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Chapter Text

"Oh, what, I'm not good enough to kidnap?" Sokka demands. The last of the pirates disappear into the trees, leaving Sokka alone in the middle of the campsite. Scrambling for his club and his boomerang, Sokka thunders after them, frantically searching for the trail in the thick foliage. "Hello! Hey! I stole your parrot!"

Nothing. The pirates have slipped from his grasp, and the only sounds in the trees are the titterings of some Earth Kingdom bird. Sokka heaves to catch his breath, blue eyes scanning the green around him, searching for any kind of movement.

"I hate pirates," he mutters, and he sets off toward what he hopes is the river. Katara has the waterbending scroll; that's probably where the pirates are headed. The question is where on the river they've ended up. And how long is it going to take for him to find them.

*

"Aang, this is all my fault," Katara says, looking over at her friend.

"No, Katara, it isn't."

General Iroh, hands tucked in his sleeves, regards them. "Yeah, it kind of is."

"Give me the boy," Zuko barks.

"You give us the scroll." The pirate captain's grip tightens on Aang's shirt, and the boy swallows hard.

"We'll meet in the middle," Zuko decides, and the captain nods once. Aang can feel himself being moved, but his heart is thumping in his ears and Katara's face has gone white. "Aang, no! Still tied to the tree, she begins to squirm. "Zuko, please! You don't have to do this!"

But the boy and the scroll are exchanged, with a bag full of gold for the pirates besides. For their troubles, the old man said. Aang is loaded on the small riverboat, but all he can hear is his heart. Zuko is better prepared this time, with metal shackles and a tight circle of guards that keep him in lockstep. "I'll be okay, Katara!" He looks over his shoulder, smiling as widely as he can, hoping she can see it through the armor that surrounds him.

"Let him go," she hisses, and he can just see the tears making tracks down her face as he is hauled over the side of the ship.

"I'm sorry," Zuko says, the earlier aggression in his voice replaced by a matter-of-factness Aang didn't know the older boy had in him. "I told you I need him to restore my honor."

Whatever else passes between them, Aang isn't certain. He is pulled into the dark maw of the riverboat, shackles clanking on his legs, and it is a few hours before he sees the sun again. They return back to port around midday, and Aang shifts restlessly in his cell as the soldiers stomp around the deck of the little boat above him.

He can hear them shouting orders. Directions for the crew on the larger ship, probably. He can hear chains attaching to the sides of the little riverboat, pulling it back inside the ship, and then he can hear the hatch clanging closed. Okay. This is okay. He'll wait until they move him to the ship. He'll have an opportunity to escape then.

The guards outside his cell have been quiet, so Aang twists his bound wrists around, just enough to get his fingers in his pocket. Fumbling a little, he can feel the bison whistle, its cold edges brushing his fingertips. Taking a deep breath, he breathes in hard, willing the whistle to rise from his pocket on the air current.

If he weren't chained to a wall, he'd leap for joy. The whistle has popped right into his mouth. One more deep breath, and he's blown on the whistle for all he's worth, willing Appa to come. "We'll ride out of here together buddy," he whispers. "And then we'll get Sokka and Katara and head straight for the North Pole."

*

"Let him go!" Katara bellows, but the order has already been given, and the riverboat begins to chug up the river. The pirate ship has launched as well, leaving her alone with Zuko and his uncle.

The prince glares at her. "I'm taking him back to the Fire Nation. If you and your brother have any sense, you won't come after us."

"Your boat is leaving," she snarls.

"We'll catch up."

He's too calm. "You think you've won? You'll never get him back there. Sokka and I won't stop until we've rescued him."

"We'll see about that."

"Prince Zuko," the old man interrupts. "You're never going to believe this. The lotus tile was in my sleeve the whole time!"

Zuko smiles, almost indulgently. "I'm happy for you, Uncle."

The old man beams. "Perhaps I could talk you into a game of Pai Sho when we return?"

Zuko glances back at Katara. "No. I need to prepare to meet my father. And we'll need to track down the Avatar's bison."

Katara can feel the blood draining from her face. "You'll never find him."

"He's a giant, fluffy, flying bison. Of course I'll find him." Looking up at the sky, Zuko sighs. He bends down, pulling a knife out of his boot, and raises it in the air. Katara flinches as the sun glints off the steel. "I'm not going to hurt you." Then, with a quick swipe, he's cut through the ropes binding her to the tree. "Go find your brother. Go home. It's over."

"How am I supposed to go home?" She spits, rubbing her wrists. "Since you're taking Appa too."

Zuko shrugs. "I guess you shouldn't have crossed those pirates. Come on, Uncle. We're going."

The old man watches his nephew's back, then pulls a small bag out of his sleeve. "My nephew will not harm your friend," he says. "The Avatar will be treated with kindness."

Katara can feel tears welling in her eyes, but she won't let them fall. Not in front of the Fire Nation. "Oh, because he's treated him so kindly before."

"Take this," the old man says. "It will buy you passage back to the South Pole. Now, where is that brother of yours?"

Katara wheels around, looking into the trees. "Sokka!"

"Do not follow us. Your brother may think we have taken you also." The man chuckles. "I doubt that would make him very happy."

Seething, Katara watches as he follows his nephew up the river. She hates that he's right. She hates it, and she's going to get Aang back. See if she doesn't.

*

By the time Zuko and Uncle return to the ship, it's nearly sunset, and to Zuko's surprise, the bison is already on board. "Uncle," he says, his voice cracking enough that it's nearly embarrassing. "Is that the Avatar's bison?"

Considering the way Uncle's eyebrows are raised, he sees it too. "Well, Prince Zuko, luck is with you."

Zuko wants to grumble that he's never been lucky, never will be lucky, and certainly isn't lucky now. Something must be wrong. The Water Tribe girl found her brother and the bison first. They're springing the Avatar already. His banishment isn't over, may never be over. He'll never have an opportunity like this again, and he's blown it, and--

Oh. His booming stomps on the black deck come to such an abrupt halt that Uncle nearly bowls him over. "Prince Zuko?"

"The bison is chained, Uncle."

Uncle blinks once, twice. "That is good news, Prince Zuko. The crew must have apprehended him for you."

Zuko hadn't realized his crew was that intelligent, but in a rare moment of forethought, decides against saying so.

"Prince Zuko," Lieutenant Jee rushes down the stairs from the helmsman's station. "The Avatar is still in the riverboat. We were about to move him to a cell in the brig, but the bison--"

The bison growls, low and dangerous.

Jee straightens his shoulders. "The bison came out of nowhere, sir. We've managed to restrain it, but I don't know how long we'll be able to hold it down."

Zuko frowns. "What about the Water Tribe siblings? Were they with him?"

"No. The animal came alone."

Perhaps Uncle is right. Maybe, just once, he's gotten lucky. "Set a course for the Fire Nation immediately. I want to put as much distance between us and this port as possible before the bison escapes. And leave the Avatar in the riverboat. If we don’t bring him into the open, there's less of a chance he'll escape."

Jee nods, retreating the way he came.

"I'm going home, Uncle."

"So it would seem, Prince Zuko." Uncle strokes his beard pensively. "So it would seem."

Chapter Text

104 ASC. The 4th Year of Our Phoenix King.

"Do you remember what day it is?" Fire Lord Zuko sips a cup of tea, peering at the Avatar over its rim. Through the bars, the Avatar mirrors him, sipping his own tea, leveling his own stare.

"How could I forget?" The Avatar has grown up since he was installed here, and hair has grown on his head, long and thick and dark. Patches of stubble have started to appear on his face, but although his body has matured, it has remained thin, perhaps now is even more delicate than it had been upon his capture. His voice is lower, the voice of a man, creaky from infrequent use. Hollows under his eyes and cheekbones have chiseled out his bones, and the childish roundness to his face is gone.

"Bringing you back got me everything I always wanted. But it's not what I thought it would be." Zuko runs a hand through his loose hair, filled in where it had been shaved and long in the style of past Fire Lords.

"It never is," Aang retorts. "Do we have to do this?"

"Yes," Zuko says, setting down the teacup. "My father does this every year. You know that."

"You could still let me out," he says, with the hopeful smile of his old self.

"I am letting you out, Avatar. To the parade."

Aang sighs heavily, shoulders slumping. "To the parade."

As he bundles the Avatar into the customary restraints, Zuko lets his mind wander. Back to that first parade, the one in his honor for bringing the Avatar back in chains. Back when he thought his father would be happy to see him, quest completed, stronger, faster, smarter. Back when he thought he'd spend more than a few days at a time at home. "Have you seen my uncle? I know he used to visit you."

The Avatar stiffens. "No, Fire Lord Zuko, I haven't."

His face is shuttered, and Zuko knows it's time to go.

*

"It didn't work last time, and it won't work this time," Sokka argues. "And this time you won't even have an eclipse to back you up!"

The leader of the freedom fighters chews on a stalk of straw, studying Sokka. "The last one was your idea. Besides, we've come a long way since the Day of Black Sun invasion. We have more warriors with better training. We're stronger, and we're ready to take on the Fire Nation. Or we would be if you weren't being such a coward about it."

"Shut up, Jet," Sokka growls. "We're not stronger. We lost a lot of good people, and you know just as well as I do that we're the last of the resistance. There's no backup this time. We can't attack them head on."

"Sokka, I know what it's like to lose your parents. Trust me. But just because your dad was killed during the last invasion doesn't mean you should be so cautious. This could be our last chance. The Water Tribes won't survive a campaign."

"We don't know that they're planning to attack," Sokka points out.

Jet grins, and it sets Sokka's teeth on edge. "You're wrong. Long Shot sent word that the Yu Yan Archers are meeting the Fire Lord's troops at the Northern Air Temple. They're going to attack the Northern Water Tribe, Sokka. There's no other reason the Fire Lord would be moving troops up there. It's not like he needs to keep the Mechanist in line anymore."

"Do we know how many he's taking?"

"No. The only thing we know is what I know from Long Shot. Don't you understand what this means? The archers aren't guarding the capital. The Phoenix King will be vulnerable. We'll be able to get everything in place."

Sokka snorts. Ozai, vulnerable. "What makes you think it's not another trap?"

Jet crosses his arms over his chest and moves the straw to the other side of his mouth. A beat passes. "It doesn't matter if it's a trap. We're running out of options. It's only a matter of time before Princess Azula finds us, and she doesn't take prisoners. If we're going to go down, let's go down fighting. Let's make the Fire Nation pay for everything they've taken from us."

There's a reason Jet is the leader. Sokka knows this as well as he knows Jet's plan is a disaster waiting to happen. Charisma makes fools of the wisest men. And women, he muses wryly as Katara pushes through the thick tarp in the doorway. 

"Hey," Jet says, raising his brows and cracking a grin. "You look pretty today."

Katara glares at him. "Thank you."

"Katara, has Jet told you about this?"

"What's going on?"

Sokka and Jet review the plan. A terrible plan, Sokka adds at regular intervals. A suicidal plan. A beyond idiotic plan. No way are they taking their entire force out of this forest and marching on the capital armed with barrels of explosives. They most certainly will not recall Long Shot from his undercover post with the Yu Yan archers, not when that would be like waving a giant red flag in the air that something is going on. A hand-picked, elite archer who spent over three years building his reputation in a puny little Fire Nation town can't just disappear one day.

The Fire Lord doesn't have the strategic genius or raw power of his sister, but Sokka knows him. He knows Zuko has instincts that rival Sokka's own. Maybe he'll even admit that they're better, if pressed, so that's their first problem. They can't bring Long Shot home to cover them as they fight their way up the beach. Again.

And there's the small matter of their force being about sixty young men, a few women, and most importantly, no Avatars. Katara flinches, but Sokka keeps going. They failed on the Day of Black Sun because their focus was divided. They should have either committed to breaking Aang out of prison and coming back to fight another day or to killing Ozai, but accomplishing both is what got them massacred.

Not again. Sokka isn't going to do that again. Not when his only family left is his sister. Not when they've lost their father, not when the Mechanist and his son are in a cell somewhere building the war machines that took down Ba Sing Se. Not when none of the men of the Southern Water Tribe will ever go home.

Never again.

"There has to be another way," Katara says. "Jet, we can't sacrifice all of our people. There has to be someone for Aang to come back to."

Jet looks down at her, fingering his swords, and then he looks away. "The Avatar isn't coming back, Katara. I know you promised him you'd free him, but that isn't an option anymore. We're going to attack the Fire Nation, and we're going to blow as much of it up as we can. We'll drop blasting jelly in its volcanoes, in its streets, in its prisons, in the palace. The only thing that matters is that it's destroyed."

"Jet--" Sokka has a bad feeling about this, but Jet isn't listening to him anymore.

"Katara," Jet whispers, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilting it up so she's looking into his eyes. "I'm sorry. The Avatar is going to die. When we're done with the Fire Nation, there won't be anything left."

Katara jerks away from him. "No. No, Jet. I won't let you do this. I won't help you destroy more innocent lives."

Jet clenches his fists and straightens his back, stepping toward her so that she has to crane her neck to look up at him. "Then why are you still here?"

"I chose to forgive you. That doesn't mean I'm going to ever help you do that again."

"You don't have a choice," he says, and Sokka can see the hollow blackness in his eyes. "We've already lost everything. We have to hit them before it's too late. If we can stop the war, stop the invasion of the Water Tribes, the Avatar can be reborn. The world can rebuild if the Fire Nation is destroyed."

Sokka thinks he might vomit. "Jet, this isn't the right way."

Jet whirls on him. "We've tried all the right ways, Sokka. We didn't blow up any more dams after Katara got all weepy about the first one. We haven't bombed the colonies. We haven't even ordered Long Shot to assassinate the Fire Lord. The only thing it's done is get us cornered. It's time to start doing things my way again."

Looking at his sister, a few paces back and trembling with rage, Sokka shakes his head. "We won't let you murder all those people. And we won't let you murder Aang."

"You're a monster, Jet." Katara's trembling has become a tightly restrained vibration. "How can you even consider this?"

"You're free to leave any time."

"Oh sure," Sokka grumbles. "We'll just take down the Fire Nation all by ourselves. Sounds like a great idea."

"Then let me know when you have a better idea. Otherwise, our mission starts in four days. When Smellerbee and The Duke are done mixing the blasting jelly. We start by blowing up the outer islands." Jet storms out of the room, shaking the trees in his wake as he swings away by the hooks of his swords.

The Water Tribe siblings look at each other, and Sokka slumps against the wall as Katara wraps her arms around herself. "They've been planning this a long time," he says.

"I know. We have to save Aang. Sokka, you're the plan guy. You've got to think of something."

"The plan guy. Right."

Sokka remembers when he used to be proud of that. He remembers when being the plan guy was fun, even. That was a long time ago.

*

As the years pass, Zuko increasingly thinks this parade is really supposed to be some kind of mockery. The details are always the same: He rides a komodo rhino at the head of a platoon of soldiers, Avatar in chains among them. Captor and captured, on display for all to see. The Fire Nation is winning, the Fire Nation has captured the Avatar. Greatness is spreading.

Zuko is starting to wonder if they've spread too much greatness and not kept enough for themselves. Atop his rhino, he looks at the once beautiful homes in the caldera, stripped of their metal trim, their ceramic tiles. The damage from the Day of Black Sun was repaired not with steel and brick but with wood, and he can see a smoky haze in the air that's semi-permanent these days. The weather is hot and dry, and the wooden houses make quick kindling for many a careless bender.

The first year, he rode, tall and proud, eyes set on the palace. His banishment lifted, his uncle beside him, honor restored, Zuko had returned home. It wasn't as he remembered it, somehow, but then nothing is the same after three years away. At least then the people had come out to celebrate. Looking at their somber faces now, things are more complicated.

Then again, things were complicated the first year too.

Your betrothal has been renegotiated, his father said. You will resume visits with Mai and her family when you return to the Fire Nation.

When I return? He'd been back a few hours. Three years gone, and he hadn't even been back to his mother's garden.

I am proud of you, Prince Zuko. I am proud that you have returned home with the Avatar. But you are the Crown Prince, and it's time you fulfilled your duty.

Zuko's head spun. He hadn't seen the turtleducks.

It's time you joined our troops on the battlefield.

It is my honor to serve the Fire Nation, Father.

Good. Commander Zhao intends to attack the Northern Water Tribe by the end of next month. You will lead the fleet.

Yes, Father. Not Zhao. Anyone but Zhao.

Welcome home, Prince Zuko.

Zuko bowed, retreated. That was enough, wasn't it? Father was proud of him. His honor was restored. That was enough. It had to be.

His people are looking gaunt now. Healthy, compared to the Avatar's skeletal frame behind him, but thin just the same. Their flowers are wilted, their homes unkept. The crowds grow smaller every year despite repopulation efforts, and he's seen the casualty lists, written the notifications and condolences. Even after Zhao's aborted mission almost certainly saved some lives, most of them aren't coming back. Some are coming back missing arms, legs, sight. Some are coming back with broken minds.

How long can you survive before you become the villain?

*

Sokka's face is grim. "I have a plan, but you're not going to like it."

Katara kneels next to her brother, bent over his maps. "We have to save Aang, Sokka. Just tell me what I have to do."

Sucking in a deep breath, Sokka looks into her eyes. "Zuko is on his way to the Northern Air Temple."

"I know."

"I can't stop Jet from starting the bombing. I've tried."

"I know. What do you need me to do?"

Her brother breathes in, out, slowly. "If there were any other way--"

"Sokka!"

"You have to go to the Northern Air Temple and convince Zuko to call off the attacks. If Long Shot reports that the Fire Nation is standing down, maybe Jet will be reasonable."

She looks at him, jaw slack. "What, you think I can just march into a Fire Nation camp and start giving the Fire Lord orders? Because he let me go when he took Aang? You know that was just to  make sure I couldn't help Aang escape!"

Sokka looks away. "No. He didn't take me either. If it were just that, I'd go myself." He glances back at his sister, then away again. "You're a woman, Katara. And you're beautiful."

"What are you--"

"You have, uh, girly powers."

She is flabbergasted, in a word. "I have girly powers."

Sokka fidgets. "Look, it's one thing to get into the camp. You can walk right up to it and splash a couple of soldiers and you're all set. The problem is convincing Zuko." He's deliberately not looking at her now; she can feel the tension. "Do you remember when you thought we should trust Jet, and I told you he was up to something? When he blew that first dam and destroyed an entire town?"

Katara studies her fingernails. Of course she remembers. How could she forget being so blinded by the charms of a boy her own age that she let him--helped him--flood the valley?

"I need you to manipulate Zuko the way Jet manipulated you."

"What makes you think I can do that?"

"I don't know," he admits. "We can't attack the camp. We can't attack the Fire Nation. We can't send someone to negotiate; he'd laugh in our faces. Killing him isn't going to do any good, and he'll fight back if you threaten him. And we both know Zuko never gives up. He'll never willingly surrender."

"It's desperate," she says.

"We're desperate," he says.

"Do you think Appa can make the trip?"

"He'll have to. Tell him it's our best chance to get Aang back."

They have more three days until the resistance starts smuggling unstable blasting jelly into the Fire Nation. Maybe two weeks until everything is in place for an attack. A month until Jet blows up an entire country, and it will take at least a week to fly to the Northern Air Temple. It's an impossible task, but Katara promised Aang that she'd come for him, and she doesn't break her promises. She doesn't abandon the people who need her.

*

"How long are you staying?"

"Just the rest of the afternoon. We sail for the Northern Air Temple at dusk."

Mai nods. "Are you ready?"

I asked if you were happy to be home, not your whole life story.

"Yeah. I'm ready."

She looks at him, face a perfect calm. "Come back soon."

"Mai?"

"Yes?"

"We're getting married on the summer solstice."

"I know, Zuko."

He walks to the window and looks out. There's smoke in the distance, another flaming building. "Is that what you want?"

"Of course."

I don't hate you.

Zuko looks over her head at the guard in the corner. "Could you give us a minute?"

The guard bows and steps outside.

"Mai, Is that what you want?"

"You're never home. What difference does it make."

Her comment bites. "That's not my choice."

"I'd rather be here than Omashu."

"Just tell me how you feel."

"It doesn't matter, Zuko. Our fathers have decided we'll be married. If you can't spend more than a few days at a time in the Fire Nation, you can't decide whether or not to get married."

Something bubbles up from his stomach and threatens to spill out of his throat, and red begins to cloud his vision. "Don't you ever feel anything? Why can't you just tell me what you want?"

"Don't try to start a fight, Zuko."

You brought me a shell?

He'd gone to Ember Island the first day he was home. The shell was dark and shone rainbow in the sunlight; he'd thought of her.

Why would I want that?

"Fine! See you on the solstice then. I won't bother you anymore." Shoulders straight and taut, he marches out of Mai's home, guard close behind, slamming the doors behind him.

Stop acting like a child.

Chapter Text

Zuko's breaths are practiced, almost meditative. The soldiers are returning to the airships from the city; he's due to join them within the hour, but for now, he's dismissed the servants and prepares alone. Somehow, being without them reminds him of simpler times. That banishment is now simpler times creates an unsteady feeling in his stomach.

His hair falls straight and black just past his shoulder blades, and the lingering wetness from the last decent wash he'll have for a while creates a stickiness against his back. Toweling it off, he dries his skin and pulls on his military tunic and pants, then regards his armor with a critical eye.

It's taken a beating. There's a large dent in the helmet from an earthbender's rock that he's more or less reshaped with careful heat, but his head hurts just looking at it. Scrapes from throwing stars and arrows litter the breastplate, and his shoulder pieces are in tatters.

You're going to get yourself killed, Mai said.

He shakes off the memory and reaches for a pile of fabric strips piled next to his bracers. Reaching into the pile, he pulls out a thick, blue strap with a shimmering blue stone secured to the center. It smells like smoke and dirt, and the strap's edges are frayed, the clasp that once clung to it long gone. He'll need to replace the strap before long.

Zuko lays the necklace along his left forearm, then he wraps the white strips around the necklace and his arm like he's dressing a wound.

Why do you wear that? Just throw it out. Or give it to a servant.

It should be returned to its owner, he'd said.

So mail it.

Somehow he'd never really thought she'd actually return to the South Pole. She was like a pentapus, the way she clung to the Avatar, and he hated her for it. Maybe he respected her for it, if he's honest, but honest reflection has never gotten him anywhere useful.

He pulls the bracers over his arms and his boots on his feet, and then the moon begins to rise, and it's time.

Spirits help him if this invasion fails.
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Aang scratches another tick mark in the wall as the sun begins to stream through the tiny window of his cell. Although he feels dizzy, he pushes himself off the floor as he does every morning, and he pushes himself through all of his airbending forms and as many waterbending forms as he can remember. The chi-blocking tea Zuko freely admits to slipping him has made him weak and foggy, but Aang knows Katara and Sokka will come for him.

They have to.

Visions of flying boars and dancing dragons come to him in his sleep. Roku visits him. A guard visits him with two meals every day. And so Aang subsists.
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"Can't you just wait until Katara can free Aang? It won't make any difference to wait a few weeks."

"I'm tired of waiting, Sokka. I'm tired of wondering when Princess Azula is going to find us. Katara should have freed the Avatar years ago if he's so important, and just because you seem to think the Fire Lord is an idiot doesn't mean his sister is. Or his father. We're fighting for our lives here."

"Zuko is not an idiot."

Jet rolls his eyes. "Your plan is crazy. Smellerbee and I move out tomorrow."

"No crazier than yours."

"At least mine is going to do some damage. You sent a rabbit-mouse into a wolf-bat cave. And for what?"

"Katara can handle herself."

Jet narrows his eyes and chews on his straw pointedly. "Come on, Sokka. She's not the girl for this. She can fight, but she won't--"

"Shut up, Jet," Sokka says, low and dangerous. "I didn't tell her to."

Jet's laugh is dry and brittle. "We aren't kids anymore. Women have to do a lot better than batting their eyelashes."

Sokka turns away. "Get out."

"Why, for telling you the truth? Even if she does manage to get the Fire Lord's attention, it isn't like he's going to bring her back to the Fire Nation. He'll chew her up and spit her out before she gets anywhere near freeing the Avatar. You're trading her for nothing. And don't think I don't know you're betting on her stopping the attack on the North Pole. It's not going to happen, Sokka, and even if she can pull it off, we're not standing down."

"Get. Out." Sokka grits his teeth. Jet smiles but leaves the other man to his thoughts.

Jet doesn't know about the necklace Katara is missing, and he doesn't know how to play Pai Sho. Sokka hopes these are exploitable weaknesses.
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"Go home, Appa. I'm going to bring Aang back. I promise." With a low moan, the bison heaves himself into the sky, and he glances over his shoulder at her as he retreats.

Not a moment too soon. Katara can see the red bulbs of Fire Nation airships cresting the midday horizon, like bloodspots on the fluffy, light clouds. It will be a dry night. Not ideal, but she's become a master since the last time she faced Zuko. The plants obey her; she can kill him with the sweat on his forehead if she has to.

The only question, really, is whether she can get him to free Aang, but she isn't a manipulator like Jet or a flirt like Jet or compelling like Jet. She's just Katara. If this is the best Sokka can come up with, he's either losing his touch or knows something she doesn't.

The flagship, enormous as it is, looms over the plateaus beneath her hilltop perch. As it descends, she sees Zuko standing on the firebender's platform, the same one his father stood on to raze the Wulong Forest four years ago.

She shivers, though she tries to keep still. Zuko is the image of his father. The clear side of his face is toward her, and he's just close enough that she can see the fine details of his straight nose and widow's peak, tightly tied hair long and dark where he'd once been bald as Aang. He has foregone his gold crown, and his armor looks old, dented, and weathered.

The northern sun heats her back, keeping her warm among the rocks as the afternoon drags on. Katara watches the little red ants far below her. Too many to fit into the ruins of the Air Temple, they pitch scarlet tents, a red swath on the landscape broken only by small clearings with roaring fires.

By the time the camp has begun to settle down for the night, the sun is setting, and the chill in the air begins to invade her thick cloak. The shadows are growing longer, and Zuko has put his tent on the outer edge of the camp. Too good to be among the common soldiers, she supposes, and too proud. Makes her job easier.

Time to move.
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The map is spread out in the center of a table in Commander Jee's tent, a replica of the one Zuko has in his own. The grizzled older man points to a green circle in the center. "Admiral Zhao has proposed we direct our forces here. Warmer temperatures will make firebending easier."

Zuko is not and has never been all that fond of anything Zhao comes up with. "But?"

Jee shrugs. "Nothing. It's not a bad plan. The waterbenders won't expect it; the palace was in the opposite direction the last time we were able to get a scout in."

Zuko frowns. "We can't fight our way to the center of enemy territory and then turn around and melt everything."

A corner of Jee's mouth quirks up. "It would be effective."

Zuko narrows his eyes. "Is that what Zhao is proposing?"

"Not explicitly, sir. I'm sure he wanted you to have the credit for the idea."

Zuko blows smoke from his nose and rubs the skin between his eyes. "Yes, Captain, I'm sure that's what he wants." He turns toward the flap at the entrance to Jee's tent. "I'm going to bed. My uncle would tell us to get some rest. We'll revise Zhao's plans at sunrise."

"Of course, sir."

"Lieutenant Jee."

"Prince Zuko."

"Thank you."

"Your uncle owes me my weight in gold." For a moment, it almost looks as if the two men might smile.

But they do not, and as Zuko's silhouette flickers and slips into the night, Jee wonders if the sham title is starting to take its toll or if the young man has been tempered by the horrors of war. Prince Zuko, because that's the uninflated reality of things, is growing into a peculiar man. Jee hopes he lives long enough to truly become Fire Lord.
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He throws her down on the floor of the tent, driving his knee into her back and her chin into the dirt. One hand wrenches her arms behind her back, holding her wrists together, and with the other hand he holds a flame near the side of her head. "Who are you?" He demands. "And what are you doing here?"

Katara wills herself to stay calm. "I came to talk to you," she says, focusing on her breathing. In, out. In, out.

Zuko barks a sardonic laugh. "I'm about to start a siege of the Northern Water Tribe, and you sneak into my tent to talk? If you were sane, you'd request an audience."

"Zuko."

"His hand tightens painfully around her wrists. "Fire Lord Zuko to you, girl. Now tell me who you are."

Does he remember her name? "Katara," she says, her voice carrying more confidence than she feels. If possible, his grip tightens even more, and she can't feel her fingertips. "Let me go!"

The pressure doesn't change. "the Avatar's girlfriend, paying me a visit? Are you hoping I'll let him go if you ask nicely?"

Not what she was going to ask for, but she'll take it. "Let me go." Nothing. She tries again. "Zuko, you're hurting me."

And then he's off her, a few steps away. He takes a firebending stance, fist no more than a foot from from her face, and glares. "Don't try anything, peasant." More slowly than she'd like, Katara staggers up off the ground, rising so that she's nearly touching him when she stumbles. "Back off," he says.

"No," she spits.

"I thought you wanted to talk. You're not making this any easier for yourself."

"Oh, so you're listening. Great. Don't attack the North Pole."

Zuko looks at her blankly for a moment before a large grin splits his face. She can't believe it in the moment, but Zuko, angry, humorless, stiff Fire Nation royal pain, is almost belly laughing. "You think," he says, fighting his mirth, "that you can just sneak into my tent and demand I stop an invasion that's been planned for months?"

"Don't you want to know how I know?"

She could swear he rolls his eyes at her, but it's hard to tell with the proximity and growing darkness. "I'm not going to waste time before a siege to find one spy. It's not like your little band of rebels could stop it anyway."

Katara steps back and slowly lifts her arms in surrender. So her way didn't work. So what? No one expected it to. But she's never been good at the damsel in distress routine, and she clearly can't talk to Zuko for longer than thirty seconds without one of them insulting the other, so Sokka's plan isn't going anywhere either. She's winging it.

Steeling herself, Katara takes a deep breath. "Zuko, you love your country."

He raises his eyebrow, curiosity piqued. "Of course I do."

"Your people are suffering in this war."

He sighs heavily, looking away from her. "I know they are."

"You're the Fire Lord. End it."

Zuko laughs bitterly. "You think that title means anything? It's a castoff, from my father. In case you haven't heard, he's the Phoenix King now. He has all the power in the world."

"Okay, so convince your father to end it."

"Did you come here to kill me or to rub my complete lack of power in my face? If you're going to kill me, go ahead and try. This is ridiculous."

"Actually, I'm here to seduce you."

Zuko's cheeks flame red and his eyes go wide. He takes a step back. "What?"

"Sokka -- my brother -- thought that if I could do that, you might call off the invasion."

"Your brother is an idiot."

"You don't think I'm pretty?"

Zuko's mouth drops open and he stutters as he tries to find words. Finally, he lands on something. "Yeah. Um. Sure. For a Water Tribe peasant you aren't terrible-looking."

Katara sighs. She's shown her cards and gotten nowhere. "Don't hurt yourself."

"Look, Katara, I'm getting married on the summer solstice. I wouldn't betray my fiancée regardless. So I'm going to keep you as my prisoner until after the siege, and then I'll let you go. We don't have to make this harder than it needs to be."

"You could kill me."

Zuko looks well and truly baffled. "Do…do you want me to kill you?"

"What? No! Why would you even think that?!"

"Women are crazy," Zuko mutters. He looks her in the eyes. "You're crazy."

"Oh, really. You think I'm crazy? You should hear the strategy that isn't I-try-to-seduce-a-firebender. They're just going to blow up everyone."

He moves like lightning, and then he's standing above her again, glaring down at her menacingly. "What are you talking about? The rebels are planting more bombs? Where?"

Katara blinks. More bombs? "That's none of your concern," she replies primly. "Secret battle plans," she says, despite the nausea rising in her stomach.

Then he's gripping her shoulders and holding her up to his eye level, forcing her feet to dangle slightly off the ground. "Tell me."

"Let Aang go."

"You know I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"You stupid peasant! What, you think I can just let the Avatar go without completely destroying my honor? My father will have me killed. I'll be buried at sea like some ice-wielding barbarian!"

"Ice-wielding barbarian," she says dryly.

"Where are the bombs, Katara," he roars, his face an inch from hers.

She winces. "You have to free Aang, Zuko. They're crazy. They won't remove them unless the Avatar goes free to help with the rebellion. Sokka thinks calling off the invasion is enough, but--"

"Where. Are. The bombs." His voice rings in her ear.

She meets his eyes, wide and shimmering, and she has a horrible feeling that this isn't the first time Jet has tried this. "I don't know."

He slams her down, and she staggers before falling into the table. "You people leveled Ember Island last year, don't you remember? Do you see this?" He points to the gash in his breast plate. "This is from the debris. I was there. I watched every child on the beach that morning get blown away to nothing, and there was nothing I could do about it." He looms over her, face a mask of fury, and she scrabbles back on the table to get away from him. Zuko follows. "You killed my fiancée's little brother with that stunt you--"

"That wasn't me," she says, sudden tears running freely down her face. "I swear it wasn't, Zuko, I would never--"

"Right. You'll just fight with people who will do it for you." The words sting as they roll off his tongue.

"He promised he wouldn't," she whispered. "He promised."

"Guess you trusted the wrong person, Katara. You should have gone home when you had the chance." The snarl in his voice tells her he doesn't believe her, not really, and she wonders if she'll die here, lying atop a map of the Northern Water Tribe, in a tent outside an Air Temple.

They stare at each other in silence, Zuko simmering, Katara shaking. "He's going to destroy everything. He wants to kill everyone he can. Even Aang. Please, Zuko, help me stop this. Let Aang go."

"You're asking for something impossible," he snaps. "I can't let the Avatar go. I can't sit here and wait for my people to be slaughtered." He turns away from her. "Have you considered getting rid of him?"

"I'm trying to prevent death, Zuko, not kill someone. Have you considered getting rid of the Phoenix King?"

He's upon her then, tackling her to the floor and clapping a hand over her mouth. "You really are a stupid peasant. You'll get us both killed talking like that. You think my father doesn't have spies?" Something seems to occur to him. "You'd ask me to kill my father?"

She shakes her head, and he lifts his hand but does not get off of her. "He's kind of a war criminal and an awful person, so yes."

"And what about your war criminal?"

"He's not my war criminal--"

"Really."

"Get off me."

"No."

"Zuko, can we just talk like normal people for a minute? I won't ask you to kill anyone, you don't ask me to kill anyone, and maybe we can work something out."

If anything, Zuko sits on her harder. "Or I could just keep you here and force your brother to ransom you."

"Will you stop thinking evil little thoughts for two seconds?"

"Will you shut up for two seconds?"

"Ugh! You are just a pea-brained, fire-breathing, coal-digging--"

"Fire Lord Zuko!" A third voice carries through the thin material of the tent. "Is everything all right?"

"I'm fine, Captain Jee," Zuko says. "I'm interrogating a prisoner."

A beat. "We have a prisoner?"

"Yes. I'll debrief you in the morning."

"Very well, sir." The man's steps fade away, and Zuko crawls off Katara.

"You're going to have to stop yelling."

"So are you!" She protests. "And stop knocking me down!"

"Stop. Yelling." He hisses.

"Fine," she hisses back. "Will you just listen for a second?"

"Fine. Peasant."

"And stop insulting me!"

"Quiet!"

"If you won't call off the invasion, let me go. Let me steal your airship. I'll go to the Fire Nation while you have your stupid invasion and free Aang. He can defeat your father and end this war."

"I doubt it. The Phoenix King is too strong." He pauses. "And you're not getting the Avatar back."

"Why not? You got your honor back, didn't you?"

Zuko's expression is unreadable. "I got everything I wanted."

"Great. So now I'll just be going to take back Aang, and then we'll defeat you and the rest of the Fire Nation so Jet doesn't start playing hide and explode with your islands."

"First of all, why would I agree to that. Now that we know your plans, we'll evacuate the islands. Second of all, who do you think is going to have to drop everything to recapture him?"

Katara is finding herself increasingly bemused at the notion of honor in the Fire Nation. "Can't someone else who lost honor do it? It's not like you'd lose it again." She holds back a frown. "How did you lose it in the first place?"

"That's not important. You're not going to the Fire Nation."

She takes a deep breath, wondering what she's risking telling him this. "It won't just be the islands, Zuko. Jet is going to take everything down by the end of the month. Call off the invasion."

He will. He has to. She can feel his weakness--Fire Lord Zuko has, against all odds, started to feel something for peasants. Her heart pounds as she wills him to agree. Appa is gone; this was always a one-way trip without Zuko's cooperation, unwitting or not.

And if Jet finds out that she's given him up, or if Sokka realizes she's just gone and told Zuko the whole plan and hoped for the best, this little episode of going rogue may be the last thing she does anyway.
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When the boredom sinks in and the moon rises, as it does now, he thinks of her. Katara, beautiful with her braid flying behind her when she bends and her blue eyes that sparkle when she learns a new form. He remembers her wide eyes, her readiness to follow him to ride every animal he could think of. He misses her light teasing. Katara, all light and hope and everything he misses about being free.

She's coming for him.

They'll get married when he's free -- he's sixteen now, isn't he? They'll have three or four airbending babies and maybe a waterbending baby or two and live in the Southern Air Temple until they're old and gray. They'll teach the children to respect all life and make fruit tarts. They'll go for rides on Appa and play with Momo and maybe see the world.

She's coming for him. She has to be.
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It rankles her that he isn't threatened. Zuko has not deigned to answer her tonight, instead throwing her a couple of scratchy blankets and going to sleep. Katara lies awake on the hard ground across the tent and glares in Zuko's direction.

"I could kill you and you'd never feel a thing," she whispers. "I could make the grass strangle you. I could stab you. I could drown you in your own spit. I could--"

"Water peasant," Zuko grumbles, turning over. "Either kill me or be quiet and go to sleep."

She hates him. He'll regret this, underestimating her. Maybe not tonight, maybe not until after the siege, but soon he'll know she's not a scared little girl anymore.

Chapter Text

Even if you're right, and this does eliminate the Avatar's ability to bend, Uncle had interjected, voice gravelly and eyes dark, you will anger the other nations. Our troops are stretched thin as it is.

Uncle sipped his tea placidly, but three years at sea with the man had made an impression on Zuko. The Dragon of the West was home, too.

Ozai had looked down his sharp nose with contempt. Iroh, you may be my brother, but you have become a doddering fool. We need not tell the world every bureaucratic detail of conquering them.

Word will find its way out, Fire Lord Ozai. It always does.

Zuko jerks up from his bedroll as the sun begins to warm the sky. A little surprised the peasant hasn't actually killed him in his sleep, he takes a deep, calming breath and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. He'll meditate, he thinks, and--

"Sleep well?"

Zuko starts. The water-peasant sits cross-legged on her stack of blankets, peering at him with cool blue eyes and more than a little amusement playing across her face.

"No," he mutters. "How am I supposed to sleep when you snore like some kind of walrus-seal?"

"I do not snore!"

In fact, she doesn't, but Zuko is running a little short on generosity this morning. "You're worse than my uncle. Now, be quiet. I'm going to meditate, and you're going to come up with something more useful than 'threaten the Fire Lord' or 'get the Fire Lord banished again' to free your precious Avatar."

Katara raises her eyebrows. "Really? You'll help?"

Zuko snarls. "I'm not helping. I might consider not throwing you in the Boiling Rock."

He'd argued with the doctor all the way to the Avatar's cell. He's a child. He's twelve years old. He could get an infection and die, and then we'll have to start the search all over again. The Avatar had looked at them with fear shining in his eyes, seeing but not understanding what was to befall him. In the end, the royal surgeon had been almost unyielding, and Zuko had made threats he wishes he hadn't had to.

But the Avatar still has his hands, and for that, Zuko is inexplicably, irrationally grateful.

Katara regards him thoughtfully. "I didn't think my plan would work."

Zuko fights the impulse to roll his eyes. "It didn't. Your plans are all deluded and insane. Come up with something better before I change my mind." He stretches his arms above his head as he gets out of bed, and then he's rummaging around a worn chest. Pulling out a length of rope, Zuko beckons.

Katara eyes him suspiciously. "What's that?"

"What's it look like? I'm tying you up."

She splutters as she moves toward him. "Why?"

"I don't need you sneaking off to the airship field," he explains, looping the rope around her wrists.

"You don't trust me?"

"No."

The girl takes a deep breath, and Zuko can practically hear her counting backwards from ten.

The Avatar was shouting at him, the ungrateful fool. How can you do that?! How can you tell him you'll have his family tortured? What's wrong with you?

Zuko had cringed, the self-loathing bubbling up. I wasn't actually going to do it.

I thought we could have been friends. I was wrong.

Zuko felt a vein in his forehead pulsing, the blood in his ears nearly as loud as his conscience. Some thanks I get for saving your bending.

The Avatar had gone white as mourning clothes, his voice suddenly subdued. What was he going to do to me?

Zuko shook his head. Nothing. I'll bring you some tea later. Drink all of it. And don't ever let anyone see your hands.

Katara interrupts his thoughts. "Are you sure you won't let me steal an airship?" She tests the bonds, but the rope holds.

"I don't need my father angry with me, trust me. Not worth it." Before she can speak again, he's nearly out of the tent, a bundle in his arms. "I'm going to wash up. You can tell me your better plan when I get back. Don't get snoopy."

She sputters, and he allows himself to smirk back at her. "I'm not snoopy!"

"Right, and I was born in Ba Sing Se." The tent flap swishes behind him, and he nearly smiles at her aggravated, strangled shout.

He really needs to assign a guard to his tent.

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Mai watches Azula. The princess practices her lightning religiously, and with five years of precision training, she's shooting apples off the heads of practice dummies with barely a flick of her fingers (better them than her, Mai thinks). Ty Lee lounges on her forearms beside Mai, legs folded over her shoulders and feet dangling in front of her face.

Dreamily, Ty Lee smiles. "I can't wait for your wedding, Mai."

"You and everyone else," Mai says.

"It's so romantic," Ty Lee chirps. "I wish I had a childhood sweetheart."                                                                             

"Whatever."

"Leave her alone, Ty Lee," Azula interjects, smoothing her bangs and turning from her practice dummies as the last apple explodes in a spray of sticky ashes. "Zuzu is gone so much that she's nearly forgotten about him."

Mai sighs. "Azula--"

"Think about it, Mai," Azula says. "You must not have seen him more than once the last time he was home."

Mai narrows her eyes fractionally. "What of it?"

Azula shrugs, gold eyes glittering, red lips pulled up into a smirk. "You love the fool just as much as you always have, I'm sure."

The barb settles heavily in her heart, but one does not stay alive near Azula by wilting in the heat. And, if nothing else, Mai is never bored. "Of course."

Azula sips at a cup of water delicately. "It's a shame, really. Someone as skilled as you should be going to the Earth Kingdom with me and Ty Lee; instead, you're stuck here, selecting napkin colors."

Ty Lee unwinds herself from her pose on the ground and pops up to stand between them. "Maybe you could use a vacation, Mai. Come with us!"

Azula holds the cup with her fingernails, balancing the porcelain between sharp, red talons. "Don't be cruel, Ty Lee. You know very well that the rest of Mai's life will be devoted to being the perfect little wife and raising my useless brother's children. She'll never leave this place again."

The effort to tamp down a flinch is greater than usual, but Mai remains impassive. "I love Zuko, and I look forward to our life together."

"One hopes," Azula nearly chirps, putting her cup back in its place. "He doesn't love you, of course, but I suppose there are more important things." She straightens her shoulders and turns to exit the training grounds. "Ty Lee, we're going."

Ty Lee shoots a mournful glance back at Mai, but she follows the princess without another word. Mai watches them go, mask firmly in place despite the black fingernails leaving red moons under her billowing sleeves and the taste of iron bubbling up where her teeth pierce her cheek. Zuko had carried Azula's dishonesty like a watchword, whispering "Azula always lies" like a prayer on his lips.

He was wrong. Azula is quite fond of the truth, sharpened and poisoned as it is on her tongue.

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You don't always hear the drums of war. It's not always practical to bring drums at all, but the anticipation thrums in Jet's veins with a steady thump as he readies the Freedom Fighters. Wheat stalk dangling from his lips, he gently taps metal shavings into characters traced in wet glue. The parchment wrinkles from the moisture, and his light taps keep rhythm with the drums in his head.

Smellerbee and a few of the men load barrels of blasting jelly on a boat outfitted to resemble a Fire Navy ship. Jet has to admit that Sokka is clever, if frustratingly idealistic, and his designs will get them through the patrols and into the Fire Nation capitol's port without a problem, so long as they can keep their Earth Kingdom heads down.

Beneath the veneer of steel, the ship is made of light birch. Useless in a fight, but it's faster than any ship has a right to be when combined with the steam engine. Backup sails will only get them caught once they’re in Fire Nation waters, but they have a lot of ocean to cover. Jet isn't worried. If all else fails, they'll blow the ship at the docks.

He writes none of that. The Blind Bandit has little patience for strategy, preferring to punch her way through problems (which, Jet thinks ruefully, is why she's off winning Earth Rumble VII instead of loading barrels with Smellerbee). His message in metal is short, succinct: Blind Bandit, need you at main hideout. Going on a mission. Ask for Sokka. Jet.

Jet holds the parchment down as cold wind blusters around him, the rat-tat-tat of the war drums beating in his brain in the chilled, pre-dawn light. Across the hideout, rigidly straight in his cot, Sokka traces the smooth and worn edges of a single wooden Pai Sho tile. And his pulse thumps heavily, erratically, and he wishes for the steadier drum of rain against his roof.

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Zuko looks down at the anchored ships clustered in the bay. The crystal blue water shimmers around them, and small waves break in white foam against the iron hulks. He counts nearly seventy ships, not as many as the last attempt, but he hopes these are stronger. Strong enough that the engines don't burn out (again) under Zhao's ambition, in any case.

 "Admiral Zhao," he grits out as the older man, thick sideburns and thicker ego, pulls himself over the cliff's edge. "Thank you for joining us."

"Fire Lord Zuko," Zhao says, voice thick and gravelly with irritation. "Perhaps the next rendezvous point should be chosen by the navy." He bows, a picture of propriety, and yet the scorn and condescension are palpable.

Zuko bites the inside of his cheek. "Was the climb too much for you, Admiral?" He has to admit that the single perk of the Fire Lord's title is his clear outranking of Zhao -- he could disrespect a banished prince. To disrespect a Fire Lord is another matter entirely. His father might have been ambiguous about Zuko's honor, but Zuko's return to the fold has done wonders for limiting Zhao's ability to torment him.

Zhao twitches. "Of course not, sir."

"Good. Inform the navy that we leave at dawn tomorrow. The attack should begin at midday."

"We should leave now. It's barely past dawn," Zhao snaps.

"No." Zuko lifts his chin. "Your men should rest; you traveled all night."

"The sooner we leave, the sooner we defeat the waterbenders."

"Don't question me, Zhao," Zuko growls. "You of all people know what happened last time the Fire Navy was too eager to reach the Northern Water Tribe."

Zhao swallows visibly and clenches his fists. "Has Captain Jee passed along my insights?"

Zuko tries very, very hard not scream. "Yes. We will attack as you suggest."

"Excellent decision, sir. I hope my experience will be valuable to your efforts." The smile that creeps across Zhao's face gives Zuko mild nausea. Blood will run in the streets tomorrow, he knows, and a fist closes around his heart.

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The day passes interminably. Finally, as shadows creep along the tent and the sun warms from its early spring brightness to a red sunset, she hears him coming, heavy, angry stomps echoing over the ground. Katara breathes deeply, trying to center herself, and then Zuko is back, throwing open the entrance of the tent and flinging a bowl of jook at her feet. "Eat this. I don't need you starving to death in here."

"Don't tell me what to do," she bites. "And how am I supposed to eat with my hands tied behind my back?"

"You'll figure something out," he says, sitting heavily on his bedroll. "I need to think. Be quiet."

"I've been stuck here all day! Untie me!"

Zuko glares, but he steps back up lightly and loosens the rope around her wrists. "You have a lot of nerve for a backwater tribeswoman." She is about to strike at him, but he speaks again. "You'll need it to survive this war."

Katara studies him in the dim light, wishing for a window, or a candle. "You've changed, Zuko." Her voice is softer than she intended, and she pinches her leg sharply.

"Fire Lord Zuko."

She makes a face. "Well, maybe not that much."

He sighs heavily, pulling his hair out of its high phoenix plume and unwinding the strip of red leather. "Of course I've changed. The war was supposed to spread greatness, Katara." His voice drops to a whisper and his arms fall to the bedroll as he returns to it. "Greatness isn't all it's cracked up to be."

"You'd know?" She snaps.

When he looks up at her, the sadness in his eyes catches her off guard. "The Fire Nation is losing. Maybe not on the battlefield, but my country is dying."

She thinks he's going to say more, but the way his eyes dart around tells her he's being cautious.  "So end the war."

"I don't have that power."

She huffs in frustration. "You're the Fire Lord! Spreading war and violence and hatred might be in your blood, but you have power. End the war and go hunt platypus bears instead."

"I don't have any power, Katara!" Fire flashes in his hands and puffs out of his nose. "The Phoenix King has power. I'm nothing but a glorified general."

She wonders if this is a way in. "Do you want power?"

Zuko blinks at her. "What?"

In her newfound confidence, she drops her chin into her hands, elbows resting on the table, and looks up at him through her eyelashes. "Do you want power? You could be a real Fire Lord. When Aang overthrows--"

"Quiet, peasant!" He shouts. "Don't speak treason in my presence."

And they'd been getting along so well. "You're the one who wanted a better plan," she grumbles.

"That's the best you came up with? Deposing the Phoenix King?" Zuko's eyes are wide, disbelieving. "Isn't your brother supposed to be some brilliant strategist?"

"Talents don't always run in families," Katara says. "In case you haven't noticed."

Zuko glares. "I don't like you."

"Obviously. How is the Fire Nation losing? I haven't heard anything about unrest."

Zuko shakes his head. "The people are afraid. The capital city caught fire during your invasion and hasn't stopped burning. Ember Island is gone. We've stripped all the metal from buildings all over the Fire Nation for weapons and airships, and it's not enough. Nothing is ever enough."

"So why keep fighting?"

"What, and tell my nation that we're giving up? That all the people who have died did so for nothing? That we've destroyed ourselves and lost?"

Katara fiddles with the ends of her hair. "What if you don't give up, and you still lose?"

"The Avatar isn't going to win this, Katara. You and your brother and your rebels aren't either. The Fire Nation needs to win this war before there isn't a Fire Nation left to come home to. And I have no reason to free the Avatar, and a lot of reasons not to. I'll get you passage to the outer islands. Stop this idiotic bombing, and you have my word that the Southern Water Tribe will be left alone. I'll recall the Southern Raiders."

She blinks back the tears in her eyes. His offer is tempting, like candy set before a child or lychee nuts before Momo. But she knows better than to trust him. She knows better than to sacrifice her sister tribe to save her own. "Or," Katara offers, "if you withdraw, you and your soldiers might have a home left. If you don't, Jet will make you Earth Kingdom colonists with no Fire Nation to go back to. And he'll probably torment you for the rest of your lives."

He looks at her tiredly, clearly weighing his options. Katara meets his eyes, daring him to make a decision, though she knows nothing he does is likely to stop Jet. She focuses on willing him to free Aang. If he does that, maybe they can stop the bombings. Maybe they can defeat the Phoenix King and stop the war, finally. Maybe things can go back to some semblance of normal. Whatever normal is after a century of war.

"Katara," he sighs, and she jolts at the sound of her name, foreign in his raspy whisper. "Take it or leave it. I don't want to hurt you or your people, but I can, and I will if I have to."

Red rage roils in her chest, and her fists clench and unclench in her lap as she kneels behind her paltry dinner. "Take me to the Northern Water Tribe," she demands, voice hard as steel. "I'll get you your victory, with no losses."

Zuko looks her up and down. "How do you plan to do that?"

"You'll find out," she says, and she turns her back to him. "And then we're going back to the Fire Nation, and I'm getting Aang out of there."

"You're in no position to make demands, peasant."

With her wrists unbound and her jook untouched, Katara is a terror as she whisks the liquid out of her surroundings and freezes it around Zuko's neck. He squirms as he struggles for breath, and she tightens the icy grip as she leans over him, suddenly close, personal. "Yes, I am," she snarls. "So, Fire Lord, do you want to be on your father's bad side, or mine?"

Zuko hacks and gasps when she releases the ring of ice, the purplish tinge fading from his lips as he recovers. He nods at her, eyes glittering furiously in the dying light. "We leave just before dawn. You'll stow away on the flagship."

"Fine." She tugs the blanket from the previous night over her and turns her back to him, dehydrated porridge left otherwise untouched.

Katara tries not to think about the gold eyes burning into her back as she feigns sleep. She tries not to think about how Zuko's throat will be mottled green and indigo in the morning. She tries not to think about how on earth she's going to keep up her end of the bargain.

Not for the first time, Katara misses her brother.

Chapter Text

"Your sister is going to fail," Jet announces, throwing open the curtain that covers Sokka's doorway. Sokka, who has been minding his own business all night and is savoring his breakfast of mystery meat jerky and a large apple, sighs deeply. Chewing vigorously on an almost comically leafy twig, Jet thrusts a packet at Sokka. "But you know what? I'm suddenly feeling generous. I'm going to give her a little more time."

Sokka takes another bite of his apple, taking the packet and narrowing his eyes at the other man. "Why? Aren't you already five days behind schedule?"

Jet grins. "Yeah. You're going to pay for that stunt, by the way. Go ahead though, open it."

As he unrolls the thick scroll, Sokka feels cold dread clench around his stomach. Gold leaf embellishes the edges, and the pitch-dark script cuts the sturdy, white parchment with a nauseating elegance. "What is this," Sokka begins, forcing levity into his voice. "A wedding invitation?"

"The Fire Lord's."

Sokka freezes. "They know our location?"

Jet scoffs. "Not yet. It's from my contact in Gaoling. The Bei Fongs are practically Earth Kingdom royalty." He pauses, studying Sokka's narrowed eyes. "It's not a problem. Her parents aren't going to risk their local business partnerships to go to a wedding, no matter how good the Fire Nation's trade offers would be. They won't be using it."

This means very little to Sokka, but he nods along. "And you're feeling generous because..?"

Jet slaps him on the back, substantially harder than necessary. "Mostly because it's going to take another week to get the blasting jelly to the Fire Nation. You see, Sokka, I seem to be missing the bottom of my boat, and the guy who made it won't help me fix it."

"Guess you should have taken better care of it."

He can hear Jet's teeth grinding despite the bright smile on the other man's face. "Guess I should have taken better care of you."

Sokka shrugs.

"Toph will be here to babysit you soon so the rest of us can complete our mission." Jet snatches the wedding invitation back. "Actually, I'm grateful to you. If you hadn't sabotaged the boat, I never would have gotten this. It's our ticket into the royal palace. We have an opportunity here, Sokka. We can take our time getting everything set up and strike when people will be gathered in the capital."

"So you're going to blow up Zuko on his wedding day," Sokka drawls. "Great idea. The rest of the Fire Nation won't be upset about that at all."

"The rest of the Fire Nation won't be around to care. We'll avenge the Northern Water Tribe. Katara isn't going to stop this, Sokka, and she isn't going to survive him. Firebenders destroy everything they touch. We'll destroy them right back."

Sokka turns away. "It doesn't have to be like this, Jet. We should use the invitation to get into the palace and try to find Aang. Or we should wait for Katara to come back and hope she can at least tell us something about the Fire Nation's strategy."

Jet shakes his head. "You just don't get it, Sokka. You never have. The Fire Nation doesn't show mercy. We can't either if we want to beat them."

Slowly, Sokka squeezes his eyes shut and pulls them open again. "Katara succeeding is a long shot, but what if she does? What if she can influence the Fire Lord? We wouldn't need your plan. Jet, we could save everyone."

Laughing bitterly, Jet shakes his head. "They killed your mother. They killed my family. They're going to pay for that."

Sokka throws up his hands. "So will you, Jet. None of the freedom fighters are going to come back from this, you know that."

"No," Jet admits. "But the Fire Nation won't ever come back either." He turns on his heel then and stalks out of Sokka's quarters, leaving the door flap snapping back and forth in his wake. Sokka pitches his apple out the window. He isn't hungry anymore, and the staccato drumbeat grows ever louder in his head.

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Zuko scowls at Katara's back, the blue fabric of her tunic shaded purple in the dim moonlight. He's taken prisoners before, but never a female one, much less an old enemy-sort-of-acquaintance asking him for a favor. Never one whose tied hands are merely a formality, bound more by an uneasy, mistrustful truce than the rope looped over her wrists. Zuko is, in short, at a loss.

He shouldn't trust her, and he doesn't, really, but she's always been an honorable foe. In retrospect, if Zuko is honest with himself, more honorable perhaps than he was. She could probably kill him, or she could steal an airship in the middle of the night and get herself killed trying to sneak up on Azula or his father. This is insane, he'll admit, but at least he can tell himself he's not being a complete idiot.

He needs to get her out of his hair. Brushing his fingers over the bruises on his neck, Zuko is reminded that he's already been too trusting. When she struck, he should have been ready for her; when she pulled his blanket over her head, he should have pulled her up and chained her to a tent pole.

Azula would cackle and tell him he's too soft for this, and considering the circumstances, Zuko has to agree. But a man needs his rest, and Zuko drifts off, waking as the camp begins to stir, before the moon sinks and the sun rises.

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Aang has curled into himself, tucking his hands to his chest with his back to the bars. The guards are busy tonight, and he remembers few things so clearly as Zuko, that day, four years ago, threatening a man's family. He hated him then, this prince who could be so callous, but he understands better now. There's been time to think (too much time to think), and he wonders what decision he'd have made.

I wouldn't have captured and imprisoned anyone in the first place, a voice whispers in the back of his head.

It doesn't matter now. What matters is keeping his hands close, close enough that no one suspects he still has them. A cruel mercy. Just the same, he's grateful, and he looks down at his thin fingers, picturing them tying a new betrothal necklace around Katara's neck. He sees them brushing through her hair, gripping his glider as she clings to him above oceans and valleys.

"The Fire Lord wants all of the outer islands evacuated," a voice says, and Aang's ears perk in the dimness. "We're moving as many as we can to the colonies."

"Has he lost his mind?" Another replies. "He can't just evacuate the entire Fire Nation."

"The message was urgent," says the first. "The Ember Island Bombers, they're coming. He wants the guards around this prison and the Boiling Rock doubled."

The second man scoffs. "Why, so more of us can watch the explosions?"

"No. To keep the Avatar in your custody. Your orders are to double the guard and ensure nothing happens to the Avatar."

Aang's blood runs cold. This isn't how he wanted to be rescued. Katara can't be behind this. She can't be. He'll wait for her, he won't go with anyone else, not like this. He'll wait for soft, shining blue eyes and a kind smile, for a long braid and blue beads anchoring hair loops that caress her face in the spring breeze.

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His hand grips her elbow tightly as they crest the hill. The harbor glistens in the cold moonlight beneath them, and the ships of Zhao's fleet are a black expanse that stretches almost as far as the eye can see. Red airships cluster on the beach, engines beginning to sputter black smoke. The sky has just begun to warm, golden orange sun peeking out over the mountains to the east.

"Last chance, waterbender," Zuko murmurs. "There are four hundred ships and another two hundred airships. We don't need you to conquer the Northern Water Tribe."

The northern wind whips loose hair around her head and sends chills through her already cold bones, and Katara scrunches her toes in her boots. The frost-crusted grass beneath crunches as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other and tests Zuko's grip. "You'll lose at least a quarter of them. I'm not going anywhere."

"You're insane." Zuko's voice is louder now, and the hand on her elbow heats. "Do you even have a plan, or are you just making it up as you go?"

"You're one to talk," Katara snaps. The pressure on her elbow begins to burn, but she plants her feet and bites her lip. "And I have a plan, Zuko." Sort of. "I'm coming with you. Whether you want to admit it or not, you need me."

The aggravated sigh that bursts from him heats the air between them, but his hold loosens, just a little. "Fine. Let's go. No casualties, right?"

"Zuko?"

"Fire Lord Zuko."

Katara rolls her eyes. "Why use a title that doesn't mean anything?"

"So peasants like you remember your place." Zuko increases his pace, tugging her along.

"Stop calling me that!"

It occurs to him as they bicker (all the way down to the harbor), that stowing her away isn't going to work--she'll pop up at the most inopportune times just to harpoon him with some righteous comment, and he's been studiously avoiding Jee since two nights before. He'll be much harder to avoid on an airship. Zuko blows a short burst of fire from his nose. "Peasant."

"Zuko! You know my name! I know you know my name! You were using it yesterday."

"We all make mistakes," Zuko grumbles. "You were going to ask me something." He wonders if she remembers past all the insults she's thrown at him in the meantime.

Katara brushes hair out of her eyes with her free hand. The wind has blown much of it out of the loose Earth Kingdom half-bun, and she misses her old bone beads. "You need to give me my own room. I'm not sharing with you on an airship."

Zuko lifts his eyebrow. "Okay?"

She stops cold, and Zuko, despite his best efforts, can no longer move her forward without resorting to far, far more physical contact than he'd like to have with her, particularly in front of his entire invasion force. "Peasant! We're moving out. Keep walking."

Her ears begin to turn red. "If you don't stop calling me a peasant, I'll freeze you to this mountain and leave you here!"

Zuko jerks her elbow, and she staggers. "I need you to spare my soldiers from my father's vanity project. You might be useful for keeping the rest of my nation safe. You need me to save your precious Avatar. So, are we going to work together, or not?"

She clenches her fists and glowers at him, but they begin to descend the hill again. "Fine. But just so you know, I really hate you."

"You want to sit in a cell all the way up to the North Pole? Fine. Captain Jee!" Zuko shouts across the plain, and Katara sees an older man look up at them.

The man begins to jog to meet them, and by the time they reach the bottom of the hill, both of them are fuming. Zuko pushes her forward abruptly, and she staggers into the captain, who catches her forearms. "This is our prisoner. Take her and confine her to the prison hold in the navy flagship." He turns on his heel and begins to stalk toward the airships.

Jee stiffens. "Fire Lord Zuko, the flagship is under the direct command of Admiral Zhao--"

Zuko whirls on the captain. "So? She's a prisoner. He has cells for prisoners. Give her one."

Jee breathes in loudly. "Fire Lord Zuko, with respect, sir," but Katara can hear the tension in his voice and wonders how much he means that. "Perhaps one of the other vessels. Admiral Zhao's ship is not the place for a woman."

The two men hold each other's glares for a long moment before fire flashes from Zuko's hands. "Fine. Wherever you see fit, Captain."

Captain Jee releases her and gestures for her to follow him. Zuko storms off in the opposite direction, fire still licking at his fingertips. Funny, she thinks, how she's jumped from one unholy alliance to another.

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Mai has heard the whispers, all the little titterings of the commanders' and the generals' and the admirals' wives that the Fire Lord wears a Water Tribe betrothal necklace under his armor. They'd never deliberately speak of it in her presence, but Mai has developed a talent for sliding through the shadows. It is a small comfort that she knows it's true, and no comfort that everyone seems to know it too.

She ought to have the field surgeon banished for speaking of it first, that foolish man who had started the rumors after setting Zuko's broken arm, one bone shattered halfway between the wrist and elbow by an earthbender's boulder. He'd come home with it in a sling, apologies on his lips and an explanation far behind. No one can keep his mouth shut, he'd muttered.

Why were you wearing it?

Zuko shifted uncomfortably. I always wear it.

She fought the rough edge creeping into her voice. Why?

He shook his head. I need to finish my report. We'll talk later.

Later became a year later, and by then her impatience had turned to suspicion. Why do you wear that? She demanded. Just throw it out. Or give it to a servant.

It should be returned to its owner, he'd said. His expression was level, his voice even, but his hand drifted to his wrist.

So mail it.

Does it bother you?

Of course not, she said, because she certainly wouldn't tell him if it did.

Zuko looked at her inscrutably. "Okay. I'll see you later." And then he was gone, and Mai swallowed the tightness in her throat.

The moment comes back to her now as she feels their eyes on her, but Mai raises her chin and looks down her nose at them. She is the one marrying the Fire Lord, after all, even if whatever they had once has shriveled, atrophied, died.

I love you, he offered, a year after his return. He was seventeen, she eighteen, a few kisses and a number of secrets between them.

Do you, she'd asked, intending to tease, but the hurt on his face gives her pause.

I'm going to marry you.

How romantic, she said. Zuko's face twisted, and he turned from her, and she kicked herself for saying the wrong thing again (every time).

What do you want from me? He whispered. Just you, she thought. Nothing, she said.

And then he'd gone, and his face, his secrets, whatever that little budding love was, each of them closed to her.

She's never gotten them back, and she wonders if the sharks in the halls smell the blood in the water. Mai will be grateful when this round of war meetings is over, when the men return to battle and their wives to their homes, when the invasion is over. When Zuko comes back to her.

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To Zuko's infinite, undying annoyance, Jee has secured Katara on the lead airship, because of course he has. He glowers at the captain, who stands in front of a makeshift cell near the washroom. "Captain Jee," Zuko mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut. "She's a waterbender."

"She mentioned that," Jee says, face blank.

"So you put her in the only place on this airship with water?!"

Jee shrugs. "Our quarters are also on this section. Keep your enemies closer, sir."

Zuko groans, and if he were fifteen years younger, would stomp his foot. As it is, he reins in his temper and turns toward the waterbender. "Are you going to let me in on your plan, peasant?"

Katara snarls. "Stop calling me that, you ponytailed cretin!"

Zuko blinks. Cretin? And he was just trying to keep his hair out of his face; she didn't need to insult him for it."Well?"

Huffing, Katara crosses her arms and glares at him. "Look Zuko, if you can't be nice, just go back to ordering people around, or whatever it is Fire Lords do in their spare time."

Jee muffles a snort, and Zuko shoots him an irritable scowl. "Fine. Katara. You've had over a day to figure something out, so are you going to tell me or not?"

As she looks up at him, she tosses her hair over her shoulder with a jerk of her head. "You're getting married this summer, aren't you?"

Suspicious, Zuko narrows his eyes and takes a half=step backward. "On the summer solstice. My father expects me to conquer the Northern Water Tribe and remain there until the government is fully under our control. What does me getting married have to do with anything?"

"Yeah, but you're marrying a Fire Nation girl, right?"

"Yes?" Zuko studies her. "Obviously."

Katara takes a deep breath and fidgets. "What if you didn't marry someone from the Fire Nation. What about an alliance instead of an attack?"

Zuko rolls his eyes. "You think my father wants an alliance with some backwater, icy middle-of-nowhere tribe? He wants to conquer the world."

"The Northern Water Tribe is not backwater! The capital city is beautiful!"

"That's not the point," he says, catching himself this time before calling her a peasant. Taking a deep breath, Zuko slowly releases warmed air from his mouth, willing it not to become fire. "The point is my father wants to dominate, and this isn't going to give him that."

Katara's eyes lower and she touches the hollow in her neck, and his wrist, where her necklace rests, suddenly burns. Then she's looking back up at him through her eyelashes, and her voice is so low he has to strain to hear her. "Unless the chief cedes power to you."

Had he been drinking a cup of tea, Zuko would have sprayed it across the mess hall and summoned Uncle from wherever he was to scold him over wasting perfectly good tea. "Why would he do that?" He snaps. "He'd have to be an idiot."

Katara shrugs. "Have you ever met the chief?"

"No."

"How do you know he isn't an idiot?"

Zuko thinks he might strangle her. "This is pointless. If he were an idiot, he wouldn't be chief."

"Your father is an idiot."

Now he's really going to strangle her. Zuko's pulse throbs in his temples, and the heat in his breath is building nearly unbearably.  "You can't talk about the Fire Lord that way aboard a Fire Nation airship!"

Katara doesn't so much as blink. "I'm not a Fire Nation citizen. Treason doesn't apply to me."

Slowly, Zuko breathes out again. "Fine. So I marry the chief's heir, he abdicates, I get to be the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe."

Katara nods. "There you go."

Rolling his eyes, Zuko mulls over how best to mock her. "And you think you're special enough to talk him into this?"

No, she doesn't say, but she looks away from him and her eyes shift between him and Jee. Her hands twist around each other in front of her, and her back is rigid. "His daughter and I are friends. She can." Her eyes shift again.

Zuko studies her then, this Water Tribe girl the Avatar idolizes. She isn't what he expected, a spitfire where the Avatar had said she was calm and calculating where the Avatar had thought her gentle. For the first time, Zuko wonders where the girl she was has gone, or whether that girl had ever existed at all, and he wonders what the Avatar would think of her now.

He wonders, too, at the girl who would sell her friend for peace, at this girl who could be a match for Azula. Her necklace burns him again, hot against the thin skin of his wrist, and he turns away from her.

"I've heard worse plans. Mostly from you."

She shouts at him as he walks away, and Zuko can't help the little smile that pulls at his face.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Zuko had offered her a boat, but there's something about being totally surrounded by her element that makes her feel like an avenging goddess. As Katara speeds toward Agna Qel'a, its palatial peaks glistening in the distance, water and ice fly behind her like a blizzard. She knows the scouts will be on alert, and when a tendril of water shoots out of the sea and whirls around her, she drops her clouds and allows the bender to draw her in.

"I'm Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe," she announces when two fur-covered benders in a low rowboat emerge from behind an ice formation. "I need to talk to the Chief."

The benders exchange a glance, but they don't argue. "We'll take you to him," one says, "he'll want to know if you can tell him anything about the approaching fleet."

Stepping into the boat, Katara exhales. Her shoulders drop as the tension of the last eleven days falls away. She's on schedule, she promises herself. Jet will land on the southernmost Fire island in three more days, and she has two weeks more after that until the attack. Zuko, she'd heard in passing, had spent nearly every moment he wasn't tormenting her organizing evacuations and ordering increased patrols.

She can do this. She can keep the Fire Nation and the Water Tribe civilians alive. She has to. She just has to figure out how to make sure Jet thinks the Fire Nation surrendered, not the Water Tribe.

Suddenly, the tension is back. Katara has never missed Sokka so much.

It doesn't take long to maneuver the boat into the city, and before long, the waterbenders have brought Katara to the center of the city. She leaps off the boat, leaving the men in the canal. They order her to wait, but then she's running, sprinting for the building and taking the stairs two at a time. Katara bursts into the council meeting, moccasins sliding along the ice as she whips herself through the door. "Yue!"

The princess, white hair gleaming atop her head, stands. "Katara! What's wrong?"

Grumbling old men and posturing young men stagger to their feet in surprise, and Chief Arnook approaches his daughter, resting a hand on his her shoulder. Katara flexes her fingers, feeling for the water in the room. "We're going to stop the Fire Nation, but I need your help." She makes eye contact with Yue, begging her to listen.

"Do you know the size of the fleet?" One of the men demands. "When will it make landfall?"

"Tomorrow, around noon," Katara says. "We won't win this fight."

Murmurs echo in the large room, and then Arnook speaks. "We'll have to try. Katara, you'll start running drills with our younger students immediately. With Master Pakku gone--"

"Where's Master Pakku?"

Chief Arnook regards her solemnly. "The Earth Kingdom, we think. It seems he pulled a high-profile war criminal from the water after the last Fire Nation attack retreated. He absconded with him before we could put the man to trial."

Blinking, Katara is about to ask why when Hahn folds his arms over his chest and glares at her. "Chief," he says, the nasal tone in his voice even worse than Katara remembers, "she's not one of us. We don't have to tell her where Master Pakku is."

"I have a name, Hahn," she snaps.

Hahn ignores her. Katara feels a sudden pang--she almost misses Zuko's churlish insults in the face of it, and she can't bear to think that way. It's disloyal to her people, and that makes the bubble of anger she's always pushing down in this land so like her own burst through her mouth.

"I need to talk to Yue. So if you old gasbags don't mind, we're taking a walk!"

Yue looks between Katara and Hahn, then timidly slinks off the raised dais to Katara's side. Hustling both of them out of the building, Katara takes a deep breath of the frigid air outside. "You shouldn't have spoken to them that way," Yue chides, eyes wide.

Katara ignores her. "We need to talk," she says, frustration gone. "The Fire Nation is on its way, and I know how we can stop them."

Yue leads her to the fountain in front of the meeting building. Ice sculptures dance in its flowing water, sparkling in the sun. Sighing, Yue kneels next to the fountain. "What did you want to talk about?"

Katara sighs and crosses her arms. "I'm getting you out of your engagement."

"Look, Katara, I know you don't like Hahn, and I'm sorry about Sokka, but--"

"It's not that," Katara says, though she can't help but glance over Yue again. "Even if I really don't like Hahn."

Yue snorts, a surprisingly indelicate sound from the most ethereal woman Katara has ever known. "You know I plan to do my duty to my tribe," she says, gratingly gently.

Katara turns, beginning to pace back and forth over a small patch of still-fluffy snow. As the silence begins to stretch too long, she speaks again. "You can still do your duty. Actually, the world needs you to do this duty."

Duty, she can hear Sokka chortle in her head.

Yue lifts a thin eyebrow.

"How would you feel," Katara begins, drawing the moment where she and Yue are still friends out one more second. "About marrying the Fire Lord?"

The look on Yue's face makes her glad the princess is not a bender. "I beg your pardon?"

"You know the Fire Nation's navy and air fleet are on their way to attack the city." Yue nods. "I made a deal with Zuko."

"I didn't know you were on a first-name basis with the Fire Lord," Yue mutters.

Shrugging, Katara stops pacing. "Don't worry. I'm still 'Peasant' to him. But I might have promised him a bloodless victory if he let me enter the city without him."

If Yue's eyebrows climbed any higher, they'd be buried in her hairline. She grabs Katara's arms, holding her in place. "Are you crazy?" Yue hisses, eyes blown wide. "You want us to surrender to the Fire Nation?"

Groaning, Katara tilts her head back and seeks solace in the blue sky. "No, not exactly. I want you to pretend to surrender to the Fire Nation. Look, Yue, I need Sokka to help me figure out what to do next, but this could buy us enough time to stop the war. Your tribe could survive it, at least."

"But we'd serve the Fire Nation."

"For a while," she admits. "But not forever, Yue. I believe we can bring down the Phoenix King. We just need a little more time."

"I was hoping you'd found a reason for me to marry Sokka," Yue admits, trailing one finger in the water. "A justifiable reason to my people, I mean."

"I'm so sorry," Katara says, and she means it more than she's ever meant an apology. "I know you've been delaying getting married, Yue, but Sokka told me you were running out of ideas. You can't keep going like this."

"I don't want to marry Hahn," Yue says, tears beginning to slide down her face. "But my father has chosen him to be his successor. I'm supposed to marry him to secure it. The Fire Lord isn't really the best option for the tribe, Katara."

Gently, Katara reaches around Yue's arms, cupping her hands around the backs of the princess's upper arms. Yue tries not to flinch as Katara's hands close. "Do you think this will stop after the wedding?"

Yue looks away. They've never discussed it, the little blooms of purple that litter the backs of her arms, but Katara has seen the surreptitious, sharp pinches at dinners, at meetings, just as she's seen the panther-shark fin of his anger all over his face and the muffled pain on Yue's. Silence stretches out, and Katara drops her hands. "No," Yue sighs. "I know it won't."

"I hate Zuko," Katara says, looking Yue steadily in the eye. "I hate him. Whenever I think of the face of the enemy, it's his face. He captured the Avatar, the world's last hope for peace, and imprisoned him. And," she groans, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but he's not as big a jerk as he could be."

Yue still refuses to look at her. "And Hahn is?"

"Yes."

"If I marry the Fire Lord, he'll leave the Northern Water Tribe alone? No one will have to die?"

Katara plops down on the edge of the fountain and drops her chin into her hands. "He gave me his word. He's never broken it before."

"He could."

"Yeah," Katara agrees. "He could."

Yue visibly steels herself, and Katara feels a flash of admiration for her peer. In some ways, Yue, though neither a bender nor a warrior, is stronger than Katara thinks she could ever be.
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Sokka and Toph emerge from her tunnel near the end of the forest Jet has called home for over a decade, and Sokka finds himself relieved to see the thinning trees. "So, Toph, where are we headed, exactly?" He's almost a little afraid of the answer.

Toph shrugs. "The Fire Nation, I guess. Jet said to meet him there, but he didn't say why. I say if we get there, we get there."

Sokka narrows his eyes at her back as she pulls ahead of him. "What if we don't?"

Toph slows. "I don't care. Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, all looks the same to me. I'm just supposed to make sure you don't get lost. Apparently, you're some kind of village idiot."

Sokka squawks in indignation, but Toph only laughs, high and gleeful. He's getting the impression that she's mostly interested in messing with him. He turns them west, toward the coast, fingering the tile in his pocket and the message beside it. He would never say so, it reads (Sokka has memorized it, the message that sent Katara north, the message that he has chosen to trust). He holds a great deal of respect for your sister.

"We need to go to the Fire Nation." He counts. "Jet left a week behind schedule, and he's only been traveling for three days. If we head west, we can make it to the capital before he does."

"Whatever. You really want to go to this wedding?"

Sokka scowls. "I'm not letting Jet blow up the city, even if it is full of firebenders."

Toph comes to an abrupt stop. "Blow up the city? What are you talking about?" She spins toward him and seizes his tunic. "Are you some kind of Fire Nation sympathizer?"

"What? No!" Sokka tries to squirm out of her grasp, unsuccessfully. "Look, we can straighten this out on the way to the Fire Nation, all right?"

Sniffing, Toph lets him go. "You think there will be free snacks at this wedding?"

"Toph," Sokka says, beginning to march west. "I'm going to stop Jet from blowing up the Fire Lord's wedding, Caldera City, the Avatar, and the volcano underneath everything. There better be free snacks. With lots of meat."

"You said it."
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The sun rises on Katara's twelfth day away from Sokka.

Katara can feel the Northern Water Tribe holding its breath as Zuko's airship touches down inside the wall, though whether it's from anger that they are allowing the Fire Lord to land at all or terror that he could have let himself in had he chosen, she can't say. Yue stands next to her father, dressed in her finest lavender coat. Glittering baubles have been woven into her hair, and she looks every inch the princess. Hahn skulks behind them, rage passing over his face with every breath.

Sucking in as much of the frigid air as she can, Katara readies herself for the worst. Three waterskins are strapped to her back in spite of the water around her, and she's thought of at least three things to say to Zuko that will keep his attention on her. She doesn't believe he'll start anything, not really. Zuko is a lot of things, and single-minded is about seventy-eight of them, but she does worry about Hahn.

Hahn, who had nearly thrown a fit when Yue asked her father to accept the Fire Lord's proposal on her behalf. Hahn, whose face had turned scarlet, then purple, when Katara explained to Arnook that he would have to abdicate to his successor, the Fire Lord. Hahn, who had stood just to the side of Yue as Katara argued her case and had seized both of her arms and pinched until she squirmed when Arnook had agreed. Hahn, who had ground his engagement necklace beneath his foot when it was returned to him.

Katara had begged Arnook to leave him behind. The council didn't need to be there, she'd argued; Hahn has a conflict of interest. But Arnook had been firm--his former successor must see how arrangements with other nations are made. The Fire Lord will need a governor, he assumes, and Hahn will be just the man for the job. Arnook would approve the marriage, but Hahn is to keep as much of his position as possible. So, she'd dashed off a message to Zuko, asking him and whatever bridal gifts he could come up with to enter the city. She hopes he has the good sense not to try to capture her messenger.

Why Arnook is so fond of Hahn, however, Katara cannot fathom.

Zuko emerges from the airship when it settles, flanked by Zhao, Jee, and two firebending guards. He seems to be on edge, and his bow to the Chief is too shallow, his arm clasp too short. The Northerners fuss quietly, offended, but Chief Arnook welcomes the firebenders anyway.

Ultimately, Katara volunteers to chaperone the meeting of the bride and groom, and to oversee the giving of the bridal gifts. She thinks the tribe is grateful. Arnook looks at his daughter sadly before slipping away.

Zuko orders the men to stay with the airship, and Katara and Yue lead him to the oasis. No sense turning his fingers blue at this stage.
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A shadow falls over the Avatar where he sits, hunched and silent. Aang looks up, and Ozai looms above him--the first time he's come to visit the Avatar since the boy's capture. The Phoenix King has never seen fit to lower himself to speaking directly with a prisoner of war.

"Hello, Avatar," Ozai says, coolly. The sound sends shivers down Aang's back.

Just the same, Aang doesn't want to take any unnecessary risks. Not now. Not when he can nearly taste escape on his tongue. Not when the guards have whispered that the Fire Lord has reached the Northern Water Tribe, too far away to do anything for Aang now. "Hello, Your Majesty the Phoenix King."

Ozai laughs. "Well, you are on good behavior. Excellent."

The shiver rises up his back this time. Aang waits.

"The Northern Water Tribe is nearly mine," Ozai announces, smugness radiating from him like light from the sun. "The Southern Water Tribe is destroyed. I won't have any use for you, much longer."

Aang's eyes widen. Ozai smiles, and Aang can count his teeth.
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It's just like Zuko. Katara roils with irritation. Of course he'd bring bridal gifts for the whole tribe. Coal to warm their hearths, indeed. What is Yue supposed to do with coal when she follows him to the Fire Nation, exactly? Oh, that's right, nothing. What was she supposed to do with bomb powder and blasting jelly when she would never see a battlefield? Frame them? Pearl diving, Zuko! The Fire Nation is full of oysters!

Zuko blinks at her tirade. Yue muffles a giggle behind her mitten. "You could have told me about bridal gifts before I was stuck in the middle of the ocean, Katara!" In a flash of irritation, Zuko tugs off his coat, throwing it into the grass. "You gave me one night! What did you expect me to do? Fly back to the Fire Nation, jump into the ocean, and bring back a bag of mollusk-oysters by morning?"

Well, he's got her there.

Yue gasps. "What happened to your neck?" With the thick collar of his coat gone, Zuko's neck, and the ring of bruises around it, are visible above the neckline of his tunic, a casual, dark red wool thing that has no business here, at his first meeting with his betrothed. Katara sighs. She's been spending too much time up north the last few years.

Zuko rolls his eyes, a bit dramatically for Katara's taste, and inclines his head in her direction. Yue looks at her, incredulous. Katara shrugs. "He deserved it."

"I did not," Zuko snaps.

Sipping tea to hide her smile, Katara does not respond.

Zuko, Katara realizes, is not a particularly talented conversationalist. Yue, bless her, has tried nearly everything to get him to open up about himself, but after nearly an hour of single-word answers, she's resorted to chatting about herself. Katara lounges comfortably against a mossy rock, watching Zuko's face drift between mild interest and utter boredom.

The worst part is that Yue is painfully aware that she and Zuko have precious little in common (apart from a crushing sense of filial piety, in Katara's opinion). All three of them are almost relieved when Admiral Zhao, seemingly thinking himself sneaky, tiptoes into the oasis. He freezes when he sees the three of them. The relief doesn't last long.

Zhao blasts them with an enormous wall of fire, sending them scrambling. He dives for the pond in the center of the oasis, and when he rises, he holds the white fish in one hand. "Your little game is over, Fire Lord," he purrs, smiling wickedly at Zuko. "The navy is waiting outside the walls. At my signal, they attack."

"The moon spirit," Yue gasps. She looks at Zuko pleadingly. "He has to put it back."

"What signal, Zhao," Zuko asks, and Katara can see weariness in his face.

"You'll see." Zhao's eyes blaze, and he pulls his arm back to fire. "When I become Zhao the Moon Slayer."

"Listen to Yue, Zuko," Katara demands. "The tribe won't honor your agreement if the moon spirit dies."

"Put the fish down, Zhao," Zuko snarls. "You lost hundreds of men during the last siege. We'll lose thousands more if you do this."

Zhao laughs darkly. "Not I, Fire Lord Zuko. Your uncle."

"What are you talking about?"

"You think no one on board my ship was watching for icebergs? No. No, it came out of nowhere, summoned by the northern waterbenders to attack my ship. Long before they should have known our position."

"My uncle is dead."

"You don't really believe that," Zhao says. "I know you've been asking around. I know you think that old man is out there somewhere. I know he's right here, hiding after he sold out the Fire Nation."

Zuko roars, launching himself at Zhao, who drops the fish back into the pond. The fish returns to its dance with the black fish, and Katara feels like she can breathe again. Zuko struggles with Zhao, limbs tangling and twisting as they both try to get the upper hand. She pulls water from her pouches and sends it streaming past Zuko to cuff Zhao to the ground, though by the time the water reaches them it doesn't seem to be much needed. Zuko has pinned the older admiral, who squirms and snarls like a caged animal.

"Zuko, get off of him," she shouts, pulling more water to herself and standing over them. Zuko looks up at her with wild eyes, and she jerks her head. "Go. Take Yue home. I'll deal with him."

She underestimates Zhao's determination. Maybe he really does want to be Zhao the Moon Slayer. Maybe he just wants to spite Zuko. Whatever it is, she'll never know because as soon as Zuko lets go, Zhao melts the ice cuffs in an instant and lunges for the pond, sending a gout of flame into the water even as Zuko is on him again, pulling him back down into the grass and smashing his face into the dirt.

Even so, the moon goes red, and Katara feels her bending leave her.