Chapter Notes: Just one pic for this chapter, once again done by my most excellent sister. Link's on my profile! And the first pathetic hints of Sokka/Suki in this part. \o/

Chapter Three: The Warriors of Kyoshi (Part 2)

The clothes went on first; Suki figured the risk of getting paint on them was higher with Sokka trying to get them on after than it was with her applying the paint while they were already on. She'd been putting her own war-paint on for years; she hadn't had to worry about accidental drips since she was twelve.

Sokka looked so disgruntled, when they had finally gotten him into the only battle dress that would fit him, that Suki almost laughed. "You're the only boy who's ever had the honor of wearing Kyoshi Warrior dress, you know," she said, pushing on his shoulders until he sat. "You should consider it a privilege."

He only scowled in reply, but Suki thought perhaps he looked less peeved after that.

They had the paints in the training hall, along with the oil undercoat that went underneath and the powder that went over top. Suki knelt, to get the right angle, and then tipped Sokka's chin up with th side of her finger. He swallowed, right then, and her knuckles brushed the skin of his throat, the feeling oddly distracting; she was abruptly glad that she had her own face-paint on, because she could feel a blush rising.

The Avatar came in when she was almost done applying the second dart of red down the side of Sokka's nose. "Looks good," she said, smiling but not mocking. Sokka rolled his eyes without moving his head, but Suki was pretty sure he was secretly pleased.

.*.

Suki shook her head. "You have the form almost right, but you need to be faster. And plant your foot more evenly, too - putting all your weight to the outside like that is part of what's slowing you down."

Sokka got up and went back into stance, as uncomplaining now as he had been upset the day before; and Suki felt suddenly proud of him. Which was completely irrational, she hadn't even been teaching him for a full day yet, but she couldn't help it.

She knocked him down again, of course; she'd been fighting with iron fans since she was eight. But this time his foot landed well, and the corner of one fan tore Suki's sleeve before he tumbled to the floor.

"Much better," she said, showing him the tear, and then offered him a hand up. "Again."

"You're worse than my mother," he said, almost admiringly, and took it.

The Avatar came in again to tell them there was supper ready; Suki was startled to realize that it had gotten dark, and that at some point, someone had come in and lit the hall lamps without either of them noticing.

"You guys didn't even break for lunch," the Avatar said. "Having too much fun getting beat up, huh?" she added, and laughed when Sokka elbowed her.

"He's doing much better now," Suki said, magnanimous. "A year and change, and he'll be about where I was when I was thirteen."

"... I think that was meant to be a compliment," Sokka said, "so I'm going to say thank you."

"Good idea," the Avatar said, smiling, and then paused, like she'd just thought of something but wasn't sure how to go about saying it.

"What?" Suki prodded, after a moment of silence had gone by.

"Well, you could - you could keep teaching him," the Avatar said - almost timidly, except that was ridiculous, she was the Avatar. "If you came with us."

Suki stared at her, so startled that she stopped walking without entirely intending it. It had been astonishing enough to have the Avatar reappear, after a hundred-year absence, on the shore of her island; to be asked to actually accompany her was more than Suki had ever even daydreamed about. "I - well, I," she stumbled, and then took a breath and made herself get a grip. "Of course, I'm honored to be asked, Avatar - I don't-"

The Avatar laughed. "We'll be here for a couple more days, at least," she said, and reached up to squeeze Suki's shoulder. "There's no hurry; just think about it. And call me Katara, will you?"

.*.

It took some work to get any proper amount of water back to the house, so Suki had some time to think without much interruption, hauling buckets back and forth from the brook until she had enough to wash her face, and a little extra for the next morning. Mother was cooking, and humming to herself; she had shot Suki a smile the first time she came in the door, but had said nothing.

Of course, why would she, Suki reminded herself, when she had no idea anything interesting had happened today.

She had all her arguments for and against sorted out by the time the basin in the house was full, and was nearly done with her face by the time Mother stopped humming and said, "Had a good day?"

Suki washed the last smears of paint from her chin, and sat back. "The Avatar asked me to go with her."

"Oh," Mother said, startled, and nearly dropped the bowl of rice she was carrying to their low dining table, catching it against her waist at the last second. "Goodness. What did you say?"

"I said I'd be honored, but - well, she gave me some time to think about it," Suki said.

Mother set down the rice, the better to give her an annoyingly knowing look. "You want to go, don't you?"

"Well, of course I'm tempted," Suki said, because she really was. "It would be - extraordinary, to go with her; to see all the things she's going to see, to fight alongside her. But I can't."

"You can't," Mother repeated, in a leading sort of way.

"I have duties, I have responsibilities," Suki said; it came out a little bit more exasperated than she had intended, but she felt silly explaining - surely Mother knew this already. "I'm head of the order, I can't just leave-"

"Mikari's older now than you were when you took charge," Mother pointed out gently. "Granted, the circumstances are a little less dire; but you won't be leaving the Warriors in incompetent hands."

"Well, no - no, of course, Mikari's more than capable," Suki said. She did feel something of a pang when she thought about handing over the First's headdress to Mikari; but she knew herself well enough to be able to tell that that was about losing a place that had been hers for years, not being afraid that Mikari couldn't handle the position.

"And the Avatar - the Avatar's going to stop the war; she's going to save the world. How better can you serve the Warriors, and the rest of us, than by helping her?" Mother shook her head a little. "There is no higher duty than that."

Suki had to admit that this was true; and the dissolution of her reasoning under the assault of Mother's careful logic set off a spike of something a bit like panic in her. "But what about you?" she blurted.

"Oh, Suki," Mother said, fond, and curved her hand over Suki's hair. "I'm glad you worry for me; and if you go, of course I'll miss you. But I'll manage - I did when you were a little girl, and I will again." She gave Suki a look, half stern and half understanding. "If you decide to stay, don't make me the reason."

Suki gazed back at her, and was overwhelmed suddenly with fondness, enough that she had to pinch her eyes shut for a second to keep from bursting into tears or sobbing like a baby or something else ridiculous. "All right," she said, when her throat loosened.

Mother raised her eyebrows inquiringly. "Is that 'all right' as in 'all right, I've perceived your wisdom and I'm going to think about it', or 'all right' as in 'all right, I've perceived your wisdom and I'm going'?"

"All right, I'm going," Suki said, "no wisdom involved," and laughed when Mother narrowed her eyes.


Zuko hated leaving his ship - not so much because he felt proprietary over it as because it was always so uncomfortable. They had a selection of green-dyed things for when they had to travel in the Earth Kingdoms; it made his face hot with shame to put them on, imagining what his father would say to see him dressing up as an Earth Kingdom peasant - and what Azula would say didn't even bear thinking about.

"Oh, tea," Uncle Iroh said, gazing unabashedly at the tea shop they were passing. "I'll be back later, my love," he told it; "fish first, or the cooks will cry."

Zuko rolled his eyes. "Hurry up, Uncle."

"It never hurt anyone to cultivate a healthy appreciation for tea, you know," Uncle Iroh told him in a patient tone, and then paused in front of a fish vendor's cart. "Ah, look - Zhen and Lao would accept some of these, don't you think?"

"They're fresh from this afternoon's catch," the vendor said coaxingly. "And good timing, too; there won't be any fishing tomorrow."

"No?" Uncle Iroh said absently, examining one of the larger fish. "Why not?"

"Why, everybody'll be off to see the Avatar," the vendor said cheerily.

Zuko had been letting his mind wander, deeply uninterested by the process of buying fish for the cook; but at this, he snapped back to attention. "The Avatar? The Avatar's on this island?" He fixed the fish vendor with an intense glare. "Where?" he demanded.

The vendor didn't have time to do more than blink at him, startled, before Uncle Iroh suddenly stepped between them - planting one heel squarely on Zuko's toes as he did. "You must forgive my nephew," he said to the vendor cheerily. "He has always admired the Avatar; to have a chance to see the Avatar in person thrills him beyond the telling of it - and beyond the bounds of politeness, unfortunately."

The vendor laughed; Zuko very carefully did not pound her head in. "Ah, of course, of course," she said. "Well, the word is that the Avatar has come to the village of Manamota - on the other side of the island, near the Great Bay? We're told she'll be there for at least a few more days; plenty of time to make the trip." Her expression was suddenly touched with a tinge of awe that made Zuko want to sneer. "Imagine it - to see the Avatar with our own eyes, after a hundred years."

"A wonder indeed," Uncle Iroh said, oddly quiet, and then dipped his head. "The thirty largest of these, then, and the best of luck on your journey," and he motioned to the servants who had come with them from the ship to start gathering up the fish.


A few people had come into Manamota the night before, staying in the village hall and watching Katara with huge eyes; but Katara hadn't thought much of it, assuming they were friends or relatives of some of the villagers who happened to be passing through. The next morning, though, there were dozens more, gathered in the cleared space that held the post Katara and Sokka had been tied to, and when Katara stepped out of the village hall after eating breakfast, they all went quiet and watched her expectantly.

"What is going on?" Katara muttered - mostly to herself, since Sokka was still busy stuffing his face in the hall, but she knew Aang could hear her.

Aang shrugged, and his mouth was halfway open before Suki said, "They're here to see the Avatar," and walked right through him.

It took a moment for Suki's words to register, partly because Aang was making a really hilarious face, and partly because Suki wasn't alone; there was a woman walking next to her, kind-faced and looking faintly amused, and one of her sleeves was empty.

"This is my mother," Suki said, and Katara remembered what she had said the day they'd arrived: my father was killed, and my mother almost was. If she had thought to doubt it, now she knew better. She had only ever seen one other person lose a limb; Aunt Maziya had succumbed to infection so completely that the Fire Nation raiders might as well have stabbed her, but it had taken several highly unpleasant days for her to die.

"Izumi," the woman said, and bowed. "It is an honor, Avatar."

"Oh - no, really, just call me Katara," Katara said awkwardly. "And - wait, really? All those people-" She turned to look down the hill at the crowd again, and felt her face start to flush.

Suki laughed unhelpfully. "Sometimes you're pretty bad at remembering how important you are," she said. "Imagine - if the Avatar had shown up in your village after a hundred years, how would you feel?"

"Well, actually, the Avatar did show up in our village after a hundred years, if you think about it," Sokka said. "But point taken."

Katara knew what Suki meant. She'd have been stuck somewhere between awestruck and delighted, and she'd probably have followed the Avatar around all day just imagining the possibilities - the Fire Lord, dead; the war, ended; her father and uncles and aunts and friends, all home at last. But despite everything that had happened - her dreams, and Aang showing up, and that funny half-vision that had shown her Manamota through Kyoshi's eyes - some part of Katara still didn't feel like the Avatar. And she really wasn't yet, in a certain sense; she hadn't even mastered Waterbending, let alone the other elements. It felt almost like lying, to present herself to this crowd like she could already save them.

"They only want to see you," Izumi said quietly; when Katara turned to look at her, her expression was assessing, but not unsympathetic. "To know that you exist, that their hopes are no longer unfounded."

But they are unfounded, Katara wanted to say, if those people are expecting a fifteen-year-old who can't even Waterbend properly to end the Hundred-Year War. Except it wasn't really true: they weren't expecting her to do it, they were expecting the person she was trying to become to do it; and the person she was trying to become would be able to.

She took a deep breath; and then Sokka reached out and gripped her shoulder. "Come on," he said. "Time to meet your adoring fans."

.*.

Katara had touched at least fifty heads, and it was getting hard to keep the continuous murmur of "An honor, Avatar" from blurring into a meaningless buzz. She was pretty sure there were at least twice as many people now as there had been when she'd started going through the crowd, and more were trickling in every few minutes.

"By the time this is over, you're going to be best friends with half the island," Sokka muttered under his breath, and then went still so suddenly that Katara turned toward him with a frown.

"What-" she got out, and then she saw it, too: a great dark smear of smoke rising in the east, the kind that had always meant it was time to put on battle-paint and get on the wall, at home. The kind that came from Fire Nation warships.

"The ship," Sokka said, suddenly breathless, "that last ship, the one we froze - it must have followed us here."

"The one I froze," Katara corrected automatically, and then the first rush of fear passed, and her brain started working again. "We have to get these people out of here, or they're all going to get killed."

The nearest clump of people had all turned and seen the smoke, and there was a growing murmur rising, sharp with an undertone of panic. "Suki," Sokka said; "where's Suki - the Warriors, they can help us move everyone out-", and then the first red-armored figure clanked out from beneath the trees.


Suki had gone back to the training hall to practice - that was why she had suited up in the first place. Much as she would have loved to watch Katara stumble through her first real attempt to act like the Avatar, she only had a few more days left with her girls, and she hadn't even told Mikari she was leaving yet.

Besides, she had put all her paint on; it would be a shame to let that go to waste.

She let herself get lost temporarily in the pure pleasure of the exercise. Fighting had always been one of her favorite things to do, mostly because it was just so viscerally enjoyable to know she had the training and the strength to do just about anything she asked of herself.

But eventually it was time to take Mikari aside, and start untying the thongs that held the First Warrior's headdress in place.

"What are you doing?" Mikari said, slow and calm, like she thought Suki might have gone mad.

"The Avatar asked me to go with her, and I - well, I haven't told her yet, but I'm going to." Suki held out the headdress, ignoring the little twinge she felt at giving it up. "I can't be First when I'm not even here."

"Oh, yes you can," Mikari said, backing away and shaking her head. "Keep it, Suki. I'll run the patrols and order everybody around when you're gone, but that's it. You're the First now, and you will be when you get back; you might as well be for all the time in between, too."

"Mikari," Suki said, ready to argue; but that was as far as she could get before the screaming started.

.*.

At first glance, it was almost impossible to tell what was happening; it could have been pirates, or bandits from the inner hills, or even signs of a tsunami about to come in to the bay. But after a moment Suki caught a glimpse of sunlight on red metal, especially noticeable when the crowd was mostly robed in blue.

She rushed the closest Fire Nation soldier with both fans out and a snarl on her face that probably looked stupid, taking advantage of a temporary gap between clumps of fleeing people to catch him by surprise. Fire Nation armor was good, but not perfect; she jabbed a fan into the gap by his armpit, which probably cracked a couple of ribs, and then ducked down and swiped the other into the back of his knee, knocking him to the ground before he'd even recovered enough to take a swing at her. When he was down, she smashed a fan into his other side, and definitely broke something; he probably wouldn't die, but he wasn't going to feel like getting up for a while, either.

The next soldier was a woman, and Suki didn't get the chance to ambush her, so it took a little bit longer to take her down, and there were actual blows exchanged. Eventually, though, Suki managed to strike her wrist hard enough to make her drop her sword with a curse, and it was all over after that; Suki was just turning to pick out a good number three when she realized the village was on fire.

Sokka wasn't far away from the closest of the two burning houses, and Suki saw with a brief glow of pride that he had a pair of fans in his hands and had just given a resounding thwack to the knee of a young Fire Nation soldier with a wide scar over one eye. Katara was a few steps away, trying to hold off a Firebender with bending water that was rapidly steaming away in the relentless heat. Sokka shouted something Suki couldn't hear, and then Ayuko came around the house and rushed the bender from behind, leaving a long slash from her fan tips along part of his back.

It was fast, so fast Suki couldn't do a thing about it: the Firebender whirled around and sent a whip of flame curling around Ayuko, who raised her fans to shield her eyes and couldn't do anything but scream when the fire flared along her shoulder and neck.

Suki cursed and started running toward her, and almost as quickly skidded to a halt: Sokka was backing away, darting around the Firebender to yank a sobbing Ayuko along with him, and Katara's eyes were glowing blue-white, ridiculously bright even under the sunshine and next to the blazing fire.

"What is she-" Suki got out, as Sokka came sprinting toward her, and then he grabbed her elbow and started pulling her along, too.

"Come on, come on," he was saying, "she's doing her thing, all we have to do is get out of the way," and then he tugged both of them down behind an untouched house on the other side of the village center.

Ayuko had gotten past the initial shock of pain, and her sobs had turned into the slow breaths that would help her keep calm until her wounds could be taken care of. That meant it wasn't serious enough for her to need help right away; so Suki didn't feel guilty about peering back around the corner instead.

Katara wasn't even touching the ground anymore, and there was a localized curl of wind not quite tight enough to be called a globe that was lifting her long braid up behind her; her eyes were still blanked out with blue-white light. The fire had spread to another two houses, and Katara spread out her arms as though to catch the roaring flames up in her hands. Then she suddenly clenched her hands into fists, and the blaze - the entire five-house inferno - was extinguished all at once, with an almost anticlimactic hiss.

The Firebender in front of her was smart enough to be backing away, but not smart enough to run; he drew back an arm, instead, and punched a flame at Katara.

Or he tried, at least - she pulled the same trick on the fire blooming around his fist that she had on the houses, and it fizzled out before he even finished the move. Then she started a move of her own, something graceful and long-lined that had a general feel of pull to it.

For a moment after, nothing happened, and the Firebender stepped forward with renewed confidence on his face. But then the trees began to rustle - the trees between Katara and the bay, Suki realized suddenly, and a moment later a huge stream of water came gushing through the leaves.

It wasn't just a random flood; it was contained, caught into a long whiplike shape by the continued movements of Katara's hands, and it curled around the Firebender and knocked his arms out of form.

"She can't stop us all!" shouted the young soldier with the eye-scar, with a look of such avaricious singlemindedness on his face that Suki grimaced. "Get her!"

But he had barely taken a step in Katara's direction when there was a whole series of those rustling splashes, and more water burst through the trees, loops and loops of it. It all merged with the whip Katara was already bending, and with a whirl of her arms, the water - at least a pond's worth, now - curled up into the air behind her. She was still floating, her eyes still glowing, and that close little wind was still whipping her hair and clothes around her; with the huge blade of water curving over her head and her arms poised, ready to drive it forward, she looked distinctly intimidating.

Suki was used to thinking of Katara as good-natured, friendly, maybe a little awkward under all her responsibility; but looking at her now, Suki felt herself shiver. She had always had faith that the Avatar would be able to end the war, but it was somehow different to know that this girl right in front of her was the one who could do it.

There was a still moment, and then Katara brought her arms down, curling them around each other in a motion reminiscent of a cyclone.

"Oh boy," Suki said, and couldn't resist the urge to clap her hands together gleefully.

.*.

The Fire Nation soldiers fled before the spinning wall of water that Katara sent whirling back toward the bay - and Suki couldn't blame them for it, it was really the only sensible thing to do.

"Go," Ayuko said.

Suki turned to look at her. "Are you sure?" she said.

"It's just my neck, it's not that bad," Ayuko said - a blatant lie, Suki could see how nasty the blistering was; but Ayuko saw her looking, and glared. "It's not good, but it's not like I can't walk myself to the healer's. You should go after her."

Suki wavered, and then gave in. "All right. If - if we don't come back - no, don't give me that look, I don't mean it like that. If we end up leaving now, tell my mother-" She paused, mind suddenly full of half-formed messages. "Tell her I'm sorry to go without saying goodbye," Suki decided at last. "She knows everything else."

.*.

The bay wasn't far, and Suki and Sokka got to the shore not long after the soldiers - quickly enough that quite a few of them were still boarding their ship, arms raised defensively against the water Katara sent whipping around them.

The Avatar was certainly thorough; she pulled the bay up after the ship like she was shaking out a rug, and the ship barely made it out into the open ocean in time to avoid the worst of the wave. Once the ship was out of sight, though, Katara went down like a sack of potatoes, and Suki was only just quick enough to keep her head from hitting the rock it had been headed for.

"Well," Suki said, staring down at Katara's placid face where it rested against her forearm. "Do that a lot, does she?"

"She is starting to make sort of a habit out of it," Sokka admitted. "Better not push our luck, though; we should get out of here before that ship comes back."

Suki glanced involuntarily at the path that led back home. "But - if they attack the village again-"

She turned to look at Sokka only to see that he was regarding her with a sort of narrow-eyed, assessing expression. "Look, there's a couple things I should probably tell you," he said. "This isn't the first time we've seen this ship - you saw the guy with the scar over his eye, right? It's pretty distinctive, I remember him from last time. He attacked us when we first started sailing north, and Katara froze his ship in the ice so that we could get away. But he's obviously still following us." He paused and gave the far side of the bay a long stare. "Somehow I'm pretty sure he'll be watching for us, and he's not going to bother with Manamota if he knows we've left."

"Good," Suki said decisively; that was a pretty big weight off her mind. "You said a couple of things - what's the other one?"

Sokka grimaced. "Well, there's - there's somebody that we, uh, aren't supposed to leave without."

"Then let's go get - whoever it is," Suki said, quite reasonably. Katara was starting to stir a little, which was good, because she was also starting to get a bit heavy.

"I - can't tell where he is," Sokka said, which made no sense at all, but then Katara made a face and pressed the heel of one hand against her temple, and Suki decided to let it go for the moment.

"It happened again, didn't it," she murmured; Suki nodded, even though it hadn't sounded at all like a question. Katara opened her eyes, peering up at Suki and then flicking over to Sokka, and then, oddly, over to the blank air on Suki's other side. "Are we on the water already, or is that just me?"

"... I think it's just you," Sokka said. "If you're going to throw up, aim away from me, okay?"

"No, no, I'm okay," Katara insisted, and struggled up to a sitting position. "Just a little dizzy."

"Can you bend?" Suki asked, because if she couldn't, that was going to seriously lower their odds of escaping from a steamship - but Katara stretched out a hand and pulled a small ripple of water into a brief globe before letting it splash back into the bay.

"I'm not going to do it all night or anything," she said, "but I'll manage for a while."

Together, they pulled the canoe out from the underbrush where it had been stowed. Suki paused for a moment before she got in. She could swim quite well, but she'd never really been on a boat before; her father had been a farmer, not a fisherman, and even the fishing boats hardly ever left the bay.

"Come on," Sokka said, already settled in the bow, and waved her in.

Suki stepped off the island and into the boat, keeping a hand out to help the Avatar climb in behind her, and wondered how her life had gotten so absurd so quickly.


Zuko paced back and forth in the bridge, so angry his hands were starting to smoke. So close - so close. The complexity of the trick the world had played on him almost defied belief: that one idiot Waterbender, the key to his desperate effort to please his father in the Avatar's persistent absence, had turned out to be the Avatar, and this truth had been revealed to him just in time for his troops to flee back to the ship before the Avatar could kill them all. He was still empty-handed, still chasing the same bender; but now he truly understood just how important it was to catch her. He wished for the dozenth time that they had all five boilers running - it was the worst possible time to be stuck limping along on just two.

Uncle Iroh was there, too, with his habitual tea, doing that thing where he conspicuously said nothing and just watched Zuko pace over the top of his cup, eyes knowing. Zuko hated it when he did that.

"A complete waste of time," Zuko spat, after he could no longer take the eyes.

"I wouldn't say that," Uncle Iroh said calmly, contrary as always. "We now know a great deal more than we did."

"Oh, yes, a great deal more about the Avatar who escaped us," Zuko ground out, throwing his hands in the air with small puffs of flame.

"Do not underestimate the power of knowledge, Prince Zuko," Uncle Iroh said maddeningly. "The previous Avatar must have died; we no longer search for an old man with Airbender tattoos, we merely follow the Waterbender we were already tracking. A much simpler task! I would think you would be pleased."

"Pleased? Pleased, that she evaded us again," Zuko shouted. "Yes, of course, I'm overjoyed."

Uncle Iroh gave him a skeptical look. "I would not have guessed that," he said.

Zuko had to stop pacing for a minute, so that he could concentrate fully on resisting the urge to claw his own eyes out. He heard the rustling sound of clothes shifting, and the soft footfalls, so it didn't catch him by surprise when Uncle Iroh's hand landed on his shoulder.

"Always so hard on yourself," Uncle Iroh said, and it sounded oddly sad to Zuko. "Before, we did not know; we were not prepared, and she escaped. Now, we know, and we will be prepared. The power of knowledge, nephew."

Zuko sighed, and pressed his hands against the wall; his palms were cooling now, enough that he could feel the chill of the metal. "Yes, Uncle. Next time, she won't get away," he said, and hoped it was true.