A/N: A little treat before we leave this year behind, since I have four more chapters on standby. Enjoy, and if you're so inclined, sweeten mynew year with some reviews!
Life is surreal.
Katara wakes up in the morning in silk sheets and on down pillows. She chooses one from a selection of robes from a closet that's larger than the entirety of her old cage. She enters the dining room to a dinner table that's been set for her (and Azula), with more delicacies than an average person eats in their entire life. She eats three meals a day, and she has a choice in the menu. Servants, as invisible (or damn near) as efficient, take her dirty clothes and launder them.
It takes some getting used to.
She doesn't see much more of Azula than before. By the time Katara gets up, Azula is often already away. Strategy meetings with her officers, exercising and relentlessly practising her stances and moves, inspecting troops, hearing petitioners, overseeing building projects and rendering the final judgement on decisions proposed by her ministers. She's a lot more hands-on than her father, but in her eyes, it's with good reason. Just like Ozai was betrayed by his brother and son, Azula has been betrayed by her so-called friends. The only way to be sure is to supervise everything herself. Leave nothing to chance. Trust is for weaklings.
When Azula returns each evening, they have nothing to talk about. Azula, ambivalent about her changed relationship to Katara, refrains from talking to her for the most part, and Katara has nothing to say to her. Occasionally, Azula will make some comment or other, but it doesn't go anywhere. They eat in silence, they retreat to their respective rooms and beds. Repeat.
It's surreal.
Katara doesn't quite know what to make of it. Here she is, being treated better than perhaps ever before in her life, living in comfort she hasn't known… ever, really – and at the same time, she's only here because she's saved the life of the girl who's caged her, burned her. Broken her.
Broken? Is that what I am?
It's a heavy question. Would she have saved Azula's life if she were still herself? She doesn't want to think about it.
Would she miss Azula's quips and barbs if Azula hadn't broken her?
A month into this arrangement, over a year of captivity and isolation finally makes a crack in Katara's walls.
Azula is in a talkative mood, for once. Acclimating to sharing a dinner with Katara every evening goes both ways. Just as Katara gets used to her silk sheets, Azula gets used to Katara's uncaged presence (not to owing her life to her, though).
It doesn't matter what Azula says. It's some irrelevant remark about some court intrigue or other. Insignificant conspiracies among the nobles.
What matters… is that Katara answers.
It's just a snide remark. About the life Azula chose, the way the Fire Nation has bred a climate of mistrust and lies.
But she answers.
Katara is a little surprised at herself. Azula is immensely pleased. Katara sees her resolve to punish Azula with silence waiver and crack. Azula sees her plan to weaken and break Katara come one step closer to fruition.
Over the next weeks, this becomes a thing. Azula, with renewed confidence and a regained sense of control, carefully feeds Katara trivia about the court, gossip, news about the Fire Nation. Nothing critical – the construction of a dam at Pohuai is not for Katara's ears, nor the fortification of Yu Dao – but tidbits: the release of a new play Caldera's high society is ecstatic about (Azula detests it without even having seen it). A particularly bountiful harvest (just in time, Azula thinks; one more drought and she would have had to start punishing the farmers). The very public affair of some lord or other (no surprise to Azula; the man is pathetic and everyone knows he only married his wife for her family's land).
Katara never says much. But she answers.
How completely unsurprising that Azula holds contempt for the arts. Typical firebender arrogance, to believe nature is beholden to Azula's threats. Sickening that everyone in the Fire Nation only thirsts for power and influence.
Azula loves it. Oh, of course Katara is wrong about everything, disappointingly primitive in her views, pathetically emotional about pointless entertainment, absolutely no appreciation for the way people work – really, it's a miracle someone with such a pitiful and limiting code has survived that long –, but she enjoys the verbal sparring. In a palace where everybody kowtows to her, a nation full of sycophants, subjects who know they don't deserve the Fire Lord's time, Katara is the only one who dares to speak to Azula not only like an equal, but openly challenges and insults her.
Azula will enjoy breaking her of that habit. It's a welcome challenge.
Katara… Katara refuses to enjoy it. Feels sick to her stomach every time she talks to Azula, and convinces herself it's because the Fire Nation sickens her, a nation of monsters and liars. But the uncomfortable truth is, as horrible as Azula is, she is the only contact to the outside world, the only person to talk to, that Katara has. She shouldn't enjoy it. Shouldn't look forward to it. Shouldn't soak up everything she hears about the world outside her prison, shouldn't care about the lives of those people and their trivial problems.
But she does.
What does that make me?
The answer is written all over her face, every time she thinks Azula isn't looking. The guilt. The loathing.
She's breaking.