Water
Reconnaissance
Katara wasn't sure what she was expecting when they got to Appa. She wasn't surprised when Aang took the reins and Sokka settled at the back of the saddle along with Yue, but she hadn't quite wrapped her mind around the fact that that would leave her and Zuko to take the remaining space at the front of the saddle.
She didn't think that she minded sitting next to him. Spending time with him was actually nice, but the idea of being next to him for however many hours it took to come within sight of Kokkyo Island—while Sokka was just a few feet away, and being all mushy with Yue—was a little jarring. What if they started bickering once they'd taken off? It was easy enough to defuse things when they weren't flying. Katara was fully willing to freeze both boys to the ground until their tempers cooled off, but up in the air, things could get messy.
But they weren't far from the city before Zuko asked to borrow their map and settled in with Sokka's spyglass to survey the ice fields from above. Sokka and Yue, of course, fell into conversation almost immediately, and Katara found herself at least watching Zuko from the corner of her eye most of the time. He seemed good at this. And as he focused his attention on the map, on working out exactly which direction they needed to fly, Zuko became a little less prickly, a little less irritable than he'd been for most of the morning. More confident and more at ease. More like the way he was when they sparred at night.
It was intriguing. And for the first few hours of their flight, while the conversation was relatively quiet, Katara had very little to do but mull over it.
"We should be within sight in another few miles," Zuko said once they'd flown across the bulk of the ice fields. He looked up from the map, frowning toward the southern horizon. "It's probably best if we stay low from here on."
"How many miles?" Sokka asked. "It might be helpful if you tried to be specific."
"And it would be helpful if I had a better map to look at too, but here we are." Zuko rolled the map back up. "How old is this thing anyway?"
"Monk Gyatso gave it to me just before I left the Southern Air Temple," Aang called back from his perch on Appa's neck. "I think it was brand new back then."
"So it's more than a hundred years old?"
"Well—yeah, I guess you could think of it that way."
Zuko scoffed and shook his head. "I should have brought my uncle's map instead. At least that one is probably only fifty years old."
And, Katara thought, probably updated more recently than that. Supposing that all her suspicions were correct, that the general had brought Zuko to the North Pole shortly after his banishment, then there would have been plenty of opportunity to make adjustments to an older map.
She snuck a look at Zuko as he scanned the horizon again. His scar was turned away from her, but she could picture it perfectly well. She wondered when exactly he'd gotten hurt. She wondered how much, if anything, he remembered about that particular journey.
"There." Zuko pointed to a place just slightly to the right of where they were headed. "That's where we need to go."
"Where?" Aang asked. "I still don't see any Fire Nation ships."
"Good. If they see a sky bison, they're going to come after us." He glanced toward Katara. "Do you all normally fly straight into trouble?"
Katara raised an eyebrow at him. "Speak for yourself, smart guy. We don't normally have warning that we're going to run into problems."
"Normally, avoiding the trouble that we can see coming just means that we're going to run into trouble that we didn't expect," Sokka added. He gave a broad shrug. "Which is sometimes worse."
Zuko frowned at Sokka, then turned forward again and pointed toward a wide, sloping ice shelf. "Try bringing us down over there. The fleet should be just on the other side of the ridge. If we can keep Appa down at the bottom of the hill, we should be able to climb up to the top and get a good view without anyone else spotting us."
"Will it be safe to land?" Yue asked. "I'm sure there will be firebenders guarding the fleet."
Zuko shrugged. "Probably. But no one really knows how far out the Northern Tribe sends its patrols. They're not going to take the risk of venturing out of sight when there's a chance that a waterbender might catch them. And if they're smart, they should realize that they don't really have a chance if they leave their patrol vessels behind."
"That didn't stop you." Sokka said in an undertone.
Zuko shot a glare toward the back of the saddle. "Good thing I was coming here to help, then, isn't it?"
Sokka made a face and grumbled a bit, but he couldn't seem to come up with a more substantial argument. After a pause, he turned toward Yue again, and they all carried on in relative silence until Appa's feet finally met the ground. Zuko vaulted over the side of the saddle first, Sokka's spyglass in hand, and Katara followed just a few seconds behind. In a straggling group, they made their way up to the knifelike ridge, and one by one, joined Zuko lying on their stomachs at the very edge of the ice.
The fleet, just as Zuko had promised, lay just below them, filling nearly all of the ice-encircled bay. Katara's breath caught. She didn't think she'd ever seen so many Fire Nation ships in one place before. Even the blockade around Crescent Island didn't seem this overwhelming in her memory.
"Were there this many ships when you left?" she asked in a hushed voice.
Zuko shook his head. "I left the day we landed. None of the reinforcements were there yet." He raised the spyglass to his eye. "Ugh. I can't even see the island anymore. But there's Zhao's ship right where I left it."
It was difficult to make out much detail from here—even more difficult to fathom the size of each ship when they looked no bigger than her hand. Katara shaded her eyes. "Which one is Zhao's?"
He glanced at her, then passed the spyglass over and pointed toward the middle of the fleet, where the ships formed an uneven arc around what had to be Kokkyo Island. "In the middle. The one with all the banners and flags on the smokestacks."
She followed his gesture with the spyglass, and sure enough, the ship at what appeared to be the southernmost point of the island was practically drenched in absurd, ostentatious red banners. She lowered the spyglass. Now that she'd seen it, she could pick out Zhao's ship even without its help.
"Somebody's compensating for something," Sokka muttered from Zuko's other side.
Zuko gave a small, affirmative grunt.
"This is unbelievable," Yue breathed. From her place at the end of the row, she craned her neck and looked toward Zuko. "Is this the whole fleet?"
He shrugged. "Hard to say. It's not the whole navy, but I can't tell whether they're waiting for more reinforcements without going down there to ask."
Passing the spyglass back, Katara watched him out of the corner of her eye. He'd better not be getting any ideas about infiltrating the fleet. She didn't think he was stupid enough to show his face down there—not when he was half-disguised in Water Tribe clothes, at least—but she'd seen him do plenty of dumb things before.
"Spirits," Yue whispered. "It isn't that I doubted you, Prince Zuko, but this is—it's beyond anything I could have imagined."
Sokka rubbed his chin. "How many people would there be on each ship? We can bring back the number of ships no problem, but it'll be even better if we have a number of soldiers to tell the council too."
"Depends." Zuko began to raise the spyglass again. "There were two or three hundred on Zhao's ship. A normal gunship can run with less, but a carrier wouldn't sail with less than four hundred."
Sokka reached over and grabbed the spyglass out of Zuko's hand. "Let me see that."
"Hey! Try asking next time."
Staring through the lens, Sokka waved him off. "My spyglass. I don't have to ask."
Katara shook her head in exasperation and nudged Zuko before an argument could break out. "You saw what they're doing down there. Does it look like they're getting ready to move out, or do they seem pretty settled?"
He sighed. "Settled, I think. But that doesn't mean very much. If orders came through, they could leave in half a day."
"So we do have a little time, then." She drew in a slow breath and watched what little activity she could make out. Half a day wasn't great, but it would take any one of these ships at least a day or two to navigate the ice fields. Together, they would likely take longer. Appa, on the other hand, could make the trip back to the North Pole in a few hours since he was well-rested. That meant, at the very worst, that the Northern Tribe would have a day to prepare for the impending attack when they arrived back at the city.
"Mmm. But the longer they take, the more reinforcements they'll have when they make it to the city. So—"
"You really are an incurable pessimist, aren't you?"
"If you see any reason to be optimistic here, then you're—"
"Here," Sokka interrupted, tossing the spyglass back at Zuko. "Take it back if it matters so much." Then he slithered back from the ridge, rose to his feet, and jogged back to Appa.
"What the flaming—"
Katara caught the spyglass before it could roll away and held it out to Zuko. "That's his planning face. You'll get used to it."
"I don't want to get used to it," Zuko grumbled, but he accepted the spyglass from her.
Yue looked back over her shoulder after Sokka for a moment, perplexed, but then frowned and faced the others again. "You had a ship of your own, didn't you, Prince Zuko? Was it anything like these? They're—enormous."
With a scoff, he shook his head. "No. My ship was decommissioned twenty years ago. I only had a crew of about thirty-five. And all of them had been kicked out of the navy for one reason or another." Katara watched the muscles in his jaw working. "It's not like I could have expected anything else after I was banished."
Yue's forehead twitched toward something like sympathy, but thankfully, she said nothing. Zuko looked out through the spyglass again, and for a few moments' things went quiet.
Then Sokka jogged back over and crashed down in his spot between Zuko and Yue again. He spread the map out in the snow, blank side up, and shoved a single wooden chopstick under Zuko's nose. "Burn this, would you?"
"Sokka!" Katara snapped. "That's not firewood. You can't just burn all our cooking supplies."
"It's one chopstick. And I need something to write with. Since all our ink and stuff is back in the city, that means that Zuko here is going to make me a charcoal stick."
Zuko lowered the spyglass. "When did I agree to that?"
"You don't have to agree to it. Just make with the charcoal, Ponytail Man."
Zuko groaned but eventually acquiesced, and Katara took another turn with the spyglass. Even with its help, the people were little more than specks on the decks of the ships below, moving slowly if they moved at all. As Zuko had guessed, smaller skiffs patrolled the nearby channels, cutting harsh lines through the slate gray water, and the observation decks on nearly all the ships were illuminated and occupied by indistinct figures.
She wondered where the general was, and whether she was looking at someone she knew without realizing it. She knew some of the people down there. That felt weird. She wasn't used to knowing the people she was fighting. She was used to, at most, knowing their leader while the rest were nothing more than faceless red figures in her mind.
And if it was weird for her, then she could hardly imagine how it had to feel for Zuko. Those were his people. His former crew. His family, in one case.
"Can I take a look?" Aang asked after a minute or so.
"Yeah, of course." Katara dragged her eyes away and passed the spyglass his way. She glanced at Zuko. She was almost tempted to ask him if he was okay with this—if the fact that his crew was down there changed anything for him—but she didn't have time to form a question before Sokka swiped at Zuko.
"Okay, that's good enough. Give it."
Zuko yanked the blackened chopstick out of Sokka's reach. "Stop. You're going to break the stupid thing."
"You're burning it to a crisp!" Sokka tried to reach up and over Zuko.
"That's what you told me to do!"
"No, I said that I wanted—"
"Charcoal, I know. It's not charcoal yet, you idiot." Zuko shoved Sokka away and then swiped the chopstick across Sokka's sleeve. "See? Not charcoal. It's just a little blackened on the outside."
"Hey!" Sokka twisted his arm around so that he could see where the stick had made contact with his parka. "That left a mark, jerk."
"It did not."
When Sokka looked to Katara for support, she shook her head. He turned to Yue instead. "Does it look like my parka is ruined?" he asked, holding up his arm.
Yue inspected the sleeve, then shook her head. "I don't see anything, Sokka."
"Told you." Zuko looked a little smug, and he closed his hands around the chopstick again.
Katara could feel the warmth coming from his hands, and she found her eyes drawn toward them. She'd seen a lot of firebending recently—in their sparring matches mostly, and none of it remotely as frightening as the firebending she'd seen in the past—but this was different. This was so much more contained, so much more focused than most of what she'd seen. This reminded her of the waterbending that she planned to teach Kriisax. It reminded her that sooner or later, she would have to learn firebending.
It made her think that firebending might not be that bad a thing to learn. That, in the end, she might actually be okay with the part of her that was a firebender.
"Hey, Sokka," Aang said after a short lapse. "I think I recognize one of the ships down there."
"Which one? Zhao's? Zuko already said which one that was."
"No, not that one. About three down from Admiral Zhao's ship." Aang shot a sheepish look down the row. "I think that's the ship I went after when I tried to save Katara."
Sokka snorted. "Of course it is."
"Did you really mistake one of those ships for mine?" Zuko asked. He paused to check on the chopstick's progress, then clenched his hands around it again.
"No," Aang said. "I knew it was way too big. I just—I thought that they'd know where I could find your ship."
"So you went and asked them where I was?"
"No. Sokka caught me right before I landed."
"Good. I'm not sure who commands that ship, but they never would have helped you." Zuko shot a look across at Aang. "Practically anyone else would have tried to kill you on sight."
"Huh," Sokka said, putting on an air of mock surprise. "So you're saying that that wasn't what you were doing?"
Zuko's head whipped back toward Sokka. "Shut up and take your stupid charcoal." He smacked the charred remains of the chopstick down in the snow beside him.
With a flourish, Sokka plucked the charcoal stick out of the snow, twirled it, and barely managed to catch it before a breeze sent it sailing down into the bay. "That's a weird way of saying that you're jealous of my genius plan."
Yue spoke before the squabbling could continue. "Do you have any idea of what they might be planning, Prince Zuko? Beyond attacking my city, of course."
"I don't—"
"Oh!" Aang passed the spyglass back to Zuko. "You can have this back. Maybe it'll help."
Zuko groaned. "I don't know what I could possibly see from here."
"Anything at all would help," Yue said.
"Hmpf." He peered through the spyglass again, and Katara watched him in profile as he scanned the fleet. For all the obvious frustration he was showing, he seemed remarkably certain about this, about where to look and what to look for.
He would be, she supposed. He had held command over his own ship for a few years. He ought to know how a Fire Nation ship would operate. Still, seeing the side of him that at least knew how to function amongst hardened soldiers was a strange contrast to the awkward, quick-tempered boy she knew.
"Well—there's a lot of gunships," he said, scanning along the island's coast, then working gradually outward. "More than I would expect from a fleet this size. And it looks like some of them are reinforced to cut through the ice, and—"
"Wait, how do you tell?" Sokka snatched the spyglass away from Zuko and trained his eye on the bay. "Which ones are reinforced?"
"Ugh! Would you stop doing that? And use your brain for a second. You can see the extra plating without a spyglass."
"Then that means that Zhao's ship is reinforced for the ice too."
"I know," Zuko snapped. "I was about to say that right before you interrupted me."
"Then maybe you need to try talking faster."
"I'm not going to make myself sound like a—"
"What does that mean?" Katara interrupted. "If Zhao's ship can cut through the ice, then—are they going to do the same thing to the whole fleet?"
Zuko glared at Sokka for a moment longer, then shook his head. "I doubt it. They would've needed a lot more supply ships to bring in that much steel."
"So—the gunships will be leading the attack, then?" Yue ventured. "I suppose the rest would be able to follow fairly easily once they've carved out a path."
Zuko nodded. "Which probably means that they're trying to hit the city hard enough to break through the wall. If they wanted to hold a siege, they'd have more supplies and a lot less firepower."
"I could've guessed that," Sokka said, scribbling furiously on the back of the map.
"Yeah, well you didn't. You're too busy—" Zuko glanced toward Sokka's scribbles and cut himself off. "What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm drawing all the different types of ships down there and writing down how many of each there are. That way, we can work out how bad the attack will be and how many soldiers we're dealing with."
A pause. "You drew a shoe."
Scowling, Sokka shielded the paper with his arms. "Think you could do better, smart guy?"
"I know I could."
Yue gave Sokka's shoulder a pat. "It's a brilliant idea, Sokka." Her gaze seemed to land on the drawings for an instant, and her brows furrowed just the slightest bit. "And—I suppose what matters is that we can explain everything to the council. If it's in your own hand, then at least we won't have to explain where we got the scroll."
That was one way to think about it. Though from what Katara could see of the charcoal scribbles, they would all be lucky if even Sokka could decipher his own drawings when they made it back to the city.
Shaking her head, she nudged Zuko again. "What about Zhao? Why is his ship reinforced if most of the others aren't?"
"That—" Zuko sighed. "I don't know for sure, but it could mean that he wants to get into the city ahead of everyone else." He paused, meeting her eyes for the first time since they'd landed. "He thinks you're gone, and if he finds you, then—it's not going to be good."
She thought back to the day of the explosion, to the way that Zuko had led her out of the cell and up the stairs to meet Zhao. She remembered how close he'd kept her all the while—how, at first, it had felt oppressive, like Zuko's only concern was to keep her from fleeing. How seeing the firebenders lining the corridor had instantly made Zuko's presence a little more welcome, and how just minutes later, Zuko had stepped forward to physically shield her from Zhao's flames.
A shiver ran up her spine. "And what if he finds you?"
He looked forward again. "I'm trying not to think about that."
Katara had to fight the impulse to scoot a little closer to him. Zhao wasn't going to hurt either of them. She would make sure of that.
"Well," Aang began, "If Admiral Zhao thinks that you both died, then at least we know he's not looking for you. So what does he want?"
Zuko groaned. "I don't know. Don't you think I'd say if I did?" He rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands. "If I could just talk to Uncle, he'd be able to tell me more. Even if he's not telling Zhao anything helpful, he'll have heard almost everything there is to know by now." He frowned for a long moment, then pushed back from the edge. Standing, he dusted the snow off of himself.
"Where are you going?" Katara asked, turning around to watch him.
"I need to talk to my uncle," he answered.
She shot to her feet, nearly forgetting to back away from the edge to keep out of sight. "Are you crazy? You can't go down there, Zuko. Zhao has already tried to kill you once before."
He scoffed. "More than that."
"What?"
Zuko turned red. "I mean—that isn't important."
"When else did Zhao try to kill you, Zuko?"
"Just—a while ago. Aang, do you think you could fly us south of the fleet without being seen?"
Aang got up too. "Yeah, probably. We'd have to go a long way around, but Appa can definitely take us farther."
"What? Why?" Sokka sat up, and beside him, Yue rose too. "I'm not done with my drawing."
"You can finish your monkey scratches up in the air," Zuko snapped. "We have to go."
"What do you have in mind, Prince Zuko?" Yue asked.
"I have to get a message to my uncle. He can tell me what Zhao is really up to."
"How?" Katara demanded. "It won't be any safer to sneak in from the south."
"I'm not going to."
"Then what is the idea?" Katara pressed. Her voice was quieter this time, and Zuko met her eyes. The agitation seemed to drain a bit from his limbs.
He gestured toward the bay. "With a fleet this size, there should be messenger hawks going out almost every hour. All of them should be going south. If we can get down there, I should be able to intercept one of them and send it back in with a letter to Uncle."
She stopped in her tracks. That was actually kind of brilliant. They would likely have to take precautions to disguise Zuko's handwriting and to encode the message itself, but if they had a Fire Nation messenger hawk, there might actually be a chance that they could get a letter into the general's hands. And, if there was enough time left before the fleet set sail, they might get a response.
"How exactly are you gonna catch a bird?" Sokka asked. "I mean—Appa isn't going to be all that maneuverable with five people on his back."
"Our hawks are all trained a lot better than you are. As long as we can get within shouting distance, I can call one of them to me." Zuko cut off there, and his eyes locked briefly with Katara's, almost as though he wanted her approval.
No, that was weird. She was probably just imagining things. Still, she gave a small nod.
He exhaled, and his shoulders visibly relaxed. And then, slowly, one by one, they piled back into Appa's saddle.
"You never answered my question before," Katara said, watching him closely as they gradually began to gain altitude again. In order to keep out of sight, they'd had to stay dangerously low to the ground for quite some time, flying west until they were several miles from the bay before picking up a decent amount of speed and circling southward. And though all of them had been relatively quiet—no one in the fleet could have possibly heard them, but it was significantly harder to trust in that once they'd left the ground—Zuko in particular seemed too quiet.
He glanced her way. "What question is that?"
"When else did Zhao try to kill you?"
There was a pause, and Zuko shook his head. "I told you, it doesn't matter."
"If it doesn't matter, then you don't have any reason not to spill it," Sokka said, not looking up from his scribbling. "C'mon. We don't have anything better to talk about."
Aang spun around on Appa's neck. "I want to hear it too. We all need to know more about what Admiral Zhao is like, right?"
A small pang hit Katara in the middle of the chest. In a matter of seconds, Zuko had turned several different shades of red, and his jaw went tight. Oops. It wasn't that she felt bad for asking—she'd poked at plenty of uncomfortable subjects before, and she'd do it again—but she'd almost forgotten that the others were listening. Some things just felt easier when it was only the two of them.
Mouth pressed into a tight line, Zuko shook his head. "It was just—I got myself into it. He wasn't happy about what I did at Crescent Island."
"Getting punched by Katara is a problem now?" Sokka asked.
"Could you shut up?"
With a shrug, Sokka went on with his scribbling.
"Crescent Island?" Katara prompted, fixing Sokka with a glare.
Zuko frowned. "Yeah. Well—Zhao had a head start. He was going to catch the three of you before I could get anywhere close, so I just—I stalled for time."
"Oh!" Sokka sat up straight again. "That was that thing you yelled at him—argh-y something."
"Agni Kai. It's a type of duel." Another small exhale, and Zuko looked out over the ocean. "I knew Zhao couldn't refuse a challenge, and when he figured out what I'd done—at least he waited until the duel started."
"Your arm," Katara said after a pause. "Zhao was the one who hurt your arm." Her stomach lurched at the very thought of it.
His brows furrowed. "You remember that?"
"How could I not?"
"What happened to Zuko's arm?" Aang asked.
Zuko reddened and replied in a mutter, "Zhao burned me after I won the duel."
"That's awful," Yue said softly.
Katara was too numb to nod in agreement. All she could think about was the way that Zuko had led her away from Zhao just before the explosion, the way that his hands had shaken and fumbled with the keys as he tried to explain the danger. The way that he'd burst back in less than an hour later to release her from the cell, so agitated that his usual scowl had disappeared entirely. The burn on his arm was bad enough. What Zhao had tried to do—what he would try again, given the chance—was infinitely worse.
"It wasn't so bad. My uncle deflected the attack. Zhao—he meant to do a lot more damage."
Yue shook her head, forehead creased. "That doesn't make it any less terrible. You were attacked when you were doing your best to help. No one should be harmed for that."
A scoff. "I wasn't helping anyone. Back then, I just couldn't see another way." Zuko paused, turning the spyglass over in his hands. "I still haven't figured out exactly what I'm doing, but I'm done pretending that I'll ever help Zhao."
"Well, then," Yue said haltingly. "I am very grateful that you've chosen to help my people. And I am happy to count you as an ally for as long as this may last."
Zuko didn't seem to know how to respond to that, and he turned forward, leaning over the front of the saddle. In the relatively confined space, it was as near to isolated as he could get.
Katara felt an impulse to reach out, to drag him back into the middle of their group. Or closer to her, at least. The stubborn, hardened façade that he was trying to put on couldn't hide the uncertainty roiling underneath. It couldn't hide the familiar bitterness that had first filled his eyes when he'd asked her whether they were friends. When he'd taken her hesitation for an outright rejection rather than the caution that it really was.
She remembered how his face had lit up when the misunderstanding had been sorted out. Zuko wanted to be her friend. Katara thought that she wanted that too. But the idea that this might be temporary—it was enough to make her hesitate. And by the time that she found the nerve to reach out, she'd forgotten what she wanted to say.
"Hey, Ponytail," Sokka called after a long lapse. "Get over here. I want to be able to tell Chief Arnook everything once we get back. You're gonna tell me if I forgot anything."
"You forgot to learn how to draw," Zuko grumbled, not looking back.
"Hey!" Sokka grabbed Aang's staff from the side of the saddle and jabbed Zuko with it. "At least pretend to be helpful, would you?"
After some more cajoling, Zuko finally gave in and joined Sokka in the middle of the saddle and began pointing out things that Sokka hadn't been able to see at a glance—weapons intended to take out other ships, others meant for more distant targets, extra shielding around the engine room, and differences between some of the ships' designs. The drawings were, objectively, getting worse the more detail that Sokka tried to add in, but with any luck, the notes that he was scrawling into the margins would make up for the sloppiness of his illustrations.
It took nearly an hour of bickering before Zuko finally moved to the front of the saddle again, looking rumpled and irritable. But, at the very least, he didn't try to pull too far away from the group this time. It was hard to tell whether he was more at ease than he had been before, or whether he was sticking close to Katara in the hopes that she might be able to act as something of a buffer if Sokka bothered him again. Either way, she didn't think that she minded too much. Grumpy Zuko was better than isolated, closed-off Zuko.
She couldn't resist giving him a light nudge. "That wasn't so bad, was it?'
Zuko turned his head just far enough to scowl at her. "If anyone sees that mess your brother drew, they'll lock him up as a lunatic, and you're not allowed to blame me when it happens."
She laughed, and his scowl faltered just the tiniest bit. Just enough for a glimmer of something like happiness to find its way out before he set his expression back in place.
"Well excuse me, Mister Fancy." Sokka said. "I'm trying to advise Chief Arnook, not win a prize for being a great artist. Although I personally think that I could do both."
At that, Yue giggled.
Sokka turned toward her with an expression of mock horror. "Are you laughing at my artistic genius, Princess? Look at this! It's a masterpiece!"
Still laughing, Yue shook her head. "It's—it's lovely. You certainly don't lack enthusiasm."
Zuko rolled his eyes. "Thank the spirits that we're finally almost there. You're all getting ridiculous."
"Getting ridiculous?" Katara asked.
"No, you're right. Sokka's been ridiculous since the first time I met him." He pulled back from the saddle's edge just a bit, brow furrowed as he searched the space around him.
"Rude," Sokka called up to them.
Shaking her head, she found the spyglass and passed it across to Zuko. "Give it a day or two. You'll get used to that too."
"That's not encouraging." He did take the spyglass, though, and in his brief nod of appreciation, there was a flash of something that almost bordered on a smile.
Ha. So he was in a slightly better mood than before. Either that or he was beginning to appreciate Katara's sense of humor a tiny bit, and frankly, she was happy with either alternative.
He trained the spyglass on the brilliant, cloudy white sky ahead of them, and Katara followed suit, shading her eyes with her hands as she scanned the horizon just slightly farther to the west. This far out, there were no longer the sort of massive, island-like ice sheets that dominated the sea just behind them, but large icebergs—at least the size that Zuko's ship had been, if not larger—still drifted through the water to the south, painting spots of vivid bluish green and white in an otherwise drab, grayish ocean.
This, she thought, was roughly where Appa had given up on flying north and settled into the water to float on his belly the rest of the way to the city. Though the icebergs had obviously moved around a good deal, the amount of open water left between the ice looked familiar to her. Out here, there wasn't much to see, so it didn't surprise her when Sokka and Yue inevitably felt back into not-very-subtle flirting in the back of the saddle. It surprised her even less when Zuko began to grow agitated with the noise again.
She'd just watched him turn back around, probably preparing to snap at Sokka—which was probably fair—when the smallest flash of motion in the sky ahead caught her attention. She squinted against the brightness of the sky until she was able to make out two small, dark specks flying close together, and she whacked blindly at Zuko's arm.
"Zuko. Zuko, up there! Are those messenger hawks?"
He spun to follow her pointing finger, squinted, and then trained the spyglass on the spot. "They are." Leaning forward, he tapped Aang on the shoulder. "Up there. Try and get us as close as you can."
Aang obeyed, snapping the reins to urge Appa faster. "Does it matter which one we catch?" he called back. "I think they're farther apart than they look."
"Ugh." Zuko studied the two distant silhouettes again. "Try for the one on the left. I think that one is an officer's hawk." Then, before there could be any other questions, he turned around. "I need a hood. Is there anything I could use for that?"
"Try the one on your parka," Sokka said dryly.
"For the hawk, you idiot. I need something to cover its head so it won't fly away."
"There might be some old socks in that pack at the bottom of the pile," Katara said, pointing to the small pile of supplies left at the back of the saddle. "Would that—"
Before she could finish the question, Zuko was at the back of the saddle, digging through the pack. Sokka yelped and squirmed out of the way, and then, as quickly as he'd gone to the back of the saddle, Zuko returned to the front. He made a face at the smell, but then balled the sock up in his hand and turned to face the hawks again.
"Almost there," Katara heard him whisper. "Almost. Almost, almost." He crouched by the edge of the saddle, holding the rim, and bouncing ever so slightly, like he was preparing himself to stand.
On an impulse, Katara reached across and grabbed hold of his arm.
Zuko whipped toward her, brows furrowed. "What are you doing?"
She clamped her free hand on the edge of the saddle. "Making sure that you don't do anything too stupid. If you fall, we might not be able to catch you."
For a brief, breathless instant, Zuko looked into her eyes, then carefully slid her hand down to his wrist. Her grip tightened a little—it was a bit easier to hold his wrist than his forearm—then Zuko rose to his feet.
Katara's pulse quickened. This was crazy. She had no intention of letting him fall, but they were still far, far above the water, and flying much faster than usual.
She wouldn't let Zuko fall, but the fact that he was willing to put so much trust in that took her breath away.
A series of quick, shrill whistles caught the hawk's attention, and the bird swerved in midair, carving a smooth arc through the sky until it came back around and landed lightly on Zuko's outstretched arm.
"That's it. Good girl. Good birdie." Slowly, carefully, Zuko lowered himself back into the saddle. As soon as he was safely seated again, Katara released her grip on his wrist, and he almost simultaneously opened up the old sock and slipped it over the hawk's head. The bird fluffed itself up and made an indignant-sounding squawk, but then settled down and sat calmly on Zuko's arm.
Katara let out a long, slow breath, and when she met his eyes, he flashed a quick, satisfied smile her way. She couldn't help but smile back.
"We can turn north again," Zuko called over his shoulder to Aang. "We've got everything we need."
As Appa slowed back to his normal pace and began a slow arc back toward the north, Sokka said, "Okay, I'll admit it. That was pretty neat." He slid forward a bit. "What did we get? Anything useful? Aside from the bird, obviously."
Zuko shrugged. "Definitely an officer's letter." He shifted the hawk down onto his hand until he managed to untie the message tube from the hawk's leg. "The female hawks are smaller, so they're faster and harder to shoot down. Enlisted men can only use the males." The message tube came loose, and Zuko moved the hawk up onto his shoulder.
From his spot on Appa's neck, Aang muttered a few quick instructions to the bison and then clambered back to join the others in the saddle. Katara scooted a little closer to Zuko so that Aang could take the spot by her other side.
"To Admiral Zhao?" Sokka said, leaning right over the letter. "Nice. We hit the jackpot! But who's General Boing?"
Zuko shoved Sokka away. "General Bujing."
"Who is General Bujing?" Yue asked.
"He's—" Zuko broke off and rubbed his forehead. His voice had gone tight, and Katara could see his jaw muscles working.
"You know him?" Katara guessed, voice hushed.
He nodded, looking—distressed, for lack of a better word. "Unfortunately." He made no effort to open the coiled letter. "He's—um—he's part of my father's council. He's been an advisor for—years."
Yue seemed to notice Zuko's distress too, and she glanced toward Katara before she spoke. "I assume that that's a bad sign."
A scoff, and Zuko shook his head. "That's putting it lightly. General Bujing—he, uh—there's a reason my father keeps him around. He—gets results. And he doesn't care what it costs." There was something raw and painful in his tone, and it took a long moment before he met Katara's eyes. "If he's advising Zhao, it's not going to be good."
Author's Note:
I have two main things I want to say about this chapter: 1) if you don't remember who General Bujing is (and I definitely had to go digging through the wiki to find his name), that's the guy who Zuko argued with before his first Agni Kai. It's brought up later on, but that chapter won't be up for two weeks. And 2) it feels weird to post a chapter that's entirely from Katara's point of view, but I felt like this chapter in particular was a good place for it. Mainly because this is Zuko's time to show off how much he really does know about the inner workings of the Fire Nation military and how competent he actually is at planning and preparing for battle. He's a smart kid when he keeps his head screwed on, and I really wanted to keep an outside perspective to highlight that rather than having his self-doubt spilling out all over the place this time. Plus his competence in this chapter also highlights the fact that if he'd had any truly bad intentions back when they were all enemies, then things would have turned out much worse for the Avatars. He wasn't always trying to do what was right, but he was always determined not to be evil, and I just think that that's neat.
The next chapter will be coming out in two weeks as usual, so in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one, and reviews are always appreciated!
