disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to the winter winds. it's good to listen to you again, my dears.
notes: I am still a dumb so yeah here have a thing
chapter title: bite down hard bite down
summary: Zuko, Katara, and life after the war. — Zuko/Katara, others.
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"Get moving," Suyin ordered. "Oi, get those sails down, y'lugs, what d'you think you're doing?!"
The crew scampered as their Captain stood over them, fit to breathe fire. She'd pulled her hair down from its severe bindings to tie it back with a length of brightly-patterned fabric. The gaping hole where her left eye should have sat was covered over, and there was no colour in her face.
"Fire Lord, Lady Katara, please stay aboard the ship. It's not safe here," she said.
Katara smiled humourlessly. "Zuko and I have been in dangerous situations before, Captain. We'll be fine."
Well, that was true.
The Captain eyed the pair of them, standing side-by-side, maybe a little bit too close for propriety's sake. But—she'd seen them earlier, seen how they'd anchored to each other to keep this little ship from falling to pieces, and she hadn't said anything then. Neither Zuko nor Katara was much worried about it.
They had bigger fish to fry, and Suyin wasn't one to go telling tales.
"We can hide ourselves well enough," Katara said quietly. "Believe me."
That seemed to mollify the Captain. She nodded at last, her mouth a tight crimson slash across her face. "There are pirates, here. Be careful."
Pirates. Katara almost laughed.
Sometimes she forgot that other people only saw a seventeen-summers-girl when they looked at her, unaware of everything that she could do. It made her feel normal. It made her feel small. It made her feel like nothing mattered, made her feel like the world would keep on rolling, whether or not she died or the rain fell or the Spirits deserted them all.
Nice, but morbid. Morbid, but nice.
Katara didn't think about the world that way, not really; she didn't stop fighting, hadn't stopped even when it seemed like she really was going to die.
Feeling small was almost a relief.
"Pull your hood up," she murmured to Zuko out of the corner of her mouth.
"You're not the Fire Lady," Zuko shot back.
"Not yet," Katara smirked.
If Zuko choked on his own spit, she had the grace not to mention it.
He did exactly as told, anyway.
The ride into the harbour was eerie-smooth, the dark water of the ocean passing away beneath them like a ribbon of black silk. Katara could feel the prickle of eyes on the back of her neck—the cliffs were full of people, none of them making a sound. She had to wonder what kept them so quiet when the docks were so full of life, lit up all merry with red paper lanterns and the furious shouting of hagglers as they bartered for goods and the end fishmeal of the day.
Her attention whirled away, settled somewhere between Zuko at her side and the gaggle of children at the dock heckling one of the fishmongers. The air stank of too many people piled on top of each other, and rotting fruit. Katara wrinkled her nose.
A snort escaped Zuko from somewhere low in his chest. "Since when are you such a princess?"
"Since when don't you have a sense of smell?" she shot back.
"Since I grew up," he snickered.
Katara didn't kick him, even though she wanted to. But she did jab her elbow into his ribs, and when he grunted in pain, she smiled.
"Agni, why are you always so violent?" Zuko asked quietly beneath his breath, still a little winded but also so that no one could hear what they said. He barely moved his lips.
"Because I have to deal with you on a daily basis," Katara replied sweetly, and smiled with all her teeth.
"You're going to be the death of me," he moaned.
"Probably," Katara agreed easily. "I'm not worried."
When her hand found his under the cover of their robes, Zuko had an idea that she wasn't actually talking about him dying at all. Her fear was in the cold of her skin, no matter what she said.
"You shouldn't be," Zuko said.
"I thought I was going to be the death of you," she said, lips twitching.
"Well, yeah, but you shouldn't worry."
"I do, though," she murmured.
"I know," Zuko said, fingers tightening around hers. Her nails dug into the soft flesh of his palm hard enough to draw blood, beading up in crimson crescents stark against his skin that shone wetly in the evening sun.
Even though it hurt, he didn't pull away.
Katara was thankful for that.
When they stepped down onto the dock at last to search out a map and some food for the crew, the boards creaked beneath their feet silver and weathered soft. Katara and Zuko trod lightly; they were perfectly aware that even under travelling cloaks with their hair loose and marks of their rank hid, they wore targets on their backs as outsiders. The crew would blend in with the fisherfolk on the docks, but an unarmed Fire Nation man with a Water Tribe woman at his side was circumspect. Easy pickings, really.
And besides. Everyone knew about the Fire Lord's scar.
So Zuko kept his hood up, Katara eyeballed everyone who came near them dangerously, and together, they walked into town.
Or at least, they tried. They made it as far as the boardwalk, and out of sight of the ship, before a tall pale man tried to get between them, maybe to slip a knife between one of their ribs. Katara was a sinuous thing moving like ink, a perfect frozen arc of water as she skirted around him back to Zuko's side.
She watched the surprise on his face, and wanted to crush his skull.
"I wish I had my swords," muttered Zuko, watching as the man disappeared into the crowd with an ugly look over his shoulder.
She favoured him with a sharp little knife-cut grin. "Feeling naked?"
"Like you wouldn't believe," he said. "Katara—
"Katara?"
Katara's hands cracked into the spider-like forms used only in bloodbending at the sound of the voice calling her name. She and Zuko moved in tandem, whirled back to back and for a moment, Katara was thrown by the ease of it. They could have been on the Boiling Rock, or fighting through the Fire Nation capital on the comet for all that her body knew.
A very distant part of Katara noted that she was totally not over it.
But she turned her attention to the matter at hand. She closed her power around the beat of his heart, and—she knew that beat.
"Haru?" she asked. Zuko still stood at her back, eyes scanning across the crowd. She could feel the heat off of him. Some of the tension in her shoulders lightened.
"Spirits, it is you!" Haru said, eyes wide.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, gesturing around them. "I thought you were in Ba Sing Se, helping rebuild!"
"I was," he said. A flicker of unease flickered over his face. "And the rest of it—not here."
"Then where?" Katara asked, hands still out, eyes narrowing rapidly. She watched as Haru swallowed, felt the pound of his heart and the sudden perspiration, the fear that contracted in his blood at the way she was staring at him.
"Could you, uh, drop the hands, Katara? You kinda look like you're gonna, I dunno, strangle me?" Haru said, watching her nervously. He still had that stupid mustache, and now it twitched a little as he watched her warily, like she was a rabid animal crouching in front of him about to bite.
She started.
She hadn't even realized she still had his blood in her hands.
One of Zuko's hands pressed against her hip, just as Katara lowered her arms. Breathe through it, that hand reminded her. I'm right here.
Katara didn't think she was ever going to be able to tell him how grateful she was for the reminder.
"Sorry," she said, but she wasn't sorry at all. She drew back a little. "Is there somewhere we can talk? Our ship won't leave without us."
"Us? Is that Aang?"
"No," Katara said sharply. "It isn't."
"Katara? Is everything—?"
"Haru," she said. "Trust me. It's fine."
He studied her for only a second, before he nodded and jerked his head down a craggy small alleyway. "This way," he said.
There was very little light between the buildings, and the lanterns strung along the boardwalk only did so much to alleviate it. Katara poured steel and lightening into her spine, ice and clouds made solid. It was courage, to push her through. She nodded fast. "Let's go."
Haru tipped his head in acknowledgement, and turned. He didn't look back to see if they were following him—Katara had a sneaking suspicion that he was trying to lose them in Hu'ai's twisted alleys. It wouldn't be the first time someone had tried to pull something similar.
Spirits, it was like they didn't know her at all.
If there was one thing that Katara was, it was stubborn. Haru led them far enough away that the sound of the water had disappeared into the cacophony of voices against feet against stone, and was lost.
He stopped in front of a purple door, paused for a second to shoot a single nervous glance at Katara, with her companion and her travelling cloak. His hand hovered over the knob. Impatience built in the back of her throat, but she knew that she pushed him now, he would flee. Her heart pounded in her throat.
"Don't be mad, okay?" he said.
"What do you mean?"
"You'll—just—don't be mad," Haru said, again, and then he opened the door.
It was a small, dingy room.
A single candle guttered in the corner, barely casting enough of a glow to light the entrance. There was a small table, too, thick with an inch of dust, and next to it, a bed covered in a pile of rags. Haru paid the lack of light no mind, and strode over to the lump on the bed.
"We have company," he said, quietly, as reached out to shake whoever it was.
A hand, colourless in the dark of the space, shot out of the pile and caught Haru's wrist before he could even touch the cloth. The voice was hoarse, tongue thick with lack of speech. "I'm gonna kill you, I thought we talked about this—"
"It's Katara," Haru said. "You wanna sit up?"
The hand froze, fingers clenching rhythmically for a moment, open close open close, as though they weren't quite sure what they were supposed to be doing with themselves. "You brought her here? How?"
"Doesn't matter," Haru said. He shot a glance to Katara, still standing in the threshold, and jerked his head. "She's here to help."
Katara was thoroughly annoyed at Haru's vagueness—if there was someone who needed her healing skills, he could have just said. The need for mystery was ridiculous, especially if it was someone she'd had previous experience with.
But that Haru's fault, not anyone else's, and Katara quieted her insides to move across the tiny room as smooth as a dream. She was out of place here, a splash of colour and moonlight, brown skin and blue eyes alive in a way that the rest of the room simply wasn't. They all watched her, watched the way she moved, and this? This was nothing new. Katara was in familiar territory, healing. She took a steadying breath.
Zuko pulled the door closed behind her with a click.
"Hey," she said. "Can you sit up?"
"Yeah, fuc—"
"Tui, Haru, why haven't you taken him to a healer? He's—Jet?"
"Hey gorgeous," Jet smirked, the muscles of his mouth strong enough to pull up and make her itch with disgust. "Look who's come back from the dead."
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tbc.