.
Chapter 17: Legacy
Suki stood absolutely still, staring across the room.
It was a part of their warrior training, the stillness—stillness took complete discipline, and made it easier to concentrate on every last detail around her. To read the environment and, in every breath and nervous tick, the thoughts of her opponents.
"Why do you want the Fire Lord's mother?" Suki asked carefully.
The girl twitched with irritation, fist raised, flames still burning inches from Kiyi's left eye. "That's none of your business," she spat. "You bring her to me, unless you want this girl to have a scar worse than her brother."
Suki paused. "I'll get her," she promised. The girl was on edge, unstable, perhaps mentally as well as emotionally. The important thing now was to keep her calm. "She's probably out in the gardens now, she occasionally likes to go out at night. Just give me twenty minutes, and I'll bring her here."
The girl's nostrils flared. Her eyes darted furiously over the guards, seeking out anyone who might try something. She gripped the squirming Kiyi tighter, the fire knife flaring out until it was as long as Kiyi's head.
"Fifteen," she hissed. "You better run." She added, "And if you're thinking of pulling some clever trick, getting archers down here or something—don't. Even the Yuyan can't make an arrow fly faster than I can firebend."
Suki opened her mouth to reassure her again—but stopped. Just beyond where the girl stood by the foot of the bed, something moved in the shadows. A panel had come out from the wall, gripped by a hand in a black fingerless glove. The panel touched the floor without a sound, and a lean figure unfolded itself from the hole.
Suki forced her eyes back to the girl. "Of course not. Just—don't hurt her."
The fire dagger flared, then settled. "You bring her here. And you'll have nothing to—"
Mai struck from the shadows, silent and deadly. She hit the girl on the wrist, forcing her hand to open and release her grip on Kiyi's arm, with Mai's other hand shoving away the fire-dagger hand in a wide arc, away from Kiyi's face.
Not a moment too soon, as the fire-dagger blazed in a vicious, blinding column, scorching the far wall and floor, igniting one of Mai's long sleeves.
Snarling in fury, the girl raised a fist to punch toward Kiyi in vengeance—
Suki slammed into Kiyi full force, and they hit the ground together just as the flames roared above them. They skidded to a stop just behind the bed. Suki wrapped the girl in both arms, trying to shield her with her armored back as beside them the bed burst into flames.
Suki couldn't see what was happening from this angle, only the long flickering shadows along the wall, cast by the firelight, as the two grappled for the upper hand. One figure struck out at the other, and the other reacted, striking back. A clatter—one of Mai's knives falling to the floor. It spun just past the nearest bedpost, coming to a stop just beside where they lay.
Suki pushed herself to hands and knees, shifting into a protective crouch and unfurling her shield. Facing outward, now she could just see the soldiers all still clustered around the door, spears and fists raised, but unable to strike lest they hit Mai by accident. Mai was trying to back up, back out of range where she and her projectile weapons would be at their most effective, but the girl had a tight hold of one of her wrists, smoke rising as heat scorched through Mai's glove. Mai gritted her teeth.
Before Suki could make it back to her feet to join the fight, a flash of green flitted through the doorway. The girl spun, sending out a ring of furious orange flames, but the new figure only ducked, her brown braid whipping behind her, before she struck the girl in a quick series of jabs.
The girl's arms both went limp, and she gasped in fury and horror as she collapsed to the floor in a heap.
"No!" she hissed. "No, no no no…!"
Suki could no longer see her from this angle, but Ty Lee bent, and there was another dull thwok thwok like fingers striking pressure points, and the girl fell silent.
Ty Lee came around the bed to see Suki, still crouched, shield and one fan drawn. Ty Lee's white painted face seemed almost to glow with concern in the darkness.
"Are you okay?" she asked anxiously. "Is Kiyi—"
Suki shifted aside, turning to look down behind her.
Kiyi was already sitting up, eyes staring up at Suki with something strangely like accusation. "I coulda taken her!"
Suki couldn't help it, she laughed with relief. "Of course you could." A quick checkover told Suki that Kiyi was unharmed but for possibly a bruise or two, and she stood again, turning toward the burning bed. But before she could even ask, two of the palace firebenders had already entered the room, and with quick gestures of their hands, extinguished the flames. One also put out the fire still smoking at one of Mai's sleeves.
Smoke still billowed in the room, and Mai coughed, wincing slightly. She stepped over to the bedpost, bending to retrieve her knife that had fallen, before returning to stand over the fallen false guard.
"The last Kemurikage that we missed," Mai noted dully. "Azula must have sent her here alone."
"But what was she after?" Ty Lee wondered, coughing and waving at the smoke as Suki helped Kiyi to her feet. Suki blinked to see Ikem suddenly beside her, his arms around his daughter in a fierce hug.
"I coulda taken her," Kiyi said, though with less vehemence this time. Maybe she could feel his tears against the side of her face where he held her. She also didn't resist when he picked her, his hand to the back of her head, and strode with her toward the door, getting them out of the smoke.
Mai coughed again. She waited until Ikem and Kiyi were outside with the guards and out of earshot before her eyes met Suki's. "I heard what she asked for." As she stowed her knife away in her good sleeve, she added, "I never thought Zuko taking his mother with him to find Azula would be a stroke of luck."
"Maybe we can find out from her what Azula's plans are," Ty Lee suggested as the guards circled around the unconscious girl, binding her hands and feet. She would be taken to the dungeons for holding for now, Suki decided, but likely she would end up going back to the institution in the end, unbalanced as she was. It was both impressive and disturbing how far she had made it, but then, Azula's plans were always thorough.
Mai shrugged as they all started in the direction of the door, just as the firebending guards began work on clearing out the smoke. "She probably won't talk, but we can try."
Out in the hall, Mai and Ty Lee both left in separate directions, Mai to inform Interim Fire Lord Iroh of the event, Ty Lee to notify the other captains. Suki ordered the guards to escort Ikem and Kiyi to another room and remain there to guard them, but everyone else to simply return to their assigned patrols. Just because they had made it through one attack didn't mean there wouldn't be another, and they needed to remain extra vigilant. Even if Suki very much doubted Azula would mix her two gathered teams together, it was best to remain on guard.
However, as Liu and Hina left to accompany the girl down to the dungeons, Suki lingered back a moment. She leaned a hand against the wall beside the open door to Zuko's mother's room, just breathing the fresh air, her heart beating strangely in her chest. Her mind was only now just beginning to catch up with what could have happened. What almost did.
Her thoughts, once again, wandered back to Katara. Not like how it had been the past month—a kind of revolving cycle of guilt and disquiet and guilt again. Instead, she thought about if Katara had been in the room with them. What she would have done.
Suki had to laugh at herself. Because it was obvious—Katara would have done what Suki would have done, if Suki had, in that moment, had the power.
With the full moon soon to pass, Suki hoped Katara and the others might return soon. And then they could talk. Talk about everything that friends and sisters should talk about.
Suki stood up straight from the wall, and continued down the corridor after the guards, for the final watch of the night.
They glided quietly over the ground.
Zuko sat still as churning water trailed their frozen platform. His knees were cold against the ice, and he looked everywhere but at the person standing in front of him, as her hands circled in and out of his peripheral vision.
"Sorry," Katara said unexpectedly into the quiet. "About… you know. I would have asked you ahead of time, but there wasn't a chance."
Zuko blinked, briefly confused, before his eyes dropped. Feeling for a moment the sensation of his limbs losing control of themselves, of his body rising into the air. "It's… okay. I figured you had some kind of plan."
"Not a very good one," she murmured. "I almost got Sokka killed."
"But you didn't." Zuko hesitated, then added, "But if you… if you had made the exchange. Given me up for Sokka's life—I would have understood."
Katara let out a short breath almost like a laugh. "Turn the Fire Lord over to a bunch of angry fanatics. That would have been good for world peace." More seriously, she added, "I couldn't choose between two people I care about that way."
Before Zuko could reply, she continued earnestly, "I want you to know, Zuko, I didn't use it on you because I thought you would change your mind, or that you weren't sincere. I just needed an excuse to get closer. And…" Her hands slowed, voice barely audible over the soft murmur of the shifting water. "I wanted them to see I was serious. That I… would go as far as they would."
Zuko was quiet at that. In truth, in that moment, deep down he hadn't really felt afraid—not of Katara. He trusted her to do what she thought was the best thing to do, whether there was a plan, or whether that meant handing him over for now and saving him later. However, he couldn't quite find how to say it. Maybe because he was too busy trying to form the words of his own apology.
They had to be getting close now, and he scanned the terrain—he had seen the place once from the outside, on the brief early morning scouting trip they'd taken to find the best place for Toph and his mother to stay, and while they were inside the cave he had kept careful track of the direction of the air current to guess at where the entrance might lay, just in case. Finding it in the dark from the ground was a different matter, but he breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes finally caught upon a familiar formation.
"Here," he said softly. "It's right here."
The churning water slowed, bringing them to a stop. Zuko stood, stepping off the ice and onto stone, a moment before the platform dissolved. He squinted into the dark, scanning the edge of the formation. At the far end he picked out a dark spot, half concealed by a few dead brambles and jutting stone. He started toward it.
However, after only a few steps he noticed that Katara wasn't following, and he turned back to see her eyes had risen to gaze at the moon.
When she didn't move, he said at last cautiously, "Katara?"
She blinked. "Sorry." She stepped forward.
Zuko didn't immediately move. He wanted nothing more than to get going, to ensure his mother was all right. However, the guilt still churned. If he was going to apologize, and give her the chance to answer however he deserved, now was probably the time.
"It's okay," he said into the quiet.
She blinked, confused.
He winced. "I mean—I know it's all my fault. That you've had to use it so much, even though you didn't want to. I'm sorry. So—it's okay if you're angry. Uh, not that you need my permission—"
He gestured uselessly, before slumping in defeat. He had gotten better at apologies since becoming Fire Lord—something Azula probably wouldn't approve of—but somehow around his friends he didn't seem to ever improve. But maybe that was just as well. It was his indecisiveness that had put them all through this, Katara worst of all, and a part of him wanted to pay for his continued mistakes. Or maybe, now as Fire Lord, surrounded by people always careful and formal, he didn't want any more polite facades, not with his friends.
Katara considered him for a long moment, before she looked away. "I'm not angry."
"But—"
She shook her head. "Zuko—do you remember what we talked about? I mean when we were headed to the capital on Appa, to face Azula."
Zuko tried to recall. They had been quiet most of the way, mentally preparing themselves for the fight.
"You were worried about Aang," she said. "If he would do what he needed to do about Ozai." She looked away. "In a way, you were right to worry. Because he didn't kill Ozai."
Zuko wasn't entirely sure what she was driving at. "That's all in the past. It all worked out in the end."
"I know," she said. "But we all thought he was going to have to do it—we were pushing him to. But he found a different way, a way that felt more right to him."
She turned back to eye him over her shoulder, with a hint of a smile. "You're a lot like Aang, Zuko, more than you know. I know you change your mind on things, and that can cause problems—but that's because you're trying to do things the right way, the honorable way. Even when everyone else is telling you you're wrong. I don't want that to change about you, Zuko. Never."
Zuko tried to reply, but he couldn't, the words stuck in his throat. Coming from Katara, he doubted there could be any higher praise.
Katara hesitated, eyes drifting from his. Her hand rose, and the water which had collapsed in a giant puddle to the ground began to rise with her, circling in the air.
"But… when I faced Aang, tried to think of all the ways they could use this power to hurt him—I also realized something."
Her fingers moved, drawing out individual tendrils from the water ring one by one, like a sculptor crafting a piece of art. Then abruptly the water froze, a mass of ice, with a dozen jagged spikes jutting outward. She turned to face him.
"I don't know… if bloodbending is right or wrong. But I can't pretend it doesn't exist. I can't not use it, just for the sake of saying I'm doing things the right way. If I can protect someone I care about—no matter how much I hate it, I will always use it."
There was something eerie in the darkness, Katara's features lit only by the silver light of the full moon. The mist rising from the ice behind her.
Then she sighed, shoulders sinking, her hand coming to rest against the edge of the ice. The spikes immediately melted, reforming the water into a smooth disc. "That's what I was thinking during the fight. Even if it means people I care about seeing me this way, I can accept it, if it means I can help them. But, now I also wonder—if this is how I want to be remembered. Katara, the fighter. Katara, the bloodbender. Is that the legacy I want to leave? Is that what will help the people I love the most?"
Zuko gazed back at her, her face a strange mix of certainty and lingering confusion that he knew only too well. He knew the feeling—of struggling and struggling with a question, then finally feeling he had reached a conclusion, only to have it twisted around and raise a dozen more.
"I don't know what my legacy will be either," he said at last. "Maybe they'll eventually say I was a good Fire Lord, who brought honor back to the Fire Nation. Or maybe they'll always say I was weak. Either way… I guess we can only ever try our best."
Katara glanced at him again, watching him. Then she chuckled. "I can't tell if that was really wise or not."
Zuko rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. He always tried to think of something Uncle would say, but somehow his words of wisdom always came out sounding more like a fortune teller from a carnival town. "Me either."
Katara smiled a moment longer, before she sighed deeply. "I guess now I just need to figure out what I'm going to say to Aang."
Zuko recalled the kind of odd discomfort between them when he and Sokka had returned to the clearing, and the way they had barely spoken when Katara left. He felt his fingers slowly close into a fist. "He wouldn't—" Aang had been the one to push Katara into using bloodbending in the first place. This was one case where Aang wasn't in any position to sit in judgment over anyone.
Katara seemed to read his thoughts in his expression, and she put up a hand. "It's not what you think. Not that I would blame him if he was—kind of, maybe a little bit ashamed of me. He trusted I would never take it too far, and maybe that's exactly what I did." She raised her eyes up to the sky again, only this time she was gazing at the stars, rather than the moon. "But, if I know Aang, I think he's just worried about me. Because he knows, better than anyone—"
Her eyes dropped to meet his again, and they were soft with an understanding that seemed to reach all the way back to the lake clearing, where Aang and Sokka waited for them to return. She smiled ruefully. "Just how horrible it can feel to be scary."
Zuko considered that. And, after a moment, he smiled in return. She was probably right. And even if she wasn't—Aang was more forgiving than either of them.
Katara looked in the direction Zuko had been headed. "I guess we should get going." She approached the dark spot in the side of the rock formation, peering over brambles and a pile of loose stone. "You think this is it?"
Zuko couldn't be completely sure, but it was about the right place he would have expected. However, he found it odd the loose stone was spread as though it had been disturbed recently, the dead brambles half separated. He would have expected Toph to have ensured it was better concealed.
"I think it has to be," Zuko said cautiously. "I'm not seeing anywhere else."
Raising a palm, he set a ball of flame to light, then carefully stepped over the pile of stone. A light tremor of dust fell on his head as he passed through.
Katara hovered uncertainly outside a moment, the globe of water trailing in the air behind her. "Is it safe?" she asked. "The tunnel won't collapse, will it?"
"If this is the right place," Zuko said, "then Toph left this tunnel so my mother would have a way to get out in case something happened to her. Toph wouldn't have left it unstable. If it's not the right place…" He shrugged. "Well, then anything could happen."
Katara hesitated a moment longer before, grumbling that he was worse than Sokka, she carefully stepped over the stone pile after him, water trailing behind her.
They started forward, Katara following along close behind him in the light cast by his flame. Unlike many of the tunnels he and Toph had cursorily examined over the past week, there was no water here, not even a trickling stream, and he took that as a promising sign. When selecting the site, they had purposely avoided anywhere with water close by. When at last he felt the air change, and the tunnel opened out into a larger cavern, he raised the flame higher, flaring it up until the light touched the stone beyond.
He immediately recognized the familiar shape of the cavern, the precise pattern of the large boulders scattered over the floor, the uneven row of jagged stalactites above. This was it.
The cavern, while not enormous, was still too large for the light to fully illuminate, and he cupped his free hand to his mouth. "Toph! We're here. The fight's over."
There came no reply, only his own voice echoing back to him. Over, over, over…
He hesitated, uncertain. He waited a moment for the inevitable sarcastic reply, maybe even for the ground to suddenly shift beneath their feet as Toph transported them on over with unnecessary roughness. But nothing happened.
Zuko glanced back at Katara, and he saw his own worry reflected back at him in her eyes. Toph surely wouldn't play a practical joke now, of all times, and even if she would, his mother wouldn't go along with it.
"Toph?" he called again. "Mother?"
Katara stepped forward next, her hands still raised around her to keep the water in the air. "Toph? Lady Ursa? Are you here?"
This time a slight groan answered her, and as Zuko raised the flame higher in the darkness, he caught a flash of green.
Zuko pushed past Katara, racing forward, and dropped to his knees.
Toph lay sprawled on the stone, his mother's traveling cloak draped over her like a blanket. She groaned again.
"Katara!" he called, but he didn't need to as she was already there, kneeling beside him. She had frozen the water into another disc behind them, taking only a small sliver to encoat her hand. She brushed Toph's long bangs aside, pressing her hand to Toph's forehead, and the water glowed briefly.
Toph's eyelids flickered. Her eyes opened halfway, and she grunted, groggy.
"Toph," Zuko said urgently, leaning down. "What happened? Where's my mother?"
Toph pressed a hand to her head, groaning again. Then, as Zuko's words seemed to sink in, she came awake all at once, sitting bolt upright, cloak falling aside. She winced, putting a hand to her head, then refocused, placing a hand flat against the cavern floor. However, after a moment her hand closed in a frustrated fist. "She's not here. Where could she have gone?"
Zuko tried to maintain his calm, even as his heart began to pound. "What happened? What do you remember?"
Toph shook her head once. "I—don't know. She was talking—she had this box she was going to show me. Fancy perfume or something. And—can't remember anything after that."
"Do you think it was Azula?" Zuko pressed. "Could she have found you? Got the drop on you?"
"Don't see how. I'd have felt her coming. Or heard her at least, if she was doing some kind of fire-jet thing."
Zuko felt Katara's hand on his shoulder. "Zuko, I think… I think your mother must have done something. Azula wouldn't have stopped to give Toph your mother's cloak."
Zuko hesitated, relief warring with new dread. She was right, but—
"She wouldn't do that," he said quietly, swallowing the dryness in his throat. "My mother wouldn't do that to us. To me."
Katara didn't try to argue, instead she looked to Toph in the firelight. "Can you feel her anywhere around here?"
Toph frowned. "No, nowhere. There's ground that's been disturbed headed in two directions, I'd guess one is the two of you, the other's headed east, it might be her. But she's too far away to feel now."
Zuko took a slow, steadying breath. "Okay. I think we should—go ahead as though Azula's gotten to her, and is holding her prisoner. We find Azula, we might find her." Even if it wasn't true and his mother wasn't in any danger, better to assume the worse.
"Right," Katara said cautiously. "So what should we do? Should we go get Aang, or—?"
Zuko shook his head. "Aang still has to watch the waterbenders, and we don't have a minute to spare. Toph—do you think you can follow that trail?"
"It's faint," Toph said. "The ground's too hard to make footprints most places. But there's plenty of loose rock and dust—I can feel where some of it's been shifted around. Feels like it might be headed toward the lake, or south of the lake. It's a chance."
Zuko nodded. "We'll take it. How fast can you move us?"
Toph set her mouth in a grim slash. "Fast. Let's go."
As Toph climbed to her feet, and Katara and Zuko both moved to stand close while the earth rumbled and rose beneath them, Toph added, "Your mom's kind of scary, Zuko. Maybe we should have her join the team after all."
Zuko stared out into the cave ahead, shoulders tense—but at this, he couldn't help it. The corner of his mouth twitched in a reluctant smile.
Sokka's arm hurt.
Like, a lot. Like worse than the time he'd smacked himself in the face with a whalebone while trying to repair his canoe, and spent the next half day trying to stop the nosebleed. Like if someone took a couple mini-clubs and pounded at either side from the inside of his arm until it was a mass of pulpy goo—
In fairness, that last one was kind of what had happened.
Sokka sat by Appa, keeping one eye on the earth-imprisoned waterbenders, the other on his arm, where he had been rubbing salve from Katara's satchel for the past hour. Momo was curled up between Appa's forepaws, occasionally reaching up with a tiny paw to poke his giant friend, still woozy from the sedative.
"That looks kinda bad," Aang observed, from where he had been rubbing Appa's leg, eying the mass of black and blue.
"Thanks," Sokka grumbled. "I didn't notice."
He had retrieved his boomerang and stowed it well away, in the deepest part of his bag. He figured the two of them would make up later—they'd been through way too much to get hung up on details now. But for the present Sokka was still wallowing in the sting of betrayal.
However, as he rubbed a bit more salve into his wrist, wincing as he brushed a particularly sensitive patch, his eyes shifted back to Aang.
Aang was sitting at Appa's flank, curled up in on himself, a bit like that first time they'd asked him why he hadn't told them he was the Avatar.
Sokka wasn't always the best at picking up on subtleties when his friends were getting too much in their heads and needing a talk, but present circumstances made for a fairly decent clue.
"So," Sokka said conversationally.
Aang glanced back.
Sokka shrugged. "So, you asked me before if I thought bloodbending was evil. What do you think now?"
Aang hesitated, turning away again, hands folded over his knees as he stared out over the lake. "I don't know."
Sokka frowned. He opened his mouth—there was a lot he could say, about bloodbending being creepy, but about how without it they would be down one Fire Lord and Zuko would be off in some cave somewhere being strung up by crazy Azula minions who didn't know they were Azula minions.
However, Aang spoke first. "I'm not saying it was evil or wrong to use it," he said quickly. "I wanted Katara to use it, even against me, if it meant I could know I could help fight if I needed to. It's just…" He gazed up at the sky. "Will she be okay? How will she feel later… and later after that… Will she be okay?"
Sokka slowly closed his mouth, pondering that. And for a moment he found himself winding back to their travels in the Fire Nation. Back then he'd had a habit of staying up late into the night, just to watch over everyone, and make sure they didn't get eaten by a some slobbering Fire Nation ant-lion, and that first week or so after they'd stopped Hama, every night he'd see Katara wake up in the dead of night, shivering and crying. When he tried to talk to her later, she turned almost aggressively cheerful, the way she did when there was something she absolutely had no intention of talking about. He wondered if she would have nightmares again now, how long they would last.
Sokka couldn't deny that sometimes he'd wondered what it would be like to be a bender. He didn't dwell on it, there wasn't much point, but there was a part of him that wondered what it would be like to be able to throw snowbanks on people like Katara could, how much more he could contribute to the group. But, apparently there was a kind of balance to everything. Any weapons powerful enough to be a gift were also bound to be a curse.
Sighing, Sokka touched a bit of salve to his forearm again, grimacing.
A snort to his left made Sokka glance up. One of the imprisoned waterbenders was looking at them—actually, they all were.
"Traitor," the waterbender called. "You deserve that and worse."
Sokka scanned over the group. They were like a series of rock sculptures with heads, scattered artistically at various intervals.
"You know your friend out there is Princess Azula, right?" Sokka pointed out. "She's been using you."
"According to you and your sister," sneered one, spitting on the ground.
"You don't know the first thing about Amka!" piped up another, this one with wide eyes and mousy features.
The others all twisted their heads as far as they could to glare at him, and he wilted. "I mean…"
"So," Sokka said. "There is a girl then. About seventeen? Black hair? Gold eyes? Evil smile? Look, it's not your fault. Azula's tricked a lot smarter people than you."
One of them glared furiously, nostrils flaring, and he struggled against the stone binding. "You shut up!"
Aang climbed to his feet—possibly thinking he might be a better diplomat than Sokka.
"I'm sorry," he said, looking around at each of them in turn. "For everything you've gone through. We haven't made any decisions about where we'll take you now—but I think back to the North Pole will be for the best. At least then you'll be home."
"Is that a threat?" asked one, lip curled. "We cooperate, or you'll send us to some Fire Nation dungeon somewhere? We're not afraid of you."
"No—" Aang began, alarmed, one hand raised in peace. "No, I'm just saying—"
"You should have put the ashmakers in their place," hissed another. "That was your job as the Avatar."
"You didn't even kill the Fire Lord—"
"The Fire Lord now isn't your friend—"
"The world deserves justice—"
Aang pressed his hands to his head as though it were about to explode, fists clenched. "Okay!"
The ground rumbled under their feet, and they all fell silent.
Aang slumped, shoulders bent. "...Okay."
He slowly sat down on the ground again, folding his arms over his knees. The waterbenders continued to glare at them for a long moment, before they turned away again, going back to staring at the lake, as though imagining using it to start the fight back up again.
"Sorry," Sokka said, in an undertone too low for them to hear. "It'd be nice if talking solved more things."
"Yeah," Aang said with a sigh.
"And who knows?" Sokka added. "Maybe Katara and Zuko will get lucky, and find Azula along the way. They think we just think their friend is Azula, but if we could catch her and bring her here—well, maybe then they'd listen to us."
Aang leaned back against Appa's flank, tilting his eyes up to the sky. The moon was still high, but had begun its descent again, toward the mountains. "Yeah," he said, slowly.
Sokka dipped out more salve, though held back a moment. He wondered idly if the world would be a simpler place without bending. But, probably not. There would always be lies and backstabbing, revenge, wannabe tyrants. Bending was just one form of power, and without it, people would just find other forms of power. Even Ozai now probably wouldn't be so completely harmless if he somehow found his way out of prison, and whipped up some more supporters like Mai's dad.
"Hope they find her," Sokka said into the silence. "Finally get her locked up somewhere for good. This story is really starting to get old."
For a moment, his eyes drifted over the landscape, toward the remains of the campfire from supper earlier that evening, and in spite of the throb in his arm, an old, nearly forgotten memory flickered.
Dad, sitting in front of the campfire, Sokka across from him, biting into the half-burned fish he had insisted on cooking himself. Katara sitting in Mom's lap, as she lectured Sokka about how he should have let Dad cook it, until Sokka put down his stick to tell her that real men cooked their own fresh game for themselves, and could eat anything.
Dad watched them quietly with a slight smile, but he interrupted when the argument was just about to become a shouting match, sitting forward for nightly story time. Sokka couldn't remember all the stories now—but his favorite that night had been one about a hunter stalking a leopard-whale, coming back and saving the village from starving over the winter. All the usual stuff. However, that one had been different from usual. When the hunter was made chief of the village, Sokka and Katara both piped up as they usually did, "The end?"
Instead of answering that yes, that was the end and now it was time for bed, as normal, that night Dad got a glint in his eye. And instead he continued on, "Then the new chief faced a lean year. One of the other villages, desperate for food, attacked—the chief drove them off, but not before he lost an eye in the fighting. He did not take retribution, and instead negotiated peace, with that village and the other clans across the land. But the great hunter would never hunt again."
Slightly more subdued, Sokka and Katara chimed in again, "The end?" And Dad smiled, and just went on with another story about the chief, and another, until they were laughing and complaining that the story had to end sometime. Dad had just answered then that no story ever ended. Lives continued on, with both good and bad, and even when the hunter-chief eventually died, more stories of his family and others would always continue.
Sokka thought he had never felt the truth of his dad's old tale more than he did now. Ending the war with the Fire Nation was supposed to be the end of the story—everything at peace and nothing but fun and good food and happily ever after. But the story kept going, and not necessarily in a good way. It felt like things could still go wrong, that they could still lose everything they'd fought for. Not to Ozai, not in a big battle they'd spent their lives preparing for—but in something like this, to waterbenders who'd just been lied to. It could happen so quickly and unexpectedly that it felt almost mundane. Pointless.
Sokka shook himself. He touched his good hand to his throat. There was still so much he wanted to do. So much to get done. He would have to try harder to make sure it got done, with all the people he wanted to get it done with. Just in case the story still had more crazy bloodbenders and firebreathing princesses in store.
Sokka rubbed a bit more salve into the cut, wincing again as it stung.
"You think it's here?"
The three of them stood below a waterfall, pouring from the side of a rock wall. Around them rocky formations ran like giant craggy centipede-snakes, extending out in all directions.
"There's more than one entrance to the tunnels around here," Toph said. "But there's a rock here on this one that's been broken off recently." She pointed to the loose rock at the base, then to a jagged place partway up, which stood out against the mostly smooth, wind-worn stone.
"How would my mother have even gotten up there?" Zuko asked incredulously, eying the wall up and down. It wasn't too high, and there were gaps in the stone enough to provide handholds— but picturing his mother scaling it in the dark made his insides turn cold.
"She could do it," Katara said. "I could, if I was determined enough, and I had a light, even without my bending." She pointed to a few darker spots a little ways up. "And those look like scorch marks. Did you say you'd left her a torch?"
Zuko took a slow, steadying breath. "Okay," he said. "We'll try looking here." He glanced at Toph. "You still don't sense her in any of the tunnels or anywhere close?"
"No," Toph answered. "But there's a lot of water down there. If she's swimming I won't feel her. And if Azula's got her, she could be floating on an iceberg or something. You said one of the waterbenders got away, so she could be with them."
"Even if she was here and left, we might be able to find a clue," Katara added.
Toph formed two quick gestures with her hands, a flattened palm followed by a raised fist, and the ground beneath them immediately shot into the air like a punching fist.
The wind whipped through Zuko's hair, ruffling his clothing, and in an instant they stood level with the waterfall mouth. They each stepped off the stone platform, onto a small ledge. Beside the mouth of the waterfall extended a narrow stoney path, and they all followed it single-file into the tunnel beyond. Zuko, who had briefly put out his flame next to the water, lit it again, raising his hand high.
"Look there." Katara pointed down at the ground just ahead of them.
Two pathways split ahead of them, one ascending, the other descending. Water rushed down from the ascending tunnel, feeding the waterfall, while along the stream of the descending tunnel a narrow stone pathway wound downward. Next to the wall, covered in moss in spite of the sparse vegetation outside, was a dribbling trail of water along the stone, as though something large and wet had recently traversed it.
"I think she was here," Katara said, glancing up from trail.
Zuko nodded grimly. "Let's go."
Once again Toph summoned a platform of earth, and soon they were hurtling down the tunnel. Zuko's heart was beginning to pound—what would they find? Perhaps just his mother, wandering hopelessly through the tunnel, looking up sheepishly when she saw him approach, knowing how in trouble she would be. However, he couldn't push away the sense that, of all the tunnels his mother could have chosen to try looking for Azula, she couldn't have picked a better one. The entrance, so far above the ground, was hardly obvious or easy to find, and of course the waterbenders wouldn't have any trouble navigating it. The only oddity was that it didn't appear to be a maze, just a single, winding tunnel—but then, maybe Azula planned for him to find her. She was, after all, doing all this for him, so she said.
Toph churned through standing puddles of water, until suddenly Katara called out, and Toph raised a fist to bring them to a halt.
"There," Katara said, pointing.
Zuko squinted out ahead of them. And he saw it too—the white tip of a small, bender-made icefloe on the water far ahead, half melted and turned over on one side. It stood out starkly in the still water, unmoving.
Fists raised in readiness, Zuko stepped off the platform and started forward carefully to get a better look, eyes scanning for any sign of Azula or his mother. As he reached the edge of the water, his eyes fell briefly to scan the ground, and for the first time he noticed a scorch mark there. Keeping one hand raised for firelight, he crouched down and brushed the stone lightly, the black ash coming away on his fingers.
Before he could say anything, Toph said suddenly, "What's that?"
Zuko lifted his head to follow the direction she was indicating, to see that Katara had already started that way. It was near the edge where the water began, at the very corner next to the wall, where the moss was thickest. Zuko thought he could make out a dark object outlined there, just sitting on the ground.
"It's… a doll, I think," Katara began slowly, reaching for it. "Oh, how awful, it looks like it's been—"
Her head shifted slightly, her eyes rising to the moss on the wall—and she froze.
Zuko slowly climbed to his feet. Something was beating in his ears—a distant throb, a pain he could see coming, but couldn't stop. He started to approach. "Katara. What—"
Katara half turned back to him, and her expression made his insides freeze. Her face was an ashen gray, all color gone, her eyes wide.
When she found her voice at last, it cracked. "Zuko—you shouldn't—don't look—"
But Zuko was already rushing forward, legs half stumbling. Blindly he found himself pushing Katara aside, as she watched him with tears already forming in her eyes. He looked down.
The object Katara had seen was familiar—he recognized the doll Kiyi never went anywhere without. Giving it to Mother to hold onto while she was gone was just the sort of thing Kiyi would do. It had been pinned to the ground with a Water Tribe bone knife, pierced through the stomach. Zuko found himself reaching forward, and as he delicately lifted its small head, he saw the entire left side was charred black.
Numbly, Zuko raised his eyes, and only then did he see what Katara had seen—a message, carved into the moss.
My dearest brother,
Our mother is no longer of this world. I have at last freed you from your weakness. I go north—come find me. And let me see your strength.
Most sincerely yours, your sister and advisor,
Azula
Zuko stared at the words. For a moment his eyes wandered, and found instead a blank patch of stone nearby, where perhaps the moss had not been able to grow. As though if he didn't look at them, didn't see them, it would make it untrue. Just more of Azula's lies.
"What is it?" Toph asked. Her voice was, for once, low and subdued. She must have felt in his chest the uneven beat of his heart. Slow, then faster, faster and faster, until he thought it might, in jagged pieces, tear itself from his chest.
"Zuko," Katara whispered. "What… what do you want to do?"
Zuko slowly reached down, pulling the knife from the stone, then carefully raised the damaged doll. He held it in his hand, staring down at the half blackened face. He squeezed it briefly, then stowed it inside his robe.
In a cold, burning rasp, he said, "We go north."
A/N: The editing on this chapter was brutal for some reason, though maybe that can be said for a lot of chapters. (Also, so many emotions.)
Next chapter should be coming out early next week. Hope to see you there!
Posted 8/25/23