Suddenly, she is fourteen.
At fourteen, a Fire Nation girl is not a child, but a woman. She puts away her dolls, readying her hands for duty, for marriage, for her future. She abandons studies of history and arithmetic to practice managing a household and raising a family. She will bow before the tablet of her ancestors, asking forgiveness for her inborn weaknesses and begging guidance. She will accept a red undertunic to wear beneath her childish robes before exchanging the garments for darker mature layers and longer sleeves. She will uncoil the braid crowning her temples and pin up her long black hair.
At fourteen, Katara looks nothing like a Fire Nation girl. She wears loose, full trousers tucked into practical high boots, not unlike those of a soldier. Her tunics and vests are high collared, boyish if not for the long, soft sleeves and vines of flowers embroidered at the hem. She runs across the deck of a ship without faltering, climbs fast, reads maps easily, and keeps a small dagger hidden in her left boot. She listens and jokes and sings with men thirty years her senior, and plays Pai Sho with sly success. She knows how to fix a net, hone a blade, skin any animal smaller than her arm, tourniquet a wound, and make a prince laugh. Her stitches are invisible and present on the back, or sleeve, or knee, or neckline of every crewman.
Yet...
Iroh finds himself occasionally startled by the blooming prettiness of her face. She is stubborn, generous, polite, forthright, and she is growing more into her skin with every day. She is a clever girl, an honorable girl, a good girl, but Iroh doesn't know what to do with her.
Because she loves Zuko.
It is a young, not-callused love; Iroh doubts Katara has any conscious awareness of it. It is a feeling based on friendship, loyalty and compassion, relying not on romance but proximity and recognition. Impossible to notice for being what it is, unless one knows how and where to look, but Iroh knows. They have, after all, been under his watch for a very long time. And Iroh is not so old as to forget what it is to be young, and lonely. He knows enough to recognize the signs: the fearless smile, the fond exasperation, the brightened eyes. In Katara's room there is a sleeping robe too big for a girl, fourteen or otherwise; on its border is a slowly growing design of scales. A dragon and a fish, together. The long body and little tails are painstakingly crafted, each line a testimony of care and attention. The great beast's head is not yet begun, but Iroh knows its eyes will be a rich, tawny gold.
She is fourteen, Iroh tells himself. It will change. For now, let things be as they are.
After dinner, Iroh takes a brocaded pouch and gives it to the girl. Katara's face is curious, then startled, then delighted. Reverently, she turns over one hairpin and then the other, fingering the ornaments with shy wonder. Gold and pearl, the pin's length is simple in design, but elegant. Perhaps too simple and too elegant for a girl still young enough to appreciate glitter without substance, but Iroh doesn't regret his choice. The pearls gleam like the skin of the moon. Curling her fingers around the gift, she bows with gratitude, and then, because no amount of propriety will keep Katara from being Katara, she throws both arms around Iroh's middle in a joyful hug.
It is at this point that Zuko leaves the room without a word. The pleasure on Katara's face momentarily dims. But she doesn't give Iroh a chance to step and comfort, smiling again within seconds and undoing the simple braid of her hair. Loose, Iroh is surprised—not at the length of the cascade but at the wealth of it, how comfortably the firelight lingers in the waves. He's almost sorry to see her start twisting the mass into order, trying to fashion an elegant knot to secure upward, as is proper. It is a tricky first time effort without a mirror to guide the work, but none are present. Like himself, Katara keeps nothing of the sort around her. The unspoken reason for this returns suddenly, his face determined, startling them both.
Here, the boy says, thrusting a tightly wrapped silken square at her. Katara takes it instinctively and the unfinished chignon tumbles down over her shoulders. Face openly puzzled, she unwraps the silk. For a moment, she holds a spotless piece of the sun in her hands. But then the angle changes and again Iroh thinks of the moon. Its silver is shining, exquisitely engraved and molded around a disk of polished bronze reflecting spots of golden light onto Katara's cheek. The mirror is obviously the work of a master; Iroh wonders where, or more specifically, when, his nephew acquired it. Zuko hates shopping, and is steadfastly disapproving of impractical objects, no matter how aesthetically pleasing. Katara's face and the rigid set of Zuko's shoulders tell Iroh there is a message in the gift whose meaning transcends the occasion.
Katara does not hug Zuko. Clasping the gift to her chest, brown hands crossed over the silver, she bows low. The depth of it holds enough respect to satisfy a king but it is her honesty that makes the gesture profound, elevating it into pure grace. From her position she cannot see the gratefulness on Zuko's face; Iroh can. He does not doubt both expressions are sincere.
When she rises and looks at the gift again, eyes dancing, the formality of the moment softens into sweetness. She spins with girlish zeal, irresistible, hair swinging like wings around her. Iroh cannot help smiling at the picture she makes. Zuko rolls his eyes, an un-princely action Iroh hasn't seen him do in nearly two years, and tells her to quit being foolish.
You're like a child, he admonishes her. The reprimand does nothing to extinguish the shine of her happiness.
Am not, she responds with unconscious, and spellbinding, charm. Fourteen, Iroh thinks with a dull pang of memory, is young enough to be innocently and blamelessly unaware of the power of your instinctive actions.
Zuko scowls (it has no bite) and takes the mirror from her hands. Katara's mild look of affront dissipates when he carefully raises the disk to the level of her face. Once again, she gathers her hair and arranges it into the correct upsweep. Turning her head a bit to the side, eyes never leaving the reflection between Zuko's hands (and thus never actually looking away from Zuko,) Katara inserts the hairpins with elaborate care. Finished, she lowers her hands, tilting her head experimentally to and fro, and smiles.
She asks, what do you think?
It's you, Zuko says.
Katara smiles again, taking the words as a compliment and not a confession. Iroh looks at the fourteen-year-old girl with gold in her hair and the sixteen-year-old boy with silver in his hands, and sees nothing that wasn't there before.
But then Iroh is old enough to know that love is invisible.