This is a rewrite of the original Chapter 4. Sorry for the...delay...hah.


She soaks up the warmth of sunlight like a starving man offered a piece of bread, but that doesn't mean she's any happier than she was in the dark, muggy confines of her prison.

Zuko is watching her from beneath the shade of a marble pillar, and her wrists are still bound, but their soreness no longer noticeable. He insisted that one of the palace's healers take care of her chafing skin despite her protests.

Katara finds it more calming to try and ignore him, so she focuses on the small ripples of water surfacing the pond at her feet. Foolish of anyone to let her near water again, but perhaps they know she stands no chance against a palace full of guards and soldiers and master firebenders in her current condition. She concentrates instead on the chirping of turtleducks, their fluffy heads bobbing in and out of the water.

The air is hot and humid, and the sun burns the top of her head. She envies the freedom of these creatures, that they can bathe and eat and play when and where they choose. She knows now what it feels to take life for granted, even when her previous life meant always fleeing from the Fire Nation.

She takes a breath, gambles with her own limited ounce of freedom for the briefest of moments, and dips a toe into the water. Immediately, Zuko is at her side and grasping her elbows, and Katara thinks it's because she's starting to lose her balance but she knows better.

"It's time to go inside," he murmurs, mouth near her ear and chest to her back. She tugs out of his grip like he's the one to burn her this time. He lets go without hesitation.

Her disappointment is hardly noticeable next to the pure frustration burning in her stomach. She is disgusted with him, with herself. She is infuriated, because she was too focused on her own temptations instead of scanning the courtyard, examining the guards' survey patterns, finding a crack in security that she can somehow slip through when – if - he lets her go outside again.

How could she - a waterbending master and warrior, a woman born to nurture and destroy - how could she be so weak?

Of course she could. Weakness got her into this mess in the first place.

Plotting was never her forte. That was Sokka's job. He'd be ashamed of her if he knew what she was trying to do. He would be ashamed that she's giving the traitorous prince yet another chance, even it's a farce, even if she's only scheming.

She would explain that it wasn't about her, that they had nothing to lose anymore. The world can still be saved, there's always hope.

She feels disgusting even thinking about it.

Katara will carve the word "hope" into her skin where it hurts the most, where she's been stained by dirtied hands that gently, shamefully caress her scars and blemishes and smoothness when she pretends to be asleep. She doesn't doubt anymore, after all this time spent thinking and thinking, that those hands touch her with regret and pained contemplation, but forgiveness is no longer something she can offer.

Zuko can't be forgiven, but she will play this little "game" of his and she will do it for the only one who truly matters in this Agni-forsaken place.

She leans into his touch, peeks at him through lidded eyes, and his eyes widen in clear amazement.

They both remain silent. She waits.

The fool doesn't leave this time.

"This was my mother's pond."

Katara pretends not to acknowledge the subtle bump of his shoulder into hers, nor does she turn to follow his voice. The origins of this place benefit her in no way, and she hardly cares what it means to the prince. She senses that he's looking at her, waiting for a response, but she offers none.

So he continues. "I used to sit beside her while she fed the turtleducks. They...never liked me."

She nearly snorts, but she catches herself before any air can whistle through her nares. She wants to tell him that there's no surprise there, that he's not exactly likeable. It's not true, though, and she forces her gaze further away, biting her tongue.

A few moments of silence thicken between them. Katara shifts, makes to step away from the stoney edge of the shallow water – she needs to explore a bit, determine if there are any other water sources nearby, observe the guard's watch practices and paths – and so she does until her departure is interrupted by a firm grip on her shoulder. She nearly curses, but she lets the stiffness of her wasted muscles reveal her distaste instead.

Zuko doesn't let go. He turns her to face him, runs a coarse, heated palm down the length of her arm before gently wrapping it around her thin wrist over cool, metal cuffs. The contrast makes her shudder.

"Katara, listen, I - I have to tell you something."

There is concern where it shouldn't be, glistening in his narrow eyes, darkened by the shade of the shaggy length of his bangs. This strikes her, because he looks like her "friend" Zuko, the one who helped her and her motley group of friends, the one who put his life on the line to protect her once upon a time. He sounds like her friend when he says her name, and it leaves a twinge in her spine. He looks and sounds just like Zuko, but that...that wasn't real.

Her fingers twitch, she weakly strains against the bindings around her wrists though they don't move, weighed down by humility and hollow anger and the pressure of his hand wrapped around her forearm.

Stupid boy. He'd never make it as a ruler. He's too vulnerable even now, a mockery of Fire Nation royalty. His father, his sister would ruin him in the end and yet he follows them in their wake like a beggar after the false promise of gold coins.

The futility of his fate is laughable at best.

"The Council decided what to do with Aang - listen." He grips her wrist more tightly when she moves to correct him – Zuko has no right to say that name anymore – effectively cutting her off as she winces. Katara bares her teeth in annoyance, but she's scared for Aang and she doesn't want Zuko to see it. She watches him visibly swallow. His gaze never leaves hers despite his obvious discomfort.

Vulnerable. Laughable.

She's terrified.

"Execution by fire."

"When?" Her voice betrays her, and her head needs to know before her heart can comprehend what he's just told her. Time, she needs time, she needs to save him.

"Katara -"

"When?!" She's yelling now, her voice hoarse, desperation curling her fingertips. The pond water crackles as it steadily freezes but the sound appears distant and all she really hears is a buzzing getting louder and louder. Zuko is watching her still – he knows what she's capable of – with an arm raised at his side as if to stop someone, a guard coming to his aid perhaps.

"Tomorrow."

Katara nearly goes cross-eyed, nearly loses her balance with the sudden force of her heart pounding against her rib cage and the loss of blood to her face and head. She feels herself go pale, her fingertips go cold, her lips go numb and her knees buckle.

Somehow he knows, he knows what his words have done and he grips her around the waist and holds her in place. Katara doesn't cling to him for support, she doesn't cry out or shed any tears. She lets him lower the both of them onto the grass. The buzzing in her ears drowns out any and all noise.

Katara thinks he's apologizing or he's calling her name or he's summoning a guard and she can't comprehend why. She doesn't want to hear it anyway. She peers past him at an ambiguous spot on the wall nearest to him and lets her mind go blank.

He's apologizing to her. He's begging her to speak.

He caresses her cheek softly, wipes away damp streams of tears, presses his lips onto the line of her jaw and tastes the pain he's caused her.

He doesn't pull away or make a noise even as melted ice and blood soak through the fabric of his robes.

Katara wakes with a start, her head spinning and her chest constricting and her eyes stinging.

She takes pause to look around her. These aren't her usual quarters, it's too bright here and the bed is small and smells of washed linen. And the food at her bedside is different, not that she has the appetite for it anyway.

She pats her face and finds no tears, scans the bedding and detects no bloody stains.

Then she begins to wonder, to realize. How long has it been? How long was she out? What happened – what -

Zuko's announcement comes back to drown her all at once.

She vomits over the side of the bed.

He doesn't seek her out for the rest of the day.

She is guided back to her room that night on trembling legs, and he isn't there waiting for her. Katara isn't disappointed, though a suffocating part of her just wants answers. She may have given up because of too many hours lost to her frailty and utter stupidity, but she wants to know. She wants to know that Zuko tried.

It doesn't make any sense, it's so important to her even though it doesn't make sense – she knows his true colors as she always has, the weak, useless prince - yet she can't seem to build up the courage to mention it even to the servants who bathe her, to ask where he is or whether he's coming back.

Perhaps, maybe, she's too broken now to bother.

Spirits...she wants to cry but no tears will come anymore.

Katara feels it's cliché to think the sky is mourning the loss of the Avatar. The cycle will renew itself, only to be smothered again in fire's wake. She recalls that "water" is next. Will the next Avatar be born to the Northern Tribes? Or will her people in the South be annihilated once and for all? Will the bender be born of the colonies instead?

...It doesn't matter. No matter where the child is born, he or she will die. The Fire Nation will make sure of it.

World domination allows them to destroy every Avatar to come.

The world will burn now and forever, its last vestige of purity, its last chance for hope gone.

And she couldn't do anything to stop it.

She hasn't eaten in days, a week, maybe two, and she hasn't slept in more. The weakness in her muscles is palpable, and it aches to move but what does it matter?

She is truly alone. The weight of this reality sinks into her bones and forms empty heaviness in parts of her that aren't already hollowed out.

Acknowledging his presence at her bedside is useless now. Answers are pointless, she doesn't need them anymore.

She is nothing without Aang.

She is nothing without her family.

The prince has her now, the silent corpse that she is, and she hears or hallucinates a quiet apology on his lips as he stands to leave, but what will words change now?

Katara may believe in his words because she has nothing left to lose anymore, but honesty has never done anyone any good. She has learned this in the hardest of ways.

All she can hope for anymore is to whither away into nothingness.