Published December 6, 2012
Author's Note: This chapter is dedicated to the lovely LadyAvatar, author of the Zutara epic "Fire and Ice". She's the one who asked me to add another chapter to this story. I'll move this chapter later to place it in the middle chronologically.
It was Sokka who gave Katara the idea, a perturbing but logical idea that she should have thought of earlier. She wasn't sure whether or not she should address it; but then, she already knew the worst of the story.
She brought tea again, and poured two cups, though hers was mostly for show; she didn't think she'd be able to eat or drink while discussing this topic. No words were exchanged between her and Ozai as he accepted the cup she passed through the bars
Finally Katara spoke. "There's something I want to ask you. I just thought of it because it might have had to do with you." Katara tried to steel herself, not knowing what the answer would be, or how it might affect her.
"Did you know Yon Rha?"
Ozai frowned, but otherwise his face remained as blank as usual. "Not personally." He vaguely remembered a man of that name seeing him, perhaps once or twice in his short reign.
"Think back. He was the leader of the Southern Raiders, until he retired four years ago."
"What is he to you?"
Katara willed her voice not to tremble. "I want to know if killing the last southern waterbender was his idea, or if you or someone else ordered him to do it."
Ozai dimly recalled hearing a report of a waterbender being found and killed in the Southern Water Tribe; he hadn't paid it much thought, because it changed nothing of the Tribe's strength. It hadn't been like Zhao's attack on the Northern Water Tribe, which had required authorization and a massive invasion force.
"If he led the Southern Raiders, then he would already have had the jurisdiction to make such an attack." He paused to take a sip of the tea. He ignored the girl's gaze on him. "You must know the war of attrition started long before your time, or even mine."
"I know; I even met a waterbender who survived your prisons. It changed her—horribly." Katara clenched her hands around the teacup. "But back then, the raiders captured when they could avoid killing. We weren't so lucky, the last time they came." Katara paused to take a drink, though she did not taste the tea; she tried to relax her throat as she swallowed.
"Tell me."
Katara's head snapped back up to look at him. Ozai appeared somehow coolly expectant, as though he didn't really care but would welcome hearing it.
The words came to her mouth slowly. "I met Yon Rha twice in my life. He led the attack on my home, almost seven years ago. He killed my mother." She did not sound sad now, but contemplative, just a bit sorrowful. "None of us could understand it … she was the only casualty of that raid. There was no reason for him to kill her."
She paused. Ozai didn't prompt her to continue, but then she went on anyway. "After Zuko joined us, he offered to help me find Yon Rha. We tracked him down, and he told us the full story. My mother had lied, to protect me, and told him that she was the last waterbender, the one he was looking for. He could have taken her prisoner. But he decided to kill her instead."
Ozai's expression was predictably free of sympathy or remorse. Katara hadn't expected any, though it might have felt good to throw such a man's crimes back at him, to tell him what his country—and by extension, what he—had done.
"So, you confronted this man," Ozai said. Katara nodded. "So he's dead now?" he asked, in lieu of asking what she had done next.
Katara's face darkened. "He was alive, when Zuko and I left him."
Ozai looked at her strangely. Was that amusement in his eyes, or condescension? "After all that searching … you let him go."
Anger flashed in her blue eyes, directed at him for the first time during that visit. "If he were still an officer, and killing him would have prevented more deaths—then I would have done it. But as it was, the only person it would have benefited was me."
And that hadn't been reason enough? Ozai wondered.
"I didn't forgive him, if that's what you're thinking," Katara interjected. "I just—" She hadn't wanted to stoop to Yon Rha's level; but she wasn't about to say that to the former Fire Lord.
The story reminded Ozai unwillingly of Ursa, another mother who had (in his view) gone out of her way to protect her child. No wonder Zuko would have wanted to help this girl; his past was almost as tragic as hers.