Water
The Code Name
"Atausiq, if you have the time to indulge in the Avatar's antics, I have to assume that you are ready to demonstrate all of your basic forms in sequence," Pakku barked over the noise of the group. "Perhaps you would like to come to the front of the class to display your newfound mastery."
Wide-eyed, the little boy snapped to attention and shook his head furiously.
"No?" Pakku turned to Aang instead. "Then perhaps Avatar Aang would like to explain how to properly create an ice column, since he clearly does not need my instructions any longer."
Katara clenched her jaw. Ever since last night, she'd been consumed by the same vague, persistent irritation, and this wasn't helping matters. Of course the boys' insistence on goofing around was annoying, but at least they were kids. It was normal for them to get distracted and make noise. It was a bit less normal for an old man like Pakku to harass them about it every few minutes. And the combination of the endless distractions and the extra grumpiness from Pakku was doing nothing to help her temper.
Aang scratched behind his ear. "Umm—I don't know exactly how to explain it. But it's like this." He scrunched his face in concentration and brought his arms up in an arc, and the snow came together into an uneven, precarious spike.
Pakku turned away, unimpressed, when Aang finished. "Sloppy. Katara, please explain what the Avatar did wrong."
Her fists tightened. Recently, Pakku had been doing this more often too, and although she was fairly certain that this was his way of expressing approval—he only asked for her input when he wanted someone to give the right answer—there was something in his tone that got under her skin and made her itch. After Pakku had spent so much time and effort on trying to keep her out of waterbending lessons, the pride, if that was what it was, just felt wrong. It was like Pakku wanted to pit her against the others—which, though she did want to be the best bender out of all of them, bothered her a little—and hold her up as an example of what his teaching could do.
He hadn't even wanted her as a student to begin with. How much credit did he think he deserved for her progress?
And, to make matters worse, she didn't have much choice but to go along with it. Pakku was still in charge of her lessons. If she didn't want to lose her place, she couldn't keep picking fights with him.
She took a deep breath. "Your wrists are too loose," Katara began. "And you aren't keeping your elbows and shoulders flexible enough. The water will respond as long as you move, but it's never going to be focused if your entire body isn't fluid."
"Precisely." Pakku both looked and sounded entirely too pleased with himself. "Now, if you wouldn't mind giving a demonstration, perhaps the Avatar will finally pay attention to what real waterbending looks like. Sooner or later, he has to realize that his mastery of one element does not elevate him above the novices in another."
Irritation bubbled up in her chest again, but Katara nodded and stepped forward. She was good at the ice column form. She ought to be. She spent more time practicing than most of the other kids combined.
Pakku gave a few more threats to get the younger kids to pay attention—all ineffectual—before he let Katara demonstrate, and then finally, finally, they went back to drilling their forms. Katara breathed a sigh of relief. This was the part of waterbending lessons that she liked the most—the part where she got to see new forms and practice them over and over until they came as naturally as breathing. The part that actually got her a little closer to mastery every day. If there was more of this and less of Pakku being mean to a bunch of little kids, waterbending lessons would be almost perfect.
She created another ice column, then brought it back down to her own level and sheared off flat, bladelike disks from the top, one after another. It was disappointing, in a way, to be stuck in Pakku's class. It wasn't that she'd ever expected her waterbending lessons to be perfect. She didn't want a flawless teacher either. She knew better than to expect anything like that. But she couldn't pretend that she hadn't been daydreaming about waterbending lessons, about meeting a master who could teach her everything she'd ever need to know for as long as she could remember either. And after fourteen years of building the experience up in her mind, Pakku's class was—not quite what she'd hoped for.
The universe seemed to have a strange sense of humor when it came to her bending. Katara wanted to fight, but the best waterbender in the city was both a jerk and poorly suited to teaching the little boys who made up most of his class. Her classmates too—with the sole exception of Aang—didn't seem to want anything to do with her. Which was fine, she supposed. She was here to learn, not to make friends.
Still, there was a part of her that had always hoped that it would be different. That she would like her teacher as much as she liked the bending itself. That she would find others along the way who were as enthusiastic as she was, who would practice alongside her. Who would maybe even spar with her from time to time, but that seemed unlikely now. Sparring wasn't allowed in beginners' lessons, and for all she knew, she might be here for a very long time.
Which was unfortunate. She had a feeling that sparring would do a lot to improve her mood if she just had someone to do it with.
Katara spent the rest of class working her way meticulously through all the forms she'd learned so far, making small adjustments and corrections as she went along. She was making progress. She was a better waterbender than she'd been at the start, and she was better than most of the class by now as well. She would probably just have to wait a while for all her daydreams about waterbending to come to fruition.
When at last the lesson came to an end, Pakku stopped her on the way out of the arena. He crossed his arms and harrumphed before announcing, "You will need to speak with Master Yugoda tonight."
She raised an eyebrow. "Will I?"
"Yes." Pakku wouldn't quite meet her eyes. "Your healing lesson tomorrow evening must be either postponed or cancelled. Make the arrangements with her as soon as possible."
What? Katara crossed her arms as Aang trotted up beside her. "I haven't been training with Master Yugoda since I started learning to fight. Imiq is teaching me now."
"Then you must speak with her instead."
"But why? I'm working harder than almost anyone else here. Is staying late some sort of punishment, or—"
"No." Another great harrumph. Pakku's mustache—still a bit uneven, but better than it had been a few days ago—quivered before he continued. "Tomorrow, you will be meeting with myself and Master Taqqiq after your waterbending lesson. Although your technique still needs work, you have progressed far enough to be tested. If you succeed, you will be given permission to proceed to our intermediate waterbending levels." He turned sharply away. "Do not disappoint me."
What? For a few prolonged moments, all Katara could do was stare at Pakku's retreating back.
"Whoa," Aang said. "Katara, that's awesome! You're gonna pass so easy, and then you're gonna be a—"
Pakku's words still hadn't entirely sunk in. What? He was actually letting her try for a spot in the next class up? She'd really come that far?
Sokka appeared behind them and slung an arm around each of their shoulders. "Gonna be what?"
Katara jumped. "Sokka! What are you doing here?"
He shrugged. "Can't I be nice and walk the two of you home after your lessons?"
"I—" She shook her head as though that would clear the stunned fog away from her thoughts. "I'm not going home yet. Healing lessons, remember?"
"Then I'll walk you there. Easy solution." Sokka pulled back and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "So what did I miss?"
"Katara's going to be a master pretty soon," Aang answered. "She gets to move on to a new class after tomorrow."
"Assuming that I pass Pakku's test," she said, more to herself than to the boys. Pakku had been asking more of her recently, having her give demonstrations and explanations for the other students' benefit, but she didn't quite dare to get her hopes up. This was still Pakku. Who was to say that he wouldn't change his mind again?
"Just give him another waterbending haircut and it'll all be good," Sokka said as they started for the street.
That, at last, was enough to break her out of her fog, and she shot Sokka a look. "Why did you decide to come meet us today?"
He shrugged. "I told you, I'm just trying to be nice."
"Likely story." She shaded her eyes as they stepped out into the sunlit street and turned south toward the healing huts. "It takes a lot more than being nice to get you to postpone your lunchtime."
"Ugh, fine." Sokka kicked a small chunk of ice, sending it skittering across the street. "We need to strategize, okay? If we don't come up with a plan, things with Red could turn into a disaster."
"Red?" Aang asked.
"Shh. You know who I mean. Red. It's a code name for—you know. Because he used to wear a lot of red."
"Oh. I get it."
Katara raised an eyebrow. "Are you feeling okay? That's the least ridiculous code name I've heard you come up with in ages."
"Hey, I know how to be subtle." Sokka stuck his nose up in the air. "Red is a perfectly good code name." He paused as though he was waiting for an objection. Then, "Point is, somebody needs to go out there a couple of times a day to check on things, so we need a schedule. And I think that Aang and I should do most of it."
"That's a really good idea," Aang said brightly.
For some reason, Katara bristled. "Why do you two have to take over? It's not a big deal if I go out there every morning and evening. I did just fine yesterday."
"Yeah, because it makes total sense for you to do everything on your own even though you're twice as busy as either of us." Sokka rolled his eyes. "But then what do I know? I was only waiting around at the healing hut for ages yesterday before you showed up late from checking on Red. Clearly you have tons of spare time to manage things alone."
Aang spoke a little softer. "We want to help, Katara. I'm sure everything will go better with Red if we all work together."
Would it? Would it really? Because Katara could think of lots of ways to describe how things went when Sokka in particular had to interact with Zuko, and 'better' was not one of them. It wasn't that she didn't trust Zuko's motives—or maybe it was a little bit—but she wanted to be the one who knew what was going on with Zuko. She didn't have to trust him quite as much if she saw him all the time.
And maybe, just maybe, there was a little part of her that wanted to make sure that the boys didn't do anything stupid either. She was more worried about Sokka—at least Aang had never threatened to kill Zuko, and he was less likely to deliberately antagonize anyone—but the simple fact was that neither of them had been around Zuko nearly as much as Katara had. They certainly weren't friends, but they knew how to talk to one another. They had a foundation, and the others just didn't. How much would Zuko be willing to cooperate with them if he only ever interacted with the boys?
"I can handle him on my own," she said sharply. "I've done it before. I can just—"
"What, show up late to every lesson?" Sokka asked. "Come on, we all know you don't have the time for that. Not unless you want everyone asking questions about Red."
Katara clenched her fists. Sokka had a point. She hated that he had a point. "Fine. If you two want to check on him in the middle of the day, go for it. But we're going to discuss the rest of it later, understand? I don't need you guys to do everything."
Sokka shrugged. "Fine by me." He nudged Aang, grinning. "You're gonna come with me, right? I think we have something to, uh—procure for Red."
Zuko lay still on his back, watching faint wisps of clouds skate slowly across the sky.
This sucked. But it definitely sucked a bit less than yesterday. The sleeping bag was warm, and for the first time since he'd left Zhao's ship, he'd actually gotten a decent amount of sleep. And while last night hadn't gone as well as it probably could have, he'd at least succeeded in telling Katara why he was here. At least she'd gotten his warning, and it was no longer entirely in Zuko's hands.
But it was boring, and there wasn't much that he could do to pass the time down here. He couldn't exactly firebend without weakening the ice and putting himself in danger. Meditation was one of the only things he could do safely, and he'd already done that. It wasn't the same without candles—not that it was exactly entertaining with candles either—but he'd meditated. And he'd eaten. And—he couldn't think of anything after that.
He wondered what Katara was doing. He wondered if and when she would return to the lake again. He wondered if she might be persuaded to stay a while when she did. It felt silly, but he'd sort of enjoyed her visits so far, at least by comparison with sitting alone in a hole. His conversations with Katara were many things, but they were never boring.
After a while, snow crunched on the surface of the lake, and Zuko tried very hard to keep his expression neutral. Even if he was a little happy to see Katara, he had no intention of showing it.
Which, it turned out, was an excellent decision.
"You're really using my sleeping bag, huh?"
Zuko scowled. Though he had come to look forward to Katara's visits a little, the feeling absolutely did not extend to her brother. "What does it look like?" he snapped, pushing himself up. He didn't want to leave the soft furs behind, but he felt ridiculous trying to hold a conversation from inside the sleeping bag, so he wriggled his way out. "It's stupidly cold out here. Why wouldn't I use whatever I can to keep from freezing?"
Aang popped up beside Sokka. "Can't you use your bending? That's what I do."
His scowl deepened. "Do you think I can firebend in my sleep? Because I can't. And it's not exactly easy to bend all day long."
"Oh." Aang frowned. "I guess that makes sense."
"I don't think I need approval from a kid who's dressed like it's summer," Zuko grumbled. The best thing he could think to say was that the monk was basically covered. His clothes looked thin, not remotely waterproof, and far, far too bright to blend in with anything. Zuko wasn't exactly dressed for the North Pole, but at least he was dressed in light gray and protected decently well from the snow. Aang, on the other hand, looked like he'd freeze to death in a matter of minutes if he let his bending lapse.
What was happening to him? When had Zuko become reasonable?
"It's not that bad," Aang said, voice bright. "It is kind of cold up here, but it's nice if you can slow down the wind."
"It's nicer if you don't have to do that."
Sokka frowned. "I don't like this. I think I agree with you, Ponytail Man. It's weird." Thankfully, he didn't linger on that for very long. "Do you have any idea how many times I've farted in that sleeping bag?"
"You're disgusting," Zuko snapped.
"I'm a man who isn't afraid to embrace normal bodily functions, and I'm stronger for it."
Zuko narrowed his eyes. Clearly, it was impossible to argue with that idiot, but for some reason, he was having a very hard time restraining himself.
"Where's Katara?" he demanded instead.
"Healing lessons," Aang answered helpfully.
"Yeah," Sokka said. "Since she's a girl, she got shoved into healing lessons right away when we got here. But now she's also learning to fight in the mornings because the teacher is in love with our grandmother." He paused. "I bet that she could kick your ass by now."
"Your grandmother could?"
"No, idiot. Katara could."
"Is that supposed to be a threat?"
"Of course not," Aang said. "She is getting really good, but nobody is going to hurt you. You know, Katara did tell us about how you helped her escape from your ship when it blew up."
"She—she did?"
Something twisted down deep in his gut. It made sense, he supposed. Her friends would have wondered and worried about her while she was gone. Of course they would have asked her about what had happened, and of course she would have answered. But knowing that they'd talked about him felt—weird. He wasn't sure why, but it felt like it should have all stayed between him and Katara. Like it was disingenuous to tell anyone how he'd gotten Katara out if they didn't also know everything else that had happened aboard his ship. And he certainly didn't savor the idea of anyone hearing about the rest of her time there. The beginning especially. Even Zuko hated to think about the beginning when Katara had refused to eat or drink or sleep.
And on top of that, it was weird to think that he was getting credit for helping her. He had technically helped her escape, but then she'd turned right back around and saved him immediately afterward. As far as the day of the explosion went, they were even. Zuko wasn't ashamed of anything he'd done that day, and he would do it again if necessary, but that didn't mean that he felt any need to relive it. It was in the past, and he and Katara were both alive, and that was all that mattered.
"That is kind of weird, though," Aang said. His face scrunched in thought. "Because Katara also told me that—" His eyes bulged, and he began bouncing on the balls of his feet. "She told me that Masky helped her get out too. So that must mean that there were two people there with her, or—or you're Masky!"
Had he been eating or drinking, Zuko would have choked. Instead, he only choked on his words. "What? Why did she—what makes you think—"
Sokka sounded equally incredulous. "What? That can't be right. Why would Zuko—"
"I—I don't even remember everything from the day of the explosion. I was knocked unconscious. How could I possibly—"
"When did Katara ever say anything about this Masky guy being there anyway? Zuko was the only person she mentioned when she finally told us what happened."
"Yeah, but this was earlier," Aang said. "I talked to her before we got to the Northern Air Temple, and she told me that she'd met Masky then. And she said that Masky helped her get off of Zuko's ship before it blew up, which means that Zuko is Masky. He has to be. Right?"
Zuko looked sharply away and set his jaw. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Sokka groaned. "Damn it, why do you have to be such a bad liar, Zuko? I thought Aang was full of it until you opened your stupid mouth." He turned toward Aang. "Now that I think of it, though, maybe Katara has a point. If this is how he acts when he lies, then maybe we can actually trust him. It's not like he's ever going to get away with lying to us this way."
"I'm not lying!"
"Oh, yeah? Then who got Aang out of that fortress, huh?"
Zuko felt his face growing hotter. "That was—"
"It was Masky. Also known as you."
"No! That's not—"
"Masky. You know, that's a pretty good name. What do you say, Aang? Should we tell Katara that we're changing his code name?"
Aang gave his usual overly optimistic, overly friendly grin. "I like it. The other code name is good too, but Masky is—"
"Do not call me Masky."
"Why not?" Sokka's smirk kept growing until it looked like it would become permanent. "Is Masky ashamed of breaking into a fortress?"
"Nobody calls me that!"
"Ha! So it was you!"
Zuko crossed his arms and clamped his mouth shut. He didn't think that that proved anything, but unfortunately, nothing that he could say was likely to change Sokka's mind now. Especially since he was technically right.
"It makes a lot of sense," Aang said. "Masky—I'm mean Zuko tried to take me somewhere after we got out of the fortress. I bet that his ship was pretty close by that night." A pause, and for a moment, he looked thoughtful. "I was probably close to seeing Katara that night. But I guess it's a good thing that I didn't, because Sokka was really sick. Thanks for changing your mind and letting me go, Zuko."
Jaw clenched, Zuko kept his expression as still as possible and refused to look up. "How are you so sure it was me, anyway?"
"Oh come on man," Sokka said. "You basically just admitted it. I'll bet that you were the one who told Aang to shove a bunch of frogs in my mouth too."
Zuko's head snapped upward, and he stared, incredulous, at Aang. "You actually fed him those frogs?"
"No, I didn't," Aang insisted.
"Aang, I woke up with a bunch of frogs in my mouth," Sokka said. "You definitely did."
"But you never ate them. I made you suck on frogs, but I didn't feed them to you. That would have been gross."
Sokka shot a glare down at Zuko. "I blame you, jerkface."
"Hey, how was I supposed to know what the stupid frogs were for? The little weirdo already had his shirt stuffed full of them when I got there."
A pause. "So now you're admitting that it was you. Why'd you deny it in the first place?" Sokka asked. "As far as we're concerned, you being a masked vigilante is—possibly the weirdest thing in the entire world, but good. We like people who fight back against the Fire Nation."
Zuko shook his head, looking away again. "You want me dead, and I could be executed for treason. Excuse me for not immediately signing my own death warrant."
"Wanted you dead. Past tense. Besides, you decided to come here. Doesn't this count as treason too?"
"I—" He groaned and rubbed his forehead. He had thought of that. He was trying his hardest not to concentrate on it, but of course it had crossed his mind. "This is different," he said. Maybe not as different as he would have liked, but it was still different. He was fighting against Zhao, not the Fire Nation. "And no one ever called me Masky aside from you three, so quit it."
"Mmm. Sorry, not interested. Too much fun watching your head almost explode." Sokka paused, ducking out of sight for just a second before he reemerged. "Speaking of which, catch."
An amorphous mass of blue plummeted down, and Zuko reflexively stepped forward to snatch the bundle. It was soft and a bit heavier than it looked, all tied up into a tight ball.
"You're welcome," Sokka said smugly.
"What is this?" Zuko turned the bundle over. It looked a bit like the sleeping bag—soft, dyed leather, but this was considerably smaller and tinged with purplish gray rather than the pure glacier blue that Katara and Sokka always wore.
"Parka," Sokka answered. "I said last night that me and Aang were going to steal one from Hahn."
"Who?"
"Just some jerk who thinks he's better than everyone else because his dad is friends with the chief and teaches all the warriors." Sokka paused. "You'd probably get along perfectly with him, being royalty and everything."
"What makes you think that I get along with anyone?" Zuko found the knot keeping the parka in its bundle and picked at it.
"I think that you're actually pretty nice, Zuko," Aang said.
Zuko scoffed in near unison with Sokka, then glared at him. What made that jerk think that he had any right to comment on Zuko's personality?
"I'm serious," Aang added. "But I do feel a little bad about stealing from Hahn. I don't know him very well, but there must be some good things about him."
"Aang. He has other parkas. He bragged about them. It's not like he's running around freezing because we took the one that he keeps in the training hall."
"Well, yeah, but he's probably going to be really mad when he finds out what we did. Maybe I could have made friends with him if we hadn't—"
"Aang, please. He's never going to find out. Besides, even Princess Yue doesn't like him, and she'll hardly say a bad thing about anyone."
"I guess so."
Zuko rolled his eyes just as the knot came loose and the parka unrolled. It did look like it would fit him well, and it did look warm. He would almost blend into the city if he wore it. Almost.
But he couldn't convince himself to put it on while the others watched, and he tossed the parka aside so that it landed on top of the sleeping bag. He didn't really need anything warmer at the moment anyway. The sun sat high enough in the sky that, at least for now, he was plenty warm in his Fire Nation rain gear.
"When do I have to meet this princess person?" he asked, crossing his arms.
Sokka wrinkled his nose. "Are you always this impatient?"
"It's not my city that's about to be invaded by an insane admiral who has even less restraint than me. You should be more impatient."
"Fine." Sokka threw his arms out to the sides. "If it bothers you that much, I guess I can go talk to Princess Yue and see when she'll be free to come out here."
Zuko's retort came a bit too late—by the time it made it out of his mouth, the other two were long gone. He sighed and flopped down in the snow. Sokka in particular was enjoying this way too much.
Another slow breath, and he turned to stare at the crumpled parka. He would be a lot happier with this whole situation if he could figure out whether they hated him or not.
"A lot on your mind?"
Katara jumped. The healing hut had grown so quiet that she'd almost forgotten that she wasn't actually alone. She shook her head. "No, not really. I've just—I've been staying up a little late for the past few nights."
"Hmm. You might have fooled me."
Katara looked up from the pestle she was using to prepare a fresh batch of numbing cream from black seaweed and seal oil. This part of healing lessons felt familiar—Gran-Gran had kept her busy with medicine preparation plenty of times before, and Imiq seemed to have very similar ideas of how idle time between patients should be spent.
"What do you mean by that?"
Imiq shot a quick glance through her lashes before turning her attention to her own pestle. "Don't think that I haven't noticed how quiet you've been today?"
"Am I usually loud?'
"Not excessively. But I recognize the look of a girl keeping a secret."
Katara frowned, grinding even harder to reduce the black seaweed to mush. "And what look is that?"
"That look." Imiq paused again. "Believe me, it hasn't been thatlong since I was last caught making that face. Even though I'm a grown woman, I still remember what it feels like to keep secrets from my friends and family."
"Like when you snuck out of the city to help that Fire Nation soldier?" Katara prodded. She hadn't forgotten that story. She didn't think she would ever forget about it, especially now that Zuko was in the city—quite possibly for the second time in his life.
Imiq pursed her lips. "My mother has been filling your head with stories, hasn't she?"
Katara smiled. "Maybe a little bit."
"That unbearable gossip." There was a kind of exasperated fondness in Imiq's voice. "I can't tell her anything important."
"Can I ask what happened?"
"Hmm. I'm sure you've heard most of it already."
"Probably most of it," Katara conceded. "But I'm still curious. I mean—I was on a Fire Nation ship for a while, but I was a prisoner. I just wonder what it would have been like if the situation had been different." If Zuko had been freshly banished and the general had been in command. If, rather than taking prisoners, they had been in desperate search of a healer.
She knew that she couldn't be positive that Zuko and the general had been the firebenders who Imiq had met, but she couldn't convince herself to picture anyone else.
"Well," Imiq said, "I was hardly a guest there. The officer who came to us for help made sure that I had everything I needed, but even he hardly said a word to me. And for the little time that I was there, it was mostly just me, the little boy I was healing, and the old officer who asked for my help alone in that room. I saw enough to know that there were more crewmen around, but they kept out of the way most of the time." For a while, she stopped, focusing harder on her mortar and pestle. "I do still think about that poor boy sometimes. It's been a long time, but some things are impossible to forget."
"What was wrong with him?" Katara asked, a little hesitant. She kept her eyes aimed downward.
"He'd been burned. I never found out how it happened, but the wound was a few weeks old and healing very poorly. Not for a lack of trying, though. The officer—I assume he was the boy's father or some other relative—had been using several Fire Nation burn remedies, but the infection would have taken his eye in another day. A day after that, and I doubt that I would have been able to save the boy at all."
Katara's insides clenched. On the one hand, the odds of Zuko being the boy who Imiq had treated seemed almost impossible. There were millions of people in the world. Out of all those millions, how could Imiq have possibly met Zuko? But on the other, how many Fire Nation boys had burn scars over their eyes? And of those, how many had left the Fire Nation a few years ago? How many could possibly have come north to the Water Tribe for help?
"Do you remember any of their names?" she asked. Katara wasn't sure that she wanted confirmation one way or the other, but if she didn't at least ask, she might drive herself mad.
Imiq raised an eyebrow. "Why? Do you know who the boy was?"
"I—no, I don't. It's just that—I met a lot of people on the way here, and I heard a lot of rumors. I'm just—curious."
The skepticism didn't lift. "Mm-hmm." Imiq finished mixing her batch of numbing cream and began scraping it into a jar. "I never asked for their names. I didn't know anything about the Fire Nation then, and I don't know any more about it now. Their names wouldn't have meant anything to me, and there was only the one person who I could speak to."
That was fair enough, Katara supposed. Finding out that Zuko was the crown prince probably would have meant something to Imiq, but nothing about the ship or Zuko himself would have given his status away. If the general hadn't said anything—and Katara knew very well how cryptic the old man could be—then Imiq would never have suspected a thing.
"Was the boy okay when you left him?" she tried instead.
Imiq shrugged. "He was better than when I arrived. The infection was gone, and his sight was on the mend. There wasn't much that I could do for the scarring, but the officer was so happy to see his boy recovering that he never mentioned it." She closed her jar and sat still for a moment or two. "By the time that I arrived home and the patrols went out searching again, the ship was gone. And we haven't heard a word from the Fire Nation since that day, as much as I've always wondered."
"Well, he's fine now," Katara mumbled without thinking.
Both of Imiq's eyebrows shot upward. "Is he?"
She felt her face grow hot. "I—I mean, he's probably fine. You're a good healer, and if that officer took good care of him once you left, then there's no reason why he wouldn't be fine." Except for all the fights that Zuko had gotten himself into, and the explosion, and the near-drowning that followed, and all the stupid risks that came from hiding on Zhao's ship, and swimming through the tunnels to get to the North Pole, and—on second thought, it was utter insanity that Zuko was even alive after all of that, to say nothing of being in one piece.
"Katara. You may be able to fool your brother, but I'm not convinced."
With a groan, Katara lowered her head. "Apparently I can't fool Sokka either."
"So?"
"So—" Her hands tightened into fists. "I think I may know who that boy was. I mean, I can't be sure since you never heard his name, but—if it's the person I'm thinking of, then he's definitely okay." She wasn't going to go any farther than that. Imiq didn't need to know that she'd met Zuko, much less that he'd chased them from the South Pole, taken her prisoner, argued endlessly with her, then let her go, saved her life, and then had finally broken into the city to warn her about Zhao. A half-truth was more than enough.
"If that's the case, then I'm glad." Imiq glanced at Katara. "And I take it that he has something to do with your big secret too."
Katara grimaced, which was apparently enough confirmation for Imiq.
"Dare I ask how long this secret is going to last?"
A shrug. "There really isn't a secret anymore. I was planning to tell the boys today, but they figured it out last night."
"Oh?"
Katara kept her eyes down but nodded.
"Anything you need to talk about?"
"No, not really. Between the three of us, we're handling it." She reached for a jar of her own and started scraping her freshly mixed numbing cream into the jar.
"Good." Imiq stood, dusting off her hands. She was still watching Katara closely, still looking suspicious. "As soon as you're through with that, we have to make one more round before I let you go for the night."
"Right." Katara scraped the rest of the gloopy grayish cream into the jar and scrambled to her feet to follow Imiq.
When Imiq turned her back, Katara clenched her hands into fists. Clearly, she had to do something about this situation. Zuko was taking up entirely too much space in her head, and if Katara didn't do something to clear her thoughts soon, she was going to let everything spill out at once.
Author's Note:
And just like that, my editing buffer is completely gone. Guess who meant to get one more chapter edited in November, but instead wrote 80k+ words, 14+ chapters (I'm working on Chapter 77 as I write this note, and Book 1 will be wrapping up somewhere around Chapter 80-ish), and didn't touch her editing once?
No worries, though, I'm not going on hiatus, I'm just going to switch back to updating every two weeks for December and January so that I can get caught back up on editing. Oh, and! And! I've been working on recording A Tale of Ice and Smoke for the past few months, and starting on Tuesday January 4, I'll be posting a chapter of the podfic on AO3 every single week! So you'll be able to relive the story in an audio format if you're interested, and if not... well, that's what I'm spending a few hours a week on, so I can't be drafting or editing all the time. I also have a plan for another (much smaller, but still cool) Ice & Smoke related project that I'm going to want suggestions for in the future, but I'm going to save that one for when I'm closer to posting the final Book 1 chapter.
I hope you enjoyed it, reviews are always appreciated, and I'll see back here on December 12!
Oh, and PS: I may be naming unimportant side characters (like Atausiq from the first line of dialogue) by just... straight-up numbering them. Atausiq means one in Inuit!
