Katara had only been on Zuko's ship in passing in her memories. She'd certainly never been on board as anything but an assailant or a prisoner in the past, and now she and Sokka were both being led up the loading ramp without shackles or even a few blades brandished in their direction. It was sort of bizarre.
"The one who's sick… When did his symptoms start? What have you all noticed?" It was clear that she wasn't speaking to Sokka. As soon as Kanna had decided that the best way to ensure the safety of her grandchildren and her sanity was to keep them together, Sokka had refused to say a single word in the presence of the firebenders. Katara could assume that the reasoning for that was something along the lines of maintaining-allied-secrets or similar, but she didn't fight it. The bit of peace was actually a bit nice.
"Yesterday, around midday. We were sailing and, all of a sudden, there was this massive beam of light. The general's nephew, Prince Zuko, was struck with what looked like a shard of the light," Jee explained with some embarrassment. It sounded impossible, but Katara only nodded. It matched Sokka's descript of what had happened to her. "He collapsed in pain and hasn't woken since. The fever struck within ten minutes, and it hasn't broken since."
"Did he say Prince Zuko?" Sokka hissed loudly to Katara. Apparently, his vow of silence had an expiration date of six minutes. Sokka shot Jee another dirty look, as if he had masterminded this entire plot, but Katara waved him away.
"If I can help him, I will. Besides, I have a strange feeling about this. A good feeling," Katara clarified as Sokka began to mutter about yeah-I-have-a-feeling-too-a-burning-ouch-dying-kind-of-feeling.
The ship was quiet as they moved below decks. Zuko's rooms were on the command tower, but he had been brought below, to the ship's sick bay. Jee escorted them through the halls, the only noise their footsteps until Jee stopped before a door marked with an embossed cross.
"The sick bay," he declared, opening the door to reveal a somewhat large room, occupied mostly by two beds and two walls lined with shelves and cupboards. Katara's heart leapt to her throat as she recognized Zuko, curled up in pain in one of the beds. She rushed forward without a thought for her brother or Jee, and she placed gentle hands on his chest and forehead.
Jee hadn't exaggerated. Zuko was running a fever so hot that Katara nearly hissed when her skin contacted his. That didn't stop her from extending her senses deeper into his body, running as thorough a scan as she breezed through his veins along his heartbeat. The malady wasn't exactly physical, she realized. She shifted her senses, seeking out the chi paths connecting his chakras, and almost immediately discovered the source of the issue. There was a blockage in his chi paths located near the third chakra, in his stomach. The disruption was forcing his chi to misbehave, attacking the pathways it traveled along and beginning to burn Zuko from within.
As awful as it was, Katara breathed a sigh of relief. She could fix this.
"I can heal him," she declared, looking towards the others to realize that Sokka was frowning at her with apprehension and Jee… Jee was staring at her hands. She had to look down to realize that they were still gently glowing and Katara cleared her throat before repeating, "I can heal him."
"You're a waterbender." Jee was in shock. He'd heard rumors, of course, that waterbenders could heal the sick, but he'd never thought that he'd ever see such a thing. Honestly, he thought it mostly to be propaganda until he saw the girl's hands begin to glow as she laid her hands against Zuko's body. A waterbender… It was a miracle her grandmother had consented to have her board their ship. It was sheer foolishness for the girl herself to have suggested this. After everything that had been done to their tribe, Jee could scarcely believe it.
"Yes," she said simply, as if the mere confirmation didn't put a price on her head. The last waterbender of the South Pole—especially a girl as intelligent and collected as Katara—would be a novelty in the eyes of the right people.
And Jee nodded back at her, mouth dry. When Katara's hand sliced through the air, gathering water from nothing, he didn't begrudge himself leaning heavily against a wall. When even Katara's brother seemed aghast, unable to process what was happening in front of him as Katara pressed her glowing hands against Zuko's stomach, pulling up and out until—
The banished prince coughed. It was a pained, wet sound and one that was swiftly following by a myriad of curses dripping from his lips as Katara ripped the rest of her water away from him. She wasn't done working, though; she brought her hands back down towards Zuko's head, pressing her palms to his temples as she quietly shushed him.
"Easy now, Zuko. My name is Katara. You're on board your ship. Your uncle invited me aboard. You were sick. It's okay now. Everything is fine." She kept up a running dialogue as she healed some invisible damage and Jee watched in wonder as the tension drained from Zuko's body. Katara kept talking, often repeating her name and that everything was okay.
Katara finally staggered back, and the spell broke. Jee noticed then that her skin was several shades paler than it had been, and a light sheen of sweat covered her brow. Her brother was at her side at once, supporting her as she quietly insisted that she was okay. What Jee hadn't anticipated at all was that Zuko, no doubt still weak with fever, clambered to his feet, hands reaching out towards Katara until Sokka pushed his sister back protectively, scowling at the firebender.
"Back off, hotshot. You're welcome, and we're done here," Sokka declared. He seized Katara's wrist, tugging her towards the door even as Katara raised a hand in Zuko's direction. More accurately, Jee reflected, she was just raising her hand so that she could slam it down on her brother's back. The firebender teenager blinked slowly as if his mind was still catching up to the bizarre reality he'd woken up to, and a frown twisted his lips as he leaned back as Katara tried to shove her brother back.
"I'm not done!" the girl insisted, voice weak but still angry. "Sokka, stop! Zuko, sit!"
"Nope! You're done here. They said fix the jerk, you did. Job well done, time to go home. Maybe Gran-Gran will have sea prunes cooking. Nice to meet you, guys, don't stop by again—" Sokka was still talking as he tried to pull Katara from the room, but that was probably to be expected. Zuko, on the other hand… Jee watched as Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation gamely sat down on the bed he'd just leapt off of at the order of a peasant from the Southern Water Tribe. Eyes flitting up to the ceiling, he began hoping that—if he did ever return home—he'd retire somewhere nice and quiet where there wasn't a teenager for miles around.
Katara finally snatched her arm back from her brother and returned to her patient's side.
"Sorry about my brother," she began softly. Zuko carefully looked between the waterbender and her brother and laughed. It was a quiet, dry chuckle but it was the closest thing to a proper laugh that Jee had ever heard from the boy.
"Better than my sister," Zuko replied, voice rough with disuse and dehydration. Jee was no longer just leaning against the wall—he was fully reliant on its support, or he'd fall to the ground. Had Zuko made a joke? Katara was smiling, so he must have, right? "You… healed me?"
"I did. You were unconscious for the better part of a day. You were experiencing a spiritual imbalance that was causing damage to your chi paths. It's been resolved now. How do you feel?" There were more questions that went unasked, questions that burned in Katara's eyes and questions that were hidden away in the curve of her smile. Zuko, seeming as if he were considering the question carefully, breathed in deeply, closing his eyes for a brief moment.
"Strong," he decided. He looked about the room then and noticed Jee with some surprise. "Lieutenant. Is my uncle—"
"He's at the village, sir." Jee had no idea how to politely explain that Iroh was currently being held, however politely, as a ransom for Katara's safety. Katara, on the other hand, seemed to feel no such reservations.
"He's there to ensure that your men don't harm me or my brother. Do you plan to?" she asked bluntly, with none of the charm she'd employed at the gate. Despite the abruptness of her question, Zuko didn't seem at all fazed.
"I owe you a debt," he replied just as plainly. Slowly, as if waiting to ensure that Katara wouldn't yell at him for doing so, Zuko returned to his feet and looked to Jee. "Are any of the men aware she's a bender?"
"Only me, sir. The other crewmen are only aware that she acts as the tribe's healer," he reported.
"Good. Keep it quiet," Zuko ordered before returning his eyes to Sokka. "This ship doesn't report to the normal chain of command, but we do make port in Fire Nation controlled territories. Your tribe has managed to keep her a secret so far. We won't break that."
"Oh, a real hero," Sokka cheered sardonically, throwing his hands in the air. "Really. A swell guy. Now we're done here. Right, Katara? I don't see any more glowing fingers, so let's see some walking feet!"
"Okay," Katara conceded with a huff, smiling with fond exasperation at her brother. Sokka took one step out of the room before freezing, neck craning to confirm that she was in his shadow, and Katara began moving towards him. Sokka, content that she was coming, turned back. He missed the look that Katara sent towards Zuko, a sort of silent plea that had Zuko stretching his limbs.
"Jee, have the ship readied to leave. I'll go retrieve Uncle." There was a strange tremor in Zuko's voice that made Jee privately wonder if Zuko was really ready to be up and about but Katara turned her head to smile at the boy so Jee decided it couldn't be that bad. Fresh air was supposed to be good, right? And Katara was smiling so it was the doctor's orders. Either way, Jee was relieved to hear that he had been readily given an opportunity to leave the presence of the three teenagers and bowed his head before departing.
Zuko took only a few minutes to dress, forgoing armor in an effort to catch up to Sokka and Katara. With Sokka leading the way, the two were sure to get lost on their way out of the ship but any of his confused crewmen would be able to easily direct the two back onto the ice. Dressed in the warmest robes he could find, Zuko emerged onto the loading ramp to see Katara and Sokka just reaching the ground. It took every drop of effort he had not to run after them, keenly aware that Katara was so very close but that Sokka's presence meant that reaching for her hand or pulling her close would not end well. Zuko, warring with himself each step of the way, forced himself to walk at a largely normal pace that would mean he didn't catch up with the other two until they were already at the village entrance.
"Zuko!" Katara's smile made Sokka's scowl very easy to ignore. The warrior's presence was enough to remind Zuko that he should not pull Katara into his arms, but it was a narrow thing in the light of the waterbender's eyes.
"My uncle is quick to make friends. You might need help convincing him to leave, especially if there's a tea here he hasn't tried."
And before Katara could reply with a quip or Sokka could begin to boil over with rage or disgust that there was a firebender smiling at his sister—who was smiling back?!—a gleeful laugh filled the air and a shadow passed over them. Zuko's heart thundered in his chest as he looked up slowly to see the last airbender gliding without a single care through the air over the Southern Water Tribe. His eyes locked onto Aang and each of his carefully memorized moments were thrown in his face by the look he briefly caught on Aang's face. This is what Aang looked like before he really knew about the war. This was Aang before he knew the fate of his people. This is the Aang who had looked at him without the burden of clouded destinies hanging between them.
His eyes followed Aang as he angled down towards the ground once more. Aang dismounted the glider gracefully, spinning it in his hand and free-falling the last ten or fifteen feet towards the ground and landing feet from the retired general Iroh. Iroh spared Aang hardly a passing glance—the nomad swiftly running deeper into the village with another laugh—before returning his full attention to the old woman beside him. She looked familiar to Zuko, but vaguely. It took him a long moment to place her as Katara and Sokka's grandmother.
Sokka seemed to relax slightly more once they were within the village walls, even with Zuko not far behind. He veered off the path towards his trainee warriors, no doubt to inform the troops of the latest developments in their fight against the enemy, and inadvertently left his sister alone with Zuko. She wasn't in any danger, though, as Zuko hadn't quite been able to walk since he spotted his uncle standing in the center of the village.
A hand slipped into his and he nearly jumped. Katara had the grace to not visibly look amused at his nervous reaction.
"A waterbender just saved your life," she pointed out quietly. "Maybe this is the first step you take towards the right path. That's believable."
"Especially since that waterbender is you." Zuko meant it to say the words lightly, but he'd never been very good at those. The words came out in a serious, grateful tone and he was rewarded with Katara's cheeks flushing deeply. Still, that was nearly as good as a laugh so Zuko still smiled. "Is love at first sight the story we're going with?"
"Time travel definitely would explain it better, but I think love at first sight is more believable," she replied with a chuckle. She released her hold on his hand, moving her own to touch his lower back and push him gently forward. "I'm with you."
Zuko took her words as gospel, taking a deep breath before beginning the short walk towards his uncle. As he tried desperately to think of words to say—anything, for the love of all that is holy, would do so long as it wasn't Hello, Zuko here—Katara kept pace easily. Her hand was still against his lower back, but she wasn't pushing him forward anymore, merely spotting him. An outsider might think she was worried he'd physically fall over, but Zuko knew that the real risk was internal. He'd reunited with his uncle so many times before in such different circumstances that he would never be able to predict—
"General," Katara's voice broke through his thoughts and Zuko wanted to curse her for a moment. He wasn't ready! He had no idea what to—
Iroh looked up towards them, at last noticing Zuko and immediately stepping away from his conversation with Kanna. His eyes were wide and it seemed that, as he studied Zuko's face, years melted from his face.
"Prince Zuko—" Iroh's relief was so palpable it hit Zuko like a sabertoothed mooselion. The older man stumbled forward, but Zuko was prepared to finally meet him halfway, catching his uncle in a firm hug. "You're—"
"I'm okay, Uncle." He forced the words out. Okay was an incredibly underwhelming word for the feelings rushing against the backdrop of his thoughts, but it was the only one that was readily available. "I'm okay."
"Katara, you—" Kanna began whispering in an urgent tone to her granddaughter and Katara responded softly but the words were lost on Zuko as he endlessly tried to form the right words to tell his uncle how much he loved him, how he had been wrong for so long but he was finally on the right path. The words never really came, which seemed to be one of the hard facts about Zuko's life, but Iroh seemed to understand his roaring thoughts well enough by the time the older man pulled back from the hug. There were tears shining in the retired general's eyes as he moved towards Katara, interrupting her increasingly heated conversation with Kanna in order to trap the young waterbender in a hug as well.
"Thank you." The words were so inadequate, but Katara was smiling again when Iroh released her. "You didn't have to help. Thank you."
"There are some things that transcend nations," was her intriguing reply. She made a quiet request of her grandmother to ensure that their guest was keeping out of trouble, but Iroh was left with the idea that Katara was trying to send Kanna away. It was if every time Iroh thought he had her measure, she did something unexpected. After her grandmother left with little more than a concerned frown and a brush against her forehead, Katara, less cryptically, continued. "Your nephew gave his word that the Fire Lord won't discover that the South Pole has a waterbender."
"That is for the best. The crew might find Prince Zuko's recovery miraculous, but not necessarily supernatural," Iroh agreed solemnly, though he sent an odd look towards his nephew. "Although I am relieved to know you are here. You and young Aang."
Zuko suddenly understood what his uncle was trying to communicate to him. It was a test, one centered on the airbending child that the Zuko of Iroh's memory had been obsessed with. The Zuko that stood before his uncle now, though, merely nodded, carefully putting a frown to his lips.
"He's the avatar, isn't he?" he asked, looking towards Katara for confirmation. She stared at him for a long moment before humming.
"He hasn't said, but I think he must be. The light that struck you, it was released when my brother and I found him. It hit me as well," Katara said softly. "I wasn't affected so strongly, but I feel different now. Stronger. And, of course…" She gently laid two fingers against Uisce's mark, smiling absently before looking up at Zuko. She was offering him a golden opportunity and he very nearly kissed her right there. In the meantime, Iroh was staring at his nephew with something like bewilderment.
"Zuko?" There was some caution in Iroh's voice as he tried to reassess whatever change had taken place in his nephew. Two days ago, Zuko would have melted this village to get to the avatar, but now? He was stood calmly, his eyes drifting towards the waterbender with a depth of emotion that Iroh could hardly explain. There was no chance that the two had met previously, but if there was some spiritual connection—something that had happened to both of them during the sickness to create a bond of shared experience—then it was possible that Iroh's patience might finally bear fruit.
"He's just a kid." There was so much in those words that Iroh didn't have a prayer of understanding, but he knew enough to gently place a hand on his nephew's shoulder. After a moment, Zuko raised his arm to place his hand on top of his uncle's. Iroh waited, expecting Zuko to continue, but Katara stole his attention with the same ease that she had kept it at their first meeting.
"We all are," was her succinct response, a wry twist to her lips. A flicker of uncertainty appeared in her sapphire eyes, and Iroh was surprised to see that the apprehension that she so clearly felt towards himself and even her grandmother faded away when she looked to Zuko. "I didn't sense any damage to your chi paths, but I would like to confirm that once you've rested some… I think it'd be best for you to return to your ship until then."
The village around them had slowly started to shift back to normal while Katara and Sokka had been on the ship, but neither Zuko nor Iroh wre able to ignore the blatant anxiety and fear in the wide eyes and stiff movements of the tribe's women, avoiding the area around them like they were infectious. Zuko realized at once that there weren't any children about—still hidden away, kept safe away from the potential threat—and he nodded, clearing his throat.
"Of course… I'll see you tomorrow?" There was a nervous doubt in Zuko's voice and the puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place in Iroh's mind. His nephew's strange quietness, his eyes forever drawn towards the young waterbender, and his small smiles. Prince Zuko was infatuated with the young woman who'd healed him.
"Yes!" Katara assured quickly, her smile bright and immediate. It seemed to drain a tension in Zuko's shoulders and Iroh had to steel himself against showing any outward amusement. For a first crush, Zuko could have done much worse. The circumstance of star-crossed lovers was more appropriate to a tragedy than a romance, but not all love was easy. "It'd be best if you return here. With my brother…"
Sokka was very protective of his sister, and rightfully so. There was no way that he'd permit her to board a Fire Navy vessel again, especially now that they were aware what she was. More than that, Katara was clearly a skilled healer, which made her a more valuable commodity than being a strong fighter. Iroh's eyes traced the crescent on her forehead. It was so terribly familiar to him, but he couldn't quite place it. He remembered his trip to the spirit world vividly. He knew how the touch of a spirit changed a person, and he saw that influence shining in the mark on Katara's forehead.
It was no accident that their paths had crossed with Katara's. Iroh only hoped that the way forward from here was made clear, for all of their hopes.
Published 19:59, 12.16.20