WhIP

by footfungus

nederlands verhalen over mijn otp

69. SOUTHERN LIGHTS ZUTARA 2

But then his voice echoes in promise - say the word, I'll show you anything you want - and even breathing becomes difficult next to the way her skin flushes red-hot and her chest twinges in impatience.

"Pretty, isn't it?"

Aang's voice snaps her out of her daze. His gait is steadier as he draws up next to her, but his breathing remains heavy with effort.

"What is?"

"The moon." Aang nods at the bright orb peeking through the hazy dim sky. "It's full."

"Almost," Katara allows. They don't talk about the sheer number of ships sailing alongside them to muster at the capital, but the looming promise of more violence lingers unsaid, hanging over them like a dark cloud. Instead, she smiles wanly. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay. Better than Toph, at least."

"Yeah. At least you can walk," Ty Lee interrupts, sliding in beside him. "It's okay though. We should be making landfall by tomorrow."

"That's great!" Aang brightens. "You must be excited to be going home after so long."

"Excited. Sure," Ty Lee mutters sullenly, slumping over the deck railing.

"Have you heard from Suki yet?" Katara chances awkwardly as the uncharacteristic silence drags out.

But Ty Lee shakes her head wordlessly and continues staring blankly into the horizon.

Must be something in the air. Katara worries at her lip. Looks like it's gotten into everyone.

She doesn't hear the approach of a nearby naval officer until he clears his throat behind her.

"Master Katara," he says, startling her. "A messenger hawk arrived with a letter for you."

He holds out a scroll.

She nods her thanks and takes it, heart plummeting when she sees that the seal isn't of red wax, but green and inscribed with a flower.

"What's that?" Ty Lee asks as Katara unrolls her letter with shaking fingers. She squints at the slanted handwriting in the faint moonlight.

Katara –

I'm going to start by saying you sent me on some chase.

"It's from Jun!" she exclaims, abruptly forgetting her disappointment. For the first time in ages, something other than vague dread clenches at her stomach.

"It's about your brother, isn't it?" Aang asks in a low voice, instantly alert.

Katara nods, throat clamped too tight to speak properly.

"Brother?" Ty Lee echoes, confused. "You have a brother? I didn't know that."

Katara turns away from the both of them, too preoccupied to answer. Aang's measured voice answering the question for her and Ty Lee's gasps of response fade into the sound of the sea as she focuses on reading.

The scent off your brother's boomerang led me just about everywhere in the world, so thank you for that.

It started in the South Pole, obviously. There was no sign of him there, but there were others…

"What brings you to our shores on this summer day, stranger?"

Two men – sentries, perhaps guards – flank the road ahead imposingly. One is young and straight-backed; the other grizzled and lean. Both have the tell-tale brown skin and long dark hair of Water Tribe people.

Jun shifts where she sits astride Nyla. "I don't mean any trouble. My name is Jun, and this is Nyla. We're tracking someone, for a friend of ours. This is where his scent starts."

The South Pole is far bigger than Jun could have imagined, vast and wild and rugged. But instead of the dark, desolated husk of civilization that she had prepared to find, the air is milder than expected and the sun shines cheerfully bright. Patches of brownish green peek through the white as small scrubs of plant rear up bravely. In the distance, smoke rises from a small village.

The younger man frowns. "Nobody has lived here in quite some time." He plants the blunt end of his whale-tooth spear defiantly into the ground.

Its sharpened edge gleams warningly in the daylight.

"I figured," Jun replies cautiously. "But you seem to live here now."

The young sentry exchanges a glance with his companion.

"We came back a couple of years ago, at the close of the polar wars," the young one explains. "With what was left of our people, whoever we could find." He lowers his head, the beads in his braids clacking gently with the motion. "There weren't many of us left to rebuild our home."

"They separated us from each other," says the older man in a rasping voice. His light blue eyes blaze with an anger Jun cannot begin to fathom. "Men from women. Parents from children. Benders from everyone else. We were scattered across the length of the Empire, cut off from our pack and our home. But our roots in this land go far deeper than any fire can easily erase. And so we wait, for the rest of our people to come home." He crosses his thin arms. "Who sent you here in search of one of our own?"

The younger man is brawnier and stronger, but Jun senses that the older man, though raw-boned and weathered, is far more dangerous. Carefully, she pulls the boomerang out from her belt. "A master waterbender by the name of Katara. She gave me this, to help find her brother –"

"Sokka," chokes the older man, his eyes widening in shock as he stares at the worn curving metal, and then back at her. "You mean – they're alive?"

Jun frowns as she nods.

"Thank the spirits!" the older man cries, clutching at his chest. "Hakoda's children – brave Sokka and…and little Katara! A master waterbender, you said?"

Jun nods. "The strongest waterbender in the Fire Empire's army. Who are you?"

"I am Bato. Hakoda was a dear friend. I loved his children as though they were my own."

The younger man's brow furrows darkly. "Why would Hakoda's daughter fight for the Empire?"

Jun shrugs again. "I imagine she didn't exactly get a say in the matter."

"The pale stranger is right, Akiak," Bato says, stroking his jaw in thought. "The last waterbender of the south…and she is trapped in the heart of the Empire beyond our reach. What a tragedy."

"The last waterbender?" Jun asks sharply. "Surely there are others here."

The younger man, Akiak, shakes his head. "If there were, our cities would be rebuilt by now. Southern waterbenders were the most powerful in the world when the wars started. But they were all rounded up and now –" his voice breaks, "now, there isn't a single one left."

"Are you sure about that?" Jun asks, raising an eyebrow. "After all, you thought Katara and her brother were dead too –"

"Empire records clearly show that all of our waterbenders were sent to a maximum-security prison, in the heart of their biggest volcano. When the wars ended, they were released along with the rest of us." Akiak swallows bitterly. "Except there was nothing to release. Nobody could have survived that."

"Katara was only a child when they took her," Bato whispers falteringly. "Had they known she could bend, she would have faced the same fate."

Jun swallows uncomfortably. Her grip around the boomerang tightens. "So you haven't seen either of them since?"

"Spirits, no." Bato shakes his head despairingly. "Sokka and Katara were lost to the Empire without a trace, like so many of our children. The paper trail ended the moment they got off their boat. We…we don't even know where they were sent next."

"You're in luck. I don't need a paper trail," Jun tells him. She holds the boomerang back to Nyla's nostrils, until the shirshu begins to growl again. "When I find him…I'll tell them that you're here. I'll tell them both."

Bato clasps her hand, and she is surprised by the strength in his wiry grip. "A blessing for your travels, friend. Give both of them my love when you find them again."

From then on, it was easy enough to follow the scent up the shipping routes past Whale Tail island, all the way to the old colonial school in New Ozai. Creepy place, by the way.

After that, things got a little confusing. I think that school was cursed...

"...from the Southern Water Tribe, you said?"

"We had a lot of Water Tribe kids passing through here during the wars—"

"—couldn't possibly remember them all by name..."

Her biggest lead ends up coming from a goofy-looking nomad wearing far too many flowers around his neck. "Skinny kid? Boomerang, you said? Yeah, we smuggled someone like that out of the city, through the secret tunnel under the mountain. He was awful grumpy, wasn't he, Lily? What was his name again?"

"Fire," supplies the nomad's equally floofy wife. "Wang Fire. He kept yelling the whole way, nearly got us attacked by the Rough Rhinos, remember?"

"Oh yeah…He was a rude one for sure. Weren't we glad to drop him off at the outpost by the swamp?"

"We sure were, Chong."

...I know. Even if you weren't the best bounty hunter in the Empire, you'd still think the name "Wang Fire" was just a figment of an overindulgent hippie's addled imagination.

But it was the most solid lead I got outside of New Ozai...and it led me straight into a swamp. I don't know if you've ever been there, but I wouldn't rush back. Weird place, weird animals, and even weirder locals, if that was even possible…

"You wouldn't happen to remember a skinny Water Tribe kid with a boomerang, would you?" Jun asks wearily as a catgator snaps at Nyla's heels. "Late teens, grumpy, might have been sporting a really ridiculous alias?"

The two grubby, nearly naked men glance shiftily at each other.

"Hey Tho? You thinking what I'm thinking?" the tall underfed one remarks, dropping his arms from their strange stance. "The kid with the funny name?"

"Yeah Due. Poor old Wang Fire," the one called Tho answers. Squat and stout, he seemed by far the more intelligent of the duo. "Thought he was gonna hack down half the swamp, the way he was carrying on. Took old Huu a good talking-to for him to calm down."

Jun frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Well he got dropped off here to catch a boat north. Except he kept yelling, something he left back in the city. Got violent when we didn't let him go back," Tho replies. He gestures at the swamp around them, an unending tangle of dank vegetation and pools of still green water. "This place don't attract a whole lot of outside folk, especially not them firebending types. Perfect for hiding the Water Tribe kids, but don't mean it's foolproof."

"I can see that. Not exactly the most cheerful place, this."

"It's more than that," Due interjects. "The swamp shows you things too."

"Shows you things?" Jun repeats, glancing around. Flashes of light catch at snarls of vines and stumps, unsettlingly resembling ghostly apparitions in the corner of her eye. "It's...it's just a trick of the light, that's all."

"To some," Tho insists, as though that explained anything at all. "And to others, they see things. Things that were, are, will be. Might be."

"You mean they hallucinate," Jun fills in sceptically. But her fingers tighten around Nyla's harness all the same.

"Who'm I to say? But take young Wang – whatever he saw here sure didn't sit pretty with him."

"Is that why he tried to hack the swamp down?"

"Now you're catching on!" Due flashes her a gap-toothed smile. "But the swamp don't take that lying down, see. It pushes back. Poor Wang kept seeing things 'till he thought he was clear outta his mind."

"Then what? Did he end up going back to New Ozai?"

Tho shakes his head. "Naw. He saw something, stopped his raving. Then old Huu got through to him and he changed his mind. Went north like all the other kids."

"Was it because he stopped hallucinating?" Jun mutters sardonically.

But Tho shakes his head again. "He kept having visions right till he left. Dunno if he started seeing anything different, or just got used to it."

"Whatever it was," Due finishes with a shrug, "he was calm as a possum chicken when he left."

After that, the trail went north, just as the swamp people said. The scent led us right to the heart of the Northern Water Tribe – but the people there seemed to tell a story that was a little more complicated...

"Sokka? You mean Hakoda's son? Why would a bounty hunter from the Empire come seeking him out?"

Unlike its sister tribe to the south, the Northern Water Tribe is bone-chillingly cold and dark as night. Which Jun thinks could also describe her reception by the two stern-faced Northerners seated at the table before her.

"I know his sister," she explains again, fighting to keep her teeth from chattering. "They were separated in New Ozai. She's looking for him."

The chieftain, a striking middle-aged man with crowraven-dark hair, shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "His sister... Katara, you mean."

"That's the one."

The other, a square-jawed man so young he might as well be a teenager, snorts loudly. "Are we supposed to take you at your word, stranger? How do we know that you're not a spy for the Empire come to track down its belligerents?"

"Well, I could always go fetch Katara and come back. As a master waterbender, you might find her more persuasive."

The teenage boy with the punchable face frowns. "A healer, you mean. Women can't be master waterbenders."

Jun arches an eyebrow, wondering what Katara would make of that if she was around to hear it.

"The Southern tribe did do things differently from us, Hahn," the chieftain interjects. "As my future son-in-law and successor, you would do well to remember that."

"Forgive me, Chief Arnook, but I find this stranger's allegations troubling," the younger man, Hahn, insists. "Not only does she barge into our land uninvited, she has the audacity to suggest that we might have harboured a known Empire fugitive at a time when its new rulers are itching to stamp out any whiff of treachery! They just cut ties with the Earth colonies - let us not give them a reason to turn their gaze north!" He pauses, eyes narrowing suspiciously. "And she did this all while blatantly disrespecting our tribe's cultural traditions as well."

"I'm sure she meant no disrespect –"

"Well, we have nothing to tell you," Hahn answers firmly, getting to his feet abruptly. "The man you're looking for was never here, so you'd best be on your way."

Jun stares at him disbelievingly. "My shirshu tracked his scent here. That means Sokka must have been here at some point."

"Well, he wasn't. Your beast must be mistaken."

"Nyla doesn't make mistakes," Jun insists. "If she led me here, it's because Sokka was here."

"I am to be the next Chieftain of the Northern Water Tribe. Are you calling me a liar?"

Hahn's voice rises threateningly. Out of the corner of her eye, Jun sees the guards at the door stirring to attention.

Sensing that this visit was quickly going south, she steps back disarmingly. "Not a liar. Forgetful, maybe. I'll just...see myself out."

"Yue!" Hahn barks, snapping his fingers. Chief Arnook glowers at him, but says nothing.

Jun half-expects a polar bear dog to come bounding into the room at Hahn's command. Instead, a tiny woman enters, her brilliant white hair barely visible over bundles of parka and thick fur. "Yes, Hahn?"

"Escort this stranger and her beast to the harbour, and see them off," Hahn orders. "They are no longer welcome here."

The woman called Yue bows obediently, before beckoning to Jun with a heavy blue sleeve.

Jun bites back the cutting retort swelling in her mouth, and follows her escort out of the chieftain's audience room. Her back stiffens on high alert as the guards flanking the doorway close in around them.

But to her surprise, Yue waves them off. "It's just to the harbour and back. I'll be fine."

"Princess Yue, this stranger and her beast could be dangerous," one of them protests. "We are sworn to protect you –"

"I said I'll be fine." An edge enters Yue's gentle voice. "Or should I tell my father that you doubt the word of your princess?"

The guard wavers before sighing and falling back to their positions by the door.

"Come," Yue says to Jun, before leading her away.

Mildly impressed, Jun falls in step behind her.

The glittering hallways of the chieftain's ice palace open up wide and dizzyingly high around her. Instead of flame lanterns, glowing stones set in sconces illuminate the space in unearthly tinges of green and purple. Pairs of guards stud the length at regular intervals, silently watching. Apart from the groan of polar wind outside, the palace is unusually quiet, as though the ice walls muffle all sound.

Yue turns a corner and leads Jun down a smaller corridor, away from the main hallway leading to the grand entrance.

"Aren't we going the wrong way?" Jun asks, shivering.

"It's a shortcut," Yue answers primly. But Jun notices at once that there are fewer guards to mark their progress, and her curiosity flares.

"That Hahn is a piece of work," she tries to probe casually.

Yue sighs. "He is my betrothed. We are to be wed at the turn of the season, when winter ends."

Ouch. Jun winces. "I'm sorry." As Yue stops and stares at her inquisitively, she rushes to correct. "I mean, I'm sorry as in I didn't mean to offend, not – not the way it sounded..."

"It's all right," Yue says as Jun trails off awkwardly. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. None of this was supposed to happen."

"What do you mean?"

But Yue shakes her head and leads her down yet another winding corridor, more dark and cramped and desolate than the ones before. The abrupt lack of light hurts Jun's eyes, but Yue presses on, her white hair almost like a beacon in the dimness. The silence grows louder, drawing attention to the lack of guards and prying eyes surrounding them.

At last, Yue stops in her tracks. "He's lying," she says flatly. She turns around, and in the light of a single glowing stone, her vivid blue eyes are curiously striking. "Sokka did come here. He stayed with us for a while...and then he left. We haven't seen or heard from him since."

Jun stares at her. "Why would Hahn lie about that?"

"It's complicated," Yue explains bitterly. She touches her neck with a mittened hand. "According to our laws, only a son can rule. My father doesn't have an heir. He needed Hahn to secure the future of our family and maintain stability in our tribe." Her voice warbles, and the air mists into thick clouds with every one of her words. "So he promised him my hand in marriage. After he sent Sokka away."

"Of course he did," Jun groans, rubbing her forehead. "And now he's ashamed."

Yue shakes her head. "You don't understand. When Sokka first came here, he was welcomed the way he should have been. The son of late Chief Hakoda? That was a legacy even Hahn's family couldn't touch. And on top of that, he was so smart and funny and – and everyone liked him. It was impossible not to…"

She trails off and clears her throat. Jun raises her eyebrows, not for the first time doubting the possibility that this guy and Lee could be the same person.

"But Sokka had been touched by the wars in a way none of us had. And when he came here and found us still thriving, he...he thought a lot of things," Yue continues, collecting herself. "But he was convinced that we should help fight back against the Empire. Join the resistance that had helped him escape to us, add our warriors to their numbers, take back our lands. He persuaded a lot of people that it was the right thing to do."

"Not your father, though."

"Even my father. But as chieftain, his duty was to his tribe first. He couldn't risk dragging us into a fight we couldn't win based on the word of one person alone. That would have set off a lot of people. Influential, prickly people." Yue's mittened hand clutches at the fur collar of her parka. "So my father sent Sokka away on a mission. To find out more about this resistance, to show that they could actually have a chance to win. If Sokka could prove that, then we'd join his fight. That was the deal they made."

Jun's eyebrows rise to her hairline. "He went back south looking for the resistance?"

"Yes," Yue whispers. "He was supposed to come back. But he never did. He never wrote, not even to me and – I don't even know if he's alive or dead."

"And once he vanished, your dad kissed goodbye to the notion of your tribe joining the fight against the Empire," Jun finishes for her, the wheels in her head swiftly turning. "How long ago was this?"

"Nearly three years ago," Yue answers. "Three years without a sign, until you came to our shores this morning looking for him. Sent by his sister, a master waterbender of the south. My father and the others must fear that others will follow, that they will have to answer to our sister tribe for what we let happen."

Jun whistles through her teeth, trying to piece it together. How many years have I known Lee for? It can't be more than three. Do I even know where he came from before that?

"Tell Katara that I'm sorry," Yue continues haltingly. "I'm sorry I didn't go with him, that I didn't do more…"

Jun watches her and for the first time notices just how young Yue appears, and how helpless. Sympathy strangely surges through her.

"I don't know how to break this to you," Jun says cautiously, scanning the surroundings for any prying ears. "But I think he may still be alive..."

The princess turned out to be right. Your brother's trail doubled back south from the North Pole, all the way back to Ba Sing Se. This time, it wasn't so difficult to follow. It appears he had no great talent for remaining inconspicuous…

"I'm tracking a young man from the Southern Water Tribe, he would have passed this way..."

"Last known to be traveling south..."

"Skinny kid with a boomerang, does that ring any bells?"

Jun first runs into luck at a mechanist's workshop at the base of the Northern Air Temple mountains.

"Oh, you must be talking about Wang Fire! He stayed here for nearly a week," exclaims the balding man behind the counter. He rummages through his shelves, before pulling out a stack of yellowing papers. "Such a brilliant mind, helped me pin down a gas leak a couple of years ago. He left these behind for me to complete."

Jun stares at the recognizably haphazard drawings and sighs. "What on earth are these?"

"You know, it took me a while to decipher them," the mechanist confesses, scratching his head. "But, they turned out to be blueprints!"

"Blueprints," Jun echoes quizzically.

"Yes!" Behind his glasses, the mechanist's eyes gleam excitedly. "Blueprints for ingenious new inventions! I spent the better part of a year perfecting them." His face falls. "But he never came back to collect. I've been hiding them in my basement for months, praying that the Empire soldiers don't stop by for a visit and find them. Otherwise..." He gulps nervously.

"Fire?" asks a brawny shopkeeper in a shabby coal-mining village. "Wasn't he that Water Tribe ruffian who ran off with Haru that one time?"

"How could you forget that name, Tyro!" the shopkeeper's wife bristles, pausing from her cleaning to brandish her feather-duster. "They disappeared for two weeks! Do you have any idea what we went through when the Dai Li found out?"

"The Dai Li?" Jun wrinkles her brow. "What did they have to do with your son's disappearance?"

"They maintain order here," the shopkeeper, Tyro, replies steadily. "Their methods are...stern, but better them than those brutes from the Fire Nation. My son, Haru, is still young and hotheaded. He...got it into his head that he wanted to join the resistance." He averts his gaze, murmuring almost inaudibly, "As though anyone could be mad enough to stand up to the Empire after what they did to old King Bumi in Omashu…"

"But the Dai Li just did! And if you ask me, it was about time, too!" his wife interjects.

"About time for what? They lost, and now Ozai and his traitor son won't stop until the rest of us suffer the same fate!"

Jun clears her throat, trying to steer the conversation back on track. "The resistance? I thought that was an old wives' tale," she prompts.

Both Tyro and his wife flinch before exchanging a look that could only be described as meaningful. Then, Tyro makes his way to close the storefront windows while his wife resumes her dusting a little too stiffly.

"That is what we told Haru," Tyro answers quietly, turning away from the windows and glancing surreptitiously around his empty shop, as though making sure he remained out of earshot. "He listened to us for a time. But when Mr. Fire turned up in our village seeking out the resistance, that was it for him. They ran off in search of it. As my wife said, they were gone for quite some time. It landed us in a heap of trouble. The Dai Li do not like troublemakers." The man's lip curls grimly.

"Interesting," Jun mutters, drumming her fingers against the wooden wall. "And where is your son now? Did he come back?"

The shopkeeper's wife drops her feather duster. It flutters to the ground without a sound.

"For a time," Tyro heaves out with a rumbling sigh. "But his sudden reappearance did not go unnoticed either. He was given a choice – submit to questioning or join the Empire's army." He pauses sadly. "He chose questioning."

"They took him to Ba Sing Se over a year ago," his wife says in a hollow voice. "He writes every now and then, says they're still processing him, whatever that means…"

"And this Wang Fire guy?" Jun asks. "Did he get nabbed for questioning too?"

Tyro's face darkens. "I have no idea. He and Haru parted ways long before our son returned home. Perhaps he ran into the Dai Li elsewhere, perhaps he is still causing trouble for other innocent children. As far as we're concerned, he simply vanished into thin air."

We followed the trail right up until where it ended. But that old shopkeeper might have been onto something because, well…

"Here again?" Jun seethes through gritted teeth. "Is there a party going on down there or something?"

She holds the boomerang to Nyla's snout resolutely, waiting for the shirshu to latch onto any lingering scent that might remain.

But Nyla paces back and forth stubbornly in place, going no further. Her meaning is clear.

This is it. This is where the scent ends.

Scowling, Jun slides off Nyla's back and walks along the shore of the lake at the edge of the walls of Ba Sing Se. Barely a ripple disturbs the water, dark, still, and quiet as a grave.

"What do you think, Nyla? Did he drown in there, maybe?" Jun remarks, rubbing at her chin in thought. "But even if he drowned, there would still be a body for you to find. Not just...nothingness. I don't know, it's a real head-scratcher."

Now it is Jun's turn to pace as she runs through it all in her head, trying to stitch everything together.

"He was here, Nyla. We know he came to the city looking for the resistance. We don't know if he ever found them." Jun stops in her tracks, struck by a sudden thought. "But we do know someone else who tried to rebel against the Empire before disappearing without a trace too…"

Nyla lets out a high-pitched whine and slumps back on her haunches.

"Right. The same thing happened when we were tracking down Jet and his freedom fighters using that knife." Jun sighs in exasperation, shaking her head. "What is it about Grandpa and his friends that always get us into the weirdest messes?"

And why does it always lead us back here? To this spot?

"Jet's scent vanished here too. But he was dead, all the way at the ass end of the Fire Nation." Jun's frown deepens. "Why couldn't you find his body, Nyla?"

And could the same thing that happened to Jet here, also have happened to Katara's brother?

"I know!" Jun exclaims, fumbling at her belt until she digs out the crumpled old letter with its crudely drawn map. "Here. Sniff this! If they're the same person, the trail's got to pick up again."

The shirshu inhales sharply a few times, growling deep in her throat. She leaps to her feet, and for a fleeting second Jun's hopes rise too.

But they shatter almost as quickly as Nyla halts at the water's edge, hissing at the silent depths far below the sinister calm of its surface.

I'll be honest, Katara. Something's up and I don't like it. It used to be the Dai Li who were near impossible for us to track. But now, it's as though the lake swallowed up all trace of your brother. Him and Lee both.

I don't know what to say or how to explain it. If he had died, there would at least be a body – whatever small comfort that would be. But I'm sorry to say all I found were more questions.

One way or another, I'm not quitting on you now. I've still got a debt to pay, so don't worry. Even if I can't get a scent off Lee's map, I know how to find him. It might take a while but hang in there. I'm going to get to the bottom of this and I'm going to bring him back to you.

Jun

The scroll crumples in Katara's tense grip and her lungs seem to follow. The entire cavity of her chest caves with every word leaping off the page in her dismay.

But then Aang's hand rests on her shoulder, a gesture of comfort. "It'll be okay, Katara. Jun will find him. You just have to be patient."

I'm tired of being patient, Katara nearly snaps. But the one person she could bear admitting that to is absent, returned home without another word.

For a moment, she desperately wishes he hadn't returned home, that it was him standing with her instead.

Then she crushes the letter vehemently into her belt. "I've managed this long. I...I suppose I can wait a little longer."

"That's the spirit." Aang smiles warmly at her. Katara tries to return one of her own but it feels tight on her face like an ill-fitting mask.

In the distance, dawn brushes the horizon with its faint hopeful glow.

And the volcanic isle of the Fire Nation capital rises in silhouette against it, growing larger with each passing moment as their ship bears them ever closer.

Suki steps onto firm dry land for the first time in what feels like days.

She inhales deeply and the air smells like home. Salty, fishy, heavy with humidity from the surrounding sea. Home. I'm home.

A growl rumbles around her and then a thump fills the air.

"My, my. Buri's exhausted," Master Iio says delicately as she lands soundlessly onto the ground. "Let me at least see you off before we get moving again."

They glance at the sky bison collapsed and spread-eagled behind them. It groans and rolls over onto its back, chest heaving in exertion.

Master Piandao adjusts the pack slung over his shoulder. "Let's go then."

Both of them gaze expectantly at Suki. Sighing and feeling slightly awkward, she leads the way inland.

It's nice to be back, she muses as they crest one of the large hills surrounding her village. But it would've been nicer to come back with the girls, instead of some random old people.

In fact, it isn't until Piandao clears his throat as they descend, that Suki notices anything amiss.

"It's awfully quiet," he remarks, and at once Suki's ears attune to all the sounds in the air. Wind moving through bare branches. Birds calling to each other in flight. The deep groan of the sea, waves crashing and foaming in the distance – "Shouldn't we have run into someone by now? You don't think they ran into trouble, do you?"

"Unlikely," Iio comments, but she too raises her hands warily. "We saw no ships in the area that could mount a sizeable threat to the warriors on this island."

"Since when have earthbenders needed ships, Iio?" Piandao returns, his voice low.

"Earthbenders?" Suki asks sharply. "Why on earth would Kyoshi Island face a threat from earthbenders? It's the Fire Empire that's the real threat! Or have you not been paying attention to everything that's been going on since the Sun Warriors attack?"

"You think this all started after the Sun Warriors attack?" Piandao lets out a laugh, shaking his head. "Oh, we've been watching long before then."

"Piandao," Master Iio warns.

"Who's we?" Suki asks suspiciously.

"Some very old friends," Piandao answers cryptically, running a hand along the hilt of his sword. "Old enough to withstand the boundaries drawn by the Empire and its conquests."

"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you," Iio grits out. "Not every conquest was without bloodshed. And the oldest friends have the longest memories."

"Perhaps," Piandao concedes. "But change is in the air. Now is the time to renew the old alliances. Redraw them, if necessary."

Suki jams her hands on her hips. "What are you two talking about?" she demands.

Iio and Piandao jolt in surprise, as though they'd forgotten she was there at all.

Then, several things happen at once.

A very faint sound, like the snap of a twig beneath a boot. Then a hiss like a curse, whispered vehemently.

Piandao's sword is halfway out its sheath by the time Suki registers the almost-inaudible whistle of fans slicing through the air.

"Wait!" she cries, whirling on her heel. "Stop! It's me – Suki!"

Beside her, Iio raises her hands. The answering gust knocks the incoming salvo out of the air. They clatter to the ground harmlessly.

"Hold!" barks a girl's voice, vaguely familiar. Then, six fighters materialize as though out of nowhere, right in front of her. Their leader, a broad-shouldered girl of about Suki's height, peers at her carefully. "It really is her!"

Suki squints, trying to make out the girl's features through layers of thick war paint. "Is that you, Riko?"

"Sure is!"

At once, Suki finds herself enveloped in a warm hug. "By Kyoshi, it's so nice to see a friendly face for once! What brings you back here all of a sudden?" Riko lets go of her abruptly and glances over Suki's shoulder. Her voice turns frosty. "With these strangers too, no less?"

"I—" Suki stammers, suddenly at a loss of how to explain everything that had happened. "They're friends, Riko – they helped me out of a really tight spot a few days ago…"

Out of the corner of her eyes, Piandao sheaths his sword back into its scabbard. "The Kyoshi warriors," he marvels, nodding his head respectfully. "It's been far too long since we last met."

"You're more right about that than you think," Riko returns with undisguised hostility. "Have we met?"

"He – he said he had business here," Suki says uncertainly. But doubt surges through her in a panic.

"Oh, did he?" Riko's voice turns sweet as she cocks her head toward the other fighters assembled behind her. "Girls, does this man seem familiar to any of you?"

"Bring me to Oyaji," Piandao suggests, in a voice so calm he might have been discussing the weather.

Riko stares at him flatly. "Oyaji is our village leader. Did you honestly think you could waltz in here and see him just like that?"

"It's been some years now. But he'll know us," Piandao assures her.

Iio raises her eyebrows but says nothing.

Riko rolls her eyes. "Fine. We'll take you to him. But the minute we find out you're lying, we're feeding you to the unagi." With a nod of her head, the formation of Kyoshi warriors surrounds them and herds them down to the village.

"Feed us to the unagi?" Suki hears Piandao complain to Iio indignantly under his breath. "We helped catch the damn thing."

Iio sighs.

They are whisked into the village's main building, its steeply pitched roof rising tall and high above all the others. There, Iio and Piandao are ushered into the large room where Oyaji held his audiences, while Suki makes to leave with the remaining Kyoshi warriors.

"What's going on in there?" Riko demands impatiently, as a faint peal of laughter filters through the door.

Suki shrugs. "Apparently all old people know each other."

Her time back in her home village is accelerated by the heightened tension in the air. Instead of whiling away the hours catching up with her old friends, she spends her time recanting the story of the Dai Li attack and teaching some of the new techniques she'd learned while away from home.

A steady stream of boats pass through their island, bearing tales from the outside world that become stranger and stranger.

"We were driven from the Imperial Court like unwashed savages!" wails an Earth colony diplomat waiting in line to catch the ship to Ba Sing Se. "We barely had time to collect our things!"

"The Empire's entire fleet was headed for the harbour, last I saw! They're gathering to invade mainland, any day now. Something has to be done."

"If only the Dai Li had been successful, then things would be different… But no, Prince Zuko had to stop them."

"Of course he had to. They were going to kill us!" Suki retorts furiously at that last part. "The Dai Li had no business being there at all! And they definitely didn't go easy on me, or any of the other earthbenders either."

The expelled party of diplomats shrivels under her ire, but their panic dogs at Suki long after their departure from the island.

Oyaji remains holed up with Piandao and Iio, out of sight and earshot behind locked doors for their top-secret meetings. The restlessness on the island mounts as Suki wonders what they could be discussing, and just how exactly they knew each other.

It isn't until her third day back home that her tentative routine is interrupted by a small commotion at the edge of the village. Everyone gathers as Riko drags a bound prisoner into Oyaji's meeting hall.

"This strange man was skulking around the harbour, watching us," Riko states, nudging the prisoner with her foot. "We think he must be a spy for the Empire!"

"For the last time, I'm not a spy for the Empire!" the prisoner protests hotly. "Just...a regular spy, I guess."

Oyaji, a tiny old man bent over in his raised rickety chair, straightens at the sight of the stranger. Piandao gets to his feet, hands raised defensively. "Ah, Oyaji. There appears to be a small misunderstanding here…"

Suki shifts to get a better view of the bound stranger, and instantly recognizes the dirt-stained green of his uniform. A tattered Dai Li uniform, growing more horrible to her by the second.

"You—" Suki lunges for the prisoner and grabs him by the collar. "What are you doing here? Who are you?"

Blue eyes blink confusedly back at her in a face the smooth, even shade of a nutshell.

Then he grins at her disarmingly. "I'm the Dai Li's worst nightmare. But you can call me Lee."

Chapter 29: wolfhearted

Summary:

zuko and katara attend a wedding.

Chapter Text

disclaimer. anything you recognize are belong to bryke.

author's notes. ...life is busy folks, what can i say? please accept this extra-long chapter in lieu of my condolences that these update lengths are becoming a thing. since it's been a while, i'd recommend rereading chapters 8 and 18 (or the whole fic if you'd rather!) for a quick refresher.

thank you so much to everyone who's been reading/following/commenting! i've had to restrain myself from jumping in at some of your theories for fear of accidentally spoiling something! as always, massive thanks to circasurvival for beta-reading and generally keeping me focused, she is awesome!

warning that this chapter features sexual content and a fair bit of implied/suggested abuse, since ozai is a walking trigger warning. please proceed with caution if you find any of these upsetting.

update: shoutout to the lovely amberesinite for the lovely fanart and for picking up on the labyrinth homage wow.

i give you...

southern lights.

chapter xxix. wolfhearted

you don't want to hurt me
but see how deep the bullet lies
unaware i'm tearing you asunder
there is thunder in our hearts

"running up that hill" / kate bush

Ty Lee stares at herself in the mirror and sighs.

It is barely dawn and weak light pours through the window. The room is cramped and stuffy, the wooden floors creaky from the heavy humidity. Clothes are strewn haphazardly everywhere, all in some shade of cheerful pink.

Ignoring the cup of tea cooling on her dressing table, she prods at the tired corners of her mouth.

"Today's the day," she mutters to her reflection. Grabbing a hairbrush, she proceeds to comb out her long brown hair.

From beyond the walls of her room, snatches of irate conversation echo through the air.

"What was Ty Lee thinking? We're going to be the laughing stock of the whole palace!"

"First she runs off to join a circus, and then she shows up on our doorstep with a pair of country bumpkins in tow -"

The house rattles warningly. "Watch who you call a bumpkin, Ty Hoo!" Toph's voice snaps defiantly.

"It's Ty Woo!"

"Sure, get mad at the blind girl for confusing you all!" Katara snarks back.

"Imagine, showing up to a royal wedding in those common trinkets!"

"And wearing that peasant's coat to boot!"

"Can't we all just get along?" Ty Lee pleads under her breath, tying off her freshly braided hair with a pink ribbon.

Toph laughs sarcastically. "Yeah, you should really say that in front of Prince Zuko! He's the one who bought it for her, so make sure he hears you."

"What? No he didn't -" Katara chokes out amid a chorus of affronted gasps.

Then the argument fades into nondescript muttering, which as far as Ty Lee was concerned, suited her purposes far better.

"Quiet," she sighs appreciatively, running her fingers along the clothes laid out on her bed. "Perfect. So...do I wear the pink dress today, the pink dress, or the other pink dress?"

She glances wistfully at the gorgeous, flowing blue silk dress she'd painstakingly picked out for the occasion, now neatly folded away. The moment she arrived home, Ty Lat had shrieked for hours about how blue was her colour and how dare she try to steal it…

Someone knocks on her door. Ty Lee looks up. "Yes?"

"Lady Ty Lee, there is a visitor for you at the door," says one of her father's attendants.

Ty Lee sighs. "So early?"

"Yes, my lady," the man apologizes. "You had best come down quickly."

Great. She blindly picks one of the pink outfits at random. "I'm just getting dressed. I'll be down soon."

"Very good, my lady."

Ty Lee fusses with the drapes, folds, and ties of her outfit - a frilly bouncy thing that fluttered with every movement. She sighs again as she examines her reflection at different angles.

It's a really nice dress, she thinks resentfully. I would probably have picked it for myself if I had the choice too.

With one last glance at the mirror, she makes her way down the stairs grinning her trademark smile.

But when she rounds the main floor landing and sees her guests standing in the foyer, it slides off her face.

"Why, Ty Lee," says Princess Azula, as Mai stands behind her impassively. "It's been so long, one would think you'd forgotten your oldest friend." Her painted mouth quirks at the corners. "I thought we could all have breakfast at the palace together. You're not busy, are you?"

The buzz of excitement swells throughout the palace with each passing moment. Zuko ignores it as he emerges from yet another harrowing meeting.

By now, his prince's crown sits easily atop his head. His ceremonial robes are tailored to fit most perfectly. And as he marches through the hallways, servants and nobility alike leap out of his way in fearful deference.

Such an honourable prince, they whisper in his wake. Bold and powerful, just like his father...

It should make him proud, yet despair gnaws at the pit of his stomach as he climbs up the tower staircase and shoves the heavy door barring its entrance.

A dark corridor yawns open, windows tightly curtained and the ceiling low and squat.

"Your Highness?" a voice rises nervously out of the dimness. "What - what brings you up here?"

At the end of the corridor are two palace guards, flanking a bolted iron door. Zuko's throat tightens inexplicably. "I wish to see my mother. Step aside."

The two guards exchange a nervous glance before one shakes his head. "Unfortunately, Your Highness, we cannot. It has been forbidden."

"Forbidden by who?"

"By order of His Majesty Emperor Ozai on behalf of the chief healer," the guard explains apologetically. "Queen Ursa is in extremely frail health and can see no visitors save the healers and your lord father."

Zuko dons his most commanding voice. "I'm no visitor. I am her son and I will see her. Now."

The guards flinch visibly, before finally stepping aside.

With a slip of the bolt, the door creaks open. Ignoring the guards shrinking in their spots, Zuko pushes his way inside.

His mother's new quarters are a far cry from the one in his memories. The slitted window is boarded shut; the only light comes from a single torch burning low in a wall sconce. A small mirror and vanity is tucked next to the armoire, but the majority of the room is occupied by the massive bed.

His eyebrows raise at the sight of the small workbench by the boarded window, filled with dried herbs and powders and potions in sealed glass bottles. Something had been freshly ground to a paste in the mortar and pestle, and the air quivers with its strong medicinal smell.

He isn't sure if it's the scent that makes his head spin, or just the relief of seeing his mother fast asleep in her room. Either way, his hands tremble as he rustles her blanket-covered shoulder. "Mom? It's...it's me."

It feels far too long before she finally stirs, sleep slurring her speech mostly beyond recognition. "...didn't mean to…I can't, I won't..."

He shakes her gently. "Come on Mom, wake up. It's just me."

Her eyes snap open and glance up to meet his. In the half-light, he sees the fear in them before she withdraws further into the covers. "Ozai", she breathes. "No… I said no, you won't make me, not again -"

"I'm not him," Zuko whispers as her voice grows stronger. "Don't...don't you know me?"

Her breathing deepens as she stares at him. Her gaze sharpens as it traces the scar over his eye. "It can't be…" She pushes at the covers, trying to fling them back with more strength than she possessed. "Zuko?"

He nods quickly, throat clamping impossibly tight.

"Is it really you?" Her hand stretches out hesitantly, as though afraid to touch him. "My son…home after all this time…"

"I wanted to see you sooner," he blurts out as he sits on the side of her bed. "But I've been - he's been keeping me so busy, I can't - and -"

His mother's fingers brush through the hair that falls into his eyes. The gentleness of her touch seems to burn straight through him, and it surprises him that his days in the heart of the Empire have managed to make him so cold.

"I'm sorry," he croaks through the lump building in his throat. "You shouldn't be shut up here like this, no matter how...touched...you are."

"Touched?" Ursa echoes in disbelief. "Is that what he says?" She glances at the clutter on her workbench and Zuko follows her gaze. "Pounded root of sunshade. A perilous plant, Zuko. It can be distilled carefully and taken for continuous, dreamless sleep." She gestures to the rows of sealed glass jars. "But a slip of the hand and it can block chi, reduce even the most powerful benders to feeble husks. The difference between rest and utter helplessness lies in the skill of the herbalist." Her brow furrows with disquiet. "Few dare to handle it. But even now, I can still brew it properly."

The soporific herbal smell cloys in his nostrils. "I...I don't understand, Mother. If you're not unwell, then why all this? Why stay up here and brew your own sleeping potions? You're the Queen Consort -"

"And you are the Crown Prince now," his mother reminds him, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. "We both answer to your father in our own way. But practicing my craft keeps my mind sharp, and he allows me to, so long as…"

She trails off, going suddenly very pale.

"So long as what?"

But his mother shakes her head in fright. "He's afraid. Of me, of what I've done…" Her fingers twine into her hair as she continues in a panicking babble, "He has some use for me, Zuko, but you have to understand - I didn't want to, I never wanted…"

"Slow down," he urges, grabbing her by the shoulders. "You're not making any sense -"

"He made me," she gasps, her eyes starting to well up. "And I thought it would be enough but it's not, it's never enough for him and now -"

"Now it is time for your mother to ready herself for the big day."

Zuko leaps to his feet. His father looms at the entrance of the room, framed by the doorway. One of the guards skulks guiltily behind him.

"Father," Zuko tries not to stammer as Ozai surveys him coldly. "I -"

"I see you have saved me the trouble of awakening your mother," his father replies dismissively as he steps into the chamber. "That is just as well. Go find your cousin, the gallant groom-to-be. His need of assistance far outweighs hers."

I don't want you anywhere near her, Zuko longs to spit back. But his father draws closer and the room seems to grow colder.

"Yes Father," he grits through teeth clenched near as tight as his fists. The guilt returns, making him feel sicker as he gets up and leaves.

"And Zuko, my son," his father calls after him gently, and he stops in his tracks. "Disobey my command again, and you will not find my displeasure so easy to forget."

Zuko doesn't say a word but continues to walk away, anger simmering where fear once bloomed.

From the moment Katara sets foot past the royal palace gates, she hates it.

Against her better instincts, she had cracked and accepted the impractical blue gown Ty Lee had quietly lent her earlier in the day. And even though it was quite modest by Ty Lee's standards, the airy silk clings to her skin and makes her feel terribly, uncomfortably exposed.

Worse, people either don't see her at all, or stare at her unabashedly as though they'd never seen a waterbender with their own eyes before. Everything about the imperial palace estate, from the opulence of her surroundings to the swathes of impeccably-dressed courtiers milling about, screams of unbridled excess.

Even the air feels bloated. She didn't think it was possible to hate the capital even more than she already did, but the suffocating heat permeates into her very skin. The sky is forbiddingly grey and heavy with clouds; somewhere behind their cover, the full moon lies in wait. Its power shivers through her veins, somehow making her feel even more restless.

"Ugh," Toph grumbles, somehow managing to capture her inner thoughts perfectly. "This place stinks."

"Because it reminds you of home?" Katara guesses.

"No, because it literally stinks." Toph wrinkles her nose. "Leave it to the firebenders to plant their fanciest palace right on top of a smelly old volcano. Their first king must have been a real sadist."

"Just their first?" Katara mutters dryly under her breath, anxiously scanning the crowds of unfamiliar people. But the royal family is nowhere to be seen, which both relieves and distresses her at the same time. On one hand, there was no sign of Zuko or of the resolution she by now sorely regrets not taking the last time she'd seen him.

On the other, it meant his accursed father was nowhere in sight either. The thought of him being present somehow, of being a guest in his hall, feels dangerous in a way she can't quite pin down. She touches her neck, where her mother's pendant gleams like a badge of pride.

Ty Lee, who had been unusually pale and quiet all day, brightens up once all her sisters scatter to find their own friends. They follow the crowd into the massive courtyard, illuminated with the soft orange glow of countless paper lanterns suspended in the air. Long tables laden with empty serving vessels line the periphery of the courtyard; rows of chairs are set at its centre, facing the set of steps leading up to the towering palace doors. A group of old men in red uniforms wait in a line at the top, in front of the ceremonial altar: a small structure wrought in gold and bedecked with brightly striped fire lilies.

"Here!" Ty Lee elbows her way into a row of seats closer to the back of the courtyard than Katara would have expected. "Let's just sit here, okay?"

"Is there a reason you want to be as far away from the ceremony as possible?" Toph asks. "Not that it makes a difference to me either way, but -"

"No!" Ty Lee exclaims but her voice is high-pitched and the tips of her ears turn scarlet. "No reason. Uh…"

Toph raises an eyebrow. "I can tell you're lying. But I'll buy it. Seems like the closer to the front you sit, the crazier everyone gets."

"Really crazy!" Ty Lee hisses in relief, collapsing into her seat. "You have no idea. Especially -"

"Oh look, there's Aang!" Katara says suddenly, spotting the young airbender entering the courtyard. She waves, but Aang moves to sit next to another Air Nomad - a lanky man stooped with age but with a kindly face that inexplicably reminds her of General Iroh.

"Traitor," Toph mutters, rolling her eyes. "Whatever, we'll catch up with him after the ceremony."

Katara doesn't answer, scanning the audience warily. She recognizes very few faces and it makes her feel oddly vulnerable.

The low wail of a horned instrument cuts through the swelling chatter abruptly.

"It's starting!" Ty Lee whispers urgently.

The group of bearded old men raise their palms. Orange fire illuminates the dull evening air. Somewhere, a drum takes up a steady beat.

"Those are the Fire Sages," Ty Lee whispers, as one of the old men sets the wedding altar alight. "And that one lighting the Eternal Flame is the High Sage!"

The booming sound of a gong reverberates across the night air and a pair of reedy voices call out, "All rise for the royal family!"

Everyone in the crowd gets to their feet. The double doors of the palace behind the altar swing open. The steady drumbeat continues, as the heralds announce, "Their Royal Highnesses, Princess Azula -"

Katara squints, barely able to see over the rows of people standing in front of them, as the princess emerges from the palace to stand beside the altar. Ty Lee squirms uncomfortably.

" - and Prince Zuko!"

Even though the distance renders him a tiny figure barely distinguishable from anyone else, heat rushes to her skin so alarmingly quickly she fears she might spontaneously combust.

"Her Grace, Queen Consort Ursa, and His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Ozai!"

And suddenly fire of a different sort spits in her chest.

Toph furrows her brow at her. "You okay, Sweetness?"

"I'm fine," Katara grits out, clenching her fists to stop them from shaking. Privately, she's grateful to Ty Lee for making them stand so far back. At least from here, Ozai could be mistaken for any other man.

"His Royal Highness, Prince Lu Ten, and His Imperial Majesty, Fire Emperor Iroh!"

The last two royals exit from the palace to wait directly in front of the altar. Even at their distance, General Iroh's broad shape distinguishes him from everyone else gathered.

"And the bride of His Royal Highness, together with her lord father and lady mother of the House of Mao!"

The bride, dressed in an ornate white-and-gold gown that trails after her as she walks, is escorted to Lu Ten's side by her parents.

The High Sage raises his hands for silence. "We are the children of fire," he intones in a deep, booming voice that echoes across the courtyard. "We are all born of the Eternal Flame, and pass when it dies within us. Fire is light. Fire is life. And tonight…" he gestures to the bride and groom, "...fire is love."

He continues in this vein for some time, unfurling a long scroll and reading its contents. Lu Ten and his bride don't do much while the sage recites his words. At one point, both are handed lit torches to exchange and feed to the fire. At another, the mothers from both sides give them each a cup of wine to drink. As Lu Ten's mother had passed away young, it fell to his aunt to fulfill that role.

Katara spots people in the audience rustling in their chairs, stifling yawns imperceptibly. Even among the royal family, the princess appears bored and the queen sickly and distraught. With Ozai hanging on to her like that, I'd feel the same way too.

Zuko stands respectfully still, but the set of his shoulders betrays his tension. Only Ozai and Iroh, the two co-rulers, watch the ceremony with rapt, undivided attention.

At length, the High Sage concludes, winding the scroll back into its holder. He raises his hands again. "I present to you for the first time, His Royal Highness Prince Lu Ten, and his new wife. All hail Her Highness...Princess Consort Ayumi!"

The courtyard bursts into applause, perhaps made more enthusiastic by the exit of the Fire Sages from the top of the stairs and a promise to the start of the festivities to follow.

"What, no kissing?" Toph demands, crossing her arms. "Man, Fire Nation weddings are just as stuffy and boring as ours."

"Only for the ones getting married," Ty Lee allows. "For everyone else, it's a party! You'll see."

She turns out to be right. By the time Lu Ten and his new wife are ushered to a pair of thrones erected in front of the altar, the long tables lining the sides of the courtyard have been laden with food. Attendants hand flutes of drinks to the guests from silver serving trays while the rows of chairs are cleared away.

"That's not fireball, is it?" Katara asks nervously as Ty Lee hands her one. Her face burns as she thinks of the last time she drank too much at a Fire Nation celebration.

"Just plum wine, don't worry." Ty Lee smirks. "It's not that kind of party, Katara."

Soon enough, the courtyard has been cleared away, allowing the hundreds of guests to mingle freely. The royal family disperses from their perch at the top of the stairs. Katara tries to seek them out in the crowd, when someone nudges her in the side and says her name. She nearly jumps out of her skin in response.

"Relax, it's just me," says Chan with a grin and a wave. "Although I gotta say...I barely recognized you!" He glances at her dress. "You look really great in that!"

"Uh...thanks?" Katara stutters. Faint disappointment glimmers in her chest but her cheeks flush at the earnest compliment. "You look pretty sharp yourself."

"I've got to look the part. Admiral's son and all." Before Katara can get a word in otherwise, he gestures to the stern-faced man who becomes horribly familiar to her in the instant before Chan speaks again. "Hey Dad! This is Katara, the master waterbender in my division! Katara, this is my dad!"

To his credit, Admiral Chan appears just as caught off-guard as she does. A spectrum of emotions cross his face before he finally inclines his head stiffly. "Sifu Katara. It's been some time."

She nearly chokes in surprise but catches herself. "Yes! Quite...quite some time. I hope you've been well?" Her voice grates in her ears, far too bright to be genuine.

But the Admiral only glowers at her in response, saying nothing.

"Wait, you two know each other?" Chan asks incredulously. "When did that happen?"

"When you were unconscious," Katara admits, ducking her head to avoid the Admiral's gaze which was by now surely heating with renewed fury.

"Really?" Chan winces. "Agni, Dad, I hope you weren't too hard on her! But judging from the way everyone's gone awkward...I'm guessing not, huh?"

The Admiral clears his throat but the outburst Katara anticipates never arrives. Growing more confused by the second, she sneaks a glance up at him. His scowl remains frozen in place, as though he was incapable of making any other expression, and yet uncertainty flickers in his eyes.

"Anyway," Chan continues as the blank silence stretches uncomfortably, "in the end she fixed me right up, so you're lucky she was around after all!"

"I suppose," his father grunts, still sounding skeptical. "Next, you will ask me to thank her, no doubt."

"Only if you want," Chan retorts with a disarming grin, nudging him in the side. "Or you could find some way to apologize for being a big grumpy jerk, Dad!"

Katara nearly chokes as the Admiral faces her grudgingly. "Fine. Please accept my sincerest regrets," he forces through gritted teeth. "I have some business to attend to. Excuse me."

And with a curt nod, he turns on his heel and disappears into the crowd to join another burly, important-looking man with sharp robes and sharper sideburns.

"That was weird," Chan remarks, perplexed.

That's an understatement. "How are you liking the party so far?" she asks instead.

Chan shrugs. "It's a little tame. Plus my dad keeps threatening to introduce me to the princess, and well…"

"You don't sound excited about that."

"No! I mean she's pretty and all but…" Chan looks around carefully before leaning closer and lowering his voice, "she's kind of intimidating, you know?"

"Not really." Katara looks around and to her frustration, both Ty Lee and Toph have vanished. "Ugh. Have you seen Aang, by any chance?"

Chan perks up. "Yeah, I did! He was right over there with another old guy."

He points to one of the long tables. Sure enough, Aang is visible, standing with the other old Air Nomad, both dressed in brilliant saffron. Both of them are talking with a Fire Nation noble wearing sharply tailored crimson robes and a small flame crown perched on his topknot. It isn't until he tilts his head that she sees the scar blooming over the left side of his face, and her breath hitches in her throat.

"Oh hey, they found Zuko!" Chan observes. "He was looking for you guys."

It takes seconds before her mouth is able to form words. "H-he was?"

"Sure." Chan scans the area again before his face brightens. "Anyway, I'm going to find Ruon-Jian before Dad tries playing matchmaker again. If he asks, you have no idea where I went!"

"Of...of course," she stammers as he winks conspiratorially at her. "Have fun."

She barely notices Chan leave. The surface of her skin feels alive with a sense of inevitability as she watches Zuko say something to Aang. And then as though in slow motion, his gaze wanders across the length of the courtyard until it happens to find hers. He stops mid-sentence and electricity bolts straight down her spine.

For a moment longer than anyone would consider appropriate, the growing intensity of his stare pins her unrelentingly in place. But then Aang waves a confused hand in front of his face and the momentary spell shatters.

Katara blinks as the rest of her senses catch up. An uncertain smile makes its way to her mouth as Aang spots her and motions to join them. Her knees feel oddly weak; it takes all of her effort to not trip on the hem of Ty Lee's dress.

"Look at you!" Aang exclaims as she joins them. "Wow! You look - wow! Who knew what losing the uniform could do, right Zuko?"

Zuko's mouth opens and closes ineffectually. "I - I mean," he manages hoarsely, "there was nothing wrong with the uniform…"

Her heart races so fast her entire body begins to shake. "Um. Th - that's very kind. Thank you." She touches her neck self-consciously before turning to the old Air Nomad she doesn't recognize. "Hi! Uh. I don't think we've met?"

Aang thumps his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Silly me. Katara, this is Master Gyatso from the Southern Air Temple, where I grew up." He turns to the old man, head bowed deferentially. "Gyatso, this is Katara, the waterbending master in our group."

"So you're Gyatso!" Katara says in surprise. "Aang talks about you a lot. It's an honour to finally meet you."

"Likewise!" the old Air Nomad returns. "Waterbending master, eh? At your age? Are you one of Pakku's, by any chance?"

"Master Pakku taught me everything I know about waterbending," Katara admits. "Well. Almost everything..." She dispels the memory before it has a chance to settle. "How do you know him? Are you friends with him?"

Gyatso laughs heartily. "Friends? With that old sea prune? Not easily, I'm afraid! But all old people know each other, one way or another. That's how I ended up here." He taps his nose knowingly. "Aang my child, I'm going to find Iroh and something to eat. I think I saw fruit pies somewhere…"

"I'll come with you!"

"To do what?" Gyatso's eyes twinkle merrily. "You stay here with your friends. I'll find you when it is time." He nods at Katara and bows his head to Zuko. "Master Katara. Highness."

And with that, the old airbender departs.

"So that's Gyatso," Katara comments blankly, unable to focus on anything other than how warm she feels under the heat of Zuko's gaze.

"Yup!" Aang doesn't seem to notice her discomfort, or Zuko's for that matter. "He's the main reason I left the Temple, he said I needed to meet people who weren't Air Nomads. I'm really glad he's here."

"You're staying with him?" Zuko asks, seeming to have regained his voice.

Aang nods. "I thought it would be nice to catch up with him. Besides, Ty Lee's place looked crowded enough, I didn't want to add to the chaos!"

"Yeah." Katara coughs, casting for something, anything to say. "Speaking of chaos, Toph said something crazy! Remember that coat you got me for Conquest Day?"

"It's kind of hard to forget when you wear it all the time," Aang quips, grinning. "What about it?"

"Well…Toph said that it was Zuko who got it!" It blurts out like an itch on her skin festering all day and longing to be relieved at last. "Isn't...isn't that crazy?"

Aang bursts into laughter as Zuko goes immediately rigid. "Oh yeah, I forgot all about that! That was forever ago, right Zuko?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Zuko hisses through clenched teeth. He averts his gaze but his cheeks still redden angrily. "I didn't do anything -"

"That's not exactly true," Aang interrupts, holding up impressively under the thunderous glare Zuko sends in his direction. "We all pitched in, but we would never have been able to afford it if he hadn't shown up and insisted on helping out - oh don't look at me like that, Zuko, she doesn't hate you anymore, what's the big deal?"

But as Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose and the blush spreads to the tips of his ears, it becomes painfully clear to Katara that it still is a big deal to him. It doesn't take long to understand why - you didn't exactly make it easy, he'd said the other night - and if that had been a part of why he did it…

Her cheeks heat up and all of a sudden, she isn't sure why it means so much to her either. Aang was right after all: it was a gift from so long ago and more had changed between them than perhaps he realized. And yet, all this time she'd been wearing it in front of him blithely, without the slightest clue of how he felt. And Zuko hadn't said a word, hadn't expected anything from her in return…

Something in her chest splits at the thought.

"Anyway," Aang changes the subject hastily, breaking the thickening tension, "Zuko was just telling me what he's been up to this whole time. He's been, uh, pretty busy…"

Zuko's glare intensifies and he looks sickened by the mention of it. "Yeah. Busy," he grunts. He stands ramrod-straight like the prince he was supposed to be, but the expression in his eyes looks pained. Defeated.

"What's wrong?" Katara asks sharply, but secretly relieved to focus on something safer. Even if it was no less discomfiting. "You can tell us."

But Zuko glances at all the well-dressed nobles well within earshot, and shakes his head. "With everyone on edge and so many... heightened emotions, it's nice to see a good show of unity tonight."

She wonders if that has anything to do with the entire naval fleet anchored at the foot of the volcano in Harbour City. From there, the closest port of entry to the Earth colonies was Kyoshi Island, barely more than a day's sail away. As to the whispers of an imminent strike from the capital, nothing had been confirmed yet...but the stricken expression that Zuko struggles to conceal from them speaks volumes nonetheless.

"How about your family?" she presses, failing to keep her voice from shaking.

"Fine. They're fine," Zuko grits out, frustration buried deep beneath the calmness of his tone. "Everything is just the way I left it."

"Are...are you glad you came back?" she tries, dismayed. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Zuko stares at her and for a moment it feels familiar, bringing a tumult of feelings bubbling to the surface. Then the princely façade slides back on. "I have a lot of responsibilities here now. My father entrusted much of the political and military command in my hands."

"Military?" Katara echoes in mounting alarm. "Do you mean - "

"I mean that right now, I have more influence than anyone on the future course of action," Zuko answers in a strained voice. What he doesn't say rings much louder. I'm the only thing standing between us and war now.

She looks at the party unfolding around them, notices the constant press of curious eyes: nobles and their wives and children alike. Where on the sidelines, General Shinu argues with Admiral Chan and the grizzled, burly man she doesn't recognize. Where Gyatso laughs with General Iroh over a slice of fruit pie, while Ozai wanders through the heart of it all, linked in arm with his brittle queen.

Then she looks back at Zuko and sees the toll of this silent battlefield written in the haggard lines of his face.

"Oh." Her voice sounds empty.

"That's - that's great," Aang recovers with much more finesse than she does. "As long as you're happy."

"Yes," Zuko agrees unhappily.

"Is there anything we can do to help you?" Aang presses. "You don't have to do this all alone, you know."

Zuko's lip curls. "This is the Imperial Court." Not some outpost in the middle of nowhere. "I have it under control." I have to.

"Okay. If you say so," Aang answers, sounding unconvinced. "Uh...I'm going to find Gyatso. I'll catch up with you later!"

"Thank you." Zuko nods stiffly. "And I'm glad to see you're recovering nicely."

Aang grins before walking away.

"What about you?" Zuko asks her, his infuriatingly-distant voice softening. "How's your foot?"

"My foot?" Truthfully, she hadn't been nearly as enthusiastic about healing herself. The limp was persistent, her ankle stiff but no longer painful. Besides, after what she had done, it had felt right to suffer. Now she feels cheated somehow, and yet she only had herself to blame. "It's fine. The same. It's just a foot."

"Right." Zuko lapses into an uncomfortable silence, broken by the arrival of an attendant with more plum wine.

"What about your shoulder?" Katara ventures awkwardly, struggling to say something that could make things feel more normal again. Without breaching the mounting pile of things that were too much to talk about here.

"It's fine?" he answers, puzzled. "Thanks to you?"

"It hasn't been giving you any problems?"

"No?"

But even before, normal had been hard to define. Now even though he wore no armour, his royal attire and gleaming crown make him seem impenetrable and utterly out of reach. A true scion of royalty, perhaps the man he'd always been.

"Your necklace," he says abruptly, and she gazes at him in surprise. "Is that new?"

She shakes her head, touching it gently. "It was my mother's."

"Oh." Somewhere beneath his stoic veneer, she senses him struggling too, and she feels slightly better. "It suits you."

She smiles at him anxiously, her throat tightening and making it difficult to speak. Sweat beads on her brow from the heat of the air, heavy with unshed rain and unspoken intentions.

"Do you...like it here so far?"

"It's really hot," she hears herself complain. "I thought it was supposed to be winter."

"It is. But that just means rain," Zuko explains. Colour crawls down his neck, or maybe it's a trick of the suffused orange light dappling the courtyard. "It's a good omen for a wedding."

"I see." They both sip nervously at their wine. She searches for a fitting retort to fill the awkward silence, but her mind is no use at all, too preoccupied with his proximity and how warm his skin had felt before.

But then Zuko's eyes focus somewhere beyond her. His jaw clenches, his entire body tenses on high alert. "Oh hell," he mutters under his breath. "Here we go."

Katara recognizes that look. It means danger. "What do you mean?"

But it's a girl's voice that answers instead. "Hello, brother," it drawls.

Zuko's fingers tighten on the stem of his glass. "Azula."

Up close, Zuko's sister favours her mother, with a similarly shaped face and delicate features. But she shares the same golden eyes as her brother, only lacking their warmth. "Enjoying yourself, are you? I can't tell. You keep running away from me, Zuzu."

Katara doesn't laugh. Coming from anyone else, Zuko's ridiculous nickname would have sounded harmless, maybe even affectionate. But the princess made it seem as innocuous as a poisoned arrow.

"I'm not running away," Zuko answers impatiently. "I just have nothing to say to you."

"Is that any way to talk to your sister?" Azula's voice takes on a petulant tone. "That's not very polite. You're hurting my feelings."

"That would require you to have any in the first place."

Katara contemplates making a discreet exit from the middle of this unexpected sibling spat when the princess finally notices her. "Ah, but who's this?"

Zuko sighs but it sounds more like a growl.

Azula claps her hands together in mocking delight. "Wait. Could it be? Is this your famous waterbender that everybody can't stop talking about?"

Katara scowls. Zuko's teeth grind together audibly. "This is Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. Her father was the legendary chieftain, Hakoda."

Azula arches an eyebrow in amusement as she sizes Katara up. "Is that why she didn't bow to me? Should I address her as Princess Katara instead, perhaps?"

"No." Katara finds her voice, already incensed. "Master Katara will do. I only use titles that I've earned, Princess."

Zuko makes a sound somewhere between clearing his throat and muffling a snort.

"Well, the rumours certainly didn't sell this one short." Azula smirks but her eyes glint ferally. "It's a shame you were born a waterbender. You've far more fire in you than anyone would expect."

"Not at all," Katara corrects, inwardly seething. "Back home, strength is valued above all else. It's our way."

"Perhaps we are more similar than we knew." The smirk turns into a full-fledged grin. "Oh Zuzu. I don't think this will work for you. What would Father think?"

Zuko glowers, hiding mounting hostility under an exterior of stone. "Father has other concerns. So should you. Or are you here because you're bored?"

Azula picks at a tapered fingernail. "Well, I was hoping things would pick up soon. But since you're so eager to get to the point, it seems our cousin is making a scene. I didn't realize he was such a lightweight."

"He's not." Zuko frowns in confusion. "How much did he drink? The dancing hasn't even started."

"I know. How embarrassing for him, and for Uncle. I thought you military boys could hold your liquor." Azula laughs, and the sound grates unsettlingly on Katara's nerves. "You should probably help him back to the wedding chamber. After all...it's not a royal wedding if he isn't up to consummate it, and we can't have that."

"Fine," Zuko bites out. "Take me to him."

"Excuse us," Azula says to Katara, sounding far too pleased with herself. "Enjoy the rest of your night! Try not to drink too much...unless you too would prefer my brother as an escort to bed."

Katara chokes on a mouthful of plum wine. Zuko all but drags his sister away, his skin colouring furiously.

The dancing has already started by the time Zuko returns from the wedding chamber.

True to Azula's word, Lu Ten had been surprisingly incoherent, leaning more heavily on Zuko's shoulder than was entirely appropriate for a Crown Prince at his own nuptials. His new wife had trailed them awkwardly the entire way, asking questions with her eyes like does he always do this and can I just go to sleep already.

"He only had one glass," she had complained as Zuko deposited his cousin onto the bed. It was decorated for the occasion with garlands of fire lilies and bunches of fertility herbs. The entire chamber was dimly lit, perhaps to distract from the sliding screen in the corner, behind which a Fire Sage would witness the consummation.

Zuko hadn't known what to say, and once the attendants came in to help his cousin out of his attire, had simply made his escape.

Outside, most people have paired off while the musicians play a waltz. Some remain on the sidelines, where food and wine still flows in abundance. A few couples even disperse into the darkened palace gardens, abandoning the party altogether now that the newlyweds had been taken into the wedding chamber.

To his surprise, his father isn't talking politics with the men but dancing with his mother. Come to think of it, he hadn't left his mother's side all night long and they look like a normal, happy couple. Zuko wonders if they had danced like this at their own wedding.

Azula is thankfully minding her own business, seemingly bored by whatever Admiral Chan and his son are telling her. Preemptively, he searches for Katara and finds her safe and laughing far away with Toph and Aang.

His jaw clenches at the sight. It isn't fair. Watching wasn't nearly enough, not when he hadn't seen her in a week and she showed up looking like that… And yet it was already too risky. Azula's scrutiny was virtually inescapable, and she had already unsheathed her claws. He couldn't afford her to exploit any weakness, not in sight of all the remaining courtiers...

"I see things have gone everywhere and nowhere with that one."

He stirs at the sound of Mai's voice as she sidles next to him. "Who?"

Mai rolls her eyes. "It's nice to see you too, Zuko."

"Uh." Tension racks his body before he remembers that she hadn't told Azula anything, and maybe he was the one who had judged unfairly. "It's...good to see you too, Mai. How have you been?"

She shrugs. "Okay, I guess. I thought it would be more fun here than back at the army. Turns out it's even more boring than I remembered. Oh well."

"Even with Azula around?"

"Well...she does her best."

"You didn't tell her everything," Zuko guesses, watching her carefully. "Why?"

Mai swirls the wine in her flute and shrugs again. "I don't know. Call me sentimental."

"You?" Zuko asks sceptically.

But Mai drains her wine in one gulp and sets down her flute. "Well. I mean, I kind of miss you. Can you believe that?"

Zuko hesitates and she waves him off. "Not like that, you idiot. I mean, you're impulsive and obsessive and totally neurotic, just like your sister. But at least you were up front about it." She shrugs again. "It was refreshing."

He grimaces. "Thanks, Mai."

"I mean, Kei Lo's not so bad either, he's got more sense than most people in this room - "

"Kei Lo?"

"New boyfriend." She smirks at the dumbfounded look spreading over his face. "What, did you think I was going to wait around for you forever?"

He follows her retreat with his eyes, to where she joins a tall, lanky guy for a dance. Well, at least someone's happy.

Zuko's attention is drawn to Uncle Iroh, escorting his mother out of the courtyard and up the stairs leading to the palace. He frowns, searching for his father among the throng of remaining people. He isn't with Azula, but Chan is, and Zuko's stomach nearly upends itself as the two of them sneak off into the darkened gardens.

At least she'll be too busy to bother me.

His gaze sweeps past the dance floor, where Toph is dancing with the muscly kid of some Fire noble he doesn't know by name. He spots Mai's mother leaving with her toddler son, Aang and Master Gyatso retreating to the entrance gate. He watches Katara as she nurses a flute of wine by herself in the corner, observing the dances wistfully.

Then his father approaches her and his heart grinds to a halt.

"May I have this dance?" asks a man's voice from behind her.

Katara snaps out of the reverie she didn't realize she'd entered. She turns her head, expecting the glimpse of brilliant crimson in the corner of her eye to be Zuko, or Chan, or maybe some other hopeful Fire Nation noble.

Instead, Ozai himself looms over her, coldly immaculate through to the sharp points of his crown.

She doesn't even try to conceal the shock that paralyzes her in place. "I—" Of all the ways she'd envisioned meeting the man, this was certainly the last of them.

Nearly everyone in their vicinity freezes to gawk at them. The sounds of their whispers only seem to amplify the roar of blood rushing through her ears as it drains from her face.

...why bother...act of charity perhaps...she should be honoured that he approached her of all people…

For his part, the Emperor doesn't appear fazed by her consternation. He smirks, and her fingers itch to douse him with enough water to wash it clear off his face.

"I would be honoured," she makes herself say instead, swallowing her outrage. She has seen enough of this place to understand that responding the way she really wanted to would only make her appear weak. She is anything but.

Burying the storm of her rage beneath depths of deceptive calm, she accepts his hand. Part of her wishes it would sear new scars into her skin, but his grip is warm and smooth to the touch, which somehow makes it all the more repulsive to her.

Ozai bows his head in acknowledgement. "Thank you." He raises an eyebrow at the small crowd gathering around them and for an instant, he resembles the terrifying monster of her childhood nightmares. "Surely my beloved nephew's nuptials have provided sufficient entertainment for the rest of our honoured guests."

His tone is perfunctory and yet everyone flinches. The whispers stop but furtive glances linger as the Emperor leads her to the center of the rapidly crowding courtyard. The evening air is stifling and clammy against her face like the breath of a beast. His silence speaks to the power he holds unquestioningly; hers is the only shield she has left to wield.

The musicians strike up a waltz – thankfully not the dragon's waltz, but the one Aang had taught her at Conquest Day a lifetime earlier. They go through the motions: his with graceful ease, hers stilted and puppet like. All of her focus flies to the careful placement of hands at waist and shoulder, and how much it makes her skin crawl.

It goes like this for several long, tense moments in which she is left to wonder at his motives, all of which become steadily wilder. Is he making a point about Fire Nation dominance? Does he know who I am? Did the princess tell him something –

"So you are a guest of my brother's," Ozai says at length, interrupting her panicked train of thought with careless aplomb.

It takes no small effort for Katara to speak, her throat clamped tightly shut. "Yes."

"Such a gracious host," he observes coolly. "I would be remiss if I didn't extend the same courtesy. I am Emperor Ozai."

"I know who you are," Katara snaps, before biting her tirade behind her teeth. "I mean. I have to. Everyone has to. Your Majesty."

Far from taking offense, her thinly-veiled hostility only seems to amuse him. "Indeed. And I understand you are well acquainted with the royal family by now. Particularly my son."

He knows. "I – I'm well acquainted with a lot of people," she parries faintly.

He laughs, and suddenly the resemblance between him and his son is queasily striking. "What was your name again?"

The instinct to look away and scream for help suddenly becomes overwhelming. But she resists and stares back into the face that had haunted her since childhood. "Katara," she answers with the last shred of her defiance.

His eyes glitter coldly. "Ah yes," he breathes. "Katara."

The sound of his voice saying her name is so disconcerting, Katara is completely unprepared for his next words.

"You're Kya's daughter, aren't you?"

She nearly trips over her feet.

"Oh, don't look so surprised." Ozai smiles. "Even if the identity of the South's last waterbender wasn't such a poorly kept secret, you're the spitting image of your mother when she was your age. A blind fool couldn't miss it."

It takes more time than Katara would like to understand the meaning hidden in his words, and when she does, a shiver runs down her spine. "You...you knew my mother?"

"Knew her?" Ozai echoes. "Why...we were practically family."

Katara shakes her head. "I don't understand…"

"She never told you." His voice turns cold at her disbelief.

"Told me what?"

"Your mother was a strong-willed and worldly woman. Didn't you ever wonder why?" His cold gaze burns suddenly intense. "She was born here, not in that barbaric wasteland you called a home."

Everything seems to stop altogether. "What? How…"

"There were a handful of diplomatic families from the Water Tribes. Kya's father was the Southern ambassador at the time," Ozai explains, as her stunned silence stretches out. "And so she grew up here, a winter flower in the heart of the Imperial Court. Most of the other Water Tribe children were far too old or too young to be proper company. But we were of an age, so naturally…"

"You were friends?!" It takes all of her effort not to shriek.

"Friends…" The word seems to roll around in his mouth, as though he found it a bitter taste to swallow. "We were inseparable, Kya and I. For all the differences in our birth, we were of one mind. Nobody understood me the way she did. And there wasn't a thing I wouldn't have done for her. Not a single thing."

"This doesn't make sense," Katara whispers faintly, as though to herself. "Mom hated firebenders! How –"

"But then my dear brother, Agni bless his resilient soul, took it upon himself to teach us a lesson in propriety," Ozai barrels onward, his tightly controlled voice a shade away from a snarl. "And the instant she came of age, she was whisked away to wed some narrow-minded upstart chieftain in the South, far beneath her station."

She gulps, suddenly afraid. "Dad…"

He shakes his head. "How strange this must all sound to you."

"Why…" She clears her throat, her voice scraping out hoarsely, "why are you telling me this?"

"Because I wouldn't want you to have any false notions about me."

"Why would you even care what I think?" she demands, the numbness of her shock beginning to shatter. "After everything you've done? General Iroh told me what happened! They'd worked out a treaty, and then you came in and… and…" Her voice trails off, shaky and suddenly brimming with unshed tears.

But that hateful, cold smile lingers on his face. "How foolish of me, that I couldn't manage so simple a task," he laments with faint triumph. "That all his hard work tragically went to utter ruin."

She dashes at her eyes with the back of her hand. "How can you admit what you did, and still tell me that you were her friend?"

But Ozai shrugs. "I gave Kya a choice. Her decision was…" his expression clouds as he chooses his next word thoughtfully, "unfortunate."

Fury nearly blinds her. "Oh, so you think she earned what you did to us?"

Ozai scowls. "Both her and her low-born husband –"

"Don't talk about my dad that way!"

"- they supported my brother instead of me," he finishes, sounding less like a dignified emperor and more like a petulant child.

"Of course they did!" she exclaims, stung. "Why wouldn't they? General Iroh worked with them for years to make that treaty, did you have anything better to offer?"

"It shouldn't have mattered. After everything I did for her – she was supposed to…" A flurry of emotions, dark and frightening, twitch across his face, making him appear positively unhinged. When he speaks again, his voice is low and unrestrainedly vicious. "But when the moment came, she turned against me. Just like everyone else, I lost her to Iroh." His expression hardens. "Perfect, infallible Iroh."

Katara stares at him with new eyes. "Mom saw right through you, didn't she? She could never have been friends with someone as empty and selfish as you!"

Her voice rings loudly in the small space between them. In the corner of her eye, heads turn to watch them curiously, and it only occurs to her then, what a scene they must be causing, but she doesn't care.

But then Ozai's sly smile returns. "Tsk. And here I was hoping you would be smarter than Kya was."

A barrel of ice cascades into her stomach. "Excuse me?"

"What's done is done," Ozai explains, infuriatingly calm again. "We must look forward, not waste time with matters so old they might as well be ancient history."

"You were the one who brought it up in the first place!"

"Only so you would understand," he says earnestly. He crowds her space as he leans closer. "You have ties here – to this land, to this palace. To me."

She recoils in dread. "No."

"You could help make it right. Who would be better suited?" he presses, his voice dripping cloying sweetness like poison laced with honey.

"I would never help you," she growls.

"That's pride talking. I understand," he observes, and his false sympathy is by far the most difficult thing for her to stomach. "But think of your place in this world, child. You have no home, no family, not even a tribe. In the end, all you have is charity." He pauses, amused. "And I can be quite generous to those who swear themselves to me."

"What could you possibly gain from this?" she demands.

"The same thing you want. To put this behind us."

Katara narrows her eyes, not liking the way he said us. "You don't need my help for that."

"Quite the contrary. Even now, it haunts me," Ozai argues. "When the people speak of me, they don't take my name. Murderer, they say instead. Child killer. Barbarian. But they would see differently if you pledged your loyalty to me." His grip on her hand and waist tightens uncomfortably. "Together, we could carve a new future. A new reputation."

He is so close, the smell of his rich sandalwood soap makes her want to vomit all over his pristine royal robes. "After everything you did, now you want my help?" She shakes her head violently. "You're even crazier than I thought!"

Ozai regards her for a long moment, his expression closing off oddly. "So you refuse?"

She knows she should heed the danger her defiance had just cost her. Instead all she hears is the sound of her mother's voice reminding her, you are the ocean made flesh and all fires bow to the sea.

Katara meets his eyes with a glare of her own. "I would rather die," she spits.

The cold, deranged smile returns. "You truly are Kya's daughter, aren't you." He shakes his head slowly. "Such a pity…"

"Father." Zuko's gravelly voice, so different from the cultured silk of his father's, cuts through the conversation like a hot dagger.

Ozai's grip slackens and she wrenches away, fighting to disguise her gasps of relief. Arms crossed protectively across her chest, she backs out of reach and sees Zuko standing before them. The expression on his face is intense yet inscrutable.

"Prince Zuko. How kind of you to join us," the Emperor greets mildly, the madness slipping from his smile. "I was just reacquainting myself with an old family friend. But I understand you and Katara are close already."

Somehow, her entire body manages to bloom with heat and shudder at the same time.

Zuko glances at her, at the surrounding onlookers who make no effort to hide their curiosity, and then back at his father. His mouth hardens into a frown. "Sifu Katara is the most powerful waterbending Master in our ranks, Father. I've underestimated her before. It would be unseemly for an Emperor to make the same mistake."

He steps next to her, a subtler defiance than his words but a far louder one.

His father raises his eyebrows. "I have merely made Katara a most lucrative proposition. Do not trouble yourself with seemliness."

His voice rises warningly at the end, but Zuko doesn't back down. He faces the crowd of spectators, announcing, "This spectacle has gone on far too long. An Emperor does not behave so dishonourably with his guests in his own hall. This ends now."

Ozai smirks mirthlessly. "If my directness has caused distress, that was not my intent. And in spite of everything...my offer still stands." He straightens himself to his full height. "Perhaps with some time, she will see the wisdom of it."

With that, he sweeps away. A chorus of dark mutterings breaks out in his wake as the crowd disperses also.

Katara lets out the breath congealing in her lungs, suddenly dizzy with relief.

Zuko takes one grim look at her face and whisks her out of the courtyard, his hand a faint warmth against the small of her back.

Not a word is said as Zuko guides her through the winding palace estate. Katara follows mechanically, too absorbed in her shock to notice how the assorted noises smooth into the quiet canopy of night, the crunch of slippers against the ground, and at length, the sound of still, lapping water.

She is scarcely aware of their surroundings by the time he stops and plants her onto a seat. "Are you okay?" His voice is no longer the coolly detached one he'd used back in the courtyard, but low and serious, almost frightened.

The world sways alarmingly. "I – I'm fine. I'll be fine – I don't know." Even through the sticky heat of the night her blood still runs cold.

Zuko hovers over her, helpless and tight-lipped. "He shouldn't have done that. And in front of everyone – did he hurt you?"

Her skin stings with the memory of that man's hands, but the wounds are hidden deep where nobody can see. She shakes her head. He sinks before her onto his knees, clutching at her hands with his warm callused ones.

It takes a few moments before she's able to breathe properly and the fog at the edge of her senses begins to slip away. "He's terrible," she manages hoarsely.

He doesn't try to defend his father this time.

"He knew my mother," Katara heaves, the numbness of disbelief sharpening to the sickly sting of grief. Zuko freezes at that, clearly as surprised as she had been, and it only makes her angrier. "He said they were friends and…and he still did it. He was proud." She shakes her head. "I don't understand."

"He told you that?" Zuko asks incredulously.

"Yes."

"He did that."

She nods, trembling violently.

Zuko lapses into a weighted silence, the deepening furrows in his forehead the only suggestion of an age-old conflict blazing somewhere within. As though he was reluctant to accept the truth of his father's depravity...or to admit upon facing its toll that he had always guessed at – perhaps always known – its depth.

But then his hands tighten around hers. "As long as I'm here, you're safe," he promises, the low rasp of his voice unchanged. "You don't have to worry about him ever again. He's my problem now, do you understand that?"

She buries herself into his chest and everything seems to slow down after that. The cold sick fog recedes to other more immediate things, like the thick heat of the air intensifying with every beat of his heart hammering against her ear. Her own pulse is erratic, shooting impulses through her body quivering with the power of the full moon hanging overhead. It reminds her, you're not helpless, you're not alone, and whenever he was close it became nearly impossible to deny.

Shifting slightly, she tries to take stock of their surroundings and it nearly takes her breath away. They are in an enclosure walled off on all sides, decorated with a garden and a small pond at its heart. "Where are we?"

Zuko clears his throat, perhaps embarrassed now that the crisis was drawing to its end. "I – I couldn't think of anywhere else to bring you where nobody could see…" He gestures awkwardly behind them, where the wall prominently displays a window of what looked like a bedroom. His bedroom, she realizes with a lurch somewhere deep in her bones, and the air seems to grow hotter still.

"Show me," Katara whispers.

His eyes widen in surprise.

She doesn't remember exactly how they wind up inside. Her focus almost wholly attuned to the nervous sound of his breathing, held under painstaking control as though one swift gust of air could break them.

The silence stretching between them feels perhaps as fragile as she takes it in: the spacious room that is far more lavishly decorated than his one back at the camp, but somehow just as sparse in its own way. The curtains at the window and coverlets of the large canopy bed, though far richer, are the same hue of blood red, and the desk and wardrobe are elaborately carved of the same dark wood.

Katara runs her fingers along the mantel lining the wall, its surface smooth and cool to the touch. The ornaments studding its length are surprisingly unassuming: a pair of broadswords with leather handles far too worn to be merely decorative, a pair of mummers' masks carved with the faces of smiling dragons, one flame red and the other dark blue.

"Is that a Water spirit?" she asks, half out of curiosity and half to break the silence. Gingerly, she lifts the blue mask to examine it more closely.

The fire in the hearth crackles in front of her, yet it's the length of her spine that seems to swelter as Zuko steps closer to peer at it over her shoulder. "It's from a play," he explains, his voice clipped. "My mother...she used to take us every year in the summer when we were younger. Back then we all couldn't stand the theater – my father most of all – but we went anyway because she loved it."

Zuko reaches out to trace the exaggerated line of the mask's wide grin. Katara's skin prickles with his nearness even though he doesn't touch her. "Everything was so much simpler back then. I thought if I came back, I...I might find it that way again." His hand stops over the mask's empty eye sockets, an unnerving tunnelling stare. "What a surprise, nothing's changed! My father still wants another bloodbath, and I have to put my honour on the line to stop it. He handed me more power and influence than I ever dreamed possible, but how am I supposed to change the course of anything without ruining the only things I have to fight him with?"

"You'll find a way," she tries to assure him. "You can do more out from under his shadow, Zuko."

"You don't understand. He's got me trapped, Katara. Right where he needs me." He swallows haltingly. "Where I need to be."

"What...what are you saying?"

She hears it looming in all the words Zuko doesn't say before he finally speaks again. "I'm saying that this is bigger than me."

It grows louder with heavy finality before it clicks. "Bigger than us, you mean."

His silence deepens, an answer in itself. "I can't let him hurt you again. And I can't protect you here, not if I have to preserve my reputation in front of the courtiers."

"Is that it?" she demands, inwardly reeling. "You're just ashamed to be seen with me?"

"Don't say that," he fires back immediately. "I wouldn't have brought you here if I was ashamed. You know that's not true."

The small space between them pulses with hidden electricity, ready to split at any instant.

"But I need to be the perfect prince if I have a chance of swaying the council from razing the colonies. And what I did for you back there...it wasn't princely," Zuko spits the word as though he hates it. The hand gripping the blue mask turns white at the knuckles. "I wish there was a way, Katara. I wish I could just take matters into my own hands without having to worry about what people think, but that's not the world we live in!"

Cold clammy sweat slickens the back of her neck and the palms of her hands. "No," she says in a hollow voice. "I suppose it isn't."

Zuko doesn't say a thing as he pulls the laughing blue mask out of her grasp and reaches over her to place it back on the mantel. He is so close behind her that the front of his robes brush against the back of hers.

"So where do we go from here?" Katara peers up at him. "Should I leave? Is that what you want?"

A trickle of flame escapes his mouth as he exhales explosively. Its dry heat caresses her temple. "No," he admits, almost grudgingly. "I don't want that."

Zuko makes to turn away, but she tugs at his sleeve to stop him. "Me neither," she whispers. "Please, I…"

He meets her gaze, torn. As though helpless under the weight of everything he wanted and could no longer deny. He crushes closer and the winding string of tension snaps through her body as though he'd gone and yanked on it. The sound of her heartbeat fills her ears until it is all she can hear.

Then, his lips crash to hers and everything else shatters.

This time, the awkwardness from before is nowhere to be found; instead their fumbling movements are desperate, urgent. His mouth is heavy upon hers and she can taste the lingering sweetness of plum wine. He runs his tongue along the inside of her mouth, rolling it with hers, before biting her lip hard enough to make her gasp.

The fabric of his ceremonial attire is velvety soft, but the heat that rises up from beneath nearly threatens to scald. The press of his body the pull to her push, as if both of them are slowly drowning.

But when she tugs at the pin holding his crown in place, Zuko struggles to break away. "Katara," he croaks, somewhere between a warning and a plea, "I don't think I can control it anymore."

The crown tumbles to the ground, its metallic clang loud enough to shake the foundation of an empire. Freed of the topknot, his hair spills into her fingers like soft black silk.

Katara buries her hands in his hair and hovers her lips over his. She barely recognizes her own voice as she replies breathlessly, "I don't want you to."

And then there were very few words left to say.

Instead, the space around them shrinks and fills with other sounds. The harshening breaths escaping where mouths cling and devour. The faint hiss where his fingers pull at the lace ties of her dress at its collar, the louder one that whistles through her teeth in response. The crackling and spitting of the fire swelling in the hearth and how it punctuates the whisper of silk cascading to the floor.

A memory of unease leaps into her gut as humid air brushes against newly bared skin. He doesn't notice at first, helping her navigate the complicated fastenings holding his mantle and outer robe in place. The tension dissipates somewhat as she nearly giggles at his mounting frustration with the sheer number of layers he wore, until at last it all piles unceremoniously in a heap on the floor.

The budding laugh dies nervously in her throat.

Through the window, the full moon bursts through a patch of cloud and the silver light makes his skin glow like carved marble. Fingers of warm firelight splay against the hard contours of his body, begging hers to follow suit. Breathing very unsteadily, she chances a touch to his skin. The strangled sound that escapes him encourages her to continue, her fingertips skimming where chiseled muscles sculpt shadowed patterns in the flickering light.

Her mouth goes dry. While no stranger to a man's body, the warmth pouring off his in heady waves and the sheer intoxication of her own urges are entirely, paralyzingly unfamiliar. She wavers, intimidated by the intimacy of it all and yet still longing to do something nonetheless.

Zuko seems in little better state than her. His mouth falls open slightly as his eyes flit over the marks at her waist and belly, registering their winestain colouring and blurred but indistinguishable handprint shape. With hesitating fingers, he reaches for one of the scars curving along the swell of her waist.

"Is this okay?" he mumbles, tracing its outline reverently. His touch resonates everywhere; the wail rising in her throat becomes a moan. Breathlessly, Katara nods instead and his eyes seem to glint where they meet hers, wild and darkening.

His fingers ghost over the skin her bindings don't cover, exploratory and maddeningly gentle. The ridges of his chest and abdomen push flush against her stomach, hips pressing into hers with a need so blinding it splits like lightning down her spine.

And the answer in the depths of her body rumbles like thunder.

Her mouth collides with his again, this time more insistent. Focused on the heat and hardness of his flesh, Katara scarcely notices the weightlessness of her limbs or the way the room seems to spin. The world tumbles around her and for a confusing moment everything turns to red silk, sinuous and cool against her skin.

Zuko clambers over her onto the coverlets of his bed. His breathing is nearly as harsh as hers is, and when he cups her cheek to kiss her again, she tastes wildness clashing against crumbling restraint. His hand hovers over the knot of her chest bindings, but doesn't move. His face is so close that strands of his hair stick to her sweat-dampened forehead. Arousal wars with disbelief in his eyes.

"Are you sure?" Zuko asks again unevenly.

Katara considers it all fleetingly: where they are, their current state, everything that would remain as helplessly complicated when all was over. But then there was the weight of his body, the fitful beat of his pulse driving through her chest to match her own, and next to that, little else mattered.

"Y-yeah," she breathes, biting her lip even while threading her fingers through his tousled hair. She swallows as his gaze intensifies and the scared confession slips out of her. "I...I just don't really know what I'm doing."

His eyes soften. "Same," he admits with a hint of a nervous laugh. "I…I don't know what you like."

Her heartbeat races with anticipation and anxiety all at once. "Me neither."

With a tenderness that defies the heat of his body, he brushes a curl of her hair away from her face and tucks it behind her ear. Then his forehead presses against hers and his voice is almost husky as he whispers, "Wouldn't it be nice to find out?"

Something hot and molten slides into the pit of her stomach. His thumb quivers with the effort of his restraint as it traces the outline of her mouth. She clutches at it, presses her lips against his knuckles in a silent plea and nods, lost for words.

Then her bindings are sliding off her chest as trails of heavy, wet kisses blaze along along her jaw, her mother's necklace, her throat trembling beneath it. Zuko's head dips, studying the curve of her body and the way it undulates under his touch. His tongue laps tentatively at one of the scars bordering the underside of her breast, and she lets out a keening sigh.

"Easy," he soothes, but satisfaction glimmers in his voice. "Did...did you like that?"

Katara nods fervently, struggling to speak. Her eyes flutter shut as his mouth closes over the side of her breast, whipping an inferno beneath her skin. Her hands find the back of his head and fist into his thick hair. He makes a greedy sound, muffled into her flesh, and the hungry sweep of his mouth devours until her whole body shivers with impatience.

A blush heats her face as she grabs him by the shoulders and tugs him back up. Taken aback by how heavy her breaths have become, she tries kissing him clumsily and he sinks into it, a moan vibrating roughly in the back of his throat. The sound pools deep and intense inside her, even as his hips roll against hers in a helpless rhythm. The weight of his arousal, hard and overheated, digs almost painfully into her thigh.

Katara gasps again, but the clench of her body is a craving in itself and she instinctively angles herself to accommodate his length. Zuko hisses explosively as she tries to rock against him, seeking somehow to ease the tension building within her and finding little relief.

"Katara…" he strains out weakly. His fist crumples into the sheets beside her head. "Stop that."

She stills, nerves wringing uncertainly. "Did I do something wrong?"

He lets out a strangled laugh and it blazes through her. His voice is almost hoarse as it rasps against her ear, "No...but you'll be the end of me if you keep doing that. Besides-"

His fingers trail a lazy pattern along her lower belly and sparks scatter everywhere against her skin. "I want to remember this," he murmurs, gaze simmering as he drinks her in. "I've wanted this for so long."

His hand slips lower.

Katara's breath explodes out of her as his touch settles at the juncture of her legs. It is unbearably delicate as he nudges her skin there. His fingers are slow and patient, mapping the spots that make her clutch at his shoulders in a white-knuckled grip. When they slide in and stroke at the liquid heat building inside, her hips jerk uncontrollably. A high-pitched yelp escapes her and she shoves a hand against her mouth, blood rushing to her face because surely, surely that sound hadn't come from her -

"No, don't." He uncovers her mouth, pushing her wrist into the silken bedsheets. "I want to hear you. Don't hold back."

She lets out a small whimper as he kisses the inside of her wrist. He thumbs the corner of her mouth, dipping into where it hangs slack in pleasure. The control slips from his voice as his lips graze her ear. "I didn't think this was ever going to happen - "

Now the hand underneath her bindings speeds up, moving in and out rhythmically. She cries out something between a curse and a plea for more. "I didn't think you'd ever let me…" The motions and pressure adjust ever so slightly, guided by the way her body thrashes against his, and the coil of her tension winds impossibly tighter.

More, she tries to beg but only manages an unintelligible shudder. Her nails rake down the length of his back instead.

Zuko lets out a moan, nearly as overcome as her. His breath is hot in her ear. "Agni, Katara, you feel - " His fingers flicker wetly against her and his teeth tug on her earlobe, scraping along the hollow of her throat. Katara nearly comes apart at the seams, crying out a series of syllables that sound like his name. Heavy, urgent kisses press along the underside of her jaw.

Zuko groans into her neck and the sound seems to penetrate right through her. "Let go," he begs, his rhythm growing erratic and desperate as though he needed to break under her pleasure too. "Katara. Let - let go."

And just like that, the coil inside her snaps. Stars burst across her vision and shockwaves consume her body like fire, too much and not enough all at once. Every muscle clenches and unclenches helplessly as her back arches off the bed, lightning racing up her spine.

"Zuko - Zuko!"

Everything splinters into buzzing white noise. She spills into his arms, dizzy and scarcely able to breathe. Zuko's scar chafes rough against her jaw as he licks at the pulsing hollow of her throat. The warmth of his ragged breath tickles her sweat-dampened skin. His hips grind a needy rhythm into her bindings and all she can really focus on is how hard he felt against the slippery heat between her legs. Through the haze, Katara registers trying to kick off the strips of fabric until they crumple into a heap by their feet.

His eyes find hers, glazing over in desperation. Even as apprehension suddenly flashes through the thrum of her arousal, the look on her face must have matched because Zuko rolls his hips and with a hoarse cry forced into her hair, he pushes into her.

Katara freezes, caught in moments long past even as her body swallows him. Zuko's mouth works wordlessly against her skin, clearly engulfed in his own pleasure. But his fingers caress her temple and his scent - star spice flung with tea and sweat - is sharp in her nostrils, and the sensations bring her hurtling back.

"Are you okay?" he murmurs very unsteadily, shifting as to not crush her under his weight. Even though his eyes are hooded with desire, his concern is obvious. "Does it hurt?"

It starts with a flip in her belly. "It's not you," she whispers truthfully.

Anyone else would have kept going, bent on extracting their own pleasure with no regard for her own. But even though Zuko's entire body is rigid with new tension, he still pauses. "If-if it's too much for you - "

Katara shakes her head and he falls silent. The tension stirring through her isn't pain, isn't even discomfort. Just a lingering coldness and holding him was like hugging fire.

She runs her hands along the muscles straining along his torso, and her body slowly unclenches. Experimentally, she tilts her hips and buries him to the hilt. Zuko curses roughly into her hair, fingers biting where he's grabbed her by the waist because he fits perfectly. The wet friction sparks at the fire still smouldering from earlier, suddenly ready to set her aflame again.

"I," she grits out shakily, "I just need you to move or something, please -"

He obliges, moving steadily until she sighs. Until all the cold, hollow spaces inside her begin to overflow with a different sort of ache, and the tension gripping her body becomes unbearable. Her nails drag along his scalp as his mouth tastes the salt on her skin. The hands cupping her face are hot and his gaze, intense and searching, never leaves hers.

"Agni," he groans, lips moving against her temple, "you feel amazing, fuck -"

It becomes easy after that, so easy. He falls into a rhythm guided by the rippling wave of her body and the sound of her sighs. The memory of discomfort melts away and in its wake churns a flood. It surges until she rocks against him, scrabbling desperately to catch the crest of her wax and wane. He responds enthusiastically, flinging her leg around his waist to deepen his thrusts, and the abrupt change in angle has her screaming his name.

The fire in the hearth flickers and pulsates, casting the room with dancing light and shadows moving perfectly in time to Zuko's harsh, uneven breaths. The musky scent of arousal and sweat clings to the air. Outside, rain finally begins to fall from the cloudy skies, spattering against the windows and blessing the dry, cracked earth. A good omen for a wedding.

"Katara," he pleads desperately into her ear, "I'm - I'm not going to last much longer, you feel so good -"

And with a crash that might have been the distant explosion of fireworks or a shattering of the earth itself, the pace of his thrusts unfetters. He grips her thigh hard enough to leave bruises, and her entire body shakes with every snap of his hips, yet pain was nowhere to be found. Her throat is raw and he keeps hitting a spot deep inside her that makes her see stars. Fire pools under every inch of her skin and she's inches from combusting on the spot, teetering agonizingly on the cusp -

"Zuko please, I'm - I'm so close - "

With a gasp, he reaches for the apex of their bodies and rubs slickened fingers against the spot that had undone her before. Her eyes roll back as she plummets over the edge, dissolving into contractions of white-hot pleasure.

She cries out hoarsely and fists the sheets, trying to stop herself from falling as everything seems to spin around her. There's a sound of ripping silk and her body blazes so hot she swears he must have set her on fire. Her hips judder aimlessly as Zuko slams into her forcefully, still nearing his own end and so racked with pleasure that he seems like he might shatter.

After a few moments the high subsides and everything stops fluttering. Her skin tingles with the warm glow of euphoria, even as exhaustion starts to settle in her bones. But Zuko hisses a curse rolled into her name, pulling her hips clear off the bed and pounding into her hard enough to make the bedposts rattle against the wall. His teeth drag along her collarbone and he chokes a strangled, "Katara - I'm -"

He bites down and her whole body resonates with the needy sounds he makes. Fireworks rumble in the distance as he jerks and stutters against her, and everything spurts to a convulsing halt. He collapses onto her, limp and sweaty. His pulse throbs wetly deep inside her and his heart hums against her own.

It's an eternity before everything ebbs and breathing becomes possible again.

"Fuck," Zuko hisses, trying to peel himself slowly from where his skin sticks to hers. "Katara, I –"

She presses a finger to his lips, stemming the flow before it can start. "I wanted this. I really did."

He kisses her gently and she yields, savouring the moment while it lasts: the sticky heat of his body, the heady smell of their arousal staining the ripped red sheets. The sound of the rain and people cheering as the fireworks continue, and the groan she tears from his throat as she thumbs the edge of his scar.

And threaded through it all, the glow of her own disbelief that she could even feel anything like this at all, eclipsing but not quite erasing the pangs of memories made faint. It weighs in her chest like a bittersweet ache.

When they pull apart, his jaw is worryingly tight. "This isn't fair," he strains out. "How…how can I just let you leave? After this – after everything?"

"Zuko, this doesn't change anything," she tries, running a hand along the hollow of his cheek. The lie burns in her throat.

"Yes it does! It changes everything!" Zuko's voice rises, uncharacteristically shaky and the rest of him is trembling too. "How am I supposed to...I don't want to forget this, Katara."

"You don't have to," Katara whispers. "It's just...something to remember."

"It's not enough." A strange flurry of emotions storm through his eyes and when he cups her face again, he's strangely resolute. A quailing part of her has already guessed what he will say in the instant before he says it out loud. "I...I love you."

It doesn't stop her from being stunned into silence.

"I love you and I can't watch you get hurt by him, but fuck, Katara, sometimes…" He swallows and for the first time all night does he truly look afraid, "sometimes I think we could do anything together."

The crashing of the fireworks outside seem to grow louder as the silence in the room deepens.

And just before Katara is capable of speech again, Zuko jerks back, cursing silent under his breath. His face suddenly goes very pale. "Uh," he manages very shakily. "I...I shouldn't have said that."

Katara's skin prickles, damp with sweat and suddenly cold. She casts for something to say but her mouth only opens and closes uselessly.

"I shouldn't have - oh, fuck." He all but flees, pushing off the bed and scrambling back to the fireplace where all their clothes are scattered over the floor. Even in the golden light, his skin is flushed deep red.

Absently, she clutches at the torn red coverlet. The rain cascades down the windows, washing away all the silver moonlight. People still cheer in the courtyard, their voices rising in the air.

"Zuko…" she says, sitting up and wincing at the aches settling along her body. "I –"

"It's okay," he blurts out in a strange high-pitched voice. He hunches over the pile of his robes, trying to untangle layers of crimson fabric with quaking hands. "Really."

Where her senses had been alive mere moments ago, now everything feels strangely muted. She reaches for her bindings trailing across the foot of the bed. "Really?" she echoes doubtfully.

He nods jerkily, trying to slide something over his head and failing to realize it was pants.

She shakes her head as she quickly does up her bindings and pads over to him. "I think you might want to start with this first." She bends down and holds out his crumpled undertunic.

He frowns, glances confusedly at what he was struggling to force over his head, and sighs wearily. "I'm an idiot," he mutters, flinging the pants to the floor and covering his face with his palms.

"You're not," Katara says softly, sliding his tunic over his shoulders.

His hands close over her wrists, stilling her. "I told you, Katara." His voice is still shaky and high-pitched, and Katara sees the terror in his eyes. "You don't owe me anything."

He lets go but her wrists still prickle with his touch. She opens her mouth to say something, but he is already occupying himself with the several complicated layers of his royal robes.

Sighing, she turns away and slips back into Ty Lee's long blue dress. For the first time all night, the thud of her heart slows to a dirge-like crawl.

By the time she finishes, Zuko is still struggling with a knot at the back of his neck.

"Let me." She steps in before he can refuse and ties it in place. Then, she wraps her arms around him, catching him by surprise.

He stiffens in her embrace and beneath her fingers she can feel the firestorm of his pulse. "Katara - I wasn't thinking straight - you don't have to -"

"Sometimes I think we could do anything together too." Her voice is small but it seems to echo in the air.

He freezes before twisting to stare back at her, mouth agape and eyes so wide with hope and fear that her heart nearly skips a beat. For a long moment, the rest of the world seems to fade away and nothing else exists except for the thrum of his heartbeat and the shaking breath in her lungs.

But then the room rattles with the force of a distant boom and the spell fizzles out abruptly.

"What is that?" Zuko murmurs in confusion as another explosion splits the sky and the windows glow with angry red light. The rain beats down harder, drenching everything in its path.

She nearly snaps at him for changing the subject, but the sound of cheers outside grow louder and shriller, as though getting closer.

Screams.

"Zuko," she says instead, "what's happening?"

And before dread can fully sink in, there's a loud knocking at the door.

"Your Highness! Are you in there?"

They leap apart as though burnt.

"Stay here," he mutters in her ear before striding to the door and flinging it open.

A pair of guards wait outside, sweaty and panting and nursing fresh wounds, but still sweeping into a bow at his presence.

"What is it?" Zuko demands. "Shouldn't you be guarding the wedding chamber, why are you –"

"Your Highness, there is little time to explain," one of the guards says hastily, brushing past him into the room. The other surveys the hallway, alert. "You must come with us, your safety is paramount -"

"My safety?" Zuko echoes. "What do you mean?"

The guard scans the room quickly, frantic eyes lingering upon the rumpled bedcovers for an instant long enough to make Katara blush.

"Nothing!" he calls to the other guard in the hallway, who nods but draws his sword anyway. "No one but the waterbender!"

"The assailants seem to be moving further away," the guard in the hallway calls over his shoulder. But he moves to block the doorway with his body nonetheless.

"Assailants? What is going on?" Zuko demands in a biting voice. Katara winces; she thought he had spoken harshly earlier but that was nothing compared how cold he sounded now.

"A thousand apologies, Your Highness." The guard in the room gets down on one knee and places a fist to the heart of his breastplate. "They came out of nowhere, bursting out of the ground before our very eyes! We tried our best, Your Highness, but the earth is like air to them and they slipped away!"

Katara chokes, horror strangling her breath in her throat.

"Who?" Zuko staggers back as the realization strikes. "The Dai Li? Here? But - but how -"

"First they struck the wedding chamber and then we heard a commotion in the tower," the kneeling guard explains fearfully. "We feared to find them here next."

"The tower – Mother!" Zuko all but shouts, making for the door. "Is she safe, is she –"

"The Queen is alive, Your Highness!" the guard exclaims, springing to his feet and blocking Zuko's path forward. "His Majesty Emperor Iroh was there to fend off the assailants." He gulps. "But your cousin, I fear, was not so lucky."

"What do you mean?" Zuko asks, abruptly stilling. "What happened to Lu Ten?"

The guard bows his head and an intense sadness crosses his face. Thick black dread claws up Katara's spine in answer.

"His Royal Highness, our beloved Prince Lu Ten…he didn't survive."

And after that, the entire world goes silent.

Chapter 30: the phoenix rises

Chapter Text

disclaimer. it ain't mine, folks.

author's notes. you guys are the best! thank you so much for keeping me well fed (even as i do evil things like that red wedding-esque cliffhanger last chapter).

super massive kudos to circasurvival for beta-reading and cheerleading across multiple time zones!

content warning for death, ozai's abusive fuckery, and violence veering on the graphic/disturbing side. please proceed with caution if you find any of this triggering or upsetting.

i give you...

southern lights.

chapter xxx. the phoenix rises

reality's a three-way, a scenery defined
by tomorrow dubbed a mystery and the past just blurry lines
if there's ever been injustice in my name, i bow unto blame

"daze" / poets of the fall

He didn't survive.

The words echo somewhere inside the hollows of Zuko's skull, resonant but not making any semblance of sense. "Didn't survive," he repeats thickly. "What do you mean he didn't survive."

Both guards at the door shuffle hesitantly, and one of them is saying something while the other looks anxiously over his shoulder into the hallway beyond. But the words crash over him, a wash of sound just like the rain pouring down the windows outside, sliding down his face in hot wet drops –

"He can't be," he says numbly, wiping at his face and surprised by the wetness there. "He can't be - how can you be alive while he -"

From very far away, the words drum in his ears and it takes an eternity before some of them begin to take form. ...must have snuck in the room somehow...sealed it off - broke in and it was too late –

"Too late?" Zuko echoes incredulously. "What use are you then? How can you stand there in front of me after you failed to protect your prince?"

"Zuko," Katara's quiet voice admonishes. A hand tentatively rests on his back, soothing cool and stinging all at once.

He recoils, whirling on the hapless pair of guards instead. "Get out! Leave me alone!"

"But Your Highness," one counters, rather bravely, "we are sworn to serve you and the royal family -"

"And you've done such a good job, haven't you?" he shouts. "I don't need the service of failures like you -"

"Let me handle him," Katara's low voice cuts him off. She nods at the guards. "You two go ahead."

The guards waver as they glance uncertainly at her. "You?"

Her voice turns indignant. "I've fought against the Dai Li before. Have you?"

And at long last, the pair of guards disappear.

Zuko's body feels incapable of movement, even as the explosions boom closer in the distance and the ground rattles in response.

"Zuko," Katara is saying, reaching for his arm gently. "Zuko, come back to me." Her fingers graze his wrist and only then does he realize that he's shaking.

"Don't," he chokes out, disgusted with himself. All this time and he's still weak, frozen and quivering and crying while everyone else outside was probably already fighting back. "Katara, don't -"

"I'm not leaving you." Her voice is forcibly calm, like she's speaking to a skittish creature. Her fingers trace the tendons lining his forearms and the sensation cracks through the fury paralyzing his body. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

Then she's hugging him and it hits like a flood, all the hurt he's trying to keep at bay. The only thing that quells it is the numbing burn of rage. "Don't tell me you're sorry! You barely knew him!"

She freezes. "I didn't have to - I'm sorry for you, not -"

"I don't need your pity, Katara," he spits. "I don't want it, just go -"

"You think this is pity? You think I don't know what you're feeling?" Katara barrels over him, wiping at her face vehemently. "Go ahead! Get angry, close yourself off, lash out at everyone for caring. But I didn't kill your cousin, Zuko. Someone else did, and they're still out there right now."

A purposeful calm settles over him at that. "You're right. They're still out there," he echoes tonelessly, drawing strength from it. "When I find them, I'm going to make them pay."

He marches toward the door, but Katara yanks on his arm to stop him.

"Don't be stupid," she snaps. "We need to find the others first, or did you forget what happened the last time we fought the Dai Li?"

"I remember you ran off and left us when you needed to." The words blurt out of him, a weapon with no target.

Katara staggers under the blow. Her grip loosens. "That's...that's not fair."

"It's the truth, isn't it?" He shakes her off before continuing to the door. "I need to do this, Katara. Don't get in my way."

"I'm trying to help you!" she bursts out, sounding very close to tears. "Do you even hear yourself?"

Zuko falters for a moment, the distress in her voice threatening to douse the small space in him that still manages to burn, that wants to keep fighting despite everything.

But he latches onto it instead and his voice hardens. "You should leave. It isn't safe for you here either."

She makes a frustrated sound, and guilt claws at him as he flees the room. But then the smell of smoke and burnt earth fills his nostrils and he pushes every other feeling away.

"Spirits," Katara curses, rubbing at her forehead. "What a stubborn, stupid, boneheaded thing to -"

She paces back and forth frantically, but the crumpled bed sheets and the coverlet lying on the ground only remind her of the enormity of what had just happened.

We did that. He said he –

And then the world had spun out from under his feet, flinging him headfirst into some unknown danger.

Everything had happened so quickly, it doesn't even feel real. And yet another distant explosion rattles the room around her. Something big was going on. She wasn't about to let him face it alone, no matter what he said.

Even if it had hurt to hear... but that wasn't important now. She could always yell at Zuko for being an idiot later, because there would be a later.

And with that, she wipes her eyes, rolls up her sleeves and races into the hallway. Outside the bubble of the bedroom, mayhem rages. The air chokes with humidity and screams and splitting bursts of light and sound.

Even then, it's easy enough to catch up with Zuko as he sprints down the length of the corridor.

"What are you doing?" he snaps, sliding to a stop as she rounds the corner. "I told you to get out of here -"

"I heard you," Katara barrels over him, jamming her hands on her hips. "But I thought it was a stupid idea so I'm coming with you anyway."

Zuko scowls ferociously. "I can handle it."

"That's what I thought too, the last time I ran off," Katara returns angrily. "Remember how that ended? Not well."

"This is different," he growls, taking a step toward her. "This is personal."

Katara holds her ground without flinching. "You just said we could do anything together," she reminds him softly.

He snarls like a wounded creature and sparks hiss at his fingertips. "What part of I don't need your help do you not understand?"

Before she can get another word in, he's already rushed off again. She shakes her head, inhales deeply, and chases after him anyway.

They race through the twining hallways of the palace, Katara lagging slightly further behind to avoid the brunt of his temper. Zuko, either deaf to the slap of her footfalls or resigned to her stubborn pursuit, doesn't say anything as she bounds silently in his wake.

By now, the flowing tapestries lining the corridors are scorched, the stone underneath battered and smoking. Chunks of the floor have been gouged out and rubble is scattered everywhere. Ahead of her, Zuko seems to barely register any of it, leaping over the craters in the floor while barely paying any attention.

Sounds of distant fighting echo through the hallways, growing steadily louder. She slows down, already streaming rainwater into her grasp from a cracked window. "Zuko, wait -!"

He doesn't pay her any heed and nearly runs headlong into a pair of dueling men, one old and dressed in the fine robes of a courtier, the other masked and wearing the stark red livery of the imperial palace guard.

"Watch out!" she screams uselessly, as the palace guard kicks a plume of fire into the air, sending the courtier crashing to the ground. The rebounding flame explodes outward, speeding toward the distracted prince like flaming shrapnel.

She lunges. Zuko jumps back just as water sprays against the oncoming blast. He turns to glare at her as she races past him, water already whipping toward the attacker. Before either can say a word, a strike to the guard's head knocks him unconscious and no longer a threat.

Zuko opens his mouth but Katara beats him to it. "You're welcome."

"What was that for?" Zuko demands, reddening furiously. "He's out cold!"

"He was going to hurt you, and you were going to let him - "

"You attacked a palace guard!" Zuko exclaims, throwing his hands in the air exasperatedly. "Their job is to protect me, not attack me!"

"Oh yeah? Then why was he attacking that old man?" Katara points impatiently at the courtier stirring feebly near the downed guard.

Zuko scowls. "I'm not sure. He must have been a threat somehow -"

"A threat?" Katara repeats incredulously. She twines her water into two rippling sleeves. "I don't like this. Something's not right."

He whirls on her, all fury and roaring grief itching for a target to unleash upon. "My cousin was just murdered by the Dai Li! Of course something's not right!"

Katara steps back, raising her hands defensively. "I know. But what can we do?" Her voice sounds tired to her ears.

"I don't know! Something, anything -" he chokes, his fingers twisting into his hair. "I don't want to stand around wasting time while they get away again."

Again. His frustration plucks at Katara's nerves as though they were open wounds. Reminding her of their losses at the Sun Warriors isle, and then from way earlier, with Jet. The acrid taste of failure, something she'd grown accustomed to whenever the Dai Li were involved.

"They won't," she says in a low voice. She glances at the empty palace around them. Apart from the two men lying unconscious on the ground, everything else appears strangely deserted. The exploding sounds become quieter, seeming to grow more distant. "Sounds like the fight went outdoors. We should go -"

To her surprise, he doesn't follow her, standing unmoving in the empty corridor. His shoulders are shaking and his nails dig into the meat of his palms. "I need to see it," he whispers.

Katara blinks. "See what?"

She follows his gaze, to where evidence of a struggle trails along the hallway leading back to a pair of warped, ornate doors that must have been the wedding chamber.

Her heart breaks for him. "Zuko, I don't know if that's such a good idea-"

He doesn't listen to her, just follows the trail of devastation unthinkingly.

"Fine," she concedes, brandishing her water at the ready. Unseen enemies bristled everywhere in wait; to fight him on this was another battle she didn't need. Her aching body complains as she follows him to the wedding chamber down the end of the hall.

Up close, its ornate double doors are rippled and blackened from within. Unconscious guards lie crumpled on the ground around them, the points of their armour glinting dully.

The sight of it sits uncomfortably as Zuko rests a hand on the remnants of the doors.

"Zuko, don't-"

But he shoves his way in, the scrape of the door hinges a curdling screech filling her ears.

The wedding chamber looks like it had been rocked by an earthquake. Not an hour earlier it had been neat and carefully decorated with hopes and flowers and bundles of herbs. Now it's the scene of devastation. One of the posts of the bed was snapped in half, the window by the fireplace was shattered into a carpet of glass shards glittering on the floor.

Zuko hadn't expected to find anyone inside - in fact, he isn't sure what he'd expected to find at all, except maybe a fight. So when he finds his mother, of all people, bent over an unmoving body on the bed, he freezes.

She snaps around as he barges in, wide-eyed terror already softening to sheer relief. In the blink of an eye, she's upon him, hugging him, stroking his hair, whispering empty gratitude into his shoulder.

"Thank Agni - thank the spirits you're okay..."

It washes over Zuko like waves upon driftwood. Numbly, he clutches at her, staring at the body on the bed, slender and long-haired and half-dressed in a bloody white shift.

Something crunches behind him and Katara's gasp pierces through the air. She is a blur of blue in the corner of his eye, her hands flying to her mouth at the bloodied bride lying prone on the bed, and her reaction only makes his disappointment sting more.

His mother stirs, watching Katara as she gingerly steps into the room. "Who's this?" she asks curiously.

Katara's face abruptly turns from sickly pale to crimson at the sight of the queen. Her mouth opens but Zuko interjects before she can speak. "A friend," he says with finality. "What happened?"

His mother begins to tremble, but when she answers, her voice is a practiced calm. "Iroh was walking me back to my room - we were halfway up the stairs when they struck." She inhales shakily. "I - I was lucky. Iroh was able to fend them off, but...but they destroyed the entire tower."

"The tower?" Zuko echoes, trying to wrap his head around it. "That's - did you see them? How did they do it?"

She shakes her head, her composure slipping. "I couldn't see anything in the chaos. We would have been crushed if Iroh's friend hadn't showed up when they did."

It takes a moment for Zuko to catch on. "Friend?"

His mother nods again, shaking more violently than before. "The Air Nomad - Gyatso, and his young pupil."

"Aang?" Zuko asks, momentarily taken aback. "What - what were they doing there? How -?"

"I don't know," his mother confesses. Her knuckles turn white where they cling to him. "But I am grateful that they showed up when they did. They cleared a path for us, right onto the back of some flying beast -"

"A sky bison?" he interrupts, confused. "Why - why would they be here for Lu Ten's wedding with a sky bison in tow?"

"I don't know. I only know that without them, Iroh and I wouldn't have..." She clears her throat. "They meant to flee then and there, ferry us to safety somehow, but Iroh didn't want to leave without his son and once we came here, we found Lu Ten..." Her voice trails off sadly.

"Where is he?" Zuko asks hollowly.

But his mother shakes her head. Her eyes are watery and the inside of his throat tightens in turn.

Then she sighs and steps back to the bed. "They moved his body to the throne room," she explains, ducking her head as she pulls a small vial from her pocket and uncorks it with a pop. "To observe the last rites before..." Her voice trails off and her hand shakes as it holds the vial under the bride's nose.

Zuko finds himself unable to look at her. The messy bed sheets grab his attention instead, flaming red but still not enough to disguise the bloodstains blooming there.

More crunching sounds as Katara picks her way to the broken window. The tattered velvet drapes swish fitfully with the wind from outside. "There's a literal massacre going on out there," she exclaims skeptically, "and someone had time to move the body?"

He intercepts her questioning gaze, something rearing up in him with the dull blow of doubt. She surveys the chaos with a steely calm that he envies to his core.

His mother shrugs helplessly. "It wasn't my place to question," she answer, sounding very small. "They charged me to take care of her while..."

Katara joins his mother, her hands already gloved in water. "Is she alive?" she asks briskly.

His mother's eyes widen, her surprise illuminated in the cool blue light radiating from the waterbender's fingers. "I-I believe so," she stammers, stepping away as Katara bends over. "She suffered a blow to her head, perhaps when the killer struck..."

Katara's mouth tightens into a grim line as she turns the girl's head and places her hands to a wound slashing from hairline to ear. She closes her eyes, brow furrowing in concentration. "She lost a lot of blood," she observes. Her voice is low but Zuko hears the anger thinly concealed in its softness. "And she's got so many burns...he - he must have gone down fighting."

The water glows so bright Zuko has to look elsewhere. At the stains on the bed, the remnants of his cousin's ceremonial robes piled on the floor. The screen door at the side where the Fire Sage had stood is toppled over, its delicate surface charred to a crisp.

His eyes linger on it before tracing the broken floor, the dark scars on the bed and door and walls where fire had left its mark. He frowns, remembering how drunk Lu Ten had been the last time he saw him –

The last time I saw him alive. For a moment, it's too much to breathe.

A gasp from the bed shatters the silence and it's as though the room itself exhales in relief. Instantly, his attention whips to Lu Ten's widow, now coughing weakly and very much awake. Her eyes are big and fearful, flitting to every corner of the room. When they land on him, she lets out a small squeak and cowers further into the sheets.

"It's okay," his mother soothes, running a hand along the girl's shoulder. "It's okay, you're safe..."

The girl's wide eyes don't leave his as his mother envelops her into a shaking hug. Her thin hands are blistered at the knuckles, and beneath them her skin is white with fear.

It makes him helplessly angry in a way he can't control. Nails digging into his palms, he forces his voice to remain quiet. "What happened?"

Katara's glowing hands pass over the girls' myriad burns, the angry skin turning flawlessly clear. His cousin's widow doesn't answer, only keeps gaping at him in fear.

Glass shards crush beneath his foot as he kneels by the bed, glaring at the newly widowed bride as her frail form begins to shake.

"What happened?" he repeats, more forcefully.

"Zuko," his mother admonishes in a hushed voice, and her hands are suddenly digging into his shoulders. "She wasn't even conscious -"

"You were here. You saw it happen," he all but snarls, deaf to his mother's protests, the furious glare Katara sends him, even the voice in his own head urging him to let it go. "How could they have gotten him and spared you? Lu Ten was such a powerful bender -"

"Zuko, enough!" His mother wrenches him away from the petrified bride. "I raised you better than this. Don't blame her for what happened."

But he feels so very young again, young and scared and more lost than ever. "I'm just trying to understand," he grits out, feeling dangerously close to breaking again. "I still don't - I can't -"

"He was drunk ." From what seems like a great distance away, Lu Ten's widow heaves through hacking breaths. Her fingers twist into the bloodstained lawn of her white shift. "You saw him, he could barely stand up straight -"

"He only drank one glass of wine," Zuko argues hotly, and his cousin's bride whimpers. "How could he have been so drunk as to not protect himself from such an attack?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Katara's glowing hands suddenly freeze in their ministrations. Horror dawns in her eyes, luminous in the bright blue light.

His mother's shaking fingers tighten almost painfully. "It's not her fault, Zuko." Then she releases him, her hands pressing so tightly against her mouth he almost doesn't hear her next words.

But the stifled confession hangs in the air like a noose. "It's mine."

Katara's hands slip from the princess's frail body.

Everything about this evening had gone from bad to steadily worse, and horrible inklings were taking root in her mind. Palace guards attacking defenseless courtiers, the careless destruction of the tower and wedding chamber, the helplessness of the newlyweds as they'd been attacked...

The chaos and terror reminds her instantly of the Sun Warriors isle, but the magnitude of the carnage makes no sense to her. A single Dai Li agent breaking into the palace and murdering the Crown Prince on his wedding bed should have been cut down instantly. A small, well-organized force of them might have been able to target the Emperor and the queen as well. But to do both and wage a full-scale invasion of the palace grounds?

No, the Dai Li were cold and cunning, but calculating above all else. Not a drop of blood spilled by them would go to waste. What unfolds around them is a far cry from that. It was no less than brutal savagery on a completely different scale.

Barbaric.

But then the queen's admission scatters her unsettled thoughts like dying leaves. She staggers, staring at her in horrified disbelief and from the way nobody seems to be able to breathe, she isn't alone.

"He drank from my hand," Ursa explains quickly, tears sliding down her face. She dashes at them with the back of her hand. "I didn't know, I swear but...when I saw how fast it hit him -"

"He wasn't drunk," Zuko realizes breathlessly, the first to react. "He was drugged."

Suddenly the room is spinning far too fast.

The princess raises a shaking hand to point at the queen. "By her," she accuses, her hoarse voice gaining strength. "That's why he got dragged here, away from everything, unable to fight against one assailant -"

"No!" Ursa whirls to face the bloodied bride and the mounting chill of her fury. "No, I didn't know! I would never try to harm Lu Ten... he was family, I loved him -"

"A likely story!" Lu Ten's widow snaps. "Just admit it. You were plotting to place your own son next in line to the throne, weren't you?"

"Enough," Zuko commands in that frighteningly hard voice and everything screeches to a halt. Katara replaces her hands on the princess's wounds, making herself focus on healing because after everything they had just shared, his sudden impenetrable coldness is too much to bear. "That can't be right. My mother doesn't have the stomach for politics of succession."

The queen slumps onto the edge of the bed, a hand pressing into her chest. "No," she admits, stricken. "I truly don't."

"That much was obvious," says a cold voice from the door.

Katara's heart nearly gives out. The queen blanches and Zuko whips around to see his father silhouetted against the blackened, crumpled doorframe. Unlike everyone else, Ozai appears immaculate as usual, bearing no injuries or marks of recent battle.

Shivers crawl across her skin everywhere, but she makes herself breathe.

"Father," Zuko says in surprise as Ozai prowls into the room and everything else in it seems to shrivel. "You - you're unharmed."

"Of course," Ozai replies. His cold amber eyes sweep over the princess, who pulls the bloody bed sheet up to her chin. Then his gaze pauses on Katara herself and he raises an amused eyebrow. Heat rushes to her face but he thankfully says nothing, choosing instead to focus on his wife's tight-lipped face.

He steps closer to cup the queen's chin. She flinches, but his grip holds firm as he turns her face one way and then the other to inspect the cuts scoring her jawline. Anger boils through Katara's veins at the sight.

"I see the same cannot be said of everyone else," Ozai sneers.

The queen's knuckles turn white, but she says nothing. Her distress of mere moments earlier had all but vanished, only visible in her eyes. As though her husband's arrival had struck her mute with new terror.

What could be worse than what she just said? Katara wonders, discomfited. For a moment, she catches Zuko's gaze and she sees thoughts of a similar nature reflected in his eyes. Relief pulses through her inappropriately because at least he's himself again -

"They were attacked," Zuko tries, sounding at once less angry. He points at Lu Ten's bride who looks more and more like she wanted to vanish altogether. "She said they burst into here, knocked her out, and Lu Ten -" Zuko's voice catches on his cousin's name, "he couldn't defend himself -"

Ozai remains silent for a moment. "That is hardly surprising, given how drunk he was. You yourself had to carry him here."

"But -" Zuko protests, clearly troubled by his father's undisturbed indifference, "but he shouldn't have been that drunk, Father, he only had one glass of wine, and Mother says -"

"What?" Ozai prompts, an edge coming into his voice where before there had been none. "What did she say, exactly?" His fingers dig into her face and she makes a small, scared sound.

The water coating Katara's hands freezes into sharp points.

Zuko speaks again, his voice rising in pitch. "N - nothing of consequence," he lies quickly. His gaze flickers to hers in a silent panicked warning. "Just that it was strange."

"Is that so?" Ozai stares down at his trembling wife, but she doesn't look away. "Well...it hardly matters at this rate. Lu Ten is gone, and it appears that Iroh has fled the city on the back of an Air Nomad's pet beast -"

"He fled?" Zuko repeats incredulously, seeming to echo Katara's own dismay. "Why?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Prince Zuko," Ozai laments with a heavy sigh. "Had he stayed, we could have been united in our efforts to root out the perpetrators of this senseless attack. Now, that burden falls to me alone."

Katara struggles not to reel under the blow. Across from her, Zuko appears forlorn.

"We must prepare for the worst, my son," Ozai says quietly. "Now is not the time to indulge in our grief for our fallen prince. Our nation looks to us for strength. Will you be the prince I need you to be?" His golden eyes burn pitilessly and Katara feels sick to her stomach. "Or will you show the same lack of fortitude as your uncle?"

Don't, Katara pleads silently, wondering if Zuko can read her thoughts in her eyes as she stares desperately at him. Don't listen to him, you're stronger than he wants you to be –

"I...I don't understand, Father," Zuko stammers instead. "What more would you have me do?"

He quails as his father's expression hardens. "Follow me."

"No, don't -" Katara blurts out, starting after them. Zuko turns his head to face her and his eyes soften at the terror plain on her face.

But Ozai looms over her like a cold spectre. "This is a matter of family, girl," he hisses, all traces of amusement gone. "You will remember your place."

Katara swallows her protest angrily as the two of them disappear into darkness. Zuko's apologetic glance over his shoulder lingers in her mind and it worries her more than when he had blindly lashed out at her in grief. Because even after everything, Zuko still wanted his father's approval so desperately, and Katara doesn't know if she can stomach what he might have to do to earn it. Not after what they'd done, what he'd said, if he even meant it...

A faint clapping noise echoes from somewhere beyond the door.

The sound tears Katara from her thoughts and replaces them with a chill of foreboding as a familiar voice laughs.

"That was a stirring performance," it says and Katara's hackles rise. "Almost like a scene from one of Mother's plays."

Katara looks up and finds herself glaring straight into Princess Azula's smirking face.

The queen stumbles to her feet. "Azula! Thank Agni you're safe-"

The princess halts her advance with a dismissive wave. "Of course I am. No thanks to you." She runs a hand along the damp strands of hair framing her face. "It's a battlefield outside. Did you know?"

"I saw," Katara replies tightly, gesturing to the broken window.

Azula's eyes flicker to it lazily before landing back on Katara, who feels more and more like a ferret-vole caught in a boaconda's hypnotic gaze. "So how did you and Zuzu manage to avoid the fighting when your little friends all got caught?" Her eyebrows arch in amusement. "Did he take you up on that escort to bed after all?"

The insinuation in the princess's voice cuts too close to the bone for comfort. "Friends?" Katara echoes instead, latching onto the word with growing worry. "What do you mean?"

Azula lounges comfortably against the warped door post, but her mouth curls into a knowing smirk. "I can't be certain," she muses, "but I could have sworn I saw you hanging around that pair of Air Nomads earlier tonight..."

Katara's gaze sharpens. "They fled," she corrects, her heart plummeting at the thought. "Your own father said so."

"Well who am I to contradict Father?" Azula taps her chin with a clawed finger. "The Air Nomads may have escaped. But then there was also that earthbender."

Somewhere in the distance, the whooshing crashes seem to grow louder. "Toph," Katara realizes, her eyes widening. "Where is she? Is she safe?"

Azula's smile widens. "I'm not so sure. Everything was so chaotic...But the last I saw, she seemed to be rather trapped."

Doubt gnaws at Katara's senses. "Trapped?" she repeats numbly. "She's the most powerful earthbender I've ever met."

"So I've heard," Azula agrees. "She and my brother bent lava together, after all. But Zuzu's somewhat preoccupied... And the last time I checked, even she couldn't bend metal." Her eyes glitter. "Didn't her parents put out a rather large bounty on her head?"

"I don't understand," Katara says numbly. "Why are you telling me this?"

Azula pushes off the door frame and straightens to her full height. Even though she's slightly shorter in height, she seems to tower over Katara nonetheless. "Don't you want to save her? I'll help you find her."

"Why are you offering to help me?" Katara asks warily, sizing the princess up with suspicious eyes.

Azula shrugs. "It's a slaughterhouse out there and you're safer with me." She grins unsettlingly. "Besides, I couldn't bear Zuzu's wrath if I stood by and let something happen to you."

The taunt hurts more than if Azula had buried her sharp claws into her skin. "I'm more than able to take care of myself," Katara recovers, her fists clenching. "Why are you being so generous?"

The princess lets out a sparkling laugh, as though the suggestion was ludicrous. "Well. We are safer together." She pauses, giving Katara a onceover. "Or rather, you're safer with me. Your choice."

Katara grinds her teeth at the barb. But time wasn't slowing down and if Toph was in trouble, then the princess was right whether she wanted to admit it or not. Even if her silently impudent presence made her skin crawl.

She meets Azula's triumphant gaze with a defiant one of her own. "Fine. Let's go find her then."

Azula's grin turns predatory. "Excellent." She glances perfunctorily at her mother. "You, keep an eye on the widow. I expect they'll want to question her in the morning."

"Azula, that's no way to speak at a time like this -"

"And you," Azula beckons to Katara with a tilt of her head, "follow me."

"I'm right behind you, Princess," Katara answers. The water at her fingertips sharpens into knifelike points. "But if this is some sort of trick, I'm going to hurt you. Badly. "

"Oh," Azula sighs airily, "I wouldn't dream of it."

Zuko trails his father to the double doors of the throne room, scuffed with burn marks yet miraculously intact.

The sounds of a struggle filter into the long ruined corridor leading toward it. Zuko turns to the shaking palace entryway. "We should help them," he says bluntly, faltering in his tracks.

His father doesn't spare a glance. "Leave it, Prince Zuko."

"But -"

"Guards and soldiers protect us with their lives. It is their honour to do so." Ozai pushes at one of the doors and it creaks as it slides open. "And ours to remember their sacrifice tonight."

The protest nearly springs to Zuko's lips - what better honour than to fight the enemy alongside them - but his father enters the throne room and then beckons him to follow. Gritting his teeth, Zuko follows instead.

To his surprise, there is a small audience of courtiers already assembled inside, in varying states of disarray. Most of the chief council, with the exception of General Shinu and the two Admirals, gather near the base of the dais upon which the empty throne glimmered alone. The torches are still lit but the room feels cold. An uneasy hush settles as the doors close behind them.

Stretching out where the two co-rulers' chairs had once stood is an unlit pyre. Zuko freezes at the sight of the body hastily laid out over top of it. The ground itself feels unsteady beneath his feet. As though he'd been cut adrift on a furious sea, with one wave after another trying to pull him under while he struggled to stay afloat.

Ozai cuts through the huddle of people with his head held high. He doesn't even look at Lu Ten's body as he walks past the pyre and sinks smoothly onto the throne, as though it was made for him.

"Iroh's line has ended," he says into the stifling quiet. He gestures at the body stretched out before him. "And the perpetrator..."

Zhao puffs out his chest. "He wound up in here, no doubt in search of another royal. Bujing and I made short work of him." He kicks at something on the ground in emphasis.

Beside him, spindly old General Bujing smiles coldly.

Ozai leans forward, steepling his fingers together in his lap. "Bring the traitor's body where all can see."

Murmurs ripple through the small crowd of courtiers as Zhao drags the body unceremoniously up the steps and dumps it at the foot of the throne.

Zuko pushes to the front, trying to get a better look. The assailant wore the telltale green uniform of the Dai Li, and his metal hat had fallen off. The face revealed beneath is unremarkably plain - it could have belonged to anybody. The sight of it leaves Zuko feeling hollow inside: robbed of vengeance and still no closer to making any sense of Lu Ten's murder.

Ozai toes the body disdainfully, kicking it over onto its front. An enormous scorch mark covers its chest and back. Zuko feels sick to his stomach, wondering if he is only imagining the smell of burnt flesh lingering in his nostrils.

Then his father rises to his feet, and everyone in the audience kneels. Zuko suddenly feels very out of place, like an actor in a badly scripted play. He falters helplessly, unsure of what to do, what else was expected of him.

Ozai steps over the fallen Dai Li agent to lay a hand on Lu Ten's unmoving shoulder. "Our beloved Prince Lu Ten. Murdered upon his own wedding bed by the Dai Li. How do we fathom their depravity?"

Water burns in the corners of Zuko's eyes, but he makes himself stay very still. What remained of the council stood just behind him. Now was not the time to be seen sniveling in public like a pathetic little boy.

"But they did not stop there," Ozai continues, his fingers stroking the shoulder of Lu Ten's robe. "No, they did not spare any of us the depth of their treachery. Our very palace lies in shambles. Countless men have laid down their lives with honour to protect us."

Zuko's scar prickles resentfully. Father didn't even try to help. The most powerful man in the room, and he wouldn't even deign to let the battle touch him. Instead, he made stirring speeches over dead bodies, keeping his hands clean while others bled for him.

"Iroh has fled the city, heading for a safe haven among the Air Nomads, no doubt." Ozai sighs. "Perhaps the grief was too much for him to bear. To lose his son, so soon after the passing of our noble father... it is a cruel blow indeed. One man should not have to suffer so."

But why would he leave? Zuko keeps wondering wildly, as his father pauses. If his uncle wanted to fight back, why flee the city with Gyatso? It made no tactical sense.

"Liang fell back with him," Zhao mutters out of the corner of his mouth. "Fool. As though his ships stand a chance."

"What about Admiral Chan?" hisses Mai's father, who stands next to him. "Where did he go?"

"Still alive, last I saw," Zhao answers, shaking his head. "Something about finding his son."

"The colony sympathizer?" Mai's father scoffs. "If that was my son, I'd sooner leave him to his fate than continue to suffer such embarrassment."

Zuko glares at the man. But then his father begins to speak again and the councilors fall silent.

"Make no mistake. We will repay the Dai Li with a gift of our own," he breathes. "But we can no longer afford to wait for the Imperial Court and its arduous decisions." His voice remains soft as always, but it seems to resonate throughout the room as though he had shouted. "As Emperor, I hereby suspend all court sessions until further notice."

The entirety of the room halts in stunned silence as he continues. "I shall appoint the council to act in its stead. For from this moment forth, we are at war with the Dai Li and all the Earth colonies."

To Zuko, everything seems to be happening far too quickly, to someone who was not himself. It should have mattered, he reflects numbly. His cousin was dead, his uncle fled, his father on the throne. The Imperial Court, the living heartbeat of the Empire, had been plucked out without a second thought, and the war he had fought with his own reputation to avoid was now a helplessly unfolding reality.

He should feel so many things, but the act of feeling itself becomes physically impossible for him.

"Let us take a moment to pay our final respects for our fallen prince," his father continues. His hand trails from Lu Ten's shoulder to his face, a gesture of convincing fondness for a nephew who went out of his way to get on his nerves. "Before we send him with honour back to the eternal flame-"

"Now? " Zuko blurts out unthinkingly.

Heads turn to face him out of the corner of his eye, but his father's stare punches the hardest. "Prince Zuko, surely you understand the reasons why we cannot observe the traditional mourning period."

"I do. But surely we can wait for Uncle to come back, he should be here to say goodbye to his only son -"

"And who knows how long that might take?" His father's voice is without pity. "Iroh is no fool. He knew what it would mean, to leave his son behind so. We cannot delay. Every moment spent waiting for him is a moment stolen from more important endeavours -"

"What about his family? " Zuko demands. "Shouldn't we get a chance to pay their respects too?"

Ozai opens his arms in a sweeping invitation. "Perhaps you should spend less time squandering yours."

Behind him, Zuko hears a faint scoff that sounded like it belonged to Zhao.

If it had been difficult to stay afloat before, now he feels like he's drowning, limbs useless and lungs unable to inhale anything. But Zuko bites his tongue to hold his protest in silence as he trudges up the steps, his feet dragging like leaden weights.

Zuko pauses at the head of Lu Ten's pyre and at first, it's far too much for him to even remember how to breathe. His cousin appears fast asleep, the mischievous quirks in his face smoothed out to make him appear uncharacteristically somber.

Someone had done a passable job of cleaning him up. No dust or grime or sign of any injury mars Lu Ten's colourless skin, visible above the neck and below the wrists where his ceremonial prince's robes and armour didn't cover. Absently he reaches out to place a hand over Lu Ten's heart, his cousin's chest still strong and solid under his palm.

His father clears his throat impatiently, and the sound seems to come from a million miles away. Zuko barely notices it, grief making him a stranger to his own senses.

Perhaps that is why it takes him so long to react to the lingering blows of his confusion, cutting like a dull blade through the thin veil of his father's contempt.

Zuko stares blankly at his cousin's body and for a moment, he is not standing at his pyre in a crumbling throne room.

Instead, he is transported vividly back into a claustrophobic dark infirmary, pitched in the wake of another struggle with the Dai Li. The smell of blood and fear heavy in his nostrils as Aang had lain unconscious in his pallet, almost as pale as his cousin with his chest hollowed out from the crushing blow to his torso.

Then he blinks and the memory, battle-forged and clear as day, fades. The dull fog of grief wanes with it, enough to sharpen his surroundings into cold relief.

Outside the throne room, in the hallways and entrances and grounds of the palace, he can hear the crashes of ongoing fighting. A desperate struggle, a valiant last stand - a sacrifice, his father had called it.

But sprawled behind him is the corpse of the man who had murdered his cousin. An agent of the Dai Li who, if the accounts were true, had conspired to somehow infiltrate his wedding chamber, kill him instantly, destroy the tower where his mother and uncle had been, and plunge the entire estate into outright chaos until he was struck down in this very room.

And even if that could be believed... Why hasn't the fighting stopped yet?

Zuko is suddenly conscious of every slow, sluggish beat of his heart and how his silken finery weighs down on him heavier than armour after a long battle.

"Prince Zuko," his father says, "we do not have all night for this."

Biting his lip, Zuko slowly drags his palm along the cold, unmoving metal of Lu Ten's chestplate, searching in vain for any sign of the blow that had killed him. With shaking fingers, he pushes the chestplate slightly to the side, as though afraid of what he might find.

And bared to plain sight in the dim flickering glow of torchlight is charred cloth, betraying the secret of burnt flesh hidden beneath.

Katara is convinced it's a trap.

First, the princess leads her through a series of underground tunnels spanning the length of the estate. "The dragonbone catacombs," she explains to a skeptical Katara, sliding down the nondescript hole in the ground serving as its entrance. "The passageways lead all the way down to the ocean if you follow them long enough."

Katara crosses her arms. "If this isn't a trap, why is it so dark in there?"

"Because it's a secret escape route," Azula answers impatiently. "In case the royal family is ever under attack. Which we are. Now hurry up."

Katara doesn't get a chance to protest before the princess disappears altogether. Grumbling under her breath, she slides in after and falls to the ground with a yelp of surprise. Her weakened ankle flares up in complaint.

Azula doesn't even wait for her to get to her feet before she dashes off. "This way."

Katara squints, racing after her in the darkness. Her skin tingles, hyper-aware of any threat lurking in the shadows. Perhaps the Dai Li, perhaps something far worse.

Overhead, the crashing and booming of aboveground collisions makes the world around them rattle handfuls of dirt everywhere. With a sickening lurch, Katara is reminded of the cave-in at the Dai Li bunker, except this time there's no Toph to guide her, no Zuko to keep her in check, no Aang to keep the peace. Only Azula's footsteps receding in the distance.

Yet, despite the growing unease crawling up her spine, Katara manages to be grateful for Azula's presence. She is distinctly conscious of running downhill, but apart from that the catacombs are a maze she can't keep straight in her head. The princes navigates them effortlessly, as though she knew them like the back of her hand.

The ground below her feet pitches steeply downhill before Azula stumbles to a halt. "Up there," she hisses, pointing to a series of handholds carved into the wall.

They scale the wall and Azula pushes the secret trapdoor at the top of the tunnel open. Heavy raindrops pellet against Katara's skin before she even finishes clambering out of the hole in the ground and kicks the door shut. It blends inconspicuously into the ground.

She gets to her feet, brushing dirt off her knees. To her, the pouring rain feels like breathing again. And behind the layers of storm clouds blotting the sky, the full moon sings its power into her veins.

The palace walls tower like a fortress over the rolling gardens, which are now a far cry from their impeccably manicured state. Diffuse grey smoke cloaks the ground, making it difficult to see and choking the air with its scent.

Somewhere in the distance, people continue to fight. Flashes of dull red fire, the thuds of bodies hitting the ground. Screams - of fear, of pain, some combination of the two, barely audible over the roar of rain. The struggle unfolds in the distance: not a defiant stand against a faceless enemy, but a slaughter. Just as Azula had described.

She barely has time to register her own shock before Azula snaps at her to hurry. In a daze, she follows. As swiftly and noiselessly as shadows, the pair of them race through the paths of the sprawling palace complex.

The closer they get to the palace walls, however, the more chaotic everything becomes. The sounds of the conflict shift abruptly: screams turning into dying shrieks, explosions fading to the clang of metal on armour. The smell of burning and smoke grows stronger and even in the heavy downpour, she sees thick heavy plumes of grey rising above the palace, billowing into the sky to mingle with the low-hanging clouds.

They nearly run headlong into an ongoing skirmish. Before Katara even registers the danger, Azula has already blasted the fighters off their feet.

Azula groans as her flames quickly fizzle into a cloud of steam. "This rain is miserable."

"I thought it was supposed to be a good omen," Katara retorts, even as she stares at the collapsed soldiers and their singed red uniforms. "Why were they fighting each other? They're both Fire Nation."

Azula doesn't reply, already sprinting ahead. Gritting her teeth against the growing ache in her ankle, Katara trails behind, visibly limping.

But the longer they spend avoiding the pockets of infighting, the harder it becomes to ignore the troubling feeling of wrongness festering through everything she sees.

"Azula," she says finally as the princess scouts the path ahead for any disturbances. "I've fought the Dai Li before. It didn't feel like this."

The princess barely throws a glance her way in acknowledgment. "So we're on first-name terms already? I didn't agree to that." She points at a secluded corner in the distance where two palace walls meet. "Just up there, that's where I saw her -"

"Listen to me!" Katara hisses, grabbing the princess by the arm to stop her from moving. "This doesn't look like an attack at all." She shudders nervously, and her heart quails in terror even as she voices the thought aloud. "It…it looks like a coup."

Azula freezes, staring at Katara shrewdly but calmly as she mulls over her words. Katara wonders what the princess must be thinking, whether she had grown as suddenly terrified for her own safety as she now is for Zuko's.

"It does, doesn't it?" Azula agrees finally, wiping at the corner of her eyes in amusement. "And a rather sloppy one at that."

All the rainwater drenching Katara's skin instantly chills, as if it had become ice.

"But then again," the princess continues, a feral grin splitting her face, "Father isn't exactly renowned for being subtle."

Sweat breaks like a clammy fever all over Zuko's skin.

It can't be true. There must be some mistake.

But the only thing that felt real was the waxy coolness of Lu Ten's skin under his fingertips, just where the pale skin became angry and blistered.

Then Zuko looks at the small crowd of courtiers in the audience, at the secretive smirks the chief councilors privately exchange with each other. And for the first time that night is he able to see things for what they undeniably were.

A farce. But for who? Zuko's mouth becomes so dry, the sides of his throat seem to stick together.

And why?

"It is truly a shame and a loss that my brother cannot be here now," his father continues, as though nothing was amiss. "How I miss his calming presence. Let me be clear, we are as different as two brothers can be and yet... I would kill for him if I had to."

Zuko withdraws his hand, reeling. Since the guards had burst into his room and announced Lu Ten's murder, artifice has been grating at his senses. Only he'd been too caught up in his own grief to pay it any heed.

"Even now, all I want to do is join Iroh's side and mourn with him," Ozai declares, pressing a hand to his chest. "But one of us must remain steadfast. I will stay the course, to allow my brother time to come to terms with his loss." He sighs theatrically but the corners of his mouth twitch. "Such a heavy burden...but one I shall willingly bear."

The ground under Zuko's feet seems to crumble away. Or, more likely, he's been blind all this time, and only now is able to fathom just how close to the precipice he has always been standing.

Because the more he thinks about it, the more it settles in his bones like gravity, a fundamental, indisputable truth.

After all, his father wanted the throne for himself, didn't he? He'd always resented his brother, and his gesture of co-rule had rung hollow to Zuko from the moment he learned of it. But Uncle Iroh, with the confidence of a man unaccustomed to losing, had assured him, he will not jeopardize the empire to put a crown on his own head. And despite knowing better, Zuko had still somehow believed it.

And now, Uncle Iroh's only son lay dead at a wedding meant to cement his own line over his brother's. And he had fled, not to mourn in private, as his father insisted, but because, Zuko realizes with blinding clarity, because he could no longer bear to stay.

His father claimed that Iroh had feared for his own life, and perhaps that was true. But if the Dai Li agent lying dead at his feet was not the true culprit...then it could only be someone closer to home.

"Father," he chokes fearfully, hating himself for even trying to give him one last chance to explain away this unsettling web of bitter truths. "Lu Ten's body has no injuries except for those inflicted by fire...Are you sure we caught the right man?"

The silence blanketing the throne room grows brittle. Heads turn, confused glances flicker among the courtiers.

"Fire?" his father repeats with a frown. "What are you talking about?"

"Here." Zuko desperately pushes Lu Ten's chestplate aside as his father stalks over. "See for yourself. A blow to the heart from a Dai Li assassin would not inflict a wound like that. It's a burn." His father's jaw tightens as he continues haltingly, "It wasn't the Dai Li that killed Lu Ten tonight, Father. It could only have been a..."

His father stares at him sharply and his voice dies in his throat. For the lengthening moments before Ozai speaks, Zuko still catches himself praying, please, don't let it be true, say something, anything.

But then his father scoffs. "Prince Zuko, it appears the loss of your cousin has driven you mad. These accusations are baseless and unfitting for your station."

The world around Zuko begins to break apart as his father turns away. "I'm - I'm not mad! It's right there, you saw it with your own eyes -"

"I see nothing."

"Why would I lie?" Zuko whispers. "It's the truth, Father -"

"The truth?" Ozai whirls on him. "The truth is what I say it is. Who are you to contradict your emperor?" His lip curls contemptuously. "Just a boy with the same fragile constitution as his mother."

Not a single blow had been struck, yet pain splits through Zuko's chest anyway as Ozai turns back to the pyre and sets it alight without hesitation. "Time is of the essence," he announces, facing the gathering. "We honour our fallen prince tonight, and I will see to it that his untimely death is swiftly avenged."

It was all too much to bear. Too many stories, too many lies...

"Mark my words." Ozai's hands clench into fists. "I shall not rest until our enemy is razed to the ground -"

Whatever had been holding him together up until this point finally snaps. "It was you," he breathes. "You wanted this - the crown, the war, Uncle out of the way, all of it - you were tired of playing a zero-sum game...so you broke the rules and changed the game..."

His voice is so quiet, it barely carries over the spitting flames consuming the funeral pyre. And yet, it seems to echo through the room with the timbre of shattering earth.

Zuko stares at the dead man wearing the Dai Li uniform, wondering dimly if he had been an earthbender or just a decoy in a costume, whether the truth even made a difference now. "You – turned our enemies into your allies, so that you could use them to...to..."

His father grows suddenly rigid with tension. "Think very carefully before you speak another word," Ozai hisses. "You are very close to committing real treason. As my son, I will undoubtedly have to be merciful -"

"Why?" Zuko pushes to his feet unsteadily, but holds his ground. "You have Azula. Why keep me around if I displease you so, Father?"

His father's face twists into an ugly scowl. "Because you are my son."

"Yes. I am." Zuko raises his chin defiantly. "But Uncle was more a father to me than you ever were, and everyone knows that. So why suffer my presence at your side now? Unless you worry about appearances... after all, you still bear the stain of the polar wars to your reputation. Without me, how could anyone think your so-called war on the Dai Li was legitimate?"

Ozai scoffs again. "This is outrageous. Hold your tongue or I will have it ripped from your treasonous mouth."

And if his father had done the unthinkable and conspired with the Dai Li to have Lu Ten killed...just how far back did his treachery spread? He thinks of all the recent Dai Li attacks on Fire Empire soil and it makes him dizzy. The Sun Warriors isle? That desperate victory scraped against all odds...wielded by his father to expel the Earth colony diplomats and shrink the Court even further.

And before that? He nearly chokes on his own breath as he thinks of Jet's dead body, the sword piercing through his heart and Katara's hands bringing him back from the abyss... A Dai Li plot to incite an insurrection against the Empire, Jun had called it. Except that was also what his father wanted, wasn't it? Fear and chaos, to make his uncle look weak by comparison.

And then there was Azulon, the late emperor, poisoned by the chief healer on behalf of some Earth colony rebels. It had sounded unlikely from the moment he heard that story. But there was someone who could have done it at his father's behest. Someone with an herbalist's lore and the trust of the emperor...

The difference between rest and utter helplessness lies in the skill of the herbalist, his mother's voice whispers in the darkness. Even now I can brew it perfectly...

He sees it clearly now: his mother terrified that the wine in her cup had been spiked, his father's fingers digging into her face hard enough to leave bruises... She was never strong enough for your father, his uncle had said.

"Is that why you had Mother moved to the tower under lock and key?" Zuko challenges, his voice rising in volume. "You play the part of concerned husband well enough, but she was never any use to you in your court intrigues. What a resourceful man you are, that you were able to use her other skills to your benefit. If only Azulon had died faster, then you would never have to fear what she might say to expose your entire sorry plan."

Ozai remains silent, breathing heavily. Zuko's blood buzzes loudly in his ears, making everything strangely surreal.

"Leave us." Ozai's command slices through the air like a whip. The tension in the room seems to crackle as the courtiers disperse. Their low mutterings swell like distant waves, crashing against Zuko with the reminder that they hadn't been alone - everyone heard, everyone now knew if they hadn't already...

The double doors swing shut and the hollow thud resonates across the empty chamber.

"I offered you a place at my side." Ozai takes a step forward, and then another, fists clenching alarmingly. "I offered you honour, your whole life back. I offered you everything you did not deserve."

Zuko fights the urge to prostrate himself on the ground and beg for mercy again. Instead, he holds his father's gaze with the golden eyes they both share. "It must eat at you," he answers evenly, "to know that such things were beyond your power to give or take."

Ozai attacks so quickly, Zuko doesn't even see it coming. A blast sends him spinning across the ground. The front of his overtunic is a smouldering ruin.

"So you have elected the path of treason." His father's smile is unpleasant as he steps down from the dais. "Such a choice will invite consequences, Prince Zuko, the likes of which you have never experienced in your brief, unhappy life."

Zuko gasps as the room lurches all around him. "Are you going to order another Dai Li assassin to try kill me again?" he rasps, pushing up to his feet. Defiance blazes in him like liquid fire. "Or are you capable of fighting someone who is no longer a child?"

Ozai's hands move in a blur of crackling white. His lightning strikes quicker than Zuko could have ever imagined.

He throws his hands up in front of him defensively. The lightning burns white-hot as it tunnels through his body. Zuko struggles to contain it, but beneath the skin of his chest, his flesh scorches. Not the heart, avoid the heart, Katara's voice reminds him. He nearly bites through his lip with the effort to force it all into his gut - how could there be so much, so quickly - and along the path of his aching arms.

He collapses onto the ground, skin still buzzing ominously. But the rest of the current empties upward. It punches through the ceiling, disappearing with a roar like the sky splitting in two. Two pillars fall, smashing into a third which cracks and topples over.

It crashes into the ground and pieces of the roof begin to fall like the monsoons pouring in from outside.

Katara runs.

Scorching heat drags against her back with the force of the princess's attacks. Wild laughter ripples behind her as she staggers forward, nearly losing her balance.

"And they warned me not to underestimate you!" Azula calls after her. "You've been disappointing me all night!"

Get to Toph, Katara thinks urgently, bounding toward the corner of the grounds that Azula had pointed out. If this was a trap then it made sense Azula would want all of them in one place, as far away from Zuko as possible.

She rounds the clearing where faint moonlight glimmers against something metallic crumpling in the distance. Her heart leaps into her throat as something lands on top of it - bulky and six-legged and thoroughly sodden.

A sky bison. "Aang!" she screams as loudly as she can.

But over the crashing fury of the princess's fire and the din of the rain, her voice barely carries. Then pain lances through her whole body as a fist full of blue fire pummels into the small of her back and the ground catches her in its squelching grip.

Azula's feet stop abruptly in front of her line of vision. "No," her voice curses from somewhere above. "They're escaping, how could she break free -"

"Don't be too disappointed," Katara spits grimly, before kicking the princess roundly in the shins.

She yelps in surprise as she goes down. Katara barely even hears it, clambering to her feet and dashing to the twisted metal cage even as the sky bison rises into the air.

"Wait!" she shrieks, waving them down. "It's me - wait -" Water funnels under her with a twist of her wrists as she tries desperately to catch up.

But blue flames smash through the rising whirlpool and she collides painfully into the ground instead.

"Leaving so soon?" Azula's voice taunts. Katara shields her eyes as bright blue light spills everywhere. She throws up a wall of water just as Azula strikes. It explodes into a cloud of violent steam, hissing against Katara's skin in thousands of scalding pinpricks.

She cranes her head back in dismay. But the sky bison sails across the sky toward the harbour and the expanse of inky black ocean.

At least they got out, she manages to think resentfully.

"Not bad," Azula drawls, lazily tossing a ball of blue fire from one palm to another. "Care to stay and play?"

Fire sails toward Katara's face, mockingly grazing her cheek with blistering heat.

Katara's nails dig into her palms. She leans into an offensive stance, glaring at the princess even as her eyes burn with unshed tears. "Fine," she growls, plucking at the air. "I'll play."

Azula bares her teeth. Kicks a towering arc of flames speeding toward Katara in a strange blue current. A curtain of rain meets it, exploding into a spray of boiling steam as it douses and evaporates all at once.

It whizzes toward Azula, who recovers much more quickly than Katara expects. The red-hot heart of her flames reforms into a whip, lashing back almost too quickly to see.

But tonight the full moon is on her side. The clouds of steam condense into a pressurized jet, easily overpowering Azula's weakening fire and landing a spiraling hit.

Azula goes sprawling to the ground, wide-eyed in surprise. Before she has a chance to regain her footing, Katara slams her in the gut with another water whip.

"You really think you're going to get away with this?" she demands, pinning her in place with the weight of her water. "When people discover the truth -"

"Who is going to tell them?" Azula challenges. "After tonight, the only truth that will matter is what the Emperor declares."

Her feet slice through the air. Fire blazes toward Katara, who douses it with another jet of water that snakes around the princess's limbs, trapping her solidly in place. "What did you do to Iroh?"

"He's out of our way. What else matters?" Azula shrugs dismissively, straining to break free of the water's unyielding grip.

"And Zuko?" Katara's voice rises. "You think he won't see right through it?"

"He might. But he'll keep it to himself. He's so willing to please Father, after all. I think he'd do just about anything to keep him happy."

"No, he wouldn't," Katara insists, raising her chin defiantly. "You don't know him like I do."

Azula raises an eyebrow. "I suppose I'll just have to find out, won't I? You, on the other hand, have far greater problems facing you. For example -"

Her hand breaks free, punching into a flaming fist. Before she can even finish, a globe of rainwater collects out of nowhere and slaps her across the face. Azula coughs and chokes violently as streams dribble out her nose and mouth. The flames gathering at her fist sputter out.

"Didn't you ever listen to your uncle? Fire comes from the breath, princess," Katara growls, icing the princess's hands to the ground. "I told you. If you tried to trick me -"

Her words are cut off by a resounding crash splitting through the air.

Katara whips around to stare open-mouthed as lightning erupts from the palace, blasting clear through the ceiling of the throne room. It leaps into the sky, illuminating everything in its cold white glare.

Her blood runs cold at the sight. Lightning. Zuko. He's in trouble.

With a roar like an empire shattering at its core, the rest of the ceiling begins to collapse.

Clenching her teeth desperately, Katara feels for all the water around her and pulls on it with the inexorable might of the full moon.

Azula is in the middle of saying something, but the sound of rushing water drowns her out. The building wave rises heads and shoulders taller than any human, crashing through everything in its path.

The princess falls to its fury, but Katara mounts it instead. The water bears her easily, as though it was just an extension of her body. She lifts her arms and the wave swells in size, until it towers over the rooftops of all the little pavilions scattering the palace grounds.

Then her arms crash down and the crumbling palace surges toward her with the roar of the incoming tide.

Zuko doesn't see so much as feel the change in the air warning of another attack. He manages to push onto his knees by the time the second wave of lightning hits his fingertips.

It passes through him more easily this time, but searing pain shoots through the fresh burns inside his chest.

His teeth grind together and he tries to take aim, focusing on his father with slitted eyes. But the world seems to flicker and he misses. The lightning crashes behind Ozai's head, fizzling out harmlessly.

"That is some trick. But it won't save you now," he warns. "You're outclassed, Zuko."

Zuko tries to concentrate on the splitting energies within him, but it slips from his grasp like running water. Instead, he tries to hurl a flaming fist at his father but he can barely breathe through the vice-grip of fire tightening around his chest.

Ozai swats it away with a lazy flick of his hand. "Yield," he orders, looming over him threateningly. "And perhaps I will allow you to remain alive." His mouth curves into a cruel smile. "Your mother needs company, after all -"

A sudden, deafening roar drowns him out.

Both of them look up in alarm. Pressurized water rushes through the hole in the ceiling with the uncompromising force of a waterfall. At its head rides a girl in pale blue.

Everything seems to flicker again. Before Zuko can process his own disbelief, her arms are already pushing down. Water charges across the length of the throne room and pummels his father off his feet with brutal force.

His body flies across the room and crashes against the wall of the raised dais. Then he crumples to the ground, directly under where the pyre still blazes uncontrollably.

Katara sails over the shattered pillars lining the ground and lands directly in front of Zuko. Her body slices into its stances, one feral bending form pouring into another like the ocean at storm.

The water splits into dozens of smaller arms spiraling toward his father. Just before he flinches, they turn into glimmering, sharp-edged scythes of ice. They spear the ground, crisscrossing with each other to trap the Emperor as he struggles to get to his feet.

She pauses, shoulders heaving up and down with her exertion. "Touch him again and I'll end you," she promises.

Zuko's mouth hangs open as Katara shifts her weight in front of him. Defiantly. Protectively. His chest hurts in a way that has nothing to do with the burns.

Ozai blinks in surprise, his head the only part of his body not pinned in place by ice. "Why, Master Katara," he says, recovering with surprising finesse. "I didn't realize you felt so...strongly...about him."

Even though Katara's back is to him, Zuko perceives the way her face twists in rage. "Him?"

A giant wave of water slams into Ozai's body, rising like a column until it crushes him into the ceiling. Then it disappears abruptly, and the Emperor lands with a bone-shattering crunch. The sound makes the inside of Zuko's head pound; darkness lingers at the edge of his senses and he struggles to stay afloat.

"You murdered my mother. You destroyed my home. You took everything from me," she snarls, advancing as though she was the predator and he the limp-boned prey. She raises her arms in front of her slowly and her voice shakes. "We've all suffered enough because of you. But I won't let you hurt anyone else ever again."

Moonlight shines faintly through the hole in the ceiling. It bathes her in a pale, eerie glow, sparkling against the drops on her skin.

Ozai looks up at her from where he is spread on the floor like a puddle at her feet. Strands of soaked, unkempt hair stick to his face and the prongs of his crown are bent out of shape.

He still sneers. "As though you could stop me, little girl. You haven't the stomach for it."

Agni help him, Zuko manages to think wildly. The darkness tugs at him, threatening to pull him under. He gasps, fighting the pain and how the room seems to spin faster and faster.

Katara hunches over. Her hands twist into a bending form Zuko has never seen before. He clutches at his chest, mouth agape, as she slashes through the motions. They look like waterbending, but jerky and unnatural. Wrong.

And the last thing he sees before the blackness claims him. His father contorting like a screaming puppet at her feet.

Katara pushes past the queasiness rising in her gut at the horrified screams bouncing off the crumbling walls.

Instead, she forces herself to focus. On the moon pulsing raw power through her blood while his ebbs under the might of her will. The vibrations juddering through the muscles under his skin, snapping and wrenching in futile protest as she reaches into him.

His joints pop audibly as she bends him onto his knees, onto all fours like a crawling beast. The blood inside him hums in her grasp, rivers inside him gushing with life and begging to be freed...

This is wrong.

The thought flashes clear in her mind, even as she tries to push it away.

He deserves it, she reminds herself. Your family, your home, your people - you would have all of them if it wasn't for him.

Her hands chop downward. His limbs remain pinned in place, but his eyes widen. He tries to speak, but finds his jaws clamped shut. Red liquid dribbles from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

The resistance in his body flags and it becomes easier to restrain him. His blood gushes onto the ground, swirling with the water pooling by his hands and knees. Muffled, high-pitched squeals escape his throat. Like a dying creature starving to live, a pitiful sound.

"You don't deserve to live," she chokes out. "Not after what you've done."

His eyes finds hers, cold and golden and begging for mercy.

She falters for a moment and the vengeful voice in her mind screams. Did he show anyone any mercy in his life? Lu Ten had died because of him. And Zuko near collapsing from new burns, new scars, when all he'd ever wanted was his love.

Hate claws up her throat, almost strangling her, begging to inflict the same on him. Her fingers squeeze instinctively and a choking sound tangles through her ears. His body thumps to the ground in answer.

The faint gurgling sound of his breath, the failing beat of his heart are the only remaining signs of the man's life.

Katara takes an unconscious step forward. Bloody water sloshes up to her ankles. He stirs feebly, unable to defend himself.

If you don't do it now, he'll keep on killing. He won't stop until he's dead.

But bile rises in the back of her throat and pain drums against her temples from the effort of bending his blood.

The choice is not yours. Finish him. Now.

Her fingers tremble in place, trying to move and failing miserably. Her heart pounds loudly, every beat another failure, another reminder of how easy it would be to stop his. And buzzing through her veins is the will to unleash this raw power, blinding and thrilling and overwhelming.

She gasps, seeking the remaining liquid inside him. A single motion and it would be over. What did it matter if he was prone and defenseless on the ground instead of upright and opposing her from across a battlefield? Killing was killing, whether in the heat of battle or in cold blood.

You haven't the stomach for it, he'd taunted arrogantly. And now he lies facedown in a pool of his own blood while she holds his last heartbeat in her hands.

I have all the power he tried to take from me. I'll let everyone down if I don't use it.

...but will I let myself down if I do?

Then the doors slam open, and a horrified scream rips through the air.

Monster, it accuses.

Katara tears her glance from Ozai's fallen body and nearly takes a blast of fire to the chest. She sidesteps it, loosening her hold on the emperor's failing heart, and instead sends a jet of pressurized water at her assailant.

He falls easily but another man follows on his heels. A wall of fire encircles her, cutting her off from Ozai's body as still more people rush through the door, alerted to the fact that the emperor was now under attack.

Not good, Katara thinks numbly as they close in on her, hands outstretched offensively and wariness in their faces.

And beyond them, Zuko lies unmoving on the ground, a hand clutched to his wounded chest. Guilt bolts an alarm through her.

"Surrender!" shouts a man, taking a step toward her. The others follow suit.

Katara's gaze flits from the guards surrounding her, to Ozai's prone body, to Zuko's lying further away. She clenches her fists, feeling the power of moonlight ripple through her body. There were eight guards total, covering her on all sides. She could defeat them now, but more would come. And Zuko wasn't moving.

As one, all of them launch their attack. Eight jets of fire whiz toward her with deadly purpose.

The bloody water pooling on the ground lashes upward, quenching the oncoming fire in a violent red spray. She twists and it reforms into a circle, expanding outward and knocking all eight off their feet.

Hesitating, she spares Ozai's unconscious form one last glance. Another arriving set of footfalls halts in the doorway.

"Father," the princess's voice breathes from a very long distance away. Katara snaps around. Azula's robes are torn in more than one place and frostburns line her wrists. Her eyes, stricken and wide, already begin to narrow.

Time to go.

The water coalesces into a cresting wave. She leaps onto it, sweeping the downed guards out of her path. Azula charges toward her, both fists clenched and glowing with blue fire. The first burst grazes the outside of Katara's forearm before she even sees it coming.

She veers abruptly off-course, just as Azula leaps into the air and splits the ground with an outpouring of more blue fire. It crashes into the body of the giant wave, foaming into clouds of hissing steam.

Katara recovers first, tightening her disintegrating wave into a pressurized jet. It snakes around the bursts of blue fire the princess hurls in her direction, before looping back and catching her in its backlash.

Azula tumbles to the ground, and Katara seizes her opening. Pulling more water from the air, she freezes it into a barrier of ice. It rattles and cracks with every incoming blow, but it would have to do.

She dashes to Zuko's side, kneels over his body. Up close, she still sees the troubled rise and fall of his breathing, the pain that scrunches across his face. The front of his robe gapes at its charred seams and angry burns line the planes of his chest.

"Get up," she hisses, trying to hook his arm over her shoulder. "We need to go, now—"

But his head lolls unconsciously, his body a dead weight anchoring her back down.

The ice wall shatters and more fire shoots in their direction. She struggles to her feet, bracing Zuko's weight against her own while trying to bend all the remaining water with one free hand.

"Hang on," she mutters, securing her arm around his waist.

The water collects into one thick jet, whizzing toward her and tightly coiling them into its buoyant grip. Then she looks up at the sky, at the patch of silver cloud glowing with the full moon overhead.

She raises her arm. The water uncoils, propelling them upward and through the broken hole in the ceiling. Below them, more fire sails harmlessly out of reach.

"Leave them!" shrieks the princess's voice. "Save my father! Get the healers!"

Katara gasps in relief as they land on the rafters. She nearly loses her footing under Zuko's weight but manages to regain her balance. His breath puffs faint warm air against her shoulder; it makes her feel reassured and guilty at the same time. I should have stayed with him. Why didn't I?

But there was no time to dwell on that. They were in the middle of a bloody coup and anyone remaining alive would be loyal to Ozai. And when they found out that she had nearly killed him, they would hunt her down in greater numbers.

Not to mention what would happen to Zuko if his father's men got a hold of him.

She anxiously surveys the grounds below, weighing her odds. They needed to escape. But high stone walls border the palace grounds, bristling with violence. Katara can barely stand straight while bearing Zuko's weight at the same time. Fighting through the grounds was nigh on impossible.

But there were the secret tunnels running below the grounds. They led to the sea, Azula had said, in case the royal family was under attack...

She squints at the grounds, trying to pick out the entrance to the catacombs that Azula had used before. Her fingers curl and flex in preparation. Her other arm tightens around Zuko, his listless weight a strange comfort.

This is crazy, she manages to think to herself, rolling her free arm. It pops and groans in its socket. Then she raises it and focuses on the water surrounding them everywhere. Breathes in and sucks all of it into her reach.

Then she exhales and steps off the edge of the rafters.

They fall into the palm of a wave, growing in height as it charges across the palace grounds. A chorus of shouting guards filters faintly over the din of roaring water, the motions of their bending barely visible in the corner of her eye. Nearby trees shrivel and snap in half as she drains them dry, tugging at every possible source to knock incoming blasts of fire out of the air. The wave gains speed, heedless of everything in its path.

Up ahead, the small trap-door leading into the catacombs shines, a beacon of safety.

Her fist crashes down and they wash into it, the thunderous roar of falling water resonating through her entire body. The darkened underground tunnel grows loud with the echo of charging water, surfing along the tapering ground in the direction of gravity.

The princess wasn't around to navigate the tunnels but it didn't matter. Sooner or later, all water finds the sea. But the sounds of pursuit and the menacing glow of fire recede in the distance, and she breathes a sigh of relief.

The incline of the tunnel steepens its pitch and they gain speed, all but hurtling down what must be the slope of the mountain. Zuko's listless body bobs on the surface of the water as she lets go, controlling their descent with tightly shaking hands.

A glimmer of light in the distance hurtles toward them and in the span of a breath the tunnel abruptly yawns open.

They tumble through the opening and wash up onto the soft scrubby sand at the foot of the mountain. The endless expanse of ocean glitters before them, a silent promise of freedom.

Gasping with exhaustion and crawling on all fours, Katara reaches for it with both arms. The surface of the water ripples and reaches back. A wave crests and stretches toward them, bearing them down into the ocean with a final, gentle splash.

Freezing the water around them into a sizable ice floe, she pants in exhaustion as she clambers onto it and hauls Zuko onto its surface. His weight nearly threatens to pull her under, and every overspent muscle screams in agony.

"I did it," she gasps hoarsely, clutching at his shoulders. "We made it, we're safe, you're safe..."

He stirs feebly, his faint breath whistling through his teeth.

"It'll be okay," she assures him, drying the water drenching their clothes and placing a hand to his chest. Against her palm his heart still beats steadily. She sighs in relief.

Beneath them, the ice bobs along the surface of the ocean, ferrying them slowly away from the shoreline and further into open water. She squints at the horizon, spotting the pinpricks of light that meant a ship. A darkened ship, a ship sailing in stealth, trying to evade pursuit.

Safety.

"Hang on," she whispers. Sweat beads on her brow as she pushes the water beneath them into a current fleeting toward the escaping vessel.

Just a little further...

With what feels like the last of her effort, she pulls the ice beneath them into a whirlpool. It launches the two of them up into the air and onto the solid, wooden dock.

Zuko's weight crumples onto her body. The brunt of the landing knocks her breath out of her lungs.

From above her, faint shouts of surprise scatter into the night air.

"It's Master Katara! And Prince Zuko! They're alive!"

"Notify the General at once!"

"And send help! They're fading fast - "

Armoured footfalls pound by her face. Katara blinks stars out of her eyes.

"Help him," she pleads softly.

Someone replies but the words are fuzzy in her ears. The world seems to dance and sway before everything swims out of focus and the merciful darkness of exhaustion claims her.

Chapter 31: eye of all storms

Chapter Text

disclaimer. nothing you recognize belongs to me.

author's notes. i live! i am so humbled by all the feedback for the last chapter (which i recognize was a real doozy), thank you all so much!

on the bright side, we're now officially halfway through the story! (i hope).

as always, i remain indebted to the brilliant circasurvival for being an utter champ while beta-reading this. everyone go give her a high five.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xxxi. eye of all storms

run from the one who comes to find you
wait for the night that comes to hide

"feral love" / chelsea wolfe

The morning sunlight bleeds angry and red through the ruined palace.

A cold breath of coppery air rustles through the empty window-panes. Mai shivers as it brushes the nape of her neck, and pulls her cloak around her. The heart of the caldera was known for its heavy climate, but it had rained through the night. An uncharacteristic chill grips the city in its wake.

She accidentally treads on glass and flinches as it splinters beneath her shoe. Her fingers twist into the black wool of her cloak. Briefly she contemplates how nice it would be to vanish into the shadows, silent and unseen.

But then out through the doorway steps the princess herself, tired yet still immaculate. Her hands clasp behind her back and she stands tall and straight, as though she hadn't gone the entire night without sleep. As though the world hadn't collapsed and the royal family hadn't boldly ripped itself apart overnight.

The princess glances at her and at once her lips curve mirthlessly. "Ah yes. My one true friend."

Mai still raises a quizzical eyebrow. "Would you like me to kowtow?" she asks bluntly, before inwardly wincing, bracing for a backlash.

But as always, Azula simply laughs. "Walk with me," she orders instead. "I could use a break."

Mai trails her wordlessly out into the grounds.

The palace interior had been scarred by pockets of fighting, but it was nothing compared to the carnage outside. Instead of vivid green, the formerly landscaped gardens are the colour of rust, churned through with mud and pools of drying blood. What remains of the flowerbeds are splattered with gory chunks of bright red. The stink in the air gathers low, heavy and foul, coppery blood mingling with rot and charred flesh.

Mai had tried not to stare earlier, but there are bodies scattered everywhere, dead, unmoving, burnt. Dressed in finery, or worse, in military armour.

She deliberately doesn't think about the implication of the latter.

Beside her, Azula sniffs imperiously. "What a mess," she complains, waving a hand in front of her face. "Surely someone should clean all this up."

"If anyone's left," Mai remarks flatly.

Azula scoffs but says nothing in response.

They walk in silence along the path winding through the estate. Or rather, what remains of the path and the estate. The landscaped and well-manicured gardens are a smoking ruin, and deep gauges in the ground are filled with muddy water. The path beneath their feet is so uneven, it takes astounding effort to not accidentally twist an ankle with every step.

But as they round the corner where the old turtleduck pond used to be, Mai freezes in her tracks.

She recognizes the corpse sprawled unceremoniously before her. General Shinu's stocky body looks powerful even in death, crumpled against a tree snapped clear in half, doubtless from the force of the impact.

"Oh." The squelch of Azula's light footsteps against the sodden ground as she draws near. The sound echoes in Mai's ears, and her skin begins to prickle as though it too is covered in mud, even though her cloak is as pristine and dry as Azula's regal robes.

"Why?" Mai can't help but ask. "He served the Empire well, he was loyal –"

"Loyal," Azula finishes dangerously, "to the wrong man."

Mai's fingers burrow tightly into her cloak. The silence turns as chilly as the morning air.

Then Azula sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. "You will think this heavy-handed, perhaps," she allows, her voice softening a shade. "I thought the same when Father first shared his plan to take power. Intricate, bold...yet inelegant." Her painted mouth twists into a wry smile. "What we gained so clumsily, we will spend the rest of our lives fighting to keep in our grasp. My uncle and brother are fled, with only a skeleton force between them. Any attack they mount will be feeble and short-lived. We must move swiftly to press our advantage. But at the height of his power, Father now fights for his life."

Her voice tapers off grimly. Mai swallows and seizes her opening. "He has you."

The princess straightens haughtily. "Yes. Through all this, I remain ever my father's most loyal servant, his trusted right hand. This is my opportunity. I won't let him down like my weak, spineless brother." Her nostrils flare with disgust. "He thought he could replace me. But the fool only proved my worth."

Beneath Mai's feet, the mud bubbles as she shifts her weight tentatively. "Zuko's harmless –"

"He betrayed us, Mai!" Azula whirls on her with wrath as hot as blue flames. Mai fights the urge to cower as Azula's cold amber eyes bore into hers. "You have the privilege of my trust. Do not make the same mistake he did."

Mai holds her ground, even as the ground turns as brittle as ice. "I would never," she says, the words curdling in her mouth.

It seems to satisfy her, because the princess backs away. But she continues to stare unblinkingly into Mai's eyes, determined to extract some secret truth from them. "So you have no idea where Ty Lee went?"

Breathe.

"I've told you once and I'll tell you again," Mai answers patiently, holding Azula's gaze like it was a distant target for her to bury one of her hidden shurikens into and nothing more, "I didn't see her. It was chaos last night. I was busy protecting my mother and brother." She pauses. "I don't even know if she survived."

For several nerve-wracking moments, Azula's penetrating gaze doesn't waver. "And if she did? She could hardly flee the city without help."

Mai blinks. Then she shrugs. "Are you sure about that? You know Ty Lee, nothing could ever keep her in a cage for long."

The princess pauses, surprised. And then to Mai's unending relief, she laughs again. "Of course. No matter." Her smile falters. "Times like these bring out your true colours, Mai. And you will learn your place here, as I have been taught mine."

Mai raises her eyebrow again. "As you wish, Princess." She fights to stop it from sounding like a question.

Azula glances up at the sky and sighs again. "I must return to the emergency council. We must prepare our troops to move quickly, before my uncle has a chance to recoup his strength." She brightens. "But afterward – you will dine with me, yes?"

Mai keeps her face carefully expressionless. "If it pleases Her Highness."

"Now you're making fun of me," Azula chides. "Keeping me in line?"

Mai dares a very small smile. "Someone has to."

And with that, Azula turns on her heel and stalks back to the hollowed-out shell of the palace.

Mai makes sure to keep her head held high as she traverses the remainder of the destroyed pathway out of the estate. The stench of mud and burnt flesh wafts along the bitter wind.

She doesn't say a word as she crosses the stone's throw distance parting the mighty palace walls from her family home. The servants bustle about inside, white-faced and hushed, fearful to make a sudden sound. From a room upstairs, the piercing wail of a baby echoes throughout the house.

"My lady," says one of her father's attendants breathlessly. "Your lord father - he hasn't been seen all day."

"My father is occupied serving the throne," Mai replies calmly, tucking her hands into her sleeves.

"Yes my lady, I understand." The attendant bobs his head nervously. "However - there is still the matter of his...outstanding business."

Mai fights the urge to roll her eyes. "Let me worry about settling his accounts overseas. It's none of your concern."

"But how?" The attendant squawks as she brushes past him. "No ship would dare sail to the colonies and risk the wrath of the Princess!"

Mai raises her eyebrows. "Well, it's a good thing I'm the only friend she's got. And she'll have a job keeping things in line here without my father's support, won't she?"

The attendant gulps. "My lady…"

Mai glances at him dismissively. "If you can't keep it together, could you at least make sure nobody follows me? I'll go down to the harbour to oversee the shipment myself."

Murmuring an acquiescence that sounds more like a squeak, the attendant scurries away.

She waits until the sounds of footsteps become very distant. Overhead, her brother's wails soften to broken hiccups.

Then she crosses to her father's study at the back of the house, its windows overlooking the garden and the steep cliffside path leading down to the harbour. A pile of crates are stacked by the back door. Methodically, she shutters the blinds and firmly bolts the door shut.

"All clear," she hisses. "Come on, quickly, we don't have much time."

For a moment, the only answer is the stifling quiet blanketing the room.

Then, the lid of the largest crate slides off and out of it climbs Ty Lee, stiff and trembling and pale as a corpse. Burns and scratches line her jaw and midriff.

"My father has a shipment leaving at midday," Mai continues urgently, keeping her voice very low. "All direct lines to the colonies are suspended, but the trade routes to Kyoshi Island are still running for now. I could smuggle you on board, and then you could get off when the ship docks -"

Ty Lee hugs her suddenly, knocking the breath clear from her lungs. "Thank you," she gasps, tears streaming down her face, "Kyoshi's perfect - thank you, thank you -"

"Don't thank me yet," Mai warns, pulling away. She glances at the bolted door. "She's watching me like a hawk, you know. But I don't dare do anything more -"

"You could come with me!" Ty Lee gushes, grabbing her shoulders. The scent of stale smoke pours off her torn pink dress. "Just leave! Look at what's going on, this is all so fucked up!"

"Uh huh. And have Azula breathing fire searching for both of us?" Mai asks skeptically. "I don't much like our chances there." She rests a hand on Ty Lee's shoulder. "You put this place behind you way before I did. Leave while you still have the chance."

Ty Lee is silent for a while, chewing on her lip doubtfully. "How long will the colonies hold out for? They're going to attack them eventually."

Mai lets out a humourless laugh. "They're not interested in attacking the colonies at all. You'll be fine."

"And Azula?" Ty Lee whispers fearfully.

Mai swallows hard. "Let me worry about her."

For the first time in her life, she isn't bored. And she hates it.

Flickers dance at the edges of Zuko's consciousness, a senseless cacophony of colour and sound splintering through an endless void.

A pair of mummer's masks carved in faces of red and blue rise out of the darkness. In a flash they spring to life and turn into a pair of dancing dragons, twining around him hissing and serpentine - offered you everything you did not deserve...elected the path of treason… Their twin mouths open, sharp teeth framing hellfire pouring forth to sear somewhere beneath his skin, splitting through his heart, his chest, everything in between.

The sound of screaming rips him back into broad daylight. He thrashes sweaty and confused as the world staggers around him, all white sheets and dark metal and fiery glowing light –

"Zuko!" cries a voice somewhere by his ear and hands made of water press soothing cool right where pain threatens to burrow straight through his flesh. He heaves as the sensations dull, until everything feels as soft as the strips of red-stained linen wrapped around his torso and the screaming stops.

It takes another moment before he realizes the sound came from him.

Zuko blinks again and everything crawls back into focus. He's lying in a bed, one of many lining a long, narrow room. Bright sunlight pours through round porthole windows and the ground beneath him rises and falls like the swell of a sleeping dragon's chest.

"Easy," breathes Katara's voice and the hands on his chest - her hands - are steadily lowering him back onto the narrow, hard bed. He blinks again and she swims into view, the flush on her cheeks not quite enough to loosen the deep furrows of worry scoring her forehead. "You've been out for a while. How do you feel?"

His mouth is so dry his tongue feels like it is pasted to the roof of his mouth, and the sight of her doesn't help. Even though a half-healed blistering burn curves across the side of her face, her skin seems to glow where the afternoon sunlight kisses it. The instinctive urge to follow suit with every inch her borrowed red uniform doesn't cover nearly overwhelms him.

"Better," he croaks, the sound barely scraping past his throat, "now that you're here."

The flush intensifies on her face. Her hand tenses against his chest, where she must surely feel his galloping pulse. Then she straightens abruptly. "Look!" she calls, her voice ringing too loud and falsely bright in the shrunken space between Zuko's ears. "He's awake! Isn't that great, guys?"

He winces as more voices rise from the other side of the room.

"About time, Sparky! We thought you were a goner!"

"Yeah, welcome back!"

Aang appears by his bedside, pale and drawn and sporting some impressively dark rings under his eyes. To Zuko's dismay, Katara recedes back into a corner of the room, her limp almost as pronounced as it had been after the Sun Warriors battle.

She sinks into a chair and next to her sits Toph, her toes wiggling experimentally against the ground. A wicked grin splits her face as she gets to her feet.

"What was that about?" she asks, shuffling over to the foot of his bed. Her sightless eyes glitter mischievously. "And does it have anything to do with why Sugar Queen's been downing dandelion tea nonstop ever since she got on this damn ship?"

"Toph," Aang splutters, managing to grow even paler as a choking sound emanates from the corner where Katara sits. "You can't just ask people private things like that!"

The heat searing under Zuko's skin rushes to his face, but he plies the sightless earthbender with a deadpan stare he knows she can't see anyway. "No clue," he replies at the exact same time Katara yelps out a frantic "Of course not!"

The inside of Zuko's chest coils tightly before the ugly memory hits like a blow to the head. I don't need your help, he'd snarled at her, you ran off and left us when you needed to...

"Huh. Sorry I asked," Toph remarks, shaking her head. "Anyway, it didn't stop her from hauling your unconscious ass out to sea after single-handedly kicking the living crap out of everyone in that palace, so you couldn't have been that bad." She rubs thoughtfully at her chin with a heavily bandaged hand. "You know, I'm beginning to think I need a better nickname. Clearly, Sweetness isn't going to cut it anymore."

Aang rubs his forehead despairingly. "I give up."

Zuko closes his eyes, trying to ignore the sudden pangs of guilt rearing up in him. "Where are we?" he asks instead.

"On Admiral Liang's flagship," Aang offers, visibly relieved at the change of subject. "He managed to retreat with a handful of vessels, and even more survivors. We're still not sure who all made it out of the capital, or if any other ships are coming to help us, but so far, the plan is to regroup at the Southern Air Temple."

"Admiral Liang's ships?" Zuko echoes, even as something stirs in him. "Retreat? What…?"

His voice cracks like the calm shielding him from the blade of his memories as they finally catch up with him. "He killed Lu Ten," he breathes, water already beginning to well in the corners of his eyes again. "My own father."

The ground beneath them seems to lurch violently, and the silence in the wake of his words turns funereal.

Aang's hand rests sympathetically on his shoulder. "We're sorry for your loss, Zuko," he says, and it makes everything seem suddenly, appallingly real in a way the chaos of the aftermath hadn't. "We really are."

Aang's sympathy only makes him feel worse, like fire cauterizing an open wound. I don't need your pity, he'd shouted when Katara said the same. And now she's all but cowering in her corner, unable to make eye contact with him. Shame makes him feel sick to his stomach as her reticence starts to make alarming sense.

"Gyatso and I helped your uncle get away," Aang continues, and Katara stiffens uncomfortably at the mention of his uncle's name. "He thought something might happen, but to him."

"Uncle must have sensed a trap brewing and Gyatso was his escape plan," Zuko realizes, horror cascading like hot water into his stomach. "That's why you showed up so quickly when they were attacked! Did you have the sky bison waiting nearby just in case?"

Aang nods solemnly. "Your uncle arranged for Pola to stay in the royal stables when we arrived. We went to feed him not too long after the newlyweds left, and then we heard the commotion. It didn't take long to get to the tower before it collapsed, which was lucky for your uncle and your mother." He shakes his head in disbelief. "Gyatso wanted to leave straightaway, since the grounds were turning into a battlefield. But your uncle wouldn't go without ensuring his son's safety. But when we got to the wedding chamber…" His voice breaks off.

Katara's lip curls but she says nothing, holding out in steely, clenched-jaw silence.

The grief wells fresh yet somehow it cut less deep. Perhaps he was still too numb. "Everyone blamed the Dai Li for it. But it was a firebender who struck the killing blow," he whispers, before a horrible thought claws at him. "If my father could devise this whole plot, what if he was the one who…" He doesn't finish this thought. It was too horrible to voice out loud.

"We didn't see him there," Aang answers gently. "By the time we got there, there was just the body. Whoever did it was gone."

"Yeah, they caught him and burned him in the throne room," Zuko finishes bitterly, remembering the nondescript man in the recognizable green uniform. "Whether he was actually an agent of the Dai Li or a disguised firebender remains a mystery my father will take with him to the grave. He never admitted his treachery, not even when I confronted him with the truth in front of what remained of his court."

Toph lets out a low whistle, clearly impressed. "How deep do you think he actually is with the Dai Li? Why make such a big show about attacking the Earth territories if he's been colluding with them the whole time? It doesn't make sense."

"It makes perfect sense," Zuko retorts tightly, understanding too late. "Divide and conquer. My father kept everyone distracted with talk of invading the colonies, so that nobody would realize when he struck his true target."

An uncomfortable silence greets his words. Toph's mouth presses tightly together. "Well shit. How involved do you think the Dai Li actually are in all this?"

Zuko tries to shrug but his shoulders feel as though they are made of stone. "I don't know. Either way, I can't imagine this ending well for the Earth territories. Even if my father has a use for the Dai Li now, he will turn on them eventually once that runs dry."

"Not unless the Dai Li turn on him first," Toph muses.

"I don't think Ozai's enemy is the Dai Li at all," Aang points out sharply. "Right now the biggest threats to him are all escaping on this ship. And General Iroh - he didn't even want to leave. He wanted to stay behind, something about an Agni Kai -" Zuko's fists tighten at the words, "—but Gyatso convinced him to stage a retreat instead. To live and fight another day, to ensure his son's murderer met justice."

"How convenient for him," Katara remarks acidly. "To ensure that he got to live another day, above everyone else."

"I'm sorry we missed you," Aang apologizes haplessly. "I really am. It was just so chaotic and we were trying to rescue Toph from an actual life or death situation, we didn't even see you."

"Thanks." Katara crosses her arms stonily.

Zuko frowns at Toph. "Life or death?" he repeats incredulously. "You? What happened?"

Toph waves a hand dismissively but her sightless face darkens. "Your sister found out my parents had a bounty on my head. I guess she thought it was a good time to cash in."

Katara shakes her head. "I knew it was a trap, and I still went with her."

"To be fair, she wasn't lying about me being in danger," Toph mutters, an uncharacteristic flush tingeing her face. "She just...hid her role in bringing about said danger."

Anger glimmers dully in the pit of Zuko's stomach. "How did she even manage to trap you? You have seismic sense!"

"Yeah, well, there was so much going on at that party, it was hard to focus, okay?" Toph's blush deepens and Zuko nearly thinks he's hallucinating. "Plus, I was a bit distracted by the muscly honeypot she sent to dance with me, so I didn't really notice the cage until I stumbled right into it."

Katara snorts darkly. "And you had the nerve to make fun of me."

"Hey, you were the one dancing with Sparky's evil dad!" Toph snaps back and the colour instantly drains from Katara's face. "And how is what I did any different from you missing the brunt of the massacre because you were shacking up with -"

"That's enough," Zuko cuts her off roughly, the backhanded comment stinging like salt on an open wound. "Azula played us all for fools, it's what she does. Don't take it out on her, Toph."

Not the way I did, his mind whispers accusingly and not for the first time does Zuko long for the other two to leave.

Toph shrugs defensively. "Hey. As far as I'm concerned, I was able to break out. So I guess in the end, she was the fool for trying to underestimate me." She smirks at Katara. "And Sugar Queen handed her ass to her afterward, so wherever she is right now, I hope she's in a lot of pain and feels really stupid."

"What about you?" Aang prompts curiously. "You - you said you confronted your father over your cousin's murder."

And suddenly the only sound is the waves lapping at the bottom of the ship far below their feet.

"I did." It feels like it must have happened in a dream. And yet the burns lining his chest and oozing into his bandages are real. He touches them disbelievingly, amazed to be otherwise intact after awakening from yet another duel with him.

"I take it he didn't appreciate your accusation," Toph remarks lightly.

Zuko shakes his head, trying to remember. There were flashes of lightning, the entire throne room caving in around him. His father looming over him and then...

His eyes land squarely on Katara again, widening as though seeing her for the first time. "You…you were controlling him somehow," he tries, fighting a shudder as the mental image of his father contorting at her feet courses through his mind. "With your bending. What was that?"

Katara recoils, ashen-faced as though she was the one he'd accused of murder instead. Then she drops her gaze. "It's a type of waterbending," she explains falteringly. "There's...there's water everywhere if you look hard enough. Anywhere there's life. When the moon is full and my bending is at its strongest, I can bend water anywhere." Her fingers clench tightly against her knees. "Even if it's in someone's blood."

Her stricken eyes find his and something leaps in his chest. Something that felt like hope but tasted like ash and dread.

He collapses back against the bed, struggling to wrap his head around it. "You were bending his blood," he realizes, and he isn't sure if he's awestruck or horrified or some grisly combination of the two. "That's...I didn't know that was even possible…"

"Wait, you can bend blood?" Toph gasps, her clouded eyes widening in shock. "Holy shit, I definitely need to find a new nickname for you. Why on earth would you keep that to yourself?"

Aang's face pales. "I don't know, Toph," he says uncertainly. "That...that sounds pretty dark."

Katara crosses her arms defensively across her chest. "I learned it on my travels from Pakku's school to here. There - there was a waterbender in one of the little villages, an old woman named Hama. She was from the South like me." She swallows nervously. "Her village was one of the first to fall during the wars. She and all the other benders in her tribe were imprisoned so deep underground nobody could ever find them again."

A chill of revulsion crawls along Zuko's skin as she continues, her voice steadily becoming hollower. "Bloodbending was how she broke free. I...I think the best parts of her died in that prison cell...but she said it was her duty to ensure every waterbender of the South knew how to wield this power. This legacy." Her mouth tightens to a grim slash. "How could she let me leave without teaching me?"

Toph's eyebrows disappear behind her bangs. "And all this time I thought waterbending was just splashing some puddles around! But that's - that's actually scary!"

"I know!" Katara snaps, springing to her feet and Toph recoils despite herself. "I know, okay! It's scary and dark and wrong. No one should have that kind of power over another! I get it. But Ozai didn't need bloodbending to destroy all of our lives, so why wouldn't I use it when I had the chance?" Her hands ball into fists at her sides as she inhales shudderingly. "And…I couldn't even finish the job, so what does it matter anyway?"

Finish the job. She had meant to kill him, he realizes uncomfortably and his stomach tightens reflexively with fear. But Katara was like water itself: gentle and soothing, but bitterly unyielding when at storm. That she could both heal him from the brink of death and stop his father's heart from beating its last are simply two sides of her he's had to reconcile by now.

"Well, you tried," Toph comments, shrugging. "And I can't think of anyone who deserved it more. No offense, Sparky. I keep forgetting he's your dad."

"It's okay," he manages as Katara carefully avoids his gaze.

Aang clears his throat. "None of this would have happened if Emperor Ozai hadn't decided to murder people for his own ends," he points out, surprisingly calmly. "You both were in danger. Katara had to do something. I'm sure if there was a better way, she would have done that instead."

But Katara's face clouds over. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Oh," Aang flounders, but looks relieved to drop the subject. "Okay."

Zuko struggles to sit upright and before he knows it, blinding pain is blazing along the lines of his sternum. Winded, he doubles over, clutching at the bandages soaking beneath his fingers.

In an instant, Katara's by his side, already helping him lie back down. "Okay, everybody out," she orders grimly without looking up. "He needs rest."

He barely hears the infirmary door slamming shut behind the others as they leave. The sound of ripping linen fills his ears, and the low curses she mutters under her breath as she bares his skin to her healing touch.

"Spirits, I've never seen burns like these before," she hisses to herself. He can't help but watch her, focused as she is on the wounds blossoming wetly across his chest, her hands planting over top of them, right over top of his heart.

For a moment, he thinks she holds that in her hands too. Her eyes are closed, her forehead furrowed and teeth gnawing at her lip in concentration. And it's for him, it's all for him while he'd yelled at her, taken out all his anger unfairly upon her. Even as she had stayed by his side when everything else had crumbled away...

Then she relaxes and the pain fades away, leaving hollow silence screaming in its absence. Her eyes flutter open, focusing on the fresh scar tissue marking the spot directly over his heart.

A small sound rises in the back of Zuko's throat as her finger absently traces along its edges. "Did that hurt?"

He shakes his head quickly, her touch on his skin while he can scarcely move almost too much for him to bear. "No, it's - it's fine." He swallows again as her fingers still. "Thank you."

Katara's eyes lower and a shadow seems to pass over her face. "You really scared me," she confesses in a low voice.

His heart races with trepidation and guilt and too many other things. "I'm sorry," he blurts out, "he was so fast, faster than I expected, even more than Uncle -"

"That's not what I'm talking about." Her voice quivers nervously but when her eyes meet his again, they blaze defiantly.

Zuko blinks, lost for words. "Uh…"

"You left me," Katara barrels over him in an agonized whisper. "You told me we could do anything together...and then you left me." Her face twists sourly. "For him."

He gapes at her, dumbfounded. In the aftermath of everything that had happened, it hadn't even occurred to him and yet, he had done precisely that. Realization settles in his gut like a leaden weight, making him want to sink through the floor and disappear. "Oh."

Katara sits on the edge of the bed, leaning in close even as she struggles to choose her words. "I - I don't care that you were angry with me," she chokes out in a brittle voice. "Even that you took it out on me. I'd be there for you, like you were for me."

His throat jams up tightly as her fingers clench into the stark white blankets. "But you shut me out."

"I know," he admits hoarsely, "I'm sorry."

"And you left. You chose to follow him," she continues, cutting him off. Her big blue eyes are suddenly far too luminous just before they scrunch shut. "Right after we –"

"I know," he says again. It stretches out between them, woefully insubstantial.

"That...that was really hard for me to do," she stutters, eyes still screwed shut as her face reddens even more. She takes a deep, shuddering breath and dashes at her eyes before opening them again. "You know what it meant to me."

For a moment he can't even breathe, his airways tangling with the memory of her skin sliding against his. But he holds her gaze even as his heart somersaults in his chest. "You know what it meant to me," he returns. His hand finds hers where it twists anxiously at the blanket.

A small breathy gasp escapes her, and she twitches in his grasp, as though she was thinking of pulling away again. "Then why did you do it?"

He quails under the hurt in her voice, but holds firm. "I had to know," he whispers helplessly as her gaze sharpens. He squeezes her hand desperately. "I stood up to him, you know. That's why he was so angry with me, that's why he…"

He breaks off, nodding at the fresh scars lining his bare chest. Katara's eyes trace them and even though he'd hurt her and she was upset with him, heat manages to pool inappropriately under his skin at her attention.

"I'm glad you were able to face him," she says very unevenly. "But – but I don't think you get it. I let you in, okay? I trusted you with that and – and then you said you…"

I love you. The memory bolts through him and the entire world seems to buck and sway as he pushes onto his elbows. "I..." he breathes, and he wonders if she can feel his heart racing too, "I meant it."

She looks away again and her jaw tightens.

"It's - it's okay if you don't," he says hurriedly, feeling like the insides of his stomach are tying themselves into knots. "I don't expect you to –"

"I know you think you mean that," Katara interrupts softly, staring very intently at the porthole window behind his bed. "But we both know that when push comes to shove, you'll choose your family. Every single time."

"But I stood up to him!" Zuko points out, taken aback. "Katara, I needed to know what he was capable of!"

"And that was what it took?" she challenges incredulously. "Nothing else was enough? You knew what he did to me, you promised me and you still…" She breaks off and a tear trails down her cheek.

Tentatively, he reaches out to brush the tear away. She freezes at his sudden closeness, but doesn't shrink away again.

"I'm so sorry," he pleads, and she rests her cheek against the hollow of his palm. "Tell me what I can do to make it up to you."

Katara's fingers curl into his tightly. "Just don't tell me things you don't mean –"

Zuko kisses her before she can finish. A surprised sound sticks in her throat before it melts into a sigh. His fingers drag through her hair, pulling her closer until her weight pins him back onto the bed. Because if she didn't believe what he said, she still must taste it in the desperate press of his mouth. Her lips part as his nails scrape along the curve of her spine and lightning nearly sears his chest raw again, surely she had to know -

A knock on the infirmary door nearly sends her bolting to the other side of the room. But his hand is heavy on the small of her back, arresting her escape.

"Zuko," she whines against his mouth and breaks off gasping as he rakes his teeth along her bottom lip, trying to absorb every sound.

But the knocking continues politely and with a groan he can't quite contain, he breaks away. His heart pounds loudly in his ears, drumming fast against her palm flat against his chest. Katara's face lingers too close to his, eyes hazed over and her harsh breathing making him dizzy. Heat pulses warm needy waves in the small space between them.

Then he lets go of her reluctantly. Her cheeks are still stained prettily as she quickly busies herself with the rolls of bandages at the opposite end of the room. "Come in!" she calls, the barest hint of a quiver in her voice.

Zuko closes his eyes. The door creaks open and the rustling of cloth bandages stops.

"Oh," says Katara.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you," apologizes the voice of his uncle and Zuko's eyes snap wide open. "I...I heard he was awake."

Katara doesn't answer, only jerks her head in Zuko's direction in tight-lipped silence.

Uncle Iroh fills the doorway but his tired face creases in relief. "Oh, thank Agni."

"Yeah." Katara replaces the bandages and crosses her arms. The look she gives him is cool. "I'll leave you to it."

His uncle nods gratefully as she brushes past him to leave the room. "I remain ever indebted to you, Sifu Katara!" he calls after her.

But his gratitude is only met with more silence as she disappears into the hallway.

Zuko wonders at her chilly hostility, but then his uncle nearly knocks him over in a strong-armed hug and he can barely think of anything except how hard it is to breathe.

"Uncle," he gasps through the tightening band squeezing across his chest with the strength of his uncle's arms.

"I thought I lost you too," whispers his uncle's voice, muffled into his shoulder. "I didn't know if you would leave him."

The clout of his uncle's words leaves him reeling. "I guess you weren't the only one who thought that," he answers faintly, thinking with mounting guilt about what Katara had said, how much he'd carelessly thrown away in blind pursuit of his father's approval.

"But you faced him," Uncle Iroh continues and a glimmer of pride suffuses into his choked voice. "And you escaped his influence, all on your own!"

"It wasn't easy," he heaves, wincing as pain twinges along his new scars. "Uncle...he killed Lu Ten."

His uncle's embrace slackens. Up close, Zuko sees how weathered and deep the crags of his broad face had become, as though grief was permanently etched into its lines.

"He did," he admits, before crumpling into tears.

Dusk slants rays of setting sunlight through the thatching in Oyaji's audience room.

It illuminates the humble wooden interior in glowing streaks and dust mites swirling idly in the air, the small handful of people crowded in front of the village elder's chair. Harder to see is the tension gripping the hall, the sudden fear and doubt raised by the bound stranger's assertions.

"A likely story!" rants Riko, the leader of the Kyoshi warriors. She gestures emphatically with every word, nudging the self-declared spy with her foot. "He's obviously a spy for the Empire, come to sow the final seeds of discontent in their strike against the colonies!" She throws him an impressive glare. "All he needs from us in an excuse to believe that our loyalties waver, and before we know it, the entire Imperial armada will be on our doorstep!"

"That doesn't make any sense!" protests the chained stranger. His voice comes out strained from the grip Suki has on his throat, but he perseveres bravely. "If the Empire wanted to invade your island, it would have showed up by now! Why wait for the word of one spy?" He rolls his eyes, struggling to twist his head. "Spirits, Piandao, why would you send me to such a backwards place? What else would you expect from an island run by women?"

Suki fumes, her fingers squeezing around his neck in warning. "Keep talking and I'm sure the unagi will dine well tonight."

Riko whirls on Piandao. "You sent him here?"

"I was under the impression he would be received as an old friend," Piandao says stiffly. "Not as a prisoner. Have times really changed so much, Oyaji?"

The village elder slumps back in his chair. "It appears they have, Piandao," he laments, to Suki's surprise. "Am I to understand this...young man is here on your invitation?"

"He's fleeing the Dai Li after spying on them at great personal risk," Piandao affirms solemnly. "I can vouch for him."

"And who are you to vouch for him?" Riko snaps. "Your word hardly carries any more weight around here!"

"Now Riko," Oyaji reproaches, steepling his fingers. "What have I taught you about hospitality?"

"That's your job, Oyaji," Riko huffs, jamming a thumb into her chest. "Keeping the island safe from spies and enemies is mine. And I'm not convinced I buy either of their stories." She surveys Piandao skeptically. "An old friend of yours happens to show up out of the blue, and a few days later, one of his associates infiltrates our island in the guise of a Dai Li agent?"

"Well, it wasn't exactly hard," admits the spy with a shrug. Suki yanks on his collar again and he yelps. "Ow! What was that for? I was just being honest!"

"I know. And I was just showing you how much I appreciated it," Suki returns, unsmiling.

He gapes at her. The well-defined muscles in his broad chest strain against her skin.

"I can see the young lady has some suspicions," Piandao says warily, raising his hands defensively. He meets Riko's glare with an uncertain smile. "I suppose in her place, I would too. Let her ask her questions since she's charged with the island's safety."

"I didn't need your permission, but okay." Riko crosses her arms. The rest of the uniformed warriors fan around him and Iio, silent and watchful and more than slightly intimidating. "Who are you and what is your business on our island?"

"I told you. I am Piandao, a swordmaster of Shu Jing," he replies. "And this is Master Iio -"

"She can speak for herself!" barks Riko, turning her attention to the silent Air Nomad. "Well?"

Iio sighs. "I am the Master of the Western Air Temple, their chief Elder."

"An impressive pair, the two of you," Riko observes, fingers drumming against her sleeve. "A swordmaster from Shu Jing and a chief Elder all the way from the Western Air Temple! You're far from home in troubled times like these."

"If you could let me finish," Piandao offers delicately. "It is because of these troubled times that Iio and I ventured forth." He sighs. "You are aware by now of the battle at the Sun Warriors isle some days ago, and that we fought in it."

Suki's attention sharpens at the mention of the Sun Warriors battle, even as Riko tosses her head dismissively. "I am," she says flatly. "Go on."

"The stand-off against the Dai Li on the Sun Warriors isle was a brave counter-attack made possible by very thorough advance knowledge of their movements," Piandao continues, gesturing to the spy Suki still has by the collar. "If it wasn't for his bravery, the battle at the Sun Warriors would never have happened. It would have likely been a massacre instead." He raises his eyebrows at Riko's unyielding expression. "Your friend Suki might not have survived if it wasn't for his efforts."

Suki's blood chills even as she glances skeptically at the handcuffed stranger who called himself Lee. "Wait," she stutters. "Jun's spy - the one we were all waiting for before the attack...you mean this is him?"

"Yes!" Piandao answers emphatically.

Shock bombards her in ringing waves. Her fingers let go of the spy's collar and he crumples to the ground with another yelp. "Oh," she says numbly.

The spy, Lee, pushes up onto his knees and stares at her with his unnervingly bright eyes. "Wait. You were at the battle too?"

"Yeah," Suki manages, torn from her surprise to glare at him. "No thanks to you. We barely made it out by the skin of our teeth waiting for you show up."

"Yeah, you were the real victim," Lee snorts, the roll of his eyes a flash of vivid blue. "I was the one who got caught while trying to sneak out to help you guys...but please! Tell me more about how hard your escape was!"

"Well, considering we were pretty badly outnumbered by the Dai Li and their sleepers, yeah, I'd say it was pretty damn hard!" Suki pushes back, her hands balling into fists.

Riko strokes her chin. "Interesting how despite never even showing up to the battle because the Dai Li supposedly caught him, he conveniently made it here without a single scratch on him! However did he manage that?"

Lee's shoulders slump. "Not easily. The Dai Li tried to take me out on the battlefield. I would've been a goner." His face brightens abruptly. "Luckily there was a waterbender who held them off for me."

"A waterbender," Suki gasps, her eyebrows rising to the level of her hairline. "You mean Katara?"

Lee shrugs. "I didn't get her name. She was sort of, uh, not all there?" He taps the side of his forehead with a cuffed hand. "But freakishly powerful, I'll give her that! Held five of them off when she could barely walk!"

Suki meets Riko's eyes, stunned. "That sounds like her. And Katara did hurt herself pretty badly in that fight…"

"She thought I was her brother," the spy supplies glibly, leaning back on his haunches.

Suki rubs at her forehead. "And you were just starting to make sense. I didn't even know Katara had a brother."

"This is all very heartwarming," Riko interjects crossly, still glowering at the spy. "But that still doesn't answer either of my questions."

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Lee protests, struggling to get to his feet. It was no easy task with his wrists and ankles cuffed together. "My name is Lee, I'm a student of Piandao's, in my spare time I spy on the Dai Li for information about their sinister plots... It's not that hard to follow."

Suki's eyebrows knit together. "Sinister plots?" she echoes incredulously. "Like what?"

Lee shrugs. "Oh you know, the usual. Brainwashing civilians, turning them against the Empire, picking fights with them to consolidate their hold on the region -"

A peal of Riko's disbelieving laughter cuts him off. "Very creative!" she sniffs, wiping at her eyes. "I have to say, of all the spies who have crossed our borders - and there have been several - you're certainly the most memorable! They'll have good company in our prison hold tonight."

"What a relief," Lee quips sarcastically. "At least I'm not getting fed to a giant eel."

"Oyaji," Piandao pleads wearily, "can you please talk some sense into your captain? Lee is doing his best for the Lotus, but we can only go so far with deaf ears."

Suki rubs at her ear, wondering if she's hearing things. But the village leader leans back dejectedly in his chair. "It's been a long time, Piandao," he laments. "The Lotus is only a memory. Stop trying to resurrect it, let it rest with dignity -"

"You're wrong," Piandao counters, impassioned even as Iio lays a cautionary hand on his shoulder. "Yes, Bumi's rebellion changed many things but - but there's still hope! You should have seen the young ones Iroh put together, the way they fought - they were better than we ever were!"

Oyaji shakes his head. "Bumi's rebellion did more than simply burn bridges, Piandao. I know you seek to rebuild them, but the places they lead to no longer exist. Iroh and Bumi made sure of that."

"The Lotus was bigger than those two," Iio reminds him steadily, stepping forward. "Forget the pride of powerful men, Oyaji. They win no battles and change nothing for the better."

Suki stares quizzically at Riko, and then at the spy. Both appear just as confused as she is. "Uh," she tries even as Oyaji falters under Iio's tranquil gaze, "what are you guys talking about, and what does it have to do with lotuses?"

The three elders glance at her in surprise, as though they had genuinely forgotten anyone else was present in the room with them.

But then the doors of Oyaji's hall crash open, shattering the uneasy silence. Suki gasps as nearly everyone jumps, startled.

"Oyaji!" One of the villagers rushes in a panic, dressed for sea and with a fishing rod still held upright in his hand. "A boat from the mainland just docked on our shores! It's the Dai Li!"

Across from her, Lee turns unusually pale, a far cry from his nut-brown complexion. "Oh hell, here we go," he mutters under his breath in a voice so low only she manages to catch it.

Dread cascades down Suki's spine with an icy chill. Everyone in the hall reacts differently, she notices. Piandao stiffens while Iio's hand closes around the staff strapped to her hip. Riko and the rest of the girls all exchange confused glances with each other. She herself feels for the folded metal fans tucked into the hidden pockets of her armour.

Then Oyaji clambers to his feet, his knuckles white where he clutches at the handles of his chair. "What do they want from us?"

The villager stumbles into the room, pressing a hand to his chest as he heaves for breath. "Their emissary said they wanted to meet with the village leaders. He - he said it was starting, that a message has been sent to the Fire Nation and we have to strike now -"

"Strike?" Oyaji repeats sharply. "Strike where?"

"A message?" Suki hisses questioningly in Lee's ear. He simply shrugs in answer, seeming to mirror her bewilderment.

"He didn't say," the villager gasps, dropping his fishing rod to the ground. It clatters loudly, punctuating his next words. "He just said he needed to meet with you, that it was urgent." He gulps audibly. "That if we don't unite under their flag, we will not survive the wrath of the Fire Nation."

Suddenly, it feels to Suki as though everyone in the room has forgotten how to breathe. Herself included.

"Send him in, then," Oyaji orders, sitting back in his seat. "And do not delay!"

The villager nods and nearly makes to leave before realizing his fishing rod was still on the ground. Hesitating, he bends over to pick it up.

"The emissary of the Dai Li," Lee speaks up suddenly, and it snaps through Suki's horrified daze. "Did he give you a name, by any chance?"

The villager wavers, glancing uncertainly at the chained prisoner and then back at Oyaji for reassurance. The village leader nods encouragingly.

"There's a dozen of them off that boat," the villager replies uncertainly, resting his fishing rod over his shoulder. "But their emissary...I think he said his name was Haru."

Jun always forgets how dark the lower ring gets.

She frowns at the sky, rubbing absently at her shoulders. The hour wasn't so late but even if the sun hung low over the horizon, the walls rose highest here and cast everything in a semi-permanent gloom. It almost suited her surroundings, the dimness cloaking how the shabby building facades have faded into ruin.

"Well, here we are again," she mutters, swinging off Nyla's back and slinging her whip at her side. "Back to square one."

The dilapidated lower-ring pub stands before her, illuminated by the harsh yellow glow of a single oil lamp. It was the only source of light on the whole street and somehow, it made the shadows in the alleys appear even darker.

Nyla whickers quietly, her ears flattened back against her head. Jun runs a hand along her neck soothingly, squinting into the darkness for any signs of suspicious movements. A flutter in the corner of her eye nearly makes her jump out of her skin, but the answering whoosh of the chilly evening breeze and rustling of scattered pebbles instantly relieves her.

That's it. I'm officially losing my mind.

The evening air is silent and the street is empty as far as she can see. And yet, as she ties Nyla's reins off to the front porch of the pub, she can't shake the feeling of being carefully watched.

After all, the last time you were here, you barely made it out in one piece. And the Dai Li have long memories.

But there was talk of war brewing and sightings of agents in green through the villages heading toward the open sea, and it stood to reason that even the Dai Li probably had their plate full at the moment.

Jun shakes her head and walks inside.

Inside, it's as though time hadn't passed at all. The same disreputable low-lifes still swig beer from chipped tankards and scrape piles of gleaming coins at the gambling tables. Behind the bar at the back stands Wei the barkeeper, wiping a glass with a greasy cloth as though he had never disappeared.

He spots her lingering in the doorway and waves her over. Surprised, and feeling nearly as wary as she does relieved to see him there, she picks her way through the pub, scanning the tables for anyone that looked out of place, for anyone capable of springing a trap while her head was turned...

"S'nice to see you again, Jun," Wei greets as she settles into her usual spot. "Didn't think I'd be seeing you back so soon."

"Neither did I," Jun grunts. "But the mouse-voles come to play while the cat-owl's away, looks like."

Wei smiles wryly before throwing the cloth over his shoulder. "The usual?"

"Yeah."

She accepts a glass of dark ale and gulps it down gratefully.

"Looks like you needed that," Wei observes as she slams the empty vessel onto the counter and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

"You're telling me." Jun glances around the bar again, half-expecting to see the sinister man with the braid sitting in the corner, watching her with his eerie green eyes. But he was nowhere to be seen, the entire pub full of unfamiliar and unremarkable faces. It should have been reassuring but instead winds unease tight down her spine.

She studies the barkeeper carefully. There were new lines crinkling around his eyes and mouth, and a tremour in his hands that hadn't been there earlier. "How about you? How are you holding up after…" Her voice trails off.

The barkeeper shuffles, suddenly nervous. "S'alright, I suppose. Settling back in, the usual. Y'know?"

"Yeah." Jun stares as he takes her glass and refills it for her. "And you've been okay? No injuries, no...unfriendly visitors?"

"Not really." Wei shrugs as he slides her drink back to her. "Except my head. Hasn't stopped pounding since I stepped out of that -" he frowns, rubbing at his forehead, "- weird rock room place."

"From the Sun Warriors isle?" Jun asks sharply.

Wei shushes her, looking around anxiously. But the inside of the pub is raucous and nobody seems to stir.

"A-anyway," Jun recovers, now thoroughly discomfited for reasons she can't place. "Glad to hear you're doing okay. Shame about the headache."

"Must'a bumped it on something while I was down," Wei reasons, chuckling helplessly. "It'll pass sooner or later, I hope."

"Right."

"And you? What brings you back here so soon?" Wei plucks the cloth from over his shoulder and begins to wipe at the damp countertop. "Looking for someone again, I bet?"

Jun sighs and stares at the foaming cap of her drink. "Yup. You haven't seen Lee around anytime recently, have you?"

In the periphery of her vision, Wei stills. "Lee."

"Yes. The infamous Lee." She swigs from her glass and sets it down. "Last spotted getting the hell out of the Sun Warriors Isle and probably hiding some secret past from all of us…"

She laughs roughly before glancing at Wei again.

To her surprise, the barkeeper doesn't return her smile. In fact, he doesn't move at all. His grip on the washcloth is taut, knuckles steadily turning white.

Her hand drifts to the whip coiled at her side. "Is everything okay?" she asks sharply.

Wei blinks twice, the expression on his face remaining oddly vacant. "Yes," he says at length. "But I don't want to talk about it here."

Jun raises her eyebrows. "Talk about what?"

Wei's gaze flits around the bar warily before landing back on her. "Too many ears. We should go out back."

Swallowing her protest, Jun scans her surroundings again. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. And yet…

"Fine," she allows, rising to her feet. "After you."

Without another word, Wei points to the door at the back of the pub and motions for her to follow. Jun tracks him with suspicious eyes, but apart from a stuttering limp left over from his ordeal at the Sun Warriors battle, he doesn't make a single unexpected movement.

She pushes through the door, a hand already closing around the handle of her whip. Glimpses a darkened narrow alley, crumbling brick walls closing in on a stone path riddled with holes.

Then the door slams behind her and everything plunges into blackness.

"Well," Jun says with a confidence that she no longer feels. "Speak freely. There isn't a soul around back here –"

Something crunches underfoot not a step away. Warmth brushes her cheek, but the night air remains stone cold.

Her whip is halfway out of her belt when –

"My dear Jun," sighs a horribly familiar voice right into her ear, "you do have some nerve showing your face back here again, don't you?"

In the space of one breath to the next, the air fills with the rumbling of shattering earth.

Jun leaps back against the doorway, whip snapping where the man should have stood. The leather whistles harmlessly through thin air instead.

Her heart drums a panicked rhythm. She squints at the faint silhouettes that had sprung out of the earth, encircling a trap around her.

Desperately, she fumbles for the doorknob, only to find it locked. "Wei, what the fuck?" she hisses, rattling it harder. "All this time and now you're throwing your lot in with these people?"

But Wei doesn't answer. Instead, the man with the long braid lets out a soft, cruel laugh.

"Oh, don't blame the barkeeper. He doesn't have a choice, Jun." He steps up close. "And very soon, neither will you."

Jun's vision fills with his green eyes, so pale they seem to glow in the dark. She sees herself reflected in them, bone-white and terrified and so very small.

Her breath catches in her throat as a hand brushes her cheek, almost tenderly. "Take her."

She lashes out, elbowing the man's arm out of her face. He lets out a gasp of surprise and stumbles back. Her whip slices every which way, finding cloth and air and bits of rock that rain down from the sky.

But the darkness latches onto her with the iron grip of a dozen men. Jun struggles against it, but her entire body is pinned down, as though encased in unyielding stone.

"You have openly defied my command," the man's voice condemns pitilessly from somewhere above her. "You have supported that madman's ill-advised rebellion, all while the blood of ten good men are on your hands. You have committed every form of treason imaginable." Something crushes to gravel under the steel of his boot. "And you will pay your debt for all of them. Starting now."

Jun opens her mouth to scream for help, and the darkness surrounding her swallows it whole.

Chapter 32: the price of mercy

Chapter Text

disclaimer. it ain't mine.

author's notes. life is rough, what can i say. thank you so much to everyone who's been following along and leaving such kind, thoughtful feedback!

as always, credit where it's due to circasurvival for her beta-reading and support, she is awesome!

warning that this chapter features some adult content, proceed at your own discretion.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xxxii. the price of mercy

don't say this house is haunted
it runs in the forever
like blood in the family

"haunted houses"/ emma ruth rundle

The wind shushes through the trees, rustling the dense branches heavy with leaves as though they were whispering secrets. The air beneath their canopy is cloyingly quiet, the outline of the full moon barely visible through the foliage where it hangs bloated and overlarge in witness.

In the heart of the night, the old innkeeper bares her teeth in a predator's grin. Her lank white hair glows everywhere the moonlight touches it.

"It was my highest honour to remind those arrogant fools…" Katara jumps at Hama's voice in the dark, punctuated by the cracking of her swollen joints as she twists her fingers in a spidery soft motion, "...where there is life, there is also water."

She hears the snap of a twig from behind an instant before the old woman does. Whirls around, already raising her hands defensively. "No, don't -"

But a horrified scream pierces through her protest.

The old woman's answering cackle makes Katara's stomach roil. "Now, my dear," she chides gently, even as her body hunches into a twisted waterbending stance Katara has never seen before. "Watch and learn."

She jerks back violently with all of the power and none of the grace of any of the bending forms Pakku had taught her. The churning in her gut only worsens as the scream grows louder.

Someone in nondescript shabby red slides out on all fours from behind one of the thick trees. One of the boys from the nearby village - her blood curdles at how young his shrill screams sound. His hands scrabble uselessly, trying to find purchase even as his body drags along the ground toward them. As though an invisible hand had grabbed him around the torso and was dragging him back ruthlessly.

"What are you doing?" Katara asks, her voice thin and frightened in her ears.

Hama's eyes stay fixed upon the young boy. "Showing you the meaning of true power."

Shivers crawl everywhere along Katara's skin as Hama yanks with all the strength in her wiry body. Suddenly the hapless victim is hoisted upright like a puppet on its strings. He hurtles through the air before halting in their midst. Another motion has him hovering an inch off the ground and stiff as a board. The muscles visible along his skin twitch uselessly. Only his eyes move, darting every which way and wide with helpless panic.

It takes Katara a moment before she finds her voice. "What...what is this?"

A self-satisfied smile curls across the old woman's mouth as she scans her handiwork. "My greatest invention, Katara. And soon enough...your salvation." Her pale blue eyes glitter as bright as the full moon overhead. "I call it bloodbending."

Everything in Katara's body goes very still, as though the word had cast a spell on her blood too. "Hama, that's…"

"Think of the possibilities, Katara!" Hama's fists close and the village boy's mouth opens in a silent scream as his body doubles over. "You, one of the last surviving benders of the South, going to serve among those rats in the Fire Empire's army?" She lowers her arms and the boy crumples to the ground on all fours. "After everything they did to us...what a pleasure it would be, to teach the sons of fire to fear water."

"He's just a boy," Katara struggles to point out. "This...this is wrong!"

"Wrong? They rounded up every last bender from my village before burning it to the ground. Locked us so far underground no light or soul could ever find us." The old woman whirls on her violently. "You call it wrong, but this power is how I survived. Because Fire Empire soldiers stood before my cell and I saw only water. Life. Freedom." Her gnarled fingers clench into shaking fists and the village boy collapses flat to the ground in a kowtow. "I will not abandon another Southern waterbender to the same fate. It is my duty to teach you this power, and yours to wield it in this unwinnable war."

"I won't!" Katara all but shrieks, bile rising in her throat. "I can't!"

"You must. And you will." Hama's voice is without pity. "Or else..."

The boy's arm contorts into an unnatural angle. An unpleasant snapping sound cracks loudly through the dark wooded clearing.

"Stop it! Stop hurting him!" Katara pleads, her voice rising. "He's not one of the men who hurt us, just stop it!"

"I won't," Hama says, and a bloodless smile splits her wizened face. "But you know what you must do to stop me."

Another loud crack punctuates her words, as the boy's leg snaps out of place too.

Katara's blood is ice in her veins but under the light of the full moon, it is alarmingly easy to sense Hama's. She twists uncomfortably into the unfamiliar stance, feeling for the tiny rivers rushing underneath the old woman's wrinkled skin. Revulsion rises like her gorge but she holds it all down, pushing back until Hama's hands finally freeze in place, struggling against the invisible grip Katara has on them.

The old woman's eyes widen in surprise before her smile widens triumphantly. Katara has to scrunch her eyes shut, because Hama's approval feels somehow even worse than learning, using her corrupted waterbending to overpower her hold on her own body.

"Good," coos Hama's voice as though from a very long distance away. "Oh, you're a natural at this. Don't stop now. Give in to it."

The old woman's blood pushes back like water rising behind a dam. Katara's temples ache with the effort of it, because bending blood was nothing like bending water. It counters against her pull, shuddering with life and resisting at every turn. And yet...it grudgingly obeys, like a wild creature finally breaking to its master.

For the first time in her life, Katara tastes the thrill of domination, the intoxication of having another submit to her absolutely.

"You have a gentle heart," Hama continues, sounding almost wistful. "After everything, you still have such innocence in you. I envy that."

And the worst part is that Katara doesn't immediately loathe the feeling. Instead, adrenaline shivers through her as she plucks at the veins lining the old woman's legs. An answering thump jars her ears as Hama crumples to the ground on all fours.

"But you must always remember, Katara," Hama says, her voice hardening, "firebender scum like him don't deserve your mercy. Not now. Not ever."

She raises her head but Katara finds herself staring into Ozai's terrified face instead, dripping blood out of every orifice. The soft grass beneath her feet turns abruptly to stone; the midnight forest clearing replaced by the collapsing throne room and the distant scent of smoke.

The old woman and the broken village boy vanish but Hama's voice still echoes vehemently in Katara's ears.

"Because in times like these, even mercy has a price," it hisses as Ozai chokes and collapses, twitching like a dying insect in a growing pool of his own blood. "Sooner or later, the world will find a way to make you pay it."

Katara wakes up drenched in sweat.

Her head hits the bottom of the bunk above hers, jolting her painfully back to reality. Blinking stars from her eyes, her harsh breaths stifle as the vivid nightmare recedes to the thick quiet of the night.

Instead of Hama's spiteful voice, the sounds of snores and muffled breathing greet her ears. Beyond the walls of the overfilled girls' cabin, the heavy creak of metal groans against the swelling waters bearing them ever further south. Closer to home, safety, anywhere.

She tries to go back to sleep. But her sheets and thin blanket are thoroughly soaked, and every time she closes her eyes she still sees Ozai's body, crumpled in a pool of his own blood.

I'm sure if there was a better way, she would have done that instead, Aang had declared earlier that day with such conviction it makes Katara burn with shame. And Zuko - she hadn't been able to look him in the eye. Not until the conversation steered to even deeper waters and, well...

Her skin abruptly flusters with heat at the thought of the way he kissed her. It is the very last thing she can bear.

Without another thought, she climbs out of her bunk. The metal lining the floor is deathly cold against her bare feet as she trudges silently through the cramped cabin, trying not to jostle any of the other girls berthed there.

She plucks at one of the thick black cloaks lining the back of the cabin door before pushing into the hallway. Wraps it around her damp nightgown thinking longingly of the warm blue coat Zuko and the others had gotten her for Conquest Day, folded neatly on top of her pack of belongings in Ty Lee's house back at the capital. Yet another thing left behind that night.

Plodding soundlessly through the darkened hallways of the ship, she wanders up the steps leading to the deck. The bite of cold salty air against her face nearly takes her breath away. Up here, a few sentries stand watch at their posts, but other than a cursory glance, none pay her much attention as she fights her way to the prow.

But when she finally reaches it on unsteady legs, she finds the spot already occupied. Though he too is hooded and cloaked, General Iroh is unmistakable as he stares vacantly out into the horizon.

"Sifu Katara," he greets without looking at her. "I see that sleep has made strangers of us both."

To her dismay, he beckons for her to join. A thousand feeble excuses die on her tongue before she reluctantly shuffles next to him.

For a while, Iroh says nothing and the only sound is the crash of waves upon the ship's hull. But when he speaks at last, he surprises her. "Tell me what you see."

She blinks salty spray out of her eyes, wondering if it's another trick of his. "It's dark," she grumbles.

"It always is," he agrees, gesturing aimlessly at the open waters before them.

Katara sighs irritably, the conversation already threatening to sweep her away like a strong undertow against her best efforts. "I don't know. The sea? The moon?"

"Go on." Iroh nods encouragingly.

She fights the urge to roll her eyes. Instead, she peers across the darkened deck, the sentries illuminated by the light of the waning moon. "I see a warship built for battle, but sailing in stealth to escape one. Men and women, young and old, all uprooted from their lives, waiting and watching for a sign. And at their head commanding them all…" she turns back to the General, her lip curling, "a sad old man."

He smiles ruefully. "You see things as they truly are, young master," he laments, pulling his cloak tighter around him. "I envy you that."

The ship lurches violently. Her hand shoots out to grab the railing beside her.

"I look back now and wonder," Iroh chokes haltingly, "how could I have been so blind? The signs...they were clear as blood in broad daylight. But for my own arrogance, I would have seen them."

Once, Katara would have been moved by the tremble in his voice. Now indignation blooms sharp and bright like a wound in her chest.

"And when I grow weary of looking back and the nights offer no solace, I...I try to look ahead instead," he continues, perhaps mistaking her tight-lipped silence for encouragement. "But all I see are ghosts."

"Ghosts?" she echoes blankly.

"Yes," Iroh admits. "Of my son, my father, all those I loved and failed to protect. The ghosts of my efforts, my best laid plans." He bows his head and the black drape of his hood shrouds his face from view. "Every last one, they haunt me."

Katara thinks of her parents and the knife of her anger burrows even deeper.

"How hard it is, and how terrible, to lose someone you love while being powerless to save them." The cloth of his hood rustles as Iroh shakes his head. "A sad old man. What else can I be?"

You're not powerless, she nearly snaps. "What are you going to do now?" she asks grudgingly instead.

Under the light of the moon, the profile of his face appears exceptionally haggard. "I hardly know. After everything, how can I even trust my own judgment?"

"People are counting on you," Katara answers impatiently. "They've trusted you with their lives, whether you like it or not."

"I don't deserve it," comes Iroh's plaintive response.

She scoffs harshly. "I thought you knew better, General."

He gives her a very weak smile but wavers at the intensity of her scowl. "And you?" he asks cautiously. "What ghosts steal your sleep tonight, Sifu?"

Katara almost forgets how to breathe. "Ozai may be fighting for his life, but Azula won't be sleeping easy," she deflects, because she would surely suffocate before talking to him about ghosts. "You'd better come up with something, and quick."

A ripple of unreadable expressions flicker over Iroh's guarded face. She only recognizes his wariness, and a sick satisfaction wrings through her. "My brother is a fearsome bender, and my niece a prodigy of her generation. How could you have subdued them on your own?"

Now it is Katara's turn to stare blankly out to sea. "I've been abandoned in far worse places, General," she answers, resentful of how surprised he sounded. "You learn to survive how you can."

"And how did you survive my brother's wrath when my nephew was not so lucky?" he asks her pointedly.

Again with his tricks and traps. Why can't he just come out and say what he means? "Well, I didn't disappear at the first sign of danger for a start."

Iroh's eyes widen. "That was unkind."

"But not untrue."

He struggles with his next words, fidgeting with the hem of his cloak. "I am sorry to have disappointed you, Sifu," he manages hoarsely at last. "It was not my intent to strand you both. But I had no doubt in my mind that you could protect yourself -"

"Then why were you so surprised that I escaped?" Katara asks flatly, meeting his gaze with a stony one of her own.

He pulls back his hood with a shaking hand. "Forgive me," he apologizes wryly. "You seem bent on drawing me into a battle I cannot win."

Katara clenches her teeth against the tirade welling in her throat. "Sorry," she grits out. "It's late."

"Of course." He gives her a nervous smile. "I really cannot thank you enough for all that you have done for him. I can arrange for more suitable quarters, more fitting for your station than that cramped officers' cabin -"

"My station?" Katara repeats uncomfortably. The insinuation trails up her spine with the phantom caress of Zuko's fingers.

But Iroh's earnest gaze gives nothing away. "Your loyalty is unquestionable, nobody would think twice -"

All you have is charity, Ozai had said with a smile on his face. I can be quite generous to those who swear themselves to me.

The memory races like poison through her veins. "Thank you for your generosity," she says stiffly, "but I'm content where I am."

Iroh stares at her unblinkingly before shaking his head. 'Well, if you should change your mind -"

"I won't."

"Very well." He crosses his arms. "Will you stay out here for a while?"

"I don't think so."

He nods awkwardly before turning his gaze out to sea.

She steps back, but the frenzy rising in her chest whips with a tumult equal to the might of the black waters roiling all around them.

It bursts out of her in a vindictive tide, smashing through the fault of her pride and her shame. "I was able to subdue your brother because I bent his blood, General. I reached into his body and held his heart so tightly, it nearly beat its last." She nods curtly as Iroh's jaw drops open in wordless horror. "Good night."

Katara turns on her heel before he can muster a reply, walking away steadily even as the ship rocks beneath her feet.

The sound of the door swinging shut tears Zuko from his sleep. He bolts wide awake at the sharp click of a metal bolt sliding into place.

His gaze darts to the infirmary door and to the cloaked figure hunched in front of it. Even in the dim light that trickles through the windows, he recognizes her and his mouth goes suddenly dry.

"Katara?" he croaks in disbelief.

She starts with a yelp, accidentally bumping into the shelf containing all the medical supplies. Rolls of bandages tumble to the ground haphazardly.

"Sorry," he apologizes, sitting up in the hard narrow bed. The blankets pool at his waist, the air cool against the uncovered skin of his torso, now flushing with heat. "What...what are you doing here?"

He can barely perceive Katara in the darkness as she crouches down to pick up one wayward bandage roll and then another. "I didn't mean to intrude," she explains, sounding somewhat helpless. "I just...needed to breathe."

With a flick of his wrist, the torches embedded into the walls spring to life, painting the sparse room with warm golden light. Enough to see the trembling of her fingers as she replaces the rolls back onto their shelf.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

She freezes, her back rigid with tension where it faces him. "I don't know," she admits at last, slumping at the confession. "I can't stop thinking about that night."

I love you. His heart begins to race as unbidden thoughts threaten to overwhelm him. "Uh," he struggles very cautiously, "which part?"

She lets out a weak snort, and a very small smile works its way across his mouth in spite of everything. Then she speaks and her voice is like thunder. "The part where I almost killed your dad with my bloodbending?"

And just like that, his smile fades. "Oh. Right," he says lamely as she shakes her head.

"I wish I had ended it," she continues vehemently. Her fingernails scratch into the wooden surface of the shelf. "I wish I could just walk away and never think about it again."

He chews on his lip, feeling more than slightly out of his depth. "Like Aang said...there was no other way."

"That's not true," Katara confesses, her voice barely a whisper. Her head hangs in remorse. "I had him cornered. I could have fought him honourably. But he was just lying there, taunting me after everything and I just...I wanted to." Her voice lowers poisonously. "I wanted him to suffer. So badly…"

And I had the power to do it. She doesn't say it out loud but he hears it ringing in her silence.

"But I couldn't even do it right!" Katara's voice wobbles dangerously as she knocks yet another roll to the ground. It bounces and wheels to a stop beside Zuko's bed. "What does that even say about me?"

She covers her face with her hands, distraught.

Zuko searches for something to say, but comes up with nothing. Instead, he bends down to pick up the cloth roll and delicately trudges over to replace it on the supply shelf.

To his relief, Katara doesn't shrink from him. "I tried fighting him honourably. I lost," he points out. "What you did saved both our lives."

Her hands drop from her face as she scoffs. "So you're saying what I did was a good thing."

"No. Just necessary," he answers patiently. She stares at him, mouth parted slightly in surprise. "This is a war he started, not you. We're beyond good or bad now." Against his better judgment, he rests a hand on her shoulder. She flinches but doesn't wrench away. "Sometimes, you have to be both."

Her mouth twists skeptically. "You can't be both."

"Oh?" he challenges, holding her gaze. In the flickering torchlight, her eyes shine like the moon. "So you regret what you did, then?"

She ducks her head to stare intently at her feet. "No," she admits at last. "Even if it was reckless, or wrong, or - or dark...I can't think of anything that would make me feel less awful than I do now." She sighs, biting her lip. "Does that make me a monster?"

"No." Zuko lets go of her with more reluctance than he cares to admit. "You did what you felt was right. Try to live with that."

She hugs him so hard she nearly knocks him off his feet. "Thank you," she whispers shakily. "I didn't think anyone would understand."

He staggers as she buries her face into the crook of his neck. Winded and astounded, he holds her close as her breathing slows to a calm and the trembling of her body eventually stills.

He makes to pull away but her grip tightens. "Don't," she pleads, her lips moving against his skin. "Just hold me. Please."

The desperation in her voice makes it impossible to do anything but oblige. He presses his face against the top of her head as her fingers absently trail up his back. Tries to focus on the smell of her hair instead of the sparks of tension flaring in the base of his gut.

But when her lips work along his collarbone, his heart nearly gives out. "Katara," he warns in a strangled voice.

She draws back slightly to meet his gaze. Every confusing thing he wants blazes plainly in her eyes.

To his waning surprise, she drags his face down to hers and kisses him. Her body rocks against his with a demand that's impossible to ignore and every bit of him swells to meet. His mind goes spiralling into the winding coil of his stomach, making everything importantly, headily simple because this at least he understands.

I need you. Now. Quick.

Everything becomes unclear after that, the passage of time heightened by the blood roaring in his ears and the heat that grips every inch of his skin.

There are sounds – ragged breathing hissing through the cover of frantic lips, the urgent rustle of clothing shoved out of the way quickly, not quickly enough – that become faint moments of awareness – pinning her against the door, one arm by her head bracing the weight of his body, the other gripping her tightly by the waist, face buried into her hair as she whimpers into the hollow of his neck – and suddenly everything is only pure sensation.

He pushes into her, feeling like he might faint as her body eagerly swallows him – her legs around his waist, fingers clenching into his shoulders, the moan in the back of her throat turning into a whine – more, please, faster. Surrendering all restraint he drives into her against the cold steel door so deliriously fast he'd worry about hurting her except for the small commands mouthed into the planes of his chest – yes, like that, don't stop – filling him with a rush that nearly drowns out the feeling of her shuddering contractions oh spirits I'm – Her teeth clamp into his skin as she convulses violently around him and it's far too much.

He hisses a litany of expletives laced with her name over and over again into her hair. Everything explodes and his clothes in disarray chafe too hot on his skin and his release positively aches from how good it feels.

"How do you do that," she gasps into his neck. Her awe and the press of her lips send desire pooling absurdly into his loins again, even as the freshly healed wounds inside his chest begin to protest and his heart struggles to stop racing and sweat makes everything sticky. "How can you feel so –"

But his legs feel like they might give out if he keeps standing here like this. Hers are still tight around his hips like she has no intention of letting go, and it hits him like lightning, the understanding that this was no accident, the dust had settled and she still wants me and when did that even happen?

Don't go I need you - "Stay," is all he manages, his breathing harsh against the top of her head. "Please."

Her fingers dig into his skin reflexively. "I don't want to be alone, I missed you -"

Everything inside him goes molten at that. He doesn't even hear her small yelp of surprise as he yanks her by the hair and kisses her. Her hands scrabble at the waistband of his undone trousers, pushing them down below his hips and he nearly trips over them, preoccupied with tearing the layers of her clothes off without having to come up for air because breathing didn't matter, nothing else mattered but her.

It's an embarrassingly short interval of time before he shoves her back onto the edge of the bed, clothes trailing chaotically on the floor. Dimly aware of how loudly she punctuates every thrust she'll wake half the ship he pushes his fingers into her mouth. "Look at me," he orders, and when she obliges he nearly loses himself at the look on her face as he takes her again.

It seems to Suki that a chill descends upon the air where before it had been damp and chokingly humid. By now, the colour of the slanting sunlight pouring through the shuttered windows has cooled from orange to pink, growing dimmer with every second.

Oyaji's small audience room is suddenly awash with a flurry of nervous energy. Piandao strokes the hilt of his sword, muttering something to himself while Iio snaps her glider open and shut, balancing it in the palm of her hand. Riko moves to stand directly in front of Oyaji's chair, silently directing the other warriors as they fan out across the room.

Suki is about to join their formation when the bound spy catches her gaze frantically.

"You've gotta hide me," he says before she has a chance to raise her eyebrows in question. "They'll recognize me in a second!"

"You know them?" Suki asks disbelievingly.

Lee rattles his handcuffs in her face. "Hello! Double agent here? Of course I know them! And they know I defected at the battle of the Sun Warriors, so they're not exactly going to roll out the welcome wagon if they find me here."

Riko tosses him a glare over her shoulder as she twirls her golden fans experimentally. "And this would be our problem because…?"

Lee stomps an impatient foot at her. "Maybe because finding a wanted spy in your midst won't leave the Dai Li with the best impression of you guys?"

Riko lets out an aggrieved sigh. "Fine! Someone, dump him in the prisoner's hold already. He'll be safe there -"

"There's no time," Piandao says stiffly, his smooth faced crumpling into an unsettling scowl.

The sound of steel-booted footsteps echoing in the hallway outside the throne room grows louder as though in answer.

Panic claws across Suki's chest. Without warning, she yanks Lee by the handcuffs down onto the ground behind her and he lets out a surprised yelp. "Stay low and out of sight," she hisses, angling her body to block him from view of the doorway.

Then a group of men dressed in the telltale green uniforms of the Dai Li march through the doorway and everything else in the room goes very still.

Suki's breath catches in her throat despite herself. It hadn't been so very long since the harrowing battle at the Sun Warriors Isle, and yet she is surprised how the sight of the men in green manages to chill the blood in her veins.

Even off the battlefield, they move in eerie unison - two rows of six behind the man standing at their head. From where Suki stands, they all look identical, their faces hidden by the slope of their metal hats.

"Good evening," says the man leading them. His voice is so smooth and without intonation it sounds artificial. Yet despite what Suki can make of his appearance, he sounds young. "I am Haru, emissary of the Dai Li. Thank you for welcoming us to your hall with such limited notice, Oyaji."

Riko's glare makes it clear what sort of welcome she felt was appropriate for Haru and his party. She clears her throat to speak, but Oyaji cuts in before she can. "Kyoshi Island has always been neutral territory," he offers, glancing meaningfully at his captain. "To what do we owe this...unexpected visit?"

"Dark tidings, I am afraid," says Haru. His hands remain clasped behind his back and his posture ramrod straight. "As you are aware, the Empire has expelled our diplomats and ended peaceful relations with us, as was decided by Prince Zuko and his council."

Suki frowns disbelievingly. "Zuko did what?"

Her consternation goes unnoticed by the Dai Li emissary, who continues blithely. "In the days since, our reports indicated a very large military presence converging upon the Empire's capital. We believed them to be preparing a full-scale assault on our lands. In light of their resources and heightened morale following their victory at the Sun Warriors Isle, we felt that we could not allow them to gather their full strength." A satisfied smile creeps into his voice. "Last night, the Empire celebrated the wedding of its beloved Crown Prince, Lu Ten."

That was last night? Suki blinks in confusion, marveling at how the days on the island melted into each other.

"The Dai Li saw this as an opportunity to right a grave wrong," Haru continues evenly. "One of our bravest, most valiant agents infiltrated the festivities, destroyed the palace, and when the moment was right, slew the prince upon his own wedding bed."

Suki nearly inhales spit. She isn't sure if the choking sound filling her ears is coming from her or from the poorly-hidden spy crouched behind her. Maybe it's both, maybe it's every stunned person gaping with sudden wordless horror at the party of Dai Li bristling in chilling triumph.

"What?" Riko explodes, the only one in the entire room capable of speech. "What in Kyoshi's boots possessed you to do that?"

"Instead of marshalling their armies against us, the Empire is now consumed in no less than an outright war for succession," Haru explains with infuriating calm. "Let this civil strife tear them apart while we muster our strength in a bid for freedom."

Suki's hands twitch threateningly, as though itching to grab Haru by the collar of his uniform and hoist him off the ground. "You think you bought us our freedom?" she demands, fists balled at her sides instead because that was safer. "All you did was create a power vacuum! And when Ozai takes power - which he will, since you've ended Iroh's line - he'll unite the entire Empire against us for revenge -"

"Exactly," Haru interrupts, the smile still plain in his voice. "He will unite the Empire against us. Once he shores up support among his own people. We must be ready."

"Ready for what?" Suki all but shouts. "You fools, you've damned us all!"

"Which is why your support is more crucial now than ever before," Haru returns earnestly, squaring his shoulders. "Kyoshi Island has been neutral territory since its founding. But I promise you, when Ozai finally strikes back, he will not spare you for that. Kyoshi Island owes no more allegiance to the Empire than the rest of the earth territories, after all."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Riko hisses, as she actually marches up to Haru, fingers skimming the fans hidden along her sleeve.

"It means the entirety of the former Earth kingdom is in danger from the Empire -"

"Danger that you created!"

"-and it is imperative that we unite to face it together," Haru finishes smoothly, utterly impervious to Riko's apoplectic rage. "Only then do we have a chance of survival."

Riko stares at him wildly. "And what exactly would that entail?"

Haru bows his head. "Every able-bodied man - and woman, it appears - is expected to bolster our ranks in our fight against the Empire. For those who are unable to fight, we expect contributions be made in other ways. Perhaps outfitting our soldiers with armour, furnishing of supplies, even -"

To Suki's surprise, Oyaji hobbles to his feet, cutting him off. "And what if we refuse?" he asks. His voice resonates clearly all throughout his audience hall.

"I would advise you to reconsider," Haru answers softly. "Otherwise -"

The dozen uniformed soldiers standing statue-still behind him suddenly come to life. In the blink of an eye, they sweep out from their neat lines in a single, unified movement.

A faint gulp stirs the air from behind Suki, but all her attention is fixed on the positions of the Dai Li agents, and how they've moved to check every person in the room capable of lifting a finger to object. Including herself.

She squares her shoulders, not even blinking at the silent boulder of an agent trying to crowd her space. "Is that supposed to be a threat?" she demands, peering over the soldier's intimidating bulk to glare furiously at Haru. "The Kyoshi Warriors respond especially poorly to those."

He is silent for a moment so long, Suki almost dares to hope that he's considering retreat.

And then he sighs before sliding into an offensive bending stance.

"Any resistance will be understood as treason," he pronounces. His hands flex and the floor begins to rumble. "Take them."

The ground is already sliding out from under Suki's feet by the time her fans slice through the air. They catch the hulking agent in front of her, opening him up elbow to wrist. He lets out a yell, blundering backward as he clutches at it with his other hand.

Suki braces her fall with her hands. A swift kick to the shins topples her opponent to the ground. It's the work of seconds to immobilize him, tying his wrists and ankles together. Lumbering back to her feet, she gasps.

The brawl unfolding around her is stunning in its brazenness, even as the attacking Dai Li agents have their work cut out for them. The Kyoshi Warriors respond aggressively, delivering blunt strikes that render bending utterly useless at such close range. Piandao's sword is a mad glint of silver streaking between the three assailants closing in on him. Two more go flying in the air as Iio unleashes a gust of wind with a snap of her glider.

Out of the corner of her eye, Suki spots Riko, facing Haru, shouting something in his face, perhaps ordering him to surrender -

"Suki! Behind you!" a voice - Lee's voice - yells loudly.

Suki spins around, narrowly evading another agent materializing from the ground behind her. She leaps out of reach as he lunges for her with gloved hands, and then realizes her mistake. With a flex of his fingers, prongs of earth hurtle toward her. She ducks as they whistle past and smash into the roof. Sharp fragments bounce off the side of her face, stinging where they tear at her skin.

Gritting her teeth against the sudden pain, Suki tries to find her footing. But her opponent, now far enough from her to bend properly, hurls one boulder after another to keep her on the defensive.

Rock splits beneath Suki's feet and encases them solidly in place. She swears, trying to pull them free but the restraints hold firm. Desperately, she glances up as the agent sweeps into an offensive stance aimed squarely at her.

Oh no. She doubles over, trying to smash the rock with her bare fists, when -

"Hey Pointy-Top!" someone yells snidely.

Confused, Suki stares at the agent still standing a dozen paces in front of her. And next to him, with his hands still cuffed behind his back, is Lee. Who headbutts him right in the face and the agent crumples.

Suki grimaces as Lee recoils, wincing in pain. With a well-placed strike, the rock restraints around her feet crumble to pieces. She leaps out of them, bounding toward the handcuffed spy, who's doubled over and shouting something into the downed agent's ears. The agent blinks, but doesn't get up to fight back.

"Are you okay?" she shouts over the din, rubbing at her raw, bloodied hands. "Get back, he might attack again -"

"Nah," Lee retorts, straightening to tower above the defeated agent, who isn't unconscious and yet continues to sit in his place, gaping stupidly as though in shock. "C'mon, let's go take out the rest."

Suki grabs at the chain of his handcuffs accusingly. "I thought you said you needed to hide. In case they recognized you."

Lee nods at the chaos unfolding around them. "You think that would make things any worse now? At least I know how to shut some of these guys down." He nudges the seated agent with his foot in emphasis.

Suki's eyes dart over to where Riko and Haru are locked in hand-to-hand combat by the door. "Even their leader?"

Lee's expression shifts to one of uncertainty. "I hope so," he mutters, chewing at his lip.

The change from his usual bravado is so jarring to Suki that for the first time in their brief acquaintance, she finds herself believing him.

"Okay," she decides, twirling one of her fans through her fingers. "Let's end this."

Lee blinks as she slices through the chain holding his handcuffs together.

"About time!" he declares, flashing a grin at her. A swoop in her gut makes her think she's about to trip again, but the ground remains steady beneath her feet.

Instead, she scowls before pushing past him. "Come on."

Suki punches an agent who tries to rush her. He goes flying back with the force of her blow, but when Lee shouts something at him, he lunges viciously. Lee dances out of range, blanching visibly.

Shaking her head, Suki instead seeks out Riko and Haru by the door. Her stomach plummets as a rock hand closes around the Kyoshi captain's neck and slams her into the broken wooden floorboards. Riko gasps and chokes, trying to pry the stone fingers slowly choking her. Haru's face remains neutral even as his fist clenches mercilessly.

Suki doesn't register cutting through the melee of dueling fighters. In the corner of her eye, shadows in uniforms close in on her but the clack of broken chains holds them at bay and she pays them no heed.

Then she tackles Haru bodily and they both go rolling to the ground. She slices viciously, trying to find any bit of exposed skin - his neck, his face, his eyes even - but his wrists twist and the rock hands hurtle toward her again.

She leaps off him as they smash into where her feet had been, snarling as she lands on all fours.

Haru sits up slowly. His metal hat has fallen off his face, hanging behind his head by a thin chain looped around his neck. Up close, he appears much younger than she'd initially thought for a heartless, soulless emissary of the Dai Li.

He raises his fists. Suki tries to leap out of the way of whatever rock he's trying to bend at her this time.

Instead, the ground beneath the shattered floor tunnels upward, propelling her to her feet. Encasing her up to the neck in a straitjacket of solid rock.

Suki yells as she struggles, trying to break free. But the stone is unyielding, she can't even move any of her limbs and Kyoshi damn it he's back on his feet, marching closer to her by the second -

A shrill whistling sound fills her ears and something silver streaks in the air as it hurtles toward Haru. Piandao's sword?

Haru ducks just in time and the shiny object bounces off the metal hat hanging around his neck with a low boom. Something like curiosity flickers across his expressionless face as he bends down to pick up the curving metal thing.

Not a sword, Suki realizes with mounting confusion. A boomerang?

Lee rushes in front of her. Haru cocks his head, a gesture that Suki finds strange given how blank his expression remains. "Why, Mr. Fire," he says softly. "How good of you to show your face again." He pauses before the smirk slides into his voice, even as it remains absent from his face. "And your true colours. But it's time you came home. After all...the Earth King would like to invite you to Lake Laogai."

To Suki, the words are meaningless. But the rest of the room suddenly becomes very quiet. Whichever agents remain standing have stopped fighting altogether. They are so preoccupied with watching their leader close in on the traitor in their ranks, that they don't notice the Kyoshi warriors silently pinioning their wrists and ankles together.

Lee raises his hands in surrender. The broken chains dangle harmlessly off the cuffs encircling his wrists.

What are you doing? Suki all but hisses at him as he takes a wordless step forward, and then another, so dazed and unlike himself she wonders if he's all right in the head.

"I would be honoured to accept his invitation," he replies in a jarring, awful monotone, so starkly different from his usual annoying voice that it grates in Suki's ears.

If it was possible for the Dai Li emissary to emote, Suki swears he'd be grinning pretty triumphantly right now. Sickening smugness radiates off him even as Lee slowly walks right up to him.

And punches him squarely in the face.

"But not today!" he announces cheerfully as Haru crumples to the ground, stunned. Suki hisses loudly in relief as Lee rubs at his knuckles. "Send the Earth King my condolences, would you?"

The tension in the room rises as the remaining agents bristle threateningly. And then it breaks abruptly as they all topple over, chained up and no longer able to bend.

Lee kneels and places his hands on each side of Haru's head. He mumbles something into his ear, too quiet for Suki to catch it.

But she sees shock split immediately across Haru's face, as though freed from beneath a cracking veneer of stone. "Where - where am I? What happened, why am I…" His eyes, no longer empty and glassy, dart around the room before landing on her and widening in dawning horror.

The rock encasing her shatters to pieces, freeing her instantly. She rubs at her arms as shivers rattle through her, but doesn't move, as though something invisible still roots her in place.

Haru's eyes settle on Lee and something other than shock registers in his young face. "Wang?" he gasps. Suki frowns - it is the same voice but completely different, alive and feeling where before it had been a monotonous, lifeless thing.

Lee tilts his head quizzically, just before Haru lunges at him. Suki reaches instinctively for her fans, but then the emissary grabs Lee's hands and lets out an earnest laugh of delight.

"It's so good to see you!" Haru exclaims, to her mounting bewilderment. "Where did you go, how did you escape? Did you find them?"

Lee tries to raise his palms defensively, which is difficult because of how tightly Haru is clutching them. "Have we met?"

After everything, nothing prepares Suki for the sound of Haru's laughter. "Come on, Wang, stop playing games," he says, rubbing at the back of his neck and startled by the metal hat hanging loosely by its chain. He pulls it around to inspect it, before grimacing in disgust and tearing it off. "Why am I dressed like one of them? Is this some kind of sick joke?"

"Guess they didn't spend that much time working on this guy," Lee muses, as Haru's metal hat clangs to the ground. "If the code was all it took…"

Suki finally steps forward, jamming her hands on her hips. "What the hell is going on? And how do you two know each other?"

Lee turns his head to face her in profile. From what she can make of the strong planes of his face, he appears almost as confused as she is. "I've never seen him before, I swear -"

"That's not true!" Haru exclaims, getting onto his knees agitatedly. "You came to my village, remember? We tried to find the resistance and you ran off when the Dai Li got too close, don't you remember?"

Lee shakes his head wildly. "No! No, I don't! Why is everyone telling me about things that never happened?"

"Resistance?" Riko cuts in, scowling severely. Both Lee and Haru glance warily at her where she and the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors loom over the dozen chained and subdued Dai Li agents. Behind them, Iio and Piandao help Oyaji navigate the battle-torn floor.

"Yeah," Haru offers, staring uncertainly at Lee. "So? Did you end up finding them, Wang?"

Lee claps a hand to his forehead. His bright blue eyes flicker to meet Suki's, and then Riko's, and then Piandao's. The swordmaster nods slightly and Lee seems to take it as encouragement. "It's a long story."

Riko crosses her arms but says nothing. Instead, she glances impassively at Oyaji as he shuffles up next to her and squints up into Lee's face.

"Luckily for you, we have plenty of time," he replies gently. "How about you start from the beginning, young man?"

Katara awakens cradled in warmth.

Her first moments of consciousness are draped in pure golden sunshine bleeding bright red through her eyelids. Caressing her face, her skin where the coverlets are bunched down, with the delicate heat of a lover's touch.

More firm is the hot furnace of a solid chest pressed into the curve of her spine, strong arms resting in the indent of her waist, fingers tracing the slope of her belly. Lips barely tickling the nape of her neck, punctuated by the steady swell of carefully even breathing.

Even in the serene space between dreaming and wakefulness, something manages to catch in her throat.

She doesn't mean to make a sound and yet one must escape her anyway, because the cocoon of heat wrapping around her stirs.

"You're awake," Zuko murmurs into her ear, his rasping voice thick from sleep.

The fingers tracing her abdomen slide over the curve of her hip. Her bare hip, she realizes, her cheeks burning bright red. She's in the infirmary, in his bed, in his arms, and not a stitch of clothing between them.

Yet the sensation that makes her heart shudder fretfully in her chest isn't embarrassment at all. Somehow, that's the last thing she feels with him, and that realization alone should be unsettling, how vulnerable this all is, and yet...

You woke early, she tries to say. But then his lips are grazing along the shell of her ear and "nghh" is all she manages to get out.

His arms tighten around her waist, pulling her tightly against the contours of his body. Her heartbeat wavers in her chest as sparks seem to flit across the thousands of spots where his skin touches hers.

She tries to turn her head to face him, half-opening her eyes and nearly blinded by the dazzling sunlight reflecting off the surface of the ocean and pouring through the porthole windows. But he's there to meet her halfway, lips capturing hers in a languid kiss that makes her breath falter in her throat.

Falling into it, he moves with her until she's spread over top of him like one of the thin white infirmary blankets. By the time they finally break apart, the weight of his breathing nearly leaves her as boneless as he'd made her the night before.

His thumbs trace small, teasing patterns up the curve of her waist and his lips quirk faintly, small but sincere. She can't help but smile back. Sunlight dapples his skin and in the morning light, his eyes glimmer like molten gold where they meet hers.

Tentatively, she twines her hands into the sides of his messy hair and presses her forehead against his. He lets out an explosive groan and his fingers bite into her skin.

This is easy. The thought flashes unbidden as she brushes her lips against the roughness of his scar and his fingers scrape along the channel of her spine as he murmurs her name under his breath. He makes it so easy.

She pauses at the thought, unsettled. But Zuko runs a hand through the wild tangle of her hair, cupping the side of her face as he whispers hoarsely, "Agni, you're so beautiful."

Katara doesn't feel beautiful. She feels bedraggled and exhausted, with sleep still crusting at the corners of her eyes and the inside of her mouth fuzzy and unpleasant-tasting. But he looks at her with wonder in his eyes and it makes her fight the urge to hide. It makes her wonder what he sees when he looks at her.

"You're one to talk," she recovers weakly, drawing back a little to drink him in. He may have just woken, but the rumpled hair tumbling carelessly over his brow only seems to suit him. His gaze is heavy-lidded, still lazy from sleep, and from the sticky smell clinging to his body, she thinks he could certainly benefit from a bath. And none of it is enough to make her pull away, to want him less. In fact, as she runs her thumb along the sharp line of his jaw and his eyelids flutter shut, it rather does the opposite.

Maybe it's the same for him.

"Your burns," she remembers suddenly, her hand trailing down his neck and heavily-muscled chest before stopping abruptly at the fresh scar blooming over his heart. Her eyes meet his in a panic. "Are you okay? I - I didn't even think - are they hurting you?"

Zuko lets out a low chuckle. The sound curls invitingly somewhere deep inside her. "I'm fine," he answers softly. "And even if I wasn't...I wouldn't care." His hand closes over hers none too gently, pressing it against the hard planes of his chest.

Flustered by the intensity building in his gaze, she makes herself stare out the window. Bright sunlight winks off the rippled surface of the water, while jagged shapes on the horizon take shape.

"Land," she breathes, amazed. "The Patola mountains - we made it!"

To her surprise, Zuko closes his eyes and groans. "I don't want to leave," he mutters under his breath. His hand tightens around hers in a vice-grip. "Burn it all. I just want to stay here with you."

Her mouth goes very dry. "You don't mean that."

But when he opens his eyes, the seriousness in them unnerves her. "There's nothing left out there that I care about."

"That's not true," she whispers, agitated. "It's war now, Zuko! Our friends need us, your - your uncle needs you." The words shrivel like ash on her tongue but she persists doggedly. "For whatever's coming next. You can't just hide from it now."

"I wish I could," Zuko confesses darkly. "Every time I try to make it better, it just…" he sighs heavily, before trailing off. The hand cupping the side of her face pulls her closer. "I wish none of it existed, except this."

She swallows very nervously even as something inside her chest flutters. "What's...what's this, Zuko?"

He lapses into silence and for a long moment, the only thing she can hear is the race of his pulse, a frantic rhythm under her palm. Then he meets her gaze resolutely and a part of her quails. "You tell me," he says gently.

It catches her off guard and some of the old panic wells up inside her. "I -" she struggles, "I don't know what to say."

His eyes soften. "You trust me."

It isn't a question, but she nods anyway.

"You want me."

She nods again. Even though the answer is obvious, the insides of her throat jam up too tightly to speak.

He inhales deeply before speaking again, perhaps even now as afraid as she feels. "But you don't love me." His smile is bitter.

She stares at him sharply, her mouth falling open. Hearing him say it sounds wrong, wrong and unfair and so, so strange. But it was as though he had spoken a word in a language she didn't completely understand, even if she heard it spoken often and could guess at its meaning.

"I can't say that," she whispers and the sudden hope flaring across his face makes her chest ache. "But I can't say I love you either. I - I don't think I know what love is, Zuko, not...not like that, not after…" She trails off, utterly lost.

"I see," Zuko says carefully. The bitter smile disappears from his face but uncertainty replaces it. She isn't sure which hurts more.

But then his hand curls around hers, fingers lacing through hers more tenderly than she believes she deserves. "I don't want to hide it anymore," he says softly. "I want to be with you, Katara."

Even though the words fill her with trepidation, a smile splits her face. I want to be with you. "That sounds nice," she admits, chewing at her lip as he all but beams at her. Her breath catches in her throat because he's beautiful like this. Beautiful and radiant and so full of warmth like a second sun, and she wishes it was enough to dispel the shadows of everything that had come before him.

"Yeah, it does," Zuko agrees, sounding almost wistful and for a single courageous moment, Katara thinks -

Maybe it is enough.

"I could try." Her voice is a thread of sound, but it's enough. Zuko starts as though the ground has split beneath him and for all she knows, it might have. "Being with you. I...I really do care about you, Zuko. Maybe...maybe in time -"

He kisses her again and she sighs into it. The intense heat of his mouth seems to sift currents through her blood, coiling and stirring everywhere their bodies meet. She marvels at how the sensations don't seem to fade, no matter how many times they touch or kiss or -

She breaks away, drawing back an inch and his breath is still heady and warm against her skin. "But I don't know if I'm ready for anyone else to know," she whispers, averting her eyes as she feels him stiffen. "I...I just want things to be simple now..."

Zuko raises his good eyebrow. "Is it Toph? You can just ice her if she gets on your nerves, she won't take it personally -"

"I can handle Toph," she replies impatiently, the suggestion making her snort nonetheless. "But the others, I don't know, what about your uncle -"

"The one who betrothed us in an old treaty with your father?" Zuko points out with a smirk that makes her blush. "That uncle?"

She coughs, remembering that night in its consummate awkwardness. "I forgot about that."

"Lucky you," Zuko mutters, a shadow momentarily passing over his face. It confuses her before she remembers with a sudden pang, just how miserable Zuko had been after hearing his uncle's story. Do you ever wonder about what could have happened, he'd asked and only now does she begin to understand the true source of his sullenness.

Brushing the tousled bangs covering his forehead, she wonders how many hidden meanings lay buried within those distant memories of him. If she would ever have enough time or fortitude to unearth them all.

Zuko's thumb traces small circles on her wrist and his voice softens. "If it isn't Toph and it isn't my uncle...then what is it?"

Her hand freezes, still entangled in the thick softness of his hair. Her entire body feels too warm, basking in the immense heat that pushes up from beneath his skin.

"I'm scared of what they'll say when they find out. What they'll think," she admits, not entirely sure who she means by they. "After all, you're -" a prince of the Fire Empire, "and I'm -" just another girl from the Water Tribes. "It...it won't be kind."

"I don't care." His gaze seems to pierce right through her, bright and steady. "I don't care what anyone has to say."

"I do," Katara insists, sounding pained. "My reputation is all I have left after the wars, Zuko... I'm not ready to lose that."

Zuko winces as though she'd slapped him across the face. He opens his mouth to counter, the seeds of a thousand arguments burning fiercely in his eyes.

Then to her surprise, his mouth clamps shut instead. "Fine," he says shortly. "If you don't want anyone to know, then no one will know. Until you want them to."

Katara hugs him tightly, cheek pressing into the plane of his chest. "Thank you," she breathes, hot tears of gratitude prickling in the corners of her eyes.

He nods jerkily, and she can feel just how hard he fights to keep his breathing under control. "And...and I'm sorry." Because despite everything, he's not entirely happy with the arrangement. She can tell. His mouth is pressed into a thin line and protest still blazes in his eyes.

But his arm snakes over her shoulders to hold her close anyway, and right now that's all that matters to her.

Chapter 33: another earth

Chapter Text

disclaimer. if i owned it, it'd be canon and what a world that would be!

author's notes. I LIVE. thanks for everyone who's read, kudosed, subscribed, commented and PMed over the past couple of months. been having some major health issues and as such, this has kind of been on the backburner. but things are looking up now, so have a new chapter!

immeasurable thanks to circasurvival for beta-reading and all her moral support, everyone go give her a high five.

i give you...

southern lights.

chapter xxxiii. another earth

the creature lunged, i turned and ran
to save a life i didn't have

"in the woods somewhere" / hozier

It is early in the morning when Mai is unexpectedly summoned to the royal spa.

Stifling a yawn into a sharply pressed sleeve, she picks her way across the palace estate. While the grounds are no less treacherous than they were in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the numerous corpses and rotting body parts thankfully had since been cleared away. Though no amount of scrubbing could clear the rank stench of old blood in the air.

Mai wrinkles her nose as she pushes at the ornate double doors leading into the royal spa. It opens up in front of her, an airy high-ceilinged room of polished stone and pools of flowing water lining the walls. Warm air perfumed heavily with sweet-smelling snapdragon wafts toward her face.

"Is that you, Mai?" Azula's voice rises lazily like the steam curling along the surface of the water. "Don't be shy. I didn't summon you here to gawk at the door."

The princess reclines against one of the intricately tiled basins in the middle of the room. Her eyes are closed and her head is tilted back into the basin as a maid diligently massages her scalp. Bright red petals float in the water where her hair fans like a silken black cloud. Instead of silk or armour, she only wears a thick white towel wrapped against her torso. The exposed skin of her shoulders and muscular arms is porcelain white and beaded with moisture.

"You look awfully cosy," Mai remarks, settling in on Azula's other side as to not interrupt the princess's head massage. She swears she sees sweat dripping down the maid's nose and the last thing the poor girl needs is a distraction.

"I've earned it," Azula sighs imperiously. "A report arrived from our patrols along the Southern Sea. You won't believe what it contained."

Mai shrugs impassively. "Some lost ice floes?"

"Not quite. Just Uncle and all the misguided fools who fled with him. Like Admiral Liang - what a disappointment he turned out to be." She clenches her fists, where half-healed frostburns still score her wrists in angry red welts. The maid discreetly starts to work along the back of Azula's neck and she relaxes instead, sniffing, "They've been stuck at the base of the Patola mountains for the past four days. Doubtless waiting for some intervention from up high."

Mai nearly yawns, but the intense smugness lingering on Azula's face advises her to tread carefully instead. "How many ships?"

"Six." A self-satisfied smirk curves across Azula's face.

Mai wipes at her forehead, already damp from the heavy air. "That doesn't sound very threatening."

"No, it doesn't," Azula agrees serenely, before abruptly breaking off to glare at her maid. "Harder! You're not getting the knots in the back!"

The maid nods frantically, looking nearly in tears as she digs her thumbs into the princess's skin with greater force. Satisfied, Azula leans back again and closes her eyes. "The emergency council meets later today. It would please me greatly if you attended."

Mai shakes her head, a bleak horror dawning upon her. "Politics aren't for me."

"Is that really for you to decide?" Azula counters, an edge appearing in her voice as it did when she sensed that she wasn't getting her way. Mai shivers at the sound of it. "After all, if I have already decided I want you there, who are you to deny me that?"

With a careless wave of her hand, she dismisses the maid attending to her. The girl scurries out of sight, casting furtive glances in their direction as she retreats.

Mai crosses her arms across her chest, staring at Azula evenly. "I thought I was my own person," she replies blandly. "I must have been mistaken."

Azula scoffs. "Apparently! It appears time spent in the military has filled everyone's heads with the strangest ideas."

"You should try it sometime," Mai parries sardonically, and is almost instantly greeted by a peal of Azula's sharp laughter.

"Oh, Mai. I don't remember when you became so amusing," she sighs, wiping at the corner of her eye with a claw-like finger.

If she had been speaking to Zuko, Mai reflects blankly, he would have backed down. And she would have disparaged him for it. Weak, malleable, just like your uncle… She had allied herself with the more powerful sibling after all.

So I guess I walked right into this one, she thinks with a dull pang of what might have been regret. But there was no point dwelling on Zuko now. That ship had sailed, both metaphorically and literally.

Instead she grits her teeth as Azula continues blithely. "As it is, I have my work cut out for me today. I know the rest of the council will heavily favour attacking Uncle at the Air Temples because that is what Father would do. But so long as the Air Nomads remain undisturbed..."

A shiver runs down Mai's spine but she says nothing.

"We control most of Uncle's precious army, while our puppets in Ba Sing Se hold the entire Earth continent. Any viable force Uncle can call to his aid sits atop those mountains or half a world away, and even so..." She drums her sharp fingernails against the basin tiles, thinking hard. "I think we should rather focus inward. After all, the people loved Uncle and my brother, not Father. Given how fickle the mob is, it is simple enough to fix. But we must not delay, lest they grow restless with us."

Mai rolls her eyes, the familiar boredom itching at her despite the drastic change in circumstances. "You're the princess. Just command the council and be done with it."

Azula pushes off the edge of the basin, glancing appraisingly at Mai. "Of course. The council may be stacked with Father's creatures. But I am the princess. In Father's absence, it is my will that they must obey. I must prove myself once and for all." A troubled expression flickers across her face so briefly Mai wonders if she imagined it. "Of course, in the beginning when Father hears, he may not understand why…" And then she shakes her head, laughing unsteadily. The tendons lining her neck strain visibly like ropes under her skin. "But I'll make him see. I'll make the whole council see."

The doors to the royal spa swing open loudly, shattering the ambient hum of flowing water with a booming thud. Mai's breath hitches at the abrupt sound but she holds her composure in front of the princess, whose attention is now fixed on a woman crossing over to them.

"Ah," Azula snorts, rolling her eyes. "So they gave you free reign of the palace already? How quaint."

Mai's eyes widen when she finally recognizes the queen, dressed unassumingly as she is in plain red cotton. With a clench of her stomach, she suddenly remembers the rumours that Queen Ursa had been ill for quite some time. She certainly looked the part, her pale face sickly and drawn, but determined nonetheless.

"Princess Ayumi's health has greatly improved," the queen declares, folding her arms across her chest. "She should return home to her family where she will be safe, not -"

"But Mother, haven't you forgotten?" Azula interrupts in a syrupy sweet voice. "We are her family now. She married Lu Ten, didn't she?"

The corner of Ursa's eye twitches but she stands her ground. "After everything she went through, it would be a kindness to have the marriage annulled."

Azula lets out her sharp, cold laugh and prickles erupt along the surface of Mai's skin. "Annulled? But how? The Fire Sages report that the wedding was consummated - or at least, in the act of - before the chamber was hit." She smirks insolently at the aghast expression spreading across her mother's face. "It seems to me that Lu Ten's widow should respect the…determination of his last moments."

Mai tries very hard not to let her disgust show. The queen, on the other hand, wears it plainly. "She should have a chance to put this behind her. In her current state, she is little better than a prisoner."

"I'm sure she'll adapt," Azula sniffs haughtily, but her smugness is palpable. "Is there anything you wanted to discuss, Mother? Or shall I simply have to settle for your disapproval?"

A silent despair washes across Queen Ursa's face before she ducks her head down to stare at her feet. "Your father is awake," she says flatly and Azula freezes. "I thought you would want to know."

"He's…" Azula's face blanches even paler than usual. "Bring me to him. Now."

"Perhaps you should take a moment." Though the queen's voice remains gracious, she arches a thin eyebrow at the towel Azula clutches to her chest with a white-knuckled grip. "I'll wait outside."

In the awkward silence that follows, Mai flounders between following the queen out the door or lingering beside Azula in her shaken daze, neither option seeming particularly appealing.

"Mai." Azula's voice is faint. "Fetch me my dress." She points a shaking hand to the corner where a pile of deep red fabric is folded neatly in a pile.

Mai itches to snap back in protest, but she bites it back instead and retrieves the princess's fine lawn garment with as much silent grace as she can muster.

Azula nods in acknowledgment. But instead of accepting the proferred pile, she turns around and holds out her arms expectantly. Her towel drops to the floor with a sodden thud, leaving her only in scant silk underclothes.

It takes Mai another moment of staggering dumbfounded silence before she realizes that Azula expects to be dressed by her.

Her nails bite into her palms. For Agni's sake. I'm not your bloody maid.

But the seconds draw out in an awkward impasse until at last, Mai concedes. Not because she wanted to but because it simply wasn't worth the struggle. Azula was the more powerful of Ozai's children. That was why Mai had come back, wasn't it?

"The emergency council meeting," Azula says once Mai is done, and smooths down the front of her dress with decisive fingers. "Half past midmorning. I expect to see you there."

She turns to survey Mai imperiously. Feeling more trapped by the second, she nods stiffly.

"I am counting on you and your father for support this session." She touches Mai's shoulder with a gentleness that surprises her. "My one true friend." Then sharp nails press into her skin - a warning, if not a threat. "Do not disappoint me."

Her fingers are cool but it seems to Mai that they are searing through her skin nonetheless. "As - as you wish, Princess," she stammers hoarsely.

In the end, Azula always got what she wanted.

The party was going great until it wasn't.

In the beginning, Toph doesn't think much of it. The reception was stuffy and boring, and everyone present was being stuffy and boring, and there wasn't nearly enough wine being passed around to make up for that.

Then some guy named Kanto had approached her for a dance and from the way her senses vibrated along his well-muscled bulk, she'd concluded her night was finally, finally starting to improve. And a few waltzes later when the dance floor was starting to thin out and he'd muttered let's get out of here into her ear, it had only seemed like that trajectory was continuing.

Besides, the party had pretty much died once they hauled the prince out of his own wedding. For a weirdly stilted affair, Toph was only surprised that someone had managed to have any fun at all. Even if it had incurred some truly sordid commentary about what was unfolding in the wedding chamber.

But then Kanto had pushed her against a wall and his large body, bulging with hard defined muscles, was practically engulfing her as he started kissing her. And Toph s ank into the feeling, all thoughts of stuffy boring parties and palace gossip vanishing without a care.

"How old are you again?" Kanto asks. His large hands trace the slope of her shoulders.

"Sixteen," Toph lies, tugging him closer. Almost. It's not a lie if it's practically true.

He pauses, breaking away slightly and for a moment, she worries he'll start complaining about her age. Instead, his body grows tense even as his breathing stays ragged. "And your name was Toph…?"

"Hey, you remembered!" She flicks the side of his head none too gently. "Careful Kanto, looks like you might have a brain under all that brawn there."

He laughs nervously. The unease in it sends prickles down her neck that have nothing to do with the heft of his grip closing around her wrists and pinning them back against the wall by her face.

"Hey -" she starts to protest, fingers already curling into fists. But then he kisses her again and she gasps into it, strangely excited even as his grip on her pinioned wrists tightens.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, his lips barely moving against hers. The weight of his body shifts, nearly threatening to suffocate her.

She smirks, still not understanding. "For what?"

A clink of metal is his only answer as he lets go of her wrists. The laugh dies in her throat as she tries to move them and still finds them locked in place.

"Kanto," she spits even as panic rises in her gorge. "What the fuck are you doing? I didn't agree to this kinky shit."

He steps back, fear rolling off him in thousands of tiny seismic waves. "The princess - I couldn't say no -"

Then with an almighty crash of solid metal meeting earth, the trap springs.

That morning, like every morning, Toph jolts awake at the crack of dawn, torn from her sleep by the same dream. An improvement from the usual nightmare of home, but still unsettling in more ways than one.

Of course, she doesn't know for sure whether it's the crack of dawn. The only hint as to the time was the sound of the birds wheeling outside the ship and the faint warmth of sunlight tickling her skin. And the stuffy silence blanketing the overcrowded girls' cabin. Most of the cabins aboard Grandpa's escaping ships were similarly crammed full with more bodies than they could comfortably bunk.

Ordinarily, Toph would feel seasick and claustrophobic sailing in such conditions. But awakening from nightmares of the inside of a cage and home within grasping distance, she finds herself grateful for the multitude of people surrounding her at all times.

And then there was the ship itself. Like most Empire warships, it was top down steel and coal shafts bobbing aimlessly against the calmer shore when anchored. With her bare feet against the ground, fuzzy lines resolve against her senses faintly. The vibrations are muted and so frustratingly muffled she can barely perceive them before they slip away like sand sliding through her fingertips.

But she can still sense it. Which made no sense because it was metal. But by now, Toph has learned to stop questioning a good thing and simply go along with it instead.

Besides, she quickly learns, there were perks to having seismic sense work on metal, no matter how rudimentary.

For a start, the mere act of existing on a ship wasn't a recipe for misery anymore. The constant rocking motion of the ocean still played havoc with her balance, but being able to perceive her surroundings helped, even if it felt like everything was wrapped in thick cotton.

Then there were the people. Such interesting things they did when they thought she wasn't looking...

She scoots to the edge of her bed and places her bare feet against the cold metal floor. The cabin moulds roughly into shape around her with a low hum. It takes more focus than she would have ever expected before the empty bunk next to hers finally carves into relief.

A wicked grin splits her face. Fourth night in a row. Way to go, Sugar Queen.

The subject of her thoughts sneaks back into the cabin not too long after, when the sunlight feels just a bit warmer on her skin. The silent limping pad of her feet and cautious click of the door opening and shutting makes it painfully obvious just how hard she was trying to be stealthy. Toph admires the effort even if it was a total waste of time.

She clears her throat loudly.

"Spirits!" Katara yelps, fighting to keep her voice quiet. Toph hears her freeze, even if she can't feel it properly yet. "Toph! How long have you been up for?"

She shrugs but her grin widens. "Long enough. How about you?"

A high-pitched laugh disguises nerves stretched taut and brittle. "Oh you know...I couldn't go back to sleep so I went for a walk."

"Again? You've been having an awful hard time sleeping lately," she remarks, fighting to keep her voice neutral. "I never pegged you for an early riser."

"Yeah...I don't know…" Katara's voice trails off uncertainly. Beneath Toph's feet she feels something pulsing very faintly, like an insect trapped in a web on the branch of a faraway tree.

"Was it too hot for you?" she asks innocently, and is rewarded by the sound of Katara accidentally choking on her spit.

"Hot," Katara stammers, fighting to regain composure. "Sure. Let's go with that."

Even in this giant metal monster I can tell you're lying. But she holds her tongue, because the telltale pounding against her soles only increases its pace and intensity and when was the next time Sugar Queen would make herself such easy bait?

Besides, Twinkletoes was meeting with the rest of the Air Nomads and hadn't come back down from the Air Temple in days. In all that time, they'd been anchored at the foot of the mountains, waiting without a plan. Grandpa was holed up in his room, Sparky was basically glued to his side, and everyone else aboard the overcrammed ships was going crazy, staring at the horizon for help.

Help, they were beginning to realize with plummeting spirits, that wasn't coming.

The first day of Aang's absence, after the Air Nomads made it clear that they wouldn't see anyone but one of their own kind, Grandpa addressed his pitifully small fleet. He gave a speech thanking everyone for their loyalty and describing his slimy brother's antics. Toph thought it would have been a great time to drum up some enthusiasm about the butt-kicking Ozai had in store for his near future, but Grandpa's voice choked up after talking about his son and that was the end of it.

The second day went by with no Aang and no new ships to replenish their ranks. Grandpa took the opportunity to give another speech, shorter this time, about hope and patience. It was pretty enough, she supposed, but the reception had been lukewarm at best. She could hear Sugar Queen rolling her eyes next to her during it.

The third day went by in a near perfect imitation of the second, except with more restless muttering and no speech from Grandpa. Despair was starting to settle into the cracks where blind optimism had given way.

And at the outset of the fourth, Toph would be damned if she squandered any entertainment available to distract her from the mounting hopelessness of the situation. Even if it was at Sugar Queen's expense.

So she waves off Katara's offer to bring her a tray of breakfast, wraps a cloak over top her sleep-wrinkled uniform that was at least two sizes too big for her, and follows her down a flight of stairs to the mess hall.

Even with her weakened seismic sense, Toph can tell that it's pandemonium inside. The ship being overfilled as it was, everyone had been instructed to take their meals in strictly regimented shifts. That said and done, there were still too many people inside the mess hall than it could reasonably fit. Metal clanged everywhere: trays of food into breastplates, armoured boots against table legs, people into people...

"Ah!" she gasps, stopping just before two brick walls of people collide into her. Liquids slosh around in the vessels scraping along her breakfast tray and she fumbles to straighten it, glaring straight ahead. "Are you blind as well? Watch where you're going!"

"Sorry!" apologizes a fearful, familiar male voice. "We didn't...see you…"

Toph furrows her brow, trying to place it, but Katara interjects first. "It's crowded everywhere, Ruon-Jian," she says in a low voice, nudging Toph in the arm. "I'm glad to see you and Ryu got out too."

"You are?" gulps Ruon-Jian's voice. Toph imagines he's sending her a nervous glance, and resolves to bask in it. "Yeah...it was a job getting out of there."

Another voice, belonging to mild-mannered Ryu, pipes in. "I heard you dragged Prince Zuko's body out of there single handed, and fought both Ozai and Azula, and won!"

"Did you?" Katara says stonily, not sounding pleased in the slightest by Ryu's awestruck tone. "What about the others? Where's Chan?"

"I don't know!" Ruon-Jian exclaims. "I've been looking for him on all the ships but I can't find him!"

"He was at the wedding," Katara remembers, sounding worried. "With his father."

"His old man's on the royal council and an admiral," Ryu reasons, unfalteringly optimistic. "I'm sure he got out safely. They must be on another ship."

"Yeah…" Katara agrees, sounding not entirely convinced. "You must have missed him in the chaos. He'll turn up."

Someone bumps into Toph from behind, jostling her tray again, and they move on. A scuffle erupts two rows down from where she and Katara eventually sit down. The sounds of raised voices and exchanged blows mingle with the fainter vibrations humming along the metal surfaces under Toph's palms and feet.

"It's all going to hell," Sugar Queen sighs next to her before plopping a spoonful of watery jook in her mouth.

"You're telling me," Toph agrees, lifting her palms from the tabletop to study her breakfast critically.

"You didn't need any help?" Katara asks just as Toph takes a gulp of what turns out to be harshly brewed black tea and nearly gags. "I have to say, you've been handling this ship way better than the last one."

"I don't know about that," Toph wheezes, setting the cup back down gingerly and pushing it to the corner of the tray. "The food's nothing to write home about."

A pang strikes at the flippant remark. Clearing her throat, she reaches for the bowl instead.

"At least you can keep it down," Katara remarks, not seeming to notice anything amiss.

Through the watery disappointment of the tasteless jook, Toph registers Sparky's approaching voice cutting through the ongoing scuffle and ending it as abruptly as it had started with a sharp command. And a familiar quickening of the faint pulse drumming next to her where Sugar Queen sits.

She smirks into her bowl as footfalls pause behind them and a spring of tension feels like it's replaced Sugar Queen's spine. "Someone sounds tired," she drawls, raising her sightless eyes to where he must be standing. "Have you been having as much trouble sleeping as Sweetness, by any chance? She says it gets too hot at night, but I can't imagine that's a problem for you."

She manages to sense Katara shrinking into her seat with what must be tight-lipped mortification, but Zuko is too far away for her to perceive in any great detail. The rustle of his clothes is the only hint that he's moved at all.

"We're on a metal ship. How did you know I was here?" he retorts, a glower evident in his voice.

Whoops. "Because being on a metal ship didn't make me go deaf," she recovers quickly. "Are you staying for breakfast?"

A pause and then Zuko speaks again, softer. "I can't. The sentries just spotted a sky bison descending from the summit. Uncle wants me with him when Aang returns with the Southern Air Temple's answer."

"Twinkletoes is coming back?" Toph echoes, brightening instantly. "Finally. What the heck took him so long?"

"Agni knows," Zuko mutters darkly, before sliding a cup of something onto the tabletop by Sugar Queen's elbow. "Here."

"Thanks," comes her clipped reply. "And yours?"

"Right here." The earthy smell of dandelion tea wafts toward Toph's nose.

But then Zuko clears his throat. "I have to go. I'll ask Uncle to send for you once Aang's back…"

And then the sound of his footsteps fade into obscurity.

Twinkletoes is coming back, Toph thinks with mounting excitement as she and Katara polish off the rest of their breakfast in silence. About time. I'm so tired of being an awkward third wheel around those two. Not that Twinkletoes would understand that. I wonder if he even knows what they're up to...

"So," she tries again as her spoon scrapes the bottom of her bowl, "what did Sparky slide you there? Smells like tea, is it?"

Katara coughs, setting the earthenware cup down with a clang. It keens like clear crystal against her senses, sharp and bright in a sea of fuzzy cotton. "Oh, this? I—it's a special blend, General Iroh made too much of it this morning apparently, so Zuko thought he'd bring some down…"

The pulse next to her rattles as though it belonged to a rabaroo. "Uh huh," Toph says slowly. "Why didn't I get any? I'm gonna have a word with Grandpa next time I see him –"

"No!" Katara yelps before she collects herself. "It's, uh, ginseng tea, you wouldn't even like it, it's really bitter…"

If Twinkletoes was here, he'd totally buy it too, Toph reflects, before arranging her face into a guileless smile. Good thing he isn't.

"Is it? I'm telling Grandpa you said that..."

They are on their third circuit of the flagship's deck when General Iroh summons them.

Sugar Queen falls sullen for a reason Toph can't quite grasp so it's up to her to lead the way, fumbling through narrow corridors and testing the stairwells, one step resolving from grainy nothingness at a time.

Fragments of a terse conversation reach her ears as they turn the corner and traverse the hallway leading to Grandpa's cabin.

"...how can that possibly be their answer?"

"...granted an audience, at least...plead our case…"

"...sorry, I tried my best…"

Toph's ears perk up at the last voice as she pushes her way across the threshold none too gracefully. "Well, look what the sky bison dragged in."

Grandpa's cabin stretches out around her, senses humming along smooth metal surfaces interrupted by tables, chairs, a pallet in the corner for sleeping, and near half a dozen people crowded in the middle of the room.

Behind her, Katara limps close on her heels in her unusual silence.

"Toph!" Twinkletoes exclaims in a voice that was a sound for sore ears. Near-imperceptibly light footfalls rush toward her and then gangly arms are hugging her with surprising strength. "I'm glad you came! I missed you guys."

"Mmmf!" Toph splutters into the flappy linen draped along his chest. "Get off me!"

The arms let go and she inhales gratefully. The smell of saffron incense and freshly baked fruit pies lingers in her nostrils as he rushes past to give Sugar Queen another of his spine-crushing hugs.

"It's good to see you too, Aang," Katara squeaks with the little air remaining in her lungs.

A few steps away, Sparky pauses where he'd been pacing irritably by the wall. Toph wonders if he's jealous or if Twinkletoes really is just that oblivious.

"What took you so long?" she ventures, wondering if it has anything to do with the vaguely funereal air permeating the room.

A loaded silence follows her question before Aang hesitantly answers. "The Council of Elders has agreed to allow General Iroh and a small delegation up to the Temple grounds for a face to face meeting."

"That's it?" Toph blurts out, making a face. "It took you three whole days to come up with that?"

"It was the best I could do," Aang admits, abashed. "It's not ideal, but hey, at least they'll hear us out!"

"About what?" Katara asks stonily. "About joining forces or just letting us camp out on their land in plain view of the Empire's scouts?"

"Master Katara raises a good point, Your Majesty," says a voice that Toph vaguely recognizes as belonging to Admiral Liang. "By now, the Princess must know our whereabouts. We can only assume that retaliation is not far behind."

"By now, if those scouts have made it home, my sister will know that we are only six ships," Sparky bites out, barely containing his frustration. "Mounting an offense on us is a tactical waste on her part."

"With all due respect, Your Highness," Admiral Liang counters, "tactical considerations may not be her priority, given the...ah...condition of your lord father." He clears his throat as an awkward silence fills the room. Nobody says Katara's name but Toph can almost feel them staring at her. But she says nothing either so the Admiral continues doggedly. "I would imagine vengeance would be a much more compelling reason to strike at us with full force."

"But what else can we do?" argues soft-spoken Captain Shu. "We can hardly strike back when our numbers are so few. By now, Ozai and his people will have taken full control of all the ships and battalions remaining at the capital. They need time to regroup also."

"But the facts are plain," Admiral Liang says to the silent, seated man in the center of the room. "If we cannot find a way to replenish our numbers, we do not have a hope of returning home. Unless it is in chains. Or worse."

A low grumbling fills the room. Toph isn't exactly surprised. Whispers of a similar sort were abounding in every corner of the ship. But hearing it here, in Grandpa's room from his most senior officers, makes it suddenly real to her in a way all the short fuses and mess hall skirmishes didn't.

So Toph lets herself be ushered above deck where Grandpa stands at the prow of the flagship to give his big speech of the day. To her surprise, they have her and her friends stand alongside Sparky, Admiral Liang and the rest of the fleet's commanding staff. A sign, but one she couldn't read just yet.

She crosses her arms, wondering what her parents would think if they could see her now. And if the thought would ever be rid of the accompanying ball of white-hot anger in the pit of her stomach.

"My loyal followers," Grandpa announces, his clothing swishing in the morning wind. "This has been a trying time. I am not worthy of the loyalty you have shown me, but I will try to do the right thing." He clears his throat and when he speaks again, his voice booms loudly across the entire fleet. "By now, my brother Ozai has assumed control of the Empire's military, all those who did not - or could not - flee the night of my son's murder. He dismantled the Imperial Court and placed a small council of his own hand-picked creatures to enforce his will upon the Empire like a tyrant. And he would not even let his own living kin stand in the way. What lies before us is not just a fight to avenge the lost life of my son. If we do not act now, we will lose our home, our families, our way of life to the machinations of a madman."

The wind ruffles through Toph's bangs, an unruly insistent gusting wind that punctuates Grandpa's grim words with a persistent shrill whistle. She wraps the cloak around herself discreetly, wondering if she looks as ridiculous and out of place as she feels.

"True, our numbers are less than I had hoped," Grandpa confesses. "But the Air Nomads have agreed to treat with us. In the meantime, it is possible that there are still those among our fellow countrymen who make their way toward us."

But unease ripples along the gathered assemblies. The surface of the water far below groans its agreement.

"I have put together a small council to join the negotiations and help us plot our path forward," Grandpa continues unwaveringly. Toph raises her eyebrows in surprise. "Admiral Liang, whose bravery and quick thinking managed to buy everyone here their escape. Major Kuro and Captain Shu of the Special Forces Division. Lieutenant-Commander Jee of the-"

Katara nudges Toph in the side, struck by a sudden thought. "Where's General Shinu?" she hisses. "Was he captured?"

She shrugs. "Either captured or…" Wounded. Killed. Defected. Every awful possibility runs through her mind as she trails off helplessly.

"...ensured my line has ended," Grandpa is saying grimly as Toph resumes paying attention to him. Sounds important. "But my brother forgets that some ties transcend flesh and blood. My heir has been with me all along, a young man of unquestionable honour, who denounced his own father when faced with the truth of his treachery." A shocked silence rings through the air like a knell as Grandpa's footsteps approach them.

Sparky makes a hoarse sound of disbelief at his uncle's next words. "I name the defender of the Empire, your Prince Zuko, as my heir and successor of my bloodline."

The silence lingers uncomfortably before someone standing near them has the presence of mind to cheer. Within seconds, a smattering of appreciative, if somewhat timid, applause echoes all around them.

Toph punches Sparky on his solid upper arm. "Ow," he complains, sounding more embarrassed than hurt. "What was that for?"

"That's how I congratulate people," she remarks, loudly cracking her knuckles.

"Congratulations for what?" Sparky grumbles, lowering his voice. "Father will just name Azula as his. Nothing's changed."

"True," Toph quips as the applause dies down and people in the audience hiss for silence. "Not until you actually have a throne. Still though...not bad."

It isn't until he shushes her that she realizes that Grandpa's started talking again. "...will also include members from all four nations as representatives for our cause outside our land's ancestral borders," he says and Toph's forehead crumples in confusion. "To rally support among our allies in the Air Nomads, the former Earth Kingdom, and the stronghold of the Northern Water Tribe, I name as my generals -"

"No," Katara blurts out under her breath in utter disbelief.

"- the heroes of the battle of the Sun Warrior's Isle -"

Grandpa's footsteps thud toward them with something like renewed purpose. It's hard to hear over the sound of Katara's breathing.

What's going on? For the first time in ages, Toph wishes she could see what was happening.

"-and the members of our very successful Avatar project-"

Now it's Toph's turn to choke. "Wait," she stutters, her voice rising in pitch, "you mean us?"

"So," Aang says in a too-bright voice, "we're your generals, huh?"

Toph groans loudly, her stomach roiling a violent storm of hot acid. She isn't sure if it's his words, made faint by the sound of wind whipping against her ears, that make her sick to her stomach, or the fact that the ground was far below somewhere and she had just gotten used to the metal ship and now Twinkletoes had come up with an even worse way to travel and seriously, do I need to invent furbending now because I swear I will -

"I meant it as a great honour," answers Grandpa, the brightness in his voice sounding at least mildly more genuine. "I hope you will accept the positions I have bestowed upon you."

Toph runs her hand along the worn leather saddle beneath her, searching for its edge. She doesn't register the ensuing silence until Aang speaks again, sounding uncomfortable. "I mean…" he struggles, and if Toph could sense anything she'd bet her big toe that he's glancing at all of them for help, "we can't exactly say no now, can we? Now that it's out in the open..."

"It is a great honour, Uncle," Sparky cuts in anxiously. Toph can feel him shifting around on the great leather saddle and she wishes he would stop fidgeting because he's making her sick again. "I'm - we're honoured, it's just...you surprised us."

"Really?" Grandpa asks, sounding genuinely confused. "I thought it was the most sensible idea I had yet. After all, the four of you are unstoppable together. It is high time the rest of the world sees that. I am sure many a person in your respective nations will heed what you have to say -"

It's too much for Toph to bear. Clutching at the side of the saddle, she heaves over the edge. Her stomach wrings but the only thing she brings up is more air. Gasping, she slumps against the edge, feeling even more dizzy. "Sure," she croaks sarcastically. "Yeah, let me curry favour with my parents who just cut a deal with Azula to have me kidnapped. I'm sure they'll really keep an open mind."

"What Toph means," Sparky continues nervously, "is that it's a great idea...but there are a few things to iron out."

Coward.

"Like her parents wanting to kidnap her and put her back under house arrest," he supplies, sounding strained. "Or Katara...not really having much of a nation to go back to, thanks to, uh, us."

Sugar Queen's silence thunders louder than everyone else on the sky bison's back.

Grandpa clears his throat awkwardly. "I understand you may have some mixed feelings about this, Sifu Katara. But you have an opportunity to change things for the better. I'm sure your parents would be so proud of you if they could see you now."

The air seems to grow chillier as Katara's brooding silence finally snaps. "I'm sure they would," she says acidly, "except thanks to some poor planning by you and your brother, they can't."

Whoa. Toph clutches at the edge of the saddle again as surprised sounds of consternation erupt all around her. Where did that come from?

It is the sound of Aang nervously coughing and the world swaying nauseatingly in answer that finally grabs everyone's attention. "Um," he ventures in a very small voice, "we're here."

The answering thump rumbles vibrations all the way up to where she sits. Toph raises her face and inhales deeply, cold mountain air sharp against her senses but not so much as the miles of rock surrounding them on every side.

"Finally," she breathes. In a trice, she plants her hands on the saddle's edge and clears it, leaping down to where the good, solid earth greets her in its grasp. A grin splits her face as she flops down, pressing her face into the dirt and savouring the loamy scent. Against her fingers, the earth slides as effortlessly as if it were water or wind.

Not since the days of Grandpa's kooky training has Toph been so cut off from her element. But where those days had been spent meditating and breathing, this time she'd filled her days struggling to control something far more evasive. And it's with barely any effort at all that Toph's senses vibrate along the place Twinkletoes had flown them - a sprawling set of stone structures carved into the mountain itself and towering possibly just as high.

"Wow," Sparky mutters under his breath somewhere behind her, probably just as captivated by their surroundings in his own way. "This place - Aang, it's incredible."

A little further away, Aang lands on the ground as lightly as only an air nomad could. "Welcome to my home, everyone," he announces, before reaching up to pat the furry flying monster by its muzzle. "Thanks for the ride, Appa."

The creature growls blearily in response before slapping its tail against the ground and taking off.

Seeming mildly more hopeful, Aang turns away. "Follow me."

A new spring slips into his step as everyone falls in line behind him - Grandpa mincing along as though he'd sustained a fresh wound on the ride up, Admiral Liang and a few other officers bristling at his shoulders. She dawdles a little after them, preoccupied with the majesty of the Southern Air Temple unfolding along her senses, and the minor hissing implosion occurring where Sparky and Sugar Queen bring up the rear.

"...just lost his son and he still showed you a great honour, what were you thinking?"

As Sugar Queen's mutinous silence rises, Toph puts them out of her mind and focuses instead on how clear everything felt on firm land. From here, her perception encompasses the entirety of the summit. She'd expected to find some boring temple, but the network of buildings surrounding her feels more the size and composition of a proper village - while somehow feeling even grander than the Imperial Palace back in the Empire's capital.

Instead of stuffy villas and sculpted bushes and people wrapped in fancy silks long enough to trip on, the Temple complex brims with weathered stone buildings, statues crawling with curious winged creatures she's never encountered before, and scores of people who didn't seem to know the difference between work and play. Whatever plants managed to thrive up here are wild and overgrown, as though the monks had better things to do with their time than try tame nature to their whims.

Toph thinks she could almost like it up here. Too bad ascending the mountain was such a pain.

Aang leads them up a cobbled path hewn into the steep rock face, where a set of gates rise like sentinels out of the ground. Beyond them lies the better part of the sprawling Temple grounds - its crops, stables, weird flat spaces that could pass as arenas except for the rock formations growing out of them…

And waiting at the gates to receive their party of visitors, Toph senses long before they draw near, are five old men.

Even at a distance, she recognizes Aang's old master, Gyatso standing among them. His wiry, featherlight form is wrapped in silk and shawls and beaded necklaces doubtless denoting his status, so much so it feels as though he had never left the royal wedding at all. But the anxious quaking of his pulse, low and full of dread, is unfamiliar to her.

The others standing with him are similarly adorned, with the one in the middle draped most heavily with intricately carved stone plates. Their leader, maybe? Unlike Gyatso, their pulses strike cool and calm, as though they had nothing to fear.

The middlemost elder steps forward as they approach. "The party of General Iroh, the Rightful Emperor of the Fire Empire," he greets, all the heavy beads in his necklace clinking as he folds his arms. "The Council of Elders welcomes you."

Grandpa inclines his head. "My deepest gratitude for receiving us in our hour of need," he replies. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. I understand it is not your custom to do so."

Gyatso glances at his fellow elders with what must have been an appeal to their better nature. "It is our custom to help people when they are in need. Our doors are always open. Is that not right, High Monk Pasang?"

But the gates behind them remain shut. A cold wind whistles shrilly along their grates.

"Yes. Our doors remain open, General. For shelter, only," the Chief Elder says pointedly. The clacking of all his heavy beads grows louder in the frosty breeze. "But we will not take up arms for any conflicts outside our borders."

It is well past dusk by the time they are finished dumping the dozen bound and unconscious Dai Li agents into the Kyoshi Island prison hold.

Suki pauses to catch her breath, leaning against the entryway's door frame as the humid breeze tickles her sweaty face. The rising moon hangs fat and golden in the bright evening sky, illuminating the narrow hallway in a dim half-light. Thick heavy doors embed one wall of the hallway, lined with lit tapers that cast long flickering shadows across the rough stone floor. Piandao and Iio wait just outside the grim building, while Riko and Oyaji bolt and lock the prison cell doors inside.

Lee saunters past her, pausing in the doorway to glance anxiously over his shoulder. He stands so near, the smell of his sweat makes Suki wrinkle her nose in distaste. "They won't stay down for too long," he warns as Riko turns a key in the last of the locks. "Give it by sunrise tomorrow."

"Good enough," Riko says grimly, tucking a keyring into her pocket and exchanging a hasty glance with Oyaji.

Suki waits for them to cross the threshold before trailing them outside, bolting the door shut behind her. She shivers in the warm night air as they make their way back indoors. Oyaji's audience room was wrecked and in need of urgent repairs, so Riko leads the way to the smaller manse where the Kyoshi warriors all trained and slept.

A wave of nostalgia hits Suki as they enter the building with its glowing lamps, polished light wooden floors, and sliding walls. They sit in the tearoom at the front on the old tatami mats, crowding around the low square table.

For a moment, it feels like she never left her island at all. Like it was her first time encountering the sinister Dai Li presence, like it was only now that the world started to slowly feel smaller, chipping away one familiar piece at a time…

A door behind them slides open. Another one of the girls joins them with Haru, whose wrists are still cuffed together.

"Thanks," Riko says to the other Kyoshi girl with a nod. "Go wash up for the night. I'll take it from here."

The war paint on her face shines sweatily in the lamplight as they are left in the tearoom to contemplate each other uncertainly.

"I swear I was going to lock half of you people up at some point within the last week," Riko grumbles, crossing her arms across her chest. "And now, we've basically committed treason together."

A muffled silence settles upon the room. From beyond one of the sliding walls, the sound of water bubbling on the stovetop is the only thing Suki can really focus on. "They killed the Crown Prince," she breathes, still stunned by the news. "What...what kind of chaos are they preparing to meet by trying to wage war on the Empire now?"

As if meeting some unspoken cue, everyone in the room glances blankly at Haru, who bristles. "Hey, don't look at me," he deflects, the chains clinking as he raises his hands defensively. "I didn't choose to join them or carry out their orders."

"No," Riko allows, and Suki's jaw drops in shock at the tough captain's concession of belief in the captive's story. "But do you remember anything? Did they say something to you, about their plan, what they'll do next? Anything?"

"If you would, Riko," Oyaji implores calmly. "Imperative as it is to understand why this young man is on our shores, first I'd still like to know who he is." He looks pointedly at Lee.

Riko nods before slowly turning on Lee. "Fair enough. So what's your story? Haru over here said only the important agents made it to the Sun Warriors. Why are you so important, Lee? Or is that even your real name?"

"It is!" Lee protests, even as Haru lets out a scoffed, "No it's not!"

"If I may," Piandao interjects delicately, glancing warily at Lee out of the corner of his eye. "Lee is a student of mine. I encountered him fleeing the Dai Li in the streets of Ba Sing Se, while I was attending to...some business of my own." His eyes shift toward Iio and then Oyaji, but the latter keeps his gaze trained squarely on his feet. "It occurred to me that a street-smart youth already wanted by the Dai Li might make an invaluable source of information in the fight for freedom."

Suki gapes at the swordmaster, her ire momentarily dwarfed by her shock. "You...you made him a spy?" she demands incredulously, part of her already feeling sorry for Lee. "A grown man like you thought it was okay to just pluck a strange boy off the street and make him spy on the most well-organized syndicate on the continent?"

"She's not wrong," Iio mutters under her breath as Piandao's ears deepen in colour.

"I gave him the means to survive," he explains defensively. "When I found him, he would have ended up like Haru here, probably - just another civil disobedient, was it? But I took him under my wing, taught him how to fight for himself, how to blend in among them…" A faraway look crosses his face. "He certainly needed help learning how to blend in."

"But Haru says they knew each other," Suki insists. "They both can't be telling the truth."

"They must have messed with his head too," Haru suggests with another shrug. "You don't make your way into that circle without going under."

Now it's Lee's turn to raise his palms defensively. "Hey. I didn't leave anyone behind if I could help it, okay? Look, Haru or whoever you are - you must be confused. Wang is the name I gave the Dai Li when I started spying on them. You must have bumped into me while I was on a mission for them or something -"

"I'm telling you, that's not how it happened!" Haru protests, sounding more exasperated by the second. "You came to my village looking for the resistance just over three years ago! We tried to seek them out together, don't you remember?"

"No! I don't!" Lee's knuckles turn white as his fingers dig into his temples. "Stop making these things up about me!"

"We followed a group of old men playing pai sho, remember? We got so close…" Haru's voice turns mournful where before it had been wistful. "And then they were onto us. The old men disappeared into thin air, but we had to run for it. Together, at first…"

Lee shakes his head vigourously as though that would shut Haru up.

"And then when they were closing in on us, you said we should split up," Haru continues, his gaze sharpening. "You distracted them, led them away so that I could get back to my village in safety." His voice chokes up momentarily before he speaks again, unusually somber. "You saved my life."

A shocked look crosses Lee's face before he bristles indignantly. "I think I'd remember if I saved someone's life! Fat load of good it did you too, if they got to you anyway."

"The point is," Suki interrupts, staring at the profile of Lee's face as though nothing else fascinated her more, "what do you remember doing over three years ago, Lee? That's before Piandao found you, so you weren't spying on the Dai Li then."

The room falls curiously silent as Lee struggles to find his words. His mouth opens and closes ineffectually before he finally finds his voice. "I was just...living my life in my village. Peacefully."

Haru raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Where was your village?"

"One of the colonies down south," Lee replies almost automatically. "Real south."

"South like Omashu?" Riko asks curiously.

Lee shakes his head. "No, further. Almost by Whale Tail Island."

"What was it called?" Riko presses. "Even villages that far south must have names."

"Nan Ji," Lee answers, the words sounding strangely foreign on his lips. "It was really small."

"And peaceful?" Riko continues, eyeing him levelly. "What did you do there? Clearly you weren't a warrior, if you needed this swordmaster to teach you how to fight."

"I...I would hunt," Lee says in a strained voice. A bead of sweat shines brightly on his forehead.

"You'd hunt, huh? For who? Who did you live with?"

"My family," Lee grits out. Suki stares as the sweat dribbles down the side of his face. "My...my grandmother was old."

"What about your sister?" Suki takes over the interrogation, snatching at the last conversation they'd had about his alleged family.

But Lee holds firm as he stares at her with his piercing blue eyes. "I don't have a sister," he answers patiently, even as more sweat dots his upper lip. "I didn't have any siblings."

"Really? You don't find it weird at all?" Suki challenges, sticking her chin up defiantly as he glowers at her. "Haru says you saved him from the Dai Li over three years ago. You don't remember it. Katara, who I imagine has never met Haru in her life before, sees you and nearly gets herself killed trying to save your neck because she thinks you're her brother. You don't remember that either. Because you were a hunter in a peaceful village that nobody's ever heard of? Which you suddenly left to go spy on the Dai Li? Does this story sound fishy to anyone else or is it just me?"

"Look! I know it sounds weird, but that girl who called herself my sister -" Lee's voice turns hoarse, "-she was obviously messed up in the head or something, she wasn't thinking straight -"

"How do you spy on the Dai Li for three years straight, and accuse my friend of being the one who's messed up in the head?" Suki fires back, leaping to her feet in agitation to tower over him. "Have you ever stopped to consider maybe there's some truth in what these two said about you? For Kyoshi's sake, you even look like Katara!"

"If she was my sister, why would I leave her?" Lee demands, also rising to keep at level with her.

Her mouth goes dry at the intensity of his gaze but she holds her ground. "Maybe you were trying to protect her," she suggests evenly. "The same way you left Haru behind to protect him."

His mouth gapes open as horrified understanding flickers in his eyes for an instant.

And then he shakes his head again, clamping his palms against his temples as he sits back down. His face screws up in visible pain. "It doesn't matter," he bites out, trying to keep his voice under control. "If you don't trust me, that's your deal, not mine. But you've got a dozen unconscious Dai Li agents in your prison hold who are going to wake up and take your answer back to Ba Sing Se. Maybe you should worry about them instead of whatever you think might be going on in my past."

Everything in the tearoom seems to ripple uncomfortably at the thought.

"What will happen then?" Oyaji chances to ask.

"Well, with luck, it'll be by the end of the week before they're back on your doorstep with even bigger numbers," Lee quips, lowering his hands from his face. "But I wouldn't count on your luck when it comes to these guys."

Riko curses under her breath, echoing Suki's private feelings about the thought of another attack by the Dai Li.

The village elder seems to deflate before Suki's very eyes. "No, I wouldn't either. As such an accomplished Dai Li spy, what do you think we should do to...avoid such a situation?"

"You want to know what I think?" Lee asks, clearly taken aback. He glances around the table, at the desperation blanching the colour from everyone's faces before his shoulders slump. "Well. I can tell you. But you won't like it."

"Try us," Suki challenges, planting her fists on the edge of the tea table.

"Okay." Lee runs a hand along the strong plane of his jaw, thinking intently. "The only thing that will stop the Dai Li from coming back is capitulation - wait, hear me out -" He raises his hands exasperatedly as Suki and Riko open their mouths to argue. "I did say you wouldn't like it."

Suki crosses her arms across her chest but bites back the protest rising on her tongue.

"Anyway, what I was saying is that you should convince them that you're giving in," Lee explains, sounding all the more ridiculous for how reasonable his tone remains. "Wake those agents tomorrow, say you've thought over their offer and you're sorry for the misunderstanding. That you were just defending yourselves from attack, but that after mulling it over with cooler heads, you understand that unity against the Empire is the most important thing. Say you'll send over some of your Kyoshi warriors in a show of good faith. If you do all that, they'll get off your backs for now."

"Give them what they want?" Riko sputters, the white mask of her makeup not quite hiding how red her face is becoming. "That's your brilliant plan?"

"For now," Lee admits, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Look, it's not ideal, but it'll get you through the day. Just play the part for now and keep your eyes and ears open. In the meantime, I'm working on a plan to take down the Dai Li from the inside. You just have to quietly resist till then."

"You're awfully confident, aren't you?" Suki mutters, shaking her head in disbelief. "How exactly do you plan on taking down the Dai Li from the inside?"

Lee throws a sheepish grin at her and something in her gut flutters. "Sorry. But if you didn't like what I just suggested, you're really not going to like what I've got to do next."

Suki opens her mouth to argue further but a knock at the door cuts off her tirade before it can begin.

Everyone in the room stiffens visibly. Riko slams her fists into the table as she gets to her feet. "Who could be calling at this hour?" she complains to herself, feet dragging as she trudges to the door and pulls it open a crack. "What do you want?"

Suki doesn't see the person standing outside but the high-pitched, trembling voice crashes over her ears with astounding familiarity.

"Sorry to bother you," it apologizes in Ty Lee's voice. "I'm looking for Suki, could I see her? You would not believe what it took to get here!"

Chapter 34: becoming wind

Chapter Text

disclaimer. atla is property of bryke, i own nothing familiar, etc.

author's notes. thank you everyone for the kind comments and for following along! please accept this new chapter as a (sort of) belated christmas present. since its been a while, i'd recommend re-reading chapters 17 & 18 (and maybe even 29) as a bit of a refresher for this chapter.

of course, immense gratitude to circasurvival for beta-reading and all the moral support!

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xxxiv. becoming wind

so boundless i feel
and boundless all my fears

"path" / apocalyptica

Faint sunshine traces through the worn wooden beams scoring the stable roof, cutting through the dim thatched interior with beams of bright gold and warming the hay piled in the corner of the sky bison's stall. The sharp, fresh smell is strong in Aang's nostrils as he bends a bale out of its pile and into Appa's waiting mouth.

The large jaws clamp down and the sound of dutiful chewing fills the air. A grin crosses Aang's mouth as he places a hand against the bison's foremost paw. "I still can't get over how big you got, Appa! What have they been feeding you here?"

The sky bison pauses to direct a bleary gaze at him. Aang sees himself reflected clearly in the liquid depths of his large, dark brown eyes. Then Appa lowers his head to the ground and continues to chew away.

"Yeah, I know. I guess I got pretty big too," Aang admits, slumping down to sit on Appa's paw. Tufts of soft fur cocoon him on all sides, nearly hiding the rest of the stable from view. From here, it almost seemed like the only part of the Temple complex that actually existed was Appa's stall and his shaggy warmth. Wouldn't that be nice? No Elders, no rules, no blips on the horizon…

But Chief Elder Pasang had hosted General Iroh's council and sheltered his ships for the better part of a week without being swayed into more meaningful action. And early in the morning, with the sighting of what looked like warships approaching in the distance, the atmosphere in the temple had turned tense indeed.

"I know the monks swore to protect all life," Aang mutters as Appa gulps down his mouthful. "I know they believe that removing themselves from the conflict is the only way to stay true to that. But -"

"Talking to yourself again, Twinkletoes?" Toph's voice cuts across the stifling silence of the stable air. "That's not a good sign."

Aang raises his head to see a small silhouette outlined in the stable entrance. He smiles faintly at her but doesn't get up from his perch on Appa's paw. "Not to myself. Just Appa." He raises a hand to pat the sky bison's leg and earns a deep rumble of appreciation.

"Appa, huh?" Toph picks her way toward the stall, her movements all the more graceful now that she was off the solid metal ship and on solid ground again. "Is he yours?"

Aang nods before remembering for the thousandth time that Toph can't see. "Yup," he replies, mentally smacking himself. "Every Air Nomad gets their sky bison. Appa's mine."

"Cool." Toph's face scrunches in focus. "From the general difficulty I have in sensing him, I take it he must be very fluffy."

Aang grins. "Very." He gets to his feet as Toph steps into the stall and pauses, sizing up the large sky bison. "Do you want to pat him?"

"That depends. Am I gonna lose a hand if I try?"

Appa lets out a growl of dissent and Toph flinches.

"I think you offended him," Aang whispers in a low voice. "He's really friendly. See?"

Before she can protest otherwise, he grabs her hand and places it on Appa's forehead. Her sightless eyes widen as the sky bison grumbles but doesn't pull away.

"Wow," she says after a moment. "He is really fluffy."

Appa lets out a sharp snort. Toph starts but doesn't pull away. Then a large pink tongue emerges without warning, lapping at her from toe to head.

"Agh!" Toph screams, wrenching back and tripping on her feet to land cross-legged on the ground behind her.

Aang can't help the short laugh that bursts out of him. "He likes you!"

"He slurped me!" She scrubs at her face agitatedly, where her bangs clump together in a matted mess over her eyes. "This washes off, right? Oh it'd better wash off, Twinkletoes."

To emphasize her point, she pulls at her tunic, now heavy and thoroughly sodden. The sky bison lumbers toward her, probably closing in for another slurp.

"Back, Appa," Aang commands, grabbing at his haunches. "We need to have a conversation about boundaries." He glances nervously at Toph as she struggles to her feet. "Sorry, he's not used to strangers."

"No kidding," Toph grouses, still fiddling with her uniform. "I can see why you didn't take him with you."

Aang's face falls. "He was too small when I left for the army," he laments, his grip loosening. "I hated leaving him behind."

An awkward silence descends upon them, punctuated by the sound of his fingers trailing absently through soft fur and Appa's contented snuffles. In the distance, the windchimes lining the temple doors clink faintly.

"They're not going to help us, are they?" Toph asks suddenly, her expression unusually withdrawn.

Aang stills and closes his eyes. "I don't think so," he admits. He wonders if he sounds as disappointed as he feels.

"Bummer." Toph crosses her arms. "What next, then?"

Aang shrugs. "We stay here as long as we can. Every day is another day that we can regain our strength, come up with a plan, maybe even add some numbers to our forces."

Toph raises an eyebrow. "You just said the Air Nomads weren't going to take part in our fighting."

"But maybe some more people from the capital are trying to make their way to us," Aang persists, scrabbling for hope, thin as it was. "Everything was so chaotic that night, we still haven't even found everyone in our own division! You can't tell me that they're siding with Ozai in this."

"I don't think he's giving them a choice," Toph says darkly, her fists clenching. "You saw what he did to Sparky after he said no thanks to being part of his psychopath society."

"Yeah." Aang rests his face against Appa's side, feeling it swell with the bison's steady breathing. "If he could do that to his own son, what could he have in store for the rest of his people?"

"Or the rest of the world?" Toph finishes, her forehead creasing uncharacteristically with worry.

"You're worried about your parents, aren't you?" Aang guesses softly.

He regrets it instantly as Toph's face hardens uncompromisingly. "No, I'm not," she retorts coldly. "They're filthy rich and cozy enough with the royal family to sell their own daughter out to them. They'll do just fine." She lowers her head and her bangs shadow her eyes from view. "There's no point in worrying about them at all."

Aang blinks, weighing his options and wondering if he should just quit while he was ahead. Instead, his mouth opens and he hears himself speaking most unwisely. "The thing about family is, they sometimes compel you to do certain things, even when it seems pointless."

"Like this conversation?" Toph grumbles. Her jaw tightens but she doesn't turn away from him yet.

"Maybe," Aang allows diffidently. "Look, I know you don't have a great relationship with your parents and that was before they - uh…"

"Tried to have me kidnapped?" Toph lets out a harsh laugh. "Yeah, that left things a bit sour."

"And I don't blame you," Aang supplies hurriedly, trying to steer the conversation back into calmer waters. "Just remember. We're your family too. And we won't sell you out or hold you captive -"

"I know, Twinkletoes, do you have to be a sap all the time -"

"Or judge you for worrying about your parents even though they've been horrible to you," he finishes pointedly.

"For the last time, I'm not worried about them!" Toph exclaims. Twin spots of red flush her cheeks as she steps back. "I couldn't care less what they do. Actually, I hope they try catch me again. I hope they have the guts to do it themselves." Her voice lowers, shaking somewhat. "Who knows how strong that would make me?"

Aang is spared from answering as the stable doors bang sharply against the walls. Both he and Toph snap their gazes to where Katara storms toward them, her face clouded with ill-concealed fury.

"Uh," Aang tries, now feeling thoroughly out of his depth. "Hi Katara. How's it going out there?"

Katara doesn't answer until she flops down onto the ground next to him. "Oh, the usual. The Elders are arguing about how to stay neutral in this fight. Pasang says offering shelter is enough, Tashi says that's going too far, Gyatso says that's not going far enough and they should join the fight before it comes to them…"

"So still nothing new," Aang groans, slumping against Appa's shaggy bulk and earning another rumble in response.

"Yeah, and then there're those weird warships sailing toward us, you'd think that would make them come to a decision sometime soon, but no, they're still arguing!"

"What about General Iroh?" Aang ventures.

"What about him?"

"Well, what's he doing in all this?"

Katara scoffs. "The same thing he always does. Spout a bunch of proverbs and wait for other people to do his work for him."

Toph lets out a low whistle. "That's a little harsh, Sweetness."

"It's the truth," Katara insists, folding her arms stubbornly. "Someone has to do something, but General Iroh has no idea what he's doing!"

"You're mad at him for leaving that night," Aang says.

Katara looks at him wildly. "Shouldn't everyone be? Think of how many people were in danger that night because of him. Because they were loyal to him!"

"Like you and Zuko," Aang suggests.

Katara winces as though he'd shouted. "Like all of us here! Lucky you were able to rescue Toph but what about the others?"

"He probably wasn't thinking straight, Sweetness," Toph interjects quietly. "He just found out his son was murdered. Can you blame a guy for wanting to quit that hellhole?"

"No, but he had the luxury of a safe escape plan," Katara argues hotly. "What about everyone else? He just left us to claw our way out of there!"

"What would you rather he have done?" Aang asks her calmly.

"Something! Anything!" Katara exclaims, jumping to her feet in her agitation. "If he had any idea it was dangerous, he should have warned us! Not just left us to the mercy of his crazy brother again!" Her shoulders rise and fall with the weight of her breathing. "But it was more important to him to find out what his brother was up to and he didn't care about the cost. He never does."

"Katara," Toph begins, "you're not being fair. He lost his son -"

"He's not the only one who lost someone!" Katara snaps back angrily.

An intense weariness passes over Toph's face but wisely doesn't push the matter further. Instead she crosses her arms and leans against the stable wall, coughing nonchalantly. "So...what does Sparky think of your take on all this?"

Katara stares deliberately at her feet as her ears redden. "Nothing. Why?"

Toph raises her eyebrows. "You haven't mentioned it to him, have you?"

Katara freezes even as her fists clench and unclench slowly. "Well...there's so much going on, it hasn't exactly come up." Her lowered voice falters before she shakes her head. "Besides, with all his new duties, he's been glued to his uncle's side and - and he won't hear a word against him..."

Toph wisely chooses to remain silent, drumming her fingers against her sleeve. Aang glances at her uncertainly her before steeling himself to face Katara.

"You're right, Katara," he says, even as Toph exclaims "What?" and Katara gapes at him in bewilderment, apparently expecting more of a fight. "General Iroh miscalculated and it cost us all. But you especially."

"I-"

"You had to fight your way out of there all by yourself, and you did it not knowing if Zuko was going to make it," Aang continues. "And Toph and I left you behind. We didn't mean to, but you'd be right to be mad at us if you are."

"I'm not mad at you," Katara mumbles, averting her gaze again.

Toph blows her bangs out of her eyes. "Well that's a lie if I ever heard one."

"I'm not!" Katara insists, whirling on Toph. "Look, I'm glad both of you got out. It was crazy back there but the timing sucked. If you'd seen or heard me, I know you would have helped me, but it didn't work out that way. I'm over it."

"So…" Aang tries again, "then why are you taking it all out on General Iroh of all people?"

Katara glances at him over her shoulder before shaking her head. "You wouldn't understand."

"Why don't you try make us understand?" Aang challenges. "That's never stopped you before."

She claps a hand to her forehead. "I just don't want to talk about it, okay?"

"Carrying that much pent-up rage inside you sounds like it would be exhausting," Aang suggests, making a wry face at her. "You sound like you need to pat Appa."

Katara stirs, glancing curiously at the giant sky bison towering over them.

"Careful," Toph warns, taking an involuntary step backward. "He licks."

Katara shuffles to her feet and extends a hand cautiously. Appa surveys it placidly before pressing a cheek against her palm and growling low in his throat.

"Hey, that's not fair," Toph says plaintively. "How come you didn't get slurped?"

"Oh you know. I guess I have a way with animals," Katara replies primly, just as Appa bounds forward and topples her over.

"Eurgh!" Katara yelps as Appa licks her enthusiastically. "Okay, Appa, cut it out!"

Aang scrambles atop the sky bison, pulling him back amid the competing sounds of Katara's protests and Toph's raucous laughter.

"You were right, Sugar Queen, you sure do have a way with animals!"

"Keep that up and I'll let you drip dry out of here!"

Aang smiles weakly. "Katara?"

"Yeah?"

He leans against the crown of Appa's head. "You don't have to talk to us if you don't feel ready. But you should really let all that anger out one way or another."

She stares at him quizzically,

"I mean it. Do what you have to. But don't let it fester inside you."

The corners of her mouth quiver before twisting into a grimace. "I'm not sure I know how." She stares darkly at her feet.

Aang smiles kindly at her. "You did it once before. I know you can do it again."

Katara gapes at him, stunned and momentarily lost for words.

Suki doesn't remember leaping to her feet or clearing over the tea table in her rush to the door. Faint sounds of surprise and scraping of wooden table legs against the tatami floor register in her ears but the whole of her attention is bent on the figure in the doorway, standing directly across from a nonplussed Riko.

"Ty Lee!" she exclaims, nearly pushing Riko out of the way. "What are you doing here?"

"Suki!" Ty Lee nearly knocks Suki over with the force of her hug. "Oh, thank Agni you're here! You don't know what I went through to get here…"

Suki hugs her back, discomfited by the way her friend's entire body quakes uncontrollably. "It's okay. You're safe now." She lets go to examine her friend at a closer distance, critical of the singed edges lining her tattered clothes and the burns crisscrossing her skin. "Come. Sit. Nobody will hurt you here."

"Suki," Riko begins waspishly but Suki cuts her off with a fierce glare.

"Anyone who has a problem with Ty Lee can take it up with me. She's one of my closest friends from the army. We fought side by side at the Sun Warriors battle. She saved my neck more than once."

Riko holds her tongue as Suki leads Ty Lee to the tea table around where the rest of their company is congregated.

"Master Iio? Piandao?" Ty Lee asks suddenly as she kneels next to Suki and noticing the familiar faces. "What are you still doing here?"

Iio inclines her head as Piandao claps a hand to his forehead. "It's quite a story. But I suspect it is nowhere near the one that explains how you got here."

Ty Lee blanches but remains silent.

Not a word is exchanged until Suki, getting up and retreating abruptly to the kitchen, has brewed a pot of tea and poured some for everyone at the crammed table. "It's going to be a long night, I think," she says grimly, passing a small clay cup to Ty Lee. "You missed out on some action here."

"It's not for lack of trying," Ty Lee laments, sipping at her steaming beverage gratefully.

Suki watches some colour return to her pallid cheeks before daring to ask. "What happened at the wedding, Ty Lee?"

She freezes before setting her cup down at length. "What did you hear?" she asks carefully.

Riko slams a fist onto the tabletop and the teacups rattle in complaint. "Enough!" she orders. "We have our own conflict with the Dai Li to think of, not the stories of every traveler that washes up on our shores -"

"The Dai Li?" Ty Lee asks curiously, staring blankly at Suki. "What are they doing here?"

"They want us to join them," Suki grits out. "They're looking to start a war with the Fire Empire. They claim - they claim that they killed Prince Lu Ten, Ty Lee - at his own wedding! Is...is it true?"

Heads turn to face Ty Lee, whose mouth opens and closes wordlessly before nodding shortly.

"So they did it," Suki breathes, shaking her head. "I thought they were bluffing. But - so he's dead, then?"

"He is," Ty Lee heaves out. "It was chaos that night, Suki! When the prince fell, all hell broke loose, and the entire city is under lockdown! I had to stow away on a ship to get out of the city, and that nearly got commandeered by Admiral Zhao's men and…" She trails off, the purple marks under her eyes appearing more prominent in the flickering lamplight.

"Everyone must have been so afraid," Suki muses. "They must have wanted to escape the Dai Li -"

"It wasn't them," Ty Lee chokes out, sounding like the words cost her a great price. "At least…I don't think it was, entirely."

Confusion ripples across the faces of everyone gathered. "What do you mean?" Haru is the first to find his voice. "The Dai Li claimed responsibility for it, they stand to benefit from this confusion and they're taking advantage of it as we speak -"

"They're not the only ones who stand to benefit," Ty Lee whispers, fear swirling in her eyes. "The morning of the wedding, I had breakfast with Princess Azula."

"Zuko's sister?" Suki asks, wrinkling her brow. "What for?"

Ty Lee shrugs. "We went to school together when we were kids. My family, and Mai's family, we were all close with the royal family. Mai kept in touch with her, but I…" She clears her throat. "Anyway. Azula heard I was back, asked me to dine with her that morning. She was testing our loyalties, to the Empire, to the royal family. To her."

"What's the difference?" Suki asks bluntly. "They should all be the same, shouldn't they?"

Ty Lee shakes her head. "They were plotting something. She wouldn't say what. Only that things would be different the next morning and she wanted to know if she could count on us to support her in the times ahead. She - she didn't say as much, but Mai and I got the sense that it wouldn't spell well for Emperor Iroh." Her fingers tighten around her teacup, the knuckles turning white. "It freaked us out, but even we didn't realize they would go this far."

"What are you saying?" Haru asks incredulously. "That some of the royal family knew that the Dai Li were going to attack? And did nothing to stop it?"

Ty Lee swallows. "I think they helped the Dai Li do it," she breathes fearfully, as though she expected to be struck down on the spot for daring to voice such suspicions aloud. "Or at least looked the other way long enough for them to pull it off. How else could the Dai Li carry out such a mission? The imperial palace is a well-defended fortress and the entire army was present that night. To murder the prince on his own wedding night, they would have needed detailed knowledge of the palace's defenses and layout." Her voice grows stronger with every word. "No, they had help and they got it from the only person who stood to gain everything from Iroh's line ending."

"Ozai," Piandao spits, his face darkening. "What wouldn't that man do for power?"

"This is grave news indeed, if Ozai and the Dai Li have joined forces," Iio remarks solemnly. "But I find that difficult to believe. Why would they help each other? If the Dai Li want freedom for the Earth continent, why support Ozai's bid for power? Iroh was ever more a friend to the colonies than Ozai ever was. Yet here they are, rounding up every able-bodied person to join their ranks for a strike against the Empire. It doesn't make any sense."

Lee clutches at his forehead, frowning deeply as though struggling to remember. "They're not building an army to attack the Empire," he realizes. "They're just doing it to cement their hold on the Earth continent."

A horrified silence washes over the group. Suki feels much like the ground is shattering beneath her feet.

"Divide and conquer," Iio says slowly. "Ozai holds his people in thrall by the existential threat of a Dai Li attack on their sovereignty, while across the sea, the Dai Li consolidate power with the promise of a bid for their continent's freedom." Her mouth purses in distaste. "An unholy alliance, but one that would entrench their grasp on power."

"She's right," Suki admits. "The Dai Li are already running the place on the Empire's behalf. Now they're just trying to make it official. And if they get credit for driving the Empire out of here, they'll be lauded as heroes for doing it." A harsh laugh escapes her. "Look at how popular they got around here after the Sun Warriors battle - and that was when they failed! Kick the Empire out now, and the people will happily give them anything they want!"

"Including complete control of the region," Iio finishes grimly, tucking her hands into her sleeves.

The shrill whistling of wind blowing through the shutters causes more than a few people to jump in their seats. A wave of nausea threatens to upend the contents of Suki's stomach all over the pristine tatami floor.

"Well then," Riko pronounces, sizing Lee up coolly. "If things are as dire as they seem to be, it appears your plan is as good as we've got."

Oyaji shuffles uncomfortably in his seat but doesn't protest his captain's decision. Even he must recognize a dead end when he sees one, Suki thinks to herself bleakly.

"We'll try our best to placate them," Riko continues grudgingly. "Give them some excuse, send them off with some warriors and a token show of fealty. With luck, they'll get off our backs and we can lay low."

"With your eyes and ears open," Lee advises, though Suki notices he doesn't appear thoroughly pleased that his plan was gaining traction. Maybe he also realizes what a risk he's asking us to take. "The Kyoshi Warriors are well respected, even among the Dai Li. I'm not sure how quickly they'll trust you, but if there's anyone likely to be sent to carry out a covert mission, it'll probably be you."

"And then what?" Riko demands, crossing her arms. "I can't ask my girls to leave their posts and their home undefended at a time like this, put their very lives at risk and court discovery to no end. You said you had a plan to take down the Dai Li from the inside. We want in."

Lee chokes, his face clamming up in an uneasy pallor. "That's - that's strictly need-to-know information…"

"Well, we need to know," Riko maintains, arching her eyebrows. "You want the Dai Li off our backs? I can guarantee that to the best of our ability. Before daybreak, you'll have a discreet escort off our island. We'll be the picture of receptive to the Dai Li's interests. I'll go with them personally to ensure that they have no reason to doubt our loyalty. I'll even send you back regular reports of what they're discussing, as often as I can without being discovered, so that you have a regular stream of intelligence. If that's what you need to make this work, then you'll have it." She leans forward, steepling her fingers together on the tabletop. "But everything has a price, Mr. Lee. You want us to put our necks on the line for you? Then tell us why."

Outside, the wind seems to sigh as it rustles against the barren trees, echoing the scrape of the teacup Lee nervously slides along the table surface. "I did warn you that you're not going to like it."

"Well, we're not huge fans of basically surrendering and putting our trust blindly in you either, but here we are," Suki retorts witheringly, looking him squarely the eye. "Why stop now?"

He squirms uncomfortably under her scrutiny. The tips of his ears flush darkly, and he lets out a long sigh. "Fine. You want to talk about risk? Let's talk about risk, then." He takes a deep swig from his teacup before slamming it down on the table with a crack. Suki flinches at the sound but keeps her gaze trained on his. "By now, you're probably aware that the Dai Li is a top-down machine of control. Well…to stop the machine, you have to get at the heart of their control."

Haru inhales sharply, his green eyes widening as everyone turns to stare at him blankly. "I remember," he breathes in rising panic. "It comes and goes in flashes…" He scrunches his face as though in pain. "A lair...dark, damp, crawling with them."

Lee nods solemnly, and the grim set of his jaw suits him strikingly, Suki thinks absently. "I know where it is," he admits softly and Haru's jaw drops. "And I found out what it is."

"You did what?" Haru gasps, and the fear in his voice runs shivers down Suki's spine. "That's - that's crazy!"

"I'm meeting with the resistance on mainland soon," Lee continues in that same whisper-soft voice, glancing at Piandao. "We're planning an operation to infiltrate their base...and take it out."

"Just like that?" Oyaji asks skeptically.

"Just like that," Lee echoes, and to Suki's chagrin, he had the audacity to sound confident about it.

"That's absolutely crazy," she huffs, her fists clenching in her lap. "That's not a plan, that's suicide."

"I've been there before," Lee points out, infuriatingly reasonable. "Now, they're stretched thin trying to recruit people left, right and centre to their cause, leaving their home base guarded by a skeleton force. Now is the time to strike."

"Count me in!" Haru declares, jumping to his feet. "I want to make those bastards pay for what they did to me!"

Lee casts a sidelong glance at him. "Well…" He shrugs. "We could use all the help we can get. And you're familiar to them too. And an earthbender. That'll help us get in."

"You're serious!" Suki splutters, nearly knocking her teacup over in her consternation. "You mean to go ahead with this suicide mission, then?"

Lee meets her wild gaze evenly and something quails in her at the resolve she sees there. "I do. And I'm going to need all the help I can get. Unless you have a better plan up your sleeve? In which case I'd love to hear it."

Her breath catches in her throat. But like it or not, the infuriating boy with the big blue eyes had a point, loath as she was to admit it. Prince Lu Ten was dead, the Empire was tearing itself apart amidst Ozai's struggle for power, and a handful of very real Dai Li agents were lying in their lockup, waiting to inflict the same on her home island.

I can't let that happen.

"Fine," she hears herself say through the roar of blood in her ears. "I still think your plan sounds absolutely insane. But seeing as it's the only plan we've got, our best shot lies in making sure it has as much of a chance to succeed as possible." She crosses her arms and sets her jaw formidably. "I'll go with you."

Lee's mouth curves into a knowing half-smile and the sight of it annoys Suki almost as much as it makes her cheeks burn inexplicably.

"Count me in too!" Ty Lee pipes up, looking more animated han she has all night. "You can't leave without me, Suki!"

"Are you sure?" Suki inquires carefully. "After all, you just fled for your life from the capital. Are you sure you don't want to take it easy for a while?"

Ty Lee shakes her head. "Nothing's going to be easy now, Suki. I might as well try stay one step ahead of them!" She tilts her head in amusement. "Besides, anyone would think twice before crossing the pair of us!"

A helpless grin bursts across Suki's face in response.

"It's settled then," Riko decides as Lee's grumbling tapers off mutinously. "You four will leave as soon as you can. I want as much distance as possible between you and our island by the time we engage the Dai Li in our prison hold at daybreak."

"They'll notice that some of us are missing," Suki points out. "Won't that be suspicious?"

"We'll feed them some story," Riko answers with a shrug. "Say these two defected and fled our shores as soon as they were able. And we sent some of our own to recapture the traitors. Hopefully they won't think twice about it, not if I convince them that we're on their side now."

"I can fly you to the mainland," Iio offers. "You won't travel any faster than you will on Buri's back. Besides, it seems that I have some old friends of my own to catch up with, before I return to the Western Air Temple." She glances coolly at Piandao. "Will you be joining us?"

But Piandao shakes his head. "I think I'll stay here and help Oyaji rebuild. Besides, this is the first port of entry to the Earth continent, and it's losing a chunk of its fighters. I can help protect it in their stead." He directs the last bit appeasingly at Riko.

"Thank you," Riko acknowledges Piandao's offer with a nod of her head. "It would seem that fate has made cautious allies of us all, even as we go our separate ways already." She turns to Oyaji, bowing her head deferentially. "While I'm gone, I leave the island's defenses in the charge of my second-in command."

Oyaji nods in understanding. "We will remember your bravery, Riko."

Riko swallows before meeting Suki's gaze with blazing eyes. "Suki, you've taught us so much in the short days you've been here, and now you're our best hope to weather this storm. Come back to us soon."

Suki jerks her head shortly, feeling her eyes prickle dangerously. "I will," she whispers fiercely, clasping at Riko's hand tightly.

Riko's eyes seem to burn as they turn to Lee's. "We're trusting you with our lives here," she warns. "Don't take it lightly, spy."

Lee gets to his feet. "I won't," he says briskly. "Come on, let's get packing. Time won't wait for any of us."

The sounds of distant arguing echo around the Temple courtyard's stone corners, mingling with the rising wind and resonant windchimes. Aang groans inwardly as he leads Toph and Katara through the cobbled pathways and under the terraced awning that opens up into the austere order of the Temple's audience chamber. With the late afternoon sunlight slanting in through the yawning empty windows, the polished stone chamber glows brilliant gold and touches the gathered Air Nomad Elders with a warm halo.

Gyatso catches his eye and nods in approval, before turning back to hear whatever cranky Elder Tashi tries to say next. The five Council Elders are seated cross-legged at the head of a raised dais on the far side of the room. Behind them sprawls an intricate mosaic of two large sky bison circling three intertwined spirals, the symbol of the Air Nomads.

Assembled before them in neat rows along the marble tile floor are the members of General Iroh's war council: powerfully built Admiral Liang, soft-spoken Captain Shu, the occasionally brash Major Kuro, newly promoted Commander Jee, and, standing at their head, General Iroh himself with Zuko, his new heir. Sunlight winks off their black armour, now greyed and grimy with dust, and the rumpled velvet of their crimson uniforms sit at odds with the immaculately pressed silks that the Air Nomad Elders wear.

A sorry bunch, but a desperate one, Aang reflects, falling in place with the rest of Iroh's council.

"We have heard your concerns to their fullest and have nothing more to add," Chief Elder Pasang pronounces, staring haughtily down at the company assembled beneath his feet. "It fills us with sorrow to hear of your losses, General Iroh. Your brother has committed heinous crimes indeed. But it has been generations since the Air Nomads swore to uphold life in all its forms and take no part in the conflicts of this world. We cannot break this tradition."

"With all due respect," Iroh counters wearily, as though he had heard this argument several times before, "it is difficult for me to understand how abstaining from a conflict that threatens to cross all borders will succeed in upholding life in all its forms -"

"It appears General Iroh thinks he is the only one who thinks his cause to be a just one!" Elder Tashi crows with a titter. Aang tries his best not to glare at the wiry old man. "Only he knows what is best for the world, and how to accomplish it!"

Aang glares at the old man's long beard, the way it bounces up and down like an overgrown sprout as he continues smugly. "Of course you couldn't understand us. Your kind only know how to fight and kill over your pathetic grievances! We have transcended such petty squabbles." He sits back contentedly, his shoulders very straight.

Aang longs to lob a fruit pie in his face like he would have done when he was younger. Instead he draws a deep breath. "What's wrong with thinking like someone who's not us?" Aang challenges, even as his palms slick with sweat. "You know, I've been personally involved in the conflicts General Iroh's speaking of. If Ozai succeeds, the whole world will be thrown out of balance. Permanently."

"Ozai has done nothing to threaten us," Tashi insists infuriatingly. "Should we join them now, we expose ourselves to unnecessary violence for a cause we do not believe concerns us at all."

"Tashi is right, General Iroh," Pasang agrees, stroking his long, thin moustache. "We cannot support your venture any more than we already have. Food, shelter, medical aid… All these are yours while you recover from your wounds. But once you are healed and your next plans finalized, you must leave here."

"Not until I have a final answer from you, High Monk Pasang," Iroh says in a steely voice. "Am I to understand your dedication to your principles is more important to you than the world that surrounds you?"

"It is our dedication to our principles that defines us, General Iroh," Pasang answers patiently and Aang's heart plummets even as it races with indignation. "Without them, we are no better than you or your brother. Should a peaceful resolution present itself, we will be only too willing to assist in its fruition."

"But Tashi just said anyone who attacked the Temple would be struck down," Aang bursts out, no longer able to contain his frustration. "So why is a peaceful resolution necessary for General Iroh's men, but not us?"

"Elder Tashi was merely expressing the paramount need to defend ourselves," Pasang answers calmly, though the warning in his eyes fails to move Aang at all. "We would not deny ourselves that right."

"But you can deny that right to people who aren't us?" Aang argues hotly, blood rushing through his ears. "Wouldn't it be more proactive to defend ourselves by helping end the conflict before it reaches us and gives us no choice?"

"It is the choice of violence that would require sacrificing who we are," Pasang replies, clasping his hands in his lap. Aang stares at the spot in his forehead where both overgrown eyebrows fuse together as he continues. "You have been exposed to many different schools of thought, young Aang. Do not think that just because they are different they are also right. There are things bigger than your sense of right and wrong."

"Don't you realize how hypocritical you sound?" Aang demands incredulously. In the corner of his eye, he perceives heads turning to stare at him but he pays them no heed. Except Katara, sitting next to him with her mouth agape and eyes wide with appraisal. "You think your principles are more important than keeping people outside our borders safe, but not important enough to protect yourself? You won't strike a blow yourself, but you'd rather look the other way and fail to protect innocent lives from a tyrant just because he might not have noticed you yet? How is that any less violent?"

"Enough, Aang!" Pasang thunders, his face turning an alarming shade of red. "I have heard quite enough about your juvenile philosophical theories in your letters, there is no need to repeat them here!"

Aang opens his mouth to argue further but he glimpses Gyatso, cross-legged on the dais beside Pasang, shaking his head forlornly. He bites his lip to hold his silence instead.

"What am I to do next if you will not help me?" Iroh asks in a hollow voice. "It is a fool's hope to await more forces to escape my brother's claws. And I dare not turn to what allies I thought I had in the Earth colonies, for my nephew tells me the Dai Li have thrown their lot in with my brother also. And now I cannot rely on your help either. Where do I turn to now?"

"What about the Northern Water Tribe?" Gyatso suggests kindly.

Tashi scoffs. "Oh yes! They may be more desperate for friends up there in the frozen wastelands."

"That does indeed seem to be our last resort," Iroh admits, crestfallen. "But they are near half a world away. And my fleet is so small."

Pasang glances at Iroh but his gaze is more sympathetic than dismissive. "All the better to outrun any force that your brother sends to follow you."

"Even the ones sailing in our direction as we speak?" Admiral Liang asks bluntly. "Our scouts report a growing number of ships originating from the Empire's capital sailing in this direction!" He scratches the back of his neck in consternation. "I was an Admiral of the Navy and yet somehow, Ozai has managed to acquire vessels whose size, shape and purpose remain a mystery to me!"

"He has resourceful friends in many places," Zuko says tightly, a muscle working in his jaw. "Even if he is in no condition to continue fighting, Azula and his followers will bear his torch to the bitter end."

"They call Ozai the Phoenix King," Liang scoffs, shaking his head derisively. "I overheard Bujing and that impudent wretch Zhao cackling about it the night of the wedding, just as I was putting two and two together." His lip curls. "Some phoenix he turned out to be. May he never rise from the ashes again."

"How could he?" Pasang dismisses his concerns without a second thought. "My understanding was that he was undone by the barbaric form of waterbending employed by your…General there."

He glances disdainfully at Katara, who bristles aggressively and pushes forward, mouth open to protest.

"That's not fair," Zuko speaks up hurriedly, moving discreetly to block her path with a well-placed shoulder. "Katara saved my life. And probably countless others. If my father's loyalists hadn't been so distracted by his injury, my uncle's forces would have had a much more difficult time escaping."

"That may be so," sniffs Pasang, "but we cannot agree that wielding such savagery against another living being upholds our values. We cannot enter this conflict now."

Aang places a conciliatory hand on Katara's shoulder instinctively as she struggles against Zuko's back in her way. "Let me show them just how savage I can be," she growls under her breath, defiance sparking furiously in her eyes.

"You don't need me to tell you about the atrocities brother inflicted upon the Water Tribes," Iroh rebukes sharply. "Atrocities he would only be too willing to commit again -"

Breathing dangerously, Katara finally shakes Zuko off and leaps to her feet. Aang braces for the storm to unleash upon Tashi but to his surprise, she turns on Iroh instead. "You're one to talk!" she snaps. "After all the mistakes you made, how can you expect us to keep paying the price for them?"

Aang stares at her in confusion but not so much as the expression Iroh directs at her, astounded and hurt at the same time. "Sifu Katara, I have no idea what you mean -"

He doesn't get to finish his sentence before Katara turns on her heel and storms out of the assembly room, overgrown plants crunching loudly under her heavy footfalls.

The silence in the room that follows reminds Aang of the stifling stillness of a bunker buried deep underground.

"What's up with her?" Zuko grumbles under his breath as Iroh stares after her helplessly, before shaking his head and collecting himself.

"It matters not," declares Tashi, with a clench of his fists. "We will not fight alongside such poorly controlled creatures. Let this... Phoenix King come with ships of any number, size or shape. This Temple cannot be taken, not while we master the skies. A tyrant he is, but a short-lived one if he dares mount an attack on Air Temple soil!"

"This is a waste of our time, Uncle!" Zuko hisses, raking a hand irritably through his hair and scowling at Tashi. "We should depart quickly, and avoid drawing Azula's attention here."

"Best be on your way," Tashi chimes in, sounding infuriatingly self-satisfied. "The Northern Water Tribe is a long and treacherous journey. By ship, anyway."

Gyatso holds his hands out helplessly. "If you depart from the northern shores by nightfall, it is possible that you can escape without being seen by your pursuers."

"Nightfall. Yes," Iroh answers tersely, getting to his feet and his entire company follows suit. He bows his head humbly. To Aang it seemed like he carried a great weight there. "I thank you for your gracious hospitality, High Monk Pasang. May you have better luck protecting your own than I did."

"Oh, we shall," Tashi answers. "Unless they've found some way of controlling the skies also."

The wind whips violently at the scrubby plants lining the craggy summit, nipping at the exposed skin of Katara's face and wrists with cold sharp teeth. She wraps her arms more tightly across her chest, swaying with the wind as it eddies around her in a furious vortex. In the distance, the setting sun casts its last light across the sky like a hungry flame. It hurts to watch and yet she still squints into the horizon, eyes watering as the small pinpricks grow steadily larger, a promise of more trouble to come.

Somehow over the roar of the wind and the groaning of branches, she hears the faint crunch of footsteps a tentative distance behind her.

"Sifu Katara," says General Iroh's voice and she stiffens, knowing that he would come and dreading it nonetheless. "I…I sense that things are not quite alright between us."

She grips at her oversized tunic and pulls it tighter across herself, as though willing everything else away by doing so, but he takes a step closer. His words ferry to her on the breeze, as though travelling a very far distance. "Is there anything that you would like to say to me? Anything at all?"

Don't let it fester, Aang had advised her, but what did Aang know? The storm claws up Katara's throat, hot anger in her blood pulsing with a long-dormant fury of unfairness that could no longer be dammed by amity or respect or plain politeness.

"My mother," she says haltingly and hears him freeze in surprise. "You told me you met her when you visited the South Pole for the chieftain's convention. But that wasn't the whole truth, was it?"

The wind howls around them, sending bits of dry earth tumbling off the mountain's edge and punctuating the silence that draws out before Iroh finally answers. "No."

Katara's teeth sink into her trembling lower lip. "You knew her since she was a girl. She grew up in your city. She was friends with him. He told me, the night of your son's wedding."

Another crunch of Iroh's footsteps, daring to come any closer. "I'm sorry -"

"He blamed you for how it ended." Katara can't help the accusation shaking in her voice. "That you had her sent away on some pretense."

"He would think that," Iroh answers bitterly, sounding like a much older man. "Katara, I acted in your mother's best interests. Ozai was no friend to her even then."

"Then why did you hide it?" Katara whips around to face him. The wind snaps through her hair, through her oversized borrowed uniform, and the chill seems to burrow straight through to her bones.

To his credit, Iroh appears forlorn. His grey cloak rustles in the breeze and the lines on his face seem etched into them like cracks on the mountainside. "I didn't mean to hide it," he says at last, his amber eyes pleading. "I just wanted to spare you the whole truth."

Katara narrows her eyes. "Why?"

"Because I was ashamed." Iroh's voice breaks and he hangs his head, staring intently at his feet. Katara's mouth falls open as he continues in a thread of a voice, racked with remorse. "Because I realized that I had been arrogant. Arrogant in severing one of the only close friendships he imagined he had. And even more arrogant for seeking to right that wrong by giving him an opportunity to redeem himself to your mother's people."

The words wash over Katara, raking open wounds that had scarce begun to heal. "You knew," she hisses, and vindication savagely flows through her as he flinches. "All this time, you've been preaching about equality between the four nations in your empire. But you knew what he was and you still unleashed him upon my people just to console your brotherly pride?"

"I realize now that I made an error in judgment," Iroh says wearily, spreading open his palms. "What would you have of me?"

"Ask that to everyone who's already paid the price!"

"What is done is done," Iroh explains earnestly, clasping his hands together. "We can only learn from the past now. We must work together to strive for the future we want -"

But Katara stares him down coldly, refusing his attempt to steer the conversation into safer waters. "All the signs were there that your brother was plotting something. Just like all the signs were there that you couldn't trust him with any power over my people. But you ignored them then and you ignored them now, and you never learned because you were content to let other people die for your mistakes! At the first sign of danger, you fled!" Katara closes in on him, all rational thoughts consumed by the rankle of injustice swelling through her. "I had to save Zuko! I had to drag his body out of there, and I was the only person who tried to do anything to stop Ozai when it should have been you."

Her voice cracks as her throat closes up dangerously and she fixes her gaze on her feet, suddenly unable to bear the hapless expression on Iroh's face, lined as it was with recent tragedy.

"You are referring to the practice of bloodbending, which you used to nearly kill him in cold blood," Iroh says in a strangled voice.

"Yes. I am," Katara answers, raising her head to stare at him defiantly.

She expects him to recoil in fear or disgust even, but she is unprepared for the sympathy that softens his eyes. "I am glad you stopped when you did," he tells her, sounding so genuinely concerned for her that it makes her feel sick inside. "Senseless violence is not the answer—"

Katara barks out a dry, humourless laugh. "I don't have the privilege of calling it senseless, General Iroh."

Sensing the trap, Iroh switches tactics. "To kill him in such a manner would be an unbearable burden upon one so young -"

"And everything he did to me isn't?" Katara shouts at him. "How can you understand so little? The only unbearable burden I'm carrying is the fact that I let him live! Whatever he does after that, any suffering or destruction he causes, that would be far worse than any guilt I'd feel over stopping him permanently!" She pants heavily, almost dizzy from exertion. "I don't know how you live with yourself."

She turns away from him again, this time staring back at the horizon and the echo of sunlight rippling across the turbulent waters. The shadows of the approaching vessels stretch out toward her like a long-fingered hand, drawing ever nearer.

"There is only one person responsible for Ozai's actions, Katara, and that is himself," Iroh says to the back of her head with a steadiness that makes her seethe. "You must not blame yourself for being a stronger person than he, or possibly even you, can understand. Whatever happens now, I implore you to be kind to yourself."

"Easy for you to say! You didn't do enough!" Katara snaps, his unsolicited sympathy crawling along her skin like slime. It's just like Aang said to the Air Nomads, she realizes, staring at him for perhaps the first time with clear eyes. Violence is only bad if he isn't the one doing it. "You may have meant well, but you still allowed Ozai to do unspeakable things to us." He can shed all the tears he wants for his mistakes, but only he has the right to make Ozai pay for it. If I take it upon myself, suddenly I'm the monster. "So you don't get to stand there and judge me for how I choose to wield what little power my people have left."

"Katara, I would have hoped by now that after everything I have done for you -"

She doesn't think she could hate him any more than she does in that moment. "What? What have you done for me that's so special?" She whirls on him again, positively crackling with rage. "Offer me the same compassion and justice that you would have given anyone else, just to hold it over my head later? You may have been the first of your kind to treat me fairly, but that doesn't entitle you to my forgiveness."

"Katara," Iroh pleads, "I am not your enemy."

"Then stop acting like one!"

Iroh regards her with the wariness of a man facing a beast threatening to savage. "A word to the wise," he cautions. "You will not progress far while making enemies of the few friends you have left."

The world seems to stutter with the weight of Katara's fury. "Excuse me?" she asks dangerously. "After all your failures, how can you expect me to keep on trusting you?"

"What other option do you have?" Iroh retorts, his long-tempered patience finally starting to crack. "My brother? I assure you, he will be a far greater threat to any future at all. I am the only choice you have, whether you like it or not."

"No," Katara whispers. Behind her, the setting sun casts her shadow long on the ground between them. "I refuse to accept help from a man who closes his eyes time and time again to very real dangers and allows others to take responsibility for his cowardice."

Iroh sputters in disbelief. "I beg your pardon?"

Katara gets the sense that his incredulity isn't from her insult. "We go our separate ways," she continues, barreling over his apoplectic shock. "I have nothing left to offer you, and I'm not sure I can trust whatever you have to offer me."

Iroh shakes his head emphatically. "You're making a mistake -"

"I'll go up north," Katara decides, squaring her shoulders confidently. "Find the rest of my people and live among them. Rebuild my home if I can. I'm done being a tool for you to use and paying the price for your mistakes." She stares at him and wishes her gaze could burn. "But maybe someone up there won't."

"If that is what you wish," Iroh concedes after a weighty pause, his face heavy and tight.

"It is."

"Then, seeing as my small fleet is also bound for the Northern Water Tribe, may I offer you an escort for your travels, or would you prefer to make your own way?" he asks her politely, without a trace of irony or resentment.

Katara glares at him but he only meets her eyes with a perfectly level stare of his own. "I'll accept your offer to travel as long as our paths align, thanks," she says coolly.

Iroh inclines his head, distancing her with his formality. "You are welcome." He turns on his heel, beckoning her to join him. "We must leave here with all haste, if we are to outrun Ozai's forces. With luck, they will be too slow to pursue."

Katara purses her lips, feeling everything settle into a strange sort of new calm as the conversation shifts back into the familiar. "I can pull up some mist to conceal us on the way out," she suggests perfunctorily.

Iroh steps aside to let her descend the winding steps down the mountainside ahead of him. "That is a good idea. Thank you, Sifu Katara."

"You're welcome," Katara acknowledges curtly, stepping in front of him. The last of the day's light dissipates into the murky gloom of evening as he falls in step behind her. "By the way, I misspoke. You were the second of your kind to treat me fairly. Zuko was the first. And unlike you, he didn't expect anything from me in return."

Chapter 35: stranger than truth

Chapter Text

disclaimer. still not mine

author's notes. is it really april already? god time flies way too quickly when you're adulting. anyway, have an update because everything sucks these days. (i also made a sort of unofficial spotify playlist for this fic, it's up here if anyone is so inclined).

thank you so much to everyone who's been following and leaving some very interesting feedback, especially with the last chapter. on that note, while i've tried to refrain from W.O.G-ing too much in these notes and allowing the story to speak for itself, i feel like it might be prudent to drop some gentle reminders, specifically: this is not just a love story. we're moving into the heart of some difficult and controversial truths regarding reconciliation and the balance of power that were first explored back in chapters 11-12 and now upended in recent chapters. while i expect to continue receiving polarizing reactions here, please remember while reading that the characters' opinions are certainly not absolute, no single character is above reproach, and we're just over halfway through the story. everyone still has a lot left to learn.

massive kudos as always to aangsslut for beta-reading and adding a finishing touch of awesome spice. she rules.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xxxv. stranger than truth

so now it's time to make things right
we have been doing damage, enough for now
you see, it wasn't always like this
you blame the world, i think she's innocent

"a storm inside" / ghost brigade

It is still hours before dawn by the time the sound splits the air.

Gyatso rises from his spot atop the dais in the outdoor courtyard. Sleep had eluded him that night but his joints are stiff from the length of his cross legged meditation.

It is time, he thinks to himself grimly, slowly making his way up the summit to gaze down from the edge of the Temple.

The sky yawns overhead, an unending expanse of cool blue, the promise of dawn glowing faintly against the distant horizon. The water ripples beneath it, dark and silent like the dozens of strangely-shaped ships anchored just off the coastal shore.

"What is it?" asks High Monk Pasang, stepping in beside him to survey the below surroundings.

Gyatso shakes his head. "It is like nothing I've ever seen."

The ships bob against the waves, bigger and stranger than any vessel Gyatso has ever seen in his long life. Their prows are chiseled like sharp knives, built for great speed, but their decks are empty of any soldiers or weaponry. Instead, strange elongated round machines that he has never seen before are bolted to their decks.

"They dropped anchors some time ago," mutters Pasang, sounding worried despite himself. "Perhaps they are waiting for daylight before mounting an attack."

"Perhaps," Gyatso says doubtfully, his fingers tightening against the wooden staff of his glider. "But what advantage could the children of fire gain from darkness?"

In the cool blue glow of early winter sunrise, Pasang's jaw tightens. "It doesn't matter. Tashi and the others are assembling the rest of the nomads in this Temple. Let the firebenders try to take the mountain if they dare."

"What about the acolytes? Have they been hidden somewhere safe?"

Pasang shrugs. "Would you prefer that they had deserted us the way Aang did?"

Gyatso hangs his head. "I fear that very soon, we would all wish we had."

The strange sound that had roused him from meditation splits the air again, echoing against the slopes of the mountain and the flat open waters.

"What is that noise?" Pasang mutters, frowning down at the motionless ships below.

Then, one by one, flaming lanterns wink into existence. The clink of metal bolts unchaining and the humming roar of engines whirring to life.

Like flying spectres of death, the elongated machines rise slowly into the air, propelled upward by a mechanism that Gyatso doesn't quite understand.

He grabs at Pasang's shoulder blindly.

The High Monk doesn't look back at him, but Gyatso reads the uncertainty spreading across the right lines of his face. "Round up the acolytes," Pasang commands grimly, tapping his glider against the ground. "Make sure they are safe."

The wings of his glider snap open and he sails off to meet the loud, smoke-coloured machines floating upward like balloons of war.

Gyatso scrambles back, dread lending speed to his limbs as shrill whistles pierce the sky and the first missiles strike the mountainside in a fiery rain of destruction.

Zuko squints in the dim morning light. The mist coats the air surrounding them, making it nearly impossible to see ahead or behind. It swirls in faint patterns suspended in the air, making him feel like he's trapped in a timeless, shapeless void as the small fleet flees from the Southern Air Temple and hooks around Whale Tail Island, at the northern edge of the Southern Air Nomads' territory.

At first it was impossible to tell if they were being pursued by his sister's forces. Katara had planted herself high atop the crow's nest and drawn up a thick fog to hasten their escape, and she hadn't budged all night, isolated in a fit of wordless stubbornness. She'd spared barely a word for him, or Toph or Aang even, and her stubborn silence was grating on his last nerve even before he had breakfast with his uncle that very morning.

After that, it was impossible to pay attention to anything else as he scales the towering mast, deeper into the swirling mists blanketing their ships.

"Can we talk?" he hisses, pulling himself into the small basket that served as the ship's main lookout. Even up close, the clouds obscure the waterbender from his view as her movements slow and eventually halt altogether.

"Fine," Katara answers shortly. She pushes her hands down and the clouds of mist dissipate, revealing a clear blue sky radiant with cold winter sunlight, the coastline of Whale Tail Island only a short distance away. "Let's talk."

He surveys her up close, noticing the old lines reappearing around her mouth and eyes, haggard with exhaustion. The set of her shoulders, the quiet blaze of anger in her eyes, ready to flare in a trice if provoked. Towering high above the rest of their fleet, Zuko looks at her and is reminded of the cold, angry creature she'd been the day he met her.

"What's wrong?" he asks bluntly.

She cocks her head, frowning and the lines on her face deepen. "Nothing."

"Then why are you ignoring all of us?" He chances a step forward and nearly bumps into her shoulder. The wind rustles his hair and he pushes it back in frustration. "You've been hiding up here ever since we came on board yesterday, and you won't talk to any of us."

"I was busy," Katara mumbles, very carefully avoiding his gaze. "I promised General Iroh I'd give some cloud cover to help us escape without being noticed."

"How kind of you," Zuko heaves, feeling his own temper ignite at the mention of his uncle's name. "Was that before or after you told him you weren't joining us after you reached the North Pole?"

Katara stares at him so sharply he nearly recoils. Then she folds her arms across her chest defensively. "After," she answers with a defiant tilt of her chin.

Zuko nearly chokes in disbelief. "So you...you meant it?" he splutters, reaching out to grasp the railing next to him. "You blame him for what my dad did and now you want to leave? Just like that? You - you can't be serious!"

"I meant every word," Katara declares, her face darkening. "After everything your uncle did - or failed to do, why do I owe him anything anymore?"

The ship sways beneath him and Zuko's grip tightens on the railing. "This isn't like you. Where is this coming from? Why are you acting like this?"

Katara makes a disparaging sound. "I guess you don't know me as well as you think you do, then." She starts to turn away, but Zuko grabs her by the shoulder to stop her.

"Stop it. Stop trying to push me away. It won't work." He inches closer as she freezes and her shoulder beneath his palm goes rigid. "I'm on your side, Katara. And… and for the record, so is Uncle."

She shakes her head slowly. "I can't believe that anymore."

"Why not?" Zuko demands, fighting to keep his voice from rising. "Look, he's got enough on his plate as it is, and even after all that, he's still worried about you-"

"Worried? About me? How generous of him," Katara all but snarls. "What about everything else? Did he tell you why or is he still too ashamed?"

"Does it matter?" Zuko asks hoarsely. "I love you. I'd do anything for you."

"Except disagree with your uncle," Katara mutters mutinously.

It catches Zuko completely off guard. "What?"

"You heard me." Wiping at her face, Katara turns slowly to face him. "You'd do anything for me, except disagree with your family. You did it before with your dad, and you're doing it again with your uncle."

A small laugh escapes him even as her gaze turns frosty. "I don't believe it," he breathes. "Father was the bad guy and I already apologized for that… But what did Uncle do that you're taking everything out on him? Yes, he's been a bit slow to act recently...but he just lost his son, how can you of all people not understand what he's going through?"

She laughs harshly. "I understand better than anyone! After all, I was the first one here to suffer after he set Ozai loose on my people. Or did you forget that he was also complicit in the polar wars?" Her mouth twists sourly into a bitter smile. "He hasn't forgotten. So why would a man who does no wrong try to hide the truth about his actions?"

"He's still trying his best!" he explodes, before groaning and rubbing at his temples. "Look, the world is a disappointing place with disappointing people. We can't help what happened before, but we can only move forward. I want to help you, but I can't do that if you just leave! We have to stick together, it's our best chance-"

"I don't have to do anything!" Katara exclaims, her cheeks flushing dark red. "Why can't you understand that your uncle's best efforts still aren't good enough?"

"I know you're upset, but -"

"Upset?" Katara breathes, her eyes flashing dangerously. She marches up to him, her face inches from his. "Do you even have a clue about what Ozai did to my mother? Your uncle sent her away to save her life. How noble of him! Too bad that paled next to the olive branch he gave his brother." Her mouth twists into a terrible grimace. "Which was to turn a blind eye when Ozai started the polar wars as his sick revenge fantasy."

The clout of her words slam into him like a kick to the chest. He staggers backward, winded. "That...that can't be true -"

"And now he has the nerve to act like he saved us by choosing to act against him!" Katara barrels over him mercilessly, her voice so loud it makes his head hurt. "When it's his fault Ozai was involved in the first place, and he should have known better!"

Zuko's mouth opens and closes helplessly, utterly lost for words as her shoulders heave up and down with the intensity of her fury. "We all make mistakes when it comes to our families, Katara," he tries, as reasonably as he can as her breathing slows steadily. "Surely you can understand that? Remember when you abandoned us in the middle of the Sun Warriors battlefield for your brother?"

She recoils as though physically wounded. "How dare you compare the two," she spits, backing away from him. "As though some casualties on the battlefield could match what he did -"

"I'm sorry," Zuko apologizes quickly, sensing her wrath spiral out of hand once again and scrambling to find something, anything to placate her. "I didn't mean it that way. What he did wasn't okay. I see that now. But you can't just leave like this, without even giving him another chance!"

"After everything your family did to me, none of you have the right to ask me to do anything for you anymore!"

Zuko flounders wordlessly, her words hurting him more than he'd care to admit. "Katara, I can't help what my family did any more than you can, you're not being fair-"

"Neither are you!" Katara wraps her arms tightly around herself. "You may not have done anything personally, but you didn't lose everything as a result of what they did." Her voice breaks. "You're not the one who people look at and feel sorry for - you… you have no idea how humiliating that is!"

"I have no idea what that feels like?" Zuko repeats incredulously, letting go of the railing to jab at his chest. "I know better than anyone what being humiliated in front of absolutely everyone feels like -"

"Yes, and then with one announcement from your uncle, you're back to being the esteemed prince you always dreamed of being!" Katara cries. "Well, I don't have that luxury! I have to fight twice as hard for half as much, and whatever respect I do earn for myself, I have to stomach people telling me that I'm nothing, that I have nothing but charity!" She blinks back abrupt tears before whirling on him. "And now, when I finally decide this isn't working for me, that this has never worked for me, you're telling me just like everyone else that I don't have a choice?"

"I'm trying to help you!" Zuko all but yells in his frustration.

"How is continuing to do things the same way supposed to help?" Katara bites back, jamming her hands on her hips.

"But it's not the same!" Zuko argues, his head pounding from the effort of trying to make her see. "We're different people, we'll make it work -"

"I'm sure your uncle thought the same thing too," Katara barrels over him, her face twisting angrily. "But he'll never see me as an equal nor will anyone else. All they'll see when they look at us is just a prince offering charity to his poor, helpless victim."

Zuko gapes at her. "That's not what it is though!"

"Isn't it? Then why are you trying so hard to control me now? On making sure that I stay with you?"

Zuko exhales a burst of fire. "I'm not controlling you, I'm concerned-"

"Concerned about what? You don't think I'm strong enough to go it alone?"

Zuko closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, swearing that she was actually trying to goad him into a fight. "You know I don't think that."

"But everyone else does -"

"Since when has this been about what everyone else thinks?" Zuko interrupts her irately, hoping that his anger would be enough to make her back down.

Instead, she meets him head on. "It has always been about that! Don't pretend you're above it," she accuses. "Remember back at the palace, you wanted me to go away because you didn't want the courtiers thinking you weren't princely-"

"And you've done such a good job hiding everything between us that I don't know why you're so worried about anyone's opinion at all!" Zuko parries, stung by the accusation and the memory it accompanied.

Katara growls furiously. "If you can't understand why people would look at us and only see a prince amusing himself with some exotic woman his people conquered, then I don't know how to keep explaining to you why we needed to keep things hidden!"

For a moment, everything goes very quiet. The sound of the waves crashing against the island shoreline in the distance only seems to amplify the roar of blood building in Zuko's ears.

"That's...that's not what this is," Zuko whispers at last. He grabs at Katara's shoulders, resisting the urge to shake some sense into her. "You know that's not -" A terrible thought strikes him, blinding in its sickly clarity. "Is that what you really think?"

He wants her to back down, to admit she's gone too far this time, but instead she just stares at him stubbornly. "Isn't that why you first noticed me?" she asks bluntly, her teeth baring ferally. "Because of what everyone in your country says about Water Tribe women?"

He lets go of her, stumbling backward in his disbelief and his outrage, swelling so hot it nearly makes him sick.

"How dare you," he whispers at last when he finds the strength to speak again. "How dare you."

"Oh, so that's not it?" Katara's voice turns mocking. "What would you prefer to say then? Was it because I was exotic?"

Smoke trickled through with flame bursts from his nostrils. "Stop it, Katara."

"Or no, maybe it was just because I was different?"

Zuko squeezes his fists before sparks start flying out of his palms too. "No," he snaps finally, "no, in case you've forgotten, it's because you kept threatening me, and clearly I'm a glutton for punishment!"

Katara scoffs, her face twisting into a terrible smile. "Oh, in that case, I'm sorry I frightened His Royal Highness so badly -"

"I don't know why I bothered to say anything when you clearly think so poorly of me!" Zuko shouts, turning back to the ladder leading back down the mast. "Forget it."

With a huff she turns back to face the tides and clouds of fog rush upward, masking everything in sight as he stumbles back down the mast in a blooming stupor of fury.

How could she think that about me? I'm on her side. Why is she being so -

He storms unseeing across the deck, patrolling naval officers nervously parting in his wake. The press of their curious stares follows him as he stomps all the way down the flights of stairs and bangs his fist against his uncle's cabin door.

He doesn't even wait for an answer within before shoving it open. The door crashes into the wall behind before bouncing back against his shoulder. A flash of pain shoots down his arm but he barely notices it.

"Prince Zuko?" Uncle Iroh glances at him from the low tea table in the corner of his room, where he had been engaged in deep discussion over tea with Admiral Liang and Commander Jee. His shrewd gaze sweeps over Zuko like a searchlight before he dismisses his senior officers and beckons his nephew to join him at the table. "What's wrong, nephew?"

Zuko struggles to contain his haphazard feelings threatening to brim out of him as his uncle gets to his feet and retrieves a clay cup along with the pot of tea resting by the fire. "Whatever it is that is troubling you, it is surely something a cup of calming jasmine tea can fix."

Zuko stares blankly at his uncle pouring tea carefully into the cup, at the sagging skin on his lined face and how behind the bright kindness of his features, sadness lurked in every crease. An ache wells from the depth of his chest, a blinding, profuse ache that makes his lower lip quiver and his throat clam up tightly.

"Uncle-" he croaks before his voice breaks off and he has to cough, annoyed with himself.

"Here." His uncle's smile is small and gentle as he slides the cup across the wooden table toward him. Like the way it always was, as far as Zuko could remember. Even when he was young and in his father's fickle favour, it was always Uncle Iroh he went to in his troubles. And later, growing up in exile of the royal palace, it was always Uncle Iroh who cared for him and made him feel at home. And now, when everything was falling apart and his own father had plotted his cousin's murder to seize the throne, it was Uncle Iroh who had named him his own heir in a public show of loyalty and courage no one else had ever matched.

Except Katara. Touch him again and I'll end you, she had promised his father, and unflinchingly made good on her threat.

But now she was turning her unbridled wrath against his uncle, and all he finds himself capable of doing is sip at his tea, flustered and distraught and feeling suddenly very young again.

"Good." His uncle nods, refreshing his own cup until it is full to the brim with steaming fragrant tea. "Now, what is troubling you?"

Zuko averts his gaze, focusing on the singed spots on the tabletop where tea spills and overheated pots had made their mark.

His uncle waits patiently as his silence draws out, at length getting to his feet to hang the teapot back in its spot along the fireplace.

"This morning," Zuko manages to find his voice at last, "you told me Katara had decided to leave us once we reached the Northern Water Tribe."

His uncle pauses, still facing the flames dancing in the fireplace, kindled to a low flicker. "That is what she told me, yes."

"But you didn't tell me why," Zuko ventures, watching his uncle's back stiffen. "She basically blamed you for the polar wars and what happened to her people!" A desperate laugh of disbelief escapes him. "That's crazy, isn't it?"

But his uncle continues watching the fire as it licks away at the charred logs below.

"I told her she should stay with us," Zuko continues, uncomfortable in his uncle's growing silence, "that we were her best chance to face the road ahead. But she shut me down. She said…" His voice breaks as he remembers her hurtful accusations when all he wanted was to help her. "She said she couldn't believe us anymore. Not after what you did."

His uncle stirs at that. "And what did you tell her?"

Zuko deflates, stricken by the way the conversation had grown ugly near the end. "That she shouldn't think so poorly of me."

"And this upsets you?" Uncle Iroh finally glances over his shoulder to meet his gaze, but there was no question in his tone. "I understand. I have disappointed my friends in my time also."

"I didn't disappoint her," Zuko grumbles vehemently, his cheeks stinging. "I just wish I knew what she wanted. I can't seem to do anything right these days."

His uncle smiles wearily. "Then it seems I have chosen my heir correctly."

And with a single announcement, you're back to being the respected prince you've always dreamed of being, Katara's voice whispers vehemently in his mind.

"I wish I could live up to the ideals you hold me to, my nephew," Uncle Iroh continues, clasping his hands behind his back. "But your friend is right to be angry with me."

Zuko gapes as his uncle slowly turns around with a sad smile on his face. "Don't let her get to you too! Uncle - I don't understand…"

"Perhaps you recall, as Sifu Katara most certainly did, that I had been tasked with negotiating terms under which the Water Tribes could be brought into the Empire, many years ago? And that I had foolishly turned this over to Ozai, who had but to put his name to paper and bring the treaty into being?"

Zuko nods curtly, not thinking he could ever forget how he had nearly been betrothed to Katara in that treaty. "But he ruined it," he supplies, his face falling. No matter what, my father always finds a way to ruin everything. "Not you. Once he started, you tried to fix things. You were always championing the cause of the downtrodden in our empire, you…"

His uncle shakes his head slowly. "He ruined it, because I allowed him to," he explains mournfully. "Ozai had long harboured dangerous ideas about the Water Tribe. Katara's mother, Kya, she -"

"She grew up in the capital," Zuko suddenly remembers, from a conversation that feels like a lifetime ago, the way everything had changed so quickly afterward. "Katara - she said my father told her that they were best friends."

"On his part, he may have thought so," Uncle Iroh answers heavily. "I do not imagine there is anyone who Ozai sought to possess more than Kya in their youth."

"He loved her?" Zuko chokes, suddenly queasy at the thought. You are more like me than you will ever know, his father had said to him once when he felt powerless to refuse him. Was he right, in the end? Was his father's shadow truly inescapable?

His uncle shakes his head. "Love is not possession, my nephew. It is not lust or control or obsession, but something far more powerful. Something your father sadly has never understood in his life." His face tightens. "I was several years their senior and did not know Kya well. However, whispers from the palace staff reached me of - of incidents, which I will not describe to you." His lip curls in distaste and his voice grows sharp as a whip. "Suffice it to say, I felt it was no longer appropriate for him to pursue this... friendship, as he called it. I'm sure Kya would have called it something very different. With my influence, I was able to craft a position for her father half a world away, back in his home, and in doing so, send her with her family to a place of security, where she could live her life in peace. But I did not expect to hurt my brother in doing so."

Zuko opens and closes his mouth ineffectually, trying and utterly failing to picture his father as anything other than the monster he'd become.

"You are surprised. I was too," Uncle Iroh admits. "I was never taught to regret a decision, but it was as though the will went out of him after she left. For a time, he lost his drive, his very spirit. I am not sure what ambitions fueled him and where Kya fit into them, but the loss of them hit him hard. And I had all but sent her away, never to return." His gaze drops down to his feet in shame and his voice softens. "I do not think he ever forgave me after that. This grieved me greatly, for I loved my younger brother, and worried about him constantly."

"Worried about him?" Zuko asks scathingly, raising an eyebrow. "When there were so many other innocents on the line?"

"Ozai was my younger brother, Zuko. He is still my younger brother." Uncle Iroh sighs, suddenly sounding very tired. "Even now, after all he has done, I still remember the young boy he was, full of life and passion..." He closes his eyes and the lines around them grow deeper. "I was the elder, always favoured by our father. Ozai, whose birth robbed us of our mother and my father his beloved wife, was always quick to earn his displeasure: too slow to learn, too blunderous to trust." His voice grows hoarse, nearly resembling a different man. "How often Father would tell us that I was born lucky, and that he was lucky to be born."

Zuko's breath freezes in his lungs. Whatever he had expected to hear, this was not it. He never imagined, after everything that had been said and done, that it would be possible for him to feel sorry for his father. And yet…

"But that's not an excuse," he breathes, and his words come out more accusatory than he intends. "If growing up like that is enough to excuse the choices he made in life, then…" Then what does that say about me? "He still chose to become a monster," he finishes, now annoyed by his uncle's sympathy. "You didn't make him do that."

"No, I did not," his uncle allows. "But I was the fool who allowed him to take over negotiations with the Water Tribe. With Kya's husband, no less. I wanted so badly for him to have closure, to forgive me for hurting him, that I placed Kya's family and her entire people straight in his path without a second thought."

No. Zuko stares at his uncle in growing horror, feeling like ice is crawling through his veins and freezing him from the inside out.

"And when he presented one sanitized report after another at our councils, I wanted so badly to believe him," his uncle continues haltingly. "Even when the signs were right there, for me to probe more deeply, to stop him, I didn't. Not until it was too late for too many." His voice shudders and he raises a hand to wipe at his eyes quickly. "I was selfish and comfortable, and I was too slow to act. When it is all said and done, your friend is justified in her disappointment with me, though it is a harsh truth to bear."

Zuko struggles to speak, because even breathing suddenly is too difficult. Guilt floods alarmingly through him as Katara's voice rings accusingly in his ears in a pounding, terrible cadence. Too bad that paled next to the olive branch he gave his brother, which was to turn a blind eye when Ozai started the polar wars as his sick revenge fantasy...

His uncle sits down heavily in the chair across from him as Zuko watches him with wildly changing eyes. "But I do not understand where to go from here," he confesses. "Though I cannot change the past, I am trying my best. How can I still be judged by the same meter as my brother?"

"Your best isn't enough," Zuko mumbles, his ears burning with shame.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's not enough," Zuko repeats, placing his palms on the tabletop. "So you're better than my father, but apart from that, what else can you offer her?"

"Whatever she wants!" Uncle Iroh insists desperately. "But she wants to be rid of us and go back among her people -"

You may not have done anything personally, but you didn't lose everything as a result of what they did...

"She wants to be free," Zuko bursts out with a sudden flash of understanding. "She wants to find her own destiny, on her own terms, without having to ask for your permission." And with a sudden pang in his chest, "She wants to be equal to us, to not be looked down upon because she's from the South Pole and not the Fire Nation homeland. Can you give her that?"

Iroh blinks several times, looking as though Zuko had suggested something extremely ludicrous. "What you are suggesting is beyond my power to give," he says delicately, though his fingers shake as they close around his teacup. "First, we must find a way to defeat Ozai and take control of the Empire back from him."

"And then what?" Zuko challenges, suddenly feeling indignant on Katara's behalf. "Everything goes back to the way it was? With Fire Nation citizens thinking they're better than people from the colonies and growing fat off the riches we take from them? Why would any of them risk their lives for that kind of future?"

"Because the alternative is too terrible to imagine!"

"But there has to be more!" Zuko insists. "If you want the colonies to fight for you, then you need to give them a reason why." He breathes heavily through his nostrils and smoke curls in the air. "A really good reason."

"Prince Zuko," his uncle admonishes him gently, "what you are suggesting would destroy the Empire."

Zuko snorts. "That would destroy the Empire? Not my father murdering innocents or expelling the Earth continent diplomats or even dissolving the Imperial Court? Just the suggestion that maybe we shouldn't look down upon and exploit the people whose help we need most right now?"

His uncle falls into a worried silence.

"I see," Zuko heaves, and trembles course through his body as he pushes to his feet. "I know you believe in the Empire, Uncle. You've spent your whole life fighting to protect it. But even if we win against my father - and that's a big if - retaking your throne won't be enough to fix it."

His uncle mumbles something under his breath before shaking his head. "The Empire was founded on pure intentions. It is lesser men like your father who have corrupted it for their own gains -"

"Equality among all four nations was never Sozin's intent and you know it!"

Zuko's voice slices through his uncle's earnest words, ringing in the sudden silence that follows. Guilt hits him like a sucker punch to the gut at the hapless expression spreading like a wound across his uncle's face, but his breath stays harsh in his throat and his face flushes impossibly hot with the roar of blood in his ears.

An urgent tap on the door outside shatters the spell. "General Iroh!" Captain Shu's soft voice filters through the door, sharp and frantic. "We have a troop of Air Nomads incoming!"

The abrupt confusion that shows undisguised on his uncle's face mirrors Zuko's own as he gets to his feet shakily, tearing his gaze away nervously. "Air Nomads?" he repeats incredulously. "We're well clear of their borders by now-"

Shaking his head, he barges out the door and a surprised Captain Shu falls in step with him. "How far to Whale Tail Island? Drop the anchors, make for land…"

Zuko lingers behind, still shaking uncontrollably. His face prickles uncomfortably hot and with a groan, he pushes a hand through his hair, accidentally dislodging the little crown perched on his topknot.

Frustrated, he yanks it out and marches upstairs, the sharp metal crown digging into his palm and heating with the fire that pulses under his skin.

By the time he surfaces above deck, a crush of people have huddled against the port side railing. Not too far in the distance, the shores of Whale Tail Island are visible through the shifting fog, now dropped to a fine mist. He squints, wondering if he's imagining the scores of six-legged bison resting on the beach, and the saffron-robed figures that accompany them.

Then a voice catches his attention and he jolts upright. The crowd builds around an Air Nomad in singed robes, but it isn't Aang. It's his old master, Gyatso.

This can't be good.

His heart sinking in its chest, he hurries to the edge of the crowd and everyone, too transfixed by Gyatso's words, barely notice him as he sidles past.

Gyatso leans heavily against the deck behind him, his voice a breathless wheeze. Across from him, his uncle and the senior officers listen grimly. He falters, not particularly wanting to confront his uncle at the moment. A small distance back, Aang waits with a white-knuckled grip on his glider and his face blanched of all colour. Katara stands next to him, her face clouded with the same storm from earlier, her arms crossed and formidable.

He fights the twin instinct to approach and retreat, and instead chooses to join Toph's side, deep enough within the crowd to be safe.

"What's going on?" he mutters in her ear, hurriedly replacing the crown in his hair.

To his surprise, she shushes him and lowers her head, her sightless eyes narrowing.

Gyatso's voice is haltingly soft but the crowd is so silent it rings clearly across the deck. "...there was little warning. They used terrible great flying machines, ones that we had never seen before. If we had known what they were capable of, perhaps the High Monk would have thought to bolster the Temple's defenses more greatly."

"What happened to the High Monk?" he hisses.

Toph shakes her head and he instinctively glances at Aang. The young monk shakes his head, his shoulders shaking as though fighting tears.

"But by the time we had escaped with the better part of our acolytes, it was too late. I tried to turn around, I and a handful of our masters, we tried to fly back to help the others but..." Gyatso's shaking voice trails off and he hunches over, clutching at his glider like a lifeline.

Shock pummels Zuko like the waves crashing against the hull of the boat, threatening to knock him off-kilter. He clutches a hand against his chest, barely able to see straight. They attacked the Air Temple. Because we were there. Because we asked for their help.

"I am so sorry, my old friend," Uncle Iroh says softly. "Is there any way we can assist?"

Gyatso shakes his head. "They took no prisoners. They leveled the Temple, blasted it clear off the summit! Then they turned around and flew back in the direction of the Capital." He gestures toward the island shore helplessly. "We are all that is left of the Southern Air Temple."

A buzz of shocked whispering erupts around Zuko, who only catches snatches of them in the surreal haze that seems to envelop him.

"...didn't know Ozai had air balloons…"

"...if they could do that to the Air Nomads, what would they have in store for us?"

"...lucky we got away…"

"...should have joined us when they had the chance…"

Then his uncle places his hand on Gyatso's arm and squares his shoulders to face the crowd. Conflicting pain and fear war in Zuko's chest at the expression clouding his uncle's face, not the helpless old man he'd shouted at earlier, but instead one determined and full of anger.

"We have heard enough," he announces in a booming voice that seems to resonate across the entire bay. "Master Gyatso, I admit I feel some responsibility for this heinous crime. By arriving at your shores and begging for your help and shelter, I drew you into the crosshairs of Ozai's gaze."

Zuko furrows his brow as his uncle fidgets uncomfortably. "It is probable that a similar reception awaits anyone who dares to offer us reprieve from the pursuit of my brother's forces. Such is their hate, that it has spread into madness and bloodshed. Where will it end?"

His uncle's gaze sweeps across the gathered crowd like a beacon until it lands squarely on him. Zuko blinks and looks away, for his uncle's eyes burned bright with some newfound fire that hadn't been there before.

"Will it end with our heads on spikes carried back to the capital in triumphant parades? Will it end when the whole world has burned to the ground and only ashes remain for those who followed him blindly?" His uncle's face hardens, every line in his weathered skin seeming alive as though buzzing with electricity. "Or will there still be some depravity left still? For a man who would kill innocent children, bystanders, even his own kin for power, can there truly be an end?"

For an instant, he chances a glance at Katara, who folds her arms and stares squarely back at him in defiance. Then he clears his throat and continues, his voice loud and clear for all to hear.

"Once, our empire had a purpose, and meant some good in this world. Now it has fallen to blood and chaos." Iroh lowers his head, shamefaced, and Zuko fights the audible gasp that threatens to escape his throat. "And we who saw the warning signs and looked the other way and allowed the price to be paid in innocent blood, we are all to blame for this."

Zuko's mouth runs dry in shock as his uncle raises his gaze to meet his. No apology or hesitation rested in his eyes, only a grim determination to set things right. "I have been so fixated on the crown that I lost sight of what was most important to protect. That what binds us all is not some feeble allegiance bought by fire and destruction." Then Uncle Iroh closes his eyes and exhales deeply and his voice softens. "I must not let anyone else pay for my failures."

The buzz of whispers erupting around Zuko melds with the ebb and flow of the shore bound tide, making the world sway around him. His face burns and the urge to apologize springs strangely to his lips, even though, even though I did nothing wrong, I was right and he knew it too.

And even in spite of that, a bitter taste still lingers in his mouth. Because how many times had Uncle tried to make amends and failed? How many times before had he been content to let others take the fall for his mistakes?

What makes now any different?

Out of the corner of his eye, he steals a glimpse at Katara and sees thoughts of a similar nature blazing like fire in the harsh lines etched into her impassive face.

"If it is our duty to make my brother answer for his crimes, then we will do it or fall trying," his uncle declares with an intensity that makes Zuko's hairs stand on end. "It will be dangerous. It will be the most difficult thing any of us will ever do. But from this moment forth, every action we take will bring closer the day of Ozai's reckoning."

The hissing murmurs wane to a hush, as though a blanket of silence has muffled everyone's ability to speak. Then Gyatso steps forward and taps his glider against the deck decisively. "And we will stand with you," he declares, his reedy voice gaining power as he straightens his wizened form and lays a hand on Iroh's shoulder. "We remained neutral to these conflicts at our cost. No more. It is time for the Air Nation to unite and join General Iroh in making a stand against the tyrant who has usurped his throne, for he threatens us all." He turns to Iroh and bows his head respectfully. "We must choose a new Council of Elders to lead us. Whatever of us remain from the Southern Temple, whoever of us join our call from the other Temples, we pledge to stand with you, wherever you may go."

Iroh raises a shaking hand to dab at the corner of his eyes. To Zuko's surprise, he bows deeply to the frail old monk, clamping a fist across his chest plate. "I am humbled by your pledge," he says. "Thank you for coming to our aid when we did little to prevent your losses."

Gyatso's mouth curves into a sad smile before he turns to Aang and beckons him with a nod of the head. "Come ashore with us, Aang. In the wake of Pasang's loss, we must choose the new High Monk."

Aang wipes at his cheeks with the back of a tattooed hand before snapping his glider open. "I'm ready."

Katara touches his elbow gently and something in Zuko's chest leaps with longing at the sight of it. "Are you sure it's a good idea to go alone, Aang?"

But the young Air Nomad only nods jerkily as he pulls away. "I have to do this," he insists, tight-lipped. "If I had spoken more clearly, maybe Pasang and Tashi would have listened, maybe they'd still be…"

"It's not your fault," Katara cuts him off, not unkindly. "You tried your best. But they didn't budge." To Zuko's surprise, and seemingly Aang's too, she hugs him quickly. "I'm proud of you."

Aang gives her a watery smile before walking over to Gyatso's side. With a snap of their gliders and without a further word, both sail off toward the island shore where the remainder of the Southern Air Temple wait.

"Oh no," Toph mumbles as though to herself, struck by a sudden thought. Her face turns a sickly shade of green. "Does this mean we're flying to the North Pole now?"

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Suki hisses out of the corner of her mouth. "So far this has been a complete waste of time!"

Ty Lee whistles. "Woke up on the wrong side of the sleeping bag, Suki? Cheer up, be patient!" She props her chin against her fist, fingers tapping away at the small tabletop around which the four of them are crammed. "This is exciting!"

"Yeah!" Haru pipes up, in a whisper loud enough to carry throughout the crowded old teashop. "Just like that time we tried to stake out for the rebellion and nearly got caught by the Dai Li! Remember that, Wang?"

"No. Because it never happened," Lee retorts without sparing him a glance. "And stop calling me Wang, that's not my name."

"Sure thing, Wang."

Suki plies him with an electric glare. "We've been waiting here for three days, and all we have to show for it is a handful of senile old men harbouring a serious tea addiction!"

Lee's eyes tear away from the aproned waiters bearing chipped teapots from table to table, and flick toward her briefly and something sharp bolts through her stomach. Even in the dim glow of the paper lanterns strung along the ceiling, his blue eyes shine brightly. "We're in the right place. Trust me."

Suki finds herself momentarily speechless as his knee bumps into hers. She jerks away instinctively, her voice taking on the cadence of the teapots boiling over in the back room. "Well...fine! But if you dragged me away from home on nothing more than a fool's errand, there'll be hell to pay!"

Instead of cowering, the corner of his mouth quirks upward. "I'll bet." He leans forward suddenly, his face scrunching up with concentration. "Hang on. That might be our guy."

Suki squints in the direction Lee directs their attention and her eyebrows shoot to the level of her hairline. "That old man? Sitting all by himself?" she scoffs. "He looks like he'd like to wipe the floor with someone in a game of pai sho, maybe." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Not take down the Dai Li from the inside."

Lee's smirk widens. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that pai sho isn't just a game, Suki?"

Steam nearly rushes out her ears as she slams her hands against the table. "Why would anyone ever tell me that?"

But he doesn't answer her, silently getting to his feet instead. Before she can get another word in edgewise, he has already slipped to the other side of the tearoom, approaching the solitary old man at the small round table with his steaming chipped teacup.

"What in Kyoshi's name is going on here?" Suki splutters as the old man gestures to the empty seat across from him and Lee obligingly takes it. "I thought we were trying to do something important! Not waste our time watching Lee drink tea and play pai sho."

"I don't know," Haru remarks, stroking his chin as a pile of gleaming pai sho chips appear at the old man's elbow. "This is bringing back memories." He leans over, whispering in Suki's ear. "The Dai Li clamp down on dissent everywhere they find it. To survive, the resistance had to find a way to thrive in plain sight. Docile, harmless, waiting for the correct moment to strike." He laughs softly under his breath as Lee takes a tile and places it confidently on the playing board set out on the table. "And what's more harmless than a bunch of senile old people nursing a tea addiction and obsessing over the cryptic arts?"

Suki pauses, watching as the old man returns the move and Lee takes up another. The clicking of tiles being set down onto the board in rapid succession seems to rattle in her ears. This is the fastest game of pai sho I've ever seen.

Curious, she gets to her feet and walks over to the back of the room, where Lee and the old stranger are still intent on their lightning round of pai sho. "It looks like we have a couple of grandmasters here," she drawls, crossing her arms as she peers over Lee's shoulder.

To her surprise, both players pause and look up at her. On the board, a flower-shaped pattern seems to watch her intently.

"One of yours?" the old man queries, his mouth curving into a gentle smile.

"Yeah," Lee replies breezily, pulling a curving piece of metal out of his pocket and spinning it between his fingers. "Her and the pretty one in pink." He pauses before shrugging indifferently. "And that guy in green sitting next to her. I think he's got amnesia or something, but he was a sleeper and he's also an earthbender, he could be useful."

"Hm." The old man places a tile in the center of the board, seeming to end the game because Lee just snatches up his boomerang and pockets it again, lounging back in his seat. "Are you sure they can be discreet?"

Suki opens her mouth to argue but Lee nods at her. "Sure I'm sure. This one's a Kyoshi Warrior."

"Really?" The old man stares at her with flabbergasted eyes. "That was quite the recruitment, Lee."

"He didn't recruit me for anything!" Suki snaps, glaring at Lee who doesn't even flinch. "My home was in danger and I wanted to help. Now, if it isn't too much trouble, could you please stop playing games and do something already?"

"This one is impatient," the old man remarks, casting a sidelong glance at Lee as he tucks his hands into his sleeves.

"Yeah, I'm working on her," Lee retorts, picking at the underside of his ragged nails. "But she's got a point. They're moving quickly. We don't exactly have all day."

The old man nods before casting a cautious glance around the small teashop. "The two of you, then. The others will arouse suspicion if they join us now."

"What?" Suki hisses as the old man bends down to retrieve something from the lumpy leather satchel lying by his feet, and then presses it into her hands. She stares at the empty clay flowerpot quizzically as the old man withdraws another and slides it around the gameboard to Lee.

"The flower arranging takes place downstairs," the old man says, gesturing at the back door.

Lee nods, palming his flowerpot as he sweeps to his feet. "Thanks. C'mon Suki, let's go learn how to arrange flowers."

"What?" Suki sputters, cheeks blooming furiously as he hooks his free arm around hers and all but drags her through the back door. "Flower arranging? What in the world -?"

She glimpses a narrow landing with a dusty door leading to the dank alleyway behind the teashop, and a rickety set of old steps descending into darkness. Momentarily staggered in her confusion, she lets Lee drag her down the stairway, daylight and the sounds of the teashop fading into the shadows.

Then she hears Lee knocking on the door with the butt of his flowerpot and the answering slide of metal against wood. "Who knocks at the gate?" a dry voice asks in the darkness.

Lee's arm seems to burn against her own as he answers brightly. "It's Lee and a friend! We're here for the flower arranging."

Suki dimly perceives him waving his clay teapot at the small grille in the door before it slides shut and the door before them swings open.

The dim flicker of torchlight assaults Suki's eyes as a burly man motions them inside and furtively shuts the door behind them.

"What…"

Suki's eyes rove all around her, taking in the small basement cellar scantily lit by four torches set in sconces on the peeling walls. Dirt scatters against her feet as she stops in her tracks. An assortment of wooden chairs are set in a large circle taking up most of the shabby single room, mostly occupied by people she's never seen before. Their whispered conversations ripple like the water slowly dripping from the ceiling.

As Lee lets go of her and takes a seat and she slides into an empty chair next to him, she notices everyone present is clutching a similar flowerpot.

I think someone must have slipped something in my tea, she decides, shivering in the cold draftiness of the cellar. After the secretive danger of ambushing the Dai Li just before the Sun Warriors battle, she can't help but feel ridiculous in the outlandishness of her current setting.

"Where are we?" she hisses, rubbing at her cold arms.

The quiet murmurs dull to a ringing hush as Lee whispers into her ear, "You wanted to find the resistance. Well, here it is."

Suki raises her eyebrows at the ragtag assortment of people seated around them, barely more than silhouettes in the faint light, and can't help the skepticism that enters her voice. "That's it?"

"Well," Lee trails off thoughtfully. "Not exactly."

"The Dai Li is a well-oiled machine," another voice answers and Suki nearly jumps out of her seat. She turns to the speaker, a man with long white hair who takes the seat next to hers. "To combat them, we must be just as organized. What you see here is just one cog."

Up close, Suki sees that he is old and balding, and even in the dim glow of torchlight, his skin looks like it could be the same deep hue as Katara's. Or Lee's.

Lee cocks his head in the old man's direction, and golden torchlight flickers off his teeth as his face splits into a delighted grin. "Is that you, Grampakku?"

Suki fights a cough as the old man stiffens in displeasure. "Just Pakku will suffice," he says crisply, sweeping long beaded braids over his shoulder. "As I have told you multiple times by now…"

"Pakku?" Suki echoes, trying to place the unfamiliar name. "Are you also from the Water Tribes?"

Instead of answering, the old man frowns at her. "Also?" he echoes.

Suki shrugs, her face burning as Lee snorts next to her. "One of my friends is Water Tribe too."

"Oh, is she?" the old man Pakku sniffs disbelievingly.

"Face it, Suki," Lee mutters under his breath. "You'd have better luck hugging a cactus than befriending that sour old sea prune."

"You speak from experience, I presume," Pakku answers dryly and even in the dark, Suki can see him rolling his eyes. "Seeing as you are the only person I've ever met with the wit to actually hug a cactus."

"Hey!" Lee protests, jamming the flowerpot in his lap to point accusingly at Pakku. "That was one time! Besides, that mission to the Si Wong desert was a huge success, or are you forgetting what we learned about our firebending friends in that old library -"

"We will focus on the task at hand," Pakku cuts him off icily, getting to his feet with a smoothness that belied his years and turning to address the rest of the room. His voice grows louder. "We seem to have even less time than we thought. The Dai Li are moving swiftly to press their advantage. Within the past week, we have heard of multiple reports of them openly invading villages and towns under the pretense of launching a military strike against the Fire Empire."

"It's true," a man says, hidden in the shadows. "They came to my home three days ago, goons and thugs all of them! Only by rounding up every able-bodied person and taking the better part of our treasury's gold were they content to leave!"

"They did the same thing to us!" Suki exclaims, craning to face the shadowed man. "Or at least, they tried. We were able to fight them back." Her face falls in hopeless desperation. "For a time."

Pakku nods curtly. "They have grown bold. They have also claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Crown Prince on his wedding night. How they could manage to do that when they have been so busy licking their wounds from their defeat at the Sun Warriors island is beyond me, but that is their story."

"It's part of their operation to make them seem more powerful and numerous than they actually are," Lee speaks up confidently, sprawled in his seat with an arm carelessly flung against the back of Suki's seat. Her cheeks burn. "By now, I'm pretty sure we've mapped their entire operation right down to the number of sleepers in each cell."

Pakku sighs before sitting back down. "If you're so sure, I'm certain you won't mind sharing with the rest of us what exactly you've mapped about their operation."

Lee grins and leaps to his feet; Suki shivers, the chill damp of the room seeming to seep into her bones. "Well, as we know, most of the Dai Li we encounter in our daily lives are the sleepers. Civilians, mostly dissenters or criminals who fall into Dai Li control and then are somehow brainwashed into following their orders. Their job is to terrorize and spy on ordinary folks like you and me." He laughs, waving his flowerpot disarmingly. "Well...I wouldn't call you or I ordinary-"

"Get on with it," Pakku interjects wearily.

"Righto, Grampakku!" Lee grins again, tossing the flowerpot from one hand to another. "Well, for a while, the whole concept of sleepers confused us. I mean, sure they're creepy and everywhere, but who was responsible for brainwashing them? And how did they do it? And why? And -"

"I'm assuming you have an answer to all these questions, Lee," Pakku quips sourly.

"Sounds like Grampakku's not interested in hearing all my stories," Lee says in a loud stage whisper. "Never mind! To cut a long story short...it was basically what we thought. The Dai Li organize themselves like a giant pyramid. The sleepers are the bottom, they're the most numerous and they also know next to nothing about the operation. It's safer that way. Then the next tier up are the agents." He pauses for dramatic effect. "At first we thought they were all brainwashed too. But turns out, it was actually a lot more complicated! There seems to be a hierarchy at work there too, with more senior agents knowing more the higher up you go. And we all know who's at the top of the chain."

The air in the room seems to turn even chillier.

"Long Feng," Pakku spits out the word as though it was a bitter taste in his mouth. "The most elusive of all of them. We've been trying to take him out for years. But the man is slippery, as though made of smoke and shadow."

"He's everywhere if you look hard enough," Lee supplies before his face falls. "But yeah, it took me forever to pin his movements. Even when I go under, he won't speak with me directly. But make no mistake, all the orders start with him. He's the real brain behind the whole thing."

"So how do we find him?" Suki blurts out impatiently, tapping her feet against the hard-packed dirt floor. "Sounds like if we take him out, the Dai Li get cut off at the head."

Lee clicks his tongue in dissent. "Actually, that's not exactly true," he says gingerly. "Even if we took out Long Feng, the agents at the top are well disciplined enough to continue what he started. We'd be back where we started in a week."

"And they're getting better at it too," complains the man sitting in the shadows. "A few years ago, you could tell a sleeper a mile away. They were basically zombies, all you had to do was use their code phrase to snap them out of their trance. But now? They seem basically normal! One could be sitting in this very room with us right now, carrying on as though nothing was amiss, and then the moment the Dai Li need them to, they switch back like a light!" She gulps with fear. "And forget about the code phrase! The sleepers today would laugh in your face if you tried to use one on them!"

A chorus of murmured agreements swells around the circle. Dread prickles its way down Suki's spine in goosebumps.

"We noticed that too," Lee laments. "Which was part of the big challenge in taking them down. Before you take out the guy at the top, you have to dismantle the network holding him up. But the code words don't work like they used to. Which means that their methods have changed. We have to get to the bottom of it, find out where and how they were doing it...and then undo it."

A stunned silence descends upon the group in the wake of Lee's words. Suki finds herself barely able to speak, her ears ringing with the steady drip drip drip of water leaking from the ceiling.

Then the door opens suddenly and everyone nearly jumps out of their seats in alarm at the sudden sound. The crunch of bootsteps against the dirt floor draws closer.

"Sorry I'm late," drawls a woman's voice that Suki finds very familiar. A shadow slips into an empty chair on the far side of the circle. "What did I miss?"

Lee's grin widens but before he can open his mouth, Pakku speaks up. "Lee was regaling us with a few of his tales."

"My condolences," snorts the woman and the familiarity of her voices itches at Suki's nerves.

"Hey, can we focus here?" Lee asks, a hint of petulance sliding into his voice. "We're only planning a top-secret mission to take down the most dangerous and well-organized syndicate on the continent here!"

Much to Suki's consternation, he throws a grin her direction before growing immediately solemn. "On my last undercover mission, I discovered where the brainwashing was taking place. Before, they would round up civilians at every regional outpost and take care of them then and there. Now, they're sending them to some hideout under the lake in Ba Sing Se to be brainwashed by some kind of bending trick. It's called Lake Laogai and you need to be an earthbender to get in or out."

"Well, it's a good thing we have an earthbender readily available here to assist you on this proposed mission," Pakku says dryly. "Oh, wait a second. Actually, we don't."

"That's okay! We found one of our own!" Lee replies brightly. "Coincidentally, he was the sleeper that the Dai Li tasked to take over Suki's village, except luckily the code phrase worked on him so he's back on our side now!"

"The code phrase worked on him, huh?" the woman with the familiar voice rasps. "They must have put him under a while ago then."

"That's what his story seems to suggest," Lee agrees. "Either way, it doesn't matter! Right now, we know the Dai Li are on the move. We have an earthbender with a vendetta, a Kyoshi Warrior, a girl who claims she can block chi, and my intelligence of the inside of Lake Laogai! We have basically everything we need to sneak in there, spy on their brainwashing operation to get enough information about how to neutralize the new sleepers, and get out safely!"

Suki's breath hitches, the damp air sticking like a knife in her throat. "Wait a second," she says hoarsely, frowning up at Lee. "What about you?"

Lee blinks at her in confusion. "What about me?"

Suki shakes her head, her confusion snatching at her senses aggravatingly. "You just said that you go under to spy on them. Does that mean they've tried to brainwash you? And if so...how do you snap out of it?"

Lee's mouth drops open as he gapes at her, truly caught off guard. Then he shakes his head and his usual infuriating smile slides back onto his face. "Trade secret?" he offers with a nonchalant shrug.

Suki scoffs, but Pakku cuts her off before she can probe any further. "This is your brilliant plan?" he asks witheringly. "Sneak in and spy on them? Sounds like an unnecessary risk, especially if it hinges on your...intelligence."

"It's our best shot," Lee argues. "We're running out of time and options. We need a way to disable the sleepers if we have a hope of stopping the Dai Li before they completely consolidate their hold on the continent!" He gestures emphatically with the flowerpot in his hands. "I'm convinced that right now, Lake Laogai will be as unguarded as it'll ever be."

"But not empty," Pakku warns. "And if you're caught, you don't need me to remind you how dangerous they are."

"I'm taking someone who can block chi," Lee answers, sounding somewhat as though he was talking to a slow-witted child. "It doesn't matter how many earthbenders are there if they can't bend."

For the second time that meeting, complete silence blankets the entire group. Suki isn't sure whether it's nerves, anticipation, or something else entirely that grips her chest in an iron grip and makes it hard to breathe.

"This idea is absolute lunacy," Pakku says flatly. "Like so many of yours. And yet...we are growing desperate for a strategy. The time to fight back is slowly slipping away from us with every day that passes and the Dai Li grow bolder."

"Are you saying that we can go along with it?" Lee asks excitedly.

"I'm saying we don't have much of a choice," Pakku admits grudgingly. He spares a glance at Suki, his pale eyes glinting in the dim torchlit glow. "You at least seem to have a sensible head on your shoulders."

Suki is so startled by the sour old man's unexpected compliment that she momentarily forgets how to speak.

Pakku gets to his feet, surveying the assembled group grimly. "You all have heard the plan. With luck - a lot of luck - these four will succeed in infiltrating the sleeper operation in Lake Laogai and bring back some more intelligence on how to undo the brainwashing for good." A note of uncertainty filters into his voice.

"Hey, as far as Lee's plans go, this one isn't actually that bad," the woman with the familiar rasp speaks up. Suki furrows her brow, distracted. Where have I heard that voice before? "Everyone else will just have to believe in him and hang tight. Do what they can to keep the Dai Li at large and away from their central base of operations."

Murmurs of dubious assent ripple throughout the circle.

"We can do that!"

"Keep them distracted, resist as best we can…"

"Exactly." Pakku reaches down behind his seat and pulls up a giant basket. He circles around the group, handing everyone something from its depths. Suki's hand closes around her offering and she examines it curiously.

"What are the flowers for?" she asks blankly, staring at the white lotus in her hand.

Pakku's lip curls. "Well, as far as anyone knows, this is a flower arranging class, isn't it? You can't leave without an arrangement."

Oh. "Right." Suki laughs nervously, watching as Lee winds his blossom into the dirt of his flowerpot and, feeling very foolish, does the same with hers.

"You have until the dark of next moon to make contact again," Pakku instructs. "We will all lie low until then. When you resurface, get in touch with Piandao. He will alert the Mad King himself."

Suki gasps. "The Mad King?" Surely he doesn't mean -

"What about you?" Lee asks, a touch impudently. "Where are you going?"

"Home," Pakku replies tonelessly. "With all that's going on...I suspect I'll be needed there sooner or later." He sighs. "It's a long way north."

"More secret old people business?" Lee guesses.

"No. More like secret saving-my-home-from-inevitable-oblivion business," Pakku replies grumpily. He plies Suki with his unnerving pale stare. "I don't have to tell you that everything you've witnessed here is top secret."

Suki shakes her head quickly, finding her voice. "You can trust me," she says firmly.

Pakku blinks and looks away. "Very well. Then we'll end this meeting here and go our separate ways. Make sure to use the back exit and don't all leave at once now."

"C'mon." Lee tugs at Suki's arm, pulling her upright. "Let's fill in the others. We've got a long way to go before we reach the walled city, especially if we have to report back by the dark of next moon." He makes a face. "That doesn't give us much time before the day of -"

"Don't worry about it," drawls the woman with the familiar voice as she slowly rises to her feet and steps toward them. "If you're in a rush, I can give you a lift."

Suki gasps, realization suddenly hitting her like the dim glow of torchlight illuminating the bounty hunter's immaculately painted face. "Jun?" she chokes.

The bounty hunter's red lips curl into a smirk. "Well, if it isn't Suki, the lone Kyoshi Warrior." Her fingers trace the whip coiled at her hip. "How on earth did you get mixed up in all this?"

Chapter 36: whispers in the dark

Chapter Text

disclaimer: even in the wackiest timeline we find ourselves in, it still ain't mine

author's notes: a really heartfelt thank you to everyone who's been kind enough to read and leave such thoughtful comments. writing is supposed to be escapist, but recently it's been challenging to separate fiction from reality, especially during this extraordinary global flashpoint of the civil rights movements. so, for what little it's worth, thank you for making a world of difference in mustering the resolve to continue writing this. kudos as always to aangsslut for beta-reading.

since it's been a while, i would recommend a re-read of chapters 10, 14, 23, 28 and 32 to get the most out of this one.

warnings for some adult content and a bit of mindfuckery that may be disturbing.

i give you…

southern lights

chapter xxxvi. whispers in the dark

i watched, i waited here
i feel you as you disappeared

"we never asked for this" / crywolf

In his dreams, he is always running.

He runs through darkness, through water, through snow. He runs without considering his path or destination, without any thought for what he has left behind.

In his dreams, they chase after him, wraiths of shadows and half-formed memories snatching at him with razor-sharp claws. He dodges and weaves ahead of their pursuit, both longing and dreading to be caught in their grips, to remember.

The ground beneath his feet sucks at his shoes and he sinks into it, swallowed as though by a swamp. A living swamp that reads his entire existence and spits it out before him in visions he can barely understand, people he can no longer recognize except for the searing wrench in his gut that tells him that he should.

And in his dreams, they speak to him in whispered commands and broken promises still weighing heavy on his soul with long-forgotten guilt.

He sinks further, struggling against the gravity of what lies behind him, an unseen terror, an unrealized yearning. His footfalls flag as he strains, sinking into the depths of a watery blackness that seems to consume him from the inside out. Struggling with limbs bound by invisible shackles.

He screams futilely, the air in his lungs, the very blood in his veins all dissolving to water, drifting away in liquid darkness like the shadows that pursue him.

And the nearer they get, the clearer their voices become, so close he can almost hear them whispering to him, a reminder for some part of him buried far below the surface.

I'll come back for you.

I'll always be with you.

I promise.

For a moment, he hovers, suspended in some invisible prison lurking far beneath the water's surface. He is neither drowning nor swimming, neither running nor following. Only trapped and waiting for something he cannot remember or describe, except for the fact that it is missing.

The shadows intertwine behind him, nebulous shapes as insubstantial as smoke, stretching toward him with voices whispering secrets to him that he cannot understand. But his entire body is frozen, and only the hypnotic pulse of his blood can answer back, jerky and erratic, beating in time to a rhythm not entirely his own.

In the end, all a man is, and all he will ever be, is written in his blood.

Then the shadows are upon him, coalescing into rows and rows of solid dark terror in identical shapes of flesh, bone and rock, sinister green light glinting off flowing cloth and sloping metal hats. They reach out with liquid hands that threaten to clamp around his heart and squeeze the very last part of him out into the still silent water surrounding him.

Part of him, the part weary of the tireless cycle of escape and rebirth, longs to stand and fight. To surrender to the agents of chaos that pursue him relentlessly, if only to hear the voices in his head more clearly.

To see their faces, to remember.

But in his dreams, all he can do is run. Run as though his very existence depends on it.

"Lee! Wake up!"

His eyes snap open. He bolts upright, hand halfway to his belt before he realizes his boomerang is safely stowed in his pack and he is dressed for sleep, safe in the bounty hunter's cramped apartment in the lower ring.

In the sleeping bag next to his, the Kyoshi warrior, Suki, peers curiously at him. "Were you having a nightmare or something?"

His breathing slows gradually as his hands drop back to his sides. He glances at the sliver of sky visible from the window, still pitch black and quiet as night.

"We have an important job ahead of us," he wheezes, the inside of his skull starting to pound with an immense headache. "You should be resting."

Suki doesn't even blink, propping her head up on her hands. "So should you."

Groaning, he presses his fingers into his throbbing temples. If he listens hard enough, he can still hear them whispering to him, the ghosts living in his dreams.

Her smooth forehead furrows in concern. "Do you always talk in your sleep?"

"What?"

She shrugs nonchalantly. "I can hear you, you know."

He gapes at her, his fingers momentarily relieving the pressure on his aching head. "What do I say?"

She snorts. "How am I supposed to know? You barely make any sense as it is."

He lets out a huff before falling aimlessly back onto his pillow, staring resolutely at the darkened ceiling. "Suit yourself."

He closes his eyes, willing the darkness to take him again and confront the faceless demons that pursue him relentlessly. In the faded space between wakefulness and dreams, some are shadowy and nondescript, fleeting like smoke on a breeze the moment he tries to think of them. Other details linger, disembodied fragments coalescing into a mass submerged deep within his skull. Like the smell of fire. Bloodstained snow. The sound of a knife whittling away at stone warm in his fingers. They pervade the edge of his senses, filling him with inexplicable terror with the unknown weight of their familiarity.

And at the tip of the iceberg stands a girl with a long dark braid, skin the same shade as his, and anguished blue eyes matching the colour of her garb. The strange waterbender from the Sun Warriors battle, whose face he does not recognize. His sister, if it could be believed. A sister he had left behind, abandoned, forgotten entirely.

Why?

"You keep apologizing."

Suki's voice cuts through his thoughts. He rolls over to face her. "What?"

Her faint blush somehow still manages to be visible in the low light. "You keep apologizing," she repeats patiently, her fingers drumming against the side of her face. "Over and over again."

He grunts. "If you say so."

"What are you apologizing for?" she asks curiously.

"How'm I supposed to know?"

"You don't remember." From the way she says it, he isn't sure if she's asking or telling him.

He shrugs uncomfortably. "Does it matter?"

"I think it's sad." Suki's voice rises quietly out of the darkness. "To remember feeling sorry, but not why. You're stuck in some endless cycle, never atoning, never being forgiven. Just...stuck."

You're him. You have to be, the mysterious girl choked out through poorly disguised tears. Before turning and helping him escape without another word. A gesture that would be bizarre if not for the deep familial bond it betrayed.

And he remembers none of it, except whispers in the dark.

His heart throbs a long-forgotten lament, fit to burst.

Instead, he says nothing and closes his eyes, the darkness behind his lids feeling more like home than anything he remembers.

A small distance away, Suki sighs and rolls over, her sleeping bag rustling secret whispers of its own.

At first, the only thing in sight are clouds, a never-ending expanse of opaque chilly white stinging their cheeks in cold pinpricks and blanketing everything in damp misery, matched only by the torrential downpour of rain emptying far below them.

Katara's teeth chatter together unconsciously as she wraps her cloak around her more tightly, layers of crimson velvets still not enough to ward off the chill of the night sky as somewhere below the northbound horde of flying sky bison, the land grows jagged and stark cold.

Somewhere through the air whistling against her ears, Toph manages to complain audibly. "How much more of this? I'm sick of not being able to see with my feet!"

Aang swivels back to toss an apologetic smile at her from where he sits atop the bison's head, clutching the reins. "Sorry," he answers, barely more than a silhouette in the thick cloudy haze. "We're almost at the Northern Air Temple! We'll stop there and rest for a bit before continuing north with the rest of the Air Nomads."

"Oh thank the badgermoles," Toph sighs with a loud soft thump. "How far away is the Northern Water Tribe now?"

"About a week."

"A week?"

The sound of rushing air swallows their bickering. Katara says nothing, curling up under her cloak and wrapped in silence. Her fingers are bone cold, and any urges to waterbend the dampness out of the air are tempered by the sheer weariness aching deep in her muscles.

"There it is." Zuko's soft voice interrupts Toph's complaints, making her start. A flare of orange light spills across the sodden saddle. "The Northern Air Temple."

With a sound of delight, Aang tugs on the sky bison's reins and a rumbling roar echoes around them. The world seems to slow, sway, and then pitch downward abruptly, the air gaining speed as Appa hurtles earthward.

Grudgingly, Katara sneaks a peek at the firebender hunched at the far side of the saddle. His focus is fixed on the gaps in the clouds where spiralling stone spires grow out of the mountaintops and pierce the sky, illuminated by the warm glow of fire burning in his open palm. The wind rakes through his dark hair as insistently as a lover's fingers and she clenches her own clammy hands in response.

It would be easy. So easy.

But she remains stubbornly in her cold, damp corner of the saddle, the rain suddenly pelting them mercilessly as they drop beneath the cloud cover, circling around the summit before finally landing with a resounding thump.

"Finally!" Toph leaps off the saddle without a second thought, a pillar of earth rising to lower her to the ground. She flops onto her back, breathing heavily and even in the dusky gloom, her face already seems less grey. "I never get sick of this feeling."

Katara wipes rain from her face. Pushing saturated hair out of her eyes, she accidentally catches Zuko's gaze before he averts his abruptly. The orange glow and curling steam of dying firelight dusts his cold white face with what looks like a blush.

She turns away too, sparing a glance at Aang. "I'm going to find some water," she says quickly, instantly feeling stupid as the rain drums down harder, soaking them all to the bone.

Without waiting for an answer, she stalks off purposefully.

The rain lashes the ground fitfully in her wake.

Overhead, the greying night sky is alive with the rumbling of flying sky bison arriving from seemingly every direction. Some are laden with uniformed Empire officers, others still with saffron-robed Air Nomads from every corner of the world.

A pang strikes in her chest at the thought of more innocents caught up in this battle, that this struggle between two brothers had somehow engulfed the world yet again with its violence. And now it was only a matter of time before it was brought before the doors of her people.

Well, someone else can fight their battles, Katara thinks vehemently, pushing her wet hair out of her face for the umpteenth time. Her drenched velvets lie heavy on her shoulders, weighing on her like a cold dead thing.

She veers off the well-worn pathway winding down the mountainside, away from the tamed temple gardens and into the overgrown forest lining the slopes, where the sound of running water rages against the rain slamming into the thick canopy overhead. No one else should have to die for them. We've done enough.

And if Zuko can't understand that, well -

It is only as the ground gives way sharply before her feet that she looks up in alarm, and then sighs with relief. The cramped growth of trees opens up to the banks of a river, swiftly flowing from the waterfall cascading down the steep rock face opposing her, already swollen from the torrential downpour opening up from above. For a moment, the sound of its roar distracts her from the ugly black cloud of her thoughts, the fine pinpricks of mist a welcome change from the rain and the chill dampness that had all but swallowed her during the long flight over.

A twig snaps behind her and her back stiffens at the sudden sound.

"Look," says Zuko's weary voice from somewhere behind her, "I'm sick of this. Can't we just talk?"

She exhales slowly through her teeth before crossing her arms and glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. To her surprise, he doesn't seem angry anymore, only wary. His hands are already upraised in a gesture of surrender.

"What do you want to talk about?" she grates, turning slowly to face him. Her arms fold across her chest protectively, the water pelleting all around her suddenly feeling as dense as armour.

Across from her, he shifts his weight uncomfortably. His wet hair, no longer pinned in place by his little flame crown, tumbles over his downcast eyes. "Are you still angry with me?"

Katara falters, barely able to hear him over the din of the water. "I thought you were still mad at me," she counters, fighting to keep her voice from shaking.

"I'm not mad," Zuko mumbles, still staring at his feet.

A huff of scornful laughter rises in Katara's throat. "You barely looked at me the whole flight over here!"

"Well, you were avoiding me too," Zuko points out, kicking aimlessly at the muddy ground with the scuffed heel of his boot.

"Well, I didn't want a repeat of our last little conversation in front of the others, obviously!" Katara snaps.

She expects him to flare up like he had the last time they argued, so when he only kicks the ground again dejectedly, she blinks in surprise. "Yeah," he agrees tonelessly. "Probably not a good idea. There isn't much privacy on a sky bison's back."

Katara scowls even as her face heats up. "So...what -?"

"I spoke to my uncle about what you said," Zuko says in a rushed voice and Katara is so surprised she nearly trips back into the river. "And - uh...even though I grew up idolizing him, it turns out there was a lot I didn't know about him. Things he did - or didn't do - I wish they weren't true. But they are." His bright gold eyes rise to meet hers and her mouth goes dry. "I was so mad when I found out. I was mad at him for what he did. Mad at myself for defending him. Mad at you for ripping back the curtain in the first place." He sighs. "I didn't want to feel that way, but I did."

The sound of the rain battering the treetops overhead grows deafening. Katara's mouth works wordlessly before she manages to get anything out at all. "I don't believe you. You're blaming me?"

"Not anymore," Zuko admits haplessly and the old fury gnawing at the pit of Katara's stomach suddenly surges anew before he continues haltingly, "but I told him he needed to do better."

To Katara it feels like the turn of the world itself screeches to a grinding halt. "You did what?"

"That's what you wanted, isn't it?" To her chagrin, Zuko has the audacity to look her in the eyes again.

Now it's her turn to sputter. "It's not your place to assume what I want! Couldn't you just listen instead of running off to your uncle and telling him what you think I need?"

"I don't know what you want me to do!" Zuko bursts out, grabbing at his hair in frustration. "Back on the ships, you said you didn't want me to do nothing, and now you're angry at me because I did something?"

"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, I don't need anyone's charity!" she exclaims, alarmed to find tears burning in the corners of her eyes. "I'm not weak and I'm not a monster. I can't be both and neither at the same time."

Zuko unconsciously takes a step toward her, his hand reaching for her before freezing and then dropping to his side.

Rain dribbles down the sides of her face. "Back at the capital...everyone had so many things to say about me, about people like me. But when everything went wrong, I was the one who stayed behind and fought."

"I know."

"I was the one who took down your sister. Your father." She breathes heavily, the memories moonlit and bloodstained and crushing her aching shoulders with the weight of the world. "Nobody helped me. Nobody gave me that. There isn't anything left for me to prove that I haven't already done. And it still isn't enough." Air rushes out her nostrils viciously. "After all that, people will still say that the only thing I have left in this world is charity."

"Who said that?" Zuko asks, his face splitting into a ferocious scowl.

A harsh smile breaks across her face as she glances at him over her shoulder. "Your dad, actually."

Zuko flinches visibly, his gaze dropping to the ground between his feet. "Of course he did," he mutters vehemently.

"He said that the only thing I had left was charity," Katara continues, the words gushing out of her like poison from a long-festering wound. "That he could be gracious to those who followed him."

Zuko stares at the ground for so long, she wonders if he has heard her at all. "You made him eat those words."

Something like fire swells inside her at that. "Yes. I did," she chokes out, pride whipping through her in a fierce wave. "And now I'm supposed to just, what, step back in line, grateful for what I'm given?" Her hands ball into fists, fingernails digging into her palms at the seething thought. "No. Whatever I did, I did on my own, without permission. I can't be quiet anymore. I can't just blindly accept things the way they are, not now, not when I know I have the power to fight for what I want!"

"And what do you want?" Zuko asks her bluntly.

It nearly overwhelms her all at once, the weight of all her desires unleashed from the long, lonely prison of her fear and self-doubt. She gapes at him, caught off guard even as the flame of her pride blazes through her, threatening to consume her from the inside out.

It takes a while before she can remember how to speak. "I want my life back. I want my destiny." Unconsciously, she steps forward, until the waves of the river lap at her ankles. "I want my home, my family, my friends. I want to be seen." The water ripples around her feet, agitated. "I want more...so much more than this."

Sympathy softens the hard lines of his face. "You can't have everything, Katara."

"But you can?"

He shakes his head, stepping forward to reach for her hands. "All I want is you."

But she steps further out of reach, holding his gaze fiercely even as the rain patters down along her skin and water soaks the hem of her tunic. "But only in a way that you find acceptable. Have you ever thought about what I want? That maybe I might want more from life than to just be content in your shadow?" She laughs bitterly. "That what we have is nice, but it's not a way forward?"

"Only because you're afraid," he says softly.

The water splashes around her in annoyance. "It's not enough to make up for everything else that's missing."

"So you'd rather leave us instead." Zuko's jaw tightens.

She crosses her arms across her chest, avoiding his accusing gaze. "I just need to find my place."

"Katara, your place is with us."

She clenches her teeth. The rain slaps the river, churning its surface. "Well, I need to be the one who decides that."

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches him shaking his head. "There is such a thing as wanting too much, you know."

She stares instead at the cascade of water gushing down the rugged mountainside to empty into the river surrounding her, trickling constantly on the edge of her senses. A humble, unstoppable force. "We'll see about that."

Only his silence rises in answer, leaving her to wonder whether he had conceded or abandoned the conversation altogether. The chill evening breeze picks up, the mists of the nearby waterfall filming into a cold wet sheen upon her skin. The smell of wet green earth and mossy rocks blooms thick in her nostrils.

"You could have what you wanted though. Most of it, anyway," Zuko says at length, venturing closer to the river's edge. "You don't have to give up on me. Or Uncle. If you talk to him, he could try -"

Her irritation strikes like a hammer against a forge, white-hot and instant. Closing her eyes, she grits through her teeth, "I have talked to him."

"And he heard you!" he insists, his voice getting louder and closer. "I see it with my own eyes, Katara. He's changing!"

"Not enough."

"But he's the best option we have! Between him and my father -"

She whirls on him, the water surrounding her splashing outward in a boiling hiss. "How is your uncle's charity any better than your father's?"

"At least Uncle respects you," Zuko points out pleadingly.

"Only when there's use in it."

"Katara," Zuko tries again in a pained voice, "he's not a killer."

"No, but he might as well be!" she snarls. The rain falling around her positively crackles with the electricity of her cold fury.

Zuko stares at her so levelly, for a moment she thinks he could have been carved from stone. Only his hair moves, rustled this way and that in the stirring evening breeze, before he speaks again, more delicately. "There's a difference between a killer and an enabler -"

"Tell that to my dead parents," she hisses, recoiling away from him. In her mind's eye, her parents' faces smile at her before the memory of soot-stained snow swallows them whole.

His fault.

Zuko flinches again, trying to mask the hurt fracturing across his face. "Fine," he croaks hoarsely, shaking his head. "Fine. I don't think we can see eye to eye here, so maybe we should just drop it."

"Maybe we should," she snaps back, her spite swelling heavy and black in the back of her throat. "Because from where I stand, evil is evil!"

He hunches away from her and part of her, the part wholly absorbed in the tangle of her wrath and hurt, blazes victoriously. "I know he's upset you, and his mistakes cost you a lot," he pleads, pinching the bridge of his nose wearily, "but he's my family. He's the only family I have left. Please..."

He trails off, but his unspoken request hangs between them, punctuated by the gurgle of falling water and the mist swelling between them until it was nearly impossible to see anything at all but the dense clouds hanging thick in the air.

Katara inhales and the cold wet air brings her hurtling back to the silence hanging thick like cotton in her ears and the growing part of her that only feels sick with shame and regret. "Fine," she breathes, holding the storm of her fury back, wondering how much further she could stretch to keep it at bay.

But then at length, Zuko sighs deeply before wading into the shallows toward her. His warm callused hands reach tentatively for hers, and he appears so sodden and miserable to her eyes that she doesn't pull away again.

"I'm sorry I got so mad at you when you said you wanted to leave us." His voice drops to barely a whisper as his hair shadows his downcast eyes from her view. "I was just - I was so scared of losing what we have -" His hands tighten around hers as his voice breaks off.

Katara feels herself soften even as she tries to extricate her hands from his grasp. "Zuko," she says as gently as she can, "you have to know this can't go anywhere."

She doesn't see the wince that flashes across his face but his shoulders go suddenly rigid.

"You don't think it's possible for us to be together," he says bluntly. His eyes blaze as they rise up to pierce her own and her skin burns with his touch.

Katara swallows carefully around the knot in her throat. "For years, all I wanted was to get to the Northern Water Tribe and find my brother there. Even in New Ozai during the polar wars, we kept hearing about how the Northern Tribe was still a safe place for our people," she whispers, hanging her head and feeling the warm velvet of Zuko's overtunic graze her forehead. She doesn't pull away and neither does he. "But he's long gone from there and now I'm about to return. At the head of an army that once tried to destroy us. Can you imagine what it would look like to my people if they also found out about you and me? How am I supposed to face them without looking like a traitor?" Or a whore?

Zuko's chest thuds uncomfortably against her skin with the steady pace of his heartbeat. "I guess it's more complicated than I thought," he mumbles, disheartened.

The hopelessness in his voice seems to match the confusing dark cloud that had been hovering over her ever since departing the capital, and strangely enough, it makes her feel better. Because if the path of her life didn't lead anywhere except for a tangled knot of missed opportunities and wasted potential, at least she wasn't alone. Zuko didn't make it any better, he couldn't, but at least he wasn't pretending anymore. At least she knew he could see the impossible twists and turns lying in wait for them, and in spite of all that...

He's still here. He still wants to be here.

Surely, in spite of everything else, that still had to mean something.

And in spite of the twin guards of her anger and resentment lashing out at everything she held dear, the warmth of affection still manages to surge in her chest.

She inhales deeply, breathing in the smell of the sweat and grime covering his skin and pulls him closer.

He gasps sharply, taken aback. "Katara, what - ?"

She presses her mouth against his still-moving lips without another thought, his protest evaporating as her fingers burrow and twine into the silk of his hair, the way they'd longed to throughout the entire journey north.

"I'm sorry," she whispers as he breaks away, gasping for breath.

Then Zuko's hands are wrapping around her waist and his lips part against her own. "I'm sorry too," he breathes, and something like steam seems to rush into every corner of her body and fill it with molten gold.

The logical part of her brain urges her to pull away before everything became too complicated again, but then Zuko's hot mouth trails along the line of her neck, making logical thought unimportant by comparison.

It blazes through her in a way the fierce glow of her anger and her pride hadn't, as she takes him by the hand and leads him knee-deep into the raging river, foaming where the waterfall cascades down the sloping rock face. It drenches them down to the last layer of their travel-stained clothes as they peel off and pool in a sodden heap by their feet.

Teeth chattering from the chill of the air, Katara runs her hands down the hard wet planes of Zuko's body. He is so warm that the jets of pressurized water drenching them turn to clouds of vapour, swirling all around them. She closes her eyes as he runs his fingers through the heavy fall of dark wet hair and pushes her flush against the steep rock face, her legs wrapped around his waist.

The falling water that tumbles all around them is ice cold to the touch, but when he presses the weight of his body against her, it turns warm in an instant. He braces his weight against the wall using one hand, and tongues of orange flame flicker from his fingertips. His other hand grabs her by the waist. All of the hesitance from earlier is gone as he moves in her urgently, until the mists surrounding them match the haze of pleasure fogging her mind and she begins to see stars. By the time he lowers her, she is gasping for breath and her entire line of vision is filled with steam.

"Not that I'm complaining," Zuko says hoarsely, disentangling from her one limb at a time, "but didn't you just say this wasn't going to last?"

Katara kicks aimlessly at a pebble rolling around at the bottom of the river as they slowly wade back through the shallows, saturated clothes dripping heavily in their hands. "I didn't say it was over," she answers, carefully avoiding the weight of his gaze. "I don't want it to be over." And then, because his answering sigh of relief makes her head swim, she groans and pushes her wet hair out of her eyes. "Come on, get dressed. We'd better head back before everyone notices we're gone."

The light of day had a way of making everything seem clearer.

Even in the perpetual gloom of Jun's lower ring apartment, the outstretched claws of his nightmares had receded into the back of his mind with the coming of daybreak. Instead, Lee preoccupies himself with the steel of his sword laid across his lap, polishing it to an oily, gleaming finish.

Today's the big day, he tells himself, winking at his distorted reflection. Today we crack Lake Laogai and expose the Dai Li as the brainwashing frauds that they all really are.

Heartened, he slides the sword into its sheath with a decisive click. The sound seems to slice through the anxious flurry of activity gripping everyone else in the apartment. Haru in the middle of practicing earthbending forms. Ty Lee stretching her leg over her head with the ease of a gymnast. Suki daubing warrior's paint thickly over her face, tucking her fans into their pockets sewn along her bodice and sleeves.

He glances out the window, where the thick shadows cast by the high walls nearly blot out

the burgeoning daylight so that only a narrow band of glowing clouds remains. A faint breeze rattles the windowpanes, whistling shrilly through the cracks in the sealing.

Then he slides to his feet in a smooth motion, holstering his sword across his back. "It's daybreak, people," he announces cheerfully, his fingers checking for the small boomerang tucked reassuringly into his belt. "Time to get going! Even for a group as well matched as us, the Dai Li won't exactly make it easy."

Before he knows it, Jun is saddling up the shirshu. The others clamber onto the creature's back, appearing somewhat skeptical of his confidence - Suki tight-lipped as Ty Lee closes her hand around hers with a reassuring smile. "It'll be fine," she whispers, her usual exuberance nearly concealing the nerves quaking her voice. "We survived the Sun Warriors...we'll be okay!"

Lee scoffs. "Guys, this isn't like that at all! The Dai Li aren't at their base, they don't even know we're coming! Seriously, relax a little, okay? You're cramping my style."

The girls roll their eyes at him but don't say anything more.

Lee grins as he vaults onto Nyla's back. Annoying the nerves out of his teammates was a specialty of his honed over the years. Angry people are predictable, nervous people aren't. "On your mark, Jun."

Jun digs her knees into Nyla's haunches, her makeup not quite concealing the odd blankness weighing on her face as though it were carved of stone.

The narrow streets and flickering lantern-posts of the lower ring whir by, seeming to melt into each other with the speed of the shirshu's footfalls. Only the great city walls remain constant, looming high above their heads like dark silent sentinels.

Then the cramped alleys and airless silence of the lower ring disappear as they pass through a gate in one of the thick walls and the air around them opens up. The glowing dawn sky wheels overhead, no longer obstructed by the walls and fully visible, reflected in the undisturbed glassy mirror of the lake below.

It feels like no time at all before Jun tugs on the reins and they all slide to a stop at the narrow band of rocky shore where the land abruptly drops away into the water's silent depths.

"There," Lee says, spotting the small glint in the water easily. "That's where the entrance is. Haru, if you could do the honours?"

But the young earthbender's face only frowns warily. "Are you sure?" he asks, springing off the shirshu's back. "This all seems familiar...but different, somehow."

Different. For an instant, the world turns dark before Lee's eyes. A starless night sky stretches over the silent black expanse of the lake, its waves bludgeoning the shore beneath his feet. Hungry, suffocating.

He tries to breathe but for a moment, he can't. His limbs are paralyzed encased in stone, the insides of his lungs submerged as he sinks helplessly, his blood beating in time to a pulse that is not his own. As though the prison of his nightmares had come alive to swallow him whole.

But then calm morning air rifles along his skin, and he blinks.

The rising sun in the blushing sky reflects harmlessly in the water's still surface.

"No, this is it," he assures Haru, mentally shaking his head of the unsettling image. He climbs out of the saddle to jump down next to him. "The Dai Li aren't exactly inventive, but this is where their operation is centred. Lake Laogai."

The insistent breeze seems to amplify his words and make it echo eerily, bouncing along the high wall towering behind them like a stark cliff face. To his annoyance, the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, even though it wasn't particularly cold.

"Where?" Suki hisses through clenched teeth, her eyes darting everywhere suspiciously, as though expecting to be ambushed at any given moment. "I don't see anything, unless you expect us to start swimming."

Lee rolls his eyes. "The entrance is buried beneath the lake," he mutters, pointing at the glinting metal ring anchored amid the shallows. "But if Haru can pull it up and build us a bridge, we can follow it to get to the trapdoor that leads down into their base."

Haru bends down to plant a hand on the ground, his brow furrowing intently with concentration. "I feel it," he announces, cocking his head shrewdly. "No problem at all."

Suki opens her mouth to say something else, but then Haru leaps back onto his feet and lunges into a quick earthbending form.

A low rumble fills the suffocating silence blanketing the air outside the city walls. Haru grits his teeth as a thin rocky bridge breaks the surface of the lake. The water churns dark and foaming in its wake, a thousand gnashing teeth threatening to devour anything that entered its depths.

For an instant, Lee imagines something floating in the distance. Maybe a ship, maybe an ice floe, he isn't sure. The sky gleams coldly with unfamiliar stars, and snow the colour of soot flutters lazily in the air.

Viciously, he rubs at his eyes until the vision fades as unexpectedly as it came. Earth to Lee. You're on the most important mission of your life. This is no time for dreaming!

He doesn't realize he's spoken aloud until Suki narrows her eyes at him. "Are you sure you're okay?" she hisses into his ear.

The bruise to his pride makes him splutter. "Of course I'm okay! Come on, let's get moving, we don't have all day…"

Before she can get another word in, he squares his shoulders and sets off.

The five of them traipse across the bridge's slippery wet surface. Jun turns around where she brings up the rear and whistles at Nyla. The giant blind creature bounds out of sight, its heavy footfalls fading into the eerie silence wrapping around the lake.

"Thanks for coming with us, Jun," Haru says from somewhere behind him. "You didn't have to, you know."

Jun snorts. "What, and hang around town waiting for the Dai Li to find me again? No thanks. I'd sooner take my chances with you lot." She lets out a cynical huff. "Even if Lee's plan is definitely going to get us all killed."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jun," Lee retorts sarcastically, without sparing her a glance.

In the distance, the morning sun peeks over the horizon, reflecting against the sparkling wave crests and illuminating the round door at the end of the bridge.

"There it is! The secret entryway into Lake Laogai," Lee announces, puffing out his chest as the five of them stand shoulder-to-shoulder around the round metal door set into the ground, its raised handles shiny and slippery with lake slime. "Am I awesome or what?"

Suki rolls her eyes again. "Actually, Haru did all the work. I don't know what you're bragging about."

Haru rubs the back of his neck bashfully, his cheeks flushing at the compliment. "Aw, thanks Suki -"

"We can thank each other once we're out of here," Jun interrupts harshly.

"Alright, alright," Lee complains, dropping to his knees and twisting at the metal handles with all his strength. "Gee, you're really turning into a real ray of sunshine, aren't you?"

A harsh screech dashes the air as the door slides against its hinges.

The sharp metallic smell permeates his nostrils, aquatic and decaying and reminding him faintly of blood. He chokes in surprise as the taste of it blooms brightly on his tongue. His wrists are clamped in stone, he struggles helplessly in a dark cavernous cell made of stone dripping with lake slime and lit by pulsating underground lanterns.

You're a tricky one, to hold out against us for so long.

"Hey!" A hand on his shoulder snaps him back to the bright light of day sparking along the waves. "Need a hand?"

Lee blinks stupidly as Haru kneels down across from him and also begins to tug. "What? No - it's okay - I've got it -"

Between their awkward combined effort, the door finally gives way with a loud clang.

"Good job, Haru!" Ty Lee says with a beam.

"Yeah, looks like Haru's the real heavy lifter around here," Jun supplies dryly, her painted mouth curling lazily at the corners. "You'd better start stepping up your game, Lee."

Lee huffs, annoyed with his own fickle nerves for betraying him. "Whatever." He peers down into the dark tunnel waiting silently below, yawning open like the mouth of some great beast waiting to swallow them down its gullet. Sunlight glimmers off the handholds studded at regular intervals down the sides of the tunnel walls.

Ty Lee shuffles uncomfortably. "Are you sure about this?" she asks anxiously. "I've never seen a blacker aura before."

Lee sighs loudly. "Come on. Just follow my lead. We'll be in and out before you even know it."

And without another word or thought, he plunges straight in.

The answering shuffle of movements are the only sign that the others have followed. Then someone swings the trapdoor shut and everything goes dark, except for the sound of water and the murky smell of the lake.

The hideout is as empty as it's ever going to get, he reminds himself, reviewing the plan in his head while steadily descending one step at a time. This is still going to work. Long Feng should be long gone from here. A smile works his way across his face at that last one and he files it away, mentally resolving to use it if he ever got the chance. He grins, thinking of how loudly everyone else would groan when they heard it.

By the time his feet find solid ground, he finds himself rather cheerful about it all. He ducks out of the way as the others jump down behind him.

The underground fortress opens up around him, a narrow tunnel hollowed through the lake bottom with ceilings rising dizzyingly high, protruding with glowing stalactites like sharp claws. A faint phosphorescence casts everything in a familiar green glow, while the sounds of their footsteps are muffled by the pressurized silence hanging in the air like a heavy blanket.

"Whoa," Ty Lee breathes, her voice echoing all around them. "I thought it would be a lot more claustrophobic down here!"

"How's the aura?" Suki quips, sidling up next to her and brushing off the front of her tunic with a grimace. "Any improvements?"

"No, it's still pretty black," Ty Lee admits, crestfallen.

Lee squints as he takes a step forward. Mud squelches loudly beneath his boot, threatening to suck him in whole like a sick swamp. The length of the corridor disappears into shadows curling along the rocky edges like soft black mist swirling toward him, until he swears he can hear it whispering to him, just out of earshot.

Those who you seek will never find you... those who you loved will feel only heartbreak and despair when they see your face...

Fear shrivels the insides of his chest, chilling his blood and urging every instinct of his to run away.

He runs a hand absently along his sleeve, under which goosebumps crawl along his flesh. A strange trembling sensation grips his fingers, his limbs, even his teeth begin to chatter, as though glimpsing an impending doom in the whispering shadows. It roots him to the spot in dread.

But the others pass by him, walking toward its clutches as though they don't see it. A cry wells in his throat, and he opens his mouth in alarm, to warn them -

"Hey Lee," Jun snarks, glancing at him over her shoulder, "are you waiting for a tour guide or something? Let's go."

Lee shakes his head vigorously, his foreboding trickling down his skin as though someone had dashed him with a bucket of icewater. "S-Sure. Follow me."

Steeling himself, he manages to push past the brick wall of his nerves blocking his path forward. The narrow stone corridor snakes ahead, coiling and twisting and burrowing even deeper underground. The faint green glow persists, the black mist of shadows growing thicker, as though every step brings him hurtling closer to oblivion...

He is so preoccupied with the blind fear shivering through his impulses that he doesn't register until far too late the warning rumble of sliding rock reverberating along the corridor walls. Of soft footsteps in rhythmic unison, the uniformed silhouettes materializing along the darkened bend in the path ahead.

He freezes, gawking in surprise. The boomerang clutched absently in his fingers, that he doesn't even remember withdrawing, clatters loudly onto the ground.

To his relief, the patrol of uniformed agents standing directly in his path appear just as shocked by the presence of intruders. They halt, four identical statues frozen in place. As though waiting for a command to strike.

The mud beneath his feet bubbles in warning. Behind him, Haru slams a fist into the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, a missile of rock and mud whizzes toward the enemy soldiers, spurring them from unnatural stillness to sudden motion. One of them raises a gloved hand. The missile deforms mid-air before disintegrating onto the ground in a harmless sprinkle.

Another raises their fists and the ground churns, propelling toward them in a rockslide.

Something pink catapults through the air. Before Lee finishes drawing his sword, Ty Lee pounces on the first enemy assailant. With a rapid succession of jabs, the soldier collapses into a puddle at her feet. The rippling in the ground slows.

"Dai Li scum," Haru taunts, somewhere behind him. "You're not so tough when you're only outnumbering me three to one!"

He plunges into another stance and the earth bursts open in a spray. Flying bits of rock and mud collide into another mass, suspended above the ground as it grows in size.

With a yell, Suki leaps onto the rocky mound, her brandished fans twin gleams of gold streaking through the darkness. Then Haru grunts and the suspended rocky mass charges back toward the enemy.

Suki tumbles off her mount before it crushes another agent under its massive weight. She slashes at one of only two agents remaining standing, parrying incoming punches with strong blocks of her own.

Behind her, Ty Lee resembles a flying pink ribbon twirling and looping through the air, effortlessly evading her opponent's strikes. With a flourish, she knocks her opponent off-balance before jabbing at his shoulder with ruthless efficiency.

Her enemy doubles over, clutching at his useless arm. The beads in the dark braided hair cascading out the back of the sloping metal hat clack together loudly, as he fumbles for the leather pouch strapped to his belt.

Then she lands squarely on his chest. He lets out a cry before she jabs him in a vicious flurry of movement. With a final gasp, he goes very still.

A sudden shout echoes through the underground corridor, as Suki lands a roundhouse kick to her enemy's nose. The last agent standing goes down with a nasty crack, head tilted at an awkward angle.

As suddenly as it had all started, silence descends once more, filling the air with its oppressive weight.

"That was something," Jun remarks, replacing her whip into her belt. "You kids make me look old."

"You're welcome," Suki declares, wiping off her fans before stowing them back into their pockets. "What do we do with these guys now?"

She nudges the nearest fallen soldier with the toe of her boot. Her face wrinkles with distaste.

"I say we move on," Jun urges. "The sooner we find what we're looking for, the sooner we can get out of here."

"We can't just leave all these bodies here," Suki argues, jamming her hands on her hips. She glances at Ty Lee for support. "How long before the next patrol notices them and clues into us being here?"

"The longer you spend sliding rocks around here, the more of them you'll attract in our direction!" Jun protests. "We can't waste any more time here!"

Here.

Their voices buzz angrily in the confining space like hungry buzzard-wasps hovering around Lee's head. Echoes ring through his ears, unbidden and somehow familiar, making his head hurt and teeth chatter.

Here we are safe, it hisses as he grabs at his pounding head, here we are free.

The dim green light shimmers hazily, the world around him seeming to sway unsettlingly. His entire body is paralyzed, pinned in place by stone manacles, his very blood frozen in place even as it thrums with urge to run -

A hand clamps around his wrist.

He nearly jumps out of his skin, swearing the stone manacles binding his limbs together were real.

"Up ahead!" Suki snaps quietly, her grip on his wrist already slackening as he shakes her off more harshly than he intends.

She points to the bend in the corridor where the echo of footsteps grows steadily louder. In the faint green glow, a pair of silhouettes stretch along the ground around the corner, clawing toward them like a dark, long-fingered hand.

Shit.

Heart hammering, he flattens himself against the wall, yanking Suki next to him. She makes a small surprised sound but thankfully doesn't protest further.

Ty Lee leaps through the air, landing on one of the stalactites hanging from the ceiling like a spider lying in wait. Jun and Haru duck behind an outcropping of stone creeping out along the wall opposite them. A tentative motion of the earthbender's hand brings up a large boulder directly in the middle of the pathway, its sudden presence crudely shielding the four downed agents from view.

Not a moment later, another Dai Li patrol stalks around the corner. A pair this time, Lee notices, his breathing quickening. Not so bad. We could maybe take them out too if it comes to it...and then that won't leave many left at all guarding this place.

They march past steadily, mud squeaking loudly under their boots in the close subterranean air. The wide flat brims of their metal hats cast their faces in shadow, but green light glimmers off the golden emblem sewn into their dark uniform, the beads woven through their long braided hair, the curving leather pouches strapped to their belts. Their tunics swish in their wake like the waves lapping at the lakeshore far overhead, and the thought of it makes him feel strangely sick.

Fighting it, Lee tenses, his hand closing instinctively around his boomerang. Next to him, Suki reaches for the first of her several concealed fans. He can feel the tension gripping her body like a coiled spring, her breathing a warmth against his shoulder.

His breath hitches as the agents slow to a stop, peering downward to study the large, irregular boulder sitting in the middle of the pathway that had certainly not been there before.

This is it, he thinks wildly, sliding the curving metal out of his belt and meeting Haru's panicked gaze from across the corridor. Any moment now, they're going to find the bodies. Three, two, one -

On cue, the pair of agents look at each other. Some unspoken communication flickers between them. One of them glances up at the corner of the ceiling where Ty Lee crouches in wait.

Then, to Lee's shock, they simply sidestep the boulder and continue their patrol, seemingly oblivious to the four poorly-hidden bodies and obvious signs of scuffle.

"What?" Suki hisses in his ear as the pair recede further away. "How did they not notice that?"

But Lee doesn't say anything. Only when the pair of agents turn around another bend in the corner and disappear from sight does he dare to breathe again.

"Something's going on," Haru insists, scrambling out from behind the outgrowth of stone he'd hidden behind. "There's no way the Dai Li could be that inept."

Ty Lee lands neatly from her perch. "I could have sworn that one guy saw me," she says breathlessly. "I was this close to dropping on him when he turned around and kept walking."

"I don't like this," Suki declares in a low voice. "They must know something's up. It could be a trap."

Four pairs of eyes land on him expectantly.

He flounders, weighing their options in his head. On one hand, Suki had a point. The Dai Li had no reason to avoid conflict with them unless they had something worse planned in store for them. They were evil like that.

But on the other hand, every moment they spent on damage control was a moment lost from their original purpose of being here in the first place.

"We're going to have to split up," he decides grimly. "Haru and Ty Lee, you guys come with me. Suki and Jun, follow those guys and take them out when you have a chance."

"Got it," Suki agrees, cracking her knuckles slowly. "Do you care what happens to the bodies? How will we find you?"

"Wait for us where we came in," he instructs her. "If we're not back in an hour, get yourselves out."

Jun shrugs noncommittally. "Getting out sounds good."

"We're on it!" Suki gives him a mock-salute, her big grey eyes gleaming fiercely. "Stay safe, all of you."

Lee opens his mouth to say something clever, but she turns on her heel and dashes off. The words knot clumsily on his tongue as he watches the two of them chase after the pair of agents. Just before she ducks out of sight, Suki glances back at them over her shoulder, her painted face all but glowing in the dark.

A strange feeling rises in his chest at the sight, the dread of familiarity. In the space of a blink, the Kyoshi warrior's face changes.

Lee finds himself staring at a warrior of a different sort. A man in blue, his face painted stark white and grey, contorted with pain. His hands clasp to his side, blooming red with blood. Run, he breathes as it spills and stains the pure white snow all around him. Run and don't look back.

He nearly yells, stumbling back and falling flat on his rear. Something rams against the inside of his skull with the force of a battering ram.

"Lee! Are you okay?" Haru's voice is asking in his ear, straining to keep quiet.

Who's Lee? For a moment he simply clutches at his head in confusion, before everything flickers back to reality.

"Fine," he croaks. "Just - a headache."

"It's your chi, it's all tangled up," Ty Lee informs him importantly, peering at him with her big grey eyes. Her face wrinkles in distaste. "Your aura's turning almost as black as this whole place!"

He groans loudly, heaving himself back onto his feet. "Look, if I wanted to hear some fortune teller nonsense, I'd ask for it."

Ty Lee shrugs innocently. "You were the one who asked me to come with you."

Lee grits his teeth in annoyance. "Well, your chi-blocking is our best bet to get out of here in a pinch if things get ugly."

She smiles at him, fluttering her eyelashes. "You're welcome."

He huffs loudly. "Come on, we're wasting time. We need to get to the lowest level of the hideout and find the black cells there."

"Black cells?" Haru echoes with a frown.

Lee nods shortly, even as prickles erupt down his spine. "Only really senior agents have access to them. I could never get in there during any of my missions. But whatever they do to turn people into sleepers, it happens there."

A sudden sound interrupts his train of thought. The telltale rumbling of rock sliding, the murmur of low voices filtering toward them, amplified by the echoes of the curving subterranean hallway. Boots sloshing against the soft mud, growing louder with each step.

Lee whirls on the others, wide-eyed. Gesturing wildly at the rock wall next to them, until understanding dawns across Haru's face.

Without a word, he plants a hand against the rock and it crumbles away to form a small hole. Lee leaps into the small space, Haru and Ty Lee cramming into it behind him.

The voices get louder and louder before the walls reform, sealing them in an airless pit of pure darkness. All sound snuffs out, leaving only the pounding of Lee's heart drumming wildly in his ears.

With a swift motion, the earth slides out from beneath them. Gravity hooks under his navel and he fights a yelp as they plummet deep underground. Lee blinks sightlessly in the unyielding black as Haru tunnels them into the foundations of the secret underwater fortress, the pressure popping loudly in his ears.

Then, as abruptly as the motion started, everything slams to a halt. Lee leans against the walls of the cramped pit, his knees suddenly trembling with the effort to keep him upright.

The wall in front of him cracks down the middle and slides open, revealing the deepest level of the Dai Li fortress.

"This must be it," Haru whispers, the weight of the air muffling his voice. "The black cells."

The sight of their goal so close within reach should have heartened Lee's spirits, so he does not yet understand the fear coiling around his heart like a gloved fist. Or the overwhelming urge to flee to safety, as though it was one of his dreams made real and he could only run for his life from the shadows reaching for him with outstretched fingers.

But then Ty Lee and Haru are climbing out of the pocket in the wall, clinging to the shadows along the walls of the lowermost corridor until it becomes clear to them that it is entirely deserted.

"Lee! Come on!"

Ty Lee's harsh whisper shatters the rigid silence gripping like a vice around his limbs. He resists the strange urge to call them back, the unrealized danger brimming in every empty, harmless corner, before shaking it off and resolutely following the others.

The lowest level of the fortress yawns open all around him. It is darker than the others, the ceiling disappearing into shadows where the dying green light doesn't pierce. The hallway is lined with barred iron doors and the air lies thick and close, as eerily still and imperturbable as the lake itself.

"This is it," he breathes quietly. "Now's our chance to find out what's going on inside those cells."

Even as he says it, a clammy hand clutches around his heart in an unspoken warning.

The others don't notice his sudden hesitation, already moving further down the hallway of barred doors, peering into one cell and then another, in search of an elusive, pervasive, terrible truth.

With a sigh, Lee is about to follow them when a flash in the corner of his eye makes him pause.

He wheels around, suddenly transfixed by the metal grille gleaming in the middle of one of the doors hewn into the rock face.

Lee blinks sightlessly in the creeping black, wondering if he imagines the murmurs barely audible to his ears. He staggers toward the door, gripped by a sudden morbid curiosity. His hands close around the cold iron bars and, his heart beating very painfully as though any moment would be its last, he dares to glance inside.

At first, all he can see is darkness. The dampness of the rock crawls down to the ground, a ceaseless, maddening sound.

Drip.

It transports him back inside, clamps around his wrists and ankles binding him to a stone chair in a small airless room, lit only by a single lantern that renders the uniformed benders standing before him to mere shadows, distinguishable only by the pointed metal slope of their hats and the hypnotic motions of their fingers.

Here we are safe, they intone as the stone bites into his skin and he tries to scream and fails as something dissolves him from the inside out, here we are free.

The lantern circles around him in a steady rhythm, like a glowing pulsing heart beating in time to the trickle of water droplets oozing down the walls.

It claws into him, bending his body, his blood, his very essence into its thrall.

Drip.

His breath hitches in his throat as the sound rips him back to awareness in the cryptlike corridor. Staring stupidly into a darkened chamber. Empty except for the large chair lined with restraints lit by faintly glimmering lanterns.

Not every day do we come across someone as strong-minded as you...

His heart cascades into his boots at the sight of it as he takes an uneasy step back, and then another.

Drip.

Then he turns on his heel and scrambles away from the empty, darkened room, desperately trying to escape its malevolent aura and the strange visions cramming his aching head.

He stumbles, catching up to the others lined up outside another cell, stone still and white-faced. Without saying a word, Ty Lee points to the door and the flickering green light casting strange shadows from within.

Voices, low and soft, hiss from inside the cell, murmuring like the whisperings that haunt Lee's nightmares.

So close. The truth rears its gargantuan head, close enough to shake the foundations of his world with its weight, but hiding just out of sight.

Haru slides back to the empty cell adjacent to the occupied one. Unperturbed by its locked door, he instead places a hand against the rock wall. It cracks open, and he slips inside, Ty Lee hard on his heels.

Mouth dry and dread pulsing a strange rhythm in his blood, he follows them into the darkness.

Behind him, the rock crumbles as it slides shut.

He blinks in the airless cell, cramped and barely lit by a single green stone lantern in the corner. In the darkness, the shadows feel alive. His skin roils in revulsion from the touch of their outstretched hands as water drips slowly down the walls.

The silhouette of a large chair nearly fills the far side of the room, propped against the supporting wall and bulging with restraints. If he stares at it long enough, he can almost feel the cold stone hard against his back, the restraints biting into his wrists and ankles, clamping around his forehead making it impossible to look away…

But the sound of more rock grinding redirects his attention back to where Haru and Ty Lee are huddled around a small hole carved into the wall adjoining the occupied cell next door. He sucks back a shaky breath and kneels behind them, squinting into the small spyhole. The cold ground, hard and slick with wet slime, presses into his knees with a damp chill.

At first, Lee can only hear fragments, floating disembodied syllables unintelligible to his confused ears. His blood runs cold in the suffocating air, even as the thrill of near discovery thrums through him.

The whisper of bootsoles treading lightly in the cell next door grows steadily louder. Lee's face scrunches in concentration as the voices grow suddenly clearer. A man and a woman, speaking low and fierce among themselves, the words foreign to his ears and yet, strangely familiar in a way he cannot place.

"...one more for the taking, this one will be ready soon…"

"And not a moment too quickly. So many were lost in battle, we must replenish their numbers quickly if we are to help our friends free their lands from tyranny."

"This one is ready. A full day must he rest undisturbed, so that our efforts take full effect. He will rise as one of them, loyal to those who seek to drive those Empire tyrants out of here and free their lands."

"What the hell are they saying?" Haru hisses in his ear, frustrated.

Lee gapes at him, his heart hammering inexplicably with dread. "You can't understand them?"

"You can?" Haru's voice rises with disbelief. Ty Lee nudges him in the ribs with her elbow and they fall silent, Lee transfixed by the conversation unfolding in the adjacent cell.

"What an honour it is to serve this cause."

"After everything those monsters did to us, this is the least we could do. To use our power to free this land, as we could not save our own."

"Finally, a place where we can be free. Where we can hold our heads high and proud."

Something like horrified understanding clicks in Lee's mind. He scrambles back, his heart racing, staring wildly at Haru and Ty Lee. "They're not from here," he stutters, even while wondering how he could know such a thing with such conviction. "They're helping the Dai Li, but they're not the Dai Li."

Haru and Ty Lee stare at him as though he's grown an extra head.

"What do you mean?"

"How can you know that when they've been speaking in whatever the hell language that is?"

The inside of Lee's skull drums a frenetic beat. He clamps his hands against his forehead, gasping in shock at the sudden pain.

In the end, all a man is, and all he will ever be, is written in his blood.

"Because…" he chokes, struggling to breathe, "because I -"

A sudden slamming sound shatters the air. The adjacent cell door bangs open, wood and metal scraping along the rock. The harsh staccato of boots march inside.

Lee freezes, heart hammering madly against his chest as everything goes deathly silent. The air around them is swollen with tension, everyone suddenly on high alert and too afraid to breathe. He swears that the sound of his wildly beating heart will betray them at any moment.

"Well, Atka, I must commend you on a job well done," declares a new voice, booming loud and clear as though the speaker intended for them to overhear. "Your work on this bounty hunter over here was exemplary."

Then more loud footsteps enter the cell, followed by the sound of a struggle. A girl struggling, shrieking, her voice horribly familiar -

"Jun, what are you doing, you're making a mistake, don't do this -"

Ty Lee gasps, her fingers flying to cover her mouth. "Suki," she breathes, her eyes wide and horror-struck.

Lee thinks he might be sick himself. But nothing prepares him for the sound of Jun's voice, flat and monotonous and utterly unlike herself. "The Kyoshi Warrior. As promised."

"Excellent work, Jun. And the others?"

"They're here somewhere," Jun intones, to Lee's mounting shock. "They will have found some place to watch your agents at work."

"So they're watching us right now, is he?" The speaker's voice grows satisfied. "Excellent."

The next thing he hears is the sound of Suki yelling, "Let go of me!" The piercing crack of a whip, the rumble of earth sliding, moving, crashing -

"We have to help her!" Ty Lee cries.

Haru slams a fist into the ground, his mouth a grim slash. The wall in front of them fissures open, revealing an unsettling scene. Three agents in Dai Li uniforms, a prisoner bound to the chair and slumped over unconscious.

Jun, standing by the door with glassy eyes and her whip in hand. And tangled in its shining coil, facedown on the ground, is a bloodied and disheveled Suki.

Then suddenly, chaos reigns. Boulders catapult through the air, smashing into the spots where the three Dai Li agents stand waiting.

Suki wrenches a hand free, fumbling frantically at her bodice. A glint of golden metal slices through the air. Bounces off the corner of a sloping hat, slashing an agent across the face with a hollow ringing sound.

The enemy agent staggers backwards in surprise, clapping a hand to his cheek. Then he lashes out with a fist of stone, so quickly Suki doesn't even see it coming.

It smashes into her abdomen with brutal force. Red dribbles out of her mouth, vivid as the paint lining her features.

She crumples to the ground under its weight, as silent and unmoving as the stone itself.

Somewhere very far away, a part of him is screaming.

A whir of pink flashes across his sight. He blinks and the scream is coming from Ty Lee as she jabs the Dai Li agent ferociously and repeatedly until he crumples at her feet like a limp rag.

She lifts her head to glare at the remaining two agents, her grey eyes blazing bright with unshed tears. One of her opponents shifts into a bending stance sinuously, gloved hands outstretched at the ready. From beneath the shadowy darkness of the sloping metal hat, the beads in his long braided hair clack together warningly.

Then Ty Lee charges, sailing through the air as though she had mastered the art of flying itself. She twists and somersaults, her fingers coming out to jab the opposing agent at the pressure points.

And then, as she arcs through the air mid-flight, her body abruptly freezes.

A sudden fear works its way across her face as she hovers, somehow suspended in mid-air and utterly incapable of movement. She struggles, trying to break free of her sudden paralysis but unable to, as though gripped in place by an invisible unyielding hand.

On the ground before her, the uniformed agent twists his gloved hands.

Ty Lee lets out a bloodcurdling shriek as her body somehow contorts in answer to the agent's twisting fingers, her limbs spreading and knotting as though her sinister opponent controlled their movements with invisible strings.

Then her opponent's hands chop downward and Ty Lee falls, collapsing beside Suki's crushed body. Only her face is capable of movement. Lee sees the tears spilling down her eyes, helpless and horror-struck.

"What the -" he hears Haru gasp from the other side of the small cell. "What did you do to her, you monsters?"

The ground beneath the young earthbender rises up and hurtles toward the agent doubled over and holding Ty Lee in place with cruelly twisted hands.

But the other remaining agent, the woman with the fierce low voice, whirls on him. With a motion of her knobbly fingers against the leather pouch strapped to her side, a jet of pressurized water appears as though out of nowhere and smashes into Haru. He yells, topping off his rolling mound of earth.

Then the woman approaches him, bending into the same unnatural stance as her partner. With a jerk of her fingers, Haru's body snaps straight and unmoving as a board, only his eyes roving around him in widening fear.

And then the two of them turn on Lee, who grabs blindly at the sword strapped to his back and points it at Jun with shaking hands. "You - you betrayed us!" he accuses, the ground beneath his feet seeming to turn to quicksand, threatening to suck him entirely under. "After everything we've been through? How could you?"

But Jun doesn't say anything, doesn't move, doesn't even blink. In fact, she appears scarcely aware of everything unfolding around her.

Fighting for his breath, he turns on the two Dai Li agents, who could not be Dai Li. "What did you do to her?" he demands, brandishing his sword at them.

The woman hunches toward him, her dark gloved fingers outstretched and clawed like the phantom terrors haunting the forbidden spaces inside his head. "The same thing we did to you, resistance spy," she grates, her low voice strange and accented. "The same fate that awaits all you Empire sympathizers."

Her fingers curl shut. Without warning, his breath suddenly chokes in his throat, as though they had squeezed around his neck instead.

Suddenly everything swims before his eyes. He floats upward in the liquid blackness under the lake, shackled and drifting away from himself as the woman reaches into his struggling body with watery fingers.

You'll think yourself free, but somewhere deeper than thought, the truth will fester…

White hot pain blazes through his temples and a strangled yelp of pain congeals in his throat. The sword drops from his hands, clattering to the ground heavily. He doubles over, falling to his knees, clutching desperately at his head as the pounding ache within his skull nearly threatens to split him apart.

That we reached into your body, your mind, your blood, and then…

His fingers clench tightly into fists, digging into his skin even as the liquid darkness pries his grip open, sweeping him away on wild currents until he is utterly lost, while the heartbeat of pulsing light fills his empty insides like a hollow puppet.

We broke you.

"What...what did you do to me?" he grits out.

But then an almighty grinding sound rips through the air as the very walls of the small cell slide downward. Dozens of uniformed agents pour through to surround them.

A balding man with a long braid stands at their head, surveying the agents' immediate brutal handiwork with satisfaction.

"So this is the elite task force that madman sent to learn our secrets?" he asks, stepping up to stand dispassionately next to Suki, Haru, and Ty Lee's motionless bodies. He glances down at them, nudging Suki's head with his foot. "Tsk. And a Kyoshi Warrior too, no less. What a waste. I hope my men weren't overzealous in their attempt to neutralize this one."

"She lives," the woman replies curtly, glancing over her shoulder. "But only barely. She will need to be healed if she is to be of any further value to you."

"No doubt one of your talented brethren can arrange that, Atka?" the man with the long braid returns, removing his foot from Suki's face. It lolls back toward the ground listlessly.

"Arrluk will heal her, my lord. Do you wish to send her for reconditioning as well?"

"That will depend on the cooperation of her co-conspirators." The man's mouth curves into a cruel, knowing smile. "As with everything else, you will find it possible to move mountains if you have the right leverage."

Two uniformed guards spring from behind him in unison and drag Suki's body out of sight.

Lee struggles upright and lets out a gasp as waves of pain pummel into the pit of his stomach. He retches uncontrollably, cold and dripping with sweat as bile rises into his mouth.

"And who but our tricky friend, Mr. Wang Fire, could we expect to find at the heart of it all?" The man with the braid kneels in front of Lee, his cruel smile dancing before his feverish eyes. "I would introduce myself. But we've met before, haven't we?"

Lee pushes past the nausea that threatens to overwhelm him as he meets the man's cold green eyes. "L-Long Feng," he mumbles through the sick dribbling from his mouth. "What do you mean, we've met before?"

Up close, the man is smaller than he seems, with a brutish face and green eyes so pale they might have belonged to a corpse. His moustache and goatee hang down the front of his tunic like thin black cords. "You mean you don't remember?" He laughs, baring sharp yellowing teeth and everything sways sickeningly.

Lee clamps his eyes shut again, feeling the shadows closing in around him, brandishing their sharpened claws, ready to tear him to shreds.

"Oh, look at him. He's falling apart." Long Feng's cold voice grows more distant as he rises to his feet and turns away. "Atka, it seems like whoever was responsible for reprogramming this one did a rather sloppy job."

"We tried. But the false persona never lasts," the woman, Atka, replies with an edge of perplexity in her low voice. "No matter how many times he comes back here, no matter how many times we try to fix it…"

"Never mind," Long Feng says with the softness of a cat-owl toying with a vole-mouse caught in its grasp, just before closing in for the kill. "He's just about outlived his usefulness. All we need from him is the whereabouts of that madman and his damned rebellion."

Something wedges under Lee's chin, tilting his head upward to meet Long Feng's cruel gaze. "And you're going to give it to us, or your pretty warrior friend will be the first to pay the price for your foolishness."

Suki. Her grim, painted face flashes through his mind, laced with instant regrets. This is all my fault. I led her straight into their trap.

"Now that we have you, it will be short work to stamp out your pathetic rebellion once and for all," Long Feng intones, contemptuously removing his foot. Lee's head slams back into the ground, and he grunts, blinking stars out of his eyes. "Face it, Mr. Lee. There's nowhere left to run."

His voice grows more distant, echoing in the deep silence in the black cells under the lake. The darkness swims across his vision, as his gaze darts helplessly from Haru and Ty Lee's paralyzed frozen bodies to the menacing uniformed woman bearing down on him.

With a motion of her hands, the lanterns in the walls begin to pulsate in a strange rhythm.

He lets out a cry as invisible manacles creep around his limbs, paralyzing him to the spot. His blood freezes ice-cold and still in his veins, entirely heedless of the desperate flail of his pulse.

Darkness shaped like demons, memories wearing strange faces all swirl around him, assaulting his fracturing mind in a cacophony of colour and sound.

It lumbers over him, growing larger in size until the foundations of his world collapse.

Lee unravels.

Chapter 37: the gates of winter

Chapter Text

disclaimer. fun fact: aujuittuq is actually an inuit village with the northernmost population in canada and literally means "the place that never melts" in the inuktitut language.

author's notes. i'm always so touched by your enthusiasm, it really means so much that you continue to show up even when i do unspeakable and unforgivable things like the entirety of last chapter.

on an unrelated and unfortunately grimmer note. i'm a fairly private person and don't usually hijack these notes for personal news but in this case i felt i had to make an exception. i was recently diagnosed with cancer and now find myself with a long and harrowing journey ahead of me. i want to make it clear that writing this has always been my number one passion and escape. i haven't allowed life to get in the way of it so far, and i plan to keep it that way. but in a time of global pandemic where we are all isolated from each other, i have to go through this experience cut off from my village. so my one request to you, dear readers, is if there is any positive energy or encouragement you could take the time to share with me, that would go a long way in supporting this girl through a really difficult and lonely time.

much love to aangsslut as always for beta-reading and being generally awesome.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xxxvii. the gates of winter

do you remember the sun
that we knew
falling down?

"the conference of the birds"/ *shels

The afternoon sunlight slants through the cracks in the red velvet drapes drawn tight against the windows, illuminating the faint swirls of dust mites. Their careless dance a far cry from the oppressive silence blanketing the small room crammed tight with an oversized low table, and too many people kneeling around it, trying to focus on the giant parchment map unfurled on its surface. A fire crackles in the hearth, its heat sweltering in the airless space.

Immediately in front of the long table sits the empty, ornately carved throne, overlarge and almost silly in the cramped room. But in spite of the grime and fingerprints left from its hasty transport from the wreckage of the throne room, it still glints malevolently.

In her corner, sweating under her crimson finery, Mai sits so perfectly still that everyone else in the room all but forgets about her presence. Just as her mother had taught her.

The low drone of crickethoppers in the distance punctuates the uneasy whispers of the men poring over the large map. Azula sits among them, at the foot of the oversized empty throne. Unlike everyone else, she is markedly silent as she studies the various coloured markers positioned along the drawn ink lines. To the untrained eye, she would appear regally impassive. But Mai recognizes the flare of her nostrils, the hard set of her mouth, the way her fingertips dig into the silk pooling in her lap...

She's furious.

Then suddenly a pair of reedy voices announce from outside the door, "All bow before His Radiance, Emperor of all the land, Phoenix King Ozai!"

That's an awful lot of pomp for a king who can barely walk unassisted, Mai can't help but think dryly to herself as Ozai slumps into his throne and waves his attendants away with a feeble motion. When did he have the time to acquire all those new titles?

"Well," the self-declared Phoenix King says hoarsely. "My faithful war cabinet. How assuring to know that even in my absence, you have not been sitting idle." He smiles before choking abruptly. His entire body doubles over, racked by a coughing fit.

Azula stirs in concern. "Father, perhaps the healers should take another look at you -"

He raises a hand to cut her off. Panting, he struggles upright. Even in the golden light, his face appears clammy and pale. "Tell me," he rasps, the words clawing out of his throat, "tell me of our victory at the Air Temples."

Zhao puffs out his chest even as Azula's eyes flash dangerously. "We deployed the experimental war balloons constructed by War Minister Qin," he explains proudly. "They successfully evened the battleground between us and those overproud Air Nomads."

"War balloons?" The corners of Ozai's mouth curl upward. "Ingenious. War Minister Qin, where did you come up with these?"

The former Interior Minister bobs his head nervously. A quivering slip of a man, Mai thinks privately, who appeared more distraught than honoured to have contributed to the war effort at all. "Our counterparts across the sea," he all but squeaks. "They supplied the designs. I merely ordered their construction."

Ozai chuckles softly. "No doubt the Dai Li are still squatting in their factories, trying to get their own prototypes off the ground. But they are no match for the machine of our industries, the drive of our people. And what a resounding success, to have finally defeated the Air Nomads in their home territory! Sozin himself could not have done so."

"This is a great victory for us," Zhao speaks up again, pointing to the white markers on the map. "By striking aggressively, we have put your brother's forces on the defensive. There is no shelter for them, no rest. We have doomed them to scurrying for their lives, like a flock of vole-mice seeking a safe hole to burrow in."

Snatches of laughter echo around the table. Azula's face remains impassive, but her eyes narrow slightly.

"Excellent," Ozai breathes. "You have done me great service. The great, proud Iroh, fleeing for his life. My perfect older brother Iroh, finally humbled." The flickering firelight reflects in his eyes, dancing madly. "What I would give to have him finally under my heel. To see the hope fade from his eyes."

"Zhao," Azula speaks up suddenly. "How large a force accompanies my uncle?"

A smirk flits across Zhao's face. "Six ships," he answers with a snort. "Only six ships, limping from shore to shore -"

"How large a force accompanies my uncle now?" Azula interrupts impatiently. "If you must report numbers, Commander, at least make sure they are up to date."

Zhao blinks, caught off guard. "Well, Princess -"

"By all accounts, six ships reached the Patola mountain range." Azula plucks a single yellow marker from a cluster at the edge of the map and turns it slowly between her clawed fingers. "How many left after your heroic attack on the Southern Air Temple?"

A line appears in Zhao's forehead. "Six," he answers stiffly, "and we leveled the temple off the mountaintop! And of all the defenders, we left none alive."

"So you did," Azula allows, sweeping half the yellow pieces off the map with the back of her hand. "What of the survivors?"

Zhao's smile strains at the corners. "I don't understand -"

"The survivors, Zhao," Azula repeats, the downward slash of her mouth mirroring the expression now slowly spreading across her father's face. "The Air Nomads who fled the wreckage of the Southern Air Temple before the battle. The Air Nomads who united with their brethren from the remaining three corners of the world. How many of them remain?"

"I -"

"Five hundred," Azula cuts him off softly, sliding the remaining yellow markers across the map to join with the white ones in a slowly deliberate motion. "Five hundred Air Nomads and their sky bison have also joined my uncle's forces, in the wake of your attack."

Zhao clenches his jaw as Azula continues to move pieces across the map, until at last a sizable cluster of yellow surrounds the small white marker. "Is this the victory you claim to have won in my father's name, Commander?"

"With all due respect, Princess," Zhao begins angrily, a vein pulsing visibly in his temple, "you made your position clear at our last meeting. You were against engaging with your uncle's forces at all. But as anyone with actual military experience will tell you, this is a tactical victory. We have sent a warning to all who would support him of the fate that will befall them if they cross us -"

"Commander Zhao," Azula interrupts, her voice sweet as honey, "I may not have as much military experience as you, but indulge me. If our enemies have left this battle with a greater number of forces than they entered, then how can this be considered a victory? Tactical or otherwise?"

"It doesn't matter. We struck fear in your uncle's heart, cut him off from all quarters and shelter." Zhao points to the map with a shaking finger. "He has only one place left to go."

"The Northern Water Tribe," spindly General Bujing agrees, as Azula slides the cluster of white and yellow markers toward the top of the map. "Our scouts report that Iroh's army heads north, with greater speed than we can hope to intercept -"

"Because they have gained sky power now," Azula concludes in a cutting voice. "Which will make attacking six ships all the more difficult. To say nothing of once they reach the North Pole."

"My daughter speaks with the wisdom of a seasoned tactician," Ozai breathes and Azula instantly brightens. "How would you propose to continue this fight, Zhao?"

The commander flounders under the unexpected scrutiny, but squares his shoulders resolutely. "Your Radiance, we have come too far to turn back now! So they have fled up north - let us follow them! We have naval and air power and plenty of it, I might add. Why hesitate? We can assemble a force greater than the world has ever seen and bring the fight to them."

Ozai nods slowly, considering Zhao's words with something like amusement. "Azula?"

Azula swallows before speaking. Mai watches her knuckles turn white, the knots under her skin straining visible and tense. "The North Pole is rugged and inhospitable territory," she says with hard-won steadiness, even as her nails dig into her trembling palms. "The Northerners know their land well, and they will control both sea and sky. It is a long journey north, and even if our forces do not deplete their strength long before they arrive, Commander Zhao has also forgotten one more thing." She taps at the top of the map, where the cluster of white and yellow lie in wait. "It is the heart of polar winter. They say entire days pass by in complete darkness up there. We draw our power from the sun. I would be fascinated to hear how Commander Zhao proposes to achieve yet another one of his tactical victories while readily giving his enemies such advantages over himself."

"Oh, don't worry, Your Highness," Zhao waves off Azula's concerns with a hearty chortle. "If firebenders draw their power from the sun, then the waterbenders similarly rely upon the moon." He smiles wolfishly, relishing some private joke that Mai doesn't quite grasp. "As your humble servant, I advise you to focus your considerable wisdom on governing, Your Highness. Leave the military tactics with the officers who have real experience under their belts."

"Well said, Commander Zhao." Ozai claps his hands together. "Your fighting spirit is exactly what our nation needs." He pushes to his feet unsteadily, heedless of the way Azula's face blanches at his proclamation. "As a reward, I entrust you with command of the entire fleet. May you lead them up north and deliver us the greatest military victory history will ever see."

"Father." Azula's voice is tight again as Zhao kowtows to the ground before Ozai's feet in gratitude. "With all due respect, Commander Zhao was promoted to his station only recently. Perhaps someone with more naval experience should be given command, like Admiral Chan -"

"Azula." Ozai's quiet voice lashes like a whip. "My word is final, a law unto itself. It will not be swayed. Certainly not by the will of an unseasoned girl."

It seems to Mai that he might as well have struck an open blow to Azula's face. She closes her mouth instantly, the muscle in her jaw clenching as her father turns back to Zhao. "I give you leave to muster all our forces at once. May Agni smile upon your journey...Admiral Zhao."

His attendants swarm back to his side with some unseen signal. With no small amount of fanfare, he sweeps out of the tiny councilroom.

"Well, Princess," Mai hears Zhao say as he gets to his feet. "I'll take my leave. You'll be hearing about my great victory any day now. I expect your presence to grace my welcome parade when I return."

"That would be a feat indeed," Azula says coldly, her golden eyes fixated intensely on the set of the pieces upon the map. "You were quick enough to dismiss my cautions out of hand. But when you are closed in at the ends of the earth, cut off from your supply lines and the sun itself, with your enemies drawing power from the long lonely nights, perhaps you will remember the misgivings of this...unseasoned girl."

Zhao tips his head in a show of acquiescence. "Surely His Majesty didn't mean it as a slight. But destiny is at hand. And I have known for quite some time that it would be mine to bring the proud Northern Water Tribe under our heel, once and for all."

Azula stares down her nose at him suspiciously. "You sound particularly confident about that, Zhao. It's almost as though you've kept something to yourself. What secret are you withholding from us, I wonder?"

Zhao's smirk widens into a bloodless, self-satisfied smile. "Well, knowledge is power, Princess. I see you understand that in theory, even if there have been few opportunities for you to practice it."

Mai's blood runs cold at the dangerous glint in Azula's eyes as Zhao continues loftily. "As for polar night...make no mistake, by the end of my time there, the dawn will come again. But not for our enemies." His teeth flash in a predator's gloating grin. "There will be no end to the darkness that awaits the Northern Water Tribe by the time I am through with them."

It seems to Mai that even Azula didn't know how to respond to the man's chilling promise. He's either delusional or a genius or some combination of the two.

"Hm," Azula sighs finally, her face drawn into an expressionless mask. "Let's hope it produces more impressive results than your last tactical victory, then."

Zhao's teeth grind together audibly.

Azula turns away from him haughtily, already preoccupying herself again with the set of the pieces on the map. "Oh, and Zhao? Send my regards to my traitor of an uncle and pitiful excuse for a brother when you see them next."

Zhao nods stiffly before turning on his heel and storming out of the room.

Mai silently rises to her feet and makes her way over to Azula as the crowd around the table disperses. "What a piece of work," she says lightly, as Azula picks up a single red piece on the southwestern edge of the map and squeezes it tightly between shaking fingers.

"Unseasoned," Azula hisses under her breath, clenching her fist so tightly the red piece in her hand begins to warp. "He wants seasoned, I'll show him seasoned. He can't treat me like Zuko. I will make Father proud of me."

Unbidden, a pang of pity flares in Mai's gut as Azula replaces the red marker back onto the board with shaking fingers. The piece is deformed at the edges, crushed under the weight of an invisible pressure.

She opens her mouth to say something but is interrupted by another arrival.

"My princess. Your Highness." Admiral Chan bows on one knee behind Azula, his mailed fist pressed into the palm of his other hand. "May I have a word?"

Azula doesn't even look at him, her gaze focused intently on the map with all its pieces. But Chan continues, his voice rushed and low. "It has been near a fortnight since I saw my son, Your Highness. I - I would happily do anything in my power to ensure his safe return home, Princess."

"Yes, you've said so before, Chan," Azula answers dismissively, without looking up. "Countless times."

The Admiral's body stiffens with ill-controlled desperation. "We will be sailing north soon. Zhao leads us, but with respect, it sounds like you have your own suspicions about how reliable the man can be."

Azula goes very still, a coiled spring waiting to unleash. "The emperor has spoken, Chan. Zhao leads the invasion of the north."

"A fool's errand," Admiral Chan says so softly Mai wonders if she imagines his words. "You recognize it as much as we do."

"There is no we," Azula snaps, finally turning around to face the Admiral bent on his knees at her feet. "There is only the will of the emperor, and those who would oppose it. One more word, Admiral Chan, and I will have that traitorous tongue ripped from your mouth."

The Admiral flinches under Azula's wrath but holds his ground. "If I sail north at Zhao's side and keep his worst impulses reined in," he breathes desperately, outstretching his hands, "would that be enough to satisfy you, Princess? To do my part in ensuring a decisive victory over your uncle's growing alliance...Would that be enough to free my son?"

Azula shrugs. "Perhaps."

"Perhaps?" Admiral Chan repeats incredulously, his clear face beginning to mottle. "What else would you have of me? When will you release my son, Your Highness?"

"When I am satisfied by what I have seen from the House of Chan, and you," Azula answers, with a sniff. "You are dismissed."

"But -"

"Dismissed, Admiral!" Azula whirls on him, the air around her seeming to positively crackle. A few of her hairs flutter out of place, dislodged from her pristine topknot. "Unless you would prefer to be reunited with your son in a far less honourable fashion."

And without a further word, she sweeps out of the room. Admiral Chan shakes his head and follows, muttering darkly under his breath.

At last, Mai remembers to breathe again.

Carefully avoiding the sight of her father's companions or anyone else important, she picks her way through the palace estate and back home, an uncharacteristic flood of panic welling inside her.

So Ozai's recovering from his injuries enough to start calling the shots again. And despite being outranked on the war cabinet, Zhao seems to be leading all the military decisions.

Not that Mai particularly cared. Decision-making and politics remained the same drudging bore as ever. But when the cabinet was being run by madmen supporting madmen, and all logical voices were being pushed to the side, Mai could no longer pretend to be bored by it.

War Minister Qin, so obviously uncomfortable with his role in decimating the Air Temple. Admiral Chan, who just wanted his son safe at home. Even Azula, her father's most terrifying right hand, had recognized the folly of pursuing Iroh's fleet.

But Ozai's ambitions could only be satisfied with blood and Zhao was willing to give it to him, no matter the cost. And everyone else could only be silenced or hold their tongues and look the other way.

Even Mai's own father had said nothing. He only sat at his place at the table, so silent he might have been invisible. A trait that Mai inherited all too well, spent a lifetime honing until here she stands, her father's perfect shadow. Content to walk like him, talk like him, climb like him.

Even think like him.

Now he would remain at his post, content with his cosseted existence behind the walls of the palace while consigning thousands of their countrymen to leave their homes and sail to the ends of the world. And for what? A chance to defeat the disgraced General Iroh and his men, when they were already so defeated that they needed to seek refuge in the most inhospitable place in the world to escape their wrath.

And Mai had sat so silently, watching the war cabinet plot to invade the north with as much force as they saw fit. General Iroh's fleet, mostly comprised of the soldiers she'd grown up with. She had never thought of them as friends, but she'd known them, experienced the world outside the capital with them.

For all that she'd derided General Iroh's soft touch to ruling, she never wanted the fate for him that Ozai and Azula seemed to want. And Zuko, he was in danger too - he needs to know -

Barricading herself in her father's study, Mai tries not to think of Azula as she sits at his desk and writes the first words of her treason with shining black ink onto fresh parchment.

Zuko,

I'm probably the last person you'd expect to hear from. I'm risking a lot writing to you like this, but I can't put this off any longer. You're in great danger.

All of you.

The cold smites with the blow of a thousand fists.

By the time the Northern Water Tribe materializes out of the eternal darkness as faint bands of white on the horizon, the sharp arctic air has gathered like a leaden weight in Zuko's chest until it feels as though his heart has been all but consumed by the growing icy mass. He coughs and buries his face into the woefully inadequate velvet cloaks that have grown stiff in the icy air, his entire body gripped in the kind of agony reminiscent of being burned alive - a sort of frozen fire that tore away mercilessly until only scars and bones remained.

"You just have to breathe through it," Aang had explained earlier, infuriatingly calm while the rest of them bundled up under layers of every scrap of clothing they could find. "Warm clothes and cold air are all just an illusion. Only your inner spirit is real."

"Twinkletoes, you're one word away from getting your inner spirit shoved overboard," Toph had grumbled in response, her skin tinged blue in the grey half-light.

Even Katara shivered relentlessly. Throughout the journey, she had been huddled with Toph underneath a pile of blankets for shared warmth, muttering to herself about being away longer than I thought. A part of him wishes she would sit by him instead of Toph. Maybe the touch of her body would do a better job of warming them than Aang's silly breathing tricks had. But he remembers the last conversation they had alone together, in the waterfall behind the Northern Air Temple, and so with a heavy sigh heaved through clenched, chattering teeth, he keeps his distance.

Now, though, there's nothing but unbridled joy at the white walls growing more monolithic by the moment. "The walls of the North Pole – we made it!"

"Hooray," Toph grunts without enthusiasm. "I hope it's warmer down there than it is up here, or I might just ask you to end my misery now. Quit while we're ahead."

"It's so big," Katara continues, her face scrunching up as she squints ahead. "I'd heard the North Pole was bigger than the South, but how did they manage to rebuild like that after the wars...?" She trails off, crawling to the front of the saddle, right behind where Aang sits atop Appa's head.

Toph huffs loudly, tugging the blankets tighter around herself to block out the cold. "Maybe Sparky's dad realized it wasn't worth sailing all the way to the ends of the earth just to stick it to you guys anymore."

Katara tosses her a glare that could peel flesh from bone. She opens her mouth to say something nasty in response but a sharp whistling sound cuts her off.

A large chunk of ice hurtles toward them. Zuko's instincts leap to action even as his frozen limbs struggle to catch up. Fire glows half-heartedly at his fingertips by the time Appa swerves out of the way.

The ice arcs over their heads. Pinpricks of shocking cold scatter down on them like a light rainfall.

"Wh - what was that?" he croaks through chattering teeth. He swivels around as the ice cuts through the air and crashes back into the waves roiling far below them.

"Looks like we have incoming!" Aang shouts, grabbing tightly at the sky bison's reins. Appa groans in protest as a barrage of ice chunks fly in their direction, before he plummets downward to evade the incoming salvo.

Zuko can barely hang on to the side of the saddle for dear life as gravity threatens to lift them all clear of its leathery surface. At its head, Katara struggles to find her footing as they descend to near the level of the cold polar waters.

With a twist of her outstretched wrists, the incoming ice missiles turn to streams of water, looping gracefully in a shining curtain before tumbling harmlessly back into the sea and forming a thick ice float, a smooth platform rising high enough above the surface for Appa to land on safely.

Zuko slumps with the impact of Appa's landing. He rubs his hands together, trying with no avail to find some spark of warmth left in him.

Something like the sound of drumbeats pounds in his ears. At first he thinks it's just the roar of his blood, but as he looks up in the distance, he spots four narrow longboats cutting across the water's surface with unnatural speed. The walls of the Northern Water Tribe loom stark and white behind them.

A cracking sound of the world splitting beneath them fills the air. Appa bounds back into the air with a roar of surprise and a slap of his flat tail. But the water churning beneath them rises more quickly, massive tidal waves surrounding them on all sides and swelling to their crests high overhead.

Then it comes crashing toward them with the unrestrained might of the furious sea. Zuko buries his head in his arms as the roar of the water drowns out every other sound.

As abruptly as the chaos started, everything suddenly turns still and chillingly silent.

Zuko peers upward, still bracing for impact. To his confusion, the cold dark swirl of water that envelopes them is now frozen solid, trapping them in the hollow of its icy depths. A sudden movement in the corner of his eye catches all of his attention.

Katara leaps to her feet. Before Zuko can say anything, or even think for that matter, the thick layers of ice trapping them explode.

Through the deafening commotion, he is still able to hear the distant cries of shock as chunks of ice punch the water's surface in an angry barrage. A grim slash of Katara's wrists reforms the float beneath them as Appa lands unsteadily with a relieved thump.

Then she jumps down from the saddle, landing cleanly on the ice. With a push of her arms that looked deceptively effortless in the half-light, the roiling water surrounding them goes dangerously still before carrying the four incoming boats back on a cresting wave.

"Stop!" someone cries in the distance - a man's voice. The boats flounder as the water slaps hollowly against their hulls. "Hold the attacks! There's a waterbender with them, can't you see?"

The boats bob along the water's surface as they limp forward, drawing close enough for Zuko to perceive the dozen or so men aboard each, hooded and bundled up in shaggy bulky layers that instantly fill him with envy. A man at the head of the foremost boat pushes back a fur-lined hood, staring at them in awe.

"A woman?" Zuko hears him say, his voice thick with confusion. A swell of murmuring from the boats rises and falls like the cold iron water sucking at the edge of the ice.

Then the water's surface freezes over, trapping the boats where they wait as Katara stalks to the edge of the ice. The arctic wind roars and whips her hair around her face like a strange dark halo.

"That's right," she calls back, her voice shaking with a newfound strength that makes Zuko's hair stand on end. "I'm the last waterbender to survive the war." She pauses and an edge enters her voice, as unexpectedly sharp as the ice cracking under the weight of the boat hulls. "From the Southern Water Tribe, at least."

Now the murmurings turn into a low angry buzz. Zuko is reminded of the hummingbees that clustered along the fire lilies lining the gardens back home.

From the depths of her blanket cocoon, Toph scowls in the direction of the boats. "Those guys sound awfully confused by the concept of a woman bending. I hope they're not all simple."

"I think there's more going on here that we don't understand," Zuko says cautiously, suddenly remembering a discussion from a lifetime ago, back in his uncle's pavilion over a cup of tea and a game of pai sho. "The Northern Water Tribe might be sister to the South, but they did things very differently."

Then the man at the head of the longboat straightens. "I am Atanek of Tunerk," he calls out, outstretching his hands to gesture at the silent men surrounding him and on the vessels nearby. "And these are some of our tribe's finest warriors. You must understand that the times are perilous...but no matter. It is our honour to receive you and your…" he peers dubiously at the six-legged sky bison towering behind her and the pathetic shivering strangers perched on its saddle, "...companions, Katara, daughter of Hakoda."

Katara starts, taken aback. "You know who I am?"

"Your reputation precedes you," the man, Atanek, answers simply. "And so did your brother."

Katara's back is to Zuko, but he perceives her crumple slightly, as though the words had struck her squarely in the chest. "Sokka," she says breathlessly. "Yes. He - he was here, some time ago..."

Somewhere in the distance, Zuko perceives the buzzing from the boats recede to a ringing silence at the mention of Katara's brother's name. A feeling of foreboding trickles like ice water inexplicably down his spine.

"He was," Atanek answers at length, and Zuko notices the men around him exchange glances with each other suspiciously. His face twists into a scowl as the Water Tribesman continues in measured tones. "Regrettably, he left us to pursue some...other endeavours."

Now it is Katara's turn to go very still, as though carved from the ice itself. "I see."

"Hopefully you will stay with us longer," Atanek cuts in smoothly, comfortably oblivious to the strange tension gripping everyone like the icy bite of the wind. "In times such as these, we in the Tribes must protect our own."

Katara remains quiet for so long, Zuko wonders if she's heard him at all. Somehow, he gets the sense that she's thinking very hard about something. He wonders how much of it had to do with the mysterious disappearance of her brother, and the way the Northern Tribesman had seemingly waved it off without another thought.

"Chief Arnook and the rest of his band chiefs will be pleased to welcome another of our sisters from the south," Atanek continues as Katara's silence gathers weight, seeming to press down on everyone like a cudgel. "We were fortunate enough to evade the brunt of the polar wars. Many of your Southern brethren were able to rebuild their lives here in the North with us, far from the Empire's reach."

As though to punctuate his sentence, the man casts a pointed glance at Zuko and his golden crown, glimmering bright as a flame dancing on the lifeless grey water.

"The Empire is partly why I'm here," Katara says finally, before swallowing hard. "But I also wanted to come home." She hangs her head, her arms crossing across her chest protectively. "I'm so tired of fighting…"

The men on the boats exchange more surreptitious glances with each other. For some reason, it fills Zuko with rage, his temper flaring hot enough to momentarily forget the unforgiving cold.

"Well, you've come to the right place, Katara," Atanek tells her gently. "Here in the Northern Water Tribe, you will never have to fight again. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Toph's face twists into a scowl. "That sounds like some patronizing bullshit right there," she complains darkly.

"I wonder if Katara sees it that way," Aang answers uncertainly. "After all she's been through, doesn't she deserve a break?"

"I guess. But this guy just seems sketchy, even though he talks all pretty," Toph mutters before she shudders and digs deeper into her pile of blankets. Her voice rises up in a small thread. "He reminds me of my dad."

Zuko's eyes narrow as Katara clears her throat and continues. "But the fight isn't over. Civil war is tearing the Empire apart. Whatever is left of the Empire's forces that are united against Ozai is following us, and they will be here soon -"

Atanek raises a hand, cutting Katara off. "Who is that accompanying you? He's from the Fire Nation, no doubt."

Zuko vaults off Appa's back, landing heavily on the ice behind Katara. As he brushes off his knees and straightens, he swears he sees the men on the boats recoil at the sight of him.

Katara gestures at him to join her. "This is Prince Zuko."

A rush of air, like a collective gasp of horror, fills the air alongside the groan of the boat hulls rocking in the water.

"Ozai's firstborn son?" someone asks incredulously.

Zuko straightens to his full height, as the chill wind unfurls his cloak and threatens to tease his hair out of its crown. "Yes. But I am my uncle's heir now, in the wake of -" He clears his throat as it closes up dangerously, and presses on. "Katara spoke the truth. We are trying to build a force to rise against my f - against Ozai, and we need your help in achieving this."

Out of the corner of his eye, Katara's lip curls upward, as though fighting a smile.

Atanek is the first to regain his voice. "It seems there is much for us to discuss. Are more of your kind to arrive on our shores?"

Zuko nods curtly. "Yes. We four flew ahead. But my uncle is coming, with a host of some ships and most of the Air Nomads who survived the attacks. They will be here by nightfall."

"Air Nomads?" A puzzled look crosses Atanek's face. "United with Iroh, the Dragon of the West? These are perilous times indeed." He turns to his men and barks commands at them in a sharp tongue that Zuko doesn't recognize. But as he glances at Katara, he is surprised to see her mouth drop, understanding dawning in her eyes.

"What's he saying?" he whispers suspiciously under his breath.

She shakes her head from where she'd been staring transfixed at the men on the boats. "He's telling them to take us into the city while the rest of them wait -" Her voice breaks off and she shakes her head. "Sorry. I'm really rusty. I haven't heard my language in such a long time…" She dabs at the corner of her eyes, which have misted over unexpectedly. "I thought I'd forgotten it."

Every part of him longs to take her mittened hand in his, right then and there. Instead, he shoves his hands under his armpits and kicks aimlessly at the ice, scuffing its shiny surface.

Finally, Atanek turns to them. "We have stationed our patrols to receive the rest of your company and bring them to host within our walls." To Zuko's surprise the man meets his eyes directly as he motions for them to follow. "But it is half a day's journey to Aujuittuq, and Chief Arnook will want to speak with you and your uncle directly."

"Where?" Zuko asks bluntly in his surprise.

"The capital," Katara hisses back, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow. "Our places have names too, you know."

"Oh. Right." Zuko blinks, at once feeling incredibly foolish. Blood rushes to his face as he bows his head. "Thank you. I'm honoured by your…hospitality."

Atanek smiles then, a thin smile that didn't reach his ice-coloured eyes. "Come. It is warmer inside."

The great white walls of the north loom behind him in wait.

As they follow one of the longboats to the shore on Appa's back, it strikes Zuko that he wasn't exactly sure what he'd been expecting to find up in the Northern Water Tribe. Maybe some desolate stretches of sparse tundra, a few settlements scattered in their midst. A stark, meager existence carved out at the ends of the earth, in defiance of his father's attempts to quash it out permanently.

But when he faces the walls of the north only to find them almost equal in height and grandeur to the Great Gates of Azulon guarding the southern sea, he finds himself shrinking in awe.

"They're huge," he hears himself say uselessly as the doors lower, allowing them passage into the locks.

Once they pass behind the walls and wait patiently for the filling water to raise them to the level of the canals leading inland, it seems to Zuko that it felt slightly warmer. Perhaps it was that they were mostly sheltered from the biting wind. Or more importantly, perhaps it was the blessedly thick blue fur-lined parkas the men in the boat guiding them ashore heaped upon them once they made landfall.

"Surely it can't be too cold up here for a firebender?" Atanek asks, smirking as he hands Zuko a third parka.

Zuko doesn't bother replying. The sting to his pride was insubstantial next to the cold of polar winter. Instead, he pulls it on over top of the two parkas he already has layered over his crimson velvets, not caring for how ridiculous he must look, and sighs with relief as sensation finally starts to return to his frozen skin.

A few paces away, Katara finishes buttoning up her parka and steps back, peering at her reflection in the stirring waters with too-bright eyes and cheeks flushed from the cold. The bulky winter garb somehow fit her better than any of the crimson Fire Empire uniforms ever did. A strange feeling rattles through him, the sense of never seeing her as she truly was until this instant, wild and free, surrounded by snow and sea, clad in the blue-and-white furs of her people.

And the sense of her never feeling further out of reach, as though the ice beneath her could break off at any moment and she would drift with the current of the water as it carried her back to her land, further away from him with every passing heartbeat...

Behind him, Toph was having a different problem. "How am I supposed to see with all this snow?" she demands, stomping her feet petulantly as she rounds on Aang. "Where the fuck did you bring us, Twinkletoes?"

Aang, declining the offers of sensible warm clothing, rubs the back of his neck and laughs nervously.

Then Atanek waves them onto another boat, bigger and flatter, meant for shallower waters.

Zuko scowls at the handful of Tribesmen seated on the boat already. Up close, he realizes they are all far younger than he initially thought, but still watching him with suspicious eyes. Feeling very much like he would have vastly preferred to stay on Appa's back, he sinks into the vacant seat next to Katara, careful to leave enough space between them to quell any idle talk.

Not that they needed his help.

"...no way she could stop all of us," grumbles one, with a milky complexion and feathers woven through the thin braids in his hair. "We just didn't expect there to be a waterbender with them. Even a weak one."

"What're you going to do? Go crying to Hahn again?" snorts another, a tall gangly fellow leaning against the side of the boat. "Tartok's just pissed he lost to a girl."

"Well, if I'd been serious, she wouldn't stand a chance," insists a bulky guy with a serrated tooth dangling in his ear. "All of us. Even Sangilak got caught off guard, and that never happens! Right Sangilak?"

A veritable mountain of a man with a warrior's brawny build and a half-shaven head simply grunts noncommittally.

"I'll bet we could all take her," continues the guy with the tooth earring, before he smirks. "But that would be beneath us, wouldn't it?"

"Says the guy who's only next in line for the chieftain's seat because his cousin's a girl," scoffs the gangly one, adjusting his sealskin belt. "You'd better be glad Bunik's a healer because I'm not convinced she wouldn't kick your butt otherwise."

"Shut up, Bastard."

"Go suck an iceberg, Unnuk."

Then Atanek jumps into the head of the boat and all the bickering halts immediately. At a nod from him, the men at the rear of the boat sweep into a waterbending stance in unison, propelling their vessel further inland.

True to Atanek's word, the journey to Aujuittuq spans half a day's length. In an attempt to stave off the cold and hunger that have begun to gnaw away at his insides, Zuko turns his attention to the settlements carved into the ice and all the people occupying them.

Huddled behind walls and watchtowers carved into the ice, clouds of smoke rise from clusters of simple structures, pitched from snow and deep-dyed cloth. People dressed in the shaggy furs of the Water Tribes mill about their business, tiny figures in the distance. Hauling buckets of water, traversing between the simple tents, perched atop the defenses with spears and shields in perpetual vigil.

It reminds Zuko of the numerous small villages strewn about the Fire Nation homeland. A humble existence for humble people of humble origins. They resembled more of what he expected to find in the aftermath of the polar wars. And as their boat sails further inland and the lines on Katara's face deepen, he wonders if she feels the same way.

As though reading his thoughts, she finally speaks out loud. "I'd heard the North had evaded the brunt of the polar wars. But Sivusiktok was far more developed than anything I've seen here."

"Sivu - what?" Aang asks.

Katara sighs impatiently. "The village I grew up in, Aang. We didn't really have a formal power structure like the North did, but we were the closest to a capital that the Southern Water Tribe had."

"Ah yes, we had heard that Sivusiktok was quite ahead of its time...for a village in the South," Atanek replies earnestly. Faint titters of laughter echo from behind them and Zuko watches Katara's mittened hands slowly curl into fists. "But over here, we have cities. You'll see."

And see they would, not long thereafter, as the riverbend curves inward upon itself and the land beyond suddenly drops away in sharp cliffs. Revealing the night-darkened valley below, where the great city sprawls like a carpet of glittering gems.

"Welcome," Atanek announces amid the collective gasp of awe, "to Aujuittuq."

It takes another long while for the bend of the river to bring them to another lock that gently lowers them to the bottom of the giant basin hollowed into the great arctic plane, so deep into the ground that Zuko can feel the heat of the earth rising up from beneath the water's surface. He marvels at the city with its structures of unyielding ice towering higher than the buildings in Caldera City, twinkling with candlelight and phosphorescent stone like it was carved from crystals.

"This is unbelievable," he breathes, slumping back in the narrow longboat as it cuts through the narrow canals crisscrossing throughout the city.

Even Katara is hunched forward in her seat, her widened eyes drinking in the majestic city from the elaborately carved spires of its tallest towers to the pristine undisturbed sheen of the bridges arching across the canals. "It is unbelievable," she mutters to herself with a slight frown. "How could they rebuild so quickly when our tribe was completely destroyed?"

By the time their longboat docks in the harbour, the sky overhead has darkened to an inky black and the only light comes from the glow of the white ice from which the city was carved.

Zuko wishes he had about a dozen more pairs of eyes as they are ushered through the grand avenue and into a huge manse hewn from the ice, glittering like everything else in the unearthly city. Atanek drops them off in a homely sort of room where they are fed an assortment of strange dishes that Zuko has never seen before.

"Stewed sea prunes!" Katara exclaims delightedly as he gingerly tries a spoonful of it. She closes her eyes, savouring every bite as she chews happily. "I haven't had this in so long. Is there any five-flavour soup, by any chance?"

The elderly woman waiting on them smiles kindly at her before spooning a thick brown mush in Katara's bowl, where it bubbles and gloops loudly.

At length, Atanek returns. "The band chiefs and General Iroh's party are all gathered. Follow me."

They fall in line behind him, as Atanek leads them into the band chiefs' hall.

Zuko cranes his neck upward to stare at the ceiling, soaring high overhead and decorated with pillars hewn in the shape of different characters from what he assumed were the local stories. Streams of water cascade down from holes in the back wall, pooling into a moat that wraps around the perimeter of the hall. The ice beneath their feet was smoothed and cut into what resembled crystalline tiles, the walls etched with glowing stones set into sconces that cast the entire place in shades of glowing blue and green, making Zuko feel like they have wandered into some sort of secret underwater grotto.

A raised dais sits at the head of the hall, not unlike in the throne room back in Caldera. Except instead of dragon reliefs etched into the wall, the rush of cascading water frames the people seated atop the platform.

Zuko squints at the handful of simple chairs lined neatly in a row atop the dais. Each was occupied by a different man heavily bedecked in furs and strange ornaments woven from a litter of trinkets: a carved stone, an animal's sharp teeth, here and there a fluffy feather…

As they draw nearer, Zuko sees that they are not alone. True to Atanek's word, he spies his uncle and nearly two dozen of his company standing before the band chiefs, barely recognizable under bulky layers of shaggy furs. Only the handful of Air Nomads remain immediately visible, seemingly unbothered by the bitter cold in their bright airy robes.

"Uncle!" he calls out, as Atanek leaves them and climbs into an empty seat on the raised dais that apparently belonged to him. Zuko wonders briefly if, as one of the band chiefs, that made Atanek any more or less dangerous.

His uncle gives him a small smile before turning back to face the chiefs. His expression instantly turns intent, as though he were engrossed in a particularly challenging game of pai sho and devising a new strategy on the fly.

The somber man seated in the middle of the dais leans forward with a frown. "General Iroh. Dragon of the West," he intones, steepling his fingers together. "I did not imagine our paths would ever cross again. Certainly not like this."

His uncle bows his head. "Life is full of unexpected surprises, Chief Arnook," he says simply. "First among them is that I do not come here alone." He gestures to the four Air Nomads standing by his side, draped more heavily with large carved medallions hanging around their chests.

Arnook straightens in his chair, shrouded in the tribal chief's mantle, a thick cascade of dark-dyed furs with tassels carved in the shape of the moon and stars that hang along his breast. "Forgive me. It has been a long time since we had contact with any of the Air Nomads."

Gyatso nods his head sagely. "The fault lies with us, I'm afraid. For too long the Air Nomads have kept to themselves. I am Gyatso, Chief Elder of the Southern Air Temple." He sighs heavily. "My predecessor, Pasang, was killed in the strike against our temple."

Arnook's eyes widen; Zuko watches the row of old men conceal their surprise in different ways. "That…is truly shocking to hear. We in the Northern Water Tribe are sorry for your loss. We understand what it means to lose everything to the Empire's thirst for power."

"It appears this is something we all share in common," Gyatso answers, gesturing to the three Air Nomads standing next to him. "These are the Chief Elders of the Northern and Eastern Air Temples, Masters Vayu and Sutra. Regrettably, Master Iio is absent on some diplomatic business in the Earth colonies. But Master Rinchen represents the Western Temple in her stead. We have emptied our Temples and joined General Iroh on his quest for justice. We recognize that Ozai's madness transcends ancestral borders. If we do not unite against him, we will all fall."

"I see," Chief Arnook says slowly, thinking very hard. "But, forgive me. It wasn't so many years ago that our people were fleeing from you, General Iroh, seeking shelter and refuge wherever they could find it. And now, you come to us in these very same halls, as refugees yourselves."

His uncle keeps his head bowed, but Zuko senses the tension rising in him. "What happened was a tragedy," he answers bluntly. "I do not deny my responsibility. But I sought to end the war, not start it. That blame lies at the feet of my brother, Ozai."

"Your younger brother, Ozai," interjects the man sitting next to Arnook, a young square-jawed teenager wearing a smug smile that Zuko instantly longs to punch off his face. "Was he not beholden to you in any way? How can a man control an army when he cannot keep his own family in line?"

"Now Hahn," cautions Chief Arnook, laying a heavy hand on the teenage boy's wrist even as some of the other seated chieftains smirk knowingly among themselves, "General Iroh and his party are our honoured guests. We will treat them with all our hospitality and respect so long as they are here."

"I don't see why," Hahn continues, undeterred. "As far as we in the North are concerned, the Empire has no power here. We owe nothing to this man or his party."

"My son speaks no more than the truth, Arnook," says the short, balding man sitting on Hahn's other side, heavy-set like his son and appearing even more squat thanks to the impressive layers of furs draped about his short form. "How dare these people come begging for our help after what they did to us and our brethren? The Southern tribe still lies in waste, a smoking ruin, thanks to their actions." His voice rises, ringing off the keen ice walls in a rousing cry. "And now they have the audacity to bring their petty civil conflict in our midst and expect our sympathy? I say we show them the mercy they heaped on us!"

Satisfied, he settles back in his seat, his feet dangling off the floor as several of the seated chieftains echo their agreement vociferously.

"That will not do, Natok," Chief Arnook admonishes, fighting to keep his tone level. "We cannot move forward with our gaze fixed on the past."

"Besides," Atanek speaks up unexpectedly, "when have we ever seen the Air Nomads take up arms outside their borders? Ozai attacked their temple, which were as unreachable as any of our cities. Now that they are here, we can only assume Ozai's forces will follow in turn."

Hahn's father bristles, crossing his arms stubbornly. "Then send them away before it is too late! We have worked hard to preserve our land and her glory, why throw it all away -"

"We will not deny them our hospitality, Natok," Chief Arnook says in a tone leaving no room for argument. "As the father of my future son-in-law, I will look to you as my strong right hand."

Hahn's father, Natok, shuts his mouth instantly, and Zuko finds himself impressed at Arnook's ability to command the room. While others seated by his side were bigger, stronger, or dressed more richly, it was very clear that he was the man who held the respect of them all. And yet, from the dark looks exchanged between Hahn and some of the other chieftains, Zuko senses that Arnook's power was, and would always remain, hard-won.

"Let us not forget that the firebenders draw their power from the sun," Arnook continues, his pale eyes glimmering keenly in thought. "I for one, am curious to see how they would fare in the heart of polar winter."

Uncle Iroh inclines his head. "With respect, Chief Arnook, if we make a stand here, I believe we could strategize a way to defeat my brother's forces. They are arrogant and will not think of all the advantages you have on your side here."

"Indeed," Arnook muses, running a hand along his dark bearded jaw. "To form an alliance with firebenders and Air Nomads? Times truly are changing... What would it mean for us in the Water Tribes if you were to oust your brother and win the throne for yourself?"

Uncle Iroh holds his gaze unwaveringly. "I would not forget those who helped me in my time of most desperate need."

Arnook glances triumphantly at Hahn's father. "Well, there we have it. Perhaps this would be worth a second thought after all. I will have to confer privately with the other band chiefs before we arrive at a decision. But I believe the time is ripe to act decisively."

"Decisive action results in dead bodies, Arnook," warns Hahn. "Remember our fallen brother Hakoda, and what his bravery wrought. And speaking of Hakoda...I understand his own daughter fights alongside these people also."

Katara's back stiffens at the mention of her father's name, even as Hahn's cold gaze lands on her. His lip curls contemptuously. "Stop hiding behind the backs of firebenders, Katara of Sivusiktok. Step forth and state your case."

Zuko scowls at the barb thinly veiled in the teenage boy's voice. But Katara, crossing her arms across her chest, steps forward with her head held high.

"That's more like it," Hahn sniffs, resting his chin atop his palm disdainfully. "Now. I suppose this is where you tell us we have to rally behind General Iroh and join another struggle that doesn't concern us?"

Katara holds his gaze unflinchingly, before turning to address Chief Arnook instead. "It's true, I am Hakoda's daughter. I know you know our story because you hosted my brother Sokka here earlier, so I won't repeat it. What I will say on General Iroh's behalf is that everything he's said is true. He bears responsibility for the start of the polar wars, for the actions of his brother and his countrymen, and for doing too little to stop them until it was too late. Now he and his brother are at war, and their conflict has already claimed the lives of innocents, both inside and outside the Fire Nation, and more will follow. You can do what you think is right in choosing how to involve yourselves in this next fight."

Chief Arnook's eyes widen. "That...is not what we were expecting to hear you say."

Katara shakes her head. "With all due respect. I've been fighting with General Iroh's army because they never really gave me a choice after they discovered my bending in the colonial schools. But I'm tired of it. My bending is not some weapon for them to use whenever they see fit, and I am not theirs to command, no matter how kind they were to me." Zuko's heart sinks at the stricken look spreading across his uncle's face, but Katara's hands clench into fists as her voice trembles. "I wanted to go home, Chief Arnook, but my home is gone. So I came here, to return to my people, to make my own life. Not be stuck fighting some unending war because someone in the Fire Empire told me to."

Zuko swallows the protest welling in his throat behind clenched teeth, and at a glance he can see Aang and Toph struggling to do the same. In fact, the entire hall falls silent in the wake of her words. Even the band chiefs exchanging scandalized whispers at the sight of her, seem to lose their voices. The hush following their sibilant whispers is almost deafening.

"Well," Hahn says at last, the first to regain the ability of speech, "I think that's all we need to hear from this woman on the matter." To the surprise of seemingly everyone, he smiles down at Katara from atop his chair on the dais. "If it's shelter she wants, we can offer her the same thing we offered her countrymen. And of course, this solves two problems at once for us."

A relieved smile flashes across Katara's face and it makes Zuko's heart ache to see it. "Really?" she asks, inclining her head gratefully. "How so?"

Hahn's smile widens. "Well, on one hand, you finally can have the home among your own people that you've been longing for. And on the other, this makes things less awkward for us." He exchanges a knowing glance with his father before continuing. "We could never support an army that allowed a woman to waterbend."

Katara freezes, her smile instantly withering. "Excuse me?" she asks incredulously, half-laughingly, unsure whether he was joking or not.

"Most of the Southern Tribe escapees reacted the same way," Hahn says smoothly, as though describing an unusual pattern in the weather, and Zuko feels his own blood beginning to boil at the hapless indignation mottling on Katara's face. "But surely you must have known that our tribe's customs were different from yours?"

"I..." Katara trails off disbelievingly, "I didn't realize you still followed them."

Hahn bursts out laughing at that. "Katara, women in the Northern Water Tribe only use their bending for healing. Surely by now you should see the sense of our ways? I thought you said you were tired of fighting."

Colour drains from her face as she shakes her head. "This isn't the answer! You can't just tell women not to waterbend because they're women -"

"Why not?" Hahn cuts her off, and to Zuko's mounting fury, he has the audacity to wag a finger at her. "Our culture is all about balance, Katara. Surely you remember that?"

"We draw our way of life from the creators of waterbending itself," pipes up an ancient chieftain, shrunken and hunched over in his seat. He peers at Katara with eyes slitted nearly shut with age, one of which had gone entirely white with blindness. "The great moon and ocean spirits! Tui and La, light and dark, push and pull. Man and woman, waterbending and healing. The two sides of humanity, the two faces of our gift. This is the sacred law of our land."

"I understand that," Katara grits out, "but times are changing! I was taught by one of your old masters, Pakku! If he could understand -"

"How dare you sully Master Pakku's name in our presence?" Hahn fires back, jumping impassionedly to his feet. "First you come to our land among our enemies, then you question our way of life, and now you have the audacity to lie about one of our most respected masters? And you expect us to take you in as one of our own?"

The ancient chieftain considers Katara with his remaining sighted, judging eye. "We suffered the so-called progress of your tribe as they abandoned the old ways, and we watched with horror at what happened to them. We must not allow the same thing to happen here."

Rage simmers in Zuko's veins as he remembers the snide commentary from all the Water Tribe boys on the boat with appalling clarity. We could all take her, but that would be beneath us, they had sneered. If he had known what they had meant, perhaps he would have been quicker to put them in their place. Maybe Katara would have too.

Instead, she takes a very deliberate step forward. "You'd better not be suggesting that we deserved whatever happened to us because we allowed women and men to live as equals, old man," she growls, her voice dangerously low.

"Oh no! Chieftain Tupilek would never say such a thing!" Hahn cuts in smoothly, slowly sitting back down in his seat, already calm again. "He only meant that we have a duty to protect our way of life at any and all costs. Surely you understand that? And forgive me Katara, but you're so young. You can't have been more than a child when all this started?" He glances entreatingly at the withered old half-blind chieftain who glowers and shrinks further into his seat.

Zuko thinks he might be sick himself as Hahn turns back to Katara with a beatific smile and outstretches his hands. "I'm sure we can look past all this if you promise to respect our traditions. Our tribe is vast and there is always room for one of our own. It's obvious that you would do well among the women here, Katara of Sivusiktok...what with your talents and all."

Katara frowns deeply as she sizes him up, him and the rest of the intractable old men on their thrones staring down at her with their heavy fur robes and their disapproving eyes. Zuko watches the lines etch into her forehead as she considers Hahn's lousy offer and opens her mouth, probably to spit in that obnoxious teenager's stupid face, Zuko thinks when -

"Fine," says Katara, to the shock of all. Including even herself as her own eyes widen with surprise. She steps back, seeming to shrink into herself with every passing moment. "If that's what you want. It's not a big deal anyway."

Not a big deal? Zuko thinks to himself in horror. Before he can stop himself, he stumbles out of line, reaching for her shoulder. "Katara, no -"

With the ferocity of a caged beast, she throws him a glare over her a shoulder, a glare that could stop a grown man in his tracks. Everything surrounding him seems to crash to a screeching halt as she jerks away from him, snapping, "Don't tell me what I can or can't do!"

Zuko is dimly aware of the movements around him: the disappointment in his uncle's face, the tight-lipped silence and clenched fists from both Toph and Aang, and at a further distance, the infuriating satisfied glances that the old Water Tribe chieftains exchange with each other.

Somewhere around him, the conversation continues, a mind-numbing exchange of promises and threats hidden under pleasantries. As his uncle's heir, he should have been paying attention, perhaps doing more to persuade the band chiefs than just scowling and sulking in his corner.

But Katara doesn't turn back to look at him and nothing else really seems to matter outside of that. I'm sorry, he whispers in his head, his thoughts clamouring so loud he swears she must be able to hear them, I didn't mean to, but how could you expect me to stand by quietly?

After what feels like another eternity, the chiefs finally dismisses them. "We have much to think about," Arnook says somberly as he gets to his feet. "In the meantime, it grows late. We have erected shelters for your company. Regrettably, they were somewhat rushed...but you should still find them comfortable and warm." His pale eyes glimmer in the dim blue light. "It is supposed to be cold tonight."

It seems to Zuko it couldn't possibly grow any colder as they are escorted out of the hall. He follows the silent Water Tribe men leading them back through the manse with unseeing eyes. Most of his attention is focused on Katara, already walking some distance ahead before she is intercepted in the corridor by another Water Tribe woman dressed in shaggy furs, with striking blue eyes and hair as white as the moon.

"Who's that?" Aang asks him, as both of them watch Katara follow the white-haired woman away from their party.

"No idea," Zuko answers flatly.

"Who's who?" Toph inquires, frowning at the ground. "I can't see anything in all this ice."

"Katara just left with some old lady," Aang answers in a low voice. His gaze drops dejectedly. "So this is it for us, huh?"

Toph blows her bangs out of her eyes angrily. "She can't just leave us like that! After all the shit we put up with from her?"

"Toph," Zuko says wearily, suddenly feeling exhausted beyond imagination.

"What? We're a team." Her face clouds over. "Or...I thought we were."

"She's got a lot going on right now, okay?" Zuko says without emphasis. "Let's just give her some space."

There is too much for Katara to think about as she follows the strange girl through the corridors under the band chiefs' manse, away from everyone else.

She should feel relieved to be here in the North Pole at last, surrounded by snow and polar night and her own people.

She should feel bitter and guilty and heartsick over the looks that her friends sent her when, after everything they'd been through, she announced that she wanted to give up her place in the army. The look in Aang's eyes, Toph's clenched fists, Zuko, Zuko -

She should feel furious at his outburst in front of everyone just like that, she should feel furious and indignant that he thought he could speak for her, for wanting more for her…

And to say nothing of what the men of her tribe were asking of her. It felt short of impossible.

She should be cursing her own short-sightedness, her blind belief that the old ways could change and she could settle into her old life here without another thought, without another fight. Because she was tired of fighting, tired of running, tired of not belonging anywhere.

Never mind the suspicious, judgmental stares of all the band chiefs, that they would sooner talk to General Iroh and Zuko about the oncoming war than with her. Never mind how much that stung inside, never mind that the Northerners weren't actually her own people.

Because everything that was once hers had been taken away and all she had left of it was her ability to bend. And now she was being asked - spirits, even agreed - to give that up in order to find a place to rest.

But that was all too much to feel at the same time, so Katara pushes it all away and instead, stares blankly at the white-haired girl as she leads them out the back of the manse. A small barge tied to the canalside bobs in wait on the water, manned by two silent guards who quickly spring to attention at the sight of them.

"My boat," the girl says softly, nodding at Katara to follow her on board.

Katara says nothing. As they climb onto the small craft, the guards bow their heads before swinging on board and untying the craft. With a synchronized push of their hands, the boat propels along the canal, drifting away from the heart of the sparkling city.

"Please, take a seat." The girl reclines into a seat padded with soft animal hides, and motions for Katara to do the same.

Katara obliges, studying the girl's luxurious furs, the elaborate twists of her beaded white hair, the carved necklace peeking through the collar of her parka. "You must be Princess Yue," she says slowly, clasping her mittened hands in her lap.

The girl blinks, her big blue eyes striking in the moonlight. "I am," she answers with a nod of her head. Katara gets the sense of being sized up equally shrewdly. "And you must be Katara."

Now it's Katara's turn to nod. "I am." She watches Yue intently, wary of princesses ever since her last encounter with Azula.

Yet to her surprise, Yue appears almost as nervous as she feels. "Sokka's sister."

Katara isn't sure whether to relax or tense after hearing her brother's name. "Yes." She wonders how much more to reveal of what she knew from Jun's letter, when so far all she'd heard from the Northern men were conflicting stories that didn't add up, except to one disconcerting truth. Which was that when it came to her brother, they were clearly hiding something.

Yue fiddles with her mittens, a surprisingly unladylike gesture for a princess. "I suppose by now you must have heard from your informant. You must know what I told her."

Katara is surprised at her candour after all the secrecy from the Northerners. "I - I do," she admits. "But I don't understand. Your father and the other chiefs... they don't deny that Sokka was here, but they all pretend that they didn't make him leave."

"They're ashamed," Yue answers with a bitterness that surprises Katara with its familiarity. "Sokka was brave and they were all cowards. Now they see you and lie to themselves that they had nothing to do with it."

"Why?" Katara presses. "Why not just tell the truth and be done with it?"

Yue plies her with the full weight of her gaze, the luminous blue of her eyes the only colour left in the night-darkened world. "Because they're afraid of you."

Katara chokes in disbelief. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"Why would they be afraid of me?"

"It would take a fool not to. Sokka was brave and Hakoda's son. But you, Katara, are more dangerous to them than your brother ever was. You're sixteen and already one of the most renowned waterbending masters in the world. Even here, we've heard stories of how you single-handedly defeated Ozai and demolished his palace during the night of the prince's wedding." Yue's unblinking gaze doesn't waver. "For all that the chiefs have dismissed these tales, deep down, they see you as the biggest threat to their ways. Maybe even more so than the promise of another Fire Empire attack."

Katara opens and closes her mouth, stunned. "I just turned eighteen, actually," she corrects blankly, her mouth very dry. "But I don't get it. The band chiefs probably have hundreds of masters at their command. I'm just one girl. Women don't fight in the North, they don't hold power. What threat could I possibly be here?"

"But you're not from the North," Yue answers simply, tucking her mittens into her sleeves and sitting back further in her seat as though it was a throne. "You're not one of us."

"Yes, I am!" Katara insists. "I may not be from the North, but I'm still Water Tribe. I speak the same language, I know the same stories. I've suffered just like you. Isn't that enough?"

"Not anymore. You've seen the world outside our borders," Yue points out in her quiet, even voice. "You know what it's like to be free."

A huff of sour laughter escapes Katara's throat. "I've never been free," she laments. "I just traded one captor for another."

"Welcome to the North," Yue says with only a trace of irony. "Now come. There's something I want to show you."

They fall silent as their boat sails further down the river cutting through the great planes of tundra, leaving the twinkling lights of Aujuittuq further behind until it fades to a distant glow pulsing faintly in the night.

The wind howling across the tundra grows colder. Katara's breath mists in front of her as she rubs her mittened hands together, shivering. You're not one of us, Yue's voice echoes in her mind as she glances furtively at the seated princess, pristine and seemingly unfazed by the brutal cold. Not anymore.

At last the boat bumps against solid land. Katara swallows her curiosity and silently trails the princess as they disembark and follow a narrow shelf of ice jutting out along the base of a towering ice cliff. The two guards remain behind, silently waiting by the boat.

"Where are we?" she finally asks through chattering teeth as Yue stops in front of a round door carved into the cliffside.

Yue pushes the door open, revealing a hole leading into darkness. "One of the most spiritual places in the whole North Pole. Follow me."

A small part of her warns against climbing into a dark hole with a complete stranger, especially one that was a princess of a tribe that she was learning to have no great love for her or her family. But Katara quells her doubts and follows Yue into the dark.

The tunnel carved into the cliff is at once warmer than it had been outside. Katara is astonished to feel sweat beading along her temples as her cheeks tingle in relief from the cruel cold. "It's so warm in here!" she exclaims.

Yue laughs. "That's the spiritual energy you're feeling. It keeps everything warm."

"I'm amazed it hasn't melted!"

Yue doesn't answer, only pushes at something else. A faint strip of light expands into what seems like another world entirely as Katara climbs through it and gasps in awe at her surroundings.

"We call it the Spirit Oasis," Yue explains with a smile. "It's technically part of Tomkin - old Chieftain Tupilek's territory. But it's the spiritual heart of our land."

After weeks of flying north and watching the land slowly grow dark and barren, the sight of so much green is a shock to Katara's eyes. But somehow, magically, ringed by protective walls of ice towering overhead, is a little island floating amid a steaming river, bedecked with green grass and trees.

"I've never seen anything like this," she breathes, closing her eyes and feeling the intense heat of the earth rise up from the ground to warm her through. The entire place radiates tranquility and positively seems to hum with energy, resonating through her with an air of renewal. The same feeling of falling into a trance during General Iroh's meditation classes a lifetime ago, but transmuted into a vibration.

Yue gestures vaguely at the small pond at the heart of the oasis. "I come here whenever I feel trapped," she says simply. "I felt that you might need this place also."

Katara stares at Yue, seeing her for the first time not as a strange regal princess, but as a young girl, soft-spoken, so slight under the layers of heavy furs, her shocking white hair making her seem older than her years. "Thank you, Princess."

The princess shakes her head with a shy smile. "Call me Yue."

Katara grins back, an indescribable relief settling over her. "Okay, princess - Yue, I mean."

They fall into a companionable silence then, basking in the wash of flowing water and the deep, low hum that vibrates throughout the oasis. Katara peels off her mittens and her parka, sitting back on the dewy grass, and wondering what kind of power could exist in this way, that could permeate the entire land with its calming aura?

"The spirits used to roam the world freely," Yue says, as though answering Katara's thoughts. "They say thousands of years ago, when the world was young, the spirits lived along humans. There was power in the world then. People were more spiritual, more in tune with their inner selves. Benders today are a mere fraction of what they once were. And everything was peaceful as long as the great bridge between our worlds remained."

Katara stares at Yue as the princess continues, trailing her fingers along the surface of the small pond. "But our link with the world of the spirits was broken. Discord spread where harmony once reigned, and the spirits turned their backs on us once we slew the Avatar. Now only a handful remain in our world, hidden, biding their time for the era of peace to return. They say some of them even made their home right here." A wistful smile crosses her face as she withdraws her hand from the water and sits back on her haunches. "That's why we in the north cling so strongly to the old ways. Why this spot is so sacred to us. We wait for the day that the spirits return to us, that the bridge between our worlds is restored."

"General Iroh started Team Avatar as a way to restore balance," Katara answers in a hushed voice. "I - I never thought of it as anything more than a vanity project."

"Team Avatar?" Yue repeats quizzically.

Katara snorts, shaking her head. "My friends and I - he assembled four benders, one from each nation, and tried to get us to bend like one." She falters, reflecting on that distant midsummer morning when Jeong-Jeong had first announced the task. How different things were now...and yet even after everything, the idea of it still seemed far-fetched. "It was supposed to be a step to restore balance to the world."

But Yue stares thoughtfully into the pond, where a pair of koi fish swim gracefully. "That's very wise of him," she comments. "And very brave of you."

"I don't know," Katara sighs, shifting onto her knees to watch the koi fish more closely. The graceful movements of their shining bodies soothing and entrancing to her weary eyes. "We're just four teenagers. It can't be enough."

"But you've done so much," Yue says in a whisper of a lament.

"And what difference did it make?" Katara asks bitterly. "I'm still as stuck as I ever was, and now I made a promise in front of everyone to follow these sexist old traditions." She sighs heavily, wrapping her hands around her knees. "I feel like I just made a huge mistake. But I don't know how to fix it. I can't trust Iroh anymore, and there's no path forward. What do I do now?"

Yue doesn't answer, only watches the surface of the water intently, and Katara feels a surge of inexplicable gratitude for her silence.

"You don't really believe in spirits and all that, do you?" Katara asks suddenly.

Yue breaks her gaze from the water to meet Katara's. "Don't you?"

"I always thought they were just stories."

Yue turns her gaze upward, to the fattening sliver of moon dangling overhead. "The spirits saved my life. I have no choice but to believe in them."

Katara frowns in confusion. "They...saved your life?"

Yue nods. "I'm not strong like you, Katara. I've always been fragile. Sickly. Weak. I was born that way." An unexpected darkness weighs down in Yue's voice as she continues doggedly. "My father needed a strong son but instead he got me. A daughter, born so weak she couldn't even cry. The best healers said there was no hope for me, that it would be a mercy if they just let me die and tried again for a son." Yue's fingers twist into the grass, tearing the small green blades from the earth. "My father gave up hope, but my mother turned to something more powerful."

"What?"

"Sacrifice," Yue answers with a twist of her mouth. "Men know how to conquer life. But only women know the price of creating it." She gestures all around her. "In her desperation, she brought me here, all the way from our home in Nutjuitok on the other edge of the tribe. It's a long journey in the heart of polar winter, and she made it alone with her dying child. She was no warrior, no bender, no wise woman of legend. Everybody thought she was crazy for trying. But she brought me here, placed me in this very pond, and pleaded with the spirits to save me. The moon spirit answered her prayer, but at a cost."

"What do you mean?" Katara asks with a twinge of foreboding. As though somewhere deep inside her, a part of her already knew the answer.

"The moon spirit imbued me with its life force. But spirit energy isn't enough to survive in this world." Yue scrubs at her eyes with the back of her hand. "My mother didn't hesitate. My dark hair turned as white as the moonlight. So did hers." She swallows, continuing haltingly. "She lived until I was ten years old. She could never have a son for my father, not after whatever she gave up of her own life to save mine."

Katara touches her shoulder tentatively. "I'm sorry," she says simply. "Nothing is ever enough after that."

"My father loves me. But I know he must resent me for the son he never had," Yue says heavily, dropping her gaze back down to the circling koi fish. "I come here every time I feel lost because part of me hopes I can channel some of my mother's courage. That part of her remains here with whatever's left of the moon spirit."

"They say the people we lose never really leave us," Katara tries to say helpfully, but the words stick in her throat. "That part of them lingers on, watching over us."

Yue stares at her flatly. "Do you really believe that?"

Katara hangs her head. "No," she says honestly. "But it sure feels nice to think about it that way."

They fall into another silence, gazing at the pond. Then Yue smiles sadly. "I don't know how to make sure her sacrifice doesn't go to waste. I'm not like you, Katara. I can't fight or be brave. I can't change the world with my presence the way you do."

Katara is taken aback. "That's just the stories. It isn't me," she confesses in a small voice. "It doesn't matter if you're strong or weak, Yue. You believed Sokka. You told Jun the truth. You brought me here when you know your father believes I'm a danger to your tribe... You're doing the same thing I am. You're doing the best you can."

"It feels so insignificant. It doesn't feel like it's enough."

"No. It never does."

Chapter 38: perpetual motion

Chapter Text

disclaimer. nothing recognizable belongs to me.

author's notes. i have no words. i'm honestly speechless and overwhelmed by everyone who sent their well wishes and their love, thank you so much. treatment hasn't been easy but i'm doing okay for now.

this one's for all you lovely beautiful people.

i give you...

southern lights.

chapter xxxviii. perpetual motion

did you exchange
a walk on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?

"wish you were here"/ pink floyd

The dim morning half-light glimmers off the snowdrifts outside the healing house, a humble igloo that manages to be warm despite its stark snowy interior, completely bereft of any furnishings except for a weathered animal-hide mannequin lying on a cot in its center.

This far north, early was a deceptive term. In the heart of polar winter, the first light of day often didn't arrive until well past midmorning. Unlike Fire Empire routine, designed to maximize time spent in the sun, life in the Northern Water Tribe didn't start until far later in the day.

Even still, Katara stifles the yawn that threatens to escape her. In spite of a much-needed rest - in a proper house no less - the hour had been late indeed by the time Yue had escorted her to the guesthouse, one of a long row of small igloos erected quickly in the empty plains surrounding Aujuittuq. It had been so late that even her friends had departed to sleep, their footprints in the snow outside her door the only sign they'd ever been there at all.

Guilt swells in the back of her throat and she swallows it down with no small effort. She shifts uncomfortably where she kneels alongside the other Water Tribe girls, her joints unused to such stillness.

Unlike her lessons with Master Pakku, which had consisted of her and maybe six other teenage boys, the healing house is crammed with girls of all ages and backgrounds. She counts at least two dozen gathered this morning: two old masters, a handful of girls roughly around her own age, and at least three girls so young they could barely speak. All gathered under the roof of the single cramped hut to learn the humble healer's art.

All of whom were currently gawking at her, unable to disguise their curiosity.

But Yue had introduced her to their midst with the calm command of a princess. And so everyone gathered to study the healer's humble art learned quickly to hold their tongues and accept the stranger into their fold without a word in otherwise.

For that, Katara couldn't help but feel grateful.

She keeps mostly to herself during her first lesson, trying to avoid drawing anymore undue attention to herself. The two master healers are situated at the head of the room - Yugoda, a grey-haired woman roughly the age her Gran-Gran would have been, demonstrates healing techniques on the hide mannequin while Ahnah, an old blind woman stooped with age, hunches over a stool and narrates in a grating reedy voice.

"...to fix a simple puncture wound, such as with a fishhook or small knife, apply pressure to the entry points and drain…"

Katara tries her best to pay attention despite her tiredness. But among even the youngest girls called up to demonstrate in front of the class, she can't help but feel like a lumbering oaf.

"My, my!" Yugoda exclaims a quarter of an hour later, as Katara places her hands on the mannequin. "That's one way to do it! The wound certainly won't bleed out if you apply that much pressure to it."

Katara bites her lip, flushing self-consciously as everyone chuckles. "Sorry," she apologizes, hastily lifting her water-gloved hands from the mannequin. "I just never really learned how to do this properly."

But Yugoda only smiles warmly at her. "That's alright, dear. You're here to learn, after all." She moves closer, covering Katara's hands with her own before placing them back onto the dummy gently. "There, see? A light touch is all it takes. Let the water do the work for you, and you won't tire as quickly."

Sweat beads upon Katara's brow at the unfamiliar technique. She flexes her fingers with the effort to keep them relaxed and gentle. The water glows and vibrates against her skin, a refined motion almost too delicate to detect.

"Just like that!" Yugoda praises her warmly, clapping her hands together in delight. "A little bit of practice and you'll be a natural in no time!"

Something small rises with elation inside Katara's chest at the unexpected encouragement. After so many years of fighting, maybe healing lessons were exactly what she needed. If it was good enough for all the women in this room, why couldn't it be good enough for her too?

"...and this is where you'll find some way to be useful around here. Usually after lunch, the women will gather and tackle the day's work."

The hustle and bustle inside the large communal tents at the city's heart unfolds around Katara with the controlled chaos of a storm around its deceptively peaceful eye. She blinks stupidly in the firelit interior, crammed full of warm animal hides and girls of all ages milling about, chattering, working under the watchful eye of the village matriarchs.

"The day's work," Katara echoes glumly. "Mending and washing and cleaning, you mean."

Nerrivik, the broad, slightly terrifying, middle-aged housewife charged with the thankless task of introducing Katara to the responsibilities of a Northern Tribe woman, only glares at her. "There's more to it than that," she explains witheringly. "The men wake at the crack of dawn to hunt and trap what they can, and then they work to keep us safe. In the meantime, we do what we can to support the tribe. Who keeps their weapons sharp and their boats seaworthy? Who sews the clothing we all wear on our backs and the furs that keep us warm in winter? Who butchers the day's hunt and feeds the tribe?" Her flint-coloured eyes bore into Katara's accusingly. "It is in these halls that we women keep alive the beating heart of our tribe."

Katara can't help but lower her head shame-facedly. "You're right." She scuffs aimlessly at the ground, trying to quash the immediate resentment that surges up within her. "It does sound...important."

Nerrivik's expression softens momentarily. "What skills do you have?"

"Me?" Katara is taken aback. "Um...it's been a while, to be honest…" She casts back in her memory, past years of anguish and bloodshed, to a simpler time when her days were occupied by the simple tasks of supporting a community where she belonged. "...I can sew, I guess," she says awkwardly, as Nerrivik's foot taps an impatient rhythm against the ground. "I think I still remember how to do that."

"Hmph," Nerrivik sniffs. "Well, it's better than nothing. Even if your domestic skills appear terribly neglected -"

"Yes," Katara snaps back, "being snatched from my home and surviving the colonial schools didn't really leave much time for maintaining domestic skills. Sorry if that inconveniences you." She bares all of her teeth into a feral smile, wondering if she appears every bit as uncouth as the sheltered Northern Tribeswoman must think her to be.

Nerrivik's nostrils flare officiously. "Hm. Southerners," she mutters to herself, shaking her head. "Luckily for you, we find ourselves hosting an unprecedented number of guests at the moment, and Chief Arnook has made it clear that our hospitality shall not be found lacking. You can help with preparing the clothing for now, and maybe with luck, some of the other girls can show you the ropes around here."

Katara only glowers as Nerrivik steers her through the chaotic hut, clearly separated into distinct but overlapping areas of industry. In one corner, some of the older women are bent over lengths of shining driftwood, waxing and whittling them into oars and masts. In another, their weathered hands roll and stretch tanned drums of animal hides to fashion into clothes, tent covers, sails. A group of younger, stronger women chatter good-naturedly among themselves as they fletch arrows and nock sharpened stones to the heads of spears.

Women's work, Katara thinks to herself, half disparagingly and half in awe. For Nerrivik was right in one way. This was the beating heart of the community, the well-oiled machine that kept the Tribe afloat.

"Aujak!" Nerrivik snaps, as they stop abruptly in front of a small group of women, some years Katara's senior. "I've brought you another one. Do you have any work to spare?"

A rosy-cheeked woman glances over her shoulder at Nerrivik, before slowly rising to her feet respectfully. "Of course, Nerrivik. We have to clothe an entire visiting army, after all!" The woman sizes Katara up from top to bottom, clutching a hand to the heavy pregnant swell of her belly in order to maintain her balance. "Is this one from the South too?"

Nerrivik sniffs again, a sound that Katara is beginning to learn signifies her perpetual disapproval. "Yes. I figure she might as well start off with you, what with your common life experiences -"

"Wait," Katara says slowly, "are you from the Southern Water Tribe too?"

Now the pregnant woman's face splits into a crinkly, friendly smile. "I am!" she exclaims, thrusting out a weathered hand. "My name is Aujak. And these -" she gestures to the two curious women sitting on the ground behind her, "are Hei and Lusa! We all came from the Southern tribe!"

"No way!" Katara exclaims, studying the small group excitedly. "I mean - I knew some of us escaped up here, but I've never met anyone who did until now -"

"I see she's in good hands then?" Nerrivik interrupts with a weary glance at Aujak. "I trust you to keep her in line and make sure she pulls her weight around here."

"Don't worry, Nerrivik," Aujak replies, somehow managing to keep her face entirely straight even as laughter glimmers in her pale blue eyes. "We'll find some use for her. You go take care of everything else you have on your plate. I'm sure it's all very important."

"Oh, you have no idea. Thank you dear," Nerrivik breathes in relief, clasping a knotted hand to her forehead before turning on her heel and scurrying off, already in search of another hapless individual to harry.

"Don't mind her," Aujak supplies conversationally. "She's a character, but her heart's in the right place." She motions at a small wooden stool, already being cleared of the piles of sewing supplies stored haphazardly on it. "Here, take a seat, we don't bite!"

Katara obliges, seating herself among the small group of women sitting in a ring behind Aujak. A group of Southern Water Tribe survivors like herself, if it could be believed. She studies the women swiftly, idly wondering if she could place them from her distant memories of a lifetime ago.

"What's your name?" one of the other girls asks kindly, setting down the swath of cloth that she had been folding and measuring.

Katara glances at the three women, some years older than herself, hunched over their sewing and dressed comfortably in plain furs. In spite of their unexpected circumstances, they appeared easy around each other, with laugh lines creasing along their young faces. A strange pang hits her at the sight of it.

"Katara," she answers forlornly, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Aujak pauses, exchanging a quizzical glance with another of the women. "Katara?" she echoes, her brow crumpling. "That name sounds familiar...I can't remember why…"

"Your dad was a chieftain," supplies another, a sprightly stick of a woman with coils of dark hair piled on top of her head. She studies Katara intently with clear grey eyes. "Somebody important, right?"

Katara shrugs, her father's memory a sinking feeling in her gut where once it had been a glow of fierce pride. "Hakoda," she says dully.

All three of the women surrounding her gasp in shock.

"Hakoda, you said?"

"You mean, the Hakoda?"

"You were from Sivusiktok? I lived a couple of villages away, we must have been practically neighbours..."

Katara learns that Aujak is nearly ten years older than herself, had been given in marriage to an Aujuittuq man upon her arrival in the North and was expecting her third child after having borne two healthy sons. "I'd like a girl," she comments with a wry smile, patting the swell of her belly. "Try being the only woman in a house full of boys! It just doesn't feel complete without a little girl, does it? But…" she trails off, before picking up a pair of bone shears and continuing to cut pieces of dyed cloth off the roll.

She learns that Lusa, the woman closest to her in age, had originally lived in Inuisertut, a village not very far from her home in the South Pole. Her family had been close friends with the village chieftain, a man who would have been familiar to Hakoda in his time as chief.

"Small world, huh?" Lusa remarks, biting soft thread off the spool and tying it off into a knot.

She learns that Hei, the tiny woman with the coils of dark hair and clear grey eyes, had been tapped for her healing abilities and spent her time fixing cuts and broken bones. "They didn't try as hard to marry me off," she explains, plying her fine bone needle through lengths of cloth and furs effortlessly. "Not for a lack of effort, though. Chieftain Natok - that's Nerrivik's husband, you see, I think he had a nephew or a cousin or someone he wanted to move out to Aujuittuq, besides his fool son Hahn. Ah, from the look on your face, I see you've met Hahn already. My condolences."

"Healers are in short supply up here," Aujak explains cheekily, as Katara blushes and resolves to make herself less easily read. "Well, especially after - after what happened -" her voice breaks off momentarily before she composes herself and continues, smiling bravely, "the Tribe was just happy to receive anyone! There's so much to do around here, and if you had special abilities or - or just the right attitude, they were happy to take us in!"

"What about waterbenders?" Katara inquires quietly, the sewing in her hands remaining quite neglected. "Surely I can't be the first one?"

She doesn't miss the loaded glance that Lusa and Hei exchange among themselves. "The Fire Empire dragged all the known Southern waterbenders off into their prisons," Lusa says carefully, not meeting Katara's gaze.

"Yes, but - what about the ones who got away?" Katara presses on curiously. "I mean, Hei - you're a healer. Doesn't that mean that you were born a waterbender in the South?"

"That's all in the past," Hei answers primly, suddenly fastidiously occupied with her sewing as well. Katara watches the embroidered patterns bloom to life under her quick fingers, a trail of birds and berries and leaping fish. "I'm here now and I'm a healer. Nothing else matters."

"But -"

"Nothing good ever came out of us being able to waterbend, Katara," Lusa hisses through gritted teeth, before her green eyes widen in panic at the accidental admission. "I - I mean -"

"What Lusa means is that we have a life here now," Aujak cuts in smoothly, even as worry creases in small lines around her eyes. "The wars, the colonial schools, the escape north - all of that is behind us. The North gave us other things to live for. A job, a family, a community. We have purpose, Katara." She smiles and her eyes glisten warmly with reflected firelight. "I hope you find that here too, eventually. After everything you've been through, isn't that what you deserve?"

Katara is so taken aback by the suggestion that she finds herself unable to answer.

Truth be told, it sounded nice. And wasn't what Aujak suggested exactly what she was looking for? Wasn't that the reason she had all but rejected her position as a general in Iroh's army, a decision that still makes her mind wrestle over itself in confusion?

"You might want to make some headway on that hemming, Katara," Hei suggests quietly. "Otherwise, Nerrivik might just consign you to the soapmaking circles next, out of spite."

"Right," Katara says, bending her head down to the task.

By the time the afternoon chores are complete, Katara suspects that Nerrivik might not have been too satisfied with the quality of her stitching. Yet despite several accidental stabs of the needle, two bravely hemmed tunics, and a promise made to the other Southern girls to join them again the following day, she leaves the women's huts feeling somehow more alone than when she had entered.

While the days in the Northern Water Tribe were a communal exercise, the hours after sundown were a strictly domestic affair. As the sky darkened and the chill in the air deepened, the combined glow of firelight and phosphorescent stone painted the entire city in flickering shades of gold and blue. Men, weary from their long days of training and hunting and trapping, stumbled gratefully back to their homes, while their wives served up whatever had been prepared and distributed from the day's kill. For that was the way of the tribe. No matter in times of plenty or scarcity, everyone earned their equal share. How else could it be in a land so cold and unforgiving?

But Katara, still housed among General Iroh's visiting army and with no family of her own, gratefully leaped at the chance to find her friends and join them for the hearty dinner being served in the kitchen tent set up by the guesthouses.

However, the army kitchen bustles full of people she no longer recognizes - mostly Air Nomads with their blue arrow tattoos and Empire soldiers who had served in different regiments. Among them, she feels like a broken nail along cloth, every now and then dragging against a quizzical stare in her direction.

This was my choice, she reminds herself, gratefully accepting a wooden bowl heaped with seal and stewed berries. I couldn't possibly continue to support Iroh, not after what he did.

Instead, she focuses on the tantalizing aromas drifting upward from her plate. Familiar. Nourishing. A reminder of a time long past and yet somehow remaining just within grasp, if only she tried hard enough.

Her eyes sharpen at the sight of a familiar duo seated in the corner among a group of saffron-clad acolytes: Aang's shaved, tattooed head, no longer as distinctive as it once was in this crowd, and Toph's shock of dark hair, the green velvet collar of her uniform peeking out under the heavy borrowed parka.

She picks her way over to them, their presence only now reminding her of how conspicuous their absence at her side had been, like the loss of a limb.

"Got room for one more?" she asks, inexplicably nervous as she sidles up to them.

To her relief, Aang grins warmly at her, shuffling over to grant her room on the bench next to him. Even Toph seems to brighten up at her presence, and the heavy weight lingering on Katara's shoulders seems to lighten somewhat.

"Well, look who decided to grace us with her presence," Toph drawls, scraping her spoon along the remnants of her supper. "After that stunt you pulled last night, we weren't sure we were ever going to see you again, Sugar Queen."

Katara's cheeks burn. "Sorry," she says hastily, glancing around them and noticing the fourth, conspicuously empty seat. "I didn't expect them to put me on the spot like that."

"I don't think anyone did," Aang admits softly. He fiddles with his bowl, the stewed berries picked clean off the untouched seal meat. An instinctive pang of distress strikes Katara at the sight of it. "But...it's great that you're reconnecting with your people, Katara! That must be so exciting!"

"Right," Katara agrees dully. "Exciting." She thinks of her day, busy and exhausting in some respects and utterly confusing in all others. "You have no idea."

"Well, it probably beats sitting in councils all day," Toph groans. "I miss when it was just us in Team Avatar. Now we've got all these extra voices from the different parts of the military butting in, not to mention the Air Nomad Elders and the Water Tribe band chiefs -"

"They're all on board already?" Katara asks, taken aback at the speed of it. "I would have thought it would take longer for the Northern Tribe chiefs to come to the table."

Toph shrugs. "They haven't made a decision one way or another. They just want to hear what we're planning before they commit."

"And they're okay to sit in on a council with you as a part of it?" Katara can't help the bitterness that leaches into her voice. "Even though you're a girl?"

"I don't think Toph would give them a choice," Aang supplies, his faint smile an unintentional slap in the face.

"Yeah, they stopped their complaining real quick once I bent some metal at their heads," Toph finishes, her face splitting into a roguish grin.

Katara blinks, nonplussed. "You did what now?"

"Oh right!" Toph exclaims, her grin widening. "You weren't there. Yeah...I know how to bend metal now."

"You do?" Katara demands, thunderstruck. "Since when? How long?"

Toph raises her hands defensively, as though trying to stem her tirade of questions. "Since the night of the wedding! I first figured it out when I broke out of the cage Sparky's sister trapped me in, and then I was working on perfecting it while we were on the ships."

"I guess that's why you weren't as seasick this time," Katara breathes, her confusion suddenly settling into a new, impossible reality. Toph could bend metal, a feat previously thought to be the stuff of stories. But she'd done it - whatever it was that held the earth captive to her will now extended to metal, once a prison for the blind earthbender. "It all makes so much more sense now!" she exclaims, laughing in disbelief.

Belatedly, she remembers all of Toph's snide comments from the boat and her blush deepens.

"I hope you're not upset?"

Toph's uncharacteristically earnest question catches Katara off guard. "Upset?" she echoes. "What do you mean?"

"Well…" Toph pushes the remaining chunks of stew around in her bowl. "I wanted to tell you. I had it all planned out, really. It was great, I was really going to mess with your head for a while."

"Gee, thanks," Katara retorts grumpily, shoveling a spoonful of stew into her mouth, hoping it would dispel the bitter taste blooming there.

"But it just sort of slipped out at the meeting today," Toph continues, blowing her disheveled bangs out of her eyes. "And you weren't there and I wish you were."

The food in Katara's mouth suddenly loses all its taste. Katara pauses, chewing the tough meat until she can finally swallow the heavy mouthful and the unhelpful sentiments accompanying it. "I'm sorry, Toph," she says, carefully aware that it wasn't enough to make up for her absence. "I wish I could have been there. But that's not how things work around here, apparently."

If either Toph or Aang hears the bitterness in her voice, neither of them make any mention of it.

"Just...just be careful, Sweetness, okay?" Toph asks, remarkably unguarded. "I've been where you are before, and I can tell you it's a slippery slope straight into the middle of a locked cage."

Unbidden, Katara thinks of the girls practicing their healing on the hide dummy in Yugoda's crowded hut. Of Hei's fingers expertly embroidering polar bear parkas, and of the panic in Lusa's eyes when she'd blurted out that waterbending had brought nothing but misery to them all.

After everything you've been through, isn't that what you deserve? Aujak had asked. Aujak, who had braved a similar flight north after losing everything, only to find contentment in her days in the womens' huts, gossiping with her friends over sewing, parrying the orders of overly controlling women with good humour. A vision of a future Katara had never thought for herself.

A vision of a future that should bring her peace, but only fills her with more resentment.

"Yeah," she mumbles through another mouthful of stew. "I'll be careful. Don't worry about me."

A slight commotion at the tent entrance cuts across their conversation. Katara spots General Iroh marching past the serving line, accompanied by a small retinue of his closest advisors, all bundled in ill-fitting fur parkas layered over their deep crimson velvets. Zuko hovers by his side, his unwavering right hand. A true prince, regal and impassive, the scar permanently twisting his face into a scowl.

The golden firelight winks off the small crown pinned to his topknot, and even under the ridiculous layered parkas, his shoulders were broad and straight. She remembers the feel of them under her fingertips, and makes herself look away before breathing became any more difficult.

"Took you long enough," Aang says brightly as Zuko approaches them, his hands wrapped around a steaming bowl of stew. "I thought you were never getting out of there, Zuko!"

"Me neither," Zuko confesses in a small voice. "And it isn't even over yet. Jee's just intercepted a whole series of communications, we're going to have to go through them quickly -"

"Already?" Toph asks, aghast. "But you've been cooped up in that stupid meeting room all day! Can't they give you a break?"

"I'm the Crown Prince, Toph. It's my duty."

The sound of Zuko's carefully measured voice makes it difficult for Katara to look at him directly, not since he had thought to speak out on her behalf the night before. Even though the day had brought no more clarity to Katara's decision and she understands now that he, like Toph, had only her best interests at heart…

It is only as the silence rises questioningly around them that Katara realizes that she's been staring at him. Her face flames hot at the quizzical look burning in his golden eyes. Instantly, she wishes everyone else would just disappear already.

But there was no such luck, as General Iroh, seeking out his nephew, chooses that exact moment to join them, ostensibly to drag Zuko back to the middle of whatever meeting they had scheduled next. Instead, he pauses and offers a smile. "Sifu Toph, Sifu Aang, I hope you are enjoying the hospitality here so far?"

"Can't complain," Toph replies.

Aang returns Iroh's smile, tapping at his unfinished bowl. "Yeah, maybe tomorrow they'll have a vegetarian option!"

Iroh's face falls at the sight and he shakes his head. "My sincerest apologies. I didn't even think to mention it to the cooks…"

"I can bring it up with them," Katara speaks up waspishly, Iroh's haplessness making her feel suddenly defensive of her entirely underwhelming day. "It's the women who do all the cooking anyway. I'm sure they can forage for some extra sea prunes or something."

Iroh appears taken aback by the sound of her voice. Perhaps he didn't expect her to speak at all anymore, she reflects bitterly. The silence surrounding them turns uncomfortably tense.

"Sifu Katara," Iroh manages at last, his smile uncertain. "I am glad to see you here, thriving -"

"Please, General, we can dispense with the formalities," Katara cuts him off. "I'm not your resident waterbending master anymore. Just Katara will do."

Iroh's eyebrows lower in a pained display of sympathy. "Surely you will not take my civility as cause for reproach? Whether in the North or outside of it, your talent and capability remain unchanged in my eyes. Regardless of how you choose to use them...or not."

Arrogant old man, she thinks harshly. Who is he to judge me?

"I see you and your soldiers are all warm, General," she bites out icily. "The parkas you all wear were all hand-sewn by the women of this tribe. The food on your plate. The bowls and utensils, carved from bone and driftwood...all work of the women of this tribe."

She directs a smile at him edged in flint.

"Forgive me," Iroh says automatically, sensing that he had struck a nerve and drawing back. "It was not my intention to cause offense."

"Of course not," Katara says severely. "I never expected you to understand my choice. But do not disrespect the work that Water Tribe women put into keeping this community afloat. Your little venture up here wouldn't survive without it."

She follows his steady retreat with unwavering eyes. With a sigh of frustration, she sets down her spoon in its bowl, the chunks of seal meat devoured and only congealed lumps of deep red berries remaining.

"You really shouldn't have spoken to him like that."

Katara kneads her temples with cold, weary fingers. It is well past bedtime and the deep black of polar night shrouds the slumbering tribe, the bright golden firelight all but dimmed to a faint shimmer.

Inside her small igloo, the fire in the pit ebbs to cool red coals, touching the pale white snow with rosy fingers. Its interior is spare if not comfortable: humble furnishings carved into the ice, a wooden basin and pitcher for washing, piles of animal furs and skins for warmth.

The tent flaps hanging along the doorway stir in the nighttime wind. Zuko lingers awkwardly on the threshold, afraid to intrude any further. It had been of little surprise to her when she'd heard him outside her door after dinner. After everything, the air between them was heavy yet again, and she had known that he would come to her in his own time.

But even though she thought herself prepared for his quiet reproach, it rankles at her anyway.

"I tried," she admits, her face falling. "I didn't want to, but it just slipped out. He was so arrogant and I got so angry."

"I don't think he was being arrogant, Katara," Zuko explains tersely, taking a tentative step into the igloo. Tamped snow crunches softly under the sole of his boot. "I think he was expressing his concern in his own way."

Katara blows a wayward strand of hair out of her face. "Iroh, the great Dragon of the West? Concerned for little old me? I should count my blessings."

"He's not the only one." Zuko's voice grows quieter in hesitation. "Katara, we're all worried about you. You're...not acting like yourself here."

"You don't know that," Katara counters stubbornly. Annoyed with the way her hands begin to shake, she reaches for her small pack of belongings, ferreting through it aimlessly. Her hands close around a bone comb, cold and hard to the touch. "You've never experienced life in the tribe, Zuko. None of you have. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean you should be worried about me."

The ebbing red heart of the firepit glows instantly brighter before dimming again. In his corner of the igloo, Zuko lets out a breath of frustration. "It's not that," he struggles to explain, as Katara undoes the myriad little braids in her hair and it cascades over her shoulders in a heavy dark fall. "Are you telling me that all of this -" he gestures around him vaguely, "- is exactly what you expected?"

Something in the sound of his voice makes her pause. "I -"

"You miss your home. I get that, I really do," Zuko continues, now seemingly unable to stop himself. "You want to do anything to get it back. Even if it means bending yourself into a shape that hurts you."

Katara freezes, her breath hitching in her throat. She glances at her own tired face in the burnished mirror before meeting Zuko's eyes in its glassy reflection. "But you still did it," she says softly, her fingers decisively dragging the bone comb through strands of her hair. "You had your freedom to make your mistakes and learn from them. Now let me have mine."

She winces as the comb snags on a knot tangled into her hair.

Zuko sighs again in defeat. "Was it this terrifying for you when I went back home?"

Katara chews her lip as the comb finally breaks through the knot, ripping pieces of hair out mercilessly. "Worse," she says plainly.

He recoils as though she had slapped him. "I guess I deserve this then."

"I'm not doing any of this because of you," Katara retorts snappishly.

"I know." He raises his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I - I just mean…" He trails off, watching her slowly comb her hair out in the dying firelight.

In the weighted silence, Katara can't help the faint stab of sympathy in her chest. "Everything is different now," she confesses, replacing the bone comb in its pouch. "I had such high hopes of what I would find here. But I forgot about the reality of it all. We did things differently in the South...and that doesn't matter now."

"I hate the way they treat you," Zuko growls, an edge entering his voice that sends prickles of unease running down her spine. "You're worth so much more than what they're giving you. It's a waste, Katara -"

"Oh, so you've decided that for me, have you?" Katara challenges, flaring up in a trice. She whirls around, marching up to him until they are practically nose to nose. "What about the way your father treated you? Time and time again...but you followed him anyway, because you still had hope that things could change!" Angry tears threaten to brim in her eyes and she looks away, setting her jaw uncompromisingly. "I trusted you to make the right choice for yourself. I believe I've earned the same from you."

The air surrounding him turns almost unbearably warm. She resists the urge to step back.

"I trust you," Zuko mumbles wearily, even as Katara raises a skeptical eyebrow. "But there's something going on here. The band chiefs, they're hiding something. Or haven't you noticed how they skulk around every time you mention the Southern Tribe or your brother?"

Katara gapes at him with equal parts disbelief and appraisal. She had expected him to continue to protest; instead he had cut straight to the heart of her own misgivings about the tribe. "Princess Yue said they were ashamed. Sokka wanted to join the resistance and fight back against the Empire. But they sent him off on a suicide mission instead."

"Do you think that's it?" In the dying firelight, Zuko's eyes seem to pin her in place. "I know you said that your tribe did things differently, Katara. But some people will do anything to keep things under their control. And if they can control you, what would that mean for the South?"

Katara tries very hard to keep her voice steady. "The South is ruined beyond repair," she chokes out. "Even if the Northerners could spare some waterbenders to rebuild it…" For an instant, she thinks of her home, rebuilt in the image of the North. With the band chiefs' tent at the heart of the community and women relegated to its corners. The complete opposite of what her mother would have wanted.

She meets Zuko's gaze to see thoughts of a similar nature flickering through his eyes. "It just seems too much of a coincidence," he says at last. "Your father and the Northerners disagreed on how to negotiate with the Empire. The next thing we know, the Southern Tribe is destroyed and the North starts accepting all its refugees under condition of obeying its rules? While staying miraculously unaffected by the wars?"

The thick wave of anger that had nearly strangled her in the hall before the band chiefs threatens to consume her again. Not for the first time does she question what Sokka must have thought when he first arrived. "Well, whatever it is, we have a better shot of finding out if we keep our eyes and ears wide open," she answers grimly. "Don't look at me like that, Zuko. You're not in much of a position to bargain either. From what I understand, your uncle needs the tribe to ally with you if you have a hope of getting your home back. And that means showing your respect for their culture, no matter what your personal opinion might be."

"I know, I know," Zuko grumbles. He pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling a small puff of smoke. "The picture of diplomacy, that's what I'll have to be."

"It'll be good practice for later," Katara advises, daring a little teasing smile. "And in the meantime... I could help you out."

"You'd do that?" Zuko demands hoarsely. "Even after everything?"

Katara shrugs, blood rushing to her face. "Well, nothing will change if you don't understand our way of life. And respect is a two-way street. I'm sure if you extended your hand, the band chiefs would notice and return the gesture in kind."

She grows uncomfortable under the growing intensity of his stare before he finally speaks again. "What do I need to know?"

With a sigh, she turns back to prod at the fire coals. The small room brightens instantly as it spits out tongues of flame, filling the air with sudden heat.

She settles herself on one side of the fire, and Zuko wordlessly sits on the furs on the other. "The first thing you need to understand about the tribes," she begins wearily as the crackling of firewood fills the air, "is their connection to the land itself. Long ago, when the spirits walked among us…"

The next morning, Katara rises early. On her way to the healing huts, she stops by the communal women's tent, already bustling with activity.

In spite of the faint periwinkle glow at the horizon's edge, roaring fires already illuminate the tent interior, dispelling the morning chill with surprising warmth. Under her fur-lined parka, Katara begins to sweat, even as she nervously slips inside.

If she had thought the tents a busy place the afternoon before, that scarcely compared to the chaos unfolding before her. Large pots of bubbling porridge and flat-baked breads steamed over top the fire pits, their smells mingling with the burning wood and animal fats in the dense warm air. Baskets of foraged plants were stacked by the back entrance, waiting to be cleaned and shelled and preserved. To her surprise, some of the older women were even barking instructions at a handful of young hunters dragging in the morning's kill: some fish, a pair of sizable caribou-elk that could certainly feed the tribe with meat to spare...

She spots Nerrivik hovering nearby, chastising a straggling pair of hunters. Katara thought she looked almost happy, even as the pair of young men cower in terror before her.

"...as if we weren't busy enough, not only must we butcher, cook and dry two whole caribou-elk, but also another entire tiger-seal to go with it? How wasteful!" She prods at the large carcass the two hunters carry between them, frowning at the scorch marks marring its striped neck. "We can still probably salvage most of the hide, but how in spirits' name did you manage to burn this creature during the hunt?"

One of the hunters, big and brawny with a half-shaven head, stirs uncomfortably but says nothing. The other, a tall lanky guy with a big forehead and a sealskin belt, clears his throat. "Well, we'd probably have let it go, but we had an important guest join us for the hunt this morning." Katara frowns, recognizing his voice and the two boys as having accompanied them on the boat ride into Aujuittuq. "Who were we to get in his way?"

"Guest?" Nerrivik's bushy eyebrows lower into a scowl. "What guest?"

"Crown Prince Zuko," the skinny guy mutters, and Katara silently chokes on her breath. "Marched right up to us this morning and asked if he could join us."

"How very strange," Nerrivik declares, with a loud sniff. "I don't understand these fire folk, or what they want from us."

"I don't know," the skinny guy muses, chewing thoughtfully on his lip. "He seemed pretty humble and curious to learn about our traditions. He knew an awful lot about some of our stories, too. Maybe he's just trying to be friendly."

Katara can't help the small smile that crosses her face, even as Nerrivik sniffs again in disapproval. "That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard, even coming from you, Jukka! Firebenders are no friends to the Water Tribes, and don't you ever forget it! I'm amazed that Arnook is even entertaining this madness, what is this world coming to..."

The skinny guy, Jukka, exchanges a dry glance with the other hunter, before delicately interrupting Nerrivik's tirade. "So, uh, do you want the tiger-seal after all, or should Sangilak and I dump it back into the water?"

"Of course not!" Nerrivik all but shrieks, clutching at her chest. She points absently at another nearby tent where the other hunters have been hauling their carcasses. "Just...put it there with the others. We'll figure something out…"

And with another sniff and a muttered tirade under her breath, she barges outside, not even noticing Katara where she skulks in the doorway.

"C'mon," Jukka mutters, shifting under the weight of the tiger-seal carcass, "let's drop this off and go. We're already late."

The big guy grunts before effortlessly wrenching the entire carcass into his brawny arms. Without another sound, he stalks into the adjacent tent, the animal carcass somehow seeming absurdly tiny compared to his massive bulk.

"Show-off," Jukka complains to his retreating back.

Katara weighs her options, feeling more and more out of place even as Jukka dashes over to one of the cookfires and pilfers a golden flatbread off the baking stone. Quick as a wink, he shovels the entire thing into his mouth, wiping golden crumbs with the back of a mittened hand before he turns on the spot and meets Katara's silent, watchful eyes.

He tenses abruptly in surprise. "Were you always here?" he asks her bluntly, cocking his head at her.

"Uh -" Katara struggles to find a word to say. He seemed friendly enough, but he was still a guy from the North. "Yeah." She intercepts his glance at the baking stone, and the conspicuous empty space where the stolen flatbread had lain. "Don't worry. I won't tell Nerrivik."

"Thanks." Jukka flashes her a swift, grateful smile, which she unexpectedly finds herself returning, just before his pale eyes widen. "Hang on. You're the new girl, aren't you?"

The smile slides off her face as quickly as it had appeared, even as Jukka snaps to himself, as though trying to remind himself of something important. "Katara, right? Sokka's sister?"

Katara's gaze sharpens at the mention of her brother's name. "You knew Sokka?"

Jukka's face splits into a dimpled grin that instantly makes her miss her brother. "Of course I knew Sokka! That kid was trouble through and through! Brave though, and sharp as a whaleshark's tooth." His face grows unexpectedly somber. "I miss him."

"Yeah." Katara slumps. "Me too."

A heavy silence follows then, punctuated only by the crackling of the cookfires and the echo of voices clamouring from the nearby rooms.

"I'm Jukka, of Nagojut," the boy says, thrusting out his mittened hand littered with breadcrumbs. "You probably don't remember, but I was part of the patrol that brought you into Aujuittuq the other day."

"I remember." Katara accepts the proffered hand warily. Because as friendly as Jukka was, she also remembered some of the unkind commentary that had followed her on the boat ride inland. "There were a bunch of you."

"Yeah. We get around. No shortage of work on this side of Aujuittuq," Jukka says disarmingly, even though his grip on her hand is firm and unwavering. He nods as his brawny, silent friend lumbers back into their midst, having deposited the tiger-seal carcass in its proper place. "That's Sangilak, of Akluilak. He was with us on your boat too."

"I noticed," Katara says, now withdrawing her hand as the giant man approaches, dwarfing both of them in his shadow. With his half-shaven head, muscles straining the seams of his parka, and impassive blunt face, he truly cut an intimidating figure. It takes all of her effort not to shrink in his presence. "Sorry about the misunderstanding the other day."

Jukka's smile hitches at the corners as Sangilak's face darkens. "Misunderstanding?"

"Yeah, I mean, when you guys attacked us in the beginning and then I had to, you know, uh…" Katara trails off as the baffled silence greeting her words grows steadily colder. She sighs through gritted teeth, instantly regretting bringing her waterbending up again at all. "You know what? Never mind."

Sangilak rolls his eyes, already turning away. His voice rumbles like an avalanche of sliding rock. "C'mon, Bastard. Master Ukiuk will tan our hides if you get us late because of her."

Jukka scrambles to follow in Sangilak's footsteps out the door. "Nice meeting you!" he still calls after her before the tent flaps erase him from view and his reproachful voice fades into the morning air. "C'mon Sangilak, that was Sokka's sister, you could at least be nice…"

Katara pinches the bridge of her nose, exhaling sharply in frustration. The heavy scents of boiling porridge and baking bread linger cloyingly in her nostrils, making her feel suddenly sick.

"And what are you doing here?" snaps Nerrivik's voice from directly behind her.

Katara jumps, finding herself face to face with the stout middle-aged woman, now clutching a turtleseal-shell basket and a flat bone utensil. "I…" she says weakly, suddenly struggling to remember her whole purpose of showing up here so early in the first place, "I just wanted to let you know that most of the Air Nomads are vegetarian," she says quickly, hating the meek tone her voice automatically assumed in the woman's presence, "and it would be really helpful if they could have something to eat that wasn't meat."

Nerrivik's thick eyebrows rise to the level of her hairline. "Vegetarians," she snorts. "Perfect. Just perfect. I didn't want to touch the dried vegetable stores for at least another moon, but Arnook ordered us to be hospitable…" She sniffs and shakes her head, strands of frizzy grey hair escaping its braids and flying every which way. "I'll see that they have enough to eat. Now, off to the healing huts with you." She waves a dismissive hand, already forgetting about her and directing another handful of girls to distribute the morning porridge and bread.

The days following afterward gradually melt into a routine of sorts, a rhythm of familiarity that dulled the passage of time even as it filled its spaces with neat little tasks to while it all away.

She learns how to pick out the quickest route from her igloo to the healing huts in the morning darkness, the deep silence broken only by the crunch of her softskin boots against the fresh powder of snow fallen overnight.

She spends most mornings holed up in the cramped healing house with Yugoda and Ahnah and all the other healing apprentices. Instead of grueling cross-bending training sessions with her friends, she learns to bite her tongue against the old masters' corrections.

"Gentle, Katara," Yugoda reminds her for what feels like the thousandth time, her knotted fingers brushing against the rigid line of her shoulders. "You are working with the water, not against it. Remember, this is healing, not waterbending."

But after years of waterbending, it has become second nature to her. After years of mastering the push and pull of water in all its shapes and spaces, the soothing art of healing in its patience and gentleness feels all wrong.

Still, she manages to learn those first simple lessons. How to heal a puncture wound from a hunting knife. How to set a bone broken from a slip on the ice. How to draw away the evil humours that collected in the chests of the young and old alike, that made them cough at night and struggle to draw breath and grow feeble and weak with each passing day.

She even begins to recognize the faces of the other healing apprentices, remembers their names when they pair off for lessons. Bunik, the sullen daughter of a band chief. Woka, an outspoken firebrand who would sooner fling water across the room than heal with it - a girl after Katara's own heart. Ulva, a steely reticent woman closest to Katara's own age but seeming far older, who everyone gave a wide berth, for she had been widowed young and under suspicious circumstances. Shila, sweet and popular, whose family required her to become a healer to uplift their social standing, but who seemed far more preoccupied with attracting a betrothal carving from a respectable match. Lately, it had become the source of much amusement among the teenage girls to tease Shila about the unlikely targets of her affections, which seemed to change from week to week.

Katara only raised her eyebrows and shook her head in a show of distaste, even while nursing the faint stabs of envy at the easy camaraderie the apprentices all shared.

In the afternoons, she joins the other Southern girls in the women's communal tents, whiling away her hours amid the thick heat of the roaring firepits.

In the cheerful, uncomplicated company of Aujak, Lusa and Hei, she doesn't revisit their shared lost past as she hoped they might. Instead, she remembers how to sew again. How to pick out polar bear furs for the winter parkas and seal hides for summer wear. How to stitch them together to withstand the bitter winter cold and the rigourous motions of hunting and fighting. How to embroider fine patterns along the cloth, tiny needle-stitches blooming along the dyed fabric in neat little rows.

"Well, look at you," Aujak marvels with a dimpled grin one day, "you're already becoming an expert! Is that your second parka you're completing there?"

"My third, actually," Katara replies without looking up. Beneath her fingers trails a simple pattern of tiny snowflakes and suns, the stitches neat and straight along the fur borders.

Lusa whistles appreciatively, glancing over bundles of unsorted cloth at the small pile of completed sewing folded neatly in a pile in Katara's basket. "Someone's been busy," she remarks, her green eyes glinting teasingly. "Are those for anyone special, Katara?"

Katara knots the thread and breaks it off the needle. "For my friends." She shakes out the garment in front of her, inspecting it in the roaring firelight. The heavy blue parka appears nearly overlarge in her hands, lined throughout with thick white polar bear fur. Enough to keep a firebender warm up here, she thinks with a small smile, recalling Zuko and his tendency to layer parkas with no regard for how it amused the Northerners.

As she folds it back up into her basket and stretches, she catches the other girls watching her oddly. Lusa sighs, her shadowed eyes growing strangely wistful. "You're lucky to have friends like that," she says absently, before continuing her sewing in silence.

And while her friends spent their long hours poring over maps and enemy communications, she learns other useful skills instead. How to properly butcher the day's kill, how to strip the flesh from the hide and preserve it with salt and rendered blubber. The myriad uses for the remains, so that hide and bone and entrails, none of it went to waste.

From the gossip filtering freely through the communal tents, she learns other, subtler things. How the women and their families felt generally uneasy about hosting so many outsiders in the heart of polar winter. How Chief Arnook's judgment would never be overtly questioned as the leader of the band chiefs, but whispers persisted about the necessity of growing involved in a conflict originating far beyond their borders. Even those sympathetic to Iroh's cause seemed more preoccupied with the tribe's winter reserves dwindling too quickly.

To Katara's growing annoyance, even the other Southern girls appeared unconcerned with Ozai's growing ambitions.

"He destroyed our home," she finds herself arguing one evening. "Surely you must find him a threat?"

"Of course he's a threat, Katara," Hei says simply, not even looking up from her sewing. "But he's all the way on the other side of the world, and severely injured." She doesn't mention the obvious. That the reason why Ozai lay injured half a world away instead of upon their doorstep sat across from her, mending worn-out mittens and old boots.

"Me, I'm more worried about winter," Aujak comments, wiping a hand against her damp sweaty brow. "It's harder and colder than we've had in years, and now we have all these new mouths to feed." She yawns loudly into her hand. "My husband says the men should be drilling, to sharpen up their warrior's skills in case of an attack. But they've been so busy hunting and foraging. It's not right."

With growing restlessness, she witnesses the haggardness apparent on the hunters' faces as they deposit their haul into the adjacent tents. Even cheerful Jukka, the only one among the surly Northern boys who made an effort to be friendly, spent less and less time around the communal tents. As for his companions, big menacing Sangilak and a handful of others, they were all kin to the tribe's band chiefs and had little time to spare for her or any other of the women.

"I don't understand why it bothers you so much," Lusa points out when Katara voices her frustration. "You left Iroh's army to join us. I thought you were done with fighting."

"I am," Katara argues, growing less sure each day of who exactly she was trying to convince.

"...and then Keelut demanded Jee to show him on the map where the messenger-hawks were coming from, and Toph told him -"

"I asked him what his problem was," Toph finishes, struggling to contain her mischievous grin, "if I could see it, why couldn't he?"

She and Aang dissolve into a fit of laughter, shared by the small group of air acolytes growing steadily around them.

I guess you had to be there, Katara thinks to herself dryly, resting her chin on her hand. "I guess Chieftain Keelut didn't appreciate being told off by a blind teenage girl, huh?"

"That's one way of looking at it!" Toph snorts, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Oh man, I wish I could've seen the look on his face -"

"He looked like he swallowed a bug mid-flight," offers Bodhi, one of the air acolytes from the Northern Air Temple. Golden firelight glimmers off the shining shaved dome of his head. "If he could fly, that is."

"If he got any angrier, something of his would probably go flying," Toph agrees.

"Knowing him, he probably wished it would be you, Toph," supplies Soma, another Air Nomad from the Eastern temple. "Unfortunately, he still had to pretend to be polite in front of Arnook and the Dragon General."

Unlike the majority of the crush of awestruck air acolytes riding hard on Aang's heels, blue tattoos decorate Soma's skin visible at wrists and forehead beneath a shock of black hair cropped nearly as short as Toph's. But that was where the similarity ended. Katara had frequently thought that Aang was the most different in temperament to Toph possible, but that was before she met Soma.

The thought of it fills her with a swelling disapproval that she can't explain. "The Dragon General?" she echoes scathingly. "Is that what Iroh's calling himself these days?"

"It is what the people are calling it," Soma informs her politely - as though of everyone sitting at the dinner table, Katara was the outsider, the one who didn't belong. "Ozai, the self-styled Phoenix King. And his brother Iroh, the famed Dragon of the West. A struggle between brothers and those caught in their loyalties. The war of the Dragons and the Phoenixes." She shrugs dispassionately. "It does have a noble ring to it."

"A noble ring to a stupid conflict," Katara snipes, tearing at the stewed sea-prunes with more ferocity than she intended. "But whatever pretty propaganda it takes to get more people on board, right?"

"You cannot possibly think the Phoenix army is blameless in all this," Soma continues, even as Toph claps a hand to her forehead and Aang very carefully looks elsewhere. "You were the one who took down Ozai. You know what he did. How can you stand aside and pretend that your role in this is over? That this conflict will not come for you, whether you engage in it or not?"

Katara sets down her spoon very calmly, exhaling sharply as though her breath was made of fire itself. "Are you honestly judging me for shunning one of the two men responsible for nearly destroying the tribe that your precious Dragon Army needs in order to stand a chance of winning its noble conflict?"

To the Air Nomad's credit, she only smiles knowingly, as though she knew something Katara didn't. "So you will only take up with the cause when it threatens you and no one else is left to shield you? The late Chief Elder Pasang felt the same way. Look what happened to him."

"Chief Elder Pasang was an arrogant old man who shut himself up in the mountains and thought he was above the conflict at his doorstep," Katara snaps. "I lost everything. I have nothing left to give that I haven't given already. You don't get to compare the two and then ask any more of me."

"Just drop it already," Toph mutters under her breath. Before Katara knows it, someone quickly cracks another joke at some hapless chieftain's expense, the table erupts in laughter, and the moment is lost entirely. Only the taste of her anger and disappointment remains, sharp in her mouth as though she had bitten her lip and drawn blood.

A few days later, Katara's morning classes are interrupted by a small group of women bursting unannounced into the healing house.

"Sorry to bother you," Nerrivik announces, crossing her arms across her chest, "but we need more hands in the kitchen tents. You can spare a few girls, right?"

Yugoda casts a mild glance at the newcomers, halting mid-sentence from where she had been explaining how to deliver a breech birth to one of the girls crouched over the glowing hide mannequin. "This is an important healing lesson," she says simply, as behind her, wrinkled old Ahnah taps her cane into the ice impatiently. "Surely there must be others in the tribe who are less occupied?"

"Chieftainess Nerrivik just told you she needed more help in the kitchens," retorts another of Nerrivik's companions, a taller, stockier version of Nerrivik herself. "She has the interests of the entire tribe at heart. Surely the healing lessons can wait?" She snaps at the apprentice lingering haplessly over the dummy. "Come, Shila. You're a good girl, you can always catch up later -"

"Is that Kirima I hear?" croaks Ahnah, tilting her blind face in the direction of the women standing at the hut's doorway. "Always in such a rush. How many times have you slipped on the ice and had to get your bones set by one of our girls? And now you ask if we can spare one!" She lets out a huff of dark laughter. "What is this tribe coming to?"

The woman called Kirima flushes visibly but takes a deliberate step into the hut. "We are hosting an entire guest army within our borders, in the middle of winter, rationing against the stores we prepared for our tribe. At times like this, we expect everyone to put the survival of the Tribe first, Ahnah. Whether they wear a healer's robe or not."

Katara startles in surprise at the unexpected battle lines drawn suddenly and decisively in the ground. But Ahnah only blinks, her filmy eyes the same colour as the weathered grey robe hanging off her wiry old body.

The heavy beads hanging around her neck and off the braids in her hair all clack together loudly as she struggles to her feet. "Master Yugoda and I have always put the Tribe first, Kirima. You can find the help you need anywhere else in Aujuittuq. Perhaps you could even trouble your young sons for help...if it is so sorely needed that you would interrupt my girls from their lessons."

Her voice rings like a hammer against steel in the crowded hut. Katara can't help but tug her grey apprentice-healer robe tighter about herself as Nerrivik lets out a loud sniff. "So, Master Ahnah. You cannot help us, or you will not? What am I to tell my husband, Chieftain Natok, or my son Hahn, who will one day lead the entire tribe itself?"

"Tell them whatever you want," Ahnah answers in a withering voice, seating herself back down on her small stool with the dignity of a queen on her throne. "Healing is a fading art in our Tribe. Within these huts, the imparting of it upon any able-bodied and willing student will always remain my priority. Do not presume to interrupt our lessons again with such trivial concerns. Otherwise, I am certain that Chief Arnook, who currently leads the tribe, will have strong words for you and any of the men you drag into your petty politics, Nerrivik."

It seems to Katara that Nerrivik swells forbiddingly at Ahnah's dismissal, like a bloated toadfrog straining to catch flies. "Very well," she says, her mouth tightening into a cold smile. "If this is how it is to be. Some of my kin are well-versed in the healing arts and would be happy to help you in your tasks, Master Ahnah. If you are indeed stretched so thin that you cannot spare a single girl to help us in our time of need. I will make sure they are able to join you for your lessons, starting tomorrow."

Ahnah inclines her head almost mockingly as Nerrivik and her companions turn back to the doorway. "Suit yourself. I hope they will add as much to our lessons as your charming presence has."

The tent-flaps sweeping shut behind the departing women do not entirely conceal the sound of Nerrivik's disapproving sniff.

"Well, Ahnah," Yugoda mutters, taking up her position beside the hide dummy and directing a bewildered Shila to continue her lesson, "you've gone and done it now."

"My dear Yugoda," old Ahnah sighs, much to Katara's growing consternation, "you don't get to my age by sparing a single thought for women like Kirima and Chieftainess Nerrivik."

Not that Nerrivik, nor anyone in her powerful family, had ever learned to accept defeat. In the case of her husband, he had forced the loss of tribal leadership into a betrothal between his son and the princess of the tribe herself. And Nerrivik's case, it meant planting several of her own creatures, distant cousins and family friends, into the healing classes themselves. Even when she wasn't around, Nerrivik always knew everything that was being said. And if Nerrivik knew, then Hahn and his father knew.

Which left Katara with one lingering concern. And that was where exactly she fit into the Northerners' plans when she surprised them with her arrival on their shores at the head of an army belonging to a perceived enemy.

"I can't stay long," Zuko says ruefully when he turns up at her door that night. He rubs at his eyes, where the shadows hang deep and dark in exhaustion. "I've been tied up in war strategy meetings all day long, and I have to be up early too."

"For the hunt," Katara answers, giving him an appraising glance from head to toe. "Why?"

He flushes under her gaze, but holds it nonetheless. "You were the one who suggested I do more to understand the ways of the tribe. I'm just...trying to do that."

She grins at him warmly as the flush on his face intensifies and crawls along his neck. "How's that going?"

He shrugs. "I'm not really sure. I try to keep up and stay out of their way, mostly." He pinches at the bridge of his nose exasperatedly. "Some days they tolerate me, and some days I get into trouble for accidentally killing a tiger-seal."

"Ah. The tiger-seal." Katara nods sagely, fighting to keep her face straight. "I heard about that. Nerrivik was furious."

"Nerrivik?"

"Chieftain Natok's wife," Katara supplies with a grimace of her own. "Hahn's mother."

Zuko's face crumples into an expression of such acute disgust that it nearly makes her laugh again. "If I could go the rest of my life without ever having to deal with Hahn and his stupid father ever again, that wouldn't nearly be long enough," he growls, dragging his fingers through his hair in frustration. "I don't understand how Toph hasn't murdered him yet."

"Probably because as Arnook's future son-in-law, it would leave a pretty bad impression overall," Katara suggests.

Zuko glares at a spot in the snow. "Probably," he agrees reluctantly, before letting out a long sigh. The set of his shoulders collapses, buckling as though under a heavy weight. "I'm really tired, Katara."

Katara turns to examine him in the dying light of the fire, the newly sewn parka soft and heavy in her hands. "They're really working you hard, aren't they?"

"It's not the work," Zuko bites out. "War tactics and deciphering intercepted messages, that's all fine. But I don't know what to make of the band chiefs, Katara. I really don't. Arnook and a few of the other chieftains seem to be in support of joining us, but Hahn and his faction - they just want us all to pack up and take a hike. Have Uncle challenge Father to an Agni Kai already and be done with it."

They're not wrong, Katara agrees privately. And then immediately drops the thought with abject horror, because it meant she accidentally agreed with Hahn about something.

"I...I just really wish you were with us." Zuko's voice drops to a weary mumble and this time he carefully avoids her gaze. "You belong there. You should have a say in what we do."

"Zuko -"

"I got a letter from Mai," he barrels over her abruptly, and suddenly Katara gets the sense that he has finally cut to the heart of the matter he has been longing to discuss. "She said that my father's recovered and he's put Zhao - he's a psychopath, Katara - in charge of amassing a fleet to mount a siege here -"

Katara can't help the disbelieving scoff that escapes her. "A siege? Here? In the middle of winter?"

"I know it sounds crazy," Zuko continues in that same, strained voice, "even Azula thought it was lunacy, and that's saying something, coming from her! But Zhao alluded to some secret knowledge, some trick up his sleeve he won't tell anyone about. Whatever it is, he's confident that he can mount a successful siege up here and bring the Northern Water Tribe to its knees."

"He sounds like a puffed-up egomaniac who's never set eyes on the North Pole," Katara spits, rolling her eyes. "Typical Fire Nation propaganda. Just wait. He'll be in for a rude awakening the day he shows up here."

"And when he does?" Worry glints in his eyes. "If Zhao sails up here with the Empire's entire fleet, including those new airships he used against the Air Nomads, I'm not sure he'll be so easy to ignore. We have to be ready. Even you."

"Me?" Katara stares at him incredulously. "What do you expect me to do?"

"Common sense says, forget all this healing nonsense and come back to join Team Avatar!" Zuko exclaims, his face flushing even deeper. "We haven't had a single practice since before the Sun Warriors Isle, and look at everything we've done since! Toph and I with the lava-bending, you with your bloodbending… For Agni's sake, Toph can even bend metal now! Think of what we could do to Zhao's ships if we tried!"

"I -"

"The last thing any of us want is to replace you, Katara," Zuko tells her in a pained voice. "But that's what's going to happen if you keep this up."

"Replace me?" Katara echoes, instantly furious. "As if you could -"

"We can't," Zuko finishes, now sounding thoroughly miserable. "But if you won't come back, Katara, we'll have to try. Uncle's put it off for as long as he can, hoping that you'll come back around, but sooner or later, he's going to have to find a replacement."

Katara closes her eyes and makes herself breathe. It was all happening quickly, far too quickly. Too many changes, too many decisions, too many conflicting feelings.

And at the heart of it, the desire to belong, anywhere, everywhere, in all its forms.

Yet for all her protestations against Iroh's complicity with his brother's crimes, it had never properly occurred to her that abandoning him might also mean giving up her spot in Team Avatar. That had always seemed separate, something precious that belonged to just the four of them, born far back on that unassuming summer morning in the heart of the Special Forces base camp.

But then she remembers Iroh's taunting voice from the pinnacle of the Southern Air Temple. I am the only choice you have, whether you like it or not, and her heart hardens to steel.

"It was always just one of your uncle's experiments," she mutters darkly, finally lowering her gaze. "I...I just can't do it, Zuko."

His face tightens as though she'd slapped him. The small fire in the pit flares suddenly, hot and bright with anger, before it calms back to its rosy flicker. "If that's your decision," he finally says curtly, stepping back toward the swaying tent-flaps. "I should go."

Katara swallows past the knot welling in her throat. "Yeah… I have an early morning tomorrow too."

He nods wordlessly, before turning away from her.

"Wait."

He glances over his shoulder at her as she approaches him tentatively. His face scrunches in bewilderment as she unfolds the heavy parka in her hands and drapes it over his shoulders. "Katara, what -"

"I made it for you," she says, her tongue thick in her mouth. "It should be a lot warmer than whatever Arnook's men gave you."

The expression of utter bafflement on his face creases into something much softer. She fights to look away, blood rushing to her face at the sight of it. He looked touched. "I - I don't know what to say -"

"If you're going to go around trying to win over the Northern band chiefs, you might as well dress the part," she says lightly, smoothing the soft, thick cloth against the solid planes of his chest. Against her fingers, threads of warmth rise from beneath his skin and it takes all her effort not to pull him close. "They might actually take you seriously now."

His hands brush reverently along the pristine white fur trimming his parka, tracing the simple sun and snowflake pattern stitched along the hems, before finally closing over her own. "It's perfect," he whispers hoarsely. "Thank you."

She closes her eyes, savouring the warmth beating off him, the solidness of his body and the loud pulse of his heart against her ears the only real thing in the world. Outside the walls of her igloo, the whistling winter wind howls and tugs at her tent flaps, but in his arms it was just another sound.

Katara is troubled all throughout the next morning's lesson. Tired from a fitful night's sleep, she barely pays attention to Yugoda's lecture at all.

Until she is picked on by blind old Ahnah to come up front and demonstrate a new advanced technique on the weathered old mannequin.

Katara struggles to focus as she places her hands into the small bucket by the mannequin's side and then lays her glowing water-gloved hands onto its chest.

From where she sits behind them, Ahnah motions with her hands. The mannequin doesn't move but Katara frowns, sensing the water start to pulse throughout the makeshift vessels, the new ruptures forming within its dried hide body.

"You can feel it, can't you?" Yugoda instructs as Katara traces her hands along the mannequin's length, pausing where the water's flow became turbulent. "The healer's art is to master the motions of life. To study the pathways of water within the human body, and to guide them back to their natural flow when disrupted. It is a painstaking art of control, far more taxing than waterbending."

She closes her eyes. The pathways inside the mannequin were at once easier than the living tissues within the human body, the pulse of its water lacking the will of a human heartbeat.

"Mastery of waterbending is attained through surrender and true humility," Yugoda continues as Katara's trembling hands hesitate over a mangled knot deep within the mannequin's shoulder. "But healing does not allow you such luxury. Where there is water, there is life. And to master life, you must control the water inside the body, bend its errant flow to your will."

Katara inhales sharply, her head snapping to face Yugoda in wide-eyed horror. "What did you say?"

She half expects to see Hama standing there with her vengeful smile and hate-drunk eyes, but Yugoda's face crinkles kindly at her consternation. "I know it sounds harsh, my dear," she admits, the warmth in her voice unchanged, "but the first thing you must understand is that healing is not always gentle. To undo violence, you may have to inflict equal violence. You must be willing to inflict pain upon your patient in order to undo the damage they have suffered."

Where there is water, there is also life, Hama's voice echoes mockingly in Katara's ears. "Do you mean to tell me," Katara says faintly, feeling sick and light-headed at once, "that you expect me to reach into this body and control it? Enforce my will upon it as though….as though it's some kind of puppet?"

"The master healer must know compassion and mercy, always," wizened old Ahnah says sharply from behind them. "But the master healer also knows that she must do what she can, whatever she can, at any cost, to keep her patient alive." She taps her cane against the floor to emphasize her point. "She must not balk at what is necessary to sustain life, must not give in to pity or doubt or the self-indulgent surrender of a waterbending master. She must be willing to dominate life itself if she wishes to save it."

Katara stumbles back from the mannequin as though it had burned her. "You sound just like her," she whispers, the taste in her mouth turning acrid. "You sound just like Hama."

"Who, dear?" Yugoda asks kindly, while impatience flashes across Ahnah's face. If the atmosphere in the igloo had been quiet before, now it grows tense with the weight of two dozen bated breaths. The burning press of curious stares, from the young apprentices to the scattered handful of Nerrivik's women glowering suspiciously at her sudden hesitation.

Suddenly everything felt too small. Katara staggers to her feet, the bleak ice walls trapping around her like the shroud of a tomb. The air is sharp and cold in her lungs, dragging with every breath like claws in her chest, every desperate beat of her heart longing to burst free.

"I can't," she gasps, struggling to breathe. Blood rushes to her face and her head spins as she fends off Yugoda's concerned hand reaching for her shoulder, "I can't, I can't…"

And without another word, she dashes out of the cramped healing hut. Someone calls out after her, but the words are lost in the chilly air whipping against her ears and the silent roar building inside her.

She runs and runs, back along the smooth carved ice paths of Aujuittuq, its crystalline majesty glowing in the faint midday light that managed to pierce through the perpetual dark of polar winter. Strangers part before her headlong flight, and if their gazes follow her, she ignores them all.

They asked too much of her. She needed to be gentler, she needed to be stronger. She needed a mind of her own, but only when it came to agreeing with the tribe's hive mind. She could be anything she wanted to be, but only if the tribe approved.

It was all too much.

She finally slides to a halt at the top of one of the bridges arching across the grand canal that cut through the city. From here, she could see its entirety unfolding before her: the boats sailing in the waterways, people going along their daily business. The grand hall of the band chiefs rises like a watchful sentinel in the distance, its snow-packed walls glittering in the daylight.

She leans over the bridge, panting heavily, as though trying to evade the perpetual weight of its gaze. But it didn't matter. No matter where she was, in the healing huts, in the women's tents, even in the depths of her own misery, the eyes of the Northern Water Tribe were always watching and judging.

And for everything that had changed, she was still no closer to feeling any of the peace that she had sought out here. She was still no closer to finding her brother or the truth of what had happened to him. All she had to show for it was a few new baskets of sewing and the shame of being unwilling to settle for the same kind of life that had appeased the other women of her tribe.

Zuko had been right. You'll do anything to fit in, he had said, even if it means bending into a shape that hurts you. And only now, when she felt like everything she had surrounded herself with was no more than a trap meant to constrain her with the duties of a Northern woman, did she truly understand his meaning.

Part of her itches for his presence at her side. Part of her longs to march straight back to the band chiefs' council and take her place alongside her friends, to hell with what the men thought.

For a moment she considers it, flexing her fingers under the faint white light of the sun.

But then a voice catches her attention and interrupts her thoughts altogether.

She glances up sharply, watching a small group of boys tussle along the canal below her. A sharp burst of envy tears through her at the sight of them, sailing along the surface of the water, practicing waterbending forms both on land and within the water.

She recognizes wiry Jukka straightaway, his chestnut hair braided into a knot away from his face, leaping out of the way of a slicing wave, pulling a pillar of ice out to support his weight. Big brawny Sangilak with his half-shaved head glinting in the light, pushing what looked like the entirety of the canal up against the other boys. Most of them fall before his onslaught and wash onto the shore, but one of them, a fair-skinned guy with feathers braided into his hair, manages to pull a whirlpool up underneath him and slings some well-timed water jets against Sangilak's offensive. It breaks through the might of his attack, suddenly forcing the giant waterbender on the defensive.

Katara watches them with an ache splitting in her chest, blinding and unshakeable in the weight of its truth. I should be there. I'm not a healer, I'm not what they want me to be.

Then, a cracking sound shatters the air around her ominously. Torn from her thoughts, she whips around in a sudden mounting panic. "What -"

Beneath her, Sangilak's opponent smashes a wave against one edge of the bridge, where its weight anchors against the shore. To her dismay, cracks thread all along it with no regard for her presence whatsoever. Shards of heavy ice crumble and fall into the water below.

There was nowhere else to run. Without a further thought, she bends the crumbling ice beneath her feet into a wave and tumbles onto the canal's surface, sweeping the icy carnage out of her way with the force of a small explosion.

"Hey, what the -"

"Who's that?"

By the time she clambers out of the water and onto the side of the canal, she realizes she has more than a small audience. A handful of dark stares pin her in place.

"Oh hey, it's Katara!" Jukka dashes up to her with a bashful grin. "Sorry about that, I guess Sangilak and Tartok got a little carried away -"

"She knows she's not allowed to waterbend up here," snaps the fair-skinned guy with the feathers in his hair, who had given Sangilak such a strong fight.

Katara jams her hands on her hips in a mounting fury. "You collapsed the bridge I was standing on in broad daylight, without even checking if anyone was there! What was I supposed to do, just fall in the water quietly and wait for you to rescue me?"

But the feather-haired guy only cocks his head forbiddingly. "So this Southerner thinks she's too good for our rules now?"

"I don't know, Tartok, she kind of has a point," Jukka interjects quickly, rubbing a hand along his clean shaven jaw. "You and Sangilak did kind of go a little overboard there. You could have really hurt someone."

"Yeah, but we didn't, so shut up, Bastard!" The guy called Tartok turns to face Katara, his lip curling contemptuously. "I know you think you're a big deal wherever you came from, little girl, but this is the North. Go stick to the healing huts and leave the bending to the men."

Katara knew better to heed his taunt, but after everything, she sees red instead. "That's a shame, Tartok," she spits. "Because you were awfully sloppy back there, and I could definitely teach you how to not waterbend like a complete amateur."

More than one person surrounding her gasps in shock as she straightens to her full height.

Tartok reacts as though her words were a whiplash. "Right," he growls, glancing about him for support. "The day I get taught anything by a female like you, I'll eat my own mittens."

The weight of the water surrounding her on all sides itches at her. Instead she folds her arms across her chest, clamping her hands tightly shut. "I hope you like the taste of wool."

Tartok gapes at her even as Jukka and some of the other guys burst out laughing. "How - how dare you," he stutters at last, his cheeks flushing dark red. "How dare you talk to a chieftain's son like that!"

"How dare you talk to me like that?" Katara fires back, incensed. Her fingers drum against her sleeves in an effort to contain herself.

"Oh yes, Hakoda's daughter, in the flesh, in our midst," Tartok crows mockingly. He steps up to her, crowding her space. "Except Hakoda's long gone by now, and we're still here. My father is Chieftain Keelut of Siliktok, and I have the ear of Hahn himself. Who are you, except a little girl looking for her place in the world?" He scoffs, staring down his nose at her. "And you still think you could teach me anything?"

Once upon a time in another life, Katara would have simply smashed his chest in and called it a day. But now, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and caged with something far more powerful than Fire Empire disdain, she only manages to bite her fury back between her teeth.

"I remember when I used to bend like you," she breathes, tilting her chin up defiantly. "My bending was rigid and predictable and hopeless against powerful attacks from the earthbenders. You're never going to beat Sangilak if you think like a waterbender. He's always going to beat you." She meets his affronted gaze, unable to resist the insolent smile that crosses her face. "And so will I."

Tartok's face twists into an ugly mask, before he spits at the ground between her feet. "We'll see about that," he seethes, wiping at the corner of his mouth. "Come on Imnek, I think we need to have a word with Dad about this impudence."

One of the guys who had been silently watching on the sidelines, a shrimpy dark guy resembling a nervous shadow, quietly joins Tartok's side as he marches away in the direction of the chief's hall. Every now and then, he turns back to stare at her in growing curiosity.

Katara breathes heavily in the cold air, suddenly feeling as though even the broad streets of Aujuittuq weren't big enough to contain her. She glares at Sangilak and the rest of the boys still gawking at her. "Can I help you?"

"Um," says Jukka, tentatively breaking the silence, "are you okay, Katara?"

She watches him suspiciously as he continues, waving his hands in front of him defensively. "Because Tartok is someone you do not piss off! He's one of Hahn's best friends, and his father is Chieftain Natok's closest ally. They could make life really difficult for you here, if they wanted to."

"Difficult," Katara snarls under her breath. "Right."

"Just take it easy," Jukka advises, offering her a quick dimpled smile that only makes her angrier to see. "You'll be fine, just wait."

But Katara didn't want to be fine. As the group of boys disperses, she closes her eyes and wishes everyone would admit that nothing was fine at all.

By the time dinner rolls around that evening, Katara is in a foul mood.

The bitter taste in her mouth lingers long after she takes her place at the table where she usually sits with Toph and Aang and the other air acolytes. Usually they were out from their meetings by the time the dinner bell rang, but for some reason, tonight they were running late.

That afternoon, she had sought out her place with the Southern girls in the women's tents. But even after burying herself amidst the rolls of furs and skins to occupy herself, Nerrivik had found her and pulled her aside for a word.

"This will not do, Katara," she informed her imperiously, with a sniff and a twitch of her nose. "This simply will not do."

"I don't understand what I was supposed to do," Katara had started to complain, but was almost instantly cut off.

"This bad attitude of yours will get you nowhere here," Nerrivik told her gravely. "I suggest you keep your head down and learn your place, Katara. Otherwise your time among us will be unhappy. And nobody wants that for you."

Katara simply stared at her balefully. "You mean you actually want me to be happy?"

Nerrivik had smiled at her then, a genuine thing that actually warmed up her eyes and made her appear almost human. "Of course we do, Katara. That's what all of us want, isn't it? To survive, and to be happy."

She didn't need to say the other part. That Hahn and the rest of the band chiefs were watching her like a falconhawk, looking for one more excuse before unsheathing their claws. Katara could read right through Nerrivik's thinly veiled promises of happiness and survival. When it came down to it, what the chiefs wanted was control.

But then finally the others join her at the table for dinner and the dark cloud of her thoughts disperses momentarily.

"Hi," she says, setting down her spoon as Toph and Aang settle in across from her. To her surprise, even Zuko slides in next to her and she smiles at him brightly. "Look who finally decided to join us! Your uncle realized he could finally spare you for a night, could he?"

But Zuko doesn't smile back. In fact, as she glances over at the others and sees a similar reticence there, the smile slides slowly off her face. "What...what's wrong?" she asks nervously.

Toph blows her bangs out of her eyes before slamming her fists on the table. "Hahn and his buddy Keelut started asking questions about Team Avatar this afternoon," she grumbles darkly. "They say they'll formally join our alliance...but only if we take one of their men as our master waterbender."

Katara spits her food out of her mouth. "What?"

"That's what we said!" Aang exclaims, his face mottling angrily. "Team Avatar was always the four of us. We can't replace Katara, she's been with us since the beginning! It would be impossible to get that chemistry with anyone else."

"Especially not some stupid Northern guy we don't even know," Toph gripes. "As if anyone could hold a candle to Sugar Queen, she's the best waterbender in the world!"

"But if we don't accept their condition, the Northern tribe won't ally with us," Zuko speaks up finally, sounding just as miserable as he had the night before. "And...we need them on our side. Zhao's fleet is coming. Uncle can't refuse without a good reason."

"Come on Sugar Queen, tell us you're coming back!" Toph bursts out, her blind face turning to face Katara appealingly. "They can't force us to take one of their dumb guys if we still have you on board!"

Katara tries very hard to breathe, but all she can hear is Nerrivik's voice echoing in her ears, a promise if not a threat. And beyond that, Tartok's ugly words, the gawking stares of the boys in the tribe. Hahn in the chief's hall that first night, old blind Tupilek declaring that the North would not suffer the same fate as the South, whatever that meant…

If I'd known this would happen so quickly, I might have fought harder and sooner, she thinks to herself ruefully. But she knows better than to indulge that kind of thinking. Sooner or later, the Northern band chiefs would have forced her hand.

"Actually Toph," she admits grimly, "I'm not so sure about that anymore." She meets the stricken look in each of their eyes, before she averts her gaze back down to the half-eaten stew in her bowl. "Me not wanting to give up my spot probably won't be enough of a reason for General Iroh to refuse the band chiefs' request, will it?"

Beside her, Zuko lets out a low rumbling sigh. Smoke trickles out from his nostrils in a mournful plume. "No," he agrees at last, "it won't."

Sooner or later, it would always have come to this.

Chapter 39: stolen moments

Chapter Text

disclaimer. it still ain't mine

author's notes. thank you all you beautiful people for reading and following and commenting! here, have another update.

warning that i have a raging literary boner for stories within stories.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xxxix. stolen moments

where is the future
we long for in life
they washed away the evidence
in the river joy

"industry" / mire kay

The wind nips at the exposed skin on his cheeks, making him bury his face deeper into the warm fur lining the collar of the parka Katara had gifted him. It ruffles the hair on his forehead, blowing it into his eyes, obscuring his view of the arena flattened into the snow stretching out on a high ledge behind the band chiefs' hall. In the warm oily light of the lanterns piercing the deep blackness of early morning, it gleams to a high-polished shine.

Except for the tracks gauged through its surface, kicking the snow up into turbulent divots and mounds shaped by the bodies of the hopeful Northern tribe waterbenders lined up for a chance to face them, to join their ranks as Team Avatar's waterbender, and then gone skidding along the snow, pummeled into the ground with the cold crash of reality.

Zuko glances at the benches lining the outdoor arena on parallel sides, packed full with grim-faced Northerners determined to prove themselves. The best and the brightest among them, Chief Arnook had said, putting out an open call for anyone who thought they could represent the Northern tribe alongside their number. Arnook and the other band chiefs now sit behind his uncle on a tiered set of steps at the head of the arena, watching the progress of their treasured young men as they square off against Zuko, Toph, or Aang to show off their skills.

Their main purpose remained unspoken, but it rings out blatantly anyway, with each waterbender introduced to them by one of the invested chiefs. Surely among our finest, you will find a happy replacement for that uncooperative little girl.

Zuko sighs loudly. It puffs into a small cloud, misting into the brisk morning air.

So far, three waterbenders had already tried and failed to impress much. Imnek and Tartok, Chieftain Keelut's two sons, were the first to challenge Zuko in the arena. Imnek the elder son, was a dark, fine-featured slip of a boy whose gentleness seemed better suited to the healing houses than waterbending. But, being the firstborn son of an important tribal chief, he tried his best to put up a fight anyway, withstanding maybe three blows before Zuko stood over him, perplexed by how easily he had defeated the boy.

Tartok, his younger brother, had put up a much stronger fight. What he lacked in creativity, he made up with a single-minded brutish determination that took Zuko by surprise. In fact, while facing off against him, Zuko unhappily remembered a similar exercise pitting him against another waterbender determined to prove her worth, back in a remote corner of the Fire Nation when the world had been a different, calmer place.

Compared to Katara's skill a lifetime ago, Zuko reluctantly had to admit that Tartok was stronger, with a technical finesse that would almost certainly have overpowered her scrappier bending had they faced each other that young summer evening. But unlike Katara, whose adaptability had earned her a win during their first duel (and the four other firebenders tasked to fight her that day), Tartok's bending was predictable enough to allow Zuko to easily find an opening and send him sprawling into the snow, just like his much weaker older brother.

Next had been Chieftain Suluk's gargantuan son, the silent lumbering giant called Sangilak. The ground seemed to groan under his feet as he marched into the arena, his face stolidly impassive in the flickering lamplight. To Zuko's relief, Uncle Iroh had him step back for a breather, allowing Toph to test the big warrior instead.

"Now, remember," Aang warned as she marched past him, punching the palm of her open hand with gusto, "No murdering anyone before breakfast, got it?"

Zuko was relieved to sit on the sidelines instead. Sangilak moved with a speed that belied his size, towering over the small earthbender and matching the power of her strikes with a surprising nimbleness. He watched Toph scrunch her face as Sangilak's streams charged toward her. She was still struggling to sense her surroundings properly in the ice, cobbling together a hazy picture of the world around her from the bits of dirt mixed into the fathoms-deep snow that coated the frozen earth far below their feet. At the last minute, she sprung out of the way, bending her own chestplate into a missile that sliced through the air and took the big man under the chin, knocking him down so hard the ground seemed to sway.

"Nice one," he says as she staggers back toward their corner.

"Don't coddle me, Sparky," she spits with a grimace. Her chestplate whizzes back toward her outstretched hand, reforming into its original shape. "They ought to replace me too, with that performance."

"There's barely any earth up here for you to fight with," he points out. "You're at a huge disadvantage and you still beat him."

"Besides," Aang cuts in, "we can't afford to lose you too, Toph." An uncharacteristically dark scowl twists across his face. "This is all bad enough already."

A small commotion at the head of the arena marks a break in the tryouts. They glance up at the distraction, as a handful of women appear, balancing trays of small steaming cups of tea in their steady mittened hands.

"A break? Already?" Toph complains, her frown deepening. "But we barely even started."

Zuko doesn't answer as the wind picks up again. Glowing bands of pink and gold begin to stretch across the lower sky, dimming the heavy warmth of the oil lamps. The ghostly crescent of the moon hangs dully among the swirling clouds, a lifeless afterthought.

By now, one of the women picks her way toward their corner at the far end of the arena, her tray mostly empty. Up close, she appears young and vivacious, with the nut brown skin and blue eyes characteristic of her people. She gives him a shy smile before averting her gaze and handing him a small pottery cup.

He doesn't miss the way her cheeks flush when their fingers touch. Clearing his throat, suddenly embarrassed, he steps back a safe distance away before thanking her politely, if not somewhat gruffly.

"Oh boy," Toph remarks as the girl quickly hands out tea to the rest of them before fleeing, clutching the empty tray to her chest as the flush on her face deepens. Every now and then, she glances at him over her shoulder with a crestfallen look on her face. "I hope she's not nursing that crush too hard, Sparky."

"Shut up," he grates, instantly wishing Katara was still with them and disgruntled at her absence. With all the paranoia of a royal upbringing, he wonders if the resemblance was a fluke, or if the band chiefs were plotting something. If so, he was insulted if they thought he would take the bait. The young Water Tribe girl retreating from them was a sweet biddable thing. Katara had single-handedly fought her way out of his father's stronghold with his prone body on her back, and won.

There was no comparison at all.

Still, the next Water Tribe hopeful pats the girl on the shoulder consolingly as she walks past him. The girl averts her gaze again, the tips of her ears growing somehow even redder before her pace quickens.

"Such a sweet thing," the guy crows as the women finally disappear from their midst. He steps into the centre of the arena, swinging his arms in circles. Sour-faced Chieftain Mallik introduces him stiffly as his nephew, Unnuk. To Zuko's growing consternation, Unnuk meets his eyes deliberately, before licking his lips. "If you and your uncle still leave today unsatisfied, we have plenty of other ways to sweeten the deal."

He winks suggestively, and Zuko struggles to keep his face diplomatically straight.

"Ergh." Aang wrinkles his nose distastefully. "Did he just say what I think he said?"

"Yup," Toph remarks, crossing her arms in disgust. "What a sack of pigweasel droppings."

"I know!" Aang exclaims, his pale face mottling indignantly. "How dare he talk about his own tribeswomen like that?"

But then his uncle gets to his feet, studying the three of them intently. "Prince Zuko," he calls, "are you ready to fight again?"

Zuko groans. But before he steps forward, Aang's hand shoots out, blocking his progress.

"I can do it," he offers brightly, his consternation seeming to vanish like a cloud before the breeze. "I haven't even had a chance to fight today yet. Feel free to sit this one out, Zuko."

"Uh," Zuko stammers as the young Air Nomad heads into the arena, spinning his glider nonchalantly before snapping it back into the holster strapped to his back. "Thanks."

Toph shuffles her feet into the snow, as though the deeper they dug, the more clearly she could sense the events unfolding around her. "This should be good."

Zuko doesn't even look at her as Aang waits patiently on his side of the arena. "What makes you say that?"

Unnuk finishes his stretches and slides into an offensive stance. Across from him, a good distance away, Aang remains still as an ice statue.

"Intuition," Toph offers.

Then Unnuk rushes toward him, springing into an athletic motion. He raises a mound of snow that turns into a jet of water, looping around his body, over his head, and then straight at the Air Nomad.

Aang remains perfectly still, even as the water rushes toward him.

Then, in a movement so quick it renders him a saffron-coloured blur to Zuko's eyes, Aang spins out his glider and slams its length against the ground. A powerful funnel of wind bats Unnuk off his feet, scooping him into its rotating bowl and spinning him bodily in midair. Another circular sweep catapults him straight over the length of the arena and over the edge of the ledge to land with a decisive thump in the snowbank below.

Zuko's mouth drops. A stunned silence grips the arena as Aang reholsters his glider and calmly walks back to the far corner without another word. In the corner of Zuko's eye, Uncle Iroh claps a hand to his forehead in growing despair.

"Told you," Toph whispers, before raising her voice. "Hey Twinkletoes, calm down! What happened to no murder before breakfast?"

"Sorry," Aang answers, not sounding sorry at all. "For a sack of pigweasel droppings, he was a lot lighter than I expected."

It is early in the morning by the time Katara musters the courage to enter the healing house. The sky remains ink blue, dotted with the last stars that peer through the canopy of night.

Inside the healing, it was cool and spacious as always. A couple of women, hand-picked by Nerrivik to help the healing masters teach their lessons, bustle about in an effort to set up the room. At the head of the room, Yugoda and Ahnah converse among themselves in low voices.

Katara feels very small by the time she approaches them. "Um. Hi," she says awkwardly. "I...I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I didn't mean to make a scene during the lesson."

Yugoda smiles at her warmly. "That's quite alright, dear. We were worried about you! I hope everything is okay now?"

"That's just the thing," Katara answers, twiddling her fingers. "That healing technique you showed me yesterday...it just reminded me so much of something else…" She trails off, remembering the thrill of bending Ozai's blood at the height of the full moon with a sick lurch in her stomach.

"Her name was Hama." Katara doesn't understand where the words are coming from, only that they needed to escape her like bad humours from a wound. "She was a waterbender from the South, like me. She was captured by the Empire and thrown into prison. The only way she escaped was by inventing a new form of bending." She wraps her arms around herself protectively. "She called it bloodbending."

The word seems to echo through the healing hut. Katara worries that the other women setting up would hear her, would report her back to Nerrivik and the others without hesitation...

But Yugoda only tilts her head in confusion. "Bloodbending?"

Katara nods. "Where there's water, there's life. That's what she said too. She learned how to bend the water inside the body of another. How to reach into them and control their movements." Her hands begin to tremble. "Like some sick sort of puppetmaster."

"I see," Yugoda muses, falling into a contemplative silence. "What a fascinating concept."

Katara chokes in disbelief. "Fascinating?"

Ahnah clasps Katara's trembling hands inside her knotted one. "It sounds like a perversion of the principles of healing," she says firmly, staring up at Katara with pale, filmy eyes. "And yet...I commend this Hama's brilliance, for bringing into harmony the opposing sides of healing and bending. What a fearsome power she must have wielded."

Hunched and shrivelled in her old age, Ahnah stands a full head shorter than Katara, but it is Katara who feels suddenly small in the strength of her presence. "She taught me how," Katara confesses. "She made me do it to her."

Ahnah's grip on her hands tightens. "She sounds like she would have made a masterful healer, if life had treated her differently," she says slowly. "Imagine what she could have achieved if she had been allowed to use her gift to help others, rather than harm."

Katara shakes her head vehemently. "You can't use it for good. It's evil," she protests weakly. "It's how I overpowered Ozai. I could have defeated him honourably. But I bent his blood because I could." Her eyes blur with hot water; the insides of her chest feel heavy as though lined with lead as she finally admits what she fought so long to accept. "I wanted him to suffer. To feel as powerless as he made us."

She expects the two old masters to recoil from her in disgust at the confession. Instead, Yugoda lays a comforting hand on Katara's shoulder.

Ahnah lets go of her hand. "This is what separates healers from monsters, Katara," she says. "Despite the ability to bend life to your will, you will never lose your respect for it. That is clear." A slow smile works its way across the old woman's face. "I think you will make a formidable healer indeed, if you possess such a rare talent."

"Talent?" Katara echoes incredulously. "It's a curse - it's dark, and twisted, and wrong! Everyone says so!"

"Do they?" Ahnah cocks her head slyly. "What short-sighted company you keep, child. Why, to me, it seems that just like any other technique, the only inherent harm lies in the intent of the one using it."

Katara gapes at the old wisewoman, wondering if this was some sick joke. "I don't understand," she stutters wildly. "How could this be used for good?"

"Katara," Yugoda says very carefully, as though the wrong word could send all three of them hurtling off an unseen precipice. "You know this is how we heal, right? By reaching inside the human body and bending it to your will. Imagine...how powerful a healer could become if she knew how to bend blood."

The sky outside the doors begins to lighten, piercing through the dimness of the healing hut as some of the younger apprentices begin to filter in and take their spots.

Katara's eyes grow so wide they nearly pop out of her head. "You're joking," she breathes. "You think you could use bloodbending…to heal?"

"I'm saying it might be worth a try." Yugoda glances at Ahnah entreatingly. "What do you think?"

The blind woman taps her cane against the ground. "I think it sounds like the most exciting thing I've heard in many years," she replies. "What about it, Katara? What will you do with this incredible skill?" Her pale eyes glitter keenly in the fading dark. "Will you keep it to yourself in fear and shame...or will you share it with us and help advance the art of healing?"

"But I don't understand," Katara protests stupidly. "I thought it was forbidden to waterbend."

"And so it is," Ahnah declares, before a knowing smile crosses her wizened face. "But you will not be waterbending, Katara. You will only be showing us a better way to manipulate the human body, as part of our healing lessons."

"No way!" Toph gushes over dinner that night. "You're teaching the other girls how to bloodbend?"

"Keep it down!" Katara hisses, glancing around anxiously before whispering, "I'm just...showing them a different way to manipulate the human body."

"I'd never have thought of that," Aang admits. "Using bloodbending to heal. But I guess it makes sense."

"You must be so excited," Toph says. "At least this way, you can still bend."

"I guess." Katara thinks back to that morning, when Ahnah and Yugoda had announced their new experiment to the apprentices. She had expected more of a pushback, but somehow, everyone had gone along with it. Even Nerrivik's women hadn't said anything.

Her stomach churns regardless. Even in spite of Ahnah's assurances that this was all to improve the art of healing, she couldn't help but think that Nerrivik and her overbearing family would be unimpressed by the concept.

"What about you?" she asks, spooning more five-flavour soup into her mouth. "What did you get up to today? More war meetings?"

Aang blows a resigned sigh into his steaming bowl. "No," he grouses. "Tryouts."

Katara raises an eyebrow. "Tryouts?"

"For your replacement," Toph supplies darkly. "We had to find another waterbender."

"Oh." Katara steels herself against the waves of hurt that pummel her at the thought. "Did you find one?"

"Barely," Toph sniffs. "Nobody held a candle to you, Sweetness. But Grandpa ended up taking Tartok, for whatever bullshit reason."

"Tartok?" Katara repeats, her face wrinkling in distaste. "But he's such a jerk!"

"That he is," Toph replies as Aang nods vociferously in agreement, "but he's also one of Hahn's best friends." A falsely bright expression crosses her face as she continues mockingly, "and we can't afford to piss them off."

Katara purses her lips at the thought of the three of them trying to adapt with Tartok as their new team member. From her limited encounters with the guy, she found the idea entirely implausible. "He's a decent enough waterbender," she says cautiously, remembering how he had been able to fend off the much more powerful Sangilak in their fight, "but I'd be really surprised if he could catch up to you enough to produce more fused bending."

"Grandpa didn't even mention that part," Toph answers dully. "As far as the chiefs know, it's just a multidisciplinary bending project. He probably knows taking Tartok will stall any momentum we had. But what else could he do?"

Katara says nothing. Truth be told, she was regretting her decision more with each passing day. But it was also becoming clear to her that there was little the Northern band chiefs wouldn't do to ensure she remained under their control.

Which only made the prospect of teaching bloodbending to the other girls that much more thrilling.

Let the band chiefs think they have me under their heel, she thinks fiercely. I'll be the picture perfect Northern Tribe woman. But in the healing huts, I'll be sharing the art that I used to take down Ozai, and they won't know any better.

But she had reckoned without Nerrivik's scrutiny. One unremarkable morning several days into the new lessons, the fearsome chieftainess barges into the healer's huts, accompanied by Princess Yue herself.

"See!" Nerrivik exclaims loudly, pointing a finger at Katara where she stands at the head of the room, the hide mannequin hovering in the air like a stringless puppet. "See how the Southerner repays us!"

Cheeks flaring hot at the sudden attention, Katara slowly lowers her hands. The floating mannequin follows suit, settling flat against the dais in front of her.

"Katara is sharing a rare skill with us all, Nerrivik," Yugoda admonishes gently. "One that we believe will advance the art of healing to heights never seen before. It is the most exciting development that Ahnah or I have ever seen."

"Exciting?" Nerrivik echoes skeptically, her face twisting in her disbelief.

"Precisely," Yugoda answers. "You should be encouraging Katara, not barging in here and scaring her."

Nerrivik looks like she had just swallowed something very sour. "Forgive me, Master Yugoda, but I believe I just saw Katara waterbending. Which, last I checked, was forbidden for women in this Tribe!" Katara flinches under her warning stare. "She already knows the consequences of going against our tribe's traditions."

"You believe you just saw Katara waterbending," old Ahnah interjects witheringly. "And they call me blind! Katara was not waterbending, Nerrivik. She was demonstrating a skill to help our healers control the flow of blood within the body."

Nerrivik lowers her eyebrows forbiddingly. "Bending blood? I do not like the sound of that any better."

Ahnah shrugs impatiently. "Be that as it may. This remains within the domain of healing. Therefore Katara has done nothing to go against our tribe's traditions, and you cannot have a problem with it."

"I'll decide for myself what remains within the domain of healing and what doesn't," Nerrivik fires back with an outraged sniff. "This...this bloodbending will never be accepted here, and if the men hear of it -"

"Ahem."

Everyone jumps as Yue quietly clears her throat from where she leans against the doorway, so silent and still her presence was all but forgotten. "I'm sorry to interrupt. But I must agree with wise Ahnah and Yugoda. If Katara can share a new skill with you all, especially one that can make you better healers, I'm sure the men won't object."

Katara's mouth drops as Yue tucks her hands into her sleeves and smiles guilelessly.

The rest of the women fall respectfully silent, but Nerrivik scowls. "With all due respect, Princess Yue," she objects, her voice softer but no less obstinate, "I don't think it'll matter once the men get wind of it. Dress it up however you want, but it is still waterbending."

"If the men come here and see waterbending, it's because they insist on bringing it everywhere they go," Yue replies without raising her voice. She taps her chin thoughtfully. "In the meantime, I can't wait to tell my father, Chief Arnook, about all the fascinating new healing techniques you're teaching our women, Katara!"

A bright, almost wicked smile flashes across her face before she turns away. "Oh! And I'll be sure to let my betrothed Hahn know that he was right! That you fit right in here with our women thanks to your talents." She waves a hand airily. "Well, I've seen enough. Please, carry on!"

And with that, the princess sweeps out the door as silently as she had entered.

Nerrivik opens and closes her mouth uselessly as the tent flaps sway in the princess's wake. "Well," she stammers, her face flushing darkly, "when this all ends very badly, don't say I didn't tell you so!"

And with a tirade of curses mumbled under her breath, she barges out of the healing hut, hard on the princess's heels.

An awkward silence settles inside the hut, before Yugoda clears her throat loudly. "Well, Katara, let's take it from the top. Something about pushing and pulling?"

Blood rushes to Katara's face as she gets to her feet. Dozens of curious eyes land on her expectantly. "Right," she stammers, raising her hands. "In waterbending, it's all about feeling the push and pull of the water. But in bloodbending, you have to fight against the push and pull of the blood inside the human body, in order to control its flow." Hunching into the shrivelled stances, the mannequin rises off the surface of the dais, its limbs contorting at unnatural angles. "Like that. Now who wants to give it a try?"

A dozen hands shoot enthusiastically up in the air. Katara looks at the crush of glowing, enthusiastic faces staring at her and a strange new warmth rises in her chest.

"I still can't believe Princess Yue told that old lady to shut up and let you go on teaching the girls how to bloodbend," Toph remarks later that night over dinner.

"I still can't believe you're teaching the girls how to bloodbend," Aang supplies with a wry smile.

"I know," Katara agrees, blowing on the stewed sea prunes steaming in the bowl before her. "It's really amazing how quickly the girls are picking it up, considering they've never actually learned how to waterbend."

"There must be something in healing that gives them an aptitude for bloodbending," Aang muses thoughtfully. "Who knew?"

Katara shrugs before helping herself to a bite of chewy sea prune. "Anyway, speaking of experimental bending, what did you guys get up to today?" She tries to ignore the fourth empty space at their table.

As one, their faces both darken instantly. "Drilling with our new waterbender," Aang replies glumly. "General Iroh thought it might be a good change of pace for us to get used to working with Tartok in our group."

Katara winces. "How did that go?"

Aang chews on his lip, thinking carefully. "Not good," he says at length.

Katara can't help the small petty part of her that manages to gloat with the news. "Oh."

"It doesn't help that Caveman is the biggest jerk ever," Toph continues, her face still dark with disapproval.

"Caveman?"

"Toph's new name for Tartok," Aang replies.

"Ah."

"He thinks he's so great, but he can't take criticism at all, because he's so arrogant! And he gets offended every time someone beats him! And he refuses to adapt too!"

"That's awful," Katara comments, privately unsurprised by the news. "For an element that's all about change and adapting, the Northern style of waterbending seems really rigid, from what I've seen so far."

She thinks back to her lessons with Pakku, an age ago. The man had been from the North, but even his teaching had been more open to change by comparison. They really could use his training up here. I wonder why he left, or if he'll ever come back.

They are interrupted by the usual nightly fanfare that grips the entire tent as General Iroh and his retinue make their entrance, hungry and weary from long, taxing meetings. By now, it has become a ritual of sorts, as Zuko grabs his dinner and seats himself at the empty space at their table. General Iroh stops by to exchange some stiff pleasantries, made slightly awkward by the frozen civility that now exists between him and Katara, before shuffling away to join the Air Nomad Elders at the other end of the tent.

Some evenings they try to revive the tradition of music night, with Iroh and the Air Nomads trying to outdo each other with renditions of songs from their homelands. Iroh's senior officers would reluctantly be goaded into playing whatever instrument they could scrounge together.

Even Zuko couldn't be spared, his title as Iroh's heir making him prime fodder to be bullied into playing the tsungi horn some nights.

Other evenings, they exchange stories from their respective cultures. Master Vayu of the Northern Air Temple surprises them with the entertainingly ribald story of the first airbender: a celibate Air Nomad and the seven temptations sent down to test him by the spirits. Master Sutra of the Eastern Air Temple has them all in stitches over the exploits of Pawan, the lemur who successfully tricked the wind spirits into giving him wings and became the first of the winged creatures that populated all four Air Temples.

Katara says nothing, thinking of her tribe's own stories even as General Iroh launches into a popular Fire Nation tale about a dragon emperor cursed to live as a mortal by a dark water spirit.

"A water spirit?" she echoes disparagingly, even as Iroh continues with his tale. "Really?"

But to her surprise, Zuko gives her a very wry smile. "This was my mother's favourite play," he mutters to her. "We'd go to Ember Island every year and watch them butcher it on stage." A smattering of red dusts his face. "One year, the actor who played the Blue Spirit gave me his mask. I still have it in my room."

Katara gapes at him, her blood suddenly rushing and searing hot with the memory of the laughing blue mask in her hand and his closeness. Her skin prickles in a thousand places, as though it was reliving that night. "R-right," she manages hoarsely. "I remember."

Zuko looks away, the deepening red crawling along his ears and neck. The tent bursts into applause as General Iroh concludes his tale with a flourish.

"Thank you, Lord Iroh, for telling us such a moving tale," Master Sutra pronounces, wiping at her eyes. "But I have yet to hear my favourite story from the Fire Nation. The one about the Painted Lady."

General Iroh's face splits into a grin of delight. "Now that is truly a stirring tale, Master Sutra. What excellent taste you have." He surveys his audience thoughtfully. "But I have done enough talking for now." To Katara's mounting consternation, his gaze pauses upon their corner of the room and his grin widens mischievously before he speaks again. "Prince Zuko. Why don't you treat our guests to the story of the Painted Lady?"

Katara doesn't think Zuko could turn any redder as his shoulders stiffen with the unexpected attention. "Me?" he stammers, already fighting for composure. "But - but -"

"My nephew is well versed in the folklore of our people," Iroh continues smoothly, as though he couldn't hear Zuko's fumbling protests at all. "He would be happy to share this tale with you, Master Sutra. Wouldn't he?"

Zuko sighs loudly before getting to his feet in defeat. "It would be my pleasure," he grumbles, sounding as though nothing could give him any less pleasure.

Katara privately sends him her condolences, at once indignant that Iroh would put him on the spot in front of so many people when he clearly didn't want to, but also curious to see how he would fare.

Zuko fidgets nervously on the spot before he clears his throat and takes a deep breath. "Uh - so...the tale of the Painted Lady," he begins awkwardly, faltering as all eyes focus on him. "This is a popular story in the small villages of our homeland. They believe that she lives in the rivers and visits them from time to time when they need her…"

He trails off, swallowing hard at the expectant, impatient silence. "A-anyway," he continues, his fingers twisting together anxiously, "I guess we should start at the beginning? Long ago - after the great divide of the human and spirit worlds. There was, uh, the king of all the spirits, and he had a daughter. They lived in the spirit world, but they kept hearing prayers from the human world below. The daughter asked why nobody helped the humans, and her father said it was because they broke the bridge between realms. They no longer deserved help, and any spirit caught helping them would be cast out themselves."

He pauses to clear his throat again, the hesitance in his voice finally fading. "So the spirit king decreed and his daughter obeyed. But as the years passed, the people's pleas became more desperate, until finally, one day, she couldn't bear it anymore."

He pauses again, collecting his thoughts. "She disguised herself with cloaks and mists, and painted herself from head to toe before crossing the forbidden rift to the human world. But once she got there, she realized that the humans weren't the unforgivables her father spoke of. They were hungry, feeble and desperate, but brimmed with gratitude when she walked among them, feeding them and healing their hurts, And so for a time there was peace and quiet in both worlds."

Katara watches Zuko with new eyes, fascinated by the story and surprised by his newfound confidence in storytelling, which jarred with everything she thought she already knew about him.

"But one day, the spirit king noticed the trails of paint leading from the forbidden rift up into the bedroom where his daughter slept by day. His fury was terrible to behold. How dare his own child defy his will? He dragged her out of the palace, still dressed in her plain cloak and paint dripping in stripes along her skin, and in front of all the spirits he cast her out." His voice trembles with tightly controlled emotion, but he continues doggedly. "He - he took away her name, her status, everything that had been hers, and banished her from the spirit realm."

What a story, Katara thinks sympathetically. It didn't take much to understand why telling a story about a king banishing his child would be difficult for Zuko. And yet his uncle had still picked on him to do so anyway.

"And so she fell from the skies, cut off forever from the world she knew. But disease and starvation returned to the human world, a blight set upon them by the wrath of the spirit king. Once again the humans cried out for help, but there was nobody to answer them. Nobody except the daughter, stripped of all titles but one." A fierce determination crosses Zuko's face as he continues. "The people begged for the Painted Lady to save them, and in that moment, it didn't matter that she was a lowly spirit stripped of her majesty and banished from her home. She still had her will - to do something when no one else would - and that was something that even her father, with all his power, could never take away."

A chill runs down Katara's spine as Zuko's voice gains intensity. "And so the Painted Lady took it upon herself to save the humans from her father's terrible wrath. Disease-torn villages healed miraculously, crops grew in famine-struck fields, and peace returned where strife and violence once raged. And in the guise of the outcast, she ended the spirit king's reign of terror." He bows his head, his voice growing quiet and the silence gripping the tent thickens as everyone hangs onto his every word. "Even today, when the spirits have all faded to bedtime stories such as this one, in the riverbanks and misty forgotten places, the people still pray to the Painted Lady and fear her return. For the power of the outcast once undid a tyrant...and can do so again."

The sound of thunderous applause is shocking to Katara's ears after such complete silence. Yet the warm interior of the kitchen tent swells with it as Zuko bows his head awkwardly and hurriedly takes his seat, presumably before his uncle could pick on him again.

"That was incredible!" Aang gushes. "You're a natural storyteller, Zuko! Who knew?"

"Yeah, you'd better be careful," Toph warns, smirking, "otherwise Grandpa might make Storytime with Sparky a regular occurrence."

"He'd better not," Zuko mutters darkly, even as his skin flushes. "Once was more than enough."

"That was quite the story," she tells him later that night, in the safe solitude of her firelit igloo. "It was moving and inspiring...but sad. And the spirit king was a real jerk."

Zuko smiles wanly at her. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was one of my favourites." His smile twists into a dark scowl. "Until my father forbade it. He always hated that story, you see."

Katara snorts. "There's a big surprise," she mutters and Zuko grimaces in agreement. "I had no idea you were such a great storyteller," she can't help but remark. "Way to hold out on me like that."

He groans, his fingers digging into his temples. "Uncle put me on the spot. I couldn't make a fool of myself in front of everybody."

"No need to get all defensive." She chuckles at the indignant flush creeping along his skin. "You just surprised me, that's all."

"Why? I had a royal upbringing, remember? Storytelling is child's play."

She tilts her head, watching the firelight flicker across the severity of his face, trying to imagine him as a child. Somehow, even without the shadows making him look tireder and older than usual, it was hard to imagine. Like her, he seemed like someone ill-suited to childhood, even before it had been cruelly snatched away.

But then he yawns and the moment disappears.

In the ebbing firelit and the deepening darkness that swallows the space around them, she yawns too. She presses her fist into her mouth to stifle it. "Not to us," she says at length.

"Huh?"

"Storytelling." Fighting another yawn, she leans her head against his shoulder, continuing, "You might think it's just child's play, but here in the Water Tribe, we hold it sacred."

"Really?" Zuko's head rests atop her own, as his arm drapes around her shoulder. "I didn't know that."

"Mm." Katara yawns again, finding his other hand and interlacing her fingers through his. "Well, now you do. So...the next time someone from the Water Tribes compliments your storytelling, maybe don't wave it off. You might accidentally insult someone that way."

She hears him chuckle softly, pressing his lips into her hair. "I'll keep that in mind."

She isn't sure what she mumbles blearily in response. The spitting of the dying fire is overloud in her ears, even as her limbs seem to fill with lead and her senses muffle as though draped in cotton. The solid warmth of his body next to hers, compared to the softness of the animal furs piled beneath them. The dark stillness of the night deepening outside the swaying tent flaps…

Katara opens her eyes again, only to see faint light glowing beneath the tent flaps, punctuated by the hustle and bustle of the big kitchen tent nearby. Blinking in confusion at the cool black coals sitting in her firepit, the chill breath of the morning air against her face and then, with a slow realization of dread prickling like gooseflesh, the warmth of someone else's breath brushing along the nape of her neck.

She yelps, kicking off the heavy furs that both of them had somehow burrowed into overnight. It tangles around her feet, anchored to the ground with the weight of his feet and refusing to budge.

"Zuko," she hisses, trying to wriggle out from under his arm draped securely over her waist, "Zuko! Wake up."

He groans into her ear, before turning over onto his stomach and burying his face into the pillow.

"No, not like that," she grates out, trying to shout and whisper at the same time. "Come on sleepyhead, get up!"

Scrabbling free of the twisted mess of furs, she crawls over him and pulls the blankets away, before nudging him with her elbow none too gently.

With a grunt and incomprehensible murmuring, he finally turns his head up, cracking an eye open to see her hovering over him in a tight-lipped panic. "Katara?" he mumbles sleepily, before it hits him and his eyes widen. "Shit."

"Shit is right," Katara tells him frantically. "We must have fallen asleep." Somehow, she manages to keep her voice low as she glances anxiously at the doorway. The tent flaps are drawn shut for privacy, but every crack where they gape and sway seems to shine on them like a spotlight.

Zuko groans quietly, a silent rumbling exhale of breath that betrayed more control than it required. "I must have been more tired than I thought."

"Me too." Tiptoeing toward the doorway, she peeks out the side of the curtain. The sky outside was starting to lighten, the kitchen tent bustling with activity. The long row of igloos mostly firelit, with the odd individual already on their way to breakfast. "Oh, spirits, this is terrible."

She barely pays attention to the rustling and cursing behind her, until she hears Zuko's voice right next to her. "What is it?"

Jumping and fighting to contain her yelp of surprise, she runs a hand though her bedraggled hair. "Everybody's awake," she grouses, facing his anxious profile. "Someone might see you!"

He swears roughly under his breath. "Uncle called a meeting with the chiefs first thing this morning too. If I'm not already late, I will be."

Biting back a slew of curses herself, Katara steels herself before sticking her head out the curtains. Glancing up and down the row of houses before accidentally making eye contact with one of the Fire Nation lieutenants ambling toward the kitchen tent.

Oh fuck. Okay Katara, just stay calm. She makes herself smile and nod at the lieutenant, who pauses in his tracks to give her a funny look. "Can I help you?" he asks.

Resisting the urge to implode on the spot, she shakes her head quickly. "No! I was just - uh - just checking for rain," she lies through her teeth. Zuko snorts quietly next to her.

The man nods slowly, clearly thinking she must be insane. "Right. Well, I'll leave you to it then," he says, already turning away.

She fights to contain her sigh of relief, accidentally shouting "You too!" before cringing, her face flaming hot. Smooth.

The lieutenant glances furtively over his shoulder at her again, obviously wondering whether she was having a psychotic break or something.

"You're a real stealth assassin, aren't you?" Zuko mutters dryly

"As if you could do any better," she hisses out the corner of her mouth, ducking back inside out of sight.

Finally, the lieutenant slips into the kitchen tent and she heaves another big sigh. "Oh thank the spirits, he's gone. Go now, quick -"

Without another word, or even saying goodbye, Zuko sneaks out the doorway, hugging the shadows and the nooks and crannies of the neighbouring houses. She watches him for as long as she can, her nerves still taut with panic even as the air finally cools in the absence of his warmth.

She crumples against the doorpost, pressing a hand to her chest. Beneath her palm, her heart hammers frantically. That was too close, she thinks, far too close, at least nobody saw -

"Katara?"

She shrieks, whipping around so quickly that the snow kicks up around her.

To her dismay, Lusa stands on her doorstep, already fully dressed with her glossy brown hair immaculate in their braids and an odd look spreading across her face.

Not good. Katara shifts her weight uncomfortably, praying that Zuko was far gone by now. "Uh - hi, Lusa! What are you doing here?"

"I was helping bring food over." Lusa nods at the big kitchen tent behind her, brightly lit and raucous with the sounds of breakfast being served.

"Oh." Katara makes herself smile brightly. "How nice of you."

But Lusa doesn't return the smile. Instead, she folds her arms and meets her gaze plainly. "Are you okay? You seem a bit strange this morning -"

"Strange?" she echoes, forcing out a strained laugh. "Me? No, no, I'm okay...just clumsy in the morning -"

"I thought I saw someone leaving your place," Lusa cuts her off suspiciously, turning to stare down the row of guesthouses in the direction that Zuko had disappeared.

Katara's stomach plummets. "What?" she squawks. "I...I think you must be seeing things." Lusa only raises an eyebrow, which only makes her breathless in her growing panic. "Or - or um, maybe you saw a wild animal, like - like a polar bear dog…"

Lusa glances skeptically at the ground, and with dread sliding slowly into her gut, Katara follows suit. Glaring back at them are Zuko's very obvious tracks in the snow leading away from her doorstep.

Katara chokes back a gasp of horror as Lusa cocks her head. "Must've been a big dog," she comments sarcastically, her green eyes flitting from the footprints back to Katara in her thin nightgown. "Anyway. I should get going. See you later."

And with that, she turns on her heel and marches off, Katara's indiscretions seemingly already dismissed. Katara shrinks back into the curtains, watching the woman recede into the distance with heightened senses, wildly wondering how much the older girl had actually seen...and just how incriminating it was.

She spends the rest of the day in a paranoid fever, wondering what would happen if the story spread like wildfire among the women of the Tribe. After so long, she was finally feeling like she started to belong among them. To learn that the Fire Prince had been spotted fleeing from her chambers at an indecent hour could only shatter the illusion that she belonged among them.

But apart from a couple of girls asking her whether she was feeling ill, nobody looked at her any differently. Even later that afternoon, when she apprehensively settled among the older Southern girls, busy with their sewing, they didn't seem to notice that anything was amiss. Her heart pounded nervously when Lusa gave her a lingering glance, but if she harboured any misgivings, she kept them to herself, and the afternoon passed by almost entirely normally.

Still, her anxiety persists until much later that night, when Zuko finally emerges with the rest of his uncle's men from their meetings.

"Someone saw you this morning," she whispers to him urgently as he sits down next to her for supper.

He stiffens in alarm. "Who?"

"One of the Southern girls."

He doesn't move, continuing to stare at his dinner tray. "Did she say anything?"

"Not exactly." She scratches her head, remembering Lusa's sardonic smile that morning and wondering about her silence afterward. Maybe she hadn't brought it up because she believed it none of her business. Or maybe she was waiting for the right opportunity to hold it over her head. "But either way, that was way too close."

He nods shortly, his jaw tightening, probably predicting what she says next. "We can't risk being caught like that again."

It doesn't stop the glower from spreading across his face as she continues anxiously. "This time, it was just Lusa. What if next time it's somebody else? Somebody who cares?"

He remains stone still for so long, she wonders if he even heard her. But at last, he finally stirs, his hands clenching into tight fists. "You're right," he agrees reluctantly. "We should probably lay low for a while."

"It's for the best," she tells him, even as part of her quails wildly, already missing him even though he was right there.

He lets out a huff and smoke trickles into the air. "Right," he mutters, still sounding unconvinced. "It's for the best."

"...and Tartok, you must learn when to break and when to yield to your teammates. Do you understand?"

"Does he understand?" Toph echoes mutinously under her breath, but loud enough for Zuko to hear. "Like you'd expect a pile of rocks to take feedback."

"Toph," he groans, already sick of it.

"I'm just saying. I don't think I've ever met anyone so resistant to criticism," Toph goes on, throwing a glare in the direction of where their new resident waterbender now waits. "At least a pile of rocks would actually cause some damage, unlike Caveman over there."

"It'd have a less fragile ego too," Aang adds darkly.

The waterbender in question only glowers at Jeong-Jeong, once again delegated with the thankless task of training up the new team. Wrapped in his nondescript black cloak, the old master seated at the head of the arena behind the chiefs' hall turns his flinty gaze on the remaining three members. "And you three. Must I remind you that you are supposed to behave as a team?"

"Sorry, Master Jeong-Jeong," Zuko says wearily. "It's...it's a big change for us too."

"We're used to Katara," Aang explains loudly, and Zuko doesn't miss the scandalized expression that Tartok throws his way at the mention of her name. "We had chemistry with her. She was talented enough, and open-minded enough, to integrate seamlessly with us." He smiles so smugly, it makes Zuko suspect that the young Air Nomad was actually trying to bait Tartok on purpose. "And of course, she was with us from the beginning too."

"I agree," Toph declares, slamming her foot into the snow. "Sweetness made me realize just how dangerous waterbending could be." She tosses her head scathingly in Tartok's direction. "This guy's about as threatening as a guppyshrimp. All he does is splash a bunch of puddles around."

"I do not!" Tartok explodes, whirling on her with fists clenched tightly to his side. "What do you know, anyway? Such bold talk from such a little girl."

"Little girl?" Toph bristles, slamming her fist into the heel of her hand. "Oh, you did not just call me that."

"But that's all you are." Tartok gives her an ugly smile. "Back where you came from, you might have been a big deal, but this is the North."

Toph points at him threateningly. "I'm hearing a lot of talk, big guy. Why don't you take it to the ring and prove it?"

"You're on," Tartok spits, before glaring at him and Aang. "The rest of you, stay back."

Zuko only sighs again as he and Aang return to one of the benches lining the side of the arena. To his surprise, Aang brightens as he sits down. "Hey Zuko, once Toph kills him for calling her a little girl, do you think the chiefs will let us bring Katara back?"

Zuko only stares at him impassively. "You've been spending way too much time with Toph. Aren't you a pacifist?"

From his spot at the head of the arena, Jeong-Jeong clears his throat. Zuko studies the old man's face, but it was impossible to read what he thought of the match-up. "Begin," he commands.

Toph's face scrunches intently, her feet sliding across the surface of the snow. Across from her, Tartok leaps into action. A lump of snow jumps upward with him, splashing into a crescent of water. It follows the deliberate rotations of his wrists, building and swelling in size until it resembles a floating tidal wave.

"Too slow," Aang complains next to him, sounding bored. "Katara would have gone on the offensive by now."

With a grimace of concentration, Toph raises her hands. Thousands of grains of sand, sprinkled across the slippery surface to prevent any slips and falls, float upward. Then, with a clench and a pull to her chest, they zoom toward her, coalescing into a growing mass hovering in front of her.

"Any time now," Aang suggests, waving his hand. "Don't mind her, she's only going to flatten you."

But Tartok, preoccupied with his kata, doesn't notice the gargantuan missile that Toph hurls at him until it slams into his chest and knocks the wind out of him.

"Oh no, he lost." Aang rests his chin onto his palm as Tartok lands on his back with a loud thump. "What a shame."

Toph only folds her arms, cocking her head triumphantly at her thoroughly trounced opponent. "You were saying?"

"That wasn't fair!" Tartok wheezes, rolling over onto his side to clutch at his chest. "I wasn't ready!"

"How much more time did you need?" Toph demands incredulously.

"You only won because you don't fight honourably," Tartok complains, sitting up and wincing with every movement.

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose as Toph swears at Tartok with a ferocity that would make a pirate blush. "At least he made a satisfying sound when he hit the ground," he grumbles.

"Way better than the ones that come out of his mouth when he talks," Aang agrees savagely. Elsewhere, Jeong-Jeong diplomatically cuts Toph off to berate the waterbender for losing awareness of his surroundings.

Zuko leans back, staring longingly upward at the sky. Even though it was past midday, the sun still hangs low, its light weak and barely able to pierce the thick cloud cover. He longs for proper sunlight, overtired and beginning to go stark raving mad in its absence. But the dim twilight glow would only last a few more hours before the black of night swallowed them again.

Forget what Katara says. Polar winter is hell.

But the thought of Katara only brings up a crush of messy feelings that he isn't prepared to face. Shaking his head, he clamps it all down and forces himself back into the present.

By now, a small group of men are exiting the back door of the chiefs' hall and approaching the sprawling arena. It takes Zuko a moment to spot his uncle, walking alongside Chief Arnook and some of the other Northern chiefs, all small figures clad in identical blue from where he sits.

Jeong-Jeong snaps to attention as Uncle Iroh joins him. "And how is our team getting along?" he asks warmly.

The stony silence that grips the four of them is the only answer he receives. "I see," his uncle continues tactfully before turning to Jeong-Jeong. "Was it like this when you first started the project?"

Jeong-Jeong clears his throat again, conscious of the expectant looks the Northern chiefs all ply in his direction. "There was no shortage of friction between the four candidates when we first initiated the project last summer," he begins, as gently as he can manage. "However...with the existing chemistry between three benders, and a new substitution in the position that requires...quite a bit more versatility than the others, the new team lineup does seem somewhat more...unbalanced than I hoped."

"I see," his uncle remarks, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He studies Tartok with his keen, assessing gaze before he lets out a disappointed sigh. "Sometimes, you just have to accept that these are very big shoes to fill. And time is not on our side, Master Jeong-Jeong."

"You don't have to remind me," Jeong-Jeong grunts, pulling his cloak tighter around himself.

But Tartok clambers to his feet, still wincing. "She can't have been that good," he argues, clutching at his chest. "I think everyone just had a soft spot for that girl, and is taking it out on me because I'm better than her!"

Zuko chokes on his spit, trying to disguise his reaction as a coughing fit. Toph doesn't bother, her laughter ringing out loud and clear in the midday air like a sword drawn from its sheath.

Jeong-Jeong and his uncle both stare at Tartok blankly. It was a testament to their diplomacy, Zuko thinks to himself, that they didn't also burst out laughing at the boy's absurd declaration.

"You are correct in one respect," Jeong-Jeong begins, exchanging a sidelong glance with his uncle. "Sifu Katara has earned a great deal of fondness and respect from all who worked with her on this project. However…"

"You have a lot of hard work ahead of you before you can claim to fill her shoes," Uncle Iroh finishes bluntly. "Perhaps we should stick to the basics for the rest of the afternoon -"

"The basics?" Tartok repeats, his pale face mottling. "I am one of the elite waterbenders of the Northern Water Tribe. I refuse to be treated as some novice!" He crosses his arms across his chest stubbornly. "And I demand to be addressed as Sifu as well!"

"No, son," Uncle Iroh refuses flatly. "That is a title that you have not earned yet." He fixes Tartok with his trademark piercing stare. "And with that attitude, it will be a long time before you do."

Tartok's mouth opens and closes wordlessly before he finally flounders and hangs his head. Angry splotches of red still burn brightly on his cheeks.

"Back where he came from, he might have been a big deal. But this is Team Avatar," Toph mocks under her breath, earning a muffled snort from Aang.

"No, Toph," Zuko corrects, kneading his temples. "He was right. This is the North. Don't forget it."

Uncle Iroh and the other chiefs depart without another word, leaving Jeong-Jeong to drill them through the basics.

Zuko gazes up at the midday sky despairingly. It was going to be a long afternoon.

The following day the clouds vanish, and the sun low in the sky still manages to stain it with soft yellow light. It touches the broad icy streets of Aujuittuq and turns the surface of its rivers to ripples of liquid gold.

Katara is in a similarly good mood by the time she leaves the healing huts, trailing the apprentices and the chaperones Nerrivik had assigned them. It had been a productive morning. In fact, there had been several productive mornings. Her bloodbending lessons had infused the healing classes with a new energy, and she could not believe how quickly the girls were mastering the skill. Even Nerrivik's women were participating, and one of them - a nervous redhead named Ikkuma - had even found some arctic lemmingvoles for use in practice that morning.

Then, a cold blinding pain splits along her temple and all thoughts scatter.

"Ow!" she cries, clapping a mittened hand to the side of her face. Blinking snow out of her eyes, she realizes that someone had lobbed a snowball at her head.

Specifically, one of the Northern Water Tribe boys now marching up behind her. Squinting in the bright midday sun, she recognizes Tartok's sour face.

"What was that for?" she demands hotly, turning on her heel to face him.

But Tartok scowls back, flanked by a crush of other boys, and with another snowball at the ready in his grasp. A small distance behind them trail Zuko, Toph, and Aang, appearing nearly as aghast as she feels.

"You're not that great," Tartok complains.

Katara frowns in confusion. "Excuse me?"

Tartok tosses the snowball from one hand to another, staring at her insolently. "The other benders - Toph, Aang, the fire prince, even the Dragon General," he spits, gesturing behind him to where her friends wait, "they all keep saying that I'm not as good as you."

"Well, you're not!" Toph pipes up, before Zuko nudges her in the side with his elbow. She falls silent with a glower.

Katara doesn't contain her snort of surprise. "And you decided to solve the problem by pelting me with snowballs?"

Tartok's pale face mottles to an ugly dark colour. "I am not inferior to you!" he shouts. "I will not be thought of as weaker than some common Southern woman."

Katara itches to water-whip the petulance out of him, but is aware of all the eyes intently watching their spat. The small group of boys gathered behind Tartok, the healing apprentices watching with growing curiosity. Ikkuma and the rest of Nerrivik's chaperones, who would surely report any transgression back to their overbearing chieftainess, leaving Katara to endure yet another unwanted lecture about Northern tribe cultural values.

"I don't understand," she says slowly. "Are you challenging me or something?"

"I would never challenge a woman! That would be beneath me," Tartok growls, before taking a step closer. "I just want everybody to know that I'm stronger than you."

She can't help the scornful laugh that escapes her. "You want to prove it? Go ahead and try."

Tartok yells as he dashes toward her, pulling a handful of snow into his grasp. He hurls it into a shining silver arc straight for her head.

Katara neatly sidesteps the blow. "Oh, were you aiming that at me?" she asks innocently amid the shocked gasps of the girls behind her.

His face twists into a snarl before he rushes her, water brandished at the ready. She moves quickly on her feet, dodging and weaving through his strikes without much effort until she catches him off-balance and knocks him into the snowbank with a swift kick to the knee.

"See?" Toph yells, running up to her. "She didn't even need her bending to beat you! That's just sad."

Tartok spits out a mouthful of snow. But before he says anything else, Toph makes a motion with her hands to crumble the ground beneath him. Tartok falls into the water with a splash, shrieking at the cold.

"Now be nice," Toph warns him as he floats away, "or Sweetness here will wash you out to sea."

"Toph," Katara admonishes her, nervously glancing at the large group of women surrounding them, stunned by what they had just witnessed. "You know I can't -"

"Picking fights with boys, are we?"

She stiffens as one of Nerrivik's women approaches her wearing a disapproving scowl. "No, Denigi," Katara answers, tamping down her indignation. "More like the boys are picking fights with me."

"You can't blame them for that. It's in a man's nature to fight," Denigi argues, jamming her hands on her hips.

"Come on, Denigi," coaxes Ikkuma, the youngest of Nerrivik's women. "You saw what happened. Let it go."

"I can't just let it go, Ikkuma," Denigi insists with infuriating self-righteousness. "Katara's practically a grown woman. She should know better."

"But Denigi -"

"I'm going to speak with Nerrivik. Are you coming?"

Ikkuma sighs defeatedly. "No, you go on."

With a last lingering look of disapproval, Denigi marches off haughtily. Katara watches her shrink into the distance, defiance and despair competing for her attention. "Just great," she groans, clapping a hand to her forehead. "Now I get to listen to another lecture."

"It can't be that bad," Ikkuma assures her kindly. "You have at least a dozen people who can vouch for you. Don't mind Denigi, she's a bit of a zealot sometimes."

"Besides," Toph exclaims, grabbing her arm excitedly, "you got to make Tartok look like a total idiot in front of everybody! Wasn't it worth it?"

Katara glances at Toph, at Aang and Zuko watching some distance away. A pang hits her along with the sudden sensation of everything feeling suddenly normal, only for a moment.

Then she glances at Ikkuma, at the small crush of Tartok's friends, now scurrying away embarrassedly to help him out of the water. At all the young apprentices staring up at her with unadulterated awe.

"Yeah," she says, finally smiling. "I guess it was."

Chapter 40: to tame the ocean

Chapter Text

disclaimer. obligatory acknowledgment that none of atla belongs to me, alas

author's notes. a huge thank you to everyone who's read and commented and following along! you are powering me through some really challenging times and i can never be grateful enough to all you beautiful people. i'm back on tumblr, feel free to follow me at colourwhirled-writesfor fic-related and general updates.

some bits and bobs for the upcoming chapter:

1) the water tribe marriage rituals as described are loosely adapted from those historically followed by the inuit of northern canada

2) the prevalence of healing among waterbenders was somewhat inconsistent in canon, with pakku suggesting that all female waterbenders learned healing vs. jeong-jeong implying that healing was a rare gift among waterbenders. i've elected to go with the latter, where not all waterbenders can heal

3) trigger warning for mentions of domestic violence and mariticides with varying degrees of success. please proceed with caution if you find these upsetting.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xl. to tame the ocean

tell the world that saw you head for hell
i can be something you believe in

"to believe" / the cinematic orchestra

It isn't until the following morning that Nerrivik pulls Katara out of her morning healing lesson and frog-marches her down the main street of Aujuittuq straight into the band chiefs' great hall.

Nerrivik remains rather tight-lipped and severe, preferring to communicate her disapproval through several loud sniffs of her nose, before presenting Katara to the assembled band chiefs and then leaving as quietly as she had come.

Chief Arnook, seated in the middle of the group of stern old men, beckons to her with a wave of his hand. "Come in, Katara. Make yourself comfortable."

In the cold light of day filtering through the slitted windows and bone-deep chilliness radiating from the rest of the chieftains, comfort felt like the last thing she could expect to find. But she draws closer, heart pounding nervously as the chieftains exchange wordless glances among each other, their frosty disapproval plain on their faces.

Arnook smooths the deep purple chieftain's mantle cascading over his shoulders before taking a deep breath. "Well, Katara. This is an awkward situation we find ourselves in, isn't it?" He smiles at her, even as the frowns of some of the other men deepen.

"Uh," Katara falters, the chief's friendliness taking her by surprise. "I don't know what you mean?"

By now, she recognizes Hahn and his father, seated on either side of Chief Arnook, as they glance knowingly among each other. Then Hahn levels her with a piercing stare. "We had such high hopes for you, Katara of Sivusiktok," he begins. "We invited you to join our tribe, as one of our own. We have given you a place to develop your healing skills. And all we asked of you was to respect our tribe's cultural traditions. One simple thing."

"I didn't mean to -" Katara begins to protest, but Hahn raises a hand to silence her.

"But we are troubled by the reports we have heard about your behaviour here," he cuts her off, straightening in his seat. "First you used waterbending in broad daylight, in the presence of our finest warriors, no less! Then you try to bring some barbaric form of waterbending into our healing classes. And now I hear from my good friend Tartok, Chieftain Keelut's esteemed younger son -" he gestures at a sour-faced old man who glowers next to him, "- that you had the nerve to attack him in a crowded street!"

But even as some of the chieftains shake their heads darkly, others shift in their seats, appearing unconvinced by Hahn's theatrical speech.

"These are serious accusations, Hahn," Chief Arnook admonishes, to Katara's mounting surprise. "Well, Katara? What do you have to say for yourself?"

Katara fights to reign in her rising temper. "It wasn't my intention to be disrespectful to your tribe's traditions, Chief Arnook," she begins, with as much patience as she could muster. "But the first time I had to use waterbending, it was because Tartok and Sangilak got carried away in a duel and collapsed the bridge I was standing on -"

"So it isn't enough to fight my son," huffs Chieftain Keelut, "but now you go after Suluk's son as well?"

A grizzled giant of a man sharing Sangilak's heavily-muscled bulk only stares impassively at Katara. "Speak for yourself, Keelut. I have heard no complaints from my son," he rumbles in a voice like an avalanche, his nostrils flaring distastefully. "Perhaps it is different in your village, but in Akluilak, we consider it beneath the dignity of a Water Tribe warrior like Sangilak to pick fights with women...let alone lose to them."

"I agree with Suluk," pipes up an old man with smooth white hair that seemed to glow in the streaming daylight. "My grandson Jukka relayed some of this story to me. According to his friends, Tartok actually provoked a fight with this girl, in front of other women, no less!"

Katara's eyes widen with surprise at the old chieftain's declaration. Jukka had always been friendly to her despite being a guy from the North. Perhaps his old friendship with Sokka had earned a degree of loyalty after all.

"My daughter Bunik witnessed the whole affair too," another chieftain cuts in, with a surly face and flat voice that reminds her of Master Pakku. "Her tale concurs with those of Suluk and Onartok here. Tartok attacked this girl, and then had the nerve to come complaining to us when he proved to be weaker." He shakes his head disparagingly. "This sounds more like an issue of the strength within Keelut's family line than it is for a ruling of the band chiefs."

"Thank you, Mallik," Chief Arnook says, straightening the carved moon-and-star tassels that hang against his chest. Katara isn't sure if she imagines the relief spreading over his face as he continues, "I think that settles the matter adequately. Katara can hardly be accused of disrespecting our tribe's traditions if Keelut's younger son did the same thing." He casts a sidelong glance tinged with triumph at Keelut. "There is hardly any higher disgrace than provoking a woman to a fight. Perhaps we should bring Tartok in here afterward, and discipline him for wasting our time!"

"That - that will not be necessary," splutters Chieftain Keelut, his milky face turning bright red. "It appears this has all been a complete misunderstanding. I will speak with my son myself, and see that he never displays such shameful behaviour again." And even through his penitence, Katara senses the grudging apology forced through gritted teeth was a step awry, a miscalculation that had backfired on Hahn and his faction among the chiefs.

"Very well," Hahn sighs, his disappointment palpable. He leans his chin against his hand, gazing down at Katara from his seat on high. "But we expect this to be the last we hear of you waterbending up here, Katara."

"I didn't do it on purpose," Katara says with all the patience she can muster. "If Tartok stops picking fights with me, then I won't have to defend myself."

Hahn raises an eyebrow, still evidently displeased. "And what's this I hear about you bringing waterbending into the healing huts? What of that?"

But before she can answer, Chief Arnook waves a dismissive hand. "Oh, that. My daughter, Princess Yue, tells me that Katara is working with our healing masters to share one of her skills. It is not waterbending, but a technique that our healers can use to manipulate the human body far more effectively than they are currently able to."

But Hahn glowers petulantly at Arnook. "My mother insists that it is waterbending. I don't like the sound of this."

"Nerrivik has mastered many skills, Hahn," Arnook replies with the hard-won patience of a seasoned leader, "but neither waterbending nor healing are among them. I hope you will forgive me for deferring to actual healing masters when it comes to guiding our decisions here."

To Katara, it seems as though he might as well have struck Hahn openly across the face. But to her relief, the stubborn teenager only slouches sullenly in his chair and says nothing further as Arnook beckons to her with a warm smile. "You may go, Katara."

"Th - thank you," she stammers, bobbing her head in a quick bow before shuffling out of the band chiefs' wintry hall.

Outside, the weak sun flirts with the wispy cloud cover trailing across the sky, illuminating the streets and canals with dim white light. But the breeze that tickles her face and flutters against the braids woven through her hair is unseasonably warm, and so is the strange hopeful feeling bubbling in her chest.

She returns to the healing huts to try catch the last bit of the lesson. By now, most of the girls have grasped enough of the bloodbending forms to practice on the hide mannequin. A few of them even manage to manipulate the lemmingvoles that Ikkuma snuck into the class for the second morning in a row.

The busy motions and side conversations die down instantly as she steps inside the crowded hut. Heads snap to face her, their gazes of combined curiosity and worry pinning her to the spot.

"So?" Bunik demands, the first to find her voice. She drops the lemmingvole from her twisted grasp and it scurries into the corner with a reproachful squeak. "How did it go?"

Katara thinks quickly of her meeting with the band chiefs and the unexpected turns it had taken. She settles for a nonchalant shrug. "Fine."

"Fine?" Denigi echoes, scarcely able to believe her ears. "You mean to tell me the chiefs were okay with your display yesterday?"

"They thought it was Tartok's fault for provoking me," Katara supplies, irritated by the woman's infuriating self-righteousness. She pauses to savour the indignation mottling on the uptight housewife's face before adding with a flourish, "They said there was hardly any higher disgrace in picking a fight with a woman...and losing."

A chorus of cheers greets her words. Katara blushes as a couple of the girls jump forward to grab her arms and raise them triumphantly. "That's what those blockheads get for challenging Katara!"

"Way to show those boys not to mess with us!"

"That'll teach them to think twice before picking on us!"

"Three cheers for Katara! The bravest woman in the North!"

Through all the excited babble, Katara's breath catches in her throat. Surveying the crush of excited, hopeful eyes and the exhilarating celebrations of the women in the hut stokes the fire in her chest and yet another elusive sensation that she hasn't felt in a very long time.

The sensation of finally beginning to fit in somewhere among her own. Of carving a spot among these girls, so different from her and yet somehow, wanting the same.

"And the bloodbending?" Ikkuma asks tentatively, pulling the sleeves of her long flowy tunic over her wrists in a nervous motion. "What did the chiefs say of that?"

Katara smirks, thinking of Hahn's sour face when Chief Arnook had made his declaration. "They're fine with it. As long as we use it only for healing, they have no problems with us working to improve our skills."

The cheer that erupts from the girls nearly threatens to knock her off her feet. Blood rushes hotly to her cheeks, but even she can't fight the big grin splitting across her face.

"Hmph," Denigi huffs, stomping back into a corner with the other older women. She scowls darkly, crossing her arms in disapproval. "What is this tribe coming to?"

"Bloodbending?" Hei repeats slowly, a line forming in the middle of her forehead as she frowns with confusion. "What in the name of the spirits is that?"

Katara leans forward earnestly, the pile of sewing in her lap quite forgotten. "It's a technique I learned from a woman in our tribe," she offers, ignoring the uncomfortable churn of duplicity in the pit of her stomach. "Master Yugoda and Ahnah thought it could be taught as a natural extension of healing."

"Hmm." Hei leans back on her haunches, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "It would be a lot easier to heal certain injuries if you could physically manipulate the blood around it," she muses. "But I could see it going south pretty quickly."

"I agree," Aujak cuts in, looking around nervously to make sure the matriarchal were well out of earshot. "It sounds too violent. My husband would probably think it sounds like waterbending, in a sense."

Katara fights the urge to roll her eyes at the unsolicited opinions of both Aujak and her husband. "Well...Princess Yue and Nerrivik both dropped by, and they didn't see a problem with it."

"Nerrivik was okay with it?" Hei asks skeptically, before shaking her head with a laugh. "Quick, somebody pinch me." Lusa leans over and pinches her forearm. "Ow! I didn't mean literally!"

"Sorry," Lusa quips, but her green eyes still glimmer teasingly. "Still though. Who'd have thought that old witch would be okay with whatever you crazy folks cooked up back in Sivusiktok?"

Katara pauses uncomfortably. "So...do you want to learn?" she chances. "So far, we've just been limiting the lessons to the healing apprentices, but Hei, you're a fully trained healer and you should have a chance to learn it if you want."

"That's very thoughtful of you, Katara," Hei replies primly, a faraway look misting her eyes. "I'll have to think about it."

"What about you?" Katara turns to Lusa as Hei bends over the tiny tunic she was stitching together.

"Me?" Lusa flounders haplessly. "I'm not a healer."

"No," Katara allows before lowering her voice. "But you can still waterbend, right? Just because you can't heal doesn't mean you can't try your hand at bloodbending."

"I…" Lusa glances down at her feet, at the pile of worn-out socks demanding her attention. Then she looks at Aujak, leaning back into a pile of furs to accommodate the growing child in her belly, content and glowing in the firelight. At Hei, barely visible under the rolls of cloth, her ink black hair fastidiously arranged into a beaded braided knot piled atop her head.

She bites her lip, clearly more tempted than she expected by the prospect, before reluctantly shaking her head. "I don't think so," she answers haltingly. "It...it wouldn't be right."

"Lusa -"

"If I was meant to bend, the spirits would have gifted me with the ability to heal," she continues, sounding as though she had recited this many times over the course of her life. She gives Katara a strained smile. "But they didn't. Best not risk their wrath."

A host of arguments well hotly in the back of Katara's throat. But as Lusa lets out a shaking sigh and turns back to her mending, she bites them back reluctantly instead.

"And what have we here?" The uncomfortable silence shatters as Kirima, one of the fearsome matriarchs, pauses during her walkabouts of the communal tents. "Too much gossip distracting you from your work? Look at the size of that pile!"

"But Kirima," Lusa answers, sounding like she was soothing a wild animal, "we've been so busy with the sewing, and Denigi only gave us this extra mending an hour ago -"

"An hour's plenty time for a woman with focus, Lusa," Kirima counters, jamming her hands on her hips. Her nose twitches distastefully. "But perhaps all you Southern girls need help with that. Should we split you up?"

"No, Kirima." Lusa's voice softens meekly as she hangs her head penitently. "We'll be good."

"The next time I come back, that mending had better be done!" Kirima barks, before moving on. Her grumbling trails in the air behind her. "Southern girls, think they're better than us, hmph - "

Katara's hands shake with repressed indignation, but Lusa only gives her a sympathetic smile before returning to her work in complete, cowed silence.

"...I'd want a hunter, of course! They'd have to be up at the crack of dawn, but at least we'd have the evenings together!"

"Me, I prefer someone scholarly. I'd lose my mind with worry if I wed a warrior. So many things could go wrong!"

"I want to marry someone from a powerful family. A chief, or close enough in kind -"

"Ugh! You're too much, Koko! You never want to marry a chief!"

"But then I could be a powerful matriarch, and then I'd be the one supervising and harassing the girls instead of sitting here working until my hands fall off!"

"But would it be worth it? You'd have to leave your home and move to his village, and you'd be alone most of the time anyway. You'd never see your husband, and spirits help you if you couldn't produce a son -"

"Shhh, keep your voices down! Nerrivik's coming!"

Katara fights a wry smile as the group of chattering young girls seated around her fall immediately silent. As Nerrivik walks by, studying them sharply for a whiff of distraction, the girls put their heads down, appearing the very picture of domestic competence. With a sniff of satisfaction, the matriarch passes them by.

The silence lingers over them comfortingly, an invisible shawl of safety. Instead of joining the other Southern girls in the communal tents that afternoon as usual, Katara and the other apprentices had been thrown into the kitchens, where the tribal matriarchs put them quickly to work. Left alone to their own devices in the back tent, the circle of young girls promptly found ways to entertain themselves while cleaning foraged mushrooms and picking seeds out of fuzzy pods. All to help prepare for the lavish feast to be held in honour of Yue's wedding to Hahn, which would take place the following evening on midwinter's day, when polar night finally drew to a close and proper daylight returned.

"Anyway," young Koko continues, picking up the conversation once Nerrivik was out of earshot, "I'd rather have Nerrivik's job and be married to a chief, than have to deal with the stress of being wed to a hunter or a warrior!"

"Koko, you can't marry a chief if you can't handle stress!" pretty Shila quips with a laugh, shaking her head. Strands of her perfectly arranged hair settle about her face like a halo, gleaming in the firelight.

"What about you? Do you think Imnek is going to carve you a betrothal necklace soon?"

"Oh, I hope so!" Shila sighs dreamily. "He's so handsome, and humble, and polite -"

"Imnek?" someone cuts in disbelievingly. "You mean Tartok's brother, Imnek?"

"That's the one." Shila nods enthusiastically. "And he's nothing like his brother, he's ever so wonderful -"

"You're wasting your time pining over that one," Woka tells her with a knowing smirk. "I heard a rumour that he skates on the other side of the ice, if you know what I mean."

Shila pouts as everyone around her snickers. "That's just hearsay, Woka, and it's unkind. Anyway, it can't be true -"

"Are you sure?" interjects Bunik, raising an eyebrow. "I've never seen him with a girl. I don't think anyone ever has."

"That's because he's very proper," Shila insists, her olive cheeks turning a deep red.

"And clean," Woka continues, her smirk widening so much that firelight gleams off the piercing in her tongue. "And well-groomed, too! He puts some of us girls to shame, doesn't he?" She runs a hand along the shaven side of her head, before winking.

"What's wrong with a man who takes pride in his appearance?"

"And spends most of his time surrounded by other men," adds another girl called Miki. She fiddles with the mangled remains of a fuzzy seed pod, its sticky sap clinging to her fingertips. "You know, he and Sangilak are practically inseparable -"

"That's because they're best friends," Shila says exasperatedly.

"Uh huh." Bunik flings a handful of seed pods into the large shell basket in the middle of their circle. "Friends. You know, Sangilak only ever speaks when Imnek's around him, right?"

"Sangilak can speak?" Woka asks dryly. "And here I thought all that muscle left no room for a brain in there!" She knocks at the side of her head to illustrate her point.

"You guys," Shila whines, clearly upset by the direction the conversation had taken. "You're all being really rude."

"We're just looking out for you," Bunik tells her in her characteristic dry voice. "Don't come sulking to us when he mysteriously refuses to share your bed."

The circle of girls erupts in another round of snickers before they finally drop the subject.

Katara sighs, not knowing what to make of the gossip but enjoying it all as harmless entertainment. That is, until Shila turns to her, her pale blue eyes sparkling. "What about you, Katara?"

"What about me?" she asks, more preoccupied with scrubbing dirt off the spongy mushrooms.

"Oh you know. Got your eye on anyone?"

Katara freezes, before glancing up at the pretty girl and then the dozens of curious stares that suddenly land upon her. "Um," she says as casually as she can, "not really…"

"Oh, come on!" Woka exclaims with a grin. "There must be someone."

"She's blushing! Look at her, of course there's someone!"

Katara clears her throat uncomfortably. "You've got it all wrong," she deflects weakly, even as a part of her wonders wildly what the girls would think if they ever discovered the truth. "No one in the tribe's really caught my eye," she confesses, the only part of the truth she could really bring herself to admit.

But to her dismay, the girls pounce on the small offering like mooselions tearing apart their prey. "So it's someone outside the tribe then?"

"Ooh, what a rebel!"

"What would you expect from Katara? Rules are just suggestions to her, right?"

"Is it someone from the Fire Nation? Is that why you're too embarrassed to tell us?"

Someone gasps. "Oh, that would be scandalous! Especially after what they did to her tribe!"

"But you know what they say about firebenders, they make great lovers -"

"I'll bet it's the prince, he's really handsome for a Fire Nation guy -"

"Okay, everybody calm down." Katara hurls her thoroughly-scrubbed mushrooms into the basket. Her heart hammers frantically at how easily they had blundered into the truth. "No, it's not someone from outside the tribe. It's…it's... "Quickly, she casts about in her head, trying to find some way to control the damage. "It's kind of embarrassing, actually. It's, um…"

"Is it Tartok?" Woka asks with a dramatic gasp. "Is that why you two keep having all those duels in front of everyone? Secretly, can you two just not control your passion for each other?"

Katara blinks, taken aback by the suggestion, and horrified by it, even if it was an easy way out of this dreadful conversation. "Yes," she says stiffly, kicking herself with instant regret. "I have...an uncontrollable passion...for Tartok."

A blank silence grips the girls, as their excitement abruptly withers.

"You're right," Bunik remarks tonelessly. "That is embarrassing."

"He's such a jerk, what do you even see in him?"

"How disappointing! At least a firebender would be exciting!"

"Nope," Katara says slowly, with an unhappy sigh of relief. "I just have...really...really bad taste, I guess." She lowers her head, reaching for another mushroom with mud-stained fingers. "So please, please don't tell anyone."

"There's nothing to tell," says Ulva, the silent young widow sitting by herself just outside of the circle. She frowns severely, even as the rest of the young girls shrink from her in fear. "You silly girls with your hopes and your passions. Just you wait. When the time comes, she'll be matched with whoever the village elders deem appropriate, and she'll be grateful for it. Just like the rest of you. Got it?"

Something wrings violently in Katara's chest and it surprises her. But Ulva only glares at the rest of the girls before turning back to the pile of soggy mushrooms heaped by her feet.

"Spoilsport," Woka mutters mutinously, glaring at the widow's back. "Just because she ruined her own marriage doesn't mean she gets a monopoly on suffering."

"Don't worry Katara. We won't tell a soul," Shila promises, before her face splits into an excited smile. "But look on the bright side! When I'm married to Imnek and you're married to Tartok, we can be sisters! It'll be so much fun…"

Zuko's chin droops from where it rests against his palm. His fingers drum idly against the edge of the worn wooden table, square and low and taking up most of the small chamber tucked in behind the band chiefs' grand hall. He gazes dully at the intricate sculptures carved along the gleaming ice walls, at the richly painted wooden statues towering in the corners, the brightly patterned rug covering most of the ground, its weave coarse and scratchy against his knees.

He pays less attention to the giant map occupying most of the tabletop, detailing the movements of their forces, their allies' forces, even what they could guess of their enemy's forces, with increasing numbers of brightly coloured pins crawling across its surface like flies atop a corpse. To the people kneeling around its four long edges: his uncle's men interspersed with the Air Nomad elders and a handful of acolytes. And lining opposite sides, staring down the breadth of the map as though it was a battle line drawn in the snow, were what Zuko recognized by now as the two opposing factions of the Northern tribe's band chiefs.

On one side was Chief Arnook, surrounded by the men who he relied on for support. Cannily diplomatic Atanek, who had welcomed them and brought them safely into the city when they arrived. Mallik, a surly, sour-faced man with grey threading his dark hair, and his bullish nephew, Unnuk, seated by his side. Onartok, an ancient man with skin like weathered oak, who was strangely regarded by the others because he had left his home village in the care of his only daughter. Suluk, a fearsome giant who spoke little but observed much with keen, beady dark eyes, and his equally intimidating son, Sangilak.

And on the other was his son-in-law to-be, Hahn, with his troupe. Natok, his wily father. Keelut and his elder son, the silent and physically unimpressive Imnek. Ancient Tupilek, with his seamed blind eye and stubborn adherence to tradition.

At the outset of deliberations, Zuko had expected the Northerners to put up a united front. But, to his surprise, once they had secured an alliance, the group of chiefs had fractured almost instantly along old political divisions.

He ignores most of the dialogue crisscrossing along the table, where on one side, his uncle tries with the help of his officers to guess the positions of Zhao's approaching fleet by poring over the text of intercepted messages. Gyatso and Sutra suggest defensive tactics, while their air acolytes bend small air currents of wind, blowing the small coloured pins into place along the map.

"Prince Zuko, what do you think?"

"Huh?" Zuko starts from his distraction, meeting his uncle's stern gaze sheepishly.

"I said," Uncle Iroh begins with a bite of impatience, "how do you feel about the Chugiak plains?"

Zuko blinks, still not understanding.

"As a defensive position," his uncle supplies. "For Team Avatar?"

"Oh." Zuko mentally smacks himself, before glancing back at the map with renewed attention. "Um. The Chugiak plains." He studies the indicated spot before frowning. "It's fine, I guess. But I thought we were supposed to guard the mouth of the Adlartok Bay, to shore up the defense of the southwestern harbour."

"That was the plan when Team Avatar was at peak efficiency," Jeong-Jeong informs him, taking over for his uncle. "But given the current situation -"

"Don't blame my son for this!" Chieftain Keelut interrupts indignantly. "If you wouldn't let your blind favouritism get in the way of his training, you wouldn't even notice the difference between the two!"

"Oh, of course. Blame the other side for your son's failings, as usual," Chieftain Mallik comments sourly, with a contemptuous twitch of his nose. "If he spent less time picking fights with women, and losing to them, he might have made some use of the opportunity that was gifted to him."

"Whatever the reason," Jeong-Jeong continues diplomatically, running a finger along the line of the river winding inland to Aujuittuq. "In its current state, we thought the Qopuk river, where it meets the Chugiak plains just outside the city."

Zuko stares at the position skeptically. "It's so far inland," he comments, thinking hard. "Do we even expect Zhao's fleet to breach that far?"

"With luck, the defenses along the harbour will hold."

"Then shouldn't we be helping along the harbour? Why keep us so far inland -" But then Zuko falls silent as it hits him. They don't plan to use us in the main defenses at all. We're just a backup, in case the worst happens.

He scowls, but he couldn't disagree with the plan. With their cross-bending practices stuck in a rut and Tartok resisting any form of progress in order to appease his big, dumb ego, Team Avatar was far more likely to go down from infighting than from Zhao's fleet. "It's fine."

"Excellent." His uncle nods as one of his officers places a pin on the corresponding spot on the map. "With the way inland guarded and the last defense held, Zhao will have his work cut out for him. With the bulk of the Northern warriors defending the Northern Sea pass, and Master Sutra leading a squadron of Air Nomads to cut Zhao's supply lines, their siege will hopefully be short-lived -"

"Excellent plan, General Iroh," Chief Arnook comments, rubbing his beard as he stares at the map. "I have no doubt that our collective effort will swiftly repel the enemy from our shores -"

"I agree with Chief Arnook," Natok cuts him off. Zuko closes his eyes, bracing for the inevitable argument. He was not disappointed as the chieftain continues, "However, I still believe the Qeorvik warriors are wasted where they are. I would prefer them to man the shores, and move the Taktuq fighters atop the walls -"

"The Taktuq fighters are specially trained in close-combat fighting, how many times do I have to tell you?" argues Chieftain Mallik, pressing at his temples in frustration. "They would be wasted up on the walls -"

"But the Qeorvik warriors are the finest waterbenders in the land! We cannot insult them by removing them so far from the first line of defense -"

"Oh, so you've entrusted the defenses to the Qeorviks' egos, have you? Well, let's all just pack up and go home, if that's the case..."

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose, breathing hard to calm himself as the chiefs' bickering erupts all along the table. A few seats down, Aang appears nearly as listless as he feels. He plays with a stray yellow pin, bending it absently with a small gust of wind. Zuko's eyes follow its progress as it floats aimlessly in the breeze. Next to him, Toph is engrossed with a piece of metal in her hands, folding it into various origami shapes and eagerly showing it off to the air acolytes sitting near her.

We're doomed.

"Enough," his uncle finally announces, once both sides have worn themselves out to merely glaring at each other in dislike. "You've...brought up a lot of good points. We will take some more time to consider them before finalizing the defense strategy -"

A chorus of groans greets his pronouncement.

" - however, this does not end with Zhao's siege," his uncle continues in a steely voice. He runs his fingers along the map, away from the Northern tribe's shores, down along the Earth Kingdom's edge to stop at the crescent islands of the Fire Empire's heartland. "Reports of Ozai's improving health continue to arrive. With each day that passes, he grows stronger. His gaze is fixed on us for the moment, but we must not forget what comes afterward."

A chill runs through his blood as his uncle's face turns grim.

"Remember that this coming summer marks a full century after Sozin's conquest," Uncle Iroh warns. "And Sozin's comet returns, to offer immeasurable power to Ozai's forces. I do not know if he has the foresight to plan so far ahead, but Princess Azula and the others advising him certainly do. They will use it to their advantage, to whatever ends he desires."

Zuko's mouth runs dry at the thought. He tries to swallow and fails. Glancing at the map with growing horror, he tries to imagine what Sozin's conquest might have looked like in the absence of restraint. With his father at the helm, he could only imagine one outcome.

A world doused in fire. Ashes, as far as the eye could see.

"It is imperative that we stop Zhao as quickly as we can," his uncle declares in the shell-shocked silence gripping the room. "For the sake of the world, we cannot afford a protracted siege. We must defeat him, and then bring the fight to my brother as quickly as we can manage. We must not allow him the chance of harnessing the comet's power. Otherwise…" He trails off, allowing the remainder to hover unsaid.

It takes a while before Zuko remembers how to breathe properly. For once, everyone gathered around the table falls completely, utterly silent. Even the most belligerent among the Northern band chiefs seem lost for words.

"I believe we can do it," Uncle Iroh says softly, plying everyone in turn with his piercing gaze. "With the combined strength of the Air Nomads, the Northern Tribe, and what men remain loyal to me, this is the best chance we will ever have. Let us not squander any more of the advantages left to us. There are precious few of them as is."

And with that, he returns his focus to the map, running once again through the defensive plan. And this time, to Zuko's amazement, nobody argues with him, not once.

"Do you think the village elders would try to set me up with someone?"

It was late in the evening, long after the crush of young girls had finally been split up by one of the irate matriarchs, dissatisfied with the lack of progress being made. Katara had been grateful to rejoin the other Southern girls as they scrubbed and polished the dishes to a gleaming shine.

And yet, for all that their conversation lacked in the irritating frequency of teenage crushes, what Ulva had said still niggled at her uncomfortably.

Aujak wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. "Probably," she admits, before giving her a sly smile. "Why, do you have someone in mind?"

"No," Katara replies quickly, keen to avoid the subject before it blew up out of control again. "No, not like that. I - I was just wondering, I guess…" She puts down the heavy pot for a second, rolling her aching shoulders. "How did it work for you?"

Aujak's face softens sympathetically. "Of course, Katara. You're of that age, it's only natural to be curious." She sighs, setting down her plate among the pile of clean dishes. "I wasn't that much older than you when I first arrived here. At that time, the village elders were keen to pair us Southerners off with any of the youths across the whole tribe who were eligible for marriage. Most of us were split up over the different villages, wherever we could settle." A faint blush colours her cheeks. "I'm not really sure what the elders saw in me or my husband, but they thought we would make a good match."

"Did you get to meet him?" Katara asks, somewhat unnerved by how queasy the whole arrangement made her. "Did you even know if you liked him before you got married?"

Aujak shrugs. "The elders introduced us. We had a conversation. Then, the next thing I knew, he presented me with a carving." She lets out a short laugh. "I guess he had a good feeling about me. Of course, he didn't have to buy me the same way he would a Northern girl."

With a pang, the memories slide into place with a clarity that astonishes her. Among the Water Tribes, there was no concept of dowry. Even back home in the South, it had been customary for a man to "buy" his intended by living with her family for a time and working to serve them. Only then could he marry her. Otherwise, the tribe would never accept their union. Those two will never last, Gran-Gran had remarked once as a pair of newlyweds walked past them. He didn't buy her. A woman who's not properly bought can't rightly count on her husband when she needs him most.

After everything, it surprises her to learn that the Northerners practiced it too. And then shame twists in her gut, for finding it surprising. At the end of the day, the two tribes have more in common than differences, she reminds herself with a heavy sigh.

Perhaps some of her consternation makes its way onto her face, because Aujak smiles at her gently. "Don't worry," she consoles, "even if he doesn't buy you, I'm sure you'll make a great match for someone when the time comes."

Katara chokes out a reply that sounds unintelligible to her ears. In truth, something far more insidious was bothering her, and it had little to do with the prospect of the tidy little future that Aujak and the other girls were dangling before her.

She falls silent, trying to focus more on the endless number of heavy dishes piled up next to them, willing the effort of scouring them all to fill her mind, wishing the exhaustion would make it impossible to think too hard about the hollow sense of inevitability taking root in her chest.

The great fires burn low to the coals and the sliver of moon rises high in the night sky by the time they finish. Most of the women had already retired to their homes for dinner with their families, leaving Katara and Lusa to trudge back to the band chiefs' great hall, their shoulders aching from the stacks of dishes heavy in their arms. Perhaps the older girl could sense Katara's growing disquiet, for she steered their conversations back to safer waters. Instructing her where to set up the plates, remarking on how the empty great hall would be decorated for the wedding feast, remarking about how early she would have to rise to help with all the cooking...

Katara only hears half of it, smiling absently as they finally turn to leave the empty hall, only to stop in their tracks at its entryway.

From another door some way down the hall, a small crowd of men empties out into the corridor, marching past Katara and Lusa where they hover on the periphery. Chief Arnook and Hahn, some of the other band chiefs. And just behind them, the Dragon General at the head of his own retinue.

Katara doesn't realize until she spots Zuko at his uncle's side, tall and broad-shouldered and wearing the parka she had made for him with her own hands, that she has been avoiding trying to think about him for the better part of that afternoon.

She backs away, suddenly unable to look at him as they march past. Her heart quavers traitorously instead. And before she could stop herself, her mind races wildly to the thought she's been trying to suppress all day. A mad, impossible thought of a life where her parents were still alive, where Zuko would have the chance to buy her, what that would even look like.

And then, with the iron control of a bending master, she forces herself to quash that irrational, dangerous thought immediately.

Because it was impossible. It had to be. She had been honest with Zuko from the very start, but perhaps less so with herself when she told him that what they had couldn't go anywhere. She was a woman of the Northern Water Tribe now, and he was a Fire Empire prince. He was no more likely to buy her hand than he was to place her by his side to rule the empire that had destroyed her home.

No, they would both have to part when the inevitable day came. They would both say their goodbyes, make neat, respectable arranged marriages with whoever their elders deemed worthy, and move on with their lives. And that would be the end of it, no matter how they felt.

"Is everything okay?" Lusa asks gently.

"Y - yeah." Katara fights to catch her breath, the slew of hard realizations bringing her no relief at all. She presses a hand to her chest, peering out into the hallway as the last of Iroh's troupe turns the corner out of sight.

"Why didn't you ever marry?"

Lusa tilts her head with a frown. Katara covers her mouth, shocked by the question that had just slipped out of her. "I'm sorry! I don't know where that came from - ignore me, please."

But a strange expression flits over the older girl's face as she stares at Katara. "I don't know," she admits, rubbing the back of her neck. "I guess they never found a good match."

An awkward silence settles between them. "Right," Katara chokes, thoroughly mortified by the whole conversation. Throat closing up tightly, she nods quickly before turning to leave.

"Wait." Lusa's voice stops her. "That's - that's not entirely true."

Katara glances back at her, her curiosity growing. Lusa gazes at the immaculately polished tiles lining the ground, draws aimless shapes in them with the toe of her boot. "I was in love once," she breathes haltingly. Twin spots of red appear on her cheeks. "But the one I wanted wasn't for me."

Katara gapes at her. She had expected Lusa to deflect, not this. She musters her courage, wary of the answer even as she asks her next question. "What happened?"

Lusa sighs, crossing her arms around herself. "The elders married her off to someone else."

Katara blinks in surprise. "Oh," she offers lamely, unsure of what to say.

They linger in the empty hall, bound by their uncertainty and the shadows of what might have been. Only the sound of water spilling down the walls and into the moat ringing around the periphery fills the air.

And then, Lusa smiles sadly at her.

"I know you probably feel a lot right now," she says, not unkindly. "I know you probably think you'll feel like this forever, only you won't." Katara stares at Lusa blankly as she runs a hand through her glossy mane of chestnut braids, the beads jingling helplessly along her fingers. "These feelings that impassion you, they're just like the wind, driving you this way and that way until you're hopelessly lost at sea. Surrounded on all sides with no path forward."

Katara swallows hesitantly, feeling suddenly very small and safe in the older girl's presence. Her voice, when she finds it, is no more than a whisper. "So how do you find your way again?"

"Duty," answers Lusa. Katara looks up at her in surprise, but Lusa's green eyes are unyielding, staring at the space in the hallway where Zuko had been. As though she knew. "It prevails when all else runs dry. Let it be your north star, and let it guide you back home. Here, where you belong." Her hand finds Katara's shoulder, its consoling grip as hard and brittle as iron. "Everything else is just a beautiful memory, Katara. That's all it can be."

Midwinter day dawns bright and cheerful, the sun finally rising high above the horizon and illuminating the city in glowing pink and gold. Katara glares at it, stomping down the now-familiar road to the healing house that morning. She hadn't slept well at all, Lusa's words clawing away at the traitorous threads knotted tightly in her chest.

A thrilling flurry of activity grips the city in the early morning. The communal tent bustles with noise, its inhabitants treading a steady path to and from the band chiefs' hall. The smell of cooking thick in the air, as the cooks churned out their finest for the long-anticipated wedding feast of Princess Yue to Hahn of Angiyok.

The whole affair strikes Katara as somewhat odd. Marriages in the Water Tribes were understated and private, compared to the spectacle of those in the other nations. The concept of a wedding feast felt almost as alien to her as another nation's traditions. And yet, she sensed that the lavish feast being thrown that night was meant to serve the same purpose as Lu Ten's ill-fated wedding: to distract a rapidly-dividing crowd from its tensions for one night.

Good luck with that, she thinks darkly. Shaking her head, she slips into the healing house.

To her surprise, everyone crowds around the middle of the room. Low conversations buzz among the girls, the atmosphere of the room heavy, a far cry from its usual soothing energy.

"What's going on?" she mutters, straining to see over the heads and shoulders of the girls crowded in front of her.

"It's Ikkuma," Bunik whispers back, squinting on tip-toes to get a better view. "She attacked her husband last night."

"What?" Katara exclaims. But the girls in front turn around to shush her. As though by some unspoken command, the crowd thins out and the low murmurings die down so that Katara can witness the commotion unfolding at the center of the ring.

Auburn-haired Ikkuma hunches in on herself, shaking and pale-faced, her thick furs tattered to reveal all the dark bruises blooming along her wrists. Yugoda holds her by the shoulders, her kind face unusually and chillingly grim, even as Denigi chastises her in a red-faced fury.

"...knew we couldn't be trusted with this! Nerrivik was right, you've brought us all to shame! What were you thinking?"

"Enough," Yugoda cuts her off in a low voice, holding Ikkuma tighter as though to shield her with her embrace. "This is a serious matter. You are not helping."

"Helping?" The woman points at Ikkuma with a shaking finger. "We're beyond help now! What are we going to do when Noatak wakes up? She's brought the wrath of the spirits down upon us -"

"I don't care!" Ikkuma bursts out, and Katara is shocked to hear the tears shaking in her voice. "Burn the spirits and the rest of them, I can't take it anymore!" She raises her hands and Katara's stomach churns in sickened understanding as the bright sunlight shines along her fresh bruises. "What about me? Don't I deserve more than this?"

"You must be stronger than this!" Denigi snaps coldly, even as Ikkuma's face crumples and her hands tremble viciously. "How can you not understand? This is what strength means when you're a woman."

"No."

Everyone startles at the unexpected interruption. To Katara's surprise, steel-eyed Ulva, who had been widowed under suspicious circumstances and thoroughly shunned by everyone ever since, steps forward to place a hand on Ikkuma's shaking shoulder. She glares ferociously at Denigi, who flinches under the intensity of her gaze. "Cowering under the will of a weak, drunk man isn't what strength means. But what would you know?"

Denigi's mouth works uselessly before she is able to find her voice again. "Oh, so we have fallen so low that we must now accept life advice from a cold-blooded murderer!" Her lip curls contemptuously. "Spirits save us all."

But Ulva's eyes blaze with unrestrained defiance; Katara feels her own heart pounding at the sight of it. "It's easy to preach about strength when you've never had to be strong," she spits. "What would an ignorant woman like you know? You've never been hidden away, kept to the whims of a weak man, knowing that if any day he decided to do away with you, nobody in the world would lift a finger to help you, because that's what they deem correct." Her nostrils flare and in that moment, Katara swears the girl could breathe fire if she tried. "The natural way of things."

Ikkuma shivers but doesn't look away as Ulva turns to her and her voice softens. "You have nothing to apologize for," she says with a kindness that belies the harsh lines scoring her young face. "The justice you crave in this world won't come from anyone else. All the strength and courage you need is already within you."

But Ikkuma only hangs her head. "I don't feel strong at all," she whispers piteously. "I could have done it - it was the middle of the night, and he was drunk, as usual and - " her voice breaks as she trails off. "But I couldn't. When the moment came, I was weak."

And in that moment, Katara understands.

She remembers a night under the light of the full moon, with the Fire Nation palace crumbling around her and Ozai's blood thrumming in her grasp. A failure that brought too many complicated feelings that she couldn't bear to face. And while the others had accepted it, nobody truly understood how she felt, or so she thought.

Until now.

"You aren't weak," she says, stepping forward, and as Ikkuma's eyes widen, she isn't sure if she's speaking to the battered housewife or to the lingering wounds of her own spirit. "Using bloodbending on another person...you had to use whatever you had to survive. He forced you into a situation where you had to take life or death into your own hands." She stops and takes a hold of Ikkuma's trembling, bruised hands within her own. "The biggest lie up here is that you can either be a healer or a fighter. I can't believe that. Sometimes, you have to be both."

"But I don't want to be a fighter," Ikkuma breathes, tearfully meeting Katara's eyes with her own. "I just wanted a peaceful life as a healer."

"I wanted a husband who wasn't a controlling heap of garbage," Ulva retorts dryly, her mouth twisting in distaste.

Bunik steps forward, her fingers twisting together uncertainly. "I wanted to be my father's heir," she says plainly, with a shrug. "If I was a boy, I would be. But I'm a girl, so I'm stuck here while my idiot cousin Unnuk gets groomed to take my father's place."

To Katara's surprise, even old blind Ahnah rises to her feet. "I wanted to be a great waterbending master and command the respect of my tribe," she says simply. "But that was forbidden, and so here I am. Stuck in these huts until the day I die, and with nothing to excite me until young Katara stepped in here and showed us how to bend blood."

Katara chokes on her own breath as everyone's gaze settles upon her. A curious sense of purpose rattles through her, the sense of finding herself. That after months of being confused and lost, for the first time in perhaps her entire life, she stood exactly where she needed to be.

"I want more," she replies in the expectant silence that follows. She raises her chin defiantly. "We deserve more."

Nobody argues, not even the housewife who had been chastising Ikkuma. Instead, amid a scattering of nods and a strange new sense of companionship, everyone slowly turns their focus to the situation at hand, and how to best keep Ikkuma protected from the inevitable wrath of her drunken husband.

But the strange fire blazing through Katara's veins only flares in response. Because even though everyone around her had trodden different paths, they were still woven from the same threads.

They knew what it meant to fight for the dignity everyone else took for granted as a right.

Chapter 41: smoke signals

Chapter Text

disclaimer. after all these years, it still don't belong to me folx

author's note. your enthusiastic feedback and insightful comments never fail to put a smile on my face, dear readers. thank you for being such lovely positive people. here, have another update.

as always, you can find me on tumblr at colourwhirled-writes. feel free to follow for fic-related and general updates.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xli. smoke signals

i want you to see
how i break the rules
in front of your trinity

"teacher, teacher" / jinjer

The moon hangs high in the sky by the time Katara makes an appearance in the band chiefs' hall, half-heartedly donning the neatest dress she could find. She had little by way of finery and most of her clothing prioritized warmth over all else, but she had taken the time to carefully braid her hair and polish her mother's necklace until it gleamed brightly where it hung against her throat.

To be fair, Yue and Hahn's wedding feast felt less like an authentically happy occasion to celebrate and more like a desperate excuse to throw everyone together into a room for something other than arguing about politics or battle tactics.

For a start, Yue being given to Hahn in marriage should have earned her a funeral instead of a lavish party, in Katara's personal opinion.

Secondly, everyone in the room, ranging from Chief Arnook and his tenuous allies, to Hahn's circle of cronies, to Yue herself, appeared downright miserable. Which left General Iroh's troupe and the group of Air Nomads to linger awkwardly on the sidelines, too polite to leave early, but too aware of the dark cloud hovering over the room to risk having any actual fun.

Finally, the awkward party bore so little resemblance to any sort of celebration that Katara can remember. Where are the bonfires? she thinks to herself, frowning. Where are the singers, where's the dancing?

In fact, the strained artifice of her surroundings uncomfortably reminds her of another wedding not so long ago, which had been slapped together for similar reasons and catastrophically gone down in flames. The waxing moon in the sky pulls on her longingly, shifting currents through her blood in a tantalizing reminder of the force of her power when unleashed, now clamped down behind a fortified dam of social graces and propriety.

Katara ignores it, ignores the constant pounding frenzy rising in her chest like a storm at the sight of Zuko in his princely getup, standing tall and strong and dutiful by his uncle's side. Instead, after hastily choking out a lukewarm greeting to Chief Arnook and paying the newly-wedded couple her compliments, she makes a beeline for where the other Water Tribe women were gathered.

Unlike the young men, who seemed to be oblivious to the tension straining heavy in the air and found ways to make the most out of any opportunity with copious food and spirits, the girls packed themselves in a small corner of the room, as though afraid to take up any more space in the great hall. Bunik surrounded by her squad of young teenagers. Pregnant Aujak conversing with Ikkuma some way back, where she could cower behind Aujak's expanding girth, her long sleeves and trailing skirt concealing every last ugly bruise from sight. Ulva off to the side by herself, wearing her usual intimidating scowl.

The other housewives were gossiping some distance away as their young children whizzed around their legs. Nerrivik, thankfully, was not with them but wrapped up in a discussion with Chieftain Natok by the tiered dais at the front of the hall. To her surprise, even Yugoda and Ahnah were seated on the platform, just behind the band of chiefs and barely visible. A great honour, she reflects, a testament to their position in the tribe as revered wisewomen and master healers.

Her lip curls in distaste.

"Hi Katara," greets Shila as she draws near. "Having a good time?" She raises a tentative hand and giggles nervously, her olive skin flushing under the glittering blue light.

"Hi," Katara returns. "Um, I guess? I just got here."

"And just in time," Woka teases, nudging her in the ribs with an elbow. "Tartok looks particularly fine this evening, don't you think?" Light flashes off the silver hook set in her tongue as she speaks, glancing surreptitiously at the wide space in the middle of the room.

"Ugh." Blood rushes to Katara's cheeks as she follows Woka's gaze, already regretting the lie. She easily spots Tartok with mountainous Sangilak and his shrimpy pretty brother Imnek, helping themselves to the heaping platters of food and cups of steaming spirits set on tables propped up against the length of the side wall. "I'm not dignifying that with a response." Her stomach rumbles. She hadn't eaten properly since breakfast, too caught up in the emotional upheaval of Ikkuma's confession in the healing houses earlier that day. "Is anyone else hungry?"

"Starving," Woka admits, running a hand along the shaven side of her head. "But good luck not getting spat on while the guys are still helping themselves."

Privately, Katara wonders what damage she could inflict on someone with only a ball of spit. "I'm going to find my friends," she says shortly. "Save me a spot in line when it's time."

Woka raises her eyebrows but doesn't say anything else as Katara stalks off. She averts her gaze as she passes a group of the young Water Tribe warrior boys, and then a cluster of older men who follow her with suspicious eyes. Even if the party was the exact opposite of fun, it was still supposed to be Yue's night and Katara didn't want to cause any trouble if she could help it.

"Hey," she says, approaching the pair that she had sought out like a safe haven from her perch at the other side of the room.

Toph and Aang grin at her arrival, turning away from the small crowd of air acolytes surrounding them. "You made it, Sweetness!" Toph exclaims. "I was beginning to think you were never going to show up."

"I had a long day," Katara answers wearily, turning back to glance at Ikkuma on the other side of the room.

"Teaching more girls how to bloodbend?" Toph supplies, her grin widening. "Are you training a secret bloodbending army, Sugar Queen? That would be awesome if you were."

Katara chokes, Toph's comment rankling after the long day spent grappling with the aftermath of Ikkuma using bloodbending to fend off her drunken, abusive husband. "I don't really want to talk about it," she says stiffly.

Aang glances at her sympathetically. "Is everything okay?"

Katara opens her mouth, unsure of what to say. Because truth be told, nothing was okay, not for her and not for any of the women in her healing class. The unfairness of it all builds like the black storm in her chest, the raw power of her bending slowly becoming a distant memory and the tribe's strict conventions chipping away at her spirit in the shape of Ikkuma's bruises hidden under glossy perfect furs. And still struggling to fit in among her people while never feeling more cut off from them.

"I…" she stutters, faintly light-headed from her hunger and feeling like her skin wasn't enough to contain everything raging inside her all the time, "I don't think I know who I am anymore."

The words surprise her as much as they do everyone else. To her relief, Toph cocks her head at the air acolytes gawking next to Aang. "Mind grabbing another round of spirits for us?"

With a flutter of air, the acolytes vanish, leaving the three of them alone. Which is when Toph finally faces her squarely, her sightless eyes roving up to her face as though she could actually see her. "It's hard to believe you left us all for this." She waves vaguely at the great hall with its towering, tiered roof and waterfalls cascading along the perimeter of the room.

Katara exhales slowly, her shoulders ready to buckle under the weight of everything. "I know," she laments, pressing a hand to her forehead. "I thought it would be different. I thought it would be like coming home. But it's not even close!" The constant storm raging in her chest swells into a knot strangling the back of her throat. "Mom and Dad would never treat their people the way the band chiefs do here! Back home, we were all like family. We cared about people, valued them, wanted them to be happy! Nerrivik said they want the same for us here, but that's not true. All that matters here are their stupid rules!"

Toph's mouth tightens as Aang kicks uncomfortably at the ice. "That's awful, Katara," he says tentatively.

"It's fucked up," Toph agrees bluntly.

"It is," Katara agrees, overwhelmed with gratitude that at least someone else could see it, that she wasn't losing her mind, "but that's the way things are here, and that's not going to change. All the other women - spirits, Toph, Aang - if you heard their stories, what they've been through, and these are their lives." Her voices wobbles dangerously, her fingers now picking at the fur trim on her sleeves, plucking and twisting the hairs one by one. "None of them are complaining about how unfair this all is, and I'm one of them now. So why should it be any better for me?"

"Because you're Katara," Toph answers without hesitation, "and you didn't lie down and accept any bullshit when it was the Empire bastards handing it to you. Why should you start now? Just because the bastards are wearing a different colour?" She spits neatly on the ground, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Fuck that."

"Toph," Aang admonishes under his breath, nudging her with his elbow, "we've talked about spitting before, that's disgusting."

"I'll spit where I damn well like, Twinkletoes!"

A borderline hysterical laugh wells in Katara's throat. "You don't understand," she says desperately, "these are still my people. I have to find a way to belong here, otherwise what else do I have left?"

"You could always come back with us," Aang suggests, perfectly, maddeningly reasonably.

Katara scoffs, throwing a cutting glance at General Iroh where he stands near the ice steps, dressed in his military uniform. The glimmering blue light winks off the points of the flame-shaped crown lodged in his topknot. "I don't think so. I burned that bridge, there's no going back there for me."

"Grandpa misses you, Katara," Toph tries, "I'm sure if you apologized, he'd forget this ever happened in a heartbeat."

"I'm not apologizing to him," Katara mutters stubbornly. The crashing in her chest nearly overwhelms her. "My people may not be exactly the way I remember them, but at least they're my own. How could I leave them for the man who basically allowed the polar wars to happen?"

Toph groans loudly, pressing her fingers into her temples. But Aang grabs wildly at Katara's sleeve. "We're not going to argue with you, Katara," he says simply. "You're allowed to make your choices...even if it's hard for us to live with."

Katara swallows, too overcome for words at their support. Even after everything, even though they clearly didn't understand or agree with her choices, here they were, offering the warmth and understanding her own tribe refused to give her.

I miss you both. So much.

A crash echoing loudly across the room cuts through her thoughts. The three of them crane their heads curiously toward the doorway, where a stocky, positively livid Water Tribe man is barging into the room. The small crowds part before him like goldminnows fleeing from a tigershark in their midst.

"Whoever that is, they sound mad," Toph remarks under her breath as the angry man stomps past them, knocking a cup out of a passerby's hand and smashing it under his boot without missing a beat.

Katara and Aang nod mutely in unison.

By now, the entire room full of people has frozen in its paces, ogling the furious man as he marches up to the foot of the ice steps where the band chiefs and their children were all seated. His yells echo off the tiered ceilings, blending into an indecipherable cacophony of rage.

Katara frowns as the man points wildly at the top of the steps, flecks of spittle spraying from his mouth. Chieftain Keelut stands up hesitantly, obviously trying to calm him down. As though on cue, Tartok and Sangilak appear out of nowhere, instantly flanking the angry man with their intimidating bulk. Without a word, they grab him by the arms and force him to his knees, restraining him in place.

Somehow, by making the man yell into his knees instead of into the air, it becomes easier to hear Keelut's attempts to placate the man. "...understand that you're upset, Noatak, but your anger here will solve nothing." Katara's frown deepens as Keelut descends the single step to stand with feet planted directly in front of the restrained angry man. "Now, apologize to Hahn and Yue for interrupting their festivities, and then you will beg for mercy from the wisewomen you disrespected so."

"My apologies to the Princess and Hahn," the man called Noatak thunders for all to hear, "but I will not beg for mercy from those two old hags!"

To Katara's shock, he glares up at the top step, where Ahnah and Yugoda sit almost concealed behind the row of band chiefs on the step beneath them. "They don't deserve to be honoured or revered, Chieftain Keelut! They're traitors to our tribe, they've betrayed us all and I will drag them down from there with my bare hands if I have to -"

"Noatak," Keelut cuts him off in ringing tones. "This is a serious matter. You do yourself grave dishonour in front of the whole tribe, and the spirits too!"

"It's the spirits you should be worried about!" Noatak shouts, lunging forward so forcefully that Tartok nearly topples over. "Those two old crones pretend to be wise, but I see through their treachery! They don't fool me!"

"Take him out back," Keelut orders quietly. "Perhaps a night in the lockup will cool his head."

"Chieftain Keelut, you're making a mistake!" Noatak pleads desperately as Tartok wrenches his arm behind his back. "They turned my wife against me, they should be in the lockup, not me!"

Keelut smiles at him coldly. "If you believe two shriveled old women were enough to lose control of your woman, you have nothing but your own weakness to blame." He motions at his younger son before turning away.

Tartok and Sangilak manage to drag Noatak halfway across the room when he shrieks. "They taught her how to waterbend!"

Katara's breath turns to ice in her lungs. The sound of everyone in the room gasping in horror screeches loudly in her ears as she puts two and two together and finally realizes who Noatak's wife was.

She glances back to the corner of the room where the Water Tribe women were gathered, but Ikkuma's bright red hair was no longer visible, shielded by the crowd of bodies standing in front of her.

Chief Arnook rises to his feet, his face seeming as though it was carved from stone. "That is a most serious accusation, Noatak," he pronounces in ringing tones. "To levy such a charge against our two most revered wisewomen and healing masters? I certainly hope you have proof."

"Where else would she learn it?" Noatak barks, spittle frothing at the corners of his mouth. "My Ikkuma spends all her days at home or in the healing houses with the other women. Those two old witches led my virtuous wife astray, I swear on the spirits!"

"Chief Arnook, the man is unhinged," Yugoda says distastefully from her seat high atop the ice steps. "Ikkuma doesn't know how to waterbend, and neither do we."

"She lies!" Noatak screams. "First she teaches my wife how to waterbend and now she dares to lie about it!"

Arnook glares pitilessly at the man. "You may be kin to my future son-in-law's family, Noatak. But everyone in this Tribe knows you to be an uncontrollable drunk. What makes you think your wife knows how to waterbend?"

It becomes impossible for Katara to breathe at all as Noatak sits up, his eyes roving wildly across the room as though trying to seek out his wife himself. "She did something to me," he insists, "when I came back home late in the night. I don't know what it was. All I know was that one moment I was a man, master of my own home, and the next, I was wretched and powerless against the ground. My own body held outside my control by some twisted abomination. Women's waterbending."

"Chief Arnook," Yugoda says sharply, not taking her eyes off Noatak's sprawled form, "it sounds like this man came home drunk and laid hands on his wife as is his custom. And instead of admitting that the excess spirits have finally addled his body the way they did his senses, he chose to come to your hall, insult your guests and trample your hospitality, before plying us all with a story so absurd, its like has never been heard before."

"That's just what she wants you to think!" Noatak cries desperately. "You'd hardly expect her to admit it!"

"Your stories belong in a book of children's tales, Noatak. Not in these halls, and certainly not in an accusation against a revered elder of this tribe," Arnook says coldly. "You are a drunk, a delinquent, and a wife beater, if Yugoda speaks truly - which I have no cause to doubt. Women's waterbending? What does that even mean?"

"Chief Arnook." To Katara's chagrin, it is Hahn who speaks as he too rises to his feet. "I don't mean to be contrary, but wasn't Katara teaching the women some strange new bending to improve their healing?" Horror cascades down her stomach as Hahn plies her with a triumphant stare. "My mother raised concerns that it too closely resembled waterbending long before you and your daughter silenced them. But now we have it, right from Noatak's mouth." His expression hardens. "Katara of the Southern Water Tribe has been teaching our healers how to waterbend, and had the audacity to lie to all of us about it!"

Shock roots her to the spot as the outcry from the gathered tribesmen whips into a frenzy. But Hahn only seems to gain strength from the chaos as he continues, pointing an accusing finger at her. "From the day she came here, she has been trying to find ways to undermine our traditions. She has no respect for our tribe and she wasn't satisfied to leave it at that, but now she's even corrupting our women to think and act like her too!"

"Hahn," Yue says delicately, now also rising to her feet, "I saw what you're referring to with my own eyes. It wasn't waterbending. And both Master Yugoda and Ahnah tell me that they have never seen their apprentices advance so quickly in the healer's art until now."

"It's true," Yugoda echoes, as the fire curling inside Katara's chest flares dangerously. "Katara wouldn't have thought of teaching bloodbending if it wasn't for Ahnah and I. We saw it as a way to improve healing and we encouraged her."

Hahn stares down his nose at the old woman. "So you two are also to blame for this incident? Our revered wisewomen, held in respect by the whole tribe...colluding with an outsider to mislead our impressionable young women."

"That wasn't their intention, Hahn!" Yue pushes back, fighting to keep her voice level.

"Don't talk back to me, Yue! This wouldn't have happened if these old women hadn't encouraged a dangerous Southern outsider to teach our girls a skill they had no business learning!" Hahn snaps back. Katara's fingers dig into her palms as he barrels on, "What was wrong with the old way of healing? No need to fix something that was never broken, I say. From this moment, you women are forbidden from bloodbending. Do I make myself clear?"

A few small cries of protest from the back of the hall quickly muffle into a mutinous silence. It is barely enough for Katara to control her strangled breathing; her entire body trembles from the unfairness of it all. Bloodbending may have sprung from a dark legacy, but it was all she had left of her bending and he meant to take it away. All to protect a cowardly drunk man who, in Katara's opinion, probably deserved whatever Ikkuma had done to him.

Ahnah scowls but says nothing. Yugoda, fighting very hard to keep her face neutral, only nods her head stiffly.

"Very well." Wearing a look of satisfaction, Hahn turns around, his eyes locking on Katara. "And you, Katara of Sivusiktok. This is not the first time you've been brought before the chiefs for disregarding our culture. You know the consequences. Consider this your final warning. You will no longer teach bloodbending to the other apprentices. Do you understand?"

Katara's teeth clench in mounting fury. The weighted silence following Hahn's words grows increasingly tense, but she can't bring herself to speak. She glances at Yugoda and Ahnah, who had helped her overcome her own fear and guilt of being a bloodbender, now cowering haplessly before a self-righteous teenage jerk. At the crowd of girls at the back of the room, watching everything unfold with dismay. Bunik, who was stuck becoming a healer while her inept cousin was groomed for leadership just because he was a boy. Woka, who had never cared for healing until Katara's lessons had caught her interest. Ikkuma, who might not have escaped with only bruises if she hadn't known how to bloodbend…

"Well?" Hahn thunders, as she watches them in stubborn silence. "Answer me!"

Katara narrows her eyes at him as the word slips insolently out of her mouth. "No."

A few people in the hall actually gasp out loud. Satisfaction blazes through her as Hahn stares at her incredulously. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said no," Katara repeats, nearly giddy with the buzz of defiance overwhelming her in its rush. "I taught the other girls how to bloodbend. I made them better healers, and I gave Ikkuma the power to defend herself from her drunk coward of a husband." She tilts her chin upward. "And I am not sorry."

The outcry that follows is nearly deafening. Through the shocked mutterings and scandalized glances being thrown her way by most of the Water Tribe men, she manages to notice the very small, proud smile cracking across Yugoda's face. Something swells inside her, even as the band chiefs cry out for order and the commotion dies down to a hush.

Chief Arnook is the first to step toward her. "Now Katara," he says, holding his hands out entreatingly, "I know that tempers are...rather high and so you may have said more than you intended…" His eyes meet hers in mute appeal. "Is there anything else you would like to say? An apology, perhaps?"

"No," Katara repeats, now thoroughly incensed. "I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me!" She glares at him as his jaw drops in shock. "How about you and the rest of the chiefs apologize to the women of your tribe instead?"

"How dare you!" Hahn spits, pushing past Chief Arnook to march down the ice steps. The small crowd parts wordlessly in front of him. "We gave you a home and a purpose here, out of the goodness of our hearts. But Southerners like you will always act like degenerates! Your minds are too full of nonsense ideals to belong in our world."

"Hahn," Chief Arnook reproaches warningly, but Hahn swats him aside.

"It's just as my father said. Hakoda's ideas were too dangerous. We had to do something for the good of the tribes. We didn't tolerate them then, and we cannot tolerate them now."

Katara's blood boils at the mention of her father's name. "What do you mean, we had to do something?" she demands suspiciously.

"Hahn," Chief Arnook warns again, his voice rising sharply. Some of the other older chieftains suddenly appear agitated, even afraid, as Hahn barrels on, too caught up in his tirade to pay them any attention.

"It was Hakoda's insistence that we get involved with the Fire Empire. It was Hakoda's obstinacy to blunder forward with them, even after we warned him again and again not to treat with them!" He shakes his head emphatically. "Well, look how that turned out! The polar wars were an inevitability we predicted long before they became a reality, and we had a choice to make." His lip curls contemptuously. "Except it was no choice. The Southern tribe had no hope of surviving but we had our own people to protect."

Unbidden, hairline cracks split the polished ice tiles beneath her feet. The chiefs' great hall grows suddenly ice cold.

"All Ozai asked of us was that we keep to ourselves," Hahn crows, almost basking in the horrified silence gripping the entire room. "Stay out of the conflict, and our lands would be spared. The North was too far away from the Empire's homeland to be of any consequence to him. His real interest was in the South, and Hakoda had led them so far astray from the old ways, it seemed kinder to let them die."

"No," Katara whispers in a shaking voice. Everything sways alarmingly around her and she staggers. Someone's arm shoots out to steady her, and she barely feels it. "You're lying."

"Your father's so-called progress led his entire tribe into ruin. We've worked hard to protect our way of life here for many years. It's the reason our tribe is a beacon of civilization while the South Pole remains a smoking ruin." Hahn's jaw tightens uncompromisingly. "Do you think we're going to stand by and let you ruin us? All our hard work, all our sacrifices will have been for nothing!"

Katara feels like the ground beneath her is crumbling and she's falling into a dark pit of despair. Aang's fingers on her shoulder tighten, whether in warning or support, she doesn't know. She rips her gaze away from Hahn's face, searching the band chiefs for some sign, any sign that this was all a lie. Some of the younger chiefs appear shocked and confused, while others like Keelut and Natok school their expressions to careful neutrality.

But the guilt weighing heavy in the worn lines of Chief Arnook's face is a punch straight to the gut, saying more in an instant than all of Hahn's vicious babble combined had.

"So this is the truth you've been hiding," she croaks, feeling like she might be sick even as Chief Arnook averts his eyes, unable to look at her in his shame. "Your need for control was so powerful, you convinced yourselves that selling out your sister tribe to the Empire was the right thing to do. How could you?"

Her question hangs in the frigid air, splintering the shocked silence with the timbre of shattering earth.

"Chief Arnook." To Katara's outrage, it is General Iroh who has the audacity to speak, somehow appearing just as distressed as she herself feels. Next to him, Zuko's scarred face is a mask of cold fury. "This must be a misunderstanding. I was not aware of any conspiracy to spare the North. Your new son-in-law is very young and cannot have been more than a child himself when the polar wars happened. Surely...surely he must be mistaken?"

But Chief Arnook only hangs his head. His shoulders crumple, the deep purple chieftain's mantle suddenly seeming too heavy a burden.

"Father." Yue's quiet voice somehow manages to ring through the air commandingly. "Answer the General. Is this true?"

The tension weighs heavy in the air, so icy and thick that Katara feels like she might suffocate. Arnook remains still as a statue, staring shamefacedly at the ground between his feet.

"When Ozai's ultimatum arrived, I wanted to burn it." Arnook's voice is so small, it sounds like it could have belonged to a different man. "Few chiefs from that time remain among us. But I was not alone in my dissent. Whatever our difference of opinion, Hakoda was our brother." He raises his head and Katara feels her fury mount at the sight of tears trailing down his weathered cheeks. "How could we abandon him? How could we live with ourselves after looking the other way while our sister tribe burned?" But his face suddenly darkens as he turns to face the ice steps behind him, where the other band chiefs sit. "But I was overruled. Natok, Tupilek and the others… I have never stopped being ashamed, that I didn't do more to change their minds."

"We did what we had to for the sake of our tribe!" Hahn's father rebukes sharply, and Katara wants to vomit all over the pristine polished ice floor. "Do you think Aujuittuq and the rest of our cities would be in this state if we had joined our sister tribe in their headlong rush to destruction? You can shed tears for your unclean hands all you want, Arnook. Leading this tribe means making the hard choices to survive."

And that, Katara understands with a feeling like ice slowly gnawing away at her heart, was the real lie of it all.

The band chiefs had deluded themselves into believing the Southern tribe had brought their destruction upon themselves, and that their adherence to the old traditions was what had saved them. Never mind that Ozai's interest in the South only stemmed from his twisted obsession with her mother. Never mind that he had probably never cared about the Northern tribe or even known that it existed. The Northern chiefs bought the lie so convincingly that they believed it was about survival when in reality it was about ensuring absolute control at the expense of all else.

"That's why you got rid of Sokka," Yue breathes, her disgust plain in her voice. "I always thought it was because you feared his bravery. But it's who he was that frightened you more." Her face scrunches in distaste. "As Hakoda's son, he must have represented an existential threat to you all. But he didn't cave quietly to your demands the way Katara did. And you had already sacrificed our sister tribe, what was one more boy?"

"Sokka was a rabble rouser who wanted to draw us into direct conflict with the Empire!" Hahn snaps. The cold feeling in Katara's chest seems to spread throughout her entire body until she can't feel anything at all. "Sending him away was the right decision for the tribe. Otherwise we would have followed him into a fool's errand. He probably got himself killed off, and good riddance too!"

Katara isn't aware of moving at all, only that the people in her way scream and flee as Hahn and the band chiefs grow closer. "Don't talk about my brother that way."

"I'll talk about him however I want," Hahn declares, drawing himself up to his full height as he stares down his nose at her. "What could you possibly do about it? Remember, I will lead the tribe, little girl, and you are on very thin ice!"

Katara stares at him blankly, his taunt ringing in her ears like a keen blade against stone. He thought he had her backed into a corner with no family, no allies, and no bending. He thought she was a good, obedient, submissive woman of the tribe who would, as Yue said, cave quietly to his demands.

To hell with that.

The triumphant smile still lingers on Hahn's face as the thick jet of water smashes into his chest. He sails through the air and crashes bodily against the platform behind him.

Cries of fear and shock ripple through the air as the band chiefs scramble to their feet. Some leap off the ice steps, in an effort to evade her blows.

"Whoops," Katara hears herself say flippantly. "Guess I lost control of my bending. I can't seem to help it. I'm inherently dangerous after all, being Hakoda's daughter. You should really be more careful around me. You just never know when I'll snap."

Hahn struggles to his feet, gaping in shock. A rumbling sound echoes as the crystalline tiles beneath his feet split. Thick prongs of ice burst upward, launching him through the air to smash into the tables lining the other side of the room. The crash is deafening as food and broken dishes tumble to the ground and drinks spill everywhere.

"Katara," Chief Arnook begs as everyone in her vicinity screams and stampedes away. "I know you must be upset, but this is going too far. You know waterbending is forbidden -"

"Oh?" Katara cuts him off, standing squarely in the middle of the emptied hall, facing the ice steps and the small handful of chiefs remaining on it. "Forbidden by who? By the spirits or by you? Because if it's so forbidden, surely something terrible must happen if I do this."

With a jerk of her wrists, the ice steps suddenly become smooth, sending all the remaining chiefs sliding down its surface to crumple into a pile on the ground below. She turns on her heel and one of the giant carved pillars at the corner of the room collapses. It topples over, and the remaining people hiding in the corners shriek as they dash out of its way. The room sways as it hits the ground and shatters, shards of ice whizzing through the air in a violent spray.

"Hey look! I'm still standing," Katara grits out in a loud, falsely bright voice at the chiefs still groaning in a heap. "Guess that wasn't forbidden enough for the spirits to strike me down. I know! Maybe they'll get mad if I do this!"

With an almighty wrench, a fissure cracks along the middle of the ceiling. Chunks of ice rain down, sending people out the doors and fleeing into the night for safety. One by one, the roof tiles smash into the ground, turning the chiefs' hall into a rubble-strewn wreck. Everything turns suddenly unbearably cold as the chill night wind batters them with its frigid bite.

"Nope! Still no spirits!" she calls in her falsely bright voice. The apoplectic shock painted on Chief Arnook's face only goads her further. "So why is it forbidden for women to waterbend? Selling your sister tribe out to the Empire was fine, but me bending? That's the line your precious spirits won't cross? Well, where are they now?"

In a corner of the room, Hahn slowly sits up amid the wreckage of the table, groaning loudly as he clutches at his ribs. "Stop her," he commands weakly, his face contorting with pain. "Don't just stand there, stop her!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Tartok leaps into the fray. The water gurgling in the moat wrapping around the periphery of the hall rears upward, looping in a thick jet before barreling toward her.

She redirects it lazily. It orbits her harmlessly before splintering the ground in a shining ring of sharp-edged scythes.

With a flick of her wrists, the sharp blades fly through the air, narrowly missing Tartok's vitals and pinning him to the nearest fallen pillar by the excess fabric of his parka. From across the room, she sees him gulp as one blade contemptuously grazes the skin of his throat, close enough to freeze but not enough to draw blood.

Then the ground beneath her shakes with the weight of another warrior's approach. She turns around to see Sangilak towering over her, bending a huge chunk of ice twice his size through the air until it hovers threateningly above her head.

She watches as it starts to fall as though in slow motion. Throws her hands up and pushes back, straining with the sheer weight of it. Across from her, Sangilak's face is impassive as he holds his hand outstretched toward her. He doesn't move a muscle.

Her knees buckle under the sheer strength of his onslaught as the ice falls freely. Gritting her teeth, she deforms it into a wave and it splashes harmlessly in front of her. With a spiral kick that would have impressed a firebender, it charges toward Sangilak, drenching him even as it freezes solid, trapping him bodily in its icy grip.

"This must be a joke!" Hahn croaks, swaying unsteadily on his feet in the corner of her eye. "Master Cotto, Master Higalik, anybody! Put this Southern upstart in her place!"

The wind rushes in through the broken ceiling opening up to the heavens. It howls and whips to a frenzy, threatening to freeze everybody with its icy breath.

Katara watches the two grim-faced masters approaching her from either side of the room. Their white braids sway with every step they take, rifling with the force of the gusting night wind. Even from a distance, she watches their mouths curl in distaste as their hands move in unison and they assume an offensive stance.

Her breath puffs around her in thick white clouds. Her body shifts into a stance of its own as the pair of old masters leap into action. The ice rubble lining the floor leaps upward, charging toward her.

She lunges, turning it into a whirlpool that wheels and breaks against her opponents. In a trice, the whirling water funnel freezes into a column before collapsing into a giant wave. It rushes toward her with the force of a tsunami.

She roots her stance the way Toph would. Ice wraps around her ankles as the water towers over her. Then it comes crashing down and she splits the wave. In the blink of an eye it ripples past her harmlessly. A twist of her arms and the water twines around her shoulders in two sleeves that span the breadth of the hall's wreckage.

One of the old masters rushes toward her on a skidding ice floe and she bowls him over with a backhand. He tumbles along the ground, head over heels until he stops with a sickening crunch against a pile of rubble.

The other master pulls up a pillar of ice and hurls sharp ice discs toward her. They shred the rippling water sleeves into puddles of water and nearly slice off a wayward strand of hair.

"Tartok, Sangilak! Get up and give Master Cotto a hand!" Hahn cries. "Imnek! Unnuk! Go help the others! Poallu, Jukka, stop lazing about and get in there!"

Katara grits her teeth, dodging another ice disc. A handful of Water Tribe warriors surround her. Her breath mists heavily as she scans them. Tartok with his shredded parka, Sangilak sporting a fresh frostburn along his chin, another guy with a tooth dangling from his ear. Dark pretty Imnek, the object of Shila's affections, helping one of the old masters to his feet, and Jukka. Tall gangly Jukka who she had even thought of as a friend, now stands against her, just like the rest of the Northerners.

Her eyes narrow at him as he stares at her pleadingly. "Come on, Katara," he says in a strained voice. "Let it go. You can't win this fight."

She scoffs, even as the others close in around her. "I single-handedly defeated Ozai and clawed my way out of his heavily armed capital. You think I can't beat a bunch of puffed-up guppyshrimps like you?"

The water lying in a limp puddle at her feet springs up around her in a multitude of thrashing liquid tentacles. They snap menacingly at the men, pushing them back.

Then they attack with surprising speed in unison.

In spite of the cold numbness lending detached precision to her movements, it's all she can do to keep up. Fighting hordes of Dai Li and firebenders were familiar to her, but she had never defended against so many waterbenders, trained warriors and masters.

The groan of ice shifting back and forth fills her ears. The crashing of water as it arcs through the air, the crack as it snaps and whistles and smashes into bodies. The thuds and cries of pain as men fall to the ground, sliding across the rubble-littered ice. Her own limbs are lined with dozens of burns and cuts, which she registers only as a mild sensation. Adrenaline roars in her veins as she cuts through the incoming salvo and pummels her opponents into the ground.

A rope of water hooks around her elbow, yanking her to her knees even as another one traps her ankle and freezes it in place. She growls, struggling to tug free even as more ice springs up to bury her other leg and someone behind her grabs at her braid.

Pain erupts along the back of her head and she yelps. The grip on her hair tightens ruthlessly. Through the watering of her eyes, she sees Sangilak and one of the old masters scramble onto their feet, moving steadily closer with grim purpose etched onto their sweaty faces. Blood dribbles from a gash on Sangilak's forehead, and the old man has a new limp.

The person behind her wrenches at her braid, trying to pull her down to the ground. The ice entrapping her legs burns with cold fire through the cloth of her parka. The water restraining her elbow tightens, threatening to snap it out of place as she slumps over, her movements awkward and twisted.

Somehow, without even thinking about it, she shifts into the hunched stance that after weeks of morning healing lessons have become second nature to her. The two waterbenders who remain standing charge toward her, sweeping into the familiar bending forms. She watches them as though in slow motion, her senses hyper aware of the blood racing beneath their skin.

Where there's life, there's water. Her fingers twist sharply downward.

The two men freeze midway through their motions, their water splashing harmlessly to the ground. A dull pain throbs in her temple as the blood thrashes against her grasp with the force of a grown man's protests. She twists and holds tightly, her own pulse hammering loudly in her ears. The sickening thrill of domination rises like bile in the back of her throat as the fight in her prey begins to flag.

Someone shouts something unintelligible in the distance. The grip on her hair disappears and she jerks forward. Footsteps pound toward her.

Then someone grabs her by the shoulders, trying to wrench her free. She tries to shake them off half-heartedly but another joins, and then another. The icy restraints holding her down shatter suddenly, and she heaves as warmth and sensation return to her legs.

The wind shrieks deafeningly in her ears, its breath a bloodcurdling chill along her skin. The shouting voice grows closer, louder, until she can finally understand it.

"Katara," it yells in a panic with Zuko's voice, "Katara, stop!"

She stills, panting with exertion, before letting go with a gasp. Across the room, both her opponents collapse to the ground. Her skin is cold and clammy with sweat, and the inside of her skull pounds with a dull ache.

Shoulders rising and falling with the force of her breathing, she stares blankly at the wreckage before her. The great hall lies in ruins, its ornately carved pillars and ceiling caved in and pounded to smithereens. Gauges rake across the polished tile as though it was littered with yawning sharp teeth. And strewn haphazardly across it are a handful of groaning men motionless and facedown upon the ice.

Somewhere through the fog coating her senses, a pang of remorse manages to strike in her chest. "I did that?" she asks numbly.

Toph lets out a snort as she hooks one of Katara's arms around her shoulder and helps her back up. "Don't sound so surprised, Sweetness."

"Are you okay?" inquires Aang, white-faced and tight-lipped as he supports her other arm.

"She's fine, Twinkletoes. The guys, on the other hand, sound way less fine."

"I can't believe him," Zuko mutters darkly under his breath. She catches him scowling in the corner of her eye. "Setting all those men on you after everything he said. What did Hahn think was going to happen?"

"Enough!"

Hahn's shout echoes around the destroyed hall, making the insides of Katara's head hurt even more. She wrenches her gaze away from the chaos back to where Hahn limps furiously toward her, clutching gingerly at his ribs.

Toph instinctively tightens her grip on Katara's shoulder. Without exchanging a word, Aang and Zuko step forward, placing themselves bodily between Katara and the furious young chieftain hobbling toward her, his face a twisted mask of fury.

"We will not tolerate this Southern barbarity here!" he yells, spittle flying from his mouth in tiny droplets. He tries to push past the pair blocking his path, but Zuko places a firm hand on his arm, arresting his progress.

"That's enough," he says coldly. "Whatever you have to say, you can say it from here."

Or else, warns the pointed silence trailing in his wake.

Hahn opens his mouth to say something hotly, but Zuko steps closer, the scowl on his face twisting his scar into a terrifying mask. His hand crushes tighter against Hahn's arm. Cowed, Hahn shakes him off and backs away, colour rising in his pallid cheeks.

"If she wishes to remain here, she will do so in observance of our culture and traditions," he says with a calm forced through gritted teeth. "Otherwise she's welcome to return to her place among your ranks, since she clearly has more respect for the Fire Empire than her own people!"

Katara flinches at the insinuation as Hahn gives her a dirty look. "Do you understand? It's over, Katara. For you and all the apprentices."

He speaks to her with slow contempt, as though he was speaking to a child. Through the myriad complaints lining her aching body, the battered remains of the great hall surrounding her, and the presence of three people who would stand by her side no matter what, Katara snatches at the last spark of her defiance and raises her head. "No," she answers, refusing to give in. I will never make that mistake again. "It's not over."

She stares daggers at him unblinking, until he finally spits at the ground between her feet and limps away.

Traitor, he might as well have called her. Outcast.

"Good riddance," Toph remarks, her grip on Katara's shoulder relaxing. "C'mon Sweetness, let's get out of here."

"I don't think that'll go over well with the rest of the Northern chiefs, Zuko," Aang mutters, glancing nervously at Hahn's retreating back. "They might see it as you taking sides."

"I don't care," Zuko fumes, exhaling a cloud of smoke through his nose. "Hahn has all the diplomatic skill of a keg of blasting jelly. Someone had to say something."

Her friends' words wash over her like waves pounding at driftwood, uprooted from its home and lost at sea in an eternal aimless wander. She tears her gaze away from the destruction surrounding her to the pile of band chiefs groaning and struggling to get to their feet, clutching at broken bones and their lined faces contorted in obvious pain. Guilt pools in her gut as they cast fleeting glances in her direction, at once fearful and full of hate.

Not hate, she thinks numbly as they avert their gazes, shuddering. Disgust.

It could not have been clearer in that moment that there was not a place she belonged less than where she stood.

"Katara, where are you going?" Aang's voice rings out behind her and then fades as night swallows her.

Outside the wrecked chiefs' hall, the crystal city stretches out before her, its ethereal white glow now seeming scarred and tainted with blood.

Somehow, she finds herself in the oasis outside the city, the wounds in her spirit instinctively gravitating toward it. Yue had said it was a place of spiritual energy and healing; perhaps it called her to it in its own way, and something inside her had answered.

Her parka lies crumpled behind her in the grass; in the surprising heat of the oasis, sweat beads along her skin like dewdrops. She stares unseeingly into the small pond at its heart, the motions of its two koi fish lulling her into a listless trance.

She doesn't know how long she sits there in a silent torpor. Everything weighed down heavy on her, but the sound of wind rifling through grass and rushing water somehow absorbed the shock, shielding her from its cutting blows.

It whirls together like the waves in the pond, each with distinct origins but fueling the ones that came after. Coalescing together in a ripple that stretched far further than any individual could on its own, until it became impossible to glean where it had all started.

Was it Ozai's obsession with claiming a lost prize he viewed as his? Was it Iroh, who had kindled the fire, empowered him, and then turned away until it was too late? Was it the entire Northern tribe, who had turned their backs on their sister tribe, whether for survival or moral superiority, or a combination of the two? Or did the fault lie with her own parents, for daring to dream of more?

Was it her brother for abandoning her to the colonial schools? Jet, for using what little she had to offer in exchange for safety and secrets? Or Hama, the first Southern waterbender to walk free after the wars, for burdening her with such a dark legacy? One that had saved her, allowed her to exact revenge on Ozai but left its scars etched so deep that she hadn't known how to face them until Yugoda had found a way for her to heal.

And what of herself? For she wasn't blameless either, so lost in her own despair at the secrets Ozai had arrogantly unveiled that she lashed out at all those she feared to trust again. Burning bridges with Iroh, who despite it all was still trying to treat with the Northern chiefs as though they were his equals. Yet the thought of forgiving him still left a sick feeling in her stomach.

Even her own people shunned her. Both paths seemed to lead nowhere, either asking her to forgive too many faults or make impossible sacrifices. One asked her to bury herself in a tomb of stifling cultural traditions, the other asked her to become a traitor to her own kind.

"I just feel so lost," she whispers into the night, unsure who heard her. Whether the water, the air, or the koi fish entwined in their serene dance, bore witness to her confusion.

Then, out of nowhere, a small voice answers. "You're not alone."

Katara closes her eyes as the princess makes her way to her side and settles down beside her. Somehow, she should have known that Yue would be waiting here, as unobtrusive as a shadow. It felt right in a way that she couldn't explain.

Yue unclasps the heavy purple cloak hanging heavy around her neck, baring her wedding finery to the air. Katara examines it with growing guilt. "I'm sorry," she apologizes hoarsely. "I didn't mean to ruin your wedding feast."

But the princess only smiles ruefully. "It wasn't my wedding feast," she corrects. "It was Hahn's, and my father's, and maybe everyone else's in the tribe. But not mine." Tilting her head, Yue's smile turns playful. "Come to think of it, you don't have a great track record at weddings, do you?"

The sound of Katara's own laughter takes her by surprise. After everything that weighed on her, she didn't think she was capable of it. "I guess not," she admits, shaking her head. "They all seem to end in bloodbending and disaster."

"It's not your fault," Yue says sharply. "The fault lies with my father, and Natok, and all the other band chiefs who chose to sell their souls rather than fight for the right thing." Her mouth presses into a thin line. "And with Hahn, for taunting you with it and provoking you into a fight."

"I didn't mean to do it," Katara apologizes hollowly. "I was just so...so…"

"Angry?"

"Worse!" Katara turns to face Yue in growing despair. "It's like Lu Ten's wedding all over again. I had Ozai in my grasp, and there were so many ways I could have ended it. But I chose bloodbending and destruction, again and again." She hangs her head, staring blankly at the grass. "What does that say about me? Am I no better? This cycle of violence and betrayal goes so far back, on all sides. Is it inescapable? Are we all doomed to follow it? Every time I think I can be different, or find a better way, it sucks me back in!"

Yue watches her with sad, serene eyes as Katara's fingers work helplessly into her hair. "I had a chance to turn away from it all. Stay with my friends, see the Avatar project through, even if it was Iroh's idea. But I turned away from it, and now it's all falling apart." Her mouth twists into a scornful grimace. "All because I couldn't break away from the pattern. No wonder I feel so angry and helpless all the time. When push comes to shove, I'm no better than Iroh, or your dad, or Hahn. Not where it counts."

The cold north wind howls against the frozen arctic planes overhead, but down in the shelter of spirit oasis, it becomes a tender warm breeze gently brushing against her skin and punctuating the silence that settles over them.

At length, Yue speaks again. "All my life, I've been trapped by duty. To my father, to my people, to my culture. All for the crime of not being the son they wanted. I didn't think anyone could escape it, so I never tried, even if it felt unfair. It was just the way of things. Even all the Southern refugees we took in didn't fight it. They were just so grateful to be safe. All except one." Guilt weighs heavy in her voice as she continues raggedly. "Sokka was the first person who ever gave me hope that things could change. He was the first person to push back against the chiefs, question why things were the way they were here. I always suspected the worst, but hearing my father admit it…"

"I'm sorry, Yue," Katara says quietly as the princess's voice breaks off. "It must have been a betrayal for you to hear it, too."

But the princess only shakes her head. "You don't understand. Katara, in all my life, no one ever fought for the women of our tribe until you. You stood in front of the whole tribe and swore you would never stop fighting for us, and then you proved that you wouldn't be stopped in the only language that men ever seem to understand or respect."

"Respect?" Katara huffs scornfully. "They don't respect me, they hate me! I don't think I could have done anything more to cement my place as an outcast here."

"That's not true." Yue's voice drops to a hush, even though they are both entirely alone. "I helped lead the women to safety. I heard them speaking among themselves. You'd be surprised at how many were touched by your words. Nobody has ever seen anyone bend with that kind of mastery, let alone a woman." Her eyes burn with an intensity Katara has never seen before. "I don't think you realize just how many people you inspired."

"Well, they shouldn't be," Katara says bitterly. "Look where it got me. Forbidden from bloodbending and shunned by the tribe. I don't want to think about how much trouble I'm in. Hahn's probably thinking up a suitable punishment as we speak."

"He is," Yue sighs. "But bloodbending...there's real power in it, isn't there? It isn't just some fancy new way to heal, is it?"

The memory springs sharp and clear, etched like flint in her mind. "I brought Ozai to within an inch of his life using the techniques I taught the girls in the healing huts."

Yue is quiet for a moment longer, wrestling with something within herself until she can hold it in no longer. "Our women deserve more," she says at last, staring heavily at the pond and the sinuous movements of the koi fish. "They deserve a chance to fight for their paths the way you did, rather than submitting to a group of old men so afraid of change that they would rather sell their own siblings to the enemy!"

Katara is surprised by the vehemence that enters Yue's voice as her fingers twist into the grass helplessly. "I know I'm fragile and sickly and can't do much on my own, Katara, but I know so many who want more from their lives, just like you. If I could just find a way, somehow…"

Yue trails off, lines etching in her smooth face as she thinks hard about something. To Katara, it feels like both an eternity and no time at all had passed before the princess dares to speak again.

"If I could round the women up somehow, out of sight somewhere...would you teach them too?" Her throat bobs as she swallows nervously. "Not just bloodbending masquerading as healing. It's time we took our fate into our own hands. Would you teach them, Katara? How to waterbend?"

Katara's heart pounds with the force of gravity weighing down on her, an undeniable pull toward a purpose unknown to her until its inevitable unveiling with Yue's halting question dangling in the serene oasis air, tempting at once with its danger and its potential.

What Yue suggested wasn't just a demonstration of brute force unleashed against the elders. It was blasphemy in the eyes of the Northern Water Tribe. And Katara was already dreading the punishment that awaited her in the morning. If this was discovered by the wrong person, seen by the wrong eyes, the chiefs wouldn't hesitate to cut her off entirely, or worse. To say nothing of what would happen to any other women who dared to cast aside the tribe's rules and join her.

In short, what Yue asked of her was no less than madness. It could only lead to disaster.

And yet Katara holds her tentative gaze, something rearing in her with the blaze of defiance, and something more, something indescribable. Something like after months of stumbling lost in the quagmire of her confusion and rage, she had finally found her path again. One that surprised her, but felt solid in her hands and couldn't be denied.

A purpose beyond herself.

"Yes," she decides with a firm nod of her head. "I will."

Yue smiles in secret triumph. The sounds of their discussion muffles into the gentle oasis breeze and the swish of the koi fish in the pond, swaying in an eternal dance of light and dark in perfect balance.

Chapter 42: still waters

Chapter Text

disclaimer. after all this time, it still doesn't belong to me

author's notes. a big thank you to everyone reading and who left such kind feedback last chapter! you guys are the best, seriously.

a special shoutout to favlie for her jaw-droppingly stunning fanart for zkfaw last week, everyone go admire it in awe like i did!

as usual, you can find me on tumblr at colourwhirled-writes for fic and other peripherally related updates.

warning that the chapter below features some adult content, proceed with caution or enthusiasm as you see fit...

i give you..

southern lights

chapter xlii. still waters

i could have sworn in you i saw myself
and all the questions that i ever asked

"exit in darkness" / mono & aa williams

They fetch her early the next morning before she even sets foot outside her door.

Flanked on either side by a retinue of men, hooded and masked against the sudden chill in the air, Katara allows herself to be led down the main street of Aujuittuq. In the rising light of day, the city didn't sparkle as magnificently, but shone red as blood instead. The band chiefs' hall no longer the crowning glory of the skyline, its splendour cut short with its towering spire collapsed. And yet, the work on rebuilding it had already begun, with squadrons of waterbenders working to raise skeleton beams where the roof had once stood.

Katara says nothing as they walk past it and toward a smaller manse next to it, an elaborate structure carved from the ice. As they lead her inside down a corridor lit with glowing stones, she surmises at once that this was the "royal" residence where Chief Arnook and his family lived.

Her lip curls at the ostentation, comparing her surroundings to her home back in the south pole. While not uncomfortable by any means, her parents had been humble by nature, taking only what they needed.

They accuse me of sharing more values with the Empire than with them, she thinks furiously, and yet they have no problems pretending to live like conquerors too.

The hypocrisy sits bitterly in her mouth as she's led into a small room, furnished with rich animal hides, bone carvings, and a low wooden table in its centre. A fire spits in the corner hearth, throwing long purple shadows across the stern faces of the men seated cross-legged on the ground.

She marches into the room and tilts her chin upward to meet Arnook's gaze defiantly. Then, she falters.

"Leave us," Hahn instructs the men behind her, from his place at the head of the group.

The door flaps swish in their wake, leaving her all alone in the growing silence.

"Where's Chief Arnook?" Katara asks, caught off-guard.

Hahn runs a hand against the scraggly hairs sprouting like weeds along his chin. "After his shameful display of weakness last night, the band of chiefs made some important decisions."

Her mouth goes dry as he continues placidly, "We stand at a perilous crossroads. The Northern Water Tribe must be ready to do what it takes to survive. At a time when allies challenge our cultural values and enemies may arrive on our shores any day now, it was unacceptable to have a chief so weak, he would allow one stubborn, disrespectful, ungrateful woman to destroy his hall and wreak havoc at his own daughter's wedding."

With a pang of alarm, she notices the purple chieftain's mantle that Arnook once wore, now draped like a warning over Hahn's shoulders as he traces its fur lining with steady fingers. "Arnook and those who shared in his weakness were removed from this band. It was decided by majority vote early this morning that from hereon in, leadership of the tribe belongs to me."

The silence resonates with the crackling of the fire but to Katara, he might as well have dropped an anvil into its midst. She surveys the group of men in growing disbelief. But Chief Arnook was nowhere to be found, nor were any of the other chieftains who had spoken in her favour the last time she had been brought before them. Bunik's father, Jukka's grandfather - of all of them, only Sangilak's imposing father still remained, occupying a whole side of the table by himself.

"You," Katara says, struggling to mask her incredulity, "they chose you to lead the band?"

He chuckles softly, fingering the moon-and-stars tassels hanging against his chest. "Don't sound so surprised, Katara. I married Princess Yue, after all. That makes me as good as Arnook's son. Who else can claim such close kinship to him? And with things as they are...it was imperative to let younger, stronger minds chart the course ahead."

Katara swallows the retort lodging firmly in her throat. Instead, she scans the small band of chieftains again, searching for a sympathetic face among them. Arnook may have been a staunch defender of the North's cultural values, but he had still been kind to her in his own way. But from the hostile glares emanating from the group of men sitting across from her, it was suddenly clear that they intended to exact every ounce of retribution for her actions the night before.

"See, Katara, we in the North want simple things for our people," Hahn drawls, his smile widening into a toothy grin that appeared no less sincere. "Peace. Prosperity. Happiness, even, if it isn't asking too much of us. So far, I was under the impression we could do this for each other, Katara." He motions to the space between them absently. "We wanted to make you happy, we wanted you to make us happy, and we could all live out our lives in peace."

Dread rises up her spine with the sense that anything that could make Hahn happy would only spell the exact opposite for her.

"Last night, you made that impossible," Hahn says flatly, his smile vanishing. "So let this be as plain as I can make it."

Katara tries very hard to stop the scowl from spreading across her face as Hahn steeples his fingers and places them on the tabletop. "Your shameful display last night broke so many rules, I don't have the time or patience to name them all. For that alone, you ought to be exiled from the tribe."

Her stomach plummets rapidly. For all that the Northerners grated on her, being cut off from her people permanently was something she had never imagined. "You - you exile people here?" Being cast out from the tribe was a fate worse than death for a life lived in the poles - an unconscionable horror. Her parents would never have imagined such a thing, not even for the worst among them.

"In theory. We've never done it before." Hahn's gaze bores into her pitilessly. "But for you, we considered making an exception."

"I -" She flounders, and the corners of his mouth turn upwards. "I didn't - you can't -"

"But my new wife pleaded so prettily on your behalf this morning…" Hahn's fingers drum against the tabletop rhythmically, mimicking the panicked beat of her racing heart. "So here's how it's going to be."

She wills herself to stay calm as he continues perfectly calmly, the glitter in his eyes the only betrayal of his triumph. "You are on your very last chance, Katara. One slip, one hint, so much as one breath of defiance out of you...and it will give me no end of satisfaction to tie you to the nearest ice floe and cut you loose. Do you understand?"

Her fingers dig into her shaking palms as she clenches her fists tightly. But she holds Hahn's gaze stormily, wondering how much he must enjoy wielding this much power over her, to think that he had her under his control at last.

"I understand," she grits out tersely.

Hahn smiles delightedly. "See? Wasn't that easy? That's all we needed to hear from you." He waves her off dismissively.

On some unspoken command, a group of unspeaking men appear at her side as though out of nowhere. As they escort her out, Hahn's satisfied voice trails behind her.

"Remember, Katara. All it takes is a little cooperation. We could even find a way to get along, after everything."

She clenches her teeth but says nothing in return.

Healing lessons were over for her, Nerrivik informed her with a twitch of her nose as they commandeered her from Hahn's house over to the communal tents.

Instead of settling in among the sewing circles as she usually would have, she is led instead to the back of the tents, where the kitchens ran in full swing as always. Far away from Aujak and the other Southern girls, in constant supervision of the tribal matriarchs sitting in the corners with their sharp tongues and beady eyes. To work alongside the overbusy girls tasked with all the labour, drudging from cookfire to cookfire with little respite.

After the relative freedom and status afforded to her as a healing apprentice, this was surely meant to her as an insult. A punishment in itself after she had snapped in front of the whole tribe. And an obvious lesson to any other women who thought of following in her footsteps: to comply with the band chiefs' wishes, or suffer the same fall from grace.

But if Hahn and the other chiefs wanted to provoke a reaction out of her, she would leave them sorely disappointed, Katara decides grimly. After all, there were other ways to protest, and now was not the time to attract any extra attention to herself.

Pick your battles, Katara, Yue had warned her before they parted ways the previous night, so late that it could be considered early. No matter how they try to taunt you, there's no shame in living to fight another day.

And so, she remains stubbornly silent as Nerrivik introduces her to everyone else. The wizened old women glare at her like some pariah, while the young girls pause in their work to stare at her fearfully. Everyone gives her a wide berth, as though she carried some disease and they were afraid of catching it.

With a sigh, she rolls up her sleeves instead.

She spends her days in tight-lipped silence, elbow deep in animal carcasses, hunched over baskets of foraged plants that had to be washed and chopped and dried. Her clothes and hair constantly smell of the spitting fat and thick black smoke that choked the air inside the tents and made her eyes water.

From the tents she trudges back to her igloo, conscious of the silent figures trailing her steps with razor-sharp eyes. Sometimes it was a pair of the young kitchen girls who happened to be heading in the same direction as her. More often than not, it was more of the tribe's young warriors, hooded and masked and watchful, ready to report any misstep back to the band chiefs. Her back stiffens under the constant scrutiny, Hahn's threat echoing in her mind in a constant warning.

One slip. One hint. One breath of defiance. As though nothing would delight him more.

Gritting her teeth, she lowers her head and continues as though she doesn't notice them, feeling very much like a ghost in the light of day.

If she crosses paths with any familiar faces - Princess Yue or any of the women from the healing huts - they pretend not to notice her either.

She turns in early, pausing only to retrieve her meals from the army kitchens. If Toph or Aang happen to be there, she makes a big show of being too bone-weary to join them, or to do much else at all.

The silent watchers linger in the periphery of her vision, shadowing her steps until she stumbles into her igloo and sweeps the tent flaps shut behind her. Kindles the fire to a low blaze, settling noisily into the animal skins, as though readying herself for sleep. Watching the silhouettes of the men waiting outside her door while quietly spooning her cooling dinner into her mouth, barely able to taste it as her nerves tighten in the uneasy growing darkness of nightfall.

At last, when she sets her empty bowl down and pulls the animal skins up to her chin, breathing quietly like someone in deep sleep, the shadows outside her door begin to stir. She hears the crunch of their boots against fresh snow, receding into the distance as the men finally retire for the night.

Lowering her head against the folded bundle of skins that served as her pillow, huddling closer to the glowing coals for warmth. Closing her eyes and welcoming what little sleep could claim her for the remaining hours that the tribe still stirred in wakefulness.

And when at last the lights of the city are quenched and only the watchfires glow in the darkness, Katara finally stirs.

The coals of her fire have burned low, leaving her to shiver in the frosty air as she slips out of the pile of animal furs and bundles into a thick parka dyed black as night. Sneaking out of her igloo, flitting silently from shadow to shadow, careful to wipe her tracks clean from the snow and evade the watchful gaze of the sentries on their nightly patrol.

Adrenaline rushes through her blood, tightening her body with the risk of being caught and the consequences that would surely follow, and the heady intoxication of defiance that makes her throw caution to the winds and think only of the next step ahead.

At long last, she slips into the small supply tunnels fueling the city's main locks, empty and dry at night when the water was at its lowest. Slides the manhole cover of the hidden passage leading outside the city walls and into the plains of the unguarded wild tundra, beyond the sight of the defenders on the parapets.

Yue had found it somehow, and suggested it as a place for them to gather. Katara had wanted to meet in the spirit oasis, but that had been too far, too remote. It was too risky for so many women to try and travel there without getting caught, the princess had pointed out with a forward-thinking shrewdness that reminded Katara of her brother.

For a moment, as she clambers out the other side of the passageway into a large snowdrift, she allows herself to miss Sokka. To imagine what he would do if he was here, if he would support her secret, reckless acts of rebellion. Or if he would bristle with brotherly concern and snap at her to drop it. But to Sokka, being safe had never been as important as being free. She hopes that if he was here, he'd understand. Maybe even help her in some way.

But such thoughts were an indulgence. Sokka was far beyond her reach, and she was alone. Instead, she thinks back to the night of Yue's wedding, how powerful she had felt unleashing her wrath upon Hahn and his cronies. Of her friends, supporting her when she was too tired to stand. Zuko, tacitly rebuilding the peace that Hahn wanted so badly to break. How he had radiated cold fury on her behalf, so much so that she questions how he could be the same boy who filled her with such warmth?

She allows herself to smile, wondering what Zuko would think of her now. There was no doubt in her mind that he would support her and keep her secret. Look at you, secretly resisting Hahn's stupid rules, she could almost hear him saying wryly. Who do you think you are, the Painted Lady?

Maybe, she would reply back playfully. Here I am, taking a stand against tyranny and injustice in our tribe.

And so she buries her face into the scarf wound tightly around her neck and trudges onward, fighting the cruel arctic wind with each step. Every now and then, she checks behind her to make sure she isn't followed. In her wake, her footsteps already begin to disappear under the steady snowfall.

She finds the others waiting in a small cave hollowed out of a large pile of snow, packed hard as ice by countless seasons of snowstorms and melt. Nobody dared to risk a small fire, relying instead upon heavy shaggy layers and the crude shelter to protect them from the harsh elements.

Ducking inside, she checks over her shoulder one last time for followers, and sweeps the path outside clear of footsteps, until it appears as powdery soft as freshly fallen snow. The bits of skin exposed around her eyes burn in the bitter cold.

Then she glances at the handful of other women waiting for her, bundled up so heavily that it is impossible to recognize them. Night after night of clandestine meetings have forced her to identify them in other ways. At first, by the sound of their voices, or the colour of their eyes faintly visible in the dark. And soon enough, by their posture and the movements of their bodies as they flowed from one beginner's stance to the next.

"Sorry I'm late," she says to the silent gathering, her quiet voice sounding overloud in the small space nonetheless. She sheds her parka, making it all the easier for her students to observe her as she shifts into a waterbending form. "Let's get started."

As one, the women of the Northern tribe follow her lead, their gazes blazing with determined concentration.

It had to start small, Yue insisted, that long night in the spirit oasis. With women who could be trusted, whose frustration with the tribe's rigid ways outweighed their fear of punishment. Who were young enough to dream of something better, bold enough to dare learn something forbidden. Who had yet to be jaded and embittered by the hardness of life, or fearful enough to court discovery.

The initial small group was therefore composed of women hand-picked among the healers' apprentices, whose ambitions far outstripped the confines of the humble healing huts, who bristled at the additional scrutiny imposed upon them ever since Katara had been ousted from their number. Yugoda and Ahnah had lost far too much face with the tribe to risk asking, even if Katara suspected they would wholeheartedly support the venture. Instead, quiet dutiful Hei had replaced them as the master healer tasked with training the apprentices. There was no more talk of bloodbending or experimenting at all.

To some of the apprentices, this came as a relief. To many others, it had simply been the last straw.

Bunik, dissatisfied with her lot in life and thoroughly soured by the band chiefs' dismissal of her father, was among the first to show up. She had been the one to put out feelers during the morning's healing classes and subtly invite the girls who were interested, who were trustworthy. One by one, they had appeared outside the city walls, multiplying each night like new frost at dawn.

Ulva, the teenage widow. Woka, whose fiery temperament had always been ill-suited to the art of healing, who had the spirit of a fighter trapped in the body of a Northern woman. Ikkuma, who had little else to lose. Even Lusa, who had fled the South and hidden her bending from the world, claiming it had only brought misery upon them all, had surprised Katara, and perhaps even herself, with her presence one night.

"I thought you said you didn't want to learn how to bend," Katara remarks, grinning nonetheless at the presence of the older Southern girl.

But Lusa only shrugs. "I didn't want to bloodbend," she corrects evasively. "I guess I changed my mind."

And so she waits in line with the rest of the girls across from Katara, watching her with starved intentness as she coaches them through the basic techniques. How to feel the push and pull of the water, how to shift and flow through the stances.

She shows them how to raise the water, how to form it to their will. A simple wave, a shining globe suspended in the air and following their every movement. She teaches them how to stream the water into shining liquid ribbons, trailing in suspended arcs following the steady motions of the beginner's kata. When one of the makeshift cave walls nearly collapses from the force of Lusa's giant wave, it takes the better part of her strength to prop it back up with a crooked pillar of ice, glittering in the light of the waxing moon.

"Don't apologize," Katara tells a stammering Lusa. She wipes the sweat beading on her brow in spite of the frost clinging to her hood in delicate silver threads. "You have more power than you know. Imagine what you could do if you unleashed it."

But Lusa only stares at the ice pillar, its edges glinting in the moonlight like a drawn sword. Her green eyes reflect its light, and for the first time, she appears truly happy and whole in a way Katara has never witnessed before.

"I'll bet we'd find out just how quickly all the men in the tribe can get out of our way," snorts Ulva, experimenting with the pile of snow in front of her. Trying to raise a column of water, but succeeding only in creating a sharp ice spear instead.

Katara places a hand on her shoulder already stiffening with frustration. "You're focusing too much on what your hands are doing. Remember, strength in waterbending doesn't come from the muscles," she advises, already sliding into the motions to demonstrate. "It comes from the way you shift your weight, from the flow between stances." The night air sticks like sharp claws in her nostrils. "It comes from control. Mind and body, breath and form, all in perfect harmony."

"You make it look so easy," Ulva complains, trying again. This time, a small spray of water surges upward toward her outstretched palm like a small fountain. She brightens instantly. "Hey look, I almost did it!"

"Almost," Katara allows with a small smile. "A little more practice and you'll have it down for sure." Katara can't see the excitement spreading under the girl's masked face, but she reads it in the way her posture changes, as though she was a thousand pounds lighter.

Feeling somewhat weightlessly giddy herself, she turns to the next girl, already focusing on the next correction to be applied, the next technique for them to master.

She teaches them how to fight. And as their numbers increase, as they rapidly improve, appearing night after night without betraying their secret, they teach her how to hope again.

But as surely as autumn followed even the most glorious summers, it all falls apart.

It starts innocently enough, with Katara stumbling toward the army kitchens erected by the rows of guesthouses on the outskirts of the city. The sun was setting, stretching her shadow along the mounds of snow glowing in the cool blue light. It was flanked by two others, alerting her to the constant presence of Hahn's watchmen shadowing her every move.

Feigning a yawn, she ducks into the kitchens, quickly grabbing a bowl heaped with steaming five flavour soup and making a beeline for the exit when -

"You're leaving already?"

Zuko's incredulous voice stops her in her tracks. She turns to meet the quizzical stare on his face. "Yeah. I'm - I'm tired," she stutters clumsily. The blue parka she'd made for him is draped neatly over his dark armour, making him appear somewhat larger than he actually was. In spite of the shadows lingering like perpetual bruises under his eyes and the weariness etching lines along his face, the sight of him still manages to send blood to her cheeks in a hot rush.

"They let you out early," she remarks in a voice of forced calm, even as her anxiety mounts. In the packed tent swarming with people wearing at least three different uniforms, she momentarily loses sight of her pursuers.

"They do that sometimes." Zuko frowns, reading her distress so easily she wonders why she bothered to hide it at all. He follows the subtle flick of her eyes, and his jaw tightens. His voice lowers as he pins her with his gaze. "Hahn's got you on a tight leash, doesn't he?"

Her throat closes up as she nods shortly, her fingers tightening around her bowl.

He makes a sound somewhere between a growl and a sigh. "This has to stop."

"Zuko -"

"He can't make you a fugitive in your own tribe, Katara."

She smiles bitterly, glancing down at her coat, patterned with old animal bloodstains that refused to wash off. "He's the chief now, Zuko. He can do whatever he wants."

"What he wants is to isolate you entirely" Zuko chances a step closer, desperately. "First, he forbade you from bending. Then he replaced you with his bonehead buddy on Team Avatar. Then, he kicked you out of healing lessons and has you slaving away in the kitchens all day. And to top it all off, he's got his own men trailing you all hours of the day, so much so that you can't even talk to us?" His voice drops to barely a whisper, but she still hears the anguish trembling beneath. "To me? How can you stand it?"

"I can't," she admits quietly.

Around them, the laughter and chatter of the other soldiers seem to blur into a surreal haze. She forces her breathing to a slow calm. It was easier to go without, she thinks desperately. But standing here, face to face with Zuko, everything suddenly felt too hard. He had the luxury of seeing things more clearly than she could, of speaking the blunt truths that she wasn't always ready to hear.

And by the spirits, she missed him.

But then she remembers her nights in the bitter cold outskirts of the city, the excitement glowing in the women's eyes as she taught them how to bend. As they all risked their place in the tribe to strive for more than what Hahn and the other men wanted for them. As they resisted.

Then she raises her eyes to meet his stricken gaze. "But this isn't just about me. It's bigger than that."

"Tell me," he pleads. "I want to know. I want to help."

Part of her rears up at the thought, longing to tell him. But as much as she wanted Zuko to be a part of it, she couldn't. It wasn't just her secret to tell. To say nothing of what that could do to his uncle's tentative alliance with the band chiefs, already teetering so precariously on the knife's edge.

She shakes her head instead, stepping back. "I want to. I really do. But I can't," she chokes out. A pause while he stares at her blankly, before the rest of it blurts out of her. "I miss you."

His face softens, twin spots of pink blooming sharply on his cheeks. "I miss you too," he whispers.

The bowl in her trembling hands begins to rattle, the soup inside it slopping at the edges and threatening to spill over.

She takes another step back, clearing her throat uncomfortably. "I should go," she says absently, tearing her gaze away with some difficulty. In the corner of her eye, she spots Hahn's watchmen skulking by the doorway. Their presence rings a pang of alarm straight through her. "Say hi to Toph and Aang for me. And - and that I wish things were different, too."

She turns away in a hurry, afraid to hear him answer.

She takes her meal alone in her igloo as usual, studying the silhouettes of Hahn's watchers as they pace back and forth in front of her curtained doorway. Closing her eyes, she sets her spoon down into her empty bowl and sighs, thinking of Zuko and the look in his eyes. It had been so long since she'd talked to him privately, not since the day Lusa had caught him leaving her house in the morning. And with Hahn tightening the noose around her neck, to spend more than a moment alone in his presence was to invite trouble. And she was already balancing on the razor's edge with her secret waterbending lessons. The last thing she needed was for Hahn to examine her movements more closely.

A sudden knock on her doorpost tears her from her thoughts, and her back stiffens in alarm, just before a familiar voice cuts through the silent air. "Hey Sweetness! You in there?"

She sighs in sudden relief, her heart already hammering a panicked rhythm before she forces herself calm. "Just a moment!" she calls back, rising to her feet and sweeping the curtain back to see Toph fidgeting on her doorstep, bundled up in her hand-sewn parka with her hands held behind her back. "What is it?"

"Well, hello to you too," the blind earthbender grumps, marching right past her without a moment's hesitation, "it's been a while, how have you been? Hey, I'm fine, thanks for asking."

Katara glances anxiously into the street, the row of guesthouses fading into the shadows. She catches the furtive glances of Hahn's sentries, before exhaling sharply through her teeth and swinging the curtains shut. There was nothing else to do.

"Sorry," she apologizes curtly, turning around to watch Toph settle by the fire. "There's just been a lot going on."

"Ever since you lost your shit on everyone at that wedding feast," Toph observes, sticking her hands out to warm them. "You couldn't build a smaller fire, Sugar Queen?"

"Oh! Right." Katara scrambles for the kindling heaped in a pile next to the fire pit. "Sorry about that. I was just about to turn in for the night."

"Already?" Toph's eyebrows rise. "You really have been living a hermit's life up here."

Katara sighs, tossing some dried twigs onto the fire. A shower of sparks dances off the coals as the fresh kindling starts to burn, the flames licking their peeling bark until it splits. "You can say that again," she mutters, shaking her head. "What brings you here all of a sudden? Shouldn't you be training or something?"

Toph snorts before her face turns suddenly serious. "Actually...I was hoping to ask you for a favour."

Katara tilts her head, sliding back down to sit cross-legged on one of the shaggy animal furs lining the ground. "A favour?" she echoes, staring at her friend quizzically. "What kind of favour?"

"Well...I've been thinking." Toph grabs at one of the dry twigs from the kindling pit, twisting it idly through her fingers. She smiles uncomfortably. "Twinkletoes actually suggested this ages ago, so don't you dare breathe a word of this to him, because I'll never hear the end of it." Her face scrunches into a ferocious scowl.

Katara nods solemnly. "Not a word," she promises, staring with growing curiosity as Toph traces patterns into the snow with her twig. "What is it?"

"I want to send a message," Toph blurts out very quickly, her pale face suddenly flushing very red.

"Well, that's easy enough," Katara replies, caught off guard by Toph's inexplicable secrecy. "To who?"

But then Toph's face darkens instantly, as she crosses her arms across her chest. "My parents," she bites out, her clouded green eyes blazing with ill-concealed anger. "I want - no, I need them to know that the way they've been behaving is unacceptable. They have to know that the more they try to control me, the further away they'll drive me."

"I'm sure they know that, Toph," Katara says gently.

"No. I don't think they do." Toph's hands lower into her lap, still twisting the slim twig through her fingers. "Katara, they've been sending bounty hunters after me, offering rewards to people who want to abduct me and send me home. They even cut a deal with Sparky's crazy sister, just to get me back in their control." The flames reflect in her eyes, suddenly very shiny before she wipes at them with the back of her hand. "This needs to end before they try something even more destructive next."

Katara watches her carefully. "You really do sound like you've talked with Aang about this," she offers. "A lot."

Toph's face twists wryly. "Yeah...him and Sparky too."

Katara tries to digest this with growing discomfort. "I guess Zuko knows all about how to handle crazy parents," she murmurs sadly.

"Yeah, after he told his dad to fuck off, he's basically an expert," Toph agrees. She begins to pick at the twig in her hands, peeling the bark off in narrow, curling strips before tossing them aimlessly into the fire. "I want to tell them not to contact me unless they're ready to accept me for who I am, without hiding or compromising." She slumps dejectedly. "Or something like that."

Katara swallows, choosing her next words very carefully. "That's...that's very mature of you," she tries. "And very brave." Elation swells inside her chest at the small smile spreading across Toph's mouth, prompting her to add, "I'm really proud of you."

"Well…" Toph shuffles uncomfortably, "seeing as I can't exactly write." She reaches into her pocket before unrolling a blank scroll of paper and waving it in the air. "Could you give me a hand?"

Katara smiles. "Of course."

Later that night, Katara can barely keep her eyes open at their secret waterbending lessons. But as she thinks of the small flame of determination blazing in Toph's eyes, she decides she wouldn't trade it for anything.

"Has anyone seen Lusa?" someone asks, jolting her suddenly awake.

Katara scans the group of women, trying to pick out the Southern girl's green eyes or her tall, stately posture. "She must have stayed in tonight," she answers. "Maybe someone was following her and she didn't want to risk getting caught." It was a common enough occurrence that nobody else gives it a second thought.

She spends the rest of the night teaching them the beginnings of an intermediate kata, instructing them on motions devoted to falling and floating. The water trails through the air, reflecting the light of moonbeams until it makes her eyes hurt.

Hahn's men accost her as she leaves the kitchen tents the next evening, exhausted and feeling like a shell of herself after getting so little sleep the night before. As they drag her away, she catches sight of Lusa's chestnut hair in its twisted coil. Her heart leaps in her chest at the sight of the Southern girl, awake and upright and engrossed in conversation in the corner of the tent with - Katara's heart suddenly plummets - Nerrivik.

She isn't sure why the sight of it unsettles her so. Nerrivik and Lusa had plenty of reasons to talk, and all of them were innocent enough. But her eyes linger on the hunched slope of Lusa's shoulders, so starkly different from her square upright posture at nighttime bending practice, just before Lusa furtively glances over her shoulder and catches her gaze.

She stiffens at once, making Katara feel horribly as though she had witnessed something private. Then Lusa turns away, back to Nerrivik and whatever they were talking about that was so important.

Katara tries to ignore the bad feeling striking through her, for reasons she can't fully understand. You're just being paranoid, she tells herself firmly, get a grip already.

Then, before she can pay it much more heed, she's dragged into Hahn's royal house and it vanishes from her mind altogether. In a matter of moments, she's brought before the band chiefs again. The small room is crammed fuller than usual, the fire in the corner kindled to a high blaze but still unable to dispel the deepening shadows stretching toward her.

Her fingers are still stained with dirt from scrubbing and peeling foraged tubers all day, and she shoves them hastily into her pockets. "I didn't even do anything," she complains as the men leave as abruptly as they had arrived.

Hahn glances up at her from the low wooden table with a smile. "Defensive, are we?" He places his palm against his jaw, where more of the scraggly hairs had grown into a sad attempt at a beard. "No need for that, Katara. We just wanted to check in on you and see how you were doing."

Katara studies the impassive faces of the other band chiefs seated around the low table, dwarfed entirely by Sangilak and his father. But Chieftain Suluk wasn't the only one accompanied by his son. She recognizes Chieftain Keelut's older son Imnek seated at his right hand.

Relieved that it wasn't Tartok sitting before her instead, she eyes Hahn suspiciously. "Fine," she answers stiffly.

Hahn tilts his head disarmingly. "So it seems. I hear you've really thrown yourself into your work, Katara. With an unusually single-minded dedication, my men tell me. What prompted this sudden change of heart?"

Katara takes a deep breath, treading carefully. Now was not the time to risk arousing any more of Hahn's suspicions. "You said I was on my last chance here. I - I don't want to waste that." She lowers her head, twisting her fingers in a show of contrition. "This is all that's left of my people. I...I want to prove that I can belong here. That we can make each other happy."

Hahn's keen stare bores into the top of her lowered head, as though trying to decipher the thoughts racing through her mind. "Is that so?" he asks softly.

Katara bites her tongue and nods.

"It gives me great joy to hear this from you, Katara," Hahn says at last, and she raises her gaze to study the uncomfortably knowing smile spreading over his face. "Too much, in fact. You're a clever girl, Katara. What are you hiding under that guise of docility, I wonder?"

She shuffles her weight from side to side, fighting the annoyance threatening to overcome her. Careful, Katara. He's baiting you. "I have nothing to hide," she says, as calmly and clearly as she can manage. "I slave away in the kitchen tents from dawn till dusk, and after that I'm so tired, I can't even eat with my friends. I go straight home and fall asleep. Your own men watch me all the time, so they've already told you that I haven't set a toe out of line." She inhales slowly, fighting to remain as neutral as possible. "I know nothing would make you happier than to catch me doing something wrong, but believe me, that's the last thing I want."

Hahn's gaze bores into hers in an unblinking challenge before he finally looks away, resting his chin on the heel of his hand. "Hm. Very well," he mutters, concealing his disappointment. Katara fights the gasp of relief brimming in her throat. "And yet for all this, you remain close with your friends among the Dragon Army. I saw how they rushed to your defense the night of my wedding, in spite of your countless transgressions. And my men say that they saw you talking with the fire prince, just the other night."

Katara raises an eyebrow. "You mean Zuko?"

Hahn's eyes gleam, and Katara's stomach churns uncomfortably. "Precisely. Now what kind of friendship could a prince of the Fire Empire - Ozai's own son - have with a Water Tribe woman?" Katara's mouth goes dry as he leans forward, clearly excited by the possibility. "And what kind of friendship would you, Katara, have with this prince, as a refugee of the wars that his own father started?"

Katara breathes very carefully, rattled by how close Hahn was to discovering the truth that she had fought so hard to hide. "Are you asking me, or have you already made up your mind?"

"You sewed that parka he always wears," Hahn points out suspiciously. "What am I to make of that?"

Katara shrugs noncommittally. "I also sewed parkas for Toph and Aang. What did you make of that?"

Hahn's eyes narrow as they scrutinize her face for a trace of guile. "I can hardly be the first to remind you of how improper it is for an unwed Water Tribe woman to be carrying on with a firebender prince. His own father was responsible for destroying your home, wasn't he?"

"Zuko renounced his father at great personal cost," Katara reminds him, now thoroughly irritated by the direction the conversation was going. "I may be a woman of the Water Tribes, Chief Hahn, but I will not forget the people who were kind to me before I got here. Even if you and the rest of the tribe consider it inappropriate."

Her nostrils flare and she instantly wishes she could breathe fire too.

"Even when you claim to be trying your hardest to fit in among us, you remain so adversarial to our help," Hahn says at last. Katara's fists clench at the smug smile on his face, so much so that his next question catches her off guard. "How old are you?"

She blinks, surprised by the sudden change in tactics. "Eighteen," she answers slowly. "Why?"

Nothing prepares her for the sound of Hahn's laughter. "Well, that explains everything!" he exclaims, smiling at the stern-faced band chiefs sitting around him. A few of them return his smile, while the remainder only glower. "I thought you to be far younger than that, but it all makes sense now. Eighteen years of age and still unwed? No wonder you're so restless."

Dread prickles along her spine as Hahn turns to broad-faced Chieftain Keelut and his eldest son seated silently at his right hand. "What do you think, Keelut? Kill two birds with one stone? This way, all the rumours about Imnek can be put to rest." He lets out a humourless laugh. "They could hardly persist with such a powerful and aggressive woman at his side."

Katara splutters loudly in disbelief. "Excuse me?"

She isn't the only one shocked by Hahn's proclamation. Imnek's dark face turns suddenly ghostly pale, while on the other side of the table, Sangilak actually slams a fist on the table, splintering its wooden surface.

"Calm down, everyone," Hahn chides. "So dramatic, the lot of you! Anyway, the two of them are hardly likely to come by a better prospect. Imnek isn't exactly renowned for his fighting prowess, but he can keep Katara in line, while she can bolster his perceived strength. It's a well balanced match. Together they can keep things peaceful back in Siliktok."

"Siliktok?" Imnek echoes, turning to face his father. "Dad, I thought that was going to be Tartok's job."

Keelut shuffles in his spot, clearly uncomfortable to be put on the spot. "Son, you could hardly expect to be placed among the band chiefs in Tartok's stead -"

"I'm the oldest son!" Imnek explodes, his fingers clenching together so that they turn bone white. "It's my birthright! How dare you and Hahn conspire to rob me of that -"

"Imnek," rumbles Chieftain Suluk, even though his hard gaze is trained on Sangilak. "You forget. In the Water Tribes, we do not follow a man's claim or his bloodline. We follow his strength."

He lets the rest linger unsaid, an uncomfortable weight in the room. Imnek glares at his father but stews silently in his anger.

"So it's settled then," Hahn declares, clapping his hands together gleefully. "The two of them will be wed and sent back to Siliktok as soon as possible -"

"I won't."

Hahn glances at Katara, smirking at the interruption. "What was that, Katara?"

She clenches her shaking fists so tightly that cuts form along her palms. "I won't. I refuse to marry Imnek. I don't even know him!"

"Oh?" His smirk widens triumphantly. "Are you disobeying the will of your Chief, then? You know what the penalty is for such disobedience."

She closes her eyes, feeling his snare close in around her, trapping her where she stood. "You can't do this," she pleads. "I'm not some property of yours, to barter or sell off as you please!"

"Yeah, Dad!" Imnek protests. "You can't just spring this on us like this -"

"It would be prudent to let this settle, Chief Hahn," big Chieftain Suluk suggests in his deep grating voice. "Clearly, forcing these two young ones into wedlock so abruptly is in neither of their best interests -"

"I hear what you're saying, Suluk," Hahn cuts him off smoothly. "But you forget. The Fire Empire's fleet is sailing toward our shores. We could find ourselves besieged any day. It's in everyone's best interests if Imnek and Katara are wed and sent back to Siliktok as soon as possible. Siliktok is far enough inland to be well defended by the time the enemy arrives..."

He rattles on, listing out the benefits as though he was conducting some sort of business transaction. Katara can no longer hear him, consumed by the sound of blood roaring in her ears, overwhelmed by the urge to smash him into the walls again, maybe even murder him this time. But no matter what she did, it would play right into Hahn's hands. Either she would have to go along with his odious plan, designed to move her out of his way once and for all, or she would protest and give him the pleasure of cutting her loose on an ice floe, to her certain doom.

He had her right where he wanted her.

A shudder racks through her and she is mortified to feel hot tears sliding down her cheeks. She furiously scrubs them away, determined not to show weakness in front of Hahn or any of his lot.

To her surprise, it's Sangilak who leaps to his feet first. The table scrapes loudly against the ground as he pushes it out of his way, barging out of the room without another word.

"Spirits save us," Imnek mutters, before rising and following hard on his heels. His voice echoes in the fluttering door flaps swaying in his wake. "Sangilak, wait…"

An awkward silence descends upon the small room. Hahn waves it off dismissively. "They'll come around. Keelut, I think we can arrange to have this concluded by the week's end. I'll let my mother know, she can get the preparations started. A simple affair will do, no need to draw unneeded attention and risk another scene…"

Katara turns on her heels and storms out the door, unable to listen to another word. It made no difference whether she was there or not, she thinks bitterly, wiping at her wet face with the back of her hand. Hahn had made sure of that. No matter what she did, he would get his way.

Her feet carry her out of Hahn's gaudy royal manse and into the darkened streets of Aujuittuq, the blackness of night matching the thick despair overwhelming her. It didn't matter which way she went, or who followed her now. She never had a reason to pay heed to her future before, but now it clamps down upon her with a predator's devouring jaws.

How did it come to this? It spins in her mind over and over, reeling in her shock.

She pushes through the streets with unseeing eyes, her feet somehow knowing where to bring her, who she needed to see the most.

It isn't until she registers the dim flickering of firelight through the door flaps of his guesthouse that the enormity of it hits her all at once.

Zuko springs up in surprise at her sudden arrival. "Katara, what -?" His eyes widen in shock at the tears pouring down her racked face. His fingers are gentle on her shoulders as he guides her onto the shaggy furs piled by the fire. "Who did this to you? What's going on?"

But the sound of his voice only makes the tears come down harder. She clutches at her chest, as though feeling the ache there, hearing the protesting cries of her heart, all for the very first time.

She barely realizes when he hugs her, his mouth breathing hotly against her forehead, his arms trying to blot it all out, the solid warmth of his body a shelter. His fingers run along the length of her hair unravelling from its braid, over and over again in a soothing motion. "It's okay," he murmurs. "It'll be okay."

"No it won't." She hiccups loudly, choking on the sobs bursting piteously out of her. "He's trying to marry me off."

His hand freezes against her hair. "Who is?"

"Who else?"

It takes a long moment for him to process her words. In the corner of her eye, she sees his jaw tighten. "How dare he - you said no, right?"

"As if it matters," she gulps out. "Zuko, I'm on such thin ice already and - and if I say anything, Hahn's going to cut me loose on an ice floe -"

"No," Zuko cuts her off furiously, his fingers tightening momentarily. "No he won't, because he'll be dead, because I'm going to kill him. Where is he?"

A helpless laugh escapes her as she shakes her head. "You can't do that," she reminds him despairingly. "You need him, remember? What about your uncle's alliance?"

"You think any of that matters now?" Zuko exclaims, cupping her face in his hands to look her straight in the eyes. "I told you before, Katara. I don't care."

"Not even a little bit?" she asks him in a small voice, even as her hands close over his. "Without Hahn and the rest of the Northern tribe, you and your uncle have no way of getting your home back -"

"You think I care about any of that when Hahn's trying to sell you off like a cart of goods to the highest bidder?" Zuko snarls before sighing in frustration, perhaps feeling nearly as lost and trapped as she does. "I can't do this," he blurts out, and even though it shouldn't be a surprise, her stomach plummets at the hurt blazing clear in his eyes. "I can't lose you."

She struggles to swallow past the lump in her throat. "I don't want to get married," she admits in a whisper, cursing the tears that continue to fall, dripping along his fingers in a constant trickle. "I don't want to say goodbye to you. I'm -" she chokes on the revelation, perhaps understanding it fully for the first time. "I'm not ready for that yet."

His sigh of relief cuts more deeply than she could have imagined. His head slumps against her own, as his thumbs move up to wipe the tears smearing along her skin. "We'll figure it out," he mutters. "I won't let anything happen to you. I promise."

She sputters on a wail of protest, her mouth moving to form sounds with no shape, a nonsensical blubbering that vibrated with the shivers racking through her entire body, as whatever held it so tightly wound together finally snaps. Clutching at him like a lifeline, the weight of his touch and the heat of his skin the only things that seemed to matter. The smell of his soap, the smell of him, rises off his hair, freshly washed and damp against her fingers. It settles in her nostrils, the scent making her dizzy and awakening the currents shifting like heat throughout her body.

It had been so very long since she had touched him, after all.

Her fingers brush the trembling slope of his shoulders, pausing along the skin exposed above the neck of his furs. She hears him hiss through his teeth, before his hands settle along the curve of her waist. She glances up, her whole body shuddering as she meets his gaze swirling like molten gold in the firelight.

"Hahn's men," he grits out, casting a tentative glance at the curtains lining his doorway, "what if they -"

"Shh." She places a finger to his lips and he falls silent immediately. "It doesn't matter." The soft bursts of his breath tickle her fingers, and she traces the outline of his mouth, hanging open slack as he lets out a longing sigh. His arms crush around her so tightly that breathing becomes difficult.

A small part of her still manages to panic. What if Hahn's men see, they'll know, they'll cut you off for good. But then Zuko presses an open-mouthed kiss to the palm of her hand and an irrational blaze of defiance swallows it, washing it down the river of heat coursing through her veins.

What more can Hahn do that he hasn't done already?

She isn't sure when or how exactly her mouth finds his, only that the taste of him was a comfort, and that he makes a ragged sound as her teeth rake along his bottom lip. Her hands bury themselves into the soft, silky hair cascading over his shoulders and down the length of his back. Fire throbs under his skin, matching the heat building through her body until the air in his hut felt uncomfortably warm, the furs lining her parka overheated and suddenly dampened with sweat.

With a decisive motion, she undoes the button at the collar of his parka, before sliding down to nip at the pale skin bared to her touch. He makes another sound and it consumes her, buzzing along her nerves like lightning, urging her to peel off the layers of clothing separating them and ease what felt like sudden tongues of flame erupting beneath her skin.

"Katara -" he breathes, before she pushes at his shoulders and he lands on his back with a thump.

Beneath them, the ground was frozen hard and dead, but they spill onto the thick piled furs, soft and warm against her knees. She curves over him, finding it difficult to catch her breath. The glowing heat of the fire brushes them with golden fingers as he gazes up at her through the curtain of her hair, cascading down the sides of her face to block out everything else in the world. His hands run along the swell of her body, reverently tracing the old scars with a practiced familiarity that makes something stir inside her.

Her eyes flutter shut as she sways tentatively, seeking to ease the ache building like yearning where his flesh stiffens against her. He exhales sharply, swearing under his breath as her fingers close over him, and she marvels at the feeling of it, silken and hard and swollen, pulsing against her hand with the frenzied beat of his heart.

Swallowing the nerves battling the heady rush of defiance and making thinking quite difficult, she meets his gaze. Even in the flaring golden light, his eyes are heavy-lidded and darkening with an intensity that matches the need coiling tight where her body rocks against his.

The firelight flares abruptly, dispelling the trembling shadows in its dazzling golden halo as she shifts and lowers herself onto him. A strangled groan strains the shrinking distance between their faces, and his breath is sharp, short bursts of warmth into the underside of her jaw as he rises to meet her, his pace feverishly matching her own.

His hands skim the curve of her spine, twining into the heavy fall of her hair and pulling at it hungrily. She gasps at the sensation, the pain flaring bright along the back of her scalp and yet somehow enhancing the pleasure building deep within her. Until her legs give out and she crumples on top of him, her bones turning to molten gold and her skin so impossibly hot she swears she can see steam curling gently into the air around them. She cries out hoarsely, fisting handfuls of his hair as her spine arches, and his teeth clamp down onto her collarbone, the sounds of his pleasure muffling into the crook of her neck.

"I love you," he gasps unsteadily through his release, starving for air. "I love you so much."

She can only focus on the ripple of his hair, the individual strands separating along her fingers as they trail along the surface of the warmed furs. "I miss you," she whispers back, the realization nearly as shattering as the ache in her chest. "I miss you and I want you and I'm not ready to let go." His grip tightens as she meets his gaze fiercely. "Not yet."

The faint smile that tugs at his mouth nearly undoes her again. She chokes, the weight of her own blundering emotions threatening to suffocate her, even as she rolls off him and he settles in behind her. His breath tickles the shell of her ear, his arms cradle her entire shaking body. She pulls him closer until his chest pushes flush with the curve of her back, curling into him as his lips nip tenderly at the quivering spots along her neck and shoulder.

Closing her eyes as they lie in the fragile silence, it was as though time fluttered to a standstill. The pulse of his heartbeat drums loudly in her ears, in tandem with her own. Her fingers run along the line of his forearms to interlace with his and clutch them against the spot where her chest rises and falls with the swell of her breath, presses her trembling lips against his knuckles and remembering the taste of his skin. Outside the swaying tent flaps, the shadows lengthen and deepen as the rest of the tribe settles for the night, and with the slight dreamlike sensation of floating, she scarcely realizes when she drifts off as well.

It isn't until the fire burns down to cool glowing coals that she stirs awake. Shivering from the icy breath of the night wind that encroaches through the tent flaps, she blinks in the darkness, momentarily disoriented by the unfamiliarity of her surroundings. But then Zuko makes a sleepy sound into her ear and she bolts upright, consumed in a sudden panic.

The girls - tonight's lesson - oh no -

Squinting into the darkness as she disentangles herself from a faintly snoring Zuko's grip, cursing silently to herself for losing track of time, she wraps her coat tightly around herself and darts off into the night.

In her haste, she doesn't notice the silent figure trailing her in the dark like a shadow.

Chapter 43: the destiny of stars

Chapter Text

disclaimer. as usual, i own nothing familiar etc.

author's notes. you are all so kind to me...and i return the favour by being so cruel. (i'll grow a heart one day, i promise!) thank you to everyone for your thoughtful, generous feedback. you keep me so well-fed, i love it.

as usual, you can find me on tumblr at colourwhirled-writes for fic and general life updates.

without further ado, i give you...

southern lights

chapter xliii. the destiny of stars

i hadn't been building
the time was spent digging
an ugly truth from which there was no way to escape

"my own grave" / as i lay dying

In his dreams he can run no more.

He struggles against the shadows pulling him with phantom fingers deeper into the abyss of forgotten nightmares. The air in his lungs turns to liquid, to tar as he sinks further into its recesses, a living swamp that gnashes its teeth around him, swallowing him piece by piece until what's left of him remains no more.

All that remains are visions, clear and sharp and coloured like memories held through broken glass. Even as he holds them closer, the shards cut through him, their truth spilling secrets out in the red of his blood, alive with a pulse thrashing against an invisible pull shackling him to the darkness.

He strains against it, pulling ever toward the pulsing light, even as he comes undone - flesh, sinew, blood, bone yielding to the hopes and dreams simmering beneath. Truth and lies weave into a bright tapestry, baring its secrets to plain sight.

...might want to think of a better cover name...try Lee, there's a million Lees…

He gasps with flagging breaths, his limbs unravelling in the jaws holding him mercilessly in its grip. Unable to flee, unable to fight back, unable to do anything at all, except endure.

A woman on the cusp of adulthood, with hair the colour of moonlight and sadness shading her smile. Her fingers closing around the empty space where his hands used to be. Stay with me.

The air sputters in his lungs, choking the silence in the shape of words spilling from his mouth, an empty forgotten tether.

I'll always be with you. The silken weight of polished stone warmed by the heat of his palms, before it is encased by hers. Shrouding its white gleam from view as though she hides the moon in her hand. I promise.

He tries to scream, an ache burgeoning somewhere in the liminal spaces where his heart used to beat. The girl's face shimmers and blurs before his eyes, swept away by an invisible current. He scrabbles against its flow, a forgotten part of him brimming with the urge to hang on, clutching at the shore with all his might even as it sweeps him further away.

Two women clad in blue and white. One ancient and one not so much older than him. Yet his pulse quickens at the sight of them, a panic and instinctive relief that makes him feel like a child again.

Why?

A gnarled hand rests on his shoulder, holding him at bay. Its frail weight more substantial than anything else in his world. Take care of each other, it warns in a voice ancient with wisdom and incipient grief. You are all you have.

Who?

But the old woman's grip falters, as snow the colour of soot drifts down lazily, a gentle harbinger of certain destruction. The women break before him, a warrior in blue collapses at his feet. Screams echo in the distance, before the black and white turns red with fire and spilled blood.

A thousand questions pummel the yawning empty spaces where Lee used to be, an identity, a self, an entire persona painted in the certainty of his blood.

And the linchpin that threatens it all, sends it teetering to the edge of the chasm waiting longingly to devour him.

Don't leave me.

A little girl surrounded by fire and water and walls of stone, screaming for him even as everything else closes in on her like a trap. Come back, come back for me.

The unmistakable face of the waterbender who saved his life, pleading for him to stay even as his traitorous feet carry him further away with each word. Brother, she calls him, a woman he does not remember, bestowing upon him a name he does not recognize.

And yet it resonates through him, the power in its syllables humming with the untapped strength of his spirit. A sense of self so strong and true, it shatters the darkness surrounding him, the web of truth and lies disintegrating like shadows yielding to purifying light. The only thing that exists is the beating of his heart, its rhythm a deafening certainty repeating into the void. Calling to him, rousing with every stroke.

He awakens with a start, his heart still drumming an echo pounding loud in his ears in syllables he can barely hang onto before they curl away like mist on the wind.

Blinking in the darkness, his entire body aching and leaden after lying motionless for how long, he doesn't even know. Where he is, who he is...it all slips out of reach, swept away by the rapid tide of his thoughts growing more erratic by the second.

At length he registers the liquid trickling down his face. Tears? Or was it the dripping of moisture gathering overhead? Only then does he realize he is sprawled on his back on a cold hard surface, in a place so dark he cannot guess its size.

With a grunt, he tries to sit up, only to find his motions restricted by the sudden clink of metal biting into his skin. Chains linking to cuffs, heavy around his wrists and ankles and neck.

"Hello?" he calls out, panic rising abruptly at the understanding - he is trapped here, he is a prisoner. "Is anybody there?"

His voice stifles overloud in the darkness enshrouding him like a cage closing in tight around him. His eyes adjusting to the gloom enough to perceive his surroundings - a tiny chamber of a room, barely more than a closet, its walls of rough stone slippery with lake slime and dimly glowing with a faint green phosphorescence. Something glimmers off the iron-bolted door across from him, a faint light peeking through the small metal grille embedded in its solid wooden mass.

"Hello?"

He isn't sure if he imagines the small voice muffled through the stone, or if it is just another echo ringing hollow in his ears. Until it continues, rising in pitch with unmistakable terror. "Lee? Is that you? Are you awake?"

Lee. The single syllable bludgeons the insides of his skull, carving out a space that doesn't fit quite right. His heart judders in response, reacting to the confused tangle of his thoughts, his senses. Who's Lee?

"Oh, please be awake," the disembodied voice continues desperately, "they've got me in here and Ty Lee - she hasn't even woken up yet since what they did to her -"

The image burrows through his mind with a flash of remembered horror. Uniformed shadows surrounding him all around. A girl in pink flying through the air, twisting like a puppet on its strings.

" - and Suki, they took her somewhere, Lee, I don't know what they're doing to her but -"

A bloodcurdling scream pierces through the stifling gloom. The lone voice breaks off abruptly.

His skin erupts in prickles all over - a girl's scream, definitely a girl -

Another image bolts through him. A girl wearing a warrior's uniform, her face daubed thickly with paint. Black like shadow, white like bone, red as the blood oozing in thin trails out the corners of her mouth as they dragged her body away…

Suki. He scrambles upright with a surge of remembrance. The chains holding him in place clank noisily around him as he eases into a crouch. Their names rattle off in his memory with a clarity that eludes his own. Suki, Ty Lee -

"Haru!" he calls back, his fingers twisting desperately at the cold metal links. "Haru, is that you?"

"Lee! Oh thank the badgermoles it's you -" The young earthbender's voice shakes in relief. "Is Suki with you?"

"No," he answers cautiously, his eyes scanning the scant darkness around him and finding it empty, "no it's just me here. Is Ty Lee with you?"

"Yeah, she's here," replies Haru's faint voice. "They locked us up here together."

"How long have we been here?" he presses, touching his face gingerly and wincing at the ache that nearly splits his head in two.

"I don't know," Haru's voice answers plaintively. "Maybe days? Weeks? Longer?"

He slumps against the wall, his back growing cold and damp with the moisture that oozes from its surface. Fighting a reflexive shudder of disgust, he tries to focus on the problem at hand.

"We've got to get out of here," he says urgently, his heart sinking as he takes stock of his surroundings. He was locked up and chained in a cell at the bottom of a lake with no escape in sight. Ty Lee was still unconscious, and nobody knew where Suki was. "Can't you earthbend a way out of here?"

Haru snorts in response. "And get caught by those freaks they have guarding us?" His voice lowers darkly. "What are they?"

Chills run down his spine at the memory of it. The menacing shadowy figures dressed in the garb of Dai Li agents bearing down on him. Clawing into his body as effortlessly as a child tearing apart its favourite doll. "I wish I knew."

We wouldn't be here if I did.

"You'll have to excuse the mess," Mai hears herself say primly. "Things have been busy around here. Redecorating hasn't exactly been a priority."

She gestures vaguely at the small palace room crumbling around them. The vestiges of its former opulence are barely visible over the cracks in the walls, the scorch marks scarring the shiny red and gold lacquer, and the ripped curtains swaying from the damp ocean breeze creeping through the shattered windows, filling the room with its faintly briny smell.

With a sigh, she folds her hands carefully in her lap, before straightening her shoulders and glancing across the low round table propped up in the middle of the room, the only furniture in the room that wasn't charred or broken or grimy with dust. The amber light of the burning torches set along the walls clashes with the grey daylight pouring through the windows, while the distant clamour of the people lining the harbour echoes up the slope of the mountain, distracting her momentarily from her thoughts.

For a moment, her reflection in the table's high-polished shiny surface captures her attention. In its dark reflective mirror, her skin appears bone white, the lines scoring her face nearly as black as her hair. Something like revulsion coils in the pit of her stomach, before she swallows and glances up at the other occupants of the small room, her expression of perpetual boredom feeling more and more like a thick mask heavy on her face.

A broad, middle-aged, plainly dressed woman with dark skin, liquid brown eyes and long black hair pulled into a high braid lounges on one side of the table, the only person in the room with the audacity to appear relaxed. Seated directly across from her was Azula, wearing a forbidding scowl and heavy red brocade befitting of her station as the Crown Princess.

Mai takes a deep breath from where she kneels quietly at Azula's right hand, before sparing a glance at the young, lean man seated next to her, his hand sometimes brushing her own. Kei Lo, with his warm brown eyes and even warmer demeanour so starkly different from Zuko and everything else she had known, she still wonders why she was dating him at all.

"It's perfect, Mai," he says formally, though he takes the opportunity to smile at her gratefully. "And I, for one, am extremely thankful for this opportunity to meet with Her Highness face to face. I know you must be extremely busy, Princess Azula."

"Yes," Azula sighs, already sounding bored. "I am. This is all highly unusual, Kei Lo."

"My apologies, Princess." Kei Lo ducks his head in a quick bow of contrition. "I sincerely hope this will be worth your while."

Azula steeples her fingers in her lap, her shoulders rigid and her back ramrod-straight. She says nothing, but offers a wry half-smile in response instead. One that suggested that she sincerely doubted it, but was curious nonetheless.

"Um…" Kei Lo's smile strains at the corners, faltering in Azula's expectant silence. Mai fights the urge to roll her eyes, instead fixating on the wrinkles barely visible along the seams of his black robes. I went through the trouble of arranging this meeting with Azula, the least he could have done is get his clothes pressed properly.

Then she winces, for the scandalized voice whispering criticisms in the back of her mind sounded an awful lot like her mother's. Truth be told, she still wasn't sure what fit of madness had possessed her to say yes when he had first asked her on a date. It had been the first indulgence she had ever allowed herself, back when she had first returned home from the army in low spirits and with no Fire Nation prince in tow. She was the daughter of a noble family, and Kei Lo was the adopted son of a former courtier. An elected representative of the Fire Nation people, a civilian leader, and now, since the dissolution of the Imperial Court by Ozai, a mere commoner.

"May I present to Her Highness, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation -"

"Empire," Azula corrects.

"What?" Kei Lo flounders, already sounding nervous to Mai's ears.

"Empire," she repeats impatiently. "I am the princess of the Fire Empire, and you will address me as such."

"R - Right," Kei Lo stutters, splotches of dark red appearing in his face. "Fire Empire. Not just the Fire Nation, of course...please accept my deepest apologies, Princess Azula of the Fire Empire."

"Go on," she commands irritably.

Kei Lo draws a deep breath, wiping his hands along his black robes. Mai watches him dispassionately, already crumbling under Azula's scrutiny. Perhaps the only reason she was dating him was because it made her parents squirm, she thinks humourlessly. To see their precious daughter with some commoner, going against everything they had taught her...it had been strangely satisfying.

And of course, it had allowed her to smugly announce to Zuko, the night of the wedding, that she already had a boyfriend by the time he thought to ask...which obviously meant that she had won the breakup. Even if she was positive that something had gone down between him and that waterbender, it didn't matter. Zuko had fled with his uncle and was still relying on her secret letters to plot his next steps forward - yes, she had definitely been the one to come out ahead compared to him.

"May I present my esteemed mother," Kei Lo continues in an unsteady voice, "Kei Ling, governor of Wu Shui, province of the Five Rivers, and former Imperial Courtier."

"Princess Azula," Kei Lo's mother says in her deep, low voice, bowing her head respectfully. "It's been some time since we've crossed paths."

"Yes," Azula says carelessly. "Ever since the Imperial Court disbanded, there hasn't been much occasion to."

"Well," Kei Ling answers evenly, "as my son said, I am grateful that you would make the time to meet with me."

"As you should be." Azula raises her chin haughtily. "I'm not quite sure what prompted me to entertain this meeting at all. But…" Mai's back stiffens as Azula smiles in her direction. "Mai is a dear friend of mine, and she would never waste my time. So tell me, Kei Ling, what can you offer me to make my time worthwhile?"

"Now Princess," Kei Ling parries, her plain dark brown hanfu seeming to strain under her considerable bulk. "I know we've never been properly introduced, but you must know of me from your time in court, do you not?"

"Hmm." Azula's nostrils flare as she stares down her nose at the earnest woman sitting across from her. "It's hard to recall. There were so many among the elected representatives and ambassadors, and yet…"

To Mai's surprise, Kei Ling begins to smile, but says nothing.

"You had quite the reputation, if I remember correctly," Azula continues, frowning as the woman's smile widens. "A fixture among the elected courtiers, even as their numbers dwindled and diminished. And yet...you were quite the rabble-rouser, weren't you? Always speaking out against my father and his friends, against me." Azula stares at Kei Ling appraisingly, appearing mildly impressed in spite of herself. "However did you manage that?"

Kei Ling laughs heartily, which was rather bold of her, Mai thinks privately. "Now, Princess, you don't stay an elected courtier for as long as I have by playing coy."

Mai raises her eyebrows but says nothing. Truth be told, she would far rather prefer to be snooping on one of the countless war councils unfolding in Ozai's parlour and Agni, she was officially losing her mind if she actually wanted to be at one of those boring meetings instead. But from what she had gleaned of Kei Lo's mother, she had been a veteran of the Imperial Court with an abrasive reputation. Though the aristocratic courtiers like Mai's father had sneered at the elected representatives, regarding them as mere commoners and peasants, Kei Ling's fearlessness probably stemmed from her ties to the more unsavoury parts of Caldera City, from where she hailed. Having most of the city's crime lords in her pocket, she probably slept the soundest in the homeland, maybe even more so than the royals did lately.

"I know we've had our difference in court," Kei Ling continues in measured tones, "but -"

Azula lets out a derisive snort. "That's putting it lightly."

"Yes." Kei Ling has the audacity to smirk. "I've been on the receiving end of your tirades more than I can count, haven't I? Spirits, I envy your youth."

Azula brightens marginally at the unexpected compliment. Well played, Mai thinks, impressed despite herself.

"But, to answer your question, Princess…" Kei Ling leans forward, placing her palms flat against the smooth polished table. "What can I offer you? Something that no one else in your father's circle can."

Now it is Azula who lets out a laugh. The sound of it sends prickles up Mai's spine. "Like what? A free ticket to the seedy underbelly of the harbour city?" She waves a dismissive hand. "No thanks."

To her credit, Kei Ling doesn't flinch at the princess's censure but instead, her smirk widens to match Azula's. "Not exactly," she allows, her deep brown eyes glittering in the flickering light of the torches. "But tell me, Princess. Now that you've earned your place in your father's special council...how does it feel to be summarily dismissed by everyone in the room?"

Azula's face turns instantly severe. "How dare you," she hisses, her clawed fingers tightening into the richly embroidered brocade of her royal dress. "Dismissed? I'll have you know that I have never commanded more respect in my life! Why, next to my brother -"

"Prince Zuko was a naive fool, yes, I grant you that, but you might as well compare yourself to a shell-less hermit crab while you're at it," Kei Ling cuts Azula off impatiently, and Mai's jaw drops. They weren't kidding when they said she had guts. "Tell me, now that your brother is no longer around to be pitted against Ozai's golden child...how soon will it be before you find yourself in the same spot as him?"

Azula opens her mouth hotly, but makes only a strangled sound. The sound of Kei Ling's deep laughter rings loudly in Mai's ears. "Oh, so it's already begun, has it?" The large woman drums her fingertips along the table in a steady rhythm, punctuating her measured tones. "You've surrounded yourself with men loyal to your father, each eager to prostrate himself lower to the ground, heedless of lineage or cunning or strength… How exhausting. And isolating."

To Mai's shock, Azula says nothing, electing to glare at the former courtier with a ferocity that threatened to set her on fire if she said the wrong word. But Kei Ling continues blithely, as though blind to the Princess's mounting hostility...or with a seasoned indifference to it. "I know what it feels like. I know because I've been there, Princess. I've had to claw my way up from the seedy underbelly of the nation, as you so eloquently put it. Pitted against thugs and crime lords and corrupt officials alike to hold my spot as an elected representative of the Imperial Court. I've weathered wildfires, famine, worker revolts, your own lord father's crusade to remove my seat from the court… And now, in the middle of a crisis of leadership and civil war brewing, if you have an ounce of curiosity as to how I managed all that, I think you'll know straightaway how exactly I can help you."

Azula lets out a disbelieving huff, her mouth working wordlessly before she finally finds her voice. "Help me?" she repeats disdainfully. "I fail to follow your rambling. Granted, you have extensive experience as a courtier, but I was born to rule. I was raised in the court, cut my teeth on its workings and intrigues and plots. What could I possibly learn from you?"

"Oh, yes. The divine right to rule," Kei Ling scoffs, her fingers still tapping rhythmically against the wooden table. "But, indulge me, Princess. When your own father decided that my opposition to him was a hindrance and that I had to go, why am I still here? Better men than me have tried to do my job, only to forget their roots. Sooner or later, they turned to corruption, bribery, lining their pockets while their countrymen starved, growing fat off riches imported from the colonies while their countrymen slaved away in factories for scraps, hiring their cronies to silence dissent among the people and bully them into believing that the politics of the Imperial Court was just another game rigged against them...until one fine day your father comes along and with a wave of his hand disbands the Imperial Court and the very office that protected these men." The woman's face grows forbidding. "Go look for them now."

Azula scowls fiercely. "I'm not following your point. I suggest you make it, and quickly, before I lose my patience."

"Your father was of the line of kings, of emperors, even. How could a jumped-up, glorified peasant nobody like myself compare to that kind of power?"

"I don't know," Azula fires back, clearly incensed. "Perhaps you were simply too irritating to get rid of quietly, and it simply wasn't worth his while."

Kei Ling lets out a big belly laugh, and Mai winces as she wipes a tear of mirth from the corner of her eye. "Well, that's one part of it! But not exactly. You see, Princess, you were born a royal amid nobles. You grew up surrounded by men of wealth and lineage and all the power that buys." The woman's face turns suddenly somber as she meets Azula's probing gaze unblinkingly. "But now that you're among equals, maybe even up against your superiors in some respects, you find your old tricks just don't work anymore. Your genius, your ruthlessness, your loyalty to your father...all of it suddenly no longer enough. After all, your father has more men than he knows what to do with. He's stacked his council with men who repeat what he wants to hear, so he has no time for your ideas or your plots. He has no need to recognize your strength when others will stop at nothing to serve him blood, no matter the cost. And as the so-called Phoenix King, everyone's utmost loyalty is his by right, so yours is no longer of consequence. What more can you offer the man who already owns the world?"

A sudden flare of light flashes in the corner of Mai's eye, and when she turns to Azula, she sees the silk smouldering in her lap. "Get to your point already, woman," she growls, her fingernails digging into the singed scorch marks of her dress. The smell of smoke lingers in Mai's nostrils.

"Well, like I said before...I believe you already know what you want from me," Kei Ling declares, impossibly confident in front of Azula's dangerously building wrath. "You want to know how I, a mere glorified commoner, succeeded where so many others failed, don't you?"

"Perhaps you accomplished this by retaining a position of so little influence or use that none would bother desiring it, let alone replace it," Azula retaliates hotly. "Who in their right mind would wish to speak on behalf of that unwashed mob?"

"That unwashed mob is the Empire," Kei Ling says sharply. "When Ozai and his cronies decided to stack the court in their favour and weed out their opponents, at that time, I oversaw the territory along the Jang Hui river. This was mostly impoverished fishing villages, mind you, but when those villagers got wind that Ozai meant to replace me with some snotty, blue-blooded aristocrat who'd never gotten his hands dirty in his life, why, they saw red." Her expression lightens as she tosses a knowing glance at Azula. "You might have heard of him, actually. Shuren? Broad shoulders, sideburns, big temper and generally incompetent?"

Azula actually winces. "One of Zhao's creatures," she mutters darkly. "He's an imbecile."

"That's putting it lightly!" Kei Ling crows, and of all the unexpected turns this ill-fated conversation had taken, Mai found this the strangest.

But a faintly amused smile plays across Azula's mouth. "I imagine the people didn't take kindly to that, did they?"

"Oh, they lashed out every way they could," Kei Ling replies, waving her hand vaguely. "They protested, they revolted, the workers at the refinery went on strike and refused to come in to work. And all of a sudden, instead of coasting on an easy political victory, Ozai was faced with a crisis. The Jang Hui refinery produces all the metal to build the military's equipment. Without those workers, construction of his boats, his tanks, his airships...all of it ground to a halt until Ozai backed down."

"My father...backed down from you?" Azula echoes, stunned.

Kei Ling smirks at her aghast expression. "Of course, he chose to thank me by increasing my jurisdiction to include the territories of all the elected courtiers he had successfully removed, so to my new constituents, it ended up looking like a power grab on my end...but that's neither here nor there, I can't fault him for playing the game. Anyway, that's how a lowborn commoner like me ended up governing the entire Wu Shui province."

"Jang Hui…" Azula's forehead furrows hard in thought. "I've heard that name before. I could have sworn I heard about three worker riots there in the past fortnight?"

Kei Ling's knowing smile widens infuriatingly. "Oh, you're right! What a happy coincidence that I have the ear of the labour leaders organizing the riots and the strikes."

"You do?" Azula stiffens, no longer disguising her interest. "Do you have their names? Of course you must, give them to me so I can have those traitors captured and burned alive as a lesson to all -"

"No," Kei Ling answers calmly.

Azula's face mottles dangerously. "Are you denying an order from your princess?" she asks in a threatening voice.

Mai privately wants to shrink into a corner of the room and hide. Next to her, Kei Lo's face has drained of its colour, appearing as terrified of Azula's wrath as Mai herself feels.

But his mother only rests her chin in the palm of her hand, regarding Azula as though she was a wayward child. "Only if it's a stupid order," she retorts with impossible brazenness. "You're thinking like your father. Just crush and burn your dissenters only to have them pop up again next week even stronger." Her deep brown eyes bore into Azula in a challenging stare. "Now, I know you're smarter than that, so let's try this again… How would you use these angry labour leaders with significant influence among the people clamouring against your father's rule, the people who run the engine of this nation?"

Azula blinks in surprise, before frowning to puzzle over Kei Ling's challenge. "Well...in an ideal world, I would want those men loyal to me."

"Ahh." Kei Ling's eyebrows raise meaningfully. "Now you're thinking like a true courtier."

"But that would never happen." Mai nearly chokes on her spit as Azula quickly backpedals, her pale face suddenly flushed. "As long as my uncle and brother walk free, the people will champion them. It would be a waste of my time to even try. Besides…" She tucks her hands into her sleeves before averting her gaze uncomfortably, "I could never do that to my father. Cultivating my own loyalties among the people…" She swallows, her voice trailing off uncertainly before she shakes her head quickly, as though in a panic. "That would be an act of direct treason."

Kei Ling stares at her searchingly, before leaning forward deliberately. "Only if you're caught," she challenges in a low voice.

Mai's breath hitches, as she braces herself for the inevitable backlash to follow. But Azula's eyes only widen fearfully instead.

"I've got extensive experience governing, plotting, wrangling...whatever you need," Kei Ling continues smoothly, leaning back on her haunches comfortably, as though they had been discussing the weather instead of how to plot treason against Ozai. She flips her braid over her shoulder decisively. "So if any position on your council becomes available...I'd be happy to throw my hat in the ring."

It takes a while for Mai to close her mouth, so taken aback by the woman's nerve. And to think all this time, she just wanted a job interview, she reflects wryly. Well, that was a hell of an interview.

Azula says nothing, only staring at the former courtier, sizing her up with cold amber eyes, possibly deliberating whether Kei Ling could be trusted.

All of a sudden, the door to the room slams open, clattering loudly as it bounces off the chipped stone wall.

Azula swallows her yelp of shock, composing herself swiftly as members of the Imperial Guard pour into the room. "What is the meaning of this?" she demands imperiously, sounding more like the cold, ruthless princess Mai knew her to be.

A part of Mai shrivels, wondering if this was a setup and they were being arrested for treason against Ozai, before one of the guards steps forward and bows. "My deepest apologies, Your Highness," he says urgently, "but we had to find you. A riot has broken out along the harbourfront."

"A riot?" Azula repeats with a scowl. "Another one? What is it this time?"

"Well, the people are hungry, Your Highness," the guard explains tersely. "A group of them tried to storm the public granaries, you see...but they were empty."

Azula's jaw tightens implacably. "Unacceptable," she seethes. "And where is the rest of the Guard? Why has nobody stepped in to stop this madness?"

"Asaka took the rest of the Guard down to contain the protest," the guard replies, his voice growing higher-pitched and anxious with every word. "But - but a child was killed, by - by accident, I think, and now it's getting out of hand, it's evolving into a massacre, Your Highness -"

"Take me there at once!" Azula commands, rising quickly to her feet. She casts a fleeting glance at Kei Ling's smugly triumphant face. "This has been a most telling meeting, Kei Ling. Excuse me."

And without another word, she sweeps out of the room, falling in step with the rest of the guards as they march away down the hallway.

Mai lets out the breath she didn't realize she had been holding. The cold air is clammy against the sweat beading along her forehead. In the distance, she can hear a faint swell of voices, shouts and screams echoing along the slope of the mountain.

"Another riot," Kei Lo groans next to her, shaking his head. "What is this nation coming to?"

But his mother only sighs contentedly, straightening the borders of her plain hanfu. "Well, that went better than I expected!" she exclaims delightedly, to Mai's growing disbelief. "At first, I didn't think she was going to bite, but that riot couldn't have come at a better time…"

Mai only shakes her head in mounting despair. Is everyone here crazy, or is it just me?

A slam against the door jolts Lee out of his daze. He scrambles to attention as something rattles and slides through the slim metal flap in the door.

"Dinner," calls a rough voice from just outside his cell. A silhouette wearing the Dai Li sloping hat hovers in the metal grille, backlit by the faint green light in the corridor. "You'd better eat that quickly."

Crawling forward, he squints at the small tray lying on the ground, its contents carelessly askew. An earthenware bowl full of thin rice porridge, a small cup of clear water. Not nearly enough to nourish a man grown, but enough to keep him alive for a time.

Still, it was better than nothing. His spirits rise marginally as he awkwardly grabs at the meagre meal. The water cold and wonderful against his parched lips, the porridge lumpy and flavourless even as he shoves it into his mouth hastily.

"I think this is the best thing I've ever tasted," he croaks out through an unchewed mouthful. With a sigh, he gulps down the last of it and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His stomach grumbles in complaint, already craving more. "You don't happen to have any more of that, do you?" he remarks at the shadow standing its silent vigil outside his cell. "For extra hungry prisoners?"

To his surprise, the guard answers. "Standard rations apply to everyone." He catches a hint of an accent in the guard's voice, one that surprises him with its familiarity. "Including extra hungry prisoners."

He isn't sure if he imagines the sardonic hint that enters the guard's voice, but he seizes the opportunity. "Hm. That's a bummer," he retorts, his heart hammering in his chest.

"Maybe you shouldn't have tried to break into Lake Laogai, then." The guard lets out a sigh, before speaking again in a quieter voice. "I'm coming inside. No funny business, now, understand?"

He nods before realizing the guard couldn't see him. "Right. Got it. No funny business," he answers solemnly. The loud scrape of sliding metal fills the air before the door screeches open partway. Light pours in from outside, threatening to blind him.

He shrinks, averting his watering eyes as the crunch of bootsteps enters the cell. The rattle of empty dishes sliding on the tray as the guard picks it up, and swiftly turns to leave.

"Wait!" he cries, snatching at his chance. "What's going to happen to us?"

The guard pauses, already halfway through the door with his back turned to him. "That's strictly need-to-know information."

But he catches a waver in the guard's voice. From the sound of it, he was young, maybe not that much older than himself. "Come on," he wheedles, prising at the chink in the guard's stern demeanour. "You already have me locked up. What more harm could I possibly do from here?"

The guard's uniform rustles as he shifts his weight from one foot to another, giving the thought far more consideration than Lee had bargained. Still, the moments stretched out long enough for him to prepare for the inevitable sound of the door slamming shut when -

"Long Feng doesn't care about your friends. He's only using them as a way to get information out of you."

Lee blinks in surprise at the blunt admission. "That's...awfully considerate of him," he says blankly, the wheels of his mind turning and sputtering to a halt.

"Once we're done with the bounty hunter, the Kyoshi girl's next." The guard's voice is steady, and yet a hint of sympathy softens its blows. "If I were you, I'd give him something. Anything. It's too late for you, but maybe your friends will be spared a drawn-out, torturous end."

As though punctuating his words, another shrill scream echoes through the corridor. Lee's stomach curdles as the guard winces. "What are they doing to her?" he asks nervously.

The guard pauses, still as a statue. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yes!" Lee exclaims, his guilt boring through him angrily. "It's my fault they're in this mess! I should at least know what torture they're going through because of me."

"You're a man of honour, aren't you?" Surprise suffuses the guard's flat voice. "You're not at all what I expected."

"Yeah, well, you're not exactly living up to your reputation either, Mr. Scary Guard," Lee grumbles, stung by the observation and how false it felt compared to the reality of the situation. In truth, he had rushed into Lake Laogai poorly prepared for what lay inside it, and led everyone straight into a trap. "You're not even from the Earth colonies, are you?"

The guard flinches again before answering tentatively. "No."

Lee thinks back to the dreadful moment when they had all been taken prisoner. Of the fearsome Dai Li agents who had rendered them all motionless without earthbending. "Waterbenders. You're from the Water Tribes, aren't you?"

The empty dishes on the tray rattle in the guard's shaking hands.

"What are you even doing here? Why are you helping Long Feng? It doesn't make any sense."

"What would you know?" The guard's voice changes abruptly, dark and scornful where it had once sounded almost reluctantly friendly. "My countrymen and I lost everything to the Empire. The Dai Li rescued us, gave us purpose. A reason to fight, to free these lands, when we couldn't save our home."

"You think Long Feng wants to free these lands?" Lee can't help the laugh that bubbles in his throat. "Boy, have I got some inconvenient news for you."

"Why do you care? You fight for the rebellion." The guard turns away from him, blocking the light streaming in from outside. "For the Empire."

"The rebellion doesn't support the Empire!" Lee retorts, straightening where he sits in dismay. "We don't support the Dai Li, either! We just want to live our lives in peace! Surely as someone from the Water Tribes, you can respect that?"

"Lies." But underneath the guard's hissing voice, a waver of doubt emerges. "Long Feng promised us a home here, where we could be free. If we helped him take back these lands from the Empire."

"For your information, Long Feng works with the Empire now," Lee fires back. "He and Ozai cut a deal. Divide and conquer. Now civil war is tearing the Empire apart, while over here, Long Feng gets to carve the entire continent out for himself."

The guard freezes in the doorway, so silent that he might have turned into stone.

"Long Feng specializes in brainwashing and misinformation," Lee continues, more gently as the guard's silence gathers weight. "It's okay if he duped you too, it's what he does -"

"Are you done yet?"

Another voice springs from the space beyond the doorway, cutting him off contemptuously. The sound of more bootsteps pausing just outside the cell, before another guard's silhouette joins them, this one smaller and female, but sounding far older. "What's taking so long?"

The younger guard starts, clutching the tray with both hands. "Sorry, Ruska. I was just on my way."

"You know better than to converse with prisoners, Arrluk," warns the new guard, already turning away. "Especially rebel scum like this one, traitors to his own kind."

"I'm not a traitor!" Lee protests, the chains binding his hands clinking uselessly.

"Aren't you?" The woman's voice is without pity as she glances at him over her shoulder. He makes out the profile of her face silhouetted against the bright light, the hard set of her mouth curling in disgust. "How a boy from the Water Tribes can work in the interests of the Empire without considering himself a traitor remains beyond my understanding. Come, Arrluk, let's go -"

"I'm not from the Water Tribe!" Lee snaps, even as something inside him reels and his heart skips a beat. "Am I?"

"You have the look of a Water Tribe boy," scoffs the woman. "You tell me."

"I don't know," Lee admits softly, the first time he has ever admitted the thought to himself, let alone voice it out loud. "I don't remember anymore." The kaleidoscope of disjointed memories plays through his mind again, seeming as though they had happened to someone other than himself. "I don't even think Lee is my real name." The waterbender from the Sun Warriors isle stands before him again, her blue eyes the reflection of his, burning with anguish and unshed tears. "I can't even trust my own memories, since you guys played in my head. The only clue I have is a waterbender who kept calling me Sokka."

The word wraps around his tongue as though made for it. His heart strikes up a pulse shaped by its syllables, echoing loudly in his ears, Sok-ka, Sok-ka, Sok-ka…

"That can't be right." The woman's voice grows hoarse with sudden feeling as she turns on her heel to survey him more closely. "That...that was the name of Hakoda's son."

"I remember," the boy, Arrluk murmurs. "Sokka was his son, and his daughter was Katara."

The name pops out at him with its familiarity. "That's what Suki called her! Katara! Apparently she's my sister."

Now the two guards stumble back from him, as though the ground is shifting unsteadily beneath their feet. "This must be a trick," the woman breathes, pressing a hand to her chest. "Hakoda fought to the death for our freedom. I saw him fall. How could his son be mixed up in all this?"

"He said he didn't know who he was, Ruska. Maybe he forgot."

"You could help me out," Lee suggests wildly, even as everything seems to sway around him with the gravity of a forgotten world dangling just out of reach. "You took my memories away, didn't you? Can't you help me remember what happened?"

But the woman grabs Arrluk by the shoulder, dragging him back. "Stay away from him," she says in a voice like steel. "I don't know what game that madman is playing, but it ends now."

And to his dismay, the door slams shut in his face, consigning him to the dark and the emptiness of his cell and the faint sounds of the guards' anxious muttering as their footsteps recede into the distance.

He lets out a frustrated sigh, the ache in his head intensifying.

Somewhere, between the guards' newfound alarm and the myriad disembodied memories crystallizing in his mind, lay a truth whose surface he had barely begun to brush. Whose weight had the power to change everything, if only he could reach it.

Katara slides to a stop as she reaches the small cave outside the city walls, doubling over and panting heavily to catch her breath as the crush of dark-bundled women peer at her curiously.

"Sorry I'm late," she heaves out, pressing a mittened hand to her chest.

"What took you so long?" one of the girls asks. Katara recognizes Woka's voice by now, picks out the upright squareness of her posture through all the warm shaggy layers.

"I got caught up," Katara answers through chattering teeth, cursing her headlong flight and for not dressing more warmly. The night was cold and the wind bit deeply at her joints.

"You weren't followed, were you?"

Katara shakes her head, but remembers to sweep the clearing behind her. Her telltale footprints disappear from sight.

"Let's get started," she says, facing the other women. Counts them in her head and frowns. "No Lusa?"

The girls exchange questioning glances among themselves. "She said she had a close call last night," Ikkuma suggests with a shrug. "Maybe she decided to stay in again to avert suspicion."

"Fine." She flings off her coat, shivering in the bitter cold. "Let me see your water whip. One at a time now."

The fattening moon trails slowly across the sky, its pure white light rippling along the surface of the water as it rears and slices and snaps through the air.

"Not bad," Katara comments, nodding her head in approval as Woka lowers herself back into a neutral stance, the water collecting into a globe hovering at the level of her hands. "You're hitting each form properly, but remember to breathe through them. Feel the push and pull as you flow through them." She stretches out her hand and the water floats toward her. With a deep breath in and out, she lunges into the simple snapping motion, the water lashing against the air with an audible crack. "See? The mistake is to think they're all different forms, when really, they're all parts of the same one."

Woka groans and shakes her head. "Just when I think I'm close to getting it, you say something like that and I get confused all over again."

Katara smiles at her before lobbing the water back. "Try it again," she challenges. "One more time, come on."

Woka catches the water with an uncertain rotation of her wrists. Katara watches the girl's motions with keen eyes, nodding as she inhales, tenses, and then lashes out with an explosive exhale. The crack of the water splitting the air echoes resoundingly.

"That was perfect, Woka!" Katara says, clapping her hands together. "Just like that! Once you master that, I can start showing you some more advanced sets, for example -"

The water dances in front of Woka's hands, wriggling into a jet before sailing upward into a graceful arc.

"Like that," Katara continues, staring nonplussed at the water's graceful motions high in the air above her head.

"Hey Woka," Bunik calls out, "how are you doing that?"

But Woka only shrugs in reply. "I'm not doing anything!" she calls back.

Katara stares at the girl's motionless form with a sudden plummeting dread. Then she glances back upward at the water, twisting in a ripple through the sky, over her head -

It slices down into the cleared path of snow leading back toward the city walls. Glimmering in the moonlight, their furs rustling in the brutal night wind, waits a silent formation of blue-clad men. At their head stands a slight figure, pointing straight toward her with trembling, accusing fingers.

"There they are," it gasps with Lusa's voice, sounding more terrified with each syllable. "Just - just like I said."

Everything suddenly goes very silent.

Katara watches as though in slow motion, the formation of men split to surround them in iron-drilled unison, pinning them off in the small cave with no escape. The faltering steps of the girls slowly falling in line behind her. And the grind of hard-packed snow under Hahn's boots as he stalks toward them, settling directly across from Katara with triumph radiating from his smug face.

The wind screams in her ears. Her breath puffs in small clouds against her face, betraying the rapid fire of her heartbeat.

"So," Hahn declares venemously, his soft voice ringing loudly in the night, "this is how Katara of Sivusiktok chooses to squander her very last chance?"

Katara opens her mouth to protest, unsure of what she could even say. "I -"

"I have no interest in the last words of a Southern exile," Hahn cuts her off with a wave of his hand. His gaze bores past her, to the women huddled behind her. "To those of you who have chosen to follow this...this woman." A strangely benign smile spreads across his face. "I'm sure we can look past all this. All you have to do is disavow the treacherous woman who led you all astray."

Katara swallows steadily. In spite of everything, they had been discovered. Not through some carelessness of their own, but because one of their own had cracked and turned them all in to save herself. She stares at Lusa's tiny form in the distance, the defeated slope of her shoulders, willing herself to feel angry, outraged at the betrayal, anything at all.

Behind her, a low buzz of muttering swells mutinously as in the distance, Lusa averts her tear-streaked face to stare at her boots.

"Lusa did the smart thing by cooperating with us," Hahn barks. "If I were the rest of you, I'd follow her example."

He doesn't voice his threat out loud. Instead, the formation of men surrounding them flexes at the ready, prepared at a moment's notice to strike.

Katara scans them all swiftly, weighing her chances. There were nearly two dozen men closing in on them, trained waterbenders of the North who spent their days drilling for battle. She was tired from nights of broken sleep and secret lessons, and if her outburst at Hahn's wedding feast had taught her anything, it was that her own bending could only go so far against her own kind.

And then there were the other girls as well. While they had willingly shared in the risk of participating in Katara's nighttime sessions, she still felt responsible for involving them at all.

With a resigned sigh, she sweeps into an offensive stance. A pile of snow leaps into the air before her, sharpening into deadly ice points glittering in the moonlight.

Hahn's laughter rings out loudly. "Give it up, Katara. You're outnumbered. You might think yourself the greatest waterbender in the world, but even you can't hold out against so many of my men."

Her mouth goes dry and yet, a strange sense of serenity settles over her. If she was going down as a traitor to her own kind, what better way to do it than to teach Hahn and his followers a lesson in the severity of underestimating her? "Maybe not," she calls back, "but I could still make them hurt."

At an unseen command, the men surrounding them take a step forward. Katara whirls as the space around her shrinks. The water splashes by her feet before several tentacles rise upward, snapping at any who dared come closer.

She chances a glance at the men's faces, wondering if she would recognize any of them. But in the moonlight, all she sees are identical masks and hoods pulled up to shield them from the bitter cold.

Then, just as the men draw breath, about to attack, a glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye catches her attention.

One of the girls dashes up to her side, brandishing a sizeable water whip that cracks in the night air. "Katara isn't the only one you'll have to deal with!" Woka shouts bravely - stupidly, Katara thinks frantically, don't do it, when -

Suddenly, there's a commotion of running footsteps and splashing water as more of the girls step up to join Woka by her side. Their voices ring out into the night in a bold challenge.

"If you want to get to her, you'll have to go through us too!"

"She's put more on the line for us than any of you ever did!"

For an instant, Katara can't breathe. Even in spite of the damning odds, a feeling of elated pride swells fiercely inside her chest.

Hahn opens and closes his mouth wordlessly, momentarily stunned before he laughs again. "I never imagined so many of our own women could be so stupid."

"No, what's stupid is trusting you and giving up on fighting for ourselves!" Bunik calls out. "You've felt threatened by Katara since she came here, and now you feel threatened that she's taught the rest of us how to waterbend! You can't stop all of us!"

Hahn sighs before shaking his head. "Actually, Bunik...I can." He turns on his heel, raising a hand in a signal to his men. "Take them all."

Katara barely has time to shout a warning to the girls before a shock of blinding cold pelts across her face.

She staggers back, frantically scrubbing snow out of her eyes as a handful of men set upon her. Blinking furiously, she sidesteps out of reach as one grabs for her. Quickly slides the snow out from under his feet and shooting forward.

She raises a giant wave, which charges toward the bulk of Hahn's men bearing down upon her. It grows exponentially in height as it crosses the short distance, rearing to a soaring pinnacle -

A concerted motion suddenly freezes it into a towering ice column, gleaming momentarily in the moonlight before it shatters into a glittering crystal shower. The pieces spin together into a funnel, whizzing straight toward her in a vortex of cold rushing darkness.

She braces herself for impact, deflecting the worst of the brunt as it collapses around her into a pile of snow. But the force of it knocks her off her feet, scrambling back on all fours, coughing into the drifting white snowflakes trailing lazily in the air around her face.

Gasping to catch her breath, she manages to roll out of the way just as another jet of water blasts the spot where she had lain. Springing to her knees, she tugs at the spray before hooking around and smashing it into the advancing body of Hahn's men closing in upon her.

They tumble to the ground, but another row of men steps in behind them, bending in unison to redirect the worst of her hit. She grits her teeth as the water splits into a handful of cresting waves rushing toward her on all sides, each bearing one of Hahn's men at its head.

With a furious motion that rattles achingly through her joints, she pulls the snow below her up into a giant whirlpool, ascending high enough into the air to avoid the oncoming waves. She teeters unsteadily with the force of the blows as the men crash into the base of her funnel. Fighting to regain balance, she struggles to reach out with a prong of water, trying to pick them off before they have a chance to recover.

But something strikes her right in the elbow, popping it out of the joint. She screams out in pain, clutching it to her body. The water beneath her collapses abruptly, gravity squeezing the air out of her chest as the ground hurtles upward.

She throws her uninjured arm out in a last-ditch effort. The small pile of snow catches her in its grip, absorbing the worst of the blow. But pain still rings shockwaves all along her body, making her dizzy when she stands. Her elbow sears with pain and she grits her teeth, cradling it closer to her chest as more of Hahn's men converge upon her.

Too many, she thinks desperately, turning one way and then the other to no avail. No matter how many she brought down, there were more of them, waiting patiently to strike while she grew weary from fending them off.

A small distance away, more of Hahn's men close in on the girls. Most of them have already been caught, struggling viciously against the gloved hands at their wrists. A couple still manage to put up a resistance. Ikkuma, recognizable only by her auburn hair spilling from her hood, lands a spiralling hit on an approaching waterbender, even as another jumps on her from behind and pinions her into the snow.

Meanwhile, Woka and Bunik manage to deter their opponents by fighting back-to-back, unleashing unexpected chaos with their newly mastered water whips. Even in spite of the pain shooting along her arm and the increasing number of men surrounding her, Katara can't help smiling faintly at the sight of them.

"That's enough!" Hahn roars over the din. "Ukiuk, stop messing around and seize those two upstarts already!"

"But Chief, they're just little girls," one of Hahn's men protests loudly.

"I don't care! If they're old enough to throw their lot in with this traitor, they're old enough to face the consequences!" Hahn's furious face seems to glow in the moonlight as he glares at the women. "Take them back to their homes and place them under constant guard! I want eyes on them every hour of the day -"

"But Chief," complains the man now struggling to bind Ikkuma's hands behind her back, "we're stretched so thin between the defenses and the patrols, we don't have the resources to put all of them under house arrest -"

"Then the prison hold will do!" Hahn snaps, stomping his feet into the snow.

Katara gapes, even as rough hands try to grab her by the wrists. "You can't!" she shouts. "Hahn! You can't imprison all these women -"

Hahn scoffs disparagingly. "It's time you woke up and learned exactly what I can do. I am the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe. All of these men, all the warriors of the North, all of our chiefs...they all obey my command. Even our precious allies don't dare speak against my will." His flinty eyes bore into her, as though trying to freeze her in place. "And you're just a foolish little girl who forgot her place."

She swallows, finding her voice. "Leave the other women out of this. It's my fault, I convinced them -"

"No, I don't think so." Hahn shakes his head, chuckling softly. "If there's one thing I've learned from tonight, it's that this treachery runs far deeper than I imagined." He smiles unpleasantly. "You've forfeited your place among us, Katara, as I knew you would. But your punishment will be to watch your sisters suffer on your behalf, before you leave us. Permanently."

She stares hollowly into his triumphant face, the air sharp and cold in her chest, her entire body leaden and aching and spent. It's over, she thinks helplessly, watching the men bind the women's hands one by one and drag them along the snow back toward the city walls. Hahn had caught her red-handed, had her beaten and outnumbered and subdued. She searches the surroundings in vain, trying to find something, anything to fight back with.

Then, as someone tugs sharply at her wrists and she moves to shake him off with a violent motion, a voice shatters through the air.

"Wait!"

Katara's spine stiffens in alarm at the familiar voice. Her mouth drops as a small figure rushes toward them from where it had hidden behind one of the nearby snowdrifts to watch, mittened hands raised in a defensive gesture.

"Wait," Zuko repeats, sliding to a stop and blocking Hahn's path forward in the process. He plants his hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. "Don't...don't punish her."

"Excuse me?" Hahn demands coldly, squaring his shoulders to his full height. "This is a matter of Water Tribe discipline! Who do you think you are to interfere, fire prince?"

Zuko's shoulders rise and fall from his exertion as he straightens also. He takes a step forward, inadvertently towering over Hahn and crowding his space.

"It's my fault," he says quickly. "I asked Katara to do it."

The blood drains out of Katara's face. "Zuko," she croaks, "what are you doing -"

"In the Fire Nation, we allow women to fight," Zuko barrels over her protests firmly, somehow managing to hold his head upright under the aghast glare she flings in his direction. "We believe in equality, and denying someone an opportunity just because of their gender...it just seemed barbaric to me."

"Barbaric," Hahn echoes savagely, his face twisting momentarily into a mask of ugly fury. "I see."

No no no -

Zuko ducks his head downward in a show of penitence. "I asked Katara to recruit the girls and teach them waterbending. She was just following my orders. If you want to expel someone for disrespecting your culture, start with me. Not her."

Katara's mouth opens and closes uselessly, utterly lost for words.

Hahn stares at him in an apoplectic silence that builds for a moment so long, Katara thinks she might explode from the tension lying thick in the air.

Until at long last, his face twists into a cold sneer. "So," he pronounces with an intensity that sends shivers running down her spine, "here I thought we had in our hands a woman who forgot her place. But that isn't true at all." He lets out a disparaging laugh, staring at Katara contemptuously. "Instead, we've just been dealing with the fire prince's prize pet."

Katara flinches as though cut to the bone.

Hahn dismisses her, turning back to Zuko with chilling geniality. "Since you've so graciously claimed ownership of her, she's no longer our concern. But tread carefully, Your Highness, if you try to do the same with the rest of our women."

Zuko nods wordlessly. There was nothing else he could do.

Katara watches, stunned in fury and horror as Hahn barks more orders at the rest of his men. They march off in a neat double line, towing the other women along with them, until they disappear into the distance and the city walls swallow them all up.

She doesn't know how long she stays rooted to her spot, frozen and aching and numb. Her eyes bore intently into the distant city walls rising like a challenge, now a fortress marking her for what she truly was.

An outsider.

Suddenly her vision blurs with hot unshed tears, just as the sound of Zuko's approaching footsteps grows louder.

He draws so close, she can feel the warmth leaping off him, just before he lets out a rumbling sigh. "Come on," he grumbles reaching for her, "it's freezing out here, let's go back -"

She pushes his hand away as though it had stung her. "How dare you."

Zuko falters, taken aback. "What?"

"How dare you speak for me like that!" she exclaims, shoving him back viciously.

He stumbles but regains his balance quickly enough. "I was just trying to help -"

She laughs darkly, even as tears spill down her cheeks, scalding at her frozen face. "Oh, you sure helped all right! All this time, all my hard work... and now thanks to you, everyone in the tribe thinks I'm just some Fire Empire pet!"

"Because of me?" Zuko counters, sounding hurt and angry all at once. "Katara, you were on your last rope -"

"So what?" Katara demands. "That didn't give you the right to barge in like that - you had no right -"

"Why are you mad at me?" he shouts, his voice ringing loud and clanging against the bruises lining her skull. "I was just trying to protect you! I did protect you!"

"I never asked you to!" she snarls, scrubbing at her cheeks furiously. "This was my fight and I was prepared to face the consequences. Now thanks to you, whatever's left of my people thinks I'm just a plaything of yours!" She gasps, the world swaying turbulently around her as she staggers toward him, consumed in fury. "They won't accept me, they won't see me or how hard I worked to get to where I am or any of that -"

"They never saw it!" Zuko cries, snapping at last. "They never saw it and they never will, and even if those jerks are from your sister tribe, they are not your people!"

The wind whistles shrilly in her ears, piercing the cold silence that grips her in the wake of his words.

In the corner of her eye, she sees him falter, as though he knew immediately that he had pushed too far. He reaches tentatively for her shoulder again. "Katara...Katara, I'm sorry -"

"Leave me alone."

He freezes. She wraps her arms fiercely across her chest before curling into herself, turning away from him.

She hears him suck in a deep breath, fight between saying everything and nothing at all. And then she hears the sound of his resigned footsteps, fading away until the city in the distance consumes him too.

Sniffling and pulling her parka tighter to her body in a vain attempt to warm herself, she tilts her head back upward to stare at the sky. It stretches up above her in a yawning expanse of inky black, the oblong white glow of the moon glaring down at her. Thousands of stars pass their silent judgment, glittering like the cold lights of Aujuittuq, and seeming perhaps just as far away.

The wind whips to a frenzy, screeching as it hurtles along the plains of open tundra surrounding her, threatening to flench her exposed skin. In the endless rolling slopes of white, she feels absurdly tiny, and immensely alone.

She trudges aimlessly onward, somehow both too afraid and too stubborn to lay down and let the cold take her. Her feet somehow know the way back to warmth and shelter, even if the city held no respite for her anymore.

Her tribe had cast her out. And she had rebuffed Iroh's overtures, lost her place in Team Avatar, and pushed Zuko away, maybe for good this time.

In a lifetime of loneliness, she had never felt so adrift as she did now.

Despairingly, she glances back up at the sky, wondering if somewhere among the cloudy spray of stars, in the abode of the spirits if they existed, the departed shades of her mother and father still watched over her.

She wonders if they could see her now, clambering through the snowdrifts into the small secret tunnel leading under the locks, or if the icy flurry of her self-destructive confusion had blocked them out, too.

And as she curls up into a small ball, dreading both sleep and the morning that would surely follow, she wonders if they would weep for her too.

But the morning that dawns over the Northern Water Tribe brings with it a horror of a different kind.

At first she understands little of the panicked shouts, or the hustle of the crowds packing in the shadows of the city walls. She doesn't grasp the tension of the sentries manning the parapets, or the hordes of warriors strapping on their armour, their painted faces gleaming starkly in the weak sunlight.

But she doesn't have to. Because as she clambers hesitantly out of the tunnel to find the entire city gripped in a panicked chaos, and glances upward at a sky full of groaning bison, she understands with a reflexive, primitive dread that sends her hurtling back to another time long ago, when she last stood in the ice on the other side of the world.

And the gentle snow that tickles her face was as black as it had been back then, promising the imminent approach of enemy ships, and all the destruction they held in wait.

Chapter 44: blood moon

Chapter Text

disclaimer. i own nothing familiar

author's notes. thank you so much to everyone following along and i apologize with my whole canadian heart for this next one :/

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xliv. blood moon

i was a heavy heart to carry
but he never let me down
when he held me in his arms
my feet never touched the ground

"heavy in your arms" / florence + the machine

The cruel arctic wind blasts across the powdery slopes of the Chugiak plains sprawling around the city walls of Aujuittuq. It slashes against Zuko's face so ferociously that it becomes nearly impossible to breathe.

He raises an arm to cover his head, bracing against the rush of air screaming into his ears. The sky overhead glows a dreary grey, masking the rising sun with swollen steel clouds. In the distance where it meets the horizon, columns of darker grey smoke belch upward, flashing a cool red as though a distant volcano was erupting. Low rumbles like thunder roll over the land, the ground beneath his feet still trembling so far inland.

And still falling gently all around him, big fat snowflakes black as tar, mingling with the pristine white of the arctic plains, staining it the ugly sooty colour of old stone.

Behind him, Toph burrows into her parka. "I'm bored," she announces for what must have been the fifth time. "Why on earth did they stick us here in the middle of nowhere?"

"Because Uncle wanted us as the city's last defense," he replies tonelessly, watching the empty sky with tiring eyes.

"And one other reason," Aang snipes, glaring sidelong at Tartok, who bristles indignantly.

"Excuse me, Ong," he declares imperiously ("It's Aang," both Aang and Toph chorus, wincing), drawing himself up to his full height with a twitch of his nose, "I must have heard you incorrectly. You wouldn't be implying that it's my fault we're stationed here instead of at the front...would you?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," Aang begins hotly, "I wa-"

"Because if you were, you'd be mistaken," Tartok continues, cutting him off midsentence and ignoring the dirty looks everyone throws at him. "My good friend Hahn - Chief Hahn, actually - told me that there was nobody he trusted more to protect the city than us. This is a great honour. So stop whining!"

"Nobody was whining, Tartok," Zuko interjects, the beginnings of a headache already drumming dully near his temples. "Now everyone focus and keep an eye out for anyone approaching."

"Yes, boss," Toph retorts sarcastically, throwing him a dry salute with a roll of her sightless eyes.

Tartok glowers. "Who made him the boss?" he complains, brushing a pile of sooty snow off his shoulders.

"No one. But he sure talks like one," Toph returns.

But Tartok only glares at Zuko, who sighs wearily as the waterbender marches up to him. "Such a bold presumption from a group of foreigners," he challenges, pulling himself to his full height and still coming up a few inches shorter than Zuko. "I'm the waterbender, I'm the one from the Northern Water Tribe. I know the lay of the land better than any of you." A smug smile crosses his pale face. "And I'm the one who's friends with our Chief. I'm certain he would object to a firebender leading our group - no less, the son of Ozai, who destroyed our sister tribe -"

"Didn't your friend Hahn also admit that he sold your sister tribe out to save your sorry skins?" Aang cuts him off witheringly, crossing his arms. "You don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to moral high ground, Tartok."

"Yeah, Tartok, get with the program."

"Quiet!" Zuko snaps, a blur of motion in the sky overhead catching his attention. "Who's that?"

The grumble of an approaching sky bison greets his ears as it dives out from the clouds to hover just overhead. Zuko raises a hand to block the gust of wind bellowing from its approach.

"Hey Bodhi," Aang calls out from behind him, "what's going on out there?"

The air acolyte straightens from where he's perched atop the sky bison's head. "Hi Aang," he replies with a faint smile. "It's okay for now. The defense at the North Sea harbour took some time to get their act together, but - but they're trying to defend against the onslaught so far…"

"And the fleet?" Zuko asks, dread boring a hollow pit in his stomach. "How big is it?"

Bodhi whistles, thinking hard. "Hard to say. But from the size of the smoke clouds, I'd guess around a hundred battleships, not counting supporting vessels of course -"

"A hundred?" Toph echoes in disbelief. "That's not a fleet, that's a fucking armada."

"What about the airships?" Zuko continues grimly, scanning the empty sky with tightening nerves. "How many of those did they bring?

"I'm not sure," the young air acolyte admits, his face falling. "They haven't deployed them yet."

"Oh, good." Zuko can't help the relief that washes over him. "Keep us posted if anything changes, okay?"

"Sure thing!" Bodhi wheels around on his bison. "They just have us shuttling the wounded back and forth from the front for now."

"Wounded? Already?" Toph gulps as the acolyte flies back toward the city. "That's not good."

"Zhao's fleet has the advantage of surprise on their side," Aang points out reasonably. "Nobody expected them to reach here so quickly. We thought we had a couple more weeks at least -"

"It doesn't matter," Tartok pipes up, sounding maddeningly unconcerned. "They're up against the Northern tribe's best. They'll be packing in no time, Ong -"

"It's Aang!" all three of them snap irritatedly in unison.

The ringing of the warning bells reverberates across the morning air. Katara ignores them, ignores the panicked cries of children, the anxious whispers of the women leading them by hand toward the safety shelters that had somehow sprung up out of the snow instantaneously like strange winter blossoms.

She watches wildly as a couple of sky bison land by the healing huts, already full of men injured from the battlefront. An air acolyte jumps down, helping yet another wounded man down from the sky bison's back.

Hei appears at the doorway, her tiny form slumping as she directs the man inside. Katara's heart swells and she dashes toward her. "Hei!"

The tiny healer pauses in her tracks, straightening at the sight of her. "Katara? Oh, thank the spirits you're okay -"

"What is she doing here?"

Katara swallows hard as Nerrivik pushes out of the healing house to glare at her ferociously. "Haven't you done enough damage for now? You're not welcome here."

"Nerrivik," Hei mutters, and for the first time, Katara notices the healer's exhaustion, "we're short-handed and I need help. Most of our apprentices and healers are still locked up, it's madness -"

"It's for the good of the tribe," Nerrivik informs her severely. "Princess Yue has gone to the Spirit Oasis to pray for our victory. With Chief Hahn at the battlefront, that leaves me in charge. And I say that these traitors can't be let loose, not now while we're under attack!"

"You mean, you still have the others locked up?" Katara asks incredulously. "Now, with the Fire Empire at our doorstep? That's insane!"

"What's it to you?" Nerrivik snaps, pushing Hei to the side as she blocks the entrance with her body. "Be off, and may the spirits take you!"

Katara's fists clench in mounting frustration at the woman's refusal to see sense. "You have all these wounded, Hei can't heal them all alone. At least let me help -"

"We don't want your help," Nerrivik tells her flatly, staring down her nose at her disdainfully. "Didn't you hear my son? You don't belong here. You're not one of us."

Katara stares at her helplessly, at Hei's white face shrinking into the crowded dark of the healing huts already crammed full of cots and wounded men. The black snow drifts down lazily from the sky, falling more heavily with every passing moment. Reminding her of the threat bearing down upon them all, even if no one else was willing to acknowledge it too. "I know," she breathes.

Nobody tries to stop her as she turns away, not even Hei, who so obviously needed her help. Her heart sinking like a stone in her chest and feeling perhaps as hard, she finds the way to her igloo, still standing in its spot among the rows of army housing, now barren and quiet.

The silence is her only witness as she marches inside, tracking black snow into the safety of her hut. Brushes it off her parka, where it stains the pale blue cloth. She empties out her pack, searching for the mismatched pieces of armour issued to her back aboard Iroh's flagship, shortly after escaping Lu Ten's disastrous wedding.

But at least they had been a team back then. At least they had been united.

Now, with so many different groups cobbled together, each with their own agendas and grievances, she feels like she's trapped in a house of sand, shifting and toppling with every turn trying to bury her. And somehow she had alienated every possible ally, one by one. Iroh. Hahn and the band chiefs. Even the women whose trust she had worked so hard to earn, were either imprisoned or probably hated her now.

She had been pulled away from her friends and replaced by some Water Tribe jerk.

She had blamed Zuko, yelled at him for trying to protect her from the implosion of her own ill-fated rebellion. Maybe pushed him away for good entirely.

And for what? To be rejected time and time again from her tribe. Only, as Zuko had pointed out bluntly the night before, they weren't her tribe. Not really. If they had been, they would never have treated her so poorly. They would never have made her give up waterbending for the sake of their stupid rules, they would never have tried to marry her off to the first convenient boy and send her away. They would never have betrayed the Southern Water Tribe and left her father to face the Empire all alone.

As much as it hurt to hear, as much as it made her heart ache and hot tears burn bright in her eyes...Zuko was right. He had been right about everything. How could he not, she realizes with a flash of understanding that sears like lightning, how could he not understand what she felt? Hadn't he tried to push everything away for a chance to regain his home, only for it all to fail miserably?

And instead of listening to him, she had turned him away and now Ozai's fleet menaced their shores. Who knew when she would see him next, if he would even want to see her? What if, after everything, he decided that he wanted nothing more to do with her? That she was too far gone to be helped, that their fledgling romance just wasn't worth it anymore?

She draws a shaky breath, trying to comprehend that possibility. After everything she had done, she wouldn't blame him if he ended up wanting very little to do with her. Because at that moment, she didn't like herself very much either. Nobody did.

That's not entirely true, a contrary voice in the back of her mind corrects, and her breath hitches in her throat at the realization.

Because when she had pitted herself against Hahn and the masters of the Northern Water Tribe and torn down his fancy hall, who had been there for her? Zuko, Aang, and Toph, the three of them, without hesitation. They had stood by her, supported her, even placed themselves between her and Hahn when they had to.

And she had taken them for granted, casting them aside for the sake of her stupid, ill-fated rebellion. Now they were all off fighting in the battle, and Zuko had probably told them about her outburst. If she hadn't lost them already, she would soon.

And she would deserve it.

But, warns that same voice, it might not be too late. You could still get them back, if you try.

Her fingers find the pendant hanging around her neck, searching for strength. The only path left to her was suddenly clear, and she was afraid to take it. Because it had always been there, all this time. Why hadn't she been able to see it before, why only now when everything else had crumbled around her?

And did that matter? After this, after everything they had been through, didn't she owe it to them to at least try? As long as there was still at least one thing left that she could do, that had to be enough.

It had to.

And so, she undoes her hair, pulling out all the beads and braids until it hangs down her back, framing her face in a loose dark curtain. Strapping on the ill-fitting cuirass, and the tassets, and the worn vambraces and greaves, she's reminded of the outset of the battle on the Sun Warriors Isle. The odds had been stacked even steeper, the battle plans slapped together quickly and outlandish by any sane person's standards. But she still hadn't felt as uncertain as she does now.

She chances a glance at the pots of war paint, before leaving them behind with a sigh.

Praying against hope through the headlong flight to the makeshift stables behind the encampment, her spirits finally rise as she slides to a stop in front of one of the pens.

Appa still waits patiently inside, chewing on a stack of hay. He growls at her, communicating his indignation at being left behind. She stares resolutely at her own reflection, warped in his giant liquid eyes.

"Come on, boy," she says, unlatching the door, "let's go find the others."

The wind picks up speed as the morning wears on slowly, flinging his hood off his head and pelting more of the ominous black snow into his eyes. Even as Zuko struggles to pull it back over his head, he wonders if the persistent breeze was still a blessing in disguise, for at least its growing screech drowned out the sound of the others arguing.

Blinking, he tries to focus on his surroundings. Even as the day grew steadily brighter, the sky in the distance remains stubbornly dark. The surface of the winding river at their side gnashes restlessly, its roiling surface the same slate of the clouds overhead. Behind them, a small distance away, the city walls teems with defenders - young men, teenagers, even some small boys, too weak to join the battlefront, but capable of manning the parapets.

"There!" Aang cries out, pointing toward the horizon. "What's that?"

Zuko spins around, squinting through the snowfall. He picks out a shape among the thick grey clouds, oblong and crimson and growing larger every second.

"It's an airship," he realizes, as it approaches steadily toward them, and a faint loud roar echoes across the plains. "A war balloon."

To his relief, the other three stop arguing at once to take stock of the small vessel slicing through the sky toward them with increasing speed.

"We need to bring it down before it reaches the city," Zuko instructs, not taking his eyes off it. "Aang, knock it off course. Tartok, see if you can slice through the balloon. Toph, the gondola is entirely metal, now's your time to shine -"

"Where are the other Air Nomads?" Tartok interrupts even as Toph lets out a whoop of excitement. "How did they allow that ship to get this far inland?"

"They must have been busy," Aang retorts, unable to disguise his annoyance.

"Busy? It's a warzone out there!" Tartok exclaims, crossing his arms stubbornly. "But it was their job to defend the skies, not ours!"

With a snap, Aang unfurls his glider. "I thought your friend Hahn trusted you to protect the city," he says witheringly before he flies off toward the approaching vessel.

Tartok blinks at his own words being thrown back at him. "Well - yes," he counters bullishly, "but we shouldn't have to. It isn't our job to clean up after the Air Nomads' sloppiness!"

"Actually," Toph grunts, "that's exactly what our job is." She outstretches her hands, her muscles straining with effort. Overhead, the bright red war balloon groans as it slows in the air, as though trying to push against something massive blocking its path. "Are you gonna talk all day, Caveman, or are you going to help?"

"Help?" Tartok scoffs, as Aang circles around the balloon, slicing through the air with one gust after another. "Fine. What would you like me to do?"

Zuko groans before jumping in beside Toph, punching a fiery blast into the sky. It strikes the side of the gondola, blasting off a large section of its hull. Free-falling debris hurtles through the air, landing around them with loud crashes.

Tartok huffs, grumbling about how everybody wanted his help but nobody was willing to tell him how, and failing entirely to notice the giant chunk of scrap metal falling straight toward him until -

Thunk.

Zuko whips around at the sound, witnessing something land on Tartok's head. The waterbender crumples into the blackened snow, already unconscious before he hits the ground.

"What?" he asks, aghast, clapping his hands to his temples. "He's down? Already?"

An answering crash rattles the ground as Aang finally rips the burners out and Toph drags the wreckage of the balloon out of the air. "Woo! Team Avatar one, war balloon zero!"

"We're down a man though," Zuko points out dully, pointing to Tartok's prone form lying facedown in the snow.

"How did that happen?" Aang asks curiously.

"He took some falling debris to the head." Zuko studies the offending chunk of debris lying in the snow by Tartok's head, before he frowns. "Hey, Toph, that was entirely made of metal. Couldn't you have moved it out of the way?"

"Whoops," says Toph, sounding entirely unconcerned. She kicks at the snow nonchalantly. "What a loss."

Zuko rounds on her furiously, about to shake some sense into her, when -

"Uh, guys?" Aang asks in a small voice, pointing tentatively at the sky. "What are those?"

Zuko growls before turning away from Toph, and toward the direction where Aang was pointing.

"Shit," is all he can manage, when he finally takes stock of the numerous dark shapes low in the sky and gathering speed. "How are we going to stop those?"

"What are those?" Toph asks, scrunching her sightless eyes.

"More war balloons coming this way. About half a dozen." Zuko frowns, studying the formation as it draws nearer. "They must be surveying the path inland."

Toph groans, before rolling her shoulders in preparation. "Great. Let's give them something fun to look at."

Waiting for the vessels to come within range was the hardest part, Zuko thinks to himself. The wind rifles along his hair, sweeping it into his eyes. Next to him, Aang holds his glider at the ready, while Toph cracks her knuckles loudly.

"They must be having a really hard time out there," Aang says softly, as the first of the airships hovers just out of reach. "If so many war balloons are already making it inland."

Zuko meets his eyes, unsure of what to say. They both knew what rested on this battle, they both knew what was at stake. Prolonging the siege was not a possibility. They had to win.

Seeing thoughts of a similar vein flickering in Aang's eyes, he nods grimly. "Then it's up to us to help them," he says shortly.

The first balloon passes overhead by the time Toph reaches for it with shaking hands. The burners sputter and screech before she rips them out and they sail through the air. The balloon follows their downward trajectory slowly, the bright red fabric deforming and crumpling like a torn sail.

The wind gushes stronger as it crashes to the ground with a deafening lurch. Zuko turns to see Aang blast the two following balloons with a sweep of his glider. A circle kick and a rough chop to the ground sends both of them tumbling out of their flight path.

With a flurry of motions, Aang channels a whirlwind, bigger and higher than before. It spins along the empty plains, growing larger in size until it sucks the confused balloons out of the sky. Zuko breathes in a lungful of icy air before sending an outpouring of flames into the whirling funnel. The swirling air whips the fire to towering heights, a raging inferno that nearly touches the clouds. It swallows the war balloons and flings their burnt, battered husks out onto the ice in pieces.

"Okay," Aang remarks, squinting past the fiery whirlwind to examine the location of the last war balloon, trailing some distance behind. "That was seriously cool!"

Zuko follows the movement of their remaining quarry as it skirts the wide mouth of the inferno, following the winding path of the river toward the city. In a concerted motion, the whirling fire trails behind it, but with an explosion of hissing steam, it shudders and shrinks as it reaches the surface of the water.

"They're using the water to protect themselves," Zuko groans, pulling back. The raging fire hesitates along the snow, narrowing into a spinning column of fire.

Toph blows her bangs out of her eyes. "This would be a great time to have a waterbender, wouldn't it?" She pauses to glare in the direction of Tartok's motionless body.

Zuko can't help scowling at it too. Before he could stop the thought, he finds himself wondering what damage they could have inflicted if Katara had been with them instead. Then he remembers their fight from the night before, and growls with frustration.

"I have an idea," Aang says softly, dragging him back to the present. "Zuko, I want you to bend all that fire away from the water, and compress it as small as you can."

"What?" Zuko stares at him as though he was crazy. "But that'll make it dangerously unstable!"

But Aang's grey eyes glitter with excitement. "Exactly." He slides into formation, focusing his breathing. "Ready?"

Wondering if he'd temporarily taken leave of his senses, Zuko sweeps into a deep-rooted squat and lunges forward. The fire rages entirely out of control, and his arms judder with the effort of constricting its tempestuous flow.

Next to him, Aang pulls the air out of the column, commanding it to surround the shrinking mass of fire. "It's working!" he cries, as the wind envelopes it and seals it off entirely.

"Barely," Zuko grunts. Clenching his teeth, he manages to shrink the inferno from a raging tower to little more than a pinprick. An erratically shuddering seed of blinding light begging to burst at any moment. His forehead pounds with the effort to keep it contained.

With a decisive motion, Aang lobs the rapid winds and the tiny seed of unstable fire straining within them high into the sky, straight toward the last war balloon flying above the river. "Now!" he cries, breaking the spinning air with a slash of his wrists.

Zuko lets go with a gasp and everything explodes.

The concussive force of the shockwave sends him and Aang tumbling backward into the snow. He blinks stars out of his eyes, feeling stupidly like someone had slammed both their heads together. A faint ringing echoes in his ears as he staggers back to his feet, brushing sticky black snow off his armour.

Overhead, the sky blackens with curling smoke as the fire finally fizzes out. Pieces of charred metal slowly fall back to the earth, splashing loudly where they cut into the river.

"Whoa," Toph breathes admiringly. The low thud of her approaching footsteps makes the inside of his head ache. "You came up with that all on your own, Twinkletoes?"

Aang rubs the back of his head bashfully. "Well...yeah. But I didn't know for sure if it'd work."

"You're mad." Toph shakes her head in wonder before she claps a hand on his shoulder. "A mad genius."

"I have to agree with Toph," Zuko says hoarsely, rubbing at his ears and frowning as the ringing sound persists. "How the hell did a pacifist Air Nomad come up with that?"

"And uh," Toph continues, cocking her head toward the direction the airships had flown from, "do you think you can do it again?" She points sightlessly at the horizon. "Because I think I can hear more of them coming this way."

The tinny roar of distant engines follows her words. Zuko throws his head back in despair at the sight of more airships, a long line of glinting pinpricks studding the sky and heading straight toward them. "This is insanity," he seethes. "How many did they even build? They never seem to end!"

Aang mops his brow with the sleeve of his tunic. "If only we had Appa with us! It'd be so much easier to take them out from the air."

"Well, whose dumb idea was it to leave the bison behind?" Toph asks scathingly. "Oh right, the unconscious guy. Why did we even listen to him?"

Zuko groans in agreement. The wind skims his face, ruffling the fur along his hood. A small distance away, the wrecked hull of a severed gondola gurgles as it slowly sinks into the river.

"This might sound weird," Aang begins tentatively, his face wrinkling disbelievingly, "but I swear I heard Appa just a second ago."

"What?" Zuko asks, rubbing viciously at his ears. "I didn't hear anything."

Toph's brow furrows with concentration. "That's weird," she remarks, tilted her head upward in confusion. "I thought I heard him just now too."

"I didn't hear anything," Zuko mutters, just before the whistling of the wind dies down. In the brief silence that follows, all he hears is the building roar of the approaching airships.

Then, suddenly, the plaintive animal roar of an approaching sky bison replaces it.

"It is Appa!" he exclaims, whirling around his spot to see the flying six-legged beast cutting a path from the city walls, bearing down right for them. He frowns even as his heart rises "Where did he come from?"

"Not that we're complaining or anything," Toph supplies quickly.

But Aang's face lights up as Appa draws nearer. "It's Katara!" he exclaims.

"What?" he and Toph chorus in unison.

But Aang points upward as the sky bison lands with a whump of his flat tail, spraying blackened snow into the air. He spots a hooded figure in mismatched armour huddled atop Appa's head, just before it leaps off. The force of the landing knocks her hood back, revealing Katara's rather sheepish face.

"Uh," she tries, clearly embarrassed as she waves a tentative hand at them, "hi?"

The sight of her, appearing so unexpectedly among their midst, knocks him back a couple of steps. To be honest, he had privately been relieved when Zhao's fleet turned up, for the welcome and necessary distraction it had provided. To see her so soon after their nasty fight, before he was properly prepared to face her, made him feel suddenly unsteady again.

"What are you doing here, Sweetness?" Toph demands, the first to find her voice.

"Uh," Katara says again, her face flushing deeply in the icy wind. "I came to help you guys? That is, if you still want me around." She hangs her head. "After the way I've been acting, I...I'll understand if you don't."

"What about your tribe?" Aang asks delicately, studying Katara's unbraided hair, the lingering redness in her eyes and puffiness in her face that betrayed earlier tears. "Won't...won't you be in trouble?"

Katara swallows, but continues to study the snow between her boots. "That...that isn't really a concern anymore, Aang," she replies very steadily.

"Oh." Aang lapses into silence. Zuko catches his puzzled stare - curiosity, concern, relief all flicker through his eyes. "Uh - I mean if you want to and you're allowed to...then -"

"What happened?" Toph interjects curiously.

Zuko rubs at his temples but says nothing as Katara sighs heavily. "Uh...I was trying to teach the other women how to waterbend, and when I got caught, I got cut off."

"What?"

"Cut off," Katara repeats, scuffing at the ice aimlessly with her boot. "You know… exiled? Cast out? Excommunicated?" She grimaces. "Hahn told me I was no longer part of the tribe, not after what I did."

"Wow…" Aang breathes, taking a couple of steps back in his shock. "That's, um...wow, I didn't know they could do that."

Katara's face hardens as she looks away. "I didn't think they could either. But...he said it. I'm...free now, I guess, and so I thought -"

"Wait a second," Toph says slowly, the frown on her face mirroring the feeling raging inside Zuko's chest, "You mean you could have joined us all along but you chose to help a bunch of random girls instead?" She scowls darkly. "What, are we just your sloppy seconds or something?"

"Toph," Aang admonishes quietly as Katara's face suddenly goes ashen, "not now, we should be supportive -"

"Screw that!" Toph bursts out, her face mottling angrily. "Look where being supportive got all of us! If we'd been straight with her from the beginning, maybe she wouldn't have taken us all for granted and maybe we'd be out on the battlefront actually fighting instead of being stuck here at the ass end of the defense with some second-rate waterbender!"

"You're right," Katara admits as Toph's outburst finally subsides. "You're right, Toph. I - I don't know what came over me." She hangs her head forlornly, and something clenches in Zuko's chest in spite of himself. "I...I just wanted so badly to fit in, to belong…"

"Katara," Aang says kindly, "you've always belonged with us."

She wipes at her face with the back of her hand. "I don't know why I couldn't see that," she confesses in a shaking voice. "You were all right there. The whole time, you were all right there and...and I couldn't see you."

"You're being awfully quiet, Sparky," Toph interrupts bluntly, and to Zuko's alarm, she turns to him. "What do you think of all this? Surely you have an opinion too."

He forces himself to breathe, as though he was trying to contain another fire raging out of control. He stares at the approaching line of airships to avoid facing Katara and the tumult of his crashing emotions instead. "I think we're in the middle of an important battle and down a waterbender," he makes himself say, his voice as tight and toneless as he can manage. "I think we would be best off putting our feelings aside for now, and dealing with those first."

He points at the streamlined ships floating low in the sky to emphasize his point.

Toph blows her bangs out of her eyes loudly but says nothing. Beside her, Aang grins widely. "And that's why he's the leader!" he declares, grabbing Toph by the hand. "C'mon everyone, time to hug it out -"

"Oof." Katara stumbles backward as Aang leaps forward, embracing her fiercely. Toph, dragged along reluctantly, gives her a quick hug. For all her indignation, Zuko watches the relief spread happily across the blind girl's face when Katara hugs her back.

"Thank you. Thank you," she chokes out, sounding dangerously close to tears. "I'm so sorry. I'll do anything - anything - to make it up to you…"

Zuko doesn't move as the others let go of Katara, remaining stubbornly frozen in place. A whirl of overwhelming emotions hammers in his chest - the hurt, the anger and tension lingering from the night before. But threaded through it all was the sheer relief of her presence...and a growing concern for the string of losses that had led her here.

As Katara turns slowly to face him, the smile fades nervously from her face. She bites her lip and he reads her penitence in the small lines that crease along her face, the sudden rigid set of her shoulders. "Um," she begins awkwardly.

He isn't sure what possesses him to step forward stiffly, and wrap his arms around her before she can continue.

Somehow, even dressed in thick furs and armour, she feels smaller and frailer in his arms. Her entire body quivers as she hugs him tightly back. "I'm sorry," she whispers into his ear, "Zuko, you were right, you were right about everything, I'm so sorry -"

"We can talk about it later," he interrupts, suddenly angry with everything. Zhao's fleet of airships was still heading toward the city and Katara had decided to return after months of meandering. Whatever she had said last night had hurt, but right now they had a siege to fend off.

He could wait for the full apology; he could wait to forgive. But no matter how irritated he was with her, she was sorry and he knew she meant it.

"R-Right." Katara backs away from him uncertainly. The uneasy moment dissipates as she spots Tartok's unconscious body lying in the snow and raises an eyebrow. "What happened to him?"

"Eh...piece of falling junk to the head," Toph quips, nudging Tartok's head with her boot. "He'll live."

"Right." Her gaze rises from Tartok to scan over the rest of them. "So what's the plan?"

"Uh," Zuko begins, relieved to change the subject to something, anything else. Even if it meant trying to explain the utter travesty that was the North's rabbit-harebrained defense strategy.

But Toph cuts him off, punching an open palm. "Screw the plan." Her eyes glitter triumphantly as she faces them all. "We're the plan."

The icy air whizzing past them makes his eyes water, the faint ringing in his ears still persisting even as they click and pop with Appa's swift ascent into the sky. Zuko grits his teeth in frustration, rubbing them furiously.

"What's wrong with your ears?" Katara asks him, her blue eyes watching him with concern.

He shakes his head. "Nothing. They just won't stop ringing."

Ducking away from her, he glances instead at the fleet of airships heading their way, dozens and dozens of giant structures floating in a single arrowhead formation. He gulps as the lingering sunlight glitters off the pointed edges of the airships' noses, their elongated balloons enveloped with metal all over and towering nearly as tall as an Imperial cruiser. If the war balloons had been meant for surveillance, there was no doubt in his mind that these airships, sturdier and dwarfing them by comparison, were definitely built for battle.

Aang whistles, even as his eyebrows lower into a frown. "That's a lot of airships."

Zuko stares at the fleet, growing steadily closer with every flap of Appa's flat tail. "I guess the other Air Nomads got busy."

"They must have had their hands full defending the skies and cutting the supply lines," Aang comments, lines of worry etching along his forehead.

"What? Why on earth would they have the Air Nomads doing both?" Katara exclaims, the shock in her voice grating against Zuko's ears. "Whose idea was that?"

"No time to play catch-up, Sweetness," Toph remarks. "Just get those metal monsters out of the sky."

Katara nods grimly, glancing down at the arctic plains spreading out a distance below, and the river snaking through it. Closing her eyes in sudden concentration, she reaches over the edge of the saddle and pulls with a strained grunt.

From far below, a broad stream of icy water gushes upward before rippling around her in a shining orbit.

"Um, guys?" Aang warns, pointing straight ahead. The leading airship, flying at the head of the wedge formation, bears down upon them. The decks below its gondola are already lined with uniformed soldiers, bracing to shoot. "Looks like we have company!"

Zuko blinks and the soldiers punch forward as one. Bright red fire spills out of the airship, roaring across the sky and directly toward them.

Katara leaps to her feet. With a slicing motion, the water propels forward, extinguishing the incoming fire with a harsh sizzle. Zuko winces as Appa jets through the clouds of steam emanating in its wake, droplets of boiling water spattering against his exposed skin.

"Incoming!" Aang calls out, as the firebenders force another plume of fire in their direction. Katara intercepts it with the shrunken remainder of her water, before batting the soldiers off their platform with a single sweep. Their piercing shrieks echo as they tumble through the air and fall into the river below with distant splashes.

Pulling the hot clouds of steam out of the air, she reforms her water into another pressurized jet as they fly past the lead airship. With a cry and a rotation of her arms, the water slashes against its hull, scraping the shining metal as though dragging a knife along its surface.

Toph leaps forward, her hands crushing into unfamiliar motions. As though in answer, the damaged hull deforms out of shape with a deafening grind, the streamlined shape crumpling like paper into a heavy metal ball that drops out of the sky. It slams into the land below, rocking the ground with dull angry explosions. A backdraft lashes upward, nearly grazing Appa's paws. The sky bison bellows angrily as Aang steers him quickly out of range.

Zuko jumps in, grabbing the explosive fire with a clash of his wrists. It spirals up beside them, its heat immense. With a roar, he shoves it straight into another airship gunning toward them, punching a hole straight through its hull and setting its engine alight. Soldiers drop like flies over the gondola railing as the rigid body is quickly enveloped in flames. The entire vessel spins wildly out of control and collides in a sudden violent burst with the airship flying directly behind it in the tightly-knit formation.

"Watch it!" Aang exclaims. The world tilts sideways as Appa dodges the falling carnage, the dry heat licking Zuko's skin with trailing embers.

They quickly fall into a harmonious rhythm, working in tandem to cut through the airship fleet as it flies across the breadth of the North Pole. Katara and Aang fend off incoming fire, while Zuko and Toph go on the offensive, destroying the hulls of nearby aircraft and knocking them down. When the resultant explosions reverberate out of control and threaten to knock Appa out of the sky, both Zuko and Aang work together to contain the combustion, bending in unison to redirect it toward the nearest ship and tearing it apart in a frenzied conflagration.

From the other side of Appa's saddle, watching steam pour out of the wreckage, Katara quickly realizes that the hydraulics powering the airships contain pressurized water. Instead of trying to damage the hulls with her bending, she promptly focuses on sensing the liquid inside the vessels' pipes and calling them to her. The bursting water and steam rips the airships apart, leaving Toph to fling the heavy metal debris into oncoming airships.

"Are we there yet?" Toph pants, massaging a cramp out of her stiffened forearms. "I swear we must have taken out a dozen ships already!"

Zuko doesn't answer, too busy fending off an approaching airship passing dangerously close. The firebenders assembled on its gondola sweep a blast of fire. He slides backward along the surface of the saddle from the force of it, straining as more pours toward him. "A little help!" he roars, glancing over his shoulder urgently.

But Toph is still doubled over, and on the other side of the saddle, both Katara and Aang are preoccupied with another ship bearing down on Appa's left flank. Growling, he clenches his jaw and forces himself to breathe. Finding his footing, he pushes back with all his might.

The swirl of fire careens back toward the airship, smashing the side of its hull and exposing the pipes running from the gas bag at its core. Zuko heaves in relief, brushing at the hair plastered to his forehead.

"I'm on it!" Toph yells in reply, too late. Before he can stop her, she jams her fists together with a sudden motion.

"Wait!" he calls out uselessly. The remainder of the intact hull buckles against the deformed, curling rudder and sending the entire airship spiralling closer. The pipes snap one by one, and Zuko curses loudly as jets of pressurized steam gush straight toward them.

He tries to push them out of the way, but to no avail. He couldn't bend steam, to do that, he needed -

"Katara!" he screams as loudly as he can.

She hears him.

Through the chaos raging around them, she leaps across the saddle, stumbling as Appa suddenly lurches. Zuko grabs her by the forearm and she glances up at him in surprise. But there was no time, the steam bearing down upon them so close he could feel its immense heat.

She springs into motion and he follows, every nerve of his battle-sharpened and somehow attuned to hers. Familiarity crushes deep in his bones as the steam clouds veer abruptly upward, coalescing into a pressurized column. With a deafening whoosh, the geyser pummels the ship attacking Appa's left flank, tearing off its elevator flap. The crash reverberates around them as the geyser finally fizzles out in a burst of fine mist.

As both ships plummet and Aang lets out a whoop of delight, Zuko only stares at Katara, panting heavily. She blinks back at him, stunned and finding it just as hard to breathe. His weariness mingles with shock at how effortlessly they had managed to blend their bending. That, in spite of everything dangling between them, they remained so innately entwined with each other. That she would still drop everything to help him, in the instant that he needed her.

It had been such a long time since he felt that way. But there was no time to dwell on that.

Through a sky full of burning airships and raining debris, the white walls of the southwestern harbour loom in the distance. In the setting sun, through the clouds of smoke and the choking smell of leaking fuel, he still sees the cool red flares crashing into them, an onslaught beyond reckoning.

And standing between them and the battlefront are the limping remains of Zhao's air fleet, a mere dozen ships reorganizing into a solid line blocking the path forward.

Toph collapses back onto all fours, gasping with exhaustion. "I can't," she heaves, clutching at her arms. "Metalbending isn't earthbending...I can't keep this up much longer."

"We'll cover you," Aang reassures her, leaping back to pick up Appa's reins. "You get some rest, you've done amazingly so far."

"I'm sorry." The distant explosions reflect in her clouded eyes. "I'm letting you down."

"No, you'd be letting us down by collapsing like you did back in that Dai Li bunker," Aang points out with a wry smile. "Come on. Zuko, Katara, do you think we can run this line?"

Zuko's eyes focus on the tiny shapes of the men filling the lower decks, sliding into position to attack. He shifts into a defensive form, his heart hammering. "We've faced worse odds."

Aang's hands tighten on the reins with a grim determination. His grey eyes sparkle as he digs his heels into the sides of the bison's head. "Appa, yip yip!"

With the force of the sky bison's acceleration crushing Zuko's chest, Appa bounds forward with an earth-shattering roar.

Aang leaps forward, aiming a spinning kick toward the row of airships. A sphere of whirling winds crashes into its centre, forcing the middle ships backward.

The outer ships hold firm, their benders pushing a fiery assault crashing toward them. The flames lick toward them hungrily, towering to heights that make Zuko's breath catch in his throat with fear.

But he pushes it away, catches the grains of lessons his uncle imparted to him so many months ago. Surrender. Be calm. Closing his eyes, he springs forward. His wrists crash together before rotating and pulling apart in a splitting motion.

With a swooshing motion, the incoming inferno flattens and rips apart in the middle like a parting curtain. A burst of dry heat batters his face but he holds firm, bending the remnants of fire out of the way.

Next to him, Katara rushes forward, her bared teeth a gleam of white in the corner of his eye. With a yell and an upward motion of her arms, the ships before them buckle and split apart in an explosion of hissing water. One by one, they burst apart at the seams, clouds of steam and boiling water mixing with leaking fuel, their ruined frames red with angry fires.

They fly over the wreckage of the last ships, descending slowly beneath them as they draw toward the battlefront and take in the ruinous sight sprawling out before them.

Bodhi hadn't lied about the size of Zhao's fleet, Zuko realizes with a feeling like a sinking stone in his stomach. Rows of gleaming dark battleships stretch out along the curve of the Northern Sea, some even managing to protrude into the mouth of the Adlartok Bay, which fed into the river leading the path inland to Aujuittuq. Their decks teem with movement, glowing fire and the snapping of catapults raining fiery blasts through the air. The echoing thuds and resulting explosions of ice and flames where they batter the giant walls, and the ominous cracking sounds that rend the air as the solid ice surfaces split and thread, chunks falling away into the roaring waters below.

Even with the setting sun and the pale sphere of the moon rising like a distant phantom behind the clouds, Zuko realizes quickly that the defenders were all but crumbling before the onslaught of Zhao's fleet. There were signs of a skirmish on the shores, with flying water and fiery punches clashing violently along the icy beach, the invaders not quite gaining ground but not being repelled either.

Elsewhere, the activity along the walls seemed to be in utter disarray. Squads of fighters caught too busy with repairing falling sections of the wall, and neglecting to repel incoming fire. An entire section of the gates manned by soldiers with no apparent ability to waterbend. Swarms of Air Nomads atop their sky bison torn between sabotaging the ships behind enemy lines, relaying instructions from one command post to the next, and ferrying the wounded inland.

"What a disaster," he breathes, chilled to the bone by the sight. From the sharp intakes of breath around him, he knows he isn't alone in the thought.

"What do we do?" Aang asks helplessly, as they finally clear the remnants of the airfleet and descend along the southwestern edge of the harbour walls. "They're really taking a hit out there -"

"Look!" Katara shouts, pointing a shaking finger in the air.

Zuko follows her gaze to the fraught battlefront, where a lone Air Nomad weaves through the heavy fire of the front lines. Climbing slowly through the air on a tiring sky bison, they watch in helpless horror as a flaming chunk of rock pummels her mount in the chest. It lets out a scream of pain before falling out of the sky and landing motionless in the pile of snow below.

"Help her!" Katara cries. Aang, white-faced in shock, quickly jerks on Appa's reins and galvanizes into motion.

They catch up with the Air Nomad and her fallen sky bison, landing atop a high cliff thick with ice, hugging the southernmost edge of the harbour walls. The ship-packed bay yawns out below the summit, glowing intermittently with fire and exploding ice.

Aang scrambles down and dashes toward the Air Nomad, head bowed mournfully as they press a shaking hand to their sky bison's unmoving chest. "Soma!" he calls out, his voice high-pitched in urgency. "Soma, are you okay?"

The Air Nomad glances up and blinks at him slowly, belatedly registering his presence. "He - he was getting so tired," she breathes, running her hand along the bison's long shaggy fur in long, slow strokes. "I told Chief Hahn we needed to swap out, but he insisted on another run to - to cut their left supply line." She swallows, the sharp lines of her tattoos stark against the extreme pallour of her skin. "Such a steep price, for so little gain."

"Hahn," Katara growls under her breath. "Hasn't everyone tolerated enough of his stupidity by now?" Her eyes glimmer with unshed tears as she stares at the dying beast, stricken. "Innocents are going to die - no, they've already died because of him. We have to stop this madness before it's too late."

"Welcome to the party, Sugar Queen," Toph speaks up, sounding just as hollow and resigned as Zuko feels. "What do you propose we do about it, exactly?"

"What about Zhao?" Zuko inquires, turning to Soma desperately. "If we take his ship and capture him, we could end this quickly and force a surrender -"

"We tried." Soma shakes her head defeatedly. "We managed to capture the flagship and a couple of others. Some high-ranking officers were taken prisoner. But Admiral Chan continues to lead the assault from a different vessel...and there was no sign of Admiral Zhao at all."

An unsettling feeling slides like cold water down Zuko's spine at her weary pronouncement. "That can't be right," he says stiffly, gazing down the peak of the cliffs to the array of ships below. "He's got to be down there somewhere. We just have to find him and end it."

Toph blows her bangs out of her eyes. "But how? We can't exactly march up to all those ships and personally search each of them for the asshole."

The roar of a distant blast punctuates her words. The cool red glow of a fireball curves past them as it hurtles straight for the section of battered wall immediately next to them.

With a sudden, desperate cry, Katara unleashes a flurry of movement. A thick column of water springs up from the ocean to swat away the incoming fire as though it was a hovering buzzardwasp. "I've had enough," she grunts, and in a trice the floating water turns to razor-tipped ice scythes that whiz toward the imperial cruisers and pierce them through. The shearing of metal and the sudden cries of the sailors as water gushes into their boats. "Sounds like it's time for a new plan."

As she straightens to her full height under the dying light of the sun, it seems to Zuko that an unspoken understanding flickers between the four of them. "Right," he recovers weakly, studying the battlefront with sharpened eyes. "This is a good position. We'll do what we can to support the defenses from here."

"Soma, you take Appa and get out of here," Aang says tersely, handing her the reins. "Let General Iroh know that we're here now...and we're holding this pass no matter what."

"Thank you, Aang," Soma says gratefully, inclining her head. She casts a last sad glance at the motionless body of her old sky bison, wiping away tears from the corner of her eyes, whispering softly, "I'll come back for you, I promise."

Then she scrambles atop Appa's head and with a grim look on her face, she flies off into the distance. Zuko watches her shrink until it becomes impossible to distinguish her from the other tiny figures enveloped in the fight.

"Right," Katara spits, cracking her knuckles loudly and squaring her shoulders from where she stands at the precipice. The wind whips blackened snow into her mass of long dark hair, hanging unbraided and heavy along her back. "Let's send those bastards packing."

And with the unrestrained force of the full moon floating like a ghostly grey eye watching the battlefield from on high, she lashes out. A tugging motion of her arms draws the water along the beach upward in a mounting tsunami, wrecking the first line of ships in the maelstrom frothing at its base. Then with a grunt and a powerful lunge, the water charges outward, breaking through the fleet's formation with the wrath of the boiling sea.

Zuko's jaw drops as he watches her rain down destruction, toppling ships over without a second thought. Tearing his gaze away with difficulty, he focuses instead on the ships further back from Katara's onslaught, still lobbing fire at the harbour walls from a distance.

"Aang!" he calls out, already dashing into motion.

Wordlessly, Aang follows suit. A strong gust of wind billows through the air, swirling into the incoming fire and deflecting its trajectory away from the walls. With a grunt, Zuko bends the remainder of the fire, redirecting it in a flaming loop charging back into the ships near the back of the bay.

Between the sudden redirection of their assault fire and the ferocity of the churning sea, the invasion stutters to an abrupt halt. The waterbenders lining the harbour walls resume attacking with renewed strength, their strikes buoyed by the full moon rising in the sky.

A sudden crash seizes Zuko's attention. He snaps around to see Katara stumbling backward, cursing loudly. A barrage of fire shatters the clifftop where she had been standing. It crumbles before her as she scrambles back to find solid ground.

He lunges toward her, sweeping the fire away as she finally finds her footing. Teeth bared in a growl, she sends the falling pieces of ice flying back toward the attacking ships, slicing off their chimneys and piercing holes in their hulls.

"They're starting to fall back!" Aang calls out, landing lightly next to him. "Look - on the beach!"

They scramble to peer over the decimated cliff's edge, at the skirmishes breaking out along the icy shore. Squads of firebenders struggle to fight their way ashore as the defending waterbenders push them back into the sea. Some even manage to leap aboard Water Tribe skiffs and jet through the turbulent waters, weaving through the sinking ships and capsizing them at close range.

"It's working!" Katara exclaims jubilantly, and the sound of it makes Zuko's spirits soar.

A faint animal roar alerts them to an approaching sky bison, with another air acolyte on its back. "I come with news from the Dragon General!" he says, ducking to avoid a fireball that threatens to pummel him out of the air. "He's thrilled to have you defending the pass. He says you couldn't have gotten here quick enough."

Zuko's eyes widen at the message, trying to imagine his uncle saying such a thing. "Does he need help anywhere else? We can try support him on the beach -"

"No." The air acolyte shakes his head. "He says there's enough fire on the beach as is. You can help by fortifying the defenses, repelling long range attacks so they can regain ground."

"Got it." Zuko nods. "What about the enemy ships? Do you need help there?"

The air acolyte shakes his head. "Thanks to your swift intervention. We've sent teams out to capture them."

"We noticed. Any sign of Zhao yet?"

"Not yet." The air acolyte shakes his head, his face falling momentarily. "But we will soon enough if we continue at this rate!"

"That's the spirit!" Aang chimes in, beaming excitedly. "Tell General Iroh we received his instructions...and maybe get him to move some of those non-bending fighters onto the beach where they can be more useful!"

Zuko frowns as the air acolyte flies away to relay the message. Narrowing his eyes, he studies the ravaged front line of the ships floundering in the sea. "Come on Zhao," he mutters, clenching his teeth. "Where are you hiding, you old bastard?"

Darkness settles quickly along the battlefront, visible only through the bright moonlight dappling the shoreline and the flashes of fire bursting through the air.

By now, the four of them have dug in along the high cliff top, bolstering the defenses on the wall. Down on the beach, the combined forces of Water Tribe fighters and Iroh's soldiers manage to hold their ground against the enemy machinery trying to crawl ashore. The clanging of metal tanks and boats echo noisily through the night, a confusing cacophony blending with the explosion and shouting littering through the air.

Yet, to Zuko's surprise, the besiegers still fight stubbornly on, trying to press their failed advantage into a desperate attempt to regain some sort of momentum. Tactical teams of soldiers jump on powered jet skis, ducking as close as possible to the Water Tribe skiffs sailing further out to sea. Light cruisers fling grappling hooks along the unoccupied cliffs of the Adlartok Bay, their soldiers trying to scale the sheer ice walls in a last ditch effort to gain a foothold inland. Aang and Toph only bring the hapless climbers down with laughable ease, slicing through the chains and blowing them into the air.

He tries to ignore the foreboding niggling at the back of his mind as the tide of the battle slowly begins to turn. With a movement like the sea unchained, Katara cuts the ice beneath their feet into a jagged platform and brings them whizzing down the cliffside. They land atop the white needley stalagmites growing out of its base, giving them a closer vantage point to the beachfront and its crush of invading machinery.

Struggling to regain his balance from the sudden steep descent, it's all Zuko can do to keep up with the chaos of battle unfolding below them. A giant armoured tank grinds steadily upward toward them, flanked by formations of enemy soldiers blasting nearby defenders out of the way as they try to gain ground.

Zuko pulls on their incoming fire, twisting it away and turning it back on them. Aang sends a mighty gust of air that forces the tank to stop in its tracks, while Katara brings up a blade of ice that slices off one of its broad rubberized wheels. The tank topples over to one side as Toph leaps forward with a crumpling motion, and its strong metal shell caves in.

Zuko directs another plume of fire into the tank's exposed interior and the entire thing explodes, sending the enemy soldiers running for cover. The defenders on the beach chase after them, hard on their heels.

"Not bad," Toph pants, ripping sheets off the destroyed tank and hurling them at the enemy soldiers scattering below. "We make a pretty great team, all things considered."

"Aw," Katara grunts, raising another tank atop a whirling funnel of water and dumping it on top of a third tank immediately behind it. The resounding crunch splits the air. "I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to us - fire!"

Zuko and Aang jump up to meet the flash of fire charging toward them, while the girls duck behind them for cover. In a coordinated motion, the fire curls into a rotating headwind before spinning back onto the beach, flattening a formation of enemy soldiers in the shallows.

"This is great and all," Zuko grumbles, redirecting a fireball away from the harbour walls behind them, "but shouldn't we have made some tactical gains by now?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Aang grits out, blasting a cruiser out of the water with a ferocious gust of wind. "I swear we've taken out most of their heavy destroyers by now!"

"Not to mention their entire airfleet," Katara heaves, working with Aang to sink the toppled cruiser with an angry giant wave. "Face it, it's only a matter of time before they give up."

"Then what are they waiting for?" Zuko demands, suddenly irritated and paranoid with the sudden worry gnawing through him. "What commander in their right mind would continue fighting like this? That too with the full moon giving us a clear advantage?" He points at the glowing white orb, hanging swollen and heavy above the star-studded horizon. "And where is Zhao?"

"He's probably cowering in the back as far away from the battle as he can," Toph remarks, sending a couple of enemy soldiers flying through the air by their metal chestplates. "Relax, Sparky, he'll give up eventually. The night's barely begun, and time is on our side here!"

"You say that," Zuko mutters. "But I know Zhao. If he's not commanding from the front lines, it's because he's got something up his sleeve. Until we have him in chains, we can't breathe lightly. None of us."

The invading fleet has all but surrendered by the time General Iroh descends to the shoreline.

By now, the fighting has mostly stopped. The icy beach is full of Water Tribe fighters and soldiers in Fire Empire uniforms. In the moonlight, it is almost impossible to tell the two sides apart.

The shallows teem with the wreckage of countless ships, while behind him, ice continues to fall from the cracks in the towering harbour walls. It smashes into the ground every once in a while, shattering the growing silence abruptly.

The remains of Zhao's fleet still bob on the open waves, waiting like spectres promising destruction with the coming dawn. But the waters of the Adlartok Bay stretching out between them are impassable, gnashing under the command of countless waterbenders of the North, keeping the threat at bay.

Team Avatar still controls the mouth of the river inland. The four of them, safe atop the icy spires lining the base of the high cliffs, command the ebb and flow of the beach's defenses. A smile works onto his face as he glimpses them, small figures atop a jagged platform of ice, working together in harmony, their combined power awe-inspiring enough to rally the rest of the fragmented defenders.

There is no doubt in his mind that their sudden arrival had turned the tide of the invasion and earned the Northern Water Tribe a decisive win against the invaders. For a moment, he remembers them, four cranky teenagers grumbling about meditation boot camp, and his heart brims with pride to witness how much they have grown together.

And will continue to grow. This is but a taste of what they can achieve, as long as they are together.

The loud roar of a sky bison jars him from his silent reverie. Iroh glances up as Gyatso lands next to him.

"We took the ship that held their Admiral," the old Air Nomad reports.

"Zhao?"

Gyatso shakes his head. "No. Admiral Chan was charged with leading the invasion. He said he would consider surrender, but first asked this to be delivered to you. He said it was urgent."

Iroh frowns as Gyatso withdraws a scroll from his belt and holds it out. "Did he?" he comments dryly, glimmers of foreboding snatching at him as he takes the scroll and examines it.

The red wax seal of the Fire Navy Admiral's office gleams in the moonlight, cracking beneath his fingers as he unfurls the scroll. He stares at the words, inked in an elegant hand, his heart pounding as he tries to make sense of it all.

My most highly esteemed General,

As the oldest of friends, allow me to offer my congratulations on your victory. My delegate, Admiral Chan, has been so kind to act on my behalf while I am elsewhere occupied. I am sure you will find him most reasonable to negotiate with in my absence.

Regretfully, by the time you receive this, I will be undertaking a legendary feat of my own. You might understand, having defeated the last dragon and tried to rebuild the bridge between our world and that of the spirits. But dominion over this world belongs to the Fire Nation by rights, and soon even the spirits themselves will bow under our heel.

Do you believe in spirits, General? You should. They are about to cost you everything.

Enjoy your victory while you still can.

The full moon has risen to its apex in the night sky by the time the snow finally stops falling.

Far below, its reflection dances on the glassy surface of the pond at the heart of the spirit oasis. Yue stares at it in a trance, deceptively near enough to touch, hovering above the silent blackness.

In the unusual warmth of the oasis, the black snow doesn't touch the ground. A fine mist wraps around the verdant grass, choking the air with a blanket of deathly silence. Beneath the surface of the water, the pair of koi fish continue to push and pull around each other, their rhythmic pulsing movements frenzied somehow. As if they too could sense her meditative distress and were also calling out for help in their own way.

That would be nice, she thinks dryly to herself. If the moon and ocean spirits won't hear my prayers, maybe they'll listen to the koi instead.

A flicker of motion on the surface of the pond catches her attention. She glances at the white fish, fluttering in a panic in the depths of the water. Blinks, and suddenly sees her own glowing reflection, staring back at her solemnly.

They're coming, something whispers in her ear. Yue isn't sure if it's the voice of her own confused spirit or another's that pleads with her now. Only you can protect me.

"I don't understand," she says haltingly, even as her reflection shivers and vanishes from the water's mirrored surface. "What - what do you want from me?"

For a moment, only the white fish's thrashing motions seem to exist. The funereal quiet of the oasis amplifies the echo of her heartbeat in her ears, and the way it suddenly begins to race.

Then there's the sound of grass crunching behind her, and a hand clamping down on her shoulder out of nowhere.

She screams, but the grip on her shoulder tightens to a vice. A sudden flare of fire burns in the corner of her eye, its dry heat blistering against her skin.

"Take the Water Tribe princess," an unfamiliar voice commands, the satisfaction in it making her stomach roil with panic. "We're going fishing."

The paper slips from his fingers, clattering against the icy ground.

"What is it?" Gyatso asks as the blood drains from Iroh's face. "What did it say?"

Iroh stares at the star-studded sky with growing horror, the serene moonlight burning his eyes. "Zhao, you madman," he whispers hoarsely, "what have you done?"

Blood splits open the sky, a blinding red wound. For a moment, a single shrill scream rends the world into oblivion.

Then all that remains is silence, and a yawning chasm of darkness where the moon once shone.

For a moment, Iroh forgets to breathe. His gaze is fixed upon the gaping void in the sky, his ears full of the malevolent silence as the ocean itself goes entirely limp, as though releasing a dying exhale.

He struggles to find words, to say anything at all. But for a moment it's as though the voice has been ripped out of him as well.

"Iroh," Gyatso says from a million miles away, before his hand finds Iroh's shoulder, "Iroh, my friend, look -"

Iroh blinks and glances out to the sea, where the numerous ships lining the horizon light up in grim succession. One by one their engines roar to life, and the glow of fire illuminates the smoke pouring up in columns out of their chimneys.

Suddenly, the soldiers taken prisoner from the day burst free of their chains, overpowering their hapless Water Tribe captors. They assemble into formation quickly, bolstered by the boats rapidly cutting across the dead waters.

"We must go," Iroh hears himself choke, grabbing Gyatso's sleeve, "quickly, now -"

The world careens abruptly as the sky bison takes flight. A rush of fire chases them into the air but with a grunt, Gyatso bats it out of range. Blinking in disbelief, Iroh can only watch helplessly as the beach suddenly comes alive, packing with docking boats, more of Zhao's soldiers manning tanks and armoured komodo rhinos. Whirling morningstars on chains bite into the surface of the walls and tug them down. The unearthly roar of crumbling, collapsing ice fills the air.

And, to his alarm, the Water Tribe fighters struggling to fight back, their bodies limp and staggering, while the water and ice surrounding them remains dead and unresponsive to their bending.

"Wait!" he calls out, his eyes widening in shock as the incoming hordes of Zhao's soldiers cut down the Water Tribe fighters effortlessly. "Gyatso - they can't bend! We must help them."

Gyatso tugs on the reins of his sky bison, wheeling around in the air. He lets out a shrill whistle, and motions to the other Air Nomads circling the skies. "Fall back! Take who you can and fall back!"

Then the world pitches suddenly downward, as they plummet toward the shore. Iroh grits his teeth, blasting as many of Zhao's soldiers back as he can.

His ears still ring with the cries of the Air Nomads, winging through the air wreaking devastation, echoing Gyatso's cry.

"Fall back! Fall back!"

At first, Zuko thinks he imagines the shriek piercing through his ears and making his temples ring.

But then a blur of blue in the corner of his eye sends his heart scampering into overdrive. Katara crumples to the ground as he snaps around, writhing and screaming, her face a twisted mask of agony.

"What -"

Suddenly, a barrage of fire rises up from below, rushing toward them with renewed vigour. Aang, still not noticing anything amiss, leaps up to blast it away. But to his surprise, the oncoming fire intensifies, wrapping around the gust of wind to suddenly surround them on all sides.

"Zuko -" Aang cries, staggering back before charging forward again with another blast. A brutal gust of air whips the snow upward around them, raising a defensive snowbank around them. But the fire surrounding them on all sides only grows taller, and the raised slopes of the snow grow shiny and wet.

But Zuko's entire attention is fixed on Katara. He grabs her by the shoulders with shaking hands even as she shudders fitfully, crying unintelligibly. "Katara! Katara, what's wrong?"

Her eyes open, wide and for an instant, their vivid blue seems to fade. Gasping through clenched teeth, she points a trembling finger at the sky before she goes limp in his arms.

He follows her gaze to the empty void torn through the sky, a pit of blackness that sucked away all light.

The moon is nowhere to be seen.

"Come on. Get it together," Zuko hisses, even as dread rises in the back of his throat with the taste of bile. "You can't give up, not now!" He struggles to help her upright, but she doubles over, her hands clamped against her temples, her breathing laboured like a mortally wounded animal.

Aang lands with a blast of icy air. "The waterbenders just collapsed - all of them!" he shouts, waving his arms in panic. "Zhao's firebenders are breaking through them - they're capturing everyone!"

"This isn't good," Zuko grunts, as Katara thrashes against him, screaming again. "Aang, we have to get out of here, now -"

"They're heading straight this way!" Toph yells. She pivots around, her blind face scrunching uncharacteristically with fear. The glow of nearing fire reflects in her widened eyes. "What are we going to do?"

Zuko snarls, flame exploding from his nostrils. His grip on Katara's shoulders tightens. "Come on, stay with me." With an explosive grunt he staggers to his feet, bracing her weight against him. "We'll get you out of here -"

"How?" Aang demands, slamming his glider down into the snow. A gust of wind blasts outward. Bodies thump faintly in the distance.

Toph stomps her foot uselessly, her face straining with effort. "Ugh! If...only there wasn't…so much ice...otherwise I'd have bent us a tunnel out of here already!"

Aang bares his teeth, leaping into the air with a twirl. The force of the wind nearly knocks Zuko over; Katara sways dangerously in his grip, her screams fading into whimpers. Snatches of it catch his ears: "- hurts, they ripped it out, just ripped it out -"

"Katara," Zuko tells her fiercely, shaking her again. "What happened? Tell me!"

She meets his gaze and for a split second, she seems to see him. Then her face screws up again, her fingers digging into her forehead.

"We need you to bend some of the ice away," Zuko tells her anxiously, his eyes flitting around to the slope of the snowbanks encircling them, the red glow of firelight lapping away at its edges. "It hurts, I know, but we need you to, Katara...it's the only way we can get out of here…"

Katara gasps, her fingers clenching into fists. Through her heaving breaths, Zuko catches the words squeezed through her clamped teeth. "...can't - can't bend -"

Zuko's eyes widen in horrified understanding. "No," he whispers uselessly, his grip weakening enough for her to wobble dangerously and slide back down onto the ground. "No!" He lunges, grabbing her around the waist as she lolls against him, barely conscious.

He stares upward helplessly, the ominous black hole in the sky seeming to fill the insides of his chest.

"The moon," he breathes slowly, "they can't bend without the moon, none of them can -"

"What are you talking about?" Toph snaps, trying in vain to reach for the ground buried far beneath the layers of snow and ice.

"The moon. It's gone." He points to the sky, as Katara had. Aang stops attacking to stare upward in dawning horror. "Zhao must have destroyed it, somehow - I don't know, and now -"

"Now they can't waterbend," Aang realizes in rising panic. "That's why the waterbenders fell. All of them - even Katara - they lost their bending -"

A blast of fire smashes through the raised slope of the snowbank surrounding them. Aang redirects it with a swing of his glider, but more pours through the breach where the steep slope had melted, allowing the attacking firebenders easier access.

"They're coming!" Toph yells, now trying to reach under the snow with both hands and knees on the ground. "Fuck! What do we do?"

Zuko spins around helplessly, his eyes flitting everywhere, trying to find some way to escape. But Katara was now down for the count, unable to bend, and Toph was nearly the same in this snow-covered environment. Aang repels the incoming enemy fire with strengthening gusts of air, but he was only one person, and the approaching firebenders were consolidating in number every second. Even if he and Aang teamed up, they could only hold them off and delay the inevitable for so long…

And what would Zhao do to them once he caught them? Katara, the most wanted waterbender in the world, who had nearly killed his father.

He pulls her tighter to his chest, unwilling to wonder what would await her if Zhao captured her.

But there was precious little time and no way around it. If his father had been willing to challenge his thirteen year old son to an Agni Kai for speaking out of turn, what unspeakable horror would he unleash on the waterbender who had nearly killed him on the night of his ascendency?

A waterbender turned powerless, with the sudden loss of the moon. It wouldn't be a fight, it would be a slaughter.

And suddenly through the chaos of a thousand fears that grip him at once, only a single thought seems to matter.

He would die before he let that happen to her.

"Stand back," he spits at Toph, still scrabbling at the ground.

"What - ah!" Toph leaps out of the way, barely missing the jet of fire Zuko pushes into the snow beneath her feet. A furious stream of glowing orange fuelled by the cold sense of purpose flooding through him, melting through the layers of snow and ice covering the ground.

Toph sits motionless, no doubt feeling the heat of his fire warm against her face. "Sparky," she says cautiously, "Sparky, what are you doing?"

"Finding a way out," he grunts. "Help me dig through the ice. There's got to be earth down there somewhere."

Toph nods grimly, before her hands crash together. A grinding sound rings out in the distance as a disembodied sheet of metal torn from the hull of an armoured tank whizzes toward them. A sudden motion reforms its shape into a pointed drill. With a yell of determination, she forces it into the ice melting slowly beneath his fire.

Some feet away, Aang gets knocked off his feet by a huge blast of fire. He feebly waves it away from him, but smaller fires flicker menacingly, lighting the snow around them. "Zuko!" he yells, staggering to his feet unsteadily, "Zuko, I need help!"

Cursing loudly, Zuko scrambles away, managing to deflect the worst of another fire blast. He hisses as flames lick the armour along his arms, but forces all his energy into raising a solid wall of fire.

Behind him, Toph clenches her teeth together, trying to drill through the ice in vain. "Come on," she hisses, "come on, you stupid ice -"

With a sudden cracking sound, the ice platform beneath them disintegrates. Gravity hooks beneath his navel and he barely has time to scream before the four of them plummet downward, the jagged ice shelf at the base of the cliff flying upward to meet them.

Aang cries out and a swirl of wind cushions their landing. Zuko clambers to his knees, glancing at the pristine ice glimmering around them with growing despair. The water glittering in the distance remains as motionless as death.

Then, a roar of fire punches straight toward them from overhead. He jolts into motion, kicking it into the cliff face behind them. Tiny fragments of shocking cold burst everywhere. "Toph -" he chokes out as more fire pours down toward them.

"I'm on it!" she grunts. With a flex, she raises her makeshift drill, boring furiously through the gouge in the cliff face, struggling desperately to find the earth buried underneath. Katara lies huddled by her feet, her whimpers and thrashing now gone chillingly silent.

Chains whiz downward along the icy stalagmites growing out of the ice. The approaching roar of engines and clanking machinery grow louder, as more fire rains down on them from above.

Zuko pushes as hard as he can, but the incoming blasts overpower him. He grunts as it flattens him, covering his face as hot flames cascade over his entire body.

Aang charges ahead, batting upward with one sweep of his glider after another. The force of the wind nearly sends Zuko flying as he totters to his feet. Wheezing, he stares desperately up at the silhouettes of descending soldiers illuminated in the endless fire raging down wildly to obliterate them.

But then, through the crashing of fire and whooshing of wind and the nearing clang of soldiers scaling down toward them, a high-pitched chink of metal meeting earth shatters through the air.

"Got it!" Toph shrieks, flinging her drill upward. It pierces through a chain and a handful of soldiers land on the ground in front of Zuko with a loud thump. "Someone, help me with Sugar Queen -"

Zuko steps backward, gasping for breath as the piled soldiers grumble and stir, before glancing up to meet his gaze. In a trice, they leap to their feet, bending plumes of fire toward him and the others.

He nearly buckles, struggling to wave off the enemy fire when -

"Zuko!" Aang calls from somewhere behind him, "Zuko, let's go!"

He glances over his shoulder to see Aang and Toph, both struggling to support Katara's dead weight between them. Aang scrambles into the narrow round tunnel carved into the ice, toward the dark hole at its end leading toward the base of the cliff. Then reaches out to grab Katara and tug her unmoving body in after him.

Something smashes into the side of Zuko's face. He yelps with pain as he falls over, clutching at his smouldering cheek. His limbs paralyze with reflexive fear as the fire licks at his face.

Boots slam into the ice in front of his face, racing toward his friends. Forcing himself back upright, his eyes starting to glaze over in exhaustion as Toph struggles to swat the soldiers back. One of them aims a fire fist directly above the tunnel Toph had painstakingly drilled. Ice piles up in front of it, threatening to bury its inhabitants alive.

With a struggling gasp, Zuko lands a spiral kick, toppling the soldiers over. Toph shoves the ice out of the mouth of the tunnel and scrambles inside. "Sparky, come on!"

He manages to catch her blind, anxious eyes vainly searching for him through the ice. Her jaw, clenched white with terror, blending in with the snow surrounding her.

But the jingling of more chains and the thump of more soldiers landing behind him makes him whip around. He kicks another plume of fire before spinning around, and finding himself now circled on all sides by Zhao's soldiers.

And more were coming.

"Go!" he screams at her, his chest squeezing tight with desperation, "go on, get out of here, go go go!"

He doesn't stop to hear if she says anything back. Forcing himself into a flying kick, a red rush of glowing fire looping around him on all sides. It expands outward, knocking his adversaries over with a loud thud.

Panting, heaving for breath, he glances back over his shoulder. But Toph and the others are gone, the narrow ice tunnel now blind-ending into a solid earth wall.

Relief batters him even as one of the soldiers leaps up to his feet and sends him sprawling with a neat kick to the chest. A grim smile works its way across his face even as he clambers back on all fours.

They're safe. The enemy fire forces him to his knees and he gasps, pushing everything he has left into a final blow. Even then, the helpless smile on his face only widens. Nothing else matters.

The thought makes him so light-headed, a faint giddiness overtakes him by the time someone finally charges straight through his flagging wall of fire. The blast knocks him off his feet, sailing through the air and landing heavily on his back.

It doesn't matter. She's safe. Zuko pushes painfully onto his knees, head bowed as more soldiers rappel down to surround him on all sides. Gasping, he curls his hands into fists, and lays them in his lap.

"Well, well, well," drawls an unpleasantly familiar voice. "Who do we have here? It can't be Crown Prince Zuko, could it?"

Zuko glances up through the heavy curtain of his sweaty hair tumbled in front of his eyes. Dozens of Empire soldiers in their smoke grey uniforms and face plates encircle him in two solid rings, poised to attack if he made any sudden movement.

And marching to a halt right in front of him, the shins of his boots level with Zuko's face, is none but Zhao himself, wearing his satisfaction as smugly as the Admiral's crest on his chestplate.

"So it is," Zhao remarks, his teeth baring into a grin. "Why, isn't it my lucky day? Who knew destroying the moon spirit's mortal body would bless my fortunes this way!"

"You'll never get away with this, Zhao," Zuko forces out, breathing heavily. He tries to lunge and suddenly, the rings of soldiers surrounding him jerk forward threateningly. Zuko's teeth grind together audibly as he grudgingly stills.

Zhao only laughs. "Won't I? In one night, I was able to accomplish what your father couldn't over the course of the entire polar war! The moon is dead, and waterbending with it. They will never rise again. The North belongs to us, now." His tongue dashes out to moisten his lips, a predator contemplating the prey trapped in its clutches. "There will be no end to the honour that awaits me back home. Especially when I bring back as my prisoner none but Prince Zuko himself. Guilty of the highest treason in the land, to await his father's justice."

Zuko swallows the sudden fear that overtakes him as Zhao kneels down to face him at eye level and leans in close. "I will enjoy watching you burn a second time, Your Highness," he murmurs, almost tenderly.

She's safe. They're safe. That's all that matters. Zuko struggles to hold Zhao's gaze, his thoughts his only remaining defense against the crippling blows of panic.

"I depart for Caldera City at first light," Zhao announces to his soldiers as he gets back to his feet, arms clasped behind his back. "I will take a very small crew with me, to hasten our flight. Admiral Chan will oversee the occupation of the north in my absence." He smiles cruelly, stroking his bushy whiskers. "I'm sure he'll find some use for its inhabitants. They'll be most cooperative without their bending, I imagine."

"You won't find all of them," Zuko blurts out with all his remaining strength. The soldiers encircling him grow tense, ready to deal a deadly blow at any moment, but he doesn't care. "You won't find my uncle. That's who he really wants."

Zhao grimaces, stung by Zuko's taunt. "We'll see about that. The North is vast and remote. No matter where your uncle hides, we have the manpower and the resources to wait him out." He turns on his heel, raising a hand to gesture at his soldiers. "Lock him up."

Zuko snarls, lunging to his feet with fire brimming in his fists. But then the ring of soldiers closes in on him, holding him down as he struggles. Someone snaps a pair of cuffs around his wrists, forcing him back onto his knees.

"It's only a matter of time before General Iroh surrenders or freezes to death," Zhao's voice cuts through the din. "But don't worry. You'll be long gone from here by then."

A mailed fist slams him in the face. Stars litter Zuko's vision, falling from the sky as the world slowly fades to black.

"Accept it, Prince Zuko. You've all lost."

Chapter 45: when all the heavens cried

Chapter Text

disclaimer. at the end of this wildest, wackiest year, atla still doesn't belong to me

author's notes. happy holidays everyone! i have to admit, i was really nervous about backlash for the last chapter, so thank you so much for choosing kindness instead! we're entering the final act of the story, and well...you can't have endgame without infinity war, unfortunately. everyone has lost what they value the most, and it certainly looks dark indeed. but dawn is coming, even if our heroes can't see it yet.

warning that this chapter contains a character death, so please proceed with caution if you find this upsetting.

as always, feel free to follow me on tumblr at colourwhirled-writesfor fic and general updates!

without further ado, i give you..

southern lights

chapter xlv. when all the heavens cried

the plastic face forced to portray
all the insides left cold and grey
there is a place that still remains
it eats the fear it eats the pain

"the day the world went away" / nine inch nails

The sun rises high in the midday sky, warming the cool wet air hanging low like a damp blanket across the palace grounds.

Mai pulls her cloak tightly around her, waiting patiently outside the training arena where the royal tutors held their lessons. The whooshing and crashing of bright blue flames illuminates the newly restored facades of the imperial palace, betraying the commotion within. She resists the urge to peek inside and instead forces herself to focus on the clouds wafting overhead, twisting in strange shapes and glowing golden in the weak spring sunlight.

It doesn't take long before Azula storms out, pulling her belt tight around her waist in a vehement motion. Mai doesn't catch the venomous mutterings the princess hisses under her breath, her hair neat in its topknot except for a few strands falling out of place.

"Lousy day?" Mai offers, catching up with Azula who only slows down marginally when she finally notices her.

But Azula snarls back, breathing blue fire into the air. "Lousy," she fumes, her hands clenching into tight fists. "It's almost as though the spirits switched my bending with that of my pathetic older brother's! I've never bent so poorly in my life!"

Mai shrugs, trying to navigate Azula's temper as though it was a bad summer storm. "So you had a bad day for the first time in your life. Big deal. You're entitled to one every now and then -"

"That's not good enough!" Azula whirls around, her fury crackling like lightning. "I've spent my whole life practicing for this, Mai. Every day, without fail, even if I was tired, or sick, or busy -" She tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, glaring as it stubbornly falls back out of place. "I can't let Father down like this. I can't."

"So don't tell him," Mai suggests. "Honestly, he's too busy running the country, he's not going to care about one measly practice."

But Azula's face only turns paler. She presses her lips together in a tight line, saying nothing.

The remainder of their walk to the main palace passes by in a tense silence. Mai keeps pace with the princess easily, grateful for the rare silence as the guards outside the throne room part to allow them entrance.

By now, the entire room has been almost fully restored from its destruction the night of Lu Ten's murder. Someone had obviously tried to make the throne room appear more grand or imposing, but to Mai, the resulting renovation just made everything dark and austere instead. The cheerful red lacquer was gone from the walls and pillars, replaced with gleaming wood the colour of old blood. The gold dragon relief had been torn down from the wall behind the throne, and even Ozai himself was barely visible, rendered to a faint silhouette behind the tongues of flame sweltering along the edge of the dais.

A long, low rectangular table stretches along the ground before the throne. The members of Ozai's emergency cabinet are seated around it, accompanied by their aides and observers. Pages rush in and out of the room, running messages back and forth frantically.

Azula takes her place at the table and Mai kneels discreetly some distance away, somewhere between the princess and her own father, who pores over a pile of letters and only pays partial attention to the matter being presented before the cabinet.

She watches Interior Minister Fukio sweat through his fine red velvets as he stammers through his report. "...more airships scheduled for production, however the workers are pushing back," he squeaks, his fingers trembling so much, the paper in his hands begins to rattle. "After the massacre of Blood Bay last week -"

"Blood Bay?" Mai's own father cuts in, sounding amused. "Whatever are you talking about?"

"The riots along the Budo Harbour last week, when the civilians tried to storm the public granaries," Azula supplies, sounding bored. "Captain Asaka and his Imperial firebenders worked hard to suppress it. But the people look upon it as a dark day, due to the number of casualties who were women and children. They call it the massacre of Budo Bay...or Blood Bay, for those feeling particularly dramatic." She rolls her eyes, waving a hand for Fukio to continue.

"Um - um, yes," the Interior Minister squeaks, staring at Azula in growing fear, "exactly as the Princess said...and, uh, in - in solidarity with the victims, the workers are refusing their orders and, as of yesterday, we've been struggling to contain the riots at the Jang Hui factory -"

Mai doesn't miss the flash of recognition in Azula's eyes at the familiar name. In her mind, she can already picture the knowing smile spreading across Kei Ling's face at the news.

"So send in an armed squadron to crush them," spindly General Bujing cuts him off dryly. "Whatever are you waiting for?"

But Fukio only gulps nervously. "But - but with the entire navy and airforce off to invade the north, we have so few soldiers left -"

"What about the Imperial Guard?" War Minister Qin interrupts, staring coldly at the Interior Minister. "Surely they have someone to spare?"

"Yes, send in the Imperial Guard," affirms Ozai from his throne up high, his voice resounding past the curtain of blinding flame and echoing around the corners of the room. "Crush the revolt and bring back their leaders. We will show the rest of these workers exactly what happens to those who conspire against the motherland."

Mai watches the fractional lift of Azula's eyebrow at the exchange, and fights to keep her own face still. Kei Lo's mother might be a crass commoner, but she was definitely onto something, she reflects sourly. With a veteran courtier's seasoned eyes, she had spotted the weaknesses in Ozai's iron-fisted rule, and now they could only sit back and watch unrest consume the land, one riot after another.

But Azula remains silent, choosing only to frown as Interior Minister Fukio drops into a kowtow. The paper crumples loudly in his shaking hands. "As you command, Your Radiance. I...I will speak to Captain Asaka of the Guard at once."

A low murmur ripples from among the pages and attendants surrounding the table. Mai watches their faces blanch in fear or twist in distaste. "Asaka," someone hisses under their breath, barely loud enough for her to hear, "the butcher of Blood Bay."

Mai tries not to shiver. She had heard the stories for herself, of how the Captain of the Imperial Guard had cruelly slaughtered innocent women and children with his own hands. It was said that the waters of Budo Bay ran red with their blood that day. A dark ugly cloud of misery had hovered over the capital ever since.

But as long as Azula held her tongue, Mai couldn't say anything either. Instead, she watches silently, reluctantly, as Fukio hurries out of the room, trailed by his attendants and pages. One of them, a young boy barely in his teens, struggles to balance all the rolled up scrolls in his arms, dropping them and picking them up quickly, before dashing out to catch up with the rest of Fukio's party.

Apart from her, nobody else seems to notice the boy's clumsiness. The low buzz of conversation settles around the table, and Mai, seated where she is in the periphery, only catches snatches of it.

"What are things coming to?" she hears her father mutter under his breath. "This is the fourth revolt we've had to contain at that damned factory...to say nothing of the city itself! What's happening out there?"

"I'll tell you what's happening out there, Governor Ukano," Azula speaks up sharply, sitting up straight and tall as though she had something that she desperately wanted to prove. "Fukio was correct on one count. We took the entire navy and airfleet and sent them away from their homes to fight a battle they didn't want to fight. All before we gave ourselves a chance to consolidate our hold on the people." Her shoulders stiffen, square and rigid under the weight of all her royal finery. "Now, while we are left with only a token force to maintain order, the commoners sow their dissent. To maintain the illusions of sanctions against the Earth colonies, food shipments have been halted and the people go hungry. To meet our appetite for war machines, the people have been pulled from their livelihoods to work in factories that are polluting their rivers, day and night in unsafe conditions."

Mai fights to contain her surprise. She thought Azula would have summarily dismissed Kei Lo's mother with her customary tyrannical impatience. But clearly, the princess had been giving her words more thought than anyone had expected.

Azula clenches her hands together to stop their trembling, her knuckles glowing stark and white as she continues, "We can crush the revolts as they happen, but under these conditions, we can only expect more to follow. That is, unless we do something to cut out these protestations at their source -"

"Treason," Ozai interrupts coldly. Azula instantly falls silent, the blood draining quickly from her suddenly fearful face. "These people have been given a rare chance to serve their country. They should be honoured. Any who oppose will learn what happens to traitors under my rule. Now, General Bujing. I believe you have important news to share."

"Yes, Your Radiance," Bujing answers, unrolling a scroll with an unpleasant smile. Mai watches Azula swallow a sigh of relief, her mouth pressing into a thin line as she stares hungrily at her father, the wall of fire blocking him from direct view reflecting in her amber eyes. A very small part of her even manages to feel sorry for the princess before General Bujing continues gloatingly, grabbing everyone's attention, "I have news from the battlefront."

Everyone gathered around the table goes suddenly silent with anticipation. The crackling of Ozai's flames is the only sound in the entire throne room.

"Zhao writes that his siege has been successful," Bujing reads, smoothing the paper along the tabletop. "Thanks to his destruction of the dread moon spirit, the entire Northern Water Tribe has surrendered."

Mai can barely hear his next words over the thunderous applause that breaks out around the table, and the sudden roar of blood loud in her ears. "He has taken their princess and all their chiefs hostage in order to secure their cooperation. Zhao leaves Admiral Chan in charge of overseeing the occupation of the North, while he flies back with a most important prisoner." Bujing's face splits into a wide-toothed grin that sends chills down Mai's spine. "Prince Zuko."

"No," Mai breathes out, unable to contain herself. She bites her lip instinctively, glancing around furtively, ready to lash back against anyone who may have heard her.

But luckily, everyone else is too busy celebrating to notice her indiscretion. Her father chuckles at a joke someone cracks from across the table, while Azula steeples her fingers in her lap.

"What about Uncle?" she asks pointedly, and the clamour dies down.

Bujing scans the rest of the message, his smile hitching at the corners. "He still eludes capture," he admits, before rolling the paper up again. "But it is only a matter of time."

"Excellent news, General Bujing," Ozai says. "May Agni smile upon you...and to Admiral Zhao, for delivering us such glorious news. My brother, forced into hiding among that wasteland." Mai's breath hitches at the cold smile evident in the Phoenix King's voice as he continues, sneering, "and my only son, Iroh's so-called heir, delivered back into my hands at long last."

"What an example we could make of him," Azula mumbles to herself with a bloodless smirk. "Poor little Zuzu, strung out to dry while awaiting Father's justice."

"With the North fallen for good, only the Earth colonies remain," Ozai muses, stroking his thin beard thoughtfully. "The Dai Li hold the region for now, but with Sozin's comet returning...perhaps we can change that."

Mai swallows nervously as Ozai pushes to his feet and everyone bows respectfully before him. "General Bujing, Commander Mukai. You will present an invasion plan at our next meeting, to be deployed the day the comet arrives."

The men kowtow gratefully, as Ozai continues. "And Azula, my daughter." The flames dance in front of him wildly, illuminating the mad glow of his eyes. "You have the enviable privilege of devising an appropriate punishment for your traitor brother."

Azula's face splits into a delighted grin as she presses her forehead into the ground. "Thank you, Father," she purrs, licking her lips with anticipation. "I can hardly wait."

At first, the only thing Katara is aware of is the ache consuming every part of her body.

It starts in her head, drilling into her temples, as though someone had driven a spike straight through her skull. Then it lances down her spine to jostle nauseatingly in the pit of her gut, before radiating out to her limbs and every sore, bruised inch of her that remains.

She groans unintelligibly, pushing something soft off her as she struggles to sit upright. A bright pulsing light flickers through her slitted eyes, making her head hurt even more, and she scrunches them shut again. Wincing at the unbelievable throbbing in her head, and how everything around her seemed to sway.

"Katara -"

"She's awake!"

Hands reach out to grab her by the shoulders, and she recoils at the sudden pain flaring everywhere they touch.

"Sorry," apologizes Aang's voice, somewhere by her ears and far too loud. Her face crumples, she tries to shake her head but everything suddenly begins to spin too fast.

She slumps against him, wincing as his arm gently wraps around her shoulders and supports her back up. "How's that?" he asks, his concern trembling through his voice.

Fine, she tries to say. "Phm," is all she manages to get out before bursting out coughing. She clutches at her chest, at her head and the searing pain splitting through it.

"Take it easy, Sweetness," advises Toph, her voice almost unrecognizable for how soft it was, low and hushed and scared all at the same time. Her hand rests against the small of Katara's back, a solid supporting weight. "You were out for a really long time."

Her words swim through Katara's ears for a long moment before she finally understands them. Drawing in a shuddering breath of cold air barely warmed through by a small fire, she finally manages to crack an eye open, and take in the small fire illuminating the cramped rocky cave surrounding them.

Her breathing quickens into small puffs of mist clouding around her mouth. The splitting ache migrates from her skull, a glaring sense of wrongness that makes her dizzy and sets the world off-kilter the longer she tries to focus on the humble fire burning in front of her. Sweat collects along her skin even as the cold eats away at it, a frozen fire burrowing persistently through the layers of furs bundled around her.

Her fingers dig into her scalp, trailing through the matted fall of her unbraided hair. Memories surge through her, too many at once, all clamouring for her attention but only making the dull throb in her head worse. "What - what happened?" she croaks, alarmed at how hoarse her voice has become.

Toph holds a cup in front of her with a shaking hand. "Here," she says shortly. "Drink. You'll feel better."

Katara accepts it without protest. Tilting it awkwardly to her mouth, the water dribbles down her face, blissful and cool against the parched rasp of her throat. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, before gulping the rest of it.

"Where are we?" she asks gingerly.

Aang lowers his head as he plucks the empty cup from her hand. "Somewhere outside Nutjuitok," he tells her, setting it down on the hardened snow packing the ground. "It's right in the heart of the North Pole."

"Oh." She tilts her head, studying the small cave, its cragged rocky surfaces barely high enough for any of them to stand upright. A small fire burned at the very back, around which she could see a pile of animal furs and a heap of mismatched pieces of armour.

My armour, she realizes with a pang of sudden alarm. Instinctively, she runs a hand along her body and feels only the soft cloth and fur of her parka. "Did I hit my head or something?" she asks, clapping her hand to her forehead. "What happened?"

Aang and Toph both freeze, their coats rustling as they turn to her. "You don't remember?" Aang asks delicately.

She scrunches her face, trying to remember. "We were defending the beach together," she says slowly, the images flashing through her mind clearly. "The fleet had fallen, Admiral Chan was about to surrender…" The pounding in her head intensifies as she continues, but only the memory of agony remains. "Then...something changed. I don't remember what." A sudden alarm pulses through her at the realization, the wrongness of everything eating away at her like a hole fraying in the center of her awareness. Something was horribly wrong with her, something was missing.

She glances down at herself, surprised and relieved to see all four of her limbs still intact. She could have suddenly sworn that one of them had gone missing. "What happened?" Her voice rises, small and scared as she folds her arms across her chest protectively. "What happened to me?"

Beyond the mouth of the small cave is more snow and darkness. The arctic wind howls outside, screaming an elegy Katara can't hear until Aang's grip on her shoulder tightens. "It was Zhao," he says tightly, an edge entering his voice that makes him sound uncharacteristically gruff. "Somehow, he...he destroyed the moon."

"What?" Katara exclaims, lurching forward. Her head spins again and she slumps. Tries to recall the night of the battle, but only remembers pain and screaming.

"He managed to track down the mortal body of the moon spirit," Aang explains patiently. "It was part of his plan. He kept us distracted with the siege...meanwhile, he snuck inland and…" His voice shakes before he breaks off, shaking his head.

"I don't understand," Katara chokes out numbly. "The moon spirit...you mean it was real? All along?" Her mind reels at the unexpected revelation. "I always thought the spirits were just stories."

But Toph only lets out a dark laugh. "Oh, it was real all right, Sweetness. Real and in the flesh, mortal and everything." She hurls a stick onto the fire and it flares suddenly, illuminating the scowl twisting across her face. "And Zhao murdered it."

Katara blinks as everything goes quiet. A strange buzzing sound seems to echo in her ears as she stares at Toph blankly. "That's not possible, Toph," she insists, feeling more and more lightheaded. "I mean - even if it was real, it's a spirit. You can't kill a spirit…" She frowns with confusion, the possibility filling her with more alarm. "Can you?"

Aang swallows, seeming to choose his words with great care. "It seems that the moon spirit was one of those that crossed over into our world and gave up its immortality." He lowers his head mournfully. "When Zhao killed it, he destroyed the moon for good."

"But -" Katara stammers, horrified, "but that would mean -"

She closes her eyes, breathing suddenly too quickly. "The moon went red that night," she remembers, her heart hammering so fast it makes her feel sick. "It - it bled. And then..."

"Katara -"

"He killed it. He destroyed the moon," she realizes, her eyes widening as she suddenly, immediately understands what exactly had gone missing that night.

Her stomach churns as she stares at the snow with tears brimming in her eyes. With a gasp, she tries to pull on it, realizes that a part of her has been trying to call out to all the water around her, all this time...and failing.

She clambers onto her knees, jerking with her wrists. A simple motion, just to pull the snow upward, a child could do it, come on…

But the snow remains stubbornly packed onto the ground, heedless of her straining motions.

"Katara," Aang repeats softly, "Katara, you'll hurt yourself."

She slams her fists into the snow, screaming in despair. Then a hand suddenly covers her mouth and she recoils in shock.

"Sorry," Aang apologizes, removing his hand sheepishly. "I know it's a lot, Katara… But you have to be quiet. Otherwise, you might give our location away."

"Give our location away?" Katara echoes incredulously. "To who?"

But Aang glances cautiously to the mouth of the cave, and Katara follows his gaze with a sudden plummeting of her heart. Because if Zhao had destroyed the moon that night, then it wasn't just her who had lost the ability to waterbend. It was everyone - the entire tribe.

Her heart shrivels at the thought of so much loss. "He won," she stutters in disbelief. "Zhao won. I can't believe it - he actually won?"

Aang nods mournfully. Toph punches the cave wall with the side of her fist. "Yeah. Once all the waterbenders couldn't bend anymore, he made quick work of the defenses. It was all the rest of us could do to get away."

Katara shakes her head numbly. It was like a nightmare made real. It shouldn't have been possible, and yet the entire Northern Water Tribe had broken like a house of glass under Zhao's deadly stroke. "What happened to everyone?"

She doesn't miss the sudden stricken look that crosses Toph's face before she lowers it, unable to say anything. Aang glances at her with sad eyes before he answers carefully. "The Air Nomads and General Iroh's men did what they could to protect and rescue as many waterbenders as they could. But Katara, there were too many to save, and the invaders weren't backing down." A tear trails down his cheek and he wipes it away vehemently. "We had to take who we could and run, before Zhao's men took us prisoner too."

"That's why we're here," Katara whispers, staring at the tiny cave with horrified understanding. "It's...it's the only place we could hide from Zhao's men."

Aang nods again. "It's far enough inland that Zhao's men won't bother following us. But we still have to be careful. They've occupied the cities and the villages, and if they find any sign that we're here…" He trails off unhappily.

Katara stares at him wildly, unwilling to believe it. It was too terrible to be true, and yet here they were, all alone and abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Then she stares at Toph, at the small fire, and it hits her then, what else was missing. "Where's Zuko?"

Aang remains so still, she wonders if he even heard her question. Until she sees another tear slide down his face, and then another.

"Toph," she says, her heart hammering with still more dread, "where's Zuko?"

But Toph only punches the wall again, and then again, over and over. Gravel scatters ominously from the ceiling.

"Toph," Aang admonishes, wiping his face absently, "you're going to cave us in. Stop that."

But the blind girl only covers her face, her knuckles dark with dirt and blood, and doubles over, her shoulders shaking violently. "He's gone!" she cries and with a crashing shock, Katara realizes that Toph is sobbing inconsolably, "Sparky's gone, that stupid idiot threw himself at Zhao's men so we could escape, and now he's gone!"

"No," Katara whispers. Everything suddenly goes cold and quiet. "No, he can't…he can't be -"

"It's true," Aang says in a breaking voice, and to her dismay, he's crying too. "There were too many of them. Zuko sacrificed himself to save us…"

Katara shakes her head, clenching her teeth together to stop them from chattering. This can't be real, this can't be happening.

"Bodhi said Zhao took him prisoner," Aang continues in a shaking thread of a voice. "They put him onto the first airship back to the Fire Nation."

She stares from Aang to Toph and then to the darkness beyond the mouth of the cave, half-expecting Zuko to step in any moment, windswept and covered with snow but still very much here.

But the small cave opening still remains empty, except for the wind shrieking with a ferocity that echoes the tumult crashing inside her chest. She wipes at her eyes, surprised to still find them dry. Perhaps it was a pain that went beyond tears.

She doesn't realize that she's gotten to her feet until the world sways unsteadily around her, the roof of the cave scraping against the top of her head as she stands up on weak, shaking legs. She staggers, almost losing her balance before grabbing on to one of the cave walls, leaning against it to propel herself forward.

"Katara," Aang says urgently, somewhere behind her, "Katara, what are you doing?"

But she pushes forward, the tiny cave seeming to close in on her, clamping around her so tightly that it becomes impossible to breathe. Tottering out into the night, the exposed arctic tundra yawning open around her, an endless expanse of rolling white slopes studded with humble tents pitched quickly and glowing weakly with tiny fires. The wind cries harder, as though unleashing the emotions choking in her throat and burning saltwater in her eyes, freezing where they manage to spill onto her cheeks.

She marches forward a few steps before tripping on a lump of snow and collapsing. Pushing herself roughly back onto all fours, she stares up desperately, the sky an uninterrupted mass of black. The darkness settles on her like a shroud, making the cold north wind feel even colder, the world seem suddenly so much bigger, vast and cruel and ready to crush her on a whim.

Then the others scramble next to her, kneeling beside her. She tries to brush them off before lunging to her feet again. But her legs protest and she struggles to find her balance, swaying unsteadily with each step.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered. She might be frail and unsteady and unable to bend, but she was still free. And that meant she could still do something, anything, to get Zuko back.

"Where are you going?" Aang calls after her, easily keeping pace with her staggering footsteps.

"I don't know," Katara mumbles, studying her surroundings with increasing desperation. The tundra rolled on for miles, with a faint glow in the distance that marked a city. Every now and then in the distance, the low roar of a passing airship cut across the darkened sky. But the rivers, the sea, the pulsing lifeblood of the tribe, were nowhere near them and her heart sinks. "If only we could find a boat -"

"A boat?" Aang repeats incredulously.

" - we could find a boat, capture it, and sail back to the Fire Nation," she continues, now turning around, searching desperately for water.

She barely catches the way Aang's face crumples in the dim firelight. "Katara, do you even hear yourself? Where are we supposed to find a boat?"

"I dont know!" Katara marches forward another step, her head spinning so hard it makes her dizzy. "But we have to try, Aang, we can't just stay here like this! We have to save him, we can't just give up…" Her legs suddenly buckle beneath her and she collapses onto her knees, the tears suddenly pouring down her face. "We can't give up on him like this."

The snow crunches gently under Aang's feet as he kneels down next to her. "Katara," he says softly, laying a hand gently on her shoulder, "Katara, he's been captured. Even if we got a boat and sailed after him, it wouldn't be enough. There are no tides anymore. By the time we got to the Fire Nation -" He breaks off, overcome.

And then it hits her, the full weight of everything that had happened. She had lost her bending. The entire Northern Water Tribe had fallen to the Fire Empire and Zuko was gone beyond their reach or help.

And she hadn't even had a chance to apologize to him properly...

Guilt racks away at her with the memory of their last interaction haunting her. How he'd risked his hard-won alliance with Hahn to get her out of trouble, and then in turn, how she'd screamed at him and pushed him away. How he'd backed away from her, slowly, his need for her always tempered by his respect for what she needed for herself.

"I want him back," she says stupidly, her voice thick with tears. "Aang, I want him back."

Aang's head settles against her shoulder and his arms wrap tightly around her, his grief meeting her own. She closes her eyes, her mind suddenly cramming bright with images, too many of them. Zuko grabbing her forearm to steady her before she fell, the relief in his eyes as they stared at each other, stunned after bending steam in battle. The strength in his arms when he held her tightly, the night Hahn had announced her betrothal to Imnek. Was that really the last time she would ever hold him again? The heat of his body curled up behind her under the animal skins in his tent, the fleeting softness of his smile. All burning bright like precious gemstones in her memory...lost before she even had a chance to consider their worth.

The piercing feeling in her chest twists deeper and deeper. She wonders if this was how Zuko had felt the night she pushed him away, like her heart was breaking in two and she would never be whole again. If so, she deserved it, every bit of the pain tearing fiercely through her.

"We didn't even get to say goodbye," she chokes out, covering her face with her hands. "Aang, what are we going to do? How am I supposed to go on without him?"

"I'm so sorry, Katara," Aang breathes with a mournful sigh, his hand stroking the fall of her hair consolingly. "You're in love with him, aren't you?"

Katara freezes, before staring at him in shock. The searing wind turns the wetness on her face to ice, and threatens to peel her skin off, the way Aang's observation just had.

"Love?" she repeats thickly, her entire body juddering with the word. Was that what it was? Was that what made Zuko her shelter from the ugliness of the world, the one person who unflinchingly saw her for who she truly was? Was that why she felt like she had now lost the very best and brightest part of herself, with no way to get it back again?

She bows her head, leaning against Aang as the sobs shudder through her. "Does it count if I only figured it out after I lost him?" she whispers forlornly.

He hugs her back, letting her burrow her face into his chest. "Of course it counts," he tells her with a tenderness that makes her feel utterly wretched. "He must have known."

"How could he?" Katara croaks. "I barely even realized it myself." She sniffles pathetically, wiping her nose with a frozen hand. "Aang, I miss him so much."

"I miss him too. We all do." Aang's hands settle on both her shoulders, steadying her as she sits back on her haunches. She stares blankly at his face, still mottled from crying but hardening resolutely. "But we can't let his sacrifice go to waste. He gave up everything so you could be free. Don't squander that, Katara."

"But -" she chokes, her mind racing with sudden fear of what lay in wait for Zuko, "they're taking him back to the Fire Nation as a prisoner. Back to his family, his dad -" Her breath hitches in her throat, turning sickly cold with dread. "They're going to kill him. If they haven't already."

Aang hangs his head, a shadow crossing his face. "It's out of our hands now."

The sound of closely approaching footsteps cuts through the screaming of the wind. Katara pulls away from Aang, wiping at her tearstained face with the sleeve of her parka. Takes a deep shaking breath to try hold herself together as she glances up squinting in the darkness to see Toph drawing near with Gyatso and - her heart plummets - General Iroh.

Aang clears his throat, perhaps sensing the awkwardness before it has a chance to settle. "General Iroh," he greets, his voice still raw from crying, "you're back already? What's going on out there?"

But Iroh only bows his head without saying anything.

"From what we could tell, Zhao's men have established a presence in all the major cities and villages across the North Pole," Gyatso supplies, stepping in delicately when it becomes clear that Iroh wouldn't answer. "They took Princess Yue hostage, and Hahn and the other band chiefs as well when they finally surrendered. We've heard Admiral Chan has been left in charge up here, while Zhao is already en route to the Fire Nation."

"Couldn't we go after him?" Toph asks desperately, her hand tight where it grips Iroh's. "You guys could all get on your sky bison and take out his airship -"

"Even if we could, we don't have the numbers to defend against their occupying force," Gyatso replies heavily. "Without the waterbenders, our ability to fight back is very much limited."

"So that's it?" Katara spits acidly. "We just let them win?"

"I didn't say that," Gyatso answers, kneeling to face her directly. "Our resources are limited, Master Katara. But we still have most of our Air Nomads and sky bison, enough of Iroh's soldiers, a handful of Water Tribesmen we were able to rescue from the front." He pauses, his pale eyes shimmering in the encompassing darkness. "And you three."

Katara huffs, thinking of Zuko flying back to the Fire Nation all alone. "What little good that is. I'm not a master of anything anymore." She holds her hands out helplessly. "Without my bending, what good am I? And the rest of the tribe - how are they supposed to fight back?"

"There are other ways to fight," Gyatso says, clasping her trembling hands with his knotted ones. "Or have you learned nothing from your time among your tribe?" He regards her with a piercing stare that reminds her uncomfortably of Iroh. "We will find a way. Until then...we will wait. We will endure. And we will resist." He pauses to glance up at Iroh's shadowed face. "However we can."

Katara nods, her throat closing up alarmingly at the thought of the daunting task ahead. To survive and find the strength to fight back when simply standing upright felt like an immense effort. "And Zuko? How do we help him?"

"We cannot." This time it is Iroh who answers. "My nephew is now far beyond our help, I fear."

"So we just give up on him? After what he did for us?" Katara demands hotly. Her temper flares wildly as she whirls on Iroh in desperation. "He's your nephew, your heir - how can you of all people say that? How can you just stand here and abandon him like that?"

But Iroh meets her eyes with his grief-ridden ones, silencing her with a stare. "I fear for his life as much as you do, Sifu Katara. He is the son I chose."

With a sickening lurch, Katara suddenly remembers that it hadn't been so long since Iroh had lost Lu Ten…

"But Zhao and my brother are arrogant, unpredictable men. There is a chance they may keep him alive as a hostage, to gloat at their victory...or to make an example of when they feel the time is right." Iroh lets out a heavy sigh. "Zuko may yet find a way to navigate that den of viper-foxes. It will be the hardest thing he has ever done. But we must believe that he can do it"

He takes a halting step toward her and Katara tenses, but when his hand rests on the side of her face, it is comforting and warm. "In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength."

Katara stares at him, suddenly overcome and unable to speak. Even after every hurtful thing she had said and done, Iroh was still comforting her. Did the man have no self-respect, or was his heart simply that big?

She only manages to duck her head in acknowledgment before he backs away testily. "You should go inside. It is too cold to be out on a night like this. And keep your fires low. The airships patrol these parts every now and then, and we cannot risk being spotted."

"Got it," Aang answers, taking Katara's hand in her own. "Come on, Katara, let's go inside…"

Katara allows herself to be pulled to her feet as Iroh turns to the rest of them. "We can discuss more in the morning. Get some rest, if you can. A good night's sleep can make even the tallest of problems seem small." His gaze lingers on Katara's face, before he lets out another sad sigh. "It is good to see you back on your feet, Sifu Katara."

Katara chews guiltily at her lip as he trudges away, saying nothing more.

In his dreams, he always ends up back at the edge of the water.

He peers into its surface, his heart hammering a panicked rhythm. Fearing the truths he might see reflected back at him in its undisturbed mirror. But though he sees the sky, cloudy and grey and completely obscuring the sun, the muddled dark green of the grass and vines and stunted ugly trees surrounding him….his own reflection is blank, absent, an empty space peering back up at him.

Lee scrambles backward, swaying unsteadily and gasping for breath as though he had just been dangling over the edge of an abyss. The invisible emptiness stretches out before him, an omniscient terror materializing into the shape of the swamp, constantly haunting his visions with its looming eerie presence.

A blur of motion in the corner of his eye captures his attention. Snapping around, he spots someone racing through the low brush covering the grassy knolls of the swamp. A woman, perhaps, someone he can barely recognize, a flash of blue and white moving fast.

He chases after her, something in his chest tightening as the ground beneath his feet grows soft with mud. "Hey!" he shouts, trying to close the distance between them and failing, his quarry remaining just out of reach. "Hey!"

Ducking under a low-hanging branch, he rounds the corner to see the woman stumble to a halt at the edge of a watery pool, one of countless others studding the swamp with their still surfaces and hidden depths. Blinking, he sees her illuminated in a stream of shifting light - a woman he barely recognizes, his age or maybe younger, with striking blue eyes and hair as white as moonlight. She gives him a sad smile as he approaches cautiously, his mouth running dry with foreboding.

"You came back," she says in a hollow, ringing voice. "At least I got to see you one last time."

She takes a step back and Lee finds his voice. "Don't!" he yells hoarsely, starting for her again, "Get away from the water!"

But no matter how quickly he ran, it was already too late. In a smooth, unearthly motion, the water rises up, swallowing the woman in a longing, hungry motion.

By the time he reaches the spot where she had once stood, only the sound of her voice remains. "Goodbye," it breathes, echoing a dizzying knell in his ears, "I will always be with you..."

Lee awakens yelling, with his heart hammering and cheeks wet with tears.

He wipes his face with the back of his hand. He didn't remember the girl from his dream any more than he could remember his old life, and yet part of him feared losing her. Or had he already lost her? Would he ever see her again or, with a sudden pang, had he already begun to mourn her?

Then, the abrupt sound of something crashing loudly outside his prison cell tears him from his thoughts.

He rubs his head in confusion, the unsettling visions still fresh in his mind when a loud moan echoes through the bars of the heavy metal door.

"Hello?" he calls, jumping up from his corner of the squat stone cell. "Hello, who's out there!"

The moaning continues, growing steadily louder. Lee furrows his brow, vaguely recognizing it as a man's voice. Shaking his wrists, he trudges as close to the door as the clinking chains around his legs would allow. Squinting into the dank green light of the corridor outside, he peers through the slitted window to see a man in a Dai Li uniform crumpled on the ground.

"Arrluk?" he asks, recognizing the waterbender curled onto his side. "Arrluk, are you okay?"

The Water Tribe man doesn't answer, or seem to hear him at all. His shaking fingers clutch at the sides of his head. His conical metal hat topples to the floor with a hollow metallic clang.

The sounds of more groans resonate from down the hall. Lee tilts his head, struggling to see with his narrow tunnel of visibility. His heart races as he glimpses more of the uniformed waterbenders, collapsed on the ground and writhing in agony.

"Haru!" he yells as loud as he can, his palms suddenly slick with sweat. "Haru, something's wrong with the guards! Now's our chance!"

He doesn't even hear Haru's muffled response from the cell next door before the floor rumbles beneath his feet. Spinning around, he spots the wall separating their cells sliding slowly downward. A relieved smile springs across his face as he spots Haru and Ty Lee, ashen and grimy in the faint murky light, but still alive and otherwise unharmed.

He holds out his hands as Haru raises a jagged rock and smashes the chains locking his wrists and ankles. The broken metal links clang dully as he shakes them out, willing the feeling back into them.

"Lee!" He nearly loses his balance as Ty Lee jumps on him with a big hug. "Thank Agni you're okay!"

He stumbles backward, awkwardly patting her back. "It's good to see you too." He peers over her shoulder at the earthbender making quick work of the shackles on his feet. "Haru, we've got to move quickly. Can you get us out of here?"

"Not a problem," announces Haru, already turning to face the door. With the hollow swish of chains slicing through the air, the stone wall around the door splits through the middle, making an archway leading straight into the corridor. "Come on, let's go!"

The three of them dash through it, gaping at the sight that greets them outside. The guards outside both their cells are contorted and screaming, barely even noticing their escape. Ty Lee pauses, glancing at them nervously. "What do you think happened to them?"

"I don't know, and I'm not about to wait to find out," Haru declares, already scanning the rest of the hallway. "We need to find Suki and get the hell out of here."

Lee spots another guard collapsed in front of a large barred door further down the hallway. "There! She must be in that one!"

They race toward it, sidestepping all the waterbenders convulsing on the ground. Lee shudders with unease at the sight of all them, even as the ceiling rattles warningly with the approach of more Dai Li earthbenders.

With a yell, Haru bends an opening into the wall. Lee squeezes through it and nearly gets pulverized by a boulder flying straight toward him.

"Haru! Ty Lee!" he screams, ducking just in time. The boulder whizzes over his head and crashes into the ground next to the prone waterbender huddled outside the cell.

In a soaring blur of pink, Ty Lee somersaults through the room, leaping off the corners of the walls before landing on the sole Dai Li agent still standing. With a flurry of jabbing motions, the earthbender crashes to the ground, paralyzed.

Hearing Haru rushing in behind him, Lee tears his eyes off Ty Lee to take in the dimly lit cell opening around them. It was slightly larger than the one he had been trapped in, with the same rough stone walls and low ceiling boxing around its sparse occupants. His blood chills at the two cots shoved against the back wall, its occupants tied to them in full body restraints. The lone earthbender remains motionless at Ty Lee's feet. More figures wearing Dai Li uniforms are collapsed on the ground around the cots - waterbenders, he surmises, mysteriously incapacitated in the same way as the ones outside.

And then as he takes another step forward, his heart plummets. Everything turns cold.

The faint glow of the glowing stones embedded into the walls throws their faces into cold relief. Suki on one cot, and Jun on the other, both appearing ghostly white in the pale green light and still as death.

"Suki!" Ty Lee's cry reaches his ears from a million miles away. He barely registers her scrambling over to the Kyoshi warrior's side. Leaning over, she fumbles with the restraints tying Suki to the cot, until she pulls them free and they hang limply over the sides. "Suki, wake up!"

Suki's head flops listlessly as Ty Lee shakes her. Guilt bores into the pit of Lee's stomach as he stares at her, the war paint smeared along her face and only accentuating the bloody bruises blooming on the bare skin underneath. Tearing his gaze away reluctantly, he instead rushes over to Jun's side and slices her restraints free too.

"C'mon Jun, wake up," he says, slapping her cheek. "I'm not about to let those bastards get the better of you now."

But the bounty hunter doesn't stir. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he grabs at her shoulders, shaking her violently. "Jun, Jun, wake up!"

Her head lolls from one side to the other. He stares at her in mounting horror, staring at the slight part of her mouth, the waxy sheen of her skin. She's unconscious, he thinks frantically, trying to slide his arm under her and brace her weight, just unconscious, she can't be -

Behind him, someone lets out a gasp and a sudden yell of pain.

"You're awake!" Ty Lee cries, sounding tearful and overjoyed at the same time. "Suki, Suki, it's okay - you're okay!"

"Fuck! My leg!" Suki curses suddenly, her voice tired and hoarse but still hers, and something rises marginally in Lee's chest at the sound of it. "Those bastards broke my leg!"

"Here, let me help you - Haru, get over here and help me get her down!"

Lee glances over his shoulder, catching Ty Lee and Haru working together to hoist Suki off the cot and standing upright on trembling legs. He stares in shock at the injuries lining the Kyoshi Warrior's entire body, visible in the dim light as vivid dark bruises and bumps peeking through the rips in her armour. For a brief moment, her eyes meet his and horror lances down his spine. Then her mouth tightens into a stoic grimace.

"I've got you," Ty Lee says, hooking her arm around Suki's shoulder. "Just lean on me, we'll get you fixed in no time…"

"Lee, come on!" Haru calls, flanking Suki's other side.

"I'm coming!" Lee yells back, turning back to Jun with growing desperation. "Jun, come on, snap out of it, you have to -"

But to his dismay, she doesn't make a sound.

Growling, he tries to pull her upright. But her skin is ice cold to the touch and, his heart racing furiously, deathly pale all over.

She isn't breathing, he realizes, struck by her unnatural stillness.

He prods her wrist, her neck, desperately searching for a pulse.

"Lee!" someone calls in the distance, through the growing rattle of more footsteps approaching in the hallway. "Lee, hurry -"

Come on, he pleads silently, willing the skin under his fingers to move as the moments stretch out in a breathless eternity, come on Jun, wake up, please -

" - they're coming, we have to go, quick -"

"She's gone." Everything goes suddenly blurry. Lee blinks and hot tears slide down his cheeks. Jun's motionless body slides back into focus. Deathly still, waxy pale under the remnants of her makeup, all the arrogant quirks smoothed from her face into a bland, lifeless mask. Jun, but not really Jun.

Not anymore.

"She's gone," he repeats, choking on the words as he stumbles backward. The walls seem to close in on him, the air in his chest seems to turn to lead. "Jun - she's dead, she...they…"

Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to run away, but Jun's body lying before him seems to anchor him to the spot. He turns to face the others, but the sight of Suki slumped between Ty Lee and Haru, barely able to support her own weight on her broken leg only makes him feel worse. Your fault, the snide voice in the back of his head reminds him, all your fault.

He whirls around, away from Jun, away from Suki and the others. A shrill roar fills his ears, drowning out the various other sounds swirling around him. The voices of his friends clamouring in shock, the thumps and thuds overhead from what must have been every last guard manning the underwater fortress, headed straight their way.

And the cries, the piteous whimpers of all the waterbenders collapsed on the ground outside...

Lee straightens, wiping his face as his vision focuses like a searchlight upon the two waterbenders huddled by the cots. He isn't even aware of marching straight toward them, only of the fury surging through him like fire in his veins.

He reaches blindly for the nearest one, a woman appearing not so much older than himself, crouched in agony and leaning against the foot of Jun's cot. His hands close around the neck of the dark green robes, the bright circular insignia emblazoned on the chest flashing in his eyes.

"You killed her," Lee croaks. His anger flares wilder as the waterbender gasps in shock, as though noticing him for the first time. Bright blue eyes blink in confusion, staring wide and fearful into his own. With a snarl, his fingers tighten, yanking the woman up by her neck in a swift, violent motion. "You killed her!" he screams into her face.

The woman's eyes scrunch shut again, her face lined with distress. The swell of her throat moves up and down as she gulps, nervously. "It - it was an accident!" she squeaks, in the same accent that grates at his nerves with its maddening familiarity. "I didn't mean to -"

"She's lying!" Suki snaps from the other side of the room. Lee glances at her, surprised as she gingerly shifts her weight. Her face mottles angrily as she stares at the waterbender hanging limply in his hands. "They knew exactly what they were doing, and they didn't care!"

"That's - that's not true," the woman whispers, clutching at his wrists with viselike fingers. "We - we told Shen Hai to stop, Iluak and I…" Her eyes flick over to the Dai Li earthbender crumpled unconscious in the middle of the cell, at the other waterbender struggling to clamber onto his hands and knees by Suki's feet, before pleadingly meeting his again. "We told him he was going too far, that it would go beyond our ability to heal, but he wouldn't listen…"

"Oh," Suki spits, biting back a gasp of pain as she jostles her broken leg. "I suppose that makes you a real hero then. My mistake."

"We let it go too far, it's true!" the woman pleads, and Lee is repulsed by the tears welling in her horrified eyes, "but we had always been able to heal them from whatever Shen Hai inflicted upon them...until...until -"

"Until what?" Lee demands, his fingers tightening around the woman's neck. "You just got sick of it and let my friend die?"

"Until something took our bending away!" the woman bursts out in tears. "I don't know what, or how, but - it happened to us, all of us, and now we can't heal! We couldn't heal her, we couldn't save her…" She trails off, her entire body racked with sobs of regret.

Lee's fingers loosen despite himself, his eyes flitting between the two waterbenders in the cell. Thinks of all the collapsed ones crying for help in the corridor. "All of you?" he asks incredulously. "How could you all just lose your bending like that?"

"I don't know!" cries the woman, shaking her head. "I don't know, nobody does -"

"How awfully convenient," he snarls, throwing her down to the ground with a loud thud. He stares at Jun's body with a rising swell of fresh anger, the waterbender's explanation offering no closure or comfort at all. "You expect me to believe all that mumbo-jumbo?"

"Look for yourself," the waterbender whispers, pointing with a shaking hand at the other waterbender in the cell, at the gaping hole carved into the wall and the space beyond it. "If we could save her, we would, believe me. We're not killers, we're not...we're not -"

"Save it," he tells her bluntly. "You're going to pay for what you did to Jun! I'm going to make you pay -"

"Lee!" Haru's yell cuts him off. "Lee, they're coming, we have to go!"

He directs one last ferocious glare at the waterbender cowering before him. But as he turns on his heel to catch up with the others -

Bang!

The ground snaps beneath his feet. He yelps as he tumbles over, the rock springing up around him like teeth gnashing out from below.

Glancing up, he spots another Dai Li agent framed in the archway carved into the wall. Struggling to regain his balance, he watches as though in slow motion as Haru lunges forward. The ground bubbles up beneath the enemy agent, threatening to knock him over.

The Dai Li earthbender leaps into the air with a swish of rippling dark velvet. In a smooth motion, he lands with the force of a small earthquake. Shockwaves radiate outward, and the world sways warningly around Lee before he falls over again.

Haru grits his teeth, deflecting the worst of the blows. Suki lets out an agonized yell as the sudden movements jostle her broken leg again. Ty Lee grips her more tightly, torn between supporting her friend and jumping into the fray.

Finding his balance briefly, Lee reaches for his belt. His hand closes around the trusty boomerang, its solid presence comforting as an old friend. Then, he lets it fly.

The whirring metal strikes the enemy agent right in between the forehead. The world rights itself, going suddenly still as he collapses, suddenly unconscious.

"Good one!" Haru crows as Lee dashes in the hallway to retrieve his weapon. "Come on, Suki - can you walk?"

But as Suki mumbles a bleary response, another swaying motion catches Lee in alarm.

Grabbing the boomerang, he manages to clutch at the wall for support just as the ground slides out from beneath him. Cursing, he peers down the hall to see more uniformed earthbenders, maybe half a dozen left in the entire fortress, advancing toward him.

He tries to call out for help, but a rock shaped like a hand whizzes straight toward his face. He ducks and it smashes into the wall behind him, crumbling into a shower of pebbles to the ground.

Gasping in relief, he charges down the corridor, straight toward the enemy benders marching over the sprawled waterbenders without pause. Praying that Haru and Ty Lee were behind him, somewhere, before a solid wall springs up right in front of him.

He smashes into it and falls back along the ground. Blinking stars out of his eyes, and feeling the air knocked out of him, he manages to fling the boomerang again. It flies at a low arc, bypassing two of the agents charging toward him on a rock slide, before it curves back sharply and takes out a third with a strike to the back of his head.

"Help!" he finally cries, scrabbling to his hands and knees. "Haru, Ty Lee, help!"

The ground splits beneath him and he screams. His hands fly out, clinging with all his strength to the edge of the pit yawning below him. He scrunches his eyes shut, trying to ignore the frantic pulse of his heart and focus instead on dragging himself out.

But through the sounds of the scuffle unfolding behind him, he manages to hear the nearing footsteps of an enemy bender. His eyes snap open fearfully. His legs kick helplessly, trying and failing to find solid ground. He cranes his neck upward, taking in the uniformed Dai Li agent towering over him, the soles of his boots inches away from where Lee's fingers dig painfully into the dirt.

He gulps, staring into the shadowed depths beneath the sloping metal hat, hiding the agent's face from view. If he could see a face, Lee imagines it would be smiling ferally at him, savouring the feeling of squashing him like an inconsequential stick-bug, dangling helplessly within his grasp.

Still. At least it was worth a try. He thinks of Jun's body back in the cell and the defiance burns like a small fire in his gut. Maybe they'll kill us quickly, that'd be nice -

But then a sudden thunk smashes across his thoughts. Blinking stupidly, he expects excruciating pain and falling, but finds himself still holding on to the edge desperately.

The enemy agent suddenly crumples before him. His body slams into the ground, the sloping hat ringing like a shrill metal gong as it hits the earth.

And, hunched over his body, clutching a large rock in his hand, panting heavily in agonized exhaustion, is Arrluk.

Lee gapes at him, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly as the waterbender flings the rock aside, pausing to stare contemptuously at the unconscious agent. Then, to his surprise, Arrluk grabs him by the forearms and yanks with all his strength.

Together, they manage to haul him out of the pit. Lee wheezes with relief as he clambers back onto solid ground. "Thanks," he chokes out.

But Arrluk's expression only darkens as he glances over his shoulder down the corridor. Lee follows his gaze. His fragile hope plummets as the remaining Dai Li earthbenders crush toward them in a leering menace.

"That was very foolish, Arrluk," one of them intones in a chillingly monotonous voice. "Long Feng will be displeased when he finds out. You should have known better than to turn against us."

They pause in a formation, each sliding into an offensive earthbending stance. The agent leading them cocks his head with what looked like amusement. "And with your bending gone too. What use are you and your brethren to us now?"

But Arrluk's face twists in anger. "No, you are the foolish ones," he snaps. Through the waves of pain battering him, he still pushes unsteadily to his feet. "You should have known better than to harm someone from the Water Tribes."

The sound of the Dai Li's raucous laughter fills the corridor. It echoes in Lee's ears, making the inside of his skull throb unforgivingly. "Was that a threat?" the lead earthbender sneers, taking a threatening step forward. "What could you possibly do without your bending?"

Arrluk smiles grimly, but says nothing. Lee watches him in rising dread.

Then, just as the earthbenders dip in unison, pushing the earth up around them, something else moves in the dim green light.

Lee blinks in the chaos as more figures charge toward them. Figures dressed in the same green uniforms but staggering as though they had just lost a limb, or a sense.

He tries to move but shock roots him to the spot as the remaining waterbenders tackle the few Dai Li agents. He can only watch open-mouthed as they pin the earthbenders to the ground, their arms ruthless and unwavering even as their enemy struggles in their grip. One goes limp, another gets a rock to the head.

"What did you think would happen if you threatened me?" Arrluk demands, clutching at the side of his head. His eyes blaze like bright blue fire in the dim green light. "We may have lost our bending, but we are still of the Southern Water Tribe...and we protect our own."

By the time Lee staggers to his feet, it was already over. The last of the Dai Li earthbenders litter the ground of the underground corridor, dark green silk sprawled over unconscious bodies. The rest of the waterbenders stand upright, though it was still clear to Lee that they were still deeply affected by the mysterious loss of their bending.

He tears his eyes away from the gathering waterbenders and back toward the large cell. To his relief, he spots Haru and Ty Lee climbing out through the hole in the wall, supporting Suki between them.

"You're okay!" Ty Lee cries as he dashes toward them. Her exhausted face still splits into a relieved smile. "Thank Agni."

"I am. Thanks to those guys," Lee retorts, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder. His friends peer curiously at the waterbenders, though Suki scowls at the sight of them.

"What are they doing?" Haru whispers, as though afraid to be overheard.

"I'm not sure," Lee answers with a shrug. "Team meeting, I guess." Against his better instincts, he turns back to face the double cell behind them. Jun still lay in there, he thinks to himself dully. They had broken out of their prison, and the waterbenders had lost their bending and somehow turned against the Dai Li...and none of it mattered.

None of it could help her now. She would never walk out of that cell ever again. They were free to leave, but she would always remain here.

A ferocious argument tears his thoughts back to the present. He frowns as the rest of the waterbenders close in on Arrluk, who leans against the wall for support. "Why did you do that?" someone demands in a high-pitched panic. "We already lost our bending! Once Long Feng finds out we turned on him -"

"Who says he has to find out?" another man cuts in urgently. "There's still time to fix this, if we get the prisoners back in their cells, we could maybe -"

"No," Arrluk says firmly as Lee tenses, bracing for another attack. "I refuse. I won't go along with any more of this."

A surprised silence hovers tentatively in the air after Arrluk speaks.

"Don't be ridiculous," someone scolds him, "you may be young, but you know we can't do that."

"Why not?" Arrluk counters. "You saw what they're making us do, how can you keep going along like this?"

"It's the price we pay for freedom, Arrluk," another woman reminds him wearily. "The Empire marked us as fugitives, so now we must fight them in the only way we can -"

"You think we're fighting the Empire?" Arrluk interrupts with a scornful laugh. "Check again! Last I heard, Long Feng is working with Ozai! We're not doing anything...except the Dai Li's dirty work!"

A hiss of several scandalized outbursts rocks the corridor at the young waterbender's pronouncement.

"That's not true!"

"Long Feng would never lie to us!"

"It can't be!"

Arrluk breaks through the commotion, grabbing at the slanting hat dangling loosely off his neck, and flinging it away. It bounces off the rocky ground with a loud hollow clang, silencing his compatriots instantly. "Lying is what he does!" he shouts. "Why else would he keep us cooped up down here? He only needs us to brainwash and torture Empire spies, who by the way, aren't even spies! Just innocent civilians he wants to control!"

A horrified silence greets his words, broken by the low groan of one of the Dai Li earthbenders stirring by Arrluk's feet. Without hesitation, the young waterbender kicks the agent in the head, and he slumps back to the ground, unconscious again.

"Think about that!" he continues as though nothing had happened. "Ruska and Iluak, you didn't murder an Empire spy, but an innocent woman! And that boy over there -" Lee flinches as Arrluk points directly at him and dozens of eyes land on him with the intensity of a spotlight, " - he's probably one of ours too! He could be Hakoda's son, and we wiped his mind just like the rest of them!"

"Hakoda's son," someone mutters, shaking their head, "that can't be possible -"

"He told Arrluk and I that his sister was a waterbender named Katara," the woman who had failed to save Jun whispers. "That can't be a coincidence, Kiraun."

"And even if he isn't," Arrluk barrels on, unable to contain himself, "how much longer can we keep doing this? We're more than just brutes, we're more than what the Empire did to us!"

"The boy speaks sense," an old woman admits reluctantly, and the familiarity of her voice sends chills of fear prickling down Lee's spine. "But this is more complicated than it seems. Whatever his motives, Long Feng harboured us when no one else would. To turn on him now would be an irreparable stain on our honour."

"Actually, Atka, it's not complicated at all," Arrluk counters, smiling mirthlessly. He nudges the unconscious earthbender with his foot. "You heard the man. Once Long Feng finds out we lost our bending and he has no more use for us, do you honestly think he'll keep us around?"

"He's got a point," Haru mutters, clearly as captivated by the discussion as Lee was himself. "If they think Long Feng won't toss them into the deepest, darkest cell there is and try to bury their dirty secret, they're bigger fools than they realize."

"It'd be more than they deserve!" Suki grits out. "Do you have any idea how many times they broke my leg? I don't think it'll ever be the same -"

"But it wasn't their fault," Lee speaks up, surprising himself. "You heard them, the Dai Li were using them too."

He nearly wilts under Suki's glare. "They killed your friend," she growls ferociously. "Jun died because of them, and you still want to take their side? Are you kidding me?"

The accusation seems to flay his skin with the sharp edge of his guilt. "I'm not taking sides," he tries to explain without flinching. "We can get out of here with or without their help -"

"Then let's get out of here," Suki finishes, her eyes flashing dangerously. "Now."

Lee sighs, glancing at the waterbenders over his shoulders for one last time. Arrluk meets his eyes tentatively, and he falters despite himself.

Arrluk, the only guard who had been kind to him. Arrluk, who was from the Water Tribes like the rest of the guards under Lake Laogai. His last link to a past barely within reach. A past he needed to remember...

"Wait," someone says softly.

The old woman steps forward from the group of waterbenders, undoing the straps holding her sloping metal hat in place. Lee flinches with reflexive fear as he finally recognizes her lined face and her low, fierce voice.

Atka. The woman who had subdued and unravelled him mercilessly, the day they were all captured.

But the leader of the Southern waterbenders pauses before them, wringing her knotted hands tentatively. Lee finds himself transfixed by the movements of her fingers, spidery and trembling, somehow powerful and helpless at the same time.

"Let us help you," she says finally, to the shock of everyone.

Lee isn't sure if the choking sound is coming from him or from his friends huddled behind him. "What?" he chokes out, rubbing his ears to make sure he had heard correctly.

But a scuffling sound breaks out behind him, before Suki yelps and curses in pain. "That's rich!" she spits venomously. "You think after what you did to Jun and I, you can just come crawling back to us now that your masters have no more use for you?"

"The fortress is poorly guarded," Atka answers in a voice of maddening calm. "We can help you escape here undetected." The lines on her face softens as she meets Suki's accusing stare. "Once the Dai Li realizes what has happened here, it will not be long before they find you. And you will not go far on that leg."

Suki tries to lunge, only to be held back tightly by Haru and Ty Lee. "And whose fault is that?" she bellows.

"Long Feng made us do unspeakable things," Atka answers flatly. Her long grizzled braid flops over her shoulder, jingling hopelessly. "If what Arrluk says is true, then he fooled us all. He took advantage of our trust, our rage, our vulnerability...just so he could use our skills to his benefit." She closes her eyes and shakes her head violently. "But that is our burden, not yours. Another...but we will bear it."

Suki laughs harshly in the stunned silence that follows. "Oh, and you expect us to feel sorry for you now? After everything you did to us?"

"We expect nothing," Atka replies, opening her eyes. In the dim green light, they glimmer with remorse and it strikes a chord somewhere inside Lee's chest. "We know that we hurt you, and your friend, the bounty hunter -"

"Jun," Lee says, his voice echoing all around the subterranean corridor. His hands curl into trembling fists. "Her name was Jun, and you killed her."

Atka hangs her head with the weight of his accusation. Lee breathes heavily with dull fury, the back of his throat constricting tighter with every passing second.

"We did," she confesses bluntly. "And she was not the first, either. We have done terrible things to survive in this world. To learn that Long Feng had us inflict such cruelty on innocents…" Her voice chokes up, shaking with an intensity that Lee feels to his core. "He has much to answer for."

"And so do we," Arrluk speaks up. The youngest of the Southern waterbenders marches forward, placing a hand on Atka's wizened shoulder. "We know you will never forgive us, but at least give us an opportunity to atone for our actions."

"You?" Suki demands disbelievingly. "You've done enough. Now leave us alone."

"Suki," Lee tries to reason with her, even as he flinches at the uncompromising edge in her voice. "Suki, they were at the heart of the Dai Li brainwashing scheme. Their intelligence could be vital to the rebellion."

He tries not to shrivel under the outraged glare she throws at him. "I can't believe you could even think of that!" she accuses, her jaw tightening stubbornly. "They tortured me, they killed Jun, how can you forget that?"

"I haven't," Lee answers solemnly, holding her gaze without wavering. "I won't ever forget. But you seem to have forgotten why we came down here in the first place." He glances at Haru entreatingly for support. "We wanted to find out more about the Dai Li's operation down here, remember? We needed to find a way to dismantle it." He gestures at the group of waterbenders gathered behind Atka and Arrluk, watching them cautiously. "They might have done awful, unforgivable things, but now they want to help us fight back against Long Feng. It's the only way our mission down here has a shot of success -"

"You want me to forgive my torturers just for the sake of your stupid mission?" Suki explodes.

"I want Jun to not have died for nothing!" Lee bursts out. The wave of guilt he's been struggling to hold back suddenly crashes over him with all its force. "She's gone...she's gone, Suki, and holding a grudge against these people won't bring her back. But at least this way, it'll have meant something." He dashes at his eyes with the back of his hand, before pleading, "I know she would have wanted to go down fighting. To stick it to the Dai Li. Can't we do that, for her sake?"

A stricken expression crosses Suki's face, before she finally turns away from him. She scowls darkly, but remains ominously, seethingly silent.

Lee exhales sharply. Jun had been a fighter, one of the most stolid, indomitable forces of nature he had ever encountered. It was impossible to think that this mission had gotten the best of her. That would always stay with him - his idea, his fault.

But if he broke down now to wallow in her memory, he knew she would personally haunt him until the end of time. So, he buries the hurt that rises up at the sight of Suki's anguish, squares his shoulders, and turns back to face Atka and the rest of the Southern waterbenders.

"Suki's right about one thing," he says, his voice somehow steady and cold. "We don't forgive you for what you did to us, and to Jun."

Arrluk bows his head, his shame apparent. "Fair enough," he answers softly. "I...I don't think I could, either."

"But," Lee cuts across, his heart hammering somewhere in the back of his throat, "if you come with us, at least our mission won't have been a colossal failure." He grits his teeth, forcing himself to stay composed, the way Jun would have if she was still with them. "We might not want you, but the resistance will."

A ripple of something that resembled relief flutters across the group of waterbenders. Lee clenches his teeth at the sight of it. Atka glances up at him in surprise, even as Arrluk marches up to him and grabs his hand.

"Thank you," he chokes out, overcome with feeling. Tears well in his bright blue eyes. "We'll do anything - anything - to help."

Lee swallows the retort rising in the back of his throat. Instead, he jerks his head toward the end of the corridor, and the stairs leading up to the exit. "Let's get out of here," he says with a sigh. "The bigger head start we have, the better."

Atka barks something in her sharp, guttural language. A flurry of motion breaks out among the group of waterbenders. The rustle of velvet, the clang of metal hats hitting the ground one by one, a discordant percussion that fills the underground hallway with its ringing echoes.

"And your friend?" Arrluk asks gently. "How do you want to honour Jun?"

Lee looks at him sharply, but the waterbender's face holds no guile, only remorse.

A hand finds his shoulder. He glances over to see Haru's somber face. "We can't just leave her," he says thickly. "Not without saying goodbye, at least." A tear trails down his cheek.

Lee says nothing, but only nods curtly.

They don't linger for long. Amid the low buzz of clipped, urgent conversations taking place in the waterbenders' foreign tongue, Lee finds himself back in the double cell that now serves as Jun's tomb.

A funereal silence settles like a shroud over the four of them as they stare at the bounty hunter's body stretched out on the ground. Now that the threat of the Dai Li had momentarily vanished, Lee thinks her face appeared almost peaceful. A serenity that she had never shown in life.

"I'm sorry, Jun," he finally whispers, kneeling over her. "We'll give them hell for you. I promise." He isn't sure what possesses him to reach into her belt and pluck the whip still coiled at her side. "And uh...thanks for everything." His fingers tighten around the handle. "You were a good friend. I could always count on you."

This time, he doesn't stop the tears that slide down his face. He doesn't know how long he remains frozen in place, crouched over her broken body, but he's grateful to the others for their silence.

But when the moment finally comes, he steps back, watching as the earth swallows her body without another word. But in his heart, he already knows that her spirit wouldn't rest until they drove every last Dai Li agent out of these halls for good.

He owed her that much, at least.

"Come on," Haru says after a moment that passes too slowly, too quickly. "Let's get out of here."

Lee tears his eyes from the undisturbed ground where Jun lay. He glimpses the congregation of waterbenders lined up beyond the door, the shocked sadness in Ty Lee's face. The intense anger blazing in Suki's eyes, the way she averts her face, unable to even look at him in her fury.

Then he tucks Jun's whip into his belt decisively, and determination blazes through him. "Let's get out of here," he makes himself say. "Arrluk, lead the way."

Chapter 46: caged bird

Chapter Text

disclaimer. just your routine reminder that i own nothing familiar and do not gain financially from the writing and posting of this

author's notes. a belated happy new year to everyone still reading this monster! y'all are the real MVPs, thank you so much for all your love and support!

as usual, feel free to follow me on tumblr at colourwhirled-writes for fic- and general updates.

advance warning for some heavy/dark content that appears throughout this one, in case some folks find it upsetting...with that out of the way, let's go save zuko!

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xlvi. caged bird

and i will pray for you
someday i may return
don't you cry for me
beyond is where i learn

"the evil that men do" / iron maiden

The mist gathers like a close-knit blanket, rolling down the slope of the dormant volcano reaching into the clouds before them. The westerly wind batters the wooden slats of the harbourfront plaza, thick with humidity and dripping with the taste of metal and salt from the angry sea stretching out behind them.

Zuko breathes it in, willing the panicked drumbeat of his pulse to calm as the joyous column of Zhao's victory parade winds through the crowded streets of the harbour and up the serpentine pathway leading toward the caldera. The Admiral himself reclines in a palanquin in the heart of the procession, flanked by bearers and a formation of marching soldiers, preceded by a small contingent of rolling tanks and armoured men on komodo rhinos. And bringing up the rear, surrounded by guards brandishing spears and swords at the ready, visible for all to see, is Zhao's prize prey: the captured prince, his spoils of war.

He grits his teeth at Zhao's silhouette, faintly visible through the fine silk lawn curtains veiling him from view of the masses. The Admiral sits puffed upright and proud, taking the opportunity to wave every now and then at the thinning throngs of people lining the path of the victory procession. Though their cheers echo in the dreary morning air, Zuko is reminded of the last time he had traversed this very path, at his own homecoming a lifetime ago. He had been welcomed as a war hero. He had been the one lounging in the royal palanquin, veiled from the public eye. Lu Ten had been by his side, still very much alive and full of his sarcastic humour. The crowds had swelled and multiplied around him, their cheers deafening in the humid morning air.

Now, those same crowds are nowhere to be seen. The crush of people lining the victory procession are dwarfed by the hordes who had cheered him on as the defender of the Empire, the hero of the Sun Warrior's battle. He himself is shackled and lashed to the back of a parade float, on full display as Zhao's war prisoner. His clothes are still marked from the battle at the North, stained with soot and scorches and blood, while his senses are sluggish, depleted by hunger and thirst and exhaustion. His hair hangs loose of its crowned topknot, trailing in a heavy matted mess down his back, limp and lank and lifeless with grime from the flight across the world.

Still, he can't help the bleak smirk that splits across his face at the slim gathering of his father's supporters welcoming Zhao back to the capital. Even though Zhao had crushed the North and brought him back home in chains, he still lagged when it came to popularity. In fact, to the Admiral's dismay, a horde of protestors had swarmed the harbour plaza as soon as their airship touched down, their raucous cries all but drowning out the feeble cheers for the returning war hero.

I'll bet he's secretly furious, he thinks with no small degree of satisfaction. No matter that his fate seemed set in stone now, that a grim, torturous, humiliating end waited for him at the palace at the end of the line. Zhao was discovering that he was losing the popularity contest between him and the captured prince trailing behind him, and it was probably eating him up inside. And after all the crimes the man had committed, Zuko allows himself to savour that small, petty victory.

The sun's rays filter weakly through the thick grey clouds, still managing to beat down on Zuko with a memory of heat. The chains chafe against his wrists and ankles, the metal rubbing his skin red and raw, while a rough cloth gags his mouth shut. His days in captivity were made utterly sleepless by recurring nightmares of the battle at the North Pole. Everywhere he looks, he remembers the blood-red moon, the smell of airship fuel, the sound of Katara's screams and how limp she had gone. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees her, a storm in human form suddenly rendered helpless and frail. Every time he manages to drift off to sleep, he awakens gasping and horror-struck by nightmares where he hadn't been quick enough, where he had fallen and Zhao had captured her instead, where she would be in his place, chained and powerless and paraded on display to await his father's vengeance...

The distant roar of the protest building along the harbour plaza jolts him back to the present moment, gasping with relief. He cranes his head over his shoulder and squints curiously at the mass of people crowding along the wooden docks. They were all dressed in black from head to toe and shouting something, he couldn't quite decipher what it was, the rush of the wind slurring their voices into a blur of sound competing with the waves crashing against the shoreline.

He watches blankly as the crowds build around a handful of individuals standing on top of a raised platform, also dressed in black but sporting what looked to Zuko like coloured theatre masks. Their exaggerated yet anonymizing features stick out like pinpricks of bright colour in the sea of black-clad people and the dull shabby wood of the buildings lining the harbour.

A small part of him even manages to wonder who they were and what they wanted, as one of them raises a clenched fist and the crowd cheers louder, as though conducted to greater volumes. Another of the masked protesters tosses what looked like a barrel from one of the silos lining the far side of the docks, where the trading ships unloaded their cargo. Zuko stares, captivated by the barrels as they bob along the crowd of protestors as though they were floating on water, before being dumped into the sea to more cheers.

What are they doing? Zuko thinks wildly, watching as the protestors empty one barrel after another of dark liquid into the water. The substance floats like a shadow atop the waves, glinting in the weak sunlight with a strange, multicoloured sheen. He frowns with confusion as the wind gusting off the bay grows stronger, and he nearly chokes with the smell of fuel wafting from down below.

But then another cry breaks across the hordes of protestors, a cry tinged with fear and alarm. Zuko blinks and suddenly, columns of guards dressed in angry red armour break up the crowd. The Imperial Guard, he recognizes with a plummeting feeling in his stomach. Probably sent by Azula or Father to keep the peace. He grits his teeth as the people buckle before the guards, fleeing as they bend red-hot flares warningly into the air. The masked ringleaders of the protest suddenly vanish, leaving the rest of the protestors pinned in by the wooden buildings and the Imperial guards marching steadily toward them.

His heart races as he watches the guards shooting plumes of fire at the scattering crowd, heedless of the cries of terror rising up around them. The fire swells and glows so bright it makes his eyes water, and his mouth drops open in horror as the blaze catches one of the wooden cargo silos lining the docks. It consumes the dry structure in a matter of seconds, the hot dry flames licking and multiplying along the docks like a living, breathing thing. The screams turn louder as the crowd finally thins, leaving a handful of small figures boxed in by the growing fire. The creaking and crashing of the wooden structures splintering and collapsing under the heat of the flames replaces the shouts of the protestors.

As the guards round up the remaining black-clad protestors, Zuko watches with horror as the blaze consumes the rest of the harbour and even spreads to the docks. The strange black fluid that had been poured by the angry mob into the water finally catches fire, springing alight rapidly with an ominous whoosh. He can barely breathe as the inferno spreads all along the waterfront, covering the entire surface of the bay with burning tongues of flame.

But then the procession turns a sharp corner, passing through the towering city walls of the caldera and the harbour dips out of sight. Only the gathering clouds of smoke are still visible, the light of the conflagration touching the dreary sky with a violent red glow.

"...in these prosperous times, we welcome the war hero home!" sing the twin palace seneschals, their screeching voices ringing loud and clear from the palace walls in the heart of the palace city. "Your brave and clever Admiral, Zhao!"

Zuko tears his attention away from the catastrophe unfolding below, and toward Zhao's thinly veiled back, now ramrod-straight with pride as the cheers finally multiply enough to drown out the chaos in the harbour. His jaw clenches at the throngs of people lining the grand avenue leading from the city walls to the palace estate, nobles and sycophants richly dressed in opulent red silks, blind to the struggle unfolding beyond the cosseted shelter of the caldera.

His mouth runs dry as the palace draws nearer and he finally notices the grisly adornment flanking its tall stone gates: a pair of charred bodies on pikes, a stark warning to the public for the consequences of treason. Was this the fate that awaited him, that the cheering crowd wanted for him?

The gates swing open to reveal the scorched, wizened grounds within. Compared to the well-manicured lawns that had greeted him the last time he had entered as a war hero, the palace grounds still appeared unkempt and withered from the concerted attack the night of Lu Ten's ill-fated wedding. Prosperous times indeed, he thinks scornfully, even as the parade sweeps him ever closer to the doom awaiting him within the palace walls.

He closes his eyes, unwilling to look at his father's supporters as they jeer at him. The sound reverberates in his ears, drowning out the echo of his pounding heart and the way his insides shrivel with building fear, crushing down on him with a weight that multiplies with every step the procession takes. The palace and the threat of his father's inevitable wrath loom ever closer.

But he wills himself to square his shoulders and hold his head high, refusing to give Zhao or any of his ilk the satisfaction of watching him cower. Instead, he forces himself to think of other things. His uncle, still at large. And Katara, alive and free and safe from his father's clutches. No matter what Ozai did to him, at least Zuko had stolen his chance to wreak vengeance on the waterbender who had bested him the night of his ascent to power. No matter what, he would take that last defiance with him to the grave.

And so he clings to that thought as they drag him past the palace gates and the charred bodies displayed like a badge of grim retribution. He forces himself to focus on his breath, trying to calm the frightened pulse of his heart the way his uncle had taught him. But his hands still tremble as he's finally pulled down from the parade float and marched through the mangled palace grounds, and into the labyrinthine darkness of the palace. The double doors of the throne room swing open like the jaws of a beast as he's flung inside, the chains clanking loudly as the hall seems to swallow him.

He manages to glare at its occupants, illuminated by the line of fire at the base of his father's throne and reducing Ozai to a menacing silhouette. The sweltering heat of the flames still wasn't enough to dispel the chill darkness of the hall, reconstructed from the destruction of their last battle into a shadowy, ominous incarnation of its past splendour. His blood runs cold as he recognizes the entirety of his father's council: Azula, her face blanched pale even as she smirks bloodlessly at the sight of him, spindly General Bujing and his unscrupulous underlings, Mai's father idly rifling through a pile of scrolls…

He swallows hastily at the sight of Mai, still and silent from where she sits behind her father. Her face remains stolidly impassive, but when he meets her eyes, he reads the fear plain in them. She fears for me, he realizes with a tightening feeling in his chest, she fears for herself.

Suddenly something rears up inside him, an unwillingness to be slaughtered here, in front of all his father's supporters, in front of Mai, who had helped him despite the threat to herself, and who was watching him with a fear she had never been able to express before. But the chains bite into his wrists as he struggles, the cloth gag mercilessly covering his mouth and stifling his breath.

"In this victorious hour," he hears his father breathe, his voice dripping with malevolence, "we welcome back the hero and the pride of our nation, Admiral Zhao."

In the corner of his eye, Zhao's infuriating smirk widens to a self-satisfied grin. "You are too generous with your praise, Your Radiance," he returns, dropping to a kowtow. "It was the greatest honour to deliver the finest military victory in history in your name."

"Indeed." Zuko swallows nervously at the smile plain in his father's voice. "And I see that is not the only token of your loyalty, Zhao." He pauses, regarding the scene with growing amusement. "Won't you bring him closer, so that we can all admire your handiwork?"

Zhao grins, before getting to his feet. "With pleasure." Zuko winces as the Admiral grabs at the shackles binding his hands behind his back. Pain rattles through his bones as Zhao drags him down the aisle running through the throne room, the clinking chain links deafening in his ears before he's finally shoved to the ground. He lets out a muffled yelp, losing his balance on bound legs before crashing to the ground, landing painfully on his side.

"Here." Zuko lets out a hiss as Zhao grabs him by the hair to raise his face. "I present to you this traitor prince, a gesture of my undying fealty."

The flames swell in size, making Zuko's eyes water as he stares through them, at his father's shadow seated behind them.

"So it seems," his father answers with a sigh. "How thoughtful of you, to bring my wayward son home again."

Laughter ripples across the gathered council. Zuko grits his teeth, even as blood rushes to his face.

"Won't you tell us how you found him?" his father asks mockingly.

"Of course, Your Radiance." Zhao bows again, his smirk burning in the corner of Zuko's eyes. "It was after we dealt our enemies a deadly blow. I captured him while they were retreating, scrambling to escape defeat." He lets out a scornful huff. "I've never heard anyone beg so pitifully for mercy before."

"You're lying!" Zuko cries, but the gag drowns out his words into a muffled sound of protest. More laughter echoes around him as he struggles, fighting the chains around his limbs to sit upright.

"As you can see, my prisoner isn't lacking for any spirit," Zhao continues with a careless wave of his hand. "But I suppose that's what will make this next part even more entertaining."

"How considerate of you," Ozai pronounces, settling back comfortably in his throne. "To take such pains to ensure this traitor faces the justice he so richly deserves -"

But just then, the sound of more people entering the throne room cuts Ozai off. Zuko hunches over, twisting through his bindings to glance at the Imperial guards in their scuffed red armour filtering through the doorway. Two of the guards flank a boy, his arms pinioned behind his back.

"What is the meaning of this?" his father demands coldly, the warmth instantly disappearing from his voice. "How dare you interrupt the royal council in this manner?"

"Begging your forgiveness, Your Gloriousness," apologizes the captain of the Imperial Guard, bobbing his head into a short bow, "but we thought you would want to know. We captured this young man from the protests this morning. We think he's one of the leaders -"

"I'm not!" the boy protests, and a chill runs down Zuko's spine at how young he was, a teenager, barely more than a child, "I'm innocent, I swear -"

"Well, you'd hardly expect the boy to admit it," the captain cuts him off smoothly. He nods at one of the guards pinioning the prisoner, who promptly places a sack over the young boy's head. "Look at him, he's got fuel up to his wrists! He's as guilty as they come. What would you have us do with him?"

"Throw him into one of the black cells for now," Ozai orders, sounding bored. "We'll deal with him later."

"Yes, oh Radiant One." The captain bows again, this time more deeply, before barking sharp commands at the rest of his men.

Zuko tries to swallow and fails, his eyes sharpening along the rips in the boy's black clothing as he's dragged out, his shrill screams for mercy muffled and bouncing off the blood-red curtains draping the towering walls as they fade out of earshot. He's just a boy, he thinks with a growing chill, remembering the masked figures leading the protest and how they had instantly vanished once the guards appeared, he's innocent, they're going to punish an innocent and nobody even cares. But this was what life under his father's rule was like, and it was but a taste of what surely awaited him.

"Now," Ozai continues, sounding somewhat petulant to Zuko's ears, "where were we? Ah yes...my traitor son and the justice that awaits him."

Zuko panics at that, struggling fitfully against his restraints. There was no justice that awaited him here, only cruelty and humiliation and the hope of a quick death. He hunches over, rubbing his face against his shoulder to slip his gag out of place.

"Azula," his father continues, sounding more amused the harder he struggles, "won't you step forward?"

Alarm winds knots in his gut as his sister obeys, slowly rising to her feet. The cloth around his mouth slips free and he finds his voice.

"It's too late!" he blurts out quickly before anyone could stop him. "You can do what you want to me, but my friends are still free and so is Uncle!" Gloved hands bite into his shoulders, pushing him into the ground but he still continues viciously, "You'll never win! Even if you usurped the throne, you still can't control your own people! After everything, Father, you're still just second best!"

"Silence!" his father thunders. A blinding crash hurtles toward Zuko, who shrinks out of the way just in time. The ground scorches where his head had been, the smouldering wood blistering his face with its heat. The fire lining his father's dais grows to twice its height, its bright light harsh in Zuko's watering eyes. He grits his teeth as more people set upon him, holding him down and replacing the gag around his mouth.

"The Northern occupation is our utmost priority," his father declares as the cloth digs into Zuko's face. "We will move more of our domestic troops to support the war up north. No matter where Iroh is, we will root him out and bring him back in chains!"

Zuko jerks against his restraints, trying to shove off the guards pinning him to the ground.

"And you, my traitor son, who Iroh had the nerve to declare his own heir," Ozai threatens, now rising to his feet as the flames tower over him in warning, "your fate will be a warning to all, of what awaits Iroh when he finally falls to us!"

Zuko's heart drums in alarm at the menace in his father's voice. But he still tilts his head upward, meeting his father's glowing silhouette with a defiant stare.

"Azula," his father commands coldly, "give your older brother a taste of what lies in store for him."

"Yes, Father," Azula drawls, and Zuko's blood runs cold at the thinly suppressed mirth in her voice, "it would be my pleasure."

Zuko glances over his shoulder, his heartbeat skyrocketing as she advances toward him. He jerks and struggles against the guards holding him down, but to no avail.

She grabs him by the hair with a clawed hand, before pulling out a knife. Its gleaming edge flashes sharp and silver in the raging firelight. Her lips curve upward coldly. Fear cascades like boulders into the pit of his gut.

His eyes squeeze shut as she brings the knife down, its keen blade a razor kiss slicing against his skin.

In all her life, Mai's hands have never trembled.

Through a childhood rife with her father's political intrigues, a struggle for attention between the two royal siblings, and now a far more insidious game where she had unwittingly pitted herself against Azula, the far more ruthless and seasoned player of the two, she has remained statue-still and poised, her fingers as steady as they would be if they were wrapped around one of her numerous concealed stilettos.

But as Ozai dismisses his council and the palace attendants sweep into the throne room, cleaning up the mess on the floor left from Zuko's punishment, she finds herself having to slide her clammy hands into her sleeves, the better for hiding their uncontrollable quaking from everyone else.

Her stomach churns queasily as she stares at the double doors, where her father and the rest of Ozai's shadow council are steadily filtering out, too occupied with their private conversations to pay her any heed. Where the guards had dragged Zuko's motionless form out into the hallway, to wherever Ozai kept his traitors, and decidedly out of sight of where Azula cleans her knifeblade along the blood-red silk of her sleeve.

She forces herself to stare at the deep crimson drapes covering the throne room's walls, the better to disguise the damage from the night of Lu Ten's murder which had yet to be restored. The heavy curtains sway and rustle in the wake of the people exiting the hall, in the midst of which Azula rises to her feet and finds her voice.

"Father," Mai hears her say with her usual careless aplomb, "a word, if you please."

The click of her knife sliding into its sheath rattles in Mai's ears like the unconscious chatter of her teeth, as the sinister chill of Ozai's throne room seeps through her heavy silks, her clammy skin and settles into her bones. She swallows silently, glancing at the emptying throne room and at the two figures remaining in it: the king behind the curtain of fire, and the princess approaching it with hard-won confidence. Both were completely oblivious to her steady, silent presence in the darkness.

She doesn't know what fit of madness possesses her to shrink silently into the corner of the room, slipping like a noiseless shadow behind the swaying velvet curtain to skulk against the battered stone wall. The air behind the curtain whistles and breathes like a sleeping beast, even chillier for the drafts from outside whittling through the cracks in the stone. She clenches her jaw, trying so hard not to shiver, she almost misses Azula's next words.

"Father," she says, her voice lowering anxiously, "I understand that until we capture Uncle, this fight is not yet over. But you must understand that we cannot afford to move any more domestic troops abroad to support the Northern occupation -"

"Azula," her father admonishes, his voice cutting like stone itself, "my decision is final."

"You saw what happened this morning," Azula argues faintly. "Our guards could barely contain the protests, and now our commercial ports are completely on fire. The populace is out of control as is, and now it will be even more difficult for us to bring food and other trade ships in from the colonies -"

"I put you in charge of overseeing our domestic affairs," Ozai cuts her off warningly, his voice growing so cold, Mai finds herself shivering ever harder. "I thought you would be far more competent than your imbecile brother. Are you proving me wrong?"

"No!" Azula replies desperately. "Your faith in me is not misplaced, Father! I am doing the best I can…" She trails off, before drawing in a deep, shaking breath before continuing. "But the people are unsettled and hungry, and they oppose us, as I've mentioned to you before -"

"Then you must work harder to crush this dissent," Ozai breathes, his displeasure plain in his voice. "I will entrust Zhao to help you with this matter."

"Zhao?" Azula stammers. "But - but his experience is with the military, not the government -"

"His experience is in serving me well and delivering what I want," Ozai declares cuttingly. "You could stand to learn from him, daughter."

The sound of Azula's breathing, forced steady to disguise the tremours gripping her rigid body, seems to echo around the throne room, loud in Mai's ears. "I only wonder if Zhao would be better suited to a military appointment," she tries again, more diplomatically. "To match the nature of his victory -"

"Oh, do not fret, my daughter." Ozai's voice warms up gloatingly. "I intend to have Zhao keenly involved in the strategy for our strike on the day the comet arrives. In the meantime...I look to you to crush the revolt among our people with an iron hand."

"About that," Azula speaks up haltingly, and Mai senses the nerves stretching her voice taut, "there may be a way to resolve this elegantly."

"How so?"

"Well…" Azula swallows hard, apparently choosing her words with great care. "As I've spoken to you before...as long as your fool of a brother has the love of the people on his side, it won't matter how many revolts we crush -"

"Azula," Ozai warns, and the whooshing sound of the flames growing in size seems to pound in Mai's ears. "I have never known you to waver. Can it be that your feet grow cold now that you understand what it takes -"

"This is not a question of my feet, Father," Azula interrupts him, rather boldly, Mai thinks privately. "If you demand it of me, I will happily bring you the heads of every last person involved in this morning's protest. But, look at Zuko and how the people still fawn and bleat over him. Even though he has been defeated and captured and humiliated before them all…" She inhales shakily, her voice growing cold with distaste. "Even if we executed him, put his head on a spike as a warning, we would only make a martyr of him."

"What difference does that make?" Ozai demands. "If the people wish to support a traitor, they can share in his fate. Their opinions are no concern to us."

"You promised me an empire, not a pile of ash," Azula complains. "Yet, to secure your victories over your brother, you've allowed the Air Nomads to join him over the destruction of their temples…not to mention reports that the Dai Li are losing their grip over the entire Earth continent! We have supply shortages crippling our entire economy, and our people go hungry already. Now we must add worker revolts at our factories, the destruction of commercial ports, the tides disappearing and slowing shipments from our colonies. This pace is not sustainable!"

Her voice rings out decisively like an axe chopping through wood. Mai's breath hitches in her throat, afraid that the frantic pulse of her heart would betray her presence at any moment.

"Your foresight does you credit, Azula," Ozai finally admits, his voice softening uncharacteristically.

"Thank you, Father -"

"But it won't matter. Just a little longer, and Iroh will be in our grasp, and then -"

"And then what?" Azula bursts out impatiently, in an unusual display of passion. "Have you even thought this through? We simply do not have the resources to fight indefinitely! How much longer until your old blood vendetta with Uncle is settled?"

"Until it pleases me," Ozai fires back. The glow of his fire builds as it crackles madly, flaring red-hot and wild, threatening to set the entire hall alight. "Until I have him kneeling before me in chains, beaten and humiliated, and not a moment sooner." He pauses, rising to his feet and his shadow stretches menacingly across the cold stone floor. "You would do well to remember this, daughter, and mind your place in my presence."

Azula flinches as though struck, before dropping to the floor in a trembling kowtow. "Yes Father." Mai bites her lip nervously at the tremour plain in the princess's voice as she promises doggedly, "I am your most loyal, faithful servant."

"Lee! Quick! There's a prickle-snake in your bag!"

"Wha -?" Lee bolts upright, before the chains around his wrists snap him back in place. He frowns at the dank cell surrounding him. His heart races as one of the uniformed guards crouches over his worn travel bag, ferreting through its contents intently. "Hey! That's my stuff!"

"Found it!" announces Arrluk, pulling something out of his bag and waving it triumphantly. "That'll teach you to keep your bag open where any old prickle-snake could climb into it."

Lee blinks in the dim green light pouring in through the open door. "That's not a prickle-snake!" he protests, struggling to get to his feet. "That's my boomerang! Give it back!"

To his dismay, the waterbender dashes out into the corridor instead.

"Hey!" Lee shouts, chasing after him. The chain bolting him to the wall breaks as easily as if it was made of paper. Running into the corridor, he halts when he finds himself standing in the middle of a teahouse instead.

He gapes stupidly, daylight pouring through the wide windows, staining the light wooden walls a dreamy shade of yellow.

"Keep it down!" admonishes one of the old men sitting at the table next to him. "Don't you know you're not supposed to run in the tearoom?"

"Sorry," Lee apologizes, suddenly feeling very silly. "I was trying to get my boomerang back."

"Well, watch where you step, young man!" The old man folds his arms firmly. "You don't want to bump into one of the servers and spill hot tea everywhere."

"Right. My apologies." Cheeks flaming, Lee tiptoes across the room carefully, before spotting someone racing to the staircase at the other end. "Hey! My boomerang!"

"Didn't you hear?" someone shrieks at him as he bolts toward the back entrance. "No running in the teahouse!"

He ignores it, heart pounding as he follows Arrluk down the steps into the basement cellar. The heavy wooden door flutters, bouncing off the battered frame. The creak of its rusted hinges screeches loud in his ears as he pushes through the door.

Then he lets out a yell as the ground dissolves under his feet.

"What?"

The swamp stretches out around him under a dreary grey sky. He scrabbles furiously, trying to grab hold of the slimy green plants as the pools of bubbling brown sludge try to suck him under.

"Aw look, Tho, someone's gone got stuck again."

"Now don't you worry, stranger! Ol' Slim's got a big bite, but he'll help you out!"

Something growls beside him. Lee whips around to see teeth, two rows of big sharp shining teeth snapping right by his face. "Ah!" he screams, pulling away as far as he can. The water rises to his waist as he kicks aimlessly, trying desperately to find solid ground.

"Ah, sorry Slim, the strange man's afraid of you."

"Ah well, that's what you get for running in the teahouse -"

Something closes around his wrist, tugging at him with surprising strength. Lee clings to the stranger's arm as it drags him along the grassy slope and out of the hissing swampwater.

He coughs, doubled over on the wet squishy mud, gulping down mouthfuls of air gratefully.

"That was close," says Arrluk's voice right next to his ear. He waves something tauntingly. "Looking for this?"

Lee lunges. Arrluk dances out of reach, a blur in the corner of his eye.

"Cut it out," Lee wheezes, staggering back onto his feet. "Give me back my boomerang!"

He whirls around and his heart freezes.

The waterbender from the Sun Warrior's Isle stands before him, her blue eyes surveying him carefully. Miles of ice and water glitter beneath the golden sun, hanging big and bright in the clear blue sky.

"Here you go," she says, holding out her hand. The boomerang gleams to a polished shine between her fingers. "You dropped it."

He takes it from her tentatively. "I didn't drop it," he argues stupidly. "Arrluk stole it. He said it was a prickle-snake."

"It's okay," she says, tilting her head. "Boomerang always comes back. Just like you." She smiles at him and the sight of it is so familiar, a forgotten part of him still manages to ache. "You always do."

He opens his mouth to say something, but then the girl looks up at the sky. Her face turns white, her lips press into a grim line.

Glancing up, he frowns at the thick clouds blocking out the sun. At the black snow falling down in heavy flakes, clinging to his eyelashes, his hair, gathering on his shoulders.

An instinctive pang of fear clutches at his heart at the sight of it. "Come on," he says urgently, grabbing her hand, "we've got to run for it -"

"Where?"

"Anywhere!" He stumbles, losing his grip on her hand before reaching for it again. "Katara, where are you?" His hand finds only empty air. Swiping aimlessly, he spins around, but the waterbender is gone, and only the blackened slopes of the arctic void remain. "Katara? Katara -"

"Lee, wake up!" A firm hand closes on his shoulder, shaking him violently awake.

He gasps, his heart beating like the wings of a hummingbee, droning a forgotten rhythm loud in his ears. His teeth chatter as he stutters, "K - Ka -"

"You were having a nightmare," Haru informs him, crouching next to the sweat-drenched rumpled mess of his sleeping bag. "Everything okay?"

Lee stares at Haru blankly, panting heavily as his pulse slowly returns to normal. He sits up, taking in the crude tent pitched around them, the faint rays of white sunlight filtering through the threadbare cloth, the persistent breeze filtering through the gaps in the tent flaps. He inhales deeply and tastes the murky aquatic tang of the lake emptying into the mouth of Chameleon Bay, where they had camped for the night. The muted buzz of terse conversations outside clash with the cries of seabirds wheeling through the clouds.

"Fine," he says, shaking his head. "Just a weird dream…"

Haru glances at him sympathetically. "When I first came out of my sleeper trance, I had weird dreams for days," he offers. "Maybe that's what you're going through too -"

"I don't really want to talk about it," Lee says shortly, getting to his feet. "Come on, let's get going. We've got to catch up with the others."

He walks past Haru without a second glance, pausing only to rummage through his pack. Relief floods through him as his hand closes around his old worn boomerang, exactly where he had left it the night before.

At least it's not a prickle-snake, he thinks to himself ironically, even as he tries and fails to shake the unsettled feeling cascading down his spine, as though he'd forgotten something else important.

It had been three days since they had managed to flee the Dai Li stronghold under Lake Laogai with the unexpected company of a host of Southern Tribe waterbenders in tow. Two since a patrol of Dai Li earthbenders had picked up their trail, now obvious and easy to track given the size of their party. And one since a team of resistance fighters, led by Master Iio, had found them in the nick of time and helped them overpower the Dai Li agents who had managed to follow them.

He wanders through the small group of them wordlessly, staggering past the hastily pitched campsite tucked into the thicket of gnarled forest shielding them from the flat beach leading into the mouth of the bay. Picking through the twisted maze of toppled trees and mushy dead leaves, he kneels by the water and splashes a cold handful onto his face. The strange dreams fade somewhat in the light of day but his own reflection, twisting and warping in the living mirror, peers back at him unrecognizably.

With a groan, he claps a hand on his head, around where the persistent drumbeat of an old headache continues to throb. "What's happening to me?" he mutters to himself under his breath. "Why can't I remember?"

But then a shrill chirrup shatters across the air, breaking him out of his confused reverie. Wiping the brisk trails of water off his face with the grimy underside of his sleeve, he scrambles back into the cover of the forest, just as a single boat cuts across the horizon. Its dark silhouette seems to stare at them, searching for them like the piercing eyes of a falconhawk bent on picking out its prey.

He freezes perfectly still, holding his breath as his heart pounds nervously. The headache brimming beneath his temples clashes with agony. Clenching his teeth, he narrows his watering eyes, even as the boat passes out of sight and earshot.

"That was close," he hears someone muttering as he meanders back to the campsite. "We have to do something, and quick."

"Long Feng must be furious," Master Iio muses from her seat in the middle of the circle of ramshackle tents. She glances thoughtfully at the mismatched group of people dressed in the nondescript earthy clothes of the burgeoning resistance, surrounding her on all sides. "When he left Lake Laogai, he thought it well-protected in the hands of formidable defenders. And with key prisoners from the resistance, ready to crack at any instant. Now with his stronghold deserted and his prisoners escaped, he finds himself stretched thin, unable to press any advantage."

"It's more than that," a middle-aged man with a rawboned dark face and a thin black goatee speaks up, glancing furtively over his shoulder at the silent group of waterbenders in their grimy Dai Li uniforms, sitting a pace apart in a circle of their own. "We've heard reports that their attempts to bully our villages into joining them have all gone sideways."

"Really?" Haru asks. "How did that happen all of a sudden?"

"I'm not sure," the man confesses with a shrug. "But more and more of the people are starting to fight back against the Dai Li. Instead of the tributes of fighters and food and resources they hoped to levy from their countrymen, they're being chased out of every corner, forced to yield territory they never expected to give up. Across every corner of the continent, they're being pushed back."

"Well that's great news," Lee remarks baldly, cutting into the group to kneel next to Haru. "But what does that mean for us? They're losing ground now, but every day that passes, they're only going to get angrier and more dangerous. We can't allow them to regroup."

"I agree," Master Iio says, smoothing the front of her umber linen robe. "Now is the time to act quickly and decisively." She prods at the little fire smouldering by her feet, a single tongue of flame spitting heavy clouds of smoke at the chipped earthenware teapot steaming over top of it. "We break camp soon. The others are waiting for us."

Everyone nods as one before silently lumbering to their feet, dissipating to the corners of the withered forest like the last of the morning's mist. Iio pours the remnants of the teapot over the fire, dousing it in a single motion.

Lee stares at the faint white tendrils of smoke curling upward in the close-knit air. "Thanks for helping us out again yesterday," he offers awkwardly, stepping toward the master airbender as she rises in a smooth motion. "We were in a - uh - a pretty tight spot when you found us."

"So it would seem," Master Iio answers, the ends of her robes sliding soundlessly against the bleached leaves piled along the muddy ground. "You were due back a fortnight ago. The silence was concerning. Still, we had hoped to avoid mounting a full invasion and rescue mission to Lake Laogai, so thank you for sparing us that, at least."

"No problem," Lee grumbles. "Glad we could be of some help after all." He glances over his shoulder to the small cluster of tents occupied by the waterbenders of Lake Laogai. "Anyway, at least we didn't come empty-handed. Lake Laogai is empty now, and the Dai Li's entire brainwashing operation is out of action."

He senses Master Iio's gaze following his, settling on the waterbenders keenly. He falls silent, watching Arrluk help Atka up from where she had been sitting in a pile of soft moss. In some way, their pain, their staggering dazed movements, as though cut off from each other, made sense to him in a way that common sense and self-preservation hadn't. After all, a growing part of him felt the same way - as lost and confused as the waterbenders of the South.

To his relief, Master Iio chooses not to pry. "Pack up your things and see to your friends," she says instead. "We must move on."

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

"You know, that's a great question to ask the blind girl, genius! How about you try again?"

"Why do you always have to insult me?"

"Shh! Keep it down before someone hears you!"

"As if! You'd have to be deaf to miss this ruckus in the first place!"

"Well, I still think this is a terrible idea and going to get us all captured!"

"Why don't you just hide out back here since you're such a little old lady, Caveman?"

Katara closes her eyes in the semi-darkness, ignoring the harsh whispers buzzing around her like a swarm of droneflies. Peering out from the trapdoor covering the tunnel melted through the thick ice layered on top of the frozen earth below, she studies the shadowed street of Nutjuitok opening up around her.

The black of the night weighs heavy on the small city, its streets and small canals deserted except for the patrols of Admiral Chan's men marching in pairs mounted on armoured komodo rhinos. The sky remains an inky expanse of faint stars, the void where the moon used to be seeming darker than black, tearing a hole through the fabric of the sky. Katara tries not to focus on it, her head spinning the longer she looks at it.

Instead, she ducks back into the tunnel, crouching in the small space. She pulls the door closed above her head as the sound of animal footsteps rounds the corner and draws nearer. She puts a finger to her lips and holds her breath as the others behind her fall silent. The indistinguishable conversation of the patrolling soldiers grows louder as they march directly overhead, before passing them by and fading into silence.

"That was close," Aang mutters, somewhere by her shoulder.

"I'll say," Toph breathes, slumping against the shiny snow wall from where she sits cross-legged on the tunnel ground.

"Couldn't you have gotten us any closer to the harbour?" Tartok complains, further back. "How are we supposed to make it from here without someone seeing us?"

"Whose idea was it to bring the whiny guy again?" Katara asks, rolling her eyes irritably.

"Grandpa's," Toph sighs. "He said Caveman should stay with us since he's actually been to Nutjuitok before."

"And he still got us lost," Aang remarks dryly. "Imagine that."

"Ahem." Ruon-Jian clears his throat awkwardly, the fire in his open palm flaring bright enough to illuminate the cramped snow-lined tunnel, barely tall enough for them to crawl through. "I don't know how much juice I've got left in me." He brushes his overlong hair out of his eyes, wincing. "Ever since the moon went out, my bending's been kind of wonky."

"You too, huh?" Katara pushes the door back open a crack, studying the land above ground. "I think I can see their ships from here. It's a bit of a hike. But doable."

"But there's a big canal separating us from the harbour!" Tartok counters as Katara pushes the door shut again. "How do you plan to cross that without being seen, now that we can't waterbend?"

"I could try digging a tunnel under the canal," Toph suggests, stroking her chin. "But it's risky. If I hit water, we're all going to drown before you can say waterbending."

"It's fine," Katara says, glaring at Tartok. "We'll figure something out."

"Great!" Toph says. She punches Ruon-Jian in the shoulder. "We make a great tunneling team, Ro-Jo."

Ruon-Jian rubs his shoulder gingerly. "Ow. Thanks...I think?"

"You can relax, Ruon-Jian. That was a compliment," Katara advises kindly. "From Toph, it's hard to tell, I know." She slumps against the wall, peering up at the slice of air through the trapdoor lying ajar. "We've still got some time before we're supposed to meet up with the others and head back. Do you guys want to explore a little?"

"Explore?" Toph echoes, her face lighting up. "Hell yes!"

"I don't know," Aang says, rubbing the back of his head. "That sounds a bit risky. What if someone sees you? Maybe we should keep a low profile -"

Katara barely hears him, checking once again for patrollers before pushing the trapdoor open and leaping out of the cramped tunnel onto the narrow street.

She dashes into the shadows, studying the tiny street, barely more than a snow-lined alley squeezed in between two stone huts, their windows shuttered and completely dark inside. She glances southward, past the rippling surface of the canal Tartok had mentioned to the quaint harbour, a jumble of icy piers where six overlarge Fire Empire ships float on the water. Their streamlined silhouettes loom tall, towering over the city like silent watchtowers.

"So we're doing this," Aang says, appearing next to her as though out of nowhere. She glances back at him, and the others, even a glowering Tartok, who have materialized by her side. "I hate to say it, but Tartok's right. That canal's proving to be a problem."

"Thank you, Ong." Tartok puffs up imperiously, only to be silenced by the withering glares everyone flings in his direction. "What?"

Katara shakes her head, before slipping toward the other end of the alley, which fed into a wider street. From a glance, it appeared to be where the infirmary and healing huts all stood, since they were the only buildings which were still lit and appeared to be occupied. Her lips press together as she spots the grey-robed healers flitting from cot to cot, their hands and ankles shackled together with clanking chains. The injured linger anywhere they can: seated on the ground, leaning against the wall, waiting outside huddled around a fire.

She tries not to stare at the bodies piled in front of the healing huts, in the middle of the broad street. Dead boys wearing blue Water Tribe furs, dyed dark with blood, the deep cold of early arctic spring staving off the rot from setting in. She chokes, her stomach threatening to spew its contents all over the ground.

"What is it?" Aang hisses before he spots the bodies and he blanches. "Oh…"

"This is sick," Tartok spits from behind him, his voice thick with grief. "Those Fire Empire monsters."

"Hey," Ruon-Jian protests weakly, "don't paint all of us with the same brush. Some of us are trying to help."

"How can they do this?" Tartok continues, staring at the dead with burning eyes. "I knew some of those guys, they didn't fight on the battlefront with us. They were just kids protecting their homes."

"Welcome to the polar wars," Katara snaps, irritated by his self-righteous anger. "But for real this time."

To her surprise, for once he doesn't argue back. "I just wish there was something we could do," he laments.

She kicks the snow with the heel of her boot. "We are doing something. We're building a network of tunnels to help us get in and out of here fast -"

"Something more," he corrects, slumping against the wall of the building next to them. His voice lowers. "My dad's being held hostage and I don't even know if my brother survived the invasion. Imnek was never the strongest fighter…"

An uncomfortable silence settles over the group as Tartok breaks off and turns away, no longer able to look at the pile of dead bodies.

Katara can't help the stab of sympathy in her chest despite it all. "You have to believe they'll be okay," she says, placing a hand gently on his arm. "It's hard, I know. But at times like these, the only way out is through."

Tartok glances at her in surprise before pulling away from her abruptly, as though her touch had burned him.

She scoffs, shaking her head before turning back. A blur of motion in the corner of her eye catches her attention, and she leans past the corner of the building, squinting. "What's that?"

But a commotion on the other side of the street suddenly breaks the oppressive silence. Katara ducks as more Fire Navy soldiers converge in their direction, before thankfully racing down the street on the far side of the healing huts.

"What's going on?" Ruon-Jian whispers, hanging well back and furtively glancing behind them.

Toph plants her hand on the wall, frowning. "Sounds like those hotheads found someone out after curfew."

Aang gives her a funny look. "How could you tell? I thought you couldn't see up here because of the snow."

Toph waves a hand in front of her face, rolling her sightless eyes. "I can't see anywhere, Twinkletoes."

"You know what I mean!"

"Shh!" Tartok hisses as Katara anxiously presses her finger to her lips, listening carefully.

The sound of voices echo softly from the distance. Katara strains to pick them apart, the louder jeering of the Fire Navy soldiers, and the higher-pitched cries of their hapless quarry.

Then the ominous glow of fire spills along the snow behind the healing hut. A man's scream shatters the air.

Something in Katara's gut tightens as she scrambles forward, heedless of the danger. "We have to help him!"

Tartok follows, heavy on her heels. Somewhere behind her, Toph swears loudly before following.

They race around the corner, passing the row of healing houses before turning again and following the sounds of the scuffle.

Katara rounds the bend to stare down a darkened side street, as narrow as the one they'd surfaced in and flanked by weathered stone walls. Four Fire Navy soldiers wearing dark plate armour surround a Water Tribe man dressed in blue furs. Her blood boils as she catches them taking turns wildly bending fire at him. None of them notice her, too busy laughing as their victim dodges the blows, pinning him in like some cruel sport.

Glancing at the side of the healing hut next to her, she mounts the window-ledge and leaps toward the low overhang of the sloping roof, quickly clambering up the slippery stone tiles. Crouching down low to maintain balance, she grabs a handful of snow, forming it quickly in her mittened hands, and hurls it with all her strength at the soldier channeling a fireburst at the man. Without her bending, her aim wasn't quite what it used to be, but the packed snowball still manages to clock the soldier on the side of his face.

He whirls around wildly, searching for his assailant. Katara drops down, flattening herself against the roof as she peeks over the spire, still packing more snow into her hands. Her heart hammers, adrenaline buzzing through her nerves.

Then, with a deafening roar, a gust of wind tears down the narrow street. Katara's eyes water as she clutches at the stone beneath her, the slipstream threatening to lift her entire body clear off the slanting roof. Through the din, she manages to hear the jeering laughter change abruptly into shouts of alarm.

Good, she thinks grimly, just before the tiles rumble beneath her. She tightens her grip as her feet slip alarmingly along the ice lining the steep incline, struggling to hold her balance. Squinting, her jaw drops as jagged spikes of earth pierce through the ice lining the narrow street below. The soldiers' screams turn shrill as they go flying into the air, crashing with a satisfying thump against the wall of the healing house.

"Why couldn't you earthbend like that the night of the invasion?" Aang's incredulous voice demands through the screeching wind.

"I don't know, Twinkletoes! I'm just going with it, okay?"

Gritting her teeth, Katara pulls herself up to the apex of the roof, kicking at the hard-packed snow with all her strength. With a crack and a whump, it slides off the roof in heavy chunks, landing heavily on the groaning soldiers and burying them a foot deep in snow.

Something spits vehemently in her chest as she crawls to the edge of the sloping roof and jumps down. The force of her landing sends shockwaves ringing up her legs. Teetering dangerously, she leans against the side of the healing hut just as one of the soldiers pops through the pile of snow. She kicks him in the side of his head with a resounding clang. His eyes roll back as he collapses facedown into the snow.

Panting, she turns around to see Toph and Aang at the mouth of the narrow street, with Tartok staring wide-eyed behind them at the entire spectacle and Ruon-Jian a further distance back, still keeping watch for more soldiers. Then she staggers over half-melted snow, smoking and slippery beneath her shaking feet, to the man crumpled on the ground and holds out her hand.

"Here," she says, hauling him to his feet before enough of the light touches his face for her to recognize him. Her eyebrows knit upward in shock. "Chief Arnook?" she gasps.

The former chief's pale eyes widen as they take her in. "Katara of Sivusiktok," Arnook breathes, before turning his head to see the rest of their group waiting at the end of the street. "I might have guessed."

Katara drops his hand, pulling back as blood rushes hotly to her cheeks. "What - what are you doing here?" She takes in his gaunt appearance, seeming small and shrivelled without the hefty bulk of the purple chieftain's mantle he had always worn.

He brushes snow off his clothes, shaking his head wearily. "After I was removed from the band of chiefs, it became clear that there was no room for me back in Aujuittuq. So I came back here, to my home." He lets out a sigh, his shoulders slumping defeatedly. "We barely heard of the siege and the defeat before our shores were overwhelmed by Fire Navy ships. I'm glad to see some of you survived the invasion, at least."

"Some of us. But not enough," Katara tells him grimly. "Without our waterbending -"

"It's hopeless," Arnook laments, hanging his head. "With the moon gone, we have no way to fight back. Our lands are completely overrun by Empire soldiers. They tore down our walls, captured our warriors, killed any who fought back. They have the rest of us in chains, slaving away to rebuild their ships and raise our cities in their name." He sighs bitterly, clenching his fists. "And they took her. My daughter, Yue, the heart of our entire tribe. They took her, and Hahn, and the rest of the band chiefs, and imprisoned them somewhere. I don't know where…" His voice breaks, suddenly hoarse with unshed tears. "I don't know if I'll ever see her again."

Katara falters helplessly, turning from Arnook to her friends and back again in mute despair. It was happening again. Her people were breaking under the iron fist of Ozai's cruelty, and this time they were utterly powerless to stop it.

And yet, through some stroke of sheer luck, they had managed to find Arnook and save him from his tormentors. Her heart quickens at the sight of their dazed bodies, misshapen lumps buried under a thick layer of snow. It wasn't much, but it had to be better than nothing.

"We're not finished yet," she tells him fiercely. "We may not be able to waterbend, but there are other ways to resist. Iroh and Gyatso have us digging a network of tunnels under the city. By night, we can still hit them where they hurt and use them to get out fast -"

"To what end?" Arnook asks faintly, shaking his head. "The soldiers will just punish us more by day -"

"Well, we have to do something!" Katara cries, wringing her hands. "Otherwise, there's no way out of this and I refuse to accept that!"

Ruon-Jian taps on the side of the healing hut urgently. "Hate to break this up, but I see patrollers heading right this way!"

Katara nods quickly, before turning back to Arnook. "You'd better get inside. I'd hate to be around when those soldiers are discovered."

Arnook nods. A strange expression flits across his face. "Thank you - all of you - for helping me," he says softly, his pale eyes fixing on Katara. "I suppose I should be grateful that you set so little store by our traditions, Katara."

Katara huffs indignantly. "Right. As if after all this, you still have the luxury of being sexist." She savours the sheepish expression growing on Arnook's face before turning away. "We'll be back tomorrow night. Spread the word to any who want to help." She pauses, before throwing him a glare over her shoulder. "And that includes the women, Arnook."

Without waiting for him to object, she breaks into a run, following her motley group of friends as they dash back into the darkened alley where the mouth of their tunnel lay.

"Imagine bumping into Arnook, of all people," she huffs, slipping through the small hole in the ground and sliding the cover back in place. "What a pompous piece of work."

"Say what you want about him, but he had a good point, Katara," Tartok points out darkly from some way ahead. "How do we stop them from taking out their anger on more innocent people?"

"I don't know." She exhales heavily, her breath clouding into swirls of fine mist. "I guess we have to find some way to get into their heads. Make them too afraid to strike back."

"How?" Tartok demands. "You saw what they did to Chief Arnook just for being out after curfew! What could they possibly be scared of? They're a bunch of monsters and we've got next to nothing! How are we supposed to take down a bunch of tyrants?"

Katara breathes slowly, her hands tracing the slippery smooth ice lining the narrow passage. The dim glow of Ruon-Jian's fire grows further away as he leads them toward the dropoff connecting them to the deeper, larger tunnel Toph had hewn into the subterranean rock bed.

"Tyrants," she echoes, the word sparking something within her memory. Inklings scatter through her mind all at once, like leaves drifting in autumn wind, slowly settling into place. "We have to undo the reign of a tyrant! That's it!"

"What?" Tartok asks, glancing over his shoulder to stare at her quizzically. "What are you talking about?"

A slow grin works triumphantly across her face. "I have an idea..."

Chapter 47: a time for shadows

Chapter Text

disclaimer. i was today years old when i learned that disclaimers are a holdover from a bygone FFN era. oh well. it still doesn't belong to me.

author's notes. february is a useless month, let's cancel it.

thanks to everybody who's still reading and following along! creativity and motivation have been pretty tough to muster these days, but your kind comments really do make all the difference.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xlvii. a time for shadows

once upon a time
i was strong enough
i was me

"under my skin" / revamp

Lee takes his time pulling down his small tent, rolling the weathered cloth and shoving it into his shapeless bag. The worn metal of his boomerang still glints beneath it, the flashing silver catching the faint threads of light filtering through the canopy of lifeless branches.

With a grunt, he heaves his pack over his shoulder and trudges over to the periphery of the campsite, where a half-dismantled tent still stands. Ty Lee frets in front of it, fussing between undoing the fastenings holding it up, and the pale young warrior huddled underneath the slumping fabric.

He tries to ignore the churn of guilt in his stomach as he draws closer, the carpet of moss on the ground softening the crunch of his footsteps. Even from the small distance, the daylight ripples glaringly along the profile of Suki's face, scrubbed clean of her warrior's makeup. One hand holds a poultice firmly to her cheek, but the damp rolled cloth isn't enough to hide the bruises rolling stark along the line of her jaw.

Her eyes widen when she spots him, before narrowing into a glare as she turns away. Her shoulders stiffen in protest, but she presses her lips tightly together in a furious silence.

"We're breaking camp soon," he says to Ty Lee instead, setting his heavy pack down on a muddy boulder. "Need a hand?"

Ty Lee stops in her paces before nodding shortly.

Lee offers her a reassuring grin before sneaking a furtive glance at Suki, seated like a stone statue a small space away. He lowers his voice to a hush. "How is she?"

"Um…" Bright spots of colour rush to Ty Lee's face as she shakes her head quickly. "Her aura's still pretty green, if you know what I mean?"

Privately, Lee had no clue what she meant, but he takes a tentative step toward the formidably silent Suki, her back still turned toward him. "Maybe I should talk to her?"

"Best not," Ty Lee advises him kindly, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "She's still pretty mad, all things considered."

He sighs heavily, something inside him plummeting at the Kyoshi Warrior's intractable silence. "Right."

Quickly, she turns away from him, busying herself with scooping up the items scattered inside the drooping tent and shoving them haphazardly into her bag.

He lingers for a while longer until Haru finally shows up and takes over. Stumbling halfheartedly back to the main campsite, he glances over his shoulder one last time, watching glumly as Ty Lee helps Suki hobble to her feet, her left leg strapped to a board as she leans heavily on a sturdy length of whittled wood.

Ignoring the curious eyes trailing him, he marches to the small ring of tents on the periphery. The waterbenders in their grimy Dai Li uniforms work quickly and silently to tear down camp, dousing fires and packing up the small shelters with grim efficiency. He catches snatches of quiet conversation in a foreign language that somehow still sounds familiar to his ears, like the memory of a song whose melody he couldn't quite place.

Then as though by some unspoken signal they slow to a halt at his approach. He fidgets awkwardly, standing just apart of their small circle, but suddenly aware of every gaze training upon him.

By now, he recognizes a few of them, if not by name. Young Arrluk with his long dark braids, who had been his guard and almost a friend in a strange way. Fearsome Atka, the grizzled matriarch who led them all. She sits in the heart of their small circle, a queen among the forty odd benders who had survived the polar wars and all that came after. All that was left of their tribe, hidden beneath bowed heads and borrowed uniforms.

"We're heading on soon," he says with some effort, when he can no longer bear their inquisitive, tense silence. "You should be packed and ready to go."

Atka breaks his gaze to glance over her shoulder, barking, "Iluak, Ruska. Go help the others." A pair of twin waterbenders rise and join the flurry of silent activity behind her before Atka meets his eyes again. "You don't trust us."

Lee shrugs awkwardly. "Can you blame me?"

"No." Atka lowers her head, suddenly preoccupied with the calluses on her knobbly fingers. "No, I cannot."

He watches her blankly, as her fingers stretch and flex aimlessly over the unmoving pools of water gathering in the crevices between the tree roots. He wonders if he imagines the silent despair radiating from all of them, abruptly and irrevocably cut off from their element. "It's okay to not trust us either," he says quietly, surprising himself. "After everything you've been through."

She stares at him sharply and he flinches. Atka's face was pinched and weathered, with a hawk-like nose and fierce pale eyes that seemed to see straight through him. "That remains to be seen," she says slowly, closing her eyes with a rattling sigh. "Until then...this too, we must endure."

Lee thinks unhappily of Jun, lying forgotten somewhere at the bottom of a silent lake. Of Suki, hobbling with her broken leg and her silent walls impassable to him. "That we do," he agrees glumly.

By the time they reach the small town nestled in the forest surrounding the outskirts of Ba Sing Se, the sun is low in the sky. The deepening shadows cast the towering village walls in a veil of purple mist, while the shabby houses with their shuttered windows stand in undisturbed long rows.

Lee's heart races as they file through the village gates, the thick silence and absolute stillness giving the stark illusion that the entire place was abandoned. In fact, only after the legion of Lake Laogai's waterbenders enter the village do the gates swing shut and they find themselves surrounded by challengers armed to the teeth and brandishing their weapons warningly.

"They're not Dai Li," he hears himself explain for what felt like the thousandth time. "Don't be fooled by their uniforms, Yao."

The burly earthbender scowls as he strokes his bushy black beard. "How do you know?" he accuses, glaring suspiciously at the silent Water Tribesmen removing their pointed metal hats one by one. "They could be spies for Long Feng!"

"I doubt they're keen on being found by Long Feng, after turning on him and helping us escape," Lee replies wearily. "They were the waterbenders of Lake Laogai. They were responsible for the Dai Li's sleeper program."

Yao glances at him sharply. "Were?" he echoes quizzically. "Am I to understand you somehow convinced the whole lot of them to pursue a career change, Lee?"

"No. More like they resigned voluntarily," Lee grunts, watching the waterbenders raise their hands defensively as more rebel soldiers surround them with long sharp spears pointing directly at them. "They lost their bending."

Yao's eyes widen as he glances up at the darkening night sky. In the glare of the dying sun, a few bright stars dot the deep blue overhead. "It must be the moon," he breathes.

"What?" Lee asks, rubbing his ear to make sure he heard correctly. "What about the moon?"

Yao shakes his head with a frown. "I'm not the one who should be explaining this. Come on, I'll take you all inside."

Lee follows him, glancing back with growing unease at the narrow streets of the previously abandoned village, now packed full with rebel soldiers who force the waterbenders into a single file, flanking them on either side. "You guys seem awfully comfy out here, Yao. Aren't you worried about the Dai Li stumbling onto this little hidey hole?"

A sudden knowing smirk flits across the man's brutish face. "Nah," he replies, pausing in front of an unassuming wooden house, seemingly empty with its darkened, shuttered windows and falling into disrepair from the worn slats of wood comprising its exterior. A single old man with a peg leg and a long white braid sits in front of the cracked door, rocking back and forth on a creaky wooden rocking chair. "We took a page out of your book, Lee."

"Huh?" But Lee glances at the bucket full of water beside the old man's chair, and the gleaming purple critter he withdraws from its depths. He lets out a laugh of surprise. "No way! Suckers?"

"Just like you suggested," Yao allows, grabbing the pentapus and plastering it on his face. "Turns out, the Dai Li were terrified of contracting pentapox. They've given us a wide berth since."

"I can't believe that actually worked!" Lee crows triumphantly, watching as Yao strokes the small purple creature, which lets go of his cheek with a small pop. His eyes widen at the unsightly purple spots newly disfiguring the man's skin. "You've been doing this for a while, haven't you?"

"We've been busy," Yao replies, sticking the pentapus onto Lee's face without a word of warning. "Turns out, entire villages between New Ozai and here have come down with pentapox. The spread has been uncontrollable. Everyone has had to stay indoors, and the village gates entirely sealed. Long Feng's orders."

"Quarantine, huh?" Lee grins, glancing back behind him. A group of rebels have already descended upon Haru and the other members of their small traveling group with more of the tiny purple suckers. "You guys are good."

"Why thank you, Lee." Yao motions to the door of the dilapidated house, swinging slightly ajar on its rusted old hinges. "Now come on. It's past time we caught up with everyone else."

Inside, the house is nearly as empty and shabby as its exterior, the light of a single oil lamp illuminating the warped floorboards and the peeling paint on the walls. Lee tries not to wince at the screeching creaking sound the floorboards make under the weight of his feet, and of everyone else following him. Yao marches in front of him, unfazed by the way the entire house seems to protest under the weight of its visitors. He wonders if the house was stable enough to support all their combined weight, or if it would cave in and collapse on all of them, burying them alive without a sign or a warning.

But to his surprise, the ugly old structure was sounder than it appeared, and it stays upright, hiding the lot of them from view as Yao leads them down the creaky wooden steps leading to the basement cellar, and then into the hole tunneled into the ground under the house.

He wills himself to stay calm, but it had been a long while indeed since his last official rebel meeting. The small gathering in the teashop basement with Pakku hadn't been so long ago, but before that, he strains to remember. No wonder his heart trembles with excitement as he follows Yao through the narrow tunnel leading further and deeper into the earth, the light of the single oil lamp beginning to clash with the greenish phosphorescence of the glowing rocks studding the walls.

"What is this place?" he hears Ty Lee breathe, a small distance back. "It's so pretty!"

Suki snorts. "Speak for yourself. This looks too similar to Lake Laogai for my liking."

Yao tosses a sympathetic glance over his shoulder at that. "My apologies," he acknowledges with a sheepish grin. "But options for underground lighting are somewhat limited. Ah, here we are."

He pauses in front of a smooth rock wall spanning the height of the small tunnel and completely blocking their path forward. Placing the oil lamp onto the ground, he lunges forward and raises his fists with a grunt.

The wall splits down its middle before the rift widens, opening a doorway into the rock. Lee glimpses a flickering of light high in the air before he follows Yao into the sprawling underground chamber lying in wait beyond.

He hears the loud gasps of awe echoing from behind him as the other members of his traveling group follow. He supposes he can understand their amazement. After the cramped confines of Lake Laogai and the labyrinthine passages of the Dai Li bunker at the Sun Warrior's battle, the wide open space yawning around them felt almost too spacious. The ground was leveled smooth, punctuated here and there by clusters of glowing crystals, while the vaulted ceilings rise dizzyingly high above their heads. Doorways set into the rock slide open and shut, as though the walls had a thousand little mouths leading anywhere and everywhere: up to the surface of the small town above ground, through to the hidden spaces where most of the rebels dwelt out of sight. A raised plateau studded with more glowing rock protrudes from the back wall, on which a giant throne sits. An impressive crystal chandelier hangs from the middle of the ceiling, the etched glass lit from within by a swarm of glowflies trapped in its depths.

"These are some sweet digs you've set up here," Lee remarks, studying the sprawling audience chamber and the crowd steadily building inside it with appraising eyes. "And within throwing distance of Ba Sing Se, too! I'm impressed."

"Well, it's a good thing we didn't have to fish you out of Lake Laogai," Yao retorts, steering them through the crush of people to settle at a spot close to the raised platform. "Otherwise we'd risk throwing the Dai Li onto the scent, and we'd have to build a new hideout all over again!" As though to punctuate his words, he throws a suspicious glance over his shoulder at the regiment of waterbenders bringing up the rear of their group, bereft of their hats but still dressed conspicuously in Dai Li uniforms.

Lee crosses his arms wearily at the multitude of ugly stares being thrown in the direction of the waterbenders. "They're with us, Yao. Believe it or not, they defected from the Dai Li at great personal risk."

Yao snorts. "Hmph. Sounds more like a great self-preservation risk, if you ask me. Still, the King will decide their fate, for better or worse."

Lee whistles appreciatively. "The Mad King, huh? Is he finally going to make an appearance?"

The sound of a glider opening and snapping shut punctuates his question. Master Iio marches serenely to the front of the building crowd, the glowing light touching her arrow tattoos to a brilliant shade of green. "Bumi has been busy indeed, Master Lee," she pronounces in her soft, ringing voice. "There is a time for fighting in the shadows, and a time for fighting in the sun. And soon, very soon, the moment will come for our time in the sun." A smattering of applause greets her words as she slides her glider into the holster strapped to her back. "We must be ready for it."

A sudden rumbling makes the ground tremble beneath Lee's feet. His arms shoot out as he struggles to catch his balance. Somewhere behind him, he hears Suki curse as her wooden crutch clatters to the ground.

"I've got you," Ty Lee says, bracing Suki's weight with her shoulder. "Just lean on me."

Lee glances back at them ruefully, something like a faint stab of envy in his chest as Suki grunts out her thanks.

"Well!" an old man's quavering voice calls out, breaking through the subdued conversations buzzing around the underground lair. "If it isn't our tricksy friends, back from their tricksiest of trips!"

Lee blinks before turning back to face the rock plateau. Climbing out of a rift in the back wall, and settling into the giant crystal throne is an old man with tufts of white hair sprouting like errant weeds out the sides of his head. His purple robes billow loosely over his body as he fidgets in the throne, evidently trying to get comfortable. A shadow passes over his age-spotted face as he sighs and shakes his head. "All the trimmings and trappings of royalty, and they can't even make this chair comfortable!"

"Um, Sir, it's a throne," Yao replies awkwardly, dipping into a half-kneel. "It's not supposed to be comfortable."

"It's not?"

"No."

"Oh." The old king hangs his head, the bald skin shining bright in the light of the glowfly-chandelier. "Next, I suppose you're going to tell me to wear that ridiculous old hat."

Yao groans heavily. "That would be your crown, Your Majesty."

The old man crosses his arms across his chest, slouching petulantly in his throne. "But it's so heavy!"

"Yes. As it's supposed to be," Yao argues, sounding more weary with every word. "The crown is a symbol of your status, Your Maj -"

"But my poor head can't handle the weight of it anymore," complains the old man, rubbing the top of his head. "It gives me such dreadful headaches!"

"But Sir," admonishes Yao, now climbing up onto the plateau and approaching the side of the throne cautiously, "without your crown, how will people know you're the king?"

The old man pauses, tapping his chin thoughtfully before slouching forward in defeat. "You're right," he announces dejectedly. "As usual, Yao. You speak such sense."

Yao bobs his head in visible relief. "Thank you, Your M -"

"Although I don't understand why, as king, I can't simply order a lighter crown," the old man continues, waving a hand dismissively. A column of rock springs up next to the throne, on top of which rests an ornate, clunky gold crown. He sighs as he picks it up and places it mournfully on top of his head. "Or some comfortable feather pillows to ease my poor old aching bones?"

Yao opens his mouth to argue, and then pauses. "I...I suppose nobody ever thought of it before, King Bumi."

Lee raises his eyebrows as the king cackles, stroking the tines of his crown with his wizened hand. "That's King Bumi?" he mutters to Master Iio, who appears unfazed by the old king's antics. "He seems a few sheaves short of the haystack, if you ask me."

"Well, was anybody?" demands King Bumi, breaking out of his laughing fit to stare balefully at Lee. "Asking you, that is?"

Lee gulps nervously, taken aback that the old man could hear him from so far away. He shakes his head quickly, blood rushing to his cheeks. "No! Um, I mean - no offense, Your Majesty -"

But the old king breaks into more laughter, cutting Lee's stammered apologies off without another word. "Madness," he chokes out, wiping at the corner of his eyes. "And genius. To youth, it must all look the same. You think I don't hear what they all call me? King Bumi, the mad genius, going senile in his old age."

It takes Lee a while to realize that his mouth has been hanging wide open. He closes it uncomfortably, no longer certain of what, if anything, he was supposed to say.

"I suppose to an outsider, it would hardly look any different," Bumi continues, resting his chin on his hand. "There was a time when all us mad old people were young, weren't we? Where's Iio - ah, there she is - you remember when we were all just a bunch of young mad people, don't you?"

A small smirk crosses Iio's thin mouth. "Like it was yesterday, Bumi."

"Ah." Bumi gives her a dreamy smile. "What a bunch we were! You, me, Gyatso, Pakku - that sour old sea prune, acting as though a single happy moment could kill him -"

Lee chortles in surprise. "Yup, that sounds like him alright!"

Bumi nods at him encouragingly and Lee feels his previous awkwardness slide away. "And then the fiery fellows to round it all out! Piandao and his rock garden - remember how upset he'd get when I'd mess it all up -"

"As clear as day," Iio replies patiently. "I remember many a duel between you two to patch things up too."

"Those were the good old days," Bumi sighs, his smile faltering somewhat as he straightens in his throne. "Us on Piandao's estate, with General Jeong-Jeong...and Iroh, too."

"Iroh? You mean Emperor Iroh?" Lee scarcely believes his ears. "Iroh of the Fire Empire?"

"Back then, he was just the Crown Prince," Bumi allows, before letting out a long sigh. "How long ago that all was. Back when we thought the four nations could be united under the banner of the Empire, when we thought our similarities could transcend our ancestral divides. Remember, Iio, what we used to call ourselves?"

"The Order of the White Lotus," Iio answers, her face turning suddenly grim. "I remember, Bumi."

"What an idea that was!" Bumi steeples his fingers, leaning forward excitedly in his throne. "To think Iroh and I dreamed it up all in one afternoon over a pot of tea and a game of pai sho. How exciting it all seemed when we were young..."

"But -" Lee stammers, his mind working quickly to fill in the gaps, "but you rebelled against the Empire, didn't you? The tale of your rebellion is practically legend now -"

Bumi's face turns suddenly dark and Lee falls silent instantly, keen to avoid another awkward exchange with the king.

"Do you know what the problem with the White Lotus was, Iio?" the king asks solemnly, taking off his crown and rubbing the skin beneath it. "It was a union of ideas. Unity between the four nations. A devotion to the cryptic arts, threads that bound us altogether, elevated us from the banalities of our humble lives." Bumi's face hardens as he twirls the crown in his hands. "But that's all they were. Ideas."

Iio nods slowly, her face held carefully neutral as Bumi continues, his green eyes glinting madly in the shifting light of the glowfly-chandelier hanging overhead. "Iroh was comfortable as long as the White Lotus remained theoretical. A society devoted to the concept of unity, restricted to the refined, harmless art of making tea and playing board games. But as soon as those goals became concrete, tangible things…" Bumi's mouth stretches into a mirthless smile, making him appear even more deranged than he sounded, "the White Lotus fell apart."

Lee hears Iio clear her throat uncomfortably, but she says nothing.

"Iroh was devoted to his precious Empire. Even when it went against the ideals of the order he helped dream up," Bumi says bitterly, his fingers tightening around the rim of his heavy crown. "When we rose up in rebellion against the Empire, he turned against us. Lofty words, but empty deeds. He crushed our rebellion and went back to preaching unity between the four nations." He lets out a derisive snort. "In all my long years, I never met anyone who could talk out both sides of his mouth quite like him."

An awkward silence descends over the entire underground lair as Bumi trails off. Then, he replaces the crown onto his head and the manic smile returns to his face. "But! Enough of an old madman's memories!" he cries, shaking his head. "We've got more important things to do!"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Yao supplies, straightening where he stands next to Bumi's right hand. His face suddenly turns stern as he faces Lee, and the crowd of waterbenders behind him. "Lee and a group of his friends broke into the Dai Li stronghold of Lake Laogai, at great risk. Their objective was to gather more intel on the sleeper operation, and neutralize it if possible. The result -"

"We found out that the Dai Li weren't using earthbenders to hypnotize the sleepers," Lee interrupts loudly, stepping forward. "They were using waterbenders. The refugees from the Southern Water Tribe, rescued from the polar wars -"

"Dai Li spies," Yao counters stubbornly, crossing his arms. "How do we know we can trust them?"

Suddenly, Jun's dead body is suddenly all he can see. "They – they lost their bending," he stammers, his heart hammering wildly. "They can't help the Dai Li now, even if they wanted to!"

Yao opens his mouth to argue some more, but Bumi silences him with a wave of his hand. "What do your waterbender friends have to say for themselves?" he asks, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "They're being awfully quiet."

Lee turns around to watch the waterbenders exchanging uncertain looks among themselves. Then Atka steps forward, the grizzled grey of her hair shifting different shades of green in the pulsing light of the glowfly-chandelier. "I am Atka of Sivusiktok," she says in a loud, clear voice, bowing her head respectfully in King Bumi's presence. "Even from the depths of Fire Nation prisons, we heard the tale of your ill-fated rebellion. It is an honour to be in your presence, King Bumi."

"Why, thank you," Bumi sings, his grin widening.

"It has been many years since we were stolen from our home by the Empire," Atka explains, her voice trembling with tightly-controlled emotion. "We were imprisoned in the deepest heart of Fire Nation volcanoes, completely cut off from any water or hope. One of our sisters, Hama, learned how to bend the water inside the human body. She taught us this skill to save our lives." Atka's face crumples haplessly. "She broke free one night, when the moon was full. To show us it could be done. That was the first night since many that we remembered how to hope." Her hands curl into shaking fists with remembered rage. "Not long after, the rest of us followed. We never found Hama, but we found Long Feng. He told us - he told us -"

"He lied to us," Arrluk speaks up, stepping forward to place a hand on Atka's thin shoulder. "He told us that the Empire had seized control of the Earth continent, and that he and the Dai Li were fighting to free it. He told us that he needed us, and if we helped him take back these lands, we could live free among them, safe from the Empire's grasp." His face twists into a scowl, the shadows deepening in the scattered glowfly-light. "So we joined the Dai Li, thinking that we were bending the blood of Empire spies and preparing them for a life of peace. We didn't know that you were fighting for your own freedom, we had no idea that the Dai Li - that we were actually helping the Empire!" He spits on the ground, visibly shaken by the implication. "But Sokka - I mean, Lee or whatever he calls himself now - he showed us the truth. And - and he's right, we lost our bending, so now we're no use to anybody." He hangs his head dejectedly. "Least of all ourselves."

"Hm," Bumi ponders even as sympathy flares in Lee's chest. "You lost your bending, eh?"

"We did," Arrluk admits, shaking his head desperately.

"It's the moon," Atka speaks up fiercely. "Somehow...it's gone."

Bumi plies her with his mad green gaze. "So you feel its loss too?" he asks her bluntly.

"It is the heart and spirit of our waterbending," Atka explains with a grim nod. "How could we not?"

"Wait," Lee interrupts, suddenly feeling very stupid. "What do you mean, the moon's gone? It's a giant rock in the sky, it can't just disappear. That's not possible!"

"Sounds like you need to check again," King Bumi says with maddening simplicity. "It disappeared from the sky the night of the full moon, not ten days ago."

Atka nods again, her pale eyes glimmering mournfully. "That would be around when we lost our bending."

"Now hold on!" Lee exclaims, not believing his ears. "I think everyone must've gone a little too hard on the cactus juice! The moon can't just disappear like that! What - how is that even possible?"

"The Empire," Bumi declares. "They invaded the North Pole and destroyed the moon spirit's mortal body. The North fell to them almost instantly after that!"

A low, distraught buzz swells through the underground lair, rising and falling like the swarm of glowflies trapped in the crystal depths of the elaborate chandelier dangling overhead.

"Such treachery," Atka hisses, recoiling like a wounded creature. "Does the Empire's depravity know no bounds? To destroy the moon itself, just to gain the upper hand in battle -"

"Yes, it's very silly of them," Bumi agrees, straightening the crown on his head. "To dig their own graves so eagerly -"

"Silly?" Arrluk echoes, his face clouding furiously. "What do you mean?"

The brightening light of the glowfly swarm throws Bumi's face into sharp relief. "I mean, we all depend on the moon. All four nations relied on it for balance. But that idiot Zhao went and destroyed it without thinking of the consequences."

"Um," Lee says disbelievingly, "I think he thought about the consequences pretty well, if he erased his enemies' ability to waterbend and coasted to an easy victory after that. How else could he crush the Northern Water Tribe so easily?"

"You think it's just the Northern Tribe he crushed?" Bumi's sudden cackle splits the tense silence gripping the lair. "Think again, boy! Think bigger!"

"I don't understand," Lee whispers into Master Iio's ear as she lets out a gasp, "I think the king's finally lost his marbles."

"Without waterbending, the four elements have gone completely out of balance!" Bumi announces with a toothy grin. "Nature itself is struggling to rebalance them. My earthbending has never been more powerful! Isn't that right, Iio?"

The airbending master nods slowly, her eyes widening. "Yes," she breathes, touching her glider in wonder. "I feel it too, Bumi. My airbending has improved dramatically since the night the full moon vanished."

"But firebenders rely on the sun. And what is moonlight but an echo of the sun at night?" Bumi barks triumphantly. "Zhao thought he was crippling his enemy, but meddling with the spirits is like handling a two-headed ratviper! I wouldn't be surprised if the lot of them mysteriously find their bending much weaker and more difficult to control now!" He settles back into his throne with a sigh of satisfaction. "There are going to be a lot of wildfires in that dry, dusty homeland of theirs. I'll bet they'll miss having the waterbenders around then!"

Lee stares blankly at the laughing king, his mind struggling to digest his words. "You're out of your mind, old man," he says numbly at last.

"Ha! Don't believe me? Just wait and watch," Bumi declares, pointing at him with a knobbly finger. "You'll see."

"We have more important matters to consider," Yao interrupts, glowering at the group of waterbenders from his spot next to the king. "They may have lost their bending, but what do you propose we do with these people?"

"Hmm..." Bumi strokes his chin thoughtfully, staring at Atka and the rest of her people with his piercing green eyes. Then, straightening his shoulders decisively, his face grows suddenly stern. "Throw them -"

Yao's face shines with grim anticipation. Lee winces, bracing for the immediate imprisonment of the defected waterbenders.

" - a party!" Bumi finishes, his eyes gleaming wildly in the flickering glowfly-light.

"What?" Yao and Lee chorus disbelievingly.

"A welcome party!" Bumi elaborates, stroking the smooth stone armrests of his throne. "We haven't had a good party in ages! All work and no play makes for a dull bunch around here! Well, Yao, don't just stand around, get to it then -"

Yao groans, clapping a hand to his forehead in despair. He casts one last suspicious glance at the waterbenders before bending a door into the back wall and disappearing through it.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Lee hears Atka say gratefully as the door in the back wall slides shut. "We - we have done some terrible things in the name of freedom. I know it's no excuse, but…" She swallows before meeting Bumi's gaze determinedly, "we will do what we can to help you and your rebellion."

Bumi claps his hands together delightedly. Atka and the rest of the waterbenders drop into a reverent bow. But in the corner of his eye, Lee spots the shadow pass over Suki's face as she looks away, scowling. The smile dies on his lips.

"But speaking of that pesky rebellion," Bumi continues, leaning back in his throne and surveying the rest of the assembly, "how are things going above ground? General How?"

Another stocky, middle-aged earthbender steps forward with a bow. "Your Majesty," General How begins, "we've been getting reports from multiple villages now of a Dai Li retreat -"

"A retreat?" Haru repeats, sounding shocked.

"Yes," General How says impatiently. "It happened rather suddenly. Up until roughly a week ago, the Dai Li were continuing with their plan to consolidate their hold on the continent. They were marching through villages, rounding up their best fighters, stamping out any defiance they encountered with brutal efficiency. But then - all of a sudden, somehow - they encountered resistance."

"What do you mean?" Lee asks disbelievingly. "What kind of resistance?"

"General Hu can explain it better," General How mutters, flushing darkly as dozens of curious eyes settle on him. "She was at the battle of Han Tui and saw it with her own eyes."

A tall, willowy woman in green plate armour scratches her head in bewilderment. "I'm not sure what I saw," General Hu remarks. "All I know was that the Dai Li were doing their usual routine. A group of them showed up and tried to bully us into joining them. We told them to get lost or face the consequences. Then they tried to attack us. There were only a dozen of them and we had them outnumbered. Or so we thought." A dark look flits across General Hu's face as she continues, shivering, "But we reckoned without the sleepers. They defected from our ranks mid-battle and suddenly we were being taken down from the inside!"

Haru curses loudly. "Those sneaky bastards!" he rages, raking his fingers through his long dark hair. "How on earth are we supposed to beat them back if they have their sleepers anywhere and everywhere, ready to turn on us in the blink of an eye?"

Lee closes his eyes, shuddering as he remembers the sinking feeling in his chest, when they had learned of Jun's sudden betrayal. It hadn't been her fault, but the trap had been no less demoralizing.

And that had been the last time he ever saw her alive. His nails dig into his palms, trembling.

"Well...that's just the thing," General Hu stammers, her fingers twisting around each other nervously. "Even with the sleepers switching to the Dai Li's side, the battle dragged on. We fought through the night and into the small hours of the morning. And that's when it happened." She closes her eyes, as though trying to remember. "The sleepers woke up."

"Huh?" Haru asks, echoing the sentiment that Lee privately feels. "What do you mean, they woke up?"

"I mean, they somehow became themselves again," General Hu tries to explain falteringly. "I don't know how else to describe it. They woke up...and became themselves again. They forgot they had ever fought for the Dai Li at all. The brainwashing...whatever it was the Dai Li did to them...suddenly wore off!"

Lee draws a slow, shaky inhale as the implication hits him. "You mean the bloodbending!" he exclaims, whirling around to stare triumphantly at Atka's ashen face. "The Dai Li relied on waterbenders to run their secret sleeper program, deep in Lake Laogai! But…now that the moon is gone -"

"The bloodbending is wearing off," Atka breathes, her eyes widening in shock. "The sleepers, all the innocent people we bloodbent…"

"Without us to recondition them, the false personas fade away!" Arrluk cries, grabbing another waterbender by the hands and spinning her around in his excitement. "No more bloodbending, no more sleepers!"

"It can't just be that," Atka muses, running a hand along the length of her thick braid. "The loss of the moon must have accelerated things, somehow."

"Whatever it was, without the sleepers, the Dai Li's numbers were sorely depleted," General Hu says with a shrug. "It was simple work thereafter to crush them and send them packing."

"This seems to be the case across the entire continent." General How picks up the story after Hu falls silent. "We've heard dozens of reports now of sleepers suddenly waking up and leaving the Dai Li to fend for themselves. The people are fighting back, taking their homes back from those bullies!" He slams a fist into the palm of his hand decisively. "Now the Dai Li are scrambling. Instead of consolidating their hold on the continent, they're trying to regroup, forced to retreat on all sides and fall back to the seats of their power."

"Hm," Bumi muses, his fingers drumming along the armrest of his throne. "They'll fall back to the cities, where it's easier for them to defend and regroup in larger numbers. I'll bet their major strongholds will be Omashu, Gaoling, and of course, Ba Sing Se."

"That's what our scouts are reporting," General How agrees with a sullen nod. "Whatever we can gain in freed villages, we still can't get a hold in those cities. Even without the sleepers, they're too powerful."

"Beating the Dai Li at their own game will be like catching smoke with a net," Bumi pronounces, even as a big grin splits his face. "We're going to have to think very cleverly about this..."

"Your Majesty," Atka speaks up, marching forward. The people in front of her part as she approaches the base of the plateau, before lowering her head. "I know without the moon, my people are effectively powerless now. But we will do whatever we can to help free your lands from those duplicitous viperfoxes."

Bumi laughs, straightening the crown on his head. "We'll be happy to have it!" he declares, before his expression turns suddenly thoughtful. "What a shame about losing the moon, though. There goes our brilliant plan to free the mines on the day of the eclipse, at the end of summer."

"I know!" Lee exclaims, suddenly stung. "And after Pakku and I nearly died in that desert in order to get that information, too!" He hangs his head dejectedly. "What a waste."

"Oh well. Keep your eyes on the prize, and something will be bound to turn up sooner or later," Bumi assures him, before waving his head dismissively. "Now, won't somebody do something about all these long faces? There's a welcome party to celebrate! Where did that old grouch Yao go, anyway…?"

It isn't until later in the night, when the impromptu welcome party for the Southern waterbenders was finally starting to wind down, that Lee finally manages to take Arrluk aside.

"Hey," he greets, tilting his head toward the corner of the large underground lair. "Can I talk for a moment?"

"Sure," Arrluk agrees, his speech somewhat thickened by the casks of stolen ale that General Hu had cracked open atop the plateau at the head of the room. "What is it?"

Lee sighs, swirling his untouched ale in his cup. He glances around the room, illuminated by the glowfly-chandelier, now burning brighter than usual as the insects awakened with the fall of night. At Atka and some of the other waterbenders conversing intently with Hu and the other four of Bumi's Generals. At Haru trading stories with Yao, who appeared somewhat less grouchy after a few cups of ale. And at Suki, leaning heavily on her crutch in a far, darkened corner of the room, still wearing her scowl as she glares at the waterbenders and the strange party that had been thrown for them.

"I was just thinking," he says, his heart sinking as he turns back to Arrluk and tries to forget about Suki's dark scowl, "I...I don't really know who I am. Not since you guys messed with my head."

He watches the guilt flit over Arrluk's blunt, dark features before the waterbender hangs his head. "Oh," he says bluntly. "I see."

"The thing is," Lee continues, thinking of his unusual dream from earlier that day with a pounidng of his heart, "sometimes...I think I'm starting to remember. Sometimes, you'll say something or I'll think of something, and it - it just feels right. Do you know what I mean?"

But Arrluk only shakes his head mournfully. "No," he answers somberly. "I'm afraid I don't."

"Oh." Lee slumps, before taking a sip of his ale and wincing. The taste was warm and flat in his mouth and he struggles to swallow before continuing, "It's just...this is all so confusing and I was really hoping you could help me out." Arrluk stares at him blankly with his pale blue eyes, prompting him to elaborate further. "I mean...you guys were the ones who made me forget who I really was. I was hoping...maybe you could reverse it somehow?"

"You know I can't," Arrluk tells him gently, and Lee can barely stomach the sympathy radiating from him. "Without the moon - without my bending -"

"You can't undo it," Lee finishes, feeling like the inside of his chest was plummeting to his feet. "It's pretty much permanent now. I thought as much." He turns away hurriedly, taking another quick swig of his warm, flat ale. "Thanks anyway -"

"Wait." Arrluk's voice stops him in his tracks. "Don't be so sure about that. After all, what we did was a quick manipulation of the blood. It was never meant to last."

Lee's breath hitches in his throat. "So - so you mean...what you did, it -" He peers curiously at Arrluk over his shoulder, "- it could wear off?"

"It probably already is," Arrluk points out, setting his empty cup down. "Look, I can't tell you how long it'll take, but you'll begin to remember soon enough."

"I will?" Lee stammers in disbelief. "You're sure?"

"Of course," Arrluk says, and a strange sense of overwhelming familiarity overwhelms him as the waterbender smiles at him with his blue eyes. "You always do."

Apart from the small rustling sounds of the rats scurrying into the corners, Zuko's prison cell is silent as the grave.

He shivers in the dampness that permeates the stone walls, his threadbare uniform scarcely enough to ward off the penetrating chill. The iron bars are cold to the touch, wet with condensing moisture that sit in his aching bones. The narrow slitted window is his only source of light, cut into the section of wall just beyond the iron bars. Each morning, the weak sunlight stretches across his curled body before shrinking into the shadows in the corner of his cell.

By now, he has memorized every last inch of it. His quarters are cramped, maybe a dozen paces deep and twice as wide. The ceiling hangs low above his head, its rough stone dragging against his freshly shaved scalp if he rose too quickly. A pallet of dirty straw in one corner to serve for a bed, a pail for him to relieve himself that was changed twice a day, or whenever the guards bothered to remember. The slot at the bottom of the metal bars, through which the guards slide his meagre meal on a tray. The loose blocks of stone at the base of the walls, through which the rats snuck in to sneak the last crumbs of his food and hide in the straw, sharing his search for warmth.

Zuko tries not to shiver as the persistent drafts tickle the back of his neck. He runs a hand absently along it, the feeling of the skin strange indeed - exposed and prickly from where his hair had been contemptuously shorn off by his sister, in front of his father and everyone else in his shadow council. It was meant to be humiliating, he understands with a memory of anger churning away somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Fire Nation men grew their hair as a symbol of honour and lineage. For Azula to shave him in front of the Empire's nobility the way she had...it was as though she had openly robbed him of both before tossing him into the capital's prison like some common criminal.

His fingers trail along the curve of his scalp, tracing the short stubbly hair with an unsettled feeling. He had never appreciated the comforting warmth of his hair, or missed it more than now, when he knelt hunched over in his cell, feeling like a distinctly alien incarnation of himself - shrunken, bald, cold…and never more exposed and vulnerable.

Then, the telltale screech of the bar locking his cell from the outside, before the heavy door swings open. He squints, shielding his eyes from the sudden light pouring in from the torch-lit corridor, and the silhouette of his mother in her royal robes looming in the doorway.

His teeth clench together but he says nothing as she picks her way inside, kneeling across from him with only the metal bars separating them.

"Here." His mother's voice is soft as she withdraws something small from her sleeve with a shaking hand. "Don't make a scene this time, Zuko."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Acid drips from his voice as he plies her with a contemptuous glare. "I wouldn't want to embarrass you for trying to poison your son again, Mother."

She makes a frustrated, helpless sound like a trapped creature, and it only makes his anger flare hotter, warming his cold body through with its sudden heat. He focuses on the feeling of it, rushing through his veins, sparking the dormant pool of energy in his stomach the way Uncle's meditations from so long ago had.

"It's not poison," Ursa pleads, sliding the small vial through a gap in the metal bars. "Please, Zuko, just cooperate this once, this one thing, or he won't let me visit anymore -"

"What a punishment!" Zuko cuts her off sarcastically, smacking the vial over onto its side with the back of his hand. "You don't get to feed your only son bending suppressants with your own hands anymore. How you must suffer."

"It was either this or poison, Zuko," his mother tells him in a low, serious voice. Her hands close around the metal bars as she stares at him pleadingly. "And not one as kind or humane as the sunshade."

He growls, before snatching the fallen vial off the ground and unscrewing its cap. "Fine," he growls, before raising it to her face with a mocking toast. "To your long life, Mother." Closing his eyes, he flings its contents into his mouth and swallows hard, shuddering as the potion burns a trail into his stomach and the paths of chi throughout his body fizz out like dying embers. "Since I've forfeited mine."

"You chose to stand against him," Ursa whispers mournfully, her face blanching sickly pale. "You knew the consequences of being captured by Zhao, and you still did it."

"I suppose this is the part where you tell me I brought this upon myself," he snaps at her viciously. "Where you say I should have put my head down and skulked like a coward. Like you."

"No, Zuko." Ursa's golden eyes glimmer like the torchlight pouring in from the corridor outside. "You did what you thought was right, even though it meant choosing the harder path. You could have given in to your father, the way I did, but you've proved once again that you're made of sterner stuff." She lowers her head, hiding the tears that trail down her face. "I don't know where you got it from, but it certainly wasn't from me."

"No," he agrees, exhaling harshly and missing his breath of fire, its absence nearly as jarring as the uneven stubble lining his shaved head. "I would never lie back and allow Father to get away with everything he's doing."

"No," she says maddeningly, her fingers tightening into the red silk of her royal robes. "And that's why you must live, Zuko. You must endure, you must survive to fight another day."

He laughs darkly. "You should hear yourself, Mother. You sound as crazy as Father said you were." He twirls the empty glass vial through his fingers. "I'm trapped in prison, waiting for a day to die, with my own mother feeding me bending suppressants. How exactly do you propose I fight another day?"

Ursa raises her head to gaze at him solemnly. "I don't know. But you're the only one, Zuko - you're the only one brave enough to stand up to him! If you can't find a way -"

"I can't," he tells her bluntly, before sliding the vial back at her scornfully. "Thanks for the refreshment."

Ursa swallows her retort, before nodding shortly and rising to her feet. "Zuko...I can't - I'm sorry -"

"Just go," he interrupts her, the potion making him far too exhausted to bear her empty apologies or her hand-wringing presence.

He hears her sigh again, a frustrated, helpless sound, before the door slides shut again, blocking out the blinding glimmer of torchlight from outside and plunging his cell back into shadows.

Growling under his breath, he falls back into the pile of straw, gasping as the waves of exhaustion batter at him. The ground seems to sway under his feet, unsteady like a raft struggling along the sea at storm. Even the protesting squeaks of the rats fleeing into the corners sound too loud. Weakly, he raises his head to glare at them, but they glower back at him, their faces lean and hardened from hunger.

"Right," he scoffs to himself, collapsing back into the scratchy straw. "I can't even win a staring contest against some rats! And she expects me to put up a fight against my father?"

Then, to his alarm, a voice speaks out of the darkness, jolting him back upright at once.

"Talking to yourself, Zuko?" He gasps in shock as something steps out of the shadowed corner to stand by the narrow slitted window. "It's not a good look on you."

He blinks, wondering if the sunshade potion was making him hallucinate as well, as the thin beam of dying sunlight streaming through the window illuminates Mai's impassive features as she tucks her hands into her trailing sleeves. Then she tilts her head and gives him a sardonic smile. "Don't feel obligated to say hello or be polite to your visitor, now."

"Mai," he stammers, clambering to his feet even as the world sways unsteadily. "What - what are you doing here? How did you get inside? I didn't even hear you!"

"Good," she replies, stepping out of the light so that he can only see her shadowed outline waiting behind the bars. "Guess I can still do something right."

He sighs. "At least one of us still can."

Mai snorts. "I never pegged you as the self-pitying type."

Zuko raises an eyebrow. "Have you met me?" he asks dryly.

"Good point," Mai allows, the small smile still plain in her voice.

He struggles to find his breath, the waves of dizziness pounding at him until he has to clutch at the metal bars, leaning on them for support. "How long have you been here, anyway?"

"Long enough," she answers primly, before swallowing hard. "I don't know if you've noticed, but it's crazy over here."

He stares at her blankly as she shifts her weight uncomfortably. "Your father's rule is a mess. All he cares about is defeating your uncle and burning the rest of the world to the ground!"

"And how exactly is this news?" Zuko grits out, squeezing his eyes shut as the spinning sensation in his head worsens.

"At least before, when the Imperial Court was still in place, there was a semblance of order!" Mai hisses, glancing around her as though nervous to be overheard. "But your father's put one bloodthirsty, ambitious monster after another in charge, and he doesn't care one bit!" Her voice lowers urgently. "Now we have hungry people, angry people, all rioting in the streets, and what does your father do? He unleashes the Imperial Guard on them to mow them down, and puts their bodies on display! He claims it's to intimidate the people from lashing out, but in reality, it's just angering them even more!"

Zuko frowns at her, his fingers tightening around the cold iron bars. "Since when have you cared about politics?" he asks incredulously. "I thought you hated it. I thought it bored you."

"It does!" she explodes. "You think I want to care about any of this? I don't! I hate caring, I hate all of this. I just want to run off and throw shiny things at people and forget any of this ever happened!"

"Sounds nice," he grunts. "But it's a little too late for that."

"I noticed," she counters acidly. "Why do you think I'm here?"

"I don't know. Why are you here?"

"Because," Mai breathes, now reaching for the bars and leaning toward him conspiratorially, "because your mother was right about one thing, Zuko. Like it or not, you're the only person who can fix this -"

He bursts out laughing at that. "Me? What can I do?" he demands. "I have nothing, Mai. This is the end of the line for me. I gave up everything to save my friends, and now there's nothing left for me except waiting for the day my father and Azula decide to finish me off for good."

"That won't be for a while," Mai tells him somberly.

His legs buckle beneath him and he slides down, grabbing at the bars to hold himself upright in a half-kneeling position. "What do you mean?"

"I heard Azula talking about it. You and your uncle are popular among the people, and the last thing she wants is to make a martyr out of you." Even in the darkness, he sees the mirthless smile stretching across her lips. "So for now, she wants you locked up and powerless - out of sight and out of mind...but still very much alive." She pauses to take a shaking breath. "At least until things calm down. Or your uncle gets captured. Whichever comes first."

He staggers backward, falling back to sit in the pile of straw. The world whirls around him unsettlingly.

"You may be living on borrowed time, but you still have time," Mai continues. "So what are you going to do about it? Lie in here feeling sorry for yourself...or actually take a stand and fight back against your father?"

He scoffs again disbelievingly. "First my mother, now you. Am I the only one who hasn't completely lost their mind? What do you even want from me?"

"A little bit of courage, for a start!" Mai fires back. He catches the challenging tilt of her chin as she stares down at him. "What would that waterbender do if she was in your place? Do you think she'd cower in her cell meekly, waiting for the end?"

"No," he admits quietly. In spite of everything, he lets out a small smile at the thought of Katara, hissing and spitting and defiant to the last, even as she was surrounded and outnumbered by Hahn's men in the plains outside the city. Even when unsure of her place in the world, she had always faced her foes with her head held high. "She'd have found some way to resist. Hell, even without her bending, she's probably still fighting back right now." He groans loudly, before throwing his hands up in surrender, steeling his resolve. "Fine. But even if I have more time than I think, what can I do?"

"You saw what happened today. The guards broke up that protest and claimed to have captured one of its ringleaders -"

"A kid," Zuko interrupts, thinking of the young boy being dragged away from his father's hall, his pitiful screams for mercy falling on deaf ears. Of the masked people leading the protest, who had disappeared like smoke at the first sign of the imperial firebenders. "He's innocent."

"Of course he is! But your father's council needs to pin it on someone! Even if he was obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time." Mai's hands close around the iron bars and he glances up at her grim face. "Unlike you, his fate is set. He'll probably end up like the others - just another body to decorate the palace gates."

Zuko breathes very carefully, the world finally seeming to settle around him. "Where are they holding him?"

"In this very same prison," Mai answers carefully. "On the third floor - three levels down from here."

"I see." His mind whirls through the possibilities, and for the first time he wonders if the potion his mother gave him had completely addled his senses. "And if this boy - this prisoner - was to somehow miraculously escape...what would my father's men do then?"

"My guess?" Mai taps at her chin thoughtfully. "I'd say it would put a few people in serious hot water. The warden, the guards, maybe even the interior minister..." She ticks them off on her fingers as she recites them. "They're all dreadfully incompetent. But your father favours them, so they're here to stay."

"The interior minister," Zuko points out, thinking hard. "Is it still Qin?"

"No, he's been shuffled off into the war portfolio," Mai replies. "It used to be Fukio, but they dismissed him after the harbourfire riots, the day you came home. Your father allowed Zhao to pick the new minister, as a reward for his victory at the North Pole. Some guy called Shuren."

Zuko rolls his eyes. "Another stooge," he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Is Father's council composed entirely of lackeys and sycophants?"

"You saw for yourself what it was like," Mai reminds him. "Even Azula is frustrated by it -"

Zuko raises an eyebrow as Mai falls suddenly silent. "It's all very compelling," he says, pushing up to his feet. "But you forget one simple, important thing." His hands curl around the solid metal bars again. "How am I supposed to do anything if I'm stuck in here?"

Mai shakes her head as though she found him slow-witted. "Oh Zuko," she chides him softly, "didn't you learn anything from me?"

With a swift, practiced motion, she plucks something out of her sleeve. The wisp of distant torchlight dances off the thin flexible blade as she twists it into shape and jams it into the padlock bolting the iron bars in place. His heart pounds faster, racing with sudden adrenaline as a small click echoes throughout the small cell.

She tosses the small blade at him. He catches it numbly as she swings the door open a crack. "Don't say I never looked out for you," she quips sardonically. "By the way, I think you might need these."

Mai pushes a small bundle at him and he unrolls it with trembling fingers. He swallows carefully as he unwraps the layers of black clothing to reveal the laughing blue mask, plucked carelessly from the mantel in his old bedroom.

A lifetime ago, he had all the power his father had gifted him and felt trapped by it, unable to lift a finger against him. Now, even though he had been stripped of all titles and humiliated in front of his father's council, he realizes grimly that it was here, in the bowels of the Fire Nation capital's prison, that he had finally had the freedom to take matters into his own hands.

All he needed was the courage.

He swallows hard, making his decision in a split second. The mask stares back at him, its empty eye sockets daring him to meet its silent challenge.

Chapter 48: the mask and the veil

Chapter Text

disclaimer. the timeline continues to spiral into uncharted craziness and yet, atla still doesn't belong to me. oh well.

author's notes. how is it that time in a pandemic both doesn't pass at all, and flies by before you can even blink? seem to have more on my plate than i can chew, so hopefully this next chapter makes up for the wait. i apologize if the writing is awkward in places, chemo brain makes word-finding impossible.

thanks so much to everyone whose been leaving such kind and thoughtful feedback! i might not say much but i cherish everything you guys send me. special shoutout to the lovely commenter who pointed out that this fic is currently 1000 words shy of matching the entire lord of the rings trilogy in length. (being the hugest tolkien nerd, i needed to take a moment to digest that, so thanks for the laugh!)

as always, feel free to find me on tumblr at colourwhirled-writes for general and fic-related updates.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xlviii. the mask and the veil

you can't live without the fire
it's the heat that makes you strong

"iron" / within temptation

The wind whips cruelly along the snow-covered streets of Nutjuitok, glowing crystalline white in the stark cover of nightfall. The undisturbed mirror of the water's surface reflects the sky, its spray of stars rolling where the anchored Fire Navy ships groan offshore. Every now and then, the faint glow of firelight waxes and wanes, betraying the positions of the nighttime sentries to the silent saboteurs skulking in the shadows below.

"Remember to wait for my mark," Toph hisses out the corner of her mouth, her forehead furrowed deep with concentration and her hand planted on the wall of one of the small huts lining the city's modest harbour. "And not a moment sooner...unless you want those soldiers to serve up fried Sweetness for breakfast tomorrow."

Katara grimaces at the idea, adjusting her broad brimmed hat where it sits on her head. The wind rustles along the folds of her cloak and the lawn of her veil, its chill breath nipping against the stripes of red paint still dripping wet on her exposed skin.

Straightening in the corner next to her, Aang twirls his glider in his outstretched hand before snapping it open. "Ready?" he asks, his grey eyes somehow luminous in the pitch blackness.

Oh spirits, I've finally lost my mind. She swallows nervously before nodding. "I'm ready," she whispers, her voice faint in her ears.

Aang falters, searching her face before turning to Toph. "Be careful," he warns. "And don't take any stupid risks -"

"Little late for that, isn't it, Twinkletoes?" Toph interrupts dryly.

He lets out an aggravated sigh. "Well, don't take any more stupid risks than absolutely necessary," he corrects, before nodding at the others crouched behind him. "Come on, let's go."

And without a further word, he flies off into the darkened alleyway, toward the giant canal that separated the main city from the docks and all the Fire Navy ships anchored there. Ruon-Jian and Ryu glance at each other dubiously before following, hugging the shadows gathering deep and dark along the sides of the buildings flanking them on either side.

"Well, looks like it's you and me, Sweetness," Toph declares. "Just like old times."

"I know," Katara mumbles, her blood running cold at the daunting task before them. What if it doesn't work, what if it all goes wrong, what if -

But then Toph's hand clamps down on her shoulders, jolting her back to awareness. "We don't have to go through with this if you're scared," she offers in an uncharacteristically solemn voice. "You don't have your bending. There's no shame in walking away."

"No," Katara forces out, her resolve instantly hardening next to the easy escape that Toph dangles before her.

After all, the only reason she walked free was because of Zuko's sacrifice. Who knew what he was enduring back in the Fire Empire capital at the hands of his evil father and sister, if he was even alive? Compared to what he faced, her path was easy.

And if he could be that brave, then so could she.

"We have to try," she says quietly. "I want to try."

"Okay." Toph tilts her head, scrunching her face in concentration before pointing ahead. "That way."

She has barely finished speaking before Katara breaks into a run. She dashes toward the mouth of the alley opening into the street with all the healing huts and the bodies still piled before them. Revulsion churns the pit of her gut, but then the telltale glow of approaching Empire patrollers approaches.

Melting into the shadows, her pulse drumming somewhere in her throat as the soldiers march closer and closer. A silent prayer loud in her mind, to summon the spirits or the last shreds of her courage, she isn't quite sure. Her fingers wrap around one of the small smoke grenades tucked into her belt. She would have preferred the reassuring weight of her waterskin, but it was useless to her without her bending.

She waits until the soldiers have all but passed her before she charges forward, cutting across the street in the blink of an eye.

"What was that?" one of the soldiers asks, stopping in his tracks and glancing back over his shoulder.

"What was what?" his partner asks witheringly.

"I thought I heard someone…" The soldier's voice trails off uncertainly, scanning the shadows and the ice-covered path behind him for footprints.

Katara pulls the pin of one of the smoke grenades before lobbing it at the soldiers. It lands right in between the both of them, stopping in between their boots.

"What -"

Then an explosion of smoke erupts around the pair of them. Their coughing and spluttering wafts through the air like the thick grey clouds blanketing the broad street.

Katara takes advantage of the cover to scale the wall of the healing hut behind her, quickly clambering onto the sloping rooftop. She skulks low, surveying the grid of Nutjuitok spreading out below. Over by the small port, where all the Fire Navy ships were still anchored, she spots Aang's silhouette gliding against the starlit sky. Twin shadows trail him on the pathway below, weaving toward the ugly makeshift storage block where Admiral Chan's soldiers kept their equipment.

But then the sound of more footsteps head in her direction. More Fire Navy guards approach, drawn by the sound of the explosion. She watches predatorily as another pair rounds the corner, freezing at the smoke filling the street in front of them.

"For Agni's sake," one of them begins to complain, reaching for his horn, "what's going on here?"

She hurls another grenade at him and ducks low to avoid being seen. The resulting blast is loud in her ears, the surprised yells and coughing of the soldiers in the street below a grimly satisfying sound.

Then the pitchy wail of an alarm horn echoes through the night air, drawing the attention of yet more sentries. Katara takes advantage of the confusion, racing to the edge of the rooftop before leaping into the air and landing with a skid on the roof of the building immediately next to the healing hut.

"Look! Up there!" someone yells from below. "Is that a person?"

Reaching into her belt, she withdraws the old bone flute that her father had once carved. Drawing a shaking breath, she blows into it. The off-key note trills through the air, a surreal, vaguely unsettling sound.

A burst of fire hurtles toward her and she stretches out her arms. The heavy arctic wind flaps against her cloak, causing them to swell and billow around her like a flag at half-mast.

Suddenly, a pillar of rock surges through the snow, swatting the incoming fire out of the way lazily.

Thanks, Toph, Katara thinks grimly, already jumping onto another neighbouring rooftop. Great timing.

"Is that an earthbender?"

"You fool, did that look like earthbending to you?"

"Now that you mention it…"

Good, Katara thinks to herself as a small crowd gathers below, coughing and spluttering as they try to clear the smoke gathering thick and heavy along the street. The more soldiers, the more witnesses.

She puts the flute to her lips and her fingers pick out a small clear melody, a lullaby her mother had once sang to her. A lilting, haunting tune that spoke of spirits and sends goosebumps down her spine.

"That sound! Where's it coming from?"

"Back there! On the rooftop! Get her!"

More fire gushes forth from the ground below, spraying into the air and catching some of the wooden huts lining the street. Katara leaps from one building to another, pausing on one of the lower shacks to play another note on her flute.

"Wait!" someone cries, his voice high-pitched with sudden fear. "Look at her, doesn't she look familiar?"

"You been pounding the cactus juice again, Jiro?"

"No, look! Just look at her…"

The fire rushing toward her suddenly weakens and puffs out into a sad trickle, easily blown away by the breeze. The soldiers, obscured by the thick smoke, slowly lower their arms, squinting at her silhouette standing prim and tall atop the low, long building.

As though in response to the warbling notes of her unsettling lullaby, more jagged rocks split through the ice-covered ground, floating upward in defiance of gravity. The guards cry out in shock as the boulders finally halt, hovering motionlessly in the air before her, at level with her feet.

With a sharp breath, she steps forward boldly, landing on one of them. She tries her best not to look at the empty air yawning below her.

"It's her! The Painted Lady!"

"No, it can't be her -"

"What is she doing here?"

A loud, rhythmic sound, like something heavy pounding against the ground and growing nearer with every breath, like the thudding footsteps of an approaching spirit monster, cuts them off. Katara smiles grimly before lowering her flute and tilting the brim of her hat to bare her painted face.

A collective gasp of shock and terror meets her as she raises her hands. The biting wind swirls around her, sweeping the translucent lawn of her veil into a strange halo surrounding her entire body.

"You have turned your backs on the spirits that protected you," Katara whispers hoarsely, in the most spirit-like voice she can muster. "I restored your lands, healed your sick, and gave you a place in the sun. And in return...this is how you thank me."

"No!" one of the soldiers, an older one by the sound of his voice, cries out in alarm. "Painted Lady -"

"You have destroyed the moon spirit, one of my dearest friends," Katara continues in her croaking spirit-wail. "You spread destruction and crippled the North - an entire innocent civilization -"

"What does that matter to her?" someone else interrupts crossly. "Since when has the Painted Lady cared for these barbarians scrabbling in the ice at the end of the world?"

Katara's arms snap to her sides. A deafening crash rattles the ground beneath their feet - something immensely heavy slamming into the earth. Whimpers of fear rise up from beneath her and she raises her arms again. The loud pounding sounds stop, the sudden silence somehow stifling and eerier by comparison.

"Whatever walks this earth is under my care, human," she spits vehemently. "But you have thrown the world out of balance." She glances up, across the rooftops and the canals to the Fire Navy base, where a glimmering beacon of light catches her attention. Nodding she lowers her head menacingly. "And now...you will pay the price!"

Raising her flute to her lips, she plays a single shrill note as loudly as she can, its discordant screech resonating through the windy night air.

Suddenly, more explosions - louder and far larger than any that had threatened the soldiers - tear along the docks, consuming all the bobbing ships in rapid succession. The angry red glow of fire illuminates the smoking remains of the weapons stores, and all the flying pieces of Fire Navy equipment as they sail through the air in an arcing trajectory.

Satisfaction coils hot in her chest as the guards below scream in horror.

"Our ships!"

"What - how - how did she -"

She raises a single hand in warning. The smoke dances around her ominously. "Leave this place," she commands darkly. "And never return. And if you harm one more innocent...next time, I won't stop at just your ships and your weapons, firebenders."

A gust of wind sweeps in from the preternaturally still water, tainted with the scent of fire and fuel. It shrieks as it rushes through the street, battering the partly burned buildings and nearly threatening to knock Katara off her precarious perch.

She grits her teeth, planting her feet the way Toph had shown her. The flapping of her cloak and veil nearly deafens her, but they still weren't loud enough to drown out the terrified yelps of all the soldiers, scrabbling back and staggering away as fast as their feet could carry them.

"You heard her, let's go!"

"Fall back! Fall back to Aujuittuq!"

"Retreat!"

By the time the smoke finally clears from the street, only their harried tracks remain, heavy footprints cut into the smooth, glistening ice.

"Not bad," Toph remarks, stepping out from her hiding-spot around the corner. With a grunt, she lowers all the floating rocks back to the ground. "They couldn't get out of here fast enough."

Katara grins as she jumps off, grateful for the solid ice beneath her feet once again. "Well, that went as smoothly as it could, but I have a feeling it won't be so easy next time."

"Yeah." Toph frowns as she cocks her head, sensing the hasty retreat of the frenzied Fire Navy soldiers. "Next time, we probably won't be facing a bunch of superstitious yellowbellies from every rinky-dink town in the homeland."

"Probably not," Katara admits, glancing up as the wind pitches sharply and then abruptly stills to a halt. "Was that you blowing all that hot air, Aang?"

The young Air Nomad grins from his perch atop a neighbouring hut, before leaping down to join them. "Pretty impressive, right?" He rubs the back of his head bashfully. "I know the destruction of the moon spirit did terrible things to the world...but my bending's never been stronger."

"Same," Toph agrees with a shrug. "Oh well, you win some, you lose some."

"No kidding," Katara breathes. "If you were able to bend all that wind all the way from the harbour, while taking out all those Fire Navy ships…"

"And their weapons stores too!" Aang puffs up proudly. "Well…that was courtesy of Ryu and Ruon-Jian, I can't take all the credit myself."

"Speaking of, where are those two hotheads anyway?" Toph interjects with a frown.

"Oh! I flew back ahead of them. They jumped back into the tunnels and said they'd meet us back at the hideout. Speaking of which…" He glances around warily. "We should probably get a move on. The soldiers might be retreating, but let's not hang out here like sitting turtleducks."

"Right," Katara agrees, raising her hand and adopting her mystical spirit-voice. "Lead the way, young Master Aang."

His grin widens as he races back to the mouth of the narrow escape tunnel burrowed into the middle of the narrow alleyway. "I have to say, Katara, you make a great spirit! Very convincing!"

"Yeah!" Toph agrees from somewhere behind Katara, her head still cocked for any pursuers. "And the bit with the flute? Genius!"

Katara smiles as she lowers herself into the cramped tunnel. "Aw. Thanks, you guys. But I couldn't have done it without you two."

"Well, without your showmanship, we'd just be a bunch of benders doing basic tricks," Aang returns, before his voice turns thoughtful. "Maybe next time, I'll hang around with you too. You could try flying, that'd really freak them out…"

Katara shudders, thinking of how unsteady she'd felt on Toph's hovering rock, and how much worse it would feel with just Aang's air currents. Then her thoughts turn to Zuko, a lonely prisoner at his father's mercy, and she musters her courage. "Sure. Let's do it."

With a thump, Toph lands in the tunnel behind her and swings the door shut. Katara blinks stupidly, blind in the pitch blackness swallowing them.

Aang realizes his mistake, groaning loudly. "Monkeyfeathers! I knew I shouldn't have let Ryu and Ruon-Jian go ahead without us!" he gripes, with a sound like a smack to his forehead. "How are we supposed to see down here now?"

"Oh, what a nightmare!" Toph mocks, pushing her way in front of them. "Come on. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can spook some of the soldiers as they're skipping town."

Katara's smile quickly turns into a wicked grin at the suggestion. "Now there's an idea. What was that about pretending to fly, Aang?"

The early spring sun peeks through the heavy cloud covering the sky in a thick grey blanket, filtering through the needles of the evergreen trees lining the edge of the forest, just beyond the nondescript village walls.

Lee ignores them as he jostles his pack, heavy with gathered firewood cut and whittled from the fallen tree trunks off the beaten path. The air within the forest gathers stifling and close, too still and too quiet for comfort. Apart from the wind, blowing more strongly than usual and rustling the bare branches with a deep groan, there was no other sound. No scurrying small creatures, no singing birds.

A twig snaps under his boot and the resultant crunch nearly makes him jump. He spins around wildly, before cursing his own paranoia. A glimmer in the corner of his eye catches his attention and he whirls toward it, staring at the shimmering light dancing in the distance, amid a thicket of shrubbery and well off the path.

He frowns, staring at it in wonder. Must be a pool of water, he thinks to himself dismissively, or something else reflecting the light.

But a strange feeling settles over him, a feeling of overwhelming familiarity, as the light sways and shifts into the shape of a silhouette. His breath hitches in his throat as the colours ripple into focus: the blue of her clothing, the dark rope of her braid, the nut-brown skin the same shade as his own…

The wind tears at his skin as he dashes toward it, his heart drumming madly. The waterbender from the Sun Warriors isle, his own sister, draws ever nearer.

Just a little bit closer, he thinks desperately, just a little more and I'll find you again -

"Ow!"

The world suddenly flips onto its side. Pain shoots blinding fireworks along the front of his body as he trips and falls face first into the dirt. Blinking stars out of his eyes, he scrambles onto all fours before glancing up desperately where the waterbender's silhouette had hovered.

Instead, he finds himself staring at a small clearing in the middle of the woods, some mossy boulders and fallen tree trunks covered in lichen, surrounding a small pool of water. And seated on one of the flat-topped rocks, her broken leg plastered and stretched out in front of her, is Suki.

He falters, pushing up to his knees as she stares at him, momentarily alarmed by his presence before her expression shifts into a scowl. Before he has a chance to say anything, she turns away from him, glaring back at the surface of the water.

Lee swallows nervously, glancing around him for Ty Lee or anyone else. "What are you doing here?" he chances, getting slowly to his feet. "Shouldn't you be back in the village, resting?"

Suki doesn't look away from the water. "I needed some air," she answers shortly, nudging her wooden crutch, lying beside her in the dirt. "I was losing my mind underground."

"I get that," he replies, his heart pounding nervously as he takes a tentative step toward her. His mouth goes dry at the unmoving lines furrowing her brow, the contours of her bones pressing up along the exposed skin of her neck.

"So, uh…" he begins awkwardly, deciding to settle an arm's length away just in case she had enough left in her to lunge at him, "I guess you're pretty mad at me, huh?"

She scoffs, and the sound of it relieves him inexplicably, even as her voice drips with derision. "Me, mad? At you? What gives you that idea?"

"Um," Lee says, backing away slowly as her scowl deepens, "I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you're being really, really sarcastic right now. And that you're trying to set that pool on fire with your eyes because you can't, uh, take it out on me like you probably want to."

The tight press of her mouth loosens somewhat. "How remarkably perceptive of you," Suki retorts witheringly.

He latches on to the sound of her voice, the fact that she was finally reacting to him instead of giving him the silent treatment. It heartens him for the first time since they'd broken out of Lake Laogai. "I can be perceptive sometimes," he says to the unyielding profile of her face. "I'm not always hopeless, Suki."

She sighs loudly, her eyes fluttering shut. "What do you want from me, Lee?"

"Nothing!" he exclaims too loudly and too quickly, his cheeks flaring suddenly hot. "I just - uh -"

"Do you want me to tell you that everything's okay?" Suki barrels over him, still staring deeply into the swirling pool of water, its surface winking with the remaining daylight. "That I forgive you for dragging us into an obvious trap, getting us all imprisoned, and then turning around to help the same monsters who tortured me the whole time?"

He gapes at her as her silence gathers expectantly. "Of course not," he recovers weakly. "That would be stupid."

"Well," Suki seethes quietly, "it's a good thing I'm not stupid, then."

"But for what it's worth," he blurts out helplessly, "I'm really sorry."

He doesn't miss the faint roll of her eyes as she mutters under her breath, "Of course you are."

"No, but really," he presses on, not really understanding the desperation that drives him, or why it should matter at all that Suki was mad at him. Not just annoyed in the heat of the moment as she usually was, but well and truly angry. That he had somehow broken the fledgling trust between them and didn't know if he'd gone too far, if he'd ever get it back. "I know I messed up, Suki. I should have considered the risks of going into Laogai, just like you said. I'm an idiot for not noticing that it was an obvious trap, and if there was a way I could do it again without putting you in danger, I'd do it in a heartbeat."

She pauses, her nostrils flaring officiously, but says nothing in response.

"And - and it kills me that you had to be the one they captured," he continues in a strangled voice. "It should have been me in there, being interrogated and tortured and spirits' knows what else…" He clears his throat uncomfortably. "It should have been me. Not you."

Suki finally moves at last, shifting around suddenly to face him head on. Her mouth drops open in shock as she stares at him with luminous grey eyes, one slitted nearly shut by the dark purple bruise swelling around it. "You're serious," she breathes disbelievingly.

"Of course I'm serious!" he cries. "Why would I joke about something like this?"

Suki shrugs, and then immediately winces in pain. "I don't know. You joke about absolutely everything else."

"Well, I'm not joking now," he says firmly. "I mean it, Suki...I'm sorry."

She continues to stare at him incredulously, as though he had suddenly begun to speak a different language altogether, one that she couldn't understand. "And, and you don't have to forgive me," he continues when her silence drags on. "You've got every right to be mad at me and to not trust me, and to question my choices because let's be honest, my plans haven't been great at keeping us safe so far -"

"No," Suki allows quietly, "no, they haven't."

"But I want you to understand one thing," he says, plying her with the weight of his gaze. "You have to - you need to understand, Suki. I didn't let the waterbenders join us as a way to disrespect you. I never meant it that way."

"I know," Suki mumbles, even as her face darkens instantly.

"It's just - they were misled by Long Feng too," he tries to explain, even as the expression on her face grows more forbidding with every word. "I spoke with some of them while I was imprisoned, and...and they're just lost and confused, Suki. They lost everything and they just wanted a way to fight back."

But Suki lets out a long deep exhale. "How noble of them to choose torturing innocent people," she says acidly.

He nods urgently. "Look, I know the sight of them makes you angry. I feel that way whenever I see the ones who murdered Jun!" And before he could fight it, the bounty hunter's face flashes before his eyes. "But…but it looks like they've completely lost their bending now, and that means Long Feng will want them gone. We can't let that happen."

"You mean you can't let that happen," Suki says pointedly. "Because you're one of them, aren't you?"

He stares at her in open-mouthed shock as her eyes narrow suspiciously. "They're from the Southern Water Tribe, aren't they? Just like Katara. Just like you."

Lee falters helplessly, the image of the waterbender flitting unsettlingly through his head. "I don't know who I really am," he mumbles, his head dropping down so he can stare at his knees instead. "My memories are all out of whack, Suki… I can guess, but I don't know."

"Well, if I had to guess," Suki ventures, adjusting the poultice clamped along the side of her bruised face, "I'd say you can't let go of your last link to who you really are. Even if it means exposing us all to people we really shouldn't trust."

His breath hitches in his throat.

"You'll do what you have to do, I suppose," Suki says. "I hope you're right about them. But after what they did to me...I'm going to need more convincing."

"That's all I'm asking," he tells her desperately. "To just...try giving them a chance? You don't even have to do it right away, stay mad for a while longer if you need to. Hell, you might even scare them into cooperating with us more if you do!"

She gives him a very weak smile and he grins back at her, relief battering relentlessly at him. Then she glances over her shoulder at the pool of water, at the twisted shapes reflected in the dark mirror of its surface. "I'm not making any promises," she says warily. "But I appreciate your apology."

"You should," he tries to joke weakly. "They don't happen very often."

"I imagine not," Suki answers solemnly before she glances at him again. She holds out her hand expectantly. "Now, help me up."

The torches set in their brackets flicker brightly, illuminating the low ceilings and cell doors studding the cold stone walls of the Empire's capital prison.

But from Zuko's vantage point, crouched in the mouth of one of the many air supply chutes embedded throughout the building, the wavering light only deepens the shadows stretching along the corridors. It makes the approach of the numerous guards harder to see, forcing him to rely on his other senses to detect their approach. Like the sounds of their voices, echoing around the corners in low murmurs difficult to place. The rhythm of their footsteps, the jangling of keys looped in their belts, growing louder or fainter depending on which way their patrol took them.

He bites back a sigh, willing himself to remain perfectly silent. Dressed from head to toe in soft black, he feels safer in the shadows than anywhere else. Only the bright blue mask covering his face risks betraying his presence. He glances out the barred window at the end of the hall, cursing how the slitted eye-holes of the mask restricted his vision, but thankful that the moon no longer shone. For all that its loss had erased waterbending from the world, its light would have only made his task harder.

Approaching footsteps echo around the corner before two guards emerge into view, their deep red prison uniforms clearly visible in the light of the torches. Zuko holds his breath, drawing back and blending even further into the shadows.

He can barely pick out their conversation from where they stand, a few doors down, but he hears their laughter faintly, before the pair of them separate. One walks deeper into the narrow corridor, while the other marches toward its other end, passing right under the air chute where Zuko lurks like a patient, hungry spider.

Even as the sound of both their footsteps eventually fade into silence, Zuko doesn't dare move. Instead, he counts silently in his head, taking stock of all the other sounds that filled the prison's nighttime silence. The whimpering of prisoners in their cells, the clank of chains against stone. The drip of water along the walls, and the barely audible whoosh of chilly air from outside, rustling through the supply chutes feeding all throughout the building.

It had been Mai who had pointed out an opening to one of the supply chutes located outside his cell, just next to the window. From then on, he'd made quick work of the lock bolting him behind bars using the blade she'd lent him. After that, it had been easy to slip outside, the bars on the window set far too wide apart to deter any prisoner from actually escaping. A short climb of the window-sill and a leap and he was already clambering into the chute, its extensive network granting him easy access to anywhere in the entire building.

Still, he waits in the vent of the air supply chute feeding the third floor landing. The guards return from their patrols, exchange a quick conversation, and march off again before he finally moves. Careful to slide the slitted vent cover back in place before he jumps down, landing soft as a cat-owl tracking its prey. Crouching low in the shadows where the torchlight doesn't pierce, he delves deeper into the corridor, pausing briefly to check each cell along the way.

Mai had said the boy was being held on the third floor, but she hadn't been more specific, and there was no shortage of prisoners being held. Zuko grits his teeth, wondering how many of the pitiful people slumbering behind bars were actually criminals or mere political dissidents imprisoned for speaking out against his father's tyranny. Then the sound of the guards' footsteps grows suddenly louder and he shakes his head, forcing himself to focus. The rest of them can wait for another night.

He runs through the layout of the building quickly in his head. The prison was a flat, rectangular building with its corridors in a corresponding shape. If he had been a high-security prisoner and his cell was located in the heart of the corridor, further from the main entrance, then it stood to reason that the so-called "ringleader" of the fuel protests would be held in a similar spot. Racing against the time marked by the nearing footsteps of the guards, a wave of relief bombards him as he rounds the corner and finally finds the boy's cell.

From the dim sliver of light peering through the grate set in the door, he can see the boy's face glowing white in the dark. The boy himself is curled up in a ball on the floor, shivering and crying piteously. Something wrenches in Zuko's gut at the sight of it, prompting him to pull out the blade that Mai had given him and pick the lock bolting the cell door shut.

The door swings open with a faint creak. Zuko slips into the cell, bracing for the nearing footsteps to suddenly pick up speed. But they continue at their steady pace and he sighs with relief. They didn't hear, that's good -

"Who...who are you?"

Zuko turns around slowly. Through the narrowed vision of his mask, he perceives the young boy staring at him with widening eyes, as he slowly pushes up to a crouch. "Are you a spirit?"

The guard's footsteps grow even louder, warning of his looming approach. Zuko weighs his odds, wondering how to answer. To give away his identity was begging for his father and Azula to kill him instantly, and this was the only chance he had to take matters into his own hands. He couldn't risk losing it - not now, not in any way.

He puts a finger to his lips, motioning for quiet. To his relief, the boy seems to understand, falling silent in an instant.

Taking his eyes off the boy, Zuko studies the cell with a quick scan. It appeared to be laid out exactly like his own, with the grille holding the young prisoner in a small space, and more bars along the slitted window set in the wall facing east. The glint of starlight winks back at him conspiratorially.

The beginnings of a plan form vaguely in his mind. It had been child's play to sneak out of his own cell in the same fashion, after all.

He steps forward with the thin blade, and it's the work of seconds before it catches at the lock with a small click. With a grunt of effort, he pulls at the grille door and it slides open with a shrill creak. Wincing, he motions for the boy to come out. Hurry, quickly.

But the boy looks at him with fear in his eyes. "Is this a trick?" he whispers in a voice hoarse from crying.

Zuko shakes his head impatiently, his pounding heart drowning out the clock ticking down a warning in his ears.

"You're freeing me?" The boy staggers to his feet, scrawny and pale and swaying slightly. "Why?"

Zuko bites back his exasperated retort, instead motioning dismissively. No time to explain. Hurry.

Luckily, the boy doesn't push any further, choosing instead to tiptoe cautiously through the gap in the bars. Temporarily forgetting his misery, he stares unabashedly at Zuko, his eyes lingering on the garish smile and empty black eyes of the laughing blue mask.

Zuko swallows his annoyance, so preoccupied with sliding the bars back shut that he momentarily forgets about the guards on their patrol in the outside corridor. Until -

"Who left the door open?"

Zuko whirls around as the voice spills into the cell loudly, unpleasantly. Curses inwardly at the sight of one of the guards standing in the doorway, framed by the light pouring in from the hallway. And the aghast expression spreading over his face at the sight of his prisoner being freed by some - some thing.

Before anyone could say anything, the guard's face twists into a forbidding scowl. Zuko watches as though in slow motion as he lunges toward them, already shifting into an offensive firebending stance.

There was no time to think, no time to waver.

Zuko charges forward, clamping down on the guard's upraised palms and stifling the flames growing there. A sudden shift of his weight and he flips the man over. The guard grunts loudly as he slams onto the ground. His yells for help splits the silent prison air, before Zuko jabs a thumb in the back of his neck.

He falls silent instantly, knocked out cold.

From a fair distance, probably the other side of the floor, someone else answers. "Iori? Iori, is that you? Is everything okay?"

"Oh no," the boy behind him whimpers fearfully, shuffling where he cowers, "oh no, oh no -"

Zuko tries to block it out, the boy's anxious muttering and the hurried footsteps of the second guard shattering his plans like cold water. He stares at the window, its bars seeming to mock him. Gritting his teeth, he glances down at the unconscious guard. The glint of metal catches his eye.

He kneels over the man, staring at the ring of keys looped around his belt, and the sword holstered to his back. Since when have prison guards carried swords, he wonders briefly, before another idea strikes him.

Prying them off the guard's prone form, he gestures at the boy for help.

Together, they manage to drag him into the boy's cell and turn him onto his side, facing the wall. With luck, nobody would look too closely.

Zuko swings the cell door shut, grabbing the boy's hand and ducking into the shadows deepening in the corner of the room. Just as the second guard pauses in front of the door, peering in through the grate.

"Iori," the second guard calls in confusion, "Iori, are you there?"

But Iori doesn't reply from where he's curled up on the ground in the cell, and his partner already starts to move away, not noticing anything amiss. From where he crouches next to Zuko, the boy lets out a slow hiss of relief as the footsteps outside begin to recede.

That was too close, Zuko thinks to himself, closing his eyes before he springs to his feet. His trick had fooled the guard for now, but he was still searching for his missing partner. Sooner or later, he would be back, maybe with reinforcements. They needed to disappear, and quickly.

He makes his way to the window, sliding through the wide-set bars and staring out beyond the ledge. His heart plummets.

Unlike his cell on the sixth floor, there were no air supply chutes near this window offering an easy escape. He weighs his options, studying the distance to the ground - too far a drop down, within sight of the men guarding the prison entrance, but with the forest lining the building's perimeter in sprinting distance.

"You're joking," the boy breathes disbelievingly from behind him. "We can't jump from here!"

He makes an annoyed gesture, instructing the boy to follow. It's either this or death for you, boy. Come on.

"I can't!" the boy whines gratingly. "I'm - I'm afraid of heights, I can't, I can't -"

Zuko stares at the ground in the distance, before his hands clutch the bars in silent despair. His jaw clenches uncompromisingly before he finally leaps back down from the window, seething silently.

"What are we going to do now?" the boy whispers. Zuko closes his eyes, reminding himself that the boy was still young, innocent, up to his neck in matters he didn't even understand. All to appease his father's bloodlust, his illusion of power and control.

Then, as the lone guard's footsteps grow distant and quiet, he holsters the stolen swords and straps them to his back.

Motioning for the boy to follow, he sneaks back into the hallway. Clinging to the shadows, he waits for the boy to exit before shutting the door and locking it with the stolen keys, as quietly as he could manage.

Glancing up at the ceiling, he studies the pipes running along it, illuminated in the flaring yellow torchlight. He grabs the boy by his shaking wrist and together, they race down the corridor in the direction opposite from the guard's patrol.

But the sounds of the guard's calls echoes all throughout, growing louder with urgency until it's finally punctuated by the wail of an alarm horn.

Shit.

The boy meets his gaze with terror in his big dark eyes. Zuko only points to the grate in the ceiling leading to the air vents, before leaping upward, tearing the covering open and scrambling into the small chute.

He leans over the opening, both arms outstretched to grab the boy. But the young prisoner remains frozen in place, petrified by the sound of the alarm.

Zuko snarls quietly, remembering the boy's fear of heights. But there was nothing else for it. He could already hear the thuds of more guards approaching from the nearby stair landing.

Perhaps the growing threat of discovery sparked a moment of bravery in the little boy, because he finally shakes his head. His eyes squeeze shut tightly as he grabs Zuko's forearms, his fingers a bruising vice-grip digging into his sleeves.

With a grunt of effort, Zuko hoists him up into the air chute, sliding the vent cover back in place just as some more guards dash past the corridor beneath them. He leans back against the flimsy walls, gasping for breath. Sweat slicks his skin and he wishes he could take off his mask. But even if he somehow managed to secret the boy to safety, there was no guarantee that he would protect Zuko's identity. It was safer for everyone that way.

"That was close," the boy whispers, his voice rising out of the pitch blackness. Zuko feels him shift his weight, resting against his feet so he can feel the frantic thumping of the boy's heart. "What now?"

Zuko tries to point, gesturing for the boy to follow him, but in the dark it was next to useless. In the end, he settles for crawling along the cramped duct and hoping the boy would have the sense to follow.

"Hey! Wait for me!" hisses the boy from some distance behind, before scrabbling to catch up.

Zuko breathes through his mask in relief.

He navigates the network of air ducts in silence, pausing every now and then to peer out a vent covering when they pass one. By now, Zuko deduces that most guards in the building were up on the third floor, searching for their missing colleague. Maybe by morning they would still be searching, giving them a window of opportunity to break out -

"What is it?" the boy whispers, bumping into Zuko as he stills in his tracks. "What's wrong?"

Zuko scowls, examining what lay below the mouth of the vent opening. If his memory served him correctly, he had been expecting it to lead outside, just beyond the back wall of the prison, where they could jump down and make a dash for the forest. Instead, he only sees a hallway landing, identical to the one they had escaped from, and a guard waiting at each of the four doors.

Fighting a groan, he falls back on his haunches, his breathing laboured and harsh. Not only had he somehow gotten them lost in the air supply network, but the discovery of the missing guard had also tightened the prison's security. Every exit was now guarded and under watch, from what he could see.

But then, the faint whistle of fresh air sings in his ears.

Straightening, he glances in its direction, scrambling toward it. Where there was fresh air, there was a possible way out.

He crawls around a corner and squinting in the distance, his spirits finally rise at the sight of light glimmering faintly at the end of the tunnel.

Praying that the ground outside it remained unguarded, he clambers blindly toward it. The thumping shuffling sounds of the boy trailing him echo all around him.

He nearly reaches the opening when, to his alarm, the duct beneath him creaks loudly.

His heart jumps up into his throat as he freezes, and so does the boy behind him. Holding his breath, he waits and listens quietly, in case any of the guards had heard.

But the moment drags on without any commotion and he slumps over in relief. Nothing. Thank Agni.

He waits a few moments longer, judging the sounds below the chute before crawling ahead, relief battering him on all sides. The mouth of the tunnel draws closer, just within reach -

"Ahhh!"

Zuko jumps up and immediately slams his head against the top of the duct. Blinking stars out of his eyes, he whips around, dazed and horrified at the sudden deafening crash and accompanying screech of terror. He stares at the hole in the bottom of the pipes with growing dread, the abrupt thud of someone landing on the ground below and answering moan of pain.

Oh Agni, he thinks frantically, crawling toward the edge of the hole and peering over its edge. The boy lies sprawled on the cold stone floor, stunned and already trying to sit up slowly. Fear dances in his big brown eyes as the guards in the room notice him and draw near.

Zuko rubs his aching head in a growing panic, his gaze flitting from the tantalizing exit of the air chute within reach, and the boy surrounded on all sides by guards.

Breathe, he reminds himself, just breathe.

If the mouth of the air duct was nearby, then that must mean that the room below was also near an exit. He studies the scene below, counting rapidly. There were four guards looming over the boy, and none were watching anywhere else.

Making his decision in a split second, he drops from the hole where the weakened duct had creaked and broken under the boy's weight. Falling through the air silently, unnoticed until -

He lands on one guard, who crumples instantly to the ground from the impact. Before the others even realize what was happening, he leaps into the air again. Crashes into another by the shoulders and brings him down with the force of his momentum.

"What - what the -?"

Springing back to his feet, he charges one of the two remaining guards. His opponent hunches forward, anticipating his blow. Zuko hisses, ducking out of the way just in time. Smoke rises from the spot where he had just been standing, the guard's face appearing scared but determined nonetheless.

Zuko takes advantage of the moment by jabbing at the man's outstretched arm. His opponent clutches at it with a sudden yelp of pain, staggering backward. Zuko charges, toppling the man over onto his back, the back of his head colliding with the stone with an unpleasant crunch.

He sprints toward the fourth, final guard, who remains frozen in place. His face turns sheet-white as Zuko stops just in front of him, the points of his swords grazing his neck in warning.

The guard's eyes flick to his other three colleagues, all moaning in pain or horribly silent on the ground in barely the blink of an eye. Then he glances back at the blue mask laughing in his face, wilting before its menacing stare.

He raises his trembling hands in surrender, gulping visibly. Zuko lowers his swords fractionally, every nerve in his body taut, waiting for some sign of treachery or ambush.

Instead, the terrified guard stumbles back a step, and then another, before finally turning tail and dashing away, whimpering in fear.

Zuko steps back, somewhat surprised but relieved nonetheless. Holstering the stolen swords, he marches back to the boy and helps him to his feet.

"That was amazing -!"

Zuko holds up a finger in sudden warning, and the boy falls silent obediently. He glances around the darkened hallway landing, empty except for the three fallen guards.

Come on. He finds the door leading outside, grabbing the boy's hand and making a dash for it.

"There - out back, past the wall -"

They have barely made it two steps outside before fire craters the ground behind them. Zuko's jaw tightens, hearing the shouts of the guards as though from a great distance away.

"They're heading for the trees! Get them!"

More fire explodes behind them, hard on their heels. The boy's hand struggles in his, and Zuko only tightens his grip in response. His gaze is focused on the cover of the trees at the edge of the forest, drawing nearer with every step.

Nothing else mattered.

The whistling rush of hot air betrays the blast of fire hurtling toward them. Zuko closes his eyes, leaping for the trees just as it smashes into the ground and misses the boy's back by a hair's breadth.

Zuko gasps for breath as the trees close in around them, seeming to close off the distant roars of the panicking prison guards.

We made it, he thinks to himself disbelieving as they charge through the foliage, keen to put as much distance between them and any pursuers as possible. Behind them, the trees at the edge of the forest glow red with fire.

They run and run for their lives, until the sounds of the prison guards finally subside and the seedy, poorly-lit streets of the lower city open up beyond the brush of the trees.

Then, they finally slow to a stop. Zuko doubles over, struggling to breathe through the constricting mask. Next to him, the boy falls to the ground, rolling onto his back and sucking in lungfuls of air gratefully.

"You did it!" he chokes out, somewhere between a laugh and a cry. "You - you saved me, you did it!"

Zuko inhales deeply, regarding the boy solemnly through his mask. He was so tired he thought he was going to collapse. Every muscle of his burns and screams, and sweat drenches his entire body. And to top it all off, he couldn't even bend anymore.

And that didn't matter. It hadn't stopped him from helping one innocent boy escape his father's wrath.

"Who are you?" the boy asks, facing him with shining eyes.

Zuko shakes his head.

"Aw, come on!" pleads the boy. "I won't tell anyone, you have my word!"

But Zuko remains resolute. He points to his mask and shakes his head again. I can't tell you.

"You're a man, aren't you?" the boy guesses, his expression turning thoughtful. "You can't show your face because you're wanted too, aren't you?"

Zuko flinches but remains motionless. To say any more was to risk both of them.

"Well, I'm Nikko," the boy declares, thrusting out his hand excitedly, "and I'm wanted too! It's an honour to meet you, Mr. Blue Spirit!"

Zuko examines the proferred hand before tilting his head questioningly.

"Well, I have to call you something," Nikko explains, bristling under his piercing stare. "And since you won't give me your name…"

Fine. Zuko crosses his arms and shrugs. But he can't help the small smile that breaks across his face. For once, he's grateful to the mask for hiding it.

"Well, thanks for your help!" Nikko says brightly, unfazed by his silence. "Whoever you are, Mr. Blue Spirit, you're really brave!" He pauses, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet tentatively. "Not many people would risk the Phoenix King's wrath to save one little kid."

Zuko coughs awkwardly under his mask, shrugging evasively. You were innocent.

"Only because my brother won't let me do anything more," Nikko laments, shoving his hands into his armpits. "The butcher of Blood Bay and his Imperial jackaldogs massacred our dad, and he expects me to sit on the sidelines because I'm young."

Zuko frowns, the wheels in his head turning slowly. Your brother?

"Kuba," Nikko supplies, giving him a sly smile. "He's one of the local organizers, but Ma says it's going to get him nothing but dead in the grave if he isn't careful."

An image flashes before Zuko's eyes of the harbour protests unfolding the day of his return. The numerous masked ringleaders conducting the angry crowd.

"I think you'd like him," Nikko prattles on, oblivious to Zuko's sudden stillness. "I think he'd like you too. You should come with me!"

He gestures vaguely at the lights of the lower harbour city, winking through the spring foliage.

Zuko staggers at the offer, considering it for a wild moment. But then he thinks of his father and Azula, and how furious they would be if he disappeared. He imagines them setting the entire lower city alight, searching for him.

No. He shakes his head again. It's too dangerous.

Nikko kicks at the ground, pouting. "Fine," he grumbles. "I know the way back from here." He hesitates, his fingers twiddling nervously. "Will we see you around, Mr. Blue Spirit?"

The way the boy speaks gives Zuko pause. He glances longingly at the path behind him, leading back to the undisturbed cage of his prison cell. Where he was helpless, powerless, safe.

Mai would kill him when she found out he'd been spotted. All considered, his plan had been sloppy. To say it hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped was an understatement.

But even though he was a prisoner and his life hung in the balance, he had still managed to do something.

The giddy rush of defiance that swallows him makes him feel intoxicated, elation swelling fiercely in his chest. Was this what Katara had felt when she had started her little rebellion against the Northern tribe's rules? No wonder she had acted so recklessly. Right now, he felt as if he could do anything.

He glances up at the starry sky, the torn blank space where the moon had disappeared mirroring the part inside him that longs for her. But for the first time since his capture, he's found something to occupy his thoughts besides blind worry for her and the others. And if he could find some way to survive his ordeal, there was no doubt in his mind that she was fighting back too.

But in the meantime, he had the rest of the night open to him, and suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with it.

Your brother, he gestures, surprising the boy. Does he have friends?

Nikko's smile unsettles him; an old man's smile on a young boy's face. "Yes."

How many?

"Enough." Nikko lowers his head, his fists curling at his sides. "We might be poor peasants, but the Butcher of Blood Bay still had to resort to slaughter to stop us."

Good. He swallows, adrenaline flooding his veins with liquid fire. Find them. All of them.

"But it's the middle of the night."

Then wake them. And tell them to wait by the harbour.

"I don't understand," Nikko whispers, frowning in puzzlement. "Wait for what?"

Zuko smiles grimly, and the laughing blue mask swallows it.

A gift.

The following morning dawns cold and red, with a bitter cold wind sweeping from across the saltwater bay.

The guards were flummoxed by the unusual events of the night. Several among their number had been beaten, an important prisoner had gone missing. Whispers spread like wildfire among both the cowed prison staff and the common people of a mythical Blue Spirit, terrorizing the oppressive and fighting back for the innocents.

Yet, the disgraced Prince Zuko was sound asleep in his cell when the guards checked. And all might have dwindled as a passing strangeness had the Imperial guard not spotted the most ominous sight of them all, illuminated in the growing sunlight rising out of the east.

Waiting like a wrapped gift just beyond the towering palace gates was the bloodstained uniform of the reviled Butcher of Blood Bay, stuffed inside an empty fuel barrel. His body is found shortly afterward, naked and mutilated and floating along the shores of the Budo Bay.

A bold message to Phoenix King Ozai and his councillors; a warning of the days to come.

Chapter 49: the mouth of the abyss

Chapter Text

disclaimer. still ain't mine!

author's notes. thank you so much to everyone who's been following along! this one's for all you lovely patient people who've slogged this far in.

as always, feel free to drop a line on tumblr at colourwhirled-writes.

putting up a warning for some heavy content relating to death, in case any of you find this upsetting. please proceed with caution.

i give you...

southern lights

chapter xlix. the mouth of the abyss

the heavy weight of mourning
drew each head to face the ground
muscles tight on bearers arms
each body cold and frail

"ashes" / oceanlab

Inside the confines of Ozai's cryptlike throne room, it seems to Mai that time barely passed at all.

Judging from the mildness of the drafts seeping through the walls and fluttering along the curtains of dark red drapery, she surmises that it could be midday, perhaps a few hours past, but no more. The barrier of searing red flames still dances before Ozai's throne, menacing the entirety of his cabinet all gathered before him.

All of them except one are seated around the long, low table stretching across the polished wood floor. The pages scurry back and forth from the room as silently as they can, cowed and keen to avoid any reprimands. Palace attendants flit among them perhaps as silently, replacing the tea and refreshments that sit on the table.

Mai's stomach grumbles as one of them sets another dish of warm bao before her, discreetly removing the untouched plate that had gone cold by now. The aroma of charred meat and fresh steamed dough wafts tantalizingly through the air, begging anyone within smelling distance to take a bite. But only a fool would dare eat in Ozai's presence, especially given the present climate.

She raises an eyebrow as the internal minister, Lord Shuren, babbles on from where he stands at the head of the table. His robes are as immaculately pressed as ever, his black hair greased and slicked back into its shiny topknot. Yet beneath the weight of half a dozen jewel-encrusted rings, his fingers tremble uncontrollably. The gems reflect the firelight, winking into Mai's eyes.

In a reedy quaver, he squawks on about the shocking murder that had greeted the unprepared capital that dawn. Extolling the virtues of the now-late Captain Asaka, swearing bloody vengeance upon the mob who had summarily executed him…

" – why, by Agni himself, if I cannot avenge my dearest friend, then I have no business calling myself the interior minister! And may the Phoenix King himself strike me down!"

He sputters on in an incessant drone, until Mai is no longer able to focus. Her heart hammers rapidly and she has to fold her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking.

When she had given Zuko that mask, she had only wanted him to help break the innocent boy out of prison. Instead, in classic Zuko fashion, he had to go one step further and brought vigilante justice to the butcher captain himself, plunging the already-tense city into a frenzy. And locking her in the longest, most boring council meeting to date.

Which, to Mai, was a completely different game altogether.

I never asked him to rock the boat like this, she complains to herself. But there was no going back now. By helping him, she had somehow crossed the invisible line that existed between the royal siblings again. And now she risked Azula's wrath, if she ever found out…

She sighs deeply and wipes her sweaty palms along the folds of her dark velvet cloak.

"Lord Shuren," Azula finally says coldly, cutting across the man's indignant tirade with a wave of her hand. "You are correct in only one respect. And it is that you no longer have any business calling yourself the interior minister after your failure."

Faint titters erupt among some of the other ministers. Lord Shuren's broad face turns very red as Azula continues, setting her hands down on the table. "You are charged with defense of the interior, are you not? Yet you allowed some commoner in a mask was able to slip in and out of the noble quarters, truss up the captain of the Imperial firebenders, and throw him to an angry mob of unwashed peasants to strip him, kill him, and subject his body to the greatest indignities…all without consequence."

"Your – Your Highness!" Lord Shuren protests, angry blotches of colour rising to his pale cheeks. "I admit this happened under my watch, but – but security has never been tighter! Whoever this Blue Spirit is, he must have some knowledge of the inner city, that is evident –"

"And to top it all off," Azula barrels over him with a voice of steel, "while you and your incompetent staff looked the other way, a high-security prisoner from the harbourfire riots was also able to escape!" Her nostrils flare dangerously, and Mai half-expects bright blue flames to pour forth any minute. "You have turned yourself into a laughingstock among the people...to say nothing of your fellow councillors. If you have an ounce of self-respect left, you will resign from your post this instant, and then find somewhere to hide."

Lord Shuren blinks at her in confusion. Stray hairs fall from his greasy topknot. "I...I beg your pardon, Your Highness?"

"My advice would be somewhere in the countryside," Azula goes on blithely, ignoring the man's stammering with practiced indifference. "Where the locals have no concept of honour...and where you can no longer shame my father with your miserable failures." She runs her fingers smoothly along a strand of hair perfectly framing her face, leaning back comfortably on her haunches.

The man stares at her, his mouth hanging open in shocked dismay. He glances among the gathered councillors for help.

Stupid man, Mai thinks, if he expects any of them to speak up against the princess. Even Zhao avoids his gaze, his fingers digging into his lap and his teeth grinding together in frustration.

At length, Lord Shuren gulps and turns around slowly, to face the curtain of fire separating him from the silent shadow seated on the throne. He drops into a bow, trembling. "Your Radiance," he squeaks, pressing his forehead into the ground, "Phoenix King Ozai, I - I humbly offer my apology for my failure."

But the monarch behind the fire says nothing and the silence draws out expectantly. Mai