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"Aunt Wu?" Katara knocked gently on the wooden doorframe, hesitating on the threshold of the old woman's shop. Meng had gone home for the day, and Katara was glad for it. She wasn't sure why, but it seemed like the young girl had a problem with how much Katara was coming to talk to her boss.
"Yes, how can I h- Katara? Child, haven't you already come to me, today?" There're too many lines on the aged woman's face to tell if she's confused or irritated.
"Yes, but I realised..." She's not sure how to go on.
Aunt Wu's face softens. "What's troubling you, child?"
"I forgot to ask you something."
"You forget now, child, I know your fortune," the old woman snorts good naturedly. "I can assure you, you forgot nothing."
"That's the thing," Katara presses on, looking at the low candlelight of the fast approaching evening. "It's not my fortune."
Aunt Wu's grey eyebrows disappear into her grey hairline. "You want me to look into someone else's future for you?"
"No!" Katara stammers. She should have thought this through more before coming here. "N-no. Not his future. I couldn't... It would be wrong to know his destiny. He seems to think he does, but he's wrong."
Aunt Wu listens through her rambling thoughts, patient as melting ice caps.
"I just... he's alone now, or he thinks he is. He doesn't understand how much he has. What's been lost is all that consumes him, he wants it back. Yet if he gets it back that means we never would have-" She cuts herself off. "I only know what he was like before and during when I knew him. Now..."
"You want to know if he's okay after." Aunt Wu doesn't need to ask, grey eyes piercing through the encroaching gloom. "I'm sorry, child, but my predictions are just that. I could not tell you what you wish to know, any more than I could tell you what colour his eyes are without ever looking at them."
Gold, Katara thinks glumly, like the rising sun.
"What do you think, Katara?"
"What?" Katara looks up from watching her feet make tracks in the ground, blinking as yellows, golds and reds fill her vision.
Zuko? Then she remembers. Aang touched them down in a soft autumn forest to give Appa a break. Auburn and russet leaves cling healthily to their branches, but winter is on its way. Ahead of her, Momo chitters as he clings to the side of a roadside kiosk, pawing at the brightly lit posters.
"Oh, good idea, Aang." She walks towards the kiosk's most brightly lit poster. "This should give us a good idea of what's around here."
Aang beams while Sokka paws hungrily at their shared travel pack, producing nothing but a few measly crumbs. "See if you can find a menu, I'm starving!"
"I bet we'll find something to eat here." Aang comes up next to Katara. His grey eyes trace the words, growing rounder and more excited as he reads. "Fire Day Festival. Fire Nation cultural exhibits, jugglers, benders, magicians. This would be a great place for me to study some real firebenders!"
Katara's about to answer when Sokka's voice from the other side of the kiosk cuts her off. "You might want to rethink that idea. Look at this."
Aang is not as worried as he should be when he sees his face on the board. In fact, he's downright ecstatic as he rips it off. "A wanted poster. How daring," he laughs, looking at Katara.
She doesn't find it as funny. "We should keep moving." The other posters on the board are equal in tone. A man with twin scars on his face stares disdainfully down towards the town which hosts the festival. Beneath him, a screaming blue spirit bares angry fangs at anyone who thinks to look at it too long.
Aang gives that one a little more of his attention when he notices Katara looking at it. "I have to learn firebending at some point and this could be my only chance to watch a master's up close." He moves between her and the poster, looking pleadingly up into her eyes. "Please, Katara?"
Her eyes flick over the posters again. There does seem to be a lot of divided attention. Surely it couldn't hurt if they keep their heads down. "I guess we could go check it out."
Aang whoops, taking her hands and dancing her away from the kiosk, towards the path into town. Sokka blocks their path before they can begin descending the hill. "You wanna walk into a Fire Nation town where they're all fired-up with their ... you know, fire? Katara, I think all that time you spent stuck on Zuko's ship fried your brains."
Katara doesn't like to be reminded of those past months. Neither, it seems, does Aang. He frowns, becoming serious.
"We'll wear disguises," she quells before an argument can break out. "And if it looks like trouble, we'll leave."
Leaving is the last thing on Katara's mind as they take their first cautious steps into the festival. Everything is bright and warm despite the autumn chill, the air hot and buzzing with candles, banners and a hundred excited voices. Children run around in masks of all colours, giggling and crying out when a particularly present black wailing dragon jumps out at them. Katara can't figure out the significance; it wasn't something that came up in her time with Zuko. She tries not to dwell, instead keeping her mind present, on the fun she rarely gets to grab for herself.
Aang shares her excitement, awed by everything he sees in his open, enthusiastic face. It's a face that will get them into trouble if they're not careful. Only after it's covered by a smiling blue spirit being hugged by sun like yellow petals does she ask him if anything reminds him of his time before he was frozen in the ice.
"Oh, everything is amazing, Katara!" He exclaims. "Just you wait. There'll be demonstrations, competitions - both for benders and nonbenders - stuff to show off their skills at the martial practices. And competitions to see who can eat the hottest chilis. And the dancing!" He smiles dreamily, wistfulness taking him back to balls, parties and festivals a century gone. "The Fire Nation is home to some of the greatest dancers ever."
"Fire Nation citizens don't dance anymore, Aang," Katara corrects. "Sozin implemented a strict outlawing."
"What? That's crazy!" Aang cries before she can lay out Ozai's manipulation. Sokka isn't listening to them anymore, leading their procession with his stomach. "Are you sure?"
Sokka dashes ahead of them before she can answer, pulled by the delicious scents across the plaza. Katara and Aang follow but she pulls up just short of the stand as a familiar, spice and butter scent hits her. Pouches of something she's never seen before are up front, but spitting away behind the man is a hot, cylindrical disc suspended over a firebenders working flame. Mounds of dough flatten and puff up, gorgeously speckled with charred brown spots. It's much more well-presented, but the smell is the same as the flat breads and curried komodochiken katsu curry transport her back to every time Zuko would juggle open her cell door with one hand, a tray carrying a steaming bowl and dry piece of flatbread in the other.
Far from stewed sea prunes, the heat of the dish took some getting used to. Squinting in memory, Zuko's amused half smile watches her force the first few bites down from the periphery of her vision. It blurs each time she tries to look at it, so much like Zuko himself whenever anything close to appreciation or praise came too close.
He's okay. She makes herself remember Aunt Wu's not-prediction, then silently chastises herself for caring. He certainly didn't, if his behaviour at the abbey was any indication. He barely even looked at her. Why does she care?
"What are those?" Sokka points to the steaming bags.
"Flaming Fire Flakes!" The stall manager proclaims. "Best in town."
"I'll take 'em," Sokka says, paying the man and gobbling down the bag before Katara can warn him. At least his choking spasms provide an amusing distraction from her pitying thought spiral.
""Flaming fire flakes", hot? What do you know?" she says, barely paying attention.
Around her, life removed from war sprouts between the cracks of devastation. True, soldiers parade around, but their presence is more formal than threatening. Security measures stretching into the simple Fire Nation village. Life is happening everywhere, in its purest forms. If not for the banners, cultural demonstrations, and the heady scent of spices that cling to Firebenders, she could mistake this place for an Earth Kingdom town far too easily.
Aang grows bored and leads them to a puppet show, then another firebending exhibition, flitting between side shows and demonstrations as easily as his element. It should have been her first warning, how easily he grew distracted. But he was excited for the first time in weeks and was funnelling it into pursuing his bending. In a way, it was her own impatience which led to their cover being blown.
If it weren't for Chey, they'd never have made it out of that festival.
He's the most passively eccentric man she's ever met. It's not only that he's strange, but he seems to be operating on a different plain of existence to everyone else as he explains what he was doing at the festival. "I serve a man. More than a man really, he's a myth, but he's real, a living legend. Jeong Jeong the Deserter. He was a Fire Nation general, or wait, was he an admiral?"
"He was very highly ranked, we get it," Sokka says, still not trusting the ex-Fire Nation soldier.
"Yeah! Way up there!" Chey exclaims, completely missing Sokka's sarcasm. "But he couldn't take the madness anymore. He's the first person ever to leave the army - and live. I'm the second, but you don't get to be a legend for that."
Katara watches Chey closely. His utter devotion to this mysterious Jeong Jeong borders on zealotry. Any Fire Nation admiration she's witnessed, meagre though it may be, is not this enthusiastic. They portion out their praise like each word are the scraps of a last meal. Even gentle, sharing Iroh was never this indulgent with his adoration.
Chey bulls on, oblivious to Katara's attention. "That's okay though. Jeong Jeong's a firebending genius. Some say he's mad - but he's not! He's enlightened."
"Risen like a new sun?" Katara suggests, much to Aang and Sokka's confusion.
"Exactly! She gets it!" Chey cries in excitement.
She should have seen the second warning the next morning.
Through her breathing, pushing, and pulling, Aang and Jeong Jeong yell at each other. Well, Jeong Jeong yells, Aang whines. She does her best to tune him out, but his unbroken voice pitches so high sometimes, she's surprised panther-wolves haven't come looking to see what all the fuss is about.
"Wider!" Jeong Jenog snaps in regard to Aang's stance. "Bend your knees!"
Katara's own weight shifts through the movements of the water whip smoothly, but her patience is growing thin from all the yelling. Her legs know the pull against the water's push, so she tries widening her own stance a little, testing the waters of this new way, so to speak, and finds she can't shift as easily, but the whip's extension almost doubles with the wider centre of gravity. A sweet ache begins to burn in her thighs. Her breathing deepens as a response, and soon, everything works in sync.
Push, pull. In, out. Forwards and... Except she isn't moving backwards. A wider stance shifts her more side to side. She can dip her shoulder and slip instead of step. She needs one hand to brace the new distribution of weight, but she can move around instead of retreating.
Never move backwards, rasps a voice in her mind. No opening appears if a man lets himself be pushed. Bend with the strikes, let them create space for you to move around and-
"What are you doing?"
She's so startled she almost falls over. Only the hand grabbing her bicep keeps her from tumbling into the river. But Jeong Jeong doesn't hold, letting her sprawl on her knees in the mud.
"Practicing?" Katara pants, the word sounding more like a question.
The Fire Master eyes her. Twin scars crease the right side of his elderly face. Not for the first time, Katara wonders just how old he is. As old as Iroh? Older? He must have served with the Fire Nation for a long time. And, if Chey is anything to go by, he's quite adept at making a name for himself.
"Master?" Aang pipes up. His heads twisted almost all the way around, trying to get a look at what's happening on the bank. "What's with the walking off? I thought we-"
"Silence! Talking is not concentrating! Look at your friend, is she talking?" Jeong Jeong gestures as Katara bends the mud from her knees. "Carry on, child."
Like he's granting her permission. Did her trying out the firebending style offend him that much?
Aang's face screws into a frown. "But what am I concentrating on?"
"Feel the heat of the sun. It is the greatest source of fire. Yet, it is in complete balance with nature!"
Trying not to feel self-conscious, Katara returns to her bending, legs closer together, breathing deep as Jeong Jeong resumes his yelling.
It doesn't get better from there. Self-control was everything to Zuko. Iroh taught him mastery over breathing before all else. Yet no matter how many times Jeong Jeong tries to hammer home the importance of discipline to Aang, the young boy pushes back.
Katara begins to worry so much she can barely concentrate on her own practice. Aang might think he knows all the elements on a theoretical level, but Katara's seen fire in action. More importantly, she's seen Zuko put the discipline of his bending into practice without creating a so much as a spark. He takes it as seriously as he takes his quest to hunt Aang down. But if she were to say that, Aang would think he doesn't take his duty of Avatar seriously.
It's as she's pondering how to broach the subject of how to give her advice without criticism or compare, when Jeong Jeong does the opposite.
"I had a pupil once who had no interest in learning discipline. He was only concerned with the power of fire - how he could use it to destroy his opponents and wipe out the obstacles in his path." Even from outside his hut, Katara can hear how weary he sounds. "Fire is a horrible burden to bear. Its nature is to consume and without control it destroys everything around it."
Her mind goes to Zuko against her will. Is this how he feels? Is this why he spends hours at a time in front of that shrine? His discipline almost put her to sleep, but what could she expect? Still water calms, soothes the burn from the soul. Fire, by its very nature, can never be still, so Zuko forces himself to be until practically comatose.
Ironically, the only other element which could understand that need for control is air.
"Learn restraint, or risk destroying yourself and everything you love."
Aang understands and proves it by sitting outside Jeong Jeong's hut all night. Rising with the moon, Katara sits by the riverside and meditates. Feels the cool embrace of the moon. Feels it shift the tides in her blood. She can almost feel every vessel pulsing through her body. At one point she must drift off. Hazy imaginings of her controlling a puppet, only the puppet has no strings. It's like its body is linked to her fingers, dancing to her whims.
Jeong Jeong's voice wakes her from the dream, though by how cold she feels, remembering that helpless puppet, she wonders if it were more of a nightmare.
"We're going to work with fire now."
Aang's exuberant reaction puts an icicle of dread in Katara's stomach. Sitting up, she pays close attention to what Jeong Jeong instructs of Aang, much to the young monk's displeasure.
"This is the worst firebending instruction ever! All he does is leave me for hours to concentrate or breathe!" Aang huffs the moment Jeong Jeong is gone, off to see to some trouble down the river.
"I'm sure there's a good reason," Katara tries, but Aang isn't buying it. "Power in firebending comes from breathing, Aang. That's what Jeong Jeong wants you to understand."
"I already understand it fi-" Aang stops, looking away from his leaf to her. "How did you know that?"
"Know what?" She does her best to affect an innocent air.
"Know about firebending. Jeong Jeong only told me that yesterday."
"I dunno. I breathe for my waterbending. Here, I'll show you." She folds her legs under her by the bank. "Bring it in for eight, hold, out for eight." She shows him, feeling her pulse slow.
"I'm a monk, Katara. I know how to meditate," Aang's voice teases good-naturedly.
"That's what Jeong Jeong is trying to tell you, Aang. This isn't the meditation you're familiar with. It's more. Have you ever meditated and sprinted at the same time?"
"Jeeze, Katara, maybe you should be my firebending teacher." Aang's good nature is beginning to bleed into frustration. "You already got the broken record part down."
She opens her eyes to glare at him, but stops short as he waves his hand, and the leaf in his palm sparks to life.
"I did it! I made fire!"
Katara watches him juggle it between his hands. The icicle grows colder, spreading throughout her stomach. "That's great, but you should take it slow."
He doesn't listen, tossing it back and forth, over his head, behind his back. Taking his eyes off the flame, laughing as he passes it from hand to hand, then pushes out and a blast sears the open sky over the river.
"You're going to hurt yourself!" Katara tries to warn. "Breathe, slow down!"
"I want to know how that juggler did it." He throws the fire up and spreads his arms wide. His smile shines bright in the circle of flames. It grows wider and wider, the flames feeding off his excitement.
The third warning hits her the exact moment the flames do.
Throwing her hands up is all she can do to protect herself, crying out as pain lances down her fingers, onto her palms. It hurts worse than anything she's ever felt. It evaporates the air in her lungs, her cries choking. She's vaguely aware of Aang's cries, Sokka pushing her behind him before he flies at Aang in a rage.
"You burned my sister!"
The words follow her as she flees downriver.
A benders hands are everything to them, and that is especially true for a waterbender.
Firebenders can exhale flames. Earthbenders can kick the earth from its place. Aang can skip and flow with the winds at his leisure. But Katara's control begins and ends with her hands.
When Zuko had her cuffed it felt like he was keeping a part of herself hostage. Even when he let her up on deck with her hands bound, the fact she couldn't touch the water, feel it between her fingertips, was the cruellest kindness she doubts he knew he gave.
Now her hands are ugly, scarred things. Livid and fresh, the burns twist around her fingers, hissing in pain like vengeful, mocking snakes. It's all she can do to hold in the cry of anguish as she looks at them. No matter where she is, who she is with, Fire will always take something from her. First her people, then her mother. It's trying to take her element from her. It wants to take Aang, but she won't let it.
But before she can go back, she must try to soothe the pain. It's too raw right now. If her nerves are tested, she'll say or do something she'll regret. Aang isn't the only one learning to temper a flame within their soul. Luckily, only Katara can be burned by hers. So, she starts by dipping her hands in the water. She whimpers. It hurts like crazy.
Breathe, she reminds herself. In for eight, hold, exhale. She breathes until the pain feels almost non-existent. Almost too easy. Opening her eyes, she gasps at the soft blue light surrounding her cupped hands, almost as if the water has taken them gently, inspecting the mottled flesh.
When she draws them free of the river, and the water drips away, her burns are gone. The pain is gone.
"How..."
"You have healing abilities." Jeong Jeong approaches her, hesitating at her side, and she realises he is waiting for her permission before he sits.
Stunned, she nods. She thought he didn't like her, but it seems the master holds her in much higher regard than she realised as he folds himself down next to her.
He's hesitant, shifting in the loose sand. When he speaks, regret for a thousand actions weighs his voice to barely a rumble. "The great benders of the Water Tribe sometimes have this ability. I've always wished I were blessed like you - free from this burning curse."
"You're a master," Katara argues, but honestly, she's stumbling her way through this. "You have power I'll never know."
Jeong Jeong regards her with a sideways look, like he can't bear to tear his eyes away from the cool water. Is that why he lives on its edge? She didn't give it much thought before, but seeing how he slumps under the weight of his own power, shies away from his inner flame's warm embrace, living near the only thing powerful enough to quench him, sheds a new light in Katara's eyes. "Water brings healing and life. Fire brings only destruction and pain. It forces those of us burdened with its care to walk a razor's edge between humanity and savagery." He shudders with an exhale. "Eventually, we are torn apart."
He dips an old, gnarled hand into the water. Ripples spread across the surface, and as Katara watches the little waves disappear, she breathes deeply.
"Water is not only gentle, and it can bring death just as easily as life."
The master waits quietly, sensing there is more, knowing she needs to make sense of it herself.
"I won't presume to understand the destruction you carry. But I'll wager those scars came from something else. Water tried to kill me. It got hold and tried to drag me down and without-" Without Zuko, she'd have died. With Zuko she could have died. It goes around and around. It thunders through her like a waterfall without end.
"Your flame burns in you. Agni warms the back of your neck and you remember to be thankful. Since that night, water has only left me cold."
Jeong Jeong doesn't know what to say, she knows because elderly men like him and Iroh may not have the answer, but they have the experience of long life. It is invaluable, and something she's watched Zuko, Aang, Sokka, too many, dismiss. Now, more than ever, she needs some.
"You know the prayer rites of my people," he finally croaks. "Even they have forgotten their values."
She almost laughs. "I... spent some time in study of culture. Your pupil, Iroh, holds your teachings dearly."
The white bushy eyebrows disappear into the white bushy hairline. "How did yo-"
He cuts himself off with a violent shove to Katara's shoulder. A second later, the water in front of them bursts apart. Violently hot showers almost scald the pair but Jeong Jeong's aged appearance hides a deceptively agile man. He throws a wall of fire against the hell rain, evaporating it.
"Get your friends and flee!" Jeong Jeong roars. Another wall of flame erupts around him, snaking through the hot sand and shearing the ships off their section of river. "Go!"
Katara spares the master one last look, before rushing off to find Sokka.
Aang's wide grey eyes go even wider as Katara lifts the burn from his shoulder. He looks between his shoulder and her hands. Maybe it's the adrenaline of facing Zhao that puts a few seconds between the point and his getting it. "Wow, that's good water."
"When did you learn that?" Sokka gawks, leaning over to poke at Aang's freshly healed shoulder.
"I guess I always knew," Katara answers, not because it's true, but because she's not in the mood to be pestered. But, in true Sokka fashion, he rakes her over the coals over past injuries she left unattended. "Knew of, Sokka. I also couldn't water whip until a month ago."
He huffs, but when she catches him looking at her hands he's smiling.
Aang looks too, and, as if he's worried he'll hurt her again, carefully takes her hand. "I'm so sorry, Katara. I'll never, ever, ever, do anything so stupid again."
"I know Aang." She pulls him into a hug, one he sinks into, grips tightly at her back. "But you will have to firebend. You know that, right?"
His fingers clench her tunic. "You didn't see him, Katara," he says in way of answer as he pulls back. "Zhao was out of control. Jeong Jeong was right, he was so obsessed with burning everything down, he didn't realise what he was doing. What if I'm no better? What if I can't even control a little flame again?"
"You will," Katara insists, gripping his shoulder. "Zhao may have been his last pupil, but he couldn't understand Jeong Jeong's lesson. He couldn't understand the nature of his teachings."
"But neither could I, even when I tried."
"You will, eventually." Katara squeezes his shoulder. "We'll practice it together. I can show you what Jeong Jeong was trying to teach you."
Aang tilts his head up at her. "Show me what?"
"The Snapping Willow."
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