This War of Ours
A/N: Credits for the chapter title goes to Merlinda Carullo Bobis and her poem "Homecoming." The line goes: "The sea clings to the roof of my mouth, but the tide of my heart cannot swell."
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender.
CHAPTER 12
the sea clings
The more Zuko read about Air Nomad culture, the more irritated he became.
Not only was he fed up with their teachings on peace, harmony, and pacifism, but the texts increasingly challenged whatever he was taught in the history lessons he took, both by the Fire Sages in the Palace and by Zhao and Zei in the Academy.
After all, how could such a peaceful group of people, so opposed to violence, stage a coup against the Fire Nation? How could nomads band together to form an army so formidable that they could threaten the peace kept by the Regime of Fire? Why would monks and nuns and acolytes even want to threaten peace?
The candlelight flickered as he rolled up a scroll in frustration, discarded it to the pile by his feet, and reached for a new one. Reading by candlelight was a challenge in itself— he found himself prone to getting headaches behind his left eye whenever he strained his vision too much— but add to that the innate difficulty of reading the flowing, lightly inked script of the Air Nomads… it was simply infuriating. Zuko wondered why Uncle even kept these scrolls in the Academy in the first place. Were they merely relics of a nation long gone? Not that he was complaining, as these were his only links to the lost Avatar, but—
He nearly dropped his scroll when the doors creaked open on the opposite side of the library.
Zuko quietly snuffed his lone candle and shifted into a defensive stance, fully expecting his sister and her sly smiles and sickly sweet mockery, but the light, slightly shuffling footsteps didn't match Azula's sure-footed gait. They didn't match Uncle's slow, placid steps, either, or Mai's fast and deliberate ones. Whoever this midnight reader was, they probably weren't here for him. Uncle, Azula, and Mai were the only ones who knew he worked in the library after hours.
Zuko relaxed from his strained form, but he fell right back into a slight squat with his arms up when the glow of a lantern hovered near the Water Tribes section. He crept through the shadowy shelves for a glimpse of the intruder and caught sight of the splash of blue clothes and uneven braid.
Of course it's her.
He watched as the girl— Katara, her name's Katara— glanced around and fidgeted with her necklace, shoulders tense. She clearly didn't sense him hovering a shelf away, because she heaved a sigh of relief and untucked a well-worn scroll from inside her tunic, smiling at it as though it were an old friend she was saying goodbye to. She shuffled some scrolls around and slid it into the rows of Water Tribe literature before walking away.
Yes, the spirits did have a habit of putting him in complicated situations. He could have laughed at their twisted sense of humor if the shame and anger inside him hadn't bubbled up so fiercely.
He scowled at the darkness, deciding that waiting for her to leave would be the better option— but then her footsteps paused by the end of the aisle and started towards the Air Nomad section.
Zuko's eyes widened. She'd see the piles of scrolls he collected— she'd know he was reading up on Air Nomad culture. She'd stick her nose in his business like she did with his lightning practice. She'd know he was hunting the Avatar— and like the rest of her backward-thinking tribe, she probably believed the legends that the Avatar was the last hope of humanity. She wouldn't care why he was doing what he was doing. She'd just hate him even more.
Didn't he want her to hate him, though? Isn't that why he revealed his identity to her in the first place?
I just wanted to know if she was really my friend, the treacherous voice in his head said, and he didn't have time to counter it because she was moving closer and Zuko knew he had to go on the offensive if he didn't want her to find out was he was doing in the library.
He stepped out of the shadows and spoke as quietly as he could.
"What are you doing here?"
Katara shrieked, and Zuko hurriedly clamped a hand over her mouth before she woke up the entire Academy.
She pushed him away forcefully and uncorked her water skin, her whip ready in one fluid motion. Zuko raised his hands to his shoulders, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. It didn't work, of course.
"What are you doing here?" she spat, solidifying her whip into an ice spear with a flick of her wrist and jabbing his chest, keeping the Fire Prince an arm's length away.
Katara half-expected him to snarl, or melt the spear, or blast fire at her and burn her along with all the remaining Water Tribe literature, just like how his nation burned all the Air Nomads, but he didn't. He just lowered his hands and his gaze, and a small voice in Katara's head scolded her for being so distrusting of Lee, the boy she'd trained with, the boy who'd been so afraid of scarring her and Haru, the boy she'd defended to her brother and Suki.
Anger, fueled by shame and confusion, crawled its way to Katara's throat and she struggled to blink away the tears. No, this wasn't her Lee, this was the Prince of the Fire Nation, who had burned her hair and attacked his own sister and broke Sokka's arm.
"Well?" She prompted, spear at the ready. "Are you here to hand me off to the headmaster? Or will you just burn my hair again as a warning?"
The hands hanging limply at his sides clenched into fists and his face contorted into a scowl, the harsh lines of his scar illuminated in the dim moonlight filtering through the windows.
"I didn't know you'd be here," replied Zuko in a measured voice, "And I haven't told anyone about… you know."
Katara glanced around warily, reforming her spear into a water whip as though the headmaster— or other sifus— would suddenly jump out from the shadows. But the library was empty, except for her and the Fire Prince.
"Why are you here, then?" she asked— then the voice in her head that sounded remarkably like her brother's chided her for being so trusting of a firebender's words.
She winced and split her whip in two. Droplets of water splattered onto the stone floor as her hands shook.
The Fire Prince coughed and glanced away, and she blinked at the familiar action; in that moment, he was Lee— her Lee— shuffling his feet awkwardly, almost guiltily, and for a second, Katara thought he would bow in that stiff Fire Nation way of his and mumble an apology.
Instead of an apology, however, he muttered, "I'm doing homework," in the most unconvincing way possible that Katara once again questioned herself for not knowing he was the Fire Prince in the first place. This boy was very clearly a bad liar.
She scoffed derisively.
"Oh, please, quit lying. I think we've established that I know you, Lee."
Even as she said the words, a lance of pain shot through her at the memory of the last time they met by the river, at how desperate she was to prove to him that they were friends, at how firmly she believed that not all firebenders were frightening… Why would she even bring up their time together?
Maybe I judged him too quickly. Maybe he was really trying to be in control of his anger. Maybe he really thought we were friends and maybe he wasn't just pretending to be nice. Maybe he really didn't want to hurt us and maybe he wasn't just spying on us or using us as target practice. Maybe he's still Lee—
But when he turned back to her, he was the scowling Prince once more.
"It's none of your business, peasant," he spat the last word like a curse, and he cut her off harshly before she could retort, "Stop sticking your nose in other people's business. I know how hard it must be for you."
"You were so much nicer with your mask on." Katara glared at him. "Do you need a mask to stop being such a jerk?"
"Maybe I was just pretending," Zuko deadpanned, eyes fixed on a nearby shelf, looking at anything else but her. "Maybe I was just using you and Haru to get better at fighting."
"You know what? Ugh!" Katara stomped her foot and shot a jet of what limited water she had at the boy. He didn't even flinch, which angered her even more. "You're just a spoiled, selfish jerk who broke my brother's arm and burned my hair and I can't believe I even considered you my friend!"
Zuko finally snapped and looked at her, his face contorted in anger.
"Well, I didn't ask to be your friend! I just wanted to train at night, alone, and you forced me to join you and Haru!"
His fists clenched at his sides, smothering the flames that had erupted from his hands at his outburst. He pinched the bridge of his nose, fully intending to just pack up his stuff and leave this obvious nightmare.
"You hate me, anyway," muttered Zuko as he turned away, "So why does it matter?"
"I don't hate you."
He whirled around in surprise. Katara blinked— her own words seemed to have shocked her, too.
"I don't hate you," she repeated levelly, as though to make the statement sink in. "But I don't trust you, either."
Rage, white-hot and irrational, clawed its way to Zuko's mouth in a snarl of flames.
"Fine! See if I care! I don't need you to trust me, anyway!" He yelled, already beyond caring if the whole Academy woke up. "I just need you to leave me alone!"
Katara's jaw dropped in indignation and she pointed an accusatory finger at him.
"You're the one who crept up on me like some stupid tiger shark!"
"Well, you're the one who keeps turning up wherever I go!"
"I don't mean to! I was just returning my waterbending scroll!" She waved a hand in the direction of the shelves agitatedly. "And I didn't turn up on the training grounds when we first met, I was there first and you started shooting fireballs like a maniac!"
She crossed her arms over her chest defensively and he clenched his jaw, smoke curling from his nostrils.
"Just go, Katara."
Her irritation stuttered at his use of her name— the only other time she heard him say it was when she was on her knees and heaving by the riverbank, when he'd tried to comfort her and failed, when she'd left him in the dark after he'd finally revealed who he was.
Her anger flared again— whether it was directed at herself or at this confusing firebender, she didn't know. She took a step back, seething.
"Fine. Wouldn't want to stick my nose in your royal business, Your Highness." She forced as much venom as she could into her words. "Go back to planning world domination or whatever it is you firebenders do. See if I care."
She turned on her heel and stomped out of the library, her footsteps echoing in the empty space, and Zuko glared at the spot where she stood until he heard the door slam shut, leaving him alone in the darkness once more.
"Why can't I get this right?"
Katara glanced at Yue with tired eyes. Any other day, she would have been amused at the image of the Northern Water Tribe Princess struggling with a water whip, her pretty little face scrunched up in concentration as she followed the forms, posture a little too straight and a little too stiff for someone usually so graceful.
Any other day, Katara would have marveled at how far she'd come— just a few months ago, she was the one struggling with the water whip— but today, memories of her midnight trainings just left a bitter taste in her mouth.
"Just think of it as an extension of your arm, Yue," she explained for what seemed like the fourth time since they started training at sunrise. "You don't have to follow the forms exactly. Just feel it flow through you."
She, Yue, and Gumi were huddled off to the side of the training grounds as Sifu Pakku taught more advanced techniques to the male waterbenders. Katara itched to join them, but Pakku had sneered and said snidely that until her companions could master the basic katas, they couldn't progress to the next ones.
"I think I've got it!" squealed Gumi, her thin whip slashing through the air without disintegrating. Katara smiled thinly.
"That's great, Gumi," she said, wincing as her words came out a tad less enthusiastic than she meant them to be.
For that entire morning, she tried so hard not to let her sleep deprivation get the best of her— after all, she'd spent almost a year staying up late and waking up early. She shouldn't let one particularly draining shouting match with a certain firebender affect her disposition.
She felt her irritation at the infuriating jerk spike again, but she was pulled from her thoughts when Yue groaned and discarded her water gracelessly onto the ground.
"I don't think I'm cut out to be a warrior," sighed the princess, covering her face with her hands.
"It's okay not to get it the first time, Yue," Katara said patiently, her irritation dissipating at the princess's despondence. "I struggled with the water whip for quite a time, too."
Yue peered at her through slender fingers, eyes disbelieving.
"How did you learn combative bending, Katara?" she asked, a rare tone of impatience seeping into her voice. "You told Sifu Pakku you taught yourself, but with the way you fought him, anyone watching would have thought you were already trained in the waterbending arts since you were a toddler."
"Yeah, you told us your father taught you how to handle a spear," Gumi added, flicking her flimsy whip back and forth, "Did combative bending come easy for you because girls in the Southern Water Tribe were taught to fight?"
Katara wanted to laugh at their comments; if only they'd seen how soaked Suki and Sokka and Haru were when she first started training, and if only they knew exactly how erratic her bending was when she fought Pakku…
"I just trained hard almost everyday, that's all," she settled on saying, because that was essentially what she did for almost a year. "I did get frustrated a lot of times, but… I just really wanted to learn, you know?"
"I truly want to learn, too," sighed Yue, summoning another tendril of water from the stream behind her, "But I never expected this to be so… tiring."
Gumi nodded earnestly. "I get what you mean, Princess Yue. Healing takes a lot out of you, but it was more of chi depletion than this physical strain, you know? I hadn't sweat this much when I was learning how to heal!"
"Maybe that's why the men fare better at combative waterbending," the Northern Water Tribe Princess muttered a little bitterly as she moved through her stances, droplets of water wavering between her fingers. "They have better endurance— maybe there's a valid reason that they don't teach combative waterbending to girls."
"Oh, that's a load of tiger seal dung and you know it," Katara snapped.
Gumi gasped in surprise and Yue covered her mouth with her free hand— Katara blanched internally, suddenly remembering their sister tribe's low opinion of her people. She didn't need to alienate what few Northerners she had on her side.
But Tui take her, she had already felt so ruffled the moment she gruffly stepped out of bed— the only thing that had prompted her to rise at dawn was the prospect of learning new waterbending moves, and here she was, stuck with repeating an elementary movement over and over to no effect. And now, they were flip-flopping on their decisions to be warriors? Oh, no. Not on Katara's watch.
"Those boys would suck just as much as we do if we told them to try their hand at healing," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "They're not better than we are, we're just untrained because of misguided tradition and the stupid rules that Sifu Pakku imposed."
"I… suppose you're right, Katara," Yue looked at her strangely before she took a deep breath and readied her stance once more. She paused, brow furrowed, water hovering between her open palms. "You said to think of the whip as an extension of my arm… How did you learn to think of it that way?"
Katara bit her lip. She couldn't exactly tell the Water Tribe girls about her midnight trainings— she had barely skirted past the topic a couple of minutes ago, and even though they'd already stopped practicing, she didn't want to cause undue trouble to her friends. And she wasn't Suki— she very well couldn't attack another student, let alone a princess, just to goad her into learning a move.
"Oh!" Gumi bounded up between them, droplets of water trailing in her wake. "Try to grab onto something! When Katara taught us the moves, I thought about how useful the water whip would be if I could use it to grab something far away, you know?"
"That's a great idea, Gumi!" Katara trilled, relieved to have an alternative presented to her on a silver platter. She squinted around the vicinity and her eyes alighted on a twig. "Here, Yue, try to grab this from me."
By the time Yue managed to haphazardly twist her water whip around the sodden twig, Pakku was already concluding his lessons with the boys and Katara's stomach was rumbling. Loathe as she was to pull a Sokka and fantasize about breakfast, it was all she could do as Yue tried and tried to form a whip and Gumi worked on the next set of techniques.
The boys trooped up the steps to the Academy, barely even giving them a passing glance, and Pakku just smirked at them and raised his brows before slipping away.
Gumi and Yue exchanged a look— it seemed the Northerners expected more encouragement from the sifu. Katara's heart went out to them, despite her slight resentment at their progress; they probably weren't used to such cold treatment. Part of her still seethed at how the other girls had treated her the same way on her first day in the Academy— as though she could be easily brushed off just because her bending water couldn't glow to a healer's blue— but Yue and Gumi were her friends, and they had worked really hard, even though Katara spent most of their lesson thinking they moved like snail sloths. Yue was still panting, her normally neat hairdo falling from its intricate bun, and Gumi had streaks of dirt on her face, having forgotten how muddy the stream was when she attempted to cool off. They definitely deserved more than the mocking smirks that Pakku passed off as encouragement.
"Well, you guys learned the water whip before breakfast," she threw an arm each over the two disgruntled girls, leading them back up to the Academy. "I bet Sifu Pakku didn't expect you guys to move up that fast."
Gumi tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and scrunched up her face. "I finally understand now why Akkad was always complaining about Pakku. I thought he was just lazy, but then we worked so hard and Pakku didn't even acknowledge it."
"It might get worse before we truly prove to him that we're worth his time," sighed the princess.
"Term's ending in a little bit over a month, though. He has to teach us more advanced moves before we leave for summer break." Katara said thoughtfully, tapping a finger to her chin. "Maybe we can speed things up for you."
Yue turned her wide blue eyes on her. "How do you propose we do that, Katara?"
She cocked her head to the courtyards. "I learned a lot just by observing benders' battles and trying to copy the moves I saw. Since you already know how to handle a water whip, it'll come easy— every other waterbending technique has the same principle behind it, like the octopus form."
"It will still be difficult, though." Yue didn't look too enthused. "There's such a huge difference between watching someone execute a move and knowing how it's done."
"We could practice together during our free period everyday," Gumi grinned at the princess, nudging her side playfully. "Oh! And maybe you can join the benders' battle tomorrow, Katara! That way, we can learn the stuff you're already familiar with!"
"That's… an idea," said Katara hesitantly. While she still wasn't confident enough in her abilities to spar with other benders in front of the whole Academy, she couldn't discount the fact that it would help further her friends' skills. Plus, hadn't she battled with an actual waterbending master? And didn't she have enough experience dealing with the other elements' combative styles?
"Alright!" Gumi pumped a fist in the air, her disheveled braid bouncing along with her. "Now, let's go get breakfast! I'm starving!"
"You and me both," muttered Katara absently, but all the previous rumblings of her stomach had already been replaced by butterflies. Was she really going to join the benders' battle?
The trio arrived at the Water Tribes' table and Katara gently separated herself from the two girls, making her way to where Suki and Sokka were sitting. The Kyoshi warrior was spooning jook glumly into her bowl and looked a tad irritated as the Water Tribe warrior gabbed on about one thing or another while shoveling Earth Kingdom egg custards into his mouth.
Katara groaned and plopped down beside Suki, resting her head despondently on her friend's shoulder. She envied their fresh faces. Why don't non-benders have to train at sunrise?
"Good morning to you, too, Katara," Suki, who looked far too happy to be given a distraction from Sokka's blabbering, patted Katara's cheek sympathetically with her free hand. "What's up with you?"
Sokka paused in his story long enough to look over his sister. "Yeah, why do you look like a boarcupine stuck needles up your butt?"
Katara blew out her cheeks and dragged a bowl of seaweed noodles towards her.
"Yue and Gumi want me to join the benders' battle tomorrow so they could learn new techniques because stupid Sifu Pakku won't teach us anything until they've caught up with the basic forms," she explained sullenly, slurping the broth.
Suki exchanged a look with Sokka.
"Well, that's good, isn't it?" she asked, reaching over Katara to grab a handful of berries. "You've worked really hard on your bending, and you held your own against Pakku, so you really have nothing to worry about, right?"
"That's the thing!" Katara looked up from her bowl and flailed her arms around in panic. "I was just so angry when I fought Pakku that it fueled my bending, but I still would've lost if Gumi hadn't intervened, and the only other people I've trained with are you and Sokka and Haru and— and— you know!"
She took a deep, shuddering breath, shaking her head at the memories of sparring with Lee. She chose to focus on the matter at hand. "What if I lose?"
"Sis, it's just a spar," her brother said, rolling his eyes and waving one hand dismissively. "You don't have to win every battle. I mean, I've gotten my hide handed to me more times than I can count, and I still wanna spar so I can show off that I got better, y'know?"
Suki rolled her aqua eyes at the boy and threw a comforting arm around Katara.
"Hey, you don't have to be the best bender on the arena immediately just 'cause you fought Pakku," she said soothingly. "Just think of the benders' battle as the— I dunno, sort of the advanced part of our training sessions."
"Except it's in broad daylight and everyone's watching," Sokka helpfully pointed out through a mouthful of custard. His sister glared at him over the rim of her bowl.
"All I'm saying, Katara," Suki pointedly continued as Sokka grimaced sheepishly, "is that benders' battles are not that different from the spars we did— and you don't need to worry about Yue and Gumi learning from you yet, you know. I noticed before that the Water Tribe girls don't watch benders' battles a lot. This could be their way of, I dunno—" Suki motioned vaguely with her hands— "dipping their feet in boiling water, so to speak."
Both Water Tribe siblings looked at her with unimpressed expressions, and she defensively crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, I don't know your tribe's sayings! You know what I mean!"
Sokka poorly tried to disguise his chuckle with a cough, earning him a glare from Suki.
Katara, meanwhile, stirred her soup with her bending and mulled over the Kyoshi warrior's words.
"You know what, you guys? I think I will join," she said resolutely, straightening her back. And with her brother and best friend smiling at her proudly like that, she knew she had nothing to worry about.
"She's gonna get crushed by a boulder until she's flat like seal jerky," Akkad said to his sister, loud enough for Sokka, who stood a couple of paces away, to hear.
He tried to ignore his former friend and instead kept an eye on Katara, who was lining up for the benders' battle on the opposite end of the Eastern Courtyard. It looked like she was having words with Sifu Pakku again, but the old coot didn't seem that perturbed as he answered her with his usual displeased frown on his face. Sokka watched as his sister marched past Pakku, her head held high, and took her place behind hulking earthbenders and older waterbenders.
It was a particularly humid day, the monsoon season giving way to fringes of summer, and if anyone asked Sokka why he was sweating so profusely, he'd blame it on the Fire Nation weather and not on the worry gnawing at his insides.
She looks so small out there, he thought. Oh no, what if she does get flattened like seal jerky? I can't bring home seal jerky-Katara to Dad!
"I can't believe they'd allow her to fight. It's just not proper," Baya agreed, fanning herself with her hand. "Maybe that's why there are so few Southerners— they allow everyone to engage in such brutish behavior."
Sokka couldn't help it anymore.
"No, it's because we don't back down from tough stuff and we don't hide when we can fight!" He all but shouted at the siblings, hand reaching for his boomerang. "Unlike you selfish Northerners who only care about yourselves!"
In the corner of his eye, he saw Yue flinch at his words. He winced, remembering how getting engaged to some warrior she didn't like was probably the furthest thing from being a selfish Northerner, but the haughty look on Akkad's face pulled him back to the more pressing issue.
"You're just a simple rube from the Southern Tribe. What would you know of the complexities of our life?" Akkad said, smirking. "No offense."
Sokka sputtered and pointed a finger at him, ready to launch himself at the other boy. "Well, you're just a stupid, sexist jerk! Yes offense!"
A hand grabbed the scruff of his tunic, pulling him back. Sokka flailed against the hold until he heard Suki's voice hiss behind him, "Let it go, Sokka. Katara's about to fight."
Sokka swallowed his anger and mimed an "I'm not done with you" gesture at Akkad, who threw his head back in challenge, ice blue eyes glinting.
"Oh no," breathed Suki, her hand on his tunic suddenly going slack.
"What? What?" Sokka squawked frantically, climbing atop a nearby bench to get a better view of Katara.
His heart plummeted to his feet when he saw her opponent.
Tui and La, can't you give us a break from that Jerkbender?!
Agni, can't you give me a break from her?
Katara stood across him on the arena, equidistant from the waterbending sifu who stood stiffly between them with one arm aloft. For a split second, her big blue eyes held a mixture of surprise, fear, and worry, but before Zuko could fathom anything else, she slid into a defensive position, determination now the only expression on her face, and the Water Tribe sifu brought down his hand.
Zuko immediately went on the offensive, kicking a blast of fire at her and following through with two flaming punches, if only to drown out the voice in his head telling him to call the spar off, to forfeit before he could do too much damage—
She was already countering, curtains of water from the fountain deflecting each of his attacks— he readied a fireball in his hands, not sure where to aim so as not to injure her— "I don't hate you," her voice whispered in his mind— but he found himself hurtling through the air as she shot a powerful jet of water to his chest.
He quickly righted himself before he could fall to the ground completely— you're such a weakling, Zuzu; honestly, any other warrior wouldn't have hesitated— and with a snarl he swept an arc of flames towards her.
Whatever words she'd said before vanished into thin air. He shouldn't have tried to protect her. He shouldn't have let their past interactions distract him. He shouldn't have hesitated.
He couldn't afford to look weak.
He punched the ground and sent a wave of fire at her feet, knowing it would force her to back away from her water source, but she lunged forward and doused his flames with a surging wave of her own, steam billowing between them—
Oh, he knew this move— she would use the steam as cover. Zuko almost laughed. It had worked in the darkness of the woods when they trained, and he even agreed it was worth pursuing as a defensive technique, but in broad daylight and without the canopy of trees, her tactic would hardly—
As if reading his mind, Katara narrowed her eyes and suddenly reformed the steam into thick, icy ribbons, twining them around his feet and freezing him in place. Zuko stared wide-eyed at the tendrils of water making their way up his legs, before he remembered himself and melted the ice in one explosive motion.
He thrust his arms in front of his chest, deflecting her barrage of ice discs with a shield of fire. She emptied half the fountain's contents and surfed around him— he sent a jet of flames at her oncoming wave, cutting off her approach and sending her tumbling to the ground.
She skidded backwards a few feet in the dirt, and when she got up and shot him a mutinous glare, Zuko immediately took a step backwards, fists coming up automatically in defense, but Sifu Pakku came between them and declared him the winner of the match.
"You still have much to learn, little girl," he heard the sifu tell Katara.
Zuko forced himself to walk away from the grounds and not look back.
"Maybe that last move is too advanced for you. Why don't you try an easier one?" Pakku commented mockingly, but Katara barely heard him over the pounding in her ears.
She glared at the Fire Prince's retreating back, seething. Their spar was so infuriating. How dare he go easy on her like that? As if she couldn't protect herself from him. As if she hadn't bested him more times than she could count. As if he thought she wouldn't see him hesitate with that fireball between his palms.
As if he was still Lee and not the Fire Lord's son.
But then he just snapped and it shouldn't have been so confusing because hadn't she wished he'd show his true colors instead of acting like Lee?
It hurt that he acted like the ruthless firebender she wanted him to be.
It hurt even more that, halfway through their battle, she realized he could read her as easily as she read him. As if fighting harder was his way of making reparations for trying to protect her. As if he also missed their midnight spars. As if he knew she would sneak up on him using the steam that resulted in their elements colliding.
As if after the battle he'd do what he usually did and ask her if he burnt her and tell her she did a good job with her wave and maybe next time she could try zigzagging away from an attack or anchoring her ankles with ice so she wouldn't easily fall off.
"She truly is Kanna's granddaughter, isn't she?"
Katara turned in surprise to find Sifu Yugoda standing beside Pakku, who looked more annoyed than usual.
"Wait, how do you know my Gran-Gran's name?" she blurted out.
"You're her spitting image! I don't know why I didn't realize sooner," Yugoda explained with a smile. "It was a good thing that Pakku recognized her in you— she was a dear friend of mine before she left the North. I always wanted to know what happened to her."
Katara rounded on Pakku with wide eyes. "You knew my grandmother, too?"
"What an astute deduction. Yes, child, of course I knew her," he said, mouth curling as though he tasted something bitter.
"She never told me she lived in the North!" Katara glanced between the two sifus. "Why did she leave?"
"Your grandmother was a very outspoken young woman," Yugoda said with a twinkle in her eyes. "Had she been given the same opportunities as you, she wouldn't have left. But I think Pakku here could explain it better, no?"
The old master straightened up with a displeased frown that wrinkled his creased skin even more.
"I do not have time to twiddle my thumbs and cluck away like pig hens," he said dismissively. He tucked his hands into his sleeves and gave Katara a once-over. "Tomorrow we will be learning the iceberg spike. Tell the princess and her friend."
With that, he left, robes billowing behind him. Katara stared dumbfounded at his wake.
"Did he get kicked in the head too many times by an armadillo goat? Why does he suddenly want to teach me and Yue and Gumi?" She threw her hands in the air in disbelief. "What was that about?"
Yugoda smiled, the expression on her face too mischievous for someone so matronly.
"That, Katara, is proof that time and again, we need to be reminded of the past in order to clearly see the future."
"What does that mean?" Katara asked, but Sifu Yugoda was already walking away to heal an earthbender with a sprained ankle, leaving Katara to wonder if vagueness came with old age or if elders just did it to purposely annoy the youth.
A/N: IMPORTANT UPDATE! We're nearing the end of Katara's first year in the Academy! *squee* Only one or two chapters left, folks! I've already started outlining chapters for Year Two, and here's the actual update: On AO3, I'll be starting a series of separate books, so keep an eye out for This War of Ours: Year Two after I publish the last chapter of Year One. On FFN, however, I'll be keeping them all in one omnibus, because FFN makes it harder for people to keep track of multi-book works. Don't worry, though! There won't be any major jumps between books, so it's not gonna be too confusing!
Big, BIG thanks to everyone who has stuck with me on this! TWOO is the longest fic I have ever written, and all your love and support keep me going! Tell me what you think of this chapter, and if you're as excited for Year Two as I am! Cheers!