A/N: Sorry for the delay on this one, you guys. I'm TRYING to keep to a chapter a week, but I picked I a few extra shifts at work this week and they've been eating into my writing/editing time. I can't wait to see what you make of this chapter, and I'm loving all of you who take the time to read and review. You're so sweet.
Much love! xx-Kitten
Brightest Nights or Darkest Days
By Kittenshift17
CHAPTER EIGHT
They went separate ways after collecting the supply sacks and Katara couldn't be more relieved. Zuko was a smug jerk and she was thinking seriously about freezing him to a wall and leaving him to think about what he'd done. She hauled her sack back their camp, muttering to herself the whole way, his laughter still ringing in her ears.
It hardly seemed fair that he would scold her for laughing when he had a problem to deal with, but when she had a less obvious but no less uncomfortable issue of the same variety to suffer through, he laughed as though it were the best joke he'd ever been told. Muttering and hauling her sack of supplies, she was more determined than ever to reach their camp before him so she'd be able to unpack her sack and hide the Golden Thread tea. The last thing she wanted with him laughing at her for her body's attraction to his, was for him to think she'd nabbed contraceptives for any reason whatsoever.
It didn't even warrant thinking about that her body was only too interested in the idea of using the tea for its intended purpose from that very morning. Her cheeks burned at the very thought and she realised that she needed to find Sokka and Aang more than ever. The sooner she did, the sooner she could be free of Zuko and his infernal chi and his wretched warmth and his cursed lips. She'd thought Jet had been intoxicating when she'd met him but he had nothing on Zuko and that, she decided, was a problem.
When she reached their hideout, Katara slipped inside and climbed the stairs quickly. She dumped the bag of supplies on the bed and made a dash for the bathroom before Zuko could return. He still hadn't by the time she was finished and Katara was grateful.
Upending the bag she'd used to steal everything, Katara's cheeks flamed even hotter when she realised she'd grabbed the wrong sack. This was the one Zuko had filled, mostly with meat, and therefor did not have the tea inside it to be hidden with the rest of her things. Cursing out loud, Katara closed her eyes in annoyance. She almost jumped out of her skin when Zuko slipped into the room quietly and snuck up on her before she'd opened them again.
Lashing out violently in her surprise, he did not look impressed to have cold, stale tea from last night's drink whipping him on the forehead.
"Hey!" he protested before throwing a fireball at her that stopped just short of her nose.
"Don't sneak up on me!" Katara hissed at him, her bad mood getting the best of her.
"What's your problem?" Zuko demanded, eyeing her like she might've lost her mind in the last ten minutes.
"Nothing!" she snapped.
He rolled his eyes and looked unconvinced.
"Give me that!" she pointed to the sack he carried. "You grabbed my bag."
"I can see that," he replied. Katara would swear he looked smug about it too. "Did anyone follow you back here?"
"Did you see anyone lurking about downstairs when you came back?" she asked. Zuko shook his head. "Then obviously not."
He didn't say anything, but the look on his face let her know he didn't appreciate her sarcasm or her bad mood and Katara thought about water-whipping him again just for spite.
"We're leaving today," he warned her. "So pack your things and prepare to leave."
Katara made a face at him. She'd been entertaining notions of returning to bed once their supplies were sorted out. They'd been up half the night.
Zuko pack his own stuff in silence, separating the food supplies and everything they'd gathered in two. When he up-ended the sack of thigs she'd collected, his cheeks turned pink. Menstrual straps and other things tumbled out and he looked uncomfortable.
"Do I want to know what you need all this stuff for?" he asked when she didn't speak before beginning to stuff all of it into her bag.
"Do you want to know that more than my bending is affected by the cycle of the moon," she retorted acidly. Zuko made a face of disgust at the idea.
"Am I going to have to put up with your bad mood when that happens?" he demanded.
"I put up with your bad attitude every second of every day, Zuko! Deal with it!"
He scowled at her. "What? Are you having that issue now or something?"
Katara lobbed the nearest object she could reach right at his head. He wasn't expecting the blow and he growled in the back of his throat in fury when the box of Golden Thread tea hit him in the nose.
"I'll take that as a yes," he snapped. When Katara lunged for the box of tea, realising with mortification what she'd thrown, he snatched it out of her reach.
"What is this? Ah." His smirk was purely wicked. "This is the tea your new soldier-friend was hunting for."
"Give it back!"
Zuko held it up high so she wouldn't be able to reach it without standing up, his arms longer than hers. When she glared at him but didn't keep reaching for it, he held the package up to the light so that he could read it carefully, looking curious. Katara's cheeks burned with shame when he did so for an inordinate amount of time while she shoved the other two boxes of it into her bag.
"Don't leave them in those," he said even as he read the box.
"What?" she asked. She lifted her gaze to stare at him in confusion.
"The boxes are too obviously Fire Nation," he said. "Empty all of it into this."
Katara blinked in surprise when he handed her a small earthen tea box with several empty canisters inside. There were nine canisters in total, one labelled as White Jasmine tea and another as Ginseng. The rest were empty.
"Why do you have a mostly empty tea box?" Katara asked.
"Why do you have contraceptive tea?" Zuko asked in return rather than answering.
Her cheeks went crimson once more when he slanted a glance at her. She was surprised to see he looked curious under a layer of hostility, but not smug. Maybe he wasn't automatically assuming she's stolen it intent on seducing him. Katara supposed that, with a scar like his, he wasn't used to getting much female attention.
"I... it's very expensive to buy," she muttered. "I've never used it before but I remember Gran-Gran giving it to some of the women in the village before the men all went off to war. She always told me that until I was sixteen - the age for marriage eligibility in the Water tribe - I would not be permitted to use it, as I shouldn't have need of it before then."
"Then why now, Water Bender?"
"It was there," Katara shrugged. "I've been sixteen for months but when I was travelling with Aang and Sokka we couldn't exactly spare the coins to buy it and there wasn't need for it. It's not exactly easy to have a romantic life whilst travelling on a flying bison with a twelve year old and my elder brother. If I'd even suggested buying it, Aang would've been as naive as ever and not known what it was for until I spelled it out for him. And Sokka would probably have had an aneurysm at the idea of any boy looking at me sideways, let alone me needing to drink contraceptive tea."
"You weren't using it when you slept with Jet?" Zuko frowned at her.
Katara blushed even brighter at the casual way he said such a thing.
"I didn't need to," she admitted. "The same way I can feel my bending getting stronger with the moon, I can feel when I'm going to... you know... and so I'd have known if I could get pregnant when I was with him. Luckily, I couldn't have at that point of the month - rather, doing so would've been an anomaly."
"When did you encounter him, again?" Zuko asked. Katara's face flamed again when his eyes dropped to her stomach - which was flat and toned and not at all beginning to thicken with pregnancy.
"Months ago," she answered. "So don't look at me like that. I'm not pregnant."
"This says it prevents pregnancy from occurring when it's already in your system at the time of... interactions, or can be used to terminate if pregnancy occurs. Maybe you should have some now."
"I'm not pregnant!" Katara said, mortified.
"You can't be certain. And it would be really inconvenient if you were, Water Bender."
"I'm not. When a woman is pregnant, her blood won't come during those months. Mine has come three times since I met Jet."
"Still," Zuko shrugged.
"Why are you pushing this?" she demanded, narrowing her eyes on him. "Do you want me to drink it?"
Zuko lifted his head slowly to look at her before he answered. "Yes."
Katara blinked at him, a small frown of confusion marring her brow.
"You want me to take it... because...?" she raised her eyebrows at him.
"Don't give me that look," he snapped. "I'm not planning to seduce you out of your sarashi wraps."
"Then why would you want me to be drinking contraceptive tea, Zuko?" she asked, unsure if she should be relieved or offended by the disgust in his tone.
She watched him open the box of tea and dump the leaves into one of the canisters before he used a piece of chalk to write "Golden Thread" on the lid. He snatched the second and third box from her and dumped them into the same canister until it almost wouldn't close.
"If you plan to continue going along with the facade of us being a couple whenever we get into trouble with the Fire Nation soldiers, it would make sense for you to be prepared for all potential outcomes of that venture," Zuko answered carefully, not meeting her gaze.
"You just said you don't plan to seduce me," she replied, frowning.
"I didn't plan on kissing you half the night when we went on a supply run, either," he snapped. "But it bloody well happened out there, didn't it?"
"You think we'd have to go so far as actual intercourse for the sake of the façade?" Katara frowned at him.
She squealed in surprise when Zuko lunged at her, knocking her to her back on her sleeping bag before he gripped her chin between tight fingers.
"I think that if you have to ask, you've been underestimating the ruthlessness of the Fire Lord's army," he said coldly. "They would make us fuck while they watched just to make us uncomfortable. If they got it into their heads that they liked the look of you, they'd try to fuck you themselves. You're not with the Avatar now. There's no flying bison to whisk you away to safety when the soldiers come. There's no Aang to fly into the Avatar state to protect you, Katara. All you've got is your own bending abilities; what little fighting skills I can teach you, and me. Do you want to risk getting pregnant to a Fire Nation soldier if you're taken prisoner? Do you think they're all decent men who won't lay a hand on you without your consent?"
His amber eyes were cold, boring into her own with such an intensity that she was sure she might never be the same.
"Stop it, Zuko. You're scaring me," Katara whispered, feeling tears prickle in her eyes thanks to his tight grip and his terrifying words.
"Good!" he hissed. "If you get captured, you'll wish you'd been drinking that tea, Water Bender. Worse, if we're both captured and they think you're in league with me or that you're really my girlfriend, they'll make you wish you'd never heard of the Fire Nation. You said that the idea hadn't occurred to your brother or the Avatar that you drink this stuff? That it wasn't priority when you do your supply shopping? It should be. You're one of the most wanted criminals alive. You travel with the Avatar. You disrupt Fire Nations take-overs, fight the soldiers and otherwise upset the wagons of war. And you're the last Water Bender from the Southern Tribe - someone believed to have been wiped out years ago. You were already going to suffer if you were ever captured, Katara. Now? Travelling with the exiled and dethroned Prince of the Fire Nation? Faking a relationship - physical or romantic - with the second Most Wanted criminal in the Four Nations? They'll eat you alive."
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and down her cheek to soak into her hair at the way he laid out the cold, hard truth of the life she was now living.
"I don't care what your intention for the tea was when you grabbed it, Water Bender. From here on out, you drink it for your own bloody good. Every day. Starting now." Zuko released her chin and levered himself off her, quick as lightning. He was on his feet and carrying the teapot out of the room to the nearest window before she could even form a sentence. When he returned, the pot was empty and he held it out expectantly, waiting for her to fill it with water once more.
Katara blinked more tears from her eyes as she flicked her wrist, summoning the magic within herself to pull the water from the snow outside and channel it into the pot. As soon as it was full, Zuko began fire bending to bring the water to a boil. He fished their two cups from his belongings and dumped the recommended amount of Golden Thread tea into her cup before pouring the water over it and waiting for it to steep. He even made himself a cup of Ginseng while he waited. Katara was silent, trying to control the urge she had to cry.
She didn't like thinking about all he'd said to her. She'd known, of course, that such a thing was a possibility while she'd been travelling alone. She'd known she was in danger if she wasn't careful. The idea that she would be in further danger as a result of associating with Zuko made her feel scared. Indeed, she was torn between fear of what being in his company if she was caught would mean, and the strange, niggling sense she had that if she was captured and he wasn't, he would do everything in his power to save her. She couldn't describe the sense she had that it was true, but as she watched his tight, controlled movements when he handed her the cup of tea he'd made for her - to the exact dosage the box said she should drink - she suspected he would slaughter battalions of his own people to rescue her from such a fate.
It was almost as though he felt guilty that her association with him might cause her trouble. She drank the tea he'd given her without protest, though she did make a face at the bitter taste of it.
"It tastes terrible," Katara complained just to fill the silence. Zuko glanced at her, having returned to packing his bag whilst sipping occasionally as his tea.
She wondered if he had taken ill when he silently picked up his cup and offered her the rest of his Ginseng tea to wash down the Golden Thread brew.
"I thought they'd have figured out a way to mix it with other, nice tasting tea leaves to properly mask the taste," Katara sighed. She'd momentarily tossed up the idea of refusing his tea because he'd been drinking out of it, but what did sharing a drink matter when they'd been swapping spit whilst kissing for nigh on an hour before dawn?
"Maybe that make it bitter so it's not consumed by mistake," he argued, handing her a small bag to carry some of the dried meats in so it wouldn't just flake all over the rest of her stuff. "I wouldn't put it past of people like my Uncle to try it by mistake if he was all out of everything else. One sip and he'd spit it out and refuse to drink it."
"Do you want to try it?" Katara asked when she noticed the way Zuko watched her pinching her nose to take big gulps of the hot liquid.
"It's for girls," he shook his head.
"A sip won't kill you," she said, holding the cup toward him and refusing to budge until he took it. His curiosity got the better of him and Katara watched his take a small sip before immediately spitting it on the floor and handing the cup back to her.
"Yeah, Uncle would never drink that by mistake. It's lucky I labelled it for what it really is. I was going to just label it as "Katara's Tea" since I would know not to drink it, but when we find Uncle, he'll take back his tea chest and he'd have tried it just to find out what it is."
"He really likes tea, doesn't he?" Katara smiled. "I noticed while I was following you that you kept looking for him in tea shops. At first I thought it was because they're good for seeking gossip, but then I noticed that you always order tea, but never seem to actually like it when it's given to you."
"Uncle probably cares more about tea than he does about most other things in life," Zuko said. Katara watched the way a small, almost affectionate smile crossed his usually scowling visage. The expression transformed his whole face. Ordinarily, his bright amber eyes, his terrible scar and his fierce expression made him look angry and unapproachable. But with that small smile on his face, she could barely notice the scar.
It was almost as though the rare smile negated the scar completely. Katara opened her mouth to tell him he was much more handsome when he smiled, but she closed her mouth again just as quickly when she realised saying so would likely just anger him. Instead she took another gulp of the Golden Thread tea until it was gone and washed it down with the Ginseng.
"I'm sure he's fonder of you than he is of tea, Zuko," Katara said quietly when a little frown arranged itself back on Zuko's face after she washed and dried the cups.
"He is," Zuko admitted in a quiet voice. He looked conflicted over the idea, as though he were worried that he'd never see his Uncle again and Katara smiled to herself.
"You miss him," she said. "I miss my friends too. I've spent so long relying on them for comfort and company that being away from them is hard. I know that you and I don't exactly see eye to eye, Zuko, but for the purpose of travelling together I'd like it if we weren't constantly hostile to one another. You might not be familiar in the sense that we're friends, but you're more familiar than the thousands of faces I've never seen before. Even if you did try to kidnap my friends and hurt me and my brother to do it. Repeatedly."
Zuko looked over at her, a glare on his face once more. She could tell he was still conflicted over the idea of travelling with her, but that he too was sick of travelling alone.
"Just stay out of my way and don't draw unnecessary attention to either of us, Water Bender," he said.
Katara smirked.
"Should we discuss the other issue now, or wait until we're better rested?" she asked, raising one eyebrow at him as she piled all the food she could carry into her bag, stuffed her clothes inside and began rolling up her sleeping bag.
"What issue?" he asked warily. He narrowed his eyes on her.
"The part where, technically, we're enemies. Enemies who've been kissing each other."
"You said yourself that it was for the sake of hiding our identities so we don't get caught by the Fire Nation soldiers," he protested.
"And it is. I just want to figure out how far you intend to push the boundaries of what's for hiding your face so no one recognises your scar. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me drinking this infernal tea you're forcing me to drink," Katara said.
Zuko narrowed his eyes on her.
"I doubt I could force you to do much of anything, Water Bender," he growled. "So don't accuse me of forcing medicinal tea on you. It's for your own confounded good and it was you who stole the terrible stuff in the first place."
"Don't get so defensive," Katara sighed, rolling her eyes. "I'm not accusing you of anything and I'll drink the wretched tea because you're right. Before I ran into you, I'd barely slept in weeks for fear of being assaulted or kidnapped. You were the one who said something about the soldiers pushing us far enough to have sex, Zuko. So I want to know what, exactly, you're planning to do in regard to travelling with me."
"Are you suggesting that you think I'm going to force myself on you?" he demanded, his temper flaring immediately.
"I'm suggesting that you said they might make us!" Katara snapped. "For once could you stop being so buggering sensitive and be straight with me? What is your plan? So far every time we've kissed it was because the soldiers might've recognised us or accused us of things otherwise. So far, we've pretended to be a young couple who were separated and then reunited thanks to the storms, and a couple disobeying their parents to carry on a relationship."
"Are you saying you want to be my girlfriend?" Zuko asked, his eyes narrowed hatefully.
"I'm saying that I need to know if you're going to get your panties in a twist every time we have to fake it and whether you only intend to do so under pressure on the fly like what happened this morning. Do you only want to use the cover story of being a couple when kissing helps hide your identity? Or do you intend to have everyone we encounter from here on out thinking that?"
Zuko kept glaring at her for so long that she was sure her cheeks had turned pink.
"What do you want to do?" he asked.
Katara blinked at the question, confused by why he would even put it on her without giving his personal feelings on the matter.
"I think that if we pretend to be together, people will ask less questions. It will make doing things like sleeping at Inns easier since this isn't really ideal weather for camping. But if we tell everyone we meet that we're a couple, it will confuse the people we're searching for. Aang and Sokka would dismiss a lead about a couple travelling together if they followed after me and heard gossip about it. Your Uncle probably would too, since you're not known to have a girlfriend. If they're following us, they'll overlook the story of us as a couple and search elsewhere."
Zuko looked thoughtful. He frowned as he rolled up his bed-roll while Katara pulled a strip of jerky from the pile still waiting to be packed or tucked away into pockets and pouches on their combined persons. She chewed it as she stared at the Prince of the Fire Nation.
"We tell people who ask that we're together," he muttered finally. "They'll assume it anyway, so most won't ask. I think you should use your real name. The Wanted posters for you don't actually list your name, so if you leave your name with people in each place, your brother and the Avatar will follow stories of a girl by your description and your name. I can't use my real name, but I've been going by Lee and Uncle has been going by Mushi since the posters went up labelling us both traitors to the Fire Nation."
"Do you want me to call you Lee?" Katara asked.
"In public," he nodded. "Where no one else can overhear you, Zuko is preferable. But I don't think any of them are following us. I think we'll find them first. That sky beast won't be able to fly in the weather conditions we've been having, so if they're travelling at all, it will be on foot. How did you get separated from them anyway?"
He picked up the remaining items on the floor when her pockets where all full and tucked them away, chewing his own strip of jerky. He nodded her down the steps ahead of him, leaving nothing inside the room they'd used for two nights.
"We were flying on Appa when the blizzard hit," Katara admitted. "Appa was descending towards land, but I was blown from his back when a tornado of snow hit. Aang was trying to keep Appa and Momo from getting lost in the winds, and Sokka was almost torn loose from the saddle. When I tried to grab him, I missed and I was blown free. They were carried away in the tornado while I was flung free. I search all the nearby areas when I could move after my landing – I was pretty banged up – but there was no sign of them. I think Aang was so busy trying to get us all to safety that he didn't notice I was missing until after getting the others free of the tornado."
Zuko walked abreast with her when they reached the street, seeming to agree without speaking on the direction they were heading.
"How did you and Iroh get separated?" she asked in return.
"We had a stupid fight," he admitted. "We were at odds over what we should do next. He wanted to go to Ba Sing Se as refugees and blend into the city until the search for us was dropped. He was also content to get there by begging for coins and living off the bare essentials we could afford. I wasn't."
"You went out to steal supplies and the storm hit before you could get back to him?" she guessed.
Zuko nodded. "By the time I could travel again, it had been almost a week. I returned to where he'd been, but he was gone. I've been looking for him, but drifting toward Ba Sing Se. If he's doing the same thing, thinking I'll be heading that way, we'll eventually run into each other on our way into the city."
"I thought you were headed that way," she said. "We were heading for Ba Sing Se too. We went back to Omashu to have King Bumi teach Aang Earth Bending, but the city had been invaded and Bumi was taken captive. Having to find someone else, we were going to search Ba Sing Se for someone to teach him."
"Will they head that way?" Zuko asked.
"They'll be looking for me," Katara shrugged. "They might do the same thing you think Iroh will do, travel to the city thinking I'll do the same."
"So Ba Sing Se is our destination?" he confirmed.
"Well, not today," Katara laughed. "Going on foot, in this kind of weather? It could take us months to reach Ba Sing Se, Zuko."
"I know," he grumbled. "So, I guess you'd better get used to me."
