Water

Allies

Of all the things that Zuko could say about Sokka and Aang's visits, there was really only one that he was willing to consider positive—they were predictable. As far as timing went, at least. Every day, without fail, the two of them showed up to annoy Zuko, and they never showed up more than half an hour before or after noon.

Most days, it didn't really matter. Beyond the fact that their consistency gave Zuko a chance to brace himself for the inevitable irritation, there was no great need for him to anticipate their arrivals. He was an early riser by nature. At least in the loosest sense of the word, Zuko was always ready for them to appear.

But today wasn't most days. Today, Zuko had woken up far later than usual, thanks to the fact that he'd been up sparring with Katara until sometime after midnight. Today, he hadn't been awake for very long at all before the sunlight reached the bottom of the pit, and footsteps crunched his way through the snow.

With a yawn, Zuko scrubbed at his eyes. Sparring with Katara had felt good—great, even, but he'd been more out of practice than he'd realized, and his usual well of pent-up energy felt much shallower than usual. Which, unfortunately, meant that his command of words was also a bit duller than normal.

Luckily, Sokka was doing more than enough talking for all three of them. And, even more luckily, he hadn't mentioned Katara's lateness last night. That came as a distinct relief. Zuko had no interest in explaining the sparring match to that nosy idiot. Why should he? Katara had asked him to spar as a favor. If Sokka wanted to know anything about it, he would just have to ask her.

Zuko wondered if Katara would come back again tonight. He wondered if they would spar again. He almost hoped so. Even if they reached a point where Katara won more often than not, being able to bend again was well worth the trouble. The odd, pleasant warmth that had filled his chest after they were through sparring was another matter entirely.

"Hey." Sokka snapped his fingers only an inch or so away from Zuko's face. "Hey. Are you even listening to me?"

Scowling, Zuko smacked Sokka's hand away. "Yes, I'm listening."

"Then what did I say?"

"Some garbage about how you'll try to kick my ass if I'm not polite enough to your girlfriend."

"Wrong," Sokka announced. "Princess Yue isn't my girlfriend. I just wish that she was."

"And if you didn't sound like a creep before, you certainly do now," Zuko grumbled.

"And," Sokka continued, voice rising to a near-yell, "I won't try to kick your ass, I will kick your ass. That's not a threat, it's a promise."

"Can you see how terrified I am?" Zuko said flatly. He yawned—not intentionally—and rubbed his scarred eye with the heel of his hand. "How will I ever survive the terror?"

"Now listen here, you big—"

"Guys," Aang interrupted. "Do you really have to argue so much?"

"Yes, Aang, I think we do," Sokka said. "Didn't you see that? He just yawned at me!"

Scowling, Zuko let his arm drop back into his lap. "If I'd done that on purpose, you would know it."

"How could I possibly know that?"

"Because I'm a lousy actor, that's how."

Sokka seemed ready to say something in response, but Aang elbowed him in the ribs. For being so small, so absurdly cheerful and naïve, the monk could actually muster a fairly authoritative glare when he put a little effort into it.

"I really don't think you need to keep fighting about this," Aang said. "Zuko isn't going to be mean to Princess Yue. Right?" He turned toward Zuko. "I mean—you're definitely kind of grumpy, but I think you're only fighting with Sokka because he keeps yelling at you."

"I—" Zuko's brow furrowed, and he felt his face heat. The kid wasn't entirely wrong. He definitely argued more when there was someone arguing back, but for some reason, he didn't want to admit that. Maybe it was just embarrassing to have a little baldheaded monk in a summer tunic see through him so easily. Zuko crossed his arms. "I still argue with Katara."

"That?" Sokka scoffed. "That's barely bickering."

"There! See?" Aang gestured triumphantly at Sokka before Zuko could reply. "You only bicker with Katara."

Zuko glanced back and forth between the two others. He still wasn't awake enough for this. He probably never would be. "Is that supposed to mean anything? Is there even a difference between the two things?"

"There is," Aang said, beaming. "Bickering is friendly arguing. Right, Sokka?"

Sokka spluttered, and his face went blotchy. "Well—I mean—it can be. Sometimes." For some reason, he seemed furious with Zuko, and jabbed a finger into his chest. "But you listen here, jerkbender. You are the exception to that rule. You are not friends with my sister."

Zuko felt a bit like he'd been punched in the stomach. He tried not to think about why that was as he smacked Sokka's hand away. "Stop touching me."

Sokka poked him again. "Not until you get that through your head. And stop keeping my baby sister out here all night long."

Zuko's face flamed, and he smacked Sokka's hand hard enough to get a yelp this time. "I'm not keeping anybody anywhere. I didn't ask you two to come out here. And unless you actually have something important to say—"

Sokka shook his hand like he was trying to physically drive away the sting. "Of course we're here for something important. I already said that." He slipped his mitten off, inspected the back of his hand, frowned, then put the mitten back on. "I need to make sure that you're ready to meet someone as amazing as Princess Yue. And obviously, you're not, Ponytail Jerk."

Zuko let out a huff, and his breath turned to mist in the air. "I don't see what the big deal is. I'm not trying to make friends with anyone, I just want to beat Zhao. It can't be that hard to explain what he's planning to some princess." Besides, Katara had assured him that she was going to be there as well. If he got tripped up or missed anything important, she was more than capable of filling in most of the details.

"So you swear that you won't yell at Yue?"

A scoff. "I'm not going to swear to anything when I don't know who I'm dealing with."

"Then you're not ready to meet Yue!" Sokka bellowed.

Zuko threw his arms out. "What are you expecting me to say? I can think of a hundred different ways that this could go wrong for me. Am I supposed to pretend that I'm just going to roll over and accept that?"

"Dude, the only thing I'm asking is that you try not to be a jerk."

"And all I'm saying is that I won't make promises that I might not be able to keep. What's the problem? Is your precious princess made out of glass or something?"

Sokka scowled. "No, I just know what you're like."

"And I don't know what this princess is like, so drop it!"

"Princess Yue is nice, Zuko," Aang interjected. "She's really good friends with both Sokka and Katara. If you're worried that she won't like you—"

"I could hardly care less if she likes me or not," Zuko snapped. "The point is that I'm still Fire Nation. People are going to see me as an enemy no matter what I do. And I'm not stupid enough to believe that everything is going to be okay just because this princess likes the three of you."

After all, even Sokka had threatened to kill him at one point. The fact that Katara was friends with this princess did put a slight dent in Zuko's pessimism, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew what could happen when royalty—or royalty that still had power and influence, at least—decided to eliminate a threat. He hadn't spent his childhood living alongside Azula and not learned a few lessons about how dangerous a vindictive princess could be.

"Wait," Sokka said. "Wait, wait, wait. Is Mister Firebender scared of Yue?"

"No," Zuko snapped before the idiot could go off into gales of laughter. "I just know a lot more about royalty than you two."

Aang made a face. "I don't know about that. One of my best friends is the king of Omashu."

Zuko's brow furrowed. The king of Omashu—was that guy still alive? Hadn't he been around before the war even started?

Sokka nodded, gesturing toward Aang like that was some sort of confirmation. "Right. And like I told you once before, my dad is the chief of the Southern Tribe. So technically, I can consider myself royalty too."

"What?" Aang raised his eyebrows. "How come you never mentioned that before?"

Sokka made a dismissive motion with his hand. "Because the South Pole doesn't really do royalty or titles or any of that," he said in a rush before he continued. "Point is, you don't have the monopoly on understanding royalty here, smart guy."

Zuko's scowl deepened. Maybe he didn't understand this specific princess, but he still had a much better idea of what he was talking about than the other two did. He knew what happened when people got on the wrong side of royalty. He understood how far that power could be pushed.

"It's different when you're an enemy," he said stiffly.

"Oh, really?" Sokka rolled his eyes tremendously. "Fascinating. Do you think you could enlighten us, or were the several months when we were fighting you enough to clue us in?"

"That's different! I never had any real power. No one would have everbacked me up if I'd asked for reinforcements." His hands clenched into fists, and his jaw tightened. "The whole reason you said that this princess had to be involved was because she has influence on the tribe. Excuse me for not seeing that as a great sign for me."

Sokka raised an eyebrow. "So—what, have you gotten on a princess' bad side before? Is that what this is all about? You've had this exact situation happen in the past?"

Zuko fixed his eyes downward. "Close enough."

"What princess was it?" Aang asked.

"My sister."

Sokka snorted. "You have a sister?" When Zuko refused to respond, he turned toward Aang. "Am I broken? I think that I might feel a little sorry for her."

"Do not feel sorry for her," Zuko snapped. He hadn't meant to say anything at all, but once he'd started, the words came of their own accord. "The only time I've heard from her since I was banished was in a letter where she told me how much better things were with me gone. How she'd taken over all my duties at home, and my father wouldn't stop telling people that she should have been his heir all along."

Aang's eyes bulged, and Sokka looked like someone had shoved a live badgerfrog down his throat.

"Sorry, Zuko," Aang said quietly.

Sokka wasn't quite as straightforward. "That's—uh. That's rough. I think."

Zuko shook his head. He wished that he could firebend at something. Not that it had ever really helped before. "Just—shut up, would you? Stop acting like I don't know what I'm talking about."

For a second or two, Sokka was quiet. Then, "Okay, but Princess Yue—"

"Ugh, Sokka." Aang tugged Sokka's arm. "Don't start that again. Let's just go."

"But I'm not the one who's arguing! He's—"

"The monks always told me that flying lemurs don't bite their own tails."

Zuko blinked. Somehow, the monk was worse than Uncle. "What in the world is that supposed to mean?"

"Well—I'm not completely sure, but I think they meant that it takes more than one person to keep a fight going. And I really don't think that you want to keep fighting, Zuko, so that means that Sokka—"

"Ugh, fine." Sokka dragged the word out much longer than seemed necessary. He pushed to his feet, then shot one more look back at Zuko. "But I will kick your ass if you—"

"Sokka." Aang stood up too. "Let's go. You two aren't getting any closer to agreeing on this."

"Yeah, but—"

At that, Aang took matters into his own hands for once, grabbing Sokka around the middle and launching them both from the pit with his airbending.

"We'll see you later, Zuko," Aang said as Sokka squawked and flailed his way free. "Sorry about—um—all of this."

"But Aang, I was just gonna tell him that—"

"Well then maybe you should tell Katara, and then she can tell him. 'Cause you're bad at this."

There was more grumbling from Sokka, but it receded away until Zuko was left alone at the bottom of his pit, with nothing but the sunlight and the sound of wind overhead to keep him company.

Zuko tried to appreciate the quiet. After all of Sokka's inevitable noise and nonsense, it should have been a reprieve. It should have been relaxing.

Instead, the tension kept building up inside his chest until he had no choice but to jump to his feet and pace back and forth across the bottom of the pit. He hated this. The gnawing sensation, the anxiety and doubt—none of those things were new. If anything, they were almost too familiar. But it had been quite some time since he'd felt this way. Since he'd come so close to bursting over a simple—if infuriating—conversation.

Why was that? Things weren't going spectacularly for him, but Zuko was used to that by now. Living at the bottom of a hole in enemy territory wasn't great, but by his standards, it was probably still better than average. And although he was still banished, still a certain failure in Father's eyes, Zuko was growing a little closer to okay with that. He didn't want to do things Father's way anymore. He liked himself better when there was no coldness, no cruelty in his actions. He didn't want to be like Azula anymore.

So why had talking about her bothered him so much? He didn't care about Azula. He hadn't thought about her in ages, and Zuko was slowly finding his own way through life. For once, no one was actively trying to kill him, and he had a plan that actually had a chance of working. For once, Zuko had at least a scrap of hope, and he could live with the choices he was making.

It couldn't be the mention of Azula that was bothering him, then. Not this time. And he didn't think that the tightness in his chest made sense when he thought about meeting Princess Yue, or about—

You are not friends with my sister.

"Ugh!" He spun into a kick, and when his foot hit the icy wall, he thought he felt something crack. Fuck. He dropped to the ground, clutching his foot.

That was it, wasn't it? In the past few days, idiot that he was, he'd half convinced himself that his truce with Katara meant something else. And it didn't. It couldn't. Katara might very well be the closest thing he'd ever had to a friend, but that didn't mean that she was his friend. Zuko knew that. Deep down, he'd known all along, and for some stupid reason, he'd let himself forget until Sokka pointed out the obvious.

And now, it seemed entirely possible that he'd broken his foot over the whole stupid thing.

On second thought, maybe things weren't actually going that great for him. Which shouldn't surprise him in the least. He knew his own luck too well.


"This doesn't look too serious." Frowning, Imiq took a step back from the boy at the end of the row. "Katara, here's another one for you."

Katara glanced up from the split lip and bruised jaw that she had been working to mend. "Be right there."

"Thank you," Imiq said, then moved onto a boy with shaggy hair who cradled his left arm against his chest.

Brow furrowed in concentration, Katara turned her attention back to her work. The healing hut was busier than usual today—apparently, the advanced waterbending class had either stayed after their lessons for extra sparring practice and the fight had gotten out of hand, or they'd argued until it turned into a brawl, no one would explain the details—and now, all the boys were sheepishly making their way in to get their bumps and bruises mended. She couldn't decide whether she liked it or not. On the one hand, there was much more to do, much more activity to speed her time in the healing huts along. On the other, the trickle of embarrassed, bloody-nosed waterbenders seemed endless. How long was this going to take? She had somewhere else she wanted to be tonight.

From the other side of the room, Imiq made a low, disapproving sound. "Malruk, I thought you knew better than to get yourself involved in this sort of nonsense."

"Sorry, Auntie," the boy replied sheepishly.

"You'd better be. I ought to bandage you up and send you home to heal the hard way."

"You won't tell Mom about this, will you?"

"You and I both know that I'm much scarier than your mother, young man. But no. I won't tell her. You will."

Katara cleared away the last of the swelling around her patient's jawline, checked one more time to be certain that she hadn't left any damage behind, and moved on to the next boy that Imiq had pointed out to her. Maybe if she worked through all their patients quickly enough, there would still be time to go out to Isux Lake again tonight. There may not be enough time for four whole sparring rounds tonight—maybe just one or two—but they were close to halfway through their cluster of patients. Between Katara, Imiq, and Kriisax, one of the apprentice healers who seemed to be around most evenings, it couldn't take that long to get through the last dozen or so boys.

Katara healed a bruised shoulder on one boy, then a black eye on a second, then a sprained wrist on a third, and then Imiq sent her to the opposite side of the room to help Kriisax mend a fractured collarbone. Then, when that was done too, Imiq pointed Katara on to the next cot in the row to mend a few cuts and bruises on yet another boy's face.

Katara could feel Kriisax watching her, wide-eyed, but did her best to ignore it as she pressed a fresh supply of water deep into the worst of the cuts. Just a few more patients. They were nearly through. Then she could go.

"How many patients have you worked with today?" Kriisax asked. There was a slight gap in her front teeth that gave an occasional whistle when she spoke. "I've counted four at least."

Frowning in concentration, Katara sealed the cut closed from the bottom up, then moved on to a smaller scrape on the boy's forehead. She shrugged. "I haven't been keeping track. Quite a few."

"More than four?"

"Probably."

"Hmm—I think it's closer to ten." Imiq said.

"Imiq!" Kriisax sounded almost aghast. "She's a beginner. I can barely get through five or six patients before I take a break. You're going to exhaust her."

Imiq didn't look up from her patient. "Katara, are you exhausting yourself?"

Katara shook her head. "No."

"Are you tired?"

"Not even a little."

"See?" Imiq said, glancing at Kriisax. "She may be a beginner, but she has stamina."

Katara glanced up, brow furrowed. "Is that—weird?"

"I've found it very useful today."

Kriisax spun toward Katara, wide-eyed. "How do you do it? I've been healing since I was a little girl. I'm good at this, and I still can't heal for that long." She paused, frowning in a way that somehow made her already round face look even rounder. "How often do you practice? It must be tons."

Katara scoffed. "No." She caught a glare from Imiq and corrected herself. "I mean—no, I barely practice healing. I've always known that I was a bender, but I didn't know about healing until a few months ago. And since then—I use it when I need it."

"Oh." Kriisax's brows crept downward. "Then—why are you so good at this? I've trained for years, and so have all the other apprentices. None of us can work for very long."

"Well—" Katara began, "—to be fair, I've never healed more than cuts and bruises without help."

"Yes, but you've just started learning."

"Kriisax, it's perfectly normal for apprentice healers to take years to build up their endurance—" Imiq started.

"But why should it be normal? Obviously it's possible for things to be easier for us." Kriisax turned toward Katara again, leaning forward with her hands braced on a cot. "So how do you do it?"

Katara frowned. "I don't know. I didn't even realize that I'd been working for very long." She paused. "I just—I guess I spend most of my time waterbending."

"Like fighting?" Kriisax wrinkled her nose. "Even if that was allowed, I don't know if I'd want to waste my time. Fighting is so brutish and imprecise."

"Hey," one of the boys protested. "Fighting isn't—"

Kriisax shot a glare at the boy. "You don't get to argue with me when you have a broken nose, Angun." She turned to Katara again. "Of course I'm sure that you have much better control than most of them since you've done plenty of healing too. I just can't see any practical reason for most people to learn how to fight. I certainly don't want to."

"Well, if there's anything that I'm doing differently, that's probably it." Katara certainly wasn't going to admit that she was training with a firebender too, but she was also fairly certain that one night of sparring hadn't made any difference in her bending yet. "I've spent whole days practicing before." When she caught a disappointed look from Kriisax, she added, "It isn't just fighting, you know. I use my bending for almost everything."

"You do?"

Katara nodded. "Cooking, washing, drying things out—I've even pulled snow out of thin air to communicate with people before."

Kriisax's brows shot up. "You can do that?"

"Of course. I mean—I definitely broke a lot of things before I figured out how to cook with my bending, but I can't see why I shouldn't make things easier for myself."

Kriisax gave Katara a slow, scheming grin. "I think," she said, "that you and I should have a conversation sometime soon."


Somehow, it was still relatively early when Imiq excused her for the night. Well, maybe early was the wrong word for it. It was dark, and the moon had crept fairly high in the sky, but Katara had begun to fear that she wouldn't make her escape until close to midnight. An hour or two after the last traces of sunlight faded from the sky—which happened fairly early anyway—wasn't bad at all.

She had, of course, taken a few extra minutes to arrange a meeting with Kriisax for some extra waterbending practice in a few days' time. Katara wondered how much of her sparring time would be lost when she began teaching Kriisax other types of waterbending. She didn't think that she was disappointed about it—no, even though it wasn't fighting, there was always something nice, something soothing about guiding the flow of the water in her normal life—and she was more than happy to share that with one of the northern girls. It wasn't fighting, so it wasn't technically against the rules, and she didn't think that she could get into any real trouble for sharing that much. And yet it wasn't fighting, so Katara had a very hard time finding anything close to enthusiasm for it. That part of waterbending was just—life.

But for now, the night was hers. For now, she had at least a little time for sparring. So she made her way out to the lake, and when she arrived at the pit, she hung her head over the edge.

"Zuko! Hey, Zuko! I hope you're ready to lose a sparring match."

There was some rustling, and then his head poked out of the tent. "What makes you think that you're going to win?"

She grinned. "Well, for starters, I saw a lot of your moves last night. And also—" Her voice trailed off when Zuko emerged from the tent, and she squinted down into the dimness. "Are you limping?"

"No," he answered a little too quickly. "I'm not limping."

"You are too." Katara dropped down into the pit. "And you're easily the worst liar I've ever met."

"I'm not lying." But his voice was stiff, and he wouldn't look at her. He did stop moving, though. At the very least, that made the slight limp less obvious.

Katara crossed her arms and scowled at him. He'd have to try a lot harder than that if he wanted to fool anyone. "What happened? You were walking just fine after we sparred last night."

"Nothing happened!"

She refused to so much as acknowledge that. Instead, she turned on the spot, inspecting the area as well as she could. He had been fine last night. Which meant that whatever had happened had to have happened here, and if she was lucky, she might be able to find some sign of it.

"There!" She pointed at a dip in the wall where the ice went dark and glossy near knee height. "You kicked the wall, didn't you?"

"I—"

"Why did you kick the wall, Zuko?" It wasn't like he'd done any damage—if there had been any fire involved, it had just barely melted the surface, but still.

He was scowling when she turned back to face him. "It doesn't matter."

She scowled back. It mattered to her. She'd thought that they were making progress last night—that they were approaching something more like friendship than a mere truce. That they trusted one another at least a little more than before. She'd thought that Zuko was going to be more open and honest now. It had seemed like he was last night.

It stung a little to think that he'd been that angry and that he wouldn't say why. Katara didn't really believe that they were friends yet, but she'd liked the idea that they were getting closer. She liked the idea that they could someday be real friends. And if Zuko didn't feel the same—

"Can we just go? You said that you wanted to spar, so—"

"No! I'm not sparring with you if you—" she waved her hand vaguely in his direction, "—broke your foot or something. Do you think I'm crazy?"

"What does it matter? I've fought through a lot worse than this."

She gaped at him. "We're supposed to be on the same side here. I'm not going to deliberately hurt you." She'd even gone so far as to heal him when they were still enemies. Zuko knew that. How could he possibly think that she would—

"That isn't going to stop anyone else."

"What?"

Zuko clamped his jaw and looked sharply away.

She narrowed her eyes. What else had happened today? Had someone found him? Was that why he was worried about someone hurting him?

"Zuko, what happened?" Her voice came out a little quieter this time.

"It doesn't matter," he snapped.

"It matters to me!"

Zuko's eyes widened. His mouth opened and closed a few times, then finally, "Nothing happened. I got annoyed, and I kicked the wall."

"Hard enough to hurt yourself?"

"I never said it was a smart idea."

"Good, because it wasn't." Katara kept her arms crossed. "So what about the other thing? What makes you think that someone is going to hurt you?"

"I just—what am I supposed to expect? I've lost count of the number of people who have wanted me dead. And now I'm stuck in a city where I'm the enemy, and I'm supposed to meet the princess, and—"

Katara frowned. "I've already told you, Yue is nice."

With a scoff, he shook his head, shifted his weight, then winced.

Her frown deepened. While he did sort of have a point that the North Pole wasn't the safest place for him to be, it wasn't like facing Yue could possibly put him in any kind of danger. Not as long as everyone kept their wits about them and acted like human beings. Besides, between the fact that he'd come here with no plans whatsoever, and that the only harm that had befallen him since he'd come was his own stupid fault—she glanced down at his possibly-broken foot—he really couldn't be surprised if he had to face a little bit of risk here and there.

She let out a huff. "Would you sit down before you hurt yourself again? Whatever you did to your foot isn't getting better with you standing on it."

Zuko started to argue again, but before he got more than half a sentence into it, Katara summoned a rope of water from behind him to wrap around his middle and drag him back to the ground.

"Ouch," he protested. "I thought you weren't going to fight me after I hurt myself."

"This isn't fighting you," she replied primly as she sat across from him and released the water's grip. "It's forcing you to be slightly less idiotic. Now let me see what you did to it."

Zuko pulled back just a little. "It's fine. Nothing's broken."

Katara grabbed his ankle and yanked it closer. "You'd better hope that nothing is broken. I've never healed a broken bone without help before."

Once her grip had tightened around his ankle, Zuko went strangely, uncomfortably still for an instant. She glanced up just long enough to see that his eyes had widened to an absurd degree, and that he wassquirming very slightly before she turned her attention back down. As long as he wasn't actually going to pull away again, she might as well begin healing him.

Fortunately, nothing seemed to be broken. There was swelling, and plenty of ugly, painful bruises, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, considering the fact that he'd kicked a solid ice wall. It was manageable, even with Katara's limited healing skills, and that was what really mattered.

For a little while, they were both quiet as she did her best to concentrate on the healing and Zuko looked very much like he was considering crawling out of his own skin just to get away without accidentally kicking her in the face. Spirits, this was a lot more uncomfortable than it needed to be.

"I know you don't believe me about Yue," Katara said eventually, more interested in breaking the silence than in saying anything of any real substance. "But I'm telling the truth. She's been nothing but nice to us since we got here. And—even Sokka and I don't fit in with the Northern Tribe quite as well as you'd probably expect. I really don't think that she's going to have a problem with you."

Zuko gave a small grunt of acknowledgement, still looking wildly uncomfortable. "I don't—it's not that I think you're lying. I just—"

"Don't believe a word I'm saying?"

He scowled. "No. I'm just saying that there's a big difference between making friends with a weird waterbender and a firebender. Any firebender." He paused, then turned his eyes pointedly away. "What am I supposed to do when your friend decides to hand me over to the rest of the tribe?"

"Well, first of all, that isn't going to happen," she said as she finished healing his foot and pulled the water away. "Yue cares too much about her people to risk facing Zhao's attack blind, and she knows that we need your help to find a way to stop him. We all know that things will be easier if you want to help us." She paused, watching as he pulled his boot back on. "And if I'm wrong, then—I'll figure something out. I'm not going to let your pessimism win."

Zuko raised his eyebrow at her.

"I mean it. I'll—maybe I'll borrow Appa and sneak you out of the city. I'm sure I can find someplace safe to stash you for a while. I could drop you off by the boat that you brought to the North Pole, or I could just find someplace for you to camp until the rest of us are ready to pick you up when we leave the North Pole."

A bit hesitantly, he asked, "Would you really do that?"

She nodded. "We're on the same side, remember? Of course I would." A pause. "But again, it's not going to happen. You may not end up being friends with Yue, but she's not going to hate you. I don't think she even hates the guy she's engaged to, and he's definitely more of a jerk than you are."

Zuko's forehead twitched midway through that, but he said nothing.

"How's your foot?" Katara asked after a lapse.

"Better."

"Enough to spar for a round or two?"

Something almost like a smile flickered across his face. "Enough to win."


For all that Zuko tried to tell himself that he wasn't distracted, that he was perfectly prepared for sparring, his actual fighting said otherwise. He wasn't doing badly—by his own standards, tonight was perfectly average. He wasn't doing any of his forms wrong either,he just couldn't seem to find the quickness, the adaptability that he'd felt so deeply last night.

They fought only two rounds—the first, Katara won handily, and the second, it looked like she was going to win again until Zuko landed a few lucky strikes and knocked her off her feet.

He frowned and shook out his arms as Katara rose back to her feet. He was almost tempted to challenge her to a tiebreaking round, but his thoughts were still scattered, and he doubted that he was going to feel any clearer before he got a good night of sleep. The sheer bewilderment of being offered a way out of the city if it became too dangerous for him to stay—even if it was just a bison ride out to his abandoned lifeboat—was going to keep his thoughts muddled for quite some time.

He hadn't forgotten what Sokka had told him. And much as Zuko hated to admit it, the idiot had a point. Katara didn't have any reason to be his friend. Still, he couldn't help but be struck over and over by the odd feeling that, even though they weren't friends, friendship had to be similar to this.

Was he just fooling himself? Was he imagining camaraderie and care where there was nothing at all? He had little enough experience with these things to get it wrong, he knew that much. He sort of wished that he'd had a friend before so he'd have at least a scrap of an idea of what to expect, what to look for.

Not that Katara had ever been even remotely predictable before.

She took her time stretching her arms before she met Zuko's eyes. "Your foot may be feeling better, but I don't think your bending caught up quite yet."

It took a moment for her meaning to register in his mind, and he scowled. "I did beat you that last time."

"Barely." She gave him a small smirk. "Winning is a lot more fun when you at least pretend to focus."

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Zuko turned toward the lake. "I have more on my mind than just your princess friend, you know."

"Her name is Yue," Katara said as she joined his slow walk to the ridge that hid them from the city. "And I sort of guessed as much."

"I thought you told me that you weren't a mind reader."

"I'm not! But if you think that you're subtle about—well, anything, I have bad news for you." He felt her gaze boring into the side of his face. "So? What is it?"

He frowned, watching his boots dragging through the snow. "Nothing important. Just something stupid that your brother said."

"Ugh. What was it this time?"

"I just said it wasn't important."

"Yes, but you also said that Sokka did something stupid. Shockingly, being his sister means that his nonsense sometimes comes back to bite me. Like the other day when he apparently told Hahn that he and Aang have a new pet named Red, and now I have to pretend that I'm furious about it if Hahn ever brings it up."

"I heard about that one." Zuko said under his breath.

"I'm sure you did. Sokka thought it was hilarious." She paused. "What about this time?"

He hunched his shoulders a little. It was such a stupid thing to get hung up on. Of course she'd never want to be his friend. Who would? He never should have brought it up in the first place.

"It's—nothing you'll have to lie about."

He could feel Katara watching him in profile as they walked. She made a small, thoughtful sound. "No lying is probably a good sign. And?"

He took a deep breath. By now, he'd probably come too far to back away without saying anything at all. If he didn't get it over with quickly, she was just going to nudge and pry until he spilled it all out anyway and made it sound infinitely worse.

He still didn't want to say it.

"Sokka said that you and I aren't friends," he said, half mumbling the words in his haste.

From the corner of his eye, he watched her stiffen, and her eyes widened. "Oh." Her voice was quiet, but flat, almost emotionless.

He should have expected that. His hands tightened into fists in his pockets. "Obviously he's right. There's no reason why you would ever want to be."

She wouldn't look at him anymore, and Zuko couldn't decide whether that made things better or worse. On the one hand, it was probably less humiliating this way. At least when she wasn't looking, he had a chance to wipe the disappointment off his face so that she'd never have to know that he'd gotten his hopes up. On the other—well, he had gotten his hopes up. Badly. And the fact that Katara wouldn't look his way didn't bode well for his ridiculous wish about finally having a friend of his own.

"Would—" Katara began haltingly. "Would you even want us to be friends?"

Yes. More than anything.

He swallowed hard and gave the most nonchalant shrug he could manage. "I don't know. It's not like I've ever had a friend before. How would I know if it's worth the trouble?"

"That might be the most depressing thing I've ever heard." There was a pause, and she sighed, scuffing her hands up and down her arms. "I don't know, Zuko. Sokka is about as tactful as a bag full of hammers, but—maybe he has a point. I'm not sure that we are friends."

A painful jolt struck him in the middle of the chest, and his shoulders hunched as though that might protect him from the impact. Too late. He clenched his jaw and quickened his pace. "Great. That's just—perfect."

"Zuko. Zuko, wait. I wasn't finished," Katara called after him, sounding cross.

He didn't slow down. Why should he? If he was nothing but a useful source of information for her and her friends, then he had no reason to stick around. In fact, it was probably best if he put as much distance between them as possible. The sooner he convinced himself that he didn't actually want to be her friend, the better things would be for everyone.

"Zuko!"

He took another step, just reaching the crest of the ridge, when he sank up to his ankles in the ice and his feet became rooted to the ground.

"Ugh, you're so infuriating sometimes." Katara marched up beside him and crossed her arms.

Zuko glared. "Let me go."

"Not yet. You didn't let me finish."

"Why should I? If I'm just a tool for you to use—"

With his ankles buried in ice, she was nearly at his eye level. She scarcely had to stretch when she reached across and flicked him hard in the middle of the forehead. "If anyone thinks you're a tool, that's because you're acting a bit like one at the moment. And what I was going to say was that I didn't think we were friends now, not that it's impossible for us to ever be friends."

Ow. Zuko rubbed his forehead. She still looked cross with him, but she hadn't left, and— "Wait, so—you think that we could—"

"I'm not sure." Her voice went quiet, and she released the ice around his ankles. "Maybe? It's just—you know, we're on the same side for now. But in a few more weeks—a month—who knows what could happen?"

Zuko shook the clumps of ice from his boots, never breaking from her gaze.

"I think," she continued, "that we could maybe—depending on how things turn out, we might be friends. Someday. Right now, we just aren't there yet."

The tension, the ache inside of Zuko's chest settled and eased until all that was left was an uncertain fluttering. Something that felt close to the edge of pleasant, something almost like hope or optimism.

"If we aren't there yet, then—where are we, exactly?" he asked.

"Allies," Katara said, and she smiled at him. "And sparring partners."

Zuko felt his mouth twitch in response. "I don't know if I've ever had one of those either."

Rolling her eyes, she bumped his shoulder with her own as she started down the slope. "And now I'm pretty sure that you're just trying to mess with me."

Even though he wasn't—even though he'd spent most of his life alone or hated, or alone and hated, Zuko couldn't bring himself to correct her. Not right now. Instead, he caught up with Katara in a few long strides, then matched her pace as they descended back toward the lake.

He couldn't remember the last time his shoulders had felt so light.


Author's Note:

What does it say about me that I was practically squealing when I wrote the scene where Zuko and Katara cement their relationship as almost friends? Like, I was elated to finally get them to this point in their relationship, and the point they've reached is, "I'm willing to openly admit that I want you safe".

It probably says that I'm really serious about this slowburn business, I guess. And to be fair, "I want you to be safe, and I might be willing to be your friend when we've built up a little more trust" is probably more affection than Zuko has ever gotten from anyone other than Iroh or his mom. At least where Zuko is concerned, those baby steps really are a big deal.

Also, I've done a lot of thinking about the Northern Tribe's way of dealing with waterbenders, and even though I'm fully on board with Katara leading a feminist revolution by teaching all the other girls to fight, I'm not entirely convinced that there would be a ton of them who'd want to fight. I mean, it's obviously a sexist tradition, but at the same time... in a culture that hasn't faced any real battles in decades, there's not a ton of use for combat training, and also fighting is both hard and dangerous. I can easily imagine that 1) there would be some sense of pride among the women over how their bending is powerful in its own right, and 2) there could be some actual aversion to the idea of fighting because of both the danger and how it can be imprecise and excessive in the wrong hands. If there were any girls in the Northern Tribe who wanted to fight, I think they'd probably be in a minority. But that doesn't mean that a feminist revolution can't still happen, so teaching the other girls (or just one of them for now) how to use other waterbending forms for things OTHER than fighting seems like a good compromise to me! (Also, Kriisax is an Aleut word for mouse - I was originally planning on having her be kind of quiet and timid, but she's shifting a little as I write her. But having a character named 'mouse' is still cute, so the name stays!)

If you haven't seen it, I've started posting an audio version of this fic on AO3, so feel free to check that out if you're interested! That updates every Tuesday morning, and will keep running until July of 2023. Which I can now say definitively, because I've also finalized the chapter count on this story! Book 1 is FINALLY fully drafted at 80 chapters! Chapter 57 will be posting in two weeks, so I hope to see you back here then, and in the meantime, reviews are alway appreciated!