It was with pride, rather than disappoint, that Rhyu watched Zuko during his next training. Zuko had been able to climb to the volcano's peak for some time now, but Rhyu kept up with the physical labor to maintain his shape. Zuko, pushing himself further and faster for reasons that Rhyu couldn't quite discern, crested the peak of the volcano and began the plunge back down through the catacombs cut through the rock in record time. Even more intriguing, Zuko settled down into his meditation with a deeper peace than Rhyu had ever seen in the boy.
Zuko still had quite a ways to go before he would truly master the element, but he had certainly come a long way in mastering himself since arriving in the valley.
When Uisce and Katara appeared at the entrance to the inner chamber—or, more accurately, when his student caught sight of the water tribe girl—Rhyu couldn't help but grin. It was a sentiment that he knew very well. Fire and water weren't opposites as humans typically thought them to be; they were simply opposite sides of the same coin. If Zuko's affection for Katara helped him better understand himself or his connection to fire, Rhyu would not fault him.
"Uisce, Katara," Rhyu greeted with a smile, reaching out in welcome. "What brings you two so far from the lakeside?"
"I would like Katara to test her ability to maintain temperatures despite outside influences," Uisce explained. Her sharp eyes landed on Zuko, and her smile twisted with amusement. "Unless we would be a distraction?"
"If you are, I'm sure you're a welcome one," Rhyu said with a disarming smile. Then, with a glance to Zuko, he raised an eyebrow. "Zuko? Do you think the ladies will distract you?"
Zuko reluctantly tore his eyes away from Katara, who was studying the cavernous room with something like awe and shook his head to answer his master's question before forcing his eyes shut and returning to his meditation. Flames danced in the palms that he left open above his knees, and he could almost feel Katara's eyes pull in his direction. He wondered for a brief moment what sort of light was in her expressive eyes but forced his attention back to his meditation as he felt his flames flickering with something near a protest.
"Stay as long as you like. Zuko is working to maintain concentration, so I'm sure he'd welcome any challenge your presence might offer," Rhyu acquiesced to Uisce after another very entertaining moment of watching his student. Uisce shot him a look that was very heavy with don't-tease-the-poor-boy-dear that Rhyu ignored with millennia of practice.
"So, Katara, you've gotten very good at shifting rapidly between temperature when manipulating water. It's easiest in a somewhat temperate environment, above freezing and well below boiling, but true mastery of waterbending must include perfect control of your element regardless of outside influences. You remember our ice furnishings of course. I'd like you to recreate that setup here."
"But—" Only a single word of protest escaped Katara's mouth before she stopped herself, the complaint freezing and dying out before Uisce could even raise an eyebrow at her student. Taking a deep, centering breath, Katara raised her arms out towards the vapors rising up from the lava. If Uisce wanted her to waterbend, there must be water in this hot environment… There!
The air was full of it, hot and humid and cloying around her. It had only been the sheer heat pouring from the heart of the volcano that had convinced her mind of something her senses knew to be false. There were certainly minerals in the gases rising steadily up towards the sky high above them, but almost all of those noxious chemicals were carried by escaping water vapor. If Katara could capture them before they flew too high up—
She brought her arms down and towards her center, directing the steam to supercool and coalesce in front of her on the platform in a shapeless mass. There was less than she might have hoped, but more vapor rose from the heart of the volcano even as she hesitated to study the ice she'd made. She frowned at it, balling her hand into a fist and strengthening her hold on the water as it threatened to break apart and melt or boil into nothingness. Even without attempting to create a specific form, the water threatened to break out of her control and return to its natural state in this level of heat. Katara frowned at it, experimentally relaxing her hold only to see steam rising again.
Uisce smiled at her student as Katara began testing her control and her methodology. She didn't truly believe Katara was at the level where she could really begin regulating temperature without conscious thought and effort, but the girl needed to face fresh challenges every now and then.
"Thinking of waterbending as the manipulation of water itself is a very undeveloped theory on your abilities.," Rhyu began quietly coaching Katara, approaching the girl as she scowled down at her melting ice. "Think of the sands that make up the beach. At the water's edge, the space between the grains of sand is consumed by water, binding them together and giving sand cohesion. Water likes to stay together. It wants to flow as one entity no matter how small or large your measure is. When you're bending, you don't control the water itself. You control the bonds between water. Heating water—boiling it—is a matter of agitating and shaking the bonds until the water generates heat or breaks apart entirely into steam. Moving liquid is accomplish by pushing and pulling along the bonds in a manner that plays upon the cohesion of water. Think of the bonds within your water. How each drop is connected to the next, how they want to stay together, even though the heat of the volcano is pulling them apart."
If Rhyu turned his eyes towards Zuko, he would have seen that the firebender had very nearly given up on his meditation and was listening attentively to Rhyu's every word. The master was busy looking at the waterbending student, though, and smiled with sharp delight when Katara's eyes widened with realization.
"Bonds within water," Katara murmured to herself softly, staring at her swiftly melting pile of ice. With a determined set in her jaw, she raised her hand against towards the vapor, pulling the steam closer and freezing it solid even as it flew towards her. It expanded slightly as she tugged it along, melding it seamlessly with the ice she'd already formed and shaping the mass until a single chair stood in the heat of the volcano, shining but holding steady.
"Exceptional work," Uisce complimented, though she sent an almost chastising look at Rhyu. "It's a shame that I intended for Katara to spend more than five minutes on this exercise."
"My apologies," Rhyu said, sounding very unapologetic as Katara darted towards Zuko, absolutely beaming and chattering about what she'd learned. Zuko had in turn abandoned all pretense of concentration, with the boy smiling proudly towards the waterbender as Katara began frowning, flicking her fingers towards the chair at some unspoken signal. Perhaps it had threatened to begin melting again?
"Zuko," Uisce interrupted, grabbing the attention of the two teenagers. If Rhyu could spoil her lesson plans, it was only fair that she returned the favor. "You might benefit from that same theory, though from a different perspective. Waterbending, as Rhyu said, is the manipulation of the bonds specifically between droplets of water. Firebending is the manipulation of the bonds that exist between all forms of matter, though its scope is slightly more limited. Human firebenders never achieve truly mastery because they focus so much on the creation of fire, but fire is simply the symptom of the real work. What you do when you firebend is agitate the bonds between matter, although most of the bending you know uses air as a medium. But you are also able to heat water or melt stone, simply by turning the principals you already know on other materials."
"Uncle believed that the highest mastery of bending could be accomplished with influence from other forms," Zuko quietly remembered. Waterbending and firebending… They weren't opposites, not truly. If Zuko could learn to redirect lightning by leaning on waterbending techniques, then he could certainly master this sort of concentration as well.
He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the world around him. Toph had described her seismic sense to him on Ember Island once, even if it felt like a lifetime ago now. It had been at that stupid play—and wasn't he embarrassed even more to think of it now, having seen the actors portraying him and Katara in that stupid crystal cave kissing as if the playwright knew him better than he knew himself—when that child had the gall to tell him his scar was on the wrong side. When the child had left, scared off by his temper or likely just bored, Toph had quietly asked him what side his scar was on, as she didn't know. It was a dramatic revelation that Toph, with her all-seeing feet, had never once seen his scar. The revelation was swiftly followed by a second: that Toph had never thought of him first as scarred or damaged when it was the first thing every other person would notice from him… He had been struck speechless until Toph punched him again. It's how I show affection…
Refocusing on his immediate goal, Zuko carefully created a small flame in his hand and closed his eyes. Instead of looking inward into his own mind, though, the firebender sought out the space that existed above his hand, where his flame still flickered, fed by a steady stream of chi. It was ephemeral, touching just beyond his senses even as he strained to see it, but it was there. The source of the flame wasn't above his palm. That was a mere illusion created by the fire feeding from his chi as a fuel source. The real source was within the very air.
Unlike Katara's cool and determined reaction to this new internalization, Zuko was ashamed to later admit to Toph that he had nearly choked on his own tongue as the flame in his hand grew larger, experimental and barely within his conscious control as he stretched his chi further up and out in an attempt to better witness the evidence of Uisce's theory. Rhyu swiftly stepped between Zuko and Katara even as Zuko began stammering out apologies for his loss of control, already killing the flame with a thought.
During that entire embarrassing event, Zuko's flame hadn't once faded from a bright, searing blue.
And Katara's smile impossibly brightened. She pushed past Rhyu without a single concern, throwing her arms around Zuko in an excited hug, her voice high and clear with pride as she congratulated Zuko on his success. Surprising everyone in the cavern, including herself, Katara mindlessly pulled away just long enough to plant a kiss squarely onto Zuko's lips.
Several mountains away, Cruinne barked out a laugh, distracting Toph away from the life-sized air bison she had been charged with molding out of metal sheeting.
"What?" she asked, far too happy with the distraction. Rather than putting her back to work, and figuring the kid would get a kick out of it, Cruinne pointed his hand in the vague direction of the volcano the others were currently huddled within. Katara had flung herself back, no doubt blushing up a storm, but Zuko was completely motionless to Cruinne's senses. As the master focused his senses on the cavern, he became more acutely away that his fellow masters were in the process of laughing their asses off.
"Focus your seismic sense that way. They're about a mile and a half—" Cruinne stopped talking when Toph's face shifted. Clearly the girl had noticed what he had seen first. For a fraction of a second, he realized that maybe he should have been more careful to bring it up. It was possible that Toph had harbored some sort of feelings for Zuko—hell, she might have had some for Katara! How was Cruinne supposed to know?—but his fears were swiftly relieved when Toph immediately launched into a victorious tirade.
"It's about damn time! Those two have been just dancing around each other for months now!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air as if the movement would forgive all the pent-up frustration she'd had for the situation. "They had this thing last night, but of course neither of them would bring it up in the light of day so—"
She seemed unable to speak for a moment, mind moving faster than her mouth and filled with all sort of laments about how she had been so sure that it was all a waste of time. The two had been playing a dedicated game of mouse and mouse, as if neither of them was able to approach the other. Perhaps it was because the two were such similar creatures, their own energies were working against them without just a few nudges of outside influence. It almost reminded Toph of the—
Magnets.
Like and unlike magnets. The life she'd felt thrumming through the metal was attraction in a form so much less complicated than whatever was between her two friends. They had been too similar, both positively charged and unable to do anything other than hold the other at arm's length until outside influences had shifted something in one of them.
One of them. Magnets worked as a set.
Cruinne was silent as Toph ripped her iron band off of her wrist but the earthbending master smiled with a quiet victory when Toph brutally tore the two in half, cursing under her breath. She held the two pieces of twisted metal against each other, glaring sightlessly at the metal until she finally tossed the mass up at Cruinne. Cruinne caught the lump of twisted metal deftly, chuckling when he immediately felt the unlike charges running through the two pieces of metal, binding them together.
"Speaking of it's about damn time," he joked, laughing loudly and hoping that it was a strong enough play that Toph wouldn't be able to perceive the relief permeating his every thought. All of the fears he had for Toph's progress were allayed, dismissed entirely over the course of just a few minutes. It stood to reason that, as soon as Toph figured out the only thing standing in her path, she'd completely unravel the mystery of it in less than five minutes. It was so typical of the greatest earthbender, he mused with a fond smile. "This means we get started on the real fun! Welcome to the second quarter, brat!"
Despite each of the students accomplishing so much during each of their lessons, dinner was an exceptionally quiet affair, although Rhyu notably continued smirking towards his student, for which Uisce would frequently smack his arm. After dinner came the real fun, with Toph stood from the table and loudly declaring that she would be making her own bedroom to sleep in from now one, citing that she didn't want to interrupt any squabbling—or worse—from the two lovebirds.
Katara had been completely baffled, rambling just as loudly and quickly to assure Toph that absolutely nothing had been happening or would happen and that she was being ridiculous to even suggest that and why-are-you-laughing, but even Toph knew that the girl was blushing from her head to her toes. All the while, Zuko had never felt more miserable, and he wondered exactly why he had ever craved a good relationship with Azula. Little sisters were the absolute worst.
Despite the drama of it all—and despite Cruinne and Toph somehow exchanging very similar grins when Cruinne very pointedly only made one new bedroom for his student, leaving the Katara and Zuko to share—all three of the students were mostly unscathed as they began to settle down for the night. Zuko disappeared into the bathroom, mumbling something about taking a long bath or drowning himself that the other two swiftly dismissed, and left the two girls alone. Or, more precisely, left Toph to Katara's wrath.
"What was all that about?" she demanded as soon as the door closed behind Zuko, whirling to face Toph with a red face and a rapid heartbeat that only made Toph's grin widen again.
"I thought I was the blind one here. You can't tell me you didn't see any of this coming, sweetness." When Katara sputtered indignantly, Toph's grin faded away into something softer, more honest. Vulnerability was harder on Toph, but it worked wonders on Katara's insufferable need to fix everything. "The people we lost aren't the only ones getting another chance. You can't tell me that he doesn't make you happy."
"And if it doesn't…" Katara's voice drifted off and Toph shrugged.
"What? You think you two will have some dramatic break up? Please. Both of you are so focused on making the right choices that I don't think either one of you would actually think about it. Unless you're planning to hurt him?" The idea was foreign, but Toph had to ask, an unexpected steel in her voice when she turned to face Katara. She might not necessarily benefit from being pointed towards the girl, but she couldn't deny that the little skip of Katara's heartbeat made Toph feel more secure when Katara shook her head. "Good. Because he's even more broken than you are and I will not be happy if I have to deal with both of you being mopey all the time. Now brush your teeth or whatever. You might have to stop the hothead from actually drowning himself beCAUSE I'M PRETTY SURE HE'S LISTENING!"
Toph felt Zuko flinch away from the wall even before she punched just under where she knew his ear had been pressed. When she left the bathroom, retreating to the privacy of her new bedroom, she grinned. Life was complicated and messy, but sometimes it was good.
Published 5:21, 7.24.20