Like shining oil this night is dripping down
Stars are slipping down
~I'll Be Gone, Linkin Park
Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown
-playing the game-
On the sixth day of Katara's arrival in the Fire Nation, the servants girls take Katara to a different room; this one with cold metal doors in place of the honey-colored carved wood of the guest room.
"It's the Agni Kai chamber," one of them says by way of introduction. Katara glances at her and wonders if Zuko (Prince Zuko? Katara isn't sure how to refer to him, even in her mind) fought his father in this very room.
The other two girls hurry ahead and push open the double doors for Katara. Fire Lord Azula is on the opposite end of the room, and beside her stands a man who looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties. His shoulder length hair is in a classic topknot and his golden eyes gleam with intelligence. Six huge pots of water are on Katara's side of the room; three on the left and three on the right.
"With all due respect, your Highness, the waterbending girl is still weak, and I wouldn't recommend starting so soon-"
"Katara," Azula says. Her voice echoes in the room. The servant girls bow to Azula and scurry away.
Before Katara can say anything, a jab of fire from Azula is heading towards her. On instinct, she pulls out the water from one of the pots and sends it hurling towards the flame.
The Fire Lord kicks in an arc, sending a blade of fire towards Katara, and Katara draws another tendril of water to counter it. She raises both arms and twin water whips rise into the air, and then with a flick of her wrists - open palms towards Azula - the two whips combine into one jet of water.
Azula throws several punches of fire in a quick succession; evaporating most of the water and moving lithely to the right to sidestep the rest. She bends her knees slightly in a classic bending stance and draws in a breath before sending a stream of blue fire towards Katara.
Katara, momentarily stunned by the strange color (blue flames?), runs to the left at the last second (she curses the skirt she's wearing for restricting her movement), feeling heat on her back as she pulls water from two of the pots. She spins once before sending all of the water in another high-pressure jet. Azula merely throws another two jabs of fire and spreads her arms out, using the flames to disperse the water.
The initial rush of adrenaline wears off and suddenly Katara feels tired. She's never fought a proper spar like this and she's still weak from being cooped up in a ship and then her room here in the palace. Still, she pushes on, sending water bullets and trying to use water whips to sweep the Fire Lord off her feet.
Within a minute another fiery kick from Azula has knocked Katara to her knees.
While Katara stumbles to her feet (they sting), breathing hard, the Fire Lord straightens easily and bows, breathing steadily.
"Looks like we have a lot of work to do," comments the man who had been watching from the sidelines. "I guess we should start now."
Katara has a million things to say to him but she is still bent over and struggling to get her lungs to function properly.
"Fire Lord Azula sent these for you. After you change I'll escort you to the chamber we'll you'll train with Master Aon."
The servant hands Katara a bundle of clothes and then steps into the hallway.
They're loose red pants, and a tunic with slits up to her hips that stops just above her knees in the front but reaches mid-calf in the back. Katara quickly puts on the new clothes and follows the servant to the training chamber.
"You're doing it wrong," says Aon, shaking his head at Katara. Katara clenches her fist and the water floating around her compacts into ice. "Your form was off during your spar with the Fire Lord as well. If she'd actually been trying, you'd have been dead in seconds. Relax your wrists."
"I don't suppose you'd like to demonstrate? Or, I don't know, find an actual waterbending master to teach me?" snaps Katara. She is tired of this firebender trying to teach her waterbending, even if he has studied waterbending longer than Katara ever will.
"Katara." A warning note slips into his voice.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that your nation killed them all."
"Katara." Aon's voice is full of resolve. He is like any one of Azula's soldiers in the way he carries himself and talks, but he bears Katara's half-hearted taunts (albeit with clenched teeth; it's almost like teasing Sokka), so Katara thinks that he's fractionally better than anyone else in the Fire Nation. "Just try it one more time."
Katara does try it again, over and over for about an hour until it's her hundred-something try. Somewhere along the way, she starts to see the difference. Aon nods at her once in approval.
Sometimes the Fire Lord drops by with her friends to check on Katara's progress.
The first few weeks of Katara's training are dreadfully tedious, and the Fire Lord doesn't hesitate to voice her boredom with the repetitive exercises. Aon, however, insists that Katara needs to refine her basic moves before getting better at the more advanced sets.
"Why don't you spar with your student?" the Fire Lord says on one of these afternoons. Katara's umpteenth water bullet falls hits the target set up opposite her.
"I don't think-" Aon begins, his voice carefully poised, but Azula cuts him off.
"Come on. Mai and Ty Lee would like to see a spar, too, wouldn't you guys? Besides, I'm leaving for my trip tomorrow. I want to get a good idea of your progress before I'm gone."
Mai eyes Katara disinterestedly while Ty Lee smiles and nods.
Azula's gaze turns back to Aon. "You have my request." With any other eighteen year old girl, the scene would've been almost comical. A young girl bossing around a full-grown man; but Katara still remembers Azula's blue fire and that keeps any thoughts of amusement far away.
Aon inclines his head. "As you wish, Fire Lord."
Katara makes the first move, hurling another water bullet at Aon, and then for a good twenty minutes blows of water and fire are exchanged in quick succession. The Fire Lord smiles and congratulates Katara on her progress at the end of it all.
"You've almost gotten it down."
Katara pulls the water on the ground in front of her into a water whip, then turns once, raises her arms, and spreads her fingers as gently as she can.
The water turns into ice shards and Katara clenches her teeth in frustration. She can't make stupid snow and her mind won't stop straying to the Southern Water Tribe and is everyone alive and her hands fly up to her necklace more than usual because today is the ninth year of having lost her mother and Katara has never, ever missed her this much before. Before, Katara had Gran Gran and Sokka and the comfort of the snowy tundra to lessen the hollowness but here she has no one.
Tears start to brim in her eyes and she stops the falling ice's descent, gathering the water in a blur and hoping Aon doesn't see her eyes. She doesn't need some firebender's pity.
Katara tries the move a few more times, but when her fifth attempt produces a strange slush, she lets all of the water drop with a splash.
"Katara, what's wrong?" Aon says gently. He moves closer to where she's standing. Katara has had several days like this in the two months she has been training with Aon, where she's just too distracted and homesick to do anything properly, but something about her right now must especially alarm him because this is the first time he has actually reached out.
And for the first time since coming to the Fire Nation, Katara lets herself cry.
Aon is there immediately, awkwardly watching her at first, but then he kneels down beside her and pulls her into his chest, stroking her hair and murmuring things that Katara can't hear over her sobs.
Over the next few months, Aon becomes Katara's only friend at the palace (friends with a firebender, who would've guessed?), and a stand-in brother and father all in one. Sometimes, Katara even gets the feeling that he doesn't like his own nation too much, although she never says this out loud.
He is the one to quiet her sobs when she misses the Southern Water Tribe so much it hurts, the one to make stupid jokes with her since Sokka can't, and the only one who checks up on Katara by choice when she comes down with a fever.
Now, it has been six months since Katara was taken from the water tribe (Katara hasn't seen the Fire Lord since that one spar, although Azula's friends can still be seen meandering around the palace).
On this particular day, Aon is apologizing for the Northern and Southern Raids.
"Why?" Katara asks as soon as the sorry leaves his mouth.
"Someone of my own nation ordered a whole group of people to be killed, so for what it's worth, I apologize," Aon says stiffly. They had been sparring a few minutes earlier - Katara notes with pride that she's beating him more often than he beats her now - and they're both sitting on a bench side-by-side. He hesitates. "My father always wanted to be a waterbender. We used to read about the waterbenders and waterbending when he was off from work."
Katara raises an eyebrow. "Isn't that looked down upon in the Fire Nation?"
Looked down upon is mild wording. Treasonous, at least in the eyes of the Fire Lord, is what Katara meant.
Aon shrugs. "Yes, but that doesn't matter now. I'm just part of Azula getting what she wants."
Katara is allowed to walk in the halls on her own now. Granted, the only place she can walk to is the walled-in training chamber where she works with Aon, and there are Fire Nation guards at every corner, but even that distance is enough to catch bits and pieces of news from nobles who cross her path.
Everyday, she takes her time navigating the halls, keeping her head ducked and ears open. The nobles continue their conversations even when they see her, because what is some peasant going to do with any information she gleans, and there's never really any problems, anyway. The biggest issue in the last month was a shortage of sugar in one of the more distant cities for Fire Nation nobility. Katara always hopes to catch something about the Southern Water Tribe, but it seems like everyone has completely forgotten about it.
However, now the nobles' voices are more hushed, and Katara actually has to strain to make out what they say. They're all talking about some Blue Spirit, "an enemy of the Fire Nation," they spit. This Blue Spirit distresses the nobles especially, as the women recount in high-pitched voices of their friends in all cities, wives of generals and governors, who have been robbed of their jewels and gold by the Blue Spirit and had it end up in the form of food and coins in the city's poor. There's a whole black market now, they say, that the Blue Spirit's single-handedly started, for selling their pretty ornaments and using the money to help out people who need it.
Katara doesn't think he's bad at all.
"Aon, why am I here?"
Katara has asked him this several times before and gotten no straight answer. He's one of Azula's many advisors, and although Azula doesn't keep any of them close (she's known to be extremely paranoid), he definitely has some idea of what is wanted of her. Katara's even asked the servants in her itching to know what she is even doing here, what Azula wants with a waterbending master, why she hasn't been killed - and is, instead, being treated as Katara begrudgingly admits -pretty well for a prisoner.
Aon sighs and Katara copies him. She looks at him for a few moments, blue eyes imploring him to answer, but then she exhales softly at the silence and turns to start warming up. Lately, Aon has been showing her how to apply firebending to water, to make her attacks faster and more lethal. Even though Katara can sooth her sore muscles with her healing afterwards, she always finds that this sort of bending stretches them out in ways she isn't used to, and Aon has told her to do at least twenty minutes of exercises beforehand to loosen up.
When Katara looks up, ready to start sparring, she finds that instead of finishing his usual warm-ups, Aon is looking straight at her. Conflict mars his features. Katara watches him patiently.
"The Fire Lord has found the Avatar," he says finally, and Katara looks at him like he's crazy. "She's been near the South Pole for the past few months, overseeing the mission to retrieve him."
"The Avatar disappeared a hundred years ago," Katara says disbelievingly, but already she feels hope creeping into her voice, the one that she'd lost when the Fire Nation had won the war.
"Last I heard, they'd retrieved him from an iceburg several miles from where your tribe is right now."
"This is insane," Katara says doubtfully, but she finds herself making sense of the situation nonetheless. If the Avatar's been frozen in an iceburg for 100 years, that explains why another water Avatar wasn't born, doesn't it? The ice would preserve his body, and the Avatar probably has some sort of power to keep himself alive. Katara feels her hopes rising against her will, because the Avatar is back and he can finally make this right. "But where do I come into this?"
"The Fire Lord needs someone to teach him waterbending," Aon says. "The boy is an airbending master, but he doesn't have full control of any other elements."
"But you could teach him waterbending. You've been doing fine with me."
Aon shakes his head. "I've only been able to help you as much I have because you had already taught yourself so much. It's one thing to read about waterbending and another to actually do it," he says.
Katara is still reeling when she says, "The Fire Lord couldn't have possibly known about the Avatar when I was captured. What- what was she going to with me before she realized she needed a teacher for the Avatar?"
Aon's expression darkens considerably and he shakes his head.
Katara can somehow feel that she's meant to teach the Avatar.
XxX
(A/N) I apologize for the complete dearth of Zutara, but that'll kick in during the second arc. There's one or two chapters left in this arc. If you could take a few moments to review, even just to ask a question or criticize, it would mean the world to me, and I hope you guys like it so far :D
(PS) Any guesses as to who Aon's father is? I think I might've made it a bit too obvious but oh well.
