Title: Wear and Tear
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Don't own nothin'.
Rating: G
Summary: Aang tells Katara to leave if she can't treat Zuko better. She does, and things fall apart.
Notes: I don't recall whose fic I read where Aang gave Katara an ultimatum that either she treat Zuko decently or she should leave. The thing is, it sent me right back to Buffy season seven, when Buffy was kicked out of her own home because since people had died in the war they were fighting that meant Buffy should leave the home her mother left her. It made me angry then, and it still makes me angry, and I kind of vented that anger in this fic. There's some Zutara hinting in here, but not enough that you can't totally ignore it if you want.
It was what she did every morning – had been doing every morning since it had become obvious that Aang and Sokka would never pick up after themselves or maintain a camp. Someone had to check on the fire, find out Sokka had forgotten to bank it the night before the way he did about half the time, then collect firewood and get out the spark rocks to restart it from scratch.
Someone had to bend the dew away so she wouldn't have to deal with everything turning to mud in the morning. Someone had to get a pot of water started for the morning meal. Someone had to go clean out the latrine that was too close to camp but no one but her ever admitted it. Someone had to clean and refill everyone's waterskins, check on the tent pegs, clear the small animals out of the nearby stream for bathing, go on yet another run to collect enough vegetables and fruits that Aang wouldn't start suffering from the deprivation of meat from his diet, collect more firewood for the day, start lining up an order of laundry, cooking, cleaning, making the others wash themselves if they didn't do it voluntarily, setting snares to back up whatever Sokka brought in while 'hunting' – the list felt endless.
Katara hated being up before dawn every morning, but it was the only way to get everything organised for the day so that she wouldn't have to do things on the fly. That had always been a disaster. Mainly because Aang absolutely refused to, "let her wear herself out," and would pull her away from whatever she was doing to do something, 'fun'. Constantly.
As much as she hated Zuko with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, she had to admit that his joining their camp had been one of the best things that had happened to her on that trip. Not only did he keep Aang busy for a large portion of the day so that Katara had the chance to spread her work out, but he didn't add to the work in any significant way. He kept his part of the camp clean, she never had to bully him into taking a bath the way she did Aang, Toph and her own brother. He was a great deal less hard on his clothes, so she hadn't had to fix anything worse than a strained seam, and nicest of all had been that he didn't try to pull her away from things when she was working.
Still, she didn't trust him. Why should she? She'd offered him everything she could under Ba Sing Se and he'd turned on her just after she'd started to trust him. Everyone was constantly going on about second chances, but the fact was, he'd had his second chance. Sure, people deserved second chances, but did people deserve third chances? At what point did you just step back and say someone was out of chances?
So while she appreciated that he was making her life easier just by being there, Katara wasn't going to let up until he spat out the real reason he was there. It was just a matter of time.
Just as she'd worked out when, during the day, she was going to train by herself, train with Aang, play with Aang, train with Toph, do the mending, the cooking, clean up all the various items around camp that needed cleaning, do the laundry, fix lunch and dinner, triple check everyone's tents, have 'girl talk' time with Suki (and possibly Toph, both of which were new additions to her daily schedule), check on her traps, have a bath, gently remind Sokka and Aang that it had been a few days for them and scrub Toph clean under the pretext of sparring – just as she'd lined that all up, dawn broke, and Zuko rolled to his feet.
It took everything in her not to growl at the easy way he just rolled to his feet and stretched briefly before sinking into a meditation position. What she wouldn't give to just . . . have some time to herself in the day to actually relax.
But that wasn't what she was there for. Katara knew that, as she'd known since her father had left; she had a job as the only ablebodied woman in her family to take care of her brother until he found himself a wife to cook and clean for him. She had a duty to take care of the young Avatar, who was often even less able to care for himself than Sokka. She had a duty, as the closest thing Toph had to a mother and an older sister, to make sure Toph had someone to help her through the hard parts of being a girl. She had a duty to help Suki recover from her stay in Boiling Rock, because no matter what the other girl believed, she wasn't fully recovered and Katara was having to bloodbend late at night to heal her in secret. Katara had a purpose and that would have to be enough.
Some ashamed little part of her admitted she was taking out her irritation on Zuko. As long as he was being repentant he wasn't going to fight back or make her feel guilty, so he was safe.
It turned out that, on the score of letting Zuko feel the sharp edge of her temper, she'd miscalculated. It wasn't Zuko who finally snapped. It was Aang. "Katara, that's enough!" he'd shouted at her over dinner.
"What?" Katara asked, startled. She'd been busy carefully dividing up their meals with scrupulous fairness, sighing as she again had to take a little less meat than the others to give everyone else perfectly equal portions.
"You know perfectly well, what," Aang told her. "I'm tired of you constantly yelling at Zuko. He's on our side, he's my firebending teacher and you're just going to have to deal with it." Katara opened her mouth to retort, as she always did, that she was sure he was biding his time, when Aang threw in a brand new argument. "I don't see you doing much around here, anyhow," he told her. "I mean, sure, you mend Sokka's pants once in a while, but I don't see you pulling your weight."
Sokka frowned. "He's got a point," he told his sister. "I mean, Aang doesn't need you to teach him waterbending any more, I do the hunting, we all set up our own tents. You pretty much just cook."
"I-" Katara didn't even get to try defending herself, because Toph interrupted.
"I know you get up early and putter around," the earthbender said. "But you're just doing that so you can feel smug and useful," she informed Katara.
Suki slowly nodded, and threw in her two coppers. "I've seen it," she told the others. "Sometimes we'd have warriors making up enemies so that they wouldn't feel useless." She turned to Katara. "You have to let this go. You're making something up so you can feel like you still have a purpose."
Tears pricked at Katara's eyes. "You think I just . . . he's turned on me – on us – before! This isn't a second chance, it's a third!"
"If you can't accept Zuko, Katara," Aang told her, sadly, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You've taught me waterbending, so I don't . . ." he paused, then took in a deep breath. "I don't need you any more. If you can't keep your feelings about Zuko to yourself, then you're just going to have to leave."
Katara looked around the circle of her friends and family. Only Zuko looked like he wanted to object, and she couldn't blame him for not leaping to her defence. Even Sokka wasn't meeting her eyes. She took in a shuddering breath. Swallowed, then said, "I did always want to . . . to be something other than that girl who just cooked and cleaned for the rest of her life. I guess . . . I guess it really isn't anything," she said, almost to herself. She shook out of her reverie. "You're right, I guess. I don't think I can keep myself from taking it out on Zuko. Good luck," she said.
Then she turned on her heel, and headed to her tent.
Once inside, she started packing up, pausing once or twice to look over some trinket or other she'd been given by Aang. A low murmur had started up around the campfire. While she waited, Katara thought about how she'd been treating Zuko. Thought over everything from that morning, from Aang's little speech to how she'd been treating him. The others were right, but she also knew she wouldn't be able to keep herself from letting her temper loose on him. Katara waited in her tent until the others had settled into their own tents for the night before stepping outside and taking her own tent down. It was a full moon and there was plenty of light to see by.
"You're leaving?" Zuko's voice came from behind her.
"Don't-" she started, then stopped herself. "Aang was right. I'm just . . . being horrible to you for its own sake. That's wrong, and I should leave."
He seemed to be searching her face for something. "They were wrong about you not doing anything," he told her. "I've seen how hard you work."
She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. It's mostly just things that make me more comfortable, in the end."
"It matters," he told her.
Why did that one statement have to hurt so much, and feel so good at the same time? She'd always hated the casual dismissal Aang and Sokka both had for the work she put into making sure they had clothes that weren't rags, cooking, keeping their sleeping bags clean and the ground dry. She'd hated the way they made her feel like a nag and a harridan when she tried to make sure they didn't leave things behind because, "We can pick up another at the next town, stop worrying, Katara."
To have someone say that all that mattered, it felt like justice and vindication. It hurt, though, that the only person who had ever noticed turned out to be the one person she couldn't keep herself from hating. She still choked out, "Thank you."
"Let me help you with that," he offered.
Katara let him help. Right before she picked up her bag and tent, she grabbed the front of his tunic and pulled him down so that his nose was inches from her. "You'd better not betray them," she snarled. "In fact, I'm expecting you to keep them safe and in one piece. If I hear that you've fallen down on the job, I will hunt you down." It was gratifying to see his eyes widen and feel him tremble. "Are we clear on this, Prince Zuko?"
"Yes, m'lady," he said, with not even the slightest trace of mockery.
"Good," she told him, and marched off.
Zuko went to bed that night with a feeling of foreboding. Sure enough, as he'd suspected was the case, without Katara's nightly double-check and tightening, Sokka's tent fell down partway through the night. He decided not to say anything about Katara, because everyone was irritated enough with Sokka's carelessness, without bringing up the missing member of their group.
Not that anyone else had noticed she was missing, apparently.
"So Sweetness' babying has finally paid off in Snoozles being even more incompetent than usual," Toph said, sitting down next to Zuko with a thud.
Almost anyone else.
"Maybe he'll learn to check his tent himself," Zuko said acerbically. He hadn't liked being on the wrong end of Katara's temper, but the way everyone had just turned on her that evening rubbed him the wrong way.
"Hm," Toph's voice couldn't be any more sceptical.
Eventually the tent went back up, and everyone went to bed. The next morning, however, Katara's absence was noted, not because someone noticed her missing tent and worried, but because Sokka noticed that there was no hot breakfast waiting for him. As he stomped around the campsite, irate at the lack of breakfast, Zuko just sighed and chivvied Aang to another clearing and into his morning meditation exercises.
By the time they'd finished and come back, Sokka was having a tremendous argument with Suki. "Well, since Katara's decided to skip out on her only job this morning, I figured you'd better make us breakfast," he told the warrior.
"Exactly why should I be the one making breakfast?" she asked in a dangerous tone of voice.
Sokka missed it. "You're a girl," he said, as though the answer was obvious.
"So that means . . . what?" Suki demanded. "I'm magically a good cook?"
"Girls cook, guys don't," Sokka said, with such a simplistic approach to the situation that Zuko found his mouth open in dismay.
"Well," Suki informed him, "This girl doesn't. I'm a warrior. We don't waste time with things like that. Why don't you ask Toph? She's a girl."
"I . . ." Sokka trailed off. "Huh. She is a girl," he said contemplatively.
Suki looked around, then said, "Where's Katara, anyhow?"
"She left, last night."
Everyone turned to stare at him, except Toph, who already knew. "What?" Sokka demanded. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Zuko told him, "Is that after you all told her she was no use to any of you, except for her cooking, and Aang gave her that ultimatum about her treating me better, that she was best off leaving and taking her . . . deadweight, with her." He waited as they absorbed this.
Sokka stared for a moment, then said, "Oh, that is just like her."
"What?" Zuko asked.
The Water Tribe boy sighed expansively. "Every time I tried to get her to help with the defences on the village, trying to train the kids or anything else important, she always going off to do what she wanted to do. "Sorry Sokka, I have to fix the tent flap, sorry Sokka, I'm washing your socks." He made his voice high pitched in a mockery of his sister. "Now the one thing that she actually does that's useful around here, and she's skipping off just because, what? We pointed out it's the only thing she does around here?"
Zuko felt his jaw drop. He managed to grate out, "Actually, no. It was because of Aang's ultimatum. Be nice to me, or leave. She felt she couldn't do it, so she left."
Aang looked very hurt. "I didn't mean it," he whined.
"Well, she thought you did," Zuko told him.
Sokka frowned a moment, then clapped Aang on the back and said, a little too heartily. "Oh, she'll come crawling back in no time. We'll forgive her for being stupid and everything will go back to normal."
Suki looked a little doubtful, and Zuko found out why when she pulled him aside a little later. "Should we go after her?" she asked. "I mean, she doesn't hunt, she's not a trained warrior – will she be able to survive on her own okay?"
Before he could answer, Sokka poked his stupid head into the conversation saying, "Oh, she'll sleep somewhere without a fire, and she'll come back cold and cranky and we'll pretend that we owe her an apology and everything'll be fine."
The rest of the day went by much as previous ones had gone, except that they didn't have a hot dinner, Sokka's tent fell down again, there wasn't enough food to go around, and Zuko could see leaves and dirt getting into everyone's blankets and clothing. In fact, it was a couple days before the first tears in the fabric of their little group left by Katara's absence came to light.
Zuko had had to relight the fire every morning, discovering that Sokka never banked the thing. He was a little miffed that Katara hadn't asked him to relight it for her, but he supposed it was too much for her pride to ask him for anything. He'd also taken to cleaning the pots himself and doing the cooking, because if he didn't, no one else would. Other than that, he stepped back, letting the others fall apart.
Aang, without Katara there to challenge him, 'practised' his waterbending by playing games with himself and Momo. Sokka still spent his days practicing his swordsmanship and planning ways and means of attacking the Fire Nation and the Fire Lord personally. In between he hunted and wooed Suki. Suki, without Katara there, was starting to show signs of increasing pain, and made Zuko wonder how much time the waterbender had spent healing the warrior, and how she'd done it without Suki knowing. Toph was just getting increasingly irritable, and Zuko started staying out of her way, because a few cautious inquiries had revealed that it was some sort of girl thing.
That afternoon, however, Sokka came wailing into camp about why Suki wouldn't fix his torn pants. "They've been ripping for days!" he moaned. "Katara would have fixed them two days ago!"
"I only know how to fix armour," Suki snapped at him. "Stop assuming that I'm going to be just like Katara and play homemaker."
Because he still totally sympathised with Katara's hurt over being told she did nothing for the rest of them but cook, Zuko twisted the knife. "Huh. I guess Katara did more than cook for you, didn't she?" He flicked a finger against one of the ropes holding Sokka's tent up, and as he'd expected, the vibration pulled the peg out of the ground, sending the canvas tumbling down again.
"Augh! My tent!" wailed Sokka.
That was the beginning of a rapid descent into chaos. Over the next few days, everyone found their clothes starting to smell from lack of laundering. Tents, blankets, utensils, tools, sleeping bags, carrying bags, waterskins, shoes . . . the list was a long one, all those things became dirty, torn, uncomfortable, smelly and often useless. "Why isn't this working!" yelled Toph in frustration, as she struggled to get the stiffened and muddy bag tied shut.
"You do realise that all those times Katara was puttering around to make it seem like she was doing something useful, she was cleaning everyone's stuff and mending it so that it would work right?" Zuko inquired mildly.
Toph had the grace to say, "Oh. Why didn't she say so?"
"Because she assumed you guys all knew she was doing that, and that you had decided it was useless puttering." Zuko shrugged. "At least, that's my guess."
Toph frowned and went back to struggling, when suddenly she paused. "What is that smell?" she demanded. "I keep smelling it and I have no idea what it is."
Zuko frowned, sniffed a little and said, "All I smell is you, Toph. When was the last time you had a bath."
"What's it to you?" she demanded irritably.
"You stink," he told her.
Toph paused, then said, "Is that why Katara always used her dishwashing water on me when we sparred?" She looked indignant. "She tricked me into a bath!"
"Well, she probably didn't like smelling you any more than the rest of us do," Zuko told her unsympathetically. "Anyhow, she was probably trying to be nice by not telling you, you smell bad."
"She tells Sokka that," Toph groused.
"Sokka's her brother, and she can bully him into taking a bath," Zuko said. "You'll notice Suki's not sleeping with him any more."
Zuko wound up bullying Sokka, Aang and Toph into the river to bathe, once it became clear that they were all about to become sick from poor hygiene.
The camp continued to fall apart, and Zuko continued to make snide comments about the things Katara did every time someone complained about something being dirty or torn, about being hungry, about being cold. They were forced to move camp after several days of waking covered in dew and mist turned the clearing into a mudhole.
"That's never happened before," complained Sokka as he searched for the knife he'd left behind at the last camp.
"Katara woke up early to bend the water away," Zuko informed him.
Sokka immediately demanded that Aang do the same, so Zuko found his quiet mornings taken up with a chattering Aang, who didn't let him do his meditations in peace. He also figured that was why Katara woke up even earlier than he did. She was trying to get as much done as possible before everyone else was up to bother her.
They discovered, after another couple days, that the move from the last camp had lost them a great many items they needed in the way of knives, kitchen implements, soap and even clothing. They made up a list and sent Zuko shopping at the nearest town.
Zuko frowned when he got there. Was there some festival he'd missed going on? It was, indeed, a very festive atmosphere. "Welcome!" shouted a girl, giddily dancing past him. "Are you here for the celebration?"
"Uhh . . . no," Zuko said uncomfortably. "We're just passing through. What's going on?"
She grinned. "You know how we've been having trouble with bandits? This girl came, and she's done what the Fire Lord's troops wouldn't do." The girl was almost dancing. "When she got here, she went to the house of healing, and she saved my father's life. It was like magic! Then she helped us stop the bandits. They were taken away to prison yesterday. So today we're celebrating in her honour!"
"She wouldn't happen to be a waterbender, would she?" Zuko asked, suspiciously.
"Yes," the girl said, her smile dimming a little. "She's so different from everything we were ever told about the Water Tribes. I just don't understand how all these stories about Water savages came about if they're anything like her."
They exchanged a few more pleasantries, then Zuko made his way through the town to the house that had been set aside for this wondrous waterbender. When he arrived, he slipped inside and found Katara happily fluffing pillows. "Katara," he said.
She turned and the smile on her face fell away. "Zuko."
"I . . . How are you?" he asked, awkwardly. What was he supposed to do? This was probably the first time he'd ever seen her look . . . happy. It was a good look on her.
"Good," she told him. "Really good." She stood and started restlessly pacing. "They told me I could stay as long as I wanted. Their old herbalist used to live in this house, now that she's gone, it was standing empty, so . . . I never have to cook any more, either. They all keep saying that I shouldn't have to do the extra work if I'm in the house of healing all the time or defending the village."
Zuko nodded. "You're worth it," he told her. "You're putting in a full day's work as a healer or a warrior, you shouldn't have to do the other things too."
The waterbender paused, looking at him suspiciously. "You're not here to take me back?"
Zuko snorted. "No. When we had to move because you weren't there to bend away the dew in the morning, the others left half their things behind. So, since I'm most familiar with things in the Fire Nation, I was sent alone to collect replacements."
She sighed in exasperation. "And Sokka wonders why I keep bugging him about making sure he's got all his things. Seriously. He forgot his boomerang that time we got chased off by the Rough Rhinos." It was like the happiness she'd felt drained out of her and the weight of caring for the others just landed on her shoulders again. "I suppose I'd better come back and-"
"No," Zuko said. He couldn't stand it. "You shouldn't-"
"I promise, I won't take it out on you again," she interrupted him in turn. "Uza, one of the older women in the village, and I, we talked. She made some good points about how I was treating you. It wasn't fair-"
He interrupted her again. "It was, but that's not the point. Katara, I think you need to let the others just deal with it. You're not their mother. Especially Sokka."
She just looked more tired. "Sokka needs someone to cook for him or he'll make himself sick by never eating anything that's not meat."
"He'll never learn better if you don't let him make himself sick," Zuko told her.
Ever since Zuko had walked through her new door, Katara had been trying to figure him out. He was being so nice, and there was absolutely no reason for him to. Katara frowned at him, sitting down and gesturing at him to join her. "Why are you so determined for me not to come back if it's not because you're worried about how I treat you?" she asked.
He looked very uncomfortable, and told her, "Because of how you were smiling when I came in," he said. As though it was an explanation.
It wasn't. "What do you mean?" she asked.
Zuko started stumbling through his explanation. "It's just . . . I'd never seen it before. You smiling like that. Like . . . like you were really happy. Not just sort of happy given how things are, but just . . . happy." The prince looked at her, earnestly. "The moment you said you thought you should go back, it was like . . . you looked . . . sad," he said. "Here, people appreciate you. They're not asking you to do more than your share, just . . . your share. The others still haven't . . . they still don't seem to get that."
Why it was that the one person she'd treated so horribly had hit the nail on the head about how she felt baffled her. Her brother, Aang, Toph even Suki, they all thought she didn't do anything useful. But this one boy who she'd been practically vicious to, he understood. She sighed. "That doesn't change the fact that we can't afford for Aang or anyone else to get sick in order to teach them a lesson," Katara said regretfully. "Maybe, when the war's over I'll just . . . I don't know," she said. "Maybe I'll come back here."
He reached out, grabbing her hand, and said, "Stay for tonight, then. Enjoy the fact that the village wants to thank you."
Katara looked down at the pale hand clasped around her own, and said, "Two conditions."
"Name them," he said.
"You'll help me run the camp from now on," she said. "All the cleaning and things that you can help with."
He smiled back. "Deal. The second?"
"Stay here tonight," she said. "Just for tonight, let's get to know each other properly. I treated you terribly, and you treated me pretty badly, and . . . let's just . . . get past it." She looked at him, anxious now. Uza had listened to her and just let her vent her fury at the prince. Then she'd helped Katara talk through her anger until she stopped being angry at Zuko. Now that they were face to face, Katara just wanted to start over with him. Let him become one of the little family she'd helped build on the road.
When he smiled, Katara wondered if she knew what he meant about her smiling now. It was the first time she'd ever seen Zuko smile like that. Free and like nothing was holding him back. "I'd love to," he told her.
That night, they joined the villagers in the celebration, talking and singing and just enjoying the break. Katara bid everyone farewell in her speech, explaining that she had responsibilities she had to get back to and gently let the village down over her leaving.
When they walked back into camp, Sokka was wailing in indignation over the fact that their spark rocks were missing as well, no one had had a warm meal in two days, and the pants that Suki had awkwardly fixed with the kind of broad stitches used in leather armour had split open again. "Are you sure you don't want to go back to the village?" Zuko asked her.
"You promised to help," she told him with a challenging smile. "Are you backing out now?"
"No," Zuko said, regretfully. "But I think we've got our work cut out for us."
Toph, looking practically grey she was so covered in dirt, suddenly shouted, "Hey! Sparky's back and he found Sugar Queen!"
"I don't suppose you can get her to take a bath," she said to Zuko.
They shared a look and waded into the chaos.