Here it is, the Penultimate Chapter!

To all my readers, you guys have been amazing! So amazing! And, if anyone has any fan art, I'd love to see it, obsess over it, then - if I can figure out how - post it with the final chapter! Hit me up on tumblr at ruebear95

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Sangok trembles before Katara, and so he should. The string of boys she's left snow blasted, frozen to the ground, or shivering where they stand are testament to her sparring skills. By the time she makes it to Sangok she's bored. Time to mix things up.

When Sangok shakily summons his snow and throws it, she's quick to catch it, melt it, let the momentum spin her in the snow, and bend a wave of water that swoops under Sangok and sweeps him into the air. She freezes it with a wave of her hand, suspending Sangok in an icy trap. She waves prettily up at him, and his blush alone almost melts through her trap.

"Nice try, pupil Sangok," Pakku's displeased voice slices the fresh, morning air. He goes on, leaving Sangok to struggle in the ice above the rest of his pupil's heads. "A couple of more years and you might be ready to fight a sea sponge." A wave of his hand dispels the ice, dropping Sangok into a flurry of snow. "Would anyone care for a rematch with Katara?"

Some of the boys actually try to disappear into the evaporating snow vapour Sangok's fall kicked up. The others pretend not to have heard their teacher.

Pakku hums in amusement, turning back to his star pupil. "Katara, you've advanced far more quickly than any student I've ever trained. You have proven that with fierce determination, passion and hard work, you can accomplish anything." Their shared moment evaporates with a happy chortle off to the side. Pakku turns, effortlessly resuming his displeased disposition. "Raw talent alone is not enough. Pupil Aang!"

Aang freezes, dropping the airball and the floating Momo onto his head. "Yes, Master Pakku?"

"Care to step into the sparring circle?" The Master's sarcasm could cut the ice. "I figure since you've found time to play with house pets, you must have already mastered waterbending."

Katara knows before Aang even opens his mouth that the point has gone right over his smooth head. "I wouldn't say mastered but check this out!"

He twists, effortlessly bending the snow around him to form a snowman of himself, arrow and all. While Katara isn't impressed, Momo can't seem to tell which is which, diving onto the snowman until it's nothing but a snow corpse.

Wisely, Pakku chooses to end the lesson there. For the other students.

While the boys and Aang disband, Katara begins the real training. If she thought Pakku was strict before he let her into his lessons, his one-on-one teachings are as severe as the glacier peaks. Slowly at first then in a flood of drills, meditations, and circuits, Katara's bending refines, her reflexes sharpen.

He begins advising she take in more proteins to aid her sore muscles. Her body quakes in the night, hungry for motion under the glowing moon. But if Pakku even senses her recovery isn't sufficient he alters the training to meditations, stretching and focusing on the pushes and pulls of their element.

He sits now on the firm packed ice walls during her warm downs, legs dangling over the edge, cup of tea steaming in his lap. It's then she likes him most, in the quiet reflective moments that make her think of Iroh.

"I downplayed it in front of the others, you know," her master mumbles between sips. "You'd already beaten them down, and I am supposed to be their teacher, not destroying the confidence of our future warriors. But you are admirable."

"Wow, tell me how you really feel," Katara teases as she hinges at the waist, bringing her arm up and over her head, seeking to release the sweet ache in her back a good day of training builds.

Pakku smiles softly and his eyes find a distant place. The future, where the sun will break the new spring horizon? Or perhaps sixty years in the past when he was young, in love, and had no idea the heartache awaiting him. "I never could have predicted how strong you'd become. When I was your age the idea of a woman warrior was..."

"We really don't need to get into that," Katara hedges. Pakku's made progress, which largely stems from her progress, but he slips sometimes back into old ways she grits her teeth and brunt's.

"I'd have laughed then as I laughed two weeks ago," Pakku presses. He's not forceful, and when Katara realises it's not about her she lets him fall into his reflections. "It may seem pig-headed to you, Katara, but there was a method to my madness beyond blindly sticking to tradition. The world was at war, but the war hadn't touched us. It hadn't touched the south. Yes, we'd heard what happened to the Air Nomads, but Sozin was dead. We thought the threat with him. Northern warriors weren't the necessity they are now. They were hazard precautions. Formalities. My life was going to be one of protection and love.

"Then Kanna fled for the south and… and then the raids. I spent my shattered youth protecting our borders before we realised branching them out was our best defence. We built further walls, cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, and I trained boys to die on walls away from their homes. No peace to it. No end to the madness."

He hasn't realised she's stopped stretching. "Why do they make it so horrible?" She asks as she plops herself down onto the wall beside him. "Life. All this. Why do they need to make us do this? Why do they treat us like we're pieces on a board?"

"And then set the board on fire?" Pakku asks derisively. He doesn't need to ask who she's talking about. "Power."

"Power isn't real. It's just a word."

Pakku ponders silently. Then he shrugs his thin shoulders. "Mankind was always in competition, they'll say. First with the elements. Then the animals. At last, with each other. Harmony enslaves us to slothfulness, naivety. They'd say we'd stand still; the progression of humanity would die. Take that harmony away, and they give me a life fulfilled by training. They gave you a life of sacrifice, family, community. Competition. And while we bicker, their society is stable."

"Stable?" Katara shakes her head. "They tried to obliterate my tribe. Aang is the last of his people. Earthbenders supress their powers or are conscripted to fight in a war they didn't start."

"None of us started it," Pakku amends, "but we all have to fight, in our own ways. The Northern Watertribe is strong, yes, but only because we seclude ourselves up here away from it all. Does that make us any better in this war?"

Katara doesn't want to say what she's really thinking. She's one girl on a mission with all but one of the most important people in her life. Pakku's the forge-master, creating blades to shatter in an unending war.

Instead, she bows her head. "It is better not to make war."

Pakku's teaching style is to break young ego's down then build warriors upon the foundation. There's no room for comfort in his questionable, but successful technique. So, when he awkwardly lays his hand on her shoulder, she smiles to save him struggling up something to say.

Her smile fades into an expression of horror, a horror Pakku has been lucky enough never to experience before this moment.

Before the first black snow of his life falls upon the North.


Vision periscoping in and out of the present. Her mother, smiling. Clear sky. Red metal armour. Her village's flat, tundra plains. Icy steps rushing beneath her feet. The Northern town hall appearing. Black snow. Her mother, dying. Hands too small to be hers clutch the fur lining to their family home. Drums pounding across the platformed switchback walls of the Watertribe palace. Aang tugging her along. Pakku's severe face stricken with worry as he ascends the meeting dais with Arnook. Her mother's body.

Katara slams back into the present as a body slams into her back. The Northern watertribe hall is jam packed with people and voices. Questions batter Arnook and his advisors. The drums beat outside, even though everyone must already be in the hall, desperate to find out what's going on. Except they all know.

The Fire Nation is coming.

Yet, right up to the last second, right up to Arnook facing the gathered crowd, opens his mouth, and delivers the news, they hope. Until it shatters. "The day we have feared for so long has arrived. The Fire Nation is on our doorstep. It is with great sadness I call my family here before me, knowing well that some of these faces are about to vanish from our tribe."

Only after hours spent training under the gruelling master can Katara interpret the twitching wince Pakku suppresses as he stands beside Yue. On his other side, an older boy waits stoically.

"But they will never vanish from our hearts," Arnook soldiers on. "Now, as we approach the battle for our existence, I call upon the great spirits. Spirit of the Ocean! Spirit of the Moon! Be with us!"

Be with us, Katara echoes from the depths of her soul.

Arnook's sigh weighs mountains. "I'm going to need volunteers for a dangerous mission."

Without waiting to hear what the mission entails, her brother shoots up from his seat beside her. "I volunteer."

Her heart breaks. "Sokka..."

He pulls his arm away when she tries to reach for him. Face painted with determination, Sokka leads a procession of sorrowful young men to the dais. The boy beside Yue moves deliberately in front of him so he can be the first recipient of Arnook's ceremonial mark. If he'd bothered to pay attention, he'd see how little energy Sokka wastes on him. His eyes are only for Yue.

"Be warned, many of you will not return." Arnook's sorrow is so great it's a surprise he can lift his arm to bestow the marks.

Yue sees her father's struggle. She straightens. "But those who do will be heroes. Those who don't will be our saviours, and the fathers of a new beginning."

Sokka isn't sure if Yue is talking only to him until she turns to face the crowd. Already sombre, none know how to respond to the usually quiet Princess. Even her father watches quietly as she stands and walks to the edge of the dais.

"We broke from the rest of the world when this war began, and in doing so we abandoned our brothers and sisters to the south." Murmurs of discontent threaten to drown Yue before she can really begin. So, she waits for them to pass. When they do, she holds her hands out to encompass her people. "On the ice, when a limb is sick, you cut it away to save the body. We thought this world already on its way to rot from the inside with Fire Nation greed. Earth Kingdom stubbornness. Watertribe segregation. In our small lives up here at the crown of the world we thought there was none left to tell us otherwise. There is no shame in being told we were wrong."

She sweeps a graceful arm to where Aang and Katara watch amongst the crowd. As if she'd waterbent a current, the people around them ripple back. "Avatar Aang returns, and with him he brings two warriors whose bravery I can not do the disservice of trying to commend with words alone."

It's not only Sokka who glows with pride at Yue's words. It slams into Katara in that moment that the first person to call her a warrior is the placid princess, and she couldn't be happier.

"My people, we do not know war. We do not know raids, know black snow, know the pain of having our mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers ripped right out of our hands. Not in the way these southern heroes do. They came here to reveal to us truth, because they have lived that truth. They know war, we know how to protect ourselves." Yue's expression hardens. "No longer. Isolation, folklore, seclusion, will not become all we know. Six decades, the world begs for the Northern Watertribes help. And we hide. We abstain. We abandon."

She lets that hang in the air for a long moment.

"Forgotten by the rest of the world, we were content to stay stuck in our ways. Now the Avatar and our Sisters of the South have come, and they teach us a new word: Provide. And with that word we embrace the truth the Avatar heralds: Destiny is not given. Destiny is taken."

Zuko would melt this palace to the ground if he heard Yue. Katara could happily be frozen to this moment in time forever as Yue reaches for her people.

"Our world as we know it is past. Divided we were safe but united our tribes will always be strong. It is time to provide strength to the rest of the world. It is time we stop dividing ourselves into Southern and Northern watertribe. We are of the north or south, but from this day, we who live will be the survivors of the new Onetribe."

And before the eyes of all her people, before the master waterbender, before her father the chief, Princess Yue, founder of Onetribe, is the first to bow before two Southern peasants and the Avatar.

"To the Onetribe," Aang murmurs, respecting Yue's soft tone, and bows back.

As the members of Onetribe bow to each other, to Katara, to the brave young men about to go to war, only Katara sees Yue's silent tears as she straightens. She lets her own quietly join the Princess in sorrow as she watches her people be born again, and another family member walk towards death.


Aang is all she has left, and she finds him talking with Arnook on the steps of the chief's palace after the meeting. They won't let her see Sokka. The men need to prep, free of distraction, even if all she wants to do is throw her arms around her brother's shoulders for what could be the last time and tell him she's so proud of the man he's becoming.

"The stillness before battle is unbearable. Such a quiet dread," Arnook whispers as she approaches. He's so unprepared for this, out of his depth in a tumultuous ocean he's too used to being still. As if he thought the tides were his whims, only to be hit with an errant wave and realise no one can control the ocean, not even his master waterbender. Not even himself.

Aang isn't handling it much better. So like the winds, when he's still Katara knows it means a storm is brewing. "I wasn't there when the Fire Nation attacked my people." He stands from his crouch, shadow long atop his snow packed pillar. "I'm going to make a difference this time."


Arnook calls the first battle a skirmish, no more than the Fire Navy flexing, mocking them as they test the waters.

Katara can't show the others how shaken it's left her. When that first flaming ball hit the wall, she thought her life had abruptly ended. The last time the world went out from under her like that was when she went over the ship rail in the storm. Only instead of drowning in the ocean, she's almost crushed by tons of falling snow. Pakku's lessons and her quick reflexes save her. But when she crests what remains of the wall, her fellow warriors stare in horror at the fleet driving for their front door. A front door which now has a giant, smoking hole in it.

They're no unit. No band of warriors. They're defenders. Gate Keepers. They have no idea the ancestry which runs in their cold veins.

But Katara does.

"Enemy iron inbound!" She yells it over and over, running the length of wall, giving the boys something to focus on. Even if they think her snow mad, crazed with fear, they turn to watch her spectacle. "If this were the age of our ancestors we would be under that ice, flooding their ships, spearing them from the inside. In everything but name, we are Icedivers!

"They believe they are coming to take a pole. Are we just going to give it to them?" In reply, fifty terrified feet pound the ice. It beats in time with Katara's heart. Boom. Boom. "Commander Zhao thinks the Northern Wat- The Onetribe is already ash. Are we ash?" Boom! Boom! Boom! "What are we?"

"Water benders!"

Katara's heart thumps in her chest. "And who are the fiercest waterbenders?"

"ICEDIVERS!"

The air warps with the thermal plummeting of fifty Waterbenders unleashing the storm. Katara's spent her life thinking she was the only one who could carry such a burn, but not all rage burns hot.

Waterbenders rise around her. The warriors of the tribe form columns with their spears. At the vanguard atop the wall, Katara turns to face the darkening world.

But she is only a student, a fighter. The waterbenders of Onetribe need their master. "Stop those fireballs!"

Pakku's students rally to their masters calls of lock, sweep, catch; stopping the fireballs with the ice which they call home, freezing them in mid-air if Aang cannot deflect them away before they reach the walls. Waterbenders flood the ships with water then freeze them, taking them clear of the ice, trapping the soldiers on board in their efforts to lighten Aang's load as he sweeps from ship to ship.

It goes on, and on. Until it doesn't. Twilight breaks as the sun dips, and as if connected by one mind, the Naval ships slip back and drop anchor. Katara, exhausted, strained, bone weary tired she hasn't felt in months, relaxes for the first time in hours and looks around her. Smoke billows from the battle-worn city in several spots where she and the other waterbenders failed to protect it.

Yue stands amongst them, silver hair a beacon between the black smoke that Katara staggers towards. When she reaches the Princess, her eyes don't leave the destruction on the horizon. "They've stopped firing."

All but one. A dark shape sails towards the city. Katara braces for the attack. It's heading straight for Yue. Until the sun finally dips, bringing the shadow, and his rider, into the waning light. "Aang!"

He's falling to the floor before Appa's finished landing, the dutiful sky bison cushioning his fall with his long, fluffy tail. On the ground, Aang slumps. "I can't do it... I can't do it."

"What happened?" Katara asks, already assessing him for damage.

He's barely aware she's there. "I must have taken out a dozen Fire Navy ships, but there's just too many of them. I can't fight them all."

The mother of Onetribe kneels before the young boy. "But you have to. You're the Avatar."

She was impressive before her people, but Katara resents how much she's asking of Aang.

"I'm just one kid." It rends something inside of Aang to admit that, and he buries his face back in his folded arms. Yue appropriately backs off as Katara kneels beside her friend.


Yue offers Aang her private chambers to rest. From just the peak Katara got in the doorway, she knows his sleep would have been luxurious if the fate of the North didn't rest on his young lithe shoulders. Still a little sore with Yue, Katara goes to help mend the defences with her teacher.

Pakku reminds her of how important recovery is, but this time she doesn't have to pay attention.

Only when the almost full moon waxes above her does she finally stop and see if Aang is awake. He is, and with Yue, on the balcony outside her chambers. No hard feelings permeate their quiet conversation, so Katara does her best to dismiss hers as she joins them.

Aang smiles and takes her hand before she can fuss. He doesn't let go when he places them down on the wall, seeking her strength. She has no idea how she has any left, but she'd gladly give it to him if only to give him some of his usual strength of will back.

"Legend says the moon was the first waterbender," Yue murmurs, and something in her voice makes Katara pay attention. "Our ancestors saw how it pushed and pulled the tides and learned how to do it themselves."

It's as if she read Katara's mind. "I've always noticed my waterbending is stronger at night." Not just that, she thinks, squeezing Aang's thin fingers.

Yue smiles. "Our strength comes from the spirit of the moon. Our life comes from the spirit of the ocean. They work together to keep balance."

Them, or when they're unavailable, a moody firebender brings you soothing tea, food, and extra blankets when the lamps get too bright. Not for the first time, Katara wonders if Zuko is on one of those ships. Looking at the moon. Does he think about her when he does, like how she irrevocably can't help but think of him when she feels the sun on her neck.

"The spirits!" Aang cries suddenly, obliterating her quiet contemplation. "Maybe I can find them and get their help!"


The most spiritual place in the Northern Pole takes Katara's breath away. The modest garden has the only grass for miles, it's earthy scent fresh, rugged where snow is crisp, like evergreen pines on solstice mornings. A fresh spring is fed by a calm torrent of water flowing over the top of the glacier walls which surround the garden, almost as if coming from nowhere. Water glows like liquid moonbeams, the spray light and refreshing on Katara's skin after hours of battle.

Until she realises, to her amazement, she's started to sweat again. "It's so warm in here," she breaths as Aang sprints ahead to roll in the grass. Her breath doesn't even steam up, and she strips off her heavy parka.

Yue joins her. "It's the centre of all spiritual energy in our land."

Momo scampers ahead to join Aang, but his attention is caught by something in the water. His sticky, agile lemur fingers try and fail to catch one of the two koi fish, one black with a white spot on its head, one white with a black spot, circling each other in the still lake. He gives up, scampering away before Katara can chase him off.

Aang stops his rolling, sitting up to look over at the princess. "You're right, Yue. I can feel ... something. It's so tranquil." He swings his legs around in the way only airbenders can, sitting in lotus, bowing his head under the silent waterfall.

Katara settles herself by the edge of the pool and waits.

Yue joins her. Slim dark fingers begin to play with stems, twisting, testing the tensile strength of the grass, but never tearing or ripping it from the ground. Despite having access anytime she could want, Katara can tell the Princess respects this place too much to use it as her playground.

"I wish I could do what you do."

It's never hard to hear Yue's soft voice, even if a hundred people are shouting over her. But Katara barely hears the words right next to her ear. When she turns, Yue doesn't look up from the ground.

"You're a stronger woman than I've any right to know, yet you call me Princess. I could have gone my whole life without ever seeing someone like you waterbend, inspire, and face a charge of Fire Nation ships without flinching."

If only she knew how terrified Katara had been. "Yue, just because you're not a waterbend-"

"You looked our traditions in the eye and told them no." Yue's clear, glacier eyes find Katara's, their hold so gentle, never forceful, as still as the spirit oasis. "You told our oldest beliefs you were worth more. That is strength."

Yue's surrounded by warriors, healers, spear masters and waterbenders. Katara feels stupid for ever assuming the Princess cared about her physical limitations. "Strength is taking one's people by the hand and telling them 'we can be better'." She takes Yue's hand now. "You called Sokka and the other men the fathers of Onetribe, but you are it's mother. It's not just an idea that you had in the moment, not with a speech like yours. You've carried it, nurtured it, seen your people stagnate up here while knowing the world needs the North's strength. Nothing takes more strength then to guide a child through its life."

"I imagined my first child a little differently," Yue tries to joke, her smile more of a grimace.

Katara knows about the engagement. After catching Sokka's resentful glances at her necklace, she finally broke him down into telling her what his problem was. "You don't have to imagine anything you don't want to. Onetribe is yours, its traditions are yours. Value your people, but value yourself too. You're a great leader, Yue. You'll make a greater Queen."

She's never seen a Princess blush and adds it to her list of achievements. "The first queen of the Icedivers."

It's Katara's turn to blush. "Spirits, I really said that didn't I? I've never even gone below the ice myself, not like the divers of old at least." She laughs, but it feels hollow, even when Yue smiles. It's so easy to see why her brother likes her so much. "I was so scared up there, Yue. I've never been in a battle like that, and your dad said it wasn't even a real one. What those ships can do, even with Aang out there. Maybe... maybe Pakku was right to be apprehensive."

It tears something inside her to admit that, but it also feels somehow better. Freeing. Like hearing it out loud releases the strain she's been holding in her neck and shoulders. She almost sighs from the sweet ache in her soul.

When she can bare to look at the princess again, she knows it must be a physical thing. "Look at that, she's human."

They giggle quietly, cautious of disturbing Aang. But Yue gasps when she looks over. Katara's panic is short lived when she sees the bright glow of his tattoos.

"Is he okay?"

"He's crossing into the spirit world." Katara turns her body to face Aang. "He'll be fine as long as we don't move his body. That's his way back to the physical world."

"Should we get some help?" Yue asks tentatively, never taking her eyes from Aang.

"No, he's my friend. I'm perfectly capable of..."

The stranger watches them from the bridge across the Oasis pool. Hooded, tall. Dressed head to toe in white. She can't even see the eyes through the narrow slits of the snow suit, but she knows they are on her. No waterbender would feel the need to blend in with the snow, and she doubts any earthbender would venture this far north.

Katara moves to stand. "Go get Sokka."

With her own life she might gamble. Not with Aang's.

"Hold," Katara warns when the stranger tracks Yue's retreating figure, then returns his gaze to the pool. No, not the pool. The boy sitting oblivious to the world around him. "I said hold."

The stranger doesn't, stepping down off the bridge. She watches the grass for scorch marks – In case they get any ideas. Fire Nation don't discriminate their benders like the watertribes, and in the sexless white suit, Katara has no idea what she might be up against.

It drifts silently across the glade, blank facemask never leaving hers once it realises the Avatar won't move. "Stop moving!" She commands. Buy time if she can. Escalate if she can't. Try to catch it off guard. "I said stop!"

It keeps coming, certain as a glacier.

Katara's been in enough battles by now to hear one gathering it's breath.

The stranger knows the sound too, skirting around Aang, knowing who the immediate threat is. But it stops barely a meter from her, tense. If it's waiting for her to move, she won't. If it does, she'll waste it before it can go two steps. A bone-weary sigh leaves it, then it lunges.

She jumps away, but the sudden jerking motion wasn't for her. The thing moved backwards, but her reaction was instinctual and deadly wrong. It sprints for Aang, gets within grabbing distance. Katara breaks right, moves around It's flank where the right-hand sparks to life. The left grips the back of Aang's collar, and Katara sees red.

The oasis erupts. Air torn to shreds by superheated particles as the Stranger concentrates fire on her. Grass turns to dust. Water freezes and melts into gnarled chunks of earth and mud as the two benders battle with everything they have. They throw them at each other, whip tendrils of flame, waves of water. Anything to keep the other away from the meditating boy at their centre.

Katara's first wave forces the stranger back, but Its retaliation is swift and deadly. She can't get close enough to pull Aang to safety, or risk getting burned. She tries once, but the fire whip slaps into the inside of her reaching arm. She leaps back, screaming more from fright than actual pain. As if the fire were doing it's best not to burn her.

The stranger has no such qualms, pressing the advantage with a furious snarl. She stumbles, victim to their chaos but not their unrelenting fury, and hits them from the side with a wave.

She rushes for Aang, but as she does, she feels a presence to her left. She turns just in time to see the Stranger flying through the air at her, blank mask covering its face, a fire whip arcing down to cut her in two. She brings her own whip up. Fire and water slam together. Vibrations rattle down her arm. She's slow after a full day of battle and no rest, despite Pakku's training. And this thing is fast.

She's pressed back. She tries to flow around the Stranger, but the thing is immovable. No, in fact the opposite. It moves too well, always ducking, stepping to the side. Always finding an escape. And it's smart, using the churned-up ground, the wooden archway to corner her. She's being hemmed in, corralled by flashing fire. Her defence doesn't cave, but it erodes along the edges as she protects her core.

A line of fire parts an inch-deep gash through her shoulder. Stings worse than frostbite. Her cry of pain harmonises with the Stranger's shout of alarm. She hasn't got a second to breath, let alone question the sound, when It presses in again. Building a rhythm until her back's touching the wall. Flash, press, shove. Fire opens up her defences, but it doesn't touch her skin again. It doesn't matter, the Stranger's just saving it's energy by this point.

The stranger spins flames in its hands, flashing wild and fast. Trying to distract her. No idea escape is not her plan until she fakes left. The Stranger swings backhanded to catch her. She rears back and slips around to Its right. A hand clamps on the back of her neck, but she's under the arm, hand outstretched towards the pool. Water bursts up in a sheet, driving for them as the Stranger pulls and slams her against the icy wall just as the water slams into their back.

A cage of ice presses the Stranger around Katara. Everything's frozen except his head. The hand around her neck pricks her skin with cold. Clouds of exertion puff between them. Vision rushes in and out. She's still standing, thanks to the nearly full moon and her reverse Willow gambit.

Time to see if it paid off, she thinks as she reaches up, pulling the white hood free.

"Zuko."

The banished prince stares at her. "You've learned some new tricks." He can't so much as turn his head.

"You haven't." Her breath cloaks his pale skin. New bruises colour him like dark purple ponds. He's got a superficial burn at the corner of his jaw, torn open in their fight. Twin slashes down the opposite cheek. She fights down the urge to ask what happened.

"How did you know it was me?"

"Flow forwards. Never retreat. No opportunity to strike opens if a man allows himself to be pushed backwards," she recites, as if it's months ago and they're on the deck of his ship again. Not tangled together at the crown of the world. "Iroh's shorter. Zhao's taller. Only one pupil left."

"You found a master." It's not a question. What waterbending he'd seen of her in the past was far outstripped by the skill which ended up with him sealed to the wall. He almost sounds impressed.

"Picked up a few new tricks." She's exhausted, slumped against the wall. Zuko can't move, but his eyes trace her fatigue, the sweat on her brow, linger on her triumphant lips. Then down to the singed gash on her shoulder. She looks too. "Amongst other things."

She leans her shoulder, touching the ice encasing his reaching arms. Light slithers down the trickling ice, coating the wound still raw and blistering. Before Zuko's amazed eyes, the burn evaporates until all that's left is the rip in her tunic and the water dripping down her skin.

She slips out of his frozen hold before he can pretend to be happy he didn't hurt her. She won't fall for it. Her face wasn't covered. He knew exactly who he was attacking. "You can cool off until Sokka and the other guards come."


He didn't almost drown with nothing but a pack of sealion turtles to mourn him, just to be frozen to this glacier cliff, ten feet from his destiny. But no matter how he thrashes, strains, roars, Zuko can't break free of the ice Katara's trapped him in. Worn out by his own futile struggling, he hangs in the frigid air.

How did she get so strong? There's no ice he can't melt, yet here he hangs. He'd be impressed if he wasn't furious. With her. With this endless wasteland of ice. With the Avatar sitting right behind him. He doesn't care. It all blends into the maelstrom building inside him. Courses through him like a fuse desperate to be lit, but he just can't summon the flames.

Until warmth bathes his hanging head. Frozen to the wall, only able to lift his neck, Zuko's vision constricts as the sun breaks the horizon, flooding his pupils with light. He doesn't need to see.

Breathing deepens. Heat rises through his body, from his guts, up into his lungs.

Remember your breath of fire, Prince Zuko. It could save your life.

Steam billows from his nose, but Katara cannot see. Smart in the moment to trap him like this. Now it will be her undoing. He snorts heat down his chest. A crack cleaves the ice holding him captive. Just a little more. Another breath.

Katara cries out as the ice holding him explodes. But he's already firing before he lands. The move is risky, his root severed. But she's already turning, whipping water into a protective shield. His fire rips through it, slams into her and takes her clean off her feet. She slams into the spirit gate with a resounding thud.

"You rise with the moon... I rise with the sun," he sneers as he stands back up.

She doesn't, even when he goes to grab the Avatar.

"Katara?" She's motionless on the ground, soot stained, face half buried in the mud. "Shit!"

Forgetting the Avatar, he rushes to her side, turning her over. He knows she's breathing before he checks her pulse, but the soft, steady beat against his fingertips calms the shaking in his hands. Heart calming, he lays her down on her back so she won't inhale the soggy earth, then turns to face his destiny.


Pretty please let me know your thoughts and feedback because I would love to know if I'm doing a good job! It only takes a second and it would be greatly appreciated! Reading all your wonderful comments keeps me writing as I plough on for Book Two.

Kudos always welcome, likes, dislikes, comments and complaints. Let me know what you guys think because I love reading them and finding out about you guys!