She spots Ikuro as she makes her way back to the ship, and he gives her a wave. Walking over to him, she notices that he's carrying a large basket full of food in one hand, and a bag of birdfeed in the other.
"What do you need that for?" She asks, gesturing towards the bag.
"To feed the hawks on the ship," He says simply.
"There's hawks?" She pauses, thinking back to the pet her brother bought in the Fire Nation. "Messenger hawks?"
"Yes. The Firelord will need to be notified if Zuko captures the avatar."
She doesn't fail to notice the if; Zuko's people clearly don't have much hope for him.
"What about the other hawks? They wouldn't all need to notify the Firelord." She pushes, narrowing her eyes.
"I don't know, Katara - I only feed them. I'm as much a prisoner as you are, remember? But…" He pauses, lowering his voice. "The Fire Nation trains their hawks excellently. They're probably there to notify authorities if one of us tries to escape, or stop the mission, or… well, anything else, I suppose."
She almost stops in her tracks. If she tries to get away, or fight the crew, or drive the ship in a different direction with her bending, the Fire Nation will probably be alerted - and her father will probably be killed. She doesn't even have a real plan, and yet the half-formed ones already seem to be slipping away from her.
She eyes Ikuro for a moment, wondering whether her next question is too risky. It is, of course - she knows it is, but maybe not with him. He always seems so anti-Fire Nation, after all.
"Where are the hawks kept?" She asks, wishing her voice didn't sound so uncertain.
He looks over to her immediately, his eyebrows raised sharply, before softening his expression and giving her a familiar smile. "Ah, that's nothing for you to fret over. You won't need to be feeding them anytime soon, after all."
He even adds a light laugh at the end of his sentence, but Katara doesn't find it particularly funny. It seems he is anti-Fire Nation, but not enough to want to help a water tribe girl, or even to help the water tribe baby who this mission will kill if something doesn't change. Maybe she was just being naive, when she thought that Ikuro would be on her side and that he'd tell her about the Boiling Rock; maybe she never stopped being far too trusting.
She forces herself to change the topic, thinking back to the shopkeeper and the way his eyes bored into her own. "What would happen, if someone in a colony found out that I'm watertribe?"
Ikuro's eyebrows raise for a second time. "What? Did someone-"
"No, no. A shopkeeper was just… suspicious."
"They'd likely try to send you to prison. Zui would probably be able to sort it out and get you back, since you're needed for Prince Zuko's mission, but it's not as if Zuko's particularly respected. Just… try not to give anything away. Because at worst, you'd end up imprisoned."
"I wasn't giving anything away, it was just my eyes. I can't exactly change how blue they are." She tells him, deciding not to mention her necklace as well; she doesn't want to give the crew a reason to take it away from her. "Besides, it's not like being a prisoner is any different to what I am now."
"Surely you don't think the ship is as bad as prison, do you? It may be small, and not in the best condition, but all of the crew are very pleased about being here rather than their cells."
She wants to tell him that she has more important things to do than sit in a cell or a ship and let the Fire Nation do as they please with her - she needs to get back to Sokka and Toph and help them to organise an invasion force for the Day of Black Sun, and she needs to play her part in ending the war, for La's sake. Every afternoon that she watches Ikuro and Kazuo play Pai Sho, and every night that she falls asleep without a detailed plan in her head, is just another day of more death and suffering and chaos; and with her captured by the Fire Nation and her friends looking for her instead of figuring how to defeat the Firelord without Aang, she knows that the end to those things is not getting any closer.
Maybe her friends have given up on looking for her, and are instead planning for the eclipse invasion. She should hope for it - it would bring the war closer to an end and help to save thousands of lives, whereas she is just one person - but she can't. It hurts too much to consider the possibility that her brother and Toph would have just given up on her.
"I don't care whether I'm sleeping on a bed or on a cell floor. I'm still a prisoner of the Fire Nation." She says bitterly, her voice low but unmistakably harsh. Ikuro simply looks at her for a moment, his eyes slightly sad for a reason she can't figure out.
"I suppose so."
-
He's looking in the mirror when a knock comes at his door. More specifically, he is looking at his scar. It's a habit that he hasn't indulged in for a while; running his finger along the rough skin, examining the sharp curve of his burned eye, and though he hates to admit it, imagining what he could have looked like without it. He didn't often feel the need to do this during his time in the Earth Kingdom; so many people had scars that his seemed far less jarring. In the poor villages they passed through and even sometimes in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se, a face with a burn scar on it was met with understanding, and he suspected that some were even more inclined towards him because of it. To them, it was a mark of another victim, of another person bearing the burden of the Fire Nation's cruelty.
It made him one of them. At some point, it stopped being an insult and became something that felt like comfort.
The knock on the door repeats, and he tells whoever it is to come in. Zui enters.
"Hello, Zuko," He greets him, offering a half smile. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Zuko shakes his head in response. "Ah, good. I just wanted to discuss courses of action for when we arrive in the Southern Water Tribe. That won't be for a while, mind you - but with Katara speeding up the ship with her waterbending, it will be sooner than I first thought."
Zuko nods. Zui looks at him expectantly.
"How are you planning to carry out the mission, Zuko?"
Oh. Plans. It seems that he's spent so much time convincing himself that he should go through with the mission, that he hasn't put much thought into how he'll actually do that.
"Uh, well, I thought I'd just do the same thing as my last mission."
"Right. The mission where you didn't capture the avatar." He says. Zuko stiffens. "What was that strategy, exactly?"
"Mostly just searching. Intimidation. Following the avatar and his friends." Even as he says it, he feels shame biting at his throat, and his fists clench at the sensation. He has never allowed himself to feel bad about it before, so why now? Why can't he just be okay with it, like he used to be? "It will be easier this time. The avatar's only a baby."
"A baby which most people in the Water Tribes will be protecting with their lives. The Fire Nation has tried to hide the death of the last avatar, but there are… certain societies who have no doubt spread the word. You cannot just walk up and expect them to hand over the avatar because you give them some flimsy threat."
"What am I supposed to do, then?"
"Well, you can either give them threats that you actually follow through on, or you can use a far more… complicated plan." Zui tells him, a slight smile on his lips.
Zuko's fists clench harder. "What makes you think I don't follow through with threats?"
"If you followed through on anything that was actually threatening - perhaps if you even made any serious threats - you would have captured the last avatar a while ago." The older man says sharply. "Killing people, for instance. Melting down an entire tribe - they are made of ice, after all. I didn't think someone like you would be able to do those things, but correct me if I'm wrong."
Zuko knows what Zui means by someone like you; the man's eyes flicker momentarily to his scar when he says it. He means someone weak, someone dishonourable; someone not truly Fire Nation. Zuko feels the kind of shame he is more familliar with burn his stomach, and he bites back the urge to shoot fire at him. Instead, he grits his teeth and looks away, unable to deny what the other man has said. "What's the other option?"
Zui's smile grows slightly, earning a certain smugness. "We say that we're from Ba Sing Se, and that we stole a Fire Nation ship to get to them as fast as we could. We tell them that the Fire Nation knows that the avatar has been born into one of the Water Tribes, and is on their way to find the avatar right now - and undoubtedly cause a lot of damage to their tribe. We are there to take the new avatar to Ba Sing Se, where it will be safe from the Fire Nation."
Zuko raises an eyebrow. "The people of Ba Sing Se barely even know that the war exists."
Surprise passes through Zui's features for a short moment - a look that makes Zuko feel a great deal of satisfaction - before he settles back to smugness. "That doesn't matter. The water tribes don't know that."
"But what if the Earth Kingdom's already gotten for the avatar?"
Zui smiles wider. "Why do you think I let Katara speed up the ship with her bending?"
"Well- why would they even believe us? We're in a Fire Nation ship, and they know that the Fire Nation wants the avatar." He pushes, despite knowing that all he's doing is fighting against the plan now.
"Katara's one of their own, and though the crew are unaware, you and I both know the travelled with the avatar. If she goes along with it - and I'm quite sure she will - they'll trust us."
Zuko doesn't like the certainty in Zui's voice when he says he's quite sure Katara will comply. The man seems almost pleased at having the power to ensure that Katara does what he wants - he knows it's probably only blackmail, but he nonetheless feels slightly sickened by the sentiment.
Zuko looks at Zui properly, the man's eyes a muddy brown but with some quality that reminds him of his father. He imagines the plan in action, imagines the trust in the eyes of whoever the avatar's mother is, the pain she will feel of giving up her child - and all of that placed faithfully in his hands, just for him to crush it between his palms as soon as he returns to the ship.
"This way, no one will get hurt." Zui says, obviously waiting for an answer.
No one except the avatar, he wants to say. No one except an innocent child and a mother who will have to lose her baby.
He forces himself to bite his tongue, meeting Zui's eyes. "Let's do that, then."
Then older man nods. "I'm glad that's decided." He says, and promptly leaves his room.
Ikuro knocks only a few moments later and offers him tea, as he often does, but Zuko refuses. He glances up at his scar again; to the Fire Nation, it's a mark of shame and weakness, and to the Earth Kingdom, it's a mark of suffering at the hands of cruel firebenders. And now, he will prove himself to be one of those cruel firebenders, lying to a mother to make her abandon her child, manipulating her so he can lead her infant to its death.
For the first time since being on this ship, he admits it to himself - he isn't sure that he can do this.
-
A quicker update!! This chap is a lot shorter but I wanted to end it here because I have the next few chaps planned out v precisely.. absolutely no interactions in this chap BUT basically all of the chaps after this until the end will be w a lot of zuko and katara interactions so woooo!
NOTE I've edited a few bits of previous chapters cause they were bugging me so important changes:
- Mai and Zuko's whole weird romantic thing in the beginning of the fic now has a more clear end cause I realised I just wrote abt it and then never mentioned it again lmao
- They are definitely heading to the SOUTHERN tribe, not northern
- Made Zui a bit less nice in the beginning because I described him as having 'warmth' to him when he meets katara and like… he definitely isn't warm lmao. He's well mannered and acts v nice but I think this chapter makes it pretty clear that that's all for show lol
- Ikuro's tattoos are in his hands now, not his face but that's rly not important lol
I rly wanted to include the bit about Zuko's scar because I think they would have treated him it so different in the Earth Kingdom?? Like most men who fought would have burns as well as a lot of civilians, and so they wouldn't see it as a big deal and tbh such a large scar where everyone can see would probably earn him more respect and care/sympathy from people because it looks like he was a v brave soldier who was one of the worst scarred by firebenders.
Contrast that w the Fire Nation, who would mostly either know a rough idea of the story and see him as disgraceful, or would see a burn like that and think he just had a training accident and may think he was clumsy or like.. even if they felt sympathy for him would not be anywhere NEAR the amount of understanding from the earth kingdom. just interesting. Though I think a lot of people were probably a lot less nice about it in the lower ring of ba sing se.. Zuko probably had a lot of nasty names thrown at him there :(
Anyway sorry for rambling so much, thanks for reading! All faves and reviews are appreciated!!