The training carried on, with days spent rigorously improving their physical bodies or widening their perception on their respective elements. As they acclimated to the harshness of the physical training, each of the teenagers began to have nightmares creep back into their nights, but they seemed less real with each passing day. The grief began to heal slowly as the knowledge that their final farewells weren't really goodbye settled in each of their hearts.
Toph progressed in lavabending faster than Cruinne could have ever guessed. Without any influence, Toph tracked Katara down to learn what it felt like to freeze and melt ice and it was only a matter of time before Toph—with much enthusiasm—was taking small pebbles and melting them with less and less effort until she was able to carve gashes into the earth to create crevices filled with molten lava and then quickly cool the lava again to create obsidian scars slashing through the ground. As she grew stronger with lavabending—eventually beginning to melt and manipulate metal as well—there was a quiet fear that rose up in her when the odd nightmare broke through the tiredness of her body after a day of training. Magnetism continued to elude her, even when she stole away to study Cruinne's train system. No matter what she did, she couldn't figure out what it was that stood in her path and, as time worn on, her frustration became less angry and more miserable.
The badgermoles hadn't been able to learn to manipulate magnetism either. She had always been so proud of her ability to be a great earthbender despite her blindness. In a lot of ways, she was a better earthbender because of her so-called disability. But now she was facing an insurmountable obstacle, one that she couldn't face from any angle. It was a challenge that she could never rise to meet, and that meant that she would never truly master earthbending. Her ease with the other higher forms of earthbending only served to make her more upset, as it seemed certain that the only thing standing in her way was one facet of her existence that had defined her since she was born. The thing preventing her from moving forward was the one unchanging thing about her.
She coped in the only ways she knew how: throwing herself back into training, aiming to surprise Cruinne whenever he stopped looking at her for a moment. When the opportunity struck, she also began pushing Zuko and Katara into each other's paths as much as she could. If one of them awoke from a nightmare, it got easier to trust the older teens to settle it amongst themselves. When the training provided an excuse for it, Toph cajoled Katara in healing sessions, guilting the waterbender into healing Toph's bruises before moving on to ascertain Zuko. When Zuko's heartbeat gave away where his thoughts were, Toph began to ask Katara leading questions, forcing her to speak up and keep Zuko's attention and not let him drift away.
Time continued to slip by, with the war affecting them in strange, unexpected ways. Awyr still spent much of her time away, but none of the teens would be able to forget the look that had come to the airbender's face when one of her episodes—the first any of them had witnessed—overtook her at dinner while Rhyu and Uisce were playfully debating the superiority of their element. Conversation ended abruptly at the low exclamation, the quiet gasp, that escaped Awyr as her bowl clattered to the ground, pushed off of the table by a blind push away. Uisce was at work in a flicker of movement, water pulled from the air to gather and glow against Awyr's chest.
The three teens watched with bated, worried breaths until Awyr was recovered, smiling gratefully at Uisce even as the waterbending spirit scowled and commanded her to stay still.
"We are connected to the world beyond by more than the mere existence of our elements. We are bound, tethered, and centered by our students," Cruinne explained, eyes darker and more solemn than the three students had ever seen him. "When those connections are lost, when they're cut… It is a wound that cannot be healed."
A new wave of loathing passed through Zuko as he watched Awyr come back to herself. Now, studying Awyr's short and shallow breaths, he wondered at how he'd ever missed her condition. He'd seen plenty of hurt warriors before. He'd suffered his own share of injuries while he was training or pushing himself forward. Awyr spoke, moved, breathed as he had when his ribs were bruised, and the source of her pain was his nation again.
Whenever the airbending spirit was back in the valley, she carried news of the war. Omashu stood for hardly a month after Sozin's comet returning. The city had already been won and lost before by the Fire Nation, which was seen as an unforgiveable offence by the new Fire Lord. Azula, with the blessing of her father, had personally visited the city and melted it into a pile of molten slag at the bottom of its chasm. Awyr had no word on survivors. Ba Sing Se still held, but barely. The Dai Li had returned to the city, embittered and banished by Azula but untrusted by the Earth Kingdom remnants. Without the luxury of an alternative, they set up ramparts outside of the city, driven to regain the trust of the Earth King by serving at the front lines. The northwest forests of the Earth Kingdom were being swiftly razed, eaten up by the hungry furnaces of the war machine. Countless communities and villages were destroyed, with survivors scattered. All throughout the kingdom, though, there was resistance. Earthbenders protected small enclaves of survivors in hidden corners of the kingdom as the Fire Nation marched further inland.
The front was better for the Northern Water Tribe. As such an isolated part of the world, the Fire Nation wasn't immediately concerned with the North Pole. The south, however… The Southern Water Tribe was near enough to the Fire Nation and the southern reaches of the Earth Kingdom that it held some strategic value. That was even before considering the morale hit rebels would feel, taking the place that had birthed the last Avatar's waterbending master and wiping it off of the map. There were concerns about a new avatar, who would be born a waterbender, but Ozai had already killed one child avatar. He was certain that he could kill a second as soon as they crawled out of the Northern Tribe in search of an earthbending master. They wouldn't get a chance to make landfall.
Katara had taken the news of her home's destruction better than her friends would have ever anticipated, but there was a harder steel in her eyes when she returned to training the day after. Her tribe wasn't lost, not so long as they had a chance to fix things. She threw herself into her training with a new fervor, learning to manipulate the lifeblood within life forms with increasingly gentle touches on the fauna that lived within the valley. The more surgical her touch was with her animal subjects, the less pain she'd be able to cause in the future. Still, the idea that even the animals she manipulated felt pain with her untrained touch disgusted her and she vowed anew to never use bloodbending for fighting.
Zuko hadn't taken the news of the South Pole's destruction as well. When he awoke the night after they heard the news—with Toph so far away from him that she was nearly falling off the far edge of their pallet and Katara, the girl who'd just lost what was left of her family, so close and warm and forgiving—he felt nearly sick. He extricated himself as quickly as he could, swallowing past the mass of heat that had risen in his throat as best he could, feeling every second that he was going to explode. He made his way out of the hut, off of the patio, and kept walking. His feet carried him all the way to the water's edge before a roar and a gout of flame finally tore their way free from his throat and he finally fell to his knees, exhausted and hollow. He stayed there, staring blankly out into the still water while his mind filled with thoughts shifting like vipers threatening to bite if he aimed to examine any too closely. He knew darkness and he knew that he'd never truly escape it. How could he, after the sort of life he'd led? A childhood filled with falsehoods and never-good-enough. His early adolescence, filled with pain and shame and you-made-the-wrong-choice-again. And now? After all his struggle, all his desire and energy poured into finally being good, there was still no respite. He was still stuck, struggling to maintain his calm when he stared at Azula's fire, flicking in his hands. He was still trapped by the legacy his nation was burning into the lands, still destroying and killing with every day he was here, safe and hidden. He had tried to help Katara find peace for the fate of her mother—he wanted her to have the closure that he was certain to never find—and had finally felt a shred of peace when she'd hugged him on that dock. But now? There was no accountability, no chance for that peace to come back. Katara had lost more because of his nation, and there wasn't any way he could ever ease that burden. She might not have processed it yet, but there would come a day before this training ended that she would look at him again with those cold, cutting eyes. As he stared out into the water, so perfect and still, he was sure that that day would kill him.
A brush of fabric was his first indicator that he was not alone. A younger Zuko might have lashed out, flames flinging off of his fingertips to attack the intruder—like he'd done to Toph, at the air temple, he thought miserably. Now, he was too tired. He didn't even bother to move his eyes off of the water. If it was Toph, she'd probably hit him as her greeting. If it was Katara—
She was behind him, gentle hands reaching out and just brushing against his temples. Zuko closed his eyes at the contact, but the soft glow of light shone through his eyelids as Katara quietly worked to ease the chaos of his mind. It was temporary, they both knew, but Zuko was sure that whatever pity or grief that stood between Katara and her fury was only a temporary boon as well. He was selfish enough to accept her kindness while she still offered it.
All too soon, the glow of Katara's hands faded away. Zuko prepared himself for her to retreat a safe distance, and was bewildered when her hands—instead of completely pulling back, Katara's hands shifted lower, her arms moving to cross his chest as she knelt behind him and caught him in a hug, kneeling behind him. She placed her head against his shoulder, her soft hair tickling the sensitive, scarred skin along his cheekbone.
"I won't forgive you." The words were quiet, muffled slightly by his shoulder, and Zuko let his head fall forward. He wasn't surprised at her words, but her tone wasn't expected. He would have guessed that she'd be sad, but he thought that she wouldn't have let him see it. No, he would only see her anger, her pain, her disgust.
Katara's head shifted off of his shoulder and he waited for her to finally retreat. It was hard to breath, he realized. She was too close, too warm, and he was suffocating, unable to breathe past the weight of his thoughts. But she didn't run. She rose up ever so slightly behind him, moving forward just far enough to lay a gentle kiss onto his scarred cheek.
"I won't forgive you," she repeated then, as Zuko's eyes opened wide with surprise. "Because you've done nothing wrong."
"Katara, I—" His voice was wrong. Everything about him was too rough, too jagged. The words died in his throat as he realized he had no idea what to say. He had no way to approach this because she didn't hate him?
"I will never hate you, Zuko," she promised quietly. Zuko felt a rush of heat but was incapable of determining if he was embarrassed at having spoken aloud, or if the source of that heat was from something else entirely as Katara moved to be sitting beside him, one of her arms tangled with his and her other hand snatching his. With a wordless, almost casual flick of her wrist, water rose up from the lake to cover that hand of hers, and Zuko watched, mesmerized, as she carefully healed the small marks his nails had dug into his palms at some point. When she was at last satisfied with his hand, her eyes returned to his. Instead of the harsh, icy look he'd so feared, her eyes were nearly molten as she steadily met his gaze. There was moisture there, tears swimming in the corner of her eyes, and Zuko felt an absurd desire to wipe it away before a single tear had the nerve to try and fall but his hand was still in hers and he didn't dare move it.
He still wasn't breathing, he realized in one frantic moment. He took a deep breath, shaky and desperate, but oxygen didn't alleviate the burning spreading from his chest. He struggled to keep breathing, to find some way to stop the pain and the need that was coursing through him, but more air didn't help. It didn't—
Katara jostled him, her leg pressing against his thigh and his arm held tightly to her chest as she nestled closer to his side, and the pain seemed to subside as his breathing finally evened out. She was still looking at him with that unnamable intensity in her eyes, but he wasn't drowning in her presence anymore.
The waterbender shifted again, her movements slow and telegraphed and uncertain but hopeful, and Zuko went perfectly still even as his thoughts raced. Katara, undeterred, continued leaning towards him until their lips finally met.
And it was like a switch was flipped. Zuko's mind froze then, entirely absorbed by her as his arm moved to her back, pulling her closer. His hand pulled out of hers and rested against her face, and he wasn't drowning in her, he was breathing her. His eyes closed unbidden, a battle behind them on whether or not he should focus on the sensation of her lips against his or catch more of that beautiful deep look in her eyes.
Katara had seen plenty of storms—hell, she'd helped create a fair few of them—and she knew the calm that could exist in the center of unbridled chaos. There was an exhilaration in that moment, in the control of something so powerful and unstoppable, that couldn't be named and that she hadn't found anywhere else in the world until Zuko pulled her closer to him. He was warm to the touch, but now it felt as if everywhere his fingers wandered—pressing against her back, pulling gently through her hair, lacing through her own hand—burned with that sensation. She was at the center of a storm but held in a perfect balance with that feeling building and demanding more. When it grew too intense, when she began to wonder if she really did control the storm, she pulled back, breathing heavily and suddenly aware that she was laughing. It was quiet and breathless, but Katara was laughing as she pressed her forehead against Zuko's, realizing that her own hands were clasped desperately behind his head, and Zuko began to smile.
Katara's laughter finally began to die down as she looked at Zuko, still caught up in his embrace. The world was so complicated, and it would only get worse in the future, but this was something that felt whole, undamaged by the war even if they had only come together because of it. She pulled one of her hands out from behind Zuko's face, and his eyes eased shut again as she gently ran her thumb against the periphery of his scar.
"You can't hold yourself responsible for every crime committed under the Fire Nation banner," she murmured softly, these words just for him. Zuko absorbed them quietly, working silently to memorize how she looked in the light, still in his arms for reasons he could barely fathom. "And, one day, you'll believe that as much as I do."
"If… If we'd won…" Zuko's voice was still rough, but Katara was still looking at him, smoothing those jagged edges with her patient gaze. "Uncle wanted me to be Fire Lord. How am I not responsible? They're my people and we've destroyed so much of the world. All these years of being wrong, believing these glorious lies… It is my job to fix it, and if I fail—"
"It doesn't all fall on you, Zuko," she interrupted when Zuko's voice was so taut it threatened to break. He was wretchedly grateful for her. "That's why Toph and I are going back as well, because what is wrong runs too deep for one person or one nation to make any difference."
"Yes, three kids saving the world," Zuko said with a quiet, bitter scoff. Katara's smile didn't slide away, but the light in her eyes shifted and another chuckle escaped her. She pulled her hand from his cheek, only to flick him in the nose. "Hey!"
"I used to think it was going to be three kids saving the world, when Sokka and I first met Aang," she reminded him quietly. Then, smiling a bit ruefully, she amended: "Well, I thought that we'd be enough until we kept running into a really annoying and persistent firebender."
"Annoying?" Zuko questioned, frowning when Katara giggled.
"I'll save you from the pirates," she rasped in an imitation of his voice. Zuko's grimace was severe enough that Katara forewent laughing at his expense more and pressed another quick kiss to his cheek. The gesture did exactly what she hoped, and Zuko underwent a brief cognitive reset as he reprocessed what she said with a grain of salt.
"Ha ha," he murmured, but there was no venom in his voice. The night might have been a bit of a roller coaster, but he was more than content with this odd turn of events. Katara was still smiling up at him without having made a single move away from him. She'd even kissed him again.
A strange but pleasant sort of daze overtook him as he reflected on the conversation, wondering idly if he perhaps was just dreaming. Maybe he'd fallen asleep at the dinner table. Maybe it had been Toph to meet him at the lakeside, and her greeting blow had accidentally hit him in the head and caused this beautiful, bizarre dream.
"Come on." She interrupted his musings, to tug on the arm he still had pressed to her back. Protests were threatening to bubble out of him, but Zuko bit them down as Katara simply pulled him to his feet, still holding one of his arms captive. "We have to start getting ready for bed. We don't want to disappoint Uisce or Rhyu by falling asleep in training tomorrow."
"So?" Maybe the daze had completely passed, but Katara's answering laugh was worth any teasing she might inflict when one of them finally regain their wits. Still staring at Katara with awe, Zuko hoped it would be quite some time before he snapped out of this dream.
In the little hut they called home, Toph finished brushing her teeth with a satisfied smirk.
"It was about damn time, Sweetness," she said to the air around her.
Published 5:20, 7.24.20