ZW 2008 Day 7: Pinch
Clothespins
Summary: In a world of tenuous peace, Kya and Ursa watch the children play. In a world of war, the children-who-aren't-quite-children-anymore still hold their old games in their hearts.
Katara has never liked her nose. It's upturned, childishly so (or like a cowpig's, if you asked Sokka). It doesn't have the fierce bridge like her father's or the sloping of her mother's; no, her nose is a monstrous little thing (though she thinks she ought to be grateful it's not large). Gran Gran always reassures her it's a perfect Water Tribe nose, but Gran Gran's nose is like Hakoda's so Katara can't say she's convinced. Of course, she's also eight years old and not given to listen to her elders, but that's a minor detail.
"Your nose is fine, Katara." Her mother smooths her hair and smiles.
"But Mom," Katara groans with all the exaggerated misery an eight year-old can muster as she slouches against the mast of the Water Tribe ship. "What if Prince Zuko and Princess Arugula make fun of me?"
"Princess Azula," her mother corrects.
Katara wrinkles her nose, but suddenly seems to realize something and smooths her face. Kya looks at her daughter quizzically. "Sokka says if I make faces I could stick that way."
Kya sighs and adjusts Katara's hair again. "Your face won't stick that way, my love."
"Well Gran Gran says I could get wrinkles like hers."
Her mother can't help but think she has a very impressionable daughter.
They arrive at the palace just after sunrise the next morning. Prince Zuko, as it turns out, is a shy boy of ten who spends much of the introductions caught in indecision over whether to hide behind his mother's skirt or to stand up straight next to his father. Princess Azula, though younger, stands taller and prouder, though Kya thinks it's more performance than confidence and Hakoda, if anyone were to ask, would say she reminds him of Sokka when he wants something. Quite a kiss-up to her father, that girl.
Sokka thinks she's stuck up, but that's neither here nor there since it's only reasonable for him to associate with his fellow man doing manly things. He and Zuko, upon being released into the palace gardens with the girls, immediately tackle each other over whose nation is better.
"So Katara," Azula begins, perching herself on the edge of a fountain. "I heard you came here because the weak Water Tribes think they can't defeat the Fire Nation in battle."
Katara is deeply offended by the smirk curling Azula's lips. "No we're not!"
"Then why are you here?"
Katara frowns. "I don't know."
"You shouldn't make faces like that. It makes your nose look dumb." Azula's smirk lifts a bit higher, and she turns on one heel and stalks toward the palace, leaving Katara at the fountain and the boys in the courtyard. The smirk relaxes into a placid smile as she passes her mother, who sits with Kya on a bench beneath an old tree. Ursa eyes her daughter, as if she's suspicious but not entirely certain what she ought to be suspecting. "Hi Mom."
"Aren't you and Katara getting along?" Ursa reaches toward Azula, but the child edges just out of reach.
"Of course," Azula replies, in that sickeningly sweet tone she knows her mother won't argue with. "I was just going to the kitchens for some lychee nuts."
Ursa looks back to the fountain where Katara is still sitting, dragging one finger through the water. "Why don't the two of you go together?"
Azula shrugs, as if she'd not considered the idea. "It won't take long, Mom." And with that, she's gone like a shadow into darkness, and Ursa sighs heavily.
A shout echoes across the garden. "Katara! Come help me pin this Fire Nation jerk!"
Katara leaps from the fountain and runs to her brother. Ursa relaxes and Kya rolls her eyes. No one sees Azula until dinner.
"The roast duck is excellent, Fire Lord Ozai," Hakoda announces, digging into his meal not unlike General Iroh, who sits across from him at the long table shoveling the meat into his mouth with all his usual gusto.
Ozai raises his head deliberately and nods slightly. Iroh swallows and pats his rotund belly. "Roast duck is the pride of the Fire Nation, Chief Hakoda. I only wish we had better tea!"
Hakoda chuckles. "The Water Tribes have excellent arctic wine, but we've never had much tea."
"That's so sad," Iroh sniffles.
Ozai looks at his brother with contempt, and if Hakoda hadn't believed the rumors that the Fire Lord killed his father and usurped his brother's throne, he certainly does now. Azula puts her chopsticks down next to her plate. "Father?"
"Yes, Princess Azula."
"When will the other leaders arrive?"
"Tomorrow." Ozai sips his tea and looks at his daughter impassively before turning his attention back to his brother.
Azula smiles and looks at Katara. "The Avatar is coming," she whispers. "He's over a hundred years old."
"Silence, Princess Azula."
The girl snaps back into a perfect posture in her seat and picks up her chopsticks. "Yes, Father."
Katara looks between the princess and the Fire Lord. Her father has never spoken to her that way. But then, Azula doesn't seem to be upset and she did tease Katara about her nose earlier, so it isn't as though she didn't deserve it.
Avatar Aang is nothing like Katara expected. He is, he says, one hundred and six years young, and as far as Katara can tell he's an old bald man who likes to play tricks on dignitaries and hide in the garden with the children. She likes him right away. Azula is rather standoffish, and Zuko is nowhere to be found, but she and Sokka play hide and seek (hide and explode in the Fire Nation, but so long as Azula isn't going to play there's not much sense following her rules. Not that she's pleased by Sokka's declaration to that effect).
"Avatar Aang, will you tell me a story?" Sokka has tired of the game and gone to find Zuko (a futile effort, which partly explains why her brother is later found stealing komodo jerky from the kitchens). Azula scoffs and lights a flame in her palm which she stares at with an odd intensity. Katara ignores her friend, or whatever this strange girl is, and looks up at the Avatar.
"You can call me Aang," he says, and plops to the ground with a grace Katara has never seen in anyone this old. "What kind of story?"
"Hmmmmmm." Katara stares at the Avatar.
"Yes?"
"Tell me about how you defeated the Fire Nation attacks."
A dark look passes over the Avatar's face. He shouldn't tell her, not here, not when there are probably servants who will report his every word to the Fire Lord. "Another time, Katara. Want to hear about when I rode the elephant koi at Kyoshi Island?"
She beams at him, and he tells her about being eleven. Never mind what happened when he was twelve. The Fire Nation attacked and killed his people, and he's the only one left, and beyond that he has no interest in thinking about what happened so many years ago. Better to leave the past in the past. Isn't it?
Kya watches her daughter, enraptured by whatever the Avatar is saying to her. Ursa stands beside her, looking contemplative. "I wish things were different."
"Your highness?" Kya looks at the other woman quickly, then turns back to the scene before her.
"I wish my husband's family were not responsible for so much destruction. I wish the world weren't so political, or that we could have a better peace." Ursa sighs heavily. "I almost married a peasant, a long time ago. We would have been happy."
It's the tone of an unhappy woman, a tone Kya knows all too well from her visits to the Northern Water Tribe, so full of tradition and loveless marriages and miserable families whose children hate each other and whose elders create a society so devoid of happiness it hurts to watch. And suddenly Kya hopes, more powerfully than she ever has, that her children will be permitted a simple life, even as she knows her eight year-old daughter is being bartered inside the palace. It is the first time that Kya wonders whether war would be better than this peace held together by long arguments or anxious arms races or ill-considered political marriages.
Zuko finds her hiding in the back of the palace, sitting under a clothesline that the maids have filled with wet laundry that blows in the wind and almost keeps her from view. It would have worked better if she were wearing red, but after a lifetime of Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, Zuko knows better than to say so.
"I don't want to marry you."
Zuko stands perfectly straight next to her, looking down his nose at his betrothed (the word nauseates him a little, now that she mentions it). "Well I don't want to marry you either."
Katara's head jerks up. "Why not? Is there something wrong with me?"
Zuko jumps back, wide eyed and just a bit startled. "No! Of course not!"
"It's my nose, isn't it?" She sniffles and puts her chin in her hands.
Zuko cautiously steps closer. "Your nose is fine."
"No it's not. It's ugly."
Zuko frowns. Girls are crazy, and noses are by no means his area of expertise. "Girls are crazy."
Katara takes a halfhearted swing at him, and Zuko jumps back again. "Sokka says it's a cowpig nose and Azula thinks it looks funny!" Zuko stares down at her. As far as he can tell, it's a perfectly normal nose. She looks up at him again. "I wish I had a nose like yours."
"Like mine?" Zuko is stymied. He's never given his nose any thought.
"If I pinch my nose like this-" Katara pinches her nose as if she's about to jump into a river or the ocean, and her voice goes flat. Zuko can barely keep a straight face at the nasally tone. "Thenb by bnose looks finbe."
Zuko considers his betrothed (and he still hates that word) for a moment. He reaches up to the clothesline and pulls a pin off. "Here." Katara's eyes light up as she takes the clothespin from his hand, and she bounces up from the ground with an energy Zuko is not prepared for.
"Thanks Zuko!" She wraps her arms around him and puts the pin on her nose. "Thbis kinda hurts."
"Prince Zuko."
Katara gives him a look, and Zuko has a bad feeling he's going to be seeing a lot of that look in the future. "We can be friends if you want," she offers.''
Zuko supposes he doesn't have much to lose; he's never really had a friend before, unless you count Sokka, which he doesn't because Sokka gets a kick out of trying to beat him up (Zuko likes to think he's being noble by going easy on him). "Okay."
"You have to promise we'll be friends forever." Katara holds out the clothespin she's removed from her nose to make talking easier. "Swear on this clothespin. Put your hand on it."
Zuko reaches out to clasp her hand, the clothespin between them. "I swear."
As it turns out, Zuko's bad feeling is unfounded. The peace and the betrothal dissolve the following year when Avatar Aang dies, and the Fire Nation begins a campaign against the Water Tribes. The Southern Raiders attack Katara and Sokka's village when Katara is ten, looking for any last waterbenders, and Kya is killed because they aren't taking prisoners today. Katara and Sokka hide in an underground bunker with the village children, and Katara holds little Korra close to her as the villagers scream for mercy high above them. No Avatar is found, and the Fire Nation turns its attention to besieging the Northern Water Tribe.
But now the Southern Tribe is decimated, hungry, and angry. Katara has lost her mother. Her father abandons her to attack the people who took his wife. Sokka plays soldier. And Katara is tired, hungry, and angry.
Ozai sends the raiders to the south again, but they come up empty. Sozin's Comet comes and goes, and the Northern Water Tribe is melted into the sea. Princess Azula loses her mind and her long vanished mother appears to her in mirrors and windows. Prince Zuko follows the example of his mother and vanishes into the night, though there are rumors he's taken some of his father's best men with him and promised to stop this war, but those are just rumors. Rebels and pirates, Sokka and the warriors he trained among them, roam everywhere; the world descends into chaos. Katara masters waterbending by years of trial and error. It's worth it in the end.
"Captain!" A sailor runs up to her, boots thumping on the wooden deck. "A small Fire Navy ship is approaching."
Katara bends herself to the crow's nest and looks out. The ship is flying a white flag, but she's seen this before. They know a waterbender is on this boat, and they'll come in peace and open fire. "Ready the torpedoes!" Her men are yelling on deck, pulling up the anchor and opening the sails. A stiff wind rocks the two ships and rain pelts their faces, but they're determined, and the torpedoes are ready to fire just as a messenger hawk screeches. "Hold your fire!" She shouts, and reaches for the bird. "It could be Sokka!"
Her men pause their work. Some watch the daughter of their chief and some the navy ship, and a few others keep an eye on Avatar Korra, just a child playing in the puddles on deck. Hiding in plain sight.
Katara opens the tube the messenger hawk carries and calls to the crew. "It's a friend!"
There's nothing in the tube, not really.
Just a clothespin.
AN: Hey look guys. I finally made it to the end of 2008. 2009, here we come! Shoutout to everybody who's reviewed; y'all are the bomb. Love.
In reality, I don't think Katara's nose is anything abnormal. I'm taking a little artistic license with a childhood insecurity I've invented for her (partially inspired by my own nose difficulties and partly by Little Women and Amy March). Also, I confess I've entirely forgotten what it feels like to be eight. Or ten. Or any other age that would be relevant. So if any of you have younger siblings or cousins or whatever and I'm making these poor kids way too old for their age, let me know. I'd consider adjusting accordingly.
