Ozai's Vengeance

Summary: Twelve years after the final battle, Zuko summons Katara to heal the victims of an epidemic spreading throughout the Fire Nation. [Katara/Zuko

Disclaimer: ATLA is the property of Nickelodeon, not me. No profit is made by this story.

Rating: T for Teen

Zuko did not see Katara until evening. They had almost reached the port nearest Tetsushi. Soon, it would be time to disembark. After a day spent practicing his bending, he found Katara in her berth reading the reports each of the Tetsushi doctors had sent to the capitol. She had spread the letters chronologically across one table, and on her coverlet were several scrolls featuring detailed representations of the human anatomy. Some even depicted the human interior, all the organs and muscles and fluids within.

"That's disgusting," Zuko said, nodding at the scrolls.

"Disgusting or not, it's what we all look like inside," Katara said. "You're no different, Fire Lord."

He raised an eyebrow at one scroll. It depicted a woman with a baby inside. "I beg to differ."

Katara rolled her eyes. She stood, stretched, and pointed at the letters from Tetsushi. "I'm getting to know my enemy."

"And? Have you formulated a plan of attack?"

She nodded. "I think so." She strode over his uncle's desk, and pointed at a large scroll she'd left unrolled. "This is the region surrounding Tetsushi," she said, her index finger making a loose circle about the small mountain town. "It's an old map. Can you tell me if Tetsushi has indoor plumbing, yet?"

Zuko shrugged. "In the residential areas? I doubt it. It's still fairly rural."

Katara nodded. "I suspected as much. Do you see this river?" She pointed. "It's probably the communal water supply. Whatever is making these people sick is in that river."

Zuko frowned. "How can you be so sure?"

Katara pointed. "The most recent reports come from downriver. If the illness had spread outward, it would mean it jumped from person to person like a child's cough. But instead, the illness has moved steadily south with the river. It starts in Tetsushi."

A cold feeling settled over Zuko's shoulders. "Are you suggesting that someone has poisoned the water supply?"

Slowly, Katara nodded. "As I see it, there are two possibilities. The first is that someone in the town brought a sickness with him, and that he's somehow tainted the water with it. Tetsushi isn't that far from a port -- maybe he came from elsewhere and brought a foreign illness, like a parasite, and transmitted it to his neighbors through the water."

"A parasite?"

Katara bent down and pulled a scroll from one of his uncle's many nooks. Unrolling it over the map, she pointed at a particularly nasty-looking creature. "Sickle-worm," she said. "It lives inside a person's intestine, and it-"

"Enough," Zuko said, holding up a hand. "I understand."

"I thought you might." She left the scroll unfurled, and crossed her arms. "The other possibility is that someone has purposefully poisoned the river near Tetsushi. I'm not sure why they would do such a thing, though. Unless…" She shifted weight to one foot. "Is it true that the town was run by a war profiteer?"

"How did you learn that?"

"I took a look at some census records. Things have gone downhill for Tetsushi ever since you ended the war."

Zuko made his way to the nearest window. He stared outside for a moment before answering. After yesterday's storm, the water looked glassy and serene, and he had a sudden and powerful yearning to stay there. Getting off his ship had only ever caused him problems. "The reception you received in Kaino-tama had to do with the population as much as your popularity," he said. "Urban dwellers were the first to see the futility of Sozin's war. It's hard to start civic improvement projects when the dragon's share of the taxes feed a war machine. It's why our roads are cracked in so many places -- we've had no money to repair them."

He turned, and clasped his hands behind his back. "In the outlying areas, it's different. Those people were convinced of the glory of the Fire Nation, and had hopes for empire. Those hopes made them feel more important, because their hard labor contributed to something much greater -- or so they thought." He cleared his throat. "Now the people of Tetsushi and places like it are living in poverty because I curtailed those hopes. More importantly, their sons are dead and gone, because the least educated in the nation served as infantrymen while the sons of Kaino-tama became my father's bureaucrats."

A tight smile crossed his face. "If I were a citizen of Tetsushi, I might be angry enough to risk poisoning my own neighbors, if I thought it would help me practice for something on a larger scale -- the capital reservoir, perhaps. And if it drew the attention of General Iroh, or the Fire Lord's favorite waterbender, so much the better." He laughed mirthlessly, and shook his head. "What new danger have I put you in now, Katara?"

Katara rolled her eyes and waved one hand dismissively. "Zuko. Snap out of it. Come on." She crossed the room to face him. "It's very realistic of you to suggest a plot from within your own country, but the world really doesn't revolve around you."

Zuko's jaw fell open. "Excuse me?" I try explaining the tensions in the Fire Nation as best I can, and you accuse me of being self-centered?

Katara took a deep breath. "I probably said that wrong. I'm sorry. What I mean is, the town of Tetsushi once helped make steel that went into weapons manufacture. Those weapons killed people all over the world. Correct?"

He winced. "Yes."

"So isn't it possible that someone has a grudge against the town?" When he frowned, she stepped even closer. Her eyes had taken on the eager, hungry look of a pygmy panther in the presence of a bird. It meant she had an idea, and she knew exactly how to follow it up. "What did you do with Li and Lo?" she asked.

"I had them imprisoned in iron cell, where their lightning would scorch them from the inside out," Zuko said.

"And why did you do that?"

"They trained Azula. Azula hurt my uncle."

"Exactly," Katara said. "Now if your sister had used a sword, wouldn't you want to find the one who forged it?"

Instantly, he understood. "Yes." I'd gut him like a fish with one of his own weapons. A stray thought occurred to him. He looked down into Katara's satisfied face and asked a question whose answer he feared: "Was that how you thought of me?"

Katara paused. She looked almost hurt in her surprise, as though she had mistakenly stepped into broken glass. There you go again, Mai's voice said within his mind, always whining. Can't you just shut up? Katara's mouth worked. He could almost see the gears of her mind turning. They had not shared a living space in years, and yet he still recognized the look on her face as she decided how to put something gently. And what stung worse than the fact that her desire for vengeance had run deep -- he had expected that -- was that he still knew her face so well, could still read it because he had memorized it ages ago. He had expected time to dull that awful sense of expectation when he watched her face, but it remained just as fresh and raw as he remembered.

"It's all right," he heard himself say. "You don't have to answer. I understand. I was the face of the enemy. You said it yourself."

Frantically, Katara shook her head. "That was then. This is now. I can't even remember what wanting to hurt you felt like." Her voice rose. "And I wouldn't ever… I'd never go to those lengths, I'd-"

"Katara." He had the oddest urge to hold her face in his hands, but he refrained. "We both know that if you thought I was going to hurt Aang, you would have put an ice arrow straight through my heart." His head tilted. "The fact that Ozai's troops eliminated your mother, father, and most of your village would only have made it easier."

"That wasn't you! And it was years ago! I'm grown up, now, and I've learned…" She faltered. "I've learned how to live without them," she said, straightening. "Your parents are gone, too. And why are we even discussing this?" She turned away. "Just because I can understand someone's motives for vengeance doesn't mean I'm a vengeful person."

Zuko had to restrain a chuckle. "We're both vengeful people, and you know it." He peered around her. "It doesn't mean I think any less of you."

She turned, and she looked very small suddenly. "I'm not vengeful, I'm passive-aggressive," she said.

"Remind me to have that inscribed on my throne."

She laughed through her nose, bending double. Her giggles streamed out around her fingers, which she held close to her mouth. Straightening, she wiped tears from the corners of each eye and sat heavily on the bed. "I think I've been going a little crazy up there in the mountains," she said.

"You don't say."

Again, she laughed. The sound left a warm feeling in his chest like good, smooth liquor. "I'm not allowed to get angry, up there. Displeased or disappointed, maybe, but not angry. I can't lose control in front of the children." She looked at the scrolls. "And Aang provided such a good example -- he was just so good -- that I felt a little ashamed every time I raised my voice." She shrugged. "I guess that's why I've been so all over the place, here. It's like the waterbending. I've been trying to hold an ocean inside a rain-barrel."

She paused a moment. "Wow. I guess you were right. I am starved for adult conversation. I should probably just be quiet, now." She looked down at her lap and laced her fingers tightly, pressing the single fist they made between her knees.

Reluctantly, Zuko sat beside her. The bed was too soft. He sank down and tried not to think of her smell there in the sheets, her body's warmth still there. "When Aang died, my uncle offered you a place with us, any time you liked. He said not to let the children run you ragged."

"I thought I could do it alone," she said in a tiny voice. "I mean, come on, I helped defeat Ozai. I faced down your sister. I protected the Avatar -- why shouldn't I be able to take care of less than a hundred kids? It's just food and clothes and teaching, right? We're not even at war, and I have a garrison and volunteers to help me." She hunched over a little, resting her elbows on her knees. "Aang was so much better at it than me."

"Aang was the Avatar. You are not."

"It was more than that," she said. "Aang was a child at heart. He understood how to share himself with the children. He knew how to make playtime a learning experience. I was always the disciplinarian." She smiled. "It's not easy always being the bad guy."

"Believe me, I know."

Her palm slapped her forehead. "I really should just shut up," she said, behind her hand. "We have a town to save, and here I am whining to you about how hard it is to run an orphanage. You have an entire country to look after."

"Katara, if I had to do your job I would have torched the temple by now."

She peered at him with one eye. "You would not."

His good eyebrow arched. "I believe you're familiar with my temper by now."

"You have much better control of it now that you did in the past," she said. "It shows."

He tried not to let the silent, triumphant riot her words incited distract him. "Why aren't Sokka and Suki helping you? What about Toph?"

Katara smiled. "Sokka and Suki have their own children to look after, and they have a difficult time as it is splitting their time between Kyoshi and the South Pole," she said. "But when I received your message, I asked them to come and watch over things for me. They're at the temple right now." She shrugged. "I suppose I could have let the volunteers and your garrison handle things. But I don't trust them like I do my brother. I don't have a personal relationship with any of them -- I'm still 'the Avatar's waterbender' to them."

Zuko nodded. That, at least, he understood. He found it a strain making friends at all -- establishing such a relationship with one of the people under his command struck him as impossible. It was as Katara had said -- friendship required equality. And he could not afford equality in large quantities. Her fingers brushing his brought him out of his musings, and he looked down at where she'd touched him. "There's something I have to tell you," she said.

His heart found his throat. "Yes?"

"I watched Aang die." She squeezed his hand and blinked away tears. "I just turned around for one second, and he fell. I couldn't do anything. The life just drifted out of his body like steam." Katara pursed her lips and seemed to firm her resolve, as though the next words would be difficult. "I've been thinking about it, and that's why I tried to capture lightning in a snowball, to use your words. I spent so long protecting Aang. Really, he was like my little brother before he was my husband. And in the end he wouldn't let me protect him."

Wondering if she felt the tremor in his hand, Zuko used it to cover hers. "But I'm not Aang," he said. "You don't have to look after me."

She nodded. "I know. You always do just fine by yourself. But I reacted. I couldn't help it. I wasn't trying to insult your bending abilities, I swear. I just…"

"You were just being yourself."

Katara hung her head. "Yes." She used one hand to wipe at her eyes. "Why can't I stop talking? Honestly, you must be so tired of it by now. You came to tell me something. What was it?"

"We'll be ashore, soon."

"Oh. Wow, I completely derailed that message, didn't I?"

"A little." He looked down at their hands. He liked the way they looked together, her palm warm and brown as an ostrich egg inside the nest of his longer, paler fingers. "There's nothing wrong with you," he said at last.

"I thought I was unbelievably reckless."

"You are." He took a deep breath. "But as I said before, you are also my favorite waterbender." He squeezed her hand to make his point.

She gave a tiny, shy smile. "I heard you say it the first time."

"Good."

"You're my favorite firebender."

Unable to restrain his smile, Zuko said: "Don't tell my uncle. He's a jealous man."

Katara rolled her eyes. "I'm sure that's why he wants me to marry you, and not him."

That's twice in as many days she's mentioned marriage. "My uncle's hints are as subtle as a firebomb, I know," Zuko said carefully, concentrating on the texture of her cuticle under his thumb. "I'm sorry if they make you uncomfortable."

Katara shrugged, and their hands loosened. "I think he does it to annoy you," she said. "You're the one who has avoided marriage. Even Toph has a live-in lover. Iroh probably just wants grandkids."

If only it were that simple. "Toph has a live-in lover? Who?"

"See, this is why you should answer my letters. Iroh has known about this for years."

"Years?"

"Yes, years. Toph just doesn't like to open up about those kinds of things to people who don't correspond with her. She met the person after Aang died."

Zuko's lip twitched. "I don't envy the man who has to put up with her attitude."

"Who says it's a man?"

His good eye widened. "What?"

"You heard me."

It was his turn to hang his head. "Is there anything else I don't know? Have you been hiding a pet dragon, perhaps?"

To his surprise, Katara didn't answer. His head came up. She had turned toward the window. Her face had re-acquired the broken, hollow expression Zuko remembered from the day after Aang's death, when she had fallen asleep watching the pyre. She had felt so right in his arms when he'd carried her to his bed, and he'd hated himself for noticing. "What is it?" he asked. What have I said? How did I ruin things, this time?

She turned to him. There were tears in her eyes, but she didn't wipe them away. "You know as much about me as I know about you," she said. "Actually, you probably know more."

He was about to ask her what she wanted to know, when a knock sounded at the door. "My Lord?"

Zuko stood, pulled his shirt straight, and opened the door. "Yes?"

"We're about to dock, my Lord."

"Very good." He was about to dismiss the man, but instead he said: "Inform the cook and the steward to buy potable water at port. We won't be using the water in Tetsushi unless we boil it first. Tell the captain."

Bewildered but obedient, the man nodded and took his leave. Zuko shut the door. When he turned, Katara was smiling. "That was smart of you."

"It wouldn't do for us to fall to the same ailment as the people of Tetsushi," he said. He gestured the scrolls spread all over the room. "Thank you for doing this."

"Research is only the first step," Katara said. "I may be entirely wrong about this. I only hope your trust in me isn't misplaced."

"It isn't," he said. "Pack what you want to take with you. We'll be leaving soon."

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