Chapter Text
Energy pulses beneath her touch. Potent… and unyielding.
“Come on, Aang.” Katara grits out and the glow at her hands grows brighter, washing away the red of the cabin. “Work with me.”
She works over the condensed energy slowly, carefully encouraging it to disperse. Like a tangle of cords, she pulls and pushes at the knot, searching for a soft spot, willing the tendrils of energy to unravel and return to their natural state.
She might as well be imploring a stone to return to sand.
Healing had never been difficult for her before. In fact, it came naturally. More so than any other waterbending technique ever had. She didn’t have to work for it. She didn’t even have to learn it. — Healing was instinctive as breathing.
Desperately, Katara thinks back to Yagoda’s classes in the North. There had to be something there, right? Something useful she could scrape from depths of her memory? But she had spent so much of that short time more interested in stewing in her own misery. Furious at the North and their backwards ideas about what she should be allowed to be capable of. All because she was a girl.
And then, Pakku finally agreed to take her on as a student… and, well, she never returned to Yagoda’s healing classes had she? There didn’t seem a point in it.
Self-centered. Katara curses herself. Stupid. She should have paid more attention. She should have kept going to the classes. If she did, maybe Aang would be—
“Katara.”
Katara startles at the hand at her shoulder, the water slipping from her grasp, and the red of the room snaps back in a way that’s disorienting.
“Oh.” She breathes as she turns towards the voice. “Sokka. You scared me.”
“I knocked.” Sokka says in way of explanation, studying her face with a frown. Then he looks at Aang. “Any changes?”
“None.” Katara says, frustrated, miserable. “I think if I could just get the energy here to breakup” — She places her hand on the angry, starburst scar on Aang’s back — “that might wake him up but he— it doesn’t respond to my healing. If we can get more Spirit Water at the North, maybe I can—”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Katara frowns. “Doesn’t what?”
“Well, what if you get more Spirit Water. And you breakup the energy” — he waves his hands the goofy way he does when he mimics her bending, despite the gravity of his words — “and he still doesn’t wake up? What then?”
“What are you—“ Katara side-steps away from her brother, putting herself more firmly between him and Aang. As if she could shield him from the very idea. “Why would you say something like? Of course, Aang is going to wake up.”
“Katara.” Sokka sighs. “The last time Aang was like this, he slept for like a hundred years. We need to figure out what we’re going to do if that’s happening again.”
“That was different.” Katara shakes her head, heat and desperation building in her chest. “This is different. You’re wrong.”
“It’s been weeks now.“
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.“ The words lash out from her, harsh, and something in her brother’s eyes harden before he speaks in an even, level voice.
“And neither do you.”
“Ugh.” Katara whirls away from him, water exploding from the bucket at her feet, toppling, as she presses her hands hard to her eyes. “Don’t act like—“
“Is everything alright in here?”
Katara’s hands drop from her face as both she and Sokka turn towards the door. Their father stands in the open doorway in his Fire Navy uniform. He holds his helmet beneath his arm, pressed against his side.
Great.
“Yeah.” Katara crosses her arms, scoffing. “We’re just fine, Dad.”
But when the answering silence is stilted, an uncomfortable sensation twists and coils in her gut. After too long a pause Hakoda opens his mouth to respond — and is promptly cut off by Sokka.
“I’ll be back out in a second, Dad. Just give us a moment?”
“Of course.” He sighs, giving Katara a pained look. “Come join us on deck when you're ready.” Then he continues down the hall, leaving the two of them in silence.
Finally, Sokka looks to her. “You can’t stay mad at him forever, ya know?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m not mad at him.”
“Right.” Sokka mutters to himself. “And I’m an otter penguin.” Then he scrubs a heavy hand over his face. “Could you at least get some rest? You’ve been going at it for days — when was the last time you slept?”
Katara reaches down and rightens the pail before bending the spilled water back into it. Then she stands back up, smoothing her hair back from her face as she says, very, very coldly:
“If you’re not going to be helpful Sokka, then you should just leave.”
Sokka holds her glower, but after a moment he seems to deflate a little, a tiredness encroaching over his features.
“Just…” He exhales heavily, rubbing the back of his neck. “Try to get some sleep soon. It’s not healthy for you to put all of yourself into something that can’t be changed.”
She turns away from him. “That’s your opinion.”
“Yeah.” He pauses. “I guess it is.”
She listens as Sokka turns and exits the cabin, and flinches when the door shuts behind him with a metal thud that seems far louder than it is.
After a pause, Katara releases her breathe and turns back to Aang. She presses the back her fingertips to his forehead — no fever — then adjusts his head carefully, making sure his neck isn’t at a bad angel. That he can breathe properly. For a moment, she watches his back rise and fall in calm, steady movements, then she bends a tendril of water from the pail, coating her hands in a layer of water before settling them to his scar once more.
Ethereal light illuminates the room. A tear slips from her chin. And the night lumbers on.
The first time she wakes, she wakes slowly.
The world is a dark, him haze reds and the steady hum of the ship engine purrs against her back.
Katara stares at the ceiling in confusion —She couldn’t remember coming back to her room. Had she fallen asleep?
Aang. She needs to check on him. Heal him. She needs to—
“Don’t move.”
“Sokka?” She asks — Had he carried her back to her room? — then gasps as fiery daggers slide into her lungs. “My chest.” She whimpers.
But it’s not just her chest. Suddenly, she’s acutely aware of pain everywhere. — Her head, her back, her knees, her hands… It feels as if her body had been mangled to head to toe. Like she’d been swept away by an avalanche and shouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.
“Don’t move.” The voice repeats. Stern. Sharp. “Your ribs are broken."
The edge of a cup is pressed to her lips and a bitter, earthy aroma fills her nostrils.
“Drink.” He orders.
She does and it’s not until she’s swallowed two mouthfuls that the foul taste hits her.
“No.” She turns her head away, tea spilling down her chin. “Water.” She rasps. “Please. I need…”
Her vision swims and then she’s gone.
Katara bleeds in and out of consciousness.
Sometimes, she’s with Aang, trying to heal him. Fruitless. Other times she’s with her brother, arguing over things she can’t remember.
Sometimes, she’s with her mother. Just the two of them in an umiak, happy and content as could be as they move through still, easy waters.
And sometimes, she’s in a cabin of a Fire Nation ship. Quite often, Zuko is there, standing over her with a grim expression. Occasionally, the Chi-Blocker is with him or, even less frequently, the Fire Princess. And then there’s a face she can’t recognize at all — a man in red robes, who force-feeds her mouthfuls of horrible, horrible tea.
Katara doesn’t know what to make of these moments. Are they real? Or are they dreams?
She’s not sure she can tell the difference.
Katara cannot pinpoint at which exact moment she becomes aware, but this time, as she wakes, it’s with a slow-building clarity.
Fragments from the past days come back to her gradually:
Defending the Wall from attack. The Fire Prince and Princess dressed in Northern blues, polar-wolves in rabbit-sheep clothing. Red, descending from the skies. A fight. Surrender. And then— and then—
Katara closes her eyes as her body pulsates with pain, breathing shallowing through her teeth. Instinctively, she goes to touch her necklace, but flinches as the motion sends a flare of agony through her right hand. It’s only then that she registers that there’s bandages wrapped around her hand — around both of them— through the contact the bandages make with the bare skin of her body.
She swallows thickly, her throat as dry as sand, and slowly turns her head to the side, searching.
The cabin she resides in is small and sparse. No window. Just the bed she lays in, the chair pulled to its side, and a small table pressed against the opposite wall. A great number of red candles line that table, lit and clearly having been so for a while, and a large Fire Nation banner hangs adjacent to them. Across the room, through the crack of an open door, is a washroom.
It takes her two attempts to rise from the bed, her ribs too tender to have any weight on, and her hands too injured to apply any leverage with. Renewed pain burns all the way from shoulder blades down to her knees but before she can lose steam, she takes several shaky steps to the washroom, nearly falling into the wall once she closes the gap.
Katara slides the door open. — And a gasp is torn from her lips.
In the large mirror of the washroom, Katara’s reflection looks back at her in horror.
Deep bruising and discoloration blossom like ink blots across her bare skin. There are plum-sized bruises at each of her major pressure points, near-distinct handprints along her shoulders and upper arms, but the worst is focalized at the center of her chest.
Bleeding beyond the edges of the white cloth covering her upper torso is a dark mass nearly the size of her head.
In a strange sort of awe, Katara raises a bandaged hand to her clavicle and traces the upper periphery of the bruise, feather-light, envisioning how the rest of it must take form beneath the bandages. She can remember the origins of the others with considerable clarity — Ty Lee, chi-blocking her. The soldiers, grabbing, restraining, shoving — but her chest… then, with an odd twist in her gut, she realizes.
Someone had given her chest compressions. Someone had given her chest compressions for so long her ribs broke.
Her heart had stopped. And she can’t remember any of it.
Abruptly, Katara feels dowsed by an ice-cold wave of panic.
She stumbles into the washroom completely, the door falling shut behind her, then beelines to the rain-machine. Fumbling, she turns the right handle — because the left sends boiling hot water, and she’ll never forget it. Sokka only had to make that mistake once on their stolen cruiser before coming up with that stupid rhyme: Right is chilly, left burns your—
Cool water descends on her from the spout above.
At the inside of her right wrist, Katara uses her teeth to rip the bandage’s stay, hissing as the cloth unspools. A sort of salve has been applied beneath the bandage, causing it to stick to her skin like honey, and by the time she’s unfurled it from her palm she understands why.
Her hand is one great, weeping wound.
She looks at her mutilated flesh in horror and disbelief. — It’s as if her skin has burst from the inside out and began to rot.
At once, Katara thinks back to the cold of the North. She remembers it steadily seeping into her, taking hold of her. She remembers Zuko, grasping her hand, and scowling. You’re hypothermic.
But it hadn’t been this bad. It hadn’t.
They’d arrived to the Northern Palace and there had been a reprieve, however brief, from the freezing temperatures and the polar winds. And then they had left and — they had —
She couldn’t remember.
Spiraling, Katara unfurls the rest of the bandage, letting it fall to her feet, then reaches towards the shower of water, her hand trembling. She sobs when the water first hits — burning in the way an open blister does — but then, instinct takes over.
A blue-white glow. Energy shifting. Push and pull. Give and take.
And when the light dies, she’s dizzy, shaking, but a perfectly uninjured hand — her hand — greets her. Skin brown, smooth, and soft.
A breathless sound escapes her, her eyes welling with tears of relief.
Carefully, she repeats the action with her other hand, unwinding the bandage and healing the wound. Then she strips herself of the cloths that had been fashioned as undergarments and sinks to the floor of the rain-machine.
Apart from her hands, her ribs are the most draining to heal. From her experience, broken bones tend to require more energy than soft tissues, and it’s an unsettling thing to feel her own bones shift back into place but once they do its as if a great stone has been lifted from her chest.
She breathes in deeply, and relishes the ease of the act.
Afterwards she checks, double-checks, then triple-checks her heart, thorough, and, once satisfied, turns her attention to the rest of her body. The injuries she finds are more minor in comparison — pulled and sore muscles, bruising, and other surface-level abrasions.
Katara washes them all away like the sea smoothes the shore clean.
Then, with a trembling hand, she reaches up and turns the left handle, and the water warms. She lets it run over her as she slumps against the wall, exhausted, bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
For a long time, Katara refuses to let the reality of her situation creep back in on her. She simply stays there beneath the stream of the rain-machine, letting the heat sink into her, lull her, and in the haze of her fatigue, she can almost pretend that she’s back on that stolen cruiser, taking a moment for herself before bed. Her family and friends are just a walk down the hall. Aang is asleep, injured — but near and safe.
Almost.
Katara’s eyes blink open, bleary.
She stands and on a metal shelf in the stall finds a bar of soap that’s evidently been left for her. It smells odd and dries out her skin and hair, but anything is better than the layer of grime and salt clinging to her. Once she’s done, she exits the rain-machine, bends the water from her body and wrappings, and dresses.
With her hand she wipes, rather than bends, a swath of condensed steam from the mirror. Her face is gaunt, eyes hollow, but there is solace, however small, in seeing her body freed from the physical score of her failures.
Her gaze lingers on her bare throat, and she presses her fingers to where the pendant of her mother’s necklace should be. Then her eyes catch on the incongruous glow of color behind her.
A white-gray dressing robe hangs from a hook beside the door. Silk and cloud-light. She reaches out to it, hesitant, and thumbs the fine fabric of the sleeve.
Katara stares at the robe for a long moment. Silent. Then, with a growing pit in her stomach, she slips it on.
The ship’s physician finds her an hour later.
Katara had sat up in her bed when she heard the bolt to her door unlocking, pulled from her half-dozing state, and when he’d discovered her there, alert and aware, the tray in his hands crashed to the floor, its contents shattering.
“Alert the prince and princess.” He’d hissed to someone outside the doorway, his gaze cutting over to her—
Now the man sits on the small stool at her bedside, listening to her heart through a long, cylindrical instrument pressed to her sternum. Katara sits stiffly, holding a cup of vile-smelling tea in her hands that she doesn’t drink from, and steadfastly ignores the black-socket stares of the helmeted soldiers that line the wall next to the door.
“Tell me.” He says, folding the tool back into his robes. Then he reaches forward and presses his hand into her lower ribcage. “Does this hurt?”
“No.” She says.
“Or this?” He takes her right hand in his own and lightly pinches the flesh of her palm.
“No.”
“And you have sensation?”
“Yes.”
“At what it was before your injuries?”
“Yes.” Katara stifles the urge to snatch her hand away. “All of it—“
The door slams open.
The occupants of the room all look at the Fire Prince, who stands unmoving in the doorway, his pale hand still outstretched, pressed against the metal door. He’s not in his armor, but instead in a set of fine, black robes that hang open over black trousers and a wine-red tunic, his hair loose. He stares at Katara in shock, looking oddly unsettled, as if he were seeing a ghost.
“Prince Zuko.” The doctor says in deference, releasing her hand and bowing his head slightly, and Zuko’s face goes blank as his eyes turn over the room. “I’ve never seen such a thing before. She’s—“
Zuko shakes his head once, and the physician falls quiet.
After a second, Zuko straightens to his full height then enters the room, slowly coming over to the head of her bed. A foreboding presence, he looks down at her, eyes scanning — over her face, her neck, her hands — anything not concealed by her robe.
“Do you know where you are?” He asks finally, voice hoarse.
Katara looks away. “Yes.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
She can feel her lip curl in disgust, anger.“Yes.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I-“ Katara starts, then stops. The last thing she could remember was leaving the Palace. Waiting for something. Cold, so cold. Tired. And then— She looks back to Zuko, wary. “You did something to me. To my hands.“
“No.” He frowns and anger hardens his eyes. “You’re the one who decided to go play in the canal, Agni only knows why.” He shakes his head. “I stopped you from jumping in for a swim.”
Katara exhales sharply through her nose and crosses her arms, a burning sensation in her face and chest. Strangely, she feels embarrassed, then aggravated that she does. She’s well aware — just as he must be — that she doesn’t quite have the wherewithal to make that sort of accusation, but she’s just as unwilling to ask him or anyone to fill in the gaps in her memory. That would be a concession, somehow.
But what he had said was enough for her get the big picture — and it confirms what she had already been suspicious of. Playing in the canal spoke to delirium. And from what she can remember of that night, she’d already been suffering from the early stages of hypothermia. Clearly at some point — her hand presses to her chest, her thumb rubbing idly over her heart — the situation had turned… dire.
She remembers once, as a child, a man from her village had wandered from a hunting group, tracking a bear out onto the ice floes. A wrong step had set him plunging into the waters, and by the time they’d fished him out and gotten him back to the village, he was barely sane, complaining that he was burning up and trying to rip off the clothes and blankets they’d bundled him under.
He didn’t make it through the night.
“Zuko.”
Katara looks to the open doorway again. Ty Lee stands there, her large gray eyes peering at Katara, curious.
“What it is?” He asks.
Ty Lee blinks at Katara, then looks to him. “She wants to see her.”
This makes Zuko turn to face Ty Lee head-on. Katara can’t make out his expression, but she can see the growing tightness in his jaw. After a moment of consideration, he glances back down at Katara, his eyes narrowed.
“Can you walk?” He asks.
Katara gives him a disdainful look but — without argument — she sets her teacup and saucer off to the side, and rises to her feet. The physician and soldiers stiffen as she does, tensing as if she were a bomb about to go off, but neither Zuko or Ty Lee have an outward reaction. Zuko simply watches her, eyes hard, as she readjusts the stay of her robes, pulling it tight. Then she crosses her arms and raises a single eyebrow to him, as if to say: Clearly.
“Perfect.” He mutters to himself. Then he turns and strides from the room without another word.
Ty Lee stays by the doorway in his wake, looking at Katara in silent, unmistakable prompting.
Understanding at once, Katara can feel her momentum waver a little, her fingers taking hold of her upper arms as her shoulders slump slightly inward, defensive. Ignoring the heavy, expectant stares of the occupants of the room, she tentatively follows after Zuko, and steps out into the hall.
An array of fine platters spread out across the low table, each piled high with generous offerings of exquisitely-prepared food. Steaming rice, spiced fruit, freshly-cooked fish, sweet pastries… it makes Katara’s stomach ache with a deep, gnawing hunger. But she makes no move to fill the plate set before her, her hands remaining folded within her lap. Neutral.
“Do you think it’s poisoned?” Azula asks her, and Katara tears her eyes away from a bowl of sliced of watermelon to look across the table. The princess smiles at her, close-lipped, like she finds the idea novel, stirring her tea idly with a small, golden spoon. “It would hardly make sense for us to put all this effort into keeping you alive if we were just going to turn around and kill you, don’t you think?”
No. It’s not that Katara thinks the food is poisoned.
It’s that she finds this entire ordeal incredibly surreal.
For years, she’s been dealing with these four. Evading. Battling. Fleeing… Tui and La, just days ago she had been fighting them for all her worth on the Northern Wall.
And now she’s on a Fire Nation battleship having breakfast with them.
The room she’s in is far more lavish than any she’d encountered on that hi-jacked Fire Nation cruiser. The walls are artfully draped in swathes of red fabrics, and tall, elegant floor vases house a variety of fresh flowers Katara’s never seen before, each beautiful and without flaw. Centered in the room is the round, low table, wood sleek and glossy.
If she were to reach out, she could easily touch Ty Lee and Zuko, who sit on either side of her respectively. Across from Katara, next to Ty Lee, is Azula, and next to Azula is Mai, completing the table’s circle. None of them wear any form of armor. And like Zuko, they’re all dressed in clothing that — while still the very image of finery and elegance — is far more casual than the attire she’d typically associate most of them to.
It’s simply weird, seeing the four of them in such a relaxed state. As if she’s entered a different world. All while her family and friends are—
Katara blinks rapidly, and takes in slow, measured breathes through her nose to mitigate the growing tightness in her chest. She looks beyond Azula, out the window to the ocean horizon — to where the sky has been turned a dark orange by the rising sun.
“You really should eat.” Ty Lee says, and the sincerity in her tone is enough to pull Katara from her thoughts. She glances to her left, perturbed, to where Ty Lee regards her in earnest. Not a hint of the girl who not that long ago looked ready to kill if Katara got too close. “You’ve had nothing but fluids the past two days. You need to eat to restore your energy —and to aid your recovery. Here.” Ty Lee reaches for a nearby platter of fish. “The protein in—“
“I don’t think she needs any help with recovery, Ty Lee.” Zuko cuts her off gruffly, but he’s looking at Katara as he says it, and, strangely, it feels like there’s an accusation there, simmering in the gold of his eyes. “Obviously.” He sneers.
And Mai looks up from her book for the first time since Katara’s entered the room in order to side-eye Zuko, gaze shrewd and razor-sharp.
“Obviously.” Azula echoes. Cool where Zuko had been irate. She brings her teacup to her mouth, but pauses before drinking from it. “And how lucky we all are that the water bender possesses such a remarkable ability.”
“Well,” Ty Lee says in a slightly wounded voice. “It still wouldn’t hurt—”
“I want to go back to my room.” Katara announces abruptly, done with whatever little bizarre game this was.
Silence greets her proclamation, their eyes all honing in on her like she’s broken some unspoken etiquette. She imagines they’d react no differently than if she had suddenly chucked her plate across the room, just to watch it shatter.
“I don’t think she sounds very grateful, does she Zuzu?” Azula says finally. She stares at her intensely and Katara thinks of a snake rising upward, its gaze locked on its target as it rears back to strike. “Especially after we’ve shown such profound understanding.”
It’s the final blow to the tenuous hold on her composure.
“Grateful?” Katara snaps. “What on earth should I be grateful for?“
“We have spared the lives of you and your fellow would-be usurpers, for one.” Azula returns her teacup to its platter and begins to trace her finger around the rim. “Your benders and soldiers haven’t been executed — much less imprisoned, for that matter. Your people are free to roam that dreadful hunk of ice as much as their hearts desire. And we’ve given you nothing less than the best care since your little accident.” She tilts her head and her long, dark hair spills forward like a curtain. “I’d say you have a great deal to be grateful for.”
And with every word, rage surges within Katara like a tidal wave. She places her hands flat to the table top, leaning forward, hissing. “The sun will freeze over before I’ll ever be—“
“I think,” Azula cuts her off with an unimpressed look, “that you’re still not grasping your situation.”
Then from somewhere at her side, the Fire Princess produces a scroll and Katara’s heart skips a beat at the familiar, blue wax seal of the Water Tribe symbol. She can feel her face twitch — anger evaporating, as confusion and despair break through, just for a moment — before she’s able to reign her features back into a sort of placidity.
“What is that?” She asks, and there’s a note of longing in her voice that she can’t quite obscure.
“Another generosity.” Azula says. “A letter. From your father and brother.” And Katara doesn’t realize she’s leaning over the table, one hand pressed between the plates and cutlery, the other reaching for the scroll, until Azula draws it back from her grasp as its just a hair’s breadth away. “Not yet.”
Katara’s eyes refocus on Azula’s face, feeling almost as if she’s emerged from a trance. The Fire Princess looks back at her, assessing, like a fisherman gauging when to best pull the line.
“You see — I need to be sure that you have a complete understanding. Of your decision. And what all that decision entails.” Slowly, intentionally, Azula handles the scroll, holding it to her chest with both hands, her thumb running mindlessly over the seal. “You agreed to be here as a ward of the Crown.”
It’s not quite poised as a question, but none the less Katara can tell she’s expecting a response.
“I did.” Katara says. She carefully sits back into her cushion, keenly aware of the way the energy has shifted in the room, as sharp as a knife’s edge. Of the way the Zuko, Ty Lee, and Mai have all gone deathly still, tensed for a fight.
“And yet your actions say otherwise.” Azula sighs as if genuinely disappointed. “Instead of acting with the honor and dignity appropriate for a lady of noble birth, you pout like a child. Instead of thanking your hosts for their benevolence and care, you scorn and mock us. I know things are more primitive in the Water Tribes, but surely even you must understand the concept of respect.”
And Katara knows — truly, she does — that the Fire Princess is toying with her. Testing her. Finding her boundaries, and pushing and prodding to see just how much it’ll take for her to crack. But even armed with that understanding, it doesn’t stop the fury from churning inside her gut like hot oil.
“In my tribe,” Katara has to speak slowly, to keep her emotions at bay. “Respect has to be earned.” Then her eyes pick over Azula, and she lets her face show her lack of impression before she throws the Princess’s words back at her. “And your actions say otherwise.”
But when Azula only smiles in response, wide and unaffected, it feels far less satisfying and much more like a misstep. The princess exhales through her nose in way that’s nearly a laugh.
“I was hoping you were smarter than your brother.” She muses, eyes light. “But obviously pig-headedness runs in the family. So let me make this very clear for you: Just as your life is at the mercy of the Water Tribes’ behavior, their lives are the mercy of yours. So if you give me so much as a single indication that you are not fully committed to your role here… well, then I will happily dissolve this accordance, execute you for your crimes, and our men stationed in the North and South will begin the process of weeding out the next avatar — Do I need to remind you of what that process entails?”
Slaughtering children. Or ripping them from their families, their homelands.
“No.” Katara says, feeling as if she’s been doused head to toe by a bucket of ice cold water.
“And we’d also have to reassess the sentences — or lack thereof — given to your soldiers for their crimes, which of course includes your father and brother. Is that what you’d prefer?”
“No.” Katara repeats.
Distantly she recognizes the sound of shaking porcelain and realizes that the teacups and teapot are all trembling as the water within the tea responds to her — to her fear, and to her anger.
“I didn’t think so.” Azula says. “So how about you start behaving with the grace and decorum that you should be.” Without looking, she presses her hand to the top of her teacup, just before it rattles off the edge of the table. “And stop behaving like a petulant brat. ”
Her final words are louder, sharper, as genuine irritation bleeds through them. A command coming down like a cleaver. At once the dishes stops shaking and Katara stares at the Princess in the silence, feeling like the air has been ripped from her lungs.
“That’s a start.” Azula raps her nails on the table. “Now thank me for my patience and understanding.”
It takes Katara a moment to find her voice, and once she does her words come out just as acidic as it feels.
“Thank you.”
“And for my generosity.”
“Thank you.”
“And for having this meal prepared for you.”
“Thank you.”
Then her eyes settle to Katara’s right, her lips pulling into a smirk that's knowing. “I think my brother deserves your gratitude as well. After all, the only reason you’re even here is because of him. Ty Lee”— Azula turns to the girl in question, sly — “how long did it take for Zuko to get her heart beating?”
“Most of the ride back to the ship.” Ty Lee responds casually. As if they were musing over nothing more than an interesting piece of gossip. “We'd just got her pulse back as we landed on deck.”
Azula hums in acknowledgment, and looks back at Katara like she can sense the sick feeling of understanding that’s taken hold of her. — Of how it builds in her gut like a sludge, heavy and nauseating. Katara swallows thickly, too aware of her heart now and how it’s pounding, thunderous, in her chest. Slowly, she looks to the Fire Prince.
Zuko does not look at her.
In fact, he’s the only one in the room not looking at her. She doesn’t know at what point he looked away, but he’s staring off ahead, not quite at the table and not quite at the wall. But his body is rigid — with fury, irritation, or perhaps even embarrassment. Katara can see it in the profile of his face and feel it in how it radiates off of him. Like he’d rather be anywhere else but here.
Aware of Azula’s prompting gaze, she forces the words to her lips again.
“Thank you.” Katara tells Zuko, and it burns like bile.
His head moves slightly, turning further away from her, but otherwise he doesn’t respond.
“Well, it seems the Water Bender can be taught new tricks.” Azula says. Then her voices raises in mocking shock. “And would you look at that — the sun hasn’t frozen over.”
Katara hates her so much.
Her eyes slip close as she breathes slowly through her nose to keep herself calm. “My letter?” She asks.
“Prove to me that you can act accordingly in your newfound station, and you’ll receive your letter when we arrive in Caldera.” Katara’s eyes open just in time to watch the scroll be tucked into the stay of Azula’s robes, golden eyes as hard as flint. “Understood?”"
And it’s a debilitating, humiliating thing — Katara isn’t shackled and her mouth isn’t gagged. She could bend the tea into shards of ice and send them flying into each of their throats faster than they could blink. She could have a wave swallow the ship whole and sink it to the depths of sea, never to be seen again. She wouldn’t even care if it took her down with them.
Katara’s surrounded by all the water she could ever want — an entire ocean of it — and yet she’s never been more powerless.
Go drown yourself, she thinks as she looks at all of them in turn, and beneath the table, her hands ball tightly into fists.
“Yes.” Katara says. "Understood."
Later, Zuko leads her back to her room, deep within the bowels of the ship.
Azula is the one who had suggested he should do so, her suggestion much less a suggestion than it is an implicit command — and Katara isn’t sure why Azula had directed Zuko to do this instead of a soldier, or even Ty Lee, who seems to function as the first person that both Azula and Zuko delegate tasks to — but then an indecipherable look had exchanged between the siblings and Zuko had stood up from the table. Unhappy, clearly, but compliant.
Katara still doesn’t know what to make of it all.
Zuko remains silent the entire journey and does not look at her once. Not even when he opens the door of her room, or when she passes by him as she enters. She stops only two steps beyond the threshold, taking in the bareness of the cabin. Her eyes flick from the bed to the door of the washroom to the still-burning candles — and then she looks back at the Fire Prince.
“Zuko.” She says.
And maybe it’s the lack of anger in her voice, or maybe it’s something else, but it pulls his attention. He looks directly at her, his face caught between the red light of the hall and the low, yellow light of the candles, and while his expression's guarded, suspicion glinting in his eyes, there’s no malice.
“I— When—“ Katara tries twice, then crosses her arms as discomfort builds inside her. “You were the first to give me medical attention.” She manages finally, and in her mind’s eye she can see herself, dying on the Northern tundra, and Zuko crouched over her, his pale hands pressed over one another to the center of her chest, forcing her heart to keep beating. “My clothing—“
“I didn’t remove your clothing if that’s what you’re thinking.” He stares down the hall for a moment, defensive or uncomfortable or both. “That was the doctor, when he was treating your” — his eyes shift to her clavicle, then to her hands, then back to her face — “injuries.”
“My necklace, Zuko.” And the words begin to pour from her like blood pours from an open wound. “My mother’s necklace. All my clothes. Where are they?”
She can hear the vulnerability and rawness in her voice, and she’ll hate herself for it later. But right now, she has to know.
Zuko looks at her, his brow drawing in, and if she didn’t know any better, she’d almost say he appears stricken, and without wanting to, she remembers — his face, serene, beneath the gentle, green glow of crystals, his skin warm beneath her hand — but then trick of the light passes and the memory fades. His face is blank again and shadowed in crimson.
That’s something we have in common.
“All of your belongings were incinerated.” He says. Then after a beat, as if that wasn’t clear enough, he adds, “Your necklace would have been included in that.”
And Katara doesn’t know what expression is on her face, but whatever it is, it makes Zuko take a physical step back from her. He looks down the hall again, frowning, his mouth opening as if he means to say something more, but nothing comes.
“We’ll arrive to Caldera in ten days.” He says finally. Stilted. Then, like he can’t stand to be in her presence any longer, he closes the door, and his footsteps disappear down the hall.
Katara isn’t sure how long she stands there in his wake. Staring at the door. Staring at nothing.
After what feels like seconds or minutes or hours, she moves away, wandering to the center of the cabin, before sitting on the edge of her bed. She looks at the flames of the candles, at the Fire Nation banner that hangs across from her — and then, all at once, it hits her.
Her pain, her grief, and her sorrow. Sweeping her away like a wave she can’t master.
Katara cradles her face in her hands, curling in on herself, and begins to cry. Like a lost child who doesn't know how to find her way home.