Water

Out of Place

"This isn't what rice is supposed to look like, Sokka." Katara lifted the ladle from the pot and let the watery, lumpy mess splash back in. "I thought you said that you learned how to cook."

"I did! See? This is cooked. I cooked this."

"Not very well."

Sokka snorted. "Nobody said anything about cooking well. I just said that I learned how."

Katara gaped at him. He sounded so proud of himself, but this didn't even look like food. This was—mostly water with a few white bits floating around in it.

"It's not so bad," Aang said, swishing the stuff around in his bowl. "It's kind of like soup."

"See?" Sokka did a funny little dance around the campfire. "See, Katara? Aang likes it."

"I don't know if I'd go that far."

With an indignant squawk, Sokka rounded on Aang. "Traitor! After all the work I went through, you can't at least appreciate my effort?"

Aang held up his hands. "Hey! I said it wasn't so bad. It's loads better than last time."

"Wait, wait, wait," Katara interrupted. "Sokka cooked something worse than mostly-water rice?"

"Yeah. Yesterday morning, he didn't use enough water, so the top was all dry and crunchy, and the bottom all stuck together and turned brown."

Katara shot a sidelong look at Sokka. "You learned how to cook, huh?"

"I—You know, it's not my fault if I'm not the best cook in the world. Cooking is girl stuff. I'm not supposed to be good at it."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm trying to be nice by making you breakfast and all I get is complaints." Sokka jutted his chin out. "I could've just waited until you woke up and let you cook instead."

Katara glared. "What if I didn't cook anything?"

"You always cook. Sooner or later—"

"I don't always cook. I haven't cooked in weeks." She narrowed her eyes. "And you know what else? I'm pretty sure everything I ate was cooked by men."

She regretted it almost as soon as the words left her mouth. Both boys' eyes landed on her, and then Sokka looked pointedly away.

Her hands clenched into fists. What was she supposed to do? She was trying her best to act like everything was normal, like nothing had changed, and it had seemed to be working. The boys relaxed a little, and Katara had almost thought that she was in the clear. That she was well on her way to feeling like things were normal again.

"And—" she fumbled for words for a second. "And Bato cooked for us too, remember? He's a really good cook. How is cooking a girl thing if Bato can cook so well, huh, Sokka? How does that work in your dumb, sexist brain?"

Aang made a face at the mention of Bato's cooking, but it faded as quickly as it appeared, and neither of the boys would look at her. Sokka's expression almost looked guilty, and he kicked a piece of firewood a little farther into the center of the ring.

That was not helpful. Katara wanted to move on, she wanted to stop lingering on the memory of the past few weeks. But if she had to keep skirting around the subject, never mentioning anything about her time away, she couldn't exactly feel normal. There had to be a limit somewhere. There had to be some things she could still talk about without getting the guilty faces from Sokka and Aang.

Moving on shouldn't have to mean ignoring what happened forever.

"What was it like?" Aang asked after a pause.

"What was what like? The food?"

Aang shrugged. "That. And—everything, I guess."

Katara tensed. Acknowledging the last few weeks was one thing. Answering questions about it was entirely different.

"The food was fine." Her tone sounded a little sharp, even to her own ears. "Weird, but fine."

Aang hesitated a moment. "And everything else?"

She crossed her arms and leaned forward, looking into the fire. "'Everything' is a big question. I wouldn't even know where to start."

Sokka's gaze turned her way again, and she could feel the sharpness of it, trying to bore into her skull like he could read her thoughts if only he stared hard enough.

"The beginning would be fine," he said flatly. "What happened when you were gone?"

That was exactly the problem. She didn't want to talk about the beginning. She didn't want to explain the all-consuming dread, the fear of being drugged or poisoned or worse. She didn't want to tell them how close she'd come to collapsing in the first few days because she was too afraid to eat. They would only worry if she did.

And if she told them about that, she'd have to explain how things finally changed. How the general had begun taking all his meals with Katara and taught her to play board games. How she'd begun to trust the old man and grown to fear the rest of the crew less and less by the day. How she'd eventually learned that all of those things had been Zuko's idea all along. That Zuko was the one who'd tried to make things better for her.

That in the end, Zuko had let her go to save them both from the explosion.

She couldn't explain any of that. They'd never believe it. Especially the part about Zuko saving her. And if she couldn't tell them how she'd escaped, then she couldn't talk about what happened before that. Which meant that there was almost nothing she could say about her time on the ship.

She scuffed her hands up and down her arms. "I don't really want to talk about it."

Sokka looked like he was about to protest, but Aang cut in first.

"Maybe some other time, then. Right, Sokka?"

Sokka scowled and grumbled, but finally nodded. "Sure. Fine." He dropped the ladle back into the pot of watery rice. "Whatever. Since you think I did such a bad job cooking, are you going to make something better?"

Katara raised an eyebrow. He was serious about that. She couldn't decide whether she was more annoyed with him or grateful for the change of subject.

"Let me think really hard about that. Hmm. No." She smirked. "Why don't you learn to cook for real and then we'll talk."

"I—but—Aang doesn't know how to cook at all! Why can't you pick on him?"

"Because he's not the one being a jerk about it right now." Katara smiled triumphantly when Sokka grumbled even louder. Let him grumble. He had to learn how to be a functioning human sooner or later. She turned toward Aang instead. "So what did you two do while I was gone?"

The boys exchanged a look.

Aang rubbed the back of his neck. "Um—a lot of things." He turned a little bit red around the ears as Sokka made a series of slashing motions through the air.

So at least Katara wasn't the only one keeping things secret.

Aang didn't have quite enough restraint to stay completely quiet, though. After he opened and closed his mouth a few times, he burst out with, "Sokka got sick and said that he loved me."

"What?" Sokka's voice went screechy at the end. "Aang! It sounds weird without context!"

Was there a context where that didn't sound weird?

"Oh, right," Aang amended. "And he told me that the armadillo men were liars."

"What in the world is an armadillo man?" Katara asked.

Aang didn't get a chance to respond before Sokka sprinted around the fire, pushed Aang down to the ground, and sat on his back.

"Uh-uh. No more stories. We're done with this."

Aang craned his neck around. "Why are you sitting on me?"

"Because you're telling weird stories, and this is the only logical solution." Sokka folded his arms and stuck his nose up in the air. "I'll get up when you agree to stop making things sound weird."

"You know I can still talk with you sitting on me, right?"

For the first time in what felt like a long time, Katara burst into genuine laughter.


"I'm going to kill him."

Aang nearly dropped the brush he was holding, and Appa rumbled in protest as he turned around.

Sokka sat hunched by the fire, staring back over his shoulder at Katara. Though it was still well before sunset, she'd curled up in her sleeping bag a while ago and was fast asleep.

Aang stared at Sokka for a second before he finally found his voice. "Who? And—why do you want to kill someone? Can't you just—"

Sokka turned toward Aang, brows drawn deep into a scowl. "I didn't say I wanted to. I said I was going to kill him."

Aang shifted. That didn't sound good. That didn't sound good at all. "Why? And you still didn't say who."

"Zuko, obviously." Twisting around, Sokka rustled through his bag until he found his machete and pulled it into his lap. "I'm going to kill him for what he did to Katara." He dug for his whetstone too, and swiped it along the length of the blade.

Aang tried to remind himself that there were times when Sokka just liked to sharpen things. It was a nervous habit, almost.

That didn't make it look any less ominous.

"What did he do to Katara?" Aang snuck another look in her direction. She'd only been back for a few days, but she seemed completely fine to him. Aside from the fact that she was sleeping a lot and the fact that she didn't like talking about what had happened to her, things were practically back to normal. As soon as she stopped feeling so tired, things would be completely normal.

"I don't know." Sokka swiped his whetstone along the blade again and then tested it with his thumb. "Something bad. Why else would she be refusing to tell us about it?"

Aang could think of plenty of good reasons to keep secrets. He still hadn't told Sokka about being captured and held prisoner at a Fire Nation stronghold for almost two days, or about the guy in the scary mask who broke him out. That didn't mean that anything really terrible had happened to him. Aang had felt pretty terrible while he was locked up, and very scared when the guy in the mask tried to take him away, but it had all turned out fine. He wasn't avoiding the subject because it was too awful to talk about, he just didn't want to talk about it.

"I don't know, Sokka. It could be something else." He frowned between strokes of the brush. "I mean—Katara does seem pretty tired most of the time. Maybe she's just too tired to talk about it."

Sokka shook his head. "No. She's not too tired to argue. She shouldn't be too tired to talk about anything else. And that's another thing too. Why is she so tired? She's been back for days now. That's plenty of time to sleep and get back to normal. If she's not feeling better by now, something else has to be wrong." There was still that jagged edge to Sokka's voice, but when he looked back at Katara, his lips pressed into a thin, worried line.

Was that it? Was Sokka just scared that Katara wasn't okay? Because insisting on killing Zuko still didn't make sense, but Aang supposed that it was a little less bizarre if Sokka was scared that something was wrong.

Aang finished the leg he was brushing and patted Appa's shoulder.

"What do you think happened to her?"

Sokka stiffened.

So that was it. Sokka thought that something was really, really wrong.

"I—I don't know, okay? Something bad. She was alone on a ship with a bunch of Fire Nation men for weeks. Anythingcould have happened." He stopped short in the middle of his rhythmic sharpening, bracing himself and holding perfectly still. "We don't even know if Zuko is the worst one. That's what scares me. She was alone with a bunch of firebenders for weeks, and one of them was Zuko, and a lot of them could be worse than Zuko. And we don't even know what Zuko is capable of."

Aang put Appa's brush away and came to sit closer to the fire. As the sky darkened, it was starting to get colder and colder. He wouldn't be surprised if Sokka and Katara had to pull out their parkas in the next few days.

"She doesn't look like she's hurt," he pointed out. "Even when we found her, she wasn't hurt."

"And that seems weird, doesn't it? She was in an explosion. How did she manage not to get hurt?" Sokka gave up on sharpening and dropped his machete to the ground. He ran a hand down the side of his face. "And—it's not just that. They could have done things that we wouldn't be able to see."

Aang frowned. "Like—saying mean things to her?"

For a second, Sokka stared. "Uh—yeah. That. And you know. Other things too." He looked back over his shoulder again, then let his voice drop. "If it was something really bad, that would explain why she doesn't want to talk about it. Maybe why she's sleeping so much too."

"Would it? When bad things happen to me, I get nightmares. Then I don't want to sleep."

A pause. "Maybe. Yeah, I guess when we were little, she—but what if she just doesn't want to think about what happened? She might sleep a lot then. Ugh." Sokka rubbed his forehead. At this rate, he was going to turn his whole face red with all that frustrated face-rubbing. "It just doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't she say what happened if it wasn't something bad? But if it was bad, then why is she sleeping so much? And if it was really bad, then—"

Aang still couldn't figure out what sort of bad thing Sokka was talking about, but he decided not to ask. Not right now. "If it was as bad as you think, what would we do? She's safe now. Whatever happened is over."

"We'd backtrack to where Dad's fleet is stationed, and Dad and I would both kill Zuko. Together. Or maybe the whole fleet would come, and we'd all take turns killing him."

Aang's eyes widened. That sounded extreme, especially since neither of them really knew what had happened.

"Or," he began hesitantly, "maybe we should find out what happened first."

"How are you planning on doing that? She's barely told us anything."

Aang shrugged. "She told us about the food. Maybe if we ask a lot of little questions, she'll tell us the big things too."

Sokka frowned. "Fine. You can try the subtle approach if you want, but I'm going to figure this out my own way."


After a few days back with the boys, Katara was finally starting to feel more like herself again. At least physically. The weary ache in her muscles had finally faded, and after a long, long night of sleep, the weighty tiredness that kept dragging her off to sleep at early hours seemed to be gone. Which was a relief. She had to assume that the Avatar State was to blame for that, but it had never drained her quite so badly before.

Of course now that she could stay awake, there was more time for her mind to wander off, and she found herself thinking about the Fire Nation ship and about Zuko more often than she would have liked. But it was easier to fill her head with other things too—normal things, like reorganizing the supplies and poring over her waterbending scrolls. Things like watching Sokka struggle through disastrous attempts at cooking and refusing to give him any advice until he swallowed his pride enough to ask without whining.

And right now, things like cleaning the dirt out of her belongings.

Katara crouched by the edge of the stream and tipped her pack over, spilling all its contents into a jumbled mess on the ground. A small hail of dust and gravel followed, and she waited for the dust to settle before she started sorting things into separate piles. Her scrolls, sewing kit, and a few cooking utensils that had somehow found their way into her pack went on one pile, then she turned her attention to the remaining mess of tangled and rumpled clothes.

"Hey, Katara. I—" Aang stopped just past the edge of the trees when Katara looked up. "Oh. I thought you were working on waterbending."

She shook her head and went back to sorting. She could probably start practicing again. She wanted to try out all her new skills with a real water supply, and she finally felt like moving again. But she really didn't want to practice when her clothes were still covered in grime.

"Maybe later. Right now, I'm trying to figure out why all my stuff is full of dirt."

"Probably because it all got dumped out on the road when Zuko—" Aang stopped midsentence and his ears went red.

"You can say it, Aang. I'm not going to fall apart."

"Oh." Aang scuffed his heel on the rocky ground. "I thought you didn't want to talk about what happened."

Standing, Katara shook the dust out of her clothes one at a time. "I don't want to talk about everything. Too many things happened. And a lot of it was really confusing." She saw a flash of Zuko kicking down the cell door and reaching his hand out to her. Her lips pursed, and she shot a look at Aang. "But I can't pretend that I was never gone."

"Okay." Aang picked his way around her scattered possessions and perched on a big rock by the edge of the water. "Then your clothes got dirty when Zuko took you. I had to pick everything up really fast so we could try to catch up."

She suppressed the urge to ask if he'd deliberately scooped up a few extra handfuls of dirt and instead merely nodded. At least it was a fair reason. "Well, thanks for bringing everything along."

"Of course! It would have been better if we could've caught up and got you back right away, but—"

Katara's stomach did a funny little twist. She would have preferred that Zuko had never captured her too, but she couldn't imagine the alternative anymore. If she'd never been on his ship, she never would have learned just how human Zuko really was. How he could yell and bluster and argue, then get flustered and overwhelmed by a single question. How he would try to act stubborn and callous only to change his mind a few hours later and relent. Her hand rose to her necklace again, just for an instant.

She never would have known how far he would go to protect her from the firebenders who were worse than him. She might never have realized that there were such a thing as firebenders worse than Zuko.

"Zuko was in a hurry. I was on the ship before I really knew what was going on." She paused. "I'm just glad you guys didn't get hurt. He had his guards everywhere for a while."

Aang frowned. "I still wish we could've gotten you out sooner."

Katara tried to think of a way to reassure him, but before she came up with anything, he went on.

"I can't even imagine how bad it must have felt to be chained up for weeks."

Her brow furrowed. "I wasn't chained up, Aang."

"You weren't?"

"No. I was in a prison cell. It wasn't very big, but there was a bunk and a little bathroom, and—" she cut herself off and narrowed her eyes. "And where in the world did you get the idea that I was chained up the whole time?"

Was it Sokka? It was probably Sokka. That sounded like one of his weird, paranoid ideas.

"Um—nowhere?" He refused to look at Katara, and his cheeks flushed.

She dropped the tunic she was holding and planted her hands on her hips. "Aang!"

"I just—I thought the Fire Nation probably kept all their prisoners the same way, that's all."

That didn't even make sense. Aang had seen Haishui. He knew that the prisoners weren't all chained up there. Well, Katara had been shackled, but no one else had to wear chains. So what was he talking about? He must have gotten that idea somewhere.

Zhao. It must have been Zhao. That must have been the night when Zuko woke her up, still wearing half of his Masky disguise. It had to be.

"Aang, did you get chained up by a firebender?"

"I—"

"You did! Why doesn't anybody tell me anything?"

Aang was red back to his ears by now. "I mean—to be fair, Sokka doesn't know either."

"He doesn't?" She felt her voice creeping higher.

"It happened while he was sick. I had to go for help, and some Fire Nation soldiers caught me while I was gone. Sokka didn't even know I was gone, and by the time he was better, he was grumpy about so many other things that I couldn't tell him."

"Like what? What other things was Sokka grumpy about?"

"Mostly the frogs he had to suck on."

Katara's jaw dropped. "Why did he have to suck on frogs? That doesn't make any sense."

"It was because he was sick! The frogs were the medicine."

Katara felt her eyebrows creeping higher.

"It worked," Aang insisted. "He got better."

"Are you sure he wasn't getting better on his own? I really don't think that sucking on frogs—" She stopped herself. She was getting off track. The frogs weren't the point. Fixing her face into a firmer glare, she resumed, "You still should have told us."

He shrugged. "It was just a few days, and I got out just fine."

Knowing what she did about Zhao, that seemed unlikely. A man who was willing to kill his own nation's prince probably wasn't inclined to show mercy for anyone else either.

She took a long, steadying breath. She had to be careful not to give too much away if she wanted to avoid the inevitable questions about what had happened to her.

"Who was it who captured you?"

"Some archers, but then they took me to this big, scary guy with sideburns at a fortress."

"Admiral Zhao?"

"I think so, yeah."

"And how did you escape?"

Aang hesitated. Then, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Katara narrowed her eyes. As far as she was concerned, that was a confirmation. There was nothing that she could think of that sounded more ludicrous than being rescued by Zuko—or by a boy in a mask who just happened to be Zuko underneath.

"Tell me anyway," she said. "It might be less weird than you think."

"I doubt it, but—okay." Aang looked down. "They had me chained up in the middle of this great big room, and then there was this guy in a blue mask. I don't know who he was or why he was there, but he came into the room and cut the chains off me with his swords."

She knew it. She knew it must have been Zuko and his stupid mask. A strange blend of annoyance and satisfaction came over her. It was nice to be right after being so confused for so long, but Zuko and his stupid mask—she kicked a pebble and hoped that her annoyance didn't show.

"Did he do anything else?" she asked. She didn't dare delve into the specifics too quickly, but she couldn't leave it alone without knowing anything else. Zuko had been maddeningly vague about that night, and she couldn't keep her mind from trying to fill in the blanks. She may as well know the truth.

"Yeah. He knocked out a bunch of guards on the way out of the fortress. Then he was leading me through the woods to get out of there, and—" he paused. "And it almost seemed like he was trying to take me somewhere else, but after I told him that I needed to take care of Sokka, he let go of my arm and just—watched me leave."

"I'm sure he did," Katara said under her breath as she crouched by the water to begin her washing.

She could picture the exact look on Zuko's face. Eyes wide, mouth slightly open, and color draining from his already pale face like he'd forgotten how to breathe. The look he got every time a question hit too close to his heart and reminded him that he did, in fact, have one. Maybe that was why he wore the mask. He was terrible at hiding emotions, and maybe the mask was his way of compensating for that.

"Wait. You know the guy in the mask too?"

Uh-oh. Her face warmed, and she kept her eyes down. "We—may have briefly met."

"What? When?"

Katara hesitated. If she said anything at all, she wasn't convinced she'd be able to stop. "That's—a really long story, Aang."

"That's okay. I'm not in a hurry."

When Katara took a second to form a response, Aang spoke again.

"Wait. Is this about how you got off of Zuko's ship? Did the mask guy break you out?"

She almost laughed. "Something like that." She plunged a tunic into the stream. "Like I said, it's—a lot, and I don't know how to explain it all."

"Do you know who the mask guy is?"

She couldn't answer that one. If she did, Aang would want to know who he was, and then she'd have to talk about Zuko, and she couldn't skirt around the issue without saying his name forever.

"I called him Masky," she offered instead. "I don't think he liked that very much, but that's too bad for him."

"That's a good name." There was a thoughtful pause. "If I ever see Masky again, I'm going to tell him thanks for letting me go."

Katara's insides lurched. Would she have to thank Zuko too? He'd saved her life, after all, and nearly died in the process. That was more than he'd done for Aang. But he'd also kidnapped her. It would take a lot more than making her imprisonment more tolerable for her to forget that. Even letting her go didn't make up for everything.

But he had risked his life for her too. That was a lot more significant than letting her out of the cell. If he hadn't taken that risk, she would have lost a lot more than the few weeks she'd spent imprisoned on his ship.

He wouldn't have needed to do that. She still couldn't understand why he had.

Don't ask me that. If I have to find an answer, we'll never get out of here in time.

That was the problem with Zuko, when it came right down to it. He didn't seem to know his own motivations, his own intentions. He was terrible at lying, terrible at hiding things, but knowing when he was lying didn't always make the truth easier to discern.

"I don't know if either of us will ever see Masky again." She frowned as she scrubbed at a muddy spot on one of the sleeves. Even if they saw Zuko again, she was fairly certain that his disguise was long gone. His swords too. She glanced back over her shoulder at Aang. "But you really should tell Sokka about what happened while he was sick. Zhao is dangerous. If there's even a chance that he's after us—"

"I guess." There was a soft scuffing sound as Aang stood, and then he stopped. "What about you? Zuko could still be after us. Are you going to tell us what happened with him?"

Katara bit her lip. He sort of had a point. There was still a chance that Zuko would come after them. A small chance—she couldn't quite believe that he'd saved her just so he could go back to his old ways, and he'd have a hard time chasing anyone without his ship, but it wasn't impossible. She just wanted to believe that it was.

Letting the tunic sink into the stream, she turned back to Aang. "Let's make a deal, okay? When I'm ready to talk about it, I'll tell you everything that happened."

At that, Aang brightened.

Before he could skip back to camp and tell Sokka about his masterful negotiations, Katara held up a hand. "But you have to tell Sokka about being captured by Zhao first. Got it? Zhao still has ships that could be following us, and he's a lot more dangerous than Zuko."

Aang deflated. "Sokka's going to be grumpy about it."

"Sokka gets grumpy about a lot of things." She narrowed her eyes just a bit. "He's going to be a lot grumpier if you make him wait a long time before you tell him."

"Is he going to be grumpy when he hears what happened on Zuko's ship?"

Katara wasn't sure she liked the way he kept turning the conversation back on her. She turned back to the stream. "Maybe. I'll deal with that when the time comes."


By the time she finished washing all of her Water Tribe clothes and cleaning the dirt from the rest of her supplies, the sun was beginning to sink toward the horizon. Truthfully, she was a little surprised that it wasn't later than sunset. Laundry normally took longer than this, and it usually didn't involve picking dirt out of her sewing kit.

Or maybe laundry didn't take longer than this. Maybe she just had more time now that she'd badgered Sokka into doing most of the cooking.

It only seemed fair. She did her part in helping to set the tents, and she did all the washing for the three of them. Why should she have to cook too?

Of course, Sokka still wasn't good at it. Part of her was almost tempted to take over the cooking again so they could have a meal that tasted like food rather than charred sticks, but Sokka had to learn how to be a functioning human sooner or later. Until he at least mastered the basics, she wasn't going to ease up on him. And once he had, maybe she'd make him do the washing while she resumed cooking duty.

In the meantime, she didn't mind washing her own clothes terribly much. At least if she did it herself, she could be certain that no one was wearing holes through the fabric.

She spread her last pair of blue leggings out over a bush and turned to face her last remaining pile. The Earth Kingdom outfit.

She crouched beside it for a second before she ran her hand over the fabric. It was dusty and stained in places, just like all her other things, but there were scorch marks too, mostly around the hems and at the seams where the tunic and leggings hung too big for her body.

She should burn them, she thought. They were just a reminder of everything that had happened on the ship. And as she'd discovered over the past few days, she didn't need any reminders. Zuko was lodged firmly in her memory regardless of her efforts to drive him out. Besides, the clothes were burned. Even as a disguise, they'd be useless to her.

But she didn't exactly want to get rid of them either. Though she didn't need any reminders for Zuko to hold his place in the back of her mind, she didn't mind having proof that the memories were real. And the Earth Kingdom outfit had been comfortable. Maybe they were unusable right now, but there was always a chance she could salvage them. If the stains washed out and there was enough undamaged fabric left, she might be able to remake them into a usable outfit. She'd need to blend into the Earth Kingdom someday.

Taking the tunic and leggings both in one hand, she returned to the stream. She'd wash them before she made any decisions. That seemed reasonable enough. So what if she wasted a few minutes washing the dirt out of the clothes only to find that they were too badly damaged? She could still use the fabric for rags or something. That would be worthwhile.

Or maybe it really didn't make any sense to try keeping them. Maybe she was just being ridiculous because she still couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that Zuko had saved her. Maybe she didn't want to believe that saving her was just Zuko's way of ensuring that he'd have another chance to chase her down. Maybe she thought that the clothes would prove that. None of those possibilities sounded impossible.

She washed carefully, working her way delicately along the singed edges of the fabric, and scrubbing more forcefully in the center where there was no damage, only stains. Blackened bits of thread came loose from the edges and crumbled to dust in her hands, then carried off down the stream. When she was finished, the stains were mostly gone—or at least faded enough that she couldn't see them by the fading evening light—and though it was hard to tell with water still streaming out of the fabric, only the seams and the hems showed much damage.

The whole outfit was too big for her anyway, she remembered as she spread the tunic out over another prickly bush and pulled the water out with her bending. It would only take slight alterations to get rid of the burnt fabric, and she would probably still be able to wear the outfit perfectly well.

She ran her hand over the soft, drying fabric one more time, then turned away, and pulled all the remaining water from the rest of her clothes. Tucking her pack under one arm, she draped her clothes over her shoulder and started back for camp in the gathering dark.

Sokka looked up as she approached. "It's about time. I was getting ready to send a search party after you."

Aang looked bewildered. "We don't have enough people to make up a search party."

Sokka started to argue but cut himself off as his eyes landed on the clothes draped over her shoulder. His forehead creased, and he frowned.

Katara set her bag down, dropped her clothes on top of it, and crossed her arms. "What's with the face, Sokka?"

"Just—you still have those? I thought you got rid of them."

"Is there something wrong with me keeping some Earth Kingdom clothes? I thought we might need disguises someday."

Of course that wasn't the whole reason, but she wasn't going to tell Sokka the rest. Besides, it was true enough.

Sokka scrutinized her, eyes narrowed. "Yeah, but—"

"But?" It was almost a challenge, and she glared harder, daring him to ask anything else.

"But those are falling apart!"

"I'm going to fix them up. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to get the sewing done on the way to the North Pole."

Sokka was undeterred. "Where did you get those anyway? You never told us that."

"I didn't." Katara looked up, expression stony and still. She shot a quick glance in Aang's direction. He had to be on her side now. Unless he was willing to spill all the details about his run-in with Zhao, he couldn't help Sokka try to pry this out of her.

Aang seemed to catch her meaning, and he spoke. "I don't think it's that big a deal, Sokka. It's just clothes." A pause. "If Katara doesn't want to tell us yet, that's okay."

Sokka's expression darkened, and his gaze didn't break away from Katara. "Sure," he said stiffly. "Yeah, that's absolutely fine."


Author's Note:

I have a confession to make: I don't know how to properly cook rice either. On that point, Sokka and I are a lot alike. All hail microwavable minute rice! (I'm not actually that bad a cook—I can bake and follow a recipe pretty dang well, I just... don't know how to do the one thing I was making fun of Sokka for. Never really tried to.)

Miscommunication isn't really my favorite story device, but I guess this isn't technically miscommunication? It's more like... not communication. Still not my absolute favorite, but it was necessary in this case. Katara's experience on Zuko's ship is such a personal thing! And her feelings are so mixed up! And... I promise I'm not going to drag out this secret-keeping thing forever. I have plans :)

Also, the fact that Masky did actually save Katara from the explosion didn't occur to me until I was halfway through the sentence where Aang asked about that, so that was fun too!

See you all next week for the last of the weekly updates (before we go back to updates every two weeks)! Reviews are always appreciated!