Chapter 34: Fishing Contest
No one could get word to Pikesman Kazuto.
They knew where he was, of course—on the Admiral's flagship, at Zhao's side, running the man's petty errands. But they couldn't get word to him. Not with him so close to the enemy, so scrutinized.
It was easy to get word to Assistant Cook Dekku; a hundred people came in and out of a kitchen every day, and if some of those were visitors from other ships who stopped to chat, who cared?
Easy for Engineer Hanako; she was one of the few mechanics in the fleet with experience keeping engines running in arctic temperatures. It was simple enough to stop for a word with an old comrade or two on her way from ship to ship.
Genji was a hawker. As it grew too cold for the hawks to safely fly, the hawkers became glorified inter-ship messengers. This was a poor life choice on Zhao's part, but hardly the first he'd made, or the worst.
Their prince had been murdered. Their captain sent north on a scout ship that had never been meant to return. No, not thinking through his lax standards for messengers was hardly at the top of Zhao's list of errors.
It was the one that would get him killed, though.
Crewman Teruko—Lieutenant Commander Teruko, now that she was on a ship that couldn't fathom the trail of paperwork errors and not-so-errors that had left her unranked on the Wani—yelled at her subordinates to ready the catapult again. The sooner the wall around this city went down, the sooner Zhao would get cocky about this invasion. The sooner he got cocky, the sooner her real crew would get their chance to gut him like a cow-pig.
No one had gotten word to Pikesman Kazuto, but they trusted he knew the plan.
Between one reload and the next, letters fluttered down to the deck. Teruko, as ranking deck officer, snatched one.
To the Honorable Captains of our allied Fire Navy fleet, and all soldiers loyal to the advancement of the Fire Nation...
Lieutenant Commander Teruko was neither of those things. Nonetheless, this letter was for her.
"...Do you think it's real?" one of her subordinates asked, sneaking a peak at the letter.
"Did I give you permission to stop? Has that catapult become self-loading? If you're so eager to test the Water Tribe's hospitality, perhaps you'd like to ride with the ammunition, Ensign!"
Her crew scrambled back to work. Teruko ordered the letters confiscated, and sent up to the ship's captain.
It didn't matter if they were real. The plan stayed the same. They'd just… adjust the end a bit. If their prince was alive, then at least a few of them needed to still be alive after this, in case he needed them.
(If there was anyone who would survive death just to make Zhao's life more difficult, it was Zuko.)
"She's smiling," one of her subordinates whispered to another.
"Work faster," the other said, with a shudder.
%%%
"Gentleman," Zhao said, behind a confident smile and gritted teeth. "I'm given to understand that some of the lower crewman have been deceived by our enemy's little stunt."
His assembled captains didn't speak immediately. Zhao let that silence continue, one eyebrow arched, until the first head volunteered itself for the chopping block.
"They have questions," one of the older captains said. "Sir."
The fleet had temporarily halted its assault on the northern capital's walls. If the city itself had a proper name, Zhao admitted he'd never bothered to learn it. Nor had the Fire Nation's mapmakers.
"I trust you've assured them of the transparent attempt to sow dissension that this letter is," Zhao said.
"Of course. Sir. But not all of us are gifted with your eloquence; perhaps you walk us through the explanation, so we can bring it back to our crewmen."
It was the same captain who spoke again. The men on either side of him had, wisely, frozen in place. Zhao took a moment to place him: Captain Keej, who had twenty years of service more than Zhao and three promotions less. Stationed on the Firecracker, a battlecruiser on the… ah yes, their front line.
He'd never much liked Captain Keej.
"Of course," Zhao said. "We could, of course, start with their transparent attempt to discredit your fleet's admiral. How very convenient, that the very officer leading the assault is the one they accuse; as if I had anything to gain from assassinating our young prince. Why, I had already helped him in his quest at Kyoshi Island, and caught the Avatar for him at Pohuai Stronghold before that Blue Spirit set the boy free. They accuse me of seeking glory. What do barbarians in animal skins know of glory? I'd offered General Iroh a place of honor at my right hand, and approved his crewmen's own requests for transfer—"
Behind him, Pikesman Kazuto, formerly of the Wani, did not shift at all from his position. He was, of course, there to refill their cups. Zhao fond he rather enjoyed petty and misdirected vengeance, though it would have been more satisfying if the man ever fought back. He'd barely even spoken since they'd reached polar waters. One glance into his service history had explained that, but it was still terribly disappointing.
"I'm already the Admiral of the entire Northern Fleet. There's no more glory for me to achieve; the rest is for our brave soldiers, and our nation."
Zhao wasn't expecting rousing applause, but he would have appreciated at least a shift in expression. Jealous fools, all of them. He continued.
"As for these claims of betrothal, and alliance—where are the messenger ships overtaking our fleet with urgent news? We move at the pace of our slowest ship; if such world-changing events had occurred in the slim few weeks our hawks have been grounded, the Fire Lord would have sent his fastest cruiser to intercept us. Ah, but perhaps all these ships were struck down in mysterious storms. Fortunately, the Northern Barbarians could simply send news to us using the scout ships they've captured, opening negotiations before we were at their very gates—Oh dear, it seems like they've been indiscriminately sinking them, instead. You all know of the bodies we've found in the waves. Too frozen to even bloat, the luckiest—the unluckiest—still clinging to flotsam from their ships as if they hoped for rescue—"
Pikesman Kazuto was turning that sickly pale shade. His neck was, anyway; this was precisely why Zhao had made him wear the helmet. No need to disturb their fleet's captains with the weak constitution of one coward.
"What strangely vicious behavior from our allies," Zhao said, his smile coming more naturally now. And his captains were doing less to keep their expressions neutral; were listening. "Strange, as well, that they didn't attempt to send their own hawks before now. Theirs clearly are not limited by this climate."
"As for the prince being alive—" he took in a breath. Closed his eyes, briefly, as if it pained him to continue. (The need for this conversation pained him; acting was not required.) "I was there, gentlemen. I watched his crew dive into the waves over and over again, calling his name. For hours we searched the water and the shore. General Iroh was inconsolable, raging; I arranged his transport back home myself, and can only hope he's found some solstice in sharing his grief with the family he has left. That these Northern Savages would dreg up our prince's memory, and accuse him of treason—"
Another breath. He was really getting a bit theatrical here, but they'd bought tickets to this play. What was a man to do?
"Advisor to the Avatar? Grandson of a southern pirate? They aren't even attempting to hide their mockery. And if you need any further proof—Hero of Omashu. Not New Ozai, as any loyal son of the Fire Nation would call it. Because no loyal son of the Fire Nation was consulted in writing this letter. Your prince—my prince—is dead, gentlemen.
"I want these letters burned. I want your own crews to do it, after you've explained every last word so that even the dullest mind can grasp the insult they've dealt to our late prince's honor. They could have written any number of lies against me, any slander they wished, and it would have been only another part of this war. But there are lines that civilized men do not cross. They've insulted our prince's memory; let their final memories be fire. When that wall goes down, we finish our prince's quest for the Avatar and destroy those that would tarnish his name."
Ah, there was the applause, the agreement. Zhao didn't smirk; it wouldn't have been seemly. He sent his captains off happy and well-satisfied, and finally allowed himself to touch the wineglass by his hand.
The letter was all lies. Of course.
(If there was anyone who would survive death just to make Zhao's life more difficult, it was Zuko.)
"Pikesman," he said. "My glass is empty. Fix that."
The prince's ex-crewman obeyed. Silently, promptly. It didn't bring Zhao the same satisfaction as it used to.
%%%
(Kazuto had a plan. It… probably wasn't the same as the rest of his crew's.)
%%%
Well that had worked for all of an hour. Or, if Sokka was going to be both fair and realistic, half a day. It was nearly dusk now, on the night of a full moon, and what Fire Navy Admiral would be stupid enough to attack in winter, during the full moon, at night?
Given that Zhao had already checked off two of those boxes, Sokka wasn't going to hold his breath on the third. But if the man wanted to give them every possible advantage, who was he to say no?
He'd received an actual invite to this war council. It was a hilarious formality he appreciated on the eve of his maybe-dying-in-a-genocide. Zuko had been invited, too, in his Fire Nation advisor capacity. All of Team Avatar had, and Yue had taken the liberty of placing herself under that heading when her own invite had failed to manifest. Though it wasn't so much a liberty as a 'fact suddenly made formal by her seating arrangement opposite her father.'
The council was currently split. Keep at full readiness all night, or let the bulk of their warriors sleep?
"The healers are ready to help," Yue demurely offered. "As there's little risk of real fighting at night, our men can sleep and be well rested for the battle tomorrow, and we can maintain full patrols. If there is any small skirmish with their scouts, our women need only hold until our men can be roused."
Sokka let out a tiny, barely audible appreciative sigh at her serene fighting sexism with logic face. And got an elbow in his side for the effort. As he had preemptively rolled up an extra shirt and shoved it under his shirt on his Zuko-side for padding, this was, and continued to be, an ineffective deterrent to admiring the Fire Prince's fiancee.
The council argued circles around itself, finally settling on graciously allowing some women to stand watch, but only with a Proper Man in each group for supervision lest they faint at the first sight of the enemy or something-something. Sokka was too busy worrying over Katara's too-sharp smile to really pay attention. Thus he was blinded-sided when Arnook turned to Team Avatar, and brought up the next point of discussion.
Not to Team Avatar. Just to his nephson.
"I have asked you this before, Prince Zuko, and the time is past for you to answer. Your fleet—"
"It's not my fleet," the prince muttered, at Sokka's side.
"—is here. Our nations are at war. Whose side do you fight for?"
His nephson squared his shoulders, and sat up as straight and potentially suicidal as a twelve-year-old could.
"My nation's."
Which is how Zuko volunteered himself to spend the rest of this siege down in the ice cells with the other Fire Nation prisoners. This seemed to reassure the Northerners, but was nowhere close to where the rest of Team Avatar could keep an eye on him. Sokka looked at Katara who looked at Aang who looked at Yue, and there was a great big circle of looks that required no interpretation. Except if you were an old man still convinced that children weren't Omashu-level threats, apparently.
"He won't be harmed," Arnook promised them.
Which was a nice sentiment and all, but not really what any of them had been worried about.
They let Zuko bring down lots of blankets. Sokka took the liberty of searching the depths of those warm fuzzy wraps, and confiscated one pair of dao swords and a blue spirit mask.
"No theme songing your way out of this one, nephson. Stay."
"Stay safe," Zuko countered with, and initiated a hug.
Which meant this was officially the end of the world, and the end of the world was warm and cuddly and a little too tight around his ribs. So. That was nice to establish.
He left Zuko locked up with the cranky lieutenant. Time to join Katara and Yue on Aang-guarding duty in the oasis. Though honestly, he wasn't sure that trying get spirits involved in a human war was the world's best idea.
That might have just been his experience with angry pandas and giant elbow-leeches talking.
%%%
The walls fell the next day. It wasn't unexpected.
The pikesman who surrendered to the first Water Tribe warriors he saw? Slightly less expected.
%%%
Pikesman Kazuto was a coward. He'd survived the loss of his first ship by jumping over the rail while the rest of his crew was being butchered by wolf-helmed nightmares. He'd weasel-ratted out a child to Admiral Zhao's men just because she'd been wearing blue. (And because she'd been a terrifying waterbender, but he if he'd just trusted his commanding officers it would have been fine.) He hadn't climbed a ladder in a storm to save Helmsman Kyo; he'd just stood on deck watching as a twelve-year-old did, and then he'd been too much of a coward to even be the first to check for a pulse—
He hadn't spoken out against his transfer to Admiral Zhao's ship. When his second ship had gone up in flames, he hadn't left his new posting. He'd just stood sentry on the towering deck of Zhao's battleship, watching the dark figures of his former crew diving into the waves over and over again like that would bring their prince back.
(He wasn't going back into the waves. He was never going back in. Water sapped your strength little by little, you couldn't fight it or escape it once it had you, not until the next ship came to pull you out and you could only pray their flag was red—)
He hadn't spoken up at Zhao's meeting with his captains. He could have, even though he didn't have proof of what everyone on the Wani knew, that Zhao had murdered their prince and was now flaunting the certain knowledge of Zuko's death to disprove the enemy's letter with absolute confidence.
If he wasn't a coward, he would have killed the man. He was using Kazuto like a valet; Kazuto brought him his meals, tidied his room, helped him take off his armor. It would have been easy, if he wasn't—
If he wasn't a coward, he would have told the man where to shove it when he'd first been handed his transfer orders. Or at least after the Wani had blown up.
If he wasn't a coward, Kyo would still be able to walk.
If he wasn't a coward, he would have died with his first crew.
Instead he'd of put himself on the Ocean's mercy, and the Ocean had spared him. The water had been cold enough to kill, he'd seen the enemy ships hunting other survivors in the waves, and the odds of any friendly ship finding him in time—
The Water Tribe had attacked his ship, and the Water Tribe's patron spirit had spared the life of a Fire Nation soldier who'd been desperate enough to pray to anything that night. He hadn't understood why. Not until he'd tidied up an Admiral's room, and picked a few locks that were easy for a colony slum brat to get around, and found out.
"The—the—" he stuttered, because he was a coward.
The Water Tribe woman narrowed her eyes at him, and the shaking hands he'd raised, and the spear he'd dropped. He'd heard that the Water Tribe didn't let their women fight, but he'd met Katara and now there was this young woman with her terrifying ice-knife throwing wrist flicks and he was trying very hard not to look at the new cuts in his coat and just how much red came from the uniform and how much came from him, and part of his mind calmly accepted that "the Water Tribes repress their women" was just another piece of propaganda. The rest of his mind gibbered uncontrollably, because he was a coward even though he'd made it this far, snuck in with the ground troops and found somewhere isolated enough that he stood a chance of not getting attacked either by their people or his own before he could get his message across—
"The Admiral—" Pikesman Kazuto swallowed. And closed his eyes, so he didn't have to see cold blue eyes and enemy about-to-kill-me when he spoke. "The Admiral is going to—"
Which is the point where a bone club hit the side of his head. Suffice it to say, he did not see it coming.
"You need to be more aggressive with them if you want to fight, girl," the Water Tribe man growled.
"I think he was trying to tell me something, boy," a woman who'd never been that great of a healer but was loving life on the front lines replied. "Don't you dare hit him again, I'm bringing him down to the other prisoners."
If she had been a better healer, maybe the cursory water she ran over the soldier's head would have been enough to wake him sooner. Instead, he came to sense-by-sense: cold air on his face, something warm wrapped around him. Dim blue light like it was filtering through ice.
...Because it was filtering through ice.
Someone fussing over him, adding more blankets to the not inconsiderable pile already weighing him down, tucking them up closer to his chin even though the white feather-fur was already getting in his mouth.
The blurry things around him resolved themselves into ghosts. Pikesman Kazuto had already willingly walked into a Water Tribe stronghold and put himself on the mercy of murderers; ghosts weren't very scary, comparatively.
"Prince Zuko. Lieutenant Jee. Are we dead?"
"No," said the prince.
"Not yet," grumped the lieutenant.
"Okay." Kazuto tucked a blanket up further over his head, and settled back down. "Then you should probably know that Zhao is going to kill the Moon spirit and destroy waterbending forever. Also the tides. I don't think he's thought this through."
As a coward, he was relieved that this was now someone else's problem, and he could snuggle up under polar bear goose pelts and let the world spin around his new concussion as his commanding officers did what commanding officers do: ie, applied volume to the problem.
%%%
Zhao and his elite force of hand-picked guards easily slipped past the front lines, into the city.
Teruko and her band of disgruntled shipmates knocked together a few heads, and followed.
Sokka plucked a handful of oasis grass and let it slip through his fingers in complete boredom, because Aang had been glowy for like a day and still wasn't back, and a true Water Tribe warrior would be out there where the real fight was.
"Sokka. Please don't pick the spiritual grass."
"Sorry, Yue."
Back to watching the fish, then. The boring, endlessly circling fish, trapped in a pond that was way too small for them. They were large and fat and probably deliciously tender from their caging, but he wasn't allowed to put them out of their misery and/or eat them, how unfair was that?
"Sokka. Please don't drool into the spiritual pond."
"...Sorry, Yue."
%%%
"You need to let us talk to Chief Arnook," Zuko said, very reasonably and at a prisoner-appropriate volume. It wasn't his fault that the ice cells echoed.
"We're in the middle of an assault, Your Highness," one of the guards answered. "The Chief is busy."
"You heard him talking!"
"I heard the concussion talking. How do you kill the Moon?"
"It's a fish!"
The guard winced, and rubbed at an ear. "I think we would know if our patron spirits had turned into a pair of fish and put themselves in the royal family's fancy spirit garden."
Zuko narrowed his eyes. "If you don't let me out, I'll have no choice but to escape."
The guard did not smirk, or say I'd like to see you try. The guard was not trying to encourage this behavior.
The guard was, in fact, rather distracted by the faint sounds of battle and the feeling that he should be up there were the real fight was, not down here babysitting the Avatar's fun-sized firebending teacher and the advanced classes' worn-out punching bags.
The guard hadn't put too much thought into the whole ice cells and firebenders who'd previously been on their best behavior because their prince commanded it thing.
%%%
The oasis went from boring fish pond to full of (non-friendly) firebenders as quick as kicking down a little wooden door. And while Sokka took a moment to mentally pat himself on the back for being able to make a distinction between firebenders now, he took an even quicker second to get his sword between a still-glowy Aang and Zhao's smug face.
"Get them," Sleazy Sideburns ordered, and Sokka regretted every thought of boredom he'd ever had.
Katara was their distance fighter. She tried to keep the pressure off with waterbending, tried to funnel the soldiers that made it past her with ice walls so that they couldn't all surge forward at once. It was winter and night and the full moon, and she had a giant water moat to pull from, and Sokka caught her smiling.
Sokka appreciated the ice walls, and the funneling-down-to-one-convenient-soldier-at-a-time, and was glad neither Zuko nor Aang were here to see what he did with them. To be fair, he was going to be a crispy critter if this kept up so he wouldn't really have to face either of them—
Yue had her knife and only a few weeks of training that had been very interrupted with politicking. Last he saw she was somewhere behind him, near Aang, pretending to have neither. Playing the ol' helpless princess, oh dear what will I do if you brutes come closer, please do underestimate me card. Which was a decent last-ditch strategy and he was going to leave her to it before he got impaled by this pikesman—
The pikesman took a fireball to the back.
Sokka was suddenly very glad that he'd gone on a world-spanning journey and understood that not all firebenders were bad because this was now a highly relevant fact, and wow there was some sheer chaos going on past these ice walls, and would it have hurt whichever team was on their side to have worn different uniforms? The red v red was not helping him understand who needed stabbing, just that he couldn't stab indiscriminately anymore.
"Teruko! Hanako!" Katara called.
Sokka did not know any of these people, but Katara apparently knew all of them, and since she was controlling who got to easily slip past their ice walls that pretty neatly sorted them into stab/no-stab piles.
"What are you doing here?"
"Came to kill Zhao," the short lady said, all casual-murder-like. "Is the prince really alive?"
"Yes."
"I'll need to kick his ass for making us worry, then. Did you know he disappeared when our ship exploded?"
"Lieutenant Jee told us."
"The Lieutenant's alive? ...I have so much ass-kicking to live for," the tiny woman grinned. It was a Katara grin. It was the grin Katara had learned from.
"Oh hi," Sokka said, "you must be my sister's terrifying knife teacher. Nice to meet you." He hadn't actually meant to say the 'terrifying' part but she grinned wider so that was… a good thing?
Also they were all still maybe about to die, so. Back to the fighting. Aang could get back from his spiritual hobnobbing up anytime now thanks.
Zhao's men made it over the moat. His sister was amazing, but she was just one waterbender. One waterbender could not keep putting up ice walls against a whole squadron of Fire Nation soldiers. Team Avatar (and Team Murder Zhao) pulled back around Aang's position, and Sokka really wished they'd established some kind of 'we're under attack' signal with the rest of the Water Tribe's troops, or they had some way to scale the sheer ice wall behind them and get Aang out of here, because being in the blizzard he could see starting up on the plateau above them would be highly preferable to their imminent immolation. It was nice that Zuko's old crew had turned up and all, but most of them seemed to be sailors first and soldiers second and there was only so much that kill-happy enthusiasm could make up for. If the spirits wanted to send any divine intervention to their oasis right about now Sokka would not complain—
"Zhao!" his nephson shouted, taking a moment to kick open an already thoroughly kicked door as he stomped into danger on the wrong side of the battle line.
Sokka. Would like to lodge a complaint. At least Zuko had apparently brought every firebender in the prison with him. Which was… that was great. Great security, Northern Water Tribe. Sokka wasn't sure if these new benders were on his side, but he was reasonably confident they were on Zuko's.
"So you really are alive," Sideburn McSmugface said. "How is your engagement, Prince Zuko?"
"It's—It's— You tried to kill me!" His nephson was as subtle in his conversational redirections as always.
"Zuko! He's after Aang!" Katara shouted.
"No he's not!"
"Who's after me?" Aang asked. And wobbled a little behind them, before suddenly looking very alarmed. "Guys, the Moon spirit is in danger!"
"You don't say," Zhao said, and bagged a fish.
Sokka was not quite sure why the man had paused their battle to catch a snack, except that Aang and Zuko looked horrified and Yue looked… like she was recognizing an old friend for the first time.
"Wait, the fish is the Moon?"
Sokka would like to lodge an additional complaint, please.
%%%
"Now I was going to monologue," Zhao said, "but you know what they say—victors and history writing, and all that. It's getting a bit crowded in here; let's say we just skip to part where I'm immortalized. I'll pass out copies of my speech to any survivors."
It was a good speech. It would be a shame to ruin it with all this brawling, and it was so hard to give a proper soliloquy with so many children about. Zhao raised his fist, and lit up. Fish cooked at 145 degrees, yes? He'd just go ahead and double that—
"Please, stop!" a regal voice cried out, with the kind of heart-rending drama he could appreciate. A white haired girl stepped forward from the Avatar's group, her hands clasped over her heart as she boldly walked through his own troops. To be fair, his own troops hadn't been fully briefed on his moment of glory—it wouldn't do for someone to beat him to the punch, as it were—and parted with a bit more general bafflement than they otherwise might have. The girl knelt before him, her skirts flaring just so with years of practice. "Please, this fight is between mortals. Let the spirit go."
Her clothes were rich and untouched by the combat—which she had not been participating in, he realized. Though her head was demurely bowed, he could see her blue eyes sneaking shy glances up at him. Her hair was white beyond her years, and luminous in the moonlight.
"Yue the Moon-Touched," he realized. "Prince Zuko, is this your fiancee?"
How delightful.
But like many things, a delight to be savored later. He raised his flames to the bag, and gripped its squirming contents in one fiery fist. Squeezed as the moon above bled red with the Fire Nation's triumph—
Coughed. Took half a step back, from the light impact. The princess was… hugging him?
The pain didn't register until she stepped back, sliding her knife out from the gap between chest and shoulder armor. The weakly struggling bag dropped from his numb fingers, onto the grass.
Zhao roared, and his flames followed.
Above them the moon began to flicker, red to black, and all of their waterbender's ice shields splashed useless to the ground.
%%%
"Yue!" Katara rushed forward. Her bending had failed her but she still had her knife, and she cleared a path with a ferociousness Zhao's stunned troops were unprepared for. Most were watching the moon. Dropping weapons, raising faceplates. They hadn't known.
"Help me," the princess said, her teeth gritted.
Katara was already reaching for her friend. "Of course—"
"With the Moon," Yue said, her burned fingers trying to—to close around the bag, but they couldn't—
Katara hesitated a moment more, then lifted the bag, and slid its contents into back into the pond.
The fish fell limply into the water, its body seizing spasmodically. It looked—it looked—
(It looked like Yue's arms, but up its whole body, and there wasn't much difference between spirit and girl when all was black and red, red and black, like the moon above.)
"Heal her. Please."
Katara reached in. The black fish—the Ocean—nudged at her fingers as she raised the Moon back up towards the surface. She gathered the pond water around her hands—
But it didn't come. It didn't glow. It didn't heal.
The moon was red and black, in the sky and in her hands and Yue's arms were the same. Fish and princess both shuddered with pain, and Katara couldn't heal either of them.
The moon was dying.
No one in particular noted Admiral Zhao as he enacted a tactical retreat, or Prince Zuko following, or Sokka cursing quite profusely in their wake.
Most parties present were far more concerned with the Avatar, who'd just stepped across the pond's water and been swallowed whole. The water began to glow the worst shade of blue imaginable.
"Knell!" Princess Yue shouted, because she'd also become acquainted with the idea of good Fire Nation citizens.
Most in the oasis followed her command. Those that didn't served as adequate incentive to the rest to keep kneeling.
%%%
"Where's the prince?" Lieutenant Jee asked. "He… he kneeled, didn't he?"
"Was he here?" Crewman Teruko asked. "Was Zhao?"
His prince was with Zhao, and the Ocean was coming. Jee didn't peg Zuko as the kneeling type. He ran, and his crew followed.
%%%
The moon was injured, dying. And Katara couldn't heal it because she needed the moon to heal.
"She's strong," Yue said. "So are you."
So was the princess, not even making a sound with burns like that. Comforting Katara, with burns like that. Katara didn't realize her shoulders were shaking, that she was crying, until Yue set her chin on her shoulder. Of course it was just her chin, she couldn't use—
Yue leaned in, pressing their cheeks together. The only comfort she could give. "Don't give up."
"But I can't—"
But she could. Because the water under her hands was glowing. Not the overpowering blue of the Ocean's wrath, but the familiar shades of healing—
She didn't know whether it was her gasp or Yue's. She didn't know which of them leaned forward first, but they didn't lean forward together, and their contact was broken—
The water stopped glowing.
The Water Tribe Princesses looked at each other. Then Yue leaned back in, her cheek warm and her breaths so painful-short, and Katara… Katara healed the Moon.
She didn't see that with each charred piece of red and black she smoothed back into white scales, Yue's hair dulled. It blackened, strand by strand, as the Moon regained its luster.
%%%
Zhao was older and more experienced and maybe a little better, but he could barely use his right arm and he'd never seen dragons.
Which was to say that Zuko totally would have beaten him, except that suddenly Sokka was tackling him to the ground and then everything was glowing. The glow was stealing his opponent. A giant Water Tribe spirit-monster was stealing his countryman.
Zuko squirmed free, chasing them up onto the sculpted ice of a bridge's ledge. "Give me your hand!"
For a moment it seemed like Zhao would. Then he curled his hand to his chest with one final sneer.
Which was a completely unacceptable response to his Prince's orders.
"Zuko no, Zuko don't you dare, Zuko so help me son—"
Zuko had let go of Helmsman Kyo's hand. He was not letting go again. He jumped and grabbed, and Sokka jumped to grab his legs, and Lieutenant Jee grabbed Sokka's, and the rest of the crew and the firebending prisoners had caught up by then and were somehow completely unsurprised, which allowed them to react very quickly in tugging all three of them back.
They played tug-of-war with the Ocean, and they won.
%%%
The Moon was whole again in Katara's hands, but it… it wasn't swimming. Its gills moved, but it lay in her hands as weak as it had when she'd first put it in the pond. And she remembered Yugoda telling her that sometimes you could heal the body, but if the spirit had already given up then the patient could still waste away to nothing—
"What else can we do?" Katara asked, turning. A black-haired girl slumped off of her shoulder, and onto the ground next to her. A girl who'd been dressed like a princess. "...Yue?"
The princess stretched out an arm, and touched the fish.
Nothing happened.
And then everything did.
%%%
Zhao was quickly pinned down under the crew's disgruntlement. Also, as many bony knees as could reasonably be forced into his ribcage and/or kidneys. He cursed and struggled and generally assisted in bruising himself up quite nicely.
Zuko watched the Ocean spirit striding onwards. Watched it taking the red armored figures in its wake, the ones with no one there to pull them free. Watched it approach his fleet.
Where was Aang, what was he doing, wasn't dealing with giant terrifying spirits his job—
The moon turned white. This just meant the waterbenders around them could fight again.
%%%
Waxing and waning. What one gave, the other took; what one took, the other gave. Yue's burned fingers touched smoothed white scales and she understood. Water spiraled up her arms, leaving silver scars glowing in their wake.
The Moon shown down from the sky, and the Moon flicked out of the waterbender's hands to swim again, and the Moon rose to her feet feeling light as moonbeams.
(Sokka would appreciate the terrible wordplay. Where was Sokka? Ah, there.)
The soldiers still in the oasis were understandably wary of the girl who wore silver-shining water like others wore flowing sleeves. Even more so when the water kept creeping, a layered gown of light and waves settling around her without a single twitch of hand to indicate bending. They bowed very low, very quickly, if they'd even dared to get up at all. The Moon laughed, and ran her hand over the heads of the closest. Wounds healed. Tiredness washed from their muscles. And a warning frost lodged itself deep in their bones, where they wouldn't soon forget that she had seen them.
A second glow rose from the Spirit Oasis as the Moon walked. Each stride was perfectly normal; each covered more ground than it had any right to, until she stepped off a bridge and onto the heights of the city's outer wall. Below her, waterbenders newly restored to their element were hunting down those few red-armored soldiers that remained. Above them, her counterpart and the Avatar towered, with rage and power no mortal could oppose.
She took another step, and stood before them on the sea. The water was nearly glassy under her; a rushing pull that could be mistaken for calm, as La gathered the waves to him. When he let the tsunami come crashing down, she pushed, and it parted around the fleet.
These were not her people. But they were her little cousin's, and her brother's, and she would not let the sun rise to find any more of them dead.
La disagreed. The Ocean was ever a realist; the specks that sailed upon his back did so at his indulgence, and he had retracted it.
"The fight is already over," Tui said, pulling at the waters as he tried them gather again. "You don't need to do this."
This piddling fight was a wave. Wave would follow wave as long as water remained; the Ocean would not leave any alive to try this blasphemy again. He pushed, and the first of the ships toppled.
Tui and La continued to have a minor disagreement over this small stretch of sea.
It felt slightly more dramatic than that to the fleet caught between them.
%%%
The monster raised another wave. The Avatar was still nowhere in sight, maybe he was back at the Oasis helping Katara heal the Moon Fish and Princess Yue still (...that couldn't have been Yue walking past them. Could it? Her hair was boring-black, and she'd been glowing.)
The monster raised another wave and the Avatar wasn't there to stop it. So Zuko raised his hands, and let out a breath. Seed lightning crackled over his fingers, under his skin, lifted each hair on his head. There was fighting all around him but his crew would protect him. He could focus on just this: those were his people. He was their prince.
Lightning was much, much easier than he'd thought.
The first bolt hit the creature's arm, and its wave faltered. Zuko slid his feet to a firmer stance as it turned towards him. Began to come towards him. Towards his crew.
The next bolt went through its glowing core. The water spirit collapsed into a tidal wave that swept the streets for blocks, washing over blue and red alike. Not that there was much red left to hit.
...Now he needed to save his people from hypothermia. Also Yue's, because he was maybe going to marry her one day.
(She'd stabbed Zhao with all the sweet words and deceit of a proper princess. He could maybe see himself marrying her, a little.)
%%%
The Avatar fell. It was not easy to spot one small non-glowing boy rushing towards the ground in the pre-dawn light (or one black fish indignantly flopping its way from the street into a canal, and sullenly swimming back towards the oasis.) Most missed it.
Tui didn't. She took another step, and caught him. Kissed him lightly on the head.
Breath shuddered back into his lungs.
She lay him down on the ice outside the city. Lay herself down, next to him.
Agni was rising, and the Moon was setting. Yue collapsed.
%%%
"Hey, Zhao," Zuko said. The man sneered up at him from where he was still pinned against the ice. Zuko crossed his arms, and bared his teeth. "My fish was bigger."