Zuko doesn't come back. The scroll's where he left it, slipper not even leaving a print. Her room is spotless since Zuko started bringing her water and meals himself, given it stays in the trays instead of thrown at her face. He even had his serving women clean her parka.

These thoughts are all she has to occupy her time now Zuko doesn't come.

She will not miss it. She won't. Not when he's obviously keeping something from her.

Another one of his plays to find out where Aang is. She isn't stupid. Interrogation isn't limited to the Fire Nation. Jet pretended to care about her life too. Used her too. She has to commend Zuko to his commitment. Asking him to read the scrolls to her was a calculated test, and he expressed no pre-understanding of her culture's tradition of Speakers to suggest a premeditation or darker purpose. When he read it was slow, stilted in the way a child understanding words for the first time puts sentences together, as he pieced each new bit of history and culture into comprehension. He even asked her to clarify some of it, earnestly taking in everything she could explain.

But her walls won't be so easily broken down this time. Jet and Zuko are as bad as each other, doing what they want; burning, hurting. Whatever it takes, casualties be damned. Scavengers, both of them, and she wishes she could see Jet's face as she lumps him with the little Fire Nation prince.

Zuko wouldn't even ask who Jet is.


Six Months Previously:

Jet

Katara has known the tender heat of the sun, it's soft fingers on her skin. She has known the inner-melting of hot food, lovingly home-cooked spreading the gooey heat deeper into her bones. The flaring ignition of true laughter is a constant around Sokka and Aang. She's known the sharp, napalm burn of strong spiritous alcohol, cooling into a low burn. She's felt the soft fizzling of crushes in her youth that stark reality and grim responsibility quickly stamped out.

Yes, despite being born of the ice, Katara has never been deprived of warmth.

But the body next to hers, the arm a weight over her stomach, is a new warmth. It burns low, ignites before she realises. Like low coals, her gut shifts and sparks. Bursts of heat leave her light-headed. Flushes and lopsided smiles rob her of words. Molten eyes burn with a pain she's all too familiar with, a flickering candle within her own shattered soul. He's the flame, she the ice it reflects, casting a brighter glow.

She isn't familiar with this heat, and like the first fire she tried to light on her own, it burns out before she can be consumed.

Acknowledging Sokka's capability is possibly the worst mistake of Katara's life. Overnight her brother goes from moody man-child to bossy know-it-all. If he's not confidently taking them in the wrong direction, he's harping on about instincts, the trials of leadership, or mooning over missing Suki. Somehow, out of the three, his bemoaned whining about his love-life is her preferred option.

But she's seen now how much her opinion matters to him, so she makes her jabs as playful as possible, only striking for the ego when he gets out of control. Aang sometimes joins in, though the monk is so earnest, Katara thinks he's actually being sincere while she speaks sarcasm so thickly the poor boy can't tell the difference.

She didn't think Sokka could get any worse than grounding Appa before he walks them smack-dab into the middle of a Fire Nation camp.

"Let us pass and we won't hurt you." Sokka's voice trembles around the reverse threat.

"You're gonna hurt us?" An eye-patched captain cackles until Sokka's face is the same shade of red as his ornamented armour. Those cackles are cut short as the man stiffens. When he topples face-first into the ground, a slim dart protrudes between two links in his armour. An impossible shot.

"How'd you do that, Sokka?" Aang gasps.

"Uh… Instinct?"

Metal flashes. A shadow slips from the canopy above their heads, swinging down as if an extension of the branches.

"They're in the trees!"

A young boy lands on top of a soldier charging Aang and turns his helmet around. Blind, the soldier thrashes, and the boy rides him and laughs. Arrows zip past anyone not in armour, expertly finding their marks. It's all Katara can do to flood her target to the ground before one of the forest dwellers is helping her.

A huge boy drops from the trees, so massive it's a wonder the branches could hold him up. He hefts a log like Sokka used to swing sticks when he played warrior as a child. He swings it through the soldiers, denting armour, bending steel, turning flesh and bone to pulp the way Momo does to Lychee nuts.

Surprise and momentum means the battle is over in seconds, and when the hooked swords bring their leader down, he strides easily into the swing. Right up to Katara, and smiles.

"Hey."

Her cheeks ignite before the rest of her. "Hi."


Exposed

Her thoughts keep her company until Iroh begins his weekly visits. Teapot tucked under his arm, he exercises none of the wall hugging, door squeezing caution Zuko obsesses over, walking in and letting the door leisurely swing shut behind him. She isn't sure if Zuko knows about the visits, though she doubts much goes on without his notice. She hasn't seen her old guards in weeks.

"How are you today, miss Katara?" As usual, Iroh regards her straw pallet with distaste, won't give her cleaning corner his attention at all as he sets up the burner and trivet. He snaps his fingers to light the burner, but why he doesn't simply use his bending to steep the tea, she doesn't know.

"Bored, sir." She likes to reserve all her flippant mockery for Zuko. Ironically, his uncle responds similarly to her respect, shaking his head.

"I've said before as I say now. Iroh, please, my lady."

"I barely have a last name." She is of the watertribe, that is honour enough. "I am no one's lady." It's then she notices the board he sets down from under his arm. "Not just tea today?"

"It is my understanding you've been rather deprived of stimulant this week."

"Not just this week." She hasn't seen the sun in weeks. Hasn't felt ocean spray on her skin or moonlight in her blood.

Iroh understands with a heavy sigh but offers no empty comforts. He knows her pain. There's a sense of loss in him, too. Much deeper than hers. "So, I thought, since my nephew has run out of scrolls, a new study could occupy your time." He's been setting the pieces out, methodical and without much concern. But the board is brand new, the pieces still shiny.

"Afraid I'll break your board if I lose?" No doubt Zuko's shared stories of her temper.

"You'll be breaking nothing of mine." Iroh smiles as his meaning dawns on her. "My lady, I have been playing Pai Sho longer than you've been breathing. Do you really expect to be even a challenge to me without practicing?"

She needs to learn the rules first, and spends an hour getting the basics down with Iroh's gentle instruction.

"Do you know why I prefer the lotus manoeuvre, Katara?" Iroh asks after setting down his first piece in their newest game.

She can barely grip the basic stratagems. If he's used the lotus before, she doesn't recognise it. "No."

"It requires patience. It emboldens gentle movements, a light touch, for lotus petals are extremely delicate. Not things opponents expect from a Firebender," he says as if he knows that's exactly what she'd been thinking. "My nephews touch is not yet so gentle. He has not yet grasped why I insist on brewing my tea with tools instead of my hands, so you can imagine I haven't showed him this method of play. Yet, he tries. He continues to play, and he drinks my tea."

Katara watches the old man smile, fond and sincere as he considers his next move. It's for her benefit. It never takes him long to beat her.

"So, when he tries, he finds he causes more damage than he intends. I always try to impress upon him the importance of his basic training. Walking before he runs. Taking a moment to breathe. Destination, unfortunately, is his only aim. He forgets what he might step on along the journey."

"So, by shrouding his behaviour in metaphors of flowers and tea, you think that excuses it?"

"No, my dear. But he has spent these last weeks learning so much about you, I thought you might like to gain an understanding of him in return."

She bristles at his implication Zuko returning a history stolen from her was out of the goodness of his heart. "What I want to understand is why he deems it acceptable to chuck scrolls of cultural appropriation at me, but won't answer my questions when his distractions prove unsuccessful. Why does being a waterbender from the southern watertribe put me in danger?"

Forthcoming Iroh hesitates. It isn't until that pause between his inhale and his answer that real fear sinks into Katara's heart. It starts as a trickle but, true to her nature, the flood consumes her the longer Iroh takes to answer.

"Zuko would prefer history be forgotten. He thinks it the best way to move forwards. It is an unfortunate trait of youth. Vanity and worth get too mixed up." Perhaps unconsciously, Iroh rubs his hand down the left side of his face. "But I ask you, Katara, if history were so brushed aside, how could we learn from our mistakes?"

She hears how he seems to seek her permission, but for what she can't tell. To reveal Zuko's truth? To forgive him for it?

"We can't." she consents.

"It was before Zuko's time," he starts, desperate to preserve his nephew in some light to her. "Before Ozai and myself. Azulon, my father, was learning under Sozin. As you know, the air nomads were being wiped from the face of the world. The temples were only accessible via Sky Bison, until my father launched his first campaign in my Grandfather's name. He used his dragon hunters to tame the beasts before their ultimate culling. They brought soldiers dressed in air nomad yellows to the base of the cliffs, where they scaled to reach the temples. I won't bore you with the details.

"But my father did not stop with the air nomads. His subjugation of the smaller Earth Kingdoms was a bold first step, cementing his first foothold into the mainland. There he birthed the colonies, colonies we still fight to establish to this day under my younger brother. But Earth is not the only element we fight."

"The Watertribes."

He nods, moves a piece on the board. Katara didn't realise they were still playing, while a weight presses Iroh down. He can't seem to lift his eyes from the piece he finishes moving. "And that in itself was the problem for my father. Multiple tribes, too many to comfortably keep on top of. The North was the older, and, more important to my father, deeper entrenched in its traditions. They keep one half of their population from learning how to martial their waterbending." For some reason he pauses, waiting to see if she has any comment. "A people half of warriors and healers is easier to control than a people of equal merit."

The cold was her home, but ice penetrates her blood, spreads against her will. From under the board, Iroh pulls a slip of paper. It ruffles the way only a map can, folded back and forth so many times. Yet it is new, brought for her. He unfolds it now and spreads it over their board.

"So, he set out to make one out of two peoples. He sent his warriors south with one goal…"

Gran-Gran's horrified face, illuminated by the sallow light of the ancient Fire Nation vessel's flair, swims through Katara's vision. Eyes glued to the map before her blur. The continents of the Four Nations sprawl before her, slightly wrinkled from the map's treatment. Earth Kingdom villages. Air nomad mountains. Polar waters. She recognises the places she's been, knows their names only because Aang shares his history as freely as the Fire Nation supress it. She ignores all this as her fingers trace the south pole. At the opposite end of the map, the North Pole is clearly marked, the tribe's location inked rich in black. She lets out a long, low moan when she moves her fingers to find no matching name in the south.

Iroh's sonorous voice echoes her mourning. "Extermination."

The Southern Watertribe is gone.


Six Months Previously:

Jet

"Katara," a husky voice breathes against her neck as hips shift and grind together.

Having an older brother means she knows the sting of burns. Cruel, outmatched snowball fights which left her half-blind, eyes burning and streaming tears. Sokka would grip her arm and rub viciously at the skin until she was screaming, her arm raw from the South Snow Sting, as he liked to call it.

But this is a different kind of friction. One she leans into, learns to match. And suddenly a voice is capable of setting fire to a new, low, flame in her belly.

Jet plays with her fingers as they sit together at his feast table. Aang's hilariously sandwiched between The Duke and Pipsqueak, laughing as the Duke makes sabretooth mooselion tusks out of roasted vegetable skewers and pretends to spear Pipsqueak's massive chest. Katara holds his hand under the table, not wanting to draw attention to this flame they're building. True, fire needs oxygen to light, but too much will blow it out. So, she smiles softly, delegates her attention, and blushes furiously when Jet steals a kiss on her cheek because he thinks she's playing hard to get. The children Jet's taken in toast him and celebrate together, and even Sokka's sulking can't dampen Katara's mood.

"You really cause the Fire Nation a lot of trouble," she hedges, wanting to her all about his adventures.

Unfortunately, massive Pipsqueak hears and leans his huge body over the table. "We've been ambushin' their troops, cutting off their supply lines, and doing anything we can to mess with 'em." An intense gleam dominates his small, focused eyes. He turned those soldier's heads to lychee jam with nothing but a stick and a lazy swing. Katara's a little disappointed not to be hearing this from Jet, but she's not going to be the one to tell Pipsqueak his story telling is less to be desired.

As if reading her mind, Jet waves Pipsqueak off before tucking his nose close to Katara's neck. "One day, we'll drive the Fire Nation out of here for good and free the valley."


Exposed

Iroh left her the board and map. It suggests a world slowly moving towards unity and peace under one name. It ignores the war-torn plains Katara knows; the homes she's run from, the people she knows suffering under the oppression of the Fire Nation. She gasps at the grotesquery of it.

Her tribe lives, but no one knows. To the rest of the world, they are a footnote of history. Once a people, now a story. She thinks of all the people she's met, told she comes from the South Pole. She'd said it with such pride, not knowing what a commodity she must have made. An endangered species.

Her life is a life.

Iroh explained it before he left. "My father's raiding parties were given one task: Wipe out any threat to the Fire Nation. We did not wish the Watertribes to be extinct like the Air Nomads. Think what you want of us, but the death of an entire culture is not something lightly considered. But two forces on either side of the world is a tactical advantage my father could allow."

"But they came again," she whispered. "We worship the spirits in the sky, the moon and sea. Water gives life. Raiders came ten years ago. How would they know if this… This…" She could only stab at the map, at the snows were her home waits for her.

"Ozai is no fool. You might have had no benders, as far as he knew, but he would not leave a potential threat unsupervised."

Her mother died because the Fire Nation needed to update its census. Bile rises in her throat.

"To the rest of the world there is only one Watertribe. Sixty years ago, my father wiped out over three quarters of the southern tribes in a bid to exterminate them all and drive the survivors from an inhospitable land. But the south pole is bigger than the whole of the Fire Nation. I hate to speak ill of the dead, so I shall say my brother is foolish for carrying on our fathers wishes. I… am aware of the last raid, ten years ago on the south. I was not aware the raiders lied in their reports."

"They butchered most of the men before they left. They killed-" Iroh is kind, but kindness of one man cannot erase the atrocities of his people. He cannot have her mother. "Your hyenadogs probably thought the elements would take us. They were monsters."

His face fell when her tears finally broke. "Zuko is not. Zuko didn't know we would find you down in the south pole. So, you see, Katara, this is why he warned you to keep your bending a secret, at least until you travelled far enough from your home that no one would assume you came from the south. If my brother finds out benders can still be born in the south…"


Six Months Previously:

Jet

Jet takes his time after that, letting her get to know his brave boys and girls. He knows all their names, where they came from, and from the cold fire in his eyes, she knows he will never let them suffer as they once did ever again. She understands that cold rage and puts her hand over his when it chokes his voice.

He smiles, squeezes back, then grabs his cup and stands. Chatter breaks off immediately, all eyes of the Freedom Fighters glued to the firm, lank boy. Katara more than any. "Today, we struck another blow against the Fire Nation swine. I got a special joy from the look on one soldier's face, when The Duke dropped down on his helmet and rode him like a wild hog monkey."

Helmet rocking on the table beside him, The Duke marches around the table with his hands in the air to the cheers of his fellows.

"Now, the Fire Nation thinks they don't have to worry about a couple of kids hiding in the trees. Maybe they're right." He grins around the lip of his cup at the hearty Boo! "Or maybe... they're dead wrong."

He sits back down to the cheers. When they fade enough for the normal chatter to resume, he tilts the half-empty cup down the table to her and Aang. "By the way, I was really impressed with you and Aang. That was some great bending I saw out there today."

She isn't used to this kind of admiration from a boy and is redirecting Jet's praise to Aang before she can preen under his attention. "Well, Aang's great. He's the Avatar. I could use some more training."

"Avatar huh? Very nice." His eyes zero in on Aang.

Katara goes from flying on cloud nine to feeling like she doesn't exist any more as Jet probes Aang across her. She'd be embarrassed at how badly she wants his attention back on her if she weren't so upset that it wasn't. "Did I mention how lucky we were you saved us from those soldiers?" she whispers against Jet's neck.

He breaks off his conversation with Aang to grin up at her. "Maybe once, not that I'm complaining."

"Good thing we were there to get the ball rolling," she finishes with a teasing grin of her own.

"I can't be the only one causing the Fire Nation trouble." His eyes darken as he shuffles closer to her. "You might be as good at it as I am, but I have years of Fire Nation antagonism on you. That particular troop were part of a bigger company that took over an Earth Kingdom town a few years back."

"Professional Fire Nation Antagoniser sounds like a lot of fun." Could she count her encounters with Zuko as practice?

"It is," Jet murmurs close to her ear, and she forgets the scarred prince. "Stick around and I'll get you on your way. We might even drive the Fire Nation out of here for good and free that town."

"I'd like that."

The Fire Nation killed his parents. They took her mother from her. It's not only his charm, his heroics, which draw her in. His pain matches the cracks in her own heart. His tears sting with the same salt she's tasted a thousand nights when her grief overwhelmed her. When he takes her hand and presses his lips to the back, she goes with him. He kisses her in front of his treetop tent. Not a chaste, teasing cheek kiss, but one where she's sinking into him. He's threading his fingers into her hair. Whispering her name against her lips.

He takes her hand and leads her inside.

Sleep thickens the grunt against her neck. Tan skin, light compared to hers, bunches at the base of the neck as the shoulders work. Jet rolls away, taking his warmth with him. She'll see him later in the day once he and Sokka return from their secret mission, so she snuggles back into the warm embrace of blankets which smell like woodsmoke and trust.

Sokka sneers at Jet as the Freedom Fighter defends himself. Katara wonders if Sokka knows the bed Jet lounges on was shared with his sister hours before. She silently begs to Tui and La that he doesn't figure it out, studiously looking away whenever Jet tries to catch her eye and smile slyly.

"If you could stop making eyes at my sister and tell them what really happened," Sokka grumbles. Mission failed, and now Katara can't face her brother without her cheeks catching fire.

"Sokka, you told them what happened, but you didn't mention that the guy was Fire Nation?"

"He conveniently left that part out." Katara blushes and looks away when Sokka turns his glare on her.

"Fine! But even if he was Fire Nation, he was a harmless civilian!" But Sokka's protests die in his throat when Jet slams the knife into the table, unhinging the hidden compartment and revealing the vile of poison inside. Desperate, he turns to his sister. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm defending a Fire Nation man, Katara. You know I wouldn't do that unless I thought it was the right call."

Her eyes flick between the knife and her older brother. "Explain the knife, the poison, Sokka." Jet's done nothing wrong, but she's begging Sokka to give her the answer he wants of her.

Softer, he inclines his head. "I had your back on Kyoshi, 'Tara."

Her heart nosedives into her stomach. "Explain why he was carrying a knife."

"There was no knife!" Sokka cries, but her eyes sliding to Jet in apology is the final straw. "I'm going back to the hut and packing my things. I'll see you guys at Appa!"

She winces as he stomps past her. Not even Jet's encouraging smile can lift her spirits, but they're two matched, scarred souls, and he knows busy-work, feeling useful, is the best way to take her mind off things. "Tell me you guys aren't leaving yet. I really need your help."

"What can we do?" Aang asks.


Exposed

Zuko was protecting her tribe.

Sitting alone in her cell, she feels outside of her body, as though she's watching the scattered bands of survivors' piece their lives back together. Ten years ago, the children of those survivors watched death swoop down again. Gran-Gran's horror in the sallow light of the flair eclipses the quiet spaces in Katara's mind. The gravity of history has drawn her people to the bottom. Worse, than the bottom. They are the dirt the other nations step on, not out of malice, but ignorance.

She isn't supposed to exist. Sokka, her father, uncle Bato, Sokka's wards protecting the tribe now. None have a glimpse of the horror Katara sees every time she looks at the map opened across the Pai Sho board. Sokka hates the Fire Nation more than Katara's ever known a person to hate anything, but this is worse than even he could imagine.

"Sixty years," she breathes to her empty cell. "Those snows belong to us." Now she knows how deeply they are stained red.

How much more will they have to give before they can take them back from the hand that sits the Fire Nation throne?

Aang.

The Avatar can bring peace. But first the watertribe must be repaid the blood it is owed. The blood Katara is owed.

There's a beast inside her broken heart. Sokka was right all along, as he trained his warriors. But it won't come to violence. They've been wrapped in it their entire lives, so surrounded they couldn't distinguish it from the norm.

Aang will be the voice that calms the fray. But before that comes the battle. Is that what Katara is to be? An avenging hand? She feels the rage, cannot reconcile it with the girl she remembers smiling with every fresh snowfall, who could giggle as the snowbear owls first flew from their nests. She thinks of her mother's sacrifice. She thinks of Gran-Grans silent suffering so to spare the grandkids she thought ignorantly safe. She thinks of Sokka, her father, Ulma, Dakoda, Sokka's young wards. Everyone she loves. She knows how hard they will live and how quickly they will die.

And now she knows why.

She has the map under her feet, shredding the edges under the soles. It's not enough. Fuck this world. Fuck what it's done to her people. With a scream she rips it down the middle, right through the poles. It tears something open inside of her, and she doesn't stop ripping until the scraps make a snowfall around her feet. She doesn't stop screaming until her throat is raw and there's nothing left to shred.

Zuko stands frozen by the open cell door. It's the first time she's seen him in a week.

"What?" she spits when he continues to stare.

A clump that was once the Earth Kingdom sits on the toe of his boot. "So, you…" Know? Yes, she does. Can't trust herself to speak again without crying though. Can't do it in front of him. To her utter disgust, he doesn't demand she does, just straightens and holds the door open further. "Come with me."

She doesn't move and isn't composed enough to ask why. She hasn't left this cell in almost a month.

"In light of our new strategy to capture the Avatar, Uncle has decided since you're going to be with us indefinitely, you will be given quarters." Except his voice fluctuates when he claims it's his uncle who's made the decision. As if he can tell she noticed, he hardens his face. "Your cuffs stay on, however. Bring your Pai Sho board."

It's too flat to juggle from the floor with her hands in the cuffs. He has to come in and grab it for her.

He takes her up. For a brief, heart-racing moment, she thinks she'll get to see sky again. She squashes that hope before she can imagine the night sky, the moon, and the waves beneath. Zuko would never be so kind, so stupid. And she's right. He leads her up two levels, then stops outside another door. A deadbolt has been installed recently on the outside, the black metal shiny and smooth, drawing back without so much as a squeak as Zuko unlocks it.

It's no bigger than her cell, but it's cosy enough to be considered a room. The first thing she notices is the bed. A real mattress lies in the corner instead of a thin pallet stuffed with straw. Above it a fire nation tapestry hangs, blood red and the only real colour to adorn the room. She gets amenities in the form of a low table and two flat cushions tucked neatly against the wall, an incense burner, and a deep bellied chest.

As usual, Zuko strides in without invitation and lays out her Pai Sho board on the table. "Your scrolls are in the chest," he says as he arranges the pieces.

"My scrolls?" He always took them with him after the lessons.

"I have no use for them. Unless you plan to rip them up like you did my uncle's map."

She glares at his back. "You really can't just say something nice and leave it at that, can you?"

"You'd accept anything from me without questioning it?" He snorts at her silence. "Exactly. We know what we are to each other, Waterbender."

Except she knows what he knows now, and he had to have had reasons for not telling her. Whatever they are to each other, their understanding of it is not mutual. Was it a tactful decision to gain some kind of advantage? But what could her continued ignorance gain him? When she looks at his scarred face, she can't reconcile it with a man who would do something out of the goodness of his heart.

Aang is the only one who can stop this war, and Zuko is trying to stop Aang. But his actions contradict his goals. He warned her and kept her exposure from the rest of his men - an act in itself a direct foil to his legacy.

So why tell her? No member of the watertribes knows the extent of the atrocities. Gran-Gran would have warned her before she left if that were the case. She can spread the truth now. Sozin, Azulon, his father. Their grand mission jeopardised, dependant on the fate of a watertribe peasant. Does Zuko plan to keep her on this ship for the rest of her life?

"What's your plan?"

Zuko looks up from the Pai Sho board. She hasn't moved beyond the closed door, capped hands heavy in front of her. "The Avatar has been spotted further inland, near the city of Omashu. It will take some time to sail to his location, so I deci- Uncle decided you may as well be moved here."

She catches the fluctuation but is in no mood to tease him. "Not for me. What's your plan for Aang?"

His good eye narrows. "Why would I discuss that with you? So, you can escape and scurry off to whisper in his ear?"

She rattles her bound hands at him. "As if I'm getting out of here. Your father is a dictator descendant from a genocider. What do you think he's going to do when you bring him a little boy? You're not stupid, sunshine, so don't pretend like you haven't considered it."

Except he pauses. He really didn't think his father would follow in his grandfather's footsteps. "He won't kill him, if that's what you're worried about." The flippant way he says it stuns Katara. "He wouldn't work so hard to capture the boy, only to restart the Avatar cycle from somewhere beyond his control."

"So, in your perfect little world, Aang spends his life in chains." She rattles her caps again. "Believe me, it's not a life worth living." Except he completely ignored something she said. Ignored it or doesn't understand what his own words imply. "Do you know the raids started up again?"

"What raids?"

"Sorry, what would your little Fire Nation schools call it? The Merging of the Watertribes? A Cleansing of potential insurrection?"

His good eye winces. "It's called what it is in the Fire Nation." He starts when he realises, she's waiting for him to say it. "The Assimilations."

"Assimilations," she breathes incredulously. "Let me shed a little light: they butchered us, sunshine. They came into my home and burned everything they could to the ground. And they didn't even bother to finish the job." She hopes her cold burns him. "And yet, you sailed south in search of an old man. Why? There wasn't supposed to be anything down there, not officially. What did you hope to find? Do they teach of the potential nomads left?"

She doesn't wait for an answer. "Or did some part of you think maybe the Avatar cycle had restarted? A waterbender would be next, and one tribe is easier to search than two. Was the heir to the genociders on his way to finish his great Grandfathers mission?"

Zuko's horror draws him sharply back from her. "That's disgusting!"

"That's your legacy!" His back slams into the door. She wasn't aware they'd moved, either. Chest rising and falling, Zuko stammers under her stabbing scrutiny. She gives no ground, gives him no cue. Whatever he has to think he's defending himself, let him dig his hole with it. "Run back to the Fire Nation, little puppy, and tell your father to hurry up and evolve. The rest of the world is waiting for you."

"I hope you enjoy the room." Of course, he denies her the fight, slamming the door behind him.

She's about to scream when the door flies back open. Zuko rushes into her space, too fast for anything but a bone deep flinch that takes her back a step. Except she feels no hand on her neck, or fire across her skin. When she opens her eyes, Zuko's shameful golden gaze is focused on the key he inserts into one of her manacles, then the other once its clicked open.

He leaves with them dangling in his hands without a word and the echo of the deadbolt drawing closed.


Six Months Previously:

Jet

"You're a lot more chipper this afternoon," Aang comments as they work the water out of the geysers and into the river.

It's true. She can't hide how she feels lighter than air; she might even have skipped. Though she begs quietly to Tui and La Aang doesn't ask her about it. He's a sweet boy approaching manhood too quickly. Let him be innocent for as long as the world will let him.

"I slept well." Not completely a lie. The time she spent asleep, she was sated and deeply under.

He grins, happily not ascertaining any double meaning from her words like Sokka or the other men of her tribe would. "That's great, Katara. I'm glad to see you happy."

"I'm always happy whenever I get to use my bending to help others." She favours him with a soft smile, one that makes the young monk blush and focus on his practice. "Jet really is doing this valley a lot of good. Do you think once he's won the battle here, he'd come with us?"

"Maybe." Aang perks up. "You think The Duke and Pipsqueak would come too? They're a riot."

"They're dedicated to keeping the people safe from the Fire Nation. If we share our mission with them, I'm sure they'd be honoured to offer the Freedom Fighters aid." Katara sighs, thinking of how Jet will smile when they invite them to join the good fight.


Exposed

Zuko's apology comes in the form of a modestly older woman appearing in her cell the next morning. She's courtly to a fault, bowing to the much less presentable Katara with a polite smile. "Master Zuko has sent me to be your personal valet, mistress Katara."

Despite herself, Katara is charmed by the pseudo-greeting delivered in the easy purr. She's past prime age, and if she's working on the banished princes ship, she can't have been a lady of the court back in the Fire Nation. "Please don't call me mistress Katara. Just Katara will be fine."

The valet smiles. "Whatever my lady wishes." It's no better. "I assume your first request is for a bath?"

Katara knows she won't be allowed the opportunity often, and not without supervision. She nods reluctantly and stands uncomfortably as the valet sets to work. She sheds her outermost layer of silks as she calls for water and towels, anticipating the affair to be awkward and messy, revealing a deeply intricate lily tattoo which takes up the majority of her chest and shoulders beneath a dark red uniform. The final petal inks delicately across the front of her wrinkled throat, and when she offers no name to a freshly scrubbed Katara, she thanks her as Lily when she departs.


Six Months Previously:

Jet

When Jet meets her eyes, it physically stings. "You wouldn't."

"I would." Cold. No hesitation. He doesn't even think about all the lives he'll take. "You would too if you just stopped to think. Think about what the Fire Nation did to your mother, we can't let them do that to anyone else, ever again."

"This isn't the answer!" She won't show her betrayal, not yet, not in front of him.

"It's the only answer!" he snarls back. "They asked the question with violence, and I answered!"

The soft boy who held her this morning, told her stories of loving parents in gaudy greens he can't look at now without crying, is gone. Did he ever exist? Did those parents? "The Fire Nation didn't do this, Jet, you did."

"So did you. Don't pretend you don't want as many of them wiped from the face of the earth as I do, else you wouldn't have helped me fill the dam."

Was she such a walking wound that he could so easily pick the scab, force her open with some words here, a touch there?

She feels sick. Everywhere he touched she needs to scrub. Needs to freeze over and rip off her body. Her fingers throb where they bended the water he used to wipe out an entire settlement of lives. Like fire he is nothing but a curse, destined to cause destruction. His warmth was the water that boils the lobsterfrog alive, heating so gently the poor beast doesn't even know its cooking until it's too late. Stoked her pain, manipulated her inability to stop and remember the roots of her pain by focusing the single-minded energy into fitting his means, killing for his ends.

Like fire, she never should have trusted it.

"You're sick." She trips over her revulsion. "You used me to… All those people…"

"This was a victory, Katara." Like that, he can wipe his hands clean, if they weren't frozen to the tree trunk behind him. "The Fire Nation is gone, and this valley will be safe."

"Say what you did, Jet!" Aang doesn't understand what she means. He stares at the raging water, trying to comprehend what's happened as the wreckage of lives streams past. Using her, Katara can forgive, but he's stripped Aang of his last shreds of innocence. For that she'll hate this injured boy until Tui calls her spirit back to the ocean. "You didn't rid this valley of Fire Nation. You. Killed. Innocents!"

"There are no innocents. I rid this valley." His eyes are cold when he meets hers. Nothing exists but his righteous war. Whatever she says, today was a victory. A step forwards in the war against the Fire Nation. Ends for means, or lives in his case. "Free of Fire Nation, and collaborators. The valley is safe."

"The only thing this valley is safe from is you!" Sokka appears, standing atop Appa as the bison rises from below the cliffs. The beast's belly is wet, fat droplets of water splattering the swaying grass.

Jets eyes go wide. "Sokka, you traitor!"

Her brother won't look at the boy struggling against the tree trunk as he helps her up into Appa's saddle. There's no blame in his eyes for her, no I told you so she completely deserves. Could he hear how disgusted she was with the Freedom Fighter, with herself, below the cliffs? She doesn't deserve his understanding but grips his hand as he begins to turn Appa away from this valley of pain.

"No, Jet. You became the traitor when you stopped protecting innocent people. If you ever did."


Exposed

Her Pai Sho lessons continue in much more comfort, and this time Zuko doesn't delegate her meals and water to the ships staff, unless he's busy so Lily brings them in his stead. It takes him another week of aloofly bringing her trays, watching until she finishes the water, half her cup evaporating if he even thinks she's going to bend the water, then leaving, before he lingers as she plays Pai Sho with his Uncle.

"Would you like a turn, Prince Zuko?" Iroh asks after he thoroughly trounces her. "You might actually win."

Only Katara laughs. Zuko watches her warily instead of rising to his uncle's bait. Time and mid numbing monotony have burned out her ambition to blame Zuko for all her woes. Well, no more than usual at least. She definitely hasn't assuaged him of guilt. However, locked here with memories washed in a new shade of red understanding and her own determination not to be forgotten, what choice does she honestly have?

Zuko, in turn, has not asked for her forgiveness. The notion would be ludicrous. But they're both stuck here, for want of a better understanding of Zuko's situation, and he knows right now it's not his uncle who should be offering he join. Only when Katara inclines her head in invitation, the first he's ever asked for, does he sit. Iroh vacates the cushion, despite Zuko's insistence he keep it.

"No, no. I will go. I have been without tea for over an hour." He waves the empty teapot for emphasis.

Zuko stands awkwardly as Iroh shuffles from the room, humming jovially. Katara lets him stew in it as she resets the board. "Well?"

He huffs and sits.

They're equally abysmal at Pai Sho, and trade wins and losses across four days of games. That's all they trade though, because Zuko doesn't take being teased well, especially if he's gunning to win and Katara undercuts his victory. The last resort company she once sought in him mostly returns, but there's an irreversible shift in them now; he can't distract her now that she knows instead of suspects the depths his Nation can go to. Ironically, it opens him up more to her. When he loses, either the match or the victors' high ground, he goes moody and sullen. It's even worse when he realises she lets him win when he does; brooding, moody Zuko is so much worse than stuck up, self-righteous Zuko.

"You have a sibling, don't you?" She guesses out of the blue halfway through a match she's set to win.

Zuko starts up from glaring at the board. "How did you know?"

"You're a terrible loser. And because you get so stroppy when I win, I'm going to guess it's a sister?" He glowers at her. "Okay, I'm definitely right. Older or younger?"

"None of your business."

She leans back, having moved the table and cushions so she could prop herself against the wall. Zuko judges her slouch with a huff. "I don't have to play you, you know. I'm sure Lily will be equal competition. If you're going to be so obtuse, you can go."

He glares when she flicks her hand at him. "If you want to know, guess for all I care."

"Hm…" He shifts under her scrutiny. "No. I don't want to play that way. Tell me two truths and one lie about her, and I'll see what I can figure out."

"I'll tell you two lies," he hisses, getting testy the longer she drags this out. "See if you can figure it out."

"Fine."

"Fine. She's loving and kind, she always has my back, and she's younger than me."

"You think you made that hard?" Katara laughs in his quickly reddening face. "Oh, Sunshine. The first two are opinions, only the last one can be a fact. The last one was the truth." She leans across the table. "Little sisters know."

He sneers in the face of her victory. "Of course, you're a little sister."

"You already knew that. You want to play, give me a second to think of my lies."

Confusion takes the place of his malice. "We're already playing something, and your nonsense has no mindful advantage." He sweeps his hand over the board. "Pai Sho trains the mind, teaches strategy and how to know your opponent."

"I know you're a sore loser who lost a lot to his little sister."

Steam shoots out of Zuko's nose. She always wondered if that was possible for firebenders. "Think of your lies."

She already has, but takes an extra two minutes, pretending to think while Zuko steeps. "Sokka's nineteen, I'm sixteen, and Aang's the oldest."

Zuko's tension flushes out in a snort. "That's it?" He shakes his head. "I expected better. The lie is the last one. The Avatar's obviously the youngest." But as his words float between them, and Katara's grin widens like the owlcat caught the mouse, he realises his mistake. "No!" he stammers as she begins to cackle. "No, I mean, the first one is the lie!"

"Aang's a hundred and fourteen years old!" Katara howls.

"By default!" The room's heating up as the air around Zuko simmers. "It's a technicality!"

"Another win for team little sister!" She cackles when he sends her Pai Sho board flying.