Time passed in the spirits' valley. The students all found that their days were largely passed with intense physical training. Zuko would continue his daily treks up the side of the volcano, only to meditate above the molten rock in the volcano's bubbling heart. Once Uisce became more familiar with Katara's limits, the young waterbender was charged with swimming lengths in the water without the assistance of waterbending, often being charged with increasingly acrobatic maneuvers to improve her flexibility or agility. Toph returned back to the mountains, scaling cliff faces with only the barest earthbending allowable to keep her from falling. Fortunately, the hard work exhausted their bodies enough to begin to quell the nightmares. The three students were usually bone-tired when they reconvened for dinner, exchanging little more than exhausted glances in greeting before settling into their seats with their dinner. Their masters were a bit more energetic, and the teenagers understood a bit better why when Uisce cleared her throat with some enthusiasm.
"We've estimated the time we will have to complete your training," she announced, turning her head to look at each of the students in turn. Zuko wasn't meeting her gaze, his eyes wide with worry as he looked over towards Rhyu, but Katara was looking up at her curiously. Toph seemed somewhat distracted to Uisce, but that was unsurprising. Cruinne usually aimed to weaken Toph's concentration as she scaled the cliffs by peppering her with earthbending theory. The poor girl was probably still reviewing whatever lost-secrets Cruinne had casually mentioned.
"How long?" Katara, seeming to note that she was the most focused of her trio, asked first.
"It was decided that, considering the state of the world, you will have at least several years. If we're lucky, it might be perhaps four or five before the balance is irreversibly damaged. If the warfront changes quickly—if the Fire Nation gains unexpected momentum, for example—then the timeline might be pushed up, but I will be keeping a careful eye on the physical world to ensure that nothing shifts too suddenly," Awyr answered the waterbender first, a sad smile softening her features. "This will be a difficult time for you, children. Over the course of the next years, the war will continue to wage. There are still people out there that you care for, that you worry for, but I implore you to remember that they aren't lost, even if they fall here. We will return you. We will right this."
Silence fell around the table as the students each contemplated what Awyr had said. Toph still had her parents in Gaoling, but she didn't fear for them. They were smart, business-conscious nobles. It wouldn't surprise her at all if they quite easily assimilitated themselves into Fire Nation culture to stay afloat, perhaps even betraying their nation to keep themselves safe. The nobility always survived the easiest in times of hardship. Knowing that her parents would likely be fine was a pale comfort as Toph thought of the bonds she'd forged since running away. There were other members of their party that, while she hadn't been close to, were still valued members of their resistance. What would a child like the Duke do when the war caught him? What would Teo do when the Fire Nation came knocking?
Katara had spent her entire life watching pieces of her family get chipped away by the war. The idea of losing more people to the war was neither new nor unexpected, but she was surprised to realize that the fear had lost some its old weight. There were still names that could be listed in the reports as dead or missing—Hakoda and Kanna were only the tip of that iceberg—but Katara felt it in her bones that the dead weren't lost anymore. She'd see them again as soon as her training was finished. She'd see them again, and she'd be strong enough to protect them properly next time.
Zuko, on the other hand, had spent most of his life sheltered from the true consequences of the war. He'd lost his mother, of course, but he hadn't lost her to some grand battle. He'd lost her because of his childish desire to make his family proud, and his father's incurable thirst for power. He'd never felt freer than when he finally cut the ties that bound him to his family and ran away to join the Avatar. The loss of his new family—Aang, who he'd spent months terrorizing instead of teaching, guiding; Suki, who's home he'd destroyed in his blind rage but who had still shaken his hand above a boiling lake; Sokka, who had been brave enough to run at him in that first meeting and who had grudgingly earned his respect with each bone-headed, brilliant scheme since—was still raw and unprocessed in his mind. He couldn't process it yet, he had no idea how to save seeing their faces, picturing their twisted, burned bodies in the darkness of his nightmares. He would have to take their losses piece by piece, absorbing it slowly until he could properly grieve, with Katara and Toph close at hand. But if Awyr came back with the one name left that held any significance for him on her lips… If she came back to report that the Dragon of the West was fallen, Zuko—
His mind stuttered at the mere thought and he flinched violently. His uncle… He'd die here, someday in some battle that would never be properly told in a way that no one would properly honor. And Zuko would still be training. Still be expected to move as if the sun hadn't burned out of the sky. Awyr's last words weren't the comfort that she had wanted them to be, because Zuko had scarcely heard them. Iroh, who had lost so much and was still so kind, would one day be killed and—
A hand found its way against his beneath the table, prying and forcing his clenched fist to relax enough for Katara to slip her fingers between his and squeeze his hand tightly. His entire body was tense, highly strung at the mere suggestion that still seemed to hover in the air like a noxious gas around him, but her hand was warm in his. She squeezed his hand again, and the warmth seemed to spread slowly up his wrist and into his arm, relaxing the muscles as if she was healing a physical injury he'd incurred. The warmth spread slowly but surely through his body until he was finally able to turn his head far enough to see her face.
Katara was beautiful. Despite his uncle often worrying that Zuko was incapable of recognizing beautiful girls, Zuko had been cognizant of that fact for months. Beauty didn't necessitate attraction, though, and it certainly hadn't lead Zuko to pulling a single punch or lightening a single blow he aimed at the waterbender while he had been fighting against her, so Zuko had put the fact out of his mind. Now, as Katara stared at him without pity or anger, he found himself nearly unable to breathe in her presence. He had known her to be powerful ever since the North Pole. He had known to fear her since the Southern Raiders. He had known to be grateful for her… He wasn't sure when that had started, but it was definitely before he awoke in her arms during his ill-fated, comet-heightened Agni Kai with Azula. Despite all the changes their relationship had gone through since their original meeting, Katara had never looked at him as she was now. He scarcely had words for the sort of determination that filled him as she held his hand, eyes boring into his soul and silently assuring him that they will do this together and that she wasn't going anywhere.
For a bright, heady moment, Zuko understood why Aang had been so head-over-heels for his waterbender master. He understood it like a slow and inevitable flood—the flow of lava gently rolling down a mountainside—as he slowly squeezed her hand back, an unbidden smile parting his lips.
And then the moment shattered, gone. Katara's eyes fell away from him, back to Uisce, and Zuko realized abruptly that they were still at dinner. Uisce was still talking and he blinked stupidly, trying to match any kind of meaning to the noises and sounds coming out of her mouth because he was still reeling.
Zuko wasn't the only one having trouble following what Uisce was saying. On Katara's other side, Toph found her thoughts pulled from her present concerns regarding how her blindness might affect her training. Her mind was an echo chamber when it came to her own problems, and she'd take a page from Aang's book any day and avoid confronting those problems directly whenever the opportunity struck. Opportunity was what Toph saw—or rather felt—further down the table. With much disgust, she had witnessed Sokka and Suki rekindling their relationship. On some nights, she almost wished Zuko would have burned her feet again, if only to dull the awkwardness that rose up in her whenever the sun rose and she'd have to face Sokka and Suki both, who were both blissfully unaware or forgetful about Toph's seismic sense. Pushing those less than comfortable memories aside, Toph focused her attention on memorizing the havoc that was being wrought on Zuko's body. His breathing was anything but steady, his heart thundering as he turned to look at Katara. He had it bad. Meanwhile, Katara's heartbeat—while a bit quick for her—was fairly steady. Katara was always the best at professionalism and focusing attention where she felt was most appropriate. Her master was speaking, so perhaps that was what kept her breathing so even. It would certainly be tragic if Zuko fell for the waterbender only for nothing to come of it. It's not like Sparky had the best support system to fall back on if he couldn't lean on Katara. Without her, it was just… Toph.
Toph pushed away those thoughts and the vulnerability that seeped out of them and focused her mind back on Zuko's slow recovery from Katara's gaze. Toph's face shifted into a somewhat satisfied smile as she noted that their hands hadn't separated.
This would be her work while they were training. It would distract Toph from the real issues, but it would also serve a purpose that she hadn't even allowed herself to deeply think on so far.
The truth of the matter—the quiet but persistent fear that had woken her up long before Zuko snapped awake on their first night in this strange place—was that she would be alone again soon enough. When their training was finished and they were sent back to the past, Zuko would be with his uncle. Katara would be with Sokka and Aang. And Toph would be alone. She would be the first human student of the original master of earth, and her parents would balk at the idea of her walking through her own damn yard. She didn't even know exactly when Aang had come back to the land of the living. She had no idea if it were weeks or months between him waking up and him stumbling into her life. The idea of spending even a few days back in that gilded prison twisted Toph's stomach, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth as she contemplated the situation. So she didn't. She had pushed it away, so far down that she wouldn't think about it in her waking moments.
But now… She could begin the distancing early. She could stop reaching out to Katara and Zuko when their nightmares burned. She could keep her hands to herself, instead of reaching out and brushing casual touches against their arms or wrists to assure herself that they were real. She would begin holding them further from her in the hopes that they might hold each other closer.
She could feel her own heartbeat thundering against her senses. Her eyes burned but she refused to acknowledge it. She would begin to train herself to live without them while they were still in front of her, otherwise it'd kill her to be apart from them in the new world they wanted to build.
She planned it slowly over the course of dinner. She would have to be slow. She would have to be careful. She had once griped about Katara trying to be the mom of the group, but she had grown to appreciate Katara's nagging long before Zuko had entered as an ally. When he'd joined them, automatically taking responsibilities and chores from Katara without as much as a flinch or prompt, it had only been a matter of time until Zuko had been granted the title of dad friend. If she pulled back too quickly or if she was too pointed in her matchmaking efforts, one of them would try to confront her to figure out what was wrong. Or worse, they would join forces, exchange notes, and then confront her.
Dinner eventually came to an end, and it was no secret by the end of it that only Katara had been paying much attention to the master's directives before they were dismissed to rest. They weren't entirely free to sleep right away, of course, so neither Toph nor Zuko worried overmuch about what they'd missed over dinner while they were trapped in their thoughts: now that dinner was over, it was time to talk.
The masters had decreed on their first day that they expected their students to talk about what they had done and learned over the course of each day. On the seventh day of their training, the masters had surprised the students by rotating the roster: Toph was taught by Rhyu, Katara was taught by Cruinne, and Zuko was taught by Uisce. All three proved to be miserably out of their depth when the masters quizzed them on material that they had taught their usual students. That dinner, the three had been treated to a special lesson from Awyr, which proved to be a very shaming talk-down about how important communication was.
The students had learned the lesson well, though, and had relented to sharing the stories of their days as best they could remember.
"My lesson today was about controlling the temperature of water," Katara began as soon as the three had finished their nightly rituals and settled in the mattresses gathered up in their communal bedroom. To demonstrate, she drew water from the air, quickly freezing it into reflective pool of ice against the stone floor. With a deep breath and a furrowed brow, she then held her hand inches above the surface of the ice, staring at the ice until it slowly melted and—as Zuko watched with fascination—began to steam and then completely boil off into hot steam.
"You can heat water?" he said, partially for Toph's benefit but also surprised on his own account. In hindsight, he shouldn't have been very shocked. In order to turn ice to water, waterbenders needed to heat it. It was logical that they could take the practice further, heat the water more and more until the water was at a rolling boil.
"Right?" Katara asked, a laugh coloring her voice as she shifted her hand, completely dispersing the steam and residual water back into the ambient humidity of the room. "I have to be careful obviously, but think of how useful this is! So many cook fires—completely unnecessary! And of course warm water is better for healing—" Katara went on to list half a dozen more uses for warm water or steam, but neither Zuko nor Toph tried to interrupt her rambling. A Katara that was mindlessly gushing about something so inane was a happy Katara, and neither of the other teens would dare interrupt such an infrequent occurrence. Eventually, though, Katara's voice tapered off and she looked towards Zuko expectantly. A month ago, Zuko would have frowned and turned away. Even two weeks ago he would have been awkward, words impossible to form, but now words rushed out of him—although, admittedly, still awkward—whenever Katara shot him that look, the one where it looked like she would hang on his every word, so long as he started talking before her attention lapsed.
"Today was about what fuels firebending, the source of it within our bodies. It was sort of like the Sun Warriors explained, how sun and heat aren't based in emotion but all around us. Fire from emotions like anger can be strong, but it's the most basic form of firebending. There are forms, entire different ways of viewing fire and heat, that can't be achieved by connecting bending to emotional output. Now I'm not supposed to just think about the heat itself in the volcano, but also calming and clear my mind."
"With a head like yours, that should take no time at all!" Toph joked, elbowing Zuko playfully. Zuko found himself smiling, one hand reaching out to playfully ruffle her hair. He knew she hated when people did that, and it was very gratifying when she leaned sharply away from him with a scowl. "Well sounds like you two had fun. I'm still stuck trying to figure out how to make rocks hate each other."
"Cruinne is keeping you on magnetism?" There was honest surprise in Katara's voice. Toph had been given a strip of iron to keep with the end goal of magnetizing it. After days without progress, Katara would have half-expected Cruinne to move on to a different focus and go back to magnetism—which was apparently one of the highest forms earthbending boasted—when Toph had more thoroughly expanded her understanding of her element. Apparently Cruinne was even more stubborn than the young teen, though, because he insisted that teaching her the 'showy' stuff like lavabending wasn't his priority. All the while, the iron band stayed, twisted into a bangle around Toph's wrist whenever she wasn't studying it or trying to manipulate its properties.
"Yeah. Well, he's trying to distract me from how much I suck by giving me busy work every day, but I know he's just waiting until I get this stupid piece of metal to stick to something. Today's lesson was basically art. To improve my precision, he yelled out different animals that I had to recreate as statues. If I got it wrong, I had to fix it before moving to next. But of course the jerk wouldn't just tell me what I messed up…"
"I wonder if Uisce will make me do that sometime," Katara said quietly, shuddering lightly. The concept of it was just so alien. Bending forms were not designed to create intricate statues, even if bending could theoretically be used for such a task, it was mind-boggling to imagine. Water bending in particular was all about guiding the flow of water and manipulating the momentum of the opponent to better aid the waterbender. The forms were written to generate massive waves, graceful whips, reaching tentacles—they weren't made to create decorative ice sculptures of turtleducks and platypus bears.
The masters didn't spend much time actually teaching their students bending forms. The biggest obstacle facing their students wasn't their ability to manipulate their respective elements; it was how they perceived those elements as a whole. It required close attention, meditation, and—worst of all—it required time. Toph would probably be the best possible student for this type of training, as her discovery of metalbending had helped open her mind to the possibilities that existed beyond traditional earth bender. Katara would no doubt struggle because her first experience with waterbending in a nontraditional form was one that she had thoroughly rejected. She had redoubled her efforts into the traditional forms, mastering water and ice as few others had, but in doing so she had worked to conscious close the creative and curious part of her mind that would ease this training along. Zuko, like Katara, would face problems, but his problems were far more abstract. Firebending as a form wasn't just the mere manipulation of fire: it is the manipulation of heat and energy. It is about manipulating the invisible bonds between matter and vibrating or soothing them. He under how to perform that manipulation to form fire, but he had tried and failed miserably when he was finally in a position to learn a higher form. Lightning bending, for all his effort and trouble, had eluded him in all but its most gentle form: redirection. The concept of readdressing lightning, and then going further beyond, was going to be a difficult battle for Zuko to face.
None of the students would resolve the obstacles facing their teaching in one night, however, and the three began to settle down for sleep. Zuko took up his normal position, waiting patiently for the girls before he bothered trying to get comfortable. Katara fell into place quickly, snagging his arm to claim it as her pillow with a sly grin that made Zuko thank Agni that, with the darkness around them, even his pale skin shouldn't betray too much of his blush. Toph, however, stayed up, a strangely pensive look on her face.
"Toph?" Zuko asked after a moment, concern beginning to grow in the dark corners of his mind. To quell them, Toph smile with a nonchalant shrug.
"I think I might have an idea about this thing," she said, pulling away far enough to remove the iron band from her wrist. "I'll be back as soon as I've tested it out, got it?"
"Are you sure, Toph?" Katara had her patented Concerned Mother voice out in full force, and Toph quickly confirmed that she was okay. Perhaps it was a bit strange in and of itself that Toph would agree so quickly without a quip or sardonic comment, but Zuko didn't think too hard on it. In close proximity like this, Zuko himself felt the need to reassure Katara that everything was okay and he wasn't the direct recipient of That voice.
Toph slipped out of the door, promising that she wouldn't go any further than the patio and citing that she might make some noise so to not worry about it. Even unable to properly see her, Zuko could almost hear how worriedly Katara was biting at her lower lip, but the waterbender settled back against Zuko's arm after a moment.
It occurred to Zuko very suddenly then that he and Katara were alone. In the dark. In a bedroom. In a bed (more or less). Her cheek was pressed against his upper arm, but she wasn't facing away from him as she usually did. Now she was looking up into his face, her eyes glinting ever so slightly in the low light, dark and worried but also hesitant.
Katara knew better than most that Toph had boundaries that couldn't be crossed without repercussions. Sometimes the repercussions were mild, sometimes they were catastrophic. Sometimes the boundaries were soft, other times they were carved into stone. Toph had clearly not wanted to be followed, but Katara's thoughts followed the young earthbender outside.
Zuko was concerned about Toph, who had been so frustrated with her lack of progress over the last few days—really, he was—but his thoughts were presently consumed by Katara. Katara beside him. Katara wrapped around his arm, pressed gently against his side. Warm, safe, whole Katara. He was so thankful suddenly that Toph had left, otherwise she would have slugged him in the shoulder and yelled at him to get his heart under control. It wasn't fair.
"Toph?" He didn't squeak. Really. He spoke with a quiet but firm voice that was at a normal range and pitch. And he certainly didn't sigh in relief when Katara took the bait and frowned, pulling back from him just far enough that he finally regained the sense to remember to alternate breathing in and out.
"I'm worried," Katara said, as if he had believed she'd say anything else.
"Me too… But I think we should trust her for now." It was hard to think when his head was still swimming with Katara, but it wasn't like Toph was still a complete kid. She was still short, but Zuko had to give her some space and the benefit of the doubt. If she thought she could handle whatever was happening, Zuko wouldn't go against her wishes until he had reason to believe she was over her head. "Push too early and she'll lash out."
Katara lowered herself back down, humming thoughtfully as she leaned against his arm once more. Her eyes didn't return to Zuko's face, downcast or closed as she pondered the changing situation, and Zuko took the opportunity to study her face again, eyes tracing the curve of her frown and the slight furrow of her brow as she worried after their young friend. In some dry, sardonic part of his mind that sounded a lot like Toph declared that his new treacherous thoughts were much more pleasant than his old ones. Zuko squashed that voice down with well-practiced fury before closing his own eyes. If he couldn't see Katara, maybe the thoughts would go away. Maybe the admiration for her would fade back into nice, easy, simple friendship.
Toph returned less than an hour later, but in that time two things had happened. First, Katara had fallen soundly asleep. Second, after realizing the former, Zuko had opened his eyes to her sleeping face and realized with much horror that the strange, prickling warmth that he felt for the waterbender was much more complicated than he had feared. Toph, settling down close to but not reaching for the firebender, cracked a wide smile as soon as her back was turned to the boy. The iron might not be giving her anything to work with, but whatever was happening that was making Zuko grimace like he was dying while Katara slept peacefully beside him was sure to keep Toph entertained for quite some time. Who knows? Maybe it's love.
Published 5:20, 7.24.20