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“I thought you threw away your Blue Spirit mask.”
“I did. Or—one of them.” Zuko rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. “This one belonged to my mother.”
All at once, his distress falls into place. His last memento from his mother lies in shards on the cold stone floor. Of course he would be upset.
Katara rests her hand on his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do?”
For a few moments, he is both silent and still before he sweeps the shards into a bin. “Could you throw it away? I don’t think I can.”
Katara isn’t sure why she keeps the pieces. For a few days, they languish, half-forgotten in the bottom of a trunk. Then she finds a bit of glue, and when Iroh finds her crying over the cracks she can’t hide, he offers his favorite teacup as consolation.
“There are ways,” Iroh tells her, “to make broken things more beautiful than ever before. If you would like to learn, you need only to ask.”
The rivers of gold crisscrossing the cup in her hands are all the proof she needs. “Show me. I know Zuko would do the same for me.”
When the mask is finally mended, all its gaps and cracks filled in and polished smooth, Katara tries to choose her moment. The spot on the wall is still left blank, so conspicuous in its bareness that she catches Zuko staring at it.
That is when she comes forward, mask concealed behind her back, and rests her chin atop his shoulder. “We should hang something new there. Don’t you think?”
He turns as though to argue, but when she produces the mask for him to see, he freezes in place.
“Yes,” he whispers at long last. “I think we should.”