Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Disembarking in the bright polar sunshine, Zuko is impatient and something that almost tastes like hopeful. This minor errand is all that stands between him and redemption. The Water Tribe village would be just another pointless stretch of ice to him except that starting from the unmistakable beam of light reported mere days ago, it is the only inhabited place the Avatar could have reached, master of all elements or no. 

It galls him that this is the one task he hasn't been able conquer. He has performed every other one of the labors his father set for him. He has slayed every spirit-touched monster tormenting the fire nation. Probably half the earth kingdom as well, at this point: wandering around hoping to find the Avatar hasn't been so eventful he's ever passed up a good fight or a chance for glory. 

He has done every other thing that was asked, but he has been frustratingly unable to find one man. Iroh has grown tired of hearing him complain that he is a fighter, not a bounty hunter. Now, on this nearly deserted ice sheet, that one man is nearly in his grasp.  

He takes a landing party of half a dozen men dressed in full armor for intimidation purposes. They'll find this collection of ice huts, rattle a few doors doors, knock a few heads, and someone will tell him where the light forsaken Avatar is. Maybe they'll even hand him over. Then he can sail away and forget this freezing nothing of a continent. Finally he will return home triumphant. 

When they reach the outskirts of the village he grabs the first old woman he sees; the tribes revere their old people enough it should be proper motivation for someone to talk. He drags her along as they they walk past crafters yards. As expected, they draw a crowd. When he has reached something that looks like a town square and a goodly number of people have gathered, he gives the old woman a shake and loudly demands the location of the Avatar. 

In his grasp the old woman looks disconcertingly unperturbed. "Young man, you'd do well to let me go. Especially if you hope to sue my grandchildren for mercy." 

She's talking nonsense. A prince of the Fire Nation doesn't negotiate with children or beg for mercy. He tells her as much, but she just holds his gaze with a knowing glint in her eye.   

His misjudgement quickly becomes apparent as blue-clad warriors appear through the crowd like smoke picked up by the wind. Preoccupied with the grandmother, he does not see the fighting start. Before he thinks to draw his sword his party is surrounded by spearpoints and two men in red are bleeding in the snow. 

"Yield!" he calls, pitching his voice to carry. 

The savages step back with admirable discipline, spears still raised in a perimeter. Zuko lets go of the old woman as gently as he can then drops to his knees and places his helm on the snow in front of him, raising open palms to the air. Bitterly remembering the words he denied moments ago, still not seeing a leader to address, he nonetheless pronounces his desire to negotiate a surrender. 

A tall warrior steps forward from the crowd and quirks an eyebrow at Zuko kneeling before him. 

"You really did not think this through, did you?" he asks, more amused than threatening. "We'll need your weapons. Once you're unarmed we'll see to your wounded."

Zuko meets the warrior's gaze with the best princely glare he can muster from his knees. 

"I am Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, Son of Fire Lord Ozai and Princess Ursa. I offer myself as bond for the immediate release of my soldiers." 

"Yeah, no. You're surrounded and outnumbered, prince. No one's leaving just yet. Just disarm. Then Katara," he gestures to a woman pushing through the crowd toward his side, "will take care of your injured." 

Zuko holds his glare. 

"Your call," the young man says evenly, "but that guy looks like he's gonna bleed out." 

"We're not going to torture you," the woman who must be Katara adds in a measured tone. 

Seeing a forest of spears and no better options Zuko instructs the soldiers to hand over arms. He unbuckles the sheath from his shoulder and offers it up. The same warrior accepts it, tucking the scabbard almost absentmindedly under one arm.

Zuko takes the moment to size up the couple in front of him. The way civilians and warriors alike regard them during this exchange tells him the man, at least, is a leader, maybe even the Chief. He's on the younger side among the armed men though, probably not much older than the prince himself. He's not a giant like some of the attackers, but he's taller than Zuko and stands with the bearing of a trained fighter. His face is mobile and his eyes have the sharpness of intellect behind them.

The prince shifts his appraisal to the woman at the warrior's side who is currently examining him with frank skepticism. She is a head and shoulders shorter than her counterpart but carries herself with the same easy grace and authority. Her face above the shapeless parka is clear skinned and delicate featured, framed by rings of small braids. When he meets her eyes Zuko draws a sharp involuntary breath.

Her eyes are striking. Overlarge in her small face and a vivid ice blue. The color reminds him of the eyes of white lynx dogs from the far north; the effect in a human face is uncanny. Her fierce regard is arresting and he is momentarily struck dumb, surprised she does not waver or flinch. He holds her gaze somewhat too long to be polite before remembering he is kneeling and disarmed and lowering his eyes.

Turning his attention back to the warrior he notes the eyes are almost identical; their color is slightly muted compared to hers, but similarly light even for the tribes. He takes in the other similarities in their features: the pointed chin, high forehead, large eyes and expressive brows. Family then, not a couple. 

"Might I know who speaks for my captors?" he asks, too sharply.  His pants are soaked through at the knees and he is becoming impatient on the ground.

"Prince Sokka and Princess Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, children of Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe and the Moon-Touched Chieftess Kya, may the lights hold her memory," the man, prince Sokka, intones formally. 

Zuko gets the vague sense he is being mocked. Then it hits him: grandchildren. How exactly his luck that the woman he made an example of would be the mother of their Chief.  

When his soldiers are disarmed the princess moves to kneel in the snow beside the two injured men.

Sokka finally gestures for him to stand.  "Will you try to escape?" he asks mildly. His curiosity appears genuine. 

"Let me send one of them back to my ship as a messenger and I will swear our cooperation for the night," Zuko offers. 

"Like I said, no one's leaving. We'll let your ship know you're okay, though," Sokka counters. 

Zuko sets his jaw. "I won't give you the ship's location," 

"Buddy, we watched you sail in. Motor in, I guess?" His tone turns serious. "Now order your men not to break out and we won't hogtie them in their cells. Then you can come with us to talk about why you thrashed my grandmother and what you're doing here in the first place" 

Resigned and a little embarrassed, he nods, "I accept your invitation to discuss the terms of an agreement." 

He speaks louder to his men, "I have accepted the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe's hospitality for the evening. You will not dishonor me by harming his people or attempting to return to the ship before I speak to you tomorrow." 

The healer princess approaches as five of his six soldiers are lead away. She and the warrior prince share a long unreadable look before she speaks. "The man with the head wound will be fine, it was shallower than it looked. The leg, though… he lost too much blood. There was nothing I could do." 

"Oh." He doesn't know the appropriate words to offer a barbarian captor princess who has tried and failed to save one of his men. He doesn't know why she tried in the first place. 

Their eyes meet again and her stare is unnerving as the first time. This time her face is alight with emotion he cannot parse, her eyes like an unnatural storm at sea. Before he finds either words or the wherewithal to stop staring she turns on her heel and marches away. 

The other prince purses his lips and looks back and forth between Zuko and her retreating form for a minute as though he is about to say something.  Instead he shrugs, speaks briefly with a pair of warriors, apparently entrusting the fire prince to their care, and strides off after his sister. 

***

Zuko is delivered to a modestly appointed bedroom in what appears to be the largest building in town, constructed of massive stone slabs and meter-thick walls of ice. There is a stone fireplace in one wall, a wood-framed bed piled with both blankets and furs and a small pile of sitting cushions near a low table. The walls are hung with patterned tapestries which look much like the thick rugs underfoot. Compared to the frigid air outside it is surprisingly temperate. 

He pulls off his wet outer layers and sinks into the bed to think. The day has overturned more than one expectation. He wonders how much else he knows about the south pole is wrong. Are there other settlements the Avatar might have found?

In seven years of traveling, the prince of the fire nation has become disillusioned about his country's approach to foreigners. He is accustomed to discounting his atlas when it warns of the unlettered simpletons or backwards savages inhabiting any particular place. But this is more than the usual chauvinism of fire nation surveyors. 

His map showed this single village as the only inhabited land in the pole, with a note that it was nothing but a handful of women and children in a cluster of ice huts, likely to freeze to death and leave nothing for future expeditions to find. 

At the end of the polar war, the south had been declared a complete victory. He's read soldiers accounts: they left the place in smoldering ruins, its warriors dead and the survivors scattered. 

But here he is and here they all very much are. It's not really a city by any civilized standard, but definitely it's more than a village, he guesses there are over a thousand people here. More crucially their warriors are very much alive, many of them obviously too old to have been orphaned children just a decade ago.

There is no conclusion but that the Fire Nation's history of the Southern Water Tribe is deliberately wrong. It has been subverted. But why and by whom he cannot fathom and it bothers him. 

Hours later the guards bring him tasteless but hearty food and inform him that the prince and princess will speak to him the next day. He is left alone with too many thoughts. 

***

The next day Zuko is informed that Iroh is visiting briefly before his ship departs southern waters to return to the fire nation. Guards lead him to a large hall in the same building where the prince and princess sit before a large fire, deep in conversation with his uncle. 

Iroh has brought Zuko's clothes from the ship, a small jar of pepper flakes, and several tins of tea. The latter he offers to Katara, calling her a lady of taste and refinement. Zuko is irked by the clear implication that prince Sokka and princess Katara have been speaking with Iroh for some time: negotiations have been conducted without him. Seeing his irritation Iroh smoothly suggests they revisit their terms before finalizing the agreement. 

The terms are simple enough. The Water Tribe demands a bargain from the Fire Lord: withdrawal of Fire Nation military ships from the south polar seas in exchange for his son's safe return. 

Privately, the Fire Lord's son doubts his father will take this offer. Without the Avatar he is still unredeemed. He hopes his father's love will prevail, but he knows an honorless prince is not likely to be worth losing access to the southern waters. He doubts the firelord will place the personal consideration above the tactical one, but he does not voice this skepticism.

Instead Zuko offers to stay peacefully as a hostage in exchange for the freedom of his crew. Katara's mirthless laugh rings like it's hollow.  

He begs for their release, and even Sokka's face turns to ice. "It's not that kind of exchange. We already have you here, peaceful or not."

Ignoring him in favor of Iroh, Katara continues, "our tribe cannot wait forever: fore each month that passes in your absence one of the prisoners loses his life. If you have not returned by the end of the sixth month," she looks meaningfully at Zuko, "it may well prove too late to strike such a deal."

Iroh takes in their stony faces and bows his head. "So be it, princess. I will come for him before autumn turns. Please, take good care of my nephew until then."

***

For the first month Zuko hopes against hope their talk of scheduled executions is some kind of empty threat. His captors seem far too kind to put a man to death for the sake of intimidation. That would be his family's style, but as far as he can tell the young Water Tribe rulers are nothing like the Fire Nation's royal family. 

He expects to be left alone, but prince Sokka visits him the next day, and every few days after that. The water tribe prince is a surprisingly friendly captor. He's also something of a mechanical genius and keen to pick Zuko's brain on the details of fire nation machinery. Zuko is no engineer, but he's lived on a steamship for years and toured plenty of military installations and factories. Mindful of divulging anything cutting edge, he's still able to answer a number of the other prince's questions. This appears to earn him enormous goodwill. 

Princess Katara brings him tea every five days exactly. He tries to repeat to her what Uncle has told him about each blend; she laughs politely whether his recollection makes sense or not. Her visits have a perfunctory feel, as though she's fulfilling her duty as a host and no more. Starved as he is for company he can't bring himself to mind. 

When they come to him in the morning after the first moonless night since Iroh left, he knows before they say it. They are both solemn as they tell him the man's name, and that he died bravely, with honor. He thinks that under her stately mask Katara looks a little bit broken, as if she feels for the man she has just killed.

He tries to remain calm as he asks that his remaining men be allowed to at least perform proper funerary rites. They tell him the body has already been disposed of. He lets loose a wordless bellow of grief and anger. They leave him to his rage. 

There is a near constant brightness that makes it hard to properly tell when it is day and night here, but he sits vigil with a candle through what thinks is the night. It's only dark for a few hours, and all that the ritual demands is a light in the dark, but it doesn't feel like enough so he sits until he hears the household begin to stir. 

Katara visits again the next evening, likely encouraged by a full day without shouts and thumps from his room. She doesn't apologize, but the tea she brings has honey in it and she makes more effort to converse with him than usual. She tells him a spirit story about a whale that sang to the moon. It doesn't make sense, but she has a nice voice and he's grateful for the company. 

Her visits become more frequent. Sometimes she simply stops in his doorway to say goodnight, sometimes she stays a while. She tells more spirit tales and sings him a few of the tribe's story songs. He tells her stories from classic Fire Nation plays and epic poems, quoting the lines he can remember.  

*** 

The second month they ask if he wants to see the man before he dies. He demands to be present for the execution and is summarily denied. They tell him then there will be no body and no funeral again this time, or ever in the future. He rages.

They leave him alone to his anger that night and all the next day. This is how they learn he is a firebender. 

Katara helps him clean and mend the furniture.  Zuko finds himself inordinately relieved that she doesn't appear to be any more afraid of him than before.  As they work she asks him about his bending. How, and how long, and what does it feel like and how does he... When he wonders at her seemingly endless curiosity she tells him he's the first bender she has ever met. 

She doesn't say 'who wasn't trying to kill me' and he doesn't point out she's old enough to remember firebenders among the soldiers of the southern raids. He's somewhat bewildered to hear that there are no waterbenders in the south pole, but too busy with her questions to say that either.  

Days of bending lore later, the princess shyly reveals her own limited waterbending.  She makes little waves, then a small iceberg in her teacup and explains how she knows only what she has been able to teach herself. Sheer practice has made her a proficient healer, but outside that her influence over her elements is limited to a few small tricks. The ocean of regret and shame in her eyes is terrifying in its vulnerability. 

When he asks why there's no one here to teach her waterbending, Katara slaps him hard across the face and stalks out without a word. 

It was a stupid question. Zuko knows well enough why. It has too much the feel of his great-grandfather's madness and his grandfather's avarice for him not to guess. 

He asks Sokka anyway and learns a whole sordid history of wrongs his people have done to theirs. 

"Waterbenders make good slaves," Sokka says with uncharacteristic bitterness, "they taunted us with that, even after there weren't any benders left. They'd say it when they..."

He stares far past the walls of the room for a few moments, then leaves without finishing the thought.

Zuko finds his days very empty after that, leaving him an uncomfortable amount of time to ruminate on the legacy of his nation's imperial ambitions. After a week or so, Sokka beings visiting again, mostly to share a meal in relative silence. 

Katara does not return until after the next new moon.

***

The third time his only friends execute one of his crewmembers, Zuko bottles up his rage and tries to take it stoically. He misses both of them more than he cares to admit, so he bites his tongue until it bleeds and does not curse or demand any more information than prince Sokka gives him. He holds his vigil for two nights this time, trying to focus his frustration on the fact he can't know exactly when the man died. 

Katara starts visiting again within a few days. To his surprise, she takes him out for a walk, promising no one will mind seeing him in town so long as she's there. He draws a few hard looks, but she talks to distract him. She tells him about life in the south pole, explains what he sees around him. After months of confinement, everything is fascinating. 

Princess Katara, it seems, knows everyone and everyone's business. She frequently stops to talk, leaving him to stand awkwardly nearby, shivering and trying to attract as little notice as possible. At first he thinks her quite the gossip, but as he watches it becomes clear she's deeply involved in the goings on of the township. She listens and advises, reminds people of timetables and constraints and obligations. They listen and thank her. She promises to return to assist with an impressive array of tasks from tending injuries to repairing igloos. 

When he remarks on her perpetual engagement she tells him that this is what it is to be Chief in the Southern Water Tribe. He doesn't voice the question about the title belonging to her father, but she explains anyway.  As their warleader, Chief Hakoda spends almost all his time at sea. In his absence his children take on his duties to the tribe. Sokka manages hunting and fishing parties, maintains weapons and boats, and trains the village's hunter-warriors. The rest falls to Katara.

They are a strongly communal people and there is no end of coordination required to keep the tribe in balance and thriving. Everyone works, even the children, but there is also an element of play and song in the rhythms of daily life. The pole is not an easy place to make a life, but they find more joy in it than he would have expected. Katara's leadership is informal but invaluable, and her devotion to her people fathomless. 

After a few such excursions the villagers grow used to him trailing after their princess, and he asks Katara to offer his help where unskilled strength might be of use. It amounts to a few menial tasks, but it feels good to be of any use after months of idleness.

Before long Zuko notices is that none of the people they encounter address her as princess, or by any other title. He mentions it and Katara nearly loses her balance laughing. Apparently Sokka has been using the titles only because he finds the fire prince's polite adherence to formalities hilarious. For three months Katara and the guards have been stifling laughter to keep him from catching on. After seeing the tribe's concept of leadership and three months of getting to know Sokka, Zuko thinks he really shouldn't be surprised. 

After a few successful walks, Sokka invites him out to the training yard to spar. It rivals his first walk for most exciting day since has been captive. He's kept ship discipline, press ups and katas every morning, so his body is not entirely rusty, but there's no substitute for the joy of fighting. 

There is also no shortage of water tribe soldiers eager to test the Fire Nation's prince. He's careful not to show the full extent of his abilities, never firebending, letting the tribesmen win more matches than not. He tells himself it doesn't matter, he does it for the chance to swing a sword. Even a practice blade of leather and bone feels like freedom in his hands. 

Warrior training becomes a regular event. Zuko works himself to exhaustion every chance he gets.  

Most evenings now Katara comes to his room and asks him to tell her more about bending, or to tell her about his life. Zuko tells her stories of his travels. The heroic challenges he has fought for glory. The giant panther bull. The troll who used trees to kill like he could bend them. The witch woman who fed children to a demon boar that fought at her side like a warrior when Zuko tried to capture her.  He tells her mundane stories too, how a tigershark cub followed his ship for a week and the time half his crew got food poisoning from one brothel.  

Some nights she falls asleep listening, curled up at the foot of his bed. At first he he wakes her and sends her back to her own room as soon as he notices her eyes have drifted closed. Each time he finds he lets her sleep a little longer. He tells himself he's simply reluctant to wake her knowing how hard she works, but he feels a kind of peaceful satisfaction just listening to her quiet breathing. 

***

As the moon whittles down to slimmer crescents, he catches a heaviness in Katara's demeanor in quiet moments. He gets the impression she's trying to offer him comfort without his noticing, like she wants her company to be a distraction. He's so gratified by this little kindness he can't care if it is pity.

The night there's just barely a bright sliver in the sky, he knows it is time again and he cannot let it pass. He sees the hurt in her kind eyes and beseeches her to be merciful, to spare his man this time. He leverages her dedication as a healer, her grief at the people needlessly killed by his countrymen. 

She pleads with him to drop the issue. He pleads with her not to murder a man. 

Finally she snaps.

"I don't want to kill anyone! None of us want to!" she screams at him with eyes full of tears.  

"You made us do this! You took my mother from me! We never wanted any of this but you made us monsters! You try to blame me, but this is your fault!" 

She runs out of his room and he doesn't understand anything except that he's afraid she will never come back. 

***

After their fight no one brings him the news, not that night or the morning after. He holds his vigil for the dead man's soul and stews in the knowledge he has failed to protect another soldier under his charge. He tries not to see Katara's furious tearstained face every time he closes his eyes. 

Later Sokka checks in on him. Zuko tells him about Katara's accusations and begs to know what's really behind this bizarre series of executions, what it has to do with their mother, and why his sister thinks this is his fault of all things. 

Sokka doesn't look surprised, he just sighs. "I don't like to talk about it." After staring at the wall for a few minutes looking more tired and sadder than Zuko has seen, he sighs again.

"Look, I'll give Katara my blessing to explain, but it's up to her if she wants to tell you. I don't," he says with some finality. 

Zuko spends three days trying to write Katara a letter to ask her to talk to him again. 

In the end he simply says he is sorry and that he hopes she will tell him the whole truth. He tells her, truthfully, that he wants his soul to bear the full knowledge of his guilt. 

It is two more days before she comes to his room. 

They regard each other in silence for a while. Eventually he apologizes. Once he starts it's hard to stop: he apologizes for his insensitivity, for his ignorance, for everything about his ancestors and everything they have done. He knows he doesn't entirely understand what he's apologizing for, but she pulls him into a tight hug like she believes him. It feels like acceptance. It's more than enough. 

She tells him, unshed tears sliding hot where her eyes press against his neck, that he's not forgiven. He tells her he isn't asking for it, not now. That he knows he needs to understand before he could even start to ask for absolution. That he is prepared to earn it.

He tells her that he will wait until she is ready to explain but he needs answers. He tells her he missed her. They hold each other close for a long time before she goes. 

Days pass before she returns. One night not long after Zuko has laid down to sleep she knocks and slips into his room, nervous and quiet, and asks him to come for a walk. She equips him with a heavy parka and two oddly strung frames like loose, flat baskets; at the edge of town she shows him how to lace them onto his shoes and walk atop the deeper snow. 

The moon is full overhead, and even though the firebender's sense of the sun tells him it is late into the night they walk through eerie twilight. After what feels like a few hours, they come to an enormous ice wall.

It stands nearly twice his height and they walk along it for some time before they come to a gap where he can see it is easily a meter thick. Looking through he sees an open space leading to another wall which blocks his view. He steps forward to examine it closer. Katara stops him with a hand on his arm. 

"If you go in you won't come out" she says thickly, "no one does."

Zuko waits, almost patient knowing she has brought him to this place to explain. 

"It's a maze. A labyrinth. Zuko, this is where they die. "

Chapter Text

Katara's eyes bore into him, dark silver in the moonlight and brilliant with unshed tears. Before the towering ice walls of the labyrinth she looks terribly small and fiercely determined.

"We bring them here. One every new moon. This is what we have to do since the Fire Nation stopped raiding. Sokka calls it the price of peace."

She brought him here to explain his soldiers' deaths, but her words imply something bigger, more profound than Zuko could have imagined. He swallows hard, trying to piece together what she's said and what he knows. The pattern of the moon, a murderous obligation, the price of peace.

"A sacrifice?" he ventures.

Katara nods miserably. "It isn't just to be cruel, you have to know that. Before you got here we sent our own people. Every new moon for six years now. And before that… before that, we didn't have the labyrinth, but it still had to—it was worse."

She barely chokes the last words out around silent shuddering sobs.

Zuko doesn't entirely understand but it hurts to watch her cry, so he steps closer and reaches a tentative hand to her shoulder, comforting, acknowledging. Then he's closer, steadying her, gripping both shoulders, hoping to reassure her.

Under his hands Katara stills. She pulls herself together and looks him hard in the eye.

"There is a monster that lives in the heart of the labyrinth," she says quietly. "It has to be fed."

A kind of clarity settles in Zuko's soul, a sense of inevitability. Something like peace takes up residence in his chest. A monster. Now he knows how this ends.

"I'll fight it."

Somehow this is the wrong thing to say. Katara's mouth twists and her moon giant eyes tremble and threaten to overflow. Then, with a wounded animal noise she curls forward into him, her body wracked with sobs.

Zuko doesn't know what to say, so he wraps his arms around her and holds her close. She buries her face in his neck and cries like her heart is breaking. Like her heart has been breaking for a long time. His insides twist at the thought of her holding all this, even as his mind reels, attempting to fully grasp what this is.

He turns it over as she cries. Holds her sobbing frame against his parka and strokes her hair with a mittened hand, lets his mind work over the fragmented information he has. After some time like that, he notices the frost on her hair and the numbness in his toes and that her sobs have turned to shivers. He pulls off a mitten and melts her frozen tears under his fingers. They can't stay out here.

"Katara," he whispers. "Thank you for bringing me here. I'm glad you told me, showed me. I don't understand everything, but we need to go home now."

He doesn't know when anywhere in the south became home, but compared to freezing in the shadow of this massive deathtrap thing that makes Katara cry like she's coming apart, his little room is a blazing star of safety and comfort Zuko will gladly navigate by.

As they begin to move, Katara tells him more of the story. How the labyrinth was Sokka's idea, how it came to him in his dreams. How they built it together, with the whole village and the survivors who trickled in from others decimated by the raids and the monster.

How everyone thought her brother was crazy, a gangly kid drawing patterns in the snow and promising in a breaking voice that the Twisty Fortress from his dream would make them safer.

"It went better after we made him stop calling it the twisty fortress. Sokka's not the best at naming things," her laugh is soft and genuine. The sound is almost physically warm.

How, barely out of childhood, she joined and reinforced ice walls with her bare hands for the better part of a year. She fixes igloos, he remembers. Just a few little waterbending tricks, barely a bender, but she can melt and freeze ice. That's material here; that's shelter.

She tells him how they lost a woman to the maze before it was even finished, found her frozen body in a dead end corridor. A pointless death they could hardly afford. He can hear in her voice that she counts it on her conscience.

When they make it back to the village Zuko is stumbling in his snowshoes and he thinks that if only he could think clearly, he might know something meaningful about labyrinths and sacrifices. There's more he doesn't know, but it can wait.

Katara walks him back to his room. Instead of leaving, she follows him in and bends both their clothes dry, then strips down to her leggings and undershirt and crawls, uninvited but blazing warm and so very welcome, into his bed. Neither surprise nor the pleasure of her closeness can stand against his body's exhaustion; sleep claims Zuko before he can question her decision to stay. /p>

Before dawn, Katara stirs from the tangle of furs and blankets. Barely waking, Zuko catches her hand to his face and kisses it softly before she can rise. He falls back into sleep as soon as he lets her go. When he wakes, much later, his soul feels lighter than he can remember.

***

Katara stops by in the evening. Zuko asks if she will explain the labyrinth to him, starting from the beginning.

He expects her to answer like the fierce-eyed woman who stood outside the wall and spoke the truth like she would declare war on it. Instead Katara crumples in on herself, sitting with her head bowed, wringing her hands in her lap.

"It was my fault," she whispers through the curtain of her hair. "It all started because of me."

That is the last place Zuko expected the story to begin. He tells her with naive certainty that it cannot possibly be her fault.

"It was, though. My mother, Kya, she was afraid for me. When I started to call water and the raiders came she was afraid they would take me." Her expression simultaneously dares and forbids response

Katara tells him in her lilting storyteller's voice how she was four years old when she first showed the signs, when the water began to answer her call. She tells him of the year the raids started up again. What had been bloody, grieved history for a decade or more became a frequent and vicious reality. These new red-armored soldiers slaughtered warriors and pillaged supplies, and in every village they announced for all to hear that the Fire Nation was looking for a waterbender and they would not leave without her.

"My parents tried to keep me a secret, but I couldn't always control my bending and before the raids we weren't so careful. People in the village knew, and there were traders in port sometimes, back in those days. There was no way to know how the Fire Nation heard, no point assigning blame, but my parents were afraid someone would turn me over to stop the soldiers from coming again.

"She was a witch, my mother. From a long line of moon-touched witches. She found a way to stop the fire soldiers herself."

Katara tells him how her mother's clan was known for dark and powerful secrets passed down through generations of women touched with the power of moon and sea and shadow. How Kya watched these new, ferocious raiders cut down warriors and families alike; how she feared for her daughter and would not give her up. And so Chieftess Kya took the tribe's protection into her own hands.

"I don't know what she did to bring the monster. Whether she made it or called it forth, or what kind of bargain she made to protect us. But I don't think it was good. Whatever she did, it wasn't right with the spirits of this place, with the balance of the world." She chews her lip for a minute and heaves a sigh. "But it worked."

Kya's monster protected them, true to her aim. The smokestack blackened snow seemed to summon it. Every time Fire Nation soldiers set foot on the ice the massive, too-quick thing was there to savage them and turn them back, but it never touched a tribesman. If anyone noticed that the beast dragged bodies with it after every battle, it was of little consequence. It would disappear into the ice until the next smoke-belching ship appeared.

The raids grew fewer. They stopped altogether by the summer Katara turned ten years old. At first the tribes thought the creature had vanished, its purpose fulfilled. But when deep winter came it stole into the village one moonless night, then another. And so they began to understand what was to come, the price of this peace.

"It killed her. My mother, she was the first one. Just her. Like it knew to come for her."

The words fall out of rhythm, tumbling out of Katara as if unbidden from the mouth of a child. "I was the only one home. Dad and Sokka were ice fishing. She told me to run, but I saw it and I was scared so I hid in a snowbank and I watched it drag her body away. Nobody in the village realized what was happening until it was too late and it's been killing our people ever since and all I can ever do is watch."

He expects her to cry, but Katara just stares into the distance, her mouth a hard, tight line.

"I lost my mother when I was ten, too," Zuko offers when she doesn't say more. "That's something we have in common."

Katara takes his hand, blinking against the shine of her her wide eyes. "Your mother… I didn't know. What happened?"

"I don't know exactly. Something about palace politics. She was trying to protect me from it, and then she was gone. There were rumors, but my father wouldn't speak of it. But I know it was because of what she did for me."

Katara gives his hand a squeeze. Zuko marvels at her strength, that she is able to find compassion for him of all people, in the midst of a story that began with Fire Nation soldiers destroying her home. A story he is all too aware he's interrupted.

"She sounds like a brave woman, your mother. Sorry, I really didn't mean to change the subject..."

"Oh. Well. That was most of what there was to tell. The monster protected us when we needed it and now that we don't, we pay for that protection in blood." She says this like she has said the words too many times. Like she is very tired of saying them. "At least now it has rhythm and rules."

And so Katara recounts the next phase of this grim tale: the years of chaos between the raids and the labyrinth. How the beast attacked randomly, tore through towns. How it killed dozens who tried to fight back, always dragging a body away in the end.

Her eyes plead with him to understand that terror and the gruesome necessity of appeasing it. Because the beast stays in the labyrinth now, unless its tribute fails to appear by the dark of the moon.

"It's worse if we don't send someone. At least that's what I tell myself. More people died back then. It was brutal and random. I know it's better like this, but we have to choose. We live knowing we will send one of our own to their death before the next moon. It's a little bit of poison in every day of peace it buys." The words are less practiced now, like maybe she doesn't say this part often.

"Dad couldn't live with it. That's why it's me and Sokka running the village now." Her voice is quiet but her words are bitter. "We say he's fighting the war for us, but really he's fighting the war so he can leave all this behind him. Dad left us so he wouldn't have to face it."

He wants to say something. Comfort her, let her know he's listening and he understands. He knows something about about complicated fathers, but not like this. His father doesn't belong anywhere near this conversation.

Katara sighs. "I know I'm not supposed to blame him for leaving us. I get it, I didn't want this responsibility either."

She sighs again and draws herself up with determination, closing that subject and moving on. "So you see? When you came, it was like a gift. You delivered us six months without sacrificing any of our own. We couldn't let that walk away. And you were Fire Nation, it seemed only right. Fitting. I'm not asking you to forgive us, but I hope you can understand."

Zuko does understand, and he will forgive, but he can find nothing to say. His heart aches for her and for the soldiers he unwittingly led to slaughter.

"So, that's my life now. That's my destiny. I'm a waterbender, I should love the moon. But I see in the night sky is time waxing and waning toward to another death I have to choose."

"Katara, this is not your fault. None of it is. Don't you dare say that." After a relative eternity of wishing he could find anything at all to say, words spring to Zuko's lips without thought. "It's my grandfather's fault, my nation's. Not yours."

She doesn't answer, but she doesn't look away.

"I'm not saying it's my fault exactly, but the responsibility falls to me. I'm here. I should be the one to fix this."

"Don't be stupid. You can't fix it, Zuko! Weren't you listening? Don't you think we've tried? It's not something that can be fixed."

"I can," he insists. "I can fight it."

"It will kill you."

"Not before I kill it too," he snaps.

She glares and he hastily amends his claim.

"I mean, I could kill it first. I wouldn't plan to die. But, Katara…" Zuko swallows, surprised by the words he's about to speak, by how certain he is. "If I die and take your monster with me, that's a worthy bargain. You know it is." A better bargain than you'll get from my father, he doesn't say.

"There's no bargain! No point in you dying! Did you miss the story? Fire doesn't touch this thing. It kills firebenders; that's what it's for."

"And this is what I'm for." It is a relief to say it simply.

"No offense Zuko, but Sokka beats you on the training ground twice a week, and he knows better than to fight this thing. You haven't seen it kill. You don't have any idea what you're talking about, so just stop."

Now it's Zuko's turn to wonder if his stories went unheard.

"I've been holding back when I train with your fighters," he admits, watching for her reaction. He hasn't actually said as much, but he thought she knew. "Because I didn't want to hurt or frighten anyone and not be allowed to go outside again."

She scoffs at his solemn confession. It's confusing and it stings.

"Don't you remember the stories I told you about my travels? I've slain monsters before. A lot. It's… it's what I do."

Katara laughs to his face, incredulous.

Zuko's temper flares. "What? Did you think I was lying to you?"

She catches his tone and answers more seriously. "I thought those were like spirit stories. Plenty of good storytellers put themselves in the action, it makes the story feel real."

"Oh." Zuko tries to tamp down his rage. "No. I wouldn't do that, Katara. I don't lie."

She only looks more politely disbelieving.

He tries not to be wounded that Katara has believed him a liar. He grasps for some way to phrase the truth that won't sound boastful or stupid or like a light-forsaken children's story.

"It was all true. I've spent seven years traveling around fighting all the worst things I could find. I lived and they didn't. I could do it again."

She looks neither convinced nor impressed. He balls his fists and grits his teeth and tries to keep his voice level.

"Listen to me, Katara! You have to let me fight it. I think it's fate. I think it's why I'm here. Even if not, this is probably the only thing I'm good for."

"No, Zuko, it's really not." Her eyes, her whole demeanor, turn to ice. "We're done talking about this. Don't you dare say that again."

She sweeps out like a chill breeze. Zuko stares after her and marvels that she is capable of anger for his sake. Despite who he is, despite everything his family has done to hers, Katara wants him to live.

But until the beast in the labyrinth dies, the southern tribe will suffer this macabre legacy of his nation's colonial ambitions, and Katara will bear the unearned guilt and grief of it.

And Zuko cannot live with that.