act two: it started from your arms (and it's a catalyst)
.
The first few days are a bit awkward.
It's just that she doesn't know how to talk to Zuko anymore, if she ever truly did - they had their moments, under Ba Sing Se and here at the palace on the day of Sozin's comet, and they used to be friends, but all that's left now is a couple of years of silence and, she's beginning to suspect, more than some bitterness.
After all, they used to be friends.
He introduces her to his ministers, and some of them are friendly or at least polite, but others look at her with something close to scorn. Surprisingly, it's not the ones she doused at the last Council of Four - in fact, they're generally warmer to her, since she can take half the credit for their trade deal with the Tribe, and they know that she's not some clueless teenager.
In the first meeting, she keeps her mouth shut and mostly observes, more concerned with paying attention to who supports what (and what kind of) proposals, who seems to have the best interest of the Fire Nation at heart and who seems to care more about their own wealth, who oppose Zuko on principle and who oppose him because they disagree about the best way to govern and who agree with him on altogether too many fronts to be anything but a brown-noser.
What she comes away from the first meeting with is this: Zuko, more than Sokka knew, really is all alone here.
Well, she thinks, not anymore.
Except as soon as they leave the meeting, when she's trying to catch his attention to discuss a few things with him, he all-but flees from her. She's pretty sure he heard her say his name, but, she muses, maybe she didn't speak loud enough - the hall is pretty noisy, and she was one of the last to leave.
Or maybe he really doesn't want to talk to her in private.
A week later, in the second meeting, she tentatively offers her opinion on a few safe things - an older female minister, perhaps taking pity on her, brings up whether or not they can afford to expand their trade with the Southern Water Tribe, and she was able to work out what sorts of imports the Tribe might need, versus what sort of exports they would be able to offer during the summer months - but still feels like an outsider.
This time, she's certain that he hears her on the way out - he hesitates - but he doesn't turn or wait for her.
In the entire week, she's only seen him a few times, and he was friendly enough, but when she offered, once, to have a cup of tea with him, he declined with what looked like discomfort and promptly disappeared.
It's making her feel pretty unwanted and miserable, and she's laying awake in her room (probably used to belong to Azula, come to think of it) trying to figure out how to tackle this problem, when it hits her -
What ruined your relationship with Aang?
Ultimately, it was the fact that she never told him when she wasn't happy. She was never willing to have hard conversations with him, never willing to be up-front and honest. And this situation with Zuko is different, sure, but at the same time, it'll get sunk by the same problem if she doesn't nip it in the bud right here and now.
She has to make him communicate with her. Even though it is definitely going to suck, she can't do anything for him if they're just tiptoeing around each other, never acknowledging the elephant in the room that is how she threw him away when she got with Aang.
She figures he's probably still up - she glances at the moon, the sun's only been down a couple of hours, of course he's still up - and so she throws herself out of bed and dresses hastily, because she knows that if she waits until morning, she won't have the nerve to corner him and get him to admit that he's upset with her.
He's in his office, or at least there's light under the door, and so she marches up to it and knocks, hard, before going in without waiting for a response.
Zuko looks up from the desk with bleary eyes and stares at her for a moment.
"Knocking generally has a purpose, you know," he drawls, and she shakes her head.
"What's going on here?" she asks, sitting in the chair opposite his desk. He makes a face.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you sent me letters all the time that made me feel like I should be here to help you in person, but now that I am, you won't even talk to me."
His expression seems to freeze in place; it's the kind of dangerously neutral expression that could be hiding any kind of depths or demons. The silence stretches for a moment, and she takes a deep breath.
"Is it because of how I acted when I was with Aang?" she offers quietly, cringing a little, and he glances away, so she continues. "I know I wasn't myself. I already got it from Toph and Sokka. And I treated you really bad," she went on, the words pouring out of her, chased into sound by her own shame and need to fill the crushing silence. "I should have come when you asked me to help you find your mother. I really should have."
"You didn't want to," he says, in a thinly neutral tone, and she looks down. It's true and it's not true at the same time: she didn't want to, yes, but not because she didn't want to help him.
"I had it in my mind that I had to be there for Aang all the time," she admits. "That I could never leave his side, and he had other things to do so I went along with them."
"That just doesn't sound like you," he bursts out suddenly, and she resists the urge to pull her knees up to her chest like a child.
"I was trying really, really hard to be someone I wasn't," she says quietly. "I felt like it was my destiny to be his wife, and I had to make myself be happy with it. I just had to... get over anything else."
He's quiet for a long moment, and then, in a very low voice: "I needed you then."
The memory - a memory he wasn't a part of, can't know he's dredging up - rises in her, I will never turn my back on people who need me! Except she had. She'd turned her back on everyone else who needed her because she had herself convinced that Aang needed her more.
"The lead's gone cold," he goes on, adding insult to injury, because he's hurting, and the only thing pain ever wants is to be shared.
"I'm sorry, Zuko," she breathes, and wishes that she had better words to say, some way to make him understand how awful she feels - how much more awful now, actually looking at him and seeing how much she failed him, even after all he did for her - but there's nothing that will be enough. And even if she could express it, it wouldn't bring his mother back. "I'm so sorry."
Toph and Sokka both told her that she wasn't herself, that she was disappearing into that relationship, that she stopped being Katara the moment she got with Aang, but they hadn't been as directly hurt by her throwing everything else aside to be his forever girl.
"I know," he replies finally, but he's not looking at her. "And I know what it's like to try and be someone you're not for someone you love, how... important it seems. And I know you're trying to fix things. I know."
"But you can't forgive me." It's not a question, although she wishes it could be.
He still won't look at her, and she knows he's not the sort of person who will say that outright, even though it's true.
"I understand," she says, because she does, even if she doesn't like it. And, well, last time, she was on his side of it, and she was a lot nastier about it. She starts to stand. "I can... I can go back to the Tribe in the morning, I just - "
"You don't have to leave, Katara," he blurts out, looking up at her, alarmed. "I meant what I said, you're welcome here and I think you can do a lot of good. You've helped me a lot in your letters. A lot," he repeats, with emphasis, and she sits back down. He looks away again, uncomfortable. "I keep thinking I'm ready to see you again," he goes on, in a low mutter, "but I'm always not."
She decides not to examine why that might be.
Even though she came here to have this conversation, knowing full well how much it was going to suck, she thinks that she'd really like to turn into a bird and fly right out the window and away from this forever.
"I'll be fine," he says, as though reading her thoughts through the top of her head. "I really enjoyed our conversation at the party last summer, it really made me think about a lot. I do want you here," he adds, but it's as though it causes him physical pain.
"Okay," she replies hoarsely, unsure of her ability to say anything else. She feels awful, somehow even worse than she did when she broke Aang's heart, because at least then she'd had the fact that she did the right thing to carry her through; this time, she's coming face to face with the fact that she abandoned and blew off a friend who had risked his life for her and to help her find closure, and she was absolutely, without question, wrong to have done so.
And worse, she did it a long time ago, and hadn't realized how bad it was at the time.
"I really am sorry," she settles on, and Zuko - for all his faults, Zuko with the heart too big for his own good - smiles at her, if a bit tightly.
"I know," he repeats.
.
The air between them the next day is still cold, but at least it's clear.
He turns her down when she offers to have a cup of tea with him, but he at least gives her a legitimate-sounding excuse and a promise to actually take her up on it sometime.
Really, he's being far kinder to her than she deserves, considering that his mother might be here to help him (them) if not for her carelessness, considering that he might have found the closure that he helped her find once, but instead here he is, alone in the Fire Nation except for Katara, the reason he's alone.
Then she thinks that maybe she's being a little unfair to herself.
Aang was her boyfriend at the time, not Zuko. All that Zuko did for her was given freely, without any promise or expectation of recompense, and she did not, strictly speaking, owe him her time.
But even so... Katara, the Katara that had fought his sister with him, the Katara that had transferred all of her hatred for her mother's murder onto him in the wake of his betrayal, the Katara that had donned the mask of a ghost to save a town, the Katara that he had known - she would never have thought twice about helping him find his mother, never would have considered not going with him.
So maybe the root of it is less that she had abandoned him as it is that she abandoned herself, or that she isn't who he thought she was.
It... stings to think of.
So she makes up her mind to stop dwelling on it. She thinks of Ty Lee's words to her, all the way back at Kyoshi when she was still reeling from what she had done to Aang: Either they'll come around or they won't, but you shouldn't wait for them to get on with your life.
Either Zuko will forgive her or he won't, but she shouldn't wait for it to get on with things here.
She'll just have to be here for him now, and somehow be here for him hard enough that it undoes the damage she did by not being here then.
Instead of trying to get him to talk to her alone, she'll simply focus on the proposals brought up in their weekly meetings, and work things out from there. He'll come to her if he ever wants to. It's not like he doesn't know where to find her - either the expansive palace library or his sister's old room.
In fact, that might be part of her problem, come to think of it: she's cooped up in this place with Zuko's uncomfortable silence and a bunch of servants who are too terrified of her, for some reason, to stop and talk. Besides, she thinks that half the problems Zuko is having could be solved if he could just get a perspective that wasn't coming from a rich old noble with his or her own agenda.
She makes up her mind to start going into the city, to talk to people who aren't still pretty (justifiably) mad at her or possibly plotting her death or seventy years old and half-senile. Katara has never exactly been a loner; all this being alone with her thoughts will drive her mad before too long.
The first time she goes into the city she briefly thinks that it is, perhaps, a mistake.
She isn't sure what she expected; perhaps gossip, or glares, or even nasty mutters behind her back - but not total ignorance.
Nobody here knows who she is. Nobody, it seems, cares.
It's more uncomfortable than she expected; she got used to being recognized in the Southern Water Tribe, as both a war hero and a leader, and to come here and find herself anonymous is... unfamiliar. Still, she gamely decides to go have a cup of tea and some conversation with some strangers, in the hopes that maybe they'll have something interesting to say, or maybe some kind of secret wisdom to help her deal with her problems.
"Hi," she says brightly, at the first respectable-looking tea shop she comes across. The server smiles at her, although it looks a bit brittle. "Do I seat myself, or should I wait to be seated?"
"You can seat yourself," the woman replies. "There's a bar if you'd prefer sake, or I can bring you a selection of our finest teas."
"Tea, please," she says, and takes a seat near the open window, looking out onto the street. "And food?"
"Of course," the server answers, with a sweet smile.
She ends up with a pot of jasmine green tea and a plate of boarpig dumplings, both of which are delicious; the dumplings are just a bit spicy, complemented by the delicate sweetness of the tea. She makes a mental note to bring Zuko here someday, although hopefully without too much fanfare, if such a thing is possible for the Fire Lord.
Maybe he can dress down, like they did before he was crowned.
"Would you like anything else?" the server asks, and Katara glances up, making a split-second decision.
"I'd love some conversation, if you're not too busy."
It's not unreasonable; at this hour of the day, it's slow enough that she's alone in the teashop, and she thinks that the server is probably about to be finished with her shift anyway. The woman tilts her head, a bit confused.
"What did you want to talk about?" she asks, but doesn't take the seat.
"What's your name?" Katara offers, as a somewhat awkward conversation-starter.
"Chunhua," the server replies amiably. "It means spring flower."
"It's beautiful," she says. "Mine is Katara, but I don't know if it means anything. I think my parents just liked the sound of it."
Chunhua laughs a little, and glances behind her, to see if anyone is watching, before she takes the seat opposite her. She refuses the tea that Katara offers, although she thinks that's perhaps going a bit too far anyway.
"You don't look like you're from around here," Chunhua says, "if you'll forgive my mentioning it."
"I'm not," she replies. "I'm from the Southern Water Tribe. I came here on... business."
She isn't sure why she feels the need to, for the moment, hide the fact that she's - at least ostensibly - a close adviser of the Fire Lord. Maybe it's because she feels like the server will run away from her if she does, or choose her words more carefully.
"I've heard great things about that place," she muses. "It's supposed to be one of the best places in the world to live, but I don't know if I could handle the cold!"
Katara laughs. "It does get pretty ridiculously cold," she admits, and can't stop smiling at the fact that her home's reputation has filtered down this far. "But it is a wonderful place to live. And you do get used to it, although I guess I had an advantage, since I was born there."
"Does that mean you're a waterbender?" she asks eagerly, and Katara grins.
"I am. I helped Master Pakku found the waterbending school there, in fact."
"Can you show me something?" Chunhua leans forward, eyes alight with wonder, and Katara draws the tea out of her cup, forming into an ice flower. Her new friend gasps in delight. "That's so cool," she gushes. "I've always wished I was a bender, but I'm not." Her face falls a little at the words, and Katara feels bad for her.
"My brother was always the same way," she says, leaning on her chin. "But if you ask me, he's smarter than I am. He never had an easy way out. I respect him a lot," she adds, and it's truer than she meant.
She misses Sokka. Somehow, she didn't expect to.
"Benders have it a lot easier than non-benders," Chunhua says, and Katara nods in sympathetic agreement, because she's self-aware enough to see that it's true. "The only public school around here just teaches benders, they don't take in non-benders."
"So, if you're not a bender, you don't get any education?" Katara asks, tilting her head, and Chunhua shakes her head.
"Not except what your parents can give you. The nobles have their own academy, but you have to pay a lot of money to get in, so if you don't have it..."
"You're left out in the cold," she finishes, and what neither of them say: and you're left finding low-paying service jobs to make ends meet.
"It's not bad," Chunhua says, although Katara thinks she's just trying to make her feel better. "I mean, my parents taught me a lot. They own this place," she adds, indicating to the teashop, and it's probably intended to make her feel better, but it has the opposite implication to Katara:
I might have been able to be something more, but I was born to the owners of a teashop, so all I could learn was how to serve tea.
And that's fine, if what you want to do is make tea and meet people - she thinks of Iroh, how happy he is in his teashop - but what if Chunhua had dreams like Katara's, once, only she didn't have the means to make them happen? Owning a respectable teashop is hardly a shameful fate, but if it's not the one you want, then it's awful all the same. And if you never get the chance to choose, you never get to know if maybe you would have been able to do more - for others, and for yourself - if you'd chosen another path.
Katara doesn't know how to make things better for Chunhua, but she does know that she owes it to her and others like her to do the most that she can with the opportunities that she does have.
"Maybe we should open a school," she muses, and Chunhua smiles wanly.
"That takes a lot of work."
"Work isn't the problem," Katara counters honestly, and Chunhua tilts her head. "We can do the work. I'll have to fight the council on funding, I'm sure," she adds, a bit darkly, thinking of how much they're gonna love this one, "but people who aren't nobles deserve the opportunity to learn. Everyone benefits from expanding education."
"What do you mean?" Chunhua asks, with some trepidation, "that you'll have to fight the council?"
Katara blinks, and decides to dive in. "Zuko's - the Fire Lord's - Ministers," she clarifies, and Chunhua's eyes slowly widen. "We don't agree on much, but I think a lot of them do want the best for the country. I just have to convince them of it. But you've given me a lot to think about."
"You're on the Fire Lord's Council of Ministers?" Chunhua breathes, backing away as though she's afraid Katara will explode, and she's suddenly missing her earlier anonymity.
"Yes," she says. "Zuko's an old friend," she adds, although it's only half-true. "I decided to come here to help him, he seemed... over-stressed."
"Does that mean..." Chunhua starts, sounding a bit faint, "that you're the waterbender who fought with the Avatar to end the war?"
She winces, in spite of herself. "I am," she replies, a bit tightly, and Chunhua stands rapidly, face pale.
"I've been so rude, I didn't mean to - !"
Katara starts. "You haven't been rude at all!" she says, aghast. "Why do you think you've been rude?"
"You're a hero," she breathes, hands over her mouth. "I had no idea you were here now!"
"Well, I've only been here a couple of weeks," she mumbles, feeling a little embarrassed. "Please, don't treat me like I'm some kind of... like I'm special. I just want to know how I can help you."
Chunhua stares at her blankly, for almost too long, before asking, "Why?" like it's genuinely strange.
"Because that's why I'm here," she answers, also confused. "To help."
"But nobody on that council cares about us," Chunhua says. "It's all big politics, like trade with the Earth Kingdom and deals with each other about who gets to rule over what. They just tell us what they're going to do."
"Well, I care," Katara says firmly. "And I want to know what you need."
The silence that falls hard after her statement is long and tense, and after a moment, she decides that she's had enough, and stands.
"I'll come back in a few days," she says, laying a few coins on the table to pay for the meal. "I promise, I'm not just saying that. I really do care."
"They usually say that," Chunhua replies softly, guarded. "That they care about us, and then they don't. They get us into wars and get our families killed - " this she says with such pointed, emotional emphasis that it can't be anything but personal " - and they tell us it was for our own good."
"I'm not starting any wars," Katara says, matching her tone, heat and water rising behind her eyes. "I lost my mother in the last one, I'm not getting behind any more fighting. I want to make things better for people."
Chunhua tilts her head, eyes softening. "I think I believe you," she says, and Katara smiles. "I hope to see you again soon."
She nods. "I'll be here. I promise."
.
She returns in two days, and Chunhua smiles with a sort of uncertainty when she walks through the door, as though she's been burned so many times that she's afraid to hope.
And Katara knows for certain that she has done the right thing by coming here.
.
She writes to Ty Lee that second week, and gets a surprisingly helpful response.
The ministers are mostly old nobility, Ty Lee writes, but a few of them actually fought in the war. They'll be your biggest allies, some of them really lost a lot, they'll support anything they think might end the fighting for good.
And also, Mai thinks you're crazy, but she says good luck, but Katara doesn't know what to make of that. She knows that Mai left the Fire Nation altogether shortly after last year's Council of Four, and on somewhat-sour terms, although Zuko was never forthcoming in his letters and she didn't really know how to phrase the question; all of her asking-without-asking questions had received perfunctory answers with no details, and she couldn't press for more without coming off as nosy. Suki was a dead end, too, since while Katara deeply suspects that she knows, she's always insisted that she has no idea what happened, that Mai just up and left one day.
So Mai could have any number of reasons - good or bad - to think that Katara is crazy for trying to help Zuko.
(The 'good luck' was nice, though, even if it was probably sarcastic. However, Katara has made it one of her life goals to see the best in people, so she's going to choose to believe that Mai sincerely was wishing her luck.)
She's not sure where to start on opening a public school; she'd like to ask Zuko, but they're still not really talking, and Ty Lee, for all of her helpful insight into the council, didn't really know either, and finally, in a fit of mild homesickness, she writes to Sokka, and receives a reply only a day later - he must have gotten her letter and responded immediately, the way she did when Zuko would write her for advice.
I wouldn't go that far this soon, he writes. You'll need allies on the council before you can make something like that happen. I think you've had the right idea so far, just watch and don't push.
Not that you've ever been great at not pushing, he adds, and she can almost hear him rolling his eyes. But it's you and Zuko against all those ministers right now, the last thing either of you need is to make anybody mad. How is he, by the way?
She doesn't quite tell him the truth; she's still too ashamed to admit it. Instead, she tells him that Zuko is doing all right, but he really, really needs all the help he can get.
Good thing he's got you, then, Sokka writes back, with a little smiley-face drawn next to it, and her heart sinks.
Yeah, she replies, glad he can't see her face. I'm really glad I came here.
.
She tries to take Sokka's advice, because it's good advice and because he's usually better at this kind of subtle pragmatism than she is, but she mentions it anyway at the next meeting, albeit off-hand, as though it's not that big a deal.
One of the ministers, a man about Iroh's age, scoffs.
"A school?" he sneers. "For the masses? Please, my lady – " this with ironic emphasis that makes her blood boil " – we are here to discuss serious matters, not those befalling peasants."
"Those peasants are the backbone of your country," she counters, through gritted teeth. "They till the fields that feed your family, they man the ships that catch the fish on your plate, they fire the porcelain you drink your tea from, they pick the tea you drink! You don't have to agree with me," she continues, voice low with rage, "but I demand that you show respect to the people you claim to speak for."
"You demand?" he snarls, eyes alight, and she's so angry she could hit him – angry because that is what he responded to out of everything she said, angry because they're even having this argument, angry because she's alone and she made this bed for herself years ago – but Zuko steps in.
"Minister Xu," he says sharply. "The Lady Katara has a point. We can discuss whether or not a public school is a practical undertaking, but the people deserve respect, and I will stand behind her demand that you treat them with such."
He won't look at her, even as he speaks in her defense. It makes something inside of her cringe.
"Of course, my lord," Minister Xu says, although it sounds pained. "I do not believe that a public school is a practical undertaking at this time."
"She never suggested that it was," Zuko counters, raising an eyebrow. "Simply that it was something the people may want in the future. We can revisit the topic at a later time when it may be more practical. I, for one, think it's something worthy of consideration."
She isn't sure if he really does think it's worthy of consideration, or if he's simply angry with Minister Xu; either way, she'll call it a win, for now.
The meeting ends shortly after that, with little ultimately being decided, but Katara does manage to catch Zuko afterward this time.
"Thank you," she says, a little ashamed at inadvertently turning the meeting into a scene.
"It's a good idea," he replies, shrugging, although he looks far more uncomfortable than his flippant tone would suggest. "Xu was wrong to dismiss it out-of-hand."
"Still," she sighs. "I appreciate it."
His eyes soften, but then he looks away. "Katara, I asked you to come here so you could help me make things better. Of course I'm gonna have your back when you want to do that."
She smiles at him, a bit tentatively, and he even returns it, although there's a sort of closed-off sadness in his eyes.
He won't say it, but she hears it all the same: even though you didn't have my back last time.
But it's sadness there on his face, not anger, and Katara isn't sure if that's better or worse.
.
This time, she goes to the market; it's a sprawling, disorganized, open-air affair - clearly something that sprang up on its own, rather than a planned sort of thing like the market back home - filled up with people and things to be bought. Some of the shops are centered in buildings, and probably stay there full-time, things like butchers and candle-makers and herbalists, and some of the shops have been set up right there on the street; she sees a woman selling Genuine Southern Water Tribe Textiles in a loud voice, and has to stop herself and her homesickness from going over and buying things she doesn't need.
There are people selling foods she's never eaten, books she's never heard of, clothes more exquisite than anything she's ever dreamed of, silks and satins and brocade, with unfamiliar names like tomesode and aodai; it's a loud and bustling place, but in between the dazzling array of goods, she sees the beggars and the prostitutes and the buskers.
The market attracts all sorts, after all. She gives a handful of silver coins to a woman playing a shamisen, and asks after her story.
"Oh, the usual, I suppose," she replies, waving a hand airily. "My husband got sick and died, my son was killed in the war, and I couldn't run the farm all alone. I heard that there was opportunity in the city, so I sold the farm and came here."
"You live in the area?" Katara asks, and the woman laughs, a harsh sort of bark that speaks to the kind of humor you have to make for yourself sometimes, in the dark places.
"I live right here, friend. I didn't have enough to pay rent, and nobody would take me on as a maid, so I used the last of my coin to buy an instrument and now this is how I make my living." She pauses, sighs a bit, and then gives Katara a more genuine smile. "It's not all bad. I always wanted to be a musician, and I do make enough to get by."
There's a sort of resigned hope in her eyes, the sort that's long-since given up on a better life, but merely hangs on to the belief that things might not get worse.
"Others have it much worse than I do, my dear," she goes on, seeing the expression on Katara's face. "At least I had a skill I could use to make money, I never had to resort to crime."
"You're happy, then?" she asks softly, and the woman glances away.
"After my son died, I gave up on happiness as a goal," she answers. "I get by. That's enough."
The last is more than just a comment, it's a gentle admonition, telling Katara to stop pitying her and stop prying.
"Thank you for speaking to me," she says, a bit lamely, because there's little she can say to help the lady, and less she can think of to do.
"Thank you for asking," the woman counters, smiling. "Not many care to."
.
She gets into it with Minister Xu again at the next meeting, although she tries not to. But he makes a comment about needing more oversight in the marketplace and her visit there is still so fresh and so vivid in her mind - the beauty, the sprawl of it - and he backs up his claim with a mention to "the people who beg on the streets" and it rubs her the wrong way.
"The people beg on the streets because they don't have enough to pay rent or buy a house," she counters, biting back a righteous fury as she remembers all the kindness the people on the street showed her - far more, she thinks sourly, than what most of the ministers have.
"Now you speak for beggars, as well as peasants?" Xu scoffs, and Katara resists the urge to ice over his mouth so he'll shut up.
"I speak for the people who have no voice," she hisses. "The ones you would never deign to ask, never lower yourself so much as to speak to."
"That sort of bleeding-heart philosophy may work in your… tribe," he starts, and she can almost hear the word savages in his tone, and her hands curl into fists entirely without her input, "but you are not in the Southern Water Tribe anymore, you cannot simply come into our country, wielding your culture like a cudgel, and remake it all in your image."
"Someone has to speak for them," she snaps, rising in her seat, and maybe Zuko can see this ending badly, because he stands up fully.
"That's enough," he says sharply. "This meeting is adjourned."
She's still fuming when one of the other ministers - the older lady who discussed trade with her at that second meeting, a woman named Minister Lian - pulls her aside.
"Minister Xu may allow his emotions to get the best of him, my lady," she says, and the epithet honestly sounds sincere, "but he does have a point. The Fire Nation does not work the same way that the Water Tribe does, and while your perspective as a member of a different culture is valuable, I do believe that it would be good for you to learn more about the country before you try to make sweeping changes."
She takes a deep breath, in a somewhat-failed attempt to calm herself. "Thank you," she says through gritted teeth, because the advice is meant in kindness, even though a part of Katara wonders just why this woman has decided to be on her side. "I haven't explored the library nearly enough, I admit," she goes on, with a forced laugh, and Minister Lian smiles. "I'll start tonight."
"I suggest starting with the history," Minister Lian says, and her kind smile becomes a bit more wry. "The scrolls of law are… no small undertaking."
"I appreciate your advice," Katara replies. "But what made you decide to speak to me?"
There's an odd sort of knowing in the older woman's face, but Katara can't place it. "You have more power than you know, Lady Katara," she answers enigmatically, "and you have a good heart. I hope to see you at these meetings for years to come, and I would aid you in being the best… you can be."
She wonders what Minister Lian was going to say after 'best', but isn't sure she really wants to know.
"May you have a good evening," Minister Lian says, bowing slightly. "I will see you here next week."
"Yes," she replies. "I will be here." And then, remembering her manners: "Good evening to you as well."
Minister Lian smiles, and then walks away, leaving Katara alone in the meeting room with her thoughts.
.
She goes to the library straight away, pulling out the scrolls of law even though Minister Lian warned her against them, along with scrolls and books on history, and sets herself up at a small table with a little lamp, and it's a nice, cozy nest of information, but then she actually starts to read them.
And she realizes that the Fire Nation really did not choose their historians based on their ability to write engagingly.
She makes it through one arduous, painfully-boring scroll before she decides that this little nest will be the scene of her death unless she makes a change, but there's no way around it - Minister Lian (and, she cringes, Minister Xu) was right, she has to read these and understand them. But, she thinks obstinately, she doesn't have to do it here, in the dimly-lit, quiet, and very sleepy library.
All of which leads her to a small, private garden near the center of the palace - Zuko had breezed by it when showing her around the palace, although he had breezed through most things in that tour, but he did say that she was welcome to come here and "use the pond" (he winced when he said it and then tried to clarify that he meant for waterbending practice, and he stumbled over himself to the point that he just gave up and went on to the next hall). And she really doesn't intend to do any waterbending right now, but she does think the cool night air and the proximity to her element might help her focus.
It does, and almost too well; she doesn't hear the door slide open or Zuko walking through it.
"What..." he starts hesitantly, and she jumps, "are you doing?"
Katara looks up, blinking back to the world around her. "I'm reading up on Fire Nation law," she replies, as though it's obvious, but he looks confused.
"Why?"
"Because Minister Xu was right," she sighs. "I started looking so I could prove him wrong, but he wasn't. I can't just come into your country, wielding my culture like some kind of - of cudgel. If I want to help you - and I want to help you - I need to actually understand your country."
Zuko stares at her for an uncomfortably long moment, and finally she shifts.
"What?"
He makes a face. "I don't think any of those ministers have actually read those scrolls. They teach some of it in school, but nobody reads the scrolls themselves. They're... dry."
"Well, I didn't go to your school," she shrugs. "And I can tell nobody's read these. There are so many laws that contradict each other, or just don't make sense. Did you know," she starts, because it's so bizarre and, in her mildly sleep-deprived state, hilarious, "that under the reign of Fire Lord Haulo the Second, it was made illegal to ride ostrich-horses on the palace roof? Why is that a law? Did he honestly have so many people doing it that he felt the need to make a law?"
"I'm more concerned with how," Zuko muses, and she glances up to see him peering at the roof, which is very high up and sharply angled. "How do you even get an ostrich-horse on the roof?"
They look at each other, and the decision is made.
"Somewhere there has to be a roof access," she says, at the same time that he says, "There's gotta be a trapdoor or something, big enough you can get one through."
He helps her to her feet. "Now," she starts, hands on her hips, "if I was a giant trap-door to the roof, where would I hide?"
"Probably the south wing," Zuko suggests. "It doesn't get used as much."
Eventually, they find it in the north wing, behind a secret passage that Katara stumbles upon entirely by accident.
It's very simple, just an opening in the wall that leads to a staircase up to a platform and a well-concealed door that opens up to a parapet on the roof.
"Yep," she says, to a bemused-looking Zuko (who is apparently learning far more about the kind of people who built his nation than Katara is at the moment), stepping out onto the clay tiles and looking out over the sloping palace and far-below Caldera, "you could definitely ride a flock of of ostrich-horses through here."
"But why would anyone do that?"
She thinks about it for a moment. "My theory is, a couple of kids figured out about this passage and decided to have fun with it."
"Where would they get the ostrich-horse?"
"All they'd have to do is rent one for a while," she suggests, and he seems to think it over before shrugging agreeably.
"I could see that," he replies, and then hesitates for a moment, before: "My theory involved crazy assassins."
"Also a possibility."
"Don't say that," he says, with an exaggerated shudder. "I can't walk out of this place without a half-dozen daggers flying at my face, the last thing I need is for them to find a way into my palace."
She laughs, in spite of the dark subject matter. "I take it back, then. Totally assassin-proof."
Honestly, it probably is; the only access is from inside the building, and if you were already inside, why go all the way to the roof? Privately - although things between her and Zuko are too strained for her to dare bring it up - she thinks that it was probably built-in as a place for the Fire Lord to get away from the rest of the court, perhaps with his or her lover.
A quiet, secluded place where they could stargaze and look out over the city. It's actually kind of sweet to think about, the Fire Lord (and if it was the one who built the palace - she cringes internally at the fact that she now knows this - it would have been Fire Lord Amaya the First) specifically building in a secret place where she and all of her descendants could go for a private, romantic moment.
If she was Haulo the Second, she thinks she might have been upset, too, if some snot-nosed prince used this as a way to play pranks on his dad.
She takes a seat near the edge, where she can look out over the city, and Zuko joins her after a moment.
The Caldera is beautiful from up here, spread out underneath them, a bunch of tiny lights and stars reflected off the calm ocean, and for a long time they just sit in companionable silence, until Zuko takes a deep breath.
"I appreciate that you're reading up on our laws," he says abruptly, and she glances at him, so he continues. "I mean, it means a lot to me. Those scrolls are dense."
She smiles. "Promise me something, Zuko," she sighs, with more drama than is necessary. "When you hire historians to write about all that happened in our lives, make sure they can write a good story. Your sages somehow made the history of dragon-riding boring. I wouldn't have thought that was possible."
Zuko laughs outright at this.
"But seriously," she goes on, leaning back onto her hands. "I meant it when I said I wanted to help you. You've been under way too much stress."
"Thank you," he says quietly. "And..." he hesitates, then rubs the back of his neck. "I'm sorry for being... mean to you when you first got here."
She looks at him. "Zuko, when I felt like you'd betrayed me," she begins softly, "I threatened to kill you. You weren't mean, you were just honest. I deserved it."
He looks like there something more he wants to say, but whatever it is, he shakes his head and glances away. "Still. I was mad at you for caring more about your boyfriend than me, and that wasn't fair."
She shakes her head, but doesn't press it; Zuko seems to believe that anything that goes wrong is because of his failure, never because of someone else's failings or because the world sometimes just isn't fair.
"I forgive you," he says finally, in a bit of a rush, "is what I'm trying to say. Not that... I don't really think you... I mean, you said you didn't think I could ever forgive you, but it's not like... that." He winces hard and looks away, and she pokes him in the arm to bring his attention back to her, but she doesn't really know how to respond.
So, she takes a leaf out of Toph's Method of Dealing With Life, and makes a joke of it. "And we didn't even have to go on a life-changing field trip this time!"
He laughs, so she calls it a win. "Are you kidding?" he asks, looking at her with a smile on his face. "This was life-changing. I know how to get an ostrich-horse on the roof now."
Katara laughs.
.
He suggests a cup of tea the next morning, and she smiles.
.
Things do begin to improve; the air between her and Zuko is warmer now than it was before, and she has a better grasp on the nuances of the Fire Nation, even though she's only part of the way through the scrolls she's borrowed from the library. In spite of their dryness, each one she reads makes her more determined to read the next one, to understand, to find a way - either hidden in the old tomes or of her own making - to help Chunhua and the shamisen-player and all the others like them.
She surprises Minister Xu at the next meeting, when they revisit the topic of "cleaning up" the marketplace, and she cites a Fire Sage's writings about how fire has the power to warm those without coats and bring light to those without lamps, how it is their duty, as leaders, to be warmth and light when there is little to be found elsewhere.
(Minister Lian seems to have trouble concealing a grin.)
"I disagree that that is our job," Minister Xu says thoughtfully, but sounds significantly more respectful than he ever has previously. "People can find jobs, if they simply expend the effort to look. There is plenty of work to be done, after all."
"But if you can't get on your feet in the first place, who would hire you?" she counters. "And that brings me to my next point, actually, thank you, Minister," she says, nodding at him and glancing to (an amused-looking) Zuko. "You have a point, that there is plenty of work to be done, but there's no organization. People don't know where they can find work. They come to the city because they've heard there's opportunity here, but they don't have anywhere to start. I'd like to propose a sort of... connecting agency, that finds people who are looking for jobs, and pairs them with people who need help."
There's a short pause as that sinks in, and Zuko nods. "I like it."
"I would like to join in this," Minister Xu says, glancing from her to Zuko, who raises an eyebrow. "I know a number of people who have jobs which need doing, and if the lady can connect them to people needing work, I think we can all benefit."
"I have no objection," Zuko says, but sounds a bit hesitant, and glances at her. She has serious reservations about working with Xu, but, well, everyone does stand to benefit from this.
"Neither do I," she replies, and forces herself to smile.
.
Later, she wants to discuss with Zuko how to go about making this agency happen, but he isn't his office, and the servants tell her that he hasn't yet gone to bed, and he isn't in the kitchen or the garden or the library…
It hits her while she's standing in the empty, dark library, trying to figure out where Zuko might be.
Of course.
Sure enough, he's on the roof, laying on his back and looking up at the stars, and he starts when she walks through the door, then relaxes.
"You found me," he says bluntly, and she laughs a little.
"Well, you weren't anywhere else," she replies, and lays down beside him; he doesn't look at her. "If I was a really serious minister trying to talk to you about serious stuff, I would have given up."
"Good."
They lay there for a long moment, and she figures that the politics can wait until tomorrow; in fact, she decides, right here and now, not to talk policy at all up here. She isn't sure what Fire Lord Amaya the First really intended when she built this place, but Katara decides that it is going to be a safe haven from all the stresses of being in charge.
The night sky brilliant, this far up above the rosy lamps and bustle of the streets, and it's a new moon, so there's nothing up there to see except the stars and the milky white splash near the eastern horizon.
She points at it.
"You know what that is?" she asks, and it's only half a question. Zuko glances at her.
"What?"
"It's Torgarsuk's paint well," she tells him, turning her head to look at him and catching his eyes for a second before looking back up. "My mother told me the story, how he painted the sky with stars to please his sister the moon, and we know this because he left his paint on the edge of the canvas of the sky. He also painted the constellations," she goes on, still feeling his eyes on her and willing herself not to blush. "The bear, the iceberg, the koi and the penguin-otter and the tiger-seal. All so she'd have company up there." When Zuko doesn't respond, she prompts him: "What stories did you hear?"
"Oh," he says, a bit uncertainly, "nobody ever told me stories about… constellations. But," he adds thoughtfully, "my mother did tell me the story of how the first dragon breathed fire into the sun."
"Oh?"
He glances at her. "That's… that's the story," he mutters lamely, and she snickers at his tone. "The first dragon breathed fire into the sun to light up the world, it… it wasn't exactly in-depth."
"My mother told me that the sun and the moon were twins, two sisters," she says slowly. "They got into a fight one day, and the sun, Siq, ran away from her sister, Tui, but Tui gave chase, unwilling to give up the fight, and she's so single-minded that she forgets to eat, and that's why the moon wanes. And when Tui catches up to Siq, there's a solar eclipse. That was… before I knew about the spirit oasis," she adds, wincing.
But Zuko is smiling. "That doesn't mean it didn't happen, once," he suggests, and she looks at him, returning his soft smile.
"Sokka says it's nonsense," she says, sighing and looking back up. "But I like the thought. I like living in a world where the sun and moon argue, and where a spirit painted the stars to make his sister happy. It makes me feel… I don't know, less alone."
"You feel alone?" Zuko asks, sounding genuinely concerned, and she bites her lip.
"My mom was my best friend when I was little," she replies, without looking at him. "When she died, I felt like… nobody would ever understand me like she did, or be there for me. I was wrong," she adds unnecessarily, glancing sideways at him. "But I guess those feelings die hard. I just like to believe that I live in the world she told me stories about, it… it sort of keeps her alive to me."
They fall quiet for a long time, until Zuko glances at her, biting his lip.
"Do they have different constellations down there?" he asks, and she shakes her head.
"No, it's mostly the same stars," she replies. "In the Northern Tribe, they're all different, but there's plenty of the same ones here. Why?"
"Because I'm trying to find any of those that you mentioned, and I've got nothing."
She laughs. "I think you have to have a really vivid imagination," she concedes. "I mean, I've never seen a bear," she says, pointing at it. "I always said it was a pot."
Zuko nods slowly. "I've always seen a cart," he admits, and she tilts her head.
"Yeah, I can see that," she muses. "You've got the lead for the ostrich-horse, and then the cart itself. I don't really know how they got a bear."
"I did see the dragon," he says, pointing at the constellation which is, to her, the koi. If she puts herself into the shoes of a little Fire Nation kid, growing up on tales of dragons setting fire to the sun, she can see where he's coming from.
"I see the koi," she tells him, and he shrugs.
"They do have the same kind of shape," he says, and then adds, "at least when you're connecting dots. Not... in real life, they're not really the same shape."
Katara laughs, because now she's picturing little dragon-koi in the spirit oasis, and it makes her happy.
The silence that settles in after that is warm and light.
.
She and Zuko are both bleary-eyed and nursing large cups of strong black tea in the morning, having spent entirely too long on the roof discussing constellations, although weirdly enough, he looks less tired than he did when she first got here.
.
The agency doesn't quite go off without a hitch, but it does go a lot smoother than she would have expected, and although she does receive a few glowers from some of the less-helpful ministers, Xu is a surprisingly enthusiastic coworker. And then, while they're going over a map to find a place to base the agency out of:
"I apologize for my rudeness," he tells her abruptly, and she looks up, startled, so he continues. "You must understand my perspective. The Fire Lord brought an old friend with very little political experience into his council of ministers and she immediately set about to telling us how we've done things wrong. I thought you naive and arrogant," he admits, without any apparent shame or compunction. "But I see now that you do have the best interests of the nation at heart, and so I apologize for being rude."
"Thank you," she replies slowly. "And... I apologize, too, for not taking the time to learn about the nation's laws and history. And for losing my temper."
He smiles thinly. "You're a passionate young woman, Lady Katara. Perhaps Lian has a point," he adds, rubbing his beard thoughtfully, "that such passion and drive to improve the world could be a good thing."
So Lian and Xu have been talking about her? Interesting.
"However," he goes on, raising an eyebrow, "simply because I respect you does not mean I agree with you in all things."
"Nor do I expect you to, Minister Xu," she says, and smiles. "You're a pragmatist, I wouldn't think you'd agree with all of my ideas."
He sighs and glances out the window. "I was once an idealist, my lady," he says, apparently out of the blue. "I fought at the Siege of Ba Sing Se," he goes on, which surprises her, because she had Xu pegged as someone who never fought in the war, "under General Iroh, when he was still the crown prince. We had great dreams of bringing the light of our civilization to the backwards Earth Kingdom, making things better for everyone by bringing them all under one rule."
She isn't sure how to respond, but he doesn't really give her the opportunity to.
"I lost my son on that battlefield," he says softly, "as did the General. I didn't see it happen, I only found his body among the dead later. All that my fighting for a better world accomplished was my son's body in a mass grave." He looks down, and then back at her. "So now I confess that I have little patience for ideals, and less for fighting unwinnable battles."
Katara thinks over that for a moment, before biting her lip. "Do you know a man named Yon Ra?" she asks quietly, and he raises an eyebrow.
"I've heard of him," he replies. "Former leader of the Southern Raiders, if memory serves."
She nods. "He is. I tried to kill him four years ago," she says simply, and Xu actually laughs once at that, although it sounds more surprised than amused.
"He stopped you?"
"I stopped me." She pauses for a moment, weighing how much she really needs to tell him to get her point across. "The Southern Raiders attacked my tribe many, many times," she sighs. "Yon Ra killed my mother. I wanted him dead, I wanted him to suffer. But when I actually had him at my mercy, I couldn't bring myself to do it, no matter how much I hated him. My point is," she goes on, looking up, "I didn't come to my idealism from a place of naivety. It's a choice I've made, and still make every day, to believe that the world can be better than the one I grew up in."
Xu watches her critically for a long moment. "The Fire Nation killed your mother and destroyed your home," he murmurs, "and yet you came here with ideas of helping us?"
"Yes," she answers, nodding. "Because a better world starts with me. I can't sit here and preach about peace and a better world if I'm not willing to let go of my own anger. How could I expect anyone else to, if I don't do it first?"
He tilts his head. "If you were anyone else," he says slowly, "I would expect that you were secretly trying to destroy us from within."
"But you trust me?"
"Trust is not a word I like to use in the high court," he counters, raising that eyebrow again. "But I do believe you when you say that you want peace. We have the same goals, Lady Katara, and I hope that we can work together to bring them about."
She smiles. "I do, too, Minister Xu."
.
The Fourth Annual Council of Four is coming up much quicker than she thought it would, and the plans for that soon eclipse all other discussion; it'll be in Ba Sing Se this year, and, unfortunately, they're expecting to be revising many of the things that didn't get resolved at the last one, mainly the issue of the colonies.
"I just have no idea what to do," Zuko groans, over a pot of tea in the kitchen late one afternoon. "I get where the Earth Kingdom is coming from, but some of those people have been there for a hundred years. I can't just kick them out and make them come back here."
"Especially when there isn't much for them here," Katara adds, and he looks up at with something akin to desperation in his eyes. "Our job-finding agency has been pretty successful, but it's not creating work, just connecting people to it. What we need is some kind of... I don't know, project that we can hire people to work on, and maybe entice people from the colonies to come back and work there. That way, they'd have a good reason to return, and something to come back to."
"But what?" he asks, and she sighs.
"I don't know. I'll think about it, though," she says, and shrugs. "And I'll bring it up in the next meeting. There are a lot of businesspeople on your council, maybe they'll have ideas." Zuko makes a face, and she leans in over the table. "Hey, that's what they're there for. To advise."
"They think they're there to make themselves more money."
"Not all of them," she counters, thinking of Lian's advice and Xu's admission about his son's death. "Some of them really do want peace and prosperity for the country."
He runs a hand through his hair and drains his teacup, and he looks so frustrated that her heart goes out to him.
"Zuko, it's gonna be okay," she says seriously, and pours them both another cup. He looks up at her. "I mean that. It's going to work out. I'm here, and I'm on your side. We are going to make this work."
He watches her for a moment with an unreadable expression, before taking a deep breath. "Okay," he breathes, nodding. "Okay. Just... think positive."
"Don't strain yourself," she says, smirking, and he gives her a mock-glare.
"I mean, I can be doom and gloom, if you'd prefer."
"Please, I've seen you at your angstiest," she retorts, waving a hand. "That doesn't scare me."
"No," he counters, with feeling, and she laughs. "No, trust me, you have not."
A servant comes in with a letter in-hand, and walks up to them with what appears to be apprehension. "My Lord?" he says, and Zuko looks up. "It's for you."
Zuko takes it but doesn't look at it, simply setting it down on the table and thanking the servant, who looks oddly relieved.
"You're not going to read it?" Katara asks, and Zuko shakes his head.
"It's probably some political drama about the Council of Four," he replies. "It can wait."
Katara smiles, and sips her tea. "No crappy politics during teatime?" she suggests, and he snickers.
"I'm going to make that a new official proclamation. Whatever it is, it can wait until I've finished my damn tea."
"I'm all for it," she says, raising her cup to toast, which he returns, smiling at her. He really looks so much younger when he smiles, she thinks, younger and brighter.
"To dealing with it later," he toasts, and she laughs.
"To dealing with it later," she repeats, and they drink.
.
It must have been something more serious, though, because Zuko doesn't come to dinner and she doesn't see him at all afterward, so she goes looking.
She finds him on the roof, holding the letter and looking up like the stars will answer his questions.
"You know you have an early meeting, right?" she asks, as a bit of an icebreaker as well as a reminder. Zuko glances at her.
"I couldn't sleep," he replies softly, and she sits next to him, waiting. She thinks she knows Zuko pretty well by now: if he didn't want to talk about the letter, he would have put it in his pocket when he heard the door open. But at the same time, he won't want to be asked. He's strange like that. (Or maybe not; she recalls how she spilled everything about her break-up to Ty Lee, who barely asked her anything, but clammed up when Sokka did the same. Maybe there's something in the both of them that feels more need to fill up silences than answer questions.)
"Something on your mind?" she prompts, but pointedly keeps her eyes on his face rather than calling attention to it. He sighs.
"It's from Mai," he says, holding up the letter. She does not want to examine the emotion that rises up in her at his wistful tone. "Apologizing."
"For what?" she asks, with no small amount of trepidation.
He runs a hand through his hair.
"Her father tried to have me killed last year," he answers, in a strange sort of tone that makes her think of herself, almost two years ago, wishing that Sokka would just leave her alone, even though it was all threatening to burn her up from the inside out. "She told me about the plot, but she lied about her father's involvement. Said he was innocent." He laughs, mirthlessly. "Now she's saying that she made a mistake, and asking me to understand."
Katara lets that sink in and roll around in her head for a moment, before forming a response.
"Understanding isn't the hard part," she muses, and when he looks at her, eyebrow raised, she goes on. "It's not. What she did is completely understandable, it's just wrong. I feel bad for her," she goes on, glancing away. "That's an awful place to be stuck, and a terrible choice to have to make, but she still made the wrong one."
"She tried to be neutral," Zuko says, voice deceptively even, and she doesn't know if he's agreeing or disagreeing with her. When he doesn't go on, she feels that powerful need, again, to pour something of herself into the silence.
"But sometimes neutrality is wrong," she says deliberately. "If you're walking down the street and you pass someone beating another guy up, and you just say "well I'm neutral on this," you've just helped the attacker by not helping the victim. You might have good reasons not to get involved, but you've still implicitly supported the guy doing the attacking."
"She did help me, though," he points out. "She warned me."
"And left you with a traitor among your staff, who you didn't know you couldn't trust," she counters, with feeling. "What happens next time, when he keeps her in the dark about it because he figured out that she warned you? Then what?"
Zuko looks away. "Then what, indeed," he murmurs, almost too quiet to hear, and shakes his head. "You don't really understand Mai," he says, louder, and she looks at him, a bit affronted. "She tried to be neutral because that's what she does, it's what she was taught to do. Be a mediator, keep things running smoothly. She tries to be neutral on everything."
"But you can't always be neutral. Sometimes you have to pick a side."
"Forgive me," he says, with a wry, tired-looking smile, "but I don't think you've ever been neutral on anything in your entire life."
She laughs a bit at that. "I can't think of much I don't have an opinion on, that's true."
"It's easy for you, is what I mean," he adds, more serious. "It's not easy for Mai. She was brought up to never rock the boat."
Katara thinks about it for a moment before replying, in a measured voice, "Then she wasn't right for you."
Zuko tilts his head. "You think I don't need someone who's been trained to make things stable?" he asks, and his tone is almost rhetorical; she wonders who he intends to convince.
"I think you don't need someone who's been trained to maintain the status quo," she clarifies. "Maybe if you were crowned in peacetime, when things were already going pretty good for most people, then you'd want someone who keeps things running smoothly. But, Zuko," she sighs, runs a hand through her hair, and winces at him, "things kinda suck for a lot of your people right now. I mean, people are starving, watching their children starve, because a lot of the men and women in power aren't willing to let go of the war. You don't need to be compromising with people who would let your citizens starve to death in the cradle."
There's something written in his expression, something she doesn't want to read just yet, something about longing.
"You really care about them," is all he says, though, in a strange voice.
"I do," she replies simply. "I care a lot about them. I've spent a lot of time in the city and the markets, talking to people about what's wrong, and they're good people, Zuko." She looks at him fervently. "They deserve better, and if I can help give it to them, I'll do whatever it takes."
He's still looking at her with that odd expression, and she turns away, feeling a bit awkward and unsure of her footing.
"Why?"
She looks up at the question. "Why?" she repeats, a bit dumbly, and he shrugs.
"Why do so much for us? For me? You could have had the easiest life," he goes on, sounding a bit agitated. "You could have married Aang and never had to get involved in any of this. Why did you choose all this stress and drama?"
She turns away from him again, but this time to the sky, the stars, her mother's story of the paint echoing her in her mind, but it's less the tale that she's listening to, than it is her mother's voice. It's so far gone to to time that it sounds like her own, but she can still close her eyes and be there all over again, in the hut during the long, dark winter, listening with her head in her mother's lap, to the story of how the stars came to be.
"I have the means," she answers slowly, after a while. "I can help them. And if I don't, who will?"
"The rest of us," he replies, but it sounds almost teasing. "You know things would probably have been just fine, eventually," he goes on, and she refuses to look at him.
"Just fine isn't good enough," she replies, with force that seems to startle him. "Just fine would have been my life with Aang, your life with Mai. We would have been just fine every day, just fine going about our business, going to sleep every night, just fine. All four nations, just fine. But not great," she continues, hugging herself around the middle. "Not even good. Not fulfilling, not with the most opportunities, not with real peace and safety." She pauses for a moment, biting back a hard knot of emotion low in her throat. "My mother didn't die for me so I could have a just fine life."
They're both quiet for a long time, and then he says, in a low voice, "You know a lot of those ministers don't agree with you."
"I'm not going to apologize for doing what I believe to be right," she replies simply. "If something happens to prove me wrong, then I'll apologize and change what I'm doing, but only then. People deserve a better world. I don't care if they worship me or execute me for it, I'm going to fight for that."
"Well," he says after a moment, looking down toward the city, "if they wanna execute you for it, they'll have to get me first."
She smiles at him and he returns the smile, albeit a bit uncertainly, like he's not sure he's supposed to.
"What are you going to tell Mai?" she asks quietly, and he takes a deep breath as the moment dissolves between them. She isn't sure she wanted it to.
"I don't know," he answers. "She's at Kyoshi with Ty Lee, but I don't think she's training to be a warrior, I think she's just... waiting for me to tell her she can come home."
"Why?" Katara asks, and when he gives her a really? look, she goes on. "I thought she hated it here."
"She didn't hate me."
"So?" she counters, and she knows she sounds a bit callous, but that's sort of the point. "Trust me, Zuko, she will. If you're the reason she has to spend her life trapped in a place she hates, it doesn't matter how much she loves you at the start, she'll hate you eventually. She may never tell you," she adds, glancing from him to the letter and then away, "just like I never told Aang. But if I had stayed with him, I would have grown to hate him."
It's the first time she's ever said it out loud, even really formed the thought in so many words, but it's so blindingly true that she can't imagine why she never saw it before. She would have hated him in the end - she would have been fifty, sixty, seventy years old and bitter and feeling like she'd wasted her life, and she would have hated him for being the reason for all of it.
Even the sweetest fruit turns sour if it's planted in poisoned ground.
He doesn't answer for a long time, and so she takes a deep breath, steeling herself for something she won't even think of too clearly, before asking, "Do you miss her?"
He seems to hesitate, still watching her even though she won't look directly at him.
"Not really," he admits finally.
"So be honest," she says, and won't acknowledge the relief she feels when he says that. "Tell her the truth."
He laughs, a bit bitterly. "And what is that? That I don't hold it against her, but I don't really care if she comes back here or not? I don't think that'll make her feel better."
"Better an unpleasant truth than a sweet lie," she counters, but still, she sees his point. "You don't have to be mean about it. Just say that you don't hold it against her, but you think it's best if the two of you stay apart for a while."
He seems to be undecided, so she stands up.
"Worry about it in the morning, okay, Zuko?" she suggests softly, reaching out a hand to help him to his feet. He looks at it for a long, long moment, long enough that she starts to feel uncomfortable, before he smiles like some kind of weight has lifted, and takes it, standing up beside her. He seems reluctant to let go of her hand, or maybe she's just projecting.
"Right, early meeting," he says, nodding and running a hand through his hair, before making for the door. "We should both get some sleep."
"Wait," she starts, a bit alarmed. "You say that like I'm supposed to be there with you. I didn't think I was supposed to be there."
He glances back at her, a genuine, if tired, smile on his face. "I thought you wanted to help me improve me the country," he teases. "We've gotta get an early start on that."
"I'm not a firebender," she counters, hands on her hips, "I do not rise with the sun."
"You're in the Fire Nation, though," he says, and he looks entirely too amused for her tastes. "It's a meeting with an ambassador from Ba Sing Se, I think you met her at the last Council. It's just about the itinerary, it'll be fine, you'll do great."
She sighs, mentally rewriting tomorrow's plans. "Fine, but you're coming with me to discuss expanding the job agency with Minister Xu."
"I thought you two hated each other."
"Nah, he's all right," she shrugs. "We don't agree on much, but he can be pretty sensible. We really connected while we were working on the first agency."
"Huh," Zuko muses, lingering on the roof as she walks through the door. "Looks like you're settling in."
Katara smiles. "I am."