Chapter Text
WOLF COVE
By the time the storm began to worry the walls of the Great Hall, Katara had already been standing over the cookfire for the better part of an hour, stirring stew with one hand and holding up the hem of her sleeve with the other.
The pot was large enough to bathe a child in, which Sokka had once tried to do with a cousin during a summer feast, and it hung over the fire on a blackened iron hook that once belonged to their grandmother.
The broth inside went thick and glossy, smelling of seal fat, onions, dried kelp, and the sharp herbs old women swore kept winter sickness from settling into the chest.
Every few turns of the spoon brought up another cloud of warmth, and Katara leaned into it, letting the steam dampen the curls at her temples.
Outside, Wolf Cove was bruised with evening snow.
Inside, Hakoda’s kitchen was all gold light and old smoke.
Furs were thrown over the long benches. A carved bone ladle hung beside three others in strict order of size. Someone - probably Bato - had left a pair of mittens drying too close to the hearth, and they gave off a faint smell of scorched wool.
The ceiling beams were low, crowded with hanging strips of fish, bundles of herbs, and charms tied there by children who believed the kitchen fire would carry wishes up to the spirits.
It was, despite everything, one of Katara’s favourite rooms in the world.
Or it would have been, had her brother not taken off his boots.
Sokka lounged against the wall beside the chopping block with his legs stretched out before him and his socked feet pointed shamelessly toward the fire. His boots lay beneath the bench like two steaming carcasses.
One of them had tipped onto its side.
Katara had been trying not to look at it for several minutes.
“You know,” she said at last, “there are laws against this.”
Sokka didn't look up from the slab of meat he was cutting into long, uneven strips.
He was twenty-nine years old now, taller than their father by a hand, broad in the shoulders, and capable of looking almost dignified when he remembered to stand upright.
Tonight he held a knife in one hand, a piece of dried fish in the other, and a posture that suggested his spine had entered retirement.
“Against preparing dinner for one’s ungrateful younger sister?”
“Against taking off your boots in a kitchen.”
“This isn't a kitchen. This is Dad's kitchen. Completely different category.”
“It's where food is cooked.”
“It's where family gathers.”
“It's where your feet are airing themselves in the presence of my stew.”
Sokka inspected the strip of meat dangling from his knife. “First of all, these feet are veterans. They've marched across half the world, survived Fire Nation prisons, swamp water, desert sand, and that one inn in the Earth Kingdom where I’m still pretty sure the floor was alive. So maybe show some respect.”
“That was because you were drunk!”
“I wasn't drunk. I had accepted too much hospitality.”
“You fell into a laundry basket.”
“I was looking for my room.”
“You were in your room.”
Sokka paused.
Katara smiled sweetly.
He pointed the knife at her. “This. This is why the baby is not being named after you. Too much memory. Very dangerous in an aunt.”
Katara turned from the pot. “You were never going to name your child after me anyway.”
“...I considered it.”
“You considered naming Suki’s baby Katara?”
“I considered Katara for a boy.”
She stared at him.
He held up his free hand. “Briefly.”
“You aren't allowed near the naming ceremony.”
“Suki says I may offer suggestions.”
“Suki loves you. That's impaired her judgment.”
Sokka smiled then, quick and crooked, and for a moment she could see the boy he'd been under the man he had become.
The years made him leaner in the face, sharper at the jaw, and there were lines now at the corners of his eyes that deepened whenever he laughed.
But his smile still made rooms feel less cold.
Katara hated that it worked even on her.
He bent back over the meat. “At least I'm trying to think of names with history. Names with weight. Names a child can grow into.”
“You suggested Boomerang.”
“A family name.”
“It's not a family name.”
“It could become one. All family names start somewhere. Someone had to be the first Chief Squid-Guts.”
“Sokka, there's never been a 'Chief Squid-Guts'.”
“Not with that attitude.”
Katara stirred the pot harder than necessary. The stew made a thick, disgruntled sound. “What does Suki want?”
Sokka’s knife slowed.
There it was. A softening. Not enough for most people to notice, but Katara had spent the first fifteen years of her life learning the different weights of her brother’s silences. This one was not grief, not exactly. It was awe, which on Sokka often looked like terror wearing a hat.
“She likes Kya,” he said.
Katara’s hand stopped.
The fire cracked beneath the pot. A piece of driftwood caved in on itself and sent sparks spiralling up into the dark throat of the chimney.
“Oh,” she murmured.
“Yeah.”
He didn't look at her.
He sawed through another strip of meat, more carefully this time.
Katara stared into the stew. Her mother’s name had a way of entering rooms long after the rest of the conversation had gone on without her. It didn't wound the way it once had; not like a blade now. More like pressing a thumb to an old bruise and being surprised to find it still tender.
“For a girl?” she asked.
“For a girl. For a boy, Suki says maybe something from Kyoshi Island. Her grandfather’s name, or her teacher’s,” Sokka made a face, “all their names sound like they come with a fan to the throat.”
“They probably do.”
“Exactly. Very intimidating - excellent for a child. I want a baby who can enter a room and make a tax collector afraid.”
“You mean you want Suki’s baby.”
“Our baby.”
Katara smiled into the steam.
Sokka saw it and, because he was Sokka, immediately ruined the moment.
“Though honestly, if it’s a boy and we name him after me, I think everybody wins.”
“No.”
“Sokka the Second.”
“No.”
“Sokka Junior.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Little Sokka.”
“I will drown you in this pot.”
“I'm only saying, it's a strong name. A handsome name. A name that says, here is a man who knows how to provide meat, maps, strategy, and reasonable quantities of charm.”
“It says 'here is a man whose socks have become a public health concern'.”
He glanced down at his feet. “These socks were a gift.”
“From who? An enemy?”
“From my wife.”
“She clearly wants you dead.”
“She wants me comfortable.” He arched back again, satisfied with himself. “That's marriage, Katara. One day perhaps you'll know the profound intimacy of someone making you ugly socks because she noticed you complained about your ankles being cold.”
Katara snorted. “If I ever marry a person who gives me socks like that, assume I've been kidnapped.”
“You've always had unreasonable standards.”
“I have standards because one of us must!”
“Nope,” said Sokka, “your problem, Katara, is that you think normal is more interesting than it actually is.”
Katara glanced over her shoulder. “What does that even mean?”
“It means your first idea of romance involved a sky bison, world-ending prophecies, and, for reasons none of us enjoyed, a prince chasing us halfway across the world. Most people just hold hands and go for walks. Maybe share soup. Maybe say something brave about liking the other person’s hair.”
Katara opened her mouth.
Sokka pointed the knife at her. “See? Ruined.”
The spoon scraped along the bottom of the pot.
It was a small sound, but it ripped the smile from his face.
Katara turned back to the stew before he could see too much.
The broth folded over itself, dark and glossy.
After a moment, she remarked, “Aang wasn't my first boyfriend.”
Sokka stared.
"Alright, fine! He was,” she admitted, “but I object to your tone.”
“My tone is balanced. Respectful. Brotherly.”
“Your tone is leaning over the table making faces.”
“That's not my tone. That's my face. We've discussed this.”
That startled a laugh out of her, and his mouth twitched in answer. He let the silence rest a moment before speaking again.
“I heard from him last month.”
Katara lifted her head. “You did?”
“Letter came through Republic City. He was in Ba Sing Se, then somewhere near the Si Wong, then possibly on an island that may or may not exist depending on which monk you ask,” Sokka shrugged, “very Aang letter. Full of hope, and one drawing of a turtleduck that looked like a war crime.”
She smiled before she meant to. “Was he well?”
“He sounded like Aang.”
That wasn't an answer, and it was.
Katara knew exactly what he meant.
There was a time when all of them had fit into one another’s days as naturally as breath.
Aang asleep upside down in some impossible place.
Toph complaining that people with eyes were making too much noise.
Suki sharpening a blade and pretending not to listen.
Zuko standing at the edge of the campfire, awkward and angry and earnest, as if friendship were a tunic someone else had handed him and he was still looking for the armholes.
They'd been children, mostly.
Then the war ended, and somehow that had been been the beginning of losing one another.
Not at once. There were visits. Letters. Weddings. Emergencies. Small, bright crossings of paths.
But Aang belonged to the world.
Toph had gone wherever the soil screeched loudest.
Suki and Sokka had made a life in Republic City with councils and patrols and, very soon, a baby.
Zuko vanished behind palace walls and official seals and the kind of letters that always began with apologies and ended in duty.
And Katara came home.
She'd told herself it was only for a while. Her people needed healers. The children needed waterbending instruction. Her father needed someone in the house after Malina went north with her sisters for the solstice.
There'd always been a reason.
Sokka tossed the finished meat into a bowl and wiped his knife clean on a rag. “Do you miss it?”
“The war?”
“The travelling.”
Katara almost answered too quickly. Instead she watched the stew turn under her spoon. “I miss us,” she remarked.
Sokka’s face softened. "Yeah,” he murmured, “me too.”
The wind pressed itself against the shutters. Somewhere beyond the hall, dogs barked at the storm and then thought better of it.
Sokka picked up another chunk of meat. “Toph sent Suki a rock for the baby.”
“A rock?”
“A very erm...significant rock, according to the note.”
“What did the note say?”
He cleared his throat and adopted a rough, theatrical voice that wasn't remotely like Toph and yet somehow captured her perfectly. “‘For the kid. Don’t let Snoozles chew on it. It’s probably smarter than him.’”
Katara laughed, “she wrote that?”
“She had someone write it, but the insult is hers. The handwriting was too legible.”
“I miss her.”
“She misses you too. Though I think she'd rather eat sand than say it.”
Katara turned back to the fire. “Maybe after Suki has the baby, I’ll go see her.”
“You always say maybe.”
“I'm going to Republic City, aren’t I?”
“For Suki.”
“And you.”
“And me,” said Sokka, with great dignity. “Your beloved brother. Father of future Boomerang.”
“Hmph! Don't make me regret packing.”
He tilted his head. “You are excited, though.”
She tried to hide it and failed.
She was excited; that was the wretched part. She'd been pretending for weeks that she was going because Suki needed her, because babies were difficult, because Sokka would faint the moment someone said afterbirth. But beneath it, buried like a coal under ash, was the bright, selfish fact that she simply wanted to go.
She wanted the noise of Republic City. She wanted Suki’s laugh. She wanted to see Aang if he passed through, or Toph if she could be bullied into appearing, or Zuko if he remembered people outside his palace still existed.
She wanted to be somewhere that didn't know every shape of her.
At twenty-eight, Katara was still beautiful in a way that annoyed the old aunties; who believed beauty should become either respectable or tragic by a certain age.
Her hair was longer than it was during the war, thick and dark and usually escaping whatever tie she forced it into. Her hands were strong from healing and work. Her face lost the roundness of girlhood but none of its quickness.
She laughed easily when she forgot not to. She danced when the drums were good.
She still ran barefoot onto the ice in spring, just to feel the first meltwater bite.
And yet lately she'd begun to feel as if everyone had moved forward whilst she remained standing in the doorway, holding someone else’s coat.
Sokka’s voice was gentle when he said, “You should stay awhile. After the baby comes.”
Katara glanced back, “you’ll be sick of me within three days.”
“I mean, obviously. But Suki won’t, and the baby will need to know its aunt. Also, Republic City has restaurants where nobody asks if you're eating enough fish oil to keep your joints warm.”
“My joints are fine, thank you.”
“You say that now. Then one day you wake up and make a noise when you stand. That's how age takes you. One little grunt at a time.”
“You're twenty-nine.”
“I've seen things.”
“You pulled your shoulder last week sneezing.”
“It was a warrior’s sneeze!”
The door banged open.
Snow gusted in first, hard and glittering, and after it came Hakoda with his hood crusted white and his beard full of frost. He stamped once on the threshold, then twice, then stepped into the kitchen and immediately began kicking snow from his boots.
Katara pointed the spoon at him. “No.”
Hakoda paused. “No what?”
“No boots.”
“I'm taking snow off them.”
“You are taking snow off them into the kitchen.”
“I live here.”
“That's not an argument.”
Sokka leaned back, delighted. “I tried that one. She’s very powerful tonight.”
Hakoda looked from Sokka’s abandoned boots to his son’s socked feet and then to Katara’s expression. Very slowly, with the caution of a man approaching a sleeping badgermole, he removed his own boots and set them beside the door.
Unfortunately, one of them fell over.
Katara closed her eyes.
Hakoda kissed the top of her head as he passed.
His lips were cold from outside, and his hand, when it settled briefly at the back of her neck, was broad and rough and familiar.
“Smells good,” he grinned.
“You're forgiven,” Katara said.
“Unfair,” Sokka muttered. “I complimented the stew earlier.”
“You called it gooey.”
“I called it promisingly-gooey, there's a difference.”
Hakoda lowered himself onto the bench with a tired sound.
He'd aged in the years since the war, though not in any way that made him seem diminished. His hair was iron-grey at the temples. His shoulders were still strong. His eyes still had that steady warmth that made people straighten themselves without quite knowing why.
Chief Hakoda could enter a room of arguing hunters and make them remember they were adults.
Dad Hakoda could enter a kitchen and make Katara feel, absurdly, like a little girl again.
She ladled stew into a deep bowl and set it before him, then tore a piece of flatbread and placed it on the side.
He caught her wrist before she could turn away. “Thank you, little wave.”
The old name struck tenderly.
She rolled her eyes because she had to do something with the affection rising in her chest.
“I'm nearly thirty.”
“You're still my little wave.”
Sokka lifted a finger. “I am also available for endearing nicknames.”
“You're my headache,” Hakoda said.
Sokka nodded. “Hpmh. Accurate.”
Hakoda ate three spoonfuls before saying anything else, which worried Katara more than if he'd come in shouting.
Her father did not hurry bad news. He respected it too much.
She noticed then the dark shape tucked inside his parka.
“What is that?”
Hakoda swallowed. “A letter came in with the hawk.”
Sokka sat up. “Messenger hawk? In this weather?”
“Fire Nation bird.” Hakoda reached into his furs and drew out a narrow packet wrapped in oilcloth. “Half-frozen and furious. Nearly took Tanu’s thumb off.”
“Fire Nation hawks always look offended,” Sokka drawled “it’s the eyebrows.”
Katara wiped her hands on her apron. “Who sent it?”
Hakoda did not answer at once.
The kitchen seemed to shrink around the fire.
He held the packet out to her.
Katara took it. The oilcloth was damp at the edges, tied with red cord and sealed in dark wax. The imprint had blurred from snowmelt, but she knew the shape even before she rubbed her thumb over it.
The flame - not the old flame of conquest. Not Ozai’s brutal, crowned symbol.
Zuko had changed the royal seal after the war. The new one was simpler, narrower, more like a lamp than a wildfire.
Still, her stomach squelched.
Sokka’s brows rose. “Hotman Zuko writes at last.”
“Sokka,” Hakoda said mildly.
“What? That was affectionate.”
Katara broke the seal.
The paper inside was thick and cream-coloured, folded with military precision. Zuko was never a man for decorative words. Even his handwriting looked as if it had somewhere else to be.
Katara read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time, because the words didn't become less irritating with repetition.
“What does he say?” Sokka asked.
Katara’s mouth flattened. “He says, ‘Master Katara, My daughter is unwell. The physicians find no cause. I do not trust their certainty. I ask that you come to the capital at your earliest convenience. Passage will be arranged. Zuko.’”
There was a pause.
Sokka blinked. “That’s it?”
“That's it.”
“No hello?”
“Nope.”
“No 'how have you been these many years, Katara, light of the South, terrifying wielder of soup ladles?'”
“No.”
“Classic Zuko.”
Hakoda held out his hand. Katara gave him the letter. He read it carefully, lips moving a little. When he finished, he set it beside his bowl.
“His daughter,” he remarked.
“Yes,” Katara replied, “apparently he has one.”
“You knew that?”
“I knew he had a child in the way one knows there are probably badgermoles under certain mountains. It hasn't affected my day.”
Sokka reached for a strip of meat from the bowl. Katara slapped his hand with the spoon.
“Ow!”
“That's for the stew.”
“Excuse me? I prepared that meat.”
“And now it belongs to the pot.”
Hakoda glanced between them. “Katara.”
The gentleness in his voice was a warning.
She turned back to the fire and stirred as Sokka tipped the meat into the pot. He tried, whilst he was there, to snatch the spoon from her hand, and she smacked him again without looking. “Let me help.”
“You have helped.”
“I'm an excellent stirrer.”
“You're a menace with elbows!”
“I've got graceful elbows.”
“You once shoved Auntie Pela’s prayer beads into the stew.”
“And dinner was blessed. You’re welcome.”
Hakoda cleared his throat.
Both of them stopped.
The stew accepted the meat with a wet, satisfied sound.
Katara gripped the spoon and felt heat climb her face. “I am sorry his daughter is ill,” she spoke up, “I am. I’m not heartless.”
“No one said you were.”
“But he cannot send a hawk through a blizzard with six stiff little sentences and expect me to come running because he's remembered, at last, that I exist.”
Hakoda’s face softened, “he's asking for help.”
Katara let out a short laugh. There was no humour in it. “He's the Fire Lord, Dad.”
“He's still Zuko.”
“Is he?” She looked down at the letter again, at the hard, careful strokes of his handwriting, “because this doesn't sound like Zuko. This sounds like a man sitting behind a desk, moving people around a map.”
“Katara...”
“No. Men like that don't ask. They send ships. They send birds half-dead through storms, and then they call it a request because they were polite enough not to command it outright.”
Sokka made a thoughtful noise. “To be fair, Zuko has never been very good at asking. Even when we were kids, his version of asking was usually showing up angry on a beach and yelling about destiny.”
“That's not a defence.”
“No. But it's a recognizable pattern.”
Katara pointed at the letter. “He barely writes. He barely visits. Aang sends turtleduck crimes from imaginary islands. Toph sends insulting rocks. Zuko sends silence and now this. His daughter is sick, so suddenly I'm remembered.”
Hakoda’s face remained calm. “Would you rather he hadn't?”
That was unfair because it was exactly the right question.
Katara looked away.
Sokka, who'd no respect for solemnity when it might become unbearable, leaned over the table and peered at the letter upside down.
“Maybe he was trying not to sound desperate.”
Katara laughed once, sharp and humourless. “That's not better.”
“No, but it's very Zuko. The guy could be actively on fire and write, ‘There's some warmth in the room.’”
Hakoda huffed a small laugh despite himself.
Katara didn't. She stirred. The pot had begun to thicken properly now, all the separate things becoming one thing, which was usually satisfying and tonight only made her more cross.
“I'm meant to leave for Republic City in three days,” she snipped, “Suki is due next month.”
“Suki is healthy,” Sokka chimed.
“She's pregnant.”
“Pregnancy isn't an illness. She keeps saying that. Usually while lifting things I'm apparently not lifting correctly.”
“She wants me there.”
“She does. But if you went to the Fire Nation first, you could come to Republic City after. It's not as if the capital is in another world. Ships travel. Maps exist.”
Katara stared at him. “You think I should go?”
Sokka put both hands on the table, his expression turning unusually serious. “I think there is an eight-year-old girl somewhere in that palace who is sick enough that Zuko sent a hawk into a polar storm. And I think if anyone had written to us, back then, saying they knew someone who might've helped Mum, Dad would have crossed the world before breakfast.”
The kitchen went very still.
Hakoda didn't look down. He only closed one hand around his bowl, as if holding its warmth.
Katara felt the words enter her and find the places she fisted tight. “That's a little manipulative,” she said quietly.
“Uh huh,” Sokka nodded, "but also true.”
She hated him a little for that. Not much. Only enough to make being loved by him inconvenient.
Hakoda spoke after a moment. “You don't owe Zuko your obedience. You don't owe the Fire Nation anything that costs you yourself. But you have a gift, Katara. And when a child is ill, the shape of the world becomes very simple.”
Katara swallowed.
The fire shifted. A long tongue of flame licked up the side of the pot and vanished.
“It's not simple,” she muttered. “He keeps trying to solve people the way he solves problems, and people don't work like that.”
Sokka tilted his head, “huh, that was almost poetic.”
Katara admired her nails, “sometimes I’m angry enough to be eloquent.”
“Good. Use that. Call him something.”
“Sokka,” Hakoda warned.
“What?! I’m helping. She has anger. Anger needs a target. Zuko has generously provided his entire personality.”
“Don't encourage your sister to insult the Fire Lord.”
“Not the Fire Lord,” said Sokka, “our emotionally constipated childhood pursuer. Completely different legal category.”
Katara snatched the letter from the table and glared at it as if Zuko might feel the heat of her eyes from across the sea.
“Self-important, crown-wearing, emotionally constipated ash-weasel.”
Sokka slapped the table. “Excellent!”
“Sokka.”
“What? It had structure. It had imagery. I believed her.”
Hakoda rubbed a hand over his face. “Don't call the Fire Lord an ash-weasel.”
“Not to his face,” Sokka added.
Katara folded the letter with vicious precision. “He thinks he can swing his - ”
“Katara,” Hakoda choked.
“ - royal authority around,” she amended, “and everyone will simply rearrange their lives!”
Sokka leaned toward Hakoda, “she was gonna say something else.”
“I know.”
“It would've been accurate.”
“I also know that.”
Katara threw the dish rag at Sokka’s head. He caught it with one hand and looked insufferably pleased.
Hakoda returned to his stew. “You will decide in the morning.”
“I can decide now.”
“Nope,” he said, in the voice that had ended council arguments and childhood tantrums alike, “tonight you are angry. In the morning you may still be angry, but you shall be rested.”
Sokka nodded. “Rested anger has better aim.”
Katara looked between them, father and brother, both pretending they weren't already certain what she would do.
That was another unfairness.
They knew her.
She turned back to the pot, tasted the stew, and added more salt than was necessary.
They ate together whilst the blizzard pressed its white hands against the shutters.
Sokka told an extremely long story about a councilman in Republic City who'd attempted to flirt with Suki and ended the evening apologising to three Kyoshi Warriors and a bush.
Hakoda laughed until he coughed.
Katara tried not to laugh and failed halfway through because Sokka demonstrated the councilman’s bow using a ladle and his own tragically exposed socked feet.
For a little while, the letter lay silent beside Hakoda’s bowl.
For a little while, they were only three people in a warm kitchen with stew in their bellies, the world kept outside by walls of snow and bone and old love.
But when the meal ended, and Sokka went to fetch more wood, and Hakoda carried the remaining stew to the cold room, Katara stood alone at the wash basin with her sleeves rolled to her elbows and felt the shape of the future waiting.
The plates were greasy. The water was hot enough to redden her hands. She scrubbed harder than she needed to, jaw tight, while behind her the old polar-dog lifted his head from beneath the bench and watched her with cloudy eyes.
His name was Uncle, because Sokka had named him at fourteen and nobody possessed the strength to argue.
Uncle thumped his tail once.
“Don't look at me like that,” Katara chided.
The polar-dog blinked.
“I'm not going because he asked badly.”
Uncle sneezed.
“I'm going because there's a child.”
The dog lowered his chin onto his paws.
“And because apparently I'm cursed to know honourable, impossible men who send letters like they were carved out of furniture.”
Uncle sighed, a long, whistling sound of deep canine judgment.
Katara set another plate in the rack. “Yes,” she said, “I know.”
The wind moaned down the chimney. The fire popped. Somewhere outside, Sokka shouted that one of the wood piles had betrayed him.
Katara stared at the folded letter on the table.
Fire Lord Zuko. Hotman Zuko. Ash-weasel Zuko. A boy from a war that had ended fourteen years ago and somehow had not stopped following her.
She plunged her hands back into the dishwater.
“I was going to Republic City,” she told the old dog, “there were going to be dumplings. Suki was going to let me hold the baby. Sokka was going to panic himself bald. It was going to be grand.”
Uncle gave another tail thump.
Katara narrowed her eyes at him. “Don't take his side.”
The polar-dog yawned.
“Oh, yes. Very wise. Very spiritual. You and Father should start a council.”
She scrubbed the last bowl and set it aside.
The letter waited.
Katara dried her hands slowly, one finger at a time, as if delay were a form of rebellion.
Then she picked up the letter once more and read it again.
A child in a palace. A sickbed. A father proud enough to make even fear sound clipped and official.
Katara groaned and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.
Uncle, traitor that he was, looked smug.
“Fine,” she hissed at him, “but if the Fire Lord is unbearable, I'm blaming you!"
The dog wheezed again.
Katara folded the letter and tucked it into the pocket of her apron.
Outside, the storm raged on.
Inside, the kitchen smelled of stew, old smoke, and the irritating churn of fate.
***