Katara couldn't stop trembling.

She was freezing and exhausted, confused about Zuko, and so high on the lunar power surging through every vein in her body and pulsing from her core that she couldn't focus on any of that. The moon was even closer on Appa's back, and even that small difference made it stronger and more persistent, almost overwhelmingly so. She felt like raising the entire ocean below up in her arms and hurling it as far as she could. She felt like diving into the waves and becoming the force that pushes and pulls the tides.

She had used blood bending on that man. The unspeakable method she'd refused to think about up until now. Her anger had taken over and it was like she had lost control of her body, all she had wanted was to hear him say it. Say he'd taken her mother from her and left her with a massive hole in her soul. When she'd realised it wasn't him, she'd deflated, but the power hadn't left her. Now, she felt like she needed an outlet to release it or she might do something else she'd regret.

She felt Zuko's eyes on her as he glanced back at her once again.

All at once, shame, rage, and lust rushed up inside of her like electricity.

"Zuko," she heard herself bark. She was afraid of herself after what she had done, she needed them to touch down so she could ground herself. He jumped at her commanding tone and turned to face her. His amber eyes were unreadable, but Katara could have sworn she saw wariness. Was he afraid of her, too? He really should be right now.

"We need to stop. I need to be on solid ground for a minute," she said, forcing her body to calm down by breathing deeply. Her instincts rebelled, but she needed to block out the moon for a minute for the sake of her sanity, so she shut her eyes and tried to meditate the way Aang had shown her once.

Zuko nodded and redirected Appa to the first stretch of beach ahead. After touching down, Katara leapt down and faced the water. The silvery waves beckoned her, the moon called to her, even the water in the grass, the trees, the earth whispered in her ears. She fell to her knees and buried her burning face in her folded arms.

Spirits, she had just bent a man's blood. She felt sick.

She felt so unmoored. The yearning for her mother was accompanied by her ache for something, anything familiar. She missed her brother and her friends, her tribe in the South Pole. She missed the version of herself that had never learned how to blood bend, that innocence that felt so far away. What she had done... it made her pure evil. It sunk her down as low as whoever had taken her mother. She was just another person forcing her will onto someone else. When had the morality of her reasons stopped being black and white?

She didn't have to see Zuko to know he had taken a seat beside her in the dewey grass. If he was indeed afraid of her, he wasn't showing it now. She wanted to tell him to go away, but her mouth was so dry it felt sealed shut.

"All those years, hunting the Avatar, I didn't stop to think about whether it was the right thing."

Katara bristled, but Zuko went on,

"I wasn't thinking about the consequences of the world being thrown out of balance, or what my father would become if I helped him snuff out the last hope for peace. I was just thinking about how badly I wanted him to accept me. I thought about why I must not deserve his love, that it was something I had lost but that I could get back. I was really just another nameless foot soldier in his army. I could have never been heard from again after I was banished, and he might not have even noticed."

Zuko hovered a hand over a patch of grass next to where he sat. It sizzled and began to burn, slowly. Katara rested her cheek on her knee and watched his fingers dance ever so slightly. The smell of burning foliage permeated the air.

"I was focused on what I wanted because I thought it would give me the life I wanted. When I got that life, it turned out to be more hollow and empty than the years of exile were. But at least it showed me what it was all for. All my anger, my feeling of abandonment, my struggle and my pain. It was to show me the right path. You need to go through this so that you can figure out what will really bring you peace. I think that this mission is what you need now, so don't be so hard on yourself for acting on your own feelings for once instead of pleasing everyone else. When's the last time you got to let yourself feel and not have to keep yourself in check so you could take care of everyone else?"

Zuko met her eyes. In the reflection of them, she could see that hers were illuminated ever so slightly with the same silver as the moon in the sky. The shame that had been chased away by his words crept in again and she flinched. Zuko persisted,

"Why should you feel ashamed that you're so powerful? Your mother wouldn't be ashamed. She would be proud."

Maybe Katara could let herself be free of her own expectations of herself, of other's expectations of her to be some perfect, unshakeable force of good. It had felt more exhilarating than she could let herself admit. Was it still wrong? Yes. But maybe not so wrong that she should condemn herself for using her power for justice.

Zuko pressed his hands to his knees and stood before offering a hand to her. She took it, and when they touched, she felt the blood in his veins sing against her palm in such an uncanny way that she wasn't sure what power had caused it. A deep, dark, gnarled part of her wanted to bend the water in his body to press it against her, to feel his skin against hers again. Feel his hands that always ran hot trailing down her body, silencing her fears and doubts.

This was the part of herself that she truly feared, and would block out at all costs.

Oblivious to her twisted thoughts, Zuko studied her from beneath his shaggy dark locks of hair.

"Lets go swimming."

"Pardon?"

Zuko had stripped his black tunic and had begun to shake off his boots, "I want to go swimming. Try to stop me."

"It's the middle of the night- Zuko!"

He took off toward the water in the most uncharacteristically spontaneous manner she had ever seen. Her heart leapt despite herself; the idiot could drown. She shed her clothes before she could think too much about it until she was down to her under wraps and followed him into the water. The moon's power was still surging from her core, and as soon as her feet kicked off the ocean floor she felt so invigorated it took her breath away. She swished her hands, and the subtle motion was enough to cause a towering whirlpool strong enough to lift her body into the air. She closed her eyes and let herself and the ocean become one, arms moving in a serene dance as water rippled and took shape around her. She opened her eyes to find she had crafted a swirling sphere of water above the waves, several feet tall and wide, and she was floating suspended at its centre. She felt so at peace using the ocean as an outlet for the overflowing power of the moon enhancing her bending. Her anxiety and restlessness felt like it was being carried away by the tides.

She happened to look down and spotted Zuko, merely a blurry blob from inside her dome of water, treading water a safe distance away and gazing up at her. It dawned on her that this was his plan all along, running recklessly into the ocean so that she would follow him and expel her pent up energy by water bending. Her chest ached at that act of kindness. He had distracted her so much that her fear and self-loathing was dissipating.

His head bobbed beneath the surface and Katara tensed in fear, but he came back up a moment later, shaking his damp head of hair. She allowed the sphere of water carrying her to recede back into the ocean, gently enough so as not to accidentally douse the prince. Soon, she was treading water in front of him.

In his warm and impossibly understanding gaze, she felt like coming apart.

"Zuko... you should stay away from me tonight. What if I hurt you? I don't even know what I'm capable of right now, I might not even have full control over it, especially in the water-"

"Katara, I'm not afraid of you," he said. "We're going to find this man, and whatever we do to him is up to you. But I'm on your side now. If you want to hurt me, do it, but just know I'm never going to hurt you again."

She wondered if he knew the irony of that declaration after he had wounded her this morning by underplaying their night at the inn together.

"I-" she began.

She noticed a dark, curling mass rising from the depths of the water a split second before Zuko was pulled under.

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