Water

Dissent

"We don't have time for meditation, Uncle."

Zuko paced from one end of the clearing to the other. He'd already packed away the bounty hunter's tent and the rest of the supplies. Which definitely didn't have anything to do with the fact that she'd told him to make himself useful and threatened him with a shirshu sting again. No, Zuko wouldn't give in just because of a silly threat. He wasn't scared of Jun.

But they were short on time. Five or six more hours, Jun had told him last night. Five or six hours to get to where the Avatar was staying and take the girl and the monk into custody. Five or six hours for the Avatar and her friends to move on and slip through Zuko's fingers again. He couldn't let that happen. They had to get moving now.

Not budging from his lotus position, Uncle peered up at him through one eye. "Meditation is necessary, Prince Zuko. We must always find time for it."

"One day without meditating wouldn't be the end of the world! We have to capture them today."

Uncle closed his eye again and let out a slow breath, easing back into his meditation.

Great. Zuko paced across the clearing again. Nobody was listening to him. Nobody ever listened to him. That was just perfect. Of all the days Uncle could have chosen to be difficult, he had to choose today. He had enough things to worry about without the one person who was supposed to be on his side ignoring everything Zuko said.

"What would you suggest we do instead, Prince Zuko?" Uncle asked, as if in reply to Zuko's thoughts, his eyes still closed. "Our lovely young guide has not yet returned. It would be the height of dishonor to leave without her."

Or maybe it was the height of dishonor to wander off in the middle of her job. Jun had made a deal with Zuko, she was meant to capture the Avatar as soon as possible. Earning her pay ought to be her concern, not—whatever she was doing right now.

"What could possibly be so important that she had to go off by herself? I'm paying her to find the Avatar! We should have left first thing this morning. No, earlier than that!"

"Quick lesson, kid," Jun called as she emerged from the trees. "Never demand to know what a girl is up to in her private time."

Zuko stopped his pacing and glowered. "Enjoy wasting my time?"

Jun smirked. "Matter of fact, I did. And having you pack up camp saved my time, so thanks for that." She surveyed the saddlebags and poked around inside them. "Better than I expected from a spoiled brat."

He felt his eye twitching. Why couldn't anyone understand how important this was? "I should start cutting your pay every time you slow down my search," Zuko snapped.

"Try it." Jun swung herself up into the saddle. "And I'll dump you and Fatso off so far from your fancy boat that it'll take you a week to find your way back. If you're lucky."

Uncle heaved himself to his feet and dusted off his clothes. "Forgive my nephew, Miss Jun. He has not had his morning meditation."

"What, is he a toddler who missed his nap?"

Zuko started to splutter out a response, but before he could finish, Jun rolled her eyes and held up a hand to silence him.

"Just get up here, both of you. The sooner I hand over your girlfriend and her monk and I get my money, the happier we'll all be."


"You hid this from us?" With the map still balled up in his hand, Sokka grabbed Aang by the front of the tunic. "You knew where our dad was, and you didn't say anything?"

Katara watched, silent and numb. Or maybe she was just numb on the inside. She could feel the paint on her forehead, slowly beginning to dry and flake away. She had been so proud to earn the mark of the crescent moon, so excited to go ice dodging at all—but all of that was gone now.

Dad was close. She'd gotten a glimpse of the map—just a brief one, just long enough to make out the contour of the coastline and the symbols marking the convent and the fleet to the north. But Dad was close, and they could have left to find him already. They could be almost halfway there by now, had Aang given them the map.

Aang's forehead creased as he looked back and forth between the two of them. "I didn't—"

"You had the map!" Sokka shook him once, gripping Aang's tunic so hard that his knuckles stood out as sharp points. "How could you lie about something like this? Do you have any idea how long it's been? How could you keep us from him?"

"I wasn't trying to—I gave you the map! You have it now!" Aang's voice wobbled and he looked to Katara for help. "Please don't be mad."

Was she mad? Katara couldn't tell for sure. She was shaking. Her eyes were burning. She wanted to yell, she wanted to scream. She wanted to grab Sokka and run north as fast as she could until they found Dad. Until they crashed straight into Dad's arms for the first time in years.

She wasn't mad. She was beyond that. She wasn't even sure that there was a word for how she felt.

"How long were you planning on keeping this a secret?" she yelled when she finally found her voice. "How far were you going to let us go before you told us that we could have seen him?" Hot, enraged tears spilled down her cheeks, but she wasn't crying, not really. Her voice stayed as clear, as steady as ever.

Aang's lower lip wobbled, and his voice wavered. Still half-dangling by Sokka's grip on his tunic, he hung almost limp. "I—I don't know."

"That's our dad, Aang!" The words tore their way out of her throat. Katara couldn't stop herself even if she wanted to. "Were you going to let us get all the way to the North Pole before you told us? Were you ever going to say anything at all?"

"I thought you guys would leave me," Aang said, voice small.

At that, Sokka shook his head and let go, sudden enough that Aang stumbled. "Now that you mention it, that's not a half-bad idea." His voice was just as cold, as brittle as Katara's was incensed. "Don't you think, Katara? Now's as good a time as any. Bato can take us. Then I'm sure Dad can spare a few weeks to get us to the North Pole."

Aang looked like he was about to speak, but Katara turned away with Sokka. She couldn't look at Aang. She didn't want to. She didn't care how pitiful he looked. She didn't care if he was upset. Not now. Not when he'd lied to them. Not when he'd tried to keep them away from their dad.

As Sokka did his best to uncrumple the map, she walked side-by-side with him, eyes fixed forward. Bato had gone back to the convent ahead of them. If they hurried, they could gather all their things and meet Bato before he headed back down to the beach.

Appa looked up and rumbled in greeting when they pushed open the doors to the barn, and Momo scampered down to sniff at their ankles. Katara refused to look at either of them as she climbed up into the saddle. Their supplies. That was all she could think about right now. Packing up their supplies and finding Bato.

She handed Sokka's pack down to him, then his weapons, his fishing supplies, his hunting spear, and both tents. The cooking supplies would go on her pack, along with her waterbending scrolls and the sleeping bags and their parkas. She hesitated over the things King Bumi had given them, then pushed it all aside. Aang could keep it. She and Sokka could make do with what they had from home, even if it meant doing without warm-weather supplies for a while.

She clambered down to the ground and bundled her things together. Then, without saying a word, and with packs strapped to their backs, they closed the barn behind them and crossed the courtyard to Bato's room.

Before Bato could greet them at the door, Sokka held out the creased map, his expression stony. "This came last night. Apparently someone tried to lose it."

Katara felt oddly calm as she nodded. "How soon can we leave? Sokka and I are coming with you."


"Steady, Nyla." Jun tugged on the reins when the shirshu lurched forward, its tentacle-ringed nose twitching with every shift in the breeze. "We're close," she added, looking back over her shoulder. "You'd better hope that your crew saw your flares, Pouty. I'm not sticking around to babysit once we've got your girlfriend."

Zuko couldn't even be bothered by the insinuations anymore. He could feel how close they were. The girl was within reach, and this time, he was practically unstoppable. The necklace still dangled from his wrist, and if he didn't know better, he'd think that it was growing warmer the closer they got. For once in his life, he couldn't lose. For once, he was going to get what he wanted, what he needed.

As they rode, slower than before, he scanned the sea to his left through breaks in the trees. There was his ship—still a good distance from shore but aiming for the bay. Just as they'd been ordered.

His stomach tied into knots. Everything was working. For now, everything was going exactly as it should. He couldn't let it fall apart this time. He wasn't sure he could take another failure, not now, not when he finally had both a plan and a real, insurmountable advantage on his side. Not when he was finally within sight of his mission's end.

"My ship is on its way," he said. "You won't have to babysit anyone. I'm not losing them again."

"Good." Jun jerked the reins again to keep Nyla from veering off the path. "Keep an eye out for your girlfriend. We should be less than a mile off now. No more noise until she's in sight."

Zuko opened his mouth to argue—he hadn't spoken until Jun asked him a question, it wasn't him she should be worried about—but thought better of it and closed his mouth again. She'd threatened to break off the deal to catch the Avatar enough times already, Zuko didn't need to test his luck any further.

When the path finally turned in the direction Nyla was pulling, Jun let the beast break into a gallop. Zuko's heart sat in his throat as they crested one rise, then another and another, riding closer and closer to the coast.

He hoped that the Avatar was still on land. He hoped that she wasn't too near the water. He hoped that wherever she was when they caught up with her, she wouldn't have any quick means of escape. If there was one thing she was good at—other than dropping water on people and freezing them solid—it was squirming out of his grasp at the last second.

Not this time. Zuko's fists clenched tight. She wouldn't escape this time.

Just as they neared the edge of the forest, where the land turned to meadows of brownish grass before the beach, he saw her. The Avatar and her oaf of a brother walked side-by-side behind a tall man in blue.

Even before Zuko yelled out that they'd found the girl, all three turned back toward the source of the noise. The Avatar's eyes went huge, and the unfamiliar man swung the girl and her brother both out of the way, placing himself in Nyla's path.

"Run for the boat, kids," The man shouted, drawing a club. In an ordinary fight, he would have been a daunting foe. He looked willing and able to crush skulls with a single blow.

Nyla came to an abrupt halt, and snarling, whipped his tongue out. The man swung his club fast enough to deflect it, but rather than running away as he'd ordered, the Avatar and her brother readied themselves to join the fight. The Avatar uncorked a waterskin, and her brother pulled his boomerang from a sheath on his back. Nyla danced sideways, keeping clear of the Water Tribe man and his club, angling toward the Avatar.

Zuko's pulse roared. The airbender. The airbender wasn't here, and the little Water Tribe group was staying in a tight cluster, fending off Nyla's barbed tongue. It wasn't enough. He couldn't lose this time—he had to get the Avatar. But if he couldn't find the airbender, would it even matter? He needed both of them.

Nyla still hadn't managed to land a blow, and the Water Tribe group was backing away toward the coastline bit by bit. No. If they made it to the water, the Avatar would be able to use her other tricks. She would have more water to work with, more places to escape to. Maybe she could even use the Avatar State. That would be Zuko's luck.

As Nyla reared up and swung around toward the Avatar again, Zuko tried to swing down to the ground. He could end this fight faster if he could just get down there—but before he managed to dismount, Jun reached back and caught him by the collar.

"Are you stupid, Pouty? Nyla has some of your scent too. Get in his line of fire and he might knock you out first."


Katara whipped small disks of water at the creature, over and over, but nothing seemed to deter it, and the giant, barbed tongue kept coming toward her, swiping closer with every attack. Part of her—a small part—wanted to listen to Bato and run as fast as she could down to the boat where the creature couldn't reach her. Her water was running low, and she couldn't spare the time to gather up the droplets that the creature had swatted out of the air. Maybe if she could make it to the shoreline, she would be able to fight it off. But she couldn't leave Sokka and Bato behind. Between the three of them, they were holding the beast back. If Katara left them, the other two would lose ground. And she had no idea what the creature would do if it caught them.

Judging by the fact that Zuko was riding the thing, nothing good.

That was probably why the big mole thing seemed intent on hitting Katara—somehow, Zuko must have trained it to go after her. Even if she wanted to run away, the creature would catch her if she dared to step away from Sokka and Bato.

The dark-haired woman in the front of the beast's saddle shouted an order to the creature and cracked a whip. The noise was loud enough that Sokka missed blocking the beast's next attack, and its tongue skimmed across his forearm. Or she thought it did. It happened so fast that it was hard to tell for certain, but Sokka dropped to the ground in a heap, limbs utterly limp.

"Sokka?" She whipped another disk of water at the beast's tongue and tried to move into a position to better defend him.

That, it turned out, was a mistake. The long, barbed tongue lashed out again and wrapped around her wrist. For an instant, there was a stinging, burning pain where it had touched her, but the sensation faded just as quickly as it had come, and she heard rather than felt herself land on top of Sokka.

She couldn't feel anything. She couldn't move anything.

She could still hear Bato fighting the beast and hear its awful, wet snarling as the tongue cast shadows across her vision, but then that stopped too, and a woman spoke.

"Now you can get down, Pouty."

"I could have ended that fight a lot sooner, you know." That was Zuko.

"You would have ended that fight a lot worse. Hurry up and get your girlfriend."

What? Katara must have been imagining things. There was no possible way that the woman would actually call her Zuko's girlfriend.

Footsteps approached her, and Katara watched, helpless, as the world around her shifted. She couldn't feel herself being moved, but she came face-to-face with Zuko for an instant, then he heaved her off of the ground and carried her back toward the creature, never meeting her eyes. Gross. She could see straight up his nostrils and she couldn't even complain about it. She tried, and all that came out was a small grunt that sounded more like Momo's snoring than the shouts she was hoping for.

Then she found herself draped face-down across the creature's back and her nose squished into its fur. She tried to shout again, but again nothing came.

More footsteps behind her, and the woman spoke again. "Oh, for fuck's sake, kid, I thought you were just after a girl and a monk. Leave those two."

Katara heard an unhappy grunt that sounded a bit like Sokka, and the footsteps resumed, coming closer this time.

"I still need a way to catch the monk," Zuko rasped. There was a thump beside Katara, and she thought she could make out the side of Sokka's head from the corner of her eye. "They were all travelling together. I might need the idiot for bait."

Sokka's grunt sounded rather high and indignant this time.

"Please," the woman said. "Please never explain the weird shit you're into. I really don't want to know."


Aang sat curled into a ball between Appa's legs. He'd messed up. He'd messed up bad. Everything he'd tried to keep Sokka and Katara with him had backfired, and now they had gone. He was alone, just like he'd feared.

Would it have made a difference if he'd given them the map sooner? Would that have helped? If he'd told them where their dad was last night, maybe they wouldn't have been angry at him. Maybe they would have stayed.

Or maybe they would have left anyway. They wanted to see their dad. They didn't seem to care where that left Aang.

He still had Appa. That was one thing. Appa would always be there for him, but it wasn't the same as having people, having someone who would listen and answer when Aang talked.

Momo scampered down from Appa's saddle and perched on Aang's knees, chattering excitedly. Aang tried to push the lemur away. He didn't want to play right now. In fact, he wasn't sure that he'd want to play again for a very long time.

Momo was insistent, though, tugging at Aang's tunic and screeching, and when Aang didn't respond, Momo climbed back into the saddle and began rustling around.

Aang's staff fell and thumped him on the back of the head.

"Ouch, Momo!" Aang rubbed the back of his head. "What was that for? I don't want to play with you right now."

Momo stared straight into Aang's eyes and screeched.

"Momo, I said no. Not right now."

The lemur screamed again and tossed a twig.

"Ugh." Aang hauled himself to his feet. "I'm not playing with you, Momo. Leave me—"

He heard a noise that didn't come from Momo. It sounded a bit like one of Momo's screams, but much farther away.

It almost sounded like Sokka and Katara. It was coming from the right direction too. Were they in trouble? Had something happened to them? Maybe they needed help. Maybe if Aang helped them, they would stop being mad at him.

Aang grabbed his staff off the ground and unfolded its wings. If they were in trouble, he had to be fast. They'd left for Bato's boat a while ago—he'd have to catch up to them before anything really bad happened, and before they took off on the ship, leaving Aang behind for good.

He swooped up over the walls of the convent, following the sounds of the shouting. The closer he went, the more he could make out other noises—fighting sounds, and big, slobbery, snarling sounds. Like they were fighting some kind of big animal.

Aang dropped closer to the treetops, scanning the path below. Nothing there, nothing there, nothing there. Then he heard Katara yell Sokka's name, and a bit more scuffling, and everything was quiet again.

Aang's heart skipped a beat. That was bad. That was really bad.

He zigzagged over the edge of the forest until he saw a splotch of blue just at the edge of the meadow, and he dropped to the ground.

"Bato?"

The warrior lay perfectly still, limbs sprawled at odd angles. Aang circled around to his head. Bato seemed to be alive—his eyes were open and moving, but he couldn't seem to move any other way.

"What happened? I thought I heard a fight. Katara and Sokka were with you, right?"

Bato looked like he was trying to answer, but all that came out was a grunt.

Huh. So talking wasn't going to be an option, then.

"I need to find Katara and Sokka. If I point, can you tell me which way they went?"

Bato made an affirmative grunt, and Aang extended an arm, turning slowly on the spot until Bato grunted a second time.

Back toward the convent. Aang nodded and gave his staff a twirl.

"Thanks, Bato! I'll find them."


Zuko didn't need to go far to find the airbender. The airbender found him. A good few minutes after they'd taken off again, backtracking through the middle of the forest, a gust struck from behind, and both of Zuko's captives began to slide off the shirshu. He caught the Avatar by the back of her tunic and held her still, but the oaf wasn't so lucky—still limp, he slid feet-first toward the ground, and landed hard on his backside.

Zuko winced. Oops. That would probably hurt when the venom wore off.

Jun yanked on the reins, turning Nyla back to face the airbender. The creature's tongue shot out at the airbender, but rather than defending against the attacks, the airbender avoided them, twisting and leaping out of the way with every lash of the massive tongue.

When Nyla kept lunging and missing and trying to spin after the airbender, Jun finally looked back over her shoulder.

"Everybody off. The kid's too fast, we're weighing Nyla down."

Finally. Zuko heaved the Avatar up over his shoulder and swung down to the ground. He couldn't stand sitting still while the overgrown mole did his work for him. Capturing the Avatar was Zuko's job. He ought to have at least a little part in the actual capturing.

Zuko laid the Avatar on the side of the path beside her equally immobile brother. For the briefest instant, his eyes locked with hers, and it made his stomach knot unpleasantly. Bad idea. He should know better than to look a prisoner in the eyes. As Zuko turned to go, the Avatar's brother made a tremendous amount of noise before he managed to slur out something that sounded like "asshole."

Zuko shook his head. He didn't have time to worry about them. The airbender had to be his priority right now.

And the airbender was hard to pin down. Any time Nyla whipped his enormous tongue at the boy, he leapt over it or dodged to the side so quickly that the barbed tongue crashed into a tree or smacked against the ground instead. With or without the extra weight slowing Nyla down, the airbender was too fast for the beast.

Jun swung her whip at the airbender's ankle. He pranced out of the way, and Jun swore.

"Pouty! Get over here!" She aimed for the airbender's arm and again, the boy spun out of the way.

Zuko threw a blast of fire at the airbender, and he yelped, leaping well above the flames.

"You could have mentioned that your monk was a slippery little shit," Jun snapped.

Zuko snarled and hurled another fireball. He'd never really realized how slippery the airbender was. Every time they'd met, Zuko had been more focused on the Avatar, and the airbender had never really fought back. Just moved fast enough to stay out of the way. Just like this. Zuko aimed for the monk's feet this time, hoping to throw the boy off balance.

The airbender, it seemed, couldn't be thrown off balance. He tossed himself from side to side, turned himself upside down, hovered out of reach of Nyla's tongue, and dissipated Zuko's flames with well-aimed bursts of air. Zuko couldn't get close enough to land a blow. It was like the airbender was toying with him.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Avatar move—just a fraction, but she had moved. Her brother too. The paralysis had to be wearing off.

Zuko's chest clenched. No. He wouldn't lose this time. He couldn't lose this time.

He threw hotter, more powerful blasts of flames at the airbender, timing them so the boy would have to dodge both the fire and Nyla's tongue simultaneously. He wouldn't be able to dodge both, not for long.

Sure enough, the airbender's eyes went wide at the sight of the two simultaneous attacks, and for the first time, he stood his ground, releasing a blast of air so strong that Nyla's tongue whipped back toward Zuko. He ducked just in time to avoid being struck, but there was a screech behind him, and when he looked back, Jun was running toward Nyla, and the beast's long tongue had retracted back into its jaw.

Before Zuko had time to figure out what had happened, much less react, the airbender barreled past, straight toward the slightly-less-paralyzed Avatar and her brother.

"Sokka! Katara! I found Bato, and he told me where you guys were. Don't worry, I'm going to call Appa and get you—"

Nyla swung around toward the airbender's voice, and the shirshu's tail caught the back of the boy's legs, knocking him off his feet. Another twitch of the muscular tail, and the airbender was launched up above the trees and out of sight.

"Nyla's been hit!" Jun shouted.

Zuko ran back down the path. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Jun looked up long enough to scowl at him. "It means that he took a dose of his own venom. This leg isn't going to move right for at least another day."

Zuko's pulse roared, and he felt a crushing weight settling down on his shoulders. "And that means—"

"That means that Nyla can't fight. And with those two coming around, you can bet their pal with the club will be back in a few minutes." Jun straightened from her examination and fixed him with a look. "Same goes for the monk."

Not just the monk. The monk and his bison. Zuko looked from the Avatar to the place where the airbender had vanished into the sky and back again. Nyla couldn't fight. Uncle wouldn't fight. Zuko couldn't pin down the airbender on his own. The crushing weight on his shoulders and his chest grew heavier and heavier.

"Can we still get to my ship?" His voice was almost hoarse.

Jun shrugged. "Probably. Might be slow, but if Nyla's not overloaded—"

Zuko didn't wait for her to finish. He circled back to the Avatar—still unable to do much more than squirm and make semi-coherent noises of rage. In one quick stroke, he produced a dagger from his boot and sliced through the straps of her pack. Letting the pack drop to the ground, he hoisted the Avatar over his shoulder again.

"Then let's go."

He could almost hear Uncle's proverbs whispering in his ear—a battle half-won is merely the first step in a victorious war or some nonsense. Even in his own mind, that didn't make sense, but he couldn't think about that now. Or anything else, for that matter. If he stopped to think, he wouldn't be able to force himself to leave without the airbender, and if he didn't leave, he might lose everything.

Again.


He wasn't gone for long. Minutes, if even that. After the big mole had knocked him into the air with its tail, Aang had been winded and barely managed to bend enough air to break his fall. But he'd managed it, and once he recovered his breath, he'd whistled for Appa and took off running toward the place where Sokka and Katara were waiting for him. He'd dropped his staff at some point—before he got launched into the sky, he hoped, it would be much easier to find that way—so he couldn't glide back, but he was a fast runner. Aang knew that he was a fast runner.

But by the time he found his way back to the bend in the path, it was almost bare. Sokka was still there. He was struggling to get to his feet, slowed by the heavy pack still strapped to his back and whatever the big mole thing with the nasty tongue had done to him. But Katara, and Zuko, and the old man, and the lady, and the mole thing—they were all gone.

Aang stared around the small clearing, then up and down the path in disbelief. All the scorch marks from Zuko's firebending were still fresh, all the footprints were undisturbed. Aang wasn't a tracker, but he could see evidence of the fight everywhere around him. It had only been a few minutes, they shouldn't be gone already.

But the firebenders—and the lady, Aang was pretty sure that she wasn't a firebender—were nowhere to be seen, and Katara was missing too. All that was left was her bag. As Aang wandered closer, he could see that the straps had been cut, and the contents had spilled out across the path. He picked his way through the mess until he found Katara's old waterbending scroll.

Aang stooped to pick up the scroll and peered down the path to where the mole's big footprints disappeared around a bend. He squeezed it so hard that the edges of the wooden spool bit into his hands.

"We lost her," he whispered.


Author's Note:

Dun, dun, dunnnnnnnnn!

Now the shit has officially hit the fan. Is this my first cliffhanger? Because I think it might be my first cliffhanger.

Also, disclaimer time: I know capture fics are very much A Thing in the Zutara fandom, but this story... isn't that thing. Yes, Zuko has captured Katara, yes, this is a Zutara fic (or it'll get there eventually), no, it doesn't fit into the box of Zutara capture fics. That said, I know capture fics and stories that toe the line are mega-controversial, so if anyone has concerns about how I'm going to be handling this plot, let me know and I'll be more than happy to answer questions! (Preferably via private message here or on my Tumblr to avoid spoilers for people who don't want them, but if you prefer leaving questions in reviews or Tumblr asks, I'll figure out a way to warn for spoilers. Just make sure you have messaging enabled you leave a question in a review and actually want a reply!)

In the meantime, Zutara Week 2020 is on the way, so if you want to see what I came up with, check back next week! Starting on July 26th, I'll be posting a fic a day for an entire week!