As you can probably tell from the title there will be hunting and since they are in the polar region it will be seals. I won't go into any graphic detail (I did some research on Inuit seal hunts to get some background info and I can't bring myself to write about it) but they will be killing a seal or two so Zuko can learn how to hunt.
Ch 5: Hunting
Zuko woke up first and started to make breakfast which woke Katara as he fumbled around her kitchen, banging things and cursing under his breath. She stopped him before it got any worse.
After they ate, they headed to Tarnook's house. Tarnook was taking Zuko tiger seal hunting. Zuko was pretty nervous since he hadn't ever really hunted before. As royalty, it was never really a needed task and even when he was on the run, he was able to purchase any food that he needed. Tarnook tried to reassure him that it was simple. So simple a firebender could do it. Meanwhile Katara and Yukiko were having a sewing day, which Katara despised with a passion, but it had to be done especially since they were her soon-to-be-husband's clothes. Might as well get used to it, she thought. He had been wearing hand-me-downs that needed some major alterations.
Tarnook and Yukiko kissed their goodbyes while Zuko and Katara stood their awkwardly. Zuko rolled his eyes, "You'd think we were going for weeks and not one day." Katara laughed and wholly agreed. After the men left, the women took up their spots on the floor and got to work. Yukiko had graciously taken Zuko's measurements so they knew what to take in and what to take out. As they sat in pleasant silence, Yukiko smiled mischievously. While the men were hunting for food, she was hunting for something else.
"He's very handsome. And very sweet too."
So involved in her mending she wasn't really paying attention, Katara murmured, "Who?"
"Zuko, silly?"
Katara pricked her finger with the needle and cursing her carelessness, began sucking on the small wound then quickly healed it. "Yeah, I suppose," Katara tried to dismiss the conversation.
As the two women sewed, Katara suddenly announced, "He kissed me last night."
"Again," Yuki teased.
"Ha ha," Katara pretend laughed. She still got teased for his first day here when he had kissed her in front of all those men. "And I kissed him back."
The shirt Yuki was working on dropped as did her jaw. Trying to compose the flood of question she wanted to ask, "Is that a good thing?"
She shrugged. "I don't know."
Yukiko was surprised at how quiet Katara was being. "He talks about you quite a bit. He likes you, you know?"
"Really?" Katara blushed.
"And I think despite this front you've put up I think you like him too. Since he arrived, you've been much happier. Everyone's noticed. And he is to be your husband. You've been putting marriage off for, what, two years now? Suddenly this firebender shows up and you offer yourself up. Surely you must have some feelings for him?"
"I just don't know. I mean we were friends for a time. But I just don't know if I'm ready to go there yet."
Yuki nodded. She knew that since her arrival, Katara had been living in a swirl of darkness that surprisingly had gotten brighter after this firebender's arrival.
"He's not coming back, you know," Yuki said after some time, eyeing the pant leg to make sure that the stitch was even.
"Zuko?" worry saturated in her voice.
"No. Aang," Yuki said softly. "He's dead and he's not coming back. It's been almost four years. Don't you think it's time to move on?"
"Hmph. You wouldn't understand." She bit down hard on the thread at the end of her stitch cutting it with her teeth.
"Katara, I don't claim I do. I may have lost my father in the war, but I haven't lost my love, praise La. But it's not like you were together. You were friends and there may have been feelings there. But from what you say, there wasn't anything beyond that. Do you really think that Aang would be happy you sitting here miserable, stuck in this whatever it is that you've made for yourself?"
Katara hung her head, "No. He wouldn't. He only wanted for me to be happy."
"And are you happy?"
She shook her head and laid the pants down in her lap. She tried to hold back the tears, but they fell despite her best effort.
"Oh, Katara," Yuki dropped the shirt she was working on and crawled to Katara wrapping her arms around her. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I'm sorry. It's just this is a good opportunity for you. You just need to let it happen and not be stuck in these what could-have-beens."
"I'm just so scared. I've gotten so used to this life."
"Some life you've made, missy," Yuki teased, "Stuck all by yourself when I know you all you really want is a family and home. Now you have that chance and you're still questioning whether or not to go for it."
Yuki went back to her hemming and so did Katara after wiping her eyes.
"Don't you think he'll be mad when he finds out though?" Katara asked. Yukiko knew exactly what she was talking about.
"You'll never know until you tell him. Maybe in his culture it's not a big deal."
As they finished the first batch of clothes and stood up to stretch and eat, Yuki raised an eyebrow going back to their initial conversation, "So, how was it?"
A delighted smile spread across her face, "It was nice."
"A smile like that and all you say is nice. Tsk, tsk. Such a horrible liar."
OoOoO
Meanwhile out on the ice, a group of around twelve men tramped through the snow finally finding a good spot to set up camp. They unhitched the polar bear dogs from the sleigh. Tarnook tossed them a chunk of whale meat for their good work. The men split into three groups of four and headed in varying directions toward the ice floe.
"Okay, so now we go find a breathing hole and wait," Tarnook explained to Zuko as he, the firebender, and the two other tribesmen, Kahn and Siku. After walking for several miles along the coast line in silence, they finally found the air holes. Kahn and Siku set up at one hole and Zuko and Tarnook set up several yards away at another hole. Tarnook showed Zuko how to create a blind for them to stand behind and wait. He made a small hole to look out of as well as to place the tip of the spear.
The two men sat there waiting in silence. Tarnook took out a pack of blubbered seal jerky and offered a piece to Zuko. He hesitantly took a piece having never eaten such a thing before. He sniffed it before tearing off a chunk with his teeth.
As the two men sat chewing lazily at the jerky, Tarnook's curiosity took over. "So. Excited to be getting married?"
Zuko looked at him lazily. "Excited wouldn't necessarily be the best way to describe it."
"Scared?"
"Honestly. Yes."
"That you're getting married or that you're getting married to a waterbender? And not just any waterbender, but Katara."
Zuko snickered, giving a half smile. He normally wasn't comfortable talking to people but this water tribesman reminded him of Sokka. Or maybe it was just their people in general that were so easy to confess to.
"I like Katara. She never held back, words or fights. I've always admired that."
"Hmm. Good quality to have in a wife." Tarnook said absently checking the hole for any life. Nothing.
For some reason that word, "wife", suddenly struck him as odd. He didn't know if he could ever view her simply as "wife". The typical definition of someone to clean his socks, make his food, bear his children. She was more than that. Partner? Absolutely. Friend? Unquestionably. Lover?…well, that would have to wait.
He knew of marriages in his own nation and usually they were arranged and loveless. That was not what he wanted. Even if he had been allowed to stay in the Fire Nation as Fire Lord he would have chosen someone he cared for. Mai. The thought of that dark haired pale beauty that had been his girlfriend for a time made him sad. Thoughts of her would float in his head as he watched her attack those guards at the Boiling Rock allowing their escape. Seeing the pain he had caused her broke his heart.
"But?" Tarnook prodded as he dug something out of the bottom of his boot.
"It just seems like every girl I've cared for something horrible has happened to them and I don't want that for her too," he finally admitted.
Tarnook looked at Zuko as he settled back into his spot on the ice. "Was there a girl back home?"
He nodded. "For a time. But I left her to join the Avatar." He snorted. "Left a letter. I was too chicken shit to tell her in person."
"It's easier to break a heart that way sometimes. Even when you know it's the worst way to do it."
"Yeah."
"Then there was this other girl. When I was on the run in the Earth Kingdom."
Tarnook offered another piece of jerky to which Zuko gladly took. "What happened there?"
"If it wasn't for me, she'd still be alive," was all he said.
Zuko sighed. He had cared for the young woman. She had taken him in as a refugee and along with her mother, hid him for several months in their home. He paid them with the gold that he had brought with them despite their protests but he felt he owed them. Especially for the time when they had met previously. Even though he always feared being found, he was comfortable in that home with those two women. He slept in his own room but after a few short weeks, the woman would enter his room at night and together they would try to make the world disappear even if it was only for a few short hours. But by the time the sun rose, the world was back to where it was.
The memory was still in his head of her screams as the soldiers came into her home one day and took her into the night. He hid, like the coward he was (she had insisted though). He tried not to envision what they had done to her, but he had a pretty good idea. The next morning they had left her scorched body in the middle of the village as a message to all of what happens to those who defy the Phoenix King. He left that night, this time paying the woman for the ostrich horse as well as what he felt could possibly make up for the death of her daughter.
"That happens too." Tarnook told of a woman he had too met while he was in the Earth Kingdom with the other water tribe warriors. He never told his wife about her, but in their culture it was acceptable for a man to have another woman. Just not the other way around. A woman had to be pure for her husband otherwise she was considered undesirable.
Zuko furrowed his brows together. He knew that girls married young (16 from what he recalled) and Katara was around 19 now. The thought hit him like a ton of bricks. "Is that why Katara isn't married?"
Tarnook looked away. "I can't speak for her. But I know that she was sad for a long time and made some choices she probably shouldn't have made. There was a young man who hung around her, insisting she marry him. There were rumors that they were intimate but both denied it. By that time though, the damage was done."
Zuko shook his head in disbelief. He never imagined Katara as being the kind of person who would make a rash choice like that knowing the consequences. But he didn't blame her. Not at all.
"Does this bother you? Knowing this, you can certainly call off the betrothal."
Before he could answer though, they both heard a watery spray sound. They jumped back and through the hole they saw the nose of the seal. Grabbing his spear, Tarnook quietly positioned it in the hole and as the nose came back up for another breath, the spear caught the seal. Tarnook motioned for Zuko to grab the club and go around to finish. And he did.
Zuko was half disgusted and half proud as the two walked their haul back to the sleigh. The rest of the men had also returned with their hauls as well. They just waited for Kahn and Siku who arrived shortly after. They all clamped each other on their backs, even congratulating Zuko on his first kill.
OoOoO
On the way back to the village, Tarnook suggested they do something. Specifically to test Katara. And more specifically for fun.
Just outside the entrance to his home, Tarnook took the seal liver and hid it beneath Zuko's parka, smearing some of the blood on the outside. He then draped Zuko's arm around his shoulder and pretended to haul him inside. Zuko pretended to be seriously injured, clutching his chest when in fact he was holding the liver in place. Tarnook shouted for help from the women. Katara and Yukiko's faces went white as they saw the blood and Zuko's limp body. Katara immediately rushed to help them. She demanded to know what happened. She shouted that it was stupid to take him out when he clearly wasn't ready for something like that. Crying as she grabbed his face to turn his head. He couldn't stand it any more and started laughing pulling the liver out from his coat. She shrunk back thinking it was his own liver that he pulled out.
Tarnook started laughing at that. Yukiko hit her husband as Katara started hitting Zuko. "You stupid son of ...how could you do... what would make you do something like this?" she couldn't even get out a full thought.
He sat up and cupping her face in his hands, "Katara. I'm fine. It was Tarnook's idea."
The tears still in her eyes, she looked him over to make sure it wasn't another "joke", then started kissing his cheeks. "Don't you ever do that to me again!"
