Act 1

The Sea

Scene 3

It was night again, and Katara was bored. The slapping of the water against the hull was making it hard for her to fall asleep, though she'd been trying for what felt like an hour. The enthusiastically bright moon was also up, which she loved to see but was not, unfortunately, condusive to getting any sleep.

"I met the king of Omashu once, you know," Katara began, too awake to keep trying anymore but too tired to practice her waterbending.

"So?" She knew he would be awake. Vampire. So far she hadn't caught him sleeping in the three days they'd been stranded. "I met him when I was six."

"Oh." She laid her back down, disappointed. Then she sat forward again. "But that doesn't make any sense! Why wouldn't the two rulers have tried to kill each other? I mean, if they were near enough for a child like you to meet him?"

"It was a formal meeting between dignitaries." Zuko's voice couldn't have been more bored. "How should I know what it was for? I was six. Could've been about bridges for all I knew. Or tarriffs. Monarchs do this sort of thing all the time."

"Meet face to face when their countries are at war?"

"It was a temporary cease-fire, lasted a couple years when I was a boy."

"Oh. I didn't realize."

"I'm not surprised," he said dismissively. "You'll only hurt your little brain trying to understand something as mature as the negotiations between kingdoms."

"Would you stop it with the age stuff?" she grumbled, barely even offended anymore. It turned out Zuko's imagination when it came to insults was fairly limited; he could only seem to think of three or four subjects to tease her for. She was already long bored of this one. "My brain is not little, as you should've realized by now, and I bet I'm more travelled than you are."

Zuko actually laughed at that; his was a harsh, barking laugh that sounded jarring in the dead night air. "I don't think so. I've been looking for the Avatar across half the world for over two years."

Despite herself, Katara's voice caught. "You've been doing this...since you were fourteen?"

In the starlight she could see Zuko suddenly scowling. "Don't sound so surprised. This is my mission."

But Katara was surprised, and she was sure it showed on her face. "But, but that's so young."

"You're fourteen and you're out here."

A part of her was pleased he'd finally acknowledged her, but the other part—

"My mother is dead and my father's gone. We had no reason not to go. But you have a family." She said this last part with a bit of a tone. She and Sokka didn't really have parents any more, despite the fact that her dad was alive somewhere. But everyone knew the Fire Lord was healthy and thriving in his gilded palace. And there was that old chubby man he called his uncle-- the point was Zuko had family. You just don't leave family to traipse around the world. He must have sensed the recrimination in her words, because his reply was cutting and cold.

"My family," he sneered, and somehow she knew he wasn't talking about the old firebender now, "is none of your business. It will never be your business. We can talk out here until the hunger takes us both and even in our final conscious moments—when yours is the last human face I'll ever see— even then I will never speak to you about my family."

Feeling thoroughly scolded, though she didn't know exactly what for, Katara turned away from churlish prince and decided that even pretended sleep was better than his company.

What follows might end up being longer than the actual chapter, for which I apologize.

I received the following review for last chapter:

"Sorry. I've been reading a lot of these fictions and the common theme seems to be: "Helpless Katara couldn't bend her way out of a wet paper sack." I got enough of the helpless and useless heroine theme reading Inuyasha fanfictions."

:gasp:shock:awe: Being as I loathe the very same sort of behavior in fanfiction about our heroine, it is to my great horror that the accusations most foul have been laid at my feet. :gasp:no: I feel I must address them, or my writer's spirit will not rest! Bear with me, good readers, as I attempt to do so.

Since these might be questions all my readers have asked themselves, I decided to include the answers here.

"Katara's a waterbender. Why can't she just separate the salt from the water for the purpose of drinking it?"

I've considered this fanon-popular ability, and rejected it on two reasons:

1) Since water-salt ratio in ocean water is usually in solution (at least, I'm pretty sure it is), it would be very complex for a bender to separate water from salt at a chemical level. It's not like sifting out dirt or sand, which are solid and separate. Artificial desalination is complex. We've never seen it done by benders on the show nor heard it suggested.

2) It might be do-able, most likely for the water tribe healers if anyone, but if so I don't think Katara has the knowledge or the skill yet to do so. Not only did she appear to focus on bending for fighting purposes for her time with the Northen Water Tribe, but I think the kind of refined detail that would require is something that someone as young as Katara just wouldn't be experienced enough for.

"Why not catch fish in a water bubble and have Zuko cook them?"

Simple: the surface of the middle of the ocean is not like a lake or a river. Fish of the size a person could eat do not generally surface very often once you go more than 20 miles out from the coast. For all Katara and Zuko know (since they can't see land anywhere), they might be hundreds of miles out. At that distance the ocean depth is a couple of miles and the only stuff you're likely to see at the surface are the rare pod of migratory porpoises and whales. Maybe a school of jellyfish (which people have been able to survive off before, eww), but even that would be against the odds. Could Katara jump into the water, swim down, capture fish, and bring them back up? Maybe if she had scuba gear, air tanks, and a very long rope. And if she knew that there was a school beneath them right at that moment. Given a basic fishing pole, line, and time, you might catch one fish after several days on the surface. And it could very well break your only line and slip away. Either way it would require a lot of patience, because the ocean is very large and fish are very small. They'd probably starve first.

But that begs the question: couldn't Zuko and Karata kill and eat a dolphin? --No. Because I :heart: dolphins so none are being harmed in the creation of this fic. Also, even if they did happen to see some (unlikely), I really don't think they're competent enough to manage it.

"Why not employ a little energy and push the boat. Sure they are in the middle of NOwhere but they'd get SOMEwhere faster if she'd remember that she's a gee-golly waterbender!"

Bending does make you tired after a while. Katara would have to move huge amounts of water to push the boat very far—water that is not stationary like a lake or snow. Water that is constantly moving and changing. Sure she could do it. Maybe even for a few hours. But where would she push them? They have no charts or compass. Say she is strong enough to bend the water for as long as three hours straight (which would be impressive). Say that takes them within 50 miles of land. After she collapses of complete exhaustion (she's also weak from starvation), they get caught in a current or a gust that carries them out another 600 miles in the wrong direction in the same three hour span it took to get them half as far by bending. This is why with all our modern technology people with GPSs and charts and radar still manage to get completely lost on the water.

Thank you for reading this fic and these notes; I hope some of your questions may have been answered! Your guys' reviews are encouraging and appreciated, always.