Water

The Oasis

"Is he going to be okay?" Yue asked, her voice barely rising to a whisper.

When Katara glanced his way again, her throat felt tight. Thankfully, Zuko hadn't left the Spirit Oasis, but he'd run off as far as he could from the rest of them. And for what felt like an hour or so, he'd been firebending at the walls and letting out incoherent shouts of rage and—anguish, she had to assume.

"I don't know," she whispered in reply. "He's—I've never seen him like this before."

She suspected that she'd been close to seeing it before. Back on his ship, just before the explosion, he'd stormed off in much the same way, full of fury and flames, but doing a poor job of hiding the layers and layers beneath that—terror and pain and helplessness. But back then, she hadn't recognized any of it. She'd never seen him fighting so hard to bury the hurt back then, and even now, she'd never seen it all burst out of him like this.

It hurt to watch. It hurt even more to stay where she was, waiting for some small crack in the outburst to appear, waiting for the pressure and tension to subside enough for her to approach.

She wanted to help. But right now, while he was still too consumed by it to do anything but firebend at the walls while he yelled his throat raw, there didn't seem to be anything that she could do. There didn't seem to be anything that anyone could do.

"Can't we go talk to him?" Aang asked, equally quiet. "This is—I mean, he seems really upset."

Sokka shook his head. "I don't think that's the best idea, buddy." He glanced across at Zuko before looking down again. "Not right now, at least."

"What do you think happened?" Yue, much like the rest of them, seemed to be having trouble figuring out how much she could—or should—watch Zuko's outburst. "You may not have seen this before, but you do know him best. Maybe you have some idea of what's bothering him."

Katara certainly had her suspicions. She just wasn't certain enough to venture a guess right here and now. Instead, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment to steel herself before beginning a different direction. "There was a time—it wasn't quite like this, but it seemed close." All three of the others looked her way, and she stared downward, into the grass. "Back on his ship, just before the explosion—Zuko and I argued. Which seemed perfectly normal to me at the time." She drew in a shaky breath. "But then I said something about how the Fire Lord seemed even worse than Zhao, and Zuko—he just—"

"He did this?" Sokka said a little flatly.

"No! He didn't. He just—he stormed off, and then I didn't see him again until he came back for me after he figured out what Zhao was trying to do."

Sokka's brow furrowed. "So basically, Zuko can handle anyone criticizing the rest of the Fire Nation, but the second his dad comes up, there's all of—this." He gestured vaguely across the oasis, and when no one objected, he sighed. "Fantastic. Our only firebender is having a breakdown, and we've got less than twenty-four hours before Scary Sideburns himself tries to bust in here."

"This isn't his fault," Katara protested.

"I know!" Sokka stopped there, looking surprised with himself. "I know that," he repeated, a little quieter, brows still drawn in bewilderment. He shook himself back to normal. "That's not what I'm trying to say. All I mean is that—yeah, the guy probably has a shitload of awful to deal with, but this is not exactly the best time for it. A few days ago would've been great. Or a few days after this is over, maybe."

Katara frowned. "Well—it's happening now."

This time, it was Aang who spoke up. "Do you think he's going to be okay?"

Katara couldn't answer that question with any more certainty now than she could a few minutes ago. All she knew for certain was that she hoped so. He had to be okay. And, as soon as she found an opening, she would do all she could to make sure of it.

It seemed like a long time passed in silence before Zuko finally ran out of steam and dropped back against the wall, hand cupped around his scarred eye like it was still hurting him. Katara's insides tied into knots, and her eyes began to prickle, but she forced herself to wait another few minutes to be certain that he was done before she finally stood.

"I'm going to go talk to him."

"Katara, wait." Aang grabbed her hem before she could go. "I want to help. Should I come too?"

She glanced across the oasis to where Zuko sat, curled up in a ball with his head resting on his knees. Shaking her head, she pulled free of Aang's grasp. "No. I think I have to do this alone."

"It has to be you?" Sokka asked a little sourly.

"What? Do you want to go talk to him?"

"Well—no. I just don't see what you're going to say that could possibly make a difference."

Katara shrugged. "I'll figure that out when I get there. I always do." She started to go, then paused, pulled a little of the water from the pool, and froze it into a snowball.

"Good luck, Katara," Yue said softly.

Katara shot a small, grateful smile back over her shoulder before she began walking again.

The Spirit Oasis wasn't particularly large. In fact, it might have even been smaller than the waterbending arenas, and yet it seemed to take ages for her to cross the stream and make her way around to where Zuko sat against the far wall. Curled up like that, he looked unusually small and defenseless, and—Katara had to take a deep breath to drive away the lump in her throat. She still didn't know exactly what to say to him, but crying couldn't possibly help.

Zuko didn't look up when she came within earshot, but he did speak, voice ragged and strained. "What do you want?"

I want to help. I want to do whatever I can to make things okay.

She swallowed. "I brought you some ice," she said, holding the snowball out as an offering.

She wanted to believe that it was the sound of her voice that made him raise his head, but it seemed more likely than not that it was the strangeness of the statement that caught his attention. Zuko looked up just far enough to squint at her. "What? Why would you—"

"Because it looked like your scar was bothering you. I thought that ice might help."

"Oh." After all the shouting, his voice would scarcely raise above a whisper, and what remained of it sounded fragile and painful. His forehead creased, and his hand twitched like he was fighting the urge to clutch at the aching side of his face again. Finally, he gave in and reached out for the snowball. "It's not exactly ice."

"Yeah, well." As he pressed the snow up against his scar, Katara perched across from him, angled so that her back mostly obscured him from the others' view. "Ice isn't the most comfortable thing to hold onto. At least snow is soft."

Zuko glanced at her, gaze lingering a bit longer this time when he saw that she was sitting so close. "What are you really doing here?"

She shrugged. "Maybe I'm just making sure that the snowball doesn't melt too quickly. And maybe I want to make sure that you don't give yourself frostbite."

He gave a faint scoff. She couldn't blame him for that. She hadn't put much effort into the lie, but she didn't have to either. She didn't want to trick him. She just needed to push far enough to find out whether he would try to push her away.

And he didn't, thankfully. After a quiet, somewhat tense moment, he let out a sigh and leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. He seemed tired, and yet despite the puffiness around his eyes and the creases in his forehead, he remained almost painfully tense.

Katara only half watched him from the corner of her eye. As much as she wanted to speak, to reach out and pull him in closer, she could think of nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn't risk driving him farther away, at least.

After a long period of silent waiting, Zuko spoke again, just a harsh, hoarse whisper. "What if Sokka's right?"

She hesitated. Then, "I'm not sure. Do you think that he is?"

His mouth compressed into a thin line. "I think I'd have to be a fucking idiot not to believe that my father could do this after—"

"Zuko—"

"Ugh! What's wrong with me? Why am I such an—"

"You're not an idiot, Zuko."

"Then I should know better! Why can't I ever get these things through my head, even when it's right in front of—" He pressed the snow harder against his eye, and a stream of water ran down from his wrist toward his elbow. Then, frighteningly, a thin wisp of steam started to rise from his hand as well.

Katara grabbed onto his wrist and pulled his hand away from his face. "Zuko, please, you're going to hurt yourself. Please, just—" She broke off when she saw the anguish in his eyes again. Her breath caught in her throat. Somehow, that single expression seemed to confirm all of her worst suspicions. "Zuko, your father—"

"What?" he snapped. "What about him?"

She'd suspected it before, though she'd never been able to put it into words. It was too terrible a thing to consider, but it made sense. She hated that it made so much sense. "He's the one who hurt you, isn't he?"

She heard his breath catch, and he looked sharply away.

Katara wasn't finished, though. "I didn't want to believe it. All this time, I've been trying to tell myself that there's no way your own family could do this to you, but—nothing else makes sense. That's why you got sick after you were banished. That's why your scar was bothering you when we were talking about your father. And that's why—"

Why he'd seemed so wary about so many things, about closeness and affection. Why he was so willing to push people away at the first sign of trouble for fear that it could get worse. Why, even now, after he'd let Katara in through his walls far enough to catch glimpses of the pain that lay behind him, he was still doing his best to hide it. Because the people he should have been able to trust before tried so hard to break him.

His lone eyebrow kept creeping slightly up and down, between an expression of rage and one of pain until at last it settled into the latter. Until he couldn't seem to contain the hurt any longer. "What's wrong with me?" The words burst out of him, but what little remained of his voice wavered.

Katara tried desperately to find something to say, something that might make all of this better. But she couldn't. She wasn't sure that there enough words in all the world to make that much difference. Instead, she reached across to him and pulled him into the tightest hug that she could manage.

"I'm sorry, Zuko."

For a few seconds, Zuko tensed, but then slowly, very slowly, he eased into her, resting his forehead against her shoulder. He sagged, and at first, she suspected that it might just be exhaustion wearing him down, but then his breathing hitched a few times over, and he began to shake.

"I'm sorry," she said again, bowing her head so that her cheek pressed up against his hair. "This never should have happened to you."

His arms slowly came up behind her, closing in bit by bit until he was clinging to her middle with all the strength he had. "Don't tell anyone," Zuko whispered. "Please."

Katara shook her head. The others should know. The knowledge made so many things fall so quickly into place—it put so much of the past, so much of the war in such a different light that she could hardly fathom moving forward without passing on the news.

The others had to know. Someday. But not now. Not if he wasn't ready for that.

"I won't. I promise."

She felt him exhale shakily, and for another long minute, that was it. He didn't move, he didn't speak, and neither did she. What else could she possibly say? If there were any words that could possibly make a difference, surely his uncle would have found them in the past three years. Maybe holding him wouldn't make any difference either, but for now, it was the best she could come up with.

Eventually he shook his head a little, still curled against her shoulder. "I should have seen this coming," he whispered. His voice was still so ragged that it sounded like it hurt to speak, but Katara made no effort to stop him. "I know what he's capable of. I've seen it before. I've felt it." He shuddered, and his arms tightened around her. "My father planned this. All of it. Even—even the explosion." Another shaking breath. "My father wanted me dead. He still does."

All she could do was hold him closer. "I'm so sorry, Zuko."

He shook his head again. "I can't understand what's so wrong with me. I never stopped trying to do the right thing, and—and it still wasn't enough. What more does Father want from me?"

Nothing. Nothing at all.

She hated how quickly the answer came to her mind. She hated how certain she felt. Of course his father was the Fire Lord, but that shouldn't mean that he was any less of a father. That shouldn't mean that Zuko had to bear the full brunt of the Fire Lord's wrath himself.

But the Fire Lord was still the Fire Lord, and clearly family meant as little to him as anything possibly could. Clearly, if he hadn't been able to see the brilliant, shining warmth in his own son, then the Fire Lord was every bit as bad as Katara had ever guessed. Or worse.

Probably worse.

She could feel small patches of dampness beginning to gather on her shoulder as Zuko continued to shake, and she closed her eyes, pressing her face into the soft hair at the back of his head. She wished that there was more that she could say, more that she could do to reassure him that this wasn't his fault. That there was nothing he could have ever done that would justify this sort of cruelty. That, no matter what his father had tried to tell him, Zuko was a good person, and he deserved so much better than this.

That anyone who tried to tell him otherwise didn't deserve his loyalty anymore.

But her throat was tight, and even if she could find the words, she wasn't sure that they would make it past her lips. She was even less sure that Zuko would hear her if they did.

She lost track of how long they sat like that, Zuko breathing in shallow, shuddering bursts, his arms occasionally tightening around her like he was afraid that he would drift away without her there to keep him anchored. She wondered when he'd last had someone to hold onto like this, someone who would sit with him through the pain. She wondered if he understood how desperately she wished that she could reach deep down inside of him to clear away the broken pieces and make room for the light and warmth in his heart to blossom instead. She'd seen that side of him before—she knew it was there.

She wondered how many times the pain had gotten in its way.

It took a long time, but when Zuko finally loosened his grasp and pulled away, he was steadier than before. His face was puffy in places from the crying, but he seemed—not happier, but at least less miserable. Less lonely and lost.

He drew a long, shuddering breath and wiped at his face with his sleeve, then cleared his throat. "Sorry," he croaked, looking downward.

Katara brushed the back of his hand before sitting back just a little—just far enough away that their knees didn't quite touch when they both sat cross-legged. "Why are you apologizing?"

"For—" He cleared his throat again, but it still didn't make any real difference. The shouting had left his voice raw, and it would take time to heal. "All of that. I shouldn't be so—touchy."

She found his hand again and squeezed it. "Well, I'm not going to apologize for hugging you, so you shouldn't have to either."

His face tightened into a halfhearted grimace—apparently the nearest thing to a smile that he could manage—and he kept his eyes fixed somewhere low and off to the side. Another few seconds passed in silence before he spoke again. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore."

Katara frowned. "Don't you think we're past 'supposed to'?"

"What?"

"I mean—you've been making your own decisions and finding your own way for a while now. I thought that was going pretty well."

He scoffed. "Going well?"

"You're with us," she pointed out. "We have a plan. We're going to stick together, and we'll all make it through this okay. You have friends who care about you, and—"

He looked up, brow furrowing. "Friends?"

Her face warmed a little. "Well—I guess I can't speak for the others, but there's at least one of us."

His mouth opened, and it took a beat before he managed to speak. "But—I thought—after all of that—"

"It'll take a lot more than that to make me forget that you're one of my favorite people." Her thumb traced lightly across the back of his hand. "If that's not enough to make us friends, I don't know what is."

His expression softened ever so slightly toward a smile. "You have weird tastes in friends."

She offered him a small smile. "You have met my other friends, right? I'm not sure how that's surprising." She looked down at their hands, still laced softly together. "I guess the Fire Nation prince part did catch me off guard."

At that, his brows furrowed again, and he rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. "How am I supposed to do this?" His voice dropped again, and it sounded rougher and more painful. "I'm already a traitor for fighting Zhao. How can I go against my own family?"

"How much can you possibly owe them?" Katara countered. "After everything they've done—"

Zuko frowned, staring down at his hands. "But I'm still Fire Nation. They're still my people. My family. And the rest of the world is still going to want me dead if I try to pretend otherwise. What am I supposed to do?"

Stay with us. With me. We'll make sure that you have somewhere to belong.

She took an extra moment to push all of that back down. Right now, things felt too delicate to risk stepping that far. "How far ahead are you trying to plan? Just for tomorrow? Or—the rest of your life?"

Zuko sighed. "All of it. Well—not tomorrow. I made a promise to help. I'm not going back on my word now."

"Then—maybe we just need to worry about the invasion for now. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like I can make any big decisions when there's a battle going on just outside the city."

"Maybe." He lapsed into silence for a moment, rubbing his forehead. He looked tired. So, so tired. Finally, he nodded. "Okay. I think I can do that."

Katara squeezed his hand again. As far as she could see it, if they could make it through the battle, then everything else would fall into place. It might take some time—nothing about his decision would likely be easy, but she would be there with him. And once they were done fighting for their lives, he would have all the time, all the space he needed to think things through.

They were quiet for a few more minutes before Zuko finally sighed again and pushed himself to his feet. He offered a hand to her. "I suppose I'll have to face the others sooner or later."

She took his hand and rose alongside him. "Only if you're ready to."

He shrugged, then cast a glance over her shoulder to where the others were still waiting by the pool. "They were watching all of that, weren't they?"

"Well—maybe not all of it."

Zuko let out a faint scoff. "You're a bad liar." His voice still crackled from overuse, but at least his expression had eased a little.

Smiling, she nudged him. "I must be spending too much time around you. I used to be a great liar."

This time when he tried to smile, it made it almost all the way up to his eyes. "Does that make me a good influence or a bad one?"

She gave his hand a slight tug as she started back across the oasis. "I think I'm still figuring that out."


When the first hints of light shining over the horizon began to kindle the flames deep in his core, it still felt too early. Much too early. By some strange stroke of luck, the noise from the battle had finally died down long after midnight, and Zuko, along with all the others, had managed to drift off to sleep. It wasn't much. Probably no more than two or three hours of rest, but it had to be better than nothing.

It would have to be enough. There wasn't much time left before sunrise, and if they wanted to find the moon spirit before Zhao did, they would need an early start.

He yawned and stretched and scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes before he finally sat up. The sun hadn't risen yet, but the sky was gradually turning from indigo to a pale lavender gray, and there was just enough light to make out the others sprawled in the grass around him—Katara curled up on one side, close enough to touch, Aang sprawled on his back just beyond her, and on the other side, Sokka and Yue lying so close that they must have been snuggling together at some point in the night.

He made a face, then turned away from them. He was not going to stick his nose in the middle of that if there was any possible way to avoid it. Especially not after last night. To his immense surprise, there hadn't been much talk about his outburst last night, about the fact that Katara had come to him and sat close by his side for what felt like hours. About the fact that, for much of that time, Zuko had been crying into her shoulder.

If they all had the decency not to rub that into his face, he supposed that he should try to ignore whatever this was too.

He turned toward Katara instead, and for a few long moments, he just watched her sleep. She'd folded her parka into a makeshift pillow, and the bits of hair that had pulled free of her braid lay in dark streams across the expanse of blue. Her arms lay sprawled out at awkward angles, and her mouth hung slightly open, possibly drooling a little.

There was a strange, fluttering feeling in his chest, and Zuko couldn't decide if he wanted to reach out and smooth back the loose, unruly locks or to simply watch her sleep for a while longer.

Unfortunately—or possibly fortunately, for the sake of his dignity—neither was an option right now.

Zuko gave her shoulder a light shake. "Katara. Katara, wake up, it's morning." Thankfully, much of his voice had returned after a few hours' rest.

Katara groaned and buried her face into her parka. "No. It can't be morning."

He snorted. "I know you're the Avatar, but I'm not sure even you can stop the sun."

She rolled her head far enough to the side to stare at him through one barely-opened eye. "It's too early for you to be funny."

He shrugged. "I don't think that's an issue. I'm never funny."

Katara groaned again and tried to pull the second parka—his parka, which he'd draped around her shoulders just after she'd fallen asleep—up higher, only to stop, brows drawn in confusion. "What's this?" She pushed the parka up until she could get a better look at it, then sat up. "Zuko! You weren't supposed to give me your parka. You were supposed to use it." But she was still too disheveled, too sleepy-sounding for her words to have the impact that she probably intended.

When she followed that immediately with a yawn, the effect was spoiled even further.

"I'm fine. I was comfortable without it." Which was true. The Spirit Oasis was warm enough that he hadn't really needed to cover himself up to sleep, and he'd done just fine folding his arms beneath his head in place of a pillow.

Katara frowned at him, then tossed the offending parka halfheartedly across his lap. "You're impossible." Then, before he could respond, she nodded toward Sokka and Yue. "Fine, then. You wake those two up. I'll get Aang."

Zuko started to protest—while Yue was calm and polite enough that it probably wouldn't be too terrible to wake her, Sokka was basically the opposite. But before Zuko could get the words out, Katara was already leaning toward the other side, shaking Aang by the shoulder.

Damn it. He was stuck now.

Waking Sokka was even more of an ordeal than he'd anticipated. Somehow, though Sokka slept like an absolute rock, he managed to react to Zuko's every attempt with a surprising amount of force. After dodging the first few swipes of Sokka's arm—and after all the flailing had woken Yue—Zuko was unlucky enough to catch an uncoordinated, backhanded smack across the mouth.

He cursed aloud and dropped back to the ground with a hand cupped around his jaw. Ouch. He didn't think that anything was bruised or bleeding, but it still hurt.

The cursing, at last, roused Sokka, and he sat bolt upright with a shout of, "Momo, don't eat that bird!"

Katara snorted. "Good morning, Sokka."

"You must have really weird dreams," Aang added. "It seems like this happens a lot."

With a tremendous yawn, Sokka waved a dismissive hand in the air. "They're not that weird." He finished stretching and slouched forward again. "Momo was just trying to eat Zuko's pet—what's its name. Bird Feet."

"Frog Face," Zuko corrected sourly. "And he's not my pet."

"And Momo doesn't eat meat," Aang added. "He likes fruit."

Sokka shook his head, eyes closed. "Hate to break it to you, bud, but I saw that little furball eat a meadowvole headfirst. In one bite. He didn't even chew."

Aang looked horrified, and Yue looked bewildered, and Katara let her head drop into her hands. Zuko, for his part, was too busy working his jaw around in an effort to get rid of the ache to do much more than glare. If Aang was right and this was a common occurrence, it was a wonder that the others had ever gotten anywhere.

Katara was the first to pull herself back to reality, and she turned to Zuko. "How much longer do you think we have until sunrise?"

He shrugged. "Half an hour, maybe? If that."

Sokka gave a low, prolonged groan. "That's loads of time. Why'd you have to wake us up so early, Ponytail?"

Zuko glowered. "I'm not convinced that you're actually awake yet. You're talking nonsense and you're barely opening your eyes."

"That's a skill." Sokka yawned again and smacked his lips noisily. "Aw, man, and we don't even have any breakfast."

With an eyeroll, Katara tossed her parka so that it landed squarely on Sokka's face. "Check the pockets. I brought food."

"What?" Sokka whipped the parka off of his head and dug furiously until he managed to produce a fistful of jerky from one of the pockets and shoved an entire strip into his mouth. "You're the besht shishter ever," he said through his mouthful of unchewed jerky. He pulled a handful of grass out of the ground, stretched across Zuko, and sprinkled it into her lap. "There. Tha's your award for winning the contesht."

"Ugh!" Katara gathered up a clump of it, tossed it back at Sokka, then wiped the rest off of her skirt. "Keep your award."

"Fine. Then I'm demoting you. Aang's besht shishter now."

One of Aang's eyebrows shot upward. "I can think of a few problems with that."

"Nuh-uh!" Sokka finally took a break to chew and swallow his mouthful of jerky. "You were a girl in a bunch of past lives. You are a girl in your next life. That means you can be the best sister."

"And by that logic, I still win," Katara said. "Because I'm Aang's next life."

Sokka's brows furrowed, and he looked back and forth between the two of them for a second. Then, "Don't try to confuse me in the morning. That's not fair."

"You hogging all the food doesn't seem very fair either, so I guess we're even." Katara reached back around Zuko again—his face warmed with her proximity—and grabbed her parka back from Sokka's lap.

Split between the five of them, it wasn't much food. Enough for a small breakfast, but not much more than that. Enough that with the sun creeping up toward the horizon, none of them could worry too much about the food. In fact, within a few minutes, even Sokka fell quiet and turned to watch the eastern sky growing lighter and lighter over the oasis walls.

It wasn't much longer before they all finished eating, and Zuko stepped back along with Sokka and Yue to leave room for Katara and Aang to begin their meditation. Zuko thought back to the last time Katara had tried to meditate with him—how difficult it had been for her then, how much more difficult it had to be to concentrate right now, when the fleet was likely just waking up to the south of them, ready to resume their push forward, to try to burst through the last of the Northern Tribe's defenses before the full moon rose after sunset.

Though he knew that it couldn't possibly help her—though he knew that he was too far away for her to notice and align her breath with his, Zuko did his best to slow his own breathing, to quiet his own thoughts as though that might make it a little easier. As though he might be able to give her one last push into the spirit world so that she could find what they needed to know before Zhao arrived.

And then, just when the sun began to cast its first golden rays across the sky, Aang's tattoos began to glow.


Author's Note:

It finally happened!

I mean, obviously Katara still doesn't know EVERYTHING about Zuko's scar, but knowing that Ozai was the one who burned him is a pretty big deal. Poor boy finally got the hug that he's been needing for a long time now, and I have lots of feelings about that. Ironically, though, I don't think that this was one of the parts of the final story arc that made me cry while writing. I may have gotten close, but... the fact that I cried several times while writing the end of this fic, and the scene where Katara figures out what happened to him wasn't one of him probably says something about me as a person. Or about the fic. It's hard to say.

Anyway! Today is the reveal date for the Zutara Big Bang, so if you haven't already, feel free to check out my fic Stolen Bending (only available on AO3 until I get around to crossposting here later in the week) for that event! If you like Ice & Smoke, you'll probably enjoy that one too! And as always, reviews are much appreciated!