Chapter 4: The Firebending Masters
The next day, everyone was settled around the campfire eating. Katara was holding her bowl of food when she noticed Zuko approach the group. "Listen everybody," Zuko said. "I've got some pretty bad news. I've lost my stuff." Zuko looked down at the ground, his face dejected.
Toph raised both her hands up, "Don't look at me," she said folding her arms. "I didn't touch your stuff."
"I'm talking about my firebending. It's gone."
"Gone?" Katara said with a gasp.
"Well, it's not completely gone. It's just," Zuko paused, "weaker for some reason. I wasn't allowed to bend when I was in prison … I'm not sure when this started."
"Damn, if you weren't a jerkbender anymore you would be slightly more tolerable," Jet said. "Though I'd say you could take the fire out of prince hot pants and he's still Fire Nation scum."
Zuko's eyebrow twitched but otherwise he showed no sign of hearing Jet. He seemed lost in thought. "I bet it's because I changed sides," Zuko said.
"You think that would make your bending weaker?" Katara said, drinking from her bowl.
Aang nodded and said, "Maybe your firebending comes from rage and you just don't have enough anger to fuel it the way you used to."
Sokka leaned toward Zuko and pointed a finger above. "Sooo, all we need to do is make Zuko angry. Easy enough." Sokka poked Zuko with his sword's hilt in the head and waist several times, laughing.
Jet laughed, "Sokka that stunt is much funnier when you're doing it to Lee and not me."
"Okay, cut it out!" Zuko said. Sokka stopped poking him, as his sword fell from his hands and was thrown above, before falling on his head. Zuko rubbed his nose, turning a stern look to Jet. "And it's Zuko," he said, sounding annoyed. "Look, even if you're right, I don't want to rely on hate and anger anymore. There has to be another way."
"You're gonna need to learn to draw your firebending from a different source. I recommend the original source," Toph said, eating from her bowl of food.
Sokka appeared to get a sudden burst of excitement, "How's he supposed to do that ? By jumping into a volcano ?"
"Maaaaybe we should try lighting him on fire," Jet said with a grin.
"No," Toph said. "Zuko needs to go back to whatever the original source of firebending is."
"So is it jumping into a volcano?" Sokka said in a serious tone, Jet laughing in response.
"I don't know," Toph said putting her bowl down. "For earthbending, the original benders were badgermoles." Toph proceeded to tell her story about how as a child she ran into and learned earthbending from badgermoles. At the end, Katara found herself thinking about the origins of waterbending. She had been taught as a young girl about waterbenders learning to push and pull water from the ocean and moon spirits.
"That's amazing Toph!" Aang said. "I learned from the monks, but the original airbenders were the sky bison." Aang leaned back to look at Appa. "Maybe you can give me a lesson sometime, buddy." Appa growled in response from the shed.
"Well, this doesn't help me. The original firebenders were the dragons, and they're extinct," Zuko said.
"What do you mean ?" Aang said in surprise. "Roku had a dragon, and there were plenty of dragons when I was a kid."
Zuko frowned and angrily said, "Well, they aren't around anymore, okay?"
After a pause, Jet said, "Yeah because Fire Nation scum killed them all." Aang gasped. At Katara's glare, Jet said defensively, "What, he should know the truth. He's the Avatar. Coddling him isn't going to help defeat the Fire Lord."
Zuko sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Another thing my people have done that makes me ashamed."
"Yeah," Jet said. "You should be ashamed."
Katara wasn't sure why almost everything Jet said since he joined the group was irritating her. Maybe because he had hurt her so much in the past she wanted him to hurt too? She knew they had a bad history, but Zuko didn't deserve the hate that Jet kept relentlessly throwing at him. She knew it was petty but she couldn't stop herself. "I'm sure you know allll about shame, Jet," Katara said. Jet turned to her with a surprised look of hurt.
"Ooooooo lover's quarrel," Toph said.
"We're not…!" Katara stood and threw her hands up in anger, knowing Toph was just trying to get under her skin. It was working. "We're not a couple." Katara said, as calmly as she could, sitting down with a huff and crossing her arms in front of her chest. She tried taking deep calming breaths.
Zuko's eyebrow was raised. He cleared his throat. "Anyways … maybe there's another way," Zuko said, walking toward the fountain. "The first people to learn from the dragons were the ancient Sun Warriors."
"Sun Warriors? Well, I know they weren't around when I was a kid," Aang said.
"No, they died off thousands of years ago," Zuko said. "But their civilization wasn't too far from where we are now." Zuko turned his head toward Aang. "Maybe we can learn something by poking around their ruins."
Aang said, "It's like the monks used to tell me. Sometimes, the shadows of the past can be felt by the present."
"So what," Sokka said. "Maybe you'll pick up some super old Sun Warrior energy just by standing where they stood a thousand years ago?" he said waving his arms around.
"More or less. Either I find a new way to firebend, or the Avatar has to find a new teacher," Zuko said.
"So," Jet said. "You two are going on a trip to some dumb old Fire Nation ruin?" Zuko and Aang nodded. Jet smiled, "I'll be sure to keep Katara safe and warm while you're gone." Jet suddenly put his arm around Katara's shoulders.
She jerked away from him, standing to glare at him with a fierce look on her face. At some point she had bent water to her hands and frozen them into icy points on her fingers, which she held raised threateningly at her side. "I don't need your protection Jet. If you keep acting like this, you're the one who's gonna need protection from me." With a jerk of her hands the icy spikes hit the ground near Jet's feet, and he winced.
ooo
"Ouch," Toph said.
Sokka guffawed as Katara walked away. "You know you deserve that," Sokka said to Jet. He stood to follow her, slyly saying, "Water tribe," and crossing his arms as he made his exit. Because of how Jet had manipulated his sister, Sokka disliked him even more than Zuko, and that was saying a lot.
ooo
It wasn't Zuko's fault really. At least that's what he tried telling himself. It had all started with Aang saying, "Zuko, get over here! I want you to dance with me!"
Zuko had been hesitant at first, but soon gave in and they followed the statue's poses of the 'Dancing Dragon'. Then a mystical egg-shaped gemstone had appeared out of the floor. Zuko had picked it up and held it. It felt warm and alive. And then slime poured into the room. They had tried to escape but there was no way out. They'd moved toward a metal grate that was open to the air, but were unable to get through it. Now the front of Zuko and Aang's bodies were against the grate, a sticky glue-like substance under them pushing them upward. Zuko was trying to not panic.
"It stopped," Aang said as the slime stopped filling the room.
"At least we have air," Zuko said. "Maybe if we stay calm, we can figure a way out of this." This was all talk, because inside Zuko's mind he was not calm at all. He could see no way out of this situation. He started to wonder, if they didn't make it out of this, how long it would take Team Avatar to decide to come after them.
A few minutes later Aang said, "You had to pick up the glowing egg, didn't you?"
"At least I made something happen. If it were up to you, we'd never have made it past the courtyard," Zuko said.
Aang opened his mouth very widely and yelled, "Help!"
"Who are you yelling to? Nobody's lived here for centuries," Zuko said.
"Well," Aang said, "what do you think we should do?"
When Zuko was in tough situations lately, he tried to think of what his uncle would do or say, so he replied, "Think about our place in the universe?"
ooo
Katara was practicing her waterbending after breakfast, when Jet strutted up to her. "Hey Kat," he said, disturbing her during a difficult move, and causing her to drop a lot of water on the courtyard ground. Some of the water hit both of their legs, and she turned to him annoyed.
"What?" she said a bit snappy.
Jet raised an eyebrow at her. "Sorry for bothering you," he said. "I was just … I guess I'm just worried about Aang going off alone with Zuko. I know you guys seem to trust him now, but … I mean he was your enemy not too long ago."
Katara froze at his words. Truthfully, there was a small part of her that was worried about it, but she wouldn't give Jet anything to work with. After Jet joined the group, Zuko had told her about his run-ins with Jet in Ba Sing Se. She knew this was all about hate, and Jet's prejudice toward anyone from the Fire Nation. "Of course I'm not worried," Katara said. "If I was, I wouldn't have let them go."
"But how can you be sure you can trust him?" Jet said.
Katara turned her whole body to face him, her eyes blazing. "Zuko has done more to gain my trust than you have Jet. He sacrificed himself for Aang and I in Ba Sing Se. He went to prison, and was going to be executed for us. He may be from the Fire Nation, but his nationality doesn't define him, his choices do."
Jet seemed surprised, but he nodded. "Ok Katara," he said. "I understand now." There was a hard look in his eyes as Katara went back to her bending practice.
ooo
Katara was lost in thought as the group sat together eating lunch in the large open-air courtyard of the Western Air Temple. Her conversation with Jet had her thinking about the risk they were taking in trusting Aang with Zuko. Aang was their only hope for defeating the Fire Lord. If anything bad happened to him and they had let him go with Zuko … no she couldn't think about it. Like she'd told Jet, Zuko had sacrificed himself for Aang, he wouldn't do anything to hurt him. She kept going back and forth, wrestling with these thoughts, when Toph's voice pulled her out of it.
"So," Toph said, "what's with the hook swords?"
"What do you mean?" Jet said.
"I mean what's the point of the hooks?" Toph said. "Of all the weapons, why have hooks? With my seismic sense and metalbending, I've been noticing the weapons that people carry with them. Hook swords aren't very common."
Jet smiled. "The hooks were great for moving around when the Freedom Fighters had our base in a forest. I could grip the trees with the hooks and swing easily from tree to tree. I had to go through a few forests to get here actually. They're pretty useful for rock climbing too," he said, gesturing to all the rocks around them.
Toph's face shifted from surprise to a wide grin. She sat, clearly thinking for a few moments. "So, you dart around from tree to tree? And you climb things?" Toph said.
"Yea, that's what I just said," Jet said, his eyebrows furrowing.
Toph punched his arm suddenly, "Okay, Sugar Glider."
There was a long moment of silence. "What?" Jet said. "What do those weird bat squirrels have to do with anything?"
"Toph likes to give out nicknames," Katara said fondly, with a roll of her eyes.
"Sure do Sugar Queen," Toph said. "And now I found a pretty good matching nickname for your Sugar Glider over here."
Jet smirked. Katara felt so irritated, she thought that if she had been a firebender at that moment, she would have had no problem with bending.
ooo
Zuko and Aang had been brought to a bridge on the side of a mountain by the Sun Warriors to meet the judgement of the firebending masters. Two eyes glowed inside a cave and a red dragon came out, roaring and circling around the bridge Zuko and Aang were standing on. They both took a step back. A blue dragon came out of the other cave and joined the other dragon as they circled the bridge.
"These are the masters," Zuko said, a note of awe in his voice.
In a low voice Aang responded, "Still think we can take 'em?"
"Sssshhhh, I never said that," Zuko said.
After the display of the dragons' fire, Zuko and Aang had descended the steps and were with the Sun Warriors. Zuko had a realization about firebending as they were all talking. "It's like the Sun," Zuko said, curling his hand into a fist over his chest, "but inside of you. Do you guys realize this?"
The Sun Warrior Chief smiled, "Well, our civilization is called the Sun Warriors ... so yeah."
"That's why my firebending was so weak before. Because for so many years, hunting you," Zuko said, turning to Aang, "was my drive ... it was my purpose." Aang turned toward Zuko as well. "So when I joined you, I lost sight of my inner fire. But now, I have a new drive. I have to help you defeat my father and restore balance to the world."
ooo
Back at the Western Air Temple, Zuko and Aang demonstrated the Dancing Dragon to the rest of Team Avatar and friends. "With this technique the dragons showed us, Zuko and I will be unstoppable!" Aang said. The two got in their final poses and Team Avatar applauded.
"Yeah, that's a great dance you two learned there," Sokka said.
"It's super cute, I'm happy for you two," Jet said, looking amused.
"It's not a dance," Zuko said, "it's a firebending form." He was clearly getting irritated, his voice a bit defensive.
"We'll just tap-dance our way to victory over the Fire Lord," Sokka said moving his fingers in a dancing motion.
"It's a sacred form that happens to be thousands of years old!" Zuko said angrily.
"What's the form called?" Katara said with a grin. She was realizing she liked seeing Zuko flustered. It was cute.
Zuko looked down at the ground as he said, "The Dancing Dragon." Zuko shut his eyes and cringed, looking embarrassed as Team Avatar laughed.
ooo
Later that night, Jet knocked on Katara's door. "Kat," he said. "I think we need to talk." Katara's face was expressionless as she stepped aside to let him in. Her arms were crossed over her chest protectively, her lips in a thin line. "I just wanted to tell you again. I'm really sorry for what happened in the past. But I swear, I want to make it right now. I'll do whatever it takes."
Katara's blue eyes were shiny in the moonlight. "I know," she said, turning away from him. "I'm just so mad at you Jet," she turned her gaze on him, her face vulnerable, "I thought you were dead," she choked out. It was like a dam had broken as tears started spilling from her eyes. She swiped at them angrily.
"Katara," Jet said, moving toward her. She backed away slowly, a scared look in her eyes. Jet stopped his advance. "Katara?" he reached his hand out toward her.
She hesitantly reached out and took his hand, sighing. His thumb slowly moved across the back of her hand. Suddenly she moved toward him, her arms wrapping around him as she hid her face in his chest. "I'm glad you're alive," she said quietly. "The world seemed a little darker without your stupid smirk."
Jet laughed as she quickly pulled away from his embrace and they stared at each other. "I'm glad you're alive too, Katara," he said. "I want to be completely open and honest with all of you this time. I know it will take time to gain your trust back, but everything is worth getting to see you again. Maybe we can call each other friends again soon … or you know." He winked at her.
She rolled her eyes at his hopeful grin, moving further away from him. "I'll just focus on not wanting to kill you for now."
"You know Kat," Jet said. "The line between love and hate is a very thin one."
She furrowed her brows at him. "Okay love guru, I said I don't hate you for now, so you can get out before you dig yourself another hole."
Jet smirked as he walked back to her door. "I sailed across several rivers, trudged through forests, and climbed a mountain with the hope of just seeing you again. I'm pretty sure I could maneuver my way out of a hole Katara." He winked at her shocked expression as he walked out and closed the door.
ooo
Zuko was about to knock on Katara's door, when Jet suddenly came out of it, closing it behind him. They quietly glared at each other a moment, before Jet said, "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same," Zuko said.
"I was just saying goodnight to my girlfriend," Jet said.
Since when were they dating? It was such a small tight knit group, Zuko thought he would have known something like that. "Your girlfriend?" Zuko said.
"Yea … Katara. We were together before we got split up at Lake Laogai, and we rekindled things the day I got here."
As soon as Jet had shown up, Zuko had pulled Katara aside and told her about his previous run-ins with Jet in Ba Sing Se. His heart sank. He felt like he'd been sucker-punched. She had seemed so genuinely shocked and upset for him. He had opened up to Katara about how Jet had relentlessly tried to ruin his life when he was trying to change, and then Katara turned around and started dating him? "I … just want to talk to her," Zuko said quietly.
"I don't trust you alone with her," Jet said, narrowing his eyes. "Scram, Hot Pants," Jet stood directly in front of her door, clearly daring Zuko to try to get past him. It was tempting, but he knew it would only end up making him look bad to fight Jet just to talk to Katara.
"Fine," Zuko said, turning away to go back to his own room. "But, Katara is smart enough to make her own choices about who she talks to." Zuko gloomily walked back to his room.
ooo
Katara was restless that night. She found herself quietly walking out to the courtyard trying to calm her mind. As she walked by Zuko's room, she considered stopping to talk to him … but he was probably asleep by now and wouldn't appreciate being woken up. She sighed and decided to head to the fountain for some bending. She was surprised to see a figure on the edge of the courtyard, aggressively swinging a sword around. Katara found herself frozen to the spot, peeking around the corner of the hallway she was coming from. She stood there for a while, watching Zuko, his body glistening from the moonlight with sweat as he moved. Suddenly he turned to her.
"It's a bit rude to spy on people," Zuko rasped out, his voice breaking the quiet.
Katara jumped at being caught. "Ahhhh um sorry," she said, rubbing the back of her neck and blushing. "You just seemed so focused, I didn't want to bother you."
"Why are you up anyways? Or did you think I was Jet?" Zuko said, his voice grumpy.
Katara felt her eyebrows raise in confusion. "Jet?" she laughed. "I'd way rather it be you."
Zuko looked surprised, "Oh." He said intelligently.
Katara approached him slowly. "I wanted to thank you Zuko. Aang hasn't been excited about firebending since he accidentally burned me. I've tried to talk to him about it. I didn't want to be the reason the Avatar never learned firebending. But … you've already brought him out of that. He's more himself now thanks to you."
Zuko was blushing. "Ahhh … well … of course. It's the least I could do after … everything."
Katara walked closer to him, "Why are you up anyways?"
"I couldn't sleep," Zuko said. "Training usually helps to calm me down."
"You mind if I watch some?" Katara said. "I also couldn't sleep. I thought being outside might help."
"Sure," Zuko said with a nod.
Katara backtracked to the fountain, leaning against one of the large arching columns surrounding it and sitting down. The floor was hard, but the rock she sat on was cool, the air thick with spray from the water hitting the circular fountain. The sound of the water was calming. Zuko's practiced movements were mesmerizing, she watched him slice through the air, swing after swing, almost like he was dancing alone. Her eyes slowly drifted closed, and she fell asleep, feet away from her past enemy.
ooo
Katara woke up with sunlight hitting her face. She blinked against it, jolting awake as she realized where she was. She had fallen asleep against the fountain … but someone had moved a sleeping bag under her head, and had covered her with a red blanket. She stared at the foreign blanket for a while. There was only one person that could belong to. As she woke up more fully, she realized she wasn't alone.
"Hey, Sweetness is awake," Toph said from the other side of the courtyard. Katara slowly stood and looked across the fountain to see some of her friends starting to make breakfast. "Rough night Sugar Queen?" Toph said.
Katara quickly folded the blanket, carrying it to the circle. "You could say that," Katara said. She noticed Jet eyeing the blanket, and smiled. "Zuko kept me company though."
Sokka snorted, "Excuse me, what now?"
Katara laughed. "Relax Sokka. He was just training, and we talked a little bit."
Toph frowned as she said, "Why wasn't I invited? I thought we were watching him train this afternoon. You're holding out on me Sugar Queen."
"What's so interesting about watching Zuko train anyways?" Jet grumbled.
Aang and Zuko suddenly walked up to the group, having finished their morning training session. They didn't seem to notice that the group had gotten quiet at their approach, and Aang babbled excitedly about what Zuko had taught him. Zuko wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel, his abs glistening as he slowly pulled his shirt back on and sat with the group.
Jet's eyebrow was raised. "Ah … I see. Maybe I should train without my shirt on too."
"Wouldn't make a difference to me," Toph said. "My feet already see all." Zuko shifted uncomfortably.
"Toph!" Sokka blushed scarlet.
"What?" Aang said, completely oblivious.
Katara was laughing, "We are so gonna have to talk about this later Toph. I think you're the one who's been holding out on me!"
Author's Note: In the words of Azula, "You can laugh. It's funny." For anyone who read the last chapter early on, I did cut a scene out. I just wanna say (about a few hate comments/flames I got), I literally took months of my free time to write this story for fun, laughing and writing scenes with my friend Shelby. It has been a labor of love for the show and for Zutara.
Last week I was a bit de-spirited and truly shocked by responses I got (on AO3, FF . net users were much kinder), as this is supposed to be a dramatic/comedic Zutara story. And to the people pressed over Jet being here ... it's in the summary that he's alive LOL. I hate him too, ok? I understand how you feel, he is here to be like the Sokka that you hate, lmao. You guys, this isn't the whole story. It's a slow burn Zutara. So I hope you stick around for more craziness to come, but I understand if it's not your cup of tea.
Thank you for reading, I seriously appreciate any reviews!