AN: Thanks, reviewers! You make updating a priority in my life! HOORAY FOR ANY PRIORITIES AT ALL IN MY LIFE!
Warning: this chapter contains sexual content.
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Hey Katto.
…
That was pretty rough, what happened back there.
…
Listen, I know you've gotta be feeling pretty raw right now, and I know you're worried about your brother, but try not to think about it. We're watching out for you now. We're a family, Katto, so we know what it's like to be missing a brother. You've got nothing to be scared of, now, though. Not with us on your side.
I've got Li, too.
Yeah. I guess you've got him, too. He's pretty good with a sword. Not a real nice guy, though, is he?
…
Don't worry about it. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. I'll just tell you a little about the gang. It's okay to think of them as your family, too, if you want to…
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Zuko walked with one hand gripping his captive's upper arm, guiding the blindfolded private along the narrow game trail. Jet had insisted on the blindfold, just in case Tyno made an escape attempt, but Zuko didn't think that was going to happen. The guy had no fight left in him. With his hands bound behind him, he trudged on however he was driven, obedient as a dog.
Even so, his steps were short and uncertain and they soon fell behind the others. But that was fine by Zuko - he didn't really want to travel with these cutthroats anyway. Ahead, Katara walked beside Jet, and Zuko could see how that bloodthirsty looter looked at her, even if she couldn't. Jet went on talking and talking, and Katara just stared straight ahead the entire time - but Zuko remembered how she had looked when she first ran into Jet, when he had just knocked out the last spearman and turned to see her blushing up at that criminal.
But she wasn't looking at him that way now. Not after what he and his "freedom fighters" had done.
A part of Zuko was reeling, too. He had never actually seen anyone die before and now, suddenly, he had. Soldiers. Men like those he had ultimately been banished for trying to protect. His grip on Tyno's arm was a vice because, while he wasn't ready to let his thoughts return to those lost men, he could easily focus on protecting this survivor. That was something he could do.
He wasn't so sure what to do about Katara walking alongside Jet, though. It had come as a shock to Zuko when she accepted his offer of help - because she had been so obviously shaken by the carnage. He had protested loudly but couldn't ask the questions he really wanted answered with the freedom fighters right there. How could she want the help of people who killed so easily - when she already had Zuko's help, which was better? How could she ally herself with them when she knew, had to know, what they would do to Zuko if they figured out what he was?
It hurt him, following Katara so close to his own death this way, but in his mind there was no other path to walk. And no other way to walk it now than lagging behind, waiting for the right time to demand answers.
"May I speak, sir?"
Tyno's voice was low, but Zuko tightened his grip in warning. The freedom fighters weren't close, but they were still too close. "You were told to call me Li."
"I'm sorry, sir. Li! It…" Tyno flinched. "It feels improper."
Zuko knew that he was not talking about the impropriety of using a captor's given name, but of using any such informality with a member of the royal family. Tyno, like one of the spearmen, had recognized Zuko on sight. He had nearly even kowtowed back in the glen, but had managed to restrain himself. Thankfully. Zuko's mouth twisted down into a sour frown.
"I don't care how it feels," he said through his teeth. "If you reveal me to these people, we'll both die. Do you understand?"
"Yes… Li." Tyno swallowed. Zuko could hear it even over the evening calls of birds and frogs. "May I speak, Li?"
"No. Just shut up and walk." Zuko did not want to hear whatever it was this guy wanted to say. He didn't want to talk about the deaths of the other soldiers. He didn't want to talk about why he was traveling with these people, apparently having betrayed his country. He didn't want to talk about why he was following a waterbender around like he was somehow bound to her when he wasn't, he wasn't at all.
He couldn't have guessed that Tyno only wanted to tell him that they shared a birthday, one year removed… And that Tyno's mother, being something of a manic follower of the royal family, had always teased him as his birthday approached by pretending that they were celebrating the prince's birthday. Tyno wanted to explain how funny it was, how strange, that he'd spent his childhood answering questions like 'what kind of cake do you think the prince will want this year?' or 'has the prince gotten tired of fire flake casserole?' and how he had sometimes pretended that he really was the prince in question, discussing himself in the third person. 'Yes, mother. I do believe the prince would love a fire flake casserole this year. With sliced char chilies on top.'
He wanted to put words to how hard it had been on his mom when the prince had been banished for weakness and cowardice when he was little more than a child, how Tyno would sometimes catch her watching him, then fourteen, with a miserable, fretful look on her face. He wanted, on some level, to tell Zuko how mad he had been with him, how much he had hated the spoiled cowardly prince who had so disappointed Tyno's own sweet mom, foremost amongst all the Fire Nation. He wanted to explain how he'd grown up and joined up and never ever expected to meet that prince, and that, if he had, he certainly wouldn't have expected that prince to risk himself saving Tyno's life.
Tyno wanted to express his gratitude, and his confusion, and the pride stirring in him as he realized that this was his prince - a man who, even in banishment and dishonor and disgrace, cared for the lives of common soldiers. A brave, capable prince who had severed his plume and maybe fallen in with a strange ally - that waterbender had gone from pitiable to terrifying in the space of a minute - but who was obviously in disguise, and obviously still bore some loyalty to his people.
In the wake of the horror Tyno had just endured, witnessing the deaths of his entire unit, most of whom he had lived and joked and fought beside for almost three years now, he could only really think - only really wanted to think - about telling his mother all about meeting Prince Zuko. He could picture her face brightening at once, and the image wrapped around the wounded parts of him, protecting him from the bloody turn reality had just taken.
Tyno wanted to talk about all of this - because Tyno was a bit of a talker - but he knew better than to defy a member of the royal family. It was with great effort that he restrained himself.
Gripping his arm, Zuko did not guess at any of this, partly because he had long refrained from thinking much about how people must see him, but mostly because he was watching Katara's shoulders slacken as she emerged from the path into a camp of shabby lean-tos camouflaged with boughs of leaves and clumps of grass and moss. He watched how Jet gestured around like he was proud of this mud-wallow of a hideout, and seethed.
Guiding his captive a bit more roughly than was necessary - and entirely unaware that he was doing so - Zuko moved to a flat spot several yards and large trees away from the camp to set up the stupid tent. He didn't remove the prisoner's blindfold, just sat him down at the base of a tree and then threw down the pack and started working. His prisoner sat quietly, but Zuko wasn't paying enough attention to be glad about it.
Darkness set in and a savory smell came from the camp but Zuko just kept working, tying the canvas over the assembled frame the way he'd seen the other recruits do it. Or something like that. It wasn't quite coming together right but, with daylight flown, he didn't care anymore. It was just a stupid tent.
"Dinner."
He turned to find Katara approaching with a bowl in each hand. In the gloom, it was hard to see her face, but her voice was dull and soft. She pressed one bowl into Zuko's hands and then, not quite looking at him, went to Tyno, who was still sitting at the base of the same tree, being very quiet. She untied his blindfold and then his wrists and made an appalled sound.
"Oh! Your hands are freezing. You can't tie a person's hands this tight, Z- Li."
Zuko, just standing there holding his hot bowl, scowled at her in the dark. "He's a firebender. He'll get over it."
"What, firebenders don't need proper circulation?"
Zuko only glared in response to her scathing, but Tyno spoke up, his voice low and stiff. Katara was still crouched beside him, apparently trying to warm his hands. By the sound of it, he pulled away. "He means that firebenders control the heat and energy in their bodies. My hands'll warm up in a second. It's fine."
Katara stayed frozen where she was for a moment, then backed off, apparently stunned by his tone. She was rising to her feet when he spoke again, like he was coming to some realization.
"You know who he is. You shouldn't speak to him like that."
Katara froze and shot a look at Zuko, but he had only turned his glare on Tyno, annoyed. "I'll speak to him however I please," Katara said. Her voice was tense but heavy, weary. "And if you're smart, you'll follow your own advice and think about who you're talking to. It didn't take much to thrash you the first time. I doubt a rematch would go much better for you."
Tyno scoffed. "You're bluffing. You don't even have anything to bend here."
"Shut up, private," Zuko cut in, scowling. "Katto could take you out with that soup in your bowl. Show him the proper respect or I'll teach it to you, personally."
They both stared at him for a moment, then Tyno murmured, "Yes, sir. Li." He bowed his head over his bowl. "I apologize for my impudence, Katto," he bit out, and then started eating.
Katara, after standing still a moment, came to sit with Zuko where he settled at the far end of the small campsite. For a long while, she didn't say anything, and the only sounds were the low chatter from the nearby hideout, the night songs of frogs and insects, and the quiet noises of eating. Then, so low Zuko almost didn't hear her, she spoke.
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
Zuko nearly choked on the last bite of his soup and for an instant just sat very still. He watched Katara from the corner of his eye, the way she clutched her knees to her and stared at the ground. He wondered whether she would respect him less for the truth, but decided to tell it anyway. "No."
"But… this is a war." She said it like she was just realizing it, like it hadn't occurred to her before tonight that she was right in the middle of one, that she had gone to a lot of trouble to get there. "How can you fight a war without killing people?"
Zuko held his empty bowl in his lap, rubbing his thumb over a chip in the rim. "I… haven't really been fighting the war." He spoke as low as she did. And she sat so close, he was sure she could hear, yet she was quiet, so he went on.
"When I first started chasing you across the Earth Kingdom, I marched with a small compliment of soldiers. We met an Earth Kingdom patrol, fought them, and won." Katara dug her chin against her knee. Zuko didn't know why he had thought it was a good idea to tell her this, but he pressed on anyway. "No one died. I had them taken back to my ship and locked up there, so they wouldn't report seeing my soldiers. I…" He hesitated, then peered at her, and decided she didn't need to know how relieved he had been to find no one had died in that skirmish. "In a way, it would have been easier to just kill them. And then they wouldn't still be there, eating my ship's rations out from under my crew… But I couldn't let them go, and killing them didn't seem… It wasn't…"
"Right," Katara supplied. She was looking at him, now. He could see a glimmer of her bright eyes in the moonlight seeping through the canopy. "It wasn't right."
"Yeah." Zuko slumped, frowning at his bowl. The earthenware was growing cool in his palms.
Katara shifted and drew a long breath, staring ahead again. "Jet says killing is inevitable in a war, and every time we show mercy is a time that the Fire Nation doesn't someplace else, so our numbers are constantly dwindling while theirs remain the same."
"That's a lie. The Fire Nation takes prisoners whenever possible."
"You do," Katara whispered against her knee. "But nobody took my mom prisoner. Jet's entire village was burned. Smellerbee's parents died. Longshot's parents died. Pipsqueak and the Duke, Shells and Knockit and Molls… They all lost people. Whole families. They didn't just get imprisoned somewhere, Zuko. They died. Because it's a war and in wars people have to die." She swallowed and pushed on. "So now, Jet says they're making it so the right people die. Soldiers on the march. Not families defending their homes."
Zuko's mouth pinched but he forced the words out anyway. "Jet's insane. You saw him today. He killed those men indiscriminately. And they weren't bad men, Katara. That lieutenant in charge? Trying to convince us not to fight? He did that because he knew we were recruits. He thought we'd only get hurt and he wanted to give us an out."
Katara didn't lift her head to look at him. She just hugged her knees tighter. "I know. I tried to stop Smellerbee but-" Her voice was thick. She was crying, Zuko realized. He could see the glimmer of fat tears rolling down her cheek. "I wasn't fast enough."
Unthinkingly, he set his bowl aside and brushed her slick cheek with his fingertips. She shut her eyes and roughly clutched his hand to her face. And suddenly, Zuko didn't know how it happened, she had flung her hard thin arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder. He raised his arms around her more slowly, his astonishment turning to a sort of aching pleasure.
"I have to be faster, Zuko," Katara gasped against his neck, tears coming harder now. "I can't be too late for Sokka. I won't. If I have to hang out with a bunch of killers to save him, I'll do it. Whatever I have to do."
Zuko pressed his cheek to the shaved side of her head and shifted to hold her closer. She was so bent on protecting her brother, maybe she'd forgotten that she needed protecting, too. It was a lucky thing she had Zuko. "I already told you," he said, the only thing he could think to say as, even through all the fear and sadness and determination, the smell of her skin tugging at him, "Sokka's going to be fine."
There was a clunk across the clearing. Zuko looked up to find Tyno, from what he could see in the moonlight, studiously looking at the bowl he had just dropped on the ground. Katara pulled away and Zuko shot the private a scowl.
"Smellerbee says there's a stream in the valley," Katara said quietly. "I need to wash the blood out of my pants. I'd-" She shuddered and wiped her face. "I'd forgotten."
Zuko nodded absently, thinking about how tightly he was going to tie his captive for the night, but his attention snapped back to her when she spoke again.
"Come with me."
"What? Why?"
Katar fidgeted a moment. "I want your company."
Zuko watched her twist her fingers into the fabric of her trousers and wondered what that was supposed to mean exactly, but didn't want to seem stupid, so he didn't ask. "What about the prisoner?"
As one, they looked over at Tyno, who was apparently now examining what patches of the sky he could see through the treetops while twiddling his thumbs. Zuko was immediately annoyed. Katara only shrugged and spoke a little louder than they had been. "Well, if he does try to run, the freedom fighters will probably get to him before we do."
She stood up and started digging through the pack for the wedge of soap while Zuko hauled Tyno into the tent and tied his wrists again. "You heard what Katto said?"
"Yes, Li," Tyno said, puffing out a breath. He sat still and quiet as Zuko tightened the knots. "I won't try to run… but… May I speak, sir? Li?"
Zuko gritted his teeth. Katara was waiting and she wanted… his company. And he didn't want to learn about a common soldier's opinions on gay interracial relationships or treason or, really, anything. He didn't want to think about rumors of any of this getting back to the Fire Nation when Tyno survived. All Zuko wanted was to give Katara his company. Whatever that meant, exactly.
"Not now."
Tyno sighed but Zuko hardly noticed as he emerged from the tent. The night seemed bright now compared to the darkness inside, and Katara stood at the edge of the clearing, facing the valley. She had stopped in a patch of moonlight, and it limned her with a silver glow, especially the long stretch of her neck as she gazed up into the light.
She did not turn as he approached, and after a hesitation, he settled his hand on her shoulder lightly. Through the cloth of her shirt, he felt her collarbone against his fingertips.
"Did you eat with the others?"
Katara was quiet for a moment longer, then she took his hand in hers and tugged him along a trail into the deeper darkness of the valley. Zuko noticed the evasion, but didn't remark on it as he followed her down the winding path. Her hand clamped around his, cool and hard, callused. A worker's hand. On a level, Zuko knew that still mattered.
But he did not think about it, he only followed her into the valley. They came to the stream, a faintly gurgling flow that Zuko could easily step over. Katara released his hand and knelt on the moss to trail a hand in the water. The ripples glittered in the few tiny dots of moonlight that managed to make their way so far down.
"The soup had rabbotter in it. I couldn't eat it." She hesitated before going on, voice hardly rising over the low sounds of the water. "After my mom died, I couldn't eat meat for weeks. I couldn't stand the smell."
Zuko sat down beside her, a little more heavily than he had meant to. "I know what you mean," he said at length, clenching his fingers around the caps of his knees. He took a long breath and went on. "After… I was burned, everything smelled disgusting for weeks. But my uncle told me I had to eat if I wanted to have the strength to complete my mission."
Just remembering that moment was hard. Zuko had been so preoccupied with his shame and pain at the time that he had lashed out at Iroh, shouting something about what a fat old man would know about strength. He couldn't remember the exact words now, and he was glad, because the memory shamed him at this moment in a way that it hadn't before.
Zuko cleared his throat and went on. "You should eat some nuts when we get back. You'll need your strength to help Sokka."
Katara was quiet, had been quiet. Then there was a rustle of cloth and Zuko could tell, not so much from what he saw but the way she moved, that she was taking off her shirt. He couldn't see much at all, just the spots where the moonlight hit her shirt, then the skin of her shoulders and her bindings. He shut his mouth and swallowed hard and sat stiffly beside her, not sure what to do as his face heated in the darkness. She stood and, he was sure, started untying the knot of her trousers. Zuko tore his eyes away and stared ahead across the stream.
"I can see you," he managed at last, thinking maybe she thought he couldn't. It came out as a hoarse whisper.
Katara paused. Her fingers stilled together against her belly, just above his eye level. "Don't you want to?"
He wrenched his head around to look up at the looming shape of her, eyes wide open. Didn't he want to what? See her? Touch her? Taste the sweat on her skin? Yes. Yes. To anything.
"Yes."
Zuko watched as she lowered her pants, watched the darts of moonlit skin appear across the faint swell of her belly, the bones of her hips, the long smooth muscles of her thighs. She sat to pull off her boots and tossed her pants into the stream to soak. Then she sat back and folded her legs beside her, leaning toward him on one arm, and was still.
Her shoulder was just inches from his. He imagined he could feel the warmth of her body, crossing the short space between them. It took a steady, stubborn restraint to keep from putting his arm around her and drawing her against him.
"I just want something good," she said in a breaking voice almost too quiet to be heard.
Zuko wasn't sure what this meant, whether she was speaking philosophically or literally, about the future or the present. All he really knew was that he didn't like her voice sounding like that, so fragile and lost, and he would do anything in his power to change it.
"Anything."
Katara turned her head to face him and through the dark he could only just see the faint whites of her eyes. She reached across and slid her fingertips up from his chin - his jaw, his cheek, the edge of his scar. He choked on a soft wail. It was at once sensitive and numb. It felt like her touch might hurt him, it might be hurting him and he wouldn't even know it until the damage was done.
But he didn't pull away, and Katara didn't pull away either. She just leaned in and covered his grimace with a kiss, a persistent, demanding kiss that Zuko surged back to answer. His fingers bit hard into his knees but his teeth were gentle against her soft mouth, he made sure.
They stayed that way for a long while, and then Katara was up on her knees, still kissing him, and she moved to straddle his lap. His arms looped around her waist, then suddenly constricted, pulling her harder against him in that most needful place. Their mouths went slack and groaning together for a second as Katara rocked to the slow beat of her own need. In this position, Zuko could only submit to the agonizing pace, and he clenched his teeth against the burning, against her fingers on his jaw, against her other hand between their bellies, sliding downward.
If he could have thought, he would have been able to recognize a lot of reasons why this was a bad idea - for her more than for him - and he would, in good conscience, have had to bring those issues to light. He would have had to stop her.
"Ahhn," he said instead, because it was all he could say. He didn't think to try and stop the slide of his own hands against her bare back, the one gliding lower until it crept over her loincloth and kneaded one cheek of her butt.
She rolled against his grip.
It was an accident, really, when his ring finger slipped under the side of her loincloth and brushed the soft hair of her sex. But Katara made that sound. That gut-wrenching sound she had made the first time he had heated her water. She groaned that way and tilted her hips in an invitation he didn't need to know anything about girls to understand. Zuko kissed her firmly and accepted.
Things grew less clear after that. The space between her legs was slick and complicated, but he tried things until he found something that made her make that sound again. Her hand found its way inside his pants and it was so much better when Katara did that than when Zuko did it himself. Awkward and uncoordinated, but so much better.
She was kissing his ear and murmuring, "You're so good. Zuko, you're so good." And it made Zuko moan - because he had always wanted to be good. He had wanted so badly to be good.
And then she was pulling his pants down a little and raising up a little and positioning and Zuko could only think yes yes yes as her slippery flesh nudged him and then, suddenly, he was inside her. Katara tensed in his arms. He could only pant with his face pressed against her shoulder and wait for her to move, to do something… Only she didn't.
Zuko raised his face to look at her but, through the darkness, he couldn't possibly have seen the pained twist of her mouth. And because he had been so adamant over the years about not letting Iroh talk to him about women or sex, he had no way of knowing that a girl's first time could hurt. When Zuko looked up at Katara's face, he could only see that she had thrown her head back, and he could see her shoulders rising and falling with her shallow breathing.
Zuko thought she had to be feeling what he felt. Because wasn't that how it worked?
He trailed kisses up her neck and then rolled her on her back on the moss. Katara squeaked and then winced and then moaned as his weight came down on her. All of those things. It was more complexity than Zuko could work through at this moment. All he really understood now was the command rooted deep in his flesh. He rocked his hips.
Katara made sounds that Zuko thought he understood but actually didn't. He didn't know how pain lanced through her pleasure, how it hurt to rise up against his aggression the way she liked to do - and did anyway because it was hers, it was all hers, the aching fullness and the sting and the sounds he made were hers and the moon winking through the treetops at her, she wanted all of it. All of it. She bared her teeth and wrapped her legs around him and held him tighter - because he was hers, because even if this was a stupid thing to do, he was the warmest and most reassuring thing right now, because under all his anger and scars and ill-placed loyalty, he was so good. But Katara spoke only in gasps and stifled cries, so Zuko didn't understand anything beyond her pleasure.
It ended very quickly and Zuko choked out a groan over her shoulder with his forehead in the moss, then slumped. As his breathing slowed and his wits came swimming back to him, he became aware of her fingers first. Katara was tracing his spine through his sweat-sticky shirt with a slow, idle ease. He nuzzled behind her ear until she gasped and then pressed kisses there as he caught his breath. For a long while, they were both quiet, and Zuko found himself unaccountably afraid of whatever words might come next.
"Since you're here," Katara said, and he relaxed at once; he could hear her faint smile, "we should wash your clothes, too. I'm not sure what a prince is supposed to smell like, but I really don't think this is it."
He puffed out an amused breath and caught her earlobe between his teeth. "You've got no room to talk. I've never met a princess who smelled so much like a Komodo rhino."
"You like it," she accused faintly, tipping her head to the side to give him easier access. "Everyone knows you're gay for my manly musk. Just come out already."
Zuko released her ear and really did laugh at that, a tiny, breathy laugh that was more a pleased spasm in his stomach than a sound. Katara turned her head and looked up at him. Her wide eyes caught the moonlight. "Give me a second," Zuko said, shifting his weight just to remind her he was still inside her, "and I'll show you exactly how gay I am for you."
Katara winced and Zuko jerked his head back, stung. "I… I'm sore, Zuko." She said it like she didn't want to admit it.
"I hurt you," he said, shocked.
Katara raised her hands off his back, then dropped them again. "It was my first time," she said, like that explained everything. Like she was a little insulted for some reason.
"It didn't hurt me," Zuko groused. It was closer than he had ever wanted to come to admitting his inexperience.
She paused, then shook her head, and she was smiling again. The smug superiority in her voice reminded him just a little of the way she talked about Sokka. "You're not a girl, Zuko. It only hurts for girls."
"Oh." He hesitated and then withdrew slowly, shifting to lay beside her. Katara started to sit up, but he snapped his arm around her and held her shoulder against his chest. He could feel her frowning at him. "Just… for a minute," he said, dipping his chin to brush her temple.
Katara sighed, and tipped her head toward him. "We really do need to get back. Tyno's waiting up there, all alone."
Zuko grunted out an annoyed sound and stopped tracing his mouth along her cheek. He let her go, and this time sat up with her. "Do you think the freedom fighters will bother him?"
"I don't think so," Katara said, "but they aren't exactly predictable."
She fumbled around in the dark finding her pants and the soap she had brought and told him to strip and even put him to work washing his own clothes. (Zuko scoffed at the indignity but humored her.) When he finished first, Katara fondly accused him of doing a lackluster job, then suggested that he put more effort into washing himself.
As they climbed the path back to the camp, Zuko caught her hand in his and trailed after her like he had on their descent. He had the strangest feeling that it would be better if they could just stay in this dark valley, and if everything between them could be as simple as awkward lovemaking and washing in the dark. But it wasn't that simple. And every step up the hill came with a reason that this had been crazy and stupid and dishonorable. Around halfway, their hands slipped apart.
They emerged in their camp again and crept into the tent, where Tyno was already snoring loudly. Katara settled into her sleeping bag and Zuko sprawled out on the groundcloth beside her for a long moment before remembering, and digging in the pack sightlessly, and then shoving a bag of nuts into Katara's hands.
"Eat."
There was a long silence, then a rustle and the soft munching sounds he had been waiting for. Zuko relaxed on the groundcloth and dozed off to that sound, blissfully exhausted.
.
Katara ached through the long march the next day, her hips and thighs and back all sore from the use of unfamiliar muscles. And between her legs there was a lingering rawness that mingled with the pleasant-yet-frustrating ache of unfulfilled arousal.
She welcomed the physical discomfort, held tight to it - because listening to Jet talk had made her doubt a lot of things, and seeing those men die had killed an innocent part of her, and it was right that her body should hurt. If the last few weeks had taught her anything, it was that fighting required some pain. And if there wasn't pain now, when Jet was challenging one of her fundamental beliefs, how could she know that she was struggling to keep it, that it was worth fighting for? How could she know that she was still alive to fight his insidious way of thinking if the effort wasn't marking her somehow?
Not that pain had been what she was after when she invited Zuko into the valley. Katara didn't want to think too much about why she had decided to do that - not so much the valley thing but the real thing, the big thing that she had just abruptly decided she wanted to do when she was touching him and he was touching her. She couldn't face the reasons now, or the consequences, not when Sokka was the only thing that mattered.
But she was aware of Zuko in a way she hadn't been before. She could feel him following along behind her, closer today than he had been yesterday. When she glanced back, his eyes were always on her, waiting. She could smell his scent on her skin even after washing, and her whole body twinged with it, this reckless blend of complex emotions - delight and remorse and pride and shame all tangled up at once.
So she focused instead on the ache of her body and on pressing the crew to march faster, harder to the south. Jet walked with her again today, and talked more about the evils of the Fire Nation, but Katara 'uh-huh'ed and 'yeah'ed through most of the conversation, only half-listening. Whether it was the thing with Zuko or the chance to bathe and climb into cleaner clothes, or the night's sleep, she felt better today. She wasn't shell-shocked the way she had been. She wasn't drifting above herself, watching the world pass with horrified disbelief. She was in her body in a very real, painful way. She had her edge back. Her convictions were hers.
And she knew Jet was a killer, and his way wasn't for her.
Katara stole a look at him from the corner of her eye. He was lean and hardened from difficult living, and his eyes had this way of never quite warming, never quite opening up. The way he had been so persistent with her yesterday, so patient and understanding and yet so bent on winning her over to his cause, had been comforting at first. But now it was setting off alarms. Now it felt a little rehearsed, like this was how he always dealt with the survivors. This was how he fed his army.
Jet was fighting this war the way he thought he had to fight it - and maybe for him it was the right way. Maybe it really was his only option. Or maybe he just liked killing Fire Nation people. Snuffing them out easy as candles.
Katara frowned ahead. "Have you heard? The Avatar returned."
"Yeah," he said, "I heard something about that. Little airbender kid, right?"
Katara nodded. "Legend says the Avatar has the power to create balance between the four nations."
"He's got a tough job, then, since there are only three nations left and one of them is bent on wiping the others out, too." Jet was shaking his head. "No way is one kid gonna be able to stop the Fire Nation armies."
Katara wasn't sure. She knew Aang was supposed to be powerful - but apart from some nifty airbending and a little waterbending and a lot of really agile animal-riding, she hadn't seen him do much. Certainly not any world-changing displays of legendary Avatar power. "But he has to be the one to end the war," she said, quietly. "Somehow, he has to do it. Otherwise, people will just keep dying. The only way for there to be peace is if the Avatar puts an end to the war."
Suddenly Katara felt incredibly foolish. Aang had seen all of this so clearly. He had come to her before he left and asked her to go with him. And she had said no, too determined to learn waterbending and help her brother with this stupid war - because she had been so sure then that the only way to win was to win on the battleground. But if she had gone with Aang, she could have been protecting him, and through him all the people who suffered, all the people he could save if he survived to end the war. She could have helped him find a better way, the right way.
If she'd gone with him, she would be floating in the clouds right now, a mile above all this blood and pain and horror. If she'd gone with him, she wouldn't have lost… whatever unnameable part of her that was gone now.
"That'd be great," Jet said, shrugging, "but this isn't a fairytale, Katto. It's not some kids' story." He lowered his chin, and glared ahead. "In the real world, the war never ends."
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AN: Cutting off here bcs gotta. But! The next chapter is underway!
