"Promise me you won't hurt them."
This is the first thing she says to him when they're alone. Zuko stares at her, standing across his room when she'd usually be sitting close, holding herself still with a firm grip on either elbow, and tries to figure who he's looking at. Because Katara, his Katara, would never ask him this.
"I have no reason to hurt them," he says and sees her flinch. Damn. "I mean— why would you think I'd do such a thing? Against women and children?"
Guiltily, he remembers the fear on the nut-brown faces, but pushes the thought aside; that was necessary and only for intimidation purposes. She should know this. Has he become like the image of the monsters in her nightmares? Something within him, Zuko knows, would not survive the transformation. After a moment, Katara nods and Zuko feels a fist unclench inside him; he recognizes the relaxed swell of her lip as understanding.
"I don't think you would—I know you wouldn't." She digs her fingers into her elbows. "But I need to hear you say it."
Because it is your tribe, your people. Because in their eyes I am the enemy. "I promise."
"Thank you," Katara says quietly.
Who is she, this stranger before him? Zuko doesn't recognize her. The shape is different, outlined and tapered by the foreign cut of the unfamiliar blue clothes, the slim long tunic and tight sleeves. Her face has new dimensions in it, framed by the twin thin locks of dark hair and the pull of the thick braid down her back. She is taller, thinner, darker, older, shorter, harder—something.
Something is different now.
Something has changed.
"Did you find people you knew—know—your family?" Zuko asks, awkward. "You were young when you left—were taken—when…"
She turns away partly, becoming an indecipherable profile against the sheet of candlelight on his wall. Her skin is like bronze. Perhaps silence was a safer position.
"I found my grandmother. Oh, and Sokka, of course."
Of course. "Sokka?"
"My brother." The crescent tip of a smile. "Sokka. He's the oldest boy left in the tribe; everybody older left two years ago to help—to fight. My father was among them. The rest…." The smile evaporates; she shrugs. "There were less people than I remember. But, well, kids are never good at keeping track; my memories were probably shoddy to begin with."
Zuko has seen her memorize a dynasty worth of titles in a week; Katara's memory has never been anything less proficient. Why the effort to pretend otherwise now? Talk to me, he thinks. Pleads. Show what you're trying to hide. I'm here; trust me.
"And Aang?" The name has a familiar flavor. "Another brother?"
"No." A guarded look veils her gaze, warning him about asking the wrong question. "A friend. A very young, very kind friend."
Zuko remembers the score of children huddling back from him. He asks, "Were you treated well? They welcomed you?"
"They were kind." Again the smile, but there is sadness in it. "They did everything they could for me, really. Fed me, clothed me, healed my wounds—it was amazing enough that Sokka found me when he did but I'd never have survived without the tribe's care."
Zuko doesn't want to hear about that. He doesn't want to picture her bleeding and weak, shivering or, worse, fatally still. Images of that ilk have been the fodder of his nightmares for over two months; he does not need to hear his imaginings be confirmed. But he looks at her, alive and whole, and finds the courage to ask, "How bad was it?"
"Frostbite was the bulk of it." Unlocking her arms, Katara studies the surface of one smooth palm. "My limbs were like wax. Lifeless. There was fever, too; it took a week before I was well enough to understand where I was. Afterwards…" She lowers her hand; Zuko watches its fingers curl loosely against her side and fight the urge to reach out and touch. "Gran-Gran said it was the fastest healing she'd ever seen in anybody. I don't know, maybe it's a Waterbender thing, but…" She tightens her lips, barring off words.
Zuko knows this expression, too. "But…what's wrong?"
"Nothing." He knows this stubbornness, too.
"Katara."
"It's nothing." Despite the sharpness of the word, it is her face that bears the hurt. "Nothing that matters at this point. Let it go."
He can't. Not even to save himself, could Zuko let go of…this. "Do you want to go back?"
The shock on her face is plain, naked, freezing her eyes and mouth. It transforms her face into that of a child, vulnerable, a face Zuko remembers studying often during his younger years. Of all the mysteries collected in Uncle Iroh's house, the curios and the stories, and the dreams born of them, of all the strange examples of the unknown Zuko has encountered on land and sea, Katara remains the most baffling.
"I can't," she says. "I can't—couldn't—go back. I don't belong there, not now. There isn't any place for me." Suddenly agitated, she turns back towards him. Emotions are rolling a storm across her face. "Nothing's like it was before. Everything's changed, been changed; it's different and I'm the only one who sees it like that because everyone else was part of the change. And you know what the worst part is, Zuko?"
Zuko. No title, no hesitation. When was the last time he heard his name released so freely and yet without rancor or aversion? He hears new tones in her pronunciation of it. But the change has nothing to do with sound, of course.
"I recognized everything. Everything. I recognized the lacings on the tent flap, the etching on the lamp pot, the bone handle of the knife during dinner." Momentarily a hand flies to her throat, overshadowing a stony glint of blue, and the fiercer blue of her eyes demands his full attention. "I recognized the smell of stewed prunes, the glossy feel of salve, the snowball games, the bedtime songs. I recognized how it all worked, how they do things. How they live…"
But it wasn't the same, was it, Katara? Beneath the familiar was a world of unknown information and even though you knew, you expected, the foreign depths were there—you weren't ready for them. Things changed in your absence; you returned to a new world.
It is wrong, Zuko knows, to feel relief at her words. Even worse to feel joy because of them, but joy unsheathes its claws inside him nonetheless. She does not belong there, with the cold and the endless whiteness; she belongs here.
"It's strange, isn't it?" Katara puts her palm against a wall, turning away again. "To think of a ship as a place, instead of what it is, a way to reach a destination."
Personally, that's something Zuko tries to avoid thinking about. "How much did you hate having to come on it?"
"I was scared." The palm slides down the metal then abruptly falls back to her side. "Too little space, too many people I didn't know, let alone trust. And there was so much water, everywhere, without end. It's one thing swirling tea in a teacup; it's another when there's enough water to rival the sky."
Zuko shakes his head, lost. "That's—I can't understand that."
"I know and I wouldn't ask you to." She gives the words without judgment. "It's just the way it was then. And, well, it doesn't matter; we're all each other in the end, I suppose."
Silence lies down to stretch between them.
"You didn't burn my name," she finally remarks, offhandedly. Her tone is casual, exhibiting no noticeable interest in the subject. Disconcerting, considering the subject is that of her own funeral. Having no body, the most honorable option available would have been to take Katara's name, written out by her closest kin (Iroh), and burn it to give her spirit a smoke trail to follow into heaven. Uncle Iroh approached him with the suggestion two weeks after her…disappearance; he was not wrong to do so.
"I forbade the ceremony." Zuko turns to look at her. It isn't easy. "It wouldn't have been the right thing to do—it was too soon."
"How long would you've waited?"
I don't know. "Longer."
"A season, then?" She meets his questioning look with fragile stillness. "That's how long they, my tribe, waited before declaring me dead. One season, summer. And then they gathered toys and beads to wrap into a parka, my parka, and threw it into the water." She purses her lips. "I think I'd rather have my spirit follow smoke into the air then have it rambling around under the ice. Though it must be interesting, don't you think, to explore the world underwater?"
"Don't," he commands. "Saying things like that is bad luck; you shouldn't talk about it."
"Why not? It's my death; doesn't that mean I have the right to discuss it?" Emotion flashes in the blue of her eyes, anger or pain, and the invisible walls around her trembled. "Especially since nobody else would. The whole tribe, everyone, not a single one of them would say a word about what happened. It was like I'd broken a rule by returning to them and the silence was a punishment. Or, worse, like my being there wasn't real, that if anyone dared to point out the presence of a ghost among them she'd disappear. My grandmother was the only person who mentioned my mother's name out loud around me, and I can count on one hand the number of times she did it. Even Sokka…" Katara's teeth bite her lip; he sees the tension gather at the corners of her mouth. "He told me to forget about it. As if half my life was something to spit out into the snow and walk away from."
Then what is it to you? he wants to ask. She's lived in the Fire Nation for half her life but how much of her heart, her mind, resides with the people who are not her own? With Iroh? With him? But the price of asking this is not something Zuko is ready to pay.
"It would've gotten better," Zuko says, his own worst enemy and yet unable to bar the words. "Whatever anxiety they felt towards your…arrival would have abated in time, Katara. Maybe you can't imagine what it's like to have someone important to you simply pop back into existence—but I can." His skin remembers the sting of the snowball. "It's like having the world disappear from under your feet. The tribe, your grandmother and brother, they just needed more time to accept what happened. Eventually things would have returned to normal."
"Things would never have returned to normal." The finality of the statement surprises Zuko; he feels her words stare at something hot and desperate inside his chest. "Sometimes there's no going back. No matter what kind of miracle you find among the ice."
Suddenly, Zuko wishes they were outside, on the deck or on land, anywhere that had a high sky of stars above them. He wants space. The room around them is too small to contain the rising tide of agitation beginning in his lungs and stomach. Katara's words have always had the power to render him undone; a one-line riddle could trap his mind for a week, a five-minute argument could haunt his temper for a month and a two-word apology could transmute his anger into simple air. This time hearing her is stirring up fears and hopes he's been spending two years trying not to name. The phantom sting on his cheek is changing into a blister. He closes his eyes against the memory.
And open them again when a cool hand touches his. Katara looks up at him, mouth closed but soul open, and the fingertips on his knuckles press down just a little. Just enough. The fear recedes and he stares at her, unsure of how to define the expression he feels forming on his face.
"What if…" she begins. Stops. The hand drops away.
"What if…what?" Talk to me.
"What if today was the first time we met?" Zuko blinks. Katara continues, not looking at him. "If the ship broke through the ice and you came down and I looked up—and that would be the first time we ever saw each other. How different would it be? Would we recognize each other as anything besides Fire and Water?" She raises her eyes. "Would you recognize me?"
What a strange thing to ask. What a strange, perplexing, amazing thing to ask. And yet how very like Katara to ask it.
"It's impossible. How could we be expected to recognize each other as anything except…different?" The fingers of his right hand, the one she touched, curl slowly. "We'd be strangers."
She nods. The acquiescence is oddly disappointing. "Strangers. You're right. It was an infantile thing to ask, sorry." A corner of her mouth twitches. "Master Iroh likes reminding about truth being stranger than fiction, but did you ever wonder at how right he is about that? The two of us—we don't make any sense. A prince with the chance to rule the world and a girl born in a house with a dirt floor; it's ridiculous. How is it that we're friends?"
"Maybe it's fate." She blinks. Zuko continues, not looking away from her. "Maybe fate saw a prince barely lucky enough to be born and brought a blue-eyed moon girl to pull him out of a garden pond. Maybe it put a brush in her hand to teach him something important about the unexpected things in the world. Maybe it called her to his door during the worst time of his life to yell like an ill-bred fishwife and remind him to be strong. Maybe he cursed every drop of water in the sea when she was gone and maybe he thanked every star when she returned. Maybe, sometimes, fate is kind."
"I don't think it knows how. Things happen because they're there to happen and there's no pattern, no reason for—I'm sorry." Katara puts a hand over her eyes. Zuko expects to hear sigh; she doesn't give it. "I'm tired. Sorry. And you don't believe in fate."
"Tonight," Zuko says, not quite laughing, "I'm willing to believe anything."
Her eyes still covered, hidden, she asks, "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow we go back to chasing fairy tales and empty rumors around the world." He turns to stare out the window, seeing moonlight but not its source. "Tomorrow we search for the Avatar."
A tug of material at his wrist makes him realize she's grabbed his sleeve, holding the edge of it like a child. "I'm not sorry I met you." He glances at her and is surprised to see no serenity in Katara's expression. Instead her face is full shaking, anxious lines and her eyes shine wetly. "I'm not. I swear it by my—my honor, by whatever you'd trust, I'm not sorry, I've never been sorry, not for that. You have to believe me—please, you have to believe it, even if—if one day something happens, if I do something, something terrible, to make you think otherwise—don't. Please."
She's trembling; Zuko feels the tremors when he puts a hand on Katara's shoulder to calm her, not understanding. "Katara, why—what are you talking about? I'd never expect you to—listen, there's no need to ask something like that. It's all right. Katara? Katara."
"—please, don't. Even if what I do is really awful and ugly, and hurts everyone, hurts you; I don't—wouldn't—mean it, not like that, Zuko, not to hurt anyone—"
Zuko lays a hand against her hair, too disturbed by the grief in her voice to worry about the intimacy of the contact. Seeing Katara come apart like this, without knowing why or how to fix it, is scattering his mind. It's panic, shock, a post-traumatic overload of stress and—whatever, Zuko doesn't care about the label; he only wants her tears to stop. "Katara, it's all right; you don't have to worry about anything like that. Really, don't, please—please, don't cry."
A sob chokes her stumbling words and Zuko breaks; he takes the next step without thinking of what may follow it and wraps both arms around her. Katara collapses into the hold without hesitation, easy as gravity or the fall of rain. "Shh, shh, it's okay, I promise. Just—just let it out. Don't fight it. You're going to be okay: let it out." His left palm rests on her shoulder blade, covering it completely; the flesh feels maddeningly fragile to him, like he could break through to the bone without even trying. Zuko is used to thinking of Katara as undersized but holding her this close, closer than he has ever held anyone, closer than he can ever remember being held, is teaching him how small the girl really is. Not in height but in the built and breadth of her, the slimness of her neck and wrists, the hollow of her throat and the flow of her back, the curve of the cheek against his chest.
How could such a little thing have so much to love about it?
"I could never hate you," he murmurs, trying to rub away the quiver in her shoulders. "It doesn't matter what we argue about or what happens, you're not—you're…I missed you. You have no idea what went through my head while you were gone. I kept thinking of what happened and I kept trying to hope, except you weren't around to show me how. So I walked around like a fool and hurt like hell—did you know I went into your room and counted ever needle you had? There were nine and two broken ones; I counted twice. I don't know why I did it but I couldn't stay away, couldn't sleep knowing you were…you were…you…"
Not letting go, he tries to steer her into sitting down but Katara resists and pushes away just enough to look up at him. The delicate skin around her eyes is turning puffy, and will only look worse later, but the wet blue is stunning.
"You're the reason I'm here," she whispers. Zuko isn't sure what that means but it sounds like a confession.
He kisses her.
Zuko has never in all his sixteen years kissed anyone in a way that meant anything and neither can he remember ever wanting to. Except maybe that's not exactly true because kissing Katara feels like answering a call, or maybe simply actually listening to it for the first time. One hand automatically goes to the back of her head, trying to lend some stability to the deed; the other hand stays laid out across her shoulders, noticing that the tremors are still. The kiss is a contact venturing no further than the skin of his and her lips, a chaste press despite the lightning Zuko's mind attaches to the sensation. But this is not important.
The fact that Katara doesn't pull away, instead leaning in, is.
Zuko pulls away first, vaguely aware of holding his breath through out the whole endeavor. Likewise, Katara exhales. The puff of warm air briefly skims the edge of Zuko's cheek; he tries to speak around the pulse in his throat. "Katara. Trust me when I say that I could never hate you. I can't."
"I missed you," she says. Arms wrap around his middle. "I missed you so much. I tried not to but it was like thinking the moon was never coming back. I'd sit out in the cold, staring at the water, and it felt wrong." She lowers her head back down, a light pressure upon him. "None of it would've happened if I'd stayed below deck during the storm. I'm sorry. Everything that happened while I was gone, all it caused…I'm sorry for hurting you."
"Katara. Katara, look at me." She does. "You helped protect this ship and everyone on it. You saved me. Again. Actually, that seems to be something of a pattern with you."
"Old habits." She's not crying now but he can still trace the tear track on her face. "I get paranoid every time I see you on a bridge or near water." She blinks, sniffing, and unpeels an arm from his waist to rub the heel of her hand against her eyes. "What a mess. Waterbenders. Soppy to the last; I'm surprised it took me this long to start leaking."
Zuko thumbs the curve of her cheek and Katara's hand falls away. "Stronger than she looks, our little fish. Stronger than the moon."
"Zuko?" Again, the lack of title. Again, he doesn't mind. "Can I…"
"…yes?"
She swallows; his eyes translate the jump and fall of it in the motion of her throat. "Can I stay here tonight? If only for a little while, can I stay? With you?"
"Afraid of bad dreams?"
"That's not it. Not anymore." Katara's gaze is steady, brave. Sincere. "I want to stay."
This could be a mistake. This could be a dream. This could be a chance that will never pass this close again. This could be worth it all. "I want you to stay."
The bed is small but then, he notes again, so is Katara. Zuko lays back on it, fully dressed, while Katara toes off her boots. The angle has her at his blind side, a blurred shape of dim blue and white. Zuko closes his eyes to give his mind a chance to dive deep and bury this moment, him and her, safely in his memory.
Tomorrow, the world. But tonight he is a believer, a child in the dark, feeling her weight settle on the bed beside him. When she curls, not facing him but staying closer than the bed's size demands, Zuko drapes his arm across her middle to feel the rise and drop of her breath.
"Do you want me to leave the lamps burning?"
"I like the glow. Do you mind?"
"No." He closes his eyes. "I don't mind at all. Dream sweet."
She doesn't speak but fingertips settle on the hand at her side; he feels the pressure of the touch sink to the core of him. There is something telling, perhaps, in falling asleep with a Fire flag at your back and a Water girl in your arms, but Zuko isn't thinking about it. Instead, he listens to the lullaby of Katara's breathing, and is almost happy.
Author's Note: Much credit for this chapter goes to amurderofcrows, who attacked with good intentions and mental torture until I gave in and had our unlikely duo kiss. She also punched me. A lot. In the ear.