Chapter Fourteen

"I saw the monster myself. It was flying over Obsidian Island just yesterday. Big and white, it was, with a brown streak down its back and six paws big enough to crush a canoe."

Katara focused on the fisherman's conversation, being careful not to turn her head in that direction. She'd been so careful to face the wall while she sat in the dingy tea shop. Wanted posters wearing her face were plastered all over the islands, and her face was becoming more widely known than ever. Zuko had torn down a dozen posters on this island alone, and they'd waited two days since getting rid of them to show their faces in public.

Even so, they were careful to keep their distance from each other. The newer posters had told of the scarred man she'd been traveling with at the bar on Obsidian Island, and she'd decided it was safer if they didn't walk side by side where people could see them. Zuko was sitting on the other side of the tea shop, ostensibly looking through the comics in the news scrolls. In reality, he was scanning the stories of sightings of flying bison.

"Sure, Jin, and that giant eel you saw at Kyoshi island really did shoot water out of its mouth," said the boy the fisherman was talking to. They appeared to be brothers, from the similar facial structures.

"It's true. Both of them. It was a flying buffalo creature."

Bison. It's a bison, she thought, sipping her tea. At least it didn't burn like the alcohol she'd tasted at the tavern.

"And where was this giant six-legged buffalo going, exactly?"

"It was the strangest thing. The beast flew in circles over the island for almost half an hour. At one point, it got so close to the ground I thought it was going to run right into the volcano. And such fearsome noise it made, a grumble that made the volcano shake and the heavens split asunder."

"And then Agni came down and showered you in brilliant firelight," the younger one said, his words dripping sarcasm. His tone reminded her a little of Sokka.

"How did you know?"

Katara gulped down the last of her tea and stood up. She took the long way around the room, circling around the tables to make sure Zuko saw her and followed. After a moment, he rose from his seat, finished his cup of tea, and put the newspapers back on the shelf.

Once they were safely outside, she turned to him and said. "That fisherman in the corner was talking about Appa."

"I heard. They flew over Obsidian Island, so that must mean they saw your wanted poster."

She nodded. "So, we're going back to the island?"

"It's our only choice. I'd imagine they'll widen their circle looking for you, so the closer we are to that island, the sooner we're likely to find them."

She hurried to the boat, smiling widely for the first time all day. "Aren't you excited?" she asked as they untied the ropes tethering them to solid ground.

"Worried, actually."

"Why?"

"They probably won't be thrilled to see we've been traveling together."
She jerked a stubborn stretch of rope free of the tree they'd tied it to. "Well, they can get over it. I might not have survived the trip if it wasn't for you."

"Are you kidding? You've been doing all the work."

"Only with the ship. I don't know how I would've gotten through the bar fight if I'd had to resort to my bending."

"But you did," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but it would've been a lot more flashy, and there were plenty of soldiers in the bar by then. I would've been taken into custody."

"Except that you wouldn't have been in the bar if I hadn't suggested it."

"Don't start acting guilty. I needed you, and that's that. So quite worrying. Aang will let you be his firebending teacher, and everything will be just fine."

"Whatever you say," he said as he climbed onto the boat. She lifted her arms and brought the tide up high enough to carry them into the water. As soon as that was done, she started moving her arms in the pinwheel motions she'd been using to propel the boat.

Zuko stayed above deck, more comfortable with the boat now that the intermittent storms were done with. While she focused on propelling them to Obsidian island, he kept his eyes to the sky, looking for flying bison.

They didn't speak much as the day went by, preferring to keep to their respective duties on deck. The only time they deviated from this was when Zuko went below deck to make some tea. Katara paused to drink, feeling dehydrated after bending all day.

They docked on the sandy shore of Obsidian Island an hour after the sun set. "Will we be safe here?" she asked as they tied the boat up.

"They wouldn't expect us to still be on the island. As long as we stay out of sight, we'll be fine."

For dinner, she used her bending to pull several fish out of the water, letting Zuko take care of the fire. They ate on the beach that night, instead of in the boat.

The moon was waning, several days having passed since she'd used its power to get them safely away from Whale Tail Island. Less light meant she had to stay close to the fire to see well.

Staring at the sand and waves got boring after a while, so she watched the way the firelight played off of Zuko's face. His gold eyes reflected the campfire, seldom moving from the flickering flames. The rest of his face was dyed orange by the light. The scarred side didn't reflect it quite as well, so it appeared darker than the normal side. The difference between them fixated her for so long that he glanced up and asked, "Does the scar look different near the fire, or something?"

"No. Well, a little. Sorry."

His strange eyes met hers for a long moment, strangely devoid of emotion. Katara realized she was still staring, then quickly averted her eyes.

Zuko sighed.

They sat like that a moment more, the moment growing progressively more awkward.

"You never told me how you got it," she said weakly, trying to explain her fixation. "I was just curious."

"I don't really like telling the story."

"Oh." She dropped the subject, and took a bite out of her second fish.

"Do you really want to know?" Zuko asked.

She fidgeted, curious, but unsure if this would be violating his privacy. "Only if you want to tell the story."

"It happened the day I was banished," he began, his eyes refocusing on the campfire. "I had spoken out against a plan at my first war meeting, and I was supposed to take part in an Agni-Kai to make up for speaking out of turn. I thought I was going to fight the general whose plan I had denounced. My firebending still needed work, but I was young and agile, and the general seemed to be growing frail in his age, so I thought I'd be able to beat him.

"It was a big affair. I don't remember how big the audience was, but I know that, at the time, it seemed like a lot of people. It seemed strange that so many people would show up to see a general they didn't even know fight with a prince with no more than average firebending skill, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.

"Before an Agni-Kai, it is customary to face away from your opponent. I didn't understand why the crowd cheered when my opponent entered the room. I thought that maybe the audience was made up of soldiers he'd led into battle, and they were cheering for his leadership. I didn't realize until I turned around that I wasn't going to fight the general."

"Who were you going to fight?" she asked, confused.

"You see, I had spoken out against the general's plan back in the war meeting. He'd wanted to sacrifice a bunch of new recruits to open the way for . . . some Earth Kingdom thing. I don't remember, exactly. Everyone seemed to be agreeing with him, and I tried to wait for someone to tell him that was wrong, but when no one did, I had to say something.

"But even though I had denounced the general's plan, it wasn't him I was fighting. I had spoken out in my father's war room, and brought dishonor against my father's family, so it was my father I was facing."

"But you were just a child!"

He made no response except to continue his story. "I tried to surrender when I saw that it was him. I begged his forgiveness." He lifted his hand to the scar. "And in return for my pitiful groveling, he gave me this and sent me away on a wild goose chase across the world.

"And after all that, being banished was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I don't know where I would've gone if I'd spent even more time growing up in the Fire Nation. I might've become as ruthless as my father."

"I don't think you would have."

He lifted one hand up to the fire, and the flames grew until the column stretched three body lengths into the air. Katara watched embers soar up into the sky like hundreds of fireflies.

Zuko dropped his hand, and the flames dropped to their normal level. "Fire is unpredictable," he said. "Even skilled firebenders have limited control over it. We can try to keep it from burning anyone. We can try to maintain perfect control all the time, to make sure our bending doesn't rage out of control, but in the end, it only takes a single misplaced ember to ruin everything.

"It was like that for me, before I was banished. I did try to be a good person. That was why I spoke out in the first place. But I did it the wrong way, at the wrong time, and everything burned out of control."

She stared into the flames, trying to think of a compelling argument. She couldn't. The Fire Nation had burned her too many times.

So she said nothing, choosing instead to watch the tongues of flame lick the air above the campfire.

At some point during the night, she fell asleep in the warm circle around the fire. When she woke up, there was a blanket draped over her shoulders, and the sun was rising in the east.

Zuko had fallen asleep, too, across the fire pit. The blackened wood no longer burned, and what little remained of it lie in a bed of ashes. Zuko's eyes were closed as he lie beside the dead fire, his arms curled up around him. The features of his face were slackened by sleep, his lips parted slightly. His hair, covered in sand from the ground, hung over half his face, obscuring part of his scar.

For a brief moment, as the morning sun slanted across the unscarred side of his face, Katara thought his expression looked serene, almost angelic in the pale light. In that fleeting moment, the scar on the other side of his face didn't seem to suggest his dual nature, as she'd always considered it, but a sort of acceptance of both the bad and good in his life.

She stood up and started folding the blanket he'd apparently draped over her shoulders, waiting for the moment to pass. But the sun didn't seem to change position, and he remained frozen in his peaceful slumber. Katara felt a lump rise in her throat.

The sand will dampen the sound, she told herself, walking closer to the firebender. He's fast asleep, anyway.

She knelt down beside him and, as she'd done back home whenever one of the little kids kicked their blankets off at night, she laid the cloth across his body. He shifted in unconsciousness, pulling the blanket tighter around him. Obsidian island lied just outside of the tropical climate of most of the Fire Nation, being one of the outlying islands. At night, it still cooled down enough to need a blanket.

She stayed there for a moment longer, watching his face relax further into sleep. Then, glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she leaned in and pressed her lips against the side of his forehead. "Sleep well. I know you're tired, too," she whispered.

He didn't stir.