Water

The Face Stealer

Not for the first time, Zuko found himself wishing that he'd had a little more time to explore and learn his way around the city. He knew enough to guess which direction Katara had gone, but she was out of sight by the time that he made it through the hatch. All he could really do was hope that she hadn't veered too far from the path he was following, or he might not be able to find her in time.

He turned toward the right, back in the direction that the creature had gone, and sprinted as fast as he could, keeping his eyes fixed on the snow-covered street in front of him. The path was worn down well enough that he couldn't make out any distinct footprints that might have belonged to Katara, but by the time that he made it halfway down the block, a pattern of weird, pointed indentations began to appear in the snow. Those had to be the centipede thing's tracks. And unless he was wildly mistaken, Katara would be following those tracks too.

Zuko raced along after them, scarcely even remembering to check the street corners for guards who might try to stop him. If there was anything good to be said about the centipede creature breaking out into the physical world, it was probably the fact that, by comparison, Zuko might as well have been invisible. If he passed by any guards, he didn't notice, and there certainly wasn't anyone bold enough to try and slow him down as he ran.

He made it as far as the canal where that asshole, Hahn, had stopped them last night, before he heard voices from somewhere beyond the next corner. Katara's voice, he was almost positive, and another, much louder voice. The same deep, unnerving rumble from the oasis.

Zuko slowed to a walk and did his best to quiet his breathing as he crept up toward the corner. If he could just keep silent and remain out of sight for a few seconds, he could figure out what was going on out there, and maybe he could carve out something resembling an advantage from this situation.

"You are a bold little thing, aren't you?" the spirit asked. An odd clicking sound punctuated almost every word as its shadow slid back and forth across the ground, like each and every one of the joints in its hardened body had a sound of its own. "But I suppose I should expect as much. You were bold the last time we met as well. Some things will never change."

"What do you mean, last time? I've never seen you before in my life," Katara shouted back at the creature.

Zuko poked his head out just far enough to see her standing her ground against the spirit as it circled her in the middle of the street. Though Katara's eyes were wide with terror, she seemed to be fighting to hold both her voice and expression as steady as possible. She followed the spirit's motions as much as she could, and her gaze didn't land on Zuko for even an instant.

"Human lives are such silly, fragile little things," the creature said. "Stretch your mind back further. That thing inside of you has been around nearly as long as I. We have met many times before." The creature surged toward Katara, only stopping when its face was only inches away from hers. She recoiled back by a few steps. "I nearly got a taste of you last time. If you give me an opening, I will succeed today instead."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't you remember, Avatar? Our paths crossed just a few centuries ago. Or have you forgotten our last encounter?" The creature's face shifted and changed until it stared back at Katara through a young woman's eyes. "You shouldn't forget. It does a disservice to the one I took away from you." The creature kept circling, its voice as low as ever despite the fact that it was speaking through the young woman's mouth. "What would she say if she knew that you'd forgotten so soon?"

Shit. What had this spirit thing done to her past life? And exactly which past life was it talking about? It couldn't be Aang, he knew that much at least. But if this thing had eaten someone close to some other past Avatar, then what was stopping it from doing the same thing again? Whowould the centipede thing go after first?

Katara stood her ground. "If you know so much about me, then you should also know that I have a lot of past lives to keep track of. Why don't you refresh my memory?"

That, he was almost certain, was a bluff. Katara had never mentioned remembering any of her past lives before. And, sure enough, the instant that the creature circled around behind her, her eyes went wild searching her surroundings, probably looking for something, anything she could use to trip the creature up. Her gaze just barely missed Zuko at the corner before the creature circled in front of her again.

"You had lost someone," the spirit said. "You came to my home in search of help retrieving her. And you very nearly stayed with me for good. What a shame that you did not. It seems that I require more—openness to feed in the physical world than the spiritual."

Frustration and rage flashed across her face. "What are you talking about, you big—"

"I believe that that will do nicely." The creature straightened out its long, segmented body, and reared back as though in preparation to strike.

Zuko took that moment to lunge, launching himself out from the corner and through the open gap that the creature's sudden movement had created. With one arm, he hooked Katara around the waist and dragged her with him, rolling into the nearest open alleyway just as the creature surged forward at the spot where Katara had just been.

"Zuko?" Katara hissed when she recovered both her breath and her wits enough to realize that it was him lying propped up on one elbow, shielding her from the creature. "What are you doing?"

He glanced back into the street just long enough to see that the creature had lunged with so much force that it had badly overshot its target and gotten its legs tangled up in the effort to change direction. His breath left him in a rush, and as quickly as he could, he scrambled back to his feet, hauling Katara by the arm along with him.

"I could ask you the same thing," he hissed. He pulled her after him down the alleyway and around the first corner before he slowed enough to add, "Are you insane? That thing eats faces!"

"Zuko! I know what I'm doing, okay? The spirits can't actually touch me. The first time the boys and I dealt with an angry spirit, it couldn't even leave a scratch on me." She pulled back against his hand. "I need to stop that thing because I'm the one it can't hurt."

Zuko shot a look back at her, still pulling her farther down the street. "I saw you riding on that Whiskers thing back on Crescent Island. That spirit could touch you. What makes you think that this one is any different?"

"Well—but Whiskers was with Haasi, and Haasi was an Avatar. I don't think any of the other spirits can touch me."

"Are you sure the spirit that eats faces is the one you want to test that theory on?"

Katara frowned. "When did you become logical?"

He shrugged. "Not sure. I'm as surprised as you are."

"Fine." With a sigh, she picked up her pace until she was leading Zuko rather than the other way around. "In here," she hissed, pulling him around another corner and into the small, sheltered hollow beneath a bridge. Then when they were both pressed up against the wall, hidden at least marginally well in the shadows, she looked straight up into his eyes. "So what are we going to do?"

Zuko could only shake his head. "Well—we have to stop that thing."

"That's very helpful, Zuko. Thanks."

"What do you want me to say? We have to send it back where it came from. I know that much, but that doesn't mean I have a plan."

Katara groaned, and her head thumped forward against his chest.

"Shh!" He glanced both ways down the street to be sure that no one could hear them. "Listen, I don't know exactly how we're going to do this. All I know for sure is that we're never going to be able to stop this thing if you get hurt. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you."

She lifted her head just far enough to meet his eyes. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you either, Zuko. Or anyone else. If that thing can't hurt me, then I should be the only one who faces it."

"Well, we don't know that for sure, and it's not a risk that I'm willing to take," Zuko said. "You're not getting rid of me, okay? So just—if you have a plan, tell me what I need to do."

Katara sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I don't know, Zuko. I just—I don't think we know enough about this thing yet. The last time I had to deal with a spirit like this, there were books and things for me to look at so I could figure out what it wanted. And once I figured that out, we didn't have any problem fixing things." She paused, giving him a pointed look. "And since this spirit can talk, I was planning to figure things out that way."

He grimaced. "You did talk to it, and we found out that it wants to eat your face. Somehow, I don't think that's a good starting point for negotiation."

"That can't be the only thing it wants."

"You're right. It wants to eat all of our faces. And I'm pretty sure that it thinks my scar is going to taste like spiced dragon fruit."

Her mouth pursed as she stared up at him. "That's not what I'm talking about."

Something in her gaze made his stomach flutter, but he managed not to pull his eyes away. "What else is there? Considering how the conversation ended, I don't think we're going to get much more information out of it."

"I don't know, there just has to be something more than that. Something that we can use, like—" She paused for a moment, then her eyes went wide, and she patted his chest. "I've got an idea. Let's just hope that it was telling the truth when it said that it's harder to eat people here than in the Spirit World. We're going to need some extra time."


"Sokka! I need your help."

Sokka was part of the way around the pond—or the muddy pit that had once been a pond—on his way to catch Zuko and give him a piece of his mind when Yue's voice stopped him in his tracks. Dang. Maybe he would have to let Zuko go this time. Even though he was very much not happy with Zuko for letting Katara keep chasing after a giant, face-eating monster, he couldn't leave Yue undefended.

He turned back to find Yue on her knees, still dripping a little from the pool's eruption, cradling a large, white koi in her hands.

Confused, Sokka jogged back a few steps. "What is it?"

"This—I think that I've found the moon spirit. I feel a connection—" She broke off, shaking her head. The fish in her hands was barely struggling, just gulping and flapping its gills in search of water. "We have to get them both back in the water. Please. Can you find the other one? They're a pair. If this is the moon spirit, the other must be equally important."

Normally, Sokka would have doubted that. He would have questioned her, because the idea of a fish being an important spirit sounded utterly ridiculous. But he had just seen a bug bigger than Appa crawl out of the pond, threaten—no, promise—to eat his face, and then crawl over a sheer ice wall to see all the sights the city had to offer. A couple of fish spirits was nothing by comparison.

He searched around the pond, nearly tripped over Aang, stopped to stare for a few seconds in surprise at the fact that Aang still hadn't budged, then waded into the bushes to resume his search. The big bug spirit had blown the pond's contents pretty far away from the pond, but he couldn't imagine that the koi would have gone that far. They were a couple of very decent-sized fish, after all.

It took a bit of rustling around before he finally found the black koi lying on its side, gills slowly rising and falling, and stooped to pick it up.

It was weird. At first glance, the fish seemed absolutely, positively normal. A bit more dramatic in its coloration than anything that Sokka would normally catch for dinner, but a normal fish nonetheless. But rather than flopping around in an effort to get away when Sokka reached for it, the black koi lay perfectly calm and still in his hand.

He couldn't be sure whether Yue was right about the fish spirit thing or not, but he was fairly certain that this was the first time a fish had ever looked him in the eye and not gone completely bonkers trying to escape. Which meant that it definitely couldn't be a normal fish, at the very least.

Holding the koi as gently as he could, Sokka headed back to what remained of the pond and joined Yue at the bottom of the muddy pit where she'd crouched down by the edge of the water, apparently not caring about the mud soaking through her knees. Though she'd already released the white koi back into the few inches of water that remained, the fish was hardly moving at all.

Carefully, Sokka allowed the black fish to slide out of his hands and into the water along with its mate.

Yue gave him a small, appreciative smile, then took hold of his hand before turning to watch the pair of listless koi again. "Thank you, Sokka. I know this probably seems strange. And—I suppose I might be wrong about the fish, but I have such a strong feeling about this."

Sokka shrugged. "We did just watch a gigantic bug crawl out of the bottom of the pond. 'Strange' is relative." He paused. "And I'm pretty sure that koi just winked at me. Either it's a spirit, or I hit my head at some point in the past few minutes."

There was a faint, breathy laugh, and her hand tightened around his. "I doubt that you hit your head. The feeling I got when I picked up the koi—it was incredible. Like a part of myself had come loose and I was holding it in my own hands."

"Yeah?" He carefully extracted his hand from hers so that he could wrap his arm around her shoulders instead. "Well, then I'm extra-glad that we got them back in the water."

For a while, the only response that Yue gave was a sigh, and she leaned in against his side.

"The fish are going to be fine," Sokka added in the most reassuring tone he could muster. "The stream runs directly into the pond. It might take a few hours, but it's going to fill back up, and then they'll have all the water they could possibly want."

"I hope so."

A few more seconds passed in silence before he frowned, looking off into the distance. "I'm a little less sure about how they're going to take it if that bug thing tries to go back to the Spirit World the same way it came. Assuming that those two don't get eaten before they bring it back here."

"I'm sure they'll be okay," Yue said softly. "Katara and Zuko will take care of one another, and between the two of them, they'll figure something out."

Sokka grunted. "We can hope. Still not crazy about Zuko running off after her like that, though."

"I think it's sweet."

He gave her an odd look. "You do?"

"Yes. They're very close, and they care about each other a great deal. It's sweet." She looked up at him, smiling very slightly. "The way he looks at her reminds me of someone else."

Sokka had to pause to let that process for a moment. Then, "Wait a minute. Do you think that he likes my sister?"


Sprinting down the familiar streets toward the healing huts with Zuko by her side was nerve-wracking, to say the least. To begin with, there was the fact that Katara wasn't meant to be in the city at all today. She and Aang and Sokka and Yue were all supposed to be somewhere else—somewhere safe until either the threat from Zhao and his men was past or until they joined the rest of the city in an evacuation. Then, of course, there was also the problem of the guards who were meant to be watching all the street corners for any sign of Fire Nation infiltration. It was hard to say whether Zuko would attract attention or not at the moment—he was very much Fire Nation, but while he was in his Water Tribe parka and very obviously running along with Katara rather than chasing her, there might be a chance that he could escape notice. She hoped that he would.

And she also had to hope that the creepy face-eating spirit wouldn't catch up with them too. That was definitely worse than the possibility of running into any guards.

Fortunately, if there were any people left in the city, it seemed that they had all retreated inside to keep out of the soot and the smoke. Which left her free to race down the street with Zuko, boosting her own speed with her bending to match his pace, and doing her best to listen for any sign of the spirit's approach.

She heard nothing. And at least until they reached the healing huts and crashed through the door into the practice room, she didn't see anything either.

Breathing hard, she pulled Zuko to a halt. "Wait here," she said between gulps of air. Her heart was pounding so fast and so loud that she was almost convinced that he could hear it—she could almost hear his pulse as well. "I just—need to talk—to someone."

Zuko shot a wary look around the room before he gave a single, mute nod and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

Though the cavernous room was both empty and sheltered—as safe a place as she could possibly ask for at the moment—it took a considerable effort before she managed to let go of Zuko's hand and head for the adjoining room. Assuming that nothing had changed since she'd last spoken to the healers, Yugoda should be here, waiting just in the other room with the other healers. And if anyone at the North Pole was likely to know anything about the spirits up here, it was probably Yugoda. Or, at the very least, one of the other old ladies who would be in there with her.

Still, the idea of leaving Zuko behind, even here, even for a few minutes, bothered her.

"Master Yugoda!" Katara called out as soon as the door closed behind her. "I need to talk to you."

Yugoda looked up from her work almost immediately. Unfortunately, all the other healers did too. Including Imiq and Kriisax and all the less-familiar faces Katara had run into over her time working in the healing huts.

She stopped in her tracks and felt her face grow warm. Maybe bursting in hadn't been her best idea.

"Katara? What's going on? Is somebody hurt?"

"No! I mean—not as far as I know. Something just came up, and I really need to know if you know anything about the spirits. Big, scary ones, mostly."

"I know a bit," Yugoda said doubtfully. "I can hardly call myself an expert, but—" There was a small tap at the door behind Katara, and Yugoda's gaze sharpened. "What was that?"

"That's probably nothing," Katara blurted. It sounded a bit like Zuko had been trying to listen in and had just gotten a bit too close and knocked slightly into the door. There was nothing that suspicious about such a small noise, was there?

It seemed that Yugoda and Imiq both disagreed with that sentiment. Before she could speak, Imiq was already on her feet, with Yugoda following just a few seconds behind on her way toward the door.

Her heart dropped, and Katara crowded in after the other women. Maybe if she was lucky, she could make it look like they were just going to talk in private—like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on here, and no reason for anyone else to get up. "I just—I really need to know if you've ever heard of a spirit that looks kind of like an enormous bug, and that talks a lot about—"

When Yugoda opened the door, there was nothing immediately out of the ordinary on the other side—Zuko had retreated away from the door, and with his back turned, he looked nondescript enough that Katara was able to get the door most of the way shut after them before he turned a bit, and Yugoda got a look at the rest of his face.

She gasped. "My goodness, Katara, you ought to have told us—"

Imiq wasn't quite so subtle. She gasped aloud, then when the other room erupted in whispers, called back to them without turning her head, "Stay where you are, girls. Everything is under control."

Perfect. There was nothing even remotely convincing in Imiq's tone, but Katara did the only thing she could think of and shut the door firmly behind the three of them.

"Great," Zuko said in a harsh whisper. "You could have warned me that people were going to come out here and—"

"Me?" Katara hissed back at him. She crossed the room to stand closer to him, just in case they had to run. "I don't remember telling you to make a lot of noise while you waited."

"I barely even touched the door, it just—"

Imiq's eyes had gone enormous as she stared at Zuko, and when she finally recovered her senses enough to speak, she grabbed Yugoda's arm. "Mother! That's him! That's the little boy."

Yugoda took a moment to register her meaning. Then, "It is?"

"Little?" Zuko asked, sounding affronted.

Imiq stepped forward. "It's been a long time since I first saw you. You were certainly little then."

"What?" Zuko looked down at Katara, then back at Imiq. "I've only been here for a few weeks, and almost no one has seen me since I got here. What are you talking about?"

Very briefly, Katara regretted ever bringing him here. Sure, the healing huts were safe from the giant bug spirit, but they were also packed with incurable gossips who had, at the very least, heard of Zuko thanks to Imiq's stories. Katara really should have seen this coming.

Imiq reached toward Zuko's face, and he smacked her hand away. "Don't touch me!"

Katara angled herself so that she stood ever so slightly in front of Zuko. "Zuko, this is Master Yugoda and Imiq. They're my healing teachers. And Zuko is my friend. Is everybody happy now? Can we move on?"

Yugoda stared at Zuko for a second longer, blinked, then looked at Katara again. "Unless I am badly mistaken, Katara, this young man is a firebender."

"I know that. He's trying to help us, I promise. Right now, we just need to know if you've ever heard anything about the giant bug spirit that's out there running around the city, and we'll get out of your way."

Yugoda's eyes widened at the mention of the spirit, but Imiq still couldn't seem to do much but stare at Zuko, who had begun to squirm a bit under the weight of her gaze.

"I believe you," Imiq said, voice soft.

Yugoda gave her daughter a stern look. "Dear, we don't know anything about this boy. Just because you saw him once before doesn't mean that he is trustworthy."

"Zuko's the reason why we found out about the Fire Nation fleet," Katara said urgently. "Please, give him a chance. We don't have a lot of time right now, but I can explain everything once this is over and the fleet moves on."

Yugoda looked from Katara to Imiq, then over to Zuko. Despite the fact that she was shorter than all of them, the sternness in her expression was enough to chill the air by a fraction. "That may be so, but he's also the reason my daughter disappeared some time ago. The fact that his father brought Imiq back safe doesn't change much."

"Mother," Imiq protested.

"That wasn't his father," Katara inserted hastily. "That's his uncle. And—"

"Wait." Zuko grabbed onto her shoulder. "This is where Uncle brought me after I was banished?"

She was going to make herself dizzy with all the looking back and forth, but Katara shot a look back at him and nodded. "Yeah, I was going to explain later, but—"

"He was banished?"

Katara turned back to face Yugoda. "Well—yes, but—"

"What sort of spirit are you looking for?" Imiq interrupted at long last. "I'm sure there will be time for the rest later."

"A big one," Katara answered, relieved. "Long, and it's got at least twenty pairs of legs. Like some kind of bug, I guess."

"A centipede," Zuko supplied. "But bigger than Appa."

She nodded. "And it talks about eating faces a lot too."

"Koh the Face Stealer," Yugoda said almost automatically.

"Mother, that's a children's story."

"You tell your kids stories like that?" Zuko said.

Yugoda frowned. "It is a children's story. But the reason we tell our children about it is because it's true. There is a creature living in part of the Spirit World that intersects with our northern hunting grounds that has been known to steal people's faces." She shot a look at Zuko. "My children were never frightened of the story."

Imiq raised her eyebrows. "That's because we never believed your stories, Mom. Arnaq told me that they were all made up."

Yugoda shook her head. "I think your grandmother must have given her that idea. But it is true. Koh is real."

Katara glanced up at Zuko to find him pinching the bridge of his nose like he was trying to keep the pressure in his head from building too much higher. She found his other hand and brushed against it briefly.

"What can we do about it?" Katara asked. "There has to be some way to stop it and get it back to the Spirit World where it belongs. What else does it want?"

"He wants to steal people's faces," Yugoda answered simply.

Zuko groaned. "That's it? We already knew that."

Frowning, Katara elbowed him. "Why does it want to steal faces? And is there some way to stop it, or—"

"As far as I know, if you don't show any emotion in front of Koh, there is nothing he can do to harm you," Yugoda answered. "It's the emotion and the power that he craves, not the faces themselves."

"Guess that's why he wants you," Zuko grumbled, nudging Katara back. His voice returned to normal. "If this thing has already seen us showing emotion, can it come back and steal our faces later?"

"I can't say that I've ever heard of anyone testing that." Yugoda paused. "In most of the stories, Koh toys with his prey just long enough to get them to break. No one has ever faced him a second time after showing him an ounce of emotion."

"Wait," Imiq said. "Why would this spirit want Katara more than any other waterbender?"

Katara felt her face grow hot, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Zuko redden as well.

Yugoda gave a dismissive wave with one hand. "Because she's the Avatar."

"What?"

"How do you know that?" Katara demanded. "I've never told you—"

"I do speak to Master Pakku fairly often, my dear. It pays to be a harmless old gossip at times. I can get almost any information out of anyone."

"I should introduce you to my uncle," Zuko mumbled. "You'd get along perfectly. It would be unbearable."

"He didn't make the best impression the first time we met. I'm not sure that I'm keen to meet him again."

"Well—then is there anything else we should know about Koh?" Katara said. She bounced ever so slightly on the balls of her feet. The longer she stood still, the more aware she became of the small noises coming from the other room and from outside on the street. If they stayed here much longer, there was no telling what Koh might be able to do.

Yugoda shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Okay, then we need to get going again. Thank you both." She grabbed Zuko by the hand. "If everyone could stay inside for a while, that would probably be a good idea."

There were a few protests and complaints from Yugoda and Imiq, but Katara didn't wait long enough for them to finish before she pulled Zuko off toward the door again. Once this was all over, once Koh was back in the Spirit World and the fleet was driven off toward the south again, they could discuss everything else.

Zuko, though, didn't seem satisfied with that. As soon as they were out in the street again, he pulled back on Katara's hand. "Your healing teachers? They're the ones Uncle went to for help after I was banished? Why didn't you say anything?"

She sighed, checking the street in both directions for any signs of Koh before she tugged on him again and started back toward the center of the city. "I don't really know. I mean—you didn't seem that interested in talking about it." Which made sense. Now that she knew what he'd gone through, she certainly couldn't blame him for trying his best to hide it. "And I guess by the time that I was sure you were the boy Imiq told me about, it felt like it was too late to bring it up."

Zuko wouldn't stop looking back over his shoulder at the healing hut, even as she pulled him faster and faster down the street away from it.

She squeezed his hand to get his attention. "Hey. Are you with me? I think I have an idea."

Zuko snapped back to reality and turned to face her. "You do?"

She nodded. "I can't promise much, but I think this will be the last time we have to run across the city today."


Katara's idea, it turned out, was to find Appa, fly circles around the city until they found Koh again, and then lure the spirit back to the oasis. From there, the plan became significantly less clear. Zuko was fairly certain that she wanted to send Koh back where he'd come from—which was a fair enough goal, he supposed—but he wasn't certain how that was meant to work. Sure, she'd opened the Spirit World before, and Koh had crossed over at the oasis. The process of reversing that, of sending Koh back to the Spirit World and retrieving Aang if he couldn't find the way back on his own, seemed daunting.

But it was still a lot better than anything that he could come up with. Zuko didn't have a plan at all, and even if Katara's sounded a bit vague, it was still a plan. Which had to be better than nothing.

He hung over the front of the saddle as Katara took the reins and the bison lifted off into the air. "So now we just have to hope that Koh can't fly."

She shot a look back at him. "Don't even joke about that. The crawling is creepy enough on its own."

"Are we sure that it can't fly?"

"I didn't see any wings on it, and it didn't fly out of the oasis, so I'm okay with assuming that it can't."

He gave a small grunt. That was fair. More optimistic than he was inclined to feel, but fair. If Koh could fly, they probably wouldn't have been able to escape simply by running off on a zigzagging path and hiding under a bridge.

He scanned the ground beneath them, eyes tracing over the vast array of houses made of snow and ice. Fortunately, the streets themselves were still practically deserted, so there were no real flickers of movement to distract him from searching for Koh. And with any luck, that could mean that there were slightly fewer potential victims for Koh to target.

"Where do you think Koh would have gone?" Zuko asked. "If he just wants to eat people's faces, then it's probably looking for prey. Where's the best place for that?"

Katara shrugged. "I'm not really sure. I don't think he would have left the city, but beyond that—"

Zuko frowned, but before he could speak, there was a blast from somewhere along the city wall. He half-launched himself to the opposite side of the saddle, and Katara jerked the reins at the same time, turning Appa toward the source of the noise. For a moment or two, there was nothing to see save for a dense cloud of smoke and fog. But then, as the haze began to dissipate, a gaping hole in the wall came into view.

Zuko's hands clamped down onto the edge of the saddle so hard that he was almost convinced that he was going to drive his fingertips straight into the leather.

He heard Katara gasp. "That's—"

"Shit," he said under his breath.


Author's Note:

Man, the problems just keep piling up, don't they? But on the bright side, I did manage to get in a Zuko tackles Katara to get her out of danger moment, so... seems like a fair trade-off to me.

When I started writing this part of the fic, I realized that it wasn't entirely clear how the mechanics of Koh's face-eating worked in canon, which works out well for me, because this way, I can fudge things a tiny bit so that the kids wouldn't get their faces schlurped off before they learned about how Koh's power works. I've always kind of assumed that it was a pretty instant thing in canon - Koh sees an expression and BOOM, face gone - but here, it takes a little more work from Koh's end (plus he's been slightly nerfed by entering the physical world, a lot like how the moon spirit became a normal, mortal fish by living in the physical world), so there's at least a chance that he won't eat EVERY person he comes across. It wouldn't be much fun to let Koh eat EVERYONE he comes across anyway.

So there's all of that! I hope you liked it, and I'll be back in two more weeks with another update! In the meantime, reviews are always appreciated!