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It started, like all things with the two of them, on the battlefield.
It was supposed to be a routine patrol. A boring, endless one, circling around the jagged coasts of the Southern Water Tribe and making sure the Fire Nation was not encroaching on their territory. Day after day of squinting through the slits in her goggles, night after night of pretending the softness she was lying on was warm fur, not snow. Her fellow soldiers grumbled about the cold, the wet, the numbness in their fingers, but Katara would not. She could not allow herself to, not after she had fought so hard for her place among them, even as their northern cousins buried so many of their sons and still refused to let their daughters fight.
The last waterbender of the South. If she didn’t wield her power, she felt like it might suffocate her.
So she insisted on trudging through the cold with the rest of them, doing her part in watching over the shimmering, vast ice where it felt like dreams melted into reality. Endless numbing same, until it was shattered by that omen they all feared. Black flakes drifting from the sky, as if the very color of the snow had been corrupted.
Katara felt it more than she heard it, the rumbling of the qilaut raising the alarm, the throaty yells of the warriors as they charged forward to meet the iron hulls shearing through the icy waters, bone clubs and spears raised high. She ran forward too, letting her power unfurl. The dark sea responded to her touch, sweeping forward in a wave determined to crush anything in her path.
Sokka spoke of adrenaline sharpening his senses in battle, but she found that she could lose herself, driven along by her instincts, her power thrumming into the devouring seas until she was part of it and it was part of her. Battle was a numbing haze, the blinding snow, bodies falling around her clad in both armor and parkas. She fought on, every thought taking form in sweeping tides and daggers of ice.
But the sharp snap of a flag snagged her attention, and she glanced up at the warships, and only then realized exactly who they were fighting. The sign of the sea raven, twisted in flight, talons outstretched. The Southern Raiders, with a bloody reputation, the terror of anyone who sailed these waters. And if they were here, did that mean their commander…
She felt him before she saw him. Like something in the core of her being could sense her antithesis approaching, fire to water, dark to light. He emerged out of the icy mist like a monster from her grandmother’s old stories, dark hair tied back, that ragged infamous scar marring half of his face.
Someone, maybe Sokka, was shouting in the distance, for her to get away, that was Prince Zuko, one of the most feared leaders in the Fire Nation’s military, but she couldn’t really hear. Blazing golden eyes narrowed, fixing on her. “You must be her,” he murmured, a low rumble barely audible above the wind. “The last waterbender in the South.”
“Good to hear you’ll know who brought you down,” she snapped, trying to inject courage into her words.
He cocked his head. “You’ve had no master. I can tell. How could you hope to defeat me?”
“We’ll see,” Katara grumbled.
“We will indeed.” He dropped fluidly into a fighting pose, smacking his hand against the ice. Heat crackled around them, shattering the ice into floes, creating their own tiny island around them. Katara moved swiftly to melt the ice beneath his feet, but he saw it coming and a gout of flame propelled him over her head. He fought with furious vengeance, scowling and tense, like he had a personal score to settle with everything and everyone. Fire blasted in a relentless barrage, a corona of heat shimmering around him, generated by pure fury.
He was right. For all her pretended confidence, she was no match for him. She summoned a sweeping tidal wave, but it dissolved into vapor before it could even reach him. With a thin smile, he mimicked her move, a wave of flame rippling outwards. It rushed over her and she fell to the ice, biting her lip to stifle a scream.
He lunged, and his fingers closed around the back of her neck before her head could hit the ice. She could hear each ragged breath he took. His body radiated pure warmth. For some odd reason, perhaps her dazed mind was desperate for anything to latch onto except for her incoming demise, she focused on his hand. His fist poised to deliver the final blow, knuckles steaming in the cold air. Something about it seemed strange. His fingers were slender and strong, graceful, the skin unblemished. It did not look like the hand of a killer. It did not look as if it had been stained by the blood of hundreds.
He froze above her, something strange shining in his eyes. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, he vanished. Katara was left alone on the wet ice, and she glanced down at her hands, burned raw.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”
He dropped down behind her, as silent as a shadow. Still, though, she always sensed when he arrived.
“I always come,” he murmured.
Katara turned to face him, even though she knew she wouldn’t see his face. As always, he was wearing that wooden mask, painted deep blue with empty eyes and a frozen grin.
“Do you have anything for me this week?” she asked abruptly. Neither of them had the time or stomach for formalities.
He nodded, producing a few scrolls from his satchel and handing them to her. Katara’s eyes skimmed over them: troop movements, military orders, supply schedules. Precious intel that could help them save thousands of lives.
“Thank you,” she said, the words sticking to the back of her throat. “Has anyone suspected you yet?”
“I’ve been careful. Anyone ask where you get this information?”
Katara shrugged. “I lie. As long as the information is good, no one really cares.”
A strange silence descended over the two of them, yet another dry transaction that might change the course of the war completed in a few minutes. And then swiftly, he moved towards her, his mask lifting up just enough for his lips to meet hers.
Fire exploded across Katara’s skin as she leaned into it hungrily, desperately. For just a moment, everything else melted away, and she could lose herself in the way his lips moved along her jaw and his hands moved across her back.
She forced herself to pull back. “I can’t,” she whispered, breathless. “Not tonight.”
His mask had already slid back into place. He nodded brusquely, and slipped away back into the shadows.
Katara was not supposed to be kissing strange men in the dead of night. But war was long and lonely, and in his arms, she could forget. In his arms, she found absolution.
She was also definitely not supposed to know who her anonymous spy was. But she could not forget the taste of his lips, and more than anything, she could not pretend she didn’t recognize the strangely gentle strength of his grip, as if his fingerprints had somehow been seared permanently into her skin.
Katara knocked. He didn’t answer. He never did. Sighing, she opened the door.
“I brought you dinner,” she said, walking towards him and holding out the bowl of rice. Zuko glared at it sullenly from where he sat at his desk and didn’t move.
“You’re not a prisoner,” she snapped. “Stop acting like you are.”
He snorted. “You have people watching my every move, everywhere I go.”
“We would certainly cut back on all that if you just agreed–”
“No,” Zuko said flatly. “We’re not going over this again.”
Katara barely managed to stop herself from strangling him. “The war is over, Zuko. Sooner or later, you will sign the treaty.”
“What, so I can be your puppet ruler?” he demanded, his proud anger flaring up again. “Dance along to the Avatar’s every whim? You’ve already killed my father and my sister, just kill me too and find some other weak-willed coward to put on the throne.”
Katara gritted her teeth, losing control of her temper too. “You know, if you insist on being so stubborn, I just might.”
“Then do it. I won’t be ordered around anymore.” He finally rose with such force that he toppled his chair. “DO IT!” he roared.
The lamp on his desk erupted into a billowing cloud of smoke and flame. Katara gasped as hot oil splattered against her arm, the bowl of rice shattering against the floor. And immediately, Zuko looked stricken, his fingers closing around her arm.
“It’s fine,” she muttered. “I can heal it easily.”
But he didn’t let go, his touch soft against her skin. Katara realized that his fingers were stained with ink, and for the first time she looked at what he had been doing.
He was painting. A scene of trees and mountains, beautifully wrought in fine black strokes. It was painstaking, delicate work. And not for the first time, she wondered how the same hands could be so capable of violence and beauty, fury and tenderness.
She glanced down to where his fingers had intertwined with hers. She had never seen a pair of hands so unalike, his pale and perfect, hers dark and scarred. And yet somehow, they seemed made to fit together.
His eyes were shining again, and she felt it too, something rooting in the innermost part of her being. She knew no word to capture it, but she supposed the closest thing might be grief. Grief for what they might have been, if not for the war, the destruction, the broken path between them. She thought if things were different, she might have liked to get to know these hands. She might have learned to love them. Perhaps another time, another life.