Chapter Two: Three Birthdays
At first, she thinks that her friends have forgotten.
She would use the term 'friends' lightly for the two people she is closest to in the world. Master Yori and Mistress Aliza are polar opposite in more ways than one. He is as thin as a rake and tall, sometimes cruel and almost never kind; she is plump and merry and mostly gentle, though Katara had learned that she could be quick with a wooden spoon when there was insolence involved.
Perhaps she could count a few more (all of them on one hand, she thinks, and wonders why she is not bitter) but she lives with Yori and Aliza in a little house just outside the palace.
("For your freedom," the Fire Lord had told her, "you don't want to be cooped up like a caged animal in the palace, after all," and she had supposed that he was right. At least until the little house with the red door had turned into just as much of a cage – just remarkably less gilded.)
Mak the guard was supposedly her friend. He had sent her a message with his hawk on her third day in the capital city, when she still cried herself to sleep and woke up with crushing self-pity that usually kick started the wallowing all over again. The thin tapping on the window then hadn't been as much of a shock as the day she'd left it open last week (the heat here was stifling, uncomfortable) and the bird had come careening in and flapped frantically around the room until she'd scrambled out of bed with her heart leaping out of her mouth to catch him.
'Hey kiddo,' the message had read, 'missing your company on board more than I expected. Fancy a game of Pai Sho on the weekend? I'll bring sea prunes. Send word back with Una. From your friend, Mak.'
It had taken her a while to decipher his writing, formal and cursive as it was. She was hardly going to deny a visit from her last link with home (tenuous as that link may be) and she sent a clumsily written note back to him, agreeing.
Today was the date they had agreed to meet, and the sun is falling westward but there is still no sign of him.
Katara begins to think that she has gotten the meaning of the word friend mixed up with something else entirely. Flicking through a collection of Master Yori's scrolls with a frown on her face, she realises that they are better described as colleagues or maybe even associates, and she steels herself for disappointment.
Perhaps this rare day off is indulgence enough, and she relishes in the feeling of basking around in the warmth without having to think or act or otherwise play the game. (The one she has been a pawn in since the first day she stepped off of that ship – though she doesn't quite realise that, not yet.)
Never mind that when Aliza calls her to dinner there is nothing special – just rice and vegetables and chicken – she twirls her chopsticks around her fingers as intricately as she does every night.
"Did you know," Katara says very unobtrusively, doing her best not to look Aliza directly in the eye, "that I'm nine today?"
"And so skinny for your age," Aliza replies, and the conversation is clearly over. The housekeeper goes back to scrubbing pots and pans in scalding water, and Katara humbly busies herself with her food.
She is waiting out on the porch in her training clothes (a simple black tunic with red lining and black leggings) after dinner, cross-legged and impatient for all appearances of meditation.
Yori is late; he'd left word with Aliza that despite having previously told Katara she could have the day off, he would be taking her to the palace for a lesson from a visiting martial artist, a non-bender who had enviable wisdom to impart to such a promising young pupil as she.
It is Mak who comes sauntering along the street though, and with Yori no-where in sight, Katara makes a wily guess that this is what had been planned all along.
"You're quite late," she says drily, cracking open an eye and staring down at him disapprovingly.
"Oh, don't be such a wet sea sponge," the grin on his face nearly wins her over – that and the way his face looks without that stupid helmet he wore on the ship, how he looks so much more human without the shoulder plates and the spiky shoes, just an off-duty soldier's sleeveless tunic and soft-soled slippers. "I'm here now, aren't I? And I have something special to show you, if you'll forgive me."
How could she refuse him?
She plays at irritation at first: "Sea sponges are always wet!" but she cannot keep up that façade for long. "Of course I forgive you," Katara says with wide eyes as though she finds him rather stupid, "if there's something special involved."
"Come on then," Mak offers her his hand and she leaps up and jumps down off the porch in one fell swoop to take it. They walk along the empty streets hand in hand with the sun low and aflame behind them. They walk until lights from the houses cast long shadows in the dark street, and then they turn around and he leads her through a little wooden gate set in a wall thick with ivy, and closes the palms of his hands around her eyes.
Katara stands in a dazed silence when he removes his hands. They are in an orchard of sun apples, and beneath a particularly large and leafy tree is the Pai Sho table that he had promised here. The place is lit with glass jars that glow, and round paper lanterns and she thinks, then, that she has never seen anything so magical.
"Happy birthday," Mak says, and winks down at her.
"How did you know?" and it is the rustling of leaves that grabs her attention; she spins around with her fingers bunching carefully into fists (force of habit – 'always be prepared,' said Master Yori) and confronts the boy who emerges from the trees with a scowl and a stance worthy of the sparring room.
Mak's voice is a low rasp behind her: "the Prince was adamant that you wouldn't be forgotten."
The change in her is immediate. She remembers her first day in Caldera City, stepping off the boat in the harbour and taking the long hike up the volcano wall and the descent into the capital where her life would be irrevocably changed. There were people missing, she remembers: a solemn Prince and a cunning Princess had greeted her but there had been no Fire Lady (though she hadn't been so insensitive as to inquire about the lack of one – not after what she had just been through).
"Your highness," she intones, and bows low in the traditional Fire Nation style. (It had taken a few days of patient instruction from Aliza, to perfect that.)
"Oh," he says, and frowns right back at her, "don't do that. Please. I'm Zuko not your highness and we're here to play Pai Sho, ok?"
Still unaccustomed to propriety, it doesn't take long for her to smirk wickedly and quirk an eyebrow at him: "more like we're here for me to totally trample you at Pai Sho," and they sit in the garden as Mak plays gentle melodies on his Pipa and true to her word Katara puts the Prince to shame. (He struggles against telling her that it's a stupid game and he hates it anyway.)
Eventually the game is over and Zuko takes Katara's hand and leads her over to show her the fireflies lighting the glass jars in the trees. "Happy birthday," he says softly, and she thinks that if she were another kind of person she might have cried.
Instead, she quirks an eyebrow and says: "why'd you do it?"
And from the way his mouth tightens and falls down at the sides, she can tell that was not what he had been expecting. The change about him is immediate, he crosses his arms over his chest and despite his apparent irritation he looks kind of sheepish. Katara recognises the look on his face, and she worries.
"My uncle Iroh told me… he told me what happened on the ship."
She supposes she should be thankful that the great, wonderful, kind Prince had taken the time out of his busy life of luxury to apologise indirectly for what had happened to her – but instead she is angry. Totally, intolerably angry and she snaps at him before she even think to stop herself (oh, the impropriety!):
"He shouldn't have told you that," she is bitter, mimicking his folded arms and turning her head away from him, "it's none of your business," and she remembers the gaping hole in the family that had met her at the palace but she says nothing.
"You could just say thank you," Zuko says sharply in retaliation, "I don't see anyone else around here even noticing that it's your birthday!"
"Oh, your highness, your magnificence, thank you for noting that this poor, humble peasant has feelings just like everyone else," she says lowly, both eyebrows raised high on her head, and she watches with a vague disinterest as Zuko spins on his heel and stalks off into the garden.
"That's not what I meant and you know it," he throws back over his shoulder as the darkness swallows him, and already Katara can feel regret blossoming in the pit of her stomach. Mak has stopped playing, and she sighs heavily as she reaches down and tugs at his tunic.
"Come on, Mak, take me home."
Katara does not have anything white, but out of respect and reverence she ignores the consequences and rips a strip of fabric out of Aliza's best white cotton bed sheets to tie around her arm. In the palace she feels out of place; there are white tapestries hanging from every beam, servants in plain white robes, and nobles adorned in white and gold and melancholy.
She is walking carefully on her tender feet, in soft-soled black slippers and her usual black tunic. Her training this week had been more intense that usual – for a reason that has not as of yet been disclosed to her own humble ears – and her feet are red raw and blistered.
Despite her own physical pain, she is much more attuned to the air in the capital city, thick with grief. Master Yori had told her during one particularly slow lesson that it underlined with something else: their nation's great defeat in Ba Sing Se.
The city had been under siege for sixth months, and such a loss had been unexpected. They studied the complications of siege, and the tactical failures of the battle, but Katara was sure there was something missing – and curious child as she was, she asked.
It was then that she learned about Lu Ten, and it was then that she set about finding something white to wear to the ceremony at the palace.
Now that she is here, she wishes that she had stayed at home.
Incense burns and sets the air alight with heady smells that make her forehead ache, and her feet ache, and she is alone without even her Sifu for company.
Nonetheless, the great feast makes a change from boiled rice and boiled vegetables and boiled pheasant-chicken, and she digs in to food that makes her eyes water it's so spicy, despite the fact that with every mouthful she chews her heart aches with the selfishness of her actions. She wants to fold poor General Iroh's hand into hers, and tell him that she is sorry, so very sorry, for his loss, but she is no better than a servant and so out of place in her poor black rags, and she could never approach him.
"Hello Katara," the prince says from behind her, and she curses herself for not noticing him sooner.
They haven't spoken much since that night in the garden almost a year ago, and then only forced courtesies when his father was near enough to hear what they were saying. Needless to say, then, that she is a little flustered when she turns around and he is standing there resplendent in formal white robes and ceremonial armour lined in gold. She scrambles upright and bows so low her body almost at a ninety-degree angle.
"I'm so sorry for your loss, your highness," she murmurs, and then just catches the hint of distaste on his face as she straightens. "I- I- I'm sorry about the black. I shouldn't really be here. I don't have anything… proper."
"No, it's perfectly fine," he says, and his eyes wander to the band of white tied around her arm, "I'm pleased that you came."
There is so much tension between them that she almost wants to throw herself down at his feet and ask him to forgive her – what had she been thinking, talking to the Fire Lord's son like that? She stares down at her throbbing feet, and twists her hands awkwardly behind her back. Zuko clears his throat and with some hesitation she looks up at him again.
"Would you like to, um, take a walk in the garden?" His stiff formalities make her uncomfortable, but the attention from the people she'd been sitting next to almost pushes her forward, and she nods once, twice, and they walk slowly side-by-side towards the nearest door. Her steps are so hesitant and careful that the prince notices the difference in her almost immediately. They are silent until they pass the guards at the exit and are wandering alone through the gardens, when he asks: "What's wrong with your feet?"
Katara hesitates. The truth is, perhaps, a delicate matter, but lying to the prince is similar to lying to the Fire Lord (treason that she would never commit) and she fists her hands in her robe and stares straight down at the path ahead of them.
"Master Yori is teaching me to be silent," and there is nothing but pure obedience in her tone, "he is a stern teacher."
She doesn't tell him the whole story: that he sits with a thin willow reed as she stalks across the specially designed training floor, and that if she makes the slightest noise (a shuffle of fabric, a creak) she is reprimanded with a slice to the sole of the offending foot. The prince is not stupid, though, and he eyes her feet with suspicion.
"Do you want to sit down somewhere?" he asks, very gently, and she balks.
"Um, no, I'm fine, actually. Shouldn't we be getting back? Your uncle will want to see you in his time of grief, I think," and she begins to turn around until a firm grip on her wrist stops her. She could twist his arm off, she thinks, press him into the floor with his arm at an unnatural angle until he begged her to let him go. Instead, she looks across at him quizzically until he drops her arm and flushes a slow shade of pink.
"I doubt my uncle wants to see anyone. He doesn't want any of this," he waves his arm in a vague direction, "ceremonial stuff."
"It must be nice to know that the whole city is mourning, though."
"Except they're not mourning Lu Ten," his voice drops to a whisper, "they're mourning the loss of that stupid city, and uncle knows it."
"Oh," she says, oh.
They come to a halt by a pond, underneath a tree lit with fireflies, which reminds her starkly of the night they'd argued. Zuko flops lazily down, and rolls his shoulders underneath the metal plates, and Katara hesitates a moment before joining him, delicately propping her feet up in front of her.
"I used to sit here all the time with my mother," he tells her quietly, and the tension seems to drop out of the air between them. It crackles with something else now – the weather, she thinks, it's heavy and warm and stifling and about to crack at any moment – and as the first roll of thunder rumbles in the sky, she pretends as if she can't hear the stifled cries of the boy next to her.
"Don't," she says awkwardly, and reaches out a hand to squeeze his shoulder. It comes up against resistance though, and sits uselessly on that cold white and gold armour that she suddenly wishes was gone, "it'll be okay," though she doesn't know quite what it is that they're talking about.
His shoulder plate wobbles underneath her hand. Then, ever so slowly, she lowers it until she can twine her fingers through his, and they sit there until rain is pouring down over the both of them, soaking them to the skin.
When she pulls her hand away, it is to clumsily lift them into position, to bend the rain away from them so that they are sitting in a sphere that glows and glistens, and the Prince is quiet beside her. She wonders if he feels ashamed. She wants to say something to comfort him, but she doesn't know what.
"Your bending's improved," he says lightly, though she doesn't miss the hoarseness in his voice that comes from crying.
"Yeah," she answers, "a bit," and then she lets the water fall and drench the two of them all over again. Katara turns to face him and find that he is staring at her without anger, or irritation like she'd expected, but something a great deal more serious. She grins at him wickedly, and he smirks back, and out there in the rain that washes down their cheeks like tears, she thinks that they might understand each other a little better, now.
"It is the Fire Lord's birthday soon."
Katara learns this from Aliza as she tries to meditate on the porch one evening with the housekeeper bustling around her, polishing and sweeping. She wonders briefly why Master Yori hadn't told her, but doesn't linger long on the thought. Meditation requires a clear mind. So instead she thinks of cobalt blue water and ice and sinks into it.
"There in an important occasion at the Palace at the end of this week," Yori tells her the next day, his long, spindly fingers bridged. He is looking at Katara in a way that makes her feel most uneasy, and she almost balks under his scrutiny. (Almost, but not quite.) "There is something… I hope that you can learn before then," the girl lifts her chin to listen, "we should have started earlier, perhaps, and this is only something I have read about…"
In that instant, she is sure that she will grasp it quickly. The things her Sifu teaches her often come easily despite the fact that her waterbending is clumsy from lack of a real master (instead she is taught from scrolls that the Fire Nation acquired through secret means, and Yori the non-bender, the martial arts expert, is quick enough to understand them better than most).
But try as she might (day in day out) she cannot grasp it.
She watches as her Sifu grows steadily more impatient, and she worries. Yori is not a kind man, and she knows well enough that he will do anything to get what he wants – and what he wants is the Fire Lord's approval. Katara lies awake at night in the stifling heat with her thin bed sheets wrapped around her ankles and she imagines terrible things, and when she sleeps she dreams of laughter and scalding tea and crimson blood spattering iron walls.
The day before the Fire Lord's birthday, she awakes with a start. She is swathed in sweat and her chest heaves, but Yori watches her dispassionately from the doorway.
"Get up," he tells her shortly, "get dressed and meet me outside."
She complies (of course) and the dawn is just breaking over the skyline as she joins him in the alley below the house.
He leads her out of Caldera city and into unknown territory – they walk down winding mountain paths and houses and lanes become trees and ditches – and he is sternly silent. (She knows better than to ask where he is taking her.)
They stop by a small pool of water beneath a canopy of trees. Pink cherry blossoms float on the surface, and for a moment she is blissful, surrounded by beauty and her element and then Yori tells her: "if you cannot learn peacefully, then this will have to do," and her heart thuds painfully in her chest, "give me your hands," he says, without a flicker of hesitation he grabs her wrists and slices her palms open.
He releases his grip, and without his support she falls hard to her knees. She is quieter than any other child would be, staring wide-eyed and mouthed at the blood pooling thick in her hands, but Master Yori is never satisfied.
"Stop that whimpering," disdain colours his tone and he pushes her towards the water's edge, "get into the water and fix what's broken."
And so she does. She doesn't kneel on the bank and put her hands into the water as she might have done before – instead she immerses herself in it completely. Her hair fans around her and she slips beneath the water, dark and sleek.
On the bank, Yori can barely see the girl below the surface. Every now and again she blows out, and air bubbles litter the otherwise calm water, disturbing the peaceful flow of cherry blossoms and leaves. And then, abruptly, there is a flash of silver light and he can see her silhouetted against it for a moment before she rises like some magnificent spirit, strands of that dark hair plastered to her forehead.
"Let me see," he commands roughly, and she holds up the palms of her hands. "Well done, child, well done," she smiles at him, and they spend the rest of the day by the side of the water, Katara swimming like a fish and splashing water, and Aliza brings lunch in a wicker basket, all complaints and sweat and a bright red face from the walk.
The next day Master Yori presents her to the Fire Lord, and she behaves admirably. She bows like the most humble servant, but she is noble and proud. She is sweet and eloquent and only speaks when the Fire Lord addresses her. When prompted, she steps forward and her new trick sends gasps around the room that echo and reverberate back at her.
She catches the Fire Prince's eye after the water in her hands has glowed silver and healed a faceless, nameless soldier who had been brought in with a gaping wound in his lower back, but he is impassive and austere as if he knows what she had gone through to learn it.
Later, while the Palace and the city are alive with celebration, Katara lies on her futon and watches the beams in her ceiling emotionlessly. Between the clap of fireworks and the heady sound of cheers, she hears a shuffle, a thump, a rap of knuckles against glass, and she shoots up out of bed to examine the ruckus outside. What she finds, clinging with white knuckles to her window ledge, is not what she had expected.
"Prince Zuko!" she heaves him in and watches him incredulously, sprawled out on the floor before he picks himself up and dusts off his clothes, "what are you doing here? You shouldn't be here! We'll both get into so much trouble if someone finds you," she is flustered and pink-cheeked and she folds her arms over her chest.
"Oh, don't worry about the rules all the time, Katara," he replies, puffing out his chest, "no-one will find me."
"With the noise you just made outside, I reckon Aliza will be in here any minute, and she's kind of deaf," she raises her eyebrow at him, and then her face falls into a frown, "what are you doing here, anyway?"
"I just… I wanted to say that, um, what you did today… in the throne room, I mean, it was great, so great, you're just," he ducks his head and even in the dark she could have sworn his cheeks were pink, "how did you learn?"
Oh, all those inconvenient questions, she thinks.
Katara chews at her bottom lip and avoids answering: "I have a teacher. Who teaches me stuff. Maybe you should get one, and learn how to creep around a little better, if you're so set on doing it all the time, your highness."
"Fire Nation princes aren't supposed to creep around," he shuffles his feet and the floorboards creak underneath them so that she winces and whips her head around to the doorway.
"I guess I could teach you. If you want," she sounds reluctant, but he jumps at the offer anyway, grins and thanks and she can't help the way her chest floods with warmth (though she wishes she could).
"You'll have to do what I tell you," she continues, ignoring the look on his face, "and no arguing. What I say goes!"
She grins and he grumbles under his breath, and that is that.
Author's Notes
Ok so I lied – no Hama this chapter. Instead we have a bit of fluff (and some not so fluffy stuff) spanning the two years between Katara's capture in Chapter One and Chapter Three (which will feature Hama the Bloodbender!). Hopefully you can see the gradual change in Katara's attitude in this chapter – she's on her way to becoming the girl we saw in the Prologue.
This took hideously long and is basically just a filler D: so sorry guys! I hope it was at least a bit enjoyable!
(This chapter has not been beta-read as of yet.)