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Thank you for reading!
"Watertribes... Tell them... Warn... Fire Nation... South... Southern..."
Impossible to keep her thoughts straight. The ache just won't go away. No amount of sleep can steady the erratic, painful drum at her temple. Not enough water to drink. Can't dispel the searing scratch of her throat.
And cold. Always cold. No matter how many of her furs she wraps herself in.
She wouldn't be cold in Zuko's ship. Those pipes were a spirits-send. Maybe she could ask to go back to her cell, snuggle down in those blankets. He could read to her again, soothe her with that low octave his raspy voice can drop to when he's content and secure.
No, she can't go back. She escaped.
Didn't she?
This is what freedom is. Travelling with her friends. Off the water. Sick.
Curled up without the comfort of another body sitting against the wall, intent on making sure she's okay. Putting wet compresses over her eyes when the old ones dry out. Through the pulsing aches, she can conjure the image of Zuko, chin tipped to his chest as he dozed.
A new ache pulses in her heart. Didn't know fevers could cause those. Dozing with Zuko carries her through the long nights. She can't truly sleep, not when Sokka's fever has gripped him for a week and shows no signs of breaking. He needs her.
"Warn... Watertribes... Fire Nation... Protocols..."
What did she need to warn them of again?
The Fire Nation were planning an attack!
No, wait, they'd already done that. For a while now.
Moth-wasps buzz in her ears. No peace. At least in her cell she could count on it to be quiet. Quiet and always warm.
Warmth blooms now. Beside her, behind her closed and aching eyes. Comes closer, kneels down in front of her. She forces them open a crack; vision blurry as she stares joyfully at the soft glow burning in his hand. "You came back."
"I said I would, Katara," a soft voice murmurs. The other hand holds something small and shiny. She can only spare her energy for the light.
"You always came back, even when I feared you wouldn't." She laughs softly until it becomes a pained cough. "I begged you not to go."
A confused tilt to his head casts a shadow across her eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"I begged you not to go... said I'd be alone... Was a lie." Her throat is dry as a bone when she swallows. "Truth... scared. Scared you wouldn't make it. Scared you'd leave... or get another..."
She can't get her eyes to focus, but something is off about his face. He always had the capacity to be gentle, even when he tried so hard to bury it under layers of brooding and wrath. But his face is too soft now, open and concerned.
And something else. She reaches up, and when she cups his left cheek, he leans into it without hesitating.
"Where... is it?"
"Where's what, Katara?"
"Where's... your scar?"
He recoils. Stupid. She knows not to bring it up. The slightest affiliation and he turns away. Conscious act or nervous compulsion? Sometimes she thought she knew. But he's just let her touch it, like it meant nothing at all, like it wasn't even there.
Something presses against her lips. Did he bring her water? He always brought her water, and she opens. It's not water. It's hard and cold.
"Suck on this. It will make you feel better," a dejected voice instructs.
She does until she falls asleep. Like before, whenever he came to her cell.
"Wait, wait, wait, hold on," Sokka waves his hands at her. "That was real?"
Katara glares at him. "No, I made the whole thing up. I thought I'd use a story of attempted genocide to debut my sick sense of humour."
It's Sokka's turn to glare at her, between his directions of Appa. "You were delirious with fever. Excuse me for thinking the Fire Nation couldn't sink any lower."
"You were way worse," Katara defends herself. "I was nowhere near your level of crazy. Right Aang?"
But the monk doesn't pipe up with a helpful example of Sokka laughing at the jokes Appa and Momo were telling all night. In fact, when she tries to prompt him with a glance, he looks away, knuckling his left eye self-consciously. He must be as troubled by the news as she was.
"I know it sounds insane, but it's the truth. I wouldn't have brought it up if I had any doubts: The Fire Nation tried to exterminate our tribe, Sokka." She shuffles to the edge of the saddle to put her hand on his shoulder. "They took our people sixty years ago. Then, when they learned they failed, they came back and took our mother."
Wordlessly, he reaches back to put his hand over hers. His grip is tight around her fingers. "We need to go back to the South Pole and warn them."
"No," Katara says, wincing when Sokka rips his hand away from hers. "We need to get to the North Pole, tell them what's going on and have them send aid."
"Katara, what about Gran-Gran, and Dakoda? We need to find dad and-"
"Aang learning to Waterbend is our top priority," Katara cuts him off, feeling a piece of her soul falling away with the declaration. "We can't stop the Fire Nation with some words, but he can by mastering all the elements before Sozin's comet. Our people already know to be wary. We'll be more help spreading the message. Incite more fury against the Fire Nation. If we didn't know it happened, I can bet no one else does. That is how we protect ourselves."
Sokka frowns. It's hard to get his mind off their father once it lands there.
"You said so yourself, right? You didn't think they could sink any lower? Well, here you go Nations of the world. Are you willing to be next?"
Sokka doesn't look happy, but he nods at her before returning his attention to the sky ahead. Only because Katara knows he feels just like that sky, empty, fathomless, and cold, does she leave him alone instead of pressing the issue.
Right now, Aang needs her attention as he paces wildly back and forth.
"Aang, you okay buddy?" Sokka calls when he notices as well.
"Am I okay?" The boy asks, uncharacteristically snippy. "I have to master three whole elements in less time it took me to master one and I haven't even started waterbending. We're still weeks away from the North Pole. What am I gonna do?"
Katara wishes she'd waited until they were further north to say anything now. He doesn't need the extra pressure. "Calm down, it's going to be okay." She has to grab and pull him down next to her when he doesn't listen. "If you want, I can try to teach you some of the stuff I know."
The first bit of hope she's seen in him shines through. His smile is soft and genuine. "You'd do that?"
"Of course." She begins tipping over the side of Appa's saddle, looking for a place to touch down. "We'll need to find a good source of water first."
"Maybe we can find a puddle for you to splash in," Sokka laughs as he flicks Appa's reins, beginning their descent.
"This is a pretty basic move, but it still took me months to perfect," Katara instructs as best she can while Aang watches and Sokka floats on Appa. The water's clear and perfect, reacting to her back-and-forth motions until waves ripple its surface. "There, see. Push and pull. Tui and La. Don't get frustrated if you don't get it right away. The key is getting the wrist movement right. Just feel its rhythm. Push and pul-"
"Like this?" Aang's wave crests and falls in time to the supple way his arms and heels lift and shift together. "Hey, I'm bending it already!"
It only gets worse from there, because Aang gets better and better and she stays the same. Katara can't understand it. She's lived her entire life surrounded by water and she can barely get the stuff to do what she wants on a good day. Watching Aang whip and twirl the water around his body, as if it's a part of him, is a slap as she barely holds her demonstration together long enough for him to show her how to do it better.
And, somehow, he reverse goads her into failing her Tidal wave. And, of course, he has to show the waterbender how to waterbend, all over Sokka and Appa. "Looks like I got the hang of that move! What else do you got?"
Nothing. She has absolutely nothing. "That's enough practicing for today."
Sokka's head pops out of the water. "I'll say. You just 'practiced' our supplies down the river."
"No worries," Aang says as he strips off his shirt and pants. "They're not too far. We can get those! Come on, Katara!"
"No!" Aang pauses, up to his shins in the shallows, about to dive after their rapidly disappearing possessions. Sokka shares his confusion as Katara stammers. "They're long gone, Aang. And they'll be ruined. No point getting ourselves even more soaked chasing them down."
"Oh..." He looks down sheepishly. Katara silently begs he doesn't notice that she hasn't, in fact, gone near the water past the bank. "No matter. I'm sure we can find somewhere to replace all our stuff."
There is, and it's filled with armoured guards. Metal is nothing new to Katara anymore. Months surrounded by it makes it lose a touch of its cold menace. But without awkward smiles, Pai Sho and expertly brewed tea, the faces behind the metal sneer and march past, and her skin crawls all over again.
She does her best to ignore them as her and Sokka peruse the stalls ahead of Aang. "We've got exactly three copper pieces left from the money King Bumi gave us. Let's spend it wisely."
"King Bumi?" Katara asks. "You guys met a king?"
"Oh, yeah, you missed a whole thing." Sokka launches into an excited tirade. "Turns out Aang isn't the only bender over a hundred years old. He's got this crazy friend, what did you call him, Aang?"
"A mad genius," Aang supplies as he eagerly browses a cart.
"Right. So, this mad genius also happens to be the king of Omashu – Yeah, that Omashu. We stopped in when we heard rumours Zuko was skulking about." She gets a half-sincere shrug from Sokka. Can't interrupt his flow with an actual apology at her extended captivity. "Halfway through trying to find you, I get kidnapped and encased in rock candy, and Aang's fighting an owlbat-shit crazy old man."
"Mad genius," Aang corrects testily.
"Sounds like you two had quite the adventure," Katara mutters.
Sokka goes on to regale her with more stories about two warring tribes, a canyon infested with fighting and fearsome beasts, a spirit upset over the forest the Fire Nation burned down, and Aang's mad dash to the crescent isle.
"Zuko beat Zhao in an Agni Kai once," Katara butts in as Sokka takes great pleasure in telling her how the prince turned tail and ran from Roku's temple the first chance he got. I asked him too. I didn't want him to kill himself. Could have told me he could handle Zhao before he set off. But she wouldn't dare say that to her brother.
"You make that sound like it's something impressive," Sokka grumbles.
"It is," Aang murmurs, sparing a look for Katara he doesn't realise she sees. He quickly wipes it away. Instead, he produces a white, bison shaped whistle. "And make that two copper pieces, Sokka. I couldn't say no to this whistle!"
Sokka stares, unimpressed, as Aang sucks in a deep breath and produces no sound whatsoever from the whistle. "I'll hold onto the money, I think."
Katara frowns. "I can do it, Sokka."
He takes the two measly coins anyway and tucks them in his belt. "It's all right, Katara, I don't mind dealing with the merchants."
She's so stunned she doesn't think to hold onto the coins. "So you can't understand the basic concept of washing your gross socks, but you know how money works now?"
Sokka rolls his eyes. "My dirty socks are gross to everyone, including me. But I actually like money now I've got the hang of this spending stuff. Who do you think took care of it while you were gone?"
He means to reassure her, not pierce a dagger into her heart. Of course, while she was chained to a ship, he was off learning beyond bartering. Becoming smarter, more capable, without her. He was becoming a man of the world, and she was still a Southern Watertribe peasant. How could she think they'd still need her to take care of their day to day when she could barely tell the difference between the value of five copper pieces and one silver?
So, she does her best to remind them. "Yeah, well remember that next time I'm chained up in a ship," she jokes awkwardly. "Next time I might be locked up longer than two months and someone else will have to scrub the crust from your nasty socks."
"You did what?" Sokka cries when Katara produces the waterbending scroll from her sleeve.
Admittedly it was a bit of a panic move brought on by the events of the morning; Sokka's independence from her, Aang's superior abilities, and, quite frankly, just wanting to be better. Katara wasn't going to apologise for any of it, even the stuff she maybe should.
"Sokka, where do you think they got it?" she chastises as she holds the scroll out of his reach. "They stole it from a waterbender!"
"It doesn't matter." Of course, he'd say that. At least some things haven't changed. "You put all of our lives in danger just so you could learn some stupid, fancy splashes."
"It's more than that," she growls, realizing too late Sokka won't let something like that go without an explanation. "These are real waterbending forms. You know how crucial it is for Aang to learn waterbending!"
You don't share a life with someone without being able to see when they're not telling you everything. Sokka knew her mind the day she went after Aang, and he knows a piece is missing now. And it hurts him more when he realises she isn't going to give it to him.
Not until she can understand it herself.
"Whatever."
She gets barely an hour's use out of the scroll before she ruins everything.
Yelling at Aang makes her feel truly awful. After being so monstrous to her brother in the past she thought she had her temper under control. Ashy regret coats her tongue as she apologises profusely to Aang and Momo, prostrating the scroll to him as a last act of confession.
That lasts until she rolls over for the hundredth and twelfth time that night, gives up on trying to sleep, and takes the scroll for some honest, uninterrupted practice. On the bank of the river she whips everything but the water into a frenzy. She hasn't pushed herself this hard in weeks and nothing is coming of it. She feels so enraged and powerless all at once.
Water won't obey her, but it wants to. It's reaching for her, wants to know she is one with it.
Come on, the water mocks her with its stillness. You spent all that time with me. Separated by a few layers of metal. And you mean to tell me you felt nothing?
"I tried." She can't shift her feet and move the water around her head.
Distracted?
"Captured."
Then why did you not focus that passion? There was plenty of it.
She focuses it now because it's there now. Because she had no one to truly hate in her imprisonment.
Her rage at the Fire Nation never ebbs. But after the first few weeks of Zuko accepting her, never trying to deflect her or change the subject, never trying to get her to believe in the empty promise of inner peace, she found she could only whip those waters into a frenzy for so long before the river began to run dry.
But it's back. And it's been waiting a long time. Fear is not her torrent.
She folds over the waters edge. Knees in the grass, her fingers inches from the water. Panting, she's desperate to touch it, but…
"Fear is my dam." Her voice cracks. Her reflection looks no better, staring helplessly up at her as the water ripples. "I don't want to fear you."
But she can't forget what being sucked down into those cold depths was like. Feeling it cling to her. Forcing its way down her throat. Trying it's hardest to take her.
"If mastering you can make this fear go away, I won't stop." Panting, she looks up. The moon smiles down at her. "Tui guide me, lend me your strength."
But when she looks down at the water, it is not strength she feels or the moon she sees. Her heart plummets into her stomach as she locks eyes with twin suns.
Zuko's reflection glares up at her.
Gasping, she kneels closer to the water, fingers hovering over his narrowed suspicion. How close did she come to touching his face once before, when the water lashed them from the sky instead of rippling beneath her fingers.
"Tui knows," she breathes and, for the first time in days, touches water. It ripples, corresponding shudders breaking across her own body. "You must hate me so much."
The glare softens, if only a little. Enough it looks almost like hurt.
"I can't say I'm sorry," she murmurs to the vision. "Why should I? You're not even here. But I have to live with this fear? Fuck you. It's not fair. You captured me. You imprisoned me. You and your insufferable destiny would have let the water kill me."
The vision in the water looks away, ashamed.
"And now I have to be afraid." She doesn't remember when she started crying. But she remembers thrashing the water, whipping it with her hand, carrying it into the air with her fury. "Fear is not the torrent. I will have no dam! I-"
The underbrush bursts apart, the body rushing towards her thick and too fast. She throws the water into his face, jumps back. But a hand is clamping down on her arm, squeezing tight enough to click the bones of her wrist. "Let go!"
A fist of moonlight slams into the man's cheek, and he drops into the water. Katara realises it's one of the pirates from the market. Looming over the pirate, rage simmering the air around him, pants Zuko.
He's enraged, gold eyes seething down at the groaning man with all the intent to kill. Until she gasps. Those twin suns lift to the sound. His eyes find hers. There's none of her surprise in him. He was there. Not some cruel vison of Tui and La.
Hot, lighting fast hands lash out, locking around her wrists. When he speaks, it's with all the coldness Katara feels closing over her heart. "I'll save you from the pirates."
"I don't remember saving and being captured meaning the same thing," Katara sneers, struggling against her bonds. Bark bites her skin, the rope not much better. "Not like you'd know the difference."
Zuko doesn't offer a response. Completely closed off, no shred of the wit he once attempted. His cool gold eyes remind her of a candle behind amber glass, flickering illusionary warmth but projecting nothing but cold. "Tell me where the Avatar is, and I won't hurt you or your brother."
"Go jump in the river," she snaps back.
"How about I throw you in? Seems to me it would be just as effective."
"Ashhole." Of course, he'd press the knife of his cruelty against her open wounds. Sentimentality is just another weapon to his kind of creature. "Where's my cuffs? Some nostalgia would go really nicely with this reunion."
"You miss the feel of metal?" he jeers. No amount of indifference can smother how good they've always been at pressing each other's buttons. A natural, deplorable talent. "Should have thought of that before you chose jumping off a ship in the middle of a storm over it."
"You're actually going to walk around like an open wound?" She can't believe she ever thought there was more to this Fire Nation princeling. "Quit being a hypocrite and untie me! Let's see who should truly be afraid of the water!"
Zuko doesn't move for a long moment. Then, he glides behind her tree, past where she can turn her head. Is he really going to jump in the river? "Try to understand. I need to capture him to restore something I've lost. My honour."
"You never had any," she whispers into the dark.
His huff washes across her neck. "Perhaps in exchange I can restore something you've lost."
Pale fingers pinch the thin strips of blue cloth suspended in front of her neck. At their centre glints the glass disc she's spent every night begging to Tui and La she'd somehow find. "My mother's necklace." She tries to twist, see his face. "Y-you had it this whole time?"
"I didn't steal it if that's what you're wondering." But he didn't give it back for months either. She doubts he'll be giving it back now.
She twits in her bonds, trying to get a look at his face. Her nose bumps the inside of his wrist. She jerks back the same moment Zuko pulls his arm away, but he's not quick enough. She felt it, the ridged texture of still healing scar tissue curling around the skin.
He comes back around, tucking her necklace into his belt. In the same motion he tugs on the cuff of his vambrace, covering the sliver of scarlet skin. "Tell me where he is."
"No!"
"Enough of this necklace garbage!" Snaps the pirate captain from where he and his crew are watching their little show. He regards Katara with particular contempt. She did start all of this, but she gives a good amount of that animosity back. "She's obviously not going to just tell you. Maybe start breaking some fingers and she'll have ten chances to rethink her silence."
"Give me a pair of tweezers and twelve minutes, and you'll know where that bald boy is," the buck-toothed grandstander simpers.
Zuko pulls the waterbending scroll from his belt. Without a word, he opens his palm underneath it, flames sparking to life. "I wonder how much this is worth."
But as the pirate's start forwards, Katara shivers. No heat comes off Zuko. His rage is cold.
"A lot, apparently. Now you help me find what I want, you'll get this back, and everyone goes home happy. Search the woods for the boy and meet back here!"
He doesn't extinguish the flames until the pirates skulk away. Even then, his rage is obvious. He never tortured her, even when he was a faceless enemy to her cause and it would have made sense. He owed her no sense of dignity, but the notion disgusts him. Thank the spirits for Iroh's influence.
"There was a time you would jump at the chance to bring me everything on watertribe history," she murmurs as he breathes to calm himself.
His back stiffens. "There was… until you jumped over the side of my ship instead."
"I fell," she spits. "I didn't jump. No waterbender in their right mind would jump into the ocean during a storm. The Storm Sons ride the waves because we'd never be so arrogant as to believe we can tame them, so stop bleeding all over the place and claiming I held the blade. Just, stop it!"
"Stop what?" He turns on her, walking into her space. "Stop you falling into the ocean? Practically slice my arm off trying to keep you from drowning?" Before she can blink, he's ripping the metal from his arm. The vambrace clatters to the ground but she can't look away from the livid pink snake curling around his arm. "Okay, next time I'll let you battle an ocean because you choose dying over spending another second with- on my ship."
His heaving chest brushes against hers with each laboured breath. Warm air burns her eyes, stinging and sharp. But she can't look away from his arm. "Zuko…"
He notices her unwavering gaze on his arm, eyes narrowing. "Don't pretend you care."
"Does it hurt?" she asks because she does care. Tui and La, he's tied her to a tree and it's all she can think to ask.
And he's still glaring at her, suspicion constant in hard lines no twenty-year-old should have. They remain even as he rolls his wrist, muscles in his forearm flexing beneath the twisting, mottled skin. "They always do at first." His eyes trap her. "Scars know they're forever. They like to make an impression."
Her eyes scan his face, like he knew she wouldn't be able to help. But he doesn't count on how hers find their way to his, how they don't shift away, too embarrassed by his face to hold contact for too long. It's the first stab at his defences, his weaponised animosity slipping.
She holds him with her gaze because her hands are tied behind her back. Because she never tried when she could.
He knows her mind, coming closer. Fingers shaking as they reach out. She doesn't even look at the fingers, still holding his eyes as those fingers cup her cheek. Skin cold. Heart thumping in her chest.
So like the final time they touched.
Except the healing skin on his arm is rough against her neck, and his thumb does not trace her bottom lip. His eyes aren't wide with the elation saving the helmsman gave him. His pulse doesn't thrum under her fingertips as he leans down, ready to consume her world in flame.
At least her hands are bound again. Except they weren't then, not really. That was the action which shattered their fantasy.
She shatters it again now. Only she can't stop herself from being selfish and taking a piece of him. Turning her cheek into his palm, she nuzzles pale skin which ignites on instinct. Her lips brush the base of his thumb as she asks, "How is using me to capture Aang going to fix anything, Zuko?"
"It can't," he exhales, voice wrecked. But he leans into her like he wants it to, hand sliding up her cheek to cradle her jaw as his forehead leans against hers. She presses as much into him as her bonds allow, feeling him squeeze his eyes shut like he always does when he's agonising over a decision.
"Are you going to lock me back up on your ship so we can play Pai Sho and drink tea in our little metal bubble?" He smells like woodsmoke and spiced tea leaves. She could get drunk on it. "Nothing is going to bring back what we had, Zuko."
"We never had anything," he seethes, his outburst thrashing against the skin of her neck. A vein near his temple throbs. "We couldn't. You made sure of that. Oh wait."
He pulls back, and the flame is locked back behind the glass. He's cold as he bends to retrieve his discarded vambrace, locking it back over the fresh scars. "You left me with more than one thing. Thanks for the tip on staying ahead of Zhao. Not that I'll be needing it come morning."
She realises what the tip she didn't realise she'd left him is as she goes over the waterfall.
He's there, on the edge of the cliff. Both eyes wide, watching her. Mouth open in a silent scream, of her name. She can see the way his lips move. Never looking away from her. It's the same way she looked at him when the Pirate Captain drew his sword against the unarmed Prince.
Until Appa catches them against the raging torrent of water, and his eyes fly to the north star before the bison's cleared the grasstop banks.
"Zuko knows we're going north."
Sokka and Aang share a look. She's guilty of so much today, yesterday. She should have told them then as she tells them now what she went through on his ship. Parts of it she leaves out, obviously. Not the sharing of history, they knew that already. Not her fixing his wounds when he returned from Roku's island. She's a healer by nature. She even tells them about teaching Zuko to skim. That night was the first time she'd tried to break through her cuffs, but the metal was too strong, her waterbending too weak.
She doesn't tell them she had fun watching him fall over. Doesn't tell them she saw how different he was from Jet. She'll never tell a soul how her heart beat a little quicker each time she called him Sunshine, and he smiled.
It's heavy now, wrapping itself in a nest of melancholy in her stomach. "Aang, I still owe you an apology. You were just so good at waterbending without really trying. I got so competitive that I put us all in danger. I'm so sorry."
Aang and Sokka look at each other again, before they both smile at her, and Aang takes her hand. "That's okay, Katara. I think they would have figured it out anyway. We were so desperate to get that scroll."
She almost cries as she smiles. "Who needs that dumb scroll."
Sokka sees her misty eyes and comes closer as well. "Is that how you really feel?" he chides as something paper and firm bonks against her shoulder in place of his comforting hand.
"The scroll!" She grabs it. He lets her. "How did you get this?"
"Lifted it right off Zuko while he was distracted with that Captain," Sokka crows. "It was so easy to grab. He jumped back from the sword right into me. Honestly, Katara, how did you get caught back in that town? It was so easy, Zuko practically gave it to me."
Never retreat backward. No attack opens when a man allows himself to be pushed.
If Sokka or Aang notice how she cradles the scroll to her chest as Appa goes high, breathing in what's left of the woodsmoke and spiced tea leaf smell, they're too busy comparing their pirate accents to bother letting her know.
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