WhIP

by footfungus

nederlands verhalen over mijn otp

72. SOUTHERN LIGHTS ZUTARA 5

CCCCCeelhound - and remained as skinny as one too.

"Don't sweat it," Sokka remarks with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I suppose a poorly-trained dragon really is small fries compared to the last time we had firebenders on our shores -"

"Sokka!"

"I'm just kidding!" Sokka raises his hands defensively. "Spirits, Chief, can't you take a little joke?"

"Jokes are supposed to be funny!"

Zuko conceals his confusion with well-practised ease. Katara and Sokka's frequent spats never failed to perplex him. So different from his relationship with his own sister…and yet the frustrated tension crackling between the pair of them rings familiar to him all the same.

"Speaking of crowds," Katara says, clearly eager to change the subject. "Where's the rest of your crew, Zuko?"

"They, uh…" Zuko glances over his shoulder at the crimson airship straining at the ropes anchoring it in place. Dark shadows flit against the windows. "They seem to be taking some time to unload their equipment. It's all a bit delicate, you see."

"Delicate," Sokka echoes, a smirk inexplicably appearing on his face. "Uh-huh."

"I brought a very small team," Zuko explains, heat rushing to his cheeks. "Just as many as we needed to, uh, investigate whatever got left in the Antarctic plains when they abandoned this place."

"Now that's the free-flowing generosity I've come to expect from the Fire Nation," Sokka remarks, the edge in his voice turning distinctly sarcastic.

Zuko tries not to glare at him. Instead, he focuses his attention on Katara, who has also elected to ignore her brother's snide commentary. "A larger party would have had people back home starting to ask questions," he continues in little more than a whisper. "I figured discretion was the priority right now. I can always requisition more support from the governing court once - I mean, if - we find anything of interest down there."

"That makes sense," Katara agrees with a quick nod. "Isn't that right, Sokka?"

"Yeah, it's awfully pragmatic," Sokka observes airily, even as his smirk grows wider. "A nice long expedition to the South to figure out how to get us out of this mess. Are you also planning on buying my sister while you're at it?"

"Sokka!"

Zuko's confusion only mounts as Katara flushes an impressive shade of purple. Seething viciously under her breath, she grabs her brother by the ear and hauls him further up the beach, deaf to his indignant protests.

"Druk," Zuko breathes uneasily. "I get the feeling that this is going to be a long trip."

"Yup," Sokka intones solemnly. "That's oil, all right."

He gestures at one of the massive chasms that had been drilled into the snow-covered plains. One of the only features disturbing the blank white canvas of the antarctic tundra, a flat valley nestled amid the jagged peaks of the ice-covered mountains ringing all around them. A strange column of light shines steadily at its centre - a beacon of some sort, Zuko had guessed upon first seeing it.

Now the wind rustles against the outer layer of his cotton robes. It remains startlingly mild despite the frozen bleakness of his surroundings.

Katara's sharp intake of breath reaches his ears. "Thanks, Sokka," she manages to bite out. "Even though Zuko's engineer literally said the exact same thing to us already."

"Well, I was just translating for you normal people. In case you didn't understand her the first time." Sokka smirks at the small team of Fire Nation mechanists, still huddled around the narrow syphon pump that had taken them nearly a week to painstakingly drill into the seemingly bottomless gorge.

And the single, absurdly tiny dropper vial of viscous black liquid that it had finally managed to produce.

Zuko stares at it, transfixed. He had lost count of the months that had passed since he had received Katara's cryptic message warning him of what they had found buried beneath the spirit wilds.

It had loomed in the back of his mind ever since, a constant gnawing concern.

They had already suspected, already known what it was. But hearing it confirmed out loud from the mouths of the Fire Nation's very own reluctant scientists still sends his blood running cold.

He maintains his composure as the principal engineer addresses him, promising to draft up a report of the team's findings. "Thank you, Marin," he says simply. "I'll look it over before sending it back to Kei Ling and her council."

The engineer bows, but does not refrain from blurting out the question burning on everyone's lips. "And then what, Your Highness?"

Every pair of eyes suddenly lands upon him. "That's for Chief Katara and her people to decide," he answers evenly. "This is Water Tribe territory after all."

Sputters of disbelief erupt from the team of Fire Nation mechanists.

"Well, we'll have to think about the best way to get a bigger drill down there," Sokka remarks, rubbing his jaw in thought. "There's no way we're using that dinky thing you guys installed there, no offence -"

"Who says anything about drilling?" Atka interrupts. The old matriarch's knuckles turn white as she clutches at her walking-stick, tapping it sharply against the ice in a warning rhythm. "Princess Yue charged us to safeguard the land and all of its resources. We cannot blindly delve into the ground and take what is not ours at the whim of - of outsiders!"

"We can't just dismiss this!" Arrluk objects, scowling. "Harnessing this resource could secure the future of the Tribes for generations to come! It could change our fortunes - it could finally give us a hand to play when dealing with the other nations! We have to at least consider Sokka's idea!"

"Master Atka is right," Bato affirms, silencing Arrluk's protests with a stern look. "Fortune is fleeting, but only the land will last. That must be our first priority."

Sokka throws up his hands in visible exasperation. "Katara, what do you think? You're the Chief - it's your call."

Katara holds her head up high as every gaze levels on hers pleadingly. "It seems there are many strong feelings on the matter," she answers, her voice schooled to a careful calm. Even her face gives none of her thoughts away. "I will hear what everyone in the tribe has to say before I can make any decision."

"Your Highness!" Marin hisses into his ear frantically. "With all due respect - this is the largest reserve we've ever seen! From our surveys, we have reason to believe that there are deposits all over this area here. While these ice-scrabblers bicker among themselves trying to make up their minds -"

Zuko drags her out of earshot. The woman falls silent, instantly cowed. "Do not forget that you are a guest here," he warns softly. "Imagine if someone you invited into your home rebuffed your hospitality the same way you just have. How quickly would you rescind your invitation, I wonder?"

"M-my apologies, Your Highness," Marin stammers, her face turning the same crimson hue as her uniform. "Please forgive me for misspeaking. I…I only meant… You have been establishing diplomatic relationships with the Water Tribes, haven't you? Couldn't you use those to - to exert some influence upon this decision?"

Zuko raises his good eyebrow. "You're an engineer, Marin, not a diplomat. I suggest you stick to what you know best -"

"F-forgive my impertinence!" she squeaks, now quailing under the weight of Zuko's glare. "I know it's not my place to remind you of your duties, Your Highness. But…but you are the ambassador-at-large! Shouldn't you be defending your own nation's interests here? Think of what access to these resources could do for the Fire Nation! For science, for development, for commerce -"

"You don't need to remind me of my responsibilities," Zuko growls. "But my hands are tied. The Fire Nation's governing court has already recognized the Water Tribes' full sovereignty over all resources in their land." He sighs theatrically for effect. "In fact, it was Trade Minister Fukio himself who signed off on that agreement, shortly after the last All-Nations Summit."

Satisfaction wrings through him at the aghast expression spreading over Marin's face as he continues doggedly. "I serve the governing council. And they have already decided that it is not in the Fire Nation's interests to interfere with decisions concerning any resources found in Water Tribe territory."

The engineer opens and closes her mouth in wordless indignation.

Zuko rests a consoling hand on her shoulder. "However. If the loss of all this opportunity distresses you so much…perhaps you could briefly mention it in your report to Kei Ling's council."

"Really?" Marin blinks at him even as a realisation dawns across her face. "I mean…that is the purpose of our report, come to think of it. We'll have to address the impacts and consequences of our findings."

"Of course." Zuko withdraws his hand, smirking inwardly as the engineer pushes her glasses up her nose in a show of growing determination. "Whatever you deem fit to include. I wouldn't dream of telling you how to do your job…"

"So the plan worked?"

"Like a charm. Marin took the bait - hook, line and sinker."

Katara's smirk blazes in the corner of his eye. "How long do you think it'll take before Fukio starts sending us messenger hawks begging to renegotiate?"

Zuko snorts, before sipping at the cup of herbal tea steaming in his glove. "I did warn him, you know."

Somewhere behind him, Druk lets out a grumble as he coils up tighter into a boneless mound of glittering red scales, snoring gently in a pile of moss.

"What about you?" Zuko chances. Have you decided anything yet?"

She inches closer to the fire, wrapping her arms around her knees. "No," she admits softly. "Like you saw…people have mixed feelings about the oil reserves."

Zuko watches the firelight play against the strong black lines tracing the contours of her face. "What do you want to do?"

She shrugs again. "I still don't know," she whispers. "Atka and Bato and the others, they have a point. This is a gift from the land. And for us in the South, having lost our home once…"

Zuko winces. "I imagine a lot of them are taking this all very personally."

Katara lets out a small laugh. "That's putting it lightly…" She gazes at the little fire, the leaping flames reflected in her thoughtful eyes. "Personally, I wish we had never found it. This puts us all at risk. It's already dividing the Tribe, and when the other nations find out about it…"

"Hey." Zuko reaches out to squeeze her hand. "We've got a plan, remember? And you're not alone this time."

Druk lets out a sleepy sigh, before stretching out to his full length and rolling over onto his back to expose his belly.

"I know," she confesses. "But - but hearing Sokka and Arrluk talking about it…Zuko, I don't know." She chews at her lip, her eyes darting from the fire to his face and then back again. "If we play our cards right…then this could change everything. The other nations wouldn't see us as primitive peasant savages living at the end of the world anymore."

Zuko arches his eyebrows, thinking darkly of the small team of mechanists, and the principal engineer's careless slip of tongue earlier that day… "Are you sure about that?"

"Not really." Katara gazes across the rocky flatlands, interspersed with glassy lakes and thick carpets of dull green brush that rustle in the sweeping wind. Distant bonfires flicker in their midst, surrounded by more tents and the bulky outlines of the Southerners dressed to ward off the chill of the night.

And the small group of Fire Nation mechanists, seated apart from everyone else, their streamlined uniforms gleaming dark crimson in the light of the midnight sun.

"But a girl can dream." Katara kneads at her temples with patient fingers. "I don't know, Zuko. Atka and the elders have one vision for the future, and Sokka's got another. But they're fundamentally incompatible. How am I supposed to find a middle ground here?"

"You don't have to do anything yet," Zuko reminds her gently. "You just have to listen and let things take their course. Our team hasn't even started writing up their report yet. You still have time."

"I know," she acknowledges with a deep sigh. "Thank you, Zuko." The smile returns to her face, hesitant this time, almost shy. "It's…it's really nice to have you here. I still have trouble believing it."

"Well, I still have trouble believing that the sun is still up!" Zuko points at it, beaming golden and heavy where it hangs low in the sky, framed by the snow-capped mountains that line the horizon. "And that it never actually sets! I'm surprised the firebenders left here at all."

"Polar night must have drained them of their enthusiasm."

Zuko grimaces, remembering the brutal winter he had passed in Aujuittuq.

Yet it lingers before his eyes, a sight he had never thought possible. The sun, still shining in a bright blue sky in the dead of the night. Its orange glow spills over the flowering heath spreading in a surprisingly colourful blanket all around them. Only the strange beacon at the heart of the spirit wilds manages to outshine it, its light illuminating the entire southern half of the sky.

"Is that some kind of beacon?" he finally asks. "Or is it…is it the southern lights?"

Katara glances over her shoulder at the blinding white beam, its brilliance undimmed despite the passage of time. "No," she answers, already turning away and dismissing the strange celestial phenomenon as though it was just another star in the sky. "No, it's the wrong season for the lights. You'll have to wait until autumn, maybe even winter, to see them…"

The waves foam and splash against the shore, blinding and flashing where they reflect the relentless light of the midday sun.

Katara raises a hand to shield her eyes. She squints from her vantage point atop one of the cliffs overlooking the precipitous drop down to the sea.

"Here," she says, nodding. "Here's where the monument should stand."

Sokka scratches his head as the architect scribbles hastily onto a notepad. "Are you sure? It's awfully close to the edge. What do you think, Juatan?"

The scratching of the architect's pen pauses momentarily. "The location might make it more susceptible to weathering -"

"Isn't there something you can do about that?" Katara asks impatiently.

"Hm." Juatan, the architect, rubs his jaw with a frown. "Perhaps a treatment of some sort, to protect against the harshness of the elements. Or choosing a hardier type of stone -"

"Or, it could go in the village square like I suggested," Sokka argues. He waves at the busy construction zone behind them, and all the clouds of dust billowing upward where the old settlements had once stood. "What's the difference, anyway?"

Katara glances at the scores of Water Tribe builders busy at their toil. Levelling the ruined earth, digging to set the foundations. Raising structures and fortifications that would last through the turn of the seasons this time...

"The difference, Sokka, is that this is where it all started."

She steps to the edge of the cliff. Rock crumbles beneath her feet, into the waiting jaws of the sea. "This is where the Fire Navy ships first landed on our shores, where the first of our villages fell. Where they rounded us all up on their boats and took us away from our home. Remember?"

Sokka shifts uncomfortably where he stands. "Yeah. I do."

"Well so should everyone else." She watches the handful of waterbenders lined up along the pebbly beach, working in unison to shore up the northern coastline. "This is the port of entry for our Tribe. Anyone who visits us, by sea or by air, I want that monument to be the very first thing they see."

Already, treacherous rapids disrupt the formerly tranquil waters, forcing the currents to change direction and seep steadily inland. In time, the weather would cool and the sea ice would return, making the approach by boat practically impassable without a waterbender on board…

She burrows into the folds of her cloak; her voice grows thick with emotion. "Nothing can bring them back."

"I know." Sokka murmurs, unusually morose. "All we can do is make everything else easier to bear."

Katara nods, everything blurring to an indistinct smudge. "And remember them." She wipes at her face again before raising her head high. "We have to make sure we remember them."

A charged silence follows her pronouncement, broken only by the calls of seabirds and the buzz of construction.

"Um." The architect clears his throat, before bobbing his head nervously. "I don't think weatherproofing the monument, as proposed by Chief Katara, will pose that much of a problem. I could talk to Ujarak or any of the other builders, see if they have any suggestions…" He trails off, scribbling away at his notepad again. "This is our home, after all. Our roots in this land go deeper than anyone ever imagined. The Fire Empire tried to drive us from here, and still we stand. What's a single monument compared to everything else we've endured?"

"Thank you." Katara smiles gratefully at the architect. "Thank you for understanding."

"So," Sokka asks as the architect rips a sheet off his notepad and tucks it into one of the many pockets lining his sealskin tunic. He gestures at the patch of land which had once housed only the remains of charred old settlements, now transforming before their very eyes into what would become the first true city of the South. One that would someday even challenge Aujuittuq in its majesty and power. "Have you thought of a name yet, Chief?"

"I have." Katara smiles. "Kamitpok."

"A fine name!"

"We couldn't have asked for a better one -"

"How fitting for the place where the Fire Empire came to destroy us," Atka proclaims loudly, her voice ringing in the large tent where the Chief held her community halls. "And the place where our tribe became whole again."

The dozens of people sitting cross-legged on the floor cheer in roaring assent. The sound threatens to knock Zuko over, tucked where he is in the corner, nearly hidden from sight behind the drape of a tent flap.

He glances quizzically at Arrluk, dutifully seated next to him. The Water Tribe ambassador grunts noncommittally. "Chief Katara just named the new village we're raising to shore up the defences on our northern coast."

"I gathered as much," Zuko answers politely, his cheeks flushing nonetheless. "But what does it mean?"

"Kamitpok?" Arrluk's answering grin is wolfish. "More or less…it means the place that never burns."

Zuko considers it silently, mindful of Arrluk's fierce scrutiny. "It's a good name," he says at last.

Arrluk, appearing satisfied, turns his attention back to the proceedings.

Katara motions for silence and the hubbub subsides.

The chief of the Water Tribe kneels on the ground amid her people in the same crammed circle. Unlike in the other nations, no throne or pedestal or wall of flame marked her as their leader. Only her regal posture and the deep purple cloak draped about her shoulders gives her station away. Even the tent itself remains sparse, with few of the trappings that Zuko had observed of the chiefs in the North.

But the polar-mink furs piled onto the ground are unimaginably soft and glow nearly as pure white as the glittering ice of Aujuittuq's opulent mansions. Almost as difficult to obtain as the baleen carvings and sculptures that had once decorated Arnook's hall - and nearly as valuable.

And Katara had chosen to spread it along the ground, to be trampled underfoot, just to make her monthly community meetings warm and comfortable for all who chose to attend.

In the South, Katara had explained, wealth comes from sharing. What keeps the tribe alive is precious to us. Even if it makes us look like paupers to other nations. But they'll learn too.

"...completed in time for the autumn festival," he hears Katara saying now, her voice mild but still able to hold her audience captive. "Meanwhile, construction will continue through the summer. Anyone who wishes to join the builders, please speak to Ujarak."

A smattering of applause breaks out across the circle.

"I can't thank you enough for your patience," Katara continues. "I know it hasn't been easy, especially with so many choosing to emigrate here from the North as well -"

Zuko doesn't miss the stiffening of Arrluk's shoulders, or the slight frown that creases Sokka's face. But if Katara notices it, she pays it no heed. "But, maybe a little population boom is just what we need here in the South."

"A population boom is one thing," someone calls. "What about that other boom, Chief?"

Katara remains perfectly composed as murmurs fills the tent - excited and worried at the same time. "You'll have to be more specific, Iluak."

"Fine." The lanky warrior brushes his dark hair out of his eyes, before staring resolutely at his chief. "It's been nearly two turns of the moon since those Fire Nation alchemists found huge oil reserves under the spirit wilds. What's going to happen with that, Chief?"

His words ignite the crowded tent like a lit match to tinder. Almost at once, it seems to Zuko that every person sitting in that crammed circle had something to say.

Sokka pounds the ground with a fist. "We've been through this before!" he hollers into the din. "Unless anyone has something new to add to the conversation -"

"There is no conversation!" a grizzled woman interrupts, her leathery face scowling fiercely. "The land and everything within it was charged to us for protection. To go about extracting its wealth simply because it is convenient - who knows what damage that will inflict?"

"It would make us no less greedy than those who first drove us from our home!" another woman concurs so loudly, she accidentally awakens the two small children dozing in her lap. But their wails are drowned out by the chorus of all the voices bubbling up in agreement.

Katara raises a hand for silence. "I've heard these concerns already. There's a lot to consider -"

"But is that a good enough reason to dismiss the idea altogether?" someone else shouts, cutting off Katara mid-sentence. "In order for us to protect the land, we need the other nations to take us seriously!"

"If they don't respect us now, what makes you think this'll change anything?"

"The Fire Nation has probably received their report by now," Iluak speaks up again, jumping to his feet. He pauses to throw Zuko a dirty glance over his shoulder. "And if they know, it's only a matter of time before the other nations follow too. They'll be on our shores before we know it. We need to do something."

Katara burrows her hands under the folds of her cloak. "What did you have in mind?"

"Anything!" Iluak pleads. "But whatever we choose, we need to be prepared to defend ourselves!"

"Iluak," Arrluk tells him gently, "the world is changing. We are not the only nation focusing on rebuilding itself. Even in the Fire Nation, there is little appetite for war -"

"But plenty of appetite for riches!" Iluak retorts. "Once the other nations learn that our land holds such treasure, what's to stop them from uniting against us, invading our home again and taking everything for themselves? We need to be ready to fight! To the death if we have to -"

"And what would that achieve?" Arrluk challenges. "We are in a time of peace, which is the only thing stopping the Fire Nation and others from uniting against us. And we are fortunate for it. Because you know as well as I that we simply cannot withstand another invasion."

"And newsflash," Sokka adds dryly, "how exactly are we supposed to protect the land if we're all dead? What kind of bonus points would the spirits give us for stupidly trying to fight an enemy we couldn't beat?"

A muted silence envelops the tent for the first time since the thorny subject had reared its persistent head.

"We've got to be practical here," Sokka continues, steepling his fingers into his lap. "Arrluk's right. The world is changing. The other nations won't squander their own limited resources on an invasion if there's any other way for them to get what they want -"

"The last thing we should concern ourselves with is giving the Fire Nation what they want," Atka crows, her quavering voice ringing the loudest in the tent.

"You're missing the point," Sokka answers impatiently. "The last century was decided by armies. But this next one's going to be decided by trade, and strategy. And what we have, it's more precious than gold to everyone outside our borders."

"It's precious to us within our borders too," Atka objects. "It's a gift from the spirits, after all. We cannot allow our land to be exploited in the way you propose, Sokka."

Sokka holds out his hands entreatingly. "If it's a gift from the spirits, why would they give us such a valuable commodity if they didn't want us to use it?"

"Enough." Katara raises a hand again, her biting voice slicing through the arguments effortlessly without rising in the slightest. "Like I said, there's a lot of different sides to consider. I haven't made up my mind yet, but I promise I'm thinking about this very carefully."

Atka gazes at her, ashen-faced. "What about the spirits, Chief? What does Princess Yue have to say about the matter?"

Zuko tilts his head in confusion, wondering what relevance a long-dead Northern princess could have to Katara's ruling decisions.

"The spirits still haven't seen fit to offer me their guidance," Katara answers, even as her tattooed fingers fidget with each other. "Maybe at the next dark of the moon -"

"Every moon that passes gives the other nations more time to organise!" Iluak cries in desperation. "When they arrive on our doorstep, we must be prepared."

Katara sighs deeply as the voices in the tent rise again in a chorus of panic. "How many times do we have to tell you? This isn't like the polar wars. Besides, we have diplomatic relations with the Earth Kingdom. They're not going to turn on us, they're our allies -"

"No. They're your allies," someone else accuses, pointing a shaking finger at her. "You have friends in other nations who will defend you, Chief Katara. But who will protect the rest of us?"

Katara tilts her head, sizing the speaker up with a single amused glance. "For someone who only arrived here from the North a few months ago, you've got a lot to say, Qannik."

The stocky man bristles. "Just because I came from the Northern tribe doesn't make me inferior to you Southerners -"

"Nobody said you were inferior," Sokka cuts him off, sounding bored. "Do you have a point to make, and can you get to it quickly?"

Qannik's glare lands on Sokka, who ignores it and continues to thumb the edge of his boomerang.

"Sokka," Katara reproaches. "Everyone under my roof has a voice. If Qannik has something to say, I want to hear it."

The Northman appears momentarily flummoxed by the magnanimous gesture. "T-the other nations barely respect us now as is," he recovers weakly. "Even with all of Chief Katara's personal connections…the Fire Nation still won't bother opening proper diplomatic relations with us."

"What are you talking about?" Arrluk asks witheringly. "The Fire Lord's own heir sits among us in this very hall -"

"So?" Qannik argues, rolling his eyes at Zuko. "The Fire Lord's heir doesn't have any more power than the Fire Lord himself! They all answer to their ministers now, and none of them have ever levelled with us!"

Zuko opens his mouth, but Katara throws him a warning glance. He falls silent, fuming internally.

"You're not wrong, Qannik," she admits, running a hand along a braid that had escaped its fastenings. "But as of now, the Fire Nation still recognises our sovereignty, and ceded all claim to resources on our land. It's not much, but it's not nothing. If they renege on their own treaty, the other nations will hold them accountable -"

"Hell. I'll do it myself if I have to," Zuko grumbles before he can stop himself, far louder than he intends.

He isn't sure what satisfies him more - the shock spreading across Qannik's gawking face, or the weak snorts of laughter that smatter around the circle in response to his accidental outburst.

But Katara flashes him a wry smile tinged with relief, and he can't help the small one that spreads across his face in turn.

"You know," Sokka sighs later that evening, after everyone departs for the night and the large communal tent yawns spacious and empty once again, "I'm beginning to think we should seriously consider a moratorium on all this Northern immigration."

Katara kneads at her temples, behind which a dull ache continues to mount. "There are people from the Northern tribe who have legitimate reasons to move here, Sokka." She pauses as the blood recedes momentarily from Sokka's face. "Polar war refugees. People who lost their homes during the siege. Widows, single mothers and their children. Those who just want to start over…"

"Hahn and his goons know you have a bleeding heart, Katara" Sokka presses, rubbing a hand agitatedly against the shaven part of his scalp. "Who's to say Qannik and the other Northern expats aren't his spies and dissidents?"

"I never said that," Katara grumbles, before leaning back to stretch. Her joints pop and creak loudly in protest. "But if Qannik is a spy, he isn't doing a very good job. Did you hear him tonight?"

"Well yeah," her brother replies, raising an eyebrow "it was kind of hard not to."

"As long as Hahn's spies continue to be totally obvious about what they're trying to do." Katara shrugs in mounting exasperation. "Let them think they're succeeding. Sooner rather than later, they'll overextend themselves and slip up."

"I still say we should send some of them back," Sokka argues. "Qannik's just a lone voice in the wind now, Katara, but we need our tribe united right now. Especially with the Fire Nation watching so closely!"

Katara lets out a groan. "I've told you before, Sokka. Zuko's on our side. What does he have to do to make you believe that?"

Sokka snorts. "I'm not as trusting as you are, Katara." He raises his hands defensively as Katara bolts to her feet, incensed. "Hey, just hear me out! Look, even if you're right about him, and the Fire Prince actually is trustworthy and on our side…he's kind of useless. He doesn't have any real power over his nation anymore."

"One thing at a time," Katara groans. "Until we can get the tribe to agree about the reserves, Hahn's spies will have to wait. And so will the other nations."

Sokka shakes his head. "We need to decide soon. Every delay makes you look more weak and indecisive, Katara."

"I know!" Katara bursts out, raking a hand through her hair and accidentally dislodging a bone ornament. It falls onto the soft fur carpet with a near silent thump. "I'd hoped that if I gave it some time, more people would have come on board one way or another -"

Sokka's hand finds her shoulder. "You can't make everyone happy," he tells her softly. "You just have to do what you think is right."

Katara pinches at the bridge of her nose. "And risk half my tribe rising up against me in open revolt?"

"Nah." Sokka gives her a reassuring squeeze. "You're their Chief. People won't always like your decisions. But they'll respect them, because they respect you. And if anyone causes trouble, we'll deal with it. Like we always have." He smiles, his eyes blazing where they hold hers. "What can't the two of us do when we're together?"

Katara gives him a watery smile of her own, before dashing at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Thanks, Sokka. I'm…I'm really lucky the Dai Li didn't murder you all those years ago."

"Yeah, good thing," her brother remarks airily. "You'd be lost without me. Admit it."

"Maybe." Katara shrugs. "But also, maybe I'm not as hopeless as you think I am. Admit that."

"Eh. You still can't beat me at pai sho."

"So? You still can't beat me, literally…"

The late afternoon sun beats down mercilessly on the back of Zuko's neck.

He tugs at his collar, trying once again to pull it up in vain.

Empty stretches of ocean yawn before him. Its waves pound against the shore, battering the base of the deserted, rocky cliffs where he continues to wait patiently.

Splashes and delighted shrieks greet his ears. He smiles at the sight of his dragon nestled in the shallows, feasting happily upon the remnants of what had once been a sizable elephant-seal.

Though Katara had long allowed Druk free reign of her land, some of her people - including her infuriating brother - were still wary of him. And Zuko knew better than to unleash an adolescent dragon in their midst. Especially one who was currently in the throes of his first growth spurt, doubling in length with every passing week - and his appetites with it.

Instead, in his free time he had taken to exploring the wild uninhabited swaths of her homeland with Druk in tow. Far from the walled settlements and the nervous, suspicious people who lived in them. Far from her brother and the others, who found no shortage of subtle ways to limit his movements.

Such as declaring the construction areas off-limits (and of late, it certainly seemed like the entire northern coast had turned into one), and then the hunting grounds, and then the hidden pathways dedicated to seasonal migratory animals…

In answer, he and Druk struck out further and deeper into the marshy grasslands sprawling between the village and the coast.

Once, he had rued this forced solitude, but after a time, he had come to enjoy the long afternoons spent wandering among the hidden beaches and caves of the mountainous western shore.

He had grown to love watching the saltwater smash in a violent white spray against the towering rock formations. Druk's excited chittering as he dashed in and out of the waves, chomping at their foam-capped tips. His loud snores as he napped in the sunlight, seeming to absorb its luminosity into the coils of his shiny red scales and golden horns.

And, of course, the piercing shrieks he emitted as he stretched his wings, allowing the wind to fill the translucent membrane stretched thin and taut between the bones. Druk was still too young to fly without risking a ruptured wing. But that hadn't stopped him from hopping and skipping and leaping with the westerlies that blew in from the open water to disturb the little rocks littering the beach.

"One day," Zuko said once, unable to hide a helpless smile as Druk tried in vain to flap his wings. "It'll be you, me, and the rest of the sky. What do you say?"

Druk had regarded him solemnly with intelligent golden eyes, set in a face the size of one of Uncle's teapots. Then he'd dunked his head impulsively into the water, withdrawing a few moments later with a large silver fish thrashing wildly in his snapping jaws.

Now, if Sokka or the others noticed the missing fish, birds, or any of the small animal carcasses Druk left behind, they kept it to themselves.

Well, Zuko can't help but think, ignoring the loud crunching sounds emanating from where Druk gnaws at a cartilaginous flipper. If we can't get along just yet, at least we can coexist in peace…

He supposes it's a small victory, one of very few he could count since arriving here in the South.

Trying not to let the dismay wash over him too, he tries to focus on other things. Like the length of time it took to send messages to and from the Fire Nation capital, and even still, countless letters from the now-disgraced Minister Fukio - wheedling him to coax the Water Tribes into rethinking their trade position - lay scattered in a corner of his tent. Unceremoniously discarded, and still somehow expecting a response that Zuko had absolutely no intention of sending.

And Katara, too preoccupied with the sizzling tensions threatening to split her own tribe apart to even celebrate the fruition of their gambit. The last he'd seen her, all she could talk about were spies, sent to her shores by her enemies in the North to turn her people against her…

"I just want to know how she's getting her messages from the North so quickly," Zuko grumbles. He always marvelled at the speed of the communication between Katara and her informants on the other side of the world. They could somehow conduct entire conversations in the entire month it took Zuko to receive a single reply from back home. "What do they feed their messenger birds here, anyway?"

But Druk ignores him, too preoccupied with picking at the last bits of his supper.

"Come on," Zuko urges, when the sun starts to dip lower in the sky, "we need to get going -"

Druk plies him with a mournful stare before he swallows the last of whatever had been in his mouth.

"Don't give me those sad dragon eyes. The tide's coming in. Besides, it's Katara's community hall tonight."

Druk perks up at the sound of Katara's name.

The roar of the sea fades gradually as they press back inland in a companionable silence. Only the rush of the wind fills his ears as it churns the waist-high wildberry bushes into a swaying sea stretching as far as he could see.

Then, a single blood-curdling scream splits the air.

Zuko flinches, startled. Behind him, Druk lets out a low growl.

"Easy, boy," he mutters, instinctively raising a hand to the dragon's brow bone. "That could have been anything. A seabird, or a wailing marsh bird -"

Another scream rings out, lower in pitch and sustained. Druk's hackles rise, his body coiling in warning.

"Yeah," Zuko mutters under his breath, as another shout rises up in a sort of primal chorus, followed by a colossal roar. "Not a bird after all. Come on."

Dry brush and dirt crunch underfoot, crumbling to dust that plumes in their wake. Ahead, Zuko perceives similar clouds billowing above patches of shaking tall grass. The shrill screams grow louder - human screams, laden with fear, pain, grief…

They draw nearer, enough for Zuko to identify with a dull horror the source of the bone-chilling shouts just before he barges into the melee.

Agni.

He races into a clearing where the vegetation had been trampled completely flat, spattered with glistening red pools. Amid it, a Water Tribe warrior sprawls face-down and unmoving, one side of his tunic covered with a blossoming dark stain.

The whir of a curving blade slices overhead, followed by the thump of a human hand closing firmly about its handle.

He turns, barely recognizing Sokka as he swings his sword in a rabid frenzy. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he charges toward a very large, very grey hill that strangely, had not been there before, or so he could have sworn -

Then, in a moment so surreal that Zuko wonders if his eyes are playing tricks on him, the hill moves.

Sokka leaps out of the way just in time. His gritted teeth flash white as blood drips red down the tip of his sword.

The ground trembles as the giant grey mass shrieks and unfurls its massive bulk of wiry bristles and long curving tusks.

Zuko stumbles back on feet that had turned instantly to leaden blocks. He lands with a painful thud; blinking in surprise at the jolts that ricochet up his spine. "Ow."

A high-pitched squeal and a rustling of the bushes behind him. Zuko clambers to all fours, wincing as stars dance around his eyes. "Druk? Druk -"

Panic rises in his gorge, halted instantly by the sight of the dragon curled up in a quaking ball behind a thick shrub. His bright red scales and gold ridges still stick out conspicuously amid the prickly foliage.

Heart of a guppyshrimp, that one. Shaking his head, he lets out a long, relieved sigh.

Thankfully, the giant walrus-boar hadn't noticed either of them. Instead, the furious predator launches itself at the Water Tribe warrior with a speed that was truly unfair given its enormous size.

To his credit, Sokka holds his ground as the creature rampages toward him, shrieking through gnashing tusks big enough to snap his sword in half. Diving out of the way only when the beast comes within biting range, and then springing back over to his listless companion's side.

The walrus-boar slides unceremoniously under its momentum. The ground shakes as it tumbles head over tail before finally skidding to a stop.

Sokka grabs at his companion's shoulder, trying to shake him awake.

But the walrus-boar rises on its spindly legs. Its bristles fan out aggressively, somehow making all the corded muscles bulging from the rolls of its barrellike body seem even bigger. Steam puffs from nostrils flaring in its dark snout; its mouth opens to reveal more slavering, ivory teeth alongside its fearsome tusks. Its eyes roll, red and wild, searching the endless brush for its assailant.

Sokka freezes as the beast levels its gaze upon him. It hunches over, pawing at the ground. For a moment, everything goes silent.

Someone gulps.

Then the walrus-boar charges again, and this time whatever madness had possessed Sokka to stand his ground vanishes.

He screams, turning tail and abandoning his fellow fallen warrior. Clumps of dirt fly through the air as he flees through the thick bushes from the rampaging beast gaining on him. The walrus-boar screeches, its tusks snapping dangerously close to the back of Sokka's shaved scalp.

Zuko wastes no more time.

A single motion brings up a wall of fire, separating the warrior from the predator on his tail. The walrus-boar screams loudly, rearing back and stamping at the flames with heavy hooves. It shakes its smouldering bristles, raining hot cinders onto the brambles.

Zuko barely hears Sokka shouting something at him in breathless panic. Because in the blink of an eye, the walrus-boar turns and spots him standing alone, clear in its path. Its foaming mouth opens and the force of its roar threatens to bowl Zuko over.

Then it lunges toward him and the ground trembles beneath his feet once more.

Trying his best to ignore the giant angry beast bearing down upon him in all its hellish fury, Zuko sidesteps it at the last moment. While it gouges a large track into the dirt with the weight of its bulky body, he darts over to where the fallen Water Tribe warrior lies. Grabs at his shoulder, his belt, searching vainly while cursing frantically under his breath.

He chokes back a breath as the walrus-boar lumbers to its feet once more and kicks menacingly at the ground. Its slavering tusks point straight in his direction.

"Come on, come on," he hisses through gritted teeth, hands still scrabbling blindly for something, anything -

Another piercing shriek and the walrus-boar charges again. Zuko is unable to tear his gaze away from those serrated ivory blades hurtling right toward his throat, when -

A winking flash of metal arcs out of the sky, striking the boar right between the eyes. It lets out a bellow of pain, faltering for a moment.

Which gives Zuko enough time to find the spear, clutched tight in the warrior's grip, buried under his listless weight. He wrenches it free, the wooden haft solid in his palm.

Then he springs to his feet, thrusting without hesitation as the beast slams into him, crushing him under its flagging body.

He struggles, gritting his teeth as the walrus-boar's foul breath steams against his face and its limbs flail helplessly. Hot blood gushes earthward in a red fountain from its jugular, where the spear had ended its life with a single clean stroke.

By the time he manages to extricate himself, Sokka has tottered over from the charred shrubs. Zuko grimaces as he pushes to his feet, the front of his tunic drenched with blood.

"Are you okay?" he croaks.

Scorched twigs crunch under Sokka's feet as he shifts his weight. "Just about," he gasps. "And you?"

Zuko wipes at his wet face and is horrified to see more blood glistening on his fingers. "I'll be fine. What happened to your friend?"

Sokka grunts as he scoops his boomerang up from the ground and stashes it into his belt. "Got on the wrong side of a rampaging walrus-boar. How...how is he?"

"I don't know." Zuko staggers over to the downed Water Tribe warrior and rolls him onto his back with a nudge of his foot. Though the man's skin is alarmingly pale and the entire left side of his tunic is soaked through with blood, he can still discern the faint rise and fall of his chest. "He's breathing though."

Relief breaks over Sokka's face as he leans over, gingerly taking the man's pulse. "Kova, you lucky bastard," he declares grimly. "We need to get him to a healer. He's already pushing his luck as is."

Zuko chews on his lip, longing for Katara's presence among them at that very moment. "It's a long walk back to Sivusiktok," he points out cautiously, eager not to aggravate Sokka any further. "How are we going to get him there?"

A ripping sound as Sokka tears the hem of his tunic with his teeth. "I guess our qamutik didn't do as well against the walrus-boar?"

Zuko glances into the distance, where the smashed remains of a wooden sled lie scattered among the deep boar tracks. "Not really. Sorry."

"Great. Just great." Sokka lapses into a grumpy silence as he slices his companion's bloody tunic open to bare the wound beneath.

Zuko winces at the sight of it - an ugly weeping gash starting from the man's lower rib and ending just above his hip bone. Sokka grabs at the waterskin strapped to his pack, uncaps it with his teeth, and begins to wash the wound clean. A low groan gurgles through the unconscious warrior's slackened mouth.

"Yeah, that's gonna hurt," Sokka mutters under his breath cajolingly. "Sorry, buddy."

Zuko watches as Sokka begins to bind the wound with his makeshift bandage. "Why were you two out here alone?" he finally asks, when Sokka has finished knotting the bandage in place. A slow dark stain already begins to spread along its surface. "If you were trying to hunt a walrus-boar, you would have needed a larger party -"

"Yeah?" A sardonic hint enters Sokka's voice as he leans back, his neck and spine cracking with the motion. "But we weren't supposed to be hunting a walrus-boar. He told me we were tracking an elephant-seal."

Zuko raises his good eyebrow. "That would've been a very large elephant-seal."

"That's what I told him," Sokka complains, before stashing his waterskin back into his pack and slinging it over his shoulder with a grimace. "But he insisted it was just an elephant-seal and the two of us could handle it." He glances back down at the unconscious warrior with a mildly irritated expression. "Come to think of it, maybe he did know it was a walrus-boar all along. He was pretty unfazed when we caught up with it and saw what it really was."

"Why in Agni's name would anyone do something so stupid?" Zuko demands through clenched teeth.

"For the story, maybe?" Sokka guesses, shaking his head pityingly. "Kova's always got his head in the clouds. It's not enough to just carve the damn necklace, oh no. He's got to carve it from walrus-boar ivory that he harvested with his bare hands after a daring saga where he and only one other hunter managed to bring it down." He kneads at his temples wearily, glaring at his prone comrade. "You're an idiot, you know that right?"

Zuko's brow furrows. "What are you talking about? What necklace?"

Sokka flinches, and his face darkens. "Never you mind."

Zuko scowls at him in return. "I think I do mind, actually! This guy nearly got us all gored by a walrus-boar! And you're saying it's because he, what, lost his girlfriend's jewellery or something?"

"Don't be stupid," Sokka snaps, crossing his arms defensively. "He didn't lose the necklace, he wanted to carve one to ask for Alasie's hand." He glances back at his unconscious companion, his face softening momentarily. "I guess he got carried away in his excitement."

A strange sensation thrums through Zuko's chest. "Men have done stupider things for love," he ventures delicately. "I know I've done dumber things than that."

Sokka's eyes narrow suspiciously. "Why are you so interested in betrothal necklaces all of a sudden?"

"W-what?" Zuko stammers, alarmed by the heat rushing to his face as Sokka's jaw tightens. "No I'm not! I-It's just…I've, uh, known your sister for a few years now and this is the first I've ever heard of it."

"Well that's a relief," Sokka snarls. "Keep it that way."

Zuko raises his eyebrow sardonically. "Wouldn't it have been worse if I'd already known about what they were?"

"Yeah, I'm trying not to think about that," Sokka replies tightly. "How about you don't remind me of how much worse this could be?"

Blood slowly drips in trails along Zuko's skin, congealing uncomfortably in the afternoon heat. "You've got a funny way of thanking me after I saved you and your buddy from a rampaging beast."

"Didn't I just say not to make things worse?"

Zuko glares at Sokka, who only returns it with equal ferocity. The mutinous silence stretches on, broken only by the rustling of the pesky wind through the berry branches.

With a sigh, Zuko is reminded of just how stubborn Katara could be when she was in one of her moods. "Ugh, just forget it. We need to get going."

"Right," Sokka mutters under his breath. "Should also do something about that - it'd be a shame to waste it." His blue eyes land on Zuko accusingly, taking him in from head to toe. "Speaking of which… how did a spoiled Fire Nation prince learn to handle a real man's weapon like that anyway?"

"Huh?" Zuko tilts his head, caught off guard.

Sokka waves at the dead walrus-boar sprawled behind them in a puddle of its own blood. Kova's spear glints in the sunlight where it sticks out of the beast's throat.

"Oh," Zuko realises belatedly. "Uh. Believe it or not…this isn't my first hunt."

"I can see that!" Sokka exclaims, his voice going slightly high-pitched in disbelief. "Kova's got a couple of seasons under his belt and he still missed his shot. How…how…did you…?" His mouth works wordlessly into a sputter. "And you even managed to kill it properly! Not - I don't know - burnt it into a pile of unusable cinders or something!"

Zuko finds himself smiling weakly, thinking of the first time he had accompanied the Northern warriors on their early morning hunts and accidentally scorched an entire tiger-seal. "I've been guilty of that too."

Sokka scoffs incredulously. "So, am I supposed to assume that you can actually help me butcher that bad boy and bring it back in?" He gestures at the walrus-boar corpse. "Or is it too much to expect the Fire Nation prince to get his hands dirty?"

Zuko searches his belt, his pockets, but only finds them full of the leathery meat strips that served as Druk's snacks. "I, uh…I'd need a knife first."

Sokka raises his eyebrows. Zuko thinks longingly of his dual swords hanging somewhere in his room back in the Fire Nation.

"Here."

To his surprise, Sokka pulls something from his belt and tosses it over to Zuko. He catches it clumsily.

Sokka sighs heavily, already turning away. "It's not like I have any use for it anymore anyway."

Zuko frowns at the small object in his hands. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be a pocketknife of some sort. Barely larger than a dagger, scarcely spanning his palms in length. Its handle had been carved from bone, and someone had painstakingly carved intricate patterns into the baleen casing.

But he unsheathes it to find a gleaming blade, well-oiled and honed to an edge so sharp that he swears he can hear it hum as he slices through the air experimentally. Despite its diminutive size, the knife is solid in his hand with a good heft and fine balance,

Zuko's gaze flicks from the pocketknife over to Sokka, already hard at work breaking down the carcass. He frowns.

This isn't a knife for hunting. That had been obvious enough from first glance. The handle was too fragile, the blade too short for anything other than to carve and whittle in delicate strokes.

Why would a warrior carry such a blade?

But Sokka glares at him over his shoulder, as though daring Zuko to ask the question brimming on his tongue.

Zuko swallows it instead, and hurries awkwardly to his side.

They work in an uncomfortable silence, butchering the carcass into its usable parts. Zuko nearly slices his finger with the pocketknife while removing the skin from the flesh. Sokka swears more than once, parting the tusk from the bone from the entrails.

By the time the beast has been rendered to piles of its constituent parts wrapped in bundles of its own skins, the sun has lowered considerably in the sky. In the corner of his eye, Zuko notices Druk traipsing sleepily across the flattened brush, curling around the unconscious warrior. He lays his head atop the wound, inadvertently applying pressure to staunch the bleeding.

If Sokka notices, he says nothing. Instead, his lips press into a thin line before he wanders back to the remains of the qamituk, meticulously starting to piece them together.

Zuko bites his tongue, hovering between following Katara's mercurial brother or giving him the space he obviously craved. He chooses the latter, focusing on gathering as many of the broken green branches as he could find.

A series of curses greets his ears. He straightens to find Sokka kicking at the rickety sled, mostly reconstructed but held together precariously by precious few lengths of hide.

He approaches cautiously, feeling like he was approaching another wild walrus-boar. "Hey," he suggests gently. "Could we use these to lash the joints together, maybe? I know they're pretty fragile by comparison, but -"

Sokka glances at the heap of young broken branches that he piles on the ground in between them. His eyebrows rise appraisingly. "That…might actually work," he says reluctantly, rubbing at his chin. "If we wove them together, they might last long enough..."

Together, they work the bendy fronds into thick braids that they use to repair the qamituk, securing its broken joints and cushioning its runners to glide more easily across the plains.

Druk watches them soberly as they load it up, taking care to lay the unconscious warrior carefully across the beams so as to not agitate his wounds any further.

"Come on, Druk," Zuko calls wearily, wiping at his forehead. "We need to get going."

He grabs at one of the handles, glancing uncomfortably at Sokka who, instead of taking the other, only continues to glower at him.

Zuko casts about in his head for what he had done wrong this time. "Oh," he realises, fumbling at his belt for the pocketknife, hastily cleaned and shoved back into its dainty sheath. "Sorry, I completely forgot. You must want this back. Here."

But Sokka's grim expression doesn't falter at the proffered blade, or at Zuko's arm stretched out entreatingly in the space between them. In fact, his eyes don't leave Zuko's face at all; instead they seem to bore right into him.

"Keep it."

Zuko blinks, wondering if the wind whistling through his ears had made him hear things. "Huh?"

"I said, keep it." A bite of impatience enters Sokka's voice. "That's a Northern carving blade. As far as traditions go, you're supposed to use it for one purpose only, and well -" He trails off with a shrug.

Zuko works very hard to mask his confusion. "Oh," he says very carefully. "Um. Th - that's very kind of you…but you don't have to do that -"

Sokka stems his feeble protests with a wave of his hand. "It was a gift," he explains, as though it made perfect sense. "But it's bad luck for a man to use the same blade more than once. I've got no more use for it." His lip curls bitterly. "I don't know if I can say the same about you."

The wind shivers through the air, suddenly fraught with a sudden chill. Zuko clears his throat awkwardly. "I'm not sure I follow."

With another sigh, Sokka jams the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I really hoped this would be a phase," he complains.

Zuko raises an eyebrow as Katara's brother continues, every word seethed through gritted teeth. "I didn't like it when I saw it in the swamp. I didn't like it any better when she told me. I still don't like it."

He kneads at his temples in a show of sheer frustration. "But Katara's a grown woman, and Chief to boot," he admits, sounding very tired. "She'll do what she wants whether I like it or not." He rolls his eyes, continuing in a sarcastic tirade. "Because she's a stubborn, spiteful little banshee who couldn't just find a nice Water Tribe guy to settle down with like she was supposed to, oh no -"

Zuko lets out an indignant huff. "Aren't you still seeing Suki?" he asks more pointedly than he had intended. "You're not exactly setting a great example for her."

"Sure, but at least I tried dating a Water Tribe girl once," Sokka retorts, with another shrug. "It…it didn't exactly work out."

"Really?" Zuko asks, his curiosity piqued. "What happened?"

Sokka's voice turns mournful. "She turned into the moon."

Zuko blurts out the first thing that comes to mind before he can stop it. "That's rough, buddy."

And then he lapses into a stunned, slightly horrified silence. Kicking himself, he clamps a hand to his forehead. That was your chance, he berates himself viciously, your one chance to make nice with Katara's brother and get him to not hate you anymore. And that was the best you could come up with?

Some diplomat you are.

For his part, Sokka only stares him down. His mouth twitches at the corners - whether a grimace or a taunting smirk at his expense, Zuko can't quite tell.

Until he speaks again, and his voice is unusually hoarse. "I wanted to hate you," he states rather baldly, and Zuko nervously steps away from him. "I tried my hardest to, really." He clears his throat and glares at the ground. "But even when you go and say braindead things like that, I…I find it hard sometimes."

Everything goes very still to Zuko. "Uh," he stammers, no longer trusting himself with any sort of diplomatic skill whatsoever, "I'm sorry I'm so bad at being…bad?"

This time there's no mistaking Sokka's amused snort. Zuko covers his burning face with his hands, wishing he could evaporate on the spot at that very moment.

"Well," Sokka says at length, studying him with a faint quirk of his mouth. "I suppose you could always have been worse. I certainly wouldn't have put it past my sister."

A faint spluttering sound reaches Zuko's ears; it takes a moment to realise it had originated from him.

"And she's not really one for tradition. Neither are you, I suppose," he continues, muttering as though to himself.

But when Sokka moves to clap a hand onto Zuko's shoulder, he fights the urge not to shrink away. Sokka's gaze burns uncharacteristically intense as his hand slides to the pocketknife now trembling in Zuko's grasp.

"But you should still remember," Sokka warns, "every stroke of this knife shapes the rest of your life. And hers."

Zuko chokes on his spit and tries not to wheeze.

Sokka regards him solemnly, perhaps taking his strangled silence as a sign of deference. "There's no taking it back once you start. So be careful with it, okay?"

Zuko can only nod, feeling himself starting to turn blue.

Sokka squeezes the carving blade in his hand once more, perhaps as a gesture of reassurance before turning away.

He bends over to pick up one of the sled handles as though nothing was amiss. "But if you don't," he remarks casually, "it goes without saying that I will literally haunt you until the end of time."

"R-right." Zuko finds his voice weakly, the pocketknife a red-hot coal in his hands as he clumsily stashes it back into his belt. "I'd haunt me until the end of time too, I guess."

In the corner of his eye, Sokka's mouth curves into a satisfied smirk.

The smell of wet earth and damp moss fills the night air.

It had rained all day, unexpectedly, driving everyone indoors. Safe and dry under the shelter of the weatherproofed hide tents, warm from the small peaty fires flickering within.

Further inland, where the ground never thawed, only more snow had fallen. Even in the mildness of late summer, the spirit wilds remained a stark, empty tundra. Elsewhere near the coast, the land dared to bloom soft and green. But around the pillar of light marking the heart of the south pole, no matter what time of year it was, the snow still piled thick and heavy in rolling mounds lit to a constant iridescent white.

Only the sky gives away the passage of time in the depths of the antarctic plain. The positions of the seasonal constellations, rising and falling to a dance of their own. The infinite black of polar night mirroring the snow that would bury the land in a deep frozen slumber. Or the fiery orb of the midnight sun, painting the horizon in vivid glowing bands.

Katara doesn't pay any of it a second glance as it all recedes behind her. The lonely expanse of the spirit wilds, the snow-covered slopes glinting orange in the weak sunlight, even the distant column of light bridging the distance from the earth to the heavens.

Her gaze remains resolutely fixed forward. Toward the twinkling of gentle fires studding the villages within their protective walls, the stretch of greening land in which new settlements already begin to spring up. And the sea, always, pounding away at her shores with the force of the incoming tide.

She chances a glance upward as she tugs on the reins and the polar bear dog slides obediently to a stop. The moon is a mere thread of silver curling in the sky, but even that small glimpse never fails to reassure.

"Did you have a safe journey, Chief?"

Katara clambers off her steed and hands the reins over to one of the handlers emerging from his tent. "Safe…if not as quick as I'd have liked. Thanks for letting me borrow Miska, Panuk."

"I'm glad to hear it, Chief. She's a good girl." The handler pauses, shifting his weight uncomfortably as he tries and fails to study Katara's impassive face. "Did…did the spirits have any wisdom to share this time?"

Katara raises her eyebrows at him sharply. He falls silent immediately, shrinking away with Miska's harness in tow. The polar bear dog bounds happily after him into the warmth of the large tent, eager for a brushing and a large helping of dinner.

She massages her temples, constantly drumming with a perpetual headache that she swore had grown immune to her healing abilities.

But every day, new letters arrived from various parts of the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom. Formal overtures, offers of friendship and trade privileges. Even gifts that were little more than bribes, all for the same purpose of wheedling their senders into her good graces.

From Trade Minister Fukio, there was no word.

And to think half a year ago at the All-Nations Summit, we were the pariahs. She smirks at the thought. How quickly fortunes turn.

But somewhere hidden under all the honey lay a trap she still couldn't see. Hahn's spies lurking among her tribe, whispering news to him of her every decision, her every hesitation. The ticking clock of the other Nations' patience, and the bloody gauntlet waving behind its thin veneer. An unspoken yet tangible threat…

But putting it off won't change anything for the better. She closes her eyes grimly, fists clenching at her sides. And whatever happens, Sokka and I will deal with it together. Like we always do.

In a chieftainship made utterly unpredictable, at least she could rely on her brother, if no one else.

Although, she had not predicted to have her last community hall delayed because Sokka had come back late from a seal hunt gone wrong. Bloodied and exhausted, and with Zuko of all people trudging dutifully at his side.

Or that her brother would, from that moment on, invent every excuse in the book to drag the Fire Nation Prince along on his various expeditions. Over the past month, poor Zuko had learned more about hunting and trapping and ice dodging than he had ever signed up for.

Not that I'm complaining, he'd assured her the other day. But Sokka doesn't exactly do anything in half measures, does he?

A wry smile lingers on her face as she quickly rinses and dresses for her impending community hall. It wouldn't start for another hour, but she had a feeling that tonight, the tent would already be crammed full of people, waiting anxiously to hear her speak.

Her hands shake as she pours out a cup of water. It dribbles down the sides of her face even as the inside of her mouth remains stubbornly parched.

Once again, she thinks of her father, faced with a choice of similar magnitude. Of late, she hadn't been able to stop thinking of him.

Perhaps he had paced impatiently across the very spot upon which she stands now, wracking it over a thousand times in his mind. Knowing that no matter what he decided, half the tribe would baulk and the world would never look the same again.

How had he done it, she wonders. For all that Bato and Atka and Iroh had extolled about her father's leadership, that part remains a mystery to her. All she knows is that he had made a choice, as controversial as it was visionary, and the history that followed was written only in blood.

Dad…I really hope I'm not about to make the same mistake.

But only silence meets the plea ringing silently through her mind.

After all, the world would continue to spin madly on. It wouldn't stop, no matter how tightly she held on.

Reflexively, her fists clench tightly, nails digging into her skin. She jams them into the folds of her cloak, where nobody could see them anyway.

But they continue to quiver as she marches through the dirt paths of her village. Mud squelches under her boots and spatters the hem of her skirts.

It's the only sound that breaks the eerie stillness of the night. Everywhere else, even the inside of the community tent as she pushes through the back flaps to find it jammed full of expectant faces, seems to hold its breath in wait.

She says nothing. She only kicks off her boots before striding across the furs heaped atop the ground and assuming her seat in the space that had been left for her, deferentially, at the head of the hall.

No one dares breathe a word as she smoothes out her mantle, hanging heavy on her shoulders. Her hands rest on her lap, her knees, before receding back into the fur-lined folds.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," she says, her quiet voice deafening in the thunderous silence. "It took me longer to get back from the spirit wilds than I thought."

A faint stirring greets her at that. Heads turning, people exchanging loaded glances with each other.

"Chief…" Atka ventures to speak first, seated at the very front of the crowded hall. "Were the spirits able to guide you this time?"

"In their fashion." Katara gazes at the woman's lined face and sighs. "As usual…even they had no right answer."

A low buzz starts to swell, starting from the very back walls and rippling forward toward her. Katara's eyes scan over the throngs of her people, flickering from one face to another.

Atka, who had been with her father when he passed.

Bato, who had been one of his dearest friends.

Arrluk, her tribe's ambassador. Maguyuk, the captain of her guard. Iluak and Ruska, twin hunters who had once lived on the edge of the barren spirit wilds. All bloodbenders who were still touched by the horrors they had seen under Lake Laogai.

And clustered along one of the walls of her tent, more familiar faces leap out at her. Aujak and her two young children, who had moved back to the South after the Northern siege left her widowed. Qannik, the bristling Northern warrior, who watches her calmly with a shrewd, unnerving gaze.

But Katara is heartened to see Sokka waiting just behind him. He meets her eyes and gives her a short nod.

And seated right next to him is Zuko, barely visible to her except as a sliver of crimson flame in a sea of blue. As silent, observant, and unobtrusive as always. But she didn't have to see him to feel the reassuring warmth of his presence. She didn't need to.

"You trusted me to be your chief." She raises her chin to stare out at the assembly of her people, the way her father must have done so many years earlier. "You trusted me to lead. To make the hard choices that nobody else wanted to make."

The low hiss of murmurs tapers off. Silence returns to fill the hall with its loud drone.

Steeling herself, she summons her courage.

Tremors course through her entire body. But when she speaks again, her voice betrays none of them.

"I've made my decision."

Chapter 73: legends (epilogue iii)

Chapter Text

disclaimer. still nope.

author's notes. we're almost at the end of the line! there's one veeeery short chapter left after this one.

i give you…

southern lights.

epilogue iii. legends

the quiet moment came
raised to life, then passed away
we will never be the same

"then the quiet explosion" / hammock

Rain lashes at the windows, dimming Azula's study with its grey gloom. Its persistent hum punctuates the gentler crackle of the fire in the grate - and the grating complaints of whatever minister had decided to whine in her chair that day.

The lacquered handle of her brush grazes her chin as she stares blankly at the lengthy scroll lying in front of her. Rows of characters had been carefully inscribed in wet black ink, only to halt abruptly halfway through the page. The remainder of the papyrus gleams bright and blank in the sputtering candlelight.

A sudden lull in the air jars her from her musings. She blinks, raising her gaze to find the disgraced Trade Minister glaring at her from across her desk. "Yes?"

Fukio's face mottles to an impressive shade of purple. "Haven't you heard a single word I've said, Princess?"

"No," Azula admits, stifling a yawn. "I'm quite busy, actually. I don't have time to listen to delusional, self-important monologues."

"Delusional?" Fukio chokes, his eyes widening behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. "Forgive me, Your Highness, but - but you were the one who asked me to deprioritise trade relations with the Water Tribes in favour of the other nations -"

Azula dips her brush in the inkwell, and carefully taps off the excess. Her voice remains perfunctory - bored, even. "It was your responsibility to develop productive relations with the other nations -"

"Yes, and I did as you asked!"

She shrugs. "I merely expressed my opinion. But frankly speaking, I'm neither knowledgeable nor qualified enough to dictate your ministry's policies. You should have shown better judgement -"

"I hardly think the Princess of the Fire Nation counts as unqualified -" Fukio wheedles desperately.

"Then you are a fool," Azula huffs, continuing to write neatly on her papyrus. "Haven't you heard? We serve the people." She rolls her eyes. "The time for rewarding blind loyalty died with my father, Fukio." Without looking up from her work, she gestures toward the door, which had been left slightly ajar. "You can see yourself out. You know the way, I presume."

A rustling sound greets her ears, as Fukio fidgets uncomfortably in his seat. She imagines his mouth working wordlessly, searching in vain for one last chance to salvage his position.

But whatever hope he had harboured in meeting with her must have been sufficiently quashed, because in a matter of mere minutes, he rises to his feet. His robes swish with the motion, his shadow momentarily darkens Azula's desk. "Yes, Princess," he answers stiffly. "I…I imagine you are already searching for my replacement, are you not?"

"Do you really think me so cold-blooded, Fukio?" She glances up at the minister, taking in the sudden hope that dawns in his widening eyes. Then she offers him a smile - a genuine one. "I can't recommend a replacement until your position is vacant. Whether by the court's will or your own, it makes no difference to me."

She doesn't bother watching him leave.

The shuffling sounds of his defeated footsteps trudging out of her study recede to the perpetual splutter of the fire and the relentless drone of the intensifying rain. It falls in sheets now, pounding the gardenbeds outside her window in frothy white currents.

Her face wrinkles in distaste before she returns to her work, her brush now moving quickly across the smooth surface.

But her productivity would be short-lived. Mere minutes after Fukio's departure, the sound of more footsteps lumbering into her study tears her from her calligraphy.

She glances up to find her uncle and Kei Ling settling into the armchairs opposite her desk. "Oh, for Agni's sake," she groans, setting down her brush. "How am I supposed to get anything done around here if everyone keeps barging in unannounced? This is my study, not a petitioner's office -"

"Nowadays, it's hard to tell the difference," Kei Ling remarks airily, smoothing her ministerial regalia as she shifts in her seat. "Why, if anyone in the governing court has a problem now, the first place they go to is Princess Azula's office."

Azula's mouth quirks into an insincere smile. "Is that what brings you here?"

"We had the pleasure of bumping into Trade Minister Fukio as he was leaving your office," Kei Ling barrels on, as though Azula hadn't spoken. Her face creases with visible mirth as she tosses Iroh a meaningful glance. But the Fire Lord only sits with his arms crossed, refusing to meet her gaze. "Or, former Trade Minister Fukio now, actually, since he just informed us that he would be resigning his post -"

"I am shocked," Azula intones, "truly shocked by this development."

"We can tell," Kei Ling retorts, raising her eyebrows. "Can't we, Fire Lord?"

Her uncle lets out an irritated sigh. "My niece did warn that Fukio was perhaps not the best choice for the role…"

Kei Ling smirks. "I was wondering how long it would take before receiving the royal I-told-you-so from you and the princess."

"To think we could have been spared this international embarrassment if you had just heeded sensible advice from the outset," Uncle Iroh grumbles, throwing an unimpressed glance at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Perhaps," Kei Ling agrees, and to her credit, she doesn't turn red or show any signs of humiliation whatsoever. "I presume you'll want more say in appointing Fukio's successor then?"

Iroh plies her with his piercing stare. "The day-to-day logistics of governing belong with you and your court, Minister," he repeats impatiently, and Azula rolls her eyes again. "But this time, I suggest you pick someone who won't kneecap our bargaining position when a world-changing discovery is made -"

"Oh, enough with the theatrics, Uncle," Azula chides, blowing at a wayward strand of hair. "You're very good at playing the disgruntled old man. But this was a tactical loss and you know it just as well as everyone else in this room does."

She raises her chin a little higher, pleased by the way both Kei Ling and Uncle Iroh stiffen in their seats. "At first, I had thought Kei Ling named Fukio as trade minister out of spite. Among the elected courtiers, it wasn't just my father's loyalists who would come to me for advice, but a fair number of hers too. By naming someone she knew I had found unfit for the role, I thought she sought to undermine my influence in her court. I thought she found me threatening and frankly, I'd never been more flattered."

Kei Ling only smiles but says nothing.

"But then dear Zuzu got named ambassador-at-large, and it gave her hand away." Azula turns to address the minister directly. "They said your council elected him into that role by overriding your wishes…but anyone who thinks that has clearly never known you. Your court would never do something unless you wanted it that way."

Kei Ling laughs again. "You have such a high opinion of me, Princess. Perhaps I'm the one who should be flattered."

"Don't celebrate too early," Azula cautions. "After all, trade and diplomacy go hand in hand in this tedious new world order. Why would you contrive to have my brother, the infamous Blue Spirit, work under Fukio, a man who had once served in my father's war cabinet? They were diametrically opposed to each other, both in policy and principle. It would only have been a matter of time before Zuzu started taking matters into his own hands and subverting Father's - I mean, Fukio's wishes. It's what he does. You know that about him, and thought to use it to your own advantage."

"I would sooner try to harness a herd of boarcupines," Kei Ling dismisses, even as her smile widens. "Your brother is soft and impulsive. A complete loose cannon."

"He is," Azula agrees with a nod. "But above all else, he's resilient. Obstinately so." She taps at her chin with a sharp fingernail as she muses on, "It's how he was able to defy Father during the war with precious few resources to his name. That, coupled with his softness, as you put it - have earned him unparalleled devotion among the common folk. A true Fire Nation hero. Tell me, if royals were allowed to occupy an elected office, do you imagine for a moment that you would still be heading the governing court today?"

For the first time during their conversation, Kei Ling's smile hitches.

"A lesser woman would have been jealous. But you?" Azula drums her fingers against the edge of her desk thoughtfully. "Your court is almost as divided as the people it claims to represent. The only thing that unites them is their will to make governing impossible. Fukio and the rest of my father's loyalists will never agree with anything that the Blue-Spirit-worshipping masses put forward, and vice versa. And then there's you, the unenviable Chief Minister. Stuck between them with no middle ground to be found and a whole country to run. What do you do?"

This time, Kei Ling doesn't even bother masking her surprise. She only folds her hands into her lap and watches Azula with an almost unnerving shrewdness.

"I think you did what you've always done," Azula ventures leisurely. "You had no trouble using me as a pawn against my father during the war. To get rid of his pesky supporters, why wouldn't you use my brother in the same manner? After all, Fukio and his ilk are a dying breed. Loud, but dying. If you played your hand right, you could neutralise their stranglehold on your court once and for all."

Inwardly, she preens at the way Kei Ling's face grows pale. "First, you had to gain their trust. So you offered up one of the choicest assignments in your cabinet - against my very public recommendations, I might add. All so that you could get them to think you tacitly supported them while having to appear unbiased in your role. Next, you made a big show of acting embarrassed when your court responded by naming Zuzu the ambassador-at-large. All you had to do after that was step back and give Fukio the freedom to engineer his own downfall. That the killing blow came from the Water Tribes of all places must have been the sugared fruit on the tart."

She waves a hand vaguely at the piles of paper organised in neat piles on top of her desk. "Now, Fukio's political legacy is that he completely squandered any leverage we could hope to wield in negotiating access to the Water Tribe's oil reserves. That he created a trade debacle requiring my brother to prolong his diplomatic mission in the South Pole in order to salvage relations. If the rest of my father's loyalists have yet to receive the message, I'm sure you will find a way to deliver it to them loud and clear."

"And what message would that be?" Kei Ling asks stiffly, while her eyebrows continue to rise to the level of her hairline.

"That this world has little room to spare for their games, and they should tow your line if they don't want their political careers to meet the same, humiliating end." She raises a hand in a mock salute. "I must say, that was all very deftly played."

Silence rings through the dimly-lit study. The rain whips harder at the windows, turning the panes to a silvery wash.

Then, Uncle Iroh chuckles into his sleeve. "It would seem the jig is up for this particular scheme of yours, Kei Ling."

"So it appears." Kei Ling shakes her head in grudging admiration. "Although I had hoped Fukio would last a while longer in his role." She sighs heavily. "But I suppose I have you to thank for the untimely demise of his career, Princess. You were the one who advised him to blindly cave in to the Water Tribes' demands, weren't you?"

"I merely encouraged him to pursue symmetrical relations," Azula sniffs. "At that time, the Water Tribes were not known to have anything of value. Any trade with them would have appeared very one-sided."

"Of course." Kei Ling's eyes bore into hers now. "And at that time, nobody could have guessed about the windfall that would be discovered in the Water Tribes. Not even your brother, with all his…very intimate connections down there."

"Hm."

"Because if he had…" Annoyance flickers faintly across Kei Ling's face, only to be suppressed a moment later. "Look. As far as scandals go, your brother's personal affairs would barely register compared to the skeletons hiding in some other people's closets." She kneads her temples in mounting exasperation. "At least the Prince remained discreet and never gave any indication that he would allow his professional judgement to be affected. So we all looked the other way." She raises her eyebrows suggestively as she continues. "But now he gets to swoop in to the rescue, exploiting his…ah, very close relationship with the Water Tribe Chief to our nation's advantage. What a happy coincidence."

Azula leans forward. "What are you trying to imply exactly?"

The Minister bares her teeth in a humourless smile. "There are no coincidences when it comes to matters of state," she answers primly. "So forgive me for wondering if your brother had been aware of such privileged information at the time we were negotiating with the Water Tribes. And chose to act against our interests to benefit those of his paramour's…" Her voice lowers grimly as she trails off in warning. "Because if something like that came to light… We'd have to recall him from his official duties immediately for such an egregious breach. To say nothing of how such actions could be regarded as treasonous, or seditious even -"

"My dear woman," Uncle Iroh rebuffs impatiently, "have you ever tried thinking before you speak? Consider who you are accusing! Zuko was scarred and banished at the age of thirteen because of his love for his countrymen. His honour is unquestionable."

"He's right," Azula drawls. "No one can question Zuzu and his bleeding heart. And to do so publicly would be political suicide." She smiles again, but her eyes narrow this time. "Imagine what would happen if someone accused the Blue Spirit of betraying the Fire Nation? The riots we saw during the war would absolutely pale in comparison."

Kei Ling's mouth tightens, a muscle working in her jaw. Azula holds her smile, guileless under the woman's scrutiny.

Until at last she shakes her head, grudging and amused at the same time. "It's good to see you finally accepting your place at the table, Princess," she concedes reluctantly. "You've finally learned to beat me at my own game."

"Don't flatter yourself," Azula replies coolly. "You were never even a player."

Kei Ling's eyes widen before she chuckles and glances over at Uncle Iroh. "I must say, Fire Lord, your niece makes a far more convincing opponent than you."

"Indeed," Uncle Iroh agrees, and his eyes crinkle into a smile when he looks at Azula. An unspoken communication flickers between them as he holds her gaze. "She is a generational prodigy. Like her grandfather, for whom she was named."

"How can anyone challenge such an impressive pedigree?" Kei Ling wonders, rising to her feet. "Well, I look forward to whatever wrench she deigns to throw into my plans next. Agni knows I need something to keep me entertained these days."

"We can see ourselves out," her uncle tells Azula kindly. "Will I see you later this evening?"

"Only if you think that tonight's pai sho match will unfold any differently than the ones prior," Azula retorts.

A boisterous laugh is all Uncle Iroh manages to summon in response. He hooks his arm into Kei Ling's and marches out the door, still wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes.

Azula slumps back in her chair with a sharp exhale. For the first time, she notices the hair plastered to the back of her sweat-drenched neck, and the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Catching her breath, she reaches for the brush again and continues scribbling away at the papyrus. The letter grows so long that the top of the scroll spills over the edge of her desk and hits the floor.

By the way, Zuzu, did I ever mention how much you owe me for dragging me into your girlfriend's mess? Because you do. Big time.

I'll have to think about what sort of recompense would be adequate for all my stalwart support.

And should you disagree, you're welcome to come back home and reclaim your place in the hot seat for a change…

So engrossed in her writing, she doesn't even notice the way the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, or the prickling along her skin. Only a soft cough at the door, followed by an impatient clearing of the throat, manages to capture her attention.

She glances up with a jolt to find Mai, of all people, leaning against her study door as though she had always been there.

The abruptness of her presence drags an undignified yelp out of her. Her brush clatters out of her hand; ink spills out of the upended well.

"How -" Azula wheezes, clapping a stained hand to her heaving chest, "how long have you been standing there?"

Mai arches an eyebrow, the only expression on her pale mask of a face. "Long enough."

Azula wonders if she imagines the amusement flickering through Mai's colourless eyes at the sight of her consternation. "Well," she splutters, her cheeks heating up almost instantly, "in case you ever get bored of skulking in corners, do feel free to take a seat."

She gestures at the armchairs in front of her desk with a shaking hand.

Mai glances at it coolly. "I think I'll pass."

Azula swallows nervously, taking her in from head to toe. It had been two and a half years since Mai had unceremoniously departed for the Earth Kingdom without a word. Since the end of the war, and the last time Azula had seen or heard from her…

At some point during that time, Mai had traded her noblewoman's attire for that of a bounty hunter. Her hide boots were dirt-stained and scuffed; her pitch-black clothes were ripped and carelessly repaired at the fraying seams in more than one place. The only visible weapon she carried was the whip - unfamiliar and serpentine, a coil of glimmering scales and gleaming leather coiled at her hip.

Absently, Azula studies Mai's clothing and armour, wondering where she had managed to conceal her array of silver blades under their snug fit. Her voice remains hoarse, her tongue clumsy in her mouth. "Suit yourself."

Mai remains silent, a hand finding the whip's handle almost reflexively. "You've gotten jumpier since the last time I saw you."

Azula coughs into a fist, suddenly uncomfortable. Kei Ling had a gaze that felt like it could pierce through bone, but even that paled in comparison to Mai's scrutiny. "Why are you here?" she manages to ask at last.

Surprise flickers momentarily across Mai's impassive face, before she shrugs. "Family business," she offers, almost as an afterthought. "There're some loose ends to tie up, and my father couldn't handle it. Considering he's still holed up in his fancy villa on the other side of the Fire Nation under lock and guard."

Words bubble up from Azula's chest, only to knot in her mouth and become utterly useless. "I - I imagine you must be irritated, to have to come back here in this fashion -"

Mai's fingertips trace the spiral of the whip-lash - an idle yet gentle caress. "It's not like it's permanent. I've got a job to do, and then it's right back to the Earth Kingdom for me."

"Of course." Azula swallows again, this time struggling to face the girl lounging in front of her as though she owned the place. "Don't let me keep you. You must be eager to get going."

"I am," Mai replies. Though her voice remains as even as ever, Azula still hears the subtle edge that enters it.

She stiffens indignantly, her heart drumming a rapidfire rhythm in her ears. "Why did you come here?"

"I told you." Mai crosses her arms defensively. "I'm here to wrap up family business -"

"I mean here," Azula clarifies pointedly. "In my study. After everything you - I - why would you even want to see me?"

Mai's lips press together into a thin line.

"You hated it here. You always did," Azula continues, and to her horror, her voice wobbles dangerously. "And with your father's imprisonment, you could finally turn your back on this place once and for all. So why come back now?"

"Don't worry," Mai answers coldly. "I won't be here long."

A scornful laugh escapes her. "Of course not," she retorts, wondering why it felt like something was strangling her from the inside. Squeezing tighter and tighter, slowly squeezing all the air out of her lungs, until there was nothing left but agony. "Well, if you're done gloating, you'd best be on your way."

Mai's mouth parts in mild confusion. Azula squeezes her eyes shut, unable to bear that much anymore.

"You were dear to me." It blurts out of her, as though she had hurled one of Mai's stupid hidden knives across the room. Except with none of the precision that made her such a menace. "No one was dearer. You knew that, didn't you?"

The floorboards complain loudly under Mai's weight as she shifts from one foot to the other. "No," she says at last, her voice flat. "I'm not really sure how I was supposed to."

"Oh." Azula considers this carefully. Composing herself, she tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. Then, she makes herself face Mai and smiles tightly. "I guess I did you a favour then. Or…or maybe you did me one. I don't know."

Whatever Mai had been expecting by way of a reaction, Azula had clearly caught her off guard. She takes an uncertain step backward, inadvertently colliding with the door.

"But you really did hurt me," Azula continues raggedly, cursing the way her entire body starts to shake. "Did you know that much at least?"

Mai's face softens momentarily. "When I betrayed you to help your brother?"

"No." Azula shakes her head vehemently. "When you left."

"Oh." Mai's tongue darts out to moisten her lips. She lowers her head, suddenly preoccupied with the grain of the wooden planks between her feet. "Well…I guess we're even then."

"I suppose we are," Azula agrees. She studies Mai's face again, a gleam of bone white against the unforgiving black of the shadows and her discreet attire. Somehow, the choking heavy thing in her chest had vanished, leaving her feeling a thousand times lighter again. "Are you heading back to the Earth Kingdom soon, then?"

"Eventually."

For a moment it feels achingly like old times. Like any conversation they might have had in the past, but altered subtly. As though the ground had somehow levelled beneath their feet, leaving Azula feeling smaller than ever in Mai's presence.

She smiles thinly at the irony. "I don't suppose I'll be seeing you again, will I?"

But Mai eyes her with almost reluctant appraisal, and she tries her hardest not to flush under it. "We'll see," she remarks casually, already turning away.

The ghost of a smirk clings to her lips.

Azula stares blankly at the shadowed space where Mai had vanished as unobtrusively as a ghost in plain sight.

Shaking her head, she turns back to her desk, considering the puddles of black ink that she had spilled everywhere.

In spite of the mess, her smile still brightens. Unexpectedly.

Then, she starts to wipe it all away.

Far below the rugged cliffs, the turbulent waters of the northern coast teem with a host of anchored ships.

They bob uneasily on the frothing surface, their flags flapping violently in the powerful autumn winds that gush in from the open sea. Illuminated in the midday sun, the colours spring vivid against the backdrop of the white-capped waves.

The wavy crescent emblems in Water Tribe blue fly from a dozen skiffs.

The crimson flame of the Fire Nation displayed by three large black cruisers, their sharp hulls mere silhouettes through the thick saltwater spray.

The solid green of the Earth Kingdom banners, fastened to the masts of their hulking destroyers sitting lowest and furthest out to sea.

And at odds with the rest, a single yellow pennant sporting the Air Nation's spirals, waving cheerfully along the side of a small airship moored on the beach.

"I still don't get why you guys needed an airship," Sokka remarks, peering over the sentry wall for what must have been the hundredth time. "You have sky bison."

Beside him, Aang shrugs, and his woollen shawl shifts with the motion. "Yeah. But where would you stable a dozen of them here?"

He gestures vaguely at the village sprawling within the enclosure of its protective walls. The small structures at its heart had been newly built from stone and imported timbers, and its narrow streets were already crammed full of people from the visiting nations.

Sokka rubs the back of his shaven scalp in thought. "We could have cobbled something together. Right, Zuko?"

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. "We could barely find space to house Druk. If you had to come up with stables for a dozen sky bison, where would the autumn festival even happen?"

He points at the empty spaces ringing the perimeter of the partly-constructed city, where dozens of makeshift stalls had popped up. A cacophony of voices rise up from them, as well as a dozen different aromas wafting up in clouds that make Zuko's stomach grumble.

By now, he has learned to identify them by scent alone. Even from his silent perch atop the walls, he can surmise the presence of a seaweed noodle boil, a stewed sea-prune cart, the distinctive herbs and roots that formed the savoury base of a hearty five-flavour soup…

The wind rustles at his cloak and he shivers, wishing for a bowl at that moment.

"Exactly!" Aang gives him a grateful smile. "Besides, it wasn't a bad idea to invest in an airship for the Council. It's not as fast as a sky bison, but it's pretty handy for getting a bunch of us around at once. And with the number of diplomatic events we have to show up for these days -"

Toph's hearty chuckle cuts him off mid-sentence. "You mean you still bother going to those?" Her footsteps clomp loudly as she wanders over. "I thought you'd have tried playing hooky at least once, Twinkletoes."

Aang smiles at her patiently. "Some of us are still in diplomatic roles." He scratches his head with a sudden frown. "Although…I don't think that was ever quite a good fit for you, Toph."

"Wait," Zuko interrupts. "What do they have you doing now, Toph?"

She smirks, leaning against the parapet wall. "The fools made me chief of police."

A strange buzzing sound rattles in Zuko's ears. He kneads at them, wondering if he had misheard. "Come again?"

"A police chief?" Sokka splutters, his high-pitched voice both grating and also relieving in its assurance that it wasn't only Zuko losing his mind. "You?"

Toph tilts her head innocently. "Why's everyone getting their britches in a knot?"

"You have to admit," Katara interjects, resting an arm on Toph's sturdy shoulder, "it is a strange choice. I mean, when have you ever cared about the rules?"

"You're not wrong," Toph admits with a wry smile. "Actually, I was pretty sceptical when Kwei offered me the job too. I wanted out of diplomacy because I wanted something fun. And then he put me in charge of making sure everyone followed the rules." She scrunches her face in distaste. "I thought the guy was pulling my leg."

"We all did," Suki confesses in a conspiratorial whisper. Zuko tries to contain his surprise at her sudden appearance among them. It never failed to amaze him, how despite her deep green uniform and brightly coloured war paint, she could blend in to her surroundings until she decided she wanted to be seen. Must be a Kyoshi Warrior thing. "We thought he was losing his marbles. Until Ty Lee pointed out that with Toph as head of police, the number of assassination attempts we had to protect the King from dropped nearly to zero!"

"Not such a crazy decision after all, then," Aang muses, gazing at Toph thoughtfully. "I imagine all the Earth Kingdom criminals are even more terrified of you than we are!"

Toph rolls her sightless eyes, but a smattering of pink dusts her pale cheeks nonetheless. "One of the many perks of the job," she quips a moment later, her voice only a little hoarse. "But the best part? I get to send officers to my dad's place at all hours of the day!"

Zuko doesn't miss the uneasy stirring among the small group, or the loaded glance that Katara and Suki exchange.

"That," Aang, the bravest of them all, ventures delicately, "sounds very, uh, not legal."

"Of course it's not," Toph huffs, picking at the underside of her nails. "But with the amount of money the old man's got flowing through there, I almost always have probable cause." She laughs darkly. "What's he going to do about it now? Send more bounty hunters after me?"

Zuko grimaces. "For a police chief, you're really not hung up about the law, are you?"

"Are you kidding?" Toph scoffs, brushing her long bangs out of her eyes. "Who on earth goes into law enforcement if they actually cared about the law?"

"You know," Sokka points out, the only one willing to break the intensely uncomfortable silence that follows, "you can't really argue with that."

"Who's cold up here?" Aang asks loudly. "Is anyone else chilly? I'm really chilly. Is there a tea stall down there, Katara? I could really use some tea…"

Zuko raises an eyebrow, remembering how in the heart of polar winter up in the Northern Water Tribe, Aang hadn't even needed a parka to stay warm. But he wisely keeps his mouth shut as everyone clamours their agreement with nothing short of relief, and allows Katara to herd them all down from the high walls and toward the ring of crowded stalls hawking their wares.

The sounds of everyone's conversations wash over Zuko's ears, an indistinct noise barely distinguishable against the commotion of the festival. Children line up in front of frozen akutuq stalls, waiting impatiently for their turn as the vendor dishes out heaping scoops from the birchbark drum behind the counter.

A few stalls over, a crowd of visitors watch the rowdy Water Tribe youths engage in spirited bouts of stick pull and snowsnake. Further down, a muscly fellow wearing a green overcoat gets dragged into a round of harpoon toss and almost skewers his opponent alive. Amid the panicked laughter over the near miss, Zuko raises his eyebrows at the sight of two Fire Nation men engrossed in a fierce round of nugluktaq. Their sharpened sticks flash in the daylight, indistinguishable from those brandished by their Water Tribe competitors, stabbing and poking, vainly trying to thread them through the small ivory piece spinning in the middle of the ring.

"I bet I could whoop you in a round of ear pull," Sokka declares, following Zuko's gaze with a grin. "Want to play?"

Zuko swallows his groan. "I think you have a slight advantage," he counters weakly, rubbing at his scarred ear. "How about, um, high kick instead?"

Sokka crosses his arms. "Just because your firebending makes you naturally gifted at kicking -"

Suki taps his shoulder and Sokka falls instantly silent. "What's that all about?" she asks, her confused scowl amplified by the stark paint lining her features.

She points at a stall nestled amid the chaos of the polar games, yet somehow even more crowded. Zuko squints at the two heavy-bottomed pots bubbling over the low fire behind the counter, the Water Tribe man at the front of the line tying a blindfold over his eyes while the vendor sets down two steaming bowls in front of him, side by side.

"It looks like a taste test," Sokka answers, sounding equally confused.

Mystified, they watch as the blindfolded man shovels a spoon from one bowl into his mouth, followed by the other, and then points to the bowl on the right. With a slight grin and shake of the head from the vendor, the entire crowd erupts into jeers and laughter.

"Are those stewed sea prunes?" Zuko asks as the man removes the blindfold and slumps away while another eagerly runs up to take his place. "Why are they booing him?"

Sokka smacks a head to his forehead. "Because he got it wrong." He points at the two bowls the vendor sets down before the next blindfolded man. "One of those is made of sea prunes…and the other is ocean kumquats."

Zuko's eyes widen in mortification. "You're joking."

"Nope," Sokka sings, clearly enjoying the way blood rushes to Zuko's cheeks. "Turns out, apparently it's so hard to tell the two apart that they're having entire competitions over it!"

Zuko covers his face. "I don't know whether I should be thanking my cooks or banishing them."

"Lighten up, Sparky!" Toph whacks him on the back so hard he momentarily loses his breath. "It could be worse. At least you're not directly responsible for the fire flake challenge too."

"The what?"

Toph jabs a thumb at another stall further down, where the counter is crammed full of people from all the different nations. Zuko watches, stunned, as they heap absurd quantities of fire flakes onto a spoon and then jam it into their mouths. "I think the goal is to see who lasts longest without screaming, jumping, or needing a glass of water," she explains matter-of-factly.

Right on cue, two people start hopping in place, fanning desperately at their mouths.

"What kind of moron would want to suffer something like that?" Suki demands.

"Count me in!" Sokka blurts out at almost the same time. He shrugs as Suki stares at him witheringly. "What? I have a natural curiosity."

"Pathological, more like," Suki mutters under her breath as Sokka jogs toward the fire flake stall, shoving one of the challengers out of the way and unceremoniously taking his place at the counter.

"Look on the bright side," Toph consoles her. "Now we all get to watch Snoozles suffer the consequences of his extremely poor choices."

Suki brightens instantly.

Zuko glances around, wondering what Katara thought of the whole ordeal. But the Water Tribe chief spares little attention for her brother's antics, engrossed in what looked like a far more serious conversation with Aang a small distance apart.

As he draws near, he catches Aang's sympathetic nod as he rests a tattooed hand on her shoulder. "Are you ready to see her again?"

Katara shrugs, blowing a beaded strand of hair out of her face. "I don't know," she laments, jamming her hands into her pockets. "We'll find out when they find her, I guess."

"She could cause a lot of trouble once she gets here," Aang warns, his voice lowering so that Zuko has to strain to hear him. "Especially for you."

"We can't just leave her there!" Katara exclaims. "When I think of her, wasting away alone in some Fire Nation prison…" She kicks vehemently at the dirt. "It may have started from a dark place, but she invented bloodbending. We owe her, Aang." She sighs heavily, her cloak swaying with the rise and fall of her shoulders. "This is her home and she belongs with us. I just hope in time she finds some peace too."

"I'm sure she will," Aang reassures her, giving her a gentle smile. "You have some of the best healers in the world working down here."

"He's right," Zuko offers, when Katara's face scrunches with mounting scepticism. "Don't forget that your healers were the ones who helped Azula find a slightly less uneven keel."

"That's true!" Aang agrees, his face brightening. "See? Hama can't possibly be more unhinged than Zuko's sister was after the war!"

But the set of Katara's jaw suggests to Zuko that she very much doubted that. Then, with a shake of her head, she glances around irritably. "What the hell is Sokka doing?"

They find him yelping and scraping desperately at his tongue, his face covered in sweat and flushed an impressive shade of red. A very unimpressed Suki grabs him by the collar and drags him to the akutuq stall, grumbling very loudly about the folly of men.

"It's a miracle your brother made it this far in life," Toph observes as she rejoins them. "I've never met anyone so completely lacking in self-preservation instincts."

"Or so eager to make a fool of himself in public," Katara growls, already turning away. "C'mon. He can catch up whenever he wants…"

The rest of them struggle to fall in step with her as she marches through the festival grounds. Crowds of Southerners part before her, while the small groups of visitors from the other nations nod at her deferentially as she passes by. When the Fire Nation's new Trade Minister even grabs her by the elbow to compliment her loudly on the remarkable progress being made, Zuko fights the urge to roll his eyes.

"I don't even know how to capture all of this in my letters to the capital!" the new minister gushes, while an artificial smile strains at Katara's cheeks. "And to think, it hasn't even been three full years since the end of the war! Truly, Kamitpok will be a jewel of the southern hemisphere one day, a shining example of what Water Tribe sovereignty is capable of producing -"

"That's very kind of you, Minister Jang," Katara tries to cut him off politely. "I hope you and the rest of your delegation are enjoying the festivities -"

"Oh, absolutely!" The Minister prattles on, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his prominent nose. "My wife was ever so excited to join, she loves Water Tribe fashion -"

"Yes. I've heard it's very popular in the Fire Nation," Katara says patiently. One of her eyes twitches uncontrollably.

Zuko tries not to cringe.

"Indeed! And to be able to support the Tribes in their recovery and development…" Minister Jang leans closer, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper, "it's honestly the least we can do as a nation -"

"I appreciate the sentiment," Katara says firmly, extricating herself from the man's claw-like grip on her arm.

"And remember…if you need anything at all," Minister Jang blurts out, a hint of desperation entering his voice, "I and my ministry are at your service -"

"We're grateful for the generosity, Minister -"

"Particularly with the construction of the new pipeline!" Jang babbles on, his voice turning strangely high-pitched. "Speaking of which, when exactly do you think they'll be breaking ground on it?"

Katara stops in her tracks with a deep sigh. "Minister Jang, I'm sure you appreciate the intense interest in our resources from all over the world," she says, betraying no hint of the ire Zuko sees flashing in her eyes. "But we have to protect our land as well. As you know, all four nations have sent their best engineers to assist in developing a suitable design. Once we have some actual proposals -"

"Yes, but you're the Chief," Jang whines, making Zuko's blood boil. "I'm sure if you wished it, you could find a way to expedite the process -"

"But I don't wish that," Katara answers slowly. "Because when all the oil is gone, our land will remain, as it always does. Sustainable extraction is a challenging endeavour. I'm sure you're aware, since the Fire Nation already tried its hand at harvesting it all." She gives him a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "The elements are harsh and unforgiving at the ends of the world. But its people don't have to be."

Minister Jang splutters out a chorus of profuse apologies, wringing his hands as they walk away.

"That," Toph quips once they have moved out of earshot, "was the most pathetic thing I've ever heard."

"I'm really impressed," Aang agrees, nodding vigorously. "If that had been me, I think I would have airbent him off a cliff! But you were so patient, Katara!"

Toph shakes her head in disbelief. "So apparently we've reached the point where Twinkletoes is advocating for violence and Sweetness isn't."

Zuko snorts, accidentally choking on his spit. As he fights to catch his breath, a small snowball arcs through the air, smashing into the ground near his boot.

He straightens, his curiosity piqued. They had wandered away from the crush of people crowding the busy stalls and closer to the mouth of Kamitpok's main street. Lined with new buildings still smelling of fresh wood, the wide road had already been tamped down by countless excited footsteps as visiting groups from all the different nations wandered through.

One such group meanders toward them, having taken in the sights of the new city and now heading for the festival grounds. He recognises some of their number by sight: a minor Earth Kingdom noble and her ensemble, accompanied by a small number of Water Tribe diplomats dressed in their blue state regalia.

The Water Tribe diplomats don't notice his stare, or Katara's for that matter, engrossed as they are in an animated conversation with their Earth Kingdom guests. He pauses, considering one of their number: a young woman that he had never seen before.

Must be from the North, he concludes. His eyes linger on the woman's soft features, her defensive posture, her jet black hair cascading over her shoulders in thick braids.

And the flare of her fur-lined skirts, swelling strangely at the knee.

Zuko frowns in confusion, until a little girl's head pops out from under the woman's skirt, grinning gap-toothed at the world around her. Her bright blue eyes sparkle mischievously.

To his surprise, she beams at the sight of him, waving cheerfully in his direction.

And even more perplexing is the sight of Aang waving back, and even Toph nodding a terse greeting. The little girl giggles, the brown pigtails framing her face bobbing with every motion.

Her mother, noticing the commotion, makes a hushing motion and slides the little girl back behind her skirts, and out of sight. Zuko wonders what he had missed, and why the woman's nervous face had suddenly grown drawn and white.

"Who is that?" he asks.

He doesn't expect the reaction that his question receives. Toph whirls on him in shock, while Aang gawks indignantly at Katara. "You haven't told him yet?"

Katara flings a braid over her shoulder irritably. "I wanted them to meet him, but they've been on a tour of the four Air Temples and the southern Earth Kingdom the whole time he's been here!"

"Well," Toph sniffs, "she's gonna have to visit the Fire Nation sooner or later. Unless you want more freak infernos popping up in storehouses, that is."

"What are you talking about?" Zuko asks, but Aang barrels over him without hearing.

"I still think she should have started with airbending first -"

"Of course you do, Twinkletoes. Then you wouldn't have to worry about her crushing you with a rock when you bore her to death with your lessons on how to be a leaf -"

Zuko turns to Katara, wondering if everyone around him had gone insane or if it was only him.

To his relief, she throws him an apologetic glance, mouthing later and pointing at the small group with the Water Tribe woman and the little girl still hiding behind her skirt.

Then another group of men approach them, and Zuko hears someone curse under their breath. He scowls as he suddenly recognises the men as those entirely hailing from the North, and Hahn standing smugly at their head.

Zuko's hands inexplicably curl into fists as the former chief corners the Water Tribe woman with the air of an arctic wolf on the prowl. The rest of the diplomatic group suddenly melt away from sight, keen to avoid any incidents.

Hahn's men almost casually surround the woman and her daughter, their manner appearing friendly on the surface but almost certainly meant to physically intimidate.

An answering tension grips the woman, even as she greets Hahn with all the diplomacy one could expect of someone in her station.

But then Hahn pushes her gently aside to flash his trademark toothy grin at the little girl who had been hiding behind her mother.

"Uh oh," Toph mutters under her breath. "Should we -"

The little girl crosses her arms and gives Hahn a ferocious scowl of her own. Zuko raises his eyebrows, something in the child's squared shoulders and brash, fearless demeanour strangely reminding him of Toph when she had been younger.

A part of him can't help but marvel as the girl, barely the height of her mother's knee, raises her chin defiantly at the men trying to intimidate her mother. To Zuko, she looked like she was ready to breathe fire - so Hahn should thank the spirits that she's not a firebender.

Even if the dangerous flash in her blue eyes gives him pause, almost suggesting otherwise.

Without another word, Katara takes off at a brisk march. In the blink of an eye, she has already muscled her way into the semicircle of Northern men skulking around the lone woman and her child.

Hahn's face darkens as Katara greets the woman and her daughter with almost deafening delight. And then, in response to some imperceptible signal that Zuko must have missed, Ambassador Arrluk appears as though out of thin air. Racing hard on his heels, not so far behind, is Sokka, his face still flushed and his eyes roving in a mild panic.

Before anyone can register their appearance, Arrluk swings an arm around the woman's shoulder and offers a hand to the scowling little girl. "Sorry Hahn," Zuko hears the ambassador say breezily, "I know you must be so eager to catch up with a former Northerner. Make sure we're taking care of your widows and all -"

Hahn says something back, indistinct and petulant to Zuko's ears. The little girl closes her hand around two of Arrluk's fingers, glaring at the former chief with a haughty sort of triumph.

"Maybe later." Arrluk dismisses Hahn's objections, already whisking the woman and her young daughter in the opposite direction. "Senna still has to debrief me about her latest diplomatic tour. It really can't wait, I'm afraid!"

Before Hahn gets a chance to voice his objections, Sokka claps a hand on his shoulder. Hahn nearly buckles under the force of it.

"Hahn! Old buddy!" Sokka's voice grates in Zuko's ears with its forced friendliness. "How long have you been in town? C'mon, it's too nice a day for big strong men like us to waste on girl stuff!"

Katara glares at him but Sokka ignores it cheerfully, steering the reluctant former chief back toward the festival grounds, loudly chattering all the while. "...we even got a merchant from the Earth Kingdom to set up a stall! Have you ever tried cactus juice?"

Zuko shakes his head, utterly bewildered by the entire strange encounter. But still somehow, he senses the tension in the air snapping. The feeling of imminent disaster, miraculously, painstakingly averted.

"That was close," Aang mutters, shaking his head. "Too close."

"I still say we dump Hahn and his goons somewhere in the middle of the Si Wong desert," Toph grunts, crossing her arms. "I know some sandbenders. I could make it happen."

"It won't just be Hahn, Toph," Aang reminds her, his voice lowering. "If we don't keep a tight lid on this, it'll be everyone."

"Is anyone ever going to tell me what's going on?" Zuko demands in mounting frustration.

Both Toph and Aang jump, as though they had forgotten he was there. Aang rubs the back of his head sheepishly.

But before he can say anything, Sokka's voice cuts through the laden silence. "Zuko! Buddy! There you are!"

Before Zuko can protest, Sokka hooks an elbow around his, already dragging him away from the others. "Did you hear? Hahn's never had cactus juice before! We have to initiate him, show him what he's missing - and I can't do it alone."

Sokka's eyes bore into his pleadingly.

Zuko sighs, but sportingly allows himself to be frog-marched back to the festival, Sokka and Hahn in tow.

It isn't until later that night, when the sky grows dark and the festival grounds on the outskirts of Kamitpok finally grow quiet and empty, that her messengers summon him.

Zuko ignores the pounding in his head as he buttons up his parka. As he trails the pair of guards along the outer rim of Sivusiktok's cramped streets, he can't help but burrow deeper into the thick fur trim of his hood.

But if Katara had been worried about secrecy, she needn't have been. Though the tribe was packed full of visitors from all around the world to celebrate Kamitpok's inaugural festival, the village around him appears as still as the grave. All the festivalgoers had made for the warmth of their tents, seeking hot spirits and hearty fires to ward off the advancing chill of the night.

To his surprise, the guards steer him past the communal hall where Katara usually took her meetings. Instead, they lead him to the discreet qarmaq she had set up at the furthest edge of the village, within throwing distance of the southernmost sentry wall and the spirit wilds that lay beyond.

The sky yawns overhead, deepening to the colour of ink. Stars glitter amid translucent cloud swirls, finally emerging after months of endless sun. The great column of light pulsing steadily at the heart of the south pole is still visible - a faint white beam bridging the rift between the earthly world and the celestial.

Then they draw closer to the sentry wall, and the towering structure blots out the night sky and all its wonders.

Katara's unassuming qarmaq appears no different from any of the others they had constructed at the turn of the season and the cooling of the wind. A circular house of sod and stone, built into a frame of whalebone and bark. Its sealhide roof flaps gently where the night breeze nips at it.

As the guards poke their heads in to announce his arrival, Zuko notices a pair of large polar bear dogs curled up in the warmth of her doorstep. They had already been harnessed.

He shakes his head, too exhausted to question it.

At a nod from the guards, he pushes his way inside. "Finally!" he exclaims, drawing the flaps shut behind him. "What in Agni's name is going on -"

The words freeze in his mouth.

He had expected to find Katara alone in the spartan interior of her little sod house. Perhaps meditating in the light of her soapstone lamp or piling her furs for the night.

So the sight of her sitting cross-legged on the bare ground in front of a little fire, accompanied by the widow and her young child from earlier in the day, steals the rest of his tirade from his tongue.

The Northern woman is the first to react to his presence, her face growing so instantly pale and drawn that it may as well have been Hahn walking through the door.

Katara and the little girl don't look up. They are both preoccupied, seated on opposite sides of the fire, palms outstretched. A glowing orb of water lazily orbits the leaping flames, passing from Katara's hands to the little girl's, and then back again.

"That's very good," Katara says at last, lowering her hands into her lap. The orbs hovers in the air, quivering under the little girl's straining wrists. "You've been practising, I see."

The little girl grins triumphantly over her shoulder at her mother.

"She could always find time for more," the girl's mother retorts.

"There'll be enough of that soon," Katara remarks, this time directing her gaze at the girl's mother. "She's still very young."

"She won't be for long." The mother sighs.

A pensive silence settles upon the inside of the qarmaq. Zuko wonders if he had been summoned by mistake, or if he had blundered into something private.

Until Katara dispels the water orb and directs it back into her waterskin with a single fluid motion. "I'm so sorry to be doing this now. But this couldn't wait."

She glances up at Zuko, still waiting awkwardly in the doorway. Her smile turns apologetic as she motions him to join. "Senna, this is Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, and it's long overdue for you to meet him." She sighs ruefully. "The timing has been so unfortunate, with your diplomatic tours and -"

"No." The woman, Senna, shakes her head firmly. "Thank you, Chief Katara, for giving us an opportunity to keep a low profile. The more difficult it is for Hahn and the others to keep tabs on us, the better." She turns to face Zuko before offering him a proper Fire Nation bow. "It's an honour to meet you, Your Highness. I've heard so much about you from the other members of your team."

Zuko returns with an incline of his head. "I hope you're finding your life in the Southern Water Tribe more pleasant than in the North."

"After a fashion," Senna agrees, before her face grows solemn. "It's not easy being a widow in the North. But - but when my daughter turned out to be -"

"A waterbender?" Zuko prompts, when Senna's voice falters and trails off, lost for words.

Katara clears her throat. Before Senna can continue, she smiles at the little girl. "Why don't you show us what you learned while you were away with your mom?"

The girl straightens excitedly. "Can I?" She glances back at her mother, doubt glimmering in her big blue eyes.

"Go on, sweetie," Senna encourages with a nod. "Do as Master Katara says."

The little girl grins, scrambling to her feet so quickly that she kicks up dirt into everyone's faces.

As Zuko rubs at his watering eyes, he glimpses her settling confidently into a new stance. Her feet plant wide apart as though they were roots plunging deep into the ground.

That's odd, he thinks, still wiping dirt from his face, that looks more like an earthbending stance than a waterbending one -

Her shoulders square off. Her fists punch downward.

And a boulder-sized clump of dirt unearths itself from the ground. Shooting up so quickly, it punches a hole right through the animalhide roof.

Then it falls back earthward, gaining speed until it finally lands with a deafening crash.

Zuko doesn't know how long he remains frozen in his daze.

He barely notices the flood of apologies from Senna, or the hand that Katara raises to stem them. He doesn't react when she summons the captain of her guard to escort the pair back to their own tiny qarmaq not so very from her own.

"And Maguyuk, I'm going to need help mending that," Katara calls to their retreating backs.

The captain pauses in the doorway, occupying its space almost entirely with his bulky frame the size of an oak tree. "Now?"

Katara shakes her head and the beads clack in her hair. "No, it's far too late. I was going to visit the spirit wilds tonight anyway."

Maguyuk nods curtly. "Right. It's the full of the moon. My apologies, Chief. I forgot."

"That's okay." Katara offers him a kind smile. "But I'll need to have it repaired by tomorrow."

Maguyuk bobs his head again. "Yes, Chief. I'll have someone stop by."

Perhaps Katara intercepts the man's gaze lingering curiously on the large hole punched clean through the hide covering, or the small crater in the ground directly beneath. "Accidents can always happen during bending practice," she supplies, before the man can get a word in. "I suppose we got a little ambitious this time. But it won't happen again."

"It wasn't my place to ask," Maguyuk grumbles, even as his cheeks flush a deep red. "Safe travels, Chief."

The door flaps sway in the man's wake, agitated by the capricious wind.

In the silence that settles uncomfortably in the small hut, its cold screech is deafening to Zuko's ears. His unblinking gaze remains fixed upon the crater in the ground, stunned beyond belief.

He wonders wildly if the little girl had also somehow managed to shatter the earth beneath his feet. The entire world as he knew it, spinning sideways and hurtling out of control…

Katara's sigh reaches him from a million fathoms away. "It's late," he hears her say reluctantly. "We need to get going."

Something in him snaps. "You think you can just ask me to leave after that?" he demands hoarsely. "Katara, what -"

She raises a hand apologetically. "I'm not asking you to leave," she tells him softly. "I'm asking you to come with me. I need to show you something."

He gapes at her, somehow furious that she could remain so calm in the face of what they had just witnessed. "In the spirit wilds?" he challenges. "Do Aang and Toph already know?"

"Yes." Her pleading eyes flick to the empty doorway, and the flaps still swaying - a constant reminder that within the tribal community, they were never alone. And its walls, whether of tanned hide or packed snow, always had ears.

He bites back his protest and nods reluctantly.

In a matter of minutes, the little fire has been extinguished and they have clambered onto the large polar bear dogs waiting outside the hut. Katara lets out a sharp whistle and before he knows it, they are bounding away from the village and its walls, and into the vast snow-covered plains of the spirit wilds.

Zuko's breath fogs into small puffs, already starting to freeze ice pellets into the fur trim of his hood. The antarctic wind whips cruelly against the bits of his exposed skin, unencumbered by the protective shelter of the walls. The lights of the village frontier gradually fade, until they too are swallowed by the night.

Only the stars remain, the full moon a silver eye gazing down at their backs. And ahead, the same pillar of white light that he had always seen from afar, looming closer and alarmingly larger with every soft footfall of their steeds' paws into the hard-packed snow.

At last, when it seems to Zuko that they must have crossed over to the ends of the world, and not a single living soul remained in existence, Katara finally tugs on her reins and brings them both to a halt.

The abrupt lack of sound fills Zuko's ears with a strange groan. He thinks it's the silence at first, the deep frozen stillness at the heart of the spirit wilds.

But to his surprise, the breeze that caresses his cheeks is dewy and mild. And when he pushes his scarf down from his face, he is shocked to find the ground beneath the polarbear dog's paws to be soft and lush.

He blinks again, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He had followed Katara into darkness, into the untamed, uninhabited tundra south of her village, until it had felt impossible to venture any further. Their journey had been through an unending expanse of empty plains, punctuated with snow-covered hills and ice-capped peaks in the distance, amid a climate so harsh that nothing could live in it.

Yet somehow, Katara dismounts onto a thick carpet of grass, quickly leashing her polarbear-dog to a tree. Not just a lone scraggy tree that had managed to survive the desolation at the heart of the spirit wilds, but one of many. Far too many for Zuko to count. A veritable forest of conifers, towering overhead to blot out the sky, and forming an almost complete ring around the base of the column of light emanating before them.

He swallows nervously, seeing it up close for the first time. The light is colossal, far beyond anything he could have imagined. About as wide across as a Fire Navy cruiser, and springing up from the jaws of the earth to pierce the clouds overhead.

"You can hear it," Katara says softly, shedding her parka and her mittens and laying them carefully on her mount's large saddle. "Don't you?"

He nods, trying to swallow with a mouth that had suddenly stopped working. A strange humming sound reverberates from the heart of that light. It seems to fill the air with heat, and the ground with its low vibrations.

His hands ache from how tightly he still clutches at the reins. He forces himself to let go, climbing off his polarbear-dog with far less grace than Katara had.

"I'm sorry for all the secrecy," Katara tells him. "I had to be sure we were alone. As you've noticed, Hahn's got spies everywhere."

Zuko's hands shake uncontrollably as he struggles to tie off his mount. Sweat pools under his parka, until he forces himself to unbutton it and set it aside as well.

What he had witnessed before in Katara's qarmaq, he might have attributed to one of the several slightly-too-potent brews of cactus juice that he had reluctantly imbibed earlier in the day. He would have been happy to dismiss it as yet another hallucination.

But here, in the embrace of a preternaturally warm green grove at the heart of the spirit wilds, feeling the sheer raw energy radiating off the light in waves, and watching it illuminate Katara's face in its pure white light, it becomes impossible to deny.

And the only thing he can sense - the only thing possible for him to sense here - is the foundation of the world, shifting one block at a time.

"That little girl," he breathes, finally able to speak out loud. "She's not just a waterbender. She can bend two elements."

"Three, actually," Katara admits, ducking her head. "And with the proper instruction…one day she'll be able to master all four."

He had expected her to say no less. Yet his legs still find a way to give out beneath him. He slumps against his polarbear-dog, clutching at its thick shaggy fur. "Who…how -?"

"I'm not even sure I understand it." Katara leans next to him against the polarbear-dog's bulky warmth, finally beginning to explain. "I met Senna and her daughter when I was in Aujuittuq last winter. She was originally from Nutjuitok, she told me. Her husband, Tonraq, died during the first battles of the siege when she was pregnant." A shuddering exhale escapes her as she shakes her head. "I even remember laying him to rest after we freed Nutjuitok. I had no idea…"

Zuko stares at her as she continues, faltering. "She says her labour started the instant the moon returned to the sky. That her daughter was the first child born to a free tribe again. That was almost three years ago. She didn't really think anything more of it until…" She gestures vaguely into the air. "A toddler is capable of a lot more than a baby. And - and when strange things kept happening around her daughter, you can imagine how quickly it drew the attention of Hahn and the others."

She holds out her hands helplessly. "I did the only thing I could think of to keep them safe. I brought them back with me, and then posted them with a diplomatic tour so it would be harder for any spies to keep eyes on them."

He replays the strange encounter from earlier that afternoon. Envisions Hahn and the other Northmen, surrounding Senna and her daughter on all sides without a care for who may have watched. "Why does Hahn care so much? What's it to him?"

"Zuko," Katara says patiently, "think. She's the first person in living memory who can bend multiple elements. Born just after Princess Yue sacrificed herself to restore balance to both worlds."

His eyes widen. "That…that can't be a coincidence."

"No. Not when all this -" she waves at the pillar of light beaming inexplicably before them, "appeared at the same time. The moon, that little girl, the portals -"

"Portals?"

Katara nods. "I didn't think you would believe me if I told you any of it. Not until you saw it with your own eyes." Her smile is bitter. "I know I wouldn't."

His stare darts from the blinding light to her strangely morose face, and back again. Even now, the ground beneath his feet seems unstable. Shifting, ready to shatter and consume his stunned, disbelieving body in its slavering jaws.

But when she pushes off and turns to him, her feet are steady. She holds her hand out to him, beckoning.

He considers her outstretched hand, before his eyes flick up to meet hers. He reads no hesitation in her face, no fear. Only a strange calm determination simmering in her gaze.

With a heavy sigh, he clasps her hand.

Her smile widens and he can't help the blood rushing to his cheeks despite it all.

"Come on."

It's a sign of how readily he had come to trust her, without question. For even through his mounting trepidation, he lets her lead him with unhesitating steps straight toward that beam of light.

The closer they get, the larger it becomes. A wall of unending light, swallowing all the darkness and encompassing everything he could see. He gulps as Katara walks right up to it, the tips of her toes grazing the surface of that raw, pulsing energy.

Feeling his hesitation, she turns back to him, her smile sincere. "It's okay," she tries to reassure him. "Just trust me, Zuko."

I do. It rears everywhere inside him, nearly as bright as the light threatening to engulf them both. With all my heart, I do.

And with that thought blazing through his mind, and her hands squeezing his comfortingly, he makes himself take a step forward - and then another.

His eyes squeeze shut, his entire body braces for impact. He expects that all-consuming light to sear his skin, rake through him with excruciating pain.

But it never arrives.

Instead, only a mellow warmth cascades over him. The sensation of walking into daylight, like the caress of steam after a long, frigid winter.

Zuko opens his eyes, and his breath chokes in his lungs.

A portal, she had called it. Only now does he understand why.

The serene green grove surrounding them had vanished, as had the stars and the night sky and the moon.

Instead, he and Katara now stand in a land unlike any he had ever seen or even heard of. The air as warm and charged as it had been in the grove, but the verdant grass stretches on for as far as he can see.

He gapes at the sloping hills, similar to those that had filled the spirit wilds, but instead bedecked with thick plants of a size and species he had never seen before. In the distance, the peaks of jagged mountains cut through swirling mists, while ancient trees with trunks thick as houses stretch their knotted branches up toward a sky full of strange glowing birds.

"We're in the spirit world," he breathes, half out of conviction and half sheer disbelief.

In the corner of his eye, she nods. "We are," she says. "There are a few points of entry from our world to this one. There's the one we just took -" she gestures at the beam of light rising from the ground behind them, "but then -"

She points ahead, to another identical column of light shining not so far away from where they stand. A few paces at most. "That one leads to the spirit oasis in the North Pole."

"Is that how you get your messages to the North back and forth so quickly?" Zuko demands, his jaw dropping. "And here I thought you were just feeding your messenger birds some weird cactus juice stuff or something…"

She laughs.

His gaze darting back and forth between the two identical beams of light. Somehow, he still couldn't bring himself to acknowledge them as portals, two twin portals standing at the polar opposite ends of the earth. "Are these the only ones?"

"That we know of," she answers, glancing around the strange surreal terrain. "The spirit world is just as big as our own. It would take an eternity to explore it. And we can only use the portals when the moon is full."

He frowns. "Why?"

Katara points at a space behind him. "That's why."

As though in answer, a blinding flash of pure white coalesces into a human-shaped mass standing right next to him.

He yelps, scrambling away. His arms rise defensively to cover his eyes, already watering from the brightness, so potent it hurts to look directly upon it.

"Hello, again," intones another voice, right into his ear.

The painful light dims abruptly, leaving him blinking and rubbing his eyes in a world that suddenly seemed too dark. Nothing about his surroundings had changed - the twin portals still stretch up into that strange ethereal sky, and the warmth rises in waves off the long grass swaying idly against his feet.

But when he turns to face Katara, he sees that they are no longer alone.

It takes him a moment to place the stranger who had suddenly materialised into their midst. He hadn't exchanged more than a dozen words with her when he had known her, and her entire form glows in a way that it surely hadn't when she had been alive.

"Is that…P-Princess Yue?" he stammers, the sights of the day continuing to challenge his faltering sanity, hanging bravely by the seams.

But to his relief, Katara only smiles and nods. "That's her."

"H-how?" Zuko croaks, unable to stop himself from recoiling away from the spectral princess waiting patiently before them. "I thought she died."

A delicate giggle follows his words. To his dismay, the princess raises a radiant hand to shield her laughter from view, but the silvery sound still remains. "Not quite," she corrects, and eerily enough, her voice still sounds the same as he remembered. "I gave up my mortal form, but that didn't mean I died."

"Technically, to us mortals, you did," Katara reminds her gently.

"You mortals oversimplify everything," Yue complains. The light enshrouding her glares brighter as though in protest. Zuko averts his eyes, wishing for them to stop aching. "Giving up your earthly form isn't the same thing as dying."

"So you're a spirit now?" he asks, unable to believe his ears.

She beams at him with the force of the moon hanging full in the sky. "I am! Thanks to you and Katara and the rest of Team Avatar…and your uncle, of course, for helping guide me here."

He blinks, his mouth feeling very dry. "Oh. I guess that…makes sense…?"

"Does it really?" Katara mutters into his ear.

"No." He shakes his head. "But I was hoping it would."

Yue laughs again. "Acts of bravery don't happen in isolation. I mean, maybe in the mortal world it looks like that, but now that I'm here, I see it all differently." A flounce of her elaborate white dress, unlike anything he had ever seen anyone wear before, flutters dreamily in a nonexistent breeze. "Take your actions on the night of blood moon, for example. You sacrificed yourself to save your friends, so they kept fighting when the odds seemed impossible. Which inspired Katara to trade her freedom for mine. Which compelled Aang and Toph to stay by my side and protect me until your uncle could deliver me safely to the spirit world." She smiles knowingly at Katara. "We change the world with every choice we make. Your wisdom, not mine."

Katara flushes a deep shade of purple.

"I guess," he mumbles, scuffing a boot at the empty ground. Truth be told, it had been a long time since he had even thought about those dark days during the war, and that alone gives him pause. "I still don't see what that has to do with…" Your presence here? Portals to the spirit world appearing out of nowhere, and a little girl born with the ability to wield multiple elements? "...all this."

"Restoring the moon didn't just return balance to the mortal world," Yue explains patiently, her vivid blue eyes twinkling like the first stars of twilight. "It gave us another chance to rebuild the bridge that was broken, and repair the great rift between the worlds once and for all!"

Zuko feels as though the weight of both worlds had suddenly descended upon his shoulders with every word the moon-princess speaks. "You mean the girl." He swallows, and glances at Katara who only nods, confirming what he already knows in his heart to be true. "She's…she's what my uncle sought to achieve when he brought the four of us together." His fingers rake through his hair in disbelief. "The Avatar. The next in the cycle."

"Yes," Yue says without hesitation. "After eternities, it has begun again."

He staggers backward. Only Katara's hand, gentle on the small of his back, stops him from toppling over backward into the portal leading back to the Southern spirit wilds. "I have to tell him," he mutters, the first thought that manages to crystallise amid the indistinct roar building between his ears. "Uncle Iroh would want to know that it worked. And - and I know he's always wanted to visit the spirit world -"

"Somehow, I don't think any of this would be a surprise to your uncle," Yue remarks. "He is an extremely perceptive man." Her expression turns mournful. "But he will only be allowed to visit this world once more, and that will be for his final journey."

Zuko gawks at her, but finds holding the light of her sombre gaze too much to handle. He looks away reluctantly. "I see."

"It is a great honour for a mortal such as him to be allowed to rest in our world," Yue insists softly. "Understand that the portals were only ever meant to be used by the Avatar. They were never meant for mortals."

"What about us?" Zuko challenges, his hand gesturing at the space between him and Katara.

A mischievous smile flits across Yue's face. "Well. Even the spirits never anticipated a world in which the Avatar could have four heads."

Zuko chokes.

"But even your time here is limited," Yue warns. "You will only be able to enter the spirit world until the Avatar comes of age." She tucks her hands into the ballooning folds of her gauzy, winglike sleeves trailing down the length of her folded skirts. "Once she is old enough to assume her duties, I won't be able to let anyone else in. Your part in this tale will be over."

Zuko laughs darkly, wondering what over would ever look like. "And until then?"

"The more people who recognize her for what she is, the more danger she will be in. It's already starting," Yue says gravely. "They will try to possess the Avatar, control her, end her if they can. If the balance in this world has a hope of enduring, you four must keep her safe."

Her gaze hardens, making her lovely, delicate form appear suddenly austere and uncompromising. A stark reminder that under the moon spirit's gentle facade lay enough strength to bridle the ocean. "You know by now that the Avatar's power isn't just in her ability to master all the four elements. That won't be why her enemies will fear her. Her real power, like yours, is what she can inspire in the rest of the world to follow and fight for."

"And what's that?" Zuko asks hoarsely.

"Hope," Yue says, holding out her open hands. "Hope for a better future."

Chapter 74: promises (epilogue iv)

Chapter Text

disclaimer. for the last time, it isn't mine.

author's notes. and here we are, at the very end.

whether you've been following from the very beginning, have yet to take the plunge, or somewhere in between, i can't thank you all enough for your patience and support throughout all these years.

i give you…

southern lights.

epilogue iv. promises

i will be here with you
just like i told you i would

"rooting for you" / london grammar

"I thought I saw it this way -"

"Look, up ahead!"

"Where?"

"There!"

Squinting through the fur trim of his hood, Zuko at first doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Just another slope of gleaming white ice rising up before them, like all the ones surrounding them and the ones they had already climbed in their headlong dash across the open tundra. Overhead, the starry black of polar night stretches on forever, a limitless glittering cowl crowned by a sliver of moon.

But the streaking light that had slashed like an unsheathed sword across the sky continues to elude him.

That is, until a loud screech pierces the thick silence of the night, followed by a rhythmic galloping. In the corner of his eye, Druk bounds excitedly in the direction that Katara points, a blur of red and gold scales.

"I guess that must be it," he mutters.

"Come on!" Katara's hand closes around his own. "Before it disappears under all the snow!"

A tired smile crosses his face, but he lets her lead him all the same.

Not that he could blame her. Like in Aujuittuq, polar night had arrived abruptly with the turn of the seasons. One late autumn evening, the sun had sunk below the horizon and simply forgotten to rise again. Entire days, weeks, maybe even months, had already gone by in little more than darkness. And he was always tired.

The winter solstice was no exception. Earlier that day, mere hours of delicate twilight had marked what might have been midday before yielding once again to the cover of night. Leaving only the thick layers of snow to illuminate the ground and the starlit sky, along with whatever the golden light of the leaping bonfires and soapstone lamps could touch.

The day had passed much as Katara had described to him on a similar solstice night in the Fire Nation, back when the war had been little more than a black shadow of gloom haunting his darkest fears.

There had been large fires lit in the villages, around which everyone bundled up and huddled for warmth. Stories were told, followed by music and dances - so different from the ones he had learned in his youth, but no less gripping.

A group of spindly youths in decorative masks and brightly painted costumes had even performed for the tribe. They had delivered one theatrical rendition after another. Plays about an air spirit whose breath became the wind and in it were the souls of every human who had ever lived. Of a sea spirit, whose own father had cut off her knuckles and fingers and tossed them overboard. And how after sinking into the water, her flesh became the great creatures of the deep.

And finally, a dramatisation of the story closest to everyones' hearts that day - that of Princess Yue's sacrifice, and her ascension as the moon spirit. Not a single dry eye remained in the audience by the time the actors concluded their final scene. Katara sniffled nonstop into a handkerchief, and tears had cut shining trails down Sokka's cheeks, dripping large wet spots into his lap.

Yet during the performance, the crescent moon had peered out from the cover of the swirling clouds - a shining silver smile suspended in the heavens. The back of Zuko's neck prickled uncomfortably, as though he could feel the princess's presence with them all, as though she was sitting right among them, watching them…

And amid it all, the excited squeals of children, searching for places to hide their gifts. Tucking small offerings into the corners of windowsills, under the folds of piled animal-furs, in the shadows behind family carvings and statuettes… The more elaborate the hiding-place, the more difficult it would be for the spirits to find them when the solstice finally weakened the liminal boundaries between the worlds.

And yet, somehow without fail, the spirits always managed to get their hands on every gift that had been left out for them by the time they woke up the next morning.

He could hear them still chattering about it as slowly, the fires burned down and people retreated back home for the night - keen to avoid encounters with any wayward spirits. He had meant to do the same, following Katara back to her igloo when everyone else had departed.

But then they had spotted the blinding streak of a falling star, so close that they could even perceive the flames where it burned up in the sky just beyond the protective walls of Sivusiktok. And somehow, following a discussion that Zuko doesn't quite remember clearly anymore, they had ended up chasing it. Trying to find the remains of that fallen star, which had traversed the heavens and crossed from that world into theirs.

"Imagine the luck it could bring!" Katara had simply said with a beatific grin so hopeful, he couldn't bring himself to refuse.

He curses inwardly now, tripping over leaden feet to keep up with Katara and Druk. The dragon halts at the sizable crater, crooning softly at the greyish plumes wafting upward from the snow and already dispersing in the air.

By the time they have caught up with the dragon, Druk has already curled up around the smoking rock, embracing its immense heat in the bitter cold of polar night.

Zuko stares, unsure of what he had expected to find. But within the dragon's clutches lies a lump of glistening moonstone. He leans over Druk's tail to pick up a chunk that had broken off, lifting it to inspect more closely.

Still hot in the palm of his hand, the space rock is the purest, unblemished white stone he had ever seen. Despite falling from its place among the stars, and tempered by the harsh fire of its descent, it had managed to find its place in the snow once more. Jagged and beautiful and perfect.

"Well," Zuko remarks, sitting down comfortably on the base of Druk's very solid tail, "this falling star looks an awful lot like my dragon."

A chuckle meets his ears. "Isn't it funny how that worked out?" Katara leans over Druk's rounded spine, and the ridges of sharp golden scales protruding from it in neat rows. "Hey Druk, you never told us you were a star!"

"Well, if the stories are to be believed," Zuko mumbles, planting a hand on Druk's muscular chest, already rising and falling steadily in the even rhythm of slumber, "dragons are a living incarnation of the Eternal Flame, the same as the sun. He could be made from stars, for all we know."

"Imagine that." Katara chews at her lip thoughtfully. Her eyes flick from the sleeping dragon to the sky, and then back down again. "Now that you mention it, I think I see the resemblance already!"

He smiles again.

She clambers next to him. They huddle against Druk's supine form, now grown large enough to encircle the pair of them almost entirely. Zuko lowers his hood, his skin flushed in the heat radiating up from beneath the dragon's scales.

"I wonder what stories they'll tell about us one day," Katara muses.

He shrugs. "It's a bit soon to think about that, isn't it?"

"I guess." The corner of her mouth works into a wry smile. "I thought it would all end with the war and stopping your father from destroying the world. But three years out and it still feels like our story's only beginning."

"But it is," Zuko points out. "We're still writing it."

She sighs, leaning her head against his shoulder. "Sometimes, I'm not sure I prefer this to fighting," she confesses. "Don't get me wrong. It's nice to have a world based on peace and cooperation instead of whatever we had going on before. But at the same time…I kind of miss it."

"It's hard to feel the same sense of accomplishment in statecraft," Zuko agrees solemnly. "But we're still fighting…just in a different way than we were trained to."

"I'm sure I've done lots of things as Chief, but I just don't feel it in the same way," Katara complains, smoothing out the thick purple fur of her chieftain's mantle over her shoulders. "But single-handedly overpowering an Admiral on his flagship, or stopping an erupting volcano? That's something you can feel proud of."

"It's different," Zuko answers. "Sitting around in a council room and talking doesn't feel as impactful as fighting for the ones we love. But at least it doesn't feel like we're constantly on the edge of another war anymore. That's progress."

"And to think I was just getting used to that," Katara snorts, burrowing deeper into his sleeve. "Now we have to figure out how to train the Avatar and I don't even know where to start!" She laughs helplessly into his shoulder. "I'm so out of shape, sometimes I think that three-year-old girl could take me down!"

"We'll figure it out," Zuko reassures her, his fingers trailing through the long mass of chestnut hair spilling down to the small of her back. "Despite a war and being in charge of opposing nations, we haven't failed yet. Whatever this next chapter brings, it's nothing we can't handle."

"As long as we're together," she finishes, glancing up at him through the white fur bordering his shoulders. "You and I, we can do anything together."

He brushes a strand of hair away from her face with a mittened thumb. "First things first, we'll have to find a way to get you back in top form."

"I could sure use a cross-bending training partner."

"Mm. We'll have to find you one." Zuko rubs the back of his head thoughtfully. "I thought I saw some toddlers out ice-fishing the other day. They might give you a good fight."

She punches his arm none too gently before pulling away. The small space that opens between them still swells with heat, surprisingly warm in the biting winter night.

"I'll have to appoint a successor," she says, slumping forward to cradle her head in her hands. "Being Chief is hard enough as is while trying to protect her. But if training the Avatar and keeping her safe until she comes of age is our main priority now, I…I really can't do both."

"I'll have to find a way out of the diplomatic service," Zuko muses, scratching his chin. "And then we'll have to find a place where the four of us can keep her safe from prying eyes."

"And do all that without drawing undue attention to her," Katara laments, her fingers raking along her scalp. "How do we pull that off?"

"Well, if I've learned anything by now, it's to never underestimate the power of a good diversion," Zuko replies, before a smirk crosses his face. "What are your thoughts on staging a good old-fashioned royal scandal?"

Katara rolls her eyes, but twin patches of red dust her cheeks almost instantly. "Oh yes, I can just picture the headlines now," she replies sarcastically. "Fire Nation Prince abandons all his honour to run off with the former Water Tribe Chief, leaving the royal family and country in shambles."

He shrugs. "It pretty much writes itself, doesn't it?"

"And to think, it technically wouldn't even be a lie!" Katara shakes her head with growing amusement. "We'll have to keep that one in our back pocket. Who knows, maybe one day we'll put it to use."

"Who's to say?" Zuko concurs. "After all, did you think you'd ever be back in your homeland, sitting on a dragon's back with a Fire Nation Prince in tow?"

Her smile widens as her eyes lock onto his. "Not quite," she acquiesces. Then, she turns away from him, her gaze flitting back up to the sky. Her face beams with unadulterated joy. "But I was right about the moonstone being lucky. Look!"

Zuko glances upward, in the direction of her pointing mittened hand. His jaw drops.

Where the sky had been an unending carpet of deep black, now sways life. At least, that was the only way he could describe the colossal curtains of shimmering lights, shifting bands of deep colour dancing on an interstellar wind beyond his sight or perception. A low electric crackle hums through the air.

"Is…is that -?"

"Mhm."

He doesn't know how long he stares up at the sky, lost for words. The trails of green and purple light arc across the entire sky, turning everything as bright as daylight. "They're incredible."

"Aren't they?" Her hand settles on top of his, giving it a quick squeeze. "I'm so glad you got to see them before you left. It's so late in the season for them to start, I was wondering what happened to them."

"Well. I guess the entire natural world shifting itself back into balance might have that effect sometimes," Zuko comments dryly.

She lets out a rueful sigh. "There's always something in the way, isn't there?"

He turns back to look at her then and his breath stills in his chest. The lovely profile of her earnest face gazing upwards, and the dappling colours of the southern lights reflected upon her skin, and he could never remember seeing something so breathtakingly beautiful. "Do you think that'll ever change?" he asks quietly. "The world won't stop turning. It's up to us to figure out the rest."

Her fingers interlace with his. "We'll just do what we can and believe that it'll be enough."

"Exactly."

He squeezes at the recovered chunk of moonstone, belatedly realising that he still carries it in the palm of his other hand. Its surface has already cooled rapidly, but heat still radiates from its depths.

Instinctively, he jams it into his pocket, alongside Sokka's pocketknife that had been stashed there and forgotten long since. Its blade is still clean and sharp in its sheath.

Unbidden, Sokka's words from that unlikely day so long ago still whisper caution into his ears. Every stroke shapes the rest of your life, and hers, they remind him. There's no taking it back once you start.

"I won't," he swears, his hand still clutching at the carving blade in his pocket. "I'll fight for us. Every time."

He swallows, wondering at the sudden tranquillity that settles over him - a feeling of stillness, of purpose. Of finally being at peace.

She turns to face him directly. "I know." The colours of the aurora reflect across the wide blue of her eyes. "I won't ever give up," she whispers softly, pressing her lips against the wool covering his knuckles. "I promise."

They fall silent after that, content to watch the southern lights shimmering overhead. Turning distant worlds, stars, lifetimes to mere dust motes in their immense, luminous depths.

The land holds them close, frozen in the deep sigh of winter. Curled up against the sleeping dragon for warmth, they laugh quietly, captivated by the sky. Wondering if somewhere in the entrails of those shifting, crackling lights, they might catch a glimpse of the boundless future that lay in wait.

All around them, snow begins to fall. Fat, lazy flakes drift down gently from the heavens.

Already shaping a space where they could finally belong.

Together.