Chapter Text
“You’ve defeated her.”
Katara hadn’t registered the soldiers and sages left in the palace starting to swarm around her. Slowly, surely, like a stream forming from the first rain after a drought, civilians started to gather as well.
She doesn’t know how they knew she was here; doesn’t know how long she’s been kneeling, staring at the unmoving form before her.
Zuko lays there, blurry in Katara’s dizzy conscience, and she must remind herself to breathe. Azula pants near the underground stream, growling like a caged animal.
She was defeated. The comet is gone. She doesn’t know if Aang managed to win against Ozai.
Her eyes are dry; she hasn’t been able to conjure a tear despite the ache in her chest. It’s as if she’s the drought now, scorched by the heat, dry and cracking.
“What is your name?” An old man in ancient-looking robes and a wobble to his voice asks. Katara answers half-mindedly.
“Katara.”
“Where are you from, my dear?”
“The South. The Southern Water Tribe.”
“Look at me, Katara from the South.” He commands.
Out of it and confused, she glances at him.
“I hereby crown you, Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, Firelord of the Fire Nation. For you have outlasted and triumphed the terrible rein of the comet. Where Prince Zuko now lay, you rise. Where Azula has been…”
A terrible ringing crowds her mind, cutting short the rest of whatever empty words the sage was announcing. All she heard was Firelord, Prince Zuko, rise.
Rise from what? The ashes of ruin? Zuko was supposed to take the throne. He had spent so much time making sure all was in order, was right. Was.
No, that’s wrong. Zuko is here. He is in front of them. She just needs more water.
When she moves to bend some from the stream, the image of Azula weeping on her side on the grate turns her veins into ice. She can’t move.
A light hand touches her shoulder.
“Rise.” He says.
So she does.
༄
Cicada-mantises buzz deep in the forest, unseen but present nonetheless.
They have just ran out of the last of their rice and need to find something, anything to eat.
There’s a stream just up northeast of where we landed. Sokka had said. So Katara had made plans to set out, her being the only one able to fish effectively. She wouldn’t tell anyone else, but she also wanted some alone time.
“I’ve been around here before. I know these plants.” Zuko had offered.
Maybe she should have told someone else.
“Really? What were you here for?” Toph countered. The truth hung heavy in the air. Toph seemed to understand after a prolonged second. Katara tried, failed, to shake the icy feeling that washed over her.
Hunting for the Avatar.
That’s why he’s here with her now, as they trek through the forest, sweat beading down her neck.
Summer, she finds, is something she mildly dislikes. Her home is void of pests that keep chirping in her ear, and while the cold bites, the heat lingers. It isn’t too long until her head starts to ache.
“You alright?” Zuko asks quietly. Katara resists the urge to turn and glare.
“Fine.” She says.
“It must be different.” He returns.
She pauses from brushing away undergrowth as they delve deeper into the forest. “What?”
“Going from the South to all over the world. Do you miss home?”
“Do you?” Katara retorts. She doesn’t stop to see his reaction; though she hopes he’s frowning. She dislikes his attempts at small talk. The heat isn’t doing well on her feelings about being thrust into this position, but Gran Gran said one must often make small sacrifices for the greater good.
A while later, Katara’s found a riverbed off the mainstream where fish are schooling. She can hear Zuko in the background searching for edible plants, but he sits there idle more often than not.
Katara can do this: focus on the way the water bends at her will, the way it softly strokes her calves, grounding her. A stray rainbowback is venturing closer, and Katara seizes her chance.
Sokka was a lousy fisher growing up- their father never got the chance to finish the lessons he used to teach him. Katara, throughout their trip, had to learn to get better at it, in her own way. If she hadn’t, they might have starved. It was insane how the need for survival pushed her boundaries.
She quickly bends the water around the fish, so fast that it doesn’t realize what’s happened until it’s too late. Freezing it inside an orb, she slices only the head off: it can’t be eaten by them. She unfreezes the part that fell, leaving it to the mercy of the other fish and the stream. Zuko’s red fabric flashes in the corner of her eye.
Katara turns, and Zuko’s holding a handful of green stems and leaves, watching her intently.
As their eyes meet for a moment, she wonders how the need for survival has pushed his boundaries.
༄
Katara cries.
She’s not sure for how long, but often her brother and father visit her in this warm room with its red walls and regal detailing. They push carafes of water ever closer to her, bowls of warm soup left to go cold on her bedside.
She hadn’t asked whose room it is. The sheets smell faintly of cedar, smoke, and cinnamon. It glides along her senses like an anchor, in plain sight yet too far and out of reach. She tries not to think of him, tries and fails.
She knows she must get up. Knows that she has duties to perform, her people to see, the world to rebuild. Her thoughts repeat in that pattern until she closes her eyes and the nightmares take over.
Blue. A scream. Zuko’s swiftness.
The icy cold feeling washing over her as he twitches on the ground, her healing hand too far away.
Tui and La circle in her dreams, a never-ending spiral. Black and white, always chasing each other, never catching the other.
༄
Katara sits glumly as the rest of those who came with them laugh and chat warmly around the campfire. She can’t share their triumph or happiness, for every time she looks at the fire all she sees is destruction.
Zuko’s handing out tea, acting jovial with the rest of them. Katara, regretfully, wishes she could wipe that smug grin off his face.
He’s joking. With Aang.
The rest of the group laughs while she digs her nails into her arm.
“To Zuko!” Her brother says brightly. “Who knew after all those times he tried to snuff us out, today he'd be our hero!”
Everyone else holds up their cups, shouting, “Hear, hear!”
“I’m touched.” Zuko smiles. “I don’t deserve this.”
Katara can’t take any more of this. Not after being separated from her dad again and every other ally they had managed to find. “Yeah,” she scoffs, “No kidding.”
She gets up abruptly, needing to be anywhere other than here.
On a rock far from the campsite, she sits, overlooking the jagged cliff. The moon sits high in the sky, waxing and peeking from around the clouds. She can sense Zuko- the blood, the water in him- before she can hear him.
The moon is in its heavier form. Her bending is stronger tonight. Still, when the call to do so rallies, she shoves it back down, and it all but vanishes from her system as she turns tail.
Unfortunately, Zuko is not as keen as he was to take her words and not bite back like he was at the air temple.
“This isn't fair! Everyone else seems to trust me now! What is it with you?”
Katara turns angrily. “Oh, everyone trusts you now?! I was the first person to trust you!” She places her hand on her heart for emphasis. She opened up- so did he. “Remember? Back in Ba Sing Se.” She points to the ocean, to those lands so far away now, like he may actually be able to see them, see where it all happened. “And you turned around and betrayed me, betrayed all of us!”
He closes his eyes as if he can escape the truth of her words, the repercussions of his actions. Katara’s boiling, warm all over, and she figures it has something to do with the fire bender constantly in her orbit now. His very presence does things she isn’t able to handle. .
“What can I do to make it up to you?” He asks, quieter now.
She’s closer now; she can see the burning emotion in his golden eyes, the desperation and need harbored there. “You really want to know? Hmm, maybe you could reconquer Ba Sing Se in the name of the Earth King-“ Katara pokes his chest harshly “-Or, I know. You could bring my mother back!”
She storms away, feeling not at all satisfied or emptied of the stress and pent-up rage she’s kept inside all these years. In fact, she only feels worse as she shoulders Zuko and leaves him to watch the sea.
In the morning when she’s getting ready she leaves her tent to find him outside of it sitting on a rock, looking exhausted.
She grabs her brush. “You look terrible.”
He looks up at her, and she cant even look at him as he says, “I waited out here all night.”
“What do you want?” Katara demands, brushing out her hair.
She’s not at all prepared for his answer- she wasn’t expecting anything of substance, really, but stops breathing when he says:
“I know who killed your mother, and I’m going to help you find him.”
༄
The servants remind her of her mother.
Women in dark red and black robes frequent her room- the one she’s taken over- and begin cleaning her up.
They knocked a few times at first. When Katara hadn’t answered thinking it was her family, they left. Then they forewent the niceties altogether and just entered the room. She hardly cared.
It belonged to someone else.
They filled the large tub in the adjacent room, the temperature in the air gradually rising. They didn’t force her, didn’t ask. They didn’t have to. Katara needed a bath- that she could admit.
Not that she hadn’t bathed since. Only, it was typically with colder water- only out of necessity. Now, her bones ache as though she’s aged twenty years in nine months and she needs to expel the exhaustion. The warmth emanating from the tub is enticing, as is the smell of the milk and honey soap they offered.
When they followed her into the tub room, Katara tried waving them away. However, she could tell by the looks on their faces they weren’t going to go easy.
“It’s fine, really.” She says quietly.
“No, my lady. I insist.” What must be the head-lady responds, waving two more girls in.
Fighting is what got her to this point. She figures the point must be futile by now, so she sinks into the tub with the three women offering her various kinds of treatment.
She lets one of them wash and brush her hair, asks for the coals to be stoked again so the tub retains some of the heat that deliciously thaws her frozen being.
For the first time in forever, Katara feels as though she’s not running or hiding from some looming threat. Instead, she sinks into the water, feeling weightless.
༄
“See? You guide the energy through your own, letting it flow as if it’s a part of you. That way it doesn’t turn on you if you try to use it. It stays concentrated where it’s safe, where you can expel it. Then, you lean into it, lean forward, and release it.”
Katara watches as Aang dutifully works to get the lightning redirection bending form down. Zuko is a good teacher, she realizes with a twinge of envy, maybe admiration.
He knows what its like to be thrust into a position of responsibility, she muses. Wanting not to give herself away, she avoids Zuko’s gaze as they come over to cool off.
What would we be like, she wondered, if the war had never happened to us?
Later Katara sits on the beach, listening to the waves crash over the shore and feeling the warm breeze shift over her. She’s so lost in the lulling waves that she doesn’t hear Zuko approach. He startles her when she feels him there.
“Sorry.” He nearly mumbles, sitting down next to her, in a meditating pose she often finds him in during the morning.
“It’s okay.” She says, studying his face as he breathes in and out deeply. Subconsciously, she does the same. With his eyes closed his face is softer, younger. His mouth isn’t downturned like it normally is in his signature small frown. His now overgrown hair softly brushes over his head, much like the healthy seagrasses she’s found in the waters near Ember Island.
Katara sits there for a while, searching for something to say. Wondering if there’s anything to say. Coming up with absolutely nothing to say.
He shifts, opening his eyes and immediately peering at her. “What?”
“Sorry. Just thinking.”
He looks at her expectantly. Katara’s face heats.
She wonders what he thinks she sees.
“Something on your mind?” It sounds like more of a statement than a question, but she hears it.
“No. Yes? I don’t know.”
“Very confusing.”
She sighs. “My mind feels like it’s in so many different places. I just can’t pick one.”
“Ah.” He hums. It’s quiet for a moment, and a toad croaks nearby, and she’s contemplating aborting the mission, but he continues.
“If my uncle were here, he’d tell you that the mind can go in a thousand different directions, but your feet only in one.”
Katara mulls it over, trying to orient herself in relation to her situation. It doesn’t really work. Just makes her feel as though by sitting down on a beach she’s not doing enough. She looks at him and wrinkles her nose, shaking her head.
“Somehow that didn’t help.”
He wrinkles his nose, copying her, but Katara finds he looks cute doing so.
“Where do you think your uncle is now?” Katara asks quietly. Zuko pauses, inhales and sighs heavily. Likely letting go the regret and shame of betraying him, of being too late to the prison tower he was held.
“I don’t know.” He says. And Katara can tell by his voice that he’s already ruminated at length about it, so she drops the subject.
“Where would you go, if you could go anywhere in the world?” She asks instead.
Zuko lets her words sink in, biting his lip and leaning back to lay on the beach. This time, Katara copies and lays beside him.
“I would go back.” He starts, moving his fingers much like he does in the lightning-bending stance, tracing familiar constellations with them. Katara turns her gaze to the stars. “I would go back to before. I would leave with my mother. Take my sister. I would kill my father.” Each word comes out deliberate, like he’s trying to be practical instead of emotional, but Katara’s come to know the underlying and untreated deep well of feeling Zuko has.
Katara wants to agree, but thinking about it, she realizes it’s not that easy. She can’t argue that killing Ozai wouldn’t solve all their problems right now, but without the war, without these harrowing circumstances, she wouldn’t know the family she has today.
Would she miss the people she’d never met? She finds herself sad at the thought.
Katara can live knowing that she, and they, have persevered through the face of it all.
“Hey.” She whispers conspiringly. He ceases his finger’s movements, glancing at her. “No, put your hand back up. Now, flip your palm the other way. There.”
Zuko, as well as being a good teacher, is also a good listener.
Katara holds her hand up, the back side facing them, twin to the way his is. Only, their arms are opposite and hands are facing different ways. Her skin is a darker color than his, their elements the opposite, and yet, they are closer now than they have ever been.
“Bet I can sound like your uncle.” She says.
On a rare occasion, he smiles at her. Wholly and unguarded.
“Zuko, you can’t undo the past. But you can let it guide you, let it echo in the wind that pushes you forward, knowing that every step you take is one moving forward.”
When he doesn’t respond, Katara gets worried she’s just embarrassed herself. But when she meets his gaze, she finds wonder. Maybe admiration, if she humors herself. It reminds her of when she would look at her reflection in the ocean when she was younger- young and hopeful. She blinks away the sting in her eyes.
“You don’t sound like my uncle.” Zuko murmurs. “You sound like you.”
༄
She’s supposed to do something today. She can’t recall what her father visited her for last night, and this morning the ladies from yesterday came back, poking a prodding more thoroughly than they tried yesterday.
After they’re done, Katara’s told to wait, left laying against the mattress with wet hair and a soft, warm robe wrapped around her. If she closes her eyes it feels like a hug. She could bend the water out of her hair- she just doesn’t want to.
“My lady,” One of them prompts. Katara sits up slightly, leaning back on her elbows. The bed is suddenly colder than it has been, soft and plush but unwelcoming in the way the sheets are disheveled by her own will.
The servant -lady- is holding up what looks like Fire Nation regalia. A fitted red long dress embroidered with gold thread and pleated gold shoulders, pointy and red and serious in a way that doesn’t suit her. She shakes her head.
The servant leaves, but another one comes, holding something similar and Katara quickly realizes the problem. Every piece of cloth they present to her is alike the other- every choice offered is one a Fire Royal would wear.
Katara’s gut turns. She glances around the room, dizzy and nauseous. She needs to go somewhere. Somewhere. Anywhere. Anywhere other than here- anywhere to throw up-
The last thing she hears before the passes out is, “My lady- are you alright?”
༄
“Are you alright?” Zuko asks her, trailing close behind as she hastily treads the dirt path.
Katara doesn’t know where she’s walking. Knows there’s nowhere on this damn island she could escape to- not in the way she wants to.
She wants out of the war. Out of the responsibility. She can’t take it anymore.
Why is it that Aang always disappears when he’s needed the most? She swallows hard, trying to force the tears away. Flicking her fingers, she bends them to the ground like the first rain drops against a path of dirt.
She doesn’t know how to tell Zuko this, how to open up. They have to win this war and make everything alright again. They can’t do it without Aang. The weight of the world bears down on her shoulders.
“Katara.” His voice is more urgent now, so unlike his usual casual remarks that she pauses. She breathes deeply, but when she opens her mouth to speak, she croaks.
“I- I can’t.”
The urge to crumble to the ground rushes over like a tidal wave, all-consuming, no hope for getting out. All she can do is release her grip on the world, weather the undertow and hope to have enough air in her to survive it.
Zuko catches her underneath her arms, gently lowering her to the steps before his old family house. The wood is old and dry, creaking under their weight. He sits beside her.
The first drops of rain splash down before her shoes, the breeze picking up, carrying winds from everywhere and nowhere.
Katara wavers. Biting her lip, she stares solely at the ground in front. She can’t even look at Zuko. She has nothing to say to him and no bone left to pick. For once in her life, utterly helpless. She doesn’t know why it stings so much.
Needing to think about anything else, she blurts, “Tell me about her.”
She feels him glance at her. “Who?”
“Your mother.”
His body leans away from hers for a second and suddenly she’s cold- she hadn’t realized he was a natural heater. Katara leans in a fraction of an inch despite herself and he closes the gap again.
“My father says I get my kindness from her. He called it weakness- but now I know what he really meant. Azula always said she left because she only cared about herself. I think she was just hurt that we were left behind.” He pauses. “I think she went away to save me, too, not just herself.”
Breathing comes easier for Katara, but she finds herself still holding her breath, staring at Zuko’s unscarred side.
“I read about her once, in an old Fire Nation news script. She used to love art. She might still have, if my father didn’t ruin everything she enjoyed. I’ve seen her art- she kept some of it, stashed away in her room under her bed. When no one was looking, I would take it out and admire it, wondering what my mom was like when she was younger.”
It might be her coming down from the rise of emotion earlier, might be the storm washing in calling to her aching bones, might be the way his voice is rough, yes, but also low and soothing and husky, but she feels herself calm and malleable. It might also be his body heat. Katara sinks into Zuko’s side.
“Thank you.” She says.
She feels him stiffen, and she would have pulled away had he not rested his own head atop hers.
“Katara?”
She hums quietly in response.
“Are you okay?”
Funny, she thinks, that he would be the one asking her that.
It sounds as though Zuko, kin to her, has no parents. Ozai is worse than an absent father, but an abuser. Neither of them, it seems, are getting their mothers back.
She inhales. His scent- cedar, smoke, and cinnamon- overtakes her senses. She decides that right now, in this moment, she is.
“With you here, yes.” She omits.
How Zuko reacts, she would never know, because sleep comes like the storm clouds dropping their weight all at once, a torrential downpour.
༄
“… what happened?”
Her brother’s voice floats through her conscience, there but too slippery. It takes a moment for the rest of her senses to catch up, but the light beams through.
“We were showing her the clothes she must wear to her official coronation. She kept saying no, we were about three pieces in, and-“
“My lady!” She recognizes the last one. It’s the last voice she heard before she went under.
When she sits up she finds five pairs of eyes watching her. Katara suddenly wishes she were still asleep.
“Katara.” Her father says. “You have to get up.”
“Why?”
Nobody answers. Her brother and father share a look: bewildered, and the servants- ladies- all find some spot in the room to fixate on.
“What am I needed for- is everything okay? Is Zuk-“ She stops herself, her veins running cold. She tries to ignore the pitying look she gets from her father and Sokka’s fiddling hands.
She’s dreamt about him so much lately it feels as though he’s still here.
The tears come silently this time and she lets them, committing to memory the look of a drop landing on the bedsheets. The look of a drop landing on a dusty old path leading to the Firelord- Zuko’s old home.
She hears the servants pack up, whispering to her father another time, and leave through the door with a quiet click.
Her father’s the first to join her, his weight sinking both of them deeper into bed. He hugs her tightly then gestures to Sokka, making room for him on her other side.
They stay like that for a while, Katara wrapped with blue, sinking with their weight. She thinks she can smell the frozen tundra, the animal skins and hearth fires and stews she’s used to, which is crazy because she hasn’t been home in a long, long time.