Water

The General's Letter

What remained of the lake—a jagged, rocky pit that hadn't yet filled in with snow—was strange to walk around. Katara had gotten used to the flat, easy expanse before the ridge where she practiced bending with Zuko. It wasn't like it was difficult to walk around the rim of the pit rather than cutting straight across the ice the way that she used to, but the sight of the great, gaping scar in the otherwise pale, smooth landscape was still enough to surprise her every time she approached.

What surprised her more, though, was the fact that when she came to the crest of the ridge, Zuko was already waiting just a few paces away, perched on a boulder-like chunk of ice a few dozen paces away from his tent.

Katara stopped in the middle of the path, scanning the hilltop with narrowed eyes. By the markings in the snow, she could see that he'd been pacing up and down the short stretch by the ridge for quite some time, sitting and standing in unsettled shifts, but there were no other clear signs that she could see up here. No fresh footprints that didn't seem to belong to Zuko, nothing wrong with his tent or the area closer to his campsite, nothing.

"Zuko? What's going on?" she asked. "Did something happen up here, or—"

He shot to his feet and jogged the few remaining steps to reach her. "No, it's not—it's just that—" He gave up on words and thrust something into her hands by way of explanation.

A hardened leather tube. The same sort—possibly even the same one that they'd sent their letter to the general in.

Katara looked up into his eyes. "He wrote back? When did this get here?"

Zuko nodded. "He did. It was—I don't know, probably a few hours before sunset. I've sort of lost track of time since then."

She fumbled to pull off one of her mittens, then struggled a little to open the tube and free the letter from its container. "So what is he saying? Is there anything—" She opened the letter and squinted down at the paper. While the sky was still more than bright enough for her to make out Zuko's face and expressions perfectly well, the characters on the page were too cramped and indistinct for her to make sense of in the dimness. "Ugh! I can't see a thing."

"Oh! Here." Zuko came around to stand by her left side and held a small, steady flame out beside the letter. "That should help."

She gave him a quick, grateful smile before skimming over the contents. The letter wasn't particularly long—or at least the general's small, precise writing made it appear relatively concise—and yet there was a frankly staggering portion that read like polite nothings to her. Expressions of gratitude for their letter, wishes for their well-being, assurances that the general himself was in good health, and yet more expressions of gratitude that they would think to write.

It sounded very much like the way that the general normally spoke, friendly and yet cryptic and formal. She could almost hear the old man's voice reading the letter out to her at a few points, but unfortunately, that didn't make it any easier to guess what he was talking about through most of the letter. He alluded to happenings within the fleet, all of which sounded like standard battle preparations in the North Pole's unforgiving cold, and to Admiral Zhao, and then in the end of the letter, to the spirits, of all things. If the general's goal had been to conceal any deeper meaning from any possible censors on the ship, he'd certainly done his job well. The trouble was that even Katara couldn't tell whether he meant anything more than what the words themselves said.

She skimmed over the letter again before she finally gave in with a groan of frustration and looked up at Zuko again. He stood just slightly behind her, near enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath passing by the side of her face.

"Do you understand any of this? I mean—I know you said that he was probably going to write in some kind of code, but I thought—"

"That he would at least make sure to tell us something useful?" Zuko interjected. He shook his head. "So did I. But this is Uncle we're talking about. I've lived with him long enough that I should have expected this."

Frowning, she looked down at the letter again. There was a string of small symbols drawn at the bottom of the letter—two tiny, meticulous circles, one entirely blank, and the other with its bottom left quarter entirely blacked in, and a few squares and triangles mixed in, all pointing different directions. For a second, she suspected that the shapes were some kind of shorthand for the whistles and clicks that Zuko and the general would use to direct the messenger hawk to her destination, but that didn't seem right either. Zuko hadn't put anything like this in their letter to the general a few days ago. She would have remembered that, and the row of symbols seemed too long for that anyway.

Katara pointed to the line of shapes. "Is the doodling also normal for him?"

"Hmm? Oh, those." Zuko angled himself a little so that he could point to the letter while still holding the flame close enough to provide light. "That's the one thing that I actually understand. Those are a kind of navigational shorthand that we used on my ship—the empty circle stands for the full moon, and the other circle is the sign for a waxing quarter moon. The rest of it is notes about what they're planning, so—" he leaned a little closer, trailing his fingertip across the paper so that she could follow along, "—he's trying to tell us that the fleet will begin sailing at the waxing crescent, and their goal is to arrive here at the full moon."

Her breath caught, and she looked up at the sky. The quarter moon couldn't be more than a day away now. "They're heading this way tomorrow?"

Zuko nodded grimly. "They're probably prepared to leave already. Typically, we try to start every journey at the first favorable tide after sunrise, so they'll be leaving Kokkyo Island no later than noon."

"That's—"

She didn't have the words to describe the feeling that had begun to build in the center of her chest. She wasn't ready for this. She doubted that any of them were.

Her breath started to come a little quicker. "We—we have to tell everyone. The whole city. They have to be ready for this." As she continued, the words spilled out faster and faster. "What am I going to tell everyone? If I go back into the city and start telling people that the fleet is sailing tomorrow morning, they're going to wonder where I heard that, and—" She spun around to face him, and found Zuko staring downward, golden eyes fixed on the letter as the light of the flame danced across his face, illuminating him in varying shades of orange and yellow, casting stark, bluish shadows in every crease of his scar and across the far side of his face.

He shook his head. "I don't know. I guess—it's probably too late to sneak out on the sky bison and use that as an excuse again."

"Probably." She hated how small her voice had become, and she looked back down at the letter, hoping that that might conceal some of the fear she felt. There were good people mixed in with the fleet, she knew that. Or one good person and twenty or so less-than-awful former crewmen from Zuko's ship, at least, but their presence was hardly enough to make her feel better about the impending attack.

The raid that had taken her mother's life had only needed one ship full of soldiers, after all. And Zhao had at least fifty.

It took a while to bring her thoughts and her breathing back to normal before she spoke again. "You said—you said that they'd be here by the full moon, right?"

"On the full moon," Zuko corrected. "Uncle was a stickler about using precise shorthand when I was first learning. There's no way he would have written it this way if the plan was to get here some other day."

Her brow furrowed, and she looked up into his eyes again. "But that's a week away. The boys and I got here faster than that on a bison floating on his belly through the water. Why would they take so long to get here?"

A shrug. "I have no idea. I assume that Uncle tried to tell us something about that in the rest of the letter, but—" He sighed. "All I can do is assume that the full moon matters for some reason. They want to be here on that day, so they're leaving early to make sure that they can get through any natural obstacles or defenses before that day."

Katara bit her lower lip for just a second, looking off toward the city, bathed in soft, silvery moonlight. "I think we're going to need the others for this."

Zuko gave a small grunt of agreement. "I guess it's lucky for us that your brother is fluent in nonsense."


Walking into the city this time felt different. Not that Zuko had visited often enough to know what a normal trip into the city felt like. The first time he'd arrived, he'd been crawling out of the tunnels in his own clothes, soaked to the bone, utterly conspicuous, and half-freezing. The second, he'd been half disguised and smuggling a hawk under his arm. And the third time, he'd been half-carrying Katara.

Still, it felt—off this time. The streets weren't any busier than normal, and with his hood pulled up and his eyes fixed downward, there wasn't much danger of anyone recognizing that he didn't belong here, but he could feel the few people who they did pass watching a little closer than usual.

"Everyone found out today," Katara whispered when they were alone in the street. "Now that the masters are back, they can't keep the fleet a secret anymore. I think everyone is feeling a little paranoid."

Zuko couldn't really blame them for that. After a hundred years of avoiding contact with the rest of the world, or near to it, being thrust straight into the war was probably terrifying. Though he couldn't find it in himself to feel especially sorry for them when he had spent so much of his life entrenched in the fighting, he could at least understand the fear.

"In that case, I'm not sure it was the best idea for me to come down here," Zuko hissed in reply.

"Hey. This may have been my idea, but you agreed to it."

She had a point there. While Zuko could have very well waited up at the top of the hill for Katara to run back to the city, gather up the others, pack up some writing supplies, and return to his camp, the very thought of sitting still for that long drove him near to the brink of madness. Besides, it would probably be easier to come up with a reasonable letter to Uncle if he didn't also need to provide his own light while he tried to keep the evening breeze from carrying the page away from him.

Maybe next time. If he got another response from Uncle before the fleet arrived, Zuko might try to summon up the patience to do the wise thing and wait at camp rather than going back to the city with Katara.

Maybe. He wasn't going to count on his patience holding out when Zhao's fleet came closer.

"You should be fine this time," Katara added, pulling him by the hand toward the edge of the street. "We really should do something about your hair, though."

"My hair is covered."

"And your hood comes to a point, smart guy. That isn't exactly normal. It looks like you're trying to hide a horn up there." Though his hood was pulled too far forward for him to see Katara in the periphery, he sensed her leaning a little closer. "It'll be an easy fix if you let me do something with it."

Zuko tried to look her way, but all he really managed to do was bury his face into the side of his hood so that the fur tickled his nose. He scowled. "I don't want you cutting my hair."

Katara gave a small huff. "Fine, then I won't cut it. There are other things I could try. And we have to do something about your pointy head or people are going to start to notice you."

Zuko made a face at the ground, but he didn't reply. They'd stopped walking, so either they'd reached the house, or his 'pointy head' had already gotten him into trouble. Either way, there wasn't much point in answering. Not yet.

The door had barely closed behind them when Sokka groaned. "Seriously? We did all that work to set up a campsite, and you're still bringing him back here?"

"Stop complaining Sokka," Katara said. "You carried one sleeping bag. That barely counts as work. Besides—" As Zuko flipped his hood down, she pulled out the message tube. "We've got a letter to figure out."

"Oh!" Sokka sat up straight, and Aang perked up too. "I guess that's an acceptable excuse."

Zuko rolled his eyes. An acceptable excuse. That was rich, especially coming from Sokka. It wasn't like anyone had ever bothered to find an acceptable excuse to come out and annoy Zuko. Or—well, Katara didn't really need an excuse, and Aang had brought food out to the lake, but Sokka had always seemed more concerned with making a nuisance of himself than anything else.

"Hand it over," Sokka said, waggling his hand at Katara. "Let me see it. I'll have it worked out in five minutes, I promise."

"I'd like to see that," Zuko grumbled, pulling the parka off over his head. By the time that he could see the room again, Katara was perched on the cushion across from Sokka, watching intently as he unrolled the scroll. Zuko hesitated for just a second before he took the remaining spot beside from Katara, across from Aang.

"Don't doubt my smarts, Prince Fire Fists." Sokka hunched up around the letter. "I'm great at this stuff."

Zuko rolled his eyes again and glanced toward Katara just in time to see her do the same. His face heated, and he looked away.

He was here to deal with Uncle's letter, nothing else. Whatever that fluttery sensation in the pit of his stomach was, he couldn't deal with it now.

Sokka read over the letter once, then frowned, furrowed his brows, and started over at the beginning. For what seemed like a long time, they were all quiet, even Aang, as they waited for Sokka to finish going over the letter.

Finally, Sokka looked up again. "What the hell is this? Talking about spirits and friendly fish—"

"Those are us, Sokka," Katara interrupted. "You and I are the friendly fish."

He made a face, apparently displeased. "That's lame. And what's with the scribbles down at the bottom? Looks like nonsense to me."

She smirked. "I see the genius codebreaker has met his match after all."

"They're navigational symbols," Zuko inserted. "Uncle says that the fleet is setting off at the waxing quarter moon."

For a few beats, Sokka just stared, forehead scrunched up like he either smelled something bad or like he was straining to remember something. Then he burst out with, "But the waxing quarter is tomorrow!"

Zuko raised his eyebrow. "You're just full of helpful revelations, aren't you?"

Sokka made a face. "You're a jerk."

Before he could respond, Katara reached across and whacked Sokka on the knee. "Oh, grow up. Maybe if you would listen for a few seconds rather than trying to figure everything out on your own, we might have a better chance at figuring out what the rest of this means."

Sokka let out a ridiculous, high-pitched whine and made a show of rubbing his knee before his expression lapsed back to normal and he let out a prolonged sigh. "Fine," he said, leaning back on his hands. "Spill it, Zuko. Tell me what's up with the letter."

Zuko had to steal a quick glance at Katara before he began—it was still weird to have someone on his side like this, willing to speak up in his defense, to push until he earned a place in the conversation.

Whatever this feeling was, friendship or not, he liked it. He liked Katara. So much so that he didn't even mind the strange, fluttery sensation in his stomach that seemed to pop up whenever he caught her smiling. Or even the fact that he blushed entirely too much when she was around.

Agni, she confused him, and yet there was something in that confusion that felt almost—pleasant.


"Just hold still for another second," Katara said. She gave Zuko's unscarred ear a soft flick. "I can't fix your hair if you're going to keep squirming."

He pushed her hand away from his ear. "It doesn't need fixing. I already told you, I don't want my hair cut."

Frowning at the back of his head, Katara smoothed the long section of sleek, black hair as far down and back as it would go. With the front of his hair so short, she couldn't give him a real wolftail, much less braid any of the bits along his hairline, but at the very least, she could still readjust the binding. It might still look a little unusual up close, but with his hair tied into a less-severe ponytail, he would be far less conspicuous from a distance.

"Why don't you want your hair to be cut?" she asked as she began wrapping the binding around the base of his hair, a little looser than usual.

Zuko started to turn back toward her. "You didn't—"

"No, I didn't cut it. I'm still tempted to, but I haven't cut anything. Now just relax. I'm almost finished."

He remained tense but turned forward again.

"You never answered my question. What's the deal with your hair?"

He huffed. "I won't know how much I want to say until I know what you're doing to it."

"Fine." Katara finished tying his hair back and poked him between the shoulder blades. "I'm finished."

Standing, she came around to his side and studied her handiwork. It was a little odd up close—from certain angles, the ponytail was completely invisible, and from others, it looked a bit like his hair hung past his shoulders—but neither actually looked bad. Without the skinny spike of a ponytail that used to protrude from the top of his head, Zuko looked softer than before. Younger. Like he really was just a sixteen-year-old kid, not a soldier who'd gone through his training far too young.

Her fingers itched to reach upward again and ruffle through the soft, fluffy new growth by his temples.

Zuko reached up and felt the back of his head, and paused, brow furrowing, when his hand found the retied ponytail.

"So?" Katara said quietly. "How's that?"

He shrugged. "It's—it's really not that different."

"Different enough that you'll blend in better. At least your hood won't be pointy anymore."

Zuko's mouth pulled a little to the side. "My face is still a pretty clear giveaway." He ran his hand over his hair from the front to the back, smoothing the short strands down until they almost seemed to blend in with the ponytailed section.

Katara's insides warmed a little bit, and she suddenly felt very grateful that she'd waited until they were alone to fix his hair. There was nothing wrong with it, not by a long shot. She was just helping him to blend in, to stay safe here amongst the Northern Tribe. But Sokka would have acted like it was weird for her to play with Zuko's hair, and Aang's exuberant friendliness probably would have made it weird.

"It's traditional," Zuko eventually said when he'd satisfied himself with the new state of his hair. "The ponytail—when someone from the Fire Nation is dishonored, we're supposed to keep our heads shaved bare except for the one plume in the back. You know—so that no one can mistake us for anything but outcasts." He looked down at his hands, almost as though he was ashamed of what he was saying. "I'm not supposed to cut it until I regain my honor. If I ever do."

Slowly, carefully, Katara sat back down beside him. "So—you're keeping the ponytail but not shaving your head anymore?" As compromises went, that was one of the strangest—and worst—that she could think of.

With a slight grimace, he shrugged. "Well—I couldn't really shave on Zhao's ship. And up here, it's warmer to have hair, and—I don't know. I can always start shaving again someday." He picked up a little of the fluffy snow from beside him and squished it between his mittened hands. "I can't really grow the plume back if I cut it off, though."

"And you want that?" She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "But if it's a punishment to keep your hair like this—you're already banished. Isn't that enough? It just sounds cruel for them to force you to hold onto more reminders like that."

And beyond that, 'dishonored' was the last way she would think to describe Zuko. If anything, he seemed more honorable by the day. Honest and loyal and thoughtful—now that she'd gotten to know him, now that she saw how hard he fought to do what was right, she couldn't even begin to understand why he'd ever been banished in the first place.

It wasn't fair. No kind of disagreement with a general could have been enough to warrant that kind of punishment.

And yet if he hadn't been banished, Katara never would have met him. Everything would have been different. And not necessarily in a good way.

With a scoff, Zuko shook his head. "Believe me, that's the last thing I'm worried about. I have plenty of other reminders that I'm never going to get away from. Keeping my hair cut the right way is nothing by comparison." He turned the left side of his face conspicuously away from her.

His scar. That really was when it had happened. He really was the boy who Imiq had saved on that Fire Nation ship.

"I know that you got your scar around the time when you were banished," Katara blurted out. Her hands clenched when she felt Zuko look her way, gaze hot and sharp. "And I know that that's why you got sick and your uncle had to take command of the ship for a while." Her voice caught, and she heard Zuko's breathing hitch too. "I'm sorry. It never should have happened to you."

Zuko pulled back from her, eyes wide. "How do you—what did Uncle tell you?"

She shook her head. Though he was clearly agitated and upset, Katara couldn't manage to raise her voice much above a whisper. "Almost nothing. He told me how long you've been away from home. The rest—I've just figured things out."

"From what?" Zuko sounded desperate, almost frantic. He shoved himself to his feet. "I've hardly told you anything. My crew didn't know—Uncle promised me that he wasn't going to tell them more than they needed to hear. If he told you, then they probably—"

"I just said that the general didn't tell me anything," Katara repeated. "Neither did your crew. And you're making it pretty obvious that I'm right."

He froze for an instant, then threw his arms out to the sides. "If you can figure all of this out, then what else do you know? Did you figure out that the scar was part of my punishment too? That even that wasn't enough for my father, and he barely let me stay long enough for the medics to finish bandaging my face? Or—"

Her eyes widened, and Katara forgot how to breathe. "What? I thought—" She wasn't actually sure what she'd thought had happened to him. She'd known that it was a burn, but beyond that, she had never given much thought to its cause. "I thought it must have been an accident, I guess. Zuko—"

He'd clammed up, and he shook his head, looking away. Apparently, he hadn't intended to give away any more than what she already knew.

"Zuko, who did this to you?" When he didn't acknowledge the question, she frowned, slowly rising to her feet. "That general—Bujing. The one you argued with. Was it him?"

That made the most logical sense to her. Zuko had told her that the argument had gotten him banished. And it was awful to think that the Fire Lord could have seen his own son so badly hurt just to turn around and punish him by sending him away, but the Fire Lord wasn't a kind man by any account. He trusted a general who was willing to sacrifice his own people in battle, after all. Who was to say that he wouldn't put his own child in harm's way too?

Zuko shook his head ever so slightly. "I almost wish it had been him."

"Then—" She remembered what Imiq had told her about the ship—about how almost no one would speak to her, how only the general had shown much concern for Zuko. "It wasn't your uncle, was it?"

Please, no. The old man had always seemed so kind, so gentle, and so incredibly fond of Zuko. More like a parent than an uncle.

Again, Zuko shook his head, but it was more forceful this time. "Of course it wasn't."

Katara let out a sigh of relief, and she felt her shoulders drop a bit. At least that was one small mercy. At least there was one person in the Fire Nation who hadn't made things infinitely worse.

Unfortunately, that meant that almost anyone else in the Fire Nation could have done this. Maybe there was some sort of official tasked with mutilating people as a form of punishment. Maybe it had been some other general or admiral who had stepped in to hurt him in Bujing's place. Or maybe it was even worse than that. The Fire Lord had undoubtedly known who had hurt his own son. He'd probably ordered it. Maybe—maybe he'd been even more involved than that.

"If I asked you who did it—would you tell me the truth?" she asked after a pause.

Zuko looked wary, but he didn't pull back when she took a careful step forward. "Could you just—not ask?"

"I guess so." She felt her forehead crease as she studied him. There was still tension in his face, pain in his eyes, and an ache started up somewhere in the middle of Katara's chest. She wanted to reach out, to help, but she didn't know where to begin.

Zuko shifted his weight, tension draining from his shoulders as the fight began to go out of him.

Another small step forward. "Do you want to know how I figured it out?"

With a sigh, he rubbed the back of his neck and dropped back to the ground. "How did you know?"

"I met the person who your uncle went to for help," she answered. She sat down across from him, fighting the urge to close the rest of the distance. "After you got hurt, I mean. From what she told me, it sounds like—by the time that she met you, things had gotten bad." She paused. "I guess you were still pretty out of it by the time that you and your uncle left."

His forehead creased. "Someone—someone told you that they helped me when I got sick back then?"

Katara shrugged. "Sort of. She told me that a few years ago, an old firebender needed help for a boy with an infected burn scar. She didn't know your name or anything, but—everything else matched up. Like I said, I pieced it together."

She watched, brow furrowing, as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and grinding the heels of his hands into his forehead.

"Zuko? Are you okay?"

He shrugged with one shoulder, not raising his head. "I don't know. Uncle never told me any of that. I thought I just—I thought that I just came out of it after a while." His shoulders shuddered visibly as he exhaled. "Am I supposed to be okay when I find out that my uncle thought I was going to die?"

"I didn't say that—"

He peered up at her from the corner of his eye. "I know my uncle, Katara. He hired a medic before we left the Fire Nation. He wouldn't have gone to someone else for help if he hadn't thought—" He paused, lowering his eyes and rubbing his forehead again. "Ugh. I don't understand why he never just—went back home."

"Probably because he cares about you too much to leave."

Still not looking up, he shook his head a little. "I don't know why. His life would have been so much easier if he'd just forgotten about me and moved on. It's not like anyone else cares what happens to me."

A pang struck her in the chest, and her mouth suddenly tasted sour. "That isn't fair."

Raising his head again, Zuko scoffed. "I'm not sure when fairness has ever made a difference before."

"No." Her breath came in quick, silvery bursts, and she shook her head as though that might somehow drive away the painful tightness gathering in her throat. "That's not what I meant."

"Then what—"

"You don't get to say that no one cares when I'm sitting right here."

She heard Zuko's breath catch, but the burning in her throat had begun to reach upward until her eyes began to prickle as well. She couldn't do this. She couldn't succumb to tears in front of him. Not like this.

Katara pushed to her feet and started to turn away.

"Katara." From the corner of her eye, she saw Zuko lurch up after her, and a strong, mittened hand closed around hers. "I—I care about—" He broke off and swallowed hard before he managed to resume. "You're the only friend I've ever wanted."

As quickly as it had appeared, all the tension in her throat receded, though her eyes continued to prickle. She stared up at him, a little breathless, her vision swimming at the edges.

His grip on her hand tightened. "And—and I realize that you don't feel the same. I remember what you told me before. I get it. We aren't really friends, and—"

"Zuko," she said, squeezing his hand in return.

He broke off and clamped his jaw shut.

"I think we're a lot closer than you realize."


Author's Note:

So... I wasn't exactly planning to have a sort-of confession of Zuko's feelings here, but now I'm pretty pleased that it happened. Also, I still love the whole concept of Zuko not understanding different types of affection and just assuming that whatever it is that he feels for Katara MUST be friendship because that's really just the closest word he can find for what he's feeling. And I love the idea of him admitting his feelings like this - by telling her how much he cares but not making any sort of demands in return. I'm diehard team Zuko-doesn't-understand-feelings-but-knows-boundaries-and-respect, and I make no apologies for that 💙❤️

See you all back here in two weeks! The invasion is creeping up faster than I'm mentally prepared for, but I hope you'll all like it! Reviews are always appreciated!