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
By the time Katara returned, the remaining guardsmen had set up a tent for them in the center of town. She stood unsteadily and gripped Zuko's arm as he guided her there. He pushed her to one side of the tent's interior wall and heard her collapse onto a pallet a moment later. It occurred to him that they had not shared space like this in years. Just the thought of it made him feel younger.
In the morning, his eyes opened with a stinging, sticky feeling. He rolled over to find that Katara's hand had escaped under the curtain separating them. When he pulled it aside briefly, it revealed her body at odd angles: limbs all askew, neck twisted in a way that was bound to cause discomfort later on. Just looking at her made him realize how profoundly he needed some meditation, so he folded his legs and sat for a moment. He wouldn't have a moment's peace when he left the tent. Inside there was only the sound of his and Katara's breathing. He slowed his to match hers. Ordinarily he liked candles for this, but in the wilderness one worked with the surrounding terrain. He formed a small ball of flame in each palm and imagined his breath feeding them. Without looking, he sensed them growing, then shrinking, to his rhythm. Concentrating, he moved through various shapes: flowers, blades, people. If he really stretched, he could form a six-legged flying bison. He had just put the finishing touches on one and begun allowing it to coast through the air when the breathing behind the curtain stopped.
He opened his eyes. "Don't worry," he said. "I won't set anything on fire."
Katara pulled the curtain aside. Her hair had mostly fallen out of her bun and now fell unevenly down her shoulders. She blinked. "Appa."
"No, Zuko," he said. "Although if you'd rather share the tent with a ten-ton bison…"
"I thought you hated Appa," she said. "Every time you flew with us, you looked so angry."
"I hate flying," Zuko said, sending the fire-Appa into tight upward spirals. "But Appa was a noble creature. If I hadn't thought so, I wouldn't have freed him from Lake Laogai."
Katara rolled to her back and looked up at the small, glowing animal. Zuko made it dive gently before floating back up. "When it was just me and Sokka and Aang," she said, "we went to a Fire Days festival."
"Stealth was never your strong suit," Zuko said, the fire-Appa executed a tight turn.
"We saw this…I don't know what he was. A magician, I guess. He tied me to a chair-" the flaming bison flared ever so briefly "-and he made this big dragon of fire. It was huge. And he flew it straight at me."
The bison grew and its flames wavered. "An ornamental firebender," Zuko said, smoothing the shape.
"It really scared Aang," Katara said. "He leapt right up onstage and dissolved it. He gave away our identity and everything, just because he thought I might be hurt."
"He loved you."
She nodded. They remained quiet for a moment. Zuko had no idea if he'd said the wrong thing. Perhaps mentioning Aang's affection for his widow was impolite. "I didn't know you could make smaller shapes like this," she said finally. "I've seen you make the blades before, but I didn't know..."
"These are frivolous," he said, flattening the fire-Appa into an elephant koi. He made it leap and dip through the air, then split into three separate koi.
"Make Tui and La," she said.
"Who?"
"The fish from the Spirit Oasis," she said. She turned. "You do remember the Spirit Oasis?"
"How could I forget?" Once again, he merged the flames only to split them again, and soon there were two koi fish swimming in delicate circles about one another.
"That's beautiful," she said.
He smiled. "I can do better." Bringing the full weight of his concentration down on one fish, he heated it until it achieved a painfully-bright, white-hot temperature. It flared blue for just a moment before resuming its normal golden hue.
"That's amazing," Katara said. "You're so precise."
"I can narrow the focus of chi in one hand," Zuko said. "It's not very practical, but it trains concentration."
"I wish I had the chance to do things like that more often."
"You can heal wounds, Katara. That's a much greater gift than making pretty things."
"Oh be quiet and let me compliment you," she said. His fire died. She sat up and crossed her arms, throwing her hair over one shoulder. If she hadn't looked so disheveled, it might have been intimidating. "I keep trying to be nice to you, and you just won't have it, will you? I know how special my gifts are. I know that they're useful. I don't need to be told how much better they are than yours. This isn't a competition. I'm not Azula."
He frowned. "I never said you were."
"But you keep on talking about how 'frivolous' your creations are, about how you're destined to fail at something as simple as watching a baby for two minutes. Just because we're good at different things doesn't make me better than you, Zuko. It just means that we're different people."
"I know we're different."
"So why are you judging yourself to my standard? Why are you judging yourself at all?"
"Excuse me for questioning myself, Katara, but the Fire Lords before me ruined this country and I don't intend on repeating their mistakes. If I have to keep myself in check to do it, so be it."
"But that's just it -- you're already Fire Lord! You defeated Ozai! Azula's dead! When is it ever going to be enough?"
"Never," Zuko said. "Everything I do -- everything I've done -- has been to atone for the mistakes that Ozai and my forefathers made. I will never, ever be finished repairing the damage they did."
"But it wasn't your fault," Katara said. She reached across and covered one of his hands with hers. "You weren't there." Her head tilted. "The past is the past. Can't you just let it go?"
His scar felt tough and heavy. "That's easy for you to say," he said. "When this is over, you'll go home and tend your children, safe from everything while my men and my money protect you. And I'll still be stuck here, trying to keep this nation together when it can't even feed itself." His words came slow and hard. He enunciated each syllable perfectly, and for a moment he sounded so much like Ozai to his own ears that he felt a little sick. But he kept talking: "I'm sorry if that's not enlightened enough for the Avatar's widow, but I think you and Aang would agree that I'm still blinded by worldly concerns like food and money and illness."
Zuko stood before she decided to slap him. He pulled on a shirt and began buttoning it as he faced away from her. His hands shook a little. "How dare you?" she asked in a whisper, but he didn't answer. Instead he just left the tent, refusing the offer of tea that awaited him and heading for a place by the river where he could practice his bending.
≅
He did not see Katara until midday, when his temper was cool enough to watch her tending patients. The lineup was fairly short, but Katara looked ragged. The temple where she worked was tiny and decrepit, with rotting beams and chipped paint. She asked the sick to sit or stand in a small hexagon of patchy mosaic tile while she tried bloodbending. Su Lin was there to help, but in the light of day she looked even more wretched: thin and pale with a veil of sweat coating her brow. Even her baby seemed oddly quiet.
"I see you decided to join us," Katara said when she caught sight of him.
"Just checking on my investment," he said, and watched her mouth turn down even further. The shaky ribbon of water she held aloft fell and splashed on the tiles below.
"Your investment would like to have a word with you, Fire Lord Zuko."
Without waiting for him to agree, she marched off in the other direction. Zuko dismissed his retinue and followed. In a copse of trees not far off, she said: "There's something wrong."
"I know that. People are dying."
"More than that, Zuko. I can't bend."
I just saw you bending. "I just saw you bending."
"Bending badly, Zuko. I was bending badly."
"Maybe you should be wiser and get a full night's sleep before you try advanced bloodbending techniques," Zuko said. "Your skills are too important for you to abuse them. I told these people I would bring them the best, and I intend to deliver."
"Oh, shut up," Katara said. "I'm not one of your subjects, so you can just dispense with the rhetoric. Watch me bend."
Rolling his eyes, Zuko stepped back and folded his arms. Katara set two waterskins on the ground and uncorked them. She raised one serpent of water, made it spiral through the air, and returned it to the skin. "I fail to see why this is a good waste of my time," he said.
"Is it impossible for you to be patient?" she asked under her breath. She moved to bend the water in the second skin. It rose, but only in a thick, malformed lump. It trembled for a moment before splashing apart. Their eyes met. "It's too heavy," she said.
His mouth worked before he could speak. "Heavy?"
She pointed at the second skin. "That's water from the river," she said. "And it feels heavy."
"Has it been boiled?"
"Yes." She pointed at the first skin. "That water is from the port. I re-stocked my personal bending supply before we left. And it feels fine. I can use it without a problem…for the most part."
He didn't like the sound of that. "What do you mean?"
She sighed. "Every time I use that water on someone here, the water comes back heavier."
He gave her what he hoped was a very skeptical look. "No, I'm serious," she said. "It took me a couple of hours to notice. But I've been seeing patients all day, and it's hard not to notice a pattern when it's staring you in the face."
"So these people are…heavy?"
She nodded. "Yes. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. And if they're like this water," she pointed at the second skin "that means that their blood is heavy, too."
The hairs along his neck prickled. "And what does that mean?" he asked, fearing he knew the answer.
"It means I can't bend their blood," Katara said. "I can't help them, Zuko."
≅
Zuko did what he did best: he ran.
Not literally, but he told Katara in his calmest, coldest tone that she was wrong. She could help these people. He had seen her work miracles. As far as Zuko was concerned, Katara was simply tired. She had over-exerted herself on the trip -- trying to capture lightning and injuring herself in the process, only to expend energy healing herself too quickly -- and she was just not in top form yet. He refused to hear any arguments to the contrary, and stalked away.
"We need to evacuate this town, Zuko!" she had called after his retreating form. He said nothing.
Hours later, he had followed the river toward the refinery. It smelled of slag and coal. The fires had long died out. His men cautioned him against going any further -- "the illness brings madness, my Lord, and who knows what characters may be lurking in these woods" -- but he still found himself in the shadow of great iron chimneys. A fine layer of coal dust coated the dry earth for a three-meter radius surrounding the refinery. It colored the trees and the stones. Just being there made Zuko want to bathe.
He hesitated to enter the refinery itself -- it smelled awful up close, like blood somehow -- but even standing outside, he had a sense of its workings. Different chimneys corresponded to different fires of varying heat. Firebenders from Tetsushi could control the burn to achieve one quality of iron smelting or another. They could manufacture high-grade steel for swords or soft, pliant stuff to be bent into nuts and bolts. All it required was enough coal, ore, heat and-
One of his retinue cursed loudly. Turning, Zuko saw the others running toward him. He clutched one hand. Zuko jogged up to him and saw what the others did: the hand had swelled purple, and two dots of blood had appeared. "That's a weasel-snake bite," he said.
"This land is cursed," he heard someone mutter. He was one of the oldest of the company -- someone who had served under Iroh at Ba Sing Se and who Iroh trusted at Zuko's side. "The old Fire Lord's spirit is punishing us all."
"You're as superstitious as my uncle, and not half the man he is for thinking such things," Zuko said. He raised his voice. "We get this man to Tetsushi now!"
≅
The run back to Tetsushi proper took little time at all. Zuko was grateful. The officer -- a slim twig of a boy named Jiru -- had already begun twitching and hallucinating. When they laid him on the floor of the temple, Katara had to sit on him: "I can't bend the venom out if he doesn't quit moving!"
Zuko turned to his fastest runner. "On the boat, there's a supply of weasel-snake antidote. It's in a locked cabinet in Lady Katara's -- my uncle's -- quarters. Pull aside the tapestry of the moon-peach blossoms and you'll find it." He fumbled in his pocket. "This is the key. The bottle you are looking for is small with a pink liquid inside. Do not open it. Hurry. Take a rhino."
The runner's eyes widened. "My Lord, for you to place such trust in me-"
"Move!"
He was off. Zuko noticed Katara staring up at him from the floor. "Keep bending," he said. "I only asked for the antidote in case you cannot remedy him."
"If you want me to heal him, then help me hold him down."
Zuko knelt and pinned Jiru's arms. Scowling, Katara made a pincer-like motion and slowly began drawing the venom out. It emerged from Jiru's arm in a bloody tendril like a climbing vine. She dropped the venom twice when Jiru jerked away. But on her third try, she finished and said: "That's all I can get. The antidote will have to do the rest."
"The colors," Jiru said, his eyes searching her face. "There are so many…"
"That's the venom," Katara said. "I remember…" She gave Jiru a light pat on the cheek. "Jiru, you're going to be all right."
"I can't breathe," Jiru said.
Katara moved off him, but Zuko held his arms fast. Jiru gasped for air. "His tongue is swelling," Katara said. "Hold his head back."
"It wasn't this fast for you," Zuko said. "You fought for hours."
"He's not a healing bender," Katara said. "My body can heal itself if I'm in the water."
Su-Lin stepped forward. "There is an old folk remedy for weasel-snake bites," she said. "It takes some time-"
"It takes days," Zuko said. "It takes eight different ingredients, three days' fermentation, and pure water, which we don't have."
Su-Lin backed away. "My apologies, my Lord."
Katara's gaze swung from the woman to Zuko. Her eyes narrowed. "Don't worry, Su-Lin, it was a great idea," Katara said through her teeth. "But the Fire Lord's man will be here any minute now."
Zuko forced himself to look at Su-Lin. "Lady Katara is right, Su-Lin. It was a good idea."
She brightened somewhat. "I just wanted to help, my Lord."
"You're a good citizen," he said, and wondered where that came from.
Half an hour later, the runner arrived with the antidote. Katara began to read the directions, but Zuko plucked the bottle from her hands and administered the necessary dose before she could protest. After that, Jiru calmed. But Katara did not look pleased, and she tended the rest of her patients until nightfall without saying another word to Zuko.