He is standing in a white room, empty except for himself and a long, spotless mirror on one wall. Looking into it, he finds an image of his face staring back at him - almost. He is without a scar, his eyes evenly shaped, his skin bright. Handsome, some would call it. It reminds him of when he was a child, and nobles would tell him that he would grow up to be a dashing young man - a man in the image of his father.

He reaches up to touch the skin around his eye, to feel its smoothness, its cleanness, but the walls around him crumble before he can. They turn to dust to reveal an arena, lit with torches and filled with the same kind of people who once called him dashing. He kneels before his father as he did all those years ago, coated in sweat and voice breaking, only now, his voice is that of a sixteen year old, his hair pulled into a small topknot instead of a ponytail.

"You will fight for your honour."

The Firelord's voice echoes throughout the room and sends tremors down his spine, his tone like the blade of a knife, the snap of a bone. Zuko only grovels, sixteen years old but somehow weaker than he was three years before, mumbling something of an apology, a plea for mercy.

"Rise and fight, Prince Zuko!"

His father's eyes are now alight and his voice is harsh, dangerous, something of a snarl. Zuko feels his chest collapse as fear overtakes him, but he grits his teeth, not allowing himself to bow his head. Instead, he forces words from his throat; a desperate attempt to save himself from the will of a merciless man, despite knowing how this story ends.

"Please, father… I am your loyal son…"

His voice catches on the last word and he feels himself break, tears streaming down his face and dread pooling in his stomach, his arms shaking violently against the marble beneath him.

"You will learn respect-"

"Please… I won't fight you… please… please..."

It is pure desperation that forces him to interrupt his father, for he knows exactly what comes next. Zuko realises that his hand has moved to the skin below his eye - some kind of attempt to protect it from the inevitable. Yet, what the Firelord says is not what he expects.

"Look at you -" he spits, beginning to circle him. "Sobbing on the ground beneath my feet. If you were a man - if you were a prince - you would fight me. Yet, after all these years, I can see that you are still weak."

"Please-"

"Please? Please what? Please allow you to fail me again, after so many times when I have been left disappointed and you have learnt nothing? Again and again, I give you the simplest of tasks and you return with nothing to show for them, only apologies and excuses and pleases. And somehow, you become disillusioned with me, your father, for simply teaching you what you must learn, punishing you for failure after failure after-"

"Please-"

"And even now, you are still so enamored with being good. Tell me - did being good bring this country to greatness? Did it ever triumph over strategy or skill or power? Did it help you to defeat the previous avatar? No - I do not think it did. What you do not understand - what you refuse to understand - is that being good is a concept made by the feeble man. Being good is only consolation for those to weak to be great."

"Please-"

"Look at all of these people." he orders, placing his hand on the back of Zuko's neck and turning his head sharply to face the crowd. "Look at their disgust. You are not their prince - you are a fool if you think they want a sniveling, pathetic boy who has slept in the dirt like a pig to rule over them. And you-" he continues, turning Zuko's head again to force him to look him in the eye. "You are no son of mine. You never were, and you never will be. It is time for you to be taught that."

It is only now that a flame sparks from his father's hand, his eyes cold and unforgiving. Zuko closes his eyes, unable to do anything else, and when he screams, the crowd bursts into cheer.

.

He wakes up with his hand on his scar and a pained cry on his lips. He is drenched in sweat and his eyes are blurred with tears that have not quite finished falling, and as he blinks to clear his vision, he is met with the image of Katara, sitting where she does during their healing sessions, her eyes wide and panicked.

At the sight of her, he lets out a yelp, unable to find the correct words to form anything along the lines of why the hell are you in my room?

"I… Ikuro told me that people who sleep with concussions can enter comas!" She blurts out, her fists clenched as if she is angry that she needs to explain it. "If that happened, then I would probably be blamed and my father would probably be killed - and I couldn't let that happen!"

It takes him a moment to process what she is saying, his heart still pounding in his head from the events of his nightmare. "So… what, you just watched me as I slept?"

She looks at him wordlessly, her teeth clenched and eyes filled with embarrassment and, underneath it, something else. It takes him a moment to realise that it is guilt, and as he begins to remember what exactly he was dreaming about, his stomach sinks.

"Did you… did you see anything?"

The guilt in her eyes comes to the surface, but she furrows her brows nonetheless. "What do you mean?"

"I mean- could you tell I was having a… bad dream? Or what I was dreaming about?"

She presses her lips together for a moment, as if contemplating how she should respond, before sighing, a mix of shame and pity entering her features. Her eyes hold a strange remorse, halfway between being sorry for what happened to him and being sorry for finding out, and he finds that he wants neither. Although her lips part, there is only silence, her breath hitching in her throat as she searches for a sufficient reply. It's not worth the effort - he already knows her answer. The way she avoids looking at his scar makes it clear.

He sighs, breaking eye contact with her. "Look, Katara, I know I haven't exactly done anything to deserve kindness from you, but please… don't tell anyone about this. About my nightmare, or about anything you found out from it. Please."

Her name slips from his mouth before he can stop it. He thinks back to the promise he had made to himself as he travelled to the Fire Nation - the promise that he would only refer to her as the waterbender, and this way, he would not become attached. He gave up on this when she began healing him, the task far more difficult when she is right in front of him, but to call her by her name is something different altogether - something more. He tells himself not to do it again; his words don't seem to hold much power.

She is silent, her expression becoming more unreadable, and his stomach begins to crawl with worry. She has spat on his cheek, called him a disgrace and blamed him for the death of her friend - now, she has been given the perfect opportunity to hurt him as he has hurt her, to have the revenge which she seems to be longing for. Yet, just as he prepares himself to add that he'll do anything she wants in return, she speaks.

"It's not kindness. It's decency."

He does not fail to realise that her words rely on the assumption that he sees her as, if nothing else, decent. Yet, the way that the nerves in his stomach dissipate when she says it seems to demonstrate that her assumption is correct, and he allows himself to meet her stare again.

"Thank you." He says, his voice sounding like an exhale of relief.

There is a moment of silence that lasts slightly too long, before she looks away. "I should go."

With that, she rises from her chair and walks out of the room, shutting the door behind her with a slight gentleness that he doesn't expect from her. He cannot tell if he is grateful for it, or resentful.

—

Her heart is still pounding in her head as she walks along the corridor outside of Zuko's room. La, how could she have been stupid enough to keep watching him until he woke up? And for that matter, how could she have been stupid enough to watch him at all when he was having a nightmare? The sick feeling that settled in her stomach as he writhed in his bed still remains, and she feels the urge to waterbend - it has always been the best way to take her mind off of something. The only times she has bent over the past few weeks is to heal, and she suddenly realises how much she longs to properly control her element, to feel its push and pull against her hands. Perhaps the realisation only serves as a way to distract herself from what she has just discovered. Before she can ruminate further, though, Ikuro appears from around the corner.

"Katara!" He gives her a wave, a warm smile appearing on his face. "I was just looking for someone to play Pai Sho with. Care to join me?"

The kindness in his eyes is difficult to refuse, and as much as she is not in the mood to play anything, she decides that if she cannot waterbend on this ship, she might as well try to find another way to take her mind off things. "Sure - but you'll have to teach me how to play."

.

She discovers quickly that Pai Sho does not serve as a good distraction; in fact, the smoothness of Ikuro's voice as he explains the rules of the game only encourages her to become lost in thought, and as he begins to describe the function of each individual tile, she cannot help but lose focus.

Her mind immediately wanders to what she has been trying to avoid - the fact that what she witnessed Zuko dreaming about not only elicits a feeling far too close to sympathy for her liking, but also fits perfectly into a puzzle that depicts a much kinder picture of Zuko than the one that exists in her mind. The guard that brought her to this ship - Ming, she remembers her name as - had told her something about Zuko having a rough past; about having seen and heard things as a servant that Zuko apparently never deserved to have happened. At the time, Katara hadn't quite understood, for Ming had skirted around what she was trying to say, and even so, it was a foreign concept to Katara; in her tribe, any punishment that a parent gave to a child seemed to be out of love - a way to deter them from getting into danger, or chastise them for not doing their part in helping the tribe to function. Now, Ming's point becomes clear, for the Firelord's mutilation of his child cannot have been out of love. No, it instead reminds her of something Toph once mentioned, about the childhoods of so many of the earthbenders she'd fought in Gaoling; that their mothers screamed insults, or their fathers threw punches, or both parents left their children alone in the corners of room, ignoring them for days on end. She remembers commenting something about how awful it was, a strange feeling of guilt entering her as all of her hurt surrounding her father's absence suddenly seemed embarrassingly unimportant, almost trivial.

Abuse, Toph had called it. For days after, Katara wondered what could cause a parent to act in such a way; a lack of compassion, or a tendency for brutality, or perhaps simply a severe unfitness to care for another in the way a parent should. The Firelord seemed capable of all those things. And if Ming was right about Zuko's treatment, then why wouldn't she have been right about his character as a child? Kind and warm-hearted - a good kid, she'd described him as. Katara still does not believe that he is any of these things, but the idea that he might have been once, before cruelty took it from him, refuses to leave her mind.

Of course, Ming could have been mistaken - perhaps Zuko's scar was the only act of violence he received from his father. Yet, Katara knows it is unlikely; the malice necessary to maim your own son does not seem like a thing that only appears when the opportunity arises, and what's more, the man in question is Firelord Ozai. Someone who has orchestrated the death of millions in a war of conquest does not seem likely to be a particularly loving father.

"Katara," Ikuro suddenly says, pulling her out of her thoughts. "You don't seem quite captivated by the rules of Pai Sho. Is something on your mind?"

"Oh - no, nothing," She says, forcing a reassuring smile. "I'm just tired, that's all."

He raises an eyebrow, his lips curving into a small smile that suggests he is not fooled by her explanation. Nevertheless, he nods. "Yes, I would imagine that healing is quite exhausting. And you stayed with Zuko for far longer today - it's no surprise that you are tired."

He examines her carefully as he says it, as if trying to find out what he knows she will not tell him directly. She feels herself freeze, but forces herself not to react otherwise; perhaps that gives him more information than a reaction would have.

"Come to think of it, I didn't hear much noise from his room for most of that time," He continues. "Have the two of you sorted out your differences, by any chance?"

She lets out a laugh that is only half forced. "No - it's more than differences that would need to be sorted out. We just found that silence was easier for both of us than yelling at each other."

"Quite a good discovery - not only for you both, but also for everyone's ears."

He says it with a smile, but his words somehow make her remember when she yelled at Zuko the first time she tried to heal him, with Ikuro witnessing it all. She had called him pathetic, a disgrace - she wonders if his father had ever said the same to him. She believes just as much as she did then that it was in her right to say it - his choice to betray herself and his uncle led to Aang's death, after all - but the disgust with herself that arose after the words left her lips reappears now, far more potent than before.

"Are you sure everything's alright, Katara? You seem quite… distracted."

Ikuro is right - she is distracted, and Pai Sho has not helped as she hoped it would. "Would I be allowed to waterbend?" She blurts out, ignoring the slight surprise that enters his face. "If I asked whoever I needed to ask, whether that's you or Zui or someone else, would I? I just- I can't handle being surrounded by all of this water and not being able to do anything with it. Bending always helps me take my mind off things that are bothering me and I think I would be a lot more helpful to this mission with a clear mind, and-"

"Ah, so something is on your mind." Ikuro says, his eyes still warm. "Don't worry, I won't intrude if you don't want to share. I have no problem with you waterbending here, Katara - bending is an art, after all, and must be practiced. However, the rest of the crew, as well as Zuko, must also be convinced."

"Well - I mean, I can try my best."

Ikuro smiles. "That's what I like to hear. I think tomorrow, during supper, would be a good time to try."

She returns the smile, finding that her mood has improved slightly with Ikuro's response. All she can hope for now is that the crew will allow her to waterbend - and that until then, her thoughts about Zuko's past will at least become less obtrusive. The former seems far more likely than the latter.

—

AN: phew another chap! I found Katara's part of this one pretty hard to write because i think finding out about zuko's scar would make her quite conflicted.. she's very empathetic and has very strong morals and i think her reaction to any kind of abuse would reflect both of those things, but she also has some very negative feelings towards zuko at this point and has kind of forced herself to see him as this wholly evil person, so i think she'd be pretty confused on how to act and feel lol.. hopefully that's reflected in this and the next few chaps. also hopefully i made dream ozai awful enough lmao!

also! i've edited the earlier chaps of this story (mostly 1-6, but slight changes on most). i don't i made any major changes, except that when ozai banishes zuko again, zuko realises that azula had only wanted him to return to the fire nation w her in case she messed up, so she could blame him. other than that, i mostly just changed the writing and description in some parts (esp to do w katara's feelings abt aang's death) so it seemed more mature and well-written. hopefully i succeeded!

anyway i hope you enjoyed the chap, likes and reviews are always appreciated!