Water
The Impending Storm: Part 1
"So basically," Sokka said, slouching back against a boulder-ish chunk of ice, "What I'm hearing is that everything sucks and we're all miserable."
Yue gave a halfhearted shrug. "I don't think that I would go that far, Sokka. Of course things will be more difficult now, but I don't see any cause for giving up."
"Yeah," Aang piped in. "Is it really a bad thing if the grown-ups want to take care of things? We'll still be around. We can still help if we have to."
"It is that bad," Katara said. "We're the only ones who really know what Zhao is up to. Or—I guess we're the ones who have a chance at figuring it out, anyway. But we should be involved in this! It's our fight." She groaned and sprawled back in the snow. "Today is the worst."
Zuko nodded his agreement. Though very little had changed for him—people didn't know that he was even here, so they certainly couldn't stop him from going on just like he'd always planned—the fact that neither Katara nor Sokka was going to be bringing back any more useful information before the attack wasn't encouraging. If they weren't allowed to get involved, then where did that leave him?
Sokka threw a snowball at him. "What do you have to complain about? The fact that you've got a weird bird hanging around? Cry me a river, man."
Zuko caught the snowball and hurled it right back at Sokka. "There's five people in the whole world who won't kill me on sight. Excuse me for being less than excited when none of them are involved in battle preparations." He paused for effect. "Especially when one of them got kicked out because he couldn't stop arguing with the teacher's kid."
"Hey." Sokka wiped the snow off of his shoulder. "Hahn argues with me, not the other way around. I don't think I should be getting yelled at for finishing what that jerk starts. Besides, Katara actually picked a fight with her teacher. If you're gonna get mad at anyone, get mad at her."
Zuko glanced toward Katara just in time to see her whip upright beside him. Frog Face, who had hopped over to greet her as soon as she'd arrived, croaked and pecked at one of her mittens.
She didn't seem to notice. "Do you really think that you would have done anything different Sokka? You weren't there. You didn't see how weird Pakku was acting. He's definitely up to something." She leaned forward, and her braid swung over her shoulder and down into her lap as she rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. "It's driving me crazy. How did he know all of that stuff?"
"I didn't tell anyone that you're the Avatar," Aang said quickly. "And even if I had, Master Pakku probably wouldn't have listened to me. One time, I told him that he had a giant, purple-spotted snow beetle in his mustache just to see if he was paying attention, and he didn't react at all."
Zuko raised his eyebrow. Coming from anyone else, that story would have sounded utterly absurd, but from Aang—it still didn't make much sense, but then neither had the time when Aang had stuffed his own shirt full of frogs. Most things didn't seem to make sense where he was concerned.
Frog Face gave up on trying to eat Katara's mitten and waddled back over to Zuko. The stupid bird tried to stick his entire head up Zuko's sleeve. "Not now, you weirdo. You've been bothering me all morning." He pulled his arm up into his lap and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think. "Did anyone say anything about Katara being the Avatar? If this guy is important in the city, he might have people reporting back to him."
Yue shook her head, then Aang, then Sokka went a step further with a scoff. "Yeah, right. Pakku is important, but he's not exactly the communicative type. The only reason he sort of listened to Katara when we got here was because she sliced off half his mustache from twenty paces away."
"That's the weirdest thing," Katara said. "He was actually listening to me this time. I even made a few sparks to prove who I am, and somehow he still acted like there was nothing even remotely weird about the fact that I was firebending right in front of him." She paused, then groaned, and Zuko felt a sudden, strange itch in his palm to reach out and rest a hand on her shoulder. "He knows. He's known for a while now, and I still have no idea how he figured it out."
"At least that means he's not blabbing about it to everyone," Sokka offered halfheartedly. "I mean, if he knows about Zuko, then he's probably got some connection to the fleet too. If he's not telling anyone here about you, then there's no way he's telling the firebenders." A pause. "One is more than enough."
Zuko scowled. "My uncle also knows. He saw her in the Avatar State just like I did."
With a groan, Sokka rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. Two firebenders. Your uncle isn't blabbing to Pakku, is he?"
His scowl deepened. "Even if my uncle was talking to someone up here, what part of his letter makes you think that he's ever that straightforward? That's just the way Uncle is. He never gives anything away if he can help it."
Sighing, Sokka gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Whatever. My point is that that part could be a lot worse. As long as Pakku keeps his pruney mouth shut, we're fine."
Katara shook her head. "It's so weird that he hasn't been telling anyone. It's almost like—I don't know, I guess it feels like he's waiting for us to make a mistake." For another few seconds, she went quiet, and Zuko felt her gaze on the side of his face. Then, "You remember that night that we sent the first letter?" she asked eventually.
Zuko nodded. "How could I forget being frozen to the outside of the city wall?"
She made a face. "Then did you hear him ask what I was doing with a Fire Nation messenger hawk? Doesn't it seem weird to you that that was the first thing he assumed when he saw a bird flying away in the dark?"
Zuko frowned. Admittedly, he hadn't been paying very much attention to the conversation itself on that night—he'd been too worried that he was about to slide out of the hole in the wall and plummet to his near-certain demise in the icy waters below—but in hindsight, it was strange. "Has he ever seen a Fire Nation hawk before?"
"I don't know! That's exactly the problem. He claims that he's just seen a lot of historical texts with illustrations before, but I don't believe that for a second. Especially since he knows so much of the other stuff, and he hadn't told anyone." She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on top of them. "Why isn't he telling anyone?"
On the opposite side of their little circle, Sokka shrugged. "Maybe because it sounds absolutely insane? Honestly, there are still some mornings when I wake up and think that I must've hallucinated all of this. I really like those mornings."
The snowball that Katara tossed at him landed much more solidly than the one that Zuko had thrown earlier. "That's not helpful."
"Ouch. And neither is the snowball, but you don't hear me complaining."
"That's all Ihear," Zuko mumbled.
Sokka turned his glare on Zuko instead. "Do I need to separate you two? I'm starting to think that you're a bad influence."
Yue played with a lock of her own silvery hair. "I doubt that Master Pakku would hide something so important just because it's difficult to believe. Right now, so much of what's happening is so strange that it makes very little sense to hide anything so important. If he believes that Prince Zuko is nearby, it would make sense for him to tell my father and begin a search."
Katara nodded enthusiastically. "See? That's what I said to Pakku. If he'd heard or seen anything for sure, then he would have people out looking for Zuko."
Staring vaguely off into the distance, Yue nodded. "Unless—is it possible that he knows everything that we do? If Master Pakku somehow knows that Prince Zuko is helping us, then he may understand that the secrecy is for the best."
Katara sat up a little straighter. "That—it doesn't sound impossible." She looked at Zuko. "I know you said your uncle wouldn't have said anything about me being the Avatar, but is there a chance that he might tell Pakku other things?"
Taking a deep breath, Zuko shook his head. "I don't know. Uncle has lots of friends who he writes to, but as far as I know, all they do is play Pai Sho and talk about tea. And I've never heard anything about him writing to the North Pole." It didn't seem particularly likely that Uncle had struck up a friendship with someone so far out of their way, but that didn't mean that it was impossible. Not even close. Especially not when Zuko knew all too well how concerned Uncle always was about Zuko making friends.
For the first time that he could remember, Zuko regretted the fact that he'd never asked Uncle about the constant flow of letters that had gone in and out of his ship. Maybe if he'd taken the time to show a little interest, he would know for certain whether Pakku was one of Uncle's many Pai Sho partners.
"Well—he's the only one who knows that you survived the explosion, right? Assuming that Pakku isn't just making things up, it has to be the general."
Zuko nodded. "Yeah. He's—" He broke off when Frog Face clamped down on his sleeve and started climbing up his arm, alternating between gripping with his feathery, sharp-clawed toes and with his pointy, hooked beak. Zuko rolled his eyes at the bird and shook himself back to reality. "Uncle is the only one who knows for sure. I mean—Taro saw me once back on Zhao's ship, but I'm pretty sure he still thinks it was a hallucination."
Sokka made a face. "How can you possibly be 'pretty sure' about that?"
"Because when he saw me, Taro fainted, and Uncle told him that it was a hallucination."
A scoff. "Sounds like this Taro person isn't very bright."
Incredibly, Zuko felt the impulse to defend Taro. Which was weird. He'd never cared much for any of his crew before, and he knew that none of them cared much about him either.
"Taro is younger than Dad," Katara said. "I think Pakku would trust someone closer to his own age way before he told Taro anything." There was a pause, and she sighed. "I almost wish we hadn't sent the messenger hawk back. We could have asked the general about this."
Zuko scoffed. "I'm not sure how much good it does to ask him anything when he would just send back a hundred more riddles for us to figure out." By now, Frog Face had clambered all the way up onto his shoulder, and Zuko tried to ignore the cross-eyed stare until the sharp little beak pecked at his ear. Ouch. The stupid bird would probably try to eat him if he gave half a chance. Zuko grabbed Frog Face off of his shoulder, which earned him a squawk of displeasure, then he tossed the bird lightly into the center of the ring so that he landed with a soft puff in the still-untouched snow there.
For a few long moments, he stared absently as Frog Face struggled to wade out of the fluff. Much as he hated to admit it, Zuko was growing more worried about their chances in the upcoming battle. He could fight just as well as he could before—well enough to beat Zhao, without a doubt, and Katara would most likely be able to push them both considerably farther before the fleet landed—but with so little idea of what might be coming, that wasn't exactly reassuring. Sure, Zuko might still get another letter from Uncle, but if none of them knew how the Northern Tribe planned to fight back, that would do them very little good. And there was definitely someone out there who knew that Zuko was around, someone who could find him if he decided to look—Zuko ground at his eyes with the heels of his hands.
"Are you okay, Prince Zuko?" Yue asked.
His spine stiffened. It was one thing for Katara to ask him things like that. He could let his guard down with her—at least a little bit. With the others around, though, he would have to lie. He did his best to bring his expression back under control. "I'm fine."
"We're going to make sure that nobody else finds you," Aang said. "You don't have to worry, Zuko."
A scowl crept across Zuko's face. He knew that he was a lousy liar, but it still annoyed him to be reminded of that fact. "I'm not just worried about people finding me. I've seen what war looks like. I'm not stupid enough to make it all about me."
"Aww, come on, man," Sokka said. "You don't have to be a party pooper. You can make it a little bit about you." A pause. "Especially if that means that I get to see you take on Hahn someday. That would be a pretty awesome show."
Yue gave just the faintest hint of a smile. "Sokka."
"Sorry. I just think he could benefit from being knocked down a peg or two."
"Mmm. And you're not the least bit upset that he's helping guard the city?"
"Well—okay, fine. I'm not made of stone."
Yue's smile widened a fraction. "That's what I thought."
While they carried on, Katara reached across and nudged Zuko's arm. "I think I need to blow off some steam if I'm going to make it through class without blowing up at Pakku tomorrow. Spar with me again?"
Despite himself, Zuko thought he gave her a lopsided smile, and his shoulders relaxed. That, at last, was something that might actually make him feel better. "I don't think I can refuse a challenge like that."
She grinned, then turned ever so slightly away, so that he could only watch her in profile. "Then you're on as soon as everyone leaves." She pulled off her mittens and stretched out her shoulders.
"Wait a minute," Sokka inserted. "Wait, wait, wait. Why do we have to leave?"
"I—" Katara broke off, then looked long and hard at Zuko. "I don't know. It's just bending practice. I doubt it's going to be very interesting for any of you."
Even if it was interesting to them, Zuko didn't think that he liked the idea of anyone else hanging around to watch their sparring. Aang, fortunately, hadn't given any indication that he still wanted to join their practice—in fact, he looked a little wary at the suggestion that they might watch—but that new reluctance didn't make Zuko any more excited about the prospect of sharing his time with Katara.
"Are you kidding?" Sokka said. "There's a Fire Nation fleet coming this way. We have a perfect opportunity to see how a firebender would fight right here. That seems kind of important to me. Right? Right, Aang?"
Aang gave a halfhearted shrug. "Yeah, I guess so."
"I suppose I would be curious to see you spar as well," Yue said. "If you don't mind."
Zuko looked back at Katara. He really didn't want to share this. He wanted his time with her—just with her. But he couldn't find a good reason to object, and eventually, all he could do was shrug. "I guess—it couldn't hurt."
"One round," Katara said after a pause. "If you stay the entire time, I know you'll just distract us, Sokka."
"I see that your mood hasn't improved since yesterday," Imiq said, passing yet another bundle of cloths down from the top shelf.
Katara took the bundle and passed it along to Kriisax. "I'm not in a bad mood." Admittedly, she could think of plenty of places she would rather be than the storeroom at the back of the healing huts. Plenty of things she'd rather be doing than loading healing supplies onto an ice sled in case they needed to evacuate the city, but this still wasn't the worst place she could be at the moment. At least she wasn't spending her time with Pakku and arguing about her place in the upcoming battle like she had been yesterday.
"You're not in a good one," Kriisax observed.
"Yeah, well—Master Pakku doesn't seem to put anyone in the best mood," Katara said. "I wanted to be more involved in things, but apparently that's not allowed, so here I am."
"I still don't understand what's so great about fighting. Especially when there's an actual battle to think about."
Katara shrugged. The two of them hadn't found much time at all to practice together in the past few days, and it wasn't looking like that would change in the near future. Which meant that her chances of convincing Kriisax that there was something immensely satisfying about winning a fight probably weren't great.
"I know what these people are capable of," Katara said eventually. That seemed as good a place to start as any. "I lost my mother in a Fire Nation raid when I was eight. And I've seen what they're doing to the rest of the world since then. If I want it to stop, the best thing I can do is get in there and fight."
Kriisax frowned as Katara reached up to take the last bundle from Imiq. "What do you think they're planning to do here?"
Another shrug. "I wish I knew. That would make it a lot easier to stop them. But the only thing I'm sure about is that Admiral Zhao is one of the worst people for us to have to deal with." Beyond Zhao, there was really only the Fire Lord. And, quite possibly, the general who had gotten Zuko banished.
"Why? What has he done?"
"What hasn't he done?" Katara said. "He threatened my brother, captured Aang, and tried to hurt me. And that was all before he blew up an entire ship trying to kill someone who he'd already burned pretty badly."
At that, Imiq spun around to face her, and her foot slipped on the step.
Katara and Kriisax both shrieked, but while Kriisax sprang back out of the way, Katara jumped forward and did her best to catch Imiq before she hit the ground.
She sort of succeeded. Imiq wasn't a large woman, but she was built solidly. And while Katara wasquick enough to reach out and break the fall, she didn't have quite enough time to properly brace herself against the weight. Her shoulder wrenched a little farther than it was meant to, and her eyes watered.
Kriisax was back beside them both in an instant, fussing and checking them both over for injuries. "I told you that I should have been the one up on the—"
On the far side of the room, Yugoda poked her head in through the doorway. "Goodness, girls. What are you up to in here?"
"Nothing, Mother," Imiq said hastily.
"You're going to wake all the patients at this rate."
"Sorry, Master Yugoda," Katara said, rubbing at her left shoulder.
Kriisax was busy inspecting Imiq's arms, but Imiq pushed her off the moment that Yugoda retreated back to the adjoining treatment room. "I'm fine, Kriisax. Have a look at Katara's shoulder, would you?"
While Kriisax did just that—her poking and prodding made Katara very glad that she was already in the healing hut rather than someplace where she would have to either treat the strained joint herself or walk all the way back here—Imiq tossed the final bundle onto the sled with uncharacteristic carelessness. Turning back, she fixed Katara with a stare, and fine lines appeared around her mouth as she pursed her lips.
"This admiral," Imiq said. "He burned someone you know? That wouldn't happen to be the same acquaintance that—"
Katara's eyes widened, then she winced when Kriisax brought a bulge of water up to her shoulder. She couldn't think clearly or quickly enough to find a convincing lie. "It's—same person, different burn." At least as far as she knew. Zuko probably would have admitted it if Zhao had been the one who'd given him the scar on his face, wouldn't he?
"Who—" Kriisax said, looking back and forth between the two of them even as the water started to glow and Katara's shoulder began to ache a little less. Then, "Oh! Nobody ever told me that Katara knew your mystery patient, Imiq."
Katara whipped her head around to stare at Imiq too. "Your mystery patient? How many people up here know about him?"
"Oh, it's sort of an open secret in the healing huts," Kriisax said, making very little effort to lower her voice. "Most of the city just knows that Imiq vanished for a few days and turned up before the search parties could find her, but after a few months, everybody here knew about it."
Imiq scowled. "And I would have preferred to keep it that way inside the healing huts too, but I have nosy students—" she paused just long enough to poke Kriisax in the arm, "—and a gossipy mother, and those two things make it nearly impossible to keep anything quiet."
Katara's shoulder was feeling much better now, nearly back to normal, and she raised an eyebrow. "You didn't seem to be trying very hard to keep that a secret when I got here."
"Only because I knew that Mother had already told you her version of the story. Even if she hadn't, someone else would have gotten around to it eventually. Besides, it was hardly a secret that you'd been out in the world and met people who might have known the situation."
Katara frowned. She supposed that that was fair. And since she had known the people involved, she'd asked plenty of questions herself. It was hardly unusual that Imiq had answered those questions.
"Spirits, that must have been years ago now," Kriisax said. She moved Katara's arm around a few times to test her healing work. "We probably would have forgotten all about it if you hadn't shown up."
"It hasn't been that long." Imiq busied herself with arranging the last few bundles of supplies in the sled—furs on the bottom, jars of medicines stacked carefully into a layer on top of that, then more soft bundles on top. "Probably only three years or so. I'm old enough already without you adding on extra time."
"Oh, fine." Kriisax paused, then gave Katara a mischievous look. "Since you know this boy, maybe you can tell me. Is he a grown man now? Because Imiq always makes a point of saying how young he was, and if he's grown up now, that means that—"
"He isn't much older than my brother," Katara answered. Which meant that by Sokka's standards, they were both full-grown manly men, but nobody else in the world lived by Sokka's standards.
"Then that probably makes him a little older than my younger sister. And close to Yue's age too, I think." Kriisax frowned just a bit, then shook her head. "It sounds like you know him really well."
Katara shrugged, half in answer, and half to test how her freshly healed shoulder felt. Not bad, it turned out. She would be perfectly capable of sparring with Zuko when night fell, at least, and if any soreness appeared later on, she could heal it perfectly well on her own.
"Is there any chance at all that this is the same boy who you were talking about with Yue that time? Red? Is that it?"
Katara's face turned hot, and she sputtered. "That's—no, of course not." She had to take a deep breath to steel herself. "I've met more than one person since I left the South Pole, you know."
"Katara." There was a warning edge to Imiq's voice. "Don't think that I don't recognize that tone."
"What tone?"
"The tone that says that you're hiding something."
She felt her face growing hotter and hotter. For some reason, lying to Imiq and Kriisax was much, much harder than lying to Pakku. "It's just that—of course he's not here. But—" She fumbled for another second. She had to give something away, or they would figure out everything. "It's just that the boy you healed three years ago was the Fire Nation prince. And—I know that sounds really bad, but he was just a kid, and he had just been banished, and—really, he's about as normal as he could be, considering where he came from."
"What?" Imiq and Kriisax said in near unison.
A moment later, Yugoda poked her head back in from the other room. "Did I hear you correctly, dear?"
Katara shrugged, snatching her parka up from the hook where it had been hanging while they packed. "That depends what you heard me say. I, um—I should go. I can go, right? You said that the last thing we had to do today was pack up the sled, and it's packed now. So I'm just going to—" She crumpled her parka up under one arm, jammed her mittens into the space between her shoulder and her chin, and fled toward the door before anyone could stop her. She could get herself bundled up once she'd made her escape.
Author's Note:
Have I mentioned that the invasion is getting close? Because, uh... the fleet arrives in the next chapter, and I'm somehow both WAY BEYOND READY for this and also NOT REMOTELY READY for this simultaneously. Oh, the joys of writing stories with stakes and tension!
I'll probably have more to say about individual chapters in coming weeks, but for now, reviews are always appreciated, and I'll see you back here in two weeks for the arrival of the Fire Nation fleet!
