Water

The Seeds of Dissent: Part 2

Optimism wasn't really Sokka's thing. With both Katara and Aang around all the time, getting them all into trouble with their reckless tendencies to look on the bright side and see the best in everyone, there was no room for another optimist in the group. They needed a realist. Katara was always accusing him of being a pessimist, and even if he was, Sokka didn't see how that was supposed to be a bad thing. The other two needed something to balance them out, and if a pessimist was what it took, then a pessimist Sokka would become.

But after meeting up with Bato, Sokka felt like he really got their attitudes for once. He could understand being an optimist if things always went this well.

Bato, as it turned out, was waiting for word of the Southern Fleet's new position while he healed at a convent about a mile inland. Sokka was ecstatic about every part of that.

Well, maybe not the nuns. They sounded boring and stuffy and like they might be scandalized by a good man-to-man talk about battle strategies.

But everything else sounded great. By Bato's recounting, the Southern Tribe's campaign against the Fire Nation was going well. Dad was smart, and he relied more on stealth and sabotage than on brute strength, and as a result, could cripple Fire Nation supply lines without putting his men in serious danger. Bato was one of the first to be seriously injured, and even he was almost ready to fight again. According to Bato, the fleet should have found a new position for a temporary base by now, and they should be sending a message back to Bato in a matter of days.

After a long round of hugs and Bato remarking about how much they'd both grown, and more hugs, and questions and explanations, and even more hugs, Bato came back to camp with them to help pack up so they could stay near him at the convent. Sokka was even excited about that. Not because of the nuns. Sokka could do without nuns. But from the sound of it, the nuns went out of their way to feed newcomers, and Sokka had never met a free meal he didn't like.

Besides, Katara was in a bad mood—or she had been before they found Bato—and cooking usually made her grumpier. It wasn't Sokka's fault that she was the only one of them who really knew how to do it. It wasn't Sokka's fault that he and Aang couldn't read her mind and know what she needed help with until she'd asked a few times. In any case, a day without Katara getting worked up about cooking seemed like the perfect chance to try out this new optimism thing.

Bato hoisted the last bag up to the saddle, passing it off to Katara, who bundled it in place. "You're pretty well supplied for just leaving the South Pole a few weeks ago," Bato remarked. "I'm glad. It took a while before we had the right supplies to live outside the poles."

Sokka puffed out his chest. "We plan ahead. Obviously we can't keep using arctic fish traps this far north. I learned how to adapt."

"And King Bumi gave us a lot of supplies when we left Omashu," Katara added pointedly. "Most of it wasn't your idea, Sokka."

He scowled. "Well I had to learn how to use all the new supplies."

She rolled her eyes. "Right. I forgot, oh wise and powerful Sokka."

Bato shook his head with a slight smile. "You two haven't changed."

Katara yanked the tethers holding their supplies in place one more time, then hopped down from the saddle. Aang started to say something to her, but before he got the words out, she huffed and turned away. Great. Of course they'd choose right now to have a spat, right when Sokka was trying to be more optimistic. Maybe the universe was just trying to balance things out—since Sokka was putting a stop to his own negativity, it had to come out somewhere. So it was leaking out of both Aang and Katara instead.

No, that was stupid. The universe didn't work like that. The universe couldn't think for itself and straighten things out.

"So you're on your way to the North Pole?" Bato asked.

"Yeah!" Sokka caught an annoyed look from Katara. Huh. Maybe he'd interrupted her or something. Oh well. "We have to make sure these two can learn waterbending since they're both—"

She came around to his side and pinched his arm hard. "Waterbenders. We're both waterbenders."

Ow. He rubbed the place where she'd pinched him.

Aang hovered in from the side. "Yeah, and we're both—"

"Aang!" Katara interrupted, voice sharp as a whip.

Aang winced, and Momo scampered up Aang's back to chatter at Katara from the top of his head.

Nope. Not Sokka's problem. Not right now. He was optimistic Sokka right now. Optimistic Sokka didn't get bogged down in silly squabbles. He didn't know what was going on between the two of them, and he was not going to ask. Not right now, anyway. Later. Sometime when he wasn't busy talking to Bato and learning all about what Dad had been up to since he left the South Pole.

Maybe if they were lucky, word about Dad's location would come while they were at the convent. Maybe they could go visit. If the fleet was north of here, it wouldn't even be a detour—maybe Dad would even come with them to the North Pole. Or if not, they could at least visit for a while.

That was what he really wanted to know. Schedules be damned, if Dad was anywhere not directly south of them, Sokka wanted to go see him. It wouldn't take any more time than any of Aang's detours, and if anything, they'd be safer from the Fire Nation with Dad than on their own.

But Bato didn't know where the fleet was yet, so Sokka couldn't exactly ask about that. He settled for the next best thing. "What's it like to fight against the Fire Nation? How many ships have you taken out? Do they go running when they see the Southern Tribe coming?"

"Mmm, I can't say that they go running." Bato smiled down at Sokka as they all set off toward the beach. "Pretty hard to run from something they never see coming."


By the time they made it to the convent and settled down to eat with Bato in his room, Katara was feeling a little better. She was still annoyed with Aang. She was going to be annoyed with Aang for a while, especially if he wouldn't stop with his constant attempts to make her laugh. But eating sea prunes and listening to Bato's stories made things better. A lot better.

"I imagine you've been getting a lot of practice with your bending," Bato said to her.

Katara nodded. "For a while, I wasn't making much progress at all. But now that I have two waterbending scrolls, I at least have a good place to start." She didn't mention the humiliation of watching Aang breeze through everything she'd taken months to teach herself in a matter of minutes. She wasn't sure she'd ever be ready to talk about that.

"Waterbending scrolls?" Bato looked impressed. "Don't tell me your grandmother was keeping them hidden away all this time. I thought they were all destroyed in the raids."

"No, nothing like that." Katara stirred her bowl of sea prunes, savoring the rich, tangy aroma. "I think Gran-Gran would have told me if she'd saved any of them." Gran-Gran had kept the Avatar thing a secret for a very long time, but she would have given Katara every opportunity to learn to defend herself with waterbending. Wouldn't she?

"She copied the first one from some waterbender way south of here," Sokka volunteered through a half-chewed mouthful of sea prunes. He swallowed before continuing. "On Kyoshi Island. The other one turned up a few days ago and she won't tell us where she got it."

Katara pursed her lips. "I don't have to tell you everything."

"Yeah, so you definitely stole it from someone." Sokka shoved another sea prune into his mouth. "I counted the money, there's no way you bought anything like that."

She thought back to Masky for an instant, and her face warmed. Even if she wanted to tell Sokka about that, where would she begin? You're right, Sokka, I stole it. I snuck out of camp in the middle of the night, went to a pirate ship, met a guy in a scary mask, stole the scroll, froze a bunch of pirates to the deck, almost got kidnapped, and jumped off a bridge. That conversation would never end well.

"The point is," she said, turning to Bato, "I'm learning. If I keep practicing, I might be able to skip over some of the basics when we get to the North Pole."

And if he kept practicing, Aang would probably be able to skip waterbending lessons entirely. She felt her expression darken and tried to shake the thought out of her head.

Bato's big hand closed around her shoulder. "You'll make us proud, Katara." He turned toward Sokka. "And you, Sokka. We couldn't ask for two better representatives to visit the Northern Tribe."

Something warmed inside her, and Katara smiled. For a moment, it felt like being back at the South Pole again, back when their village was whole and happy. If Dad and Gran-Gran were here too, it might as well be home.

"Have you met anyone from the North Pole?" she asked.

Bato shook his head. "We keep expecting to, but nothing so far. We've found plenty of allies along the Earth Kingdom coast, but if I didn't know better, I'd think that the whole North Pole just—" He looked around the room. "What happened to your friend?"

A second passed before Katara remembered that Aang had come in with them—after gagging on half a bite of sea prunes, he'd excused himself from the circle and gone to investigate the things hanging from the walls. Aside from a brief scolding from Bato when Aang tried to play with a sacred headdress, he'd been quiet enough that she'd practically forgotten about him. And now he was gone, and Katara couldn't remember seeing him leave.

Sokka scratched behind his ear. "Uh—I'm not sure."

"I'm sure he's fine." Katara interrupted. "He's probably just checking on Appa and Momo."

Sokka stared at her, eyes narrowed.

Katara stared right back. What else could Aang possibly be doing? They were at a convent, it wasn't as though there were many places for him to wander off to, or any big, toothy animals for him to ride. She still needed some space, and Aang probably did too.

After a pause, Sokka shook his head. "Yeah, okay." He gave her another look, but then turned back to Bato. "Oh, wait! Did you guys stop at Kyoshi Island? The Kyoshi Warriors are so cool. If you can get past the sea monster first."


Riding the shirshu with Jun and Uncle was every bit as uncomfortable as Zuko feared it would be. Jun had forbidden them from bringing the komodo rhinos—something about the shirshu being territorial, though Zuko suspected it was more about ensuring they couldn't leave without paying her—and Zuko somehow ended up squashed between the bounty hunter and Uncle. The proximity alone was grating on his nerves. But of course that wasn't enough. Jun kept making snide remarks about the Avatar, and as much as Zuko wanted to scream, for the last time, she isn't my girlfriend, there wasn't much else he could say by way of explanation. A strategist he was not, but Zuko knew better than to give the girl's real identity away. Zhao was enough of a pain, and he was only after the airbender. But every time Zuko defended himself by saying that the girl was wanted by the Fire Nation, Jun just snorted and told him to invest in some better euphemisms.

And as much as he spluttered and fumed, he couldn't come up with a decent response to that. Better explanations, better excuses, that was what he really needed. It wasn't his fault that the safest version of the truth could get twisted up in the hands of a dirty-minded bounty hunter.

Uncle wasn't any help either. He seemed to think that the bounty hunter was funny, even charming. She definitely wasn't. And while Uncle did nothing to confirm any of Jun's suspicions, he didn't do anything to shut her up either. If anything, Uncle was just adding an extra layer of awkwardness by making slightly inappropriate, admiring remarks to Jun. Nothing lewd, thankfully. Uncle's penchant for wandering from the washroom to his cabin in his undergarments was bad enough without any insight into the old man's thoughts. But despite not being truly objectionable, Uncle's admiration for the bounty hunter still made Zuko's skin crawl.

The sun had barely touched the horizon when Jun pulled back on the reins and dismounted, motioning for Zuko and Uncle to do the same. "This is as far as we go tonight. By Nyla's behavior, I'm guessing we're only five or six hours from the girl."

While Uncle clambered down from the saddle, Zuko exhaled a few sparks. "Only five or six hours and we're stopping?"

Jun gave him an increasingly familiar, unimpressed look. "It's dusk, Pouty. I'm not riding five or six more hours in the dark."

"Your overgrown rat doesn't need light. We don't need to stop."

"Shirshu," Jun corrected sharply. "And unless you can see with your nose, there's no one who can drive Nyla in the dark."

"We could all use the rest, Prince Zuko." Uncle stretched and yawned.

Zuko glowered. He wasn't tired. He could ride all night and the following day if he needed to. He could sleep when the Avatar was in custody. "We're firebenders. We have all the light we need."

Jun reached up and opened one of the saddlebags. "Let's see how that ends. A venomous animal and fire sounds like a winning combination to me." She produced a bundled-up tent from the depths of the saddlebag, and fixed Zuko with a stare. "We're stopping for the night. Down. Now."

Zuko crossed his arms. He was a prince. He didn't have to take orders—his mission to capture the Avatar took precedence over everything else. The bounty hunter ought to know that.

One of Jun's eyebrows arched. "Off, Princey-poo, or I'll have Nyla give you a taste of his venom."

She was bluffing. There was no way that the bounty hunter would dare to—Jun rounded toward Nyla's head and started murmuring the beginning of a command. Zuko gave in, scrambling to the ground before the huge, barbed tongue could shoot his direction.

"I'm down, I'm down."

Jun nodded and backed away from Nyla's head, giving the ugly creature one last scratch under the chin. "Good choice. Shirshu venom isn't known for inducing restful sleep. You can thank me later."

He would not be thanking the bounty hunter for any such thing. She was costing him precious hours of his quest. And if she didn't stop with the nicknames and insinuations, he'd be tempted to un-hire her when they got closer to his target. Except that the ship was still miles away and working under orders to sail north until they saw a flare from the shoreline. Zuko wasn't convinced that they were near enough to the coast to send up a flare.

"I still don't see the point in stopping. Why does anyone need to drive your rat?"

Jun shot him a frigid look. "Call him a rat again and I'll let him shoot you full of venom. A whole night paralyzed and awake, how does that sound to you?"

"But why? Why can't she just take us there in the dark?"

"And what, you want to fight your girlfriend and her monk in the dark?"

Zuko spluttered. He could. He was good at fighting in the dark. Better with his swords than his bending, but still good. Besides, if they found the Avatar and the airbender asleep, there wouldn't have to be a fight.

Jun shook her head. "You don't want to try dodging a shirshu's tongue in the dark, believe me. Nyla doesn't miss." Smirking, she opened another saddlebag and produced a sleeping bag this time. "Besides, you could use the beauty sleep. Unless you want your girlfriend to run away screaming at the sight of your ugly mug."

Zuko's fists clenched. "For the last time, she's not—"

Before he had a chance to finish, Jun tossed the bundled tent at him, and he had to stop midsentence to keep it from colliding with his nose.

"Make yourselves useful." Jun motioned to Uncle. "Fatty, campfire. Pouty, the tent."

"Just the one tent?" Zuko sneered. "What's the matter, can't extort enough customers for a place to sleep."

Black hair swishing, Jun turned away, heading off in the direction of the last stream they'd crossed. Without looking back, she called, "It's my tent. You two can sleep in the dirt for all I care."

Uncle's hand landed on his shoulder.

"What a perfectly enchanting young woman. Don't you think, Prince Zuko?"

Zuko looked back at Uncle, disgusted, and pulled away. He'd pitch the tent, but he wouldn't do a very good job of it.


Aang couldn't understand it. Everything had been going so well. He had Appa and Momo and Sokka and Katara. They were supposed to be a team, a family. But it felt like everything was falling apart around him. Katara was mad at him, Sokka was all but ignoring him, and now—now there was this.

He turned the map over in his hands and unrolled it for what felt like the hundredth time. Water Tribe maps looked different than he was used to, more twists and swirls drawn into the water, and no indication of the prevailing air currents, but he recognized the shape of the Earth Kingdom's northwestern coast. And he didn't have to know their symbols to recognize the midnight blue wedge shapes in an inlet to the north were meant to be ships. Their dad's ships.

He rolled the paper up again and rested his elbows on his knees. It wasn't fair. What good was being the Avatar when he couldn't make people stay with him? The map would take Katara and Sokka straight to their dad, and that would leave Aang—well, he wasn't actually sure where. They were following Aang's map, and for the first few weeks, Sokka had more or less gone along with Aang's ideas on fun places to stop on their journey, but ever since Crescent Island, Sokka had taken over and insisted on no more distractions. They had to focus on evading the Fire Nation and getting to the North Pole as soon as possible.

Or they had to focus on their journey until they ran into one of their dad's friends. Then everything else stopped and they packed up camp and moved their things to a convent to hang out with their dad's friend who was stern and liked to talk about the war. Aang didn't like any of those things. He liked being left out even less.

He unrolled the paper again and scowled at it. It wasn't fair. They couldn't just leave him behind like that, could they? They couldn't just go off without Aang to find their dad.

Except that Bato had a nice big boat, and though Aang knew next to nothing about sailing, he remembered that the Water Tribe's boats were the best and fastest in the world. Maybe the big, scary Fire Navy ones had changed that in the past hundred years, but that didn't matter. The point was that Bato could take Sokka and Katara to the North Pole just as well as Aang. Or maybe Bato would take them to meet their dad first, and the whole fleet would escort them to the North Pole.

Either way, they wouldn't need Aang anymore. They were supposed to be his family, they were supposed to stay with him no matter what. He wanted to believe that they would, but Aang's mind kept replaying the afternoon with Katara. She was mad at him. Really mad. And he couldn't understand why—he hadn't said anything bad, he just wanted to learn from a scroll made by a real master! He'd done all of Katara's other forms. Done them pretty well too, if he said so himself. He didn't understand what part of that had made her so upset. Katara wanted him to train with her, and he had.

But she was mad at him. Nobody had ever been mad at Aang before, not like that.

He didn't know what it even meant when someone got that mad at him. What if Katara wanted to leave Aang behind? What if she was still so mad that she would grab the first chance to take off with Sokka and Bato? Sokka wasn't mad at Aang, but it didn't seem likely that he would argue against leaving. Sokka was really excited about seeing his dad.

No. He wasn't going to be left behind. Taking a deep breath, Aang scrunched up the map and stowed it away down the front of his tunic. He'd hold onto the map until Katara wasn't angry with him anymore. Maybe if he just waited a while, she'd go back to normal. Maybe then the prospect of finding their dad wouldn't be enough to pull Katara and Sokka away from him.


It was well after dark, probably nearing midnight before Bato shooed them off for bed. Sokka complained about it. Katara did too, on principle. No one had sent them to bed in ages, and Katara was perfectly capable of deciding when she went to sleep. Nobody needed to enforce that for her.

But she was tired, and as much as Sokka denied it, she could tell that he was too. It was hard to argue with Bato for long when they both kept yawning. And when Bato hugged them both and promised more Water Tribe meals and an ice dodging trip in the morning, they both gave in.

Ahead of her, Sokka fumbled and thumped his way around in the dark. Katara rolled her eyes and hoisted the lamp higher. The nuns hadn't had time to prepare regular bedrooms for them, but there was a barn big enough for Appa, and with the addition of a few cots, it would do perfectly well for the night.

Once Sokka had finished his bumping around and managed to get his sleeping bag spread out on one of the cots, Katara picked her way past him. Aang, she noticed, was curled up on Appa's tail, back turned toward her cot with Momo held snug against his chest. It looked like he was sleeping. As quietly as she could, Katara unrolled her sleeping bag, kicked off her boots, and crawled into bed.

"Goodnight, Sokka."

A snore came in response, and she shook her head, reaching to extinguish the lamp.

"Goodnight, Aang," she added in a whisper as the barn went dark.

There were shifting sounds from Appa's tail, and Momo chattered sleepily in protest. Katara turned her head to see Aang's shadowy form rise to sit.

"You aren't sleeping?" she asked.

It was too dark to tell for certain, but she thought he shook his head. "No, I'm just—thinking."

Katara looked up into the blackness of the rafters overhead. "About?"

There was a bit of rustling. "About today."

Right. Between the excitement of finding Bato and the hours of conversation after Aang left, she'd almost forgotten about that. She played with one of the tassels on her sleeping bag, still staring upward. "I'm sorry for the way I yelled at you."

"You are?"

"I didn't mean to be that harsh," she said. "But it's just that—"

"I wasn't trying to say anything bad about your waterbending scroll." Aang's words came in a rush, and Katara stopped short. "And I want to learn Southern waterbending too. That's what the monks wanted me to learn before I was frozen. They said that they were going to send me to the Eastern Air Temple first, then when I was ready, they were going to send me to the Southern Water Tribe to start learning the other elements. I guess they thought it was better for the Avatar to know Southern Style."

Katara felt herself softening. Her tribe was supposed to be entrusted with training the Avatar. It made the ever-present sting of her tribe's loss a little deeper, a little more raw, but she still swelled with pride at the knowledge that she belonged to that tradition. That she could bring back at least a little of what her people had lost.

"It's just that—bending scrolls are tricky. The real ones are only drawn by masters because it takes a master to get the important parts right."

She stiffened in her sleeping bag and slowly turned to face Aang. She still couldn't make out his face, but she could see his silhouette, and his posture looked easy, even relaxed. "The real ones?" she repeated, a little louder than before, a little sharper.

"Yeah, the ones made by masters." His tone sounded far too relaxed, far too chipper for her liking. "You copied a real scroll. And you did a good job, but—" She heard him scratch the back of his neck. "There's a lot of little details they have to put in the scrolls so people can really learn from them. And you're not a master. I just think—maybe you missed a few things. And maybe that's why you had to work so hard to learn just a couple of forms."

Katara crossed her arms and stared straight upward again, scowling hard. Aang was wrong. She'd worked so hard because she had no other choice. She'd worked so hard because there was never anyone to teach her. She'd worked so hard because she needed to learn how to waterbend, and her hand copied scroll was her only option. Because she couldn't take the original from its rightful owner on Kyoshi Island, and because she refused to travel all the way across the world without learning at least a little of her own element along the way. It had nothing to do with how good or bad her scroll was.

"Your scroll is fine," Aang added, in what he probably thought was a soothing tone. Even though he'd hardly done more than glance at her scroll. Even though he'd never seen the original, even though he didn't know waterbending forms any better than she did. "I was just excited to learn from one made by a real master."

Katara was done listening to him. She turned her back and pulled her sleeping bag up higher around her chin. "Good night, Aang," she said sharply.


Author's Note:

Step 1: accidentally insult your friend.
Step 2: fail to realize how insulted your friend feels.
Step 3: try to make it better by, hiding some uh... slightly important information.

What could possibly go wrong?

This story keeps surprising me. I keep expecting to hate writing certain things (fight scenes, arguments, emotional outbursts, etc), but I keep... not hating them. It's weird, but I'll take it. And hopefully this means that the stuff I'm looking forward to writing in Chapter 22 and beyond will be even more fun to write. Though I'm not sure if 'fun' is the right word... satisfying, maybe.

Anyway. Chapter 21 is coming next week, and ALL of this *gestures vaguely around* is going to hit the fan, so I hope to see you back for that! And beginning on July 26, I'm going to be posting for Zutara Week 2020, so if you're at all interested in reading a whole heap of Zutara oneshots, be sure to come back then! In the meantime, reviews are very much appreciated! And check out my Tumblr (soopersara) if you're interested!