characters: katara, sokka, zuko.
etc: probably should announce my hiatus next time.
…
x. haven't looked me in the eye once
of learning the true motives
…
Katara doesn't quite know how to feel. By nightfall, she takes Appa's reins with gentle hands in order to let her brother rest. Something in her chest swells, perhaps the apology she wants to offer to Sokka, but it's stuffed deep down beneath too many other emotions for her to grasp it the way she wants to. Still, she cringes at the thought—this isn't about you—and promises herself that she will find a way to make it up to him. And Sokka behaves as if she hadn't reduced their mother to some totem to him, which is the part that bothers Katara the most.
Her fingers knot with pressure around the leather harness, and Appa offers a low, sympathetic rumble at her distress.
"…so, water captures fire."
"No," a soft sigh, "water captures earth, and earth captures fire."
"That makes zero sense, logically!"
This time, she can hear her brother's voice clearly; the two of them have either given up on keeping their friendship a secret, or are the two worst whisperers she's ever known—and knowing Sokka, she can't put her finger on which is closer. But she hasn't missed anything between them: the shared smiles and Sokka's sudden interest in going on walks and Zuko walking around with his swords more than usual. She's not sure what to make of the two of them, but all she knows is she wants no parts of Zuko, even if he's her brother's new best friend.
"It's just the cycle of bending, Sokka," Zuko tips his voice back into near-silence, and Katara refocuses her gaze on the night sky. Pulling Appa up into the clouds had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but she finds gliding with the bison below the clouds gives the most breathtaking view of the night sky. And anything for her to focus on other than the two boys playing board games at her back is a small relief for the mounting tension she feels.
She tries not to think about what could await her at the end of this trip, but the thoughts rise in her mind unbidden. Information seemed trivial at the time, especially because she refused to allow Zuko to divulge much to her in person, but she knew well enough from Sokka. She knew if they were successful, there would be a face to pin to her shattered childhood.
She would finally be able to look in the eyes of the man who killed her mother.
For a split second, Katara's head swims with an uncontrolled rush of blood, and she sways to the side. Someone's hands are around her shoulders and her ears feel weighty with liquid, and she can see the sky completely, now. The stars twinkle overhead and she feels warm hands slide underneath her thighs, lift her away from the reins.
The world comes back into focus slowly. Someone breathes a sigh of relief.
Katara blinks and tips her head back until she can make out the line of her brother's jaw. "Why can't you ever just rest when you're tired?" Her head is in Sokka's lap, his fingers resting at the curve of her collarbone. The rest of her is shrouded in blankets and she can see some of the tiles from their game spilling out from one of their bags.
"M'not tired," she offers, a long blink of her lashes before she peeks back at Sokka. His expression is the most serious she's seen on him in a long time; it gives her a gentle flashback to the day their father left, the way his brow curled as he watched Hakoda join the others who went off to war.
She turns onto one side, the tiles clattering when she pulls her knees towards her chest.
"Why're you so close to him?"
The question sounds innocent, only because Katara's exhaustion wilts the venom from her voice. Sokka's fingers brush at the curls near her temple, and he holds in a sigh that she can feel against his chest.
"He's not so bad," he offers passively, "he helped us bring Dad back."
"He hurt us," is her petulant answer, slurred into the night air, "he almost killed Aang."
Sokka's rebuttal never comes. Instead, he rubs his fingers along the edge of her hairline, a motion meant to soothe her but Katara suspects it is for him. From where she lays, she can make out the outline of his figure against the night sky. In all black, if she squints, Zuko simply looks like an expanse of the midnight sky. Easier, she thinks, to pretend he's not there.
…
"We're not here yet," Zuko says to her the moment she sits up, from somewhere on the ground.
Katara blinks into the sunlight, stretches her hands above her head, and promptly ignores him. The sky is clear and from what she can distinguish from their surroundings, they've touched down at a farm on the outskirts of town. She takes care to tether herself to the saddle before she leans over to get a closer look. It seems to be remote, since Appa is easily the largest mass against the horizon for as far as Katara can see. The way his body shifts underneath her gives an indication that he's more than comfortable enough to graze, and the grass surrounding them gives him plenty to work with. A sturdy wooden fence encloses the property, and Sokka is standing beside Zuko as he talks to an older woman.
Her hand, thin and wrinkled, palms Zuko's scar with such a boldness that it makes Katara's cheeks burn—and her eye hurts (this was my punishment for trying to save people) with phantom ache—but the firebender doesn't as much as flinch. Curiosity flares and another memory rises to the surface of her mind before she can stop it; the green glow of the catacombs, her fingers spread along the base of his scar, a phial of healing water trembling between her clumsy fingers.
The anger rises, too.
Katara slices her fingers through her hair in a half-hearted attempt to make it decent before she climbs down from Appa's saddle, landing on the ground with a spring against the soft grass. Something must give her away because Sokka turns to look at her the moment she approaches them from across the field, his eyes already a deep indicator of his worry. He meets her halfway there, a hand reaching out to grasp her shoulder to steady her.
She dodges it artfully, firing off a question. "Where are we?"
Sokka's dedication to avoiding the awkward moments between the two of them is a next-level tier, because he moves his hand behind his head and shrugs nonchalantly. "Zuko found a safe place to keep Appa so we can go into town."
For a moment, Katara thinks Sokka will answer her next question before she can answer it, but she blurts it out anyway. "How do you know it's safe?"
"Well, it's a farm full of other animals. Not to mention that it's a shelter, so." Sokka's tongue hits the back of his teeth with a noise that she registers as annoyed. "It's sort of their job."
Her shoulders slump. "Sokka—"
"I'm starving," he cuts in with a half-shout, "and I think there was the promise of breakfast, so I'm going to grab our things." He floats past her to climb into the saddle and retrieve their belongings, and now Katara feels that avoidance as a warm shame in her cheeks.
…
"I'm going to learn how to play this game if it'll be the death of me," Sokka announces triumphantly.
A pause, then Katara hears something that she would call a laugh if it came from anyone else. "I'd rather not have your death on my hands."
The town that they've settled in is quiet and sleepy, in the haunted sort of way. She'd taken some time to walk the streets earlier, careful to be inconspicuous as she studied her surroundings. It didn't seem anything like how she pictured the Fire Nation to be; it was too civilian, not well enough marked by the destruction of war.
It seemed unfair.
On the floor of their room, Katara gets a better view of the game they had been talking about the night before. It's a round board bisected twice, dozens of pieces scattered on each side like inlaid gems. The tiles glimmer with vibrant colors and if she looks closer, she can see the markings of the elements on some of the tiles.
"So I can block," Sokka is kneeling over the board, his brows knit in concentration as he slips a blue piece beside Zuko's green piece, "here, like this?"
"Exactly." Zuko sifts some of his dark hair away from his face, and the edges of his scar are outlined against the lantern light in the room. Katara glances away from him, hones in on the lotus board.
It doesn't take long for Katara to gather the rules. Air captures water, and water captures earth, and earth captures fire. Fire captures air. She learns the two omniscient tiles—the Avatar and the white lotus—and the objective of the game that revolves around the white lotus tile.
So, when she suspects the two of them have crawled into their sleeping mats, Katara pries the board from its spot and gathers the small, black bag that contains all of the pieces, and drags it out of their room. Down the hallway, past the alcove, Katara sets the lotus board in the center of a table eclipsed by the moonlight through a window. The lobby of the inn is empty, and its doors are sealed shut for the night.
Katara sets the pieces in order and moves them on her own accord. It isn't exciting, but she finds herself righting the rules of the game as she missteps. She can't move the vermilion tile because it is blocked by the bright green tile. She loses her Avatar tile to the blue tile, and must start all over again.
The time passes without consequence for her as she sits at the table, and as she lifts her yellow tile to move it over into the next space, a voice cuts through the silence.
"Don't do that," the familiar rasp of his voice doesn't soothe her heart, beating rapidly in her own chest, "you'll put your lotus into check."
The darkness doesn't do Zuko any favors, but the moonlight does; his features are sharpened by the shadows, but softened by the incandescent light streaming through the windows. His eyes glow in pulses as they move around the room. Katara swallows down on her nerves and finds herself with no anger left in reserve. She is merely tired, again. A little skeptical, but not angry.
"It's called Pai Sho." He doesn't try to talk to her. Katara wonders if he will ever try, or whether she has shattered his bravery in conversation. Despite it all, she is grateful for the small acquiescence. "I imagine you can't be as terrible as your brother."
Katara watches him reset the pieces with a muscle-memory she recognizes; it's the way it feels when she bends, or when she fits herself into Sokka's arms for a hug, or when she used to tumble down the snow piles in the South Pole. Once they all fit back into place, he extends a hand to her. She notices the look on his face, a softened grimace and a curious glance, but the emotion behind it slips Katara's mind. She notices he is less hostile, now (and her shame returns for a fleeting moment, always being the person to hold onto things too tightly).
Zuko moves a tile on his side of the board, and Katara mirrors him.
And they play.
...
notes: i suck at real life, sorry for taking so long with this. i'm still here, i promise.