That night, Katara searches the ship for messenger hawks. She can't find any, and as much as she wants to believe that Zuko and Ikuro were simply lying about them being there, she refuses to risk it - especially as it seems unlikely that Zuko and Ikuro have banded together to construct some elaborate lie about messenger hawks just to prevent her from escaping. And so, with no way of stopping the hawks from alerting the Fire Nation if she takes over the ship, and with no way to tell if Zuko was lying during their conversation, she decides that she needs a new plan.
It only takes her about a day to think of one. It takes her three further days of desperately trying to think of a different plan before she actually allows herself to go through with it.
Ever since she was put on this ship, Zuko hasn't acted at all antagonistic towards her. He has let her shout at him, he has held civil conversation with her when she has allowed it, and he has answered all of her questions about the Boiling Rock. Granted, the last point may have been influenced by her blackmailing him, but she's grateful for it nonetheless. What's more, nothing he has done seems fake - he has not been overly nice, and he certainly hasn't been without any frustration or indignance when she's insulted at him. He has seemed, on the whole, decent - and she knows from past experience that he isn't, and he has done terrible things and made terrible decisions, but she can't help but think that maybe, there really is good inside of him. And however insignificant that goodness may be, or how far he has pushed it away in order to go home or fulfil his destiny or earn his father's love, it's something that she can hold onto.
She is well aware that it isn't her job to try to reform Prince Zuko. Yet, she can ignore what is and isn't her job if doing it could help her get off of this ship. If she can just get on good terms with him - for her escape, and nothing else, she reassures herself - and ease out a little bit of his goodness for her own benefit, then maybe he can help her with some sort of escape; maybe she can even convince him, very slowly and very carefully, to go against this entire mission and stop the new avatar from ever being captured.
It's ridiculously flimsy - less of a plan and more of a long, rickety string of maybes held together by sheer desperation - and she knows it will be humiliating to actually carry out, but she has to try it. Even if it fails in its first step and she can never look Zuko in the eyes again, she still has to. Her family, her friends and the survival of avatar state are all far more important than her grudges and her pride - and besides, it's not like she has any actual desire to become friends with him. If he refuses her and spends the rest of the mission giving her strange looks, she can at least console herself with the reminder that it was for her father, and for the balance of the world.
She will ask him to spar. She figures it will help if she begins this friendship with something they are both familiar with - fighting with each other.
.
She waits for the next time that he walks onto the deck while she's waterbending. They lock eyes and almost immediately turns to leave, and she freezes, suddenly overwhelmed by both her complete lack of desire to be friendly with him, and her panic at the possibility of the entire plan going wrong. He gets halfway down the stairs before she forces herself to call out his name.
He pauses, and turns around to look at her. "Yeah?"
All of the confidence that she built up while practicing bending seems to have melted away, and bites back the urge to say sorry, nothing and let him leave. "Were you coming up to firebend?"
A confused look passes over his features. "Uh, yeah, but it's fine - I'll just practice once you're done."
"I mean, if you'd rather practice at this time," She begins, unable to look him in the eye. "we could spar."
His eyebrow shoots up, and with the way he's looking at her, she's half surprised that his jaw hasn't dropped to the floor. "What - now?"
She grits her teeth, folding her arms under her chest almost instinctively. "Whenever you want to," she snaps, before forcing herself to calm down - you're trying to be his friend, remember. "I know it's probably… an unexpected offer. But we both need to be fighting at our best when we get to the South Pole, and we're pretty evenly matched, so I thought it could be useful,"
He is silent for an infuriatingly long time. She can't quite read the expression on his face and decides that this is probably a bad sign; yet, just when she thinks he's about to say no and walk away, he surprises her. "It wouldn't exactly be fair though, would it? We're surrounded by ocean."
"I'll just use what's in here," she gestures to her water pouch. "If I use anything from the ocean, then… I automatically lose."
He goes silent again, his eyes pointed to the pouch rather than her, before straightening his shoulders slightly. "Okay, yeah."
She raises a brow. "You agree to spar?"
"Yeah," he nods, slightly unsure, as if he isn't quite sure why he's saying yes.
They both stay where they're standing for far too long, looking at anything besides each other, and she suddenly feels the stupidest she's felt in a long time.
"As in, now? Or some other day?" She asks, attempting to sound sarcastic despite the fact that she really does need the clarification.
His shoulders tighten noticeably in embarrassment, and she wonders he, too, if feeling unbearably stupid. "Oh, sorry. Now's fine."
Perhaps it's only because of how painfully awkward their conversation was, but she's surprised at how smoothly they spar. There's something inexplicably easy about it - not in how easy it is to beat him, because it isn't, but in how easily she douses the fire aimed at her, or how easily he blocks the water she flings, as if they both know what the other is about to do a moment before they do it. It reminds her of the fights they used to have, when the only thing deciding who won was whether it was the sun or the moon in the sky, and she feels a sudden anger tug at her. Because they used to fight, not spar - he would fight to take Aang, and she would fight to protect him, and it seems that with Aang gone, Zuko has won that long battle. She lets the anger fuel her bending, her water suddenly holding far more power, her body moving twice as fast.
He doesn't match it. Instead, he stays at the level they both started at, blocking her heavier hits instead of competing with them. She feels her fists clench.
"Stop." She says, her voice harsh. He does so almost immediately. "You're going easy on me,"
He opens his mouth to reply, but pauses before any words come out, his eyes slightly guilty.
"Don't. It's insulting. Just fight me like you used to - I can heal myself if you burn me."
He closes his mouth and nods before looking away from her, his voice quiet. "I try not to burn people."
Oh. She forces herself not to look at his scar. Then, she realises that he's right - in all of their fights and all of their time as enemies, he never burnt her. She wonders if it's difficult to stop your fire from burning an opponent - then she stops herself from wondering, because she doesn't like her own answer.
He doesn't go easy on her when they resume. At some point - she isn't quite sure when - she begins enjoying it. She hasn't sparred with anyone since she and her friends were living in the upper ring of Ba Sing Se, and she seems to have forgotten how freeing it feels, to be completely focused on her movements, her body, her element; all of the worries and pains and struggles in her mind temporarily forgotten. It's a difficult fight, and the longer it goes on with them both matching eachother strike for strike, the more she is determined to win.
She hurls three large shards of ice at him and he dodges two of them gracefully - the third one, though, slices through the bottom of his tunic, and while he doesn't notice it and carries on fighting, an idea pops into her head. His tunic is drenched in sweat, clinging to his body in a way that, admittedly, would be quite distracting if it were someone other than Zuko. She pushes the last thought aside and begins using her hits to gradually move them both towards the wall near the stairs, waiting for the right moment to strike.
It comes when Zuko miscalculates his footing slightly and her water whip wraps around his leg. He breaks the whip with a fire blast after a short moment, but it's enough - just as he does, she bites back a smile and bends the sweat out of his shirt, using it to pin his wrists to the wall and freezing them there. He stops bending for a second, clearly disorientated by the move, and she wastes no time in using her water to freeze his feet between the ground and the wall, ensuring that the ice is too thick for him to melt easily.
She counts to ten, and gives him a smug smile. "I win."
He looks at her incredulously, his breath heaving. "You... you used my sweat? You said you'd only use the water in your pouch!"
"You're just mad that you lost. Besides, if you didn't sweat so much, I wouldn't have been able to use it."
"I don't usually sweat that much! I'm just not used to wearing a shirt when I spar," He snaps.
She crosses her arms under her chest and scoffs - if she's too nice to him, she decides, then it will seem fake. For now, she can give into her dislike of him, or at least her exasperation. "Why were you wearing one, then?"
He suddenly looks sheepish. "I don't know. I thought it might be... weird."
Oh. She pauses for a second. Then, she scoffs again - it's Zuko, after all. Whether he's wearing a shirt or not changes nothing. "Trust me, it won't make anything weird. I've seen enough guys without their shirts on before."
It's only when he flushes, as if slightly scandalised, that she realises exactly what she said. She feels her cheeks burn. "I meant my brother! And Aang! I didn't- I'm not- you know what I meant! I didn't mean that!"
"How was I supposed to know what you meant?" He defends himself, and she clenches her fists, ready to deny it all over again. "Besides, it's not my business. You can do what you want."
"But I didn't- I really did mean my brother and Aang, alright?" She snaps, before glancing at his wrists and seeing that he's slowly melting the ice. You're trying to be his friend, she reminds herself. "You could just ask," she says, swiftly bending the ice off of him.
He raises a brow, slightly incredulous at the gesture, but nods anyway. "Thanks,"
"Don't mention it. We're sparring, not fighting," she says, trying to ignore how strange the words sound on her lips.
"Yeah," he says, clearly finding her words as strange as she does, and the long silence that follows makes her wonder if she's tried to be too nice too quickly. Before she can begin doubting her plan - or worse, her execution of the plan - she pushes the thought away. They argued for most of the time that they weren't sparring - if that still makes Zuko suspicious, then he should get a better idea of what friendliness is.
She clears her throat to fill the silence. "Well, I should go... read,"
He nods, as if slightly relieved. "Mhm. Me too," he says. They both go swiftly to their rooms.
She can't focus on her novel. The events of the morning refuse to stop replaying in her head, and part of her still can't believe that she even went through with the plan in the first place. What's more, he agreed to spar when she asked him, and she actually ended up enjoying it. She isn't quite sure how she feels - or should feel - about any of these things.
She wonders if Zuko is at all suspicious. She wonders if he really is reading, like he said. Despite herself, she wonders if he, too, can't focus on his book.
AN: another chap! Finally! I was so excited to write this but I honestly found it so difficult and it's probably some of my worst writing in the story so far so sorry! It's taken me two entire months for quarantine to start getting to me but now that it has I can barely focus on anything and I've kinda lost all my motivation so :/
So maybe the whole sparring thing is cliche but like… i wanted to indulge myself so its happening lol. But now things will really start picking up! Lots more actual zutara interactions to come! Katara v much does NOT want to be friends w zuko at this point but shes also very desperate to get back to her friends and make sure the avatar state doesn't end (or just make sure that an innocent baby doesnt die). I think this is especially important to katara because throughout atla she REALLY believes in the role and importance of the avatar and definitely puts a lot of hope for world peace etc. on Aang because he's the avatar to a far larger extent than a lot of other characters
I also wrote Zuko as going easy on Katara at first because he's just a bit like? Wtf is going on right now? Is this a trick? I thought this girl hated me so let's NOT fight her super hard and piss her off again? Mixed with the guilt he's been feeling about the crystal catacombes and all - NOT because he thinks she can't handle it or something like that
I've also written a few entries for zutara quarantine month so check those out! Thanks for reading this chap!