"Alright, everybody, good morning, good morning, I'm calling this meeting of Team Avatar to order." Sokka sat up straight on his rock and peered amiably around the circle they'd formed around the fire. "Let's all begin by agreeing on some basic rules of conduct."
"Or we could agree that this meeting is a waste of time," Toph muttered. "You're the only one who wants-"
"Rule one," Sokka loudly interrupted, "no complaining about the meeting. We need to stay focused here, people. Seriously, we have to make some tough choices."
"I agree," Aang said brightly. "I'm glad we're finally sitting down together to hash this out. There's been a lot of tension in the group over the last week and I'm sure we'll all benefit from having a rational, open discussion."
"Most assuredly," Iroh said, smiling over his teacup.
"Whatever," Toph grunted, flinging herself back in the rocky throne she'd summoned up for herself. It reclined back and kicked up a footrest. "Waste my time; I've got nothin' better to do."
"Great!" Sokka held up his hands and, with measured conviction, stated his case. "We have to leave the Fire Nation."
Everybody spoke at once.
"Well, let's not be hasty-"
"-all giddy to go skipping back to a war zone-!"
"-not without strategic advantages..."
Sokka smacked himself in the forehead and waited a moment for the backlash to die down. It had been like this since they left Piandao's house. For the past week, they had been hopping around the Fire Nation, zig-zagging all over the place to hide out in the wilderness and drop in to solve random villagers' problems.
It turned out, despite the giant fluffy monster that could fly huge distances in a straight line, traveling with the Avatar was just about the most indirect way to get anywhere. By the fourth day, Sokka had torn up his sheet of calculations and resigned himself to absolute, maddening, happy-go-lucky chaos.
"Toph," he finally started, "I thought you wanted to check in with your parents."
"Nah, I'm good." She crossed her arms behind her head. "I sent that letter. It'll probably be fine."
"You said Azula is blackmailing them into helping the Fire Nation take Gao Ling!"
"Yeah, but that was weeks ago. Whatever she wanted them to do, they probably did it already."
"Unfortunately," Iroh said quietly, "Toph is probably right. Gao Ling was always a vulnerable target. It is likely that Admiral Zhao has been frustrated in his efforts to invade the resistance base - a task that would require a significant number of earthbenders - and has instead directed his forces to take the city first. Under such pressure, and with the added threat of sabotage from the Bei Fongs, it is unlikely the city remains free."
Sokka clawed his hair back out of his face and glowered at the old man, who he had initially thought would be his one rational ally at this super-powered kiddie table.
But no.
"Call me crazy, but our allies being besieged seems like a pretty good reason to go and, I don't know, help them?"
"Since when are those girl-hating cave-crawlers our allies?" Toph squawked. "I don't know if you remember, but the last time we went into that base, we had to fight our way out again."
"That was when Hahn was in charge. Somebody else has to have taken over by now. Or else... the resistance has probably already fallen. Whatever's going on, they need us. We're probably the only people who could make a real difference for them now."
There was a charged silence during which everyone's attention slipped to Aang. He sat cross-legged on the short pillar of stone he had raised up for himself, looking solemn and small.
"Normally, I'd agree with you, Sokka. But we also have to think about where we can do the most good. As the Avatar, I have a duty to the whole world, not just the resistance."
"Great point, Aang. Quick counterpoint; the Fire Nation may not be without some suffering and hardship - which, admittedly, I've seen you do a lot to alleviate - but have you seen, say, anywhere else? Your duty is to the whole world and the whole world is suffering. You make a difference everywhere you go, but frankly, the Fire Nation is least deserving of your help. There's no mystical Avatar-wisdom 'spirits-told-me-to' excuse to stay here."
Aang turned his large eyes up toward the high ceiling of the cave as if there was some logic hiding up there somewhere, but Sokka knew better. Whenever he had tried to address this before, the kid always ended up changing the subject or redirecting to some fresh new Avatar kookiness.
But not this time. It was time to face facts.
"There is one excuse," Iroh said, a crease in his brow as he peered steadily into the fire. "The Fire Nation is the source of the conflict that devastates the rest of the world, and the only way to put a stop to such a widespread problem is to confront it at its source."
The mood around their little circle changed like the light dropping right before a storm. In his heart, Sokka felt that terrible nemesis rising up, waving reason like a sword. Doubt. Aang was a powerful bender, but doubt kept pestering Sokka. It kept reminding him of the relative strengths of a firebending master in his prime, a grown man, pretty ripped if his giant statue likenesses were to be believed, backed by armies and navies enough to conquer a world...
...versus Aang, who was presently twiddling his thumbs and trying not to look nervous. And failing.
Sokka didn't blame him. He'd be nervous, too, if everyone said it was his destiny to fight and defeat The Bad Guy - and he wasn't even a twelve-year-old kid. But Sokka, being of a more pragmatic and realistic mind, was not so convinced that destiny was a real thing that should be relied on to make major life-or-death decisions. He certainly didn't believe they should trust-fall into destiny by neglecting any advantage they might be able to scrounge up. One of the biggest reasons he wanted to reconnect with the resistance was because that at least was an army. They could and would lend their strength to Aang's cause.
He was ninety... eighty-five percent sure they would.
And Aang learned fast. With support and another month or two of training, he might even be strong enough to defeat the Fire Lord.
Sokka was... sixty-five percent sure on that one.
But right now, he was one hundred percent sure that that fight, if they stumbled into it prematurely, was going to end very badly for Team Avatar.
"Aang isn't ready to face the Fire Lord," he said reasonably, totally about to go on and suggest that they leave the Fire Nation and keep clear of the source of the problem for the time being, but Toph jumped into his pause.
"I'll say. He's not nearly as wimpy as he was when I first got my hands on him, but he needs a lot of work before his earthbending goes from crumbly to rumbly."
"Thanks, Sifu! I think. Rumbly is good, right?"
"Rumbly is the peak of earthbending achievement, Twinkle Toes. And that ain't you. Yet. But keep working hard and you'll get there."
"Which, honestly," Sokka pressed on, "is probably yet another reason we shouldn't be hanging around the Fire Nation. We stand out! The crashing, the giant flying bison, the Avatar proclaiming himself returned all over the place... Seriously, we're so lucky no one has caught up to us yet."
"As long as Appa keeps flying us around only at night, nobody will see him. He really shouldn't be on the list, Sokka."
"It's almost the full moon! People can see a big white animal flying through the sky by the light of the full moon."
For a long moment, everyone was quiet, caught in their own thoughts. Sokka wanted to shake them all. Instead, he drew a long breath and let it out, crumpling forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He fixed his eyes on the fire and just said it.
"Look. I don't really want to go, either. The last thing I said to Katara was 'I'm here.' It feels so wrong to tell her that and then just leave the country..." He sat up, peering around the circle at their thoughtful, sad faces. "...but I don't know how we can justify making the selfish call here when reason is telling me pretty clearly that we're needed somewhere else. Guys, we have to be realistic about what we can do and the risks we're taking. The resistance is penned in under that mountain, fighting to survive - assuming they haven't already been defeated. Either way, they could definitely use a little Avatar positivity right about now. But until Katara is ready to leave Caldera, we're just rolling the dice every day we hang around here."
Toph righted her chair with a muted boom. She wore an uncharacteristically sad expression. "I promised I'd keep us close. What if we go all the way over to the Earth Kingdom and Splatto is ready to go the day after we leave? Then what'll she do? Just wander the Fire Nation alone?"
"Toph is right," Aang said, a crease in his brow. "I know it's too risky to go back to the palace, but we can't just leave. We have to figure out some way to be here for Katara when she needs us."
"How would we even know if she was ready to go right now?" Sokka asked. "We sleep in caves and socialize with random villagers. These are not the circles you run in if you want the hot gossip out of the palace-"
Toph threw up a hand. "We've got company."
.
.
Katara rushed Iyuma to the courtyard and asked a few rapid-fire questions about how the healers were settling in to avoid the inquisition she sensed waited behind the older girl's sparkling eyes.
"But did they all seem pretty calm? I don't want to go away and leave them, you know, worried about the security of their situation."
"You mean whether the prince or his majordomo is gonna toss us all out on our butts for the tiger-seals? No, nobody's worried about that, really. At least, nobody was talking about it."
Katara both did and didn't want to know what they had been talking about. But she had just about hit her limit for embracing discomfort for the day, so she resolved to try not to think about it. Luckily, they came within sight of the grand double doors and she was relieved of that worry - by the arrival of an entirely different one.
"Oh," she said, a little disappointment in her voice.
About a half-dozen healers waited inside and under the awning while the rain pattered down beyond them. That was it. Less than a quarter of them.
"Yeah," Iyuma sighed, "probably you'll get more students when it isn't raining and they haven't all had such a long night. And it seems like Bogara is more interested in talking up training than in actually doing it herself, so that might not be setting the best example, either."
"That's alright," Katara decided briskly. "I can't expect everyone to want to train after staying up all night. It's just..." She floundered briefly, then met Iyuma's inquisitive sideways look. "When I was in training, it was all day, every day. That's how I progressed so quickly; improving my skills was my one and only occupation. No meetings or moving or..."
She heaved a sigh and looked back at the handful of healers. They all knew there was danger, but they didn't know exactly how immediate the danger was. And maybe they should. Maybe they should know that soldiers could be on their way through the pass right now. Maybe knowing would make them take training more seriously.
The healers had begun to notice their approach. Their faces split into smiles. Their eyes flashed, excited and curious. From among them, the two younger teens emerged and raced to meet her and walk beside her, crowding Iyuma out of the way. The younger, Pikka, who was maybe thirteen, spoke first.
"Princess Katara! We're so excited to start waterbender training! Can you teach us to surf on ice like you did? That was so cool!"
"Can you show us how you got out of that hold?" Yakita broke in, only a little more restrained than her sister. "It was too fast to even see what you did!"
Katara's heart buoyed upward on the swells of their enthusiasm and she grinned back. Any thoughts of warning her bright-eyed students about the danger hunting them simply evaporated.
"Sure! But we have to start with the basics. If you work hard every day, you'll build up to those techniques in no time. And, if you develop a really strong understanding of basic forms, you'll be able to create moves of your own."
The girls grinned at each other and hummed, seeming almost to vibrate in their excitement.
"Personally," Tenna said as she caught up with her daughters, "I want to know how just pushing and pulling can possibly lead to those big moves."
"Ugh. Mom." The girls said it almost in unison.
Tenna just smiled the bright, determined smile of an eager learner who would be dragging her offspring with her toward a proper and thorough education. The other healers gathered behind her, their faces similarly lit from within.
Recognizing an opening when it was being created for her, Katara launched into talking about the very basic fundamentals of push and pull and how balance and tranquility within the bender contributed to control and the buildup of power.
"Tranquility," Iyuma chortled. "Yeah, that's definitely what I saw this morning."
Katara felt herself start to blush, but Pawe spoke before she could formulate a response. "And no wonder. With a young man storming around the house issuing commands? A woman mustn't stand for such a thing." She turned a firm look to Katara. "You did well to correct him."
"He's not some village boy, Pawe," hissed the sturdy younger woman who had sat beside Katara at lunch yesterday. Dakata. "He's the Fire Prince! She can't just hector him into proper behavior!"
"You watched her do it," another healer scoffed. Her eyes switched over to Katara, and she remembered her as the one who had waited in the rain with the guard captain. Takima. "Do you have a husband yet? Because my brother needs a good dose of that. Probably daily until he gets right."
A few women laughed and agreed, apparently familiar with Takima's brother. Katara felt an anxious block of ice in her gut start to melt. The healers hadn't been gossiping about her like she had quietly feared in the back of her mind - like the Fire Nobles would have, analyzing every little facial tic for some deeper emotion to scratch up and crow over. They weren't assuming anything untoward had happened between her and Zuko. They were simply assessing the dynamics of the household they had fallen into. Who was in charge? And how in charge were they really? What was acceptable behavior?
"Thanks," Katara said dryly, "but I have enough projects going at the moment. I'm not adding 'fix Takima's brother' to my to-do list."
Takima laughed agreeably. "Yeah, nobody should. Seriously."
Katara laughed with the others and then brought the topic back around to the lesson. "Sometimes things happen and your emotions will take control. The way a waterbender deals with those situations is to let her feelings and thoughts flow away; as easily as a thought occurs to her, and as quickly as an emotion wells up, she releases it and allows herself to return to tranquility. So that's what we should strive for every day in practice..."
She led everyone out into the rain and set them up around the fountain, pushing and pulling the water in a big circle. Once they were comfortably passing the swell along, Katara stepped out of the circle and went around adjusting people's posture and complimenting good practice. They picked it up quickly and she moved them along to more precise streaming, and then she had Iyuma demonstrate the first sixty movements.
"You're letting yourself get distracted," she said after pointing out the third lapse in her tense-to-loose posture transitions.
"Yeah, well, I haven't done this with an audience before," Iyuma grumbled. "Sifu."
Katara glanced around the faces of her other students, all of them watching the demonstration closely. "When I first became his student, Master Pakku mostly left me alone to practice my forms and figure out my own mistakes. But as I got more confident, he would come up and talk to me, expecting me to just carry on like he wasn't suddenly completely derailing my focus. It was really annoying and uncomfortable, but it taught me this kind of... fluid focus. Part of your brain is doing the task of working through the form or following through on the attack or landing the jump - and meanwhile a whole different part of your brain listens to people talking around you or watches out for an enemy to come from an unexpected direction."
"I do that!" Dakata said excitedly, then glanced around at the eyes that had suddenly turned to her and shrugged, blushing. "When... I sewed back home. Akota used to come stomping through the house looking for his fishhooks or his spare arrowheads or whatever and I would just keep sewing, but I could hear which room he was in and I could tell which baskets he was rifling through. I could tell him where to look, or ask him to do some chore and the whole time never slow down or take my eyes off what I was doing."
Pain lanced across her face. The brightness in her eyes became sharp as shattered glass.
"I could have let him interrupt me sometimes."
They all felt it, the needle stabbing through their hearts and drawing them all closer together on that rasping thread. Tenna was the one to lay her hand on Dakata's back and rub soothing circles.
"He probably found you even more beautiful when you were ignoring him," Pawe said gently. "Men can be so contrary that way."
"Yeah," Pikka offered up with a sympathetic but faintly playful smile. "Boys like trying to convince you they're the most interesting thing in the room."
"That's the truth," Takima said, her voice wry but uncharacteristically gentle.
Dakata let out a wet chuckle and wiped the tears and rain from her face. "Sorry. It came on me so suddenly."
"None of us have had much chance to grieve," Tenna murmured. "Your heart is finally safe to take what it wants. So sometimes it will."
"My heart can wait until after I learn how to wallop a firebender," Dakata sniffed, and looked at Katara with her inquiring eyes as she let her pain flow on. "Is that what you mean by fluid focus, Sifu Katara?"
"Yeah... that's it exactly."
Iyuma resumed her demonstration and then Katara had her begin again, only this time holding each position as the group emulated her. Katara moved among them, praising them and making gentle corrections.
At length, she realized they were being watched. For a long while, she did not look at him, seeing him only as a dark shape in the doorway from the corner of her eye. She just focused on her students and getting their postures right. But he couldn't be ignored forever.
Yakita kept glancing up toward the entryway instead of keeping her knees bent. "Sifu Katara...the Fire Prince..."
"I know," Katara huffed. "You're straightening up again."
"Why is he watching us?" she whispered.
It gave Katara just the slightest pause. Yakita was just a year or two younger than her, but there was a world of vulnerability in her eyes. Vulnerability that Katara herself had possessed before everything got so hard...
Yakita was afraid of the Fire Prince. She'd asked about getting out of his hold earlier. To her, he was an enemy that still seemed insurmountable.
But she needed to know he was just an ordinary boy. Katara drew herself up and rolled her eyes.
"He's probably waiting for the lesson to be over so he can get back to bugging me," she returned with as much prim dismissiveness as she could summon. "He's being a real nuisance, isn't he? Just hovering like that. But he's also giving you an opportunity to practice splitting your focus. He's there, but he's not gonna do anything. His job is to stomp around the house and be annoying. Your job is to learn this form and let your feelings flow away. Can you do that?"
Yakita peered at her, an uncertain smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. "I thought his job was ruling the Fire Nation or something."
Katara shrugged as if who ruled the Fire Nation hardly mattered to her. "Maybe when he's out there. In here, in our home, he's just a grumpy guy who mostly just wants to follow the rules but doesn't always know what they are."
That smile got a little wider. "So you're teaching him, too? Getting him right like Takima said?"
"Somebody has to, I guess," Katara blustered, then clenched her fists at her sides. "Just keep practicing. I'll handle it."
She spun on her heel and marched up the steps to where Zuko stood under the awning with his arms crossed and a look of mild interest plastered on his aloof face. His eyes flicked to her and away and back again as she approached.
"What?" Katara demanded in what she was sure was a reasonably moderated tone. "You're distracting my students. What do you want now?"
His eyes narrowed. "It's almost time to go."
"Already?"
"We have a ship to catch. The voyage will take half a day."
"I thought we were gonna move house."
"Machi is handling it. We have to go."
Abruptly, she realized his clothing was... different. The cut of his tunic was simple with none of the usual ostentatious embroidered gold trim. Instead, he just wore layers of dark red and brown. Even his curl-toed boots were relatively plain. The hilts of his swords peaked over his shoulder.
She gestured with one hand at the ensemble. "What is this, your peasant disguise?"
He scowled. "I don't want to draw attention. This is my humblest tunic."
Katara scoffed at the notion that his humblest tunic was so obviously well-made that it had to have easily cost more than everything she had ever spent currency on combined. Instead of remarking on this, she arched her eyebrows and curled her lip. "What, so no palanquin today?"
"We'll be walking. And if you don't hurry up and get ready, we'll be jogging. We can't be late."
"Luckily," Katara said, holding out her arms, "I'm still dressed for sneaking."
Zuko cast a brief glance over her. "You look like a criminal. Nobody dresses all in black unless they're lurking in the night, trying to not be seen."
"Then I'll throw on a tunic over it. Let me just go pick out something really humble real quick."
She nearly stomped around him and made for her rooms but then whirled around to address her students, very few of whom were still practicing their form.
"Prince Zuko and I have business in the city. Until I get back, Iyuma will lead you in practicing the first sixty movements. Keep in mind what I've told you today and help each other identify ways you can strengthen your form."
She paused, taking in their nervous, uncertain faces. The way many of their eyes flicked between her and Zuko. It might have made her anxious - on a deep level, it still did - but she recognized it for what it was. A distraction.
"What you're doing is serious and important. Your training is your top priority right now. I know it feels... so exciting and... fun to finally learn these skills, but keep in mind that you're learning them for a reason. When you get tired or sore or bored, remember that practice is vital to getting stronger. Remember your reason. Use it to push yourself. When you feel like you're done, think of your reason and go through the movements one more time."
"Five more times," Zuko said in an undertone. When she shot him a sideways look, he shrugged, still with his arms crossed over his chest, and spoke a bit louder. "I always add five extra repetitions."
"Five can be daunting," Katara snipped. "We aren't all blessed with a firebender's freakish stamina."
"You think I was born that way?" he scoffed. "Firebenders have stamina because we train for it. Same as anybody." His eyes narrowed. "Except we add five. Not one."
Katara rolled her eyes and looked back at her students. "Add whatever you want, just do it again."
She encouraged them to all stay and practice a while and then made her excuses and marched off to her room, leaving Zuko standing by the doors. It didn't occur to her that she had left him alone with her students until she was halfway to her suite, and that that wasn't likely to help any of them focus on their movements. But it wasn't like she could take him with her to her rooms, that would be- just- so weird! She just had to hurry back.
With this running through her head, it was a bit of a shock when she rushed through her open sitting room door and found Bogara at her table, waiting patiently with a pot of tea, two cups, and her hands folded neatly in her lap - as if she had been waiting here since the dawn of time and would go on waiting forever if need be.
When Katara arrived, Bogara looked up at her - and did not smile.
.
.
"Prince Zuko," Iyuma said not two minutes after Katara had marched out of hearing range, "you said firebenders train for stamina. Apart from more repetitions, what do you do to achieve that?"
It wasn't like Iyuma had never spoken to him before. They had exchanged words when she was healing him in the past, and it had been cordial if not entirely comfortable. But now, she seemed to be striking up a conversation with him. Which was such a... Water Tribe thing to do...
She wasn't being impolite or anything, though. She just seemed genuinely curious. And one of her 'minor inconveniences' had been something about 'engaging in friendly discussions'... So Zuko sighed and answered.
"Most firebenders focus on the katas - like your movements, only the power doesn't come from the transition between push and pull, but the energy built up as the body moves and then released as fire. But... really, firebending comes from the breath, so there are also a lot of breathing exercises meant to increase lung capacity or control."
In fact, Uncle Iroh had been infuriatingly committed to incorporating those exercises into Zuko's training over the years. He'd hardly gotten the old man to teach him any advanced sets at all before Uncle was satisfied that Zuko had truly mastered breathing. And, closely related, emotional regulation. Which had been just... impossible.
"I did not see you firebend at all this morning," one of the older women ventured - the taller one. She had clever eyes and her hair was cropped much shorter than the other women's. She didn't stop her practice of the form, but she raised her eyebrows at him minutely. "You must have worked very hard to achieve such a level of skill with those swords as well. I've never known a bender who also bothered to learn to handle weapons. Do you prefer them?"
Zuko wasn't sure he wanted to talk about this. It cut dangerously close to an insecurity he had no intention of sharing with these people. But, the healers before him were all so diligently working on their forms and it was a simple enough question...
"Sometimes. It depends on the situation."
"I can't really imagine," one of the younger women said, her voice sharp, "a situation in which swords could be more effective than fire. Fire beats swords, pretty much every time."
A brittle silence hung in the air that reminded Zuko acutely of the broken, blackened ice walls of the Northern citadel, the captive waterbenders he had watched through his spyglass as they worked to rebuild. And he remembered Chief Hakoda leaping through the flames onto the throne, his whale-tooth sword slashing just a hair shy of Zuko's throat.
"Fire isn't always a better tool though," he said thoughtfully. "Steel can be versatile in ways fire can't. And it's static, doesn't have any fight of its own. It doesn't matter what the swordsman is feeling - a sword doesn't get sharper or become a bunch more swords that spread around chopping up random stuff that happens to be in the way."
"I think I'd rather win and devastate my enemy than practice any more restraint."
"It's a lucky thing you're a waterbender, then."
She stopped practicing and snapped her fierce eyes up to him. "Because water's so inherently weak and inferior, you mean. And you might as well just fight it with a sword!"
"No," Zuko sneered back. "Because water's inherently versatile. It can devastate your enemies and then build walls and restraints to hold them. If your water cuts too deep or hits too hard, it can heal those wounds, too. A waterbender without restraint is dangerous, but a firebender without restraint is a liability on a good day and a monster on a bad one."
She watched him through narrowed eyes, then seemed to break past some internal point and curled her lip. "What does a firebender with restraint look like? I'm having trouble imagining, since all I've met in this country are monsters."
Zuko glared back at her, but only for a few seconds. In the sudden silence, he became aware that several of the waterbenders had stopped practicing and were watching him with anxious flashes of their eyes. He drew a deep breath and rolled his eyes and struggled to think up a properly diplomatic and cutting way to tell her she was full of rhino dung while also being sensitive to what had probably been a very hard ordeal. She very well could have met only monsters, and that troubled him enough to derail the offense he knew he should be taking at her attitude, much less her open insult.
He wasn't looking, so he didn't see the way her combative posture eased minutely as the seconds stretched long. Everyone's tension eased back from its edge while Zuko stewed and thought ferocious thoughts.
"Takima," the other older woman stepped in, her tone firm and her eyes flicking once, then twice to the Fire Prince, but mostly staying on the younger woman. "stop instigating. Prince Zuko clearly possesses a great deal of restraint."
"And weren't you telling me earlier," Iyuma cut in with snide tranquility, resuming her form a little stiffly, "about your friend Sho?"
"Tch! Sho's a woman. That almost makes up for being a firebender." She jerked her chin toward Zuko, who glowered back even though she wasn't looking at him. "And so what if I'm instigating, Tenna? You ought to be grateful I'm bold enough to stress-test the hull before we all go piling aboard and wind up sunk."
"We're already aboard, frost-for-brains," a thick-limbed young woman muttered. "Stop rocking the boat."
"Yeah, yeah..."
Takima went back to her practice but the woman who had called her out, Tenna, fixed Zuko with a nervous sort of smile.
"So sorry - I think we're all a little raw this morning."
"Not at all," Zuko said with an upward tick of his chin as if to imply he was above such conflicts. Now. After his own raw episode this morning. He apparently wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.
"Yeah, Prince Zuko, about that fight earlier," Iyuma said as she guided her water through a slow whip and then repeated the move with speed. "I've seen you and Katara spar before and kind of really fight before and it was pretty clear you held back then. Today you looked like you were out for blood. If you'd won, what would have happened?"
"You saw it. I thought I had won," Zuko grumbled, "before she threw that cheap shot."
"So you just wanted to talk to her? Does she always make you work that hard to communicate? I mean," she paused her movements and fixed him with a mild shrug that still came off to Zuko as extremely suspect, "I've only really known her while she's recovering from a major injury. As her healer, is this the energy level I should expect?"
Zuko hesitated only a second before answering honestly. "She's getting stronger, but she's still not over it. At her best, she could have taken me out a half-dozen times this morning, but she missed her shots until she got that surprise attack in."
"Like when? When else could she have taken you out?"
It was the youngest of them - a little girl, really. She peered at him with wide-eyed curiosity - but then quickly dropped her eyes. Her cheeks got a little pink. The older girl next to her, probably a big sister, kept casting Zuko nervous looks.
"When she surfed around the fountain and brought that wave down on me, for one." Zuko rolled his eyes upward both to recall the moment and to release the pressure of his gaze. He didn't like the feeling he got when the little one had wilted like that. "I was slow getting out of the way, but she's still rebuilding her speed..."
.
.
No one but Toph could have noticed the figure as it materialized out of the steady rain that poured beyond the cave's mouth. She stood out of the range of the firelight and, thinking she would not be seen, hesitated. Rested. She could not even clearly see the people inside - or that what appeared to be the back wall of the cave was actually a giant furred beast.
She had walked all through the night in the rain, and her journey before that had been so long. She was weary and drenched in despair as well as water. It would be nice to sit by a fire in a shelter, even if such a comfort came with terrible risks.
"Come on in," called a girl's piping voice. "Don't be shy."
The herbalist was too tired to be shy, and so let herself be reassured by the child's voice. She drew a breath and stepped out of the rain. A girl, a boy, an old man, and a young man sat around the fire, all of them watching her. Or - she realized as the girl who had spoken grinned and the light caught her milky eyes - at least attentive to her.
"Lemme pull you up a rock."
She slid one foot across the cave floor and a short pillar punched up between the young man and the boy... the boy with blue arrow tattoos and an open, smiling face.
"Greetings, fellow traveler," he said. "I'm Aang."
It did not fully break upon her for a moment, though it should have - a clear mark of the deep exhaustion weighing her down. She had certainly heard the stories circulating among other travelers on the road. The Avatar and his allies had broken free from the palace. They had aided the prince of the Southern Water Tribe in his unheard-of escape from the Boiling Rock. She had even put together that the Captain and his men who had come to her home some two weeks ago were none other than the Chieftain and his rescue party...
...but it was an enormous stretch of the imagination to think that she would meet the Avatar.
"Kuo," she said, her voice hoarse from disuse, as she made for the stone seat. The young man stood and offered her a hand so she did not entirely fall onto it. The hand she grasped was strong and warm with a swordsman's calluses.
"Pretty nasty morning for a walk!"
His eyes were the pale blue of shadows cast down the flanks of glaciers and, looking briefly into them, she could not help thinking he looked familiar, this young man with his easy smile and awkward haircut. But the thought was interrupted by the incredible relief of sitting, and by the boy, who pulled the water from her clothes with a few graceful passes of his hands. The fire's warmth baked through her suddenly dry clothing and had her leaning forward, raising her shaking hands.
An earthbender and a waterbender. How very odd.
"I'm Sokka," the young man said genially, "Aang you know, that's Toph, and-"
"What kind of introduction is that, Snoozles? Where's the hype? The pageantry? 'That's Toph'? Up your game!"
This was the moment when the herbalist realized the names of the people around her were matching up with names she had heard. She stared at the young man as he rolled his eyes and made some sarcastic reply, then plopped back down on his own rock. Suddenly, she could see it. Those arctic sea eyes, just like his father's, and a similar jaw emerging from the softness of youth.
And that awkward haircut...
"Prince Sokka," she said very faintly. Reverently. As the humble ought speak to royalty.
"That's seven for you, Sokka!" The boy held up his fingers, delighted.
"He's just patronizing you because you don't pose any real threat to his lead, Snoozles," the girl chortled. "He's sitting pretty at twenty-nine now."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm only kinda famous, Aang's real famous." The young man just blew his awkwardly-shorn hair off his nose and looked back at the herbalist with a droll mimicry of a haughty expression. He sat up very straight. "The Water Tribe will never accept Fire Nation sovereignty. Tell all your friends."
The herbalist peered between them, staring now at the Avatar, who smiled back at her, a little mischief in his eyes. But before he could make whatever joke he clearly had queued up, the old man spoke for the first time.
"Would you like some soup?"
That voice. She would know it anywhere, no matter the span of years. The sound of it now filled her with torrential horror and shame.
Her eyes snapped up to stare at him across the fire, where he was presently fishing a ladle out of a small pot. He had gotten fatter and much grayer, and the years weighed deep in the lines of his face, but he still had the pleasant warmth about him that had endured for all the years of their acquaintance.
Until she had murdered his father and stolen his birthright and skulked off like a thief in the night.
She needed to run now. She needed to not be seen, to crawl back under her rock and disappear. But she could only stare as, slowly, Prince Iroh looked back across the fire at her.
And saw the startled recognition on her face.
And mirrored it.
"Ursa."
.
.
"Bogara! Hi!" Katara stood awkwardly just past the doorway, shooting glances at her bedroom door.
"Princess Katara," Bogara said in her reserved way. Her mood was not easy to read at the best of times, but now there seemed to be a hidden tension that Katara had not seen in her before. "I am so glad to have caught you. I thought we might confer on the current situation and strategize for the coming days."
"I actually have somewhere I need to be..."
"It won't take long. Close the door, if you would, please."
The words were polite, reassuring, but the tone in which they were spoken made the command clear.
Sit down. We're having this talk.
Katara shut the door and sat. Despite her assertion to Iyuma that Bogara wasn't her Gran-gran and had no power over her, it was much harder to argue that when faced with the woman herself and all the authority she managed to pack into her firm, upright posture and direct, unsmiling stare.
Bogara swiftly raised the pot and poured the tea. She spoke at a rapid clip.
"It has become clear to me that we, the free Water Tribe as it exists within the Fire Nation, require structure. Without it, we risk being defined and directed by our host and his majordomo into their ways and practices rather than our own - and regardless of how accommodating they suggest they are willing to be, I have no stomach for being penned in another such bind..."
The words resonated with Katara's own thoughts on her new freedom - and yet they also unnerved her. Because she didn't want to be penned into anyone's traditions, including and perhaps especially the Northern Water Tribe.
Bogara poured the tea with a precision that was almost too cautious, then set down the pot delicately and folded her hands in her lap, still speaking the entire time.
"I had not... intended... to take on a leadership role, but we must all step up as we are able and it is true my past experience is the closest any of us can claim that might suit our current need, so it seems inevitable that this duty must fall to me. Therefore-" She tipped down her chin as if to peer over a pair of spectacles that were not there. "Princess, do you have objections to my becoming your... deputy, of sorts?"
"Oh, no!" Katara said, shaking her head and smiling a nervous little smile, "I'm actually really glad to have help-"
"Excellent," Bogara pounced, and from beneath the table she withdrew a crisp little notepad and a charcoal stick. She flipped open the pad to a particular page where many tidy notes had already been scratched. "Now, there are several issues in need of your attention. First and foremost: that was quite an argument this morning. Is your alliance with the prince always so explosive?"
Katara fought the urge to grab her elbow and stammer. Instead, she sat up straight and settled her hands carefully in her lap as well, just like Gran-gran had taught her for guarded conversations.
"Well-! No! Not always. It's kind of..." She struggled for the right words. "We had some things to work through. It should be... calmer... after today."
Bogara gave a short, businesslike nod. "It was a big secret to keep from him. All things considered, he seemed to take the discovery rather well."
Katara snorted, thinking she was making a joke, but Bogara only peered at her and raised one eyebrow. Katara's smile dropped. "I guess..."
"I had not realized he was so young. When you spoke of him yesterday, I had an impression he was at least... a grown man, established enough to pose a substantial threat to his father. But he's hardly any older than you. Just a teenager. A boy, really."
This was very nearly the impression of Zuko Katara had been thinking would be good for her people to have... And yet, hearing it aloud, she found she was a little offended. She tried not to let it come through in her voice.
"Zuko does pose a substantial threat to the Fire Lord. We all have to play our part, like you said. Just because we're young doesn't mean we can't do what has to be done."
"On the contrary. Your youth, your newness to our world... it is a great advantage."
She settled her hands on the table on either side of her teacup and was silent for a long moment. Katara watched her rigid posture, unsure of what she was seeing.
"Penguins do not fly," Bogara said abruptly.
Katara blinked, confused by the shift in topic and the lines deepening on the older woman's face.
"Their wings are weak and narrow - not even strong enough to glide. So they swim instead, and are quite graceful and quick in the water, and they do not envy the gulls that soar the skies because they have their own world beneath the waves."
Bogara raised her hands and drew the tea from her cup up into a shuddering, shimmying sphere. It dripped, not quite holding its shape.
"That is what my father told me fifty years ago, when I was a little girl who wanted to become a waterbender."
All of a sudden, Katara recognized the anger, the sorrow, the bitterness in Bogara's face and posture. It was so carefully integrated into her stately presence that it did not stand out at all. Bogara began to adjust her hands and pull shapes from the amber sphere - petals, Katara realized. She was making an ice flower, as Katara had demonstrated just yesterday.
"I resigned myself to being a penguin," she enunciated, "for fifty years. And make no mistake, I have done great things for my tribe. I have saved many lives - hundreds - and eased much suffering. I stood as a leader and did everything a penguin could and should do. I won respect, accolades. I was on my way to veneration..."
Her flower was misshapen, half ice and half water. Half too rigid, half too loose. At her next words, hairline cracks formed in the petals, a webbing of fragile veins.
"...and then the Fire Nation attacked."
The look on her face did not change exactly. But it was as if, instead of staring down at the delicate craft between her hands, she was seeing a vast and raging inferno.
"And everything I thought I was would eventually be stripped from me - my dignity, my respectability, my poise and self-possession, my very humanity..." She blinked as if to clear smoke from her eyes. "But before any of that could happen, the waterbenders and the warriors made their daring escape. And they left us there, with an angry army in search of someone to punish."
Her flower shuddered, turned too fluid and lost some definition, then over-corrected into a jagged, almost unrecognizable thing.
"We were their Yin, and they were our Yang, and together we were strong and whole. That is another story my father told me. I have thought much about my father since coming to the Fire Nation, where women firebend and serve in their guard. I have been observing this strange, fierce land and thinking... perhaps the Yang that would make me whole was always only in myself. Thinking, all this time, I could have been a cormorant. And now, here you are, a teacher seemingly plucked from fantasy to offer me my chance to fly-"
Her little shape of tea shattered and blotted the table's surface. She dropped her hands to her lap.
"-and I fear it is too late. I am a penguin. Because that is what I was told until I believed it, and that is what I have believed all my life, and such beliefs do not simply... flow away, as the waterbenders say."
Katara wanted to deny it, wanted to stop her or comfort her, but Bogara fixed her steady gaze on her and went on, her words unrelenting as a current.
"You and the Fire Prince, you are both challenging the way of things in the worlds you come from... in part because you have not been forced to accept it for fifty years. I... believe you about him. His words this morning were a young man's words. Hopeful and idealistic. And such high hopes inspire me and terrify me in equal measure, because I have seen mighty ice walls tumble, and I have seen idealists die."
Her eyes on Katara were a steady, insistent weight.
"Only the young possess the hope and will to do this, I think, and it is such a cruel thing that it falls to you. But I won't allow you to go alone, either, Katara." Her face was taut with conviction. "Prince Zuko can have his concerns and he can blow all the smoke he likes, but you said he was indecisive in the past. Perhaps his concern will wax and wane. Be assured that ours will not. You are ours as much as we are yours."
Katara became aware that her eyes were welling up with the intensity of hearing these words. All her persistent fears that the Northern women would judge and reject her, that they would exclude her the way the boys in the resistance base had or instill doubt in her the way her own family had... Those fears had gnawed at her for so long from a shadowed corner of her mind. An insecure part of her had been certain when Loska confronted her in the spring that that was how it would be with all the healers, that Iyuma was an outlier.
But now, here was this stern almost-elder asserting the tribe's claim on her. Not just accepting her, but insisting on their support. As much as it had heartened her to feel the perfect parka of their appreciation yesterday, it was nothing next to this. This was the ice flow rising up sturdy under her feet or the igloo building itself around her, cocooning her from the cutting wind.
Katara blinked back her sudden tears.
"Now, as such," Bogara continued at her brisk speed, evidently untroubled by sentiment, "it is not proper for a young woman, much less a princess, to be in a strange land without the support of her kin. Several among our number have offered to stand for you - Ulka, Pawe, and myself included. You are now in possession of a handful of aunties. Do not hesitate to come to us for support, and be advised that such support will come looking for you if you do not."
"I- thank you," Katara managed. She was thinking of Pawe earlier, when she had informed her she had done the right thing in her confrontation with Zuko. She was thinking of Ulka yesterday, peering at her with a mother's warm, proud eyes. A couple more tears dropped down Katara's cheeks and she glanced down at her hands in her lap. "I didn't expect this."
"You thought we would be content to let you go to war for us with just that volatile young man at your side? No. Such a thing would be unconscionable. We are not all suited for combat, but we all possess skills to contribute. I, for instance, may never be a waterbender, but I can herd a flock of penguins." Her mouth was down-turned, yet her eyes were mild, almost amused. "I will get you more students, and I will keep order and attend to the needs of our people."
"It might actually help," Katara said, thinking back to what Iyuma had said, "if you attend lessons and try to learn anyway. To show others that it's worth their time."
Bogara watched her flatly. "That is not my preferred approach, but I will take it under consideration."
"Great!" Katara said, not grasping the rejection. "You know, the trick to making those flowers is to work them in slush - in between solid and liquid. You're really close!"
"Thank you," Bogara said with a dry blink and then peered down at her notepad. "I shall keep that in mind going forward. At present, we must address the obvious nature of the Fire Prince's regard for you."
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AN: Thanks for reading! Next chapter coming Sunday