Water
The Warriors' Report
"Are you sure that you're actually trying?" Katara called. Her voice sounded breathless, and there was a bright, smiling lilt to each word.
Zuko groaned, pushing himself back up to a seated position. He ached a little from all the bending—and from landing flat on his back several times over—but it was a good sort of ache. The kind that reminded him that he was still in one piece, still strong and fighting. "I already lost. Why should I have to get up?"
"Lazybones." But before the word was even out of her mouth, Katara had come over beside him and flopped back into the snow herself, sending up a cascade of fluff while her hood swung up over her head, cushioning her landing.
"Ugh." Zuko scrubbed at his face with his sleeve, wiping away the snow that had melted on contact. Though he was a little warmer than was strictly necessary now that he had a full Water Tribe outfit to wear, he still didn't care for the cold wetness on his skin. "Was that intentional?"
"Waterbender's secret. I'll never tell."
He snorted and flipped his own hood up before reclining back beside her. Their sparring matches were getting longer and longer—he'd lost the first one after a prolonged, relatively balanced struggle, then barely defeated her in the second, and then fought for what felt like ages in their third match before Katara had finally succeeded in knocking him to the ground and knocking the air from his lungs.
He could have fought through it. Possibly. He'd had the wind knocked out of him before and swung himself to his feet before his breath fully returned, but he was tired by the time that they were through. He didn't really want to force himself back up just for Katara to knock him over again before he succeeded in catching his breath. And when he was sparring with Katara, at least he didn't have to worry about what came after he surrendered. He could just lie back and catch his breath for a little while. He'd lost, and that was okay.
"It feels like it's been ages since the last time I got to spar with anyone," Katara said.
"Ages? It's been—what, two days?"
"Three."
He rolled his eyes. "And I thought that I was impatient. Three days is barely anything."
"Three really long days. And I haven't been in my normal waterbending class for a few days either." There was an audible pout in her voice when she continued. "How am I supposed to be prepared for the attack if I'm taking all this time away from lessons?"
Zuko rolled his head just far enough to the side to catch a glimpse of her profile. "Honestly—I think you're more prepared than you realize."
There was a soft rustle as Katara turned her head, then pushed the thick ruff of fur around the edge of her hood aside so that she could study him. "You think so?"
It felt strange holding her gaze like this, but it wasn't unpleasant. Not like it was with most people. "Yeah. I mean—you've beaten me plenty of times. And I'm not really—I'm not the best firebender, but I've seen a lot more of the other elements than most of the Fire Nation has. Most of them wouldn't have any idea how to fight a waterbender."
She smiled just a bit, then looked back up at the sky. "Doesn't that make you a better firebender than all the others?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that all the fancy moves in the world don't mean very much if they can only fight other firebenders. At least you're versatile."
Frowning, Zuko looked up at the dark, star-specked sky as well. He'd never really thought about it that way before. As firebenders went, he certainly wasn't exceptional, but there were relatively few people in the world who he wouldn't be willing to face, who he wouldn't at least stand a chance against in a fair fight.
"Maybe. Yeah, I guess you have a point." He let out a slow breath and folded one arm back behind his head as a sort of a cushion. But almost as soon as he'd said it, a memory from his childhood flooded back in, and he remembered his tutors and their constant disappointment with his progress. He remembered watching Azula start her own lessons a few years later, only to catch up with and overtake him in a matter of months, leaving him to flounder helplessly in her wake. His hands clenched into fists. "But I barely finished learning my intermediate forms before the explosion. I'm from a family of prodigies. I should have at least finished my training by now."
"I don't see how learning things a little backward is a bad thing. Keeping people confused is almost always a good tactic."
For an instant, Zuko was too confused to speak. Then he had no choice but to snort, then smile. "I'm not sure that excuse would fly with anyone in my family."
Katara smiled too. "Mmm—I think the general would appreciate my reasoning. I don't know about the rest of your family, but they're not here, are they?"
Zuko grunted. "Guess not."
"So then as long as you're ready to face Zhao, isn't your bending right where it should be?"
"I suppose." He sighed. "And I guess I'm more prepared than I was when I beat Zhao a few months ago." It had been a narrow victory, and the only thing that had really spared him in the end was the fact that Zhao had underestimated him. But that really hadn't changed—Zhao would still underestimate him now—and Zuko had to take victories wherever he could get them.
"That didn't stop him from burning you," she said, voice so small that the snow nearly swallowed it up.
He gave a halfhearted shrug. "If I'd been paying enough attention, that wouldn't have happened. I should have known better than to expect him to follow the rules."
Beside him, Katara sat up straight and turned his way, brows furrowed. Though the darkness drained most of the color from the world, her eyes were still bright, and they pierced clear through him. "I still can't believe that anyone would do that. I don't even care that it's Zhao. I know he's awful, I just—how can anyone be okay with hurting people like that?"
Zuko sat up too, a tiny bit slower. "He tried to do the same thing to you. Or—worse, probably." His pulse quickened a fraction at the thought of it. It could have been worse for Katara. It would have been so much worse if Zuko hadn't managed to intervene. "You can't be surprised after you saw that."
"I'm not surprised, I'm just—okay, I am surprised. I know what happened. I know what I saw, and I know what he's capable of. I'm just—I can't understand how anyone can be so willing to hurt people." She looked down, and he watched her forehead crease.
"Then you'd hate my family," Zuko mumbled without thinking. When Katara looked up again, wide-eyed, he cleared his throat. "I mean—it would be worse if we didn't know what to expect from Zhao, right? At least we know what to look out for."
"Zuko," Katara said quietly, holding tight to his gaze.
Shit. He shouldn't have said anything at all. He hadn't really meant the comment about his family. Sure, Azula had always taken every opportunity to lie and manipulate, and Father had been—Father—but that didn't mean that they were wrong. Sometimes it had felt like they'd wanted to make Zuko's life harder, but that was probably just his imagination. It was a lot more likely that they'd just been hard on Zuko to toughen him up.
But now he'd slipped up, and Katara was going to start asking questions, and Zuko couldn't fathom the possibility of talking about any of it. His scar, his banishment, Azula, Father—they all sat too close to his core, and even now, even three years later, it felt as though he would break if anyone got too close.
Something in Katara's gaze felt strange, and it took a moment before he realized that she was staring at his scar. That shouldn't have bothered him. It shouldn't. People were always staring at his scar. Frankly, it was more surprising when people tried to be subtle about it than when they openly gaped at him. But Katara—before today, he realized, he'd never caught her staring at his scar. Not even once. And the fact that she'd always acted as though his face was normal before made it all the more uncomfortable now that she'd given up on pretending.
But after a few tense seconds of silence, her gaze shifted back to his eyes, and Katara took a slow breath. "Can I ask—"
"Don't," he said, voice tight and harsh.
"You didn't even hear my question."
Zuko shook his head. "I don't have to. When you start staring at that side of my face, it's pretty obvious what you're going to ask. And I don't want to talk about it."
She frowned. "Fine, then. I'll ask you something else."
He started to retort that he wasn't in the mood for any questions about his scar, about his family, about his banishment—that he probably never would be in the mood for them—but she was undaunted and went on before he could speak.
"The other day, you told me that your uncle took command of your ship for a few weeks right after you left the Fire Nation. Was that because you got sick?"
Zuko froze, and he felt his own forehead crease. "I—what? What makes you think that I was—" He had to break off before his voice failed him completely. How did she know about that? The short time when he'd been confined to his cabin after his banishment was so insignificant by comparison with everything else that had happened around it, and yet so terrifyingly close to the point that he had to wonder whether she was really a mind reader after all. How else could she have possibly guessed that he'd been sick so soon after his banishment?
Unless she knew everything already. Unless Uncle had told her the whole, long, messy story, and she'd somehow kept it all hidden until now. But even that seemed impossible.
Katara shrugged. Though her expression remained inscrutable, her gaze seemed to grow even more intense. Like she was searching for a crack in his façade that she could peer through and see what lay beneath. "Just piecing together things that I've heard."
He scowled. "Did Uncle tell you?"
"Not exactly. But I'm going to take that as a yes."
His scowl deepened, and he shook his head. "What hasn't he told people about?"
"Probably lots of things. I just told you, he didn't actually say anything about you being sick. I pieced it together from lots of different places." She crossed her legs, and her mittened hands came to rest together in her lap. "After a while, the gaps say just as much as what people are willing to tell me."
That didn't make him feel much better. "What did Uncle tell you?"
"That you left the Fire Nation almost three years ago. And that by the time you were banished, there wasn't anything left for him to stay in the Fire Nation for."
"And?"
She pursed her lips. "And that you celebrated your last birthday by not doing anything that even remotely resembled a celebration. And that the two of us were apparently very similar even when we wouldn't say more than two words to one another."
The tension in his chest loosened just the slightest bit. "Was that all he told you?"
Katara shrugged. "You know your uncle better than I do. Do you really think he'd ever be straightforward about anything?"
"No. I guess not."
"The only thing that was ever obvious was how much he cared about you."
Zuko lowered his head just a little, watching Katara from just beneath his eyelids. "I'm not sure why."He paused. It still didn't make sense that she'd been able to get so close to the truth without having heard anything from Uncle, and yet the more that he thought about it, the less sense it made for Uncle to have said anything about the first few weeks of his banishment. Of all the things that had happened in Zuko's life, that was one of the least significant. "Why does it even matter?" he asked. "I got sick three years ago. So what? Even I barely remember it."
Katara frowned, and she took a while to think. "I guess—the longer I know you, the more questions I have. I know you better than I ever have before, but there's a lot that I still don't understand. And I think I might like to understand, that's all."
He sighed, rubbing at his forehead. "You know, almost nothing you've ever said to me has made any sense at all, right?" And the weirdest thing was that he didn't entirely mind that. For all her contradictions, he still liked being around her.
Katara smiled. "See what I was talking about earlier? Confusing people is a very good tactic sometimes."
Despite himself, Zuko gave a brief smile in return. Damn it, how did she keep getting into his head like that? And more importantly, why didn't it bother him more? There was a reason why he'd done his best to keep himself shielded for the past three years—why he'd been so careful to mask everything except for anger. Everything else was too easy for people to exploit.
But for all the times that Katara had unnerved him by working out exactly what he was thinking and feeling, she had never used that against him. At least not the way that people had done in the Fire Nation. He felt—almost safe when she was around.
"You must have been practicing that tactic for a while," he finally said, and hauled himself to his feet. He didn't really want to return to the pit in the middle of the lake, but he was becoming a little too tired, a little too comfortable to trust himself not to open up and tell her everything. "You've been confusing me since the first day we met."
"Mm-hmm. You know, everyone says that there's only four elements in the Avatar cycle. I think they're wrong. Confusion was my first element."
Zuko rolled his eyes and offered her a hand. "Come on, Master of Confusion. I'm going to fall asleep if we stay out here any longer."
When she grinned and accepted his hand, his pulse quickened just a little. Yes, it probably was wise to return to the lake. Katara was definitely doing something strange to his mind.
Sokka didn't allow his scowl to fade once on his trek out to the lake the following morning. He hadn't been able to figure out where Katara had taken Zuko last night, but by the time that Sokka made it back to the house, Katara had already been in bed, and she'd insisted that Zuko was back in the pit where he belonged.
Sokka wasn't so sure about that. He'd seen the steps cut into the ice last night. He knew that they were a bit too elaborate for Katara to put up one day and take down the next. Which meant that the steps had to still be there now, which meant that Zuko had a way to get in and out on his own, which meant that the jerk could be almost anywhere. And if Zuko was anywhere but the bottom of the pit, Sokka wasn't going to let him off easy.
He'd even brought snacks along with him. That was how determined Sokka was to get to the bottom of things. If it took him all day to find Zuko and interrogate him, then that was what Sokka was going to do.
"Hey, Jerkbender. Come out here, I want to talk to you."
There was a bit of rustling, and Sokka watched from the edge of the pit until Zuko stuck his head out of the tent and squinted upward.
"You? Forget it, I'm going back to bed."
"Hey!" Sokka repeated, his voice coming out a bit higher than he liked. Damn it. Why couldn't he sound manly and tough when it really mattered? "I'm not going away, Zuko."
When no response came, he scowled, then rounded the pit and took the steps down to the bottom. He wasn't happy that Katara had given Zuko a set of stairs, but Sokka might as well use them since they were here.
"I mean it, Zuko. Come out of there."
The voice from inside the tent was just a bit muffled. "Is it just you?"
"Obviously. You know my voice. Who else would it be?"
Zuko still hadn't reemerged from the tent. He gave a grunt of acknowledgement, then, "Just say what you want and go, would you?"
"No. I want to ask you some questions, and I need to see your dumb face when you answer so that I can tell whether you're lying or not."
There was a prolonged, exaggerated groan before he finally emerged from the tent again. Hey. Who was he to act like he was being inconvenienced by Sokka? If anything, Zuko was the inconvenience.
"What?" Zuko asked, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. "Can you make this quick? I didn't get to sleep until late."
Hmm. He did look a little rough. He definitely wasn't lying about the lack of sleep.
"Too busy keeping my sister out late at night, I'm sure," Sokka retorted.
Zuko's hand dropped from his face. "What? Is that what this is about? Because the sparring has always been her idea, not mine."
Sokka crossed his arms. "But you go along with it, don't you? I bet you even enjoy it."
"I—ugh. Am I supposed to give up on sparring just because I happen to enjoy it? Because there are only a few things that I can still do without getting myself caught and killed. If Katara still wants me to spar with her, I'm not about to give that up."
Sokka's temper rose just a bit. Of course. Of course Zuko was doing exactly what he'd feared—weaseling his way into Katara's good graces so that she'd let her guard down. Sokka couldn't be sure what Zuko was planning after that, but it had to be something. Something bad. It was either that or Zuko actually wanted to be friends with Katara, and that just sounded absurd.
"You're supposed to be helping us get ready to fend off Zhao and the rest of the fleet," Sokka said. "Not messing around and sparring with my sister and—whatever else you're doing with her."
Zuko went all blotchy and red. "Sparring is helping! That's why she asked me to do it—so that she could get in more waterbending practice and be more prepared to fight firebenders."
Okay, that made sense. A little bit. "What about the rest of it?" Sokka demanded.
"The rest of what?"
"Why are you spending so much time with Katara, you jerk? Are you trying to make friends with her, or—" Sokka cut himself off. He didn't want to go any farther than that. He might give Zuko ideas if he listed out any specifics. "Because she's not your friend, remember? I want to be really clear about that."
"I'm aware," Zuko snapped. "Katara—we're just allies right now. She told me that. I get it, and I don't need you here reminding me."
Right now. That sounded like a bad sign. "But you want to be her friend, don't you?"
"I—" Zuko paused, then looked down, and his forehead scrunched. Uh-oh. He didn't actually look angry, he looked—sad. Almost wistful, but in a constipated sort of way. He ran a hand over his hair, which was just starting to get long enough to do something other than stand on end—when it got ruffled, it stayed ruffled. "So what if I do?"
"I don't trust you, that's what. It's one thing to have you feeding us information and all, but it's another for you to be acting so buddy-buddy with her." Zuko had raised his head again, and he'd resumed glaring, but Sokka continued, undaunted. "We haven't forgotten the things you've done in the past. I for one am not going to believe a word you say until I have proof that it's never going to happen again."
Zuko's scowl deepened. "Then it's a good thing that I don't want to be friends with you."
"You great big—"
"Katara is the one I hurt, okay? I've been trying to make it up to her ever since I got here, and if she decides that I've done enough—if she trusts me, that's her choice, not yours."
Sokka narrowed his eyes. "Did she tell you to say that?"
"What? No. Did you tell her that you were going to come out here and interrogate me?"
"Why would I have done that?"
Zuko threw his arms out to the sides. "So then how and why would she have told me what to say to you?" His expression darkened. "She's not my friend, remember? What reason could she possibly have for helping me out like that?" With that, he turned for the tent. "I'm going back to sleep. I hope you had fun bothering me."
"Hey," Sokka said. "Hey! I'm not done with you yet."
Zuko had already swung the tent flaps shut behind him, and there was no answer.
Sokka crossed his arms. Fine. If that was the way things were going to be, then he'd just have to talk louder. "What do you think you're doing with those steps in the side of the pit?"
A prolonged groan. "Katara did that. I never asked her to."
"Why did she do that?"
"I don't know. She said something about more people out searching the city. Maybe she wanted me to have a fair chance if someone found me out here." There was a pause. "Are you going to leave anytime soon?"
Sokka shook his head, not caring that Zuko couldn't actually see him. "Nuh-uh. How am I supposed to believe that you're not going to run off and cause a bunch of trouble?"
"Maybe the fact that I haven't run away from you should be your first clue." His voice sounded a little lower, a little murkier than before.
Sokka frowned a bit. In a way, that was a decent argument. "Still. You must be crazy if you think I'm just going to trust you. No way. From now on, I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on you until I see a real reason to believe that you're not going to go back to your old tricks."
No answer.
Sokka waited for what felt like five whole minutes. Then, "Hey, Zuko."
Still no answer.
Narrowing his eyes, Sokka crept closer and poked his head through the tent flaps. Zuko had crawled into the sleeping bag, sprawled out, and—he'd fallen asleep.
The guy was actually sleeping.
Already.
After just a few minutes.
With a huff, Sokka pulled back again and crossed his arms, scowling at the tent. Sure, Zuko had looked tired, but that was no excuse for being so rude. Who actually fell asleep in the middle of a conversation?
Maybe Sokka would just wait until Zuko woke up. He didn't actually need to wake the guy up and resume the conversation now—Zuko couldn't cause any trouble while he was asleep, and Sokka did have pockets full of snacks to last him through the day. And it wouldn't hurt to make it clear that he was serious about keeping an eye on Zuko.
He plopped down in the snow to wait, idly tossing his boomerang from one hand to the other. A few minutes passed. Then a few more.
Finally, Sokka sighed and pushed to his feet. This was boring. And weird. And for all he knew, Zuko would sleep for the rest of the day.
Sokka didn't have the patience for that. He'd find some other way to keep a close eye on Zuko. Something that didn't involve sitting at the bottom of a pit to actually watch what was going on.
The open space beside Appa's stable wasn't exactly the ideal place to practice waterbending. Kriisax had been fairly vocal about that. But Katara had thought long and hard about how to best continue their informal lessons since yesterday. They couldn't really venture outside of the city—that would bring Kriisax, and possibly others, closer to Zuko. And the waterbending arenas, while not occupied with lessons, were full of kids playing and tossing snowballs at each other. That was probably where Aang was spending his days, come to think of it. But in any case, the arenas weren't going to be an option, half because they were occupied, and half because this sort of bending practice—even though it wasn't strictly for combat—was probably still unacceptable to the rest of the tribe. Of the remaining open spaces that Katara could think of, this was probably the best.
As she had promised yesterday, Yue joined them too, and took a minute or two to greet and pet Appa before taking a place right along the stable wall.
"You're really sure that we have to do it this way?" Kriisax asked.
Katara made a face and flicked a bit of snow her way. "Every time you ask me that, I get a little bit more sure. If you're not careful, I might try to turn you into a warrior after all."
"Didn't your family ever tell you that blackmail is wrong?"
From her place alongside the wall, Yue giggled.
"I don't think it's blackmail if you asked me to teach you," Katara countered. "Besides, if you don't want to fight with these forms, you don't have to. You can just use your bending for some really aggressive cooking and laundry if that makes you happy."
Kriisax crossed her arms. "Aggressive laundry?"
Katara narrowed her eyes. "You're just trying to avoid learning something that you could use to fight someday, aren't you?"
"Don't be silly. If that was all I wanted, I'd be teasing you instead." When that earned no response, Kriisax reluctantly took her stance before adding, "About your boyfriend," in an undertone.
Yue gasped. "Katara! Did I miss something? Are the two of you—"
"What?" Katara spun toward Yue, then whipped back around to glare at Kriisax. "No. I don't have a boyfriend."
"There is a boy, though," Kriisax singsonged. She grinned wide enough that the gap in her teeth was visible from several paces away. "And apparently Yue knows him and there's reason to think that he might be your boyfriend too."
"I'm sorry," Yue said hastily. "I just thought—no, I'm sorry, I was only teasing."
Spirits, Yue was really bad at acting. That excuse was never going to get them anywhere.
Katara huffed and crossed her arms. She'd have to tell at least a fraction of the truth in order to get Kriisax off of the subject. "Stop. I told you the other day that there's a boy, but it's not what you think. I've just been meeting up with someone for extra waterbending practice sometimes. And you don't know him, I promise."
Kriisax leaned a little farther forward. "How do you know that I don't know him?"
"Because he doesn't know you," Katara said.
"So? I've met most of the boys in waterbending lessons, and I know for a fact that most of them have dried out sponges for brains. He probably doesn't remember me."
Katara shook her head. "He's not in waterbending lessons. I said that I practice waterbending with him, not that he was a waterbender."
Kriisax turned to Yue. "Is that true? I take it that you've met this boy."
Yue was a little flushed, and she nodded cautiously. "Yes, I've met him. And—Katara's right. He's not a waterbender, and you haven't met him."
"But you still thought that he might be her boyfriend?"
Yue's blush darkened half a shade. "I—no, not exactly. It's just that—I've seen them together." She turned toward Katara, and her gaze held steady when she added, "Whatever else the two of you may be, it's obvious that you're close. I think it's nice."
Katara felt her face heat a bit too. Ugh. Why was she blushing so badly? "I'm not sure I'd say that we're close."
"You know each other very well. You understand each other better than most," Yue paused, then added, "You've been around each other enough to have gotten past many of the bad things so that you can focus on the good. If the two of you aren't close, I don't know what close is."
Katara's heart did a small flip, but she forced herself to shake her head. "That's not—he's a walking disaster. I know that." She couldn't bring herself to say much more than that. She did like spending time with Zuko. In that sense, she supposed that they were close. And the more she thought about it, the harder it was to deny Yue's point about having moved past most of the bad things. It wasn't that Katara had forgotten the bad things. It wasn't that they didn't matter anymore. It was just that the bad things were finally falling together into a pattern, and now that she could see more of the threads that lay beneath, the bad things made more sense than they used to. The bad things could be dealt with, and for the most part, Zuko seemed like he wanted to deal with them.
And she did care about him. Quite a bit, if she were honest. But unlike Kriisax, she didn't see any reason to linger on that. She was working alongside Zuko, and as far as she could tell, they were both fairly comfortable with that arrangement. That was good enough for her.
"Are you going to stop stalling, or are you happy with not knowing how to use your bending for anything but healing?" Katara asked in her sternest tone. "Because if you don't learn from me, then you'll probably have to beg Master Pakku for help after he comes back, and nobody is going to be happy about that."
Kriisax sighed. "I suppose if I have to. I still want to know who this boy is, even if he's not your boyfriend, though."
Katara rolled her eyes. "There's no 'if'. He's just not."
"That's really all you're going to tell me?"
"Yep."
"You might be even meaner than Master Pakku," Kriisax said, but she gave a smiling sigh afterward and shook her head. "Fine. No more questions about your boy, then."
Katara rolled her eyes. Her boy. What a ridiculous thought.
She pointed to a spot a little closer to the middle of the opening. "Start there. That way if you lose control of the water, it has a lot of space to go in all different directions." She positioned herself on the side nearer to the stable while Yue farther out of the way. "The first thing you'll want to do is find your stance."
She went on from there, coaching Kriisax through a few attempts at the wave form while Yue watched from close by the stable. Almost half an hour of practice had gone by—with relatively little progress, but mercifully mild frustration—when Katara saw someone approach Yue out of the corner of her eye. She tried to stay focused. It probably didn't matter that much. And they probably didn't have that much more time to work either. Not with the sky starting to dim even at midafternoon like this.
But just a few moments later, Yue called out, "Katara! We've gotten an update on the fleet."
Katara let her water drop and motioned for Kriisax to rest as well. "What is it?" she asked, jogging back toward the stable, her braid swinging with every step.
"The reconnaissance team is on the way back," the young man who'd come to speak with Yue answered. Katara thought she recognized him from the advanced waterbending class—a bulky young man, neither particularly tall nor particularly short, with midnight-dark hair and eyes that nearly matched. "From the sound of their message, they should be here the day after tomorrow."
Katara's heart skipped. "Were they able to sabotage any of the ships?"
The young man shook his head. "No word on that. But the mission was a success otherwise. No one spotted, and no one hurt."
And no word about the general. Nothing that she could tell Zuko one way or another about his uncle.
"Has the fleet moved at all?" Yue asked.
"Not as far as I know. The only instructions they gave us were to begin work on reinforcing the city wall and constructing ice barricades beyond that."
Katara breathed just a little easier. If the fleet hadn't moved, then that meant that the general was probably fine. Even if Zhao's ship had been sabotaged, it would have gone down at Kokkyo Island, leaving the general just a little way from dry land. There would be no rescue needed.
"Very well," Yue said, giving the young man a gracious smile. "And are those preparations starting soon?"
"Tonight, Princess Yue. Angun is already gathering the rest of the upper class to drain Isux Lake and start work on the city wall."
All at once, Katara forgot how to breathe and felt her eyes widen until it felt like they would pop. "Isux Lake? Are—are you sure about that?"
She was barely listening, but she heard the word 'yes' as plain as day. Her stomach turned over, and her heart rose up to her throat.
"I have to go," she announced. "Right now. I'm sorry. I—um—I forgot that I have to be—somewhere else." Her pulse had grown so forceful in her ears that she couldn't tell whether her voice was loud enough or entirely too loud, and she reached up nervously to smooth down the top of her hair, even though she knew full well that it looked the same as ever. "Kriisax—I'm sorry. I'll see you tomorrow."
She was already running by the time that Yue called after her.
"Good luck, Katara."
Author's Note:
Y'know, I could have had Sokka catch up with Zuko and Katara at the beginning of the chapter, but I don't think he's quite as good a tracker as he thinks. Plus he went exactly the wrong direction to look for Katara and Zuko, and while their sparring sessions take a while, it's not like it's HOURS or anything. But don't worry! That little revelation about the lake at the very end is going to lead to some interesting conflicts (and cuteness) in the next few chapters ;)
I hope you liked the chapter! I'm busy working on my fic for this year's Big Bang and creating even more probably unnecessary work for myself, but I'm still making time for I&S editing on the weekends, so all signs point to my update schedule holding up decently well.
As always, reviews are much appreciated, and I'll be back in two weeks!
