Water

The Seeds of Dissent: Part 1

It was habit more than anything else. Every night when Katara gathered up her scroll to practice her waterbending, she asked Aang to join her. Every day they grew closer to the North Pole, and every day, there was another chance that they might come face-to-face with the Fire Nation again. Another chance that they might run into Zuko. The more waterbending she knew, the safer she would be, the safer she could help keep the others.

Besides, the more waterbending she knew when they arrived at the North Pole, the faster she'd be able to master the rest. Aang had three whole elements left to learn, and Katara had four. Any head start she could gain would only help them, and it wouldn't hurt for Aang to learn along with her.

Aang seemed to disagree. He rarely joined her, and on the few occasions when he did, he seemed more interested in creating little floating balls of water for Momo to chase than in actually practicing. There had been a few times—well, two times—when he'd watched her and mimicked her motions, but he'd never looked at the scroll to help her puzzle out the new forms. That was fine. Maybe Aang didn't learn well from scrolls. Katara could understand the feeling. Trying to decipher her own hand-copied scroll was difficult. She was making progress, but every improvement came slowly, after days and days of arduous practice. Maybe Aang just didn't have the patience for it. He was only twelve, after all.

Still, they'd both need to learn sooner or later. While Aang didn't really need waterbending to defend himself the way Katara did, not yet, she could see no harm in trying to teach him.

"I'm going down to the beach to practice," she announced, gathering up both scrolls. "If you want to join me, Aang—"

Reclining on Appa's tail, Aang scratched Momo behind the ears. "Thanks, but I think I'll just—" he glanced Katara's way and sat bolt upright, knocking Momo to the side. "You're using the new scroll?"

For a second, Katara just stared. "Uh—" She glanced down at the scrolls in her arms, the ornate blue ivory spool side-by-side with the slightly battered wooden one. "I was planning on it."

Aang leapt so high that he had to hover back to the ground. "I'll come!"

That was—a lot of enthusiasm. Which was normal for Aang, but his enthusiasm was normally reserved for animals and desserts and interesting flowers. Never waterbending.

Before she could react, Sokka tossed his boomerang into the air. "You guys can't practice in the ocean."

Aang, who had already started down the path, turned back, forehead creased in bewilderment. "What?"

"Waterbending practice. In the ocean. You're not doing it."

Katara planted a hand on her hip, scrolls tucked under her other arm. "Says who?"

Sokka jabbed his thumb toward his chest. "Says me."

"And why not?"

With a sigh, Sokka rolled his eyes and pushed himself to his feet. He pointed his boomerang at Katara, then at Aang. "Because what do all the firebenders we've met have in common?"

Aang scrunched his brows together. "They can bend fire?"

Another toss of the boomerang, and Sokka carried on as though Aang hadn't spoken. "They have boats. They travel by sea. You two do your splishy-splashy stuff in the ocean, and somebody's going to see you."

Katara rolled her eyes back at him. "You're welcome to keep watch for us if you're so concerned."

"Nuh-uh. You're not splishy-splashing this guy."

She shook her head. "Bye, Sokka."

Not giving him a chance to respond, Katara turned toward the beach. Sokka could be as grumpy as he wanted, he was not going to ruin this for her. She had old forms to drill, several half-learned ones to perfect, and a whole new waterbending scroll to work with. If Sokka thought that she was going to waste a whole night without practicing, he was crazy.

Aang waited just until Katara reached the start of the path before he broke into a grin. "If you get bored, Appa needs brushing," Aang called back to Sokka, then took off down the trail at a sprint.

Katara stared after him for a second. She could get used to this. Having a regular training partner would be good for her—good for both of them, really. A smile spread across her face and she jogged after Aang toward the water's edge.


"Still sore about the stowaway huh, Pouty?" The bounty hunter, Jun, tossed back the rest of her drink in a single gulp. "Don't be. Every captain gets stowaways. Even the good ones."

Zuko's scowl deepened. Don't take the bait, don't take the bait. It was not his fault that some vagrant had managed to sneak onto his ship, no matter what the bounty hunter tried to imply. He exhaled. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could get out of this rundown Earth Kingdom tavern and back on the Avatar's trail. "That's not what I'm here for."

"Then the answer is no." Jun cocked her head to the side, arms crossed. "I don't date younger men."

Uncle elbowed his way in from the side. "Why, hello." He waggled his bushy eyebrows.

If the thought of Uncle with the bounty hunter didn't make him feel vaguely nauseous, Zuko would have laughed. Jun had recoiled back in her chair and stared, aghast, at Uncle. It was funny to see her thrown off guard, in a revolting kind of way. But in his years at sea, Zuko had gotten a few too many glimpses of Uncle wandering from the washrooms to his cabin in his underwear. Adding another person to that image—eugh.

Zuko gave Uncle the most scathing look he could muster and shoved him to the side. "I'm here," he told the bounty hunter, "because there are two people I need to find. I was under the impression that you could do that."

Jun gave Uncle another disgusted look and rested her elbow on the table. She drummed her fingertips against her chin. "I can find anyone for the right price."

"What's the right price for—"

She held up a hand to stop him. "I don't negotiate in public, kid. If you have a bounty for me, it waits until I'm through here." She motioned to a server and pointed at her empty cup. "Discussing money where anyone can hear is never good business."

Fury boiled in his stomach. This hardly counted as public. The tavern was busy, but it wasn't like anyone would be eavesdropping. Half the patrons were too far gone to stand up straight, much less comprehend a conversation, and the other half looked too stupid to understand anyway.

Zuko slammed his hands down on the table. "I'm about to hand you the most important job of your life," he snarled.

The bounty hunter narrowed her eyes. Holding Zuko's gaze, she slammed her fists right back at him. "If it's that important to you, pay my tab. Once I've seen your money, I might consider it."


Katara spread her old hand-copied scroll out over a rock and scanned the illustrations as quickly as she could. Practicing with Aang would be different than what she was used to—she'd hardly ever been able to practice her bending with anyone else before, much less someone who knew less than she did. It felt important. Like she was a teacher and Aang was her pupil.

"I was thinking," she began, "that we could start by drilling the forms I've already learned. Then I wanted to work on this one—" she pointed to the eighth set of illustrations down the page. "And then we'll start on the new scroll."

"Oh." There was an edge of disappointment to Aang's voice.

Katara looked up. "Is there something wrong with that?"

Aang's eyes widened, and he shook his head. "No! It just—you know, it just sounds like a lot."

"Oh." Katara looked down at her old scroll again. It probably was a lot for Aang. He hadn't been practicing with her very much, and it had taken Katara weeks to learn what she already knew. "Well—there's a lot to learn. But if it's too much, we can always slow down so you don't miss anything."

"But we can work on some of the stuff from the new scroll too, right?"

"I guess so," Katara conceded. If Aang was worried about the amount of work it would take to get through her old scroll, she wasn't sure they'd make it that far. But maybe after they spent an hour on the forms Katara already knew, they could take a break to try some of the new ones. Then if Aang was tired of practicing, Katara could keep working on her own when he went back to camp. It would still be better than practicing entirely on her own. "Let's see how you do with the basics first."

That was enough to earn a smile and a nod from Aang, and Katara joined him at the water's edge to coach him through the motions. After just a few repetitions, he got the feel for pushing and pulling water, and she moved him on to the next step. It felt quick to her, but it was just the first step of waterbending. Maybe Katara would have learned it faster too if she'd ever had a chance to see waterbending in real life. The other forms would probably give him a lot more trouble.

They didn't.

The wave had taken Katara several days to learn, the tall vertical disks a week, and the smaller throwing disks even longer. But despite the fact that Aang had never tried any of them before, he picked up each one by the third or fourth try. Katara hardly had to offer any directions or suggestions or corrections to his posture, everything just—worked. The water did exactly what it was supposed to, and Aang bounced on the balls of his feet, turning back to Katara for approval every time.

Her smile grew tighter with every form he successfully replicated. He's just a fast learner, she told herself. It's easier to learn from a person than a scroll. That's it. This next one will be harder for him.

The next one wasn't harder for Aang. None of them were. Katara's jaw clenched and she did her best not to scowl when he breezed through the rest of the forms she'd learned.

"Well, that's everything I've learned," Katara said, her voice tight. "In my whole life. And we've been here an hour."

"You had to teach yourself," Aang said cheerfully, shooting a disk of water at the sandy slope. "Having somebody else to teach you makes a big difference. You'll see when we get to the North Pole. Besides, you're still way better at most of this stuff than I am."

Most of this stuff. Somehow, that didn't make her feel any better. Fourteen years of work, and she was still close to being outdone by someone who had only been practicing for a single afternoon.

"Right." Her smile felt ready to crack.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that she should have to put in so much time and effort to figure things out on her own just for Aang to swoop in and reduce months—years—of effort to a few minutes of work.

He flashed his usual chipper smile her way, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. "Can we try the new scroll now?

Katara wanted to refuse. She wanted to pack both scrolls away and hide them from Aang until she had learned all the forms. She wanted to enjoy at least a little time as the better waterbender. It was her native element, after all. Aang had already mastered his own. It only seemed fair that she master waterbending before Aang. She was older than him and everything!

Instead, she managed a tight-lipped nod.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe she should give him a chance. Maybe working with Aang would make it easier for her to learn.

Slowly, meticulously, she spooled up her old scroll and tried to convince herself that it wouldn't matter either way. If Aang mastered the new scroll before her, it shouldn't make a difference. It shouldn't even bother her. They were friends—they were a team. She shouldn't feel like she was in competition with Aang.

But that didn't make the annoying buzz in the back of her brain go away.

"Yes!" Aang bounded over to her as she picked up the ivory scroll. "Finally we can start on the real stuff!"

Katara went rigid, and her grip on the scroll tightened so her fingernails dug into the sealskin. "What did you just say?" Her voice was remarkably even, but her jaw clenched, and she wouldn't look at Aang.

"It's a real waterbending scroll. Made by a master and everything."

Slowly, very slowly, she turned back toward Aang. "My scroll isn't real enough for you?"

Aang's forehead crinkled. "That's not what I—"

"Isn't it? You just said that the new scroll was the 'real stuff,' so what does that make mine?" Her voice crept higher with every word. "So what, have I been learning fake waterbending all this time? Is that why you never wanted to practice with me? My waterbending wasn't good enough for you?"

"I never said—"

"Maybe not, but you never wanted to practice with me before I got the new scroll. Why is that?" Her voice had risen to a yell, but she didn't care. "My scroll isn't as pretty so it isn't as good? Is that it? Well excuse me for trying. Do you have any idea how hard I worked to copy the whole thing in a day? I worked for hours so we could at least have a chance at learning a little waterbending before we got to the North Pole. But that's not good enough?"

Aang's voice shrank. "I just meant that—"

"That my scroll isn't as good as the one I found. Why is that? The only difference is that mine's from the South Pole, and the new one is from the North. Is that it?"

Aang's lower lip began to tremble, but Katara wasn't done. It felt good to yell. She was angry and frustrated, and she didn't care who heard. She wanted people to hear.

"What makes my tribe's bending so much worse than the Northern Tribe's? Hmmm? Do you have a problem with my people's traditions?"

This time, Aang didn't even try to respond. His face crumpled, and when Katara paused for a breath, he turned around and ran.

Katara stared after him, pulse still roaring with fury until she heard a twig snap on the trail that led to camp. Eyes blazing, she whirled around to find Sokka staring at her.

"What? What are you looking at?" she snapped.

One of Sokka's eyebrows crept upward. "I missed something here. Was Aang crying?"

Katara scowled. No, Aang wasn't crying. He just had a wobbly lower lip and a scrunched-up face, and he was blinking a bit too fast, and—whoops. Aang was definitely crying.

A little knot of regret squeezed in alongside the anger. She hadn't meant to actually make him cry.

"Aang," she shouted and took off at a run, following his tracks up the beach.


"So who's the target?"

For all the fuss Jun had made over discussing business in public, her choice of meeting place baffled Zuko. Apparently the tavern was too public, but the alley behind the tavern was perfectly fine. Never mind the fact that anyone who pleased could sneak up and eavesdrop around a corner—apparently being near the bounty hunter's oversized rat while it dug through the tavern's trash heap was good enough.

Not that Zuko really cared. He didn't have anything to lose by being overheard. One bounty hunter was as good as the next. If another bounty hunter wanted to help Zuko capture the Avatar, he wouldn't argue about it. Maybe one who didn't stake her livelihood on a giant mole's sense of smell would charge less money.

"I'm looking for a waterbending girl," said Zuko.

"I'm not a matchmaker. You have a taste for waterbenders, you'll have to find one yourself."

Uncle chuckled and patted Zuko on the shoulder.

His scowl deepened, and he shook off Uncle's hand. "A specific waterbending girl," Zuko amended. "She's wanted by the Fire Nation. It'll be worth her weight in gold if you help me capture her."

Jun scratched the shirshu under the chin. "For you? No. Make it Fatty's weight in gold and we've got a deal."

Zuko clenched his jaw. "Fine. But I need to capture the airbending monk she's traveling with too."

Jun's eyebrow cocked upward. "Some monk has your girl? What kind of weird shit are you into, kid?"

He felt his face go hot. "The waterbender is not my girlfriend!"

"Nice work. The screeching is very convincing." Jun leaned back against the beast, her arms crossed. "So a girl and a monk. Weird shit aside, what's the situation here? Two targets are going to cost you more. How serious a threat are we talking?"

"The boy is a skilled airbender. Perhaps even a master," Uncle supplied. "But he is no more than perhaps eleven or twelve years of age. And the girl—"

Zuko tried not to think about the time when she'd frozen his hands together, or when she'd punched him, or when she'd grabbed his injured arm as a distraction, or when she'd leapt from a bridge to get away from him. She wasn't a skilled fighter, but she was quick, and she was creative. That almost made it worse.

"She's a novice," he growled. Wrecking his ship didn't really count—that one wasn't voluntary. He hoped.

Uncle gave him a stern look. "The girl is nearer to Prince Zuko's age. She seems to have more talent than training, but she is not without skill."

Zuko frowned. He couldn't argue the point, but he was in no mood to agree with Uncle either. He faced Jun again. "My uncle's weight in gold for the two of them. That's more than fair for a couple of children."

"No. Fatty's weight in gold for the first one. If I can capture them both at the same time, I'll give you the second at half price."

Zuko spluttered. "But that's—"

"If I have to capture them separately, I want Fatty's weight for each. That's my price. I won't charge less to capture children when I've been hired by one." Jun stared him down. "Call it a matter of principle."

He started to protest again. Royalty or not, he couldn't afford to be cheated like this. Father should have given him enough money to pay off a hundred leeches like Jun, but Father hadn't. The war was more important.

Zuko squashed the burning knot of resentment down and caught a slight nod from Uncle out of the corner of his eye.

"Fine," he spat. "But don't expect any thanks from the Fire Nation when this is over."

Jun rolled her eyes. "A true tragedy. Just make sure I get my money, kid, and you can have all the credit you want." She straightened. "I assume you have something for me to track?"

At least that was something Zuko was prepared for. He pushed back his sleeve, unwound the necklace from his wrist, and held it out triumphantly.

Jun arched an unimpressed eyebrow. "Not your girlfriend, huh?" She grabbed the necklace by its clasp and let it dangle as she examined it. "How long have you been wearing this?"

Zuko felt Uncle's eyes on him, and his face heated. "I was just making sure it didn't get lost."

"And I couldn't care less why you thought wearing it was a good idea." Jun fixed him with a look. "As long as you realize that Nyla might shoot you full of venom if he can't pick out your girlfriend's scent under yours."

His stomach dropped. Oh. That could be a problem.

Jun shrugged. "Brace yourself, Pouty. Here goes nothing."


Aang was a fast runner. Even at the best of times, Katara could barely keep up with him. He was always absurdly quick and overflowing with energy, more than enough to make up for his shorter stride.

And this was not the best of times. Aang didn't want to be caught, and Katara was fairly certain that he was boosting his speed with airbending. If that wasn't bad enough on its own, running on loose sand was difficult. She could follow his footprints without much trouble, but if she couldn't catch up with him, it wouldn't matter. How was she supposed to apologize for upsetting him if he wouldn't slow down enough to let her talk? It annoyed her. She was still angry about what he'd said, but she hadn't meant to make him cry, and if he would just stop for a second, she would apologize.

But the more ground she lost to him, the less inclined toward apology she felt. She wasn't wrong for being upset with him. Aang wasn't blameless, even if her yelling had been a bit much. And now that he was running away, even with Katara calling for him to stop, refusing to even let her take responsibility for her share in the argument, she wasn't sure she even wanted to apologize anymore.

She still would—eventually. She had been a bit harsh, but if Aang wouldn't slow down enough to let her talk, then he could just wait until she was done being upset with him. She would apologize when she was good and ready.

Sokka overtook her just as Aang vanished over a rise in the sand—stupid Sokka with his stupid long legs—and she kept running a few steps behind.

Over the crest of the short, sandy hill, Aang had stopped in his tracks, and Sokka's pace slackened. Katara stopped too, breathing hard, when she came even with Sokka. She blinked. Ahead, at a low spot in the beach, a Water Tribe boat was pushed halfway up onto the sand, tethered to a protruding boulder the size of Appa's head.

For a second, she thought she was dreaming. It had been years since she'd last seen Dad's fleet, but she would know them anywhere. They were sleek and nimble enough to dodge through ice fields and light enough to outrun and outmaneuver almost any ship on the open seas. When she was little, she used to know each ship by sight, by the slight variations in the patterns of bone and colored shell along the upper edge of the hull, but now it had been too long. After years of seeing nothing larger than a canoe from her own tribe, she could no longer remember the exact patterns.

Exchanging a look, she and Sokka both slowed to a walk. The ship appeared to be abandoned—there was no one on the deck, and no sign of a camp anywhere nearby. A single Water Tribe ship on its own and so far from home felt deeply, deeply wrong. Water Tribe warriors fought best at sea. They didn't camp far from their ships, and if they ever did have to venture inland for any length of time, there would be men left behind to watch the fleet and replenish supplies. Never just one ship, and never without other signs of the warriors' presence.

"What the—" Sokka began, voice hardly over a whisper.

Aang darted ahead and leapt upward, twirling his staff to hover over the deck, then dropped back to the ground. Without so much as glancing back, he ran around to the far side of the boat.

"Who are you?" Aang's voice carried back to them.

"I could ask you the same thing," a deep, bemused voice answered.

Eyes wide, Katara glanced at Sokka, whose jaw hung slack. She knew that voice. It had been years, but she would know it anywhere.

"Bato?" Sokka yelled, breaking into a jog again, and Katara ran alongside him.

Bato emerged around the corner. "Sokka? Katara?"

"Bato!" Katara shouted an instant before she and Sokka both crashed into his arms.


Author's Note:

Woohoo! That posting break was shorter than I expected, and now I'm back with three more chapters that I've been casually referring to as "The Part Where the Shit Hits the Fan". Or at least the first part where the shit hits the fan, so this should be fun. I'm excited. I've been waiting to get to this part since I started working on this fic ages ago.

By the way, I was unreasonably annoyed when I remembered that Nyla is a boy, and I had already written these chapters under the assumption that Nyla was a girl, so... I think I fixed all of the pronouns? But I also decided to give the canon spellings a big ol' middle finger by going with 'Jun' instead of 'June', so clearly I don't care that much about consistency.

Reviews are always appreciated!

PS: I'm going to be posting for Zutara Week from July 26 - August 1 and I'd love it if you checked out some of those stories!