Chapter Text
Zuko doesn't mean to take the necklace. Well, no, that's not quite right. He sees it on the floor of the cave, back where Katara- the waterbender had been before she conjured a massive wave over him and the Dai Li and carried the Avatar's lifeless body up through the ceiling. Everyone else is leaving. His sister isn't looking. He shouldn't be either.
Her mother's necklace.
He stows it away in his pocket.
He regrets it later, the first night on the ship home. In the Earth Kingdom, watching his father's forces march the streets from the window of the palace, thoughts of the necklace fell to the wayside as a horrible sense of guilt closed his throat and doubt over his decision crept at the edges of his mind, looking for any chink in his defenses. But on the ship, out of his Earth Kingdom disguise, back in the reds and blacks of the Fire Nation, the blue stone falls from his pocket and Zuko finds himself facing a different kind of guilt. In his hands, a stark reminder of the week in those crystal caves, the necklace stares up at him as he sits on his bed. The stone is somehow the exact shade of her eyes.
Disgusted with himself for holding onto it, Zuko tosses it across the room, turning his back to the wall where it clatters. It might be broken now. Her mother's necklace.
The floor is cold on the soles of his feet. He stands over the offending accessory, glaring as though it had purposely followed him from the catacombs to haunt him. The clasp is damaged, but not by the throw. He kneels, letting his head rest against the steel wall. He just stares at it. The unchipped, undamaged, pendant shines in the red light. It's in perfect shape, if it weren't for the damaged clasp, which is singed. It must have been when her hair was knocked loose, he concludes. Zuko had never seen Ka- the waterbender with her hair down before. It had looked... powerful, somehow. But moreover, he realizes, examining the burnt fabric, it was now his fault she no longer has it.
"I didn't steal it, if that's what you're wondering," he once said to her. And now he has, essentially. The only thing she had left of her mom, and he took it from her, along with everything else, in one fell swoop.
He snatches the necklace off the metal floor, shoving it in his bedside table drawer. Then he stares at the drawer and rips it back open, pulling the pendant out again. He shouldn't leave it where anyone could find it. Azula... would question him. And he's just now finally returning home. He can't let her think he's having doubts.
He shoves it under his pillow. 'There,' he thinks. At least if someone tries to come in tonight, he'll be able to grab it and hide it quickly.
He falls asleep, keenly aware of its presence under his head, tossing and turning.
____
"I'm sorry I yelled at you before," Katara says, and Zuko believes her. It's funny, he's not sure anyone has ever apologized to him before. He was usually the one doing the apologizing to others.
"It's okay. It doesn't matter," he says, because it's true. Why should she be sorry? It's not like anything they say now makes a difference.
"It's just that, for so long now, when I pictured the face of the enemy, it was your face." Katara sounds guilty. He glances at her. The catacombs melt into a riverbank in the dead of night. She's glaring off at some distant thing from where she's tied to the tree. The air is unnaturally still.
"My face," he echoes. "I see." He closes his eyes and then opens them with a smile. "Try to understand," he tries, because he doesn't want her to see an enemy now. He approaches carefully, circling behind her because she won't look at him. He just wants someone to see him. "I need to find him in order to restore something I've lost. My honor." Surely she must understand this. She still won't look at him. He gets close to her ear, something strange and wanting taking over as he tries to persuade her. "Perhaps in exchange I can restore something you've lost."
The necklace he keeps wrapped around his wrist is now held up in front of her. She gasps and he grins, knowing he was right all those weeks ago when he found it on the brig. "My mother's necklace!" She cries and he brings it closer to him. "Where did you get that!?" Katara yells as he walks away.
"I didn't steal it if that's what you're wondering," he taunts, because he still can't believe she was crazy enough to steal from pirates. Did she seriously need to learn new moves that badly? She certainly didn't need help freezing his men to the deck of his ship. He turns to see her looking at him now and he feels victory within his reach. "Tell me where he is!"
"No!" She yells and turns from him. "He's my friend." The ropes melt away and the riverbank morphs into a pond, surprisingly warm for the North Pole in the dead of winter. "I'm perfectly capable of protecting him," she tells the watercolor smudge next to her.
He glares, frustrated that this isn't working. "Well," he says, reminding her that he exists. "Aren't you a big girl now?"
"No," Katara says, and the watercolor smudge next to her runs off as the waterbender turns to him as though of all people, she can't believe he's here. He clenches his fists.
"Yes," he says, because he is. He's alive, despite all of the universe's attempts and the Avatar is a distant smudge, but he's within reach. Zuko's not just going to disappear quietly. "Hand him over, and I won't have to hurt you."
Katara drops into a fighting stance, standing between him and his ticket home. Why won't she just listen? Why can't she understand? He rushes her, casting blow after blow when suddenly she knocks him back, flipping him onto his stomach. Drenched, he pushes himself up. Okay. So maybe that scroll had taught her a few things. "I see you learned a new trick," he snarks, as he rises to his feet. "But I didn't come this far to lose to you."
Not her. Why does he care that it's her?
He turns, fire blazing, but she's ready for him, and he gasps as the force of her strikes push him back. He staggers, caught off balance, the ground now slippery. Then his feet are frozen to the ground and Katara starts moving, fast, expert motions, and water rises around him on all sides, swirling faster and faster and he's frozen, a hint of genuine fear as the temperature drops and he's locked in. He wipes his hand on the ice and through it he can see her, grinning, confident. Okay. So more than just a scroll.
He's impressed and enraged all at once. So all those months were far from her best. "You little peasant," he sneers. "You've found a master, haven't you?"
The ice explodes and then he's in a fight. A real fight. The Avatar always gave him one, but Katara doesn't evade like the airbender does. She holds her ground, rushes him, matches him blow for blow, deflecting, not so much as dodging. She's good. Great, even. In the moonlight he sees the pendant of her mother's necklace glinting and he wonders when on earth she managed to retrieve it. The thought only incenses him.
He feints and slips past her, trying to reach his golden prize. He can feel the fabric come into focus beneath his fingertips, and suddenly he's completely disoriented, slammed aside with bruising force. When he opens his eyes, he's fifty feet in the air and furious as the light shifts to a pale yellow dawn. He attacks when she isn't looking and still she almost defends herself, but the force of his fire knocks her back into a pillar and she's out cold. He holds his victory in his hands, but still, he feels the need to end it, staring down at her unconscious form. "You rise with the moon," he tells her. "I rise with the sun."
The oasis swirls around him, the color draining as the girl rises to her feet, a parka materializing, making her look bigger, more solid, and dead serious. The grayscale storm whips around them as his prize is dragged away from him by more smudges. When will she give up?
"Here for a rematch?" He asks, because he's beaten her once before. He won't go down without a fight. She glares.
"Trust me, Zuko," she says, and it's the first time he's ever heard her say his name. It sends shivers down his spine, unnerving him. "It won't be much of a match."
He's lifted in the air and slammed to the ground. He blinks and snow becomes stone and sand, his uncle unconscious before him, chest blackened and Zuko's entire world crumbling around him. The Avatar is right there, but he can't reach. His uncle needs him but he can't heal. He's so tired and he cannot rest. He can feel the flames around them, violent and unstoppable. He's never been able to stop them from taking everything from him.
"Zuko, I can help." Katara's voice rings out behind him and he clenches his fists. His uncle wouldn't even be here if it weren't for all of them trying to fight Azula. His uncle would still be okay and far far away, and what could she possibly do to fix any of this anyway?
"Leave!" He cries, throwing flames above her head, the other smudges next to her cowering from the heat, and her raised hands fly up. He sees one smudge pull her away and turns his back, angry and scared. This is all that ever happens isn't it? He pushes people away.
"Why did they throw you in here?" Katara asks, still here for some spirit or another's reason. Her voice is lower, but far more hostile now, and he hears her footsteps approaching in the gravelly sand, gaining clarity with every movement. He doesn't answer, head hung low, hands over his eyes. Nothing makes sense anymore. "Let me guess," she continues. "It's a trap. So that when Aang shows up to find me you can finally have him in your little Fire Nation clutches." He chances a glance over his shoulder and sees her seething face. He wishes it were a trap. He looks away. He can't find his uncle anymore. He must have lost him, somehow. He's always losing important people.
"You're a terrible person, you know that?" Katara asks him. "Always following us, hunting the Avatar, trying to capture the world's last hope for peace?" Her voice raises with every accusation. He sits. "But what do you care?" She spits. "You're the Fire Lord's son. Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood."
"You don't know what you're talking about!" He yells, because how could she think he doesn't care? No one is indifferent to this war. It follows wherever he goes, as proven by his sister ripping apart the fragile life he just started to build. Azula must have taken his uncle away somehow and that's why he can't find him.
"I don't!?" Her voice cuts. "How dare you? You have no idea what this war has put me through. Me personally!" He hears the whirl of her shoes on the stone floor. "The Fire Nation took my mother away from me."
Katara is crying. And suddenly Zuko is not a young man and she is not a young woman and they are two children sitting on the floor of a dark prison with no-one but each other for company and far more in common than anyone else could ever understand. He turns to her, feels himself melting down and shrinking and the girl he turns to is small. "I'm sorry," he tells her, his voice younger and clearer. "That's something we have in common."
She stops sobbing and turns to him, her features squished smaller, her eyes bigger and bluer, far too blue as tears run down her face. She's nothing like his sister and her friends. They never cry in front of anyone.
He crawls towards her and she hiccups, not mirroring him, but not backing away. He stops in front of her, on his knees and she faces her whole body to him. "I like your necklace," his small voice echoes in the cave.
"It belonged to my mom," she says. "I like your swords."
"My mom got them for me," he says. "I miss her."
"I miss my mom, too." She looks like she's going to cry again.
"I'm Zuko," he says, trying to smile because his mom told him he's nicer when he smiles. She must have been right because the girl smiles back.
"I'm Katara."
____
Zuko wakes in the middle of trying to say something. His senses flood to him. He is not small. His voice is not clear and boyish. He is not in the catacombs and he is not with Katara- no- no, he shouldn't remember her name. He can't call her by her name ever again. He never should have learned it. He clenches his fists and finds the smooth stone of the pendant in his grasp beneath his pillow. He scowls. He never should have gotten close to her. Never should have picked up this cursed necklace. He's going home. He doesn't need memories of a half-baked acquaintanceship bogging him down. He needs to be Prince Zuko, not just... Zuko.
He sighs and sits up, rubbing at his eyes and staring down at the necklace. He should just get rid of it. But how? Maybe he should burn it. "The Fire Nation took my mother away from me." Maybe not. He stands, then walks, dragging a cloak from his open wardrobe as he heads to the door, tucking the necklace up his sleeve as he slips down the metal hallway.
The world is quiet save for the slight breeze and waves rushing below. Zuko walks to the edge of the deck in the moonlight, inhaling the ocean air. It's hard to believe how long it's been since he's been on the water. His time at sea feels like ages ago, though it's only been about a year since he was spending every waking moment on the water. This ship is much larger than the one he commanded, though. The wind and salt spray are so far below him and he finds himself feeling unjustly separated from them. There's no one else up here on the deck. He chances a glance up at the helmsman's watchtower and is satisfied that no one up there would be able to see him from where he stands off to the side. He looks out at the ocean and traces the carved pattern of the pendant hidden by the long fabric of his robes. This is what he must do. He has to let go of whatever weaknesses he has. Not that the pendant is a sign of his weakness. It's not even his. And that's why it has to go.
The stone seems to glow under the light of the moon, catching and reflecting it beautifully. Zuko holds it over the edge of the hull, his grip tightening even as he prepares himself to drop it into the waves below. He grits his teeth. He looks up at the waxing gibbous moon and he could almost swear he hears it speaking to him, a low, foreboding thrum in the back of his skull.
Her mother's necklace. What he wouldn't do to see even one of his mother's old possessions. What he wouldn't give to know a part of her exists out there somewhere. What he wouldn't pray to have a reminder of her with him at all times.
Blue eyes flash through his mind, kind, understanding, and so deep he nearly falls in. Zuko curses and yanks the necklace back to himself. He can't do it.
The necklace goes back up the sleeve of his robes and he wraps the fabric around his wrist, much the same way he had way back when he'd first found it on a Fire Nation brig. Back then it was nothing more than a possible bargaining chip. What could he possibly bargain for it now?
It's a horrible choice. Keeping it can only cause trouble for him now. And yet he holds on. Zuko frowns, staring out at the moon once again. He's such a sentimental fool.