Chapter Text
Katara stared at the young man on the ground in front of her, bathed in an unnatural green light. The features of his angular face accented by an angry red scar, covering the left side of his face. It perfectly matched his interior- a cold, soulless heart, fighting for the destruction of peace. “Zuko,” Katara quipped. The young man stared back blankly. He wasn’t much older than Katara, no older than eighteen. “Of course they would lock me in here with you.” She turned her back on the firebender, her nose scrunched with disgust. The boy was silent, maintaining the look of a kicked seal-turtle. “Well? You don’t want to shoot any fireballs at me?”
“I…”
“What?” Katara snapped, her fists balled at her side. Her nose was scrunched with disdain. She couldn’t believe her luck. Getting stuck with an evil firebender, captured by Azula. Separated from her friends and family. And now she was stuck with the bane of her existence, the Crowned Prince of the Fire Nation. The physical representation of every horrible thing that has befallen her tribe for the past hundred years. His amber eyes gleamed in the neon colors of the cavern.
“Now that you actually have me cornered, you suddenly DON’T want to kill me?” She flung the words from her mouth as concisely as the ice daggers she had long since perfected. The air around her was crisp, the moisture freezing in time with Katara’s temper.
“I never would have hurt you, any of you.” She could barely hear what he said. His face was turned away, head hanging low. His shaggy hair barely reached below his ears, a far cry from the bald ponytail look he had been sporting for the better part of a year. He looked slightly- every so slightly- more human this way.
“Oh, that’s rich. What about when you kidnapped Aang and almost got BOTH of you killed in a blizzard? You would have died if he hadn’t insisted on saving you!”
Zuko remained quiet, sitting in his pensive silence. His fingers flitted against the seam of his Earth Kingdom robes, targeting an edge that had started to fray. The air was almost blistering cold now.
“I mean, you chased us around the entire world, for months. You burned down my friend’s village. You helped them kill the Moon Spirit- you know, another friend of mine died that night too. Because of you and your people!” She spat out the last word, filling it with as much poison as she could muster. Her eyes burned, and she tried to blink away the tears. But Zuko still just sat there, silently, his face turned away.
“You can’t even defend yourself? No words about honor, or destiny, or how I’m just a peasant who doesn’t know anything about the pressures of royalty? You’re being pathetic.” The teenage boy turned slightly, looking up at the waterbender from his good eye, curtained by his hair. “I’m sorry,” his voice was hoarse with emotion. “I shouldn’t have called you that.” He drew a shaky breath and closed his eyes. Katara pretended not to see the moisture gathered there. “I won’t try to… excuse anything I’ve done. I think… I think I was wrong. I thought if I just brought The Avatar home, my family would love me. But I found him, and my sister still betrayed me. My father still wanted me in chains.” His gaze trailed to the uneven ground, littered with rocks and crystals. It might have been a beautiful place, if it wasn’t for the circumstances.
“Good. Maybe a little solitary confinement would be good for your sanity. Maybe it would teach you not to, you know, kidnap people. You said you wouldn’t hurt us, but what do you think your father would have done to Aang? Do you think the Fire Lord would have let him live? And even if he did, do you think it would have been pleasant? You killed his people. Murdered them in cold blood. You went to their homes and murdered all of them, I’m the- I.. He’s the last of his people, because of you.”
Zuko glanced up, golden eyes meeting blue for a split second before training themselves on a crystal lodged into the dirt. He stayed silent, but his eye was pained.
“You know…” Katara started, forcing down the lump in her throat. “You- your people, they killed my mother. Murdered her. Right in our home. Left her dead body on the floor, bleeding on a rug she had just finished a few days ago.” The lump returned with a ferocity, paired with the memory of her mother’s body. She sniffled, hot tears beginning to trail down her cheeks. She sat on the lumpy earth, pressing her palms into her eyes to try to stop the flow. Her quiet gasps echoed through the cavern. She knew it wasn’t weak to cry, but doing it in front of your sworn enemy was definitely embarrassing.
She sat in silence for an indeterminate amount of time, there was no sunlight to measure how long it had been since she had been thrown down here. The quiet wasn’t quite as uncomfortable as she expected it to be, even after lashing out and crying in front of Fire Nation royalty. He hadn’t been as jerk-ish as she figured he would be. Just… silent, and mopey. Even though she couldn’t tell what time it was, Katara felt as though it must be getting dark outside. The air had a crispness to it, that wasn’t caused by her bending. She wondered if she should try to sleep, or if that would be a dangerous mistake with Zuko right there. He said he wouldn’t hurt her, but she couldn’t exactly trust his word. There was no telling how long they would be locked down here,
“Uhm,” She glanced up, meeting Zuko’s eyes. He looked uncertain, nervous even. “My mother.” He continued. “I mean, that’s something we have in common. The Fire Nation took her from me too. She disappeared one night, I don’t know… I haven’t heard from her, no one has. I don’t think I’ll ever know what my father did with her. If she’s even…” Katara stared at him. He looked different. He looked like an unsure boy, her own age, who had suffered like she had. She realized not even the perpetrators of this cursed war would come out unscarred. The Fire Lord must really be a heartless monster if he would… dispose… of his own wife so callously. Honestly, it almost made sense that Zuko was the way he was. He could have even been worse. Like Azula.
All things considered, she couldn’t recall Zuko actually hurting anyone. Yes, he did burn down Suki’s village. And he kidnapped Aang at the Spirit Oasis. He still stole her mother’s necklace. But from what she saw, he hadn’t killed anyone. Unlike his father. She reached over, setting her hand against his arm.
“I’m sorry.” She said simply. She knew, better than anyone, there weren’t enough words for what a mother’s loss would make you feel. Zuko startled at the sudden contact, and looked at Katara with a face full of shock.
It was definitely nighttime. The chamber was cold, and silent outside of the occasional drip. Though she enjoyed the chill, the ground was rather uncomfortable. Her stomach was beginning to gnaw anxiously, she was worried Azula and the Dai Li would leave her here to slowly starve. Though the quiet that had fallen over the duo was now fairly companionable, it was still… boring. She was laid on her side, back facing the prince. Her shoulder was barely in between several hard rocks.
“Are you awake?”
She rolled onto her back, turning her head to look at the scarred face she had grown to hate. “No.” She replied bluntly. He caught her gaze, uncertainty swimming in his eyes. “Well,” he swallowed. “If you were awake, I would have asked you something.”
Katara sighed. “Okay well, maybe I’m awake now.”
“I was just… what… uhm.” Katara cleared her throat. Since when is the crown prince awkward and nervous? He never hesitated like this when he was hunting her friends.
“Changed my mind, I’m asleep again.” To punctuate her statement, she rolled back on her side. They were maybe half a dozen feet apart. The cavern itself was fairly large, about the size of her home in the South Pole.
“What’s your favorite memory of your mom?” Katara stayed silent for a moment, then two. It had been a long time since someone had asked about her mother. Sokka didn’t like talking about her. Aang hadn’t asked before, either. It never really came up with Toph.
“It was… this one Spring day. There was still snow everywhere, but some days could get pretty warm. That day was.” She stayed on her side. “We were out for a walk, just us. My dad had taken my brother on some hunting trip, so my mom wanted to help me practice a bending move a friend had shown her some time ago. You know, she wasn’t a bender. But she was so passionate about the history. That day she told me about Tui and La, the Ocean and Moon Spirits. How waterbenders learned our bending. How we followed the push and pull of the tides. She taught me how to feel the flow in my body. We spent hours beside the water, her encouraging me. She told me about her friends who fought in the war, and how being a waterbender meant you had to be brave.”
A few stray tears ran down Katara’s cheek. She truly missed her mother. No one had shown her so much strength, passion, no one had believed in her so much. As much as she learned during her months with Master Pakku, he would never be able to compare to what her mother taught her. Master Kya, her father would call his wife.
“That was right before she… I mean, we went home and she taught me how to sew. She had been working on a new pelt for our home. Sokka’s first successful hunt. She even let me make a few stitches.” She smiled. “When our dad and Sokka came home, they showed us everything Sokka learned. I showed him what I learned. We had a big dinner sitting on that pelt, it was… it was the happiest I’ve ever been.”
She rolled over, and clasped her hands over her stomach. She looked at Zuko, a shadow of a smile still on her face. “Why do you ask?”
He held her stare, the glowing rocks illuminating his face and casting strange shadows.
“I just wanted to know. You know, the Fire Nation… my people. I just think it’s important to know everyone’s story.” He sighed. “When my mother disappeared, we weren’t allowed to talk about her. Me and my sister, we… y’know, we didn’t talk much after that. She was attached to my father at the hip. Maybe she was scared he would disappear, too. But she hasn’t been the same since. I wonder if we had talked about our mom more, just. Maybe things would have been different.”
Now Zuko was facing the wall of the cavern. His voice had been shaky. But Katara knew what he meant. Sokka and her dad didn’t really want to talk about her mom much, after she passed. GramGram would, but the conversations were always sad, and Katara didn’t like making her sad. Eventually she just stopped talking about her mom. It wasn’t worth the pain.
“Well, what about you? What’s your favorite memory with her?”
Zuko took a sharp breath in response to Katara’s question. Would Sokka believe her if she told him the enemy has feelings, too?
“Honestly, it isn’t too different from yours. It was warm out, but the Caldera almost always is. It was in the fall, not too humid, no sweltering heat. I had tried to show off for my grandfather, Fire Lord Azulon. You know, Azula was named after him. She was his favorite. A real prodigy, a namesake to make her grandfather proud.” He grinned somewhat bitterly. “She was always learning these advanced firebending techniques, even though she was younger than me. I just wanted to make someone proud. Maybe my dad, maybe my grandfather. Maybe her. But I failed. It was pretty bad. I got sent away from the throne room. Azula mocked me, my grandfather was ashamed. But my mother… My sweet mother.” This time, when he smiled, it was genuine. “She told me, I was someone stronger than anyone else. That, when I failed, I just kept trying. And she admired that about me. We didn’t practice any bending- my mother was a nonbender, too- but she had me play her the tsungi horn. We talked almost the whole night. About how I had talents outside of firebending, and that it was okay to have more than one passion. To wander from the beaten path, she said. That day, she had me enrolled for sword fighting classes with a master outside of the Caldera. She disappeared the next day.” He frowned. “Even though I never got to show her my progress, I still trained. I went every summer, and thought of her with every new move I learned, every time my master praised me. I like to think she would have been proud. I only got to spend a few summers there, though. It wasn’t too long after she disappeared that I got…”
He trailed off, his hand reaching up to graze the scar that spread across half of his face. Katara watched. She had never wondered about the story behind his scar, but it was hard not to now. She wouldn’t ask, but she could wonder.
“She sounds like a wonderful woman.” Katara whispered.
“Your mother does, too.” Zuko whispered back. They stared at each other for a moment. Katara turned her head to stare at the ceiling. She watched the glowing crystals embedded there, imagining she was back home, tracing constellations and reciting their stories. She didn’t even realize it when she drifted off to sleep.