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To say that Katara hates the newest member of their group would be an understatement.
She loathes Zuko.
She thought she did before Ba Sing Se. She thought that her anger and hostility towards him couldn't get higher until their shared moment of vulnerability. When she'd genuinely opened her heart to him, tried to see him and past his faults, she'd thought that maybe there was more to him than the words enemy and danger.
Her mistake cost her Aang. It almost cost her everything.
Her hatred before was hot. Simmering. Now it is fueled by her grief. It's fueled by hours and days and weeks spent pouring her energy, her soul, her life into the tiny body of a boy that is too young to be dealing with this, too young to be so pale, too young to have been filled with electricity. It's fueled by nights of sobbing at the bedside of her best friend, pushing past her limits and her limited knowledge of healing just to keep his lungs pumping air.
Katara's hatred has long lost its heat. Where mom's body burned, Aang's was cold. Now, too, ice runs in her veins like the floes at the poles. The visible parts of the ice doesn't even compare to the sheer depth of her contempt for Zuko.
Perhaps it's unfair to lump the war on him. Perhaps he's just an easy target.
She's past caring about fair.
Fair died the day Aang did.
The moment he slips up, she vows, watching him like the moon watches the world at night, the moment he slides backwards again, he's out of second chances. His pathetic attempts at making jokes don't mean anything to her. Once it might have endeared him to her, but that was before he got her friend killed. His furtive, spooked glances in her direction every time she spits venom at him fill her with neither vindication nor shame.
He deserves to be scared. The moon may forgive, but the ocean tides do not. She's been pulling back for so long, and when the tide comes in, she will push with all her might.
Katara can't lose her family again. She's scared.
Deep down, she's terrified. She knows she can be ruthless. The full moon haunts her in Hama's voice, calls her, lets her feel the flow of blood nearby, the way the water moves in the air, in the plants, calls to her stronger than the water in her bending skin. She feels the blood pumping through Zuko's veins when he sits too close, and it would be so easy to just.
Reach out.
And make him walk off that cliff.
She made the vow.
(She's not sure she'll come out of it if he pushes her. Under Yue's gentle light, Hama's voice in her ears, she begs him in her mind not to with tears running down her face.)
(She never, ever wants to hold someone's heart in her hands again.)
If it's Zuko's, it doesn't matter, she tells herself.
(The tiny voice that sounds like Aang in her head whispers, you're hurting yourself.)
(Maybe she hates herself too.)
(It's hard to tell, anymore.)
Aang goes with Zuko to get Zuko's firebending back.
Alone.
Not even Toph pokes her. Katara prowls back and forth, seething and roiling and boiling like an angry, trapped fish. She is not happy. She's on edge, both physically and mentally, as she paces the cliffside and watches for the slightest sign of Appa. Any chore she tries to do ends up utterly ruined. Her stitches are huge and ugly. The stew she makes for lunch nearly attacks Sokka on its own. Nobody is willing to go near the fountain out of fear for their own safety. It's probably for the best.
Aang and Zuko come back and do a silly dance. Everyone laughs at how Zuko protests that the dance literally called The Dancing Dragon is not a dance. There's not a scratch on Aang's body.
The full moon passes. Katara stops feeling the movement of Zuko's blood.
She barely notices. She's watching him.
One slip. Just one.
He brought back dad.
Hakoda's presence is a balm on her nerves. The moment Katara sinks into his big warm arms, she is once again a little girl instead of a woman. She is not the adult with everyone's safety and health riding on her shoulders. She is not the caretaker who cooks for the entire group, not the one soothing The Duke's hair back as he sobs for Pipsqueak in the dead of night, not the raging murderer her bending has her convinced she will be.
She's just Katara, and she is fourteen, and she does not have to be the adult. She will soon, but for this moment, she melts.
Dad is dad. Even though she was miffed at him for leaving, and he didn't know her as well as he used to, he's still dad. He still recognizes when Katara is stretched tighter than a seal skin on a tanning rack. It's dad who cooks dinner, even if he does get Zuko's help to maintain the temperature of the fire, and it's dad who makes that new guy- Chit Sang, or whatever his name was- help him do the dishes. For the first time in what feels like weeks, months, years, who knows- Katara relaxes. And she sleeps deeply, tucked up underneath dad's arm, Sokka snoring away on the other side of the broad chest that isn't as big as it once was, but still retains that same salty smell and comforting feeling.
She still hates Zuko. But for the first time since Ba Sing Se, she's willing to cut him a little slack. She tells herself it's because she has dad's reliable eyes and hands to take him down if need be.
(It's... more that she feels safe now. Dad is a wall that Zuko can't break. She sees the way Zuko skirts around Hakoda and defers to him with shaking fingers.)
(Zuko is more scared of Hakoda than he is of her, she realizes distantly, numbly, and is shocked by how much that comforts her. She's too tired and stressed and worn out from her anger to think about why.)
It's the third day since Sokka and Zuko brought Dad back. Zuko and Aang have just finished training for the day, and are walking back to the group while Sokka catches Hakoda up on what's happened since he was imprisoned. Somehow, they're on the topic of Azula's ability to generate lightning.
"I don't think I've ever seen anyone else use it," Sokka says, folding his arms with a frown. "We're in big trouble if we go to storm the palace and there's, like, a bajillion guys with zappy fingers."
Katara shudders. She can't-
She can't bring Aang back again. Not only does she not have any spirit water left, but- she knows. She knows he won't come back from a second hit like that.
"That's not happening," Zuko cuts in.
Her head snaps to stare at him. He flinches slightly. She doesn't have it in her to feel vindicated or darkly satisfied at his reaction right now.
"What do you mean?" Aang asks, bouncing on his heels and genuinely curious. There's relief on his face, though, hidden underneath his cheerful expression.
Zuko takes a deep breath. "Lightning is... it's a highly advanced technique. Not even most masters will get the handle on it- it takes a select few that can separate the positive and negative energies and keep them in balance. Uncle called it a pure expression of firebending, because unlike most firebending, which is influenced by emotions, lightning... isn't."
Aang's eyes are wide. "Balance? Do you think I could...?"
Katara's heart drops. But Zuko shakes his head.
"Not in a million years. You're too..."
"Too what?" Katara asks, snidely.
"Too innocent," Zuko mumbles.
Everyone kind of. Blinks. Digests that. Katara looks at Sokka, who shrugs, then at dad, but dad- Hakoda looks like he understands, somehow, and suddenly Katara is grateful that The Duke, Teo, and Haru are off dragging Chit Sang around the temple. Suki has that contemplative look on her face that says she's reaching the same conclusion dad came to.
It's Toph who says it, blunt as always. "It's a killing technique."
Aang blanches. Zuko nods, face set and serious.
"I only know of three firebenders who can generate it," Zuko says. "Azula, obviously, Uncle, and... Ozai."
Aang has gone even paler. He swallows and forces some liveliness back into his voice. "Not you?"
Zuko's laugh is sudden and unnatural. Hakoda shifts, and the look on his face has Katara reaching for her water skin, but Toph puts a hand over Katara's and shakes her head. Katara scowls- until she looks at Zuko's face.
Her fingers fall. Zuko, somehow, is whiter than Aang is. He has his arms folded like he's standing proud, but his hands are tucked inward like he's hugging himself. He looks young like this, she realizes, and shoves the thought away. Then she brings it back, because, hatred or not, it's true. Zuko isn't that much older than she is. She can't deny the truth just because she has a grudge.
"Lightning requires peace of mind," Zuko spits. "It requires you to have absolute control over yourself and to know who you are. Does that sound like me?"
Katara wants to snap not in a million years, buddy, but it dies on her tongue. Zuko smirks, bitter, but confident.
"I can redirect it, though."
Sokka sits bolt upright. Aang has passed through terrified and come out on the side of hope and awe. Zuko holds out a hand to him. Katara politely ignores how his fingers tremble.
"I'll teach you that, but not yet. You're not ready."
"How come?" Aang asks, eyes wide.
Zuko's breath hitches. Hakoda's eyes narrow.
"Because," Zuko says, very carefully, eyes flitting around the room before they drop to the fire, "if you don't understand the flow of chi in your veins. If you- holding that much energy, it's... it's terrifying. One wrong move, and it's over. You're a quick study, Aang, but... I can't. I can't let you learn that yet."
Katara thinks of blood. She thinks of a full moon. She thinks of the feeling of Hama's withered old bones bending under her will.
"You've redirected it before," Katara realizes.
Zuko flinches.
For the first time, Hakoda speaks. "Who was it?"
Zuko's eyes flick to him. He swallows. Dimly, Katara wonders what would happen if she told dad about bloodbending. She wonders if his face would look just as closed off.
"Zuko," Hakoda says, and his voice is so, so gentle even as his eyes are filled with whalebone and tar. "The only people you listed who can generate lightning are your family. If one of them shot lightning at you..."
Oh.
Oh shit.
Katara dimly registers Toph's hand reaching out for her own. Sokka is rapidly turning green.
Zuko's mouth opens. It shuts. His hands run through his messy, shaggy hair. He's a mess, and all they've done is sit here and talk.
"My father," Zuko breathes. "The- on the day of the eclipse. It was- I was stupid. I confronted him while he couldn't bend, so he couldn't... so he had to listen to me. I- I needed closure. He... I'm so stupid. He stalled me by talking about- about my mother."
I'm sorry. That's something we have in common.
He hadn't been lying.
Katara... knows, logically, that Zuko hasn't lied about a single thing since he showed up at the Western Air Temple. He's made good on his word on every single thing he's done. He can't tell a joke to say his life, and he lies even worse. It's like the very act of telling a fib is a foreign language that he only knows a single word in.
So she knows. Logically. That Zuko had told her the truth in Ba Sing Se, surrounded by enemies and buried under the earth. She hadn't wanted to believe it.
She wants to scream at him. To tell him he has no right to be emotional over this. That his people took her mother away from her, that he took Aang from her. How dare he.
His father tried to kill him by dangling his dead mother over his head.
"...How did you lose her?" Katara says, and it's the softest she's ever spoken to him.
"Katara," Sokka hisses. She ignores him.
Zuko's legs wobble. Aang drags him closer to the fire and pulls him down, and he buckles like a puppet with the strings cut. Nobody moves to get closer to him. Aang leaves his hands on Zuko's arm, neither gripping nor hovering. Just resting.
"When I was ten," the former Crown Prince of the Fire Nation says, "I went from being fifth in line to the throne to second overnight."
Fantastic storytelling. Gut punch right out of the gate. Good job, Zuko.
His eyes flutter for a second. Aang moves one of his hands and rests it on Zuko's back, and suddenly the former prince seems to remember that he needs to breathe. Katara hasn't taken her eyes off of him, but she catches the way Dad's hands twitch in that way of his that says he's restraining himself. She knows the feeling. He's where she gets it from.
"My- Uncle was Crown Prince, at the time," Zuko stilts. "The seige of Ba Sing Se was- it was his greatest accomplishment, they said. My cousin, Lu Ten... Uncle's son. He... well, it's war. And you don't... you don't always get a body back. Especially against earthbenders. No offense, Toph, I- I mean, it's just-"
"It's okay, Sparky," Toph murmurs. "Keep going."
Zuko ducks his head. He takes another breath at Aang's prompting, and obeys. "Uncle lost any and all zeal for war that day. That's- that's not my story to tell. When we got the letter, my- Father, he, uh, he made us gather in front of my Grandfather, Fire Lord Azulon. He had Azula show off her firebending and her knowledge of war tactics."
Azula, Katara notes, but not Zuko.
"Grandfather ordered us out of the room, with Father behind to talk. Azula grabbed my hand and- she's always been good at... at picking up situations. We hid behind a pillar. And, uh... we eavesdropped Ozai asking the Fire Lord to make him Crown Prince, stating that Uncle was weak, and heirless. That's- it was really bad."
"No kidding!" Toph snarls. Her fingers are digging into Katara's hand- not that she cares much at the moment. Katara is too focused on the way Zuko's hands are twisting around each other and picking at his skin with a slight heat haze around his fingertips. "What a tactless prick! Uncle had just lost his son and he calls him weak!?"
Zuko swallows. "That's. That's not why it was bad. I mean, it was, but- it's basically treason. Depending on the Fire Lord, the punishment- it could have been anywhere from my Father being struck down then and there, to all of us being killed, or imprisoned. I couldn't... I ran away. I couldn't listen to it. Not an hour later, Azula comes flouncing into my room, singing Dad's going to kill you."
He pitches his voice up to something sickly sweet with faux innocence. Toph and Suki look ready for murder.
Katara stares at him.
She knows where this is going.
Hakoda and Sokka do, too.
"We... argued. I didn't- I didn't want to admit that she was right. Azula always lies. Azula always lies... except when the truth hurts worse."
Toph's head turns in Sokka's direction. Sokka looks in Suki's, then back at Zuko.
"Your sister's kind of messed up," Sokka says.
The heat mirage around Zuko's hands gets stronger for a moment. "She wasn't always," he whispers.
Katara doesn't want to hear it. She doesn't want to imagine Azula ever being innocent. She's having a hard enough time humanizing Zuko at the moment, even though his familiar pain is slowly working its way through the cracks in her hatred like water between tightly packed stones.
(Just how deep did it go?)
"...Mom heard us," Zuko says, and Katara distinctly notes the term difference. Not mother. Mom. Father, Zuko seems to be struggling to separate between Fire Lord and Ozai, as if he's trying to distance himself, but Mom rolls off his tongue easily. "She dragged Azula out to talk, and I... guess I was so scared I tired myself out and fell asleep. That was... that was the last time I saw her. The next morning, Fire Lord Azulon was dead, Ozai was Fire Lord, and any and all traces of mom were removed. Her paintings, her favorite theatre scrolls- Father ripped her favorite hair pin right out of Azula's hand. Cut her palm. She, uh. Started producing blue fire on the spot."
Hakoda's twitching hands fist his pants. Katara's own hand feels like Toph is actively trying to break her fingers. The calmest person in the room is probably Suki, who's looking at Zuko like he's a puzzle with pieces slotting into place.
Zuko, who takes a shallow breath, then a deeper one at Aang's silent insistence.
How the teacher eats his own words, Katara thinks.
"...The day of the eclipse... Ozai told me the truth. Fire Lord Azulon was furious that my Father would suggest such a thing about his favored son. He wanted Ozai to feel Uncle's pain, so he ordered him to kill me. And he was happy to."
A crack appears in the armor.
"Mom... mom made him a deal. In exchange for my life, she'd put him on the throne. So- so she did. And he banished her."
Mom, I'm scared.
Go get your father, sweetie. I'll handle this.
Zuko chokes on air. Breathes again for a moment. He doesn't seem to notice that Aang has interwound their fingers together.
"She's- she's alive," Zuko croaks. "For six years, I thought- I thought my mother was dead, but she's alive, and then he shot lightning at me. And I- I caught it. I held death in my fingers, and my father tried to kill me, and if I made one wrong move it would go through my heart, but all I could think was that it would be so easy."
Katara's eyes widen.
Lightning is like bloodbending.
"So easy," she whispers, horrified.
Sokka shoots her a look, his pale face draining of whatever color it had left. He looks at Dad, then back, and starts shaking his head. She teases him for being stupid, but her big brother is incredibly smart.
"You could have killed him."
Zuko fists his hand in his hair. His good eye is wide, glossy, wet. Molten gold, Katara thinks.
"All I had to do was lift my hand just a little bit more," Zuko says. His voice isn't quiet anymore. "I could have ended it all. The war, the suffering, the needless deaths, nobody would know, because I can't fucking bend lightning! He would never have been able to lay a hand on m- o-on Azula, or me, or anyone ever again, I wouldn't have to dream about him burning me, or the way mom used to flinch, or- or the way he throws human life away like broken toys. All that gloating, his plans for the comet- I could have stopped it. If I'd raised my hand a little higher."
Katara watches herself fold inward as Zuko rips his hand from Aang's, thrusts it in his hair, and yanks. She hears her own sobs the night she forced Hama to her knees as Zuko hunches over himself with his nails in his scalp and tears dripping from only one eye.
He can't-
He can't cry from half his face.
Can he even see from that eye?
"You didn't," Aang murmurs.
"No!" Zuko shrieks. "I didn't! Because I'm- I'm useless, and a fucking failure, and weak, but that's not-"
His breath hitches.
"That's not who I am," Zuko sobs into a whisper. "I don't want to be like him. I don't want to be angry anymore. I've done so many horrible things because I thought maybe he'd love me, but all I was doing was lying to myself, because he's hated me since I was born. I don't want anyone to be scared of me anymore. I could have ended the war right then and there, but if I did, I- I don't think I'd ever recover."
Katara's armor cracks.
She's moving before anyone registers it. She doesn't pull him into a hug, because she still doesn't like him, but she does take his hands and uncurl them from his hair. Aang winces as several strands rip from Zuko's scalp. It's unavoidable. His fingers are so tense he physically can't let go.
She works with him anyway. Pulls his hands down to his lap. Unhooks her water skin from her side and pops the cork, then presses it between his sweaty palms.
"Drink," she orders.
Something she's noticed about Zuko is that he follows orders really well. He stumbles and trips if the choice is left up to him, but if he's told what to do, he does it immediately and to the letter. She'd thought it annoying, at first. It grated on her like everything else about him did.
Now, though, she thinks she's starting to understand.
The waterskin makes it up to Zuko's lips. He barely gets a gulp in before he chokes on it. Katara grabs his hand less gently than she ought to and forces him to take smaller, spaced out sips. He gives her a plaintive look that's so apologetic it reminds her of a kicked penguinotter.
"I'm sorry," he whispers hoarsely. "In- in Ba Sing Se, I- Azula promised me I could go home. It was easier to hurt you again than it was to accept something I already knew was the truth. What you offered- that was one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me, Katara. And I turned around and burned you. It's not an excuse- never- but I- I want to take responsibility for my actions."
"I don't forgive you," Katara says.
"I don't want you to."
"Stop beating yourself up for being a survivor."
Zuko pulls up short. Aang looks like she's hung the moon. Katara looks between them and almost snorts. Instead, she pulls back, retreats to Sokka's side, and lets go.
Because she is fourteen, both a grown adult in a child's body and a child without a childhood, and she knows more about the inner workings of the human body than any living being ought to. She knows exactly where to find the blood vessels that attach to a man's heart and how to constrict them until that heart stops beating.
She is also fourteen, and while she knows more about how to kill a man than she should, she also knows how to constrict those blood vessels to make the heart beat again. She is hurt, she is tired, and she is angry, and she is so young.
Katara is fourteen, and while Zuko hurt her in a way he can't take back, she sees him hold the same power she does to kill a man, the same power that killed her best friend, and tell it no thank you. He took the raw force of the same energy his little sister used to kill an even younger child, looked at the man who abused him, and in a split second made the decision to break the cycle he was born into.
Katara is fourteen, and she doesn't have the heart to tell him that she wishes he had killed his father. She understands why he didn't because she is fourteen. She understands the desperation for a parent that isn't there.
Katara lets go.
Hakoda, adult, here, now, steps in. Just like she knew he would.
She doesn't hear what he says to Zuko. She has a pretty good idea what it is, anyway- something about warriors, and strength, and how that teenager who is barely a man has gone through more in the past few years than most men do in their lives. She doesn't care.
Right now, her job is to settle down against her brother's side, pull Toph close enough to cuddle, close her eyes, and stop taking responsibility for the adults that failed them.
Katara doesn't hate Zuko anymore. It still takes a few days for her temper to warm from icy waters to room temperature, but she feels herself coming around. She still hasn't forgiven him, and she doesn't know if she ever will, because Aang's lifeless body will haunt her for years.
Still, it's kind of hard to hate someone who's literally tripping over themself to fix their past mistakes and learn from them.
On Hakoda's suggestion, Zuko has started a journal of things he wants to fix. To Suki's delight, Kyoshi Island reparation funds are on the top of the list. To Hakoda's delight, reparation efforts for the Southern Water Tribe is number two. To Aang's blubbering tears, reformations to the educational system, starting with the Air Nomad genocide, is number one.
No, Katara really doesn't hate Zuko anymore. He's so earnest in everything he does, and it doesn't hurt that he jumps on doing camp chores and the opportunity to help her keep everything organized before she even has to open her mouth. Zuko is absolutely terrible at most anything involving manual labor, but his sheer determination to learn means that he doesn't stop trying. It's pretty easy to see how he chased them across the entire map.
He also, she learns, has no self preservation instincts, as he is the first to leap off the cliff when his sister comes for his head.
"Forgot to warn you about that," Sokka drawls as they both watch Zuko and Azula bitch slap flames at each other hundreds of feet in the air. "He's worse than Aang at staying out of trouble. Still want to be friends with him?"
"I'll think about it," Katara groans.