, Azula," Zuko snapped, and she heaved a heavy sigh.

"All right, fine," she replied gently, walking over and placing a hand on his chest. He looked at her strangely. "I am plotting something. I want Father out of the way - he's getting too old for his job," she said, poison in her voice. "The border planets are talking about rebelling, and he seems to think that this is normal! How could he do that to the poor folk on the border?" she asked saccharinely. "They need the Alliance to take a stand. With Father out of the way, you and I will be able to quell the rebels and move on, to a prosperous future."

He peered at her for a moment, and then recoiled, disgust on his face. "You're lying. You'd never share the throne with me."

She cursed her misstep. "Why not?" she asked innocently. "You're my big brother!"

"And you're a power-hungry bitch. Who do you plan to pin Father's murder on? Zhao?" he asked mockingly, and Azula scowled.

It occurred to her in a horrible flash: he knew about her plan, but how? How could he possibly have - blue eyes and rich brown skin flitted into her mind. The Companion. The chòu biaozi was Water Tribe! She'd put the pieces together, probably from Zuko's whining to her about how lonely and disaffected he was, and realized that Azula was taking a leaf out of her home planet's book.

Oh, this just would not stand.

"And what are you going to do about it?" she challenged in a low voice, raising an eyebrow. "You've got no proof, no one loyal enough to you to stand against me."

"I'll go to Father," he snarled, already turning to go.

"Yes, and what will you tell him?" she asked, crossing her arms, already plotting. "That your whore told you I'm a danger to him? Your Independent whore? He'll be sure to take your word for it. Oh, and be sure to tell him," she called after his retreating form, "how you failed again to produce lightning. Make him proud of you!"

With that, she turned on her heel and stalked into her room, grabbed a knife and slashed herself across the stomach - deep enough to leave a scar, but not enough to kill her, and screamed, as loud and as terrified as she could make it sound, before throwing the knife from her. She timed it perfectly - Zuko was first to reach her room, running back when he heard the scream, and when he caught sight of her bleeding, he picked up the knife.

"What did you - " he started, and then his eyes widened and he dropped the knife, cursing.

She bit back a smile and crumpled to the floor as the servants burst through the room. "Get him away from me!" she shrieked. "He just tried to kill me!"

"She's lying!" Zuko yelled, but the healers rushed forward. No one would believe that she would have slashed herself up just to implicate Zuko.

"You have to stop him!" she cried, clutching the healers and fighting them violently. "He's going to kill Father! His Water Tribe whore put him up to it - stop him, you have to stop him!"

Zuko stared at her in horror.