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“This word,” Hakoda explains to her, holding the fur with the utmost care, “means ‘family.’”
Katara stares at the word curiously. When she’d happened in her bored rummagings upon some ancient looking furs painted with characters she couldn’t understand, she hadn’t expected that it would mean anything for their lineage. But apparently, it was a family heirloom, passed down from the days when some people still spoke the ancient Water Tribe language instead of the Common Tongue, and kept, although there was no way to understand what it said.
“We have knowledge of half of the symbols,” says Hakoda with a sigh, “but the rest of it is hard to figure out. The knowledge was lost a long time ago. Chiefs in our family have been trying and failing to decipher it for generations.”
Katara tilts her head, eyes roving over it, smiling. “Well, if anyone will figure it out, it’s Sokka. He loves this kind of stuff.”
“Yes.” Hakoda pauses. “He may.”
Katara looks up, her brow furrowed at his strange tone. He sounds almost...unsure. “You don’t think he could do it?”
“No, no,” says Hakoda with a laugh. “I have complete faith in your brother’s abilities. But lately I question…” He stops, his expression thoughtful. “Whether he will want to be chief, in the conventional way at least.”
Katara stares at him, questions ricocheting off the walls of her mind. “What do you mean?” she says at last, worry entering her tone. “You don’t think Sokka will want to be chief? Is there something wrong with him?”
Hakoda sighs and puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it lightly. “No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him. But, well, you never know what may happen. Sokka may end up feeling that his interests lie elsewhere.”
“I can’t imagine what would be so important that he would turn being chief down,” says Katara, blinking in confusion. “He’s never given any indication that he wouldn’t want to be chief.”
“No, he hasn’t,” agrees Hakoda, but his tone is still strange. “Not in so many words, at least.”
Katara frowns at him. “Besides, if he didn’t do it, who would?” The answer comes to her as soon as she’s said it, and she quiets instantly with the gravity of the thought.
“Well,” says her father gently, looking at her proudly, “If he declines—You are my child as much as he is. And I think you would do a fine job. You have a great deal of experience with the other nations, and you’ve become a fine warrior.” He laughs a little. “But neither of you has to worry about that for a long while. I don’t plan on retiring any time soon.”
Katara shakes her head disbelievingly. “I don’t—I don’t know that that will happen, Dad.”
“Neither do I,” says Hakoda after a short, thoughtful silence. “But it’s good to be prepared for every eventuality.”
Katara dithers. Returning to the quiet of the Southern Water Tribe, seeing the village he grew up in again, has been strange. He almost feels like he doesn’t know the place anymore, like the Katara who left and the Katara who returned weren’t even the same person. Except for the residual signs of damage from where Zuko and Iroh crashed through the wall with that godawful ship so long ago, the place was nearly the same when he returned—but Katara was not the same, and the village feels itchy and small and confining where it didn’t before, like a sock he’s outgrown.
He feels himself itching to go—where, he doesn’t know—but he wakes up and goes about his everyday duties, stitches tents, practices how to build larger structures with waterbending, anxiously awaits the appearance of ships from the North even as the date of their arrival keeps getting pushed further and further back, and the mundaneness grates on him somehow in a way it never did before. Even when all he ever wished for was a chance to travel, even when the desire to see the Northern Water Tribe and learn waterbending occupied his every waking thought, he didn’t feel so restless.
There is no going back to the way things were.
There is also the matter of his brother, and of Katara possibly taking his place. If the time came where he was called upon to step up, it would be years from now, he knows. But still—he isn’t sure he’s ready, is afraid he won’t ever be.
He has tried to reason himself into being satisfied, tried to picture the future stretching out ahead of him here uninterrupted. But he knows in his heart that he feels destiny urging him onwards, at least for now. And after all, nothing is happening here—is he really needed, right now?
In the end, the decision is easy.
Aang panics a little when he hears the news.
“But I won’t know where you are! What if you run into trouble?” he says anxiously on his last visit before Katara leaves, perched on the wall of Katara’s latest attempt at building a larger building, as close as he can remember to what the smaller ones in the Northern Water Tribe looked like.
Katara smiles at him, endeared by his concern. “I can take care of myself, Aang. You don’t have to worry about me.”
He still looks worried. “When will you be back?”
“Well, um...I don’t know for sure,” admits Katara, and as expected Aang looks even more alarmed if possible. “It’s just...” He shrugs. “I’ve been thinking, and I just don’t feel right staying here all the time. I feel like I need to get away for a while.”
“You could come with me! I travel all the time!” says Aang hopefully, jumping down from the wall. “I go all over the world! It’d be just like old times, Katara.” He casts around for more supporting reasons, pulling out his best pleading eyes. “Besides, Appa and Momo miss you.”
Momo, shivering in a little spare fur parka they usually use for infants, jumps onto Katara’s shoulders as if on cue, and Katara smiles and pets his head. “Well, I miss Appa and Momo too, but I just need some time to myself for once.” He pauses, looking at Aang seriously. “You understand, right, Aang?”
Aang looks disappointed. “Yeah. I get it.” He frowns, tilting his head. “You will come back, though. Right?”
“Of course I will,” says Katara firmly.
He sighs a little, shrugging. “Well, okay. You know what’s best, Katara.”
“I knew you would understand. Thanks, Aang,” says Katara warmly, putting a hand on his shoulder, and he smiles a little at the praise. They hug, and Katara feels a wave of relief once again that the awkwardness and pain of a couple years previous in the wake of their never really-relationship has faded. “So, do you think you could help me raise the roof on this thing? I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”
“Definitely,” says Aang, trying to look cheerful again.
Aang has other friends, Katara reminds himself as they work, the slabs of ice cracking as they’re adjusted. Aang’s more than capable of standing on his own for a while. Still, he feels a pang of guilt at leaving him behind, knowing that Aang will miss him. Katara can only hope that he won’t let it slow him down.
Once they’ve had a tearful goodbye and Katara has watched Aang fly off across the sea, he asks his father to please check up on Aang while he’s away. With Katara gone, someone has to have his back, after all, and he knows that Hakoda will take the responsibility seriously.
While she’s on the road, she has to visit her brother, she reasons. It’s been more than six months since they’ve last seen each other, and as much as she’d like to pretend she doesn’t need her big brother around, his absence has left a significant hole in her life. They’ve spent their entire lives by each other’s side, even during everything that happened after finding Aang. This is the longest they’ve ever been separated.
Besides, she wants to know just what on earth he is doing in the Fire Nation that could possibly have her father unconvinced he would end up being chief, of all things.
“Katara!”
“Sokka!” She drops the pack immediately and they crash into each other in a hug, laughing. Over his shoulder she spots Zuko, standing behind them and smiling.
“It’s so good to see you! How’s Dad? How’s Gran Gran? How’s the rebuilding coming?”
“One at a time!” says Katara, laughing. “Everyone’s great! The rebuilding, not so much.” Her smile fades a little bit. “It’s still slow going trying to build larger structures. It’s a lot harder than I thought.” She doesn’t mention that she’s often wished he were there to help design the plans.
“I thought that people from the North were going to help out?”
“They still haven’t arrived,” Katara admits. “Not much has changed since my last letter, to be honest.”
“Hmm.” Sokka frowns. “Well, a lot’s been happening here. You won’t believe how much we changed things around here.”
He steers her inside the palace, and Katara almost doesn’t catch it, but when she does she’s briefly confused.
We?
And not only that, but it’s dawning on her that she might not be the person who knows Sokka best in the world anymore.
As Sokka drags her around the palace, showing her around, he and Zuko hover around each other closely, brushing shoulders more often than not. Zuko quietly fills in the gaps in Sokka’s explanations smoothly and seamlessly, as if they are intimately familiar with each other’s speaking patterns, and they share a laugh that Katara doesn’t understand when they point out some statue, a meaningful glance when they pass some room, and when did this happen?
“Zuko’s favorite room,” Sokka adds when they encounter the throne room, and Zuko rolls his eyes and nudges Sokka’s shoulder playfully.
Katara looks between them, feeling lost. She doesn’t understand.
Wait a second, isn’t Sokka supposed to be staying in the Water Tribe Embassy?
When did they develop all these inside jokes?
Maybe she should have realized, from the way he talks about Zuko in his letters...Every other sentence has him in it. He talks about him like he hung the stars.
Katara’s not jealous. And she certainly doesn’t envy her brother—whom she definitely doesn’t need around, she’s fine on her own, not missing him at all—who seems to have settled into a comfortable niche here, while she’s quite literally wandering.
Nope. Not jealous.
A realization hits her.
Is this why her father is raising the possibility that she might be chief?
She blankly watches them laughing at something she didn’t hear while she was lost in thought, Sokka’s arm around Zuko’s shoulders. They glance at her and blink at her faraway gaze, smiles fading.
“Katara? Are you okay?” says Zuko with a frown.
Katara forces a smile onto her face. “I’m fine.”
Because Sokka would rather stay here?
“So are you going to tell me what’s bothering you, or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”
Katara looks up, surprised. She’s tucked herself away in the remotest part of the palace she could find, sitting under a dusty window with her arms around her knees. She honestly didn’t think that anyone would locate her here.
Sokka lowers himself to the ground next to her with a sigh, leaning against the wall and stretching his legs out in front of him. He looks at Katara. “So?”
Feeling too tired for a fight, Katara simply says, “I’m not sure exactly. I guess I’m just worried about—how things will go, back home.”
“The people from the North will get there,” he says encouragingly. “Sometimes it just takes a while to cross half the world.”
“But even when they do,” says Katara, resting her chin on her knees, “I don’t know what my role is there. I’m not sure why, but somehow I just feel lost.”
She considers telling him the other half of it, what she’s wanted to tell him for years, but clamps her mouth shut, her chest feeling cold and yet sweat breaking out under her collar. Somehow it’s never seemed the time.
Sokka frowns at her. “You should try to do something for yourself for once. Go somewhere nice and just...take your mind off things. You always think it’s your job to protect everyone else. And I understand. I feel that way a lot, too. But you deserve a break too.” He pauses, studying her face. “You’ll give yourself a break, right? When you leave. Don’t spend the whole time overextending yourself.”
“Sure,” says Katara grudgingly, more to make that pinched, worried look on Sokka’s face go away than anything else. Katara has no intention of slowing down.
“Good,” says Sokka firmly, pulling her into an awkward hug.
And, because Katara is wishing to talk about something else, and because all the feelings she’s kept bottled up are just pouring out today apparently, she says into his shoulder, “I don’t think I know you as well as I used to anymore.”
Sokka pulls back, frowning at her. “What do you mean?”
“Look, I don’t mean to sound jealous,” says Katara. She’s definitely jealous. “But I just—well—you and Zuko seem so—so close—”
He goes rigid, and tries to cover it up by coughing and crossing his arms. “Yeah?”
Katara eyes him with confusion, frowning. “And I feel like I’m kind of. Being replaced as the person who knows you best.” She shrugs. “It’s silly, I know, I just…”
Sokka’s expression softens. “Well, it is a little silly. But only because you’re never going to get replaced, Katara.” He ruffles her hair obnoxiously and Katara squawks in protest, swatting his hand away and trying to fix it. “You’re my sister. And nothing will change that.”
Katara takes a deep breath, unable to keep the doubt from pooling in her stomach, because it isn’t true that nothing will change that—that does change, all the time. But Katara can’t get into it now—she’s not brave enough. The moment’s not right.
Still, she knows what he means, and she feels a little better simply knowing that he noticed she was unhappy and came to find her—he must have looked all over the palace—and yet, she still gets the feeling that there is something here she is missing on the other end. Something he’s not telling her. She hesitates.
“Are you happy here, Sokka?”
He raises his eyebrows, but his answer comes immediately. “Yeah, Katara, I am.”
“Well, then that’s all that matters,” says Katara firmly, and so ends that conversation.
She doesn’t tell him what Hakoda said about him being chief.
“Be careful,” says Sokka as she hugs him goodbye.
“I will,” she says firmly as they pull away. She gives him a long, hard look, scrutinizing his face.
He raises an eyebrow nervously. “What?”
“Nothing,” says Katara with a sigh. “Just…” she trails off, deciding not to continue about how she still gets the feeling there are things he’s not telling her, how she’s worried that his absence from the Southern Water Tribe might put her on a path she’s a little terrified of taking. “I’ll miss you, that’s all.”
“Aw, Katara,” he coos, poking her cheek.
She swats him away, pouting but trying to hold back a smile.
His shit-eating grin fades. “I’ll miss you too. You take care of yourself.”
“I will,” Katara says, trying to project honesty.
He nods, but his expression doesn’t change.
She picks up her pack.
The open road is calling her.
Two weeks later, she’s still trying to figure out what that call is saying to her. She’s making her way on foot through the Fire Nation, not really paying much attention to where she’s going except for her vague goal of heading towards the Earth Kingdom.
After years and years of nonstop purpose, war and the comet and afterwards the shaky peace that needed to be established, it feels good just to walk. When she returns, there will be work again to do, she knows. The peace needs to be actively maintained; after so long it’s as if the world doesn’t really know what to do with itself when it isn’t fighting.
But right now, all she has to do is listen to the sound of her feet on the ground. All she has to worry about is the path stretching on ahead of her, infinite, with limitless possibilities. When no one’s around, she hums as she walks, and she sometimes trades assistance with menial tasks in the towns she passes for lodgings.
It’s still strange, that she’s able to do that. Not even two years ago, she would have hidden her identity for her own safety. But she’s still fairly close to the Caldera, and opinions here have shifted devastatingly quickly. It’s when she gets to areas farther out that she’ll have to be cautious, where anti-Water Tribe sentiment is still high.
While she travels, she has nothing to really do but think. Her, chief?
She frowns down at the road and swats absently at the mosquito-flies buzzing around her head in the late summer mugginess.
Katara never expected such a thing to fall to her. She never thought she would inherit anything other than her mother’s necklace. She realized during her and her friends’ sojourn in the Northern Water Tribe that gender relations were comparatively good in the Southern Water Tribe, but it’s highly unusual even in the South for a woman to assume leadership. And that would be difficult, especially once the population grows, because that, and that alone, is what everyone thinks Katara is.
She feels a familiar twinge of discomfort and does her best to brush it away.
Katara would do it. She’s here to help, and she’s absolutely willing to do that in whatever way she needs to. But it’s still a difficult idea to get used to. Now that the pressures of the war are over, her people and realm may be on the verge of growing far, far beyond the single village she grew up with. And with people from the North coming down—if they ever get there—their numbers are sure to swell.
Katara thinks about the stories of the Southern Water Tribe cities of old. Cities. How much might Katara ultimately be responsible for? How badly would she hurt people if she made a mistake?
Katara was the comforter, the protector, the revolutionary, the vigilante even, sometimes—she was never the leader. That was Sokka’s job.
She spurs her pace on a little, watching the road steadily disappear under her feet.
What does Katara want?
She doesn’t know.
She takes the ferries from island to island heading east, keeping a lower profile as she gets farther and farther away from the capital and keeping an equally sharp eye out for any signs of trouble or people in need. She stops when she finds hospitals to offer her services. Some of them take her up on the offer; some of them turn her away with a suspicious gaze. Some of them simply spit slurs and slam the door in her face.
I’m not going to murder your wounded, Katara wants to shout at them. I can help! There’s no reason to turn me away just because I’m from the Water Tribe!
But she’s gotten so used to the easy companionship she and her friends have grown to share, all of them from radically different places around the globe, that she’s forgotten the rest of the world didn’t have that, that it might need some time to catch up. How strange it is that they all managed to find each other, really.
She misses them all terribly.
Katara settles into the booth heavily, wincing at the soreness of his feet. Never before had he appreciated Appa so much.
He’s at the edge of the Fire Nation, on the island where Aang had once attended school in disguise. Tomorrow he will leave the Fire Nation, sailing east past Crescent Island and into the Earth Kingdom.
He looks around curiously. The place is well furnished and busy. The sounds of eating and low murmurs of conversation fill the room. He settles his chin on his folded arms on the table as he waits for a server to come by, tired, watching the people around him. The table next to him has a family with a baby, and he smiles to herself a little as the child’s father plays a game of peekaboo, causing them to erupt in peals of laughter. The table a little farther along the room has a young woman, a little older than Katara, who’s frowning down at a book as she eats. And the booth next to his, the one he’s facing, has a girl with dark hair in buns with her back to Katara, sitting across from another girl—
He jolts upright. The girl facing him makes eye contact, holding his gaze. They already knew he was here.
He stands, taking a few steps forward to stand above their table: Mai and Ty Lee.
“Hi,” says Ty Lee. “Katara, right?”
“Yes,” says Katara. “Hi.”
Ty Lee smiles at him a little. Mai looks up at him, her face expressionless. Ty Lee and Mai make eye contact for a brief second.
“Do you want to sit down?” Ty Lee asks him politely, scooting over a little and patting the space next to her.
Katara hesitates. He sits down.
Mai has discreetly scooted over as well, and Katara settles into the small booth, accidentally brushing against someone’s feet. Wait—are their...are their ankles tangled?
Must be a Fire Nation thing.
“Long time no see,” says Mai dryly.
Katara frowns a little, not sure whether he’s being ribbed or not, trying to be polite. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“It’s nice to see you too,” says Ty Lee, chipper. “What brings you around here?”
“Oh. Just...sightseeing, I guess.” Even he isn’t exactly sure why he’s here. He’s sitting in a restaurant booth at the edge of the Fire Nation across from two former enemies, Fire Nation nobles whom he never formally made peace with personally because they disappeared from prison before he could. This whole situation is slightly bizarre.
“Have you visited the temple here?” Ty Lee responds helpfully, large grey eyes ostensibly innocently curious. Katara gets the distinct impression that he’s being examined right down to his bones. “They’ve got some amazingly carved sculptures.”
“No. I’ll be sure to look into it,” says Katara, with a smile. “What brings you around here?”
Ty Lee’s smile doesn’t change, but Katara feels the air grow a little more tense.
Mai raises an eyebrow. “Just passing through.” Her voice is effortlessly bored. She takes a sip of her drink, and then turns her gaze to the counter. “I wonder what’s taking our food so long?”
As if on cue, from the back of the shop a rough voice shouts, “LILING!”
“Coming!” comes the sound of a younger voice, and a few seconds later a youth in an apron hurries through the doors, carrying a tray laden with plates.
“Sorry about the wait,” the androgynous-looking person says, reaching their table and beginning to unload the plates, a little pink in the face and frowning. “We’re a little short tonight.” They notice Katara and pause, looking confused. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—Would you like to order something?”
“It’s okay,” says Katara with a warm smile. Her gaze slips to the simple bowls of noodles just unloaded onto the table. “I’ll have whatever they’re having.” The person nods distractedly, pulling out a notepad and jotting it down quickly. The name tag they’re wearing has something scratched out, and above it the name Lihon is written in squashed, bold characters.
“LILING!” shouts the voice from the back again.
The person sets their jaw, tense, remaining still for a few seconds. But eventually they stomp away.
Katara looks after them in confusion for a moment, a feeling of cautious connection blooming, and trying not to let it take him over too much. He’s always a little too soft hearted in this...
“So,” says Mai, bringing him back to reality. She picks up her chopsticks. “Sightseeing, huh?”
Katara weighs his options and decides to cut right to the root of the situation. They obviously don’t trust him. They might be willing to verbally dance around, but Katara is tired, and he’s not willing to endure this any longer.
“Look,” he begins firmly. “I haven’t been sent to bring you back or spy on you, not by Aang, or Zuko, or anyone. Please believe me when I say that I don’t mean you any harm.”
Ty Lee’s expression turns a little more considering, her smile fading. Mai’s doesn’t change.
Katara continues, more softly, “Without you, my father and brother, and my friends, would never have made it out of the Boiling Rock alive. I owe you a thank you. Your sacrifice allowed us to continue training Aang.”
“You give us too much credit,” says Mai blandly, raising her eyebrows. “I did it because one person I cared about was about to die. I did it because I was tired of us having to kowtow to Azula for years. I didn’t do it because I had some great spiritual-moral awakening.”
“You still put yourself at risk to do something really important,” says Katara insistently. “You saved a lot of lives. And I don’t think I can ever express to you how grateful I am for you saving my family.”
The two of them exchange another look that Katara can’t parse.
“Well,” says Mai. “You’re welcome.” She turns her attention to her food.
Ty Lee’s bright smile returns, a little disbelieving. “You make it sound like we were so important!”
“But you were!” says Katara earnestly, now a little concerned that they’re not getting it, struggling to uncover some of his feelings of urgency, things he has thought about but never put into words before. “Without you, the success of the whole campaign to end the war might have been in jeopardy! So many people could have gotten hurt. Even Zuko—he’s my friend, and I’ll always be grateful to you just for that, but—if he hadn’t—hadn’t made it—there wouldn’t have been anyone to assume the throne. Even if we’d somehow defeated Azula, there’s no telling what kind of instability we would have been facing. Even now, things are difficult, all over the world, and…” He pauses, frowning. “You don’t care?”
“Of course we care!” says Ty Lee, eyes wide. “But that’s all over now, Katara.” She waves a hand in a dismissive gesture, grinning. “I’m happy we could help, but the war’s done. Over. Gone. Poof.”
Katara is silent for a moment, stumped. He doesn’t know how to impress upon them the continuing importance of caring about what’s bigger. Why, if they had returned to the capital, maybe they could have helped more. It’s not as if Zuko is exactly swimming in allies there. He opens his mouth, frowning, but is cut off.
“Not everyone is built for this grand political calling you seem to think is so necessary,” says Mai, seeming to read Katara’s mind. She stabs a fish ball with her chopsticks, pausing to look Katara in the eye. Katara can’t read her expression. “The war may be over. But the fakeness, the conventions, the pure inaneness of it all, of politics—" Here her voice conveys clear disgust. “—that hasn’t changed, and I doubt it will ever change.” Her voice turns wry. “What would you have had me do? Return to a guy whose life I saved and then forgot we were in prison for it? You know, we waited. By the time we finally got out, it was my uncle’s doing, not his. You would have me return to that city, with all of its insincerity, where nothing ever really matters?” She rolls her eyes. “No. There’s nothing worth caring about there.”
“Thousands of people live in that city,” says Katara incredulously.
“And they’ll continue to live there,” says Mai. She bites into the fish ball delicately, chews, and swallows, raising an eyebrow. “If you’d like to sell your soul to politics, I can’t stop you.”
“I’m not a politician,” says Katara, unsure what else to say.
“Right.”
Katara stares at her, at a loss. He’s saved from unleashing a possibly frustrated and angry tirade by the return of their server.
“Here you go,” they say distractedly, nudging the bowl onto the table in front of Katara.
Another server crosses by their table, a young man a few years older than Katara. “Liling, where were you? You were supposed to be in the back ten minutes ago. Hikan wants you helping with the washing up, and let me tell you he is angrier than a cow hippo in heat.”
The person—man? Woman? Neither? Both? Their voice is higher-pitched, but from their clothes, their hair, and Lihon is a boy’s name...Katara mentally shakes himself. He shouldn’t get his hopes up.
All the same, he can’t help the fact that his attention has been caught.
The person closes their eyes briefly, looking immensely frustrated. “Got it,” they say through clenched teeth.
Feeling guilty—had it been his late order that got this person in trouble with their boss?—Katara brightly says, “Thanks a lot,” his eyes flicking to the nametag again, “...Lihon. I really appreciate it.”
Katara knows he’s hit upon the right thing to say when the person gives him a startled look, and then gives him a small but genuine looking smile. “No problem.” They turn and hurry back through the doors to the kitchen.
“We didn’t sign up for a lifetime of battles between good and evil, Katara,” says Ty Lee quietly, almost pleadingly, jerking Katara out of his thoughts again. Ty Lee tilts her head. “Isn’t it enough that it’s over?”
Katara thinks of the refugees in Ba Sing Se who’ll be returning to burned villages, of the stiff, guarded, distrustful way he watched Zuko and Sokka interact with the few nobles they encountered during his time in the capital, of the state of his tiny village, shrunken to nearly nothing after a century of war.
Not for him, it’s not.
Katara decides to stay the night there. There’s a small inn attached to the restaurant. He doesn’t know where Ty Lee and Mai are staying, or where they’re going, if anywhere, and he doesn’t ask.
The two of them stand to pay once they’ve finished their food, Ty Lee deftly swinging herself up and flipping easily over the table rather than uproot Katara to squeeze past him on the bench, and say their goodbyes.
“I can’t convince you…” Katara shakes his head, not sure what he was going to say. “Never mind.”
Ty Lee gives him a grin, looking a little unsure. “Good luck with your sightseeing.” She takes Mai’s arm.
“Good luck to you too,” says Katara, a little awkwardly.
Mai sighs. “Hope you don’t become as boring as everyone in the capital.”
“Thanks,” says Katara, not quite sure what else to say to that.
They turn to leave. Ty Lee wraps her arm around Mai’s waist, resting her head on her shoulder as they walk.
Ty Lee had not said why she stood up to Azula at the Boiling Rock when Mai had offered her own explanation.
But suddenly, Katara thinks that he can guess.
Are Mai and Ty Lee...together? Like...together-together?
He contemplates this as the same employee who had served their table earlier leads him up a flight of stairs to a dimly lit hallway of rooms with wooden doors.
There’s no guarantee he will ever even see them again. But he finds himself regretting not trying to get to know them better all the same—Katara, that’s silly, he scolds himself, you can’t just like them because they’re gay or bi.
But there’s no getting around the fact that he does, and—well, Katara’s always wanted to believe the best of people anyway.
“Here you go,” says the employee, pulling him out of his thoughts. They unlock the door and hand him the key. Their voice is quiet and a little hoarse. “Water’s down the hall, that way.” They point off to the left, towards the end of the hallway, where a small window precedes a bend in the hallway. They turn to leave.
“Wait,” breaks out Katara nervously.
The person—Lihon, Katara remembers—turns to look at him, eyebrows knitted.
“About earlier—when you were serving my table—I don’t mean to pry, but I heard that other server tell you that you were needed elsewhere, and that your boss was angry, and I want to tell you that I’m so sorry if it was my late order that caused any disruption. If I had known I would have waited. Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you.”
“Oh,” says Lihon after a moment of staring at him, eyes a little glazed over. Katara notes the bags under their eyes. They shake their head a little, eyes clearing slightly. “That’s all right. It wasn’t really you. My boss, ah, he can be…” They pause, looking off to the side in thought. “...difficult sometimes.” They appear to remember they’re talking to a customer and hitch a smile onto their face, with seemingly great effort, and wave a hand nonchalantly. “Sorry you had to see that. But please, don’t trouble yourself—” They stop suddenly and wince, stiffening, clutching their ribs.
“Are you okay?” says Katara, immediately surging forward to hover his hands over them—they don’t look too steady on their feet suddenly.
“Yes,” they say, sounding a little strangled. They straighten their posture a little. “I’m fi—ah!”
“You’re hurt,” says Katara, increasingly alarmed. “Here—do you want to sit down?”
He grips their elbow, guiding them down gently against the wall. “Do you know what the problem is? If it’s a wound, I’m a healer, I can help.”
They don’t answer for a moment, eyes glazed, breathing a little unsteady. They eye him wearily, and Katara tries to project as reassuring an image as he can. “I…” They lick their lips. Their voice cracks a little. “My boss will be expecting me back.”
“You’re hurt,” repeats Katara. “I can…” He thinks fast. “I can tell your boss you were helping me with something. Would that help?” Would it? Katara’s not sure.
They hang their head. “...All right.”
It would be better if they got out of this hallway.
After a few shaky, stumbling steps, Katara helps them to collapse with another wince onto the bed in his freshly rented room, and Katara quickly lights the lamps in the room and closes the door, readying his water skin. “Okay,” he says, hovering by the bed. “Where does it hurt?”
They eye him with skepticism and then sigh. “Look, I know exactly what the problem is. Before you see it, I just—I appreciate your help, but it’s not something you need to worry about. It might seem a little confusing, but it—it is what it is.” And slowly they begin to remove their shirt.
Katara moves to help again, but they hold up a shaky hand to stop him, and continue themselves slowly. “If you could just heal it just this once,” they say, eyeing his water skin with mingled skepticism and curiosity as they slowly pull their arm out of a sleeve. “I’d really appreciate it. But I’m all right, really. Today’s just been an unusually bad day.” Once all the layers of cloth have been removed, the location of the problem is revealed: a mass of white bandages tightly wrapped around their chest. They stare at her warily.
Katara stares at the bandages, feeling a familiar feeling of pressing panic building up. Katara’s never done this, for obvious reasons—it’s dangerous—but the sight of it brings the discomfort that sometimes appears around that area roaring back.
“You bind your chest,” he says. His voice sounds strange.
They nod slowly. “But you must understand—I need these. I don’t know any other way. I know it must be confusing to you, but…” They trail off, tensing a little as Katara approaches.
He hesitates. “Is it all right if I take these off?”
They nod slowly, untucking the end themselves, and allowing him to help unwind them slowly. The process takes much longer than Katara thought it would. It’s quite a lot of bandages.
“You shouldn’t do this,” Katara says lowly, gently tugging the bandages off around their left side and continuing around their body. “I know how it feels, but you can’t. You’ll really hurt yourself.”
They look up at him sharply. “You...you know?”
Katara nods, not sure whether he wants to smile or cry. He’d almost expected the first time to be more of a big, dramatic moment. He never dreamed that his first coming out would be in an inn at the edge of the Fire Nation, helping a stranger heal injuries induced by chest binding. It’s a heady feeling—he feels at once gloriously free and terrifyingly untethered—tempered all the while by the pressing fact that this person, someone like Katara, has seriously hurt themselves and is likely to do so again, and the fact that there is likely nothing on earth that can completely take away the feeling that this binding is necessary for them.
At the end, Katara sucks in a breath, frowning. Their body is covered with bruises. “Can you lie down?”
He runs the water over their chest, assessing the damage and trying not to let on how concerned he feels himself becoming. Some of their ribs are fractured.
In the end, he’s done all he can. He’s mended the tissue, and accelerated the healing of their ribs. They do seem to feel a little bit better after he’s done. The color has returned to their cheeks.
He helps them back into their shirt, but not into the bandages.
“Thanks,” they say quietly.
“You’re welcome,” says Katara. He watches them for a moment, hesitating. “Are you…” He pauses, gathering his thoughts. “How should I refer to you?”
They look up, watching him consideringly. “‘He,’” he says quietly. “I’m a guy.”
“Me too,” Katara confides, a little giddy. “Or at least I am right now. I’m genderfluid.”
The boy nods, watching him curiously, a ghost of a smile appearing. “Thanks,” he says, appearing to remember something. “Back in the restaurant, when you addressed me—you looked at my nametag instead of what my coworker called me. I appreciate that.”
“Oh, it was no trouble at all!” says Katara, nearly tripping over himself with suppressed excitement. He tries to school himself, reminding himself sternly that Lihon is a patient, and Katara shouldn’t be thinking about other things like his first time really interacting with another trans person, no matter how exciting it is, when there’s someone hurt. Katara clears his throat. “Do you do this often?”
He nods slowly. “Almost every day.”
“I know you said these bandages are important to you, and I understand why. But I have to tell you, as a healer, if you keep going like this, you’re really going to hurt yourself,” says Katara, her voice deadly serious. “This isn’t healthy.”
Lihon sighs a little, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know.”
“I know it’s not always possible,” Katara says gingerly, “and that sometimes you feel like you have to. But do you think you could maybe...hold off on it sometimes? I don’t want you to keep injuring yourself this way.”
He stares at Katara, looking more tired than ever, and says, “How do you deal with it, then?”
“I, well,” Katara starts a little, surprised to be asked. He thinks about it—not that he has to dig very deep; it’s never far from the surface of his mind these days—and says slowly, “Sometimes it doesn’t bother me very much. Like when I am a girl, it mostly goes away. And sometimes, like today, I can bear it—I wish it wasn’t there, but I can’t…” He trails off. “I’m sorry. I guess I just try to tolerate it.”
“Okay,” he says with a sigh, running his hand through his hair. “But I can’t.” He looks up at her. “There is no other way.”
Katara knows this to be the truth, but it still feels terrible.
Lihon looks back at the bandages doubtfully.
Wondering if he’s planning on trying to put them back on, Katara says quickly, “Don’t. It’ll undo everything I just fixed.”
He nods slowly, and then stands unsteadily, gathering the bandages up and stuffing them into his pockets. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” says Katara. He watches as Lihon walks over to the door, opening it and peering out cautiously before slipping out.
He looks back at Katara awkwardly, appearing to remember that he is a customer. “If you need anything, just notify the front desk. There’s someone up there until around midnight.”
“Thank you,” says Katara.
Lihon closes the door.
She doesn’t know if she should move on. She can’t leave a patient behind who still needs her help.
But when she sees Lihon the next day, working the restaurant again, and asks him cautiously how he’s feeling that day and if he could spare some time to meet with her later, he offers her a tight smile and tells her that he’s afraid not, they’re expecting to be busy today.
She lingers another two days, always trying to catch his attention, concerned about his healing, but he waves her off every time, even when they are not around other people who might overhear.
Katara can tell when someone doesn’t want her help.
On the morning after the fourth day since she arrived at the inn, she departs. If he won’t accept her help, there’s not much more she can do here, and there are people in other towns who need her help too. Or at least, that’s the way she tries to justify it to herself as a weight of anxiety churns in her stomach.
She can’t stop thinking about it, about the binding. There must be some other, better way.
In the aftermath of the war, the Earth Kingdom is still somewhat in disarray. Thousands of people have been displaced, and bandits, some of them rogue soldiers, are taking advantage of the opportunity to become bolder and bolder. Most are petty criminals, like the ones Katara has met on the road.
This time, though, she turns onto one road to a scene of utter carnage. There are smashed goods scattered across the path, and a small group of people are screaming and sobbing over—spirits, is that a person on the ground?—
Katara rushes forward. “What happened?”
“Bandits,” says a man at the edge of the group, his face gray. “A group of them—they took everything they could and—”
Katara shoves her way to the front of the group and inhales sharply. On the ground is a boy, fifteen at the oldest, with a gaping wound in his chest. A knife, maybe—that’s how she finds bandits usually armed. But she’s never seen anything like this. They don’t usually go for deadly force.
She falls to her knees, already uncapping her water skin.
A woman sitting next to the boy, pressing an already soaked cloth to the wound, looks at her wildly. She bends over the boy as if to shield him. “W-Who are you?”
“Katara of the Southern Water Tribe,” says Katara soothingly, automatically, scanning the boy’s wound. It doesn’t look good. “I’m here to help. I’m a healer.” She gloves her hand in the water and shows her.
The woman hesitates.
“Please,” says Katara. “I can help.”
She moves back.
Katara presses her hands to the wound. She pushes a little harder with her bending, willing the flesh to heal, wounds to close. Eventually, panting, she raises her hands, dripping with bloody water. She stares at the boy anxiously, moving her hands over his chest, feeling for a heartbeat. Nothing.
“Please,” says the woman, her face ashen, tear tracks drying on her cheeks.
Katara wants to tell her it’s okay, the boy is going to be fine, but suddenly she’s faced with the mounting horror of finally encountering a wound she can’t heal. She always knew this day would come.
The woman releases a dry sob, and the sound just about stabs Katara right through the chest. There has to be something. Something. She presses her hands to his chest again. The gash is healed, even the internal organs are healed, it’s just that his heart—it isn’t beating.
She feels a wave of pain wash over her, and then a stronger wave of determination. No. NO. There must be something, something she hasn’t tried, anything—
She feels for the water inside, the liquid residing in every soft inner tissue, and, pushing aside her own pounding heart, grips his heart firmly. And squeezes.
One beat. Two. Three.
Beat. BEAT.
Four. Five. Six.
Her breath coming fast, she lets go.
It still beats.
She gasps as if breaking the surface of water, knowing somehow with certainty that she’s done it, but presses her ear to his chest all the same, not quite believing what she’s done. She sits up shakily.
The woman is staring at her, her expression right on the verge of breaking entirely.
“He’ll live,” says Katara, her voice croaky.
The woman gasps out a sob and throws her arms around Katara, then flings herself next to the boy, pressing her own ear to his chest to see for herself. Tears stream down her face as she clutches at his hand. The rest of the group, five adults and a younger girl, all look immensely relieved; one man sits down shakily.
Katara rises to her feet unsteadily. There’s blood in her hair where she pressed her ear to the boy’s chest, there’s blood on her hands and a little on her clothes. She must look horrifying.
She just restarted someone’s heart with bloodbending.
The group argues. Go after them, or no? They’d been ambushed. The bandits were probably far away by now. But they’ve lost most of their possessions. Their money, too. Even if they got to the next village, they’d have nothing. Someone would take them in for the night, of course—but that had been everything they had. What was the point of moving on?
They break out into a louder phase of the argument as Katara listens, continuing to tend to the boy and fighting off a dazed feeling. The woman who had sheltered the boy argues most fiercely for moving on; Katara doesn’t blame her. If she hadn’t been there, the boy would surely have died. He very nearly did.
Katara checks over the boy again. These people have no options. The small group doesn’t look half prepared to mount any kind of attack.
The sun is setting, lighting up the space between the trees and casting long shadows, and Katara pulls herself to her feet. “I can go,” she says. “They won’t be expecting me. Maybe I’ll have an advantage.”
The small group blinks at her.
“You don’t have to do this,” says an older woman gently, “You’ve done more than enough healing my grandson. Those bandits—” She presses her lips together. “They are vicious. It’s not safe.”
But after everything, bandits don’t really scare Katara anymore. And it’s not as if she hasn’t run into them before. How many could there possibly be—a half dozen at most, most likely—and if no one else is able to do this, well—Katara is willing and able.
Katara returns with most of the family’s money a few hours after setting off. Turns out the bandits had set up camp not far from the location of the attack—they probably had become confident no one would come after them.
Well, they won’t be camping there again.
The group showers Katara with many profuse thanks, which he accepts with a small amount of embarrassment, but they quickly head off as soon as the boy wakes up, groggy and weak but seemingly in full possession of his mental faculties.
Katara, left behind, looks at his hands and the remnants of blood still caked on them, frowning, considering. He used up a lot of his water healing the boy. He needs to conserve it in order to reach the end of this dry area safely, and there is no other way to get clean of the blood—it had unfortunately dried while Katara was busy standing around in a daze, trying furiously to reconcile his aversion to bloodbending with the fact that technically, that is what he had drawn on to do what he just did. And then—well, then he’d been going after the bandits, and he wasn’t thinking...Was it right, to use something so horrible? But if someone can be saved, they should be saved, he argues with himself. I couldn’t live otherwise.
He shakes himself.
He should have followed them. That boy had lost a lot of blood, and was likely to be in bad shape for some time, wounds healed or not. He should have gone with them, to watch him, make sure he was okay—he curses himself. That’s what he gets from standing around in shock instead of doing something useful.
He uses a small amount of his water to clean his hands, but there is no way to wash his hair. He tugs at it experimentally and grimaces. It’s dried into clumps in a few places, sticky and stiff. He doesn’t even want to know what he looks like. Perhaps he should just wait. He’s not that far from the end of this road and the next settlement. It’s not that much blood. But there is another option.
His eyes stray to his knife. Well...
He grips a large chunk of hair tightly and raises the knife, but hesitates, heart beating a little faster. He’s never cut his hair like this. It’s been getting longer for as long as he can remember. All the women of the Water Tribe keep their hair long; only men ever cut or shave it.
One beat passes, then two. Circumstances demand it, Katara justifies to himself, pretending he doesn’t want to try this for its own sake.
And he finally presses the knife to the chunk of hair in his grasp. He lets go and hears a soft flop as it hits the ground. His stomach swoops.
He grasps the next chunk.
His hair loopies remain—he doesn’t think he could bring himself to cut them off, and besides there’s no blood there—but in the end, it’s shorn right up to his ears. He pins his hair loopies with difficulty to the hair at the nape of his neck.
Well, it’ll grow back.
He’s not sure that he wants it to.
Toph has taken up residence near Chameleon Bay, and her fledgling school already has a dozen students, with more clamoring to join. Katara doesn’t know why she’s surprised.
“Something’s different about you,” says Toph, her eyebrow raised. “Did you cut your hair?”
Katara grins, unable to stop herself. “Yeah. I never thought about it before, but I thought it was time for a change. I got blood caked in it when I helped heal someone and I couldn’t wash it out, so I decided to just cut it. I think it’s really—”
“Hold on,” says Toph, holding up a hand with a grin, “Caked blood? This is a story I need to hear.”
“Oh, well…” Katara stalls, unsure. She still feels conflicted. She used bloodbending, which she’d sworn never to use again. But the boy was going to die. Did that justify it? Would it be more dangerous to let it be used regularly, since it had such a capacity for damage?
She tells Toph the story of her encounter with the group of bandit victims, but pauses once she gets to the part where she’d realized the boy’s heart had stopped, where she’d thought in a flash to try something drastic. “Toph,” she continues hesitantly. “Do you think that any form of bending is inherently bad?”
Toph tilts her head, crossing her arms, unfazed by the sudden swerve in conversational direction. “You used bloodbending, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t even realize at first that that’s what I was doing. It was different from how I’d used it before, and I didn’t think. He had such a bad wound, and his heart had stopped, and I just wanted him to heal.” She bends over in her chair a little, resting her elbows on her knees and rubbing her eyes.
Toph scratches her head. A few seconds pass. “Well, did he?”
“Yes, and I don’t know if he would have if I hadn’t done it,” says Katara heavily. “I don’t understand, Toph. Should I have let him die?” She makes a noise of frustration. “I just don’t know. I never thought it could be used for something good. People’s lives might be saved if I told other healers how to do it, but how would I know they would never use it for evil? It’s so dangerous, and I just want to keep people safe.”
Toph is silent for a few moments. “I can’t tell you what to do, Katara. It’s not my decision.”
Katara is silent.
“Sometimes you’ve gotta look at your priorities. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. But if you think it’s going to save people, then that’s your decision. You have to do what you think is right.”
Katara sighs. This isn’t really advice. But then, perhaps she should have expected as much.
Toph quietly pours herself some more tea. She takes a deep swig of it and then says, “I can’t tell you what to do, Katara. But I can help you forget about it for a while. You wanna go see my students? There’s a little demonstration I’ve wanted to do, but I haven’t had a lovely assistant for it until now.”
Katara snorts despite herself, crossing her arms. “A lovely assistant, huh? Are you sure that’s safe?”
“I’m sure it’s awesome.” At Katara’s silence, she adds, “You don’t even know what it is!”
“Maybe not, but I do know you.”
Toph insists on lending her some clothes—“Seriously, I’ll have your stuff washed properly, you still smell a little like blood”—about which Katara is embarrassed but would believe; water to wash with really has been scarce until she got to this town—and Katara changes into them before they go out to see the students. The tunic is a looser garment, less form fitting than her Water Tribe clothes, probably because it’s so warm here, and it’s dyed a dark shade of green. It’s pleasant to look at, but Katara’s not sure it’s her color, she realizes wryly, smoothing it down across the front. Oh, well.
“This is a friend of mine, Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe,” says Toph, roughly clapping Katara on the back. “I’ve got a little exercise I want you guys to pay close attention to, and Katara’s gonna help me out with it and then sit in on class today.”
“We’ll wait a little bit before bringing out the show stopper,” Toph hisses to Katara with relish as the students chatter, moving into their own spaces for practice. “Really ramp up the anticipation.”
Katara is suddenly reminded of Toph’s glee at professional earthbending, years ago now. Some things never change.
Katara walks among the students, watching them in curiosity. None of them display the reticence and skittishness that Aang did when he first became Toph’s student, standing their ground firmly in the face of boulders bearing down on them—but then, much as Toph is fond of Aang, she probably would not have had the patience for another student of his mold.
“That’s amazing,” says Katara encouragingly as she watches one student deftly create a ramp to deflect a boulder. He’s short, with brown hair and round eyes, maybe twelve or thirteen—he reminds Katara a little of Aang from back then, she realizes with a twinge of nostalgia. Hopefully he’s all right, wherever he is. It’s not as if Appa can’t effectively provide backup, and Aang is much stronger now than he was when Katara first cracked him out of an iceberg nearly three years ago, but is he safe enough…?
They both wince a little as the boulder lands behind them on the rocky hill bordering the yard with a crash.
“Thanks!” says the student, eyes wide, but a disbelieving smile quickly appearing on his face.
Katara isn’t surprised; he likely doesn’t get this kind of praise from Toph. “What else has Sifu Toph taught you?”
Now with a willing audience, he’s eager to demonstrate, pulling out some moves that Katara remembers from Aang or Toph’s bending, and some that are new, chattering all the way—“...and sometimes, we’ll all take turns trying to create the best sculpture we can in one try,” he confides, frowning before stomping his foot hard. A misshapen model of the compound grinds up out of the ground, and his face falls a little. “Man, I really thought I had it that time.” He scratches at the back of his head, and his face suddenly brightens. “But I did a much better job in the locker room this morning! Maybe after Sifu Toph lets us have a break, I can show you—” He pauses suddenly as if he’s run into a dead end, his face reddening a little. “I mean—uh—” He gives Katara an almost shy glance. “The guys’ room, it’s just—um—are you a boy or a girl?”
Katara wants very, very dearly to simply say “Yes,” even while knowing she can’t. She must grudgingly tell him that she’s a girl—which is not technically incorrect, because today Katara is—but she knows that were she to say that, the combined effect of her statement, and likely her voice, and perhaps her body shape once she changes out of this oversized tunic, would lead him to assume that she is only and always a girl.
This is incorrect, and Katara is keenly aware of the assumption always.
But before she can really open her mouth, she is interrupted.
“Excuse you,” Toph’s voice says indignantly, and Katara looks back quickly. Toph is marching up from the practice area of the next student over, looking annoyed. She plants her feet next to Katara, crossing her arms. “Katara is my female friend. She’s also a waterbending Master who once defeated Azula in Agni Kai, making the end of the war possible, so don’t push your luck, Min.”
She’s only trying to help, Katara tries to remind herself, Toph thinks he’s insulting me, her intentions are good... But she feels it like a physical stab and winces all the same, closing her eyes for a moment to collect herself.
“I’m sorry, Master Katara,” stammers Min quickly, and Katara opens her eyes to see his face turning red, his gaze on the ground. “I thought—I should have realized, that you, um—I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, it’s okay!” says Katara, shaking herself out of her reverie, putting a hand on his shoulder and looking back at Toph with a frown. “Toph, it’s really fine. I wasn’t offended.”
She tries to beam her thoughts at Toph, trying to get her to understand—shouldn’t it be obvious? Katara wishes she knew.
Toph frowns a little back, seeming perplexed, tilting her head. “...Okay.”
“Look, I’m sorry about that,” huffs Toph after she’s dismissed the students for a break and they’ve left the area. “I guess it’s the clothes. You wouldn’t fit mine, so I had to give you some guys’ spares we keep around, I knew they’d be too big. And your hair.”
“It’s okay,” says Katara, wishing that Toph knew what had really hurt her and that she might apologize for that instead.
Toph frowns, still looking baffled. “I know. But I still wanted this visit to go perfect.” She pauses. “So why weren’t you offended? I figured he was badmouthing you, saying he thought you looked like a guy. Which, I mean—I wouldn’t mind someone saying that about me—” She grins. “—but I thought you liked being seen as pretty.”
Katara opens her mouth to speak, but finds that she doesn’t know what to say. Katara does like being pretty. But sometimes, Katara wants to be recognized as a boy, pretty or not, because that is what she sometimes is. But she can’t say that.
Toph would know if she lies. Honestly, Katara is impressed she doesn’t know yet.
“I guess I’m just a little less attached to being seen as feminine than some people,” she says at length, and Toph nods a little as if she expected as much.
“Look, Katara,” says Toph firmly as Katara stands at the gate, ready for them to part. “Maybe you don’t know what’s going on exactly, with the bloodbending and all. But whatever you end up doing, I know you’re gonna own it.”
“Thanks, Toph,” says Katara. She hesitates, and then surges forward to hug her.
Toph stiffens a little, then relaxes and pats her back, saying, “All right, enough of that mushy stuff.” But her voice is fond. “Say hi to Honey for me.”
She says her goodbyes, reluctantly, and moves on, heading north to Ba Sing Se, to Suki.
But before she leaves town, she stops to buy a top in a looser, more ambiguous cut, unflattering shade of green be damned.
Ba Sing Se has emptied considerably in the time since the end of the war, but many people still have not been able to return home. The Kyoshi Warriors, along with such troops as the Earth Kingdom has been able to muster up, have set up a chain of camps from here to the bay and beyond, passing refugees along it in an attempt to provide them some protection as they straggle back to their villages. Suki, with most of the Kyoshi Warriors, is stationed at the edges of the city.
“You look tired,” Suki tells Katara when they meet, knitting her brows.
“Do I?” says Katara, touching his hair nervously. “Well. It’s been a long journey.”
Suki nods understandingly, her eyes softening.
“And Sokka seems...different,” says Katara one evening a week later, feeling a little guilty about discussing him behind his back but worried enough that silence isn’t an option. Suki knows Sokka well, Katara knows. Perhaps she has some idea of what’s changed.
“What kind of different?” says Suki curiously.
“Like—there’s something he’s not telling me, and I don’t know what.” Katara sighs. “Like something happened to make him really happy, and he’s settled in so well in the Fire Nation that I feel like an outsider. I think…” A pause. “I think we’re pulling away from each other,” Katara says quietly. “We’ve always been mostly on the same page in life, and now we’re not, and—it’s not that I don’t want him to be happy. I’m glad that he’s happy! I’m glad both of them, he and Zuko, are happy! But being around them just made me realize even more that I’m...not. I don’t know who I am anymore, what I’m supposed to do.” Katara shivers a little, rubbing his arms. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s just hard to adjust sometimes.”
“Don’t apologize,” says Suki immediately, pulling off her outer shirt and draping it around Katara’s shoulders.
Katara pulls it close, grateful for the warmth. It smells a little like Suki, an earthy yet sweet smell; it’s weirdly comforting.
Suki laces her fingers together as she turns to lean her arms on the railing. “I understand that you don’t want things to change. I feel that way sometimes too. It’s been a big adjustment, being part of the war, and then being part of rebuilding. You know I’d never even left Kyoshi Island before you guys came along?” She laughs a little. “I think it’s natural to feel overwhelmed by all this change. We’ve all been through a lot.” She smiles at Katara sadly, and Katara musters up a small smile back. “And as for Sokka, and Zuko...well... If you feel like there’s something he’s not telling you, I’m sure that it’s not because he doesn’t trust you. Maybe he just doesn’t feel ready.”
Katara looks off to the side. “You...know something I don’t, don’t you?”
Suki sighs, smiling a little apologetically. “Honestly? Yes. But it’s not my place to tell.”
Katara blows out a puff of air, nodding reluctantly. Well, Sokka can keep his secrets. It’s not as if Katara doesn’t have any, like the fact that he’s genderfluid and not happy in the closet. Katara has never tried to hide who he was, always had his opinions of where he stood right on his sleeve—but this makes him feel afraid of who he is, afraid to be brazen and unapologetic about his determination to see justice in a way he’s never really been before. And it—well, it hurts.
But cutting that train of thought right off, Katara thinks hastily, trying to rid himself of the discomfort, what could it possibly be that is making Sokka’s life so pleasant in the Fire Nation? It can’t be the environment; a quarter of the content of the letters Sokka sends are complaints about how much he hates the weather and the Fire Nation nobility. Maybe it’s that he has the chance to do something purposeful; Katara certainly knows that not having a niche is bothering him. Maybe it’s just that he and Zuko are such good friends. Katara knows that in their tiny tribe, Sokka had never really had the chance to have male friends his own age; perhaps this is it?
“Do you know where you’ll go now?” says Suki, breaking into Katara’s thoughts. “If you’re willing to make a little side trip, there’s a village just east of here, near the coast, that’s been really struggling the past few months with some kind of difficult illness. Maybe you’d know how to treat it.”
“I don’t know,” says Katara, a little relieved by the distraction. “But I’ll do everything I can.”
“It used to be rare, but left untreated, it is fatal,” says the woman, her face wan. “No one has ever recovered unaided.”
“There must be something we can do,” says Katara desperately. “There must be some way to find the cure. We just have to look a little harder.”
“There isn’t. Not anymore,” she says, her mouth twisting. “There used to be a plant that could produce a cure, but it was always very rare, and the Fire Nation burned down the last of them during the war, the bastards.” She clenches her fist, raising it before exhaling deeply, her shoulders slumping, and slowly lowering it to the tabletop. “There is nothing we can do but ease their passing.”
“There is a place,” says a new voice, and Katara looks up.
“Give it a rest, Kan,” says the woman tiredly, and an older woman with sparse hair and piercing eyes leans forward from her chair in the corner. “There’s a small island just east of here, uninhabited, where the plant used to grow in abundance.”
“Don’t listen to her,” says the woman Katara has been conversing with in irritation. “Ever since the moon briefly went out a few years back, the tides around there have been unstable. They’ve grown too strong. That part of the ocean is practically unnavigable. We don’t need to be giving our people false hope.”
“I can still try,” says Katara hopefully. “It can’t hurt to tell me some more information about this, can it?”
“Kid,” says the first woman, looking at him in exasperation, “people have died trying to get to it.”
But Kan smiles crookedly, hobbling over to a chest of drawers off to the side and rummaging around in it as the first woman sighs, kneading her temples. Eventually she pulls out a battered map, beckoning Katara over. “You have next to no chance of making it there; the ocean won’t let you through easy. But look here, girlie, if anyone’s got a shot, it’s somebody who can waterbend.”
Katara swallows down a sudden lump, familiar and sharp, at the gendered term.
Katara sits in a rented room the night before his departure, frowning down at his chest. That is the problem. Something about it is—wrong. Not all the time, but sometimes, and it’s immensely irritating.
Katara doesn’t wish to give up his identity. But sometimes he wishes gender didn’t exist. All it seems to do is make people miserable in the end.
Feeling a little embarrassed despite being alone, Katara pulls off his tunic and underwrappings to look down at himself. He looks away quickly, scrunching up his face—if only there was a way to make it stay flat by itself—some way that didn’t involve those horrible bandages. Some way to make his body go where he wants it to...
Suddenly Katara is struck by an idea. He hurries to try it, taking a deep breath and feeling out the water in his own body.
Maybe bloodbending it down will work a little better—perhaps if combined with healing in some combination, it will safely yield better results. If Katara just uses it on himself—that couldn’t be wrong, right?
He considers what he would do if this works. The memory of Lihon’s bruised chest flashes into his mind. With bloodbending and the knowledge it provides, would it be possible to design something, a technique maybe, or a specialized garment, that made things more bearable? Maybe with greater control over bodily tissues, some kind of surgery could even be developed for people with problems like this, or for many other ailments besides. Katara allows himself briefly to envision a world without those bandages.
Using it to heal, using it for this... What justifies it? Can bloodbending really do some good?
Katara’s reluctantly, but rapidly, coming to the conclusion that it can. It would be irresponsible to keep so many benefits to himself.
As Katara concentrates, examining the results on himself—it does appear to have some effect, but Katara’s first attempt was a little clumsy—a thought comes into his mind unbidden: Thirteen-year-old me, before Aang appeared, before all of this—thirteen-year-old Katara would never recognize me now. I wouldn’t recognize me now.
Where will I be in another few years?
Katara looks at the water, frowning. The boat she’s borrowed is small to the point of being ludicrous—it’s Kan’s, and Katara is grateful, because she is just about out of money—and Katara didn’t believe that its size would be a problem, but.
She stares out at the ocean. Far enough away that Katara is spared from it, but close enough to be impressive, is an area with a curiously contained but intense increase in the sea’s choppiness. And not only that, but there’s a thick fog developing not far after that.
I guess she was right about the sea conditions, thinks Katara, standing on the beach and trying to formulate a plan of attack. Katara knows how to sail a boat, has helped do it before, but this is little more than a rowboat, and she is alone.
Katara thinks about the village, the population’s ranks dropping as people flee the area, the desperate state of the ill people Katara had met and tried unsuccessfully to heal with bending.
I can’t back down now, thinks Katara, looking at the waves for a few moments in silence.
Maybe no one from the village has ever been able to navigate this area successfully. But none of them had been waterbenders.
The sea is brutal.
Katara had lost sight of everything around within a minute of sailing, barely even able to see the far end of the boat, and the waves have gotten rougher and rougher, gliding in to slam against the little boat as if trying to smash it. A few times a wave many yards high appears to rise up from nowhere, towering over the dinghy challengingly, and each time Katara guides it away, refusing to be cowed.
This is an ocean that wants to start a fight, for whatever reason, and Katara isn’t going to let it.
Sweat dripping, feet braced on either side of the boat so as not to fall out, she pushes away another wave with effort. She closes her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, trying to move with the motions of the waves.
So this is a little harder than expected. So what? Katara’s not afraid. All she has to do is keep a sharp eye out, be ready to adapt to whatever the ocean can dish out—
Something bumps the boat from beneath, and Katara takes a deep breath with difficulty, refusing to panic. A row of fins break the surface just to starboard.
Piranha sharks, most likely.
They start circling, gliding in and out of Katara’s field of vision eerily calmly, and Katara bends smaller waves between them and the boat, trying to gently push them away. They press against the current insistently, inching closer and closer.
Katara feels out for the water blindly, blinking saltwater out of her eyes, searching for something solid. Nothing; there is only the powerful swell of water, over and over in an endless cycle, and the chill of the water particles in the air. But this is the location, and Katara’s no quitter.
Katara reaches out a little farther with bending. Push, pull. Push, pull.
There—an obstruction in the flow of the waves, a lulling farther off. Katara aims the boat towards it with difficulty, fending off powerful swells as the boat bobs over the waves.
Eventually, when Katara’s arms are shaking with exhaustion, a landmass appears through the gloom.
Using the last of her strength, Katara shoves the dinghy ashore, the hull scraping against the sand, pushing it farther up the beach than is really necessary, just to be on the safe side.
Katara climbs out with difficulty, legs shaky, stumbling a little in the sand, and turns to look out at the ocean.
The sky, a little bit clearer over the sand, turns thickly foggy just past the beach, and the ocean, a mild and clear bluish grey where it’s rushing up against Katara’s ankles, turns dull and opaque twenty feet out.
There’s a line of trees farther up the beach. It’s quiet, the only sounds Katara’s breathing and the waves.
Katara stays staring at the ocean for a minute before dazedly turning towards the treeline. Now to find that plant.
She takes a step and winces at the feeling of wet clothes clinging to her skin. Maybe a quick change of clothes is in order. Hopefully Katara’s pack isn’t too soaked.
In the end, the only mostly dry item is a spare red top left over from her stay in the Fire Nation capital, months ago now. Katara finds it balled right at the bottom. She’d forgotten she even had it. It’s a little too loose for Katara, and she smoothes her hands over it, pleased in a way. This will be useful, especially for other days. The way it’s cut appears to hide her chest.
Red isn’t ideal, of course. But dry is dry.
Katara trudges through the trees, picking her steps carefully so as not to trip. It’s slow going. The trees are nearly as dense as the fog was over the ocean. The forest is silent, not a single bird call to be heard.
She looks around. The plant whose flowers can provide a cure is supposedly a small tree with wide green leaves and distinctive white flowers with golden petal tips that open facing the ground. But there are so many different kinds of plants that it’s hard to pick out any single one.
Katara walks for about an hour before stopping to plop down on a log, rubbing her temples. This is ridiculous. The greenery grows so close that the flowers all overlap each other, and in the riot of color it’s hard to tell for sure exactly whether any are the plant Katara’s looking for.
She drops her face into her hands, closing her eyes for a brief moment. If Katara could just think…
The next thing Katara notices is a shuffling sound, and she jolts upwards, startled. What…? She must have fallen asleep.
Katara lifts her head and is met with the sight of a woman standing at the other edge of the small clearing, her eyes wide. She’s dark haired and pale, holding a basket in which a few bits of greenery can be seen, and she’s holding aside a large leaf as if she is intending to enter the clearing.
“Uh—hi!” says Katara, jolting upwards to her feet, a little groggy. “I’m Katara—”
The woman turns and runs, and Katara jolts into action. “Hey! Wait! I just want to talk!”
Katara takes off after her, but the woman is fast, and she obviously knows the terrain while Katara doesn’t. She finds herself getting slapped in the face by plants as the woman expertly maneuvers around them, flying easily across the stones and tree roots placed in the path. Katara begins pushing the larger leaves away with her bending, panting from exertion. She can only catch glimpses of the woman’s green clothing through the trees. There—but maybe that’s a leaf? Or there—
She bursts out into another clearing unexpectedly and scans the trees wildly.
The woman is gone.
“Hello?” Katara calls yet again, holding aside a purple frond as long as her leg that threatens to smack her in the face as she climbs over a log. “My name is Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. I’m here to look for the fairy dress tree, a cure for an illness that’s putting a lot of people in danger in the village of Yu Fei on the mainland. Can we talk? Please? I promise I’m not here to attack you…” She halts, letting herself pause in front of a wall of low, dense foliage above which long branches can be seen. Her throat is sore and scratchy. She thinks she’s losing her voice.
She closes her eyes again, leaning back.
And promptly loses her footing as the foliage turns out to be hiding the fact that the branches are extending from trees far to either side and not directly behind her, and actually the thing behind the plants isn’t a tree trunk but a sharp, steep cliff, and suddenly Katara is falling backwards—
A hand shoots out of the plants, gripping her arm tightly, and Katara is unceremoniously hauled back onto stable ground. She stumbles to the ground and jerks her head up, heart pounding, to see the woman from before swiftly turning away.
“Wait! Please!” says Katara desperately. “I’m not here to attack you—I’ve come looking to find a cure—”
The woman, already at the edge of the clearing, turns to look at her sharply, scanning her face, hesitating. A sword’s sheath is visible on her back. Her brow knits, and she pauses.
Encouraged, Katara breathlessly reiterates her quest to obtain a cure for the beleaguered village of Yu Fei. The woman seems to be hesitating.
“Who are you really?” the woman finally says, her voice sounding rough, as if she has not used it for a long time.
“Katara,” Katara repeats for the hundredth time, “of the Southern Water Tribe.” She stands up slowly. “I didn’t know anyone lived on this island. Can we talk?”
The woman’s name is Palana, she says. She consents to hover tensely at the edge of the clearing as Katara rests against a tree trunk opposite her, and she keeps scrutinizing Katara’s features as if sure they hold the answer to some pressing question. Katara’s not sure why. It is a little disconcerting.
“Who are you working for?” Palana asks her, her gaze boring into Katara. Her eyes are yellow—odd, for the northeastern Earth Kingdom.
“I’m not working for anyone,” says Katara. Why does everyone always think she’s working for someone else? First Mai and Ty Lee, and now this. “I’m a healer, and I’m travelling in the hopes of helping people. I just want to find a cure for the village. That’s all.”
The woman narrows her eyes, and Katara thinks fast, trying to come up with something to say to convince her of her trustworthiness. Why is Palana so suspicious? She must be on the run from someone, either that or something about Katara makes her look untrustworthy—
Oh. Katara’s in the Earth Kingdom.
And she’s wearing red—the red top—
Suddenly Palana’s scrutiny of Katara’s face makes sense—perhaps she’s noticed Katara’s darker skin and blue eyes, and is confused about whether to trust her or not.
“I’m not Fire Nation,” she blurts out. “I really am Water Tribe.”
Palana raises an eyebrow.
“I—look—” Katara hurriedly uncaps her water flask, bending out some water into a ball. “I’m a waterbender.”
Palana appears to relax a little. “So that’s how you got here. The ocean’s been too difficult to get through from the mainland for a long time.” She nods once, frowning thoughtfully. “Just taking advantage of an opportunity, then. Well, I don’t blame you for picking up what you can, red or not. I know that times are difficult nowadays.”
Katara nods without saying anything. The mere mention of the Fire Nation seems to make this woman suspicious. And honestly, Katara can understand that. If she wants this woman’s help, then, it might be prudent not to let slip that actually, she picked up the top by being the personal guest of the Firelord. In the Earth Kingdom, opinions on Zuko, she has found in the past few months, are mixed, to put it lightly.
It turns out, to Katara’s immense relief, that Palana does indeed know where to find the plant. She guides Katara a short distance to a small hill where a little tree pokes up out of a group of ferns.
“The buds aren’t open,” Katara says, confused.
“They won’t come in for a couple weeks still,” says Palana, putting her hands on her hips. She looks at Katara sidelong. “You would have to come back, if you can. Or wait.”
Katara stares at the plant. Well. She didn’t expect this.
Palana becomes considerably warmer after that. Katara, confused and unprepared to spend so much time on the island—he’d expected it to be a trip of a day or two at most—ends up tagging along as Palana goes about her daily business. Palana, for her part, seems a little pleased to have the company, taking the time to instruct Katara about which plants are good for food, which ones have medicinal qualities, and similar things. She seems to live alone on the island, and if it’s as difficult to get to all the time as it was for Katara, Katara would guess that there hasn’t been anyone else here for a long time. Years, even.
“What’s this one?” Katara asks, pointing to a vine with small, bright red berries.
Palana glances at it briefly, her expression smoothly turning blank. “That’s crab’s eye.”
Katara squats down to look at it better. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s very poisonous,” says Palana quietly, “if ingested.”
“So tell me,” says Palana one night as they sit cross-legged on opposite sides of a fire. “What possessed a young man like yourself to leave the Water Tribe and travel across the Earth Kingdom helping strangers?” She’s polishing the sword whose sheath Katara had glimpsed on that first day, which is actually dual dao blades. She touches the metal gently, almost absentmindedly, as if she has done it so many times that she doesn’t even need to pay attention anymore.
Katara starts. “You—you think I’m a guy?” Katara has been experimenting with his bending, and he’s seen some promising results, but he didn’t think he’d gotten that good yet.
Palana looks up in shock, nearly cutting herself on the edge of the blade, looking closely at Katara’s face again. “Oh! My apologies, then. A young lady.” She grimaces a little. “I’m sorry. I guess I am getting older after all, if my eyesight is going that much.” She laughs a little.
“No, no!” Katara says, taking a deep breath. This is the second time, and the first time when the person isn’t trans—he can do this. “I am a boy. Just not...all the time.”
“Hmm?” Palana’s hands stop on the blade, and she looks up at Katara with a puzzled frown.
Katara breathes deeply, hoping this won’t get him thrown off the island, or worse. But if there’s anyone to tell, it’s this nice lady whom he probably won’t ever see again at the end of these two weeks, right?
“Some of the time I’m a boy,” Katara explains, “and some of the time I’m a girl.” He shrugs a little, self consciousness creeping in. “I know it might be confusing to you. But it’s really the truth.” It’s come to feel so natural to him that he has a hard time explaining it aloud. Katara may once have been confused, but it’s been years—and after all, adaptability is the foremost characteristic of waterbending.
Palana blinks at him from across the flames, then looks back at the blade in her hands, resuming polishing it. “I used to believe that the world is split into easy opposites.” Her voice turns thoughtful. “Good and evil, civilized and in need of civilizing…” She trails off, and then shakes her head as if to remind herself where she is. “But I learned when I travelled here that things are rarely so simple. You are who you are.”
Encouraged—this was much more than Katara expected—he admits, “I think people would think I’m crazy, if I told them.” The confession feels like it slipped past his lips without his permission, but Palana gives off an aura of calm understanding. It reminds Katara a little of his mother, makes him want to confide in her. But it settles a weight in his chest to think about his mother now, especially about what she might think…
“Sometimes,” says Palana, stopping her polishing and leaning down a little to examine the sword before setting it aside in favor of the other one, “remaining sure of who you are and what you care about will make people think that you’re crazy.” She stares down at the sword and sighs before beginning to polish it. “But that doesn’t mean you should change for their sake. It doesn’t mean that what you care about isn’t worth protecting. You can’t allow them to make you lose who you are.”
Katara nods, watching her hands moving steadily.
“You know,” says Palana, looking up briefly at Katara with a kind smile, “you never answered my question.”
“Your question?”
“When I asked you,” says Palana patiently, “what caused a nice young man like you—may I say that?” and when Katara nods she continues, “—to leave the Water Tribe and end up here. I don’t mean to offend you, but you do seem a little young to be off on your own so far from home.”
“You have no idea,” says Katara with a sheepish smile.
The tree’s buds grow larger. And Katara tells Palana the abridged version of her journey across the world and back again, and of her recent travels since leaving the Southern Water Tribe last summer. Palana doesn’t seem to recognize her as the Avatar’s companion, and it is surprisingly nice to be hidden here away from all the troubles besieging the world in the wake of the war, so Katara makes no mention of Avatar business. She carefully keeps Aang’s name out of things, referring to him with a pseudonym, and making it seem like it was all simply a very long vacation instead of a quest to help the Avatar learn the elements—but before she knows it she’s told her nearly everything she can without revealing those last essential pieces. About her friends, about her worries for the future of her Tribe and the possibility of being trusted with leadership, about her family—Palana listens to this all wistfully, especially the last, and Katara shyly asks her if she has a family.
“A son and a daughter, once,” she responds, and Katara takes the hint to drop the subject.
It is in the middle of one monologue that she mentions missing her brother and how strangely he’s been acting with Zuko—
She stops herself.
That’s right. The strangeness is always with Zuko. She thinks hard, trying to remember—some of his weirder reactions—the way the two of them seemed to orbit each other—could Sokka have possibly—? But Katara likes to think she would have noticed, she of all people, if her own brother had liked—
She sits stunned. Katara is in the midst of reorganizing and reclassifying all of their interactions. This changes things—and hope blossoms in her chest.
“Say that again,” says Palana abruptly, breaking Katara out of her reverie. Her tone is stricken, and Katara looks up at her in surprise.
“Palana? What’s wro—”
“Say that name again,” she commands, and Katara stares up at her.
Say—oh, Tui and La, she’d mentioned Zuko by name, hadn’t she? There went Katara’s hopes of remaining anonymous. And possibly her hopes of remaining on the island, if Palana was very much against Zuko and the Fire Nation—
“What did you say?” says Palana, her voice growing stronger, more determined.
Katara doesn’t want to lie. “Firelord Zuko,” she admits, and feels compelled to mount at least a token defense. “I know you probably don’t have a good opinion of the Fire Nation. I didn’t trust Zuko at first either. But he’s really proven himself to be a good person and a good friend, and—”
Palana holds up a shaky hand, and Katara stops. Palana stands up suddenly and paces to the other side of the fire. “Firelord—Firelord—Zuko—” She wheels about, her expression wild. “Tell me—how did that happen?”
Katara stares at her, completely lost and a little unnerved. “Well he—he took the throne when Aang—when the Avatar defeated Ozai—after the war ended—or are you asking about the Agni Kai?”
Because Katara would rather not discuss that in detail if she doesn’t have to.
But Palana only stares at her, her frame rigid. “The war ended?” she croaks eventually, her voice cracking.
Katara blinks. “Yes, after the war ended—” It hits her as if she’s been run over by an armadillo lion. “You mean you didn’t know?”
Palana sits back down jerkily. “You are serious.”
“Yes,” says Katara, even though it wasn’t a question.
Palana scrubs her face with her hands, then peers at Katara with a squint, as if she will be able to discern some evidence of a joke from her face.
“It’s been over for two years,” says Katara quietly. “Ever since the comet, when the Avatar...”
“The Avatar disappeared a hundred years ago,” says Palana incredulously.
“Well, yes, but we—that is, my brother and I—kind of… found him,” says Katara sheepishly.
“I can’t believe…” Palana’s eyes dart around the clearing, flickering in the firelight. “I’d assumed that nothing could stop the conquest—I thought that…”
“I’m so sorry,” says Katara, standing up and putting a hand on her arm. “If I’d known you didn’t know, I’d have told you as soon as I got here. I understand that it must be a huge shock.” She peers at Palana’s face in concern, alarmed to see her eyes suddenly fill up with tears.
“In all my life,” Palana says quietly. “I never thought that I would ever again…”
“Palana?” Katara says hesitantly. “Are you all right?”
Palana dabs at her eyes, and Katara says comfortingly, “Hey, it’s all right. A lot’s changed, but it’s all for the better…”
Palana takes a deep breath through her nose and lifts her head, her expression suddenly determined.
Katara stares at her, lost.
“The flowers you need will be ready in less than a week,” she says.
“Yes…?” says Katara, a little thrown by the shift in topic.
“After that, you’ll be leaving to take some to villagers on the mainland. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah,” says Katara, frowning, “but what does that—”
“You know,” says Palana, looking around at the trees, “I think I’ve spent long enough on this lonely island. Perhaps it’s time to move on. I think I will depart when you do, if you’d consent to take me to the mainland with you.”
“Of course I will,” says Katara, still confused. “Where are you going to go?”
“To the Fire Nation.” Palana stares into the fire, seeming a little dazed, and suddenly very tired. “I think...it’s time I saw my son.”
In the next three seconds, a few pieces click together, and Katara just about falls over from shock.
“He told me about you,” says Katara in amazement, tagging along as Ursa packs up baskets and dismantles wooden structures with brutal efficiency. She disappears behind a tree, and Katara, still not used to the terrain, stumbles down the little slope after her clumsily. “When I told him about my mother, he told me—”
“Hold this for me a minute, will you, darling?” says Ursa, handing him the basket, and Katara wraps his arms around it with difficulty as he tries to get a stable footing on the shifting brush. Ursa pulls herself up into the tree, and Katara cranes his neck upwards to continue speaking. “He’ll be so happy to see you.” He won’t pretend he’s not a little envious—Zuko will get his mother back, but Katara never will.
Ursa jumps down from the tree, holding a small sack, and tucks it into the basket, taking it from Katara’s arms. “You must tell me everything,” she says firmly, and Katara nods quickly. “Without leaving anything out this time.”
“I don’t know about everything that happened to him since you...left,” says Katara reluctantly. “We’ve only known each other for a few years, and there are things he’s never told me.” For instance, the full details of how Zuko got his scar, or why exactly he was banished—Katara knows only the rough bones of the story, but it’s enough to tell that it’s not a pleasant one, and he winces a little at the thought of what Ursa will do when she sees him—she’s never seen his scar.
“Is he happy, Katara?” says Ursa quietly, after they’ve tromped across the forest for a few minutes in silence.
“The last time I saw him, he seemed happier than I’d ever seen him before,” says Katara honestly.
Ursa nods once, and then says, “I don’t suppose you know anything about my daughter, Azula?” She sounds hopeful and apprehensive at once.
“Oh,” says Katara, thinking of their final battle, “um…”
The next few weeks go by in a blur. The flowers bloom. Katara forces their way back through the turbulent ocean in the same small boat, this time with a companion. Kan is significantly irritated at Katara’s having disappeared with her boat for two weeks, but quickly ceases berating him when Katara shows her the flowers, as many as Katara could fit tucked into a carefully protected sack, along with a store of seeds to plant the tree on the mainland. They stay just long enough to see some improvement in the afflicted villagers—a week and a half—before practically flying south.
On the way there, Katara had wanted to take his time, not knowing where to go and wanting to be able to offer what help he could to people along the way. But now they’re in a hurry—it seems too incredible to be true, that Katara has found her, and he has a terrible feeling that unless he gets Ursa to the Fire Nation capital as fast as humanly possible, something terrible will happen and she will be snatched away.
Katara knows what it’s like to lose a mother. He’s not going to let it happen again to someone else. This is his chance to pay back Zuko’s understanding when Katara wanted to find Yon Rha.
They take a boat out of Chameleon Bay, traveling southwest.
Katara takes advantage of the time they have, days at sea without much to do, to catch Ursa up on what has happened in the years since she was last out in the world. And as they are cruising past Kyoshi Island, once Katara has run out of things to tell her for the moment, she works up the courage to ask Ursa why she left the Fire Nation.
She has heard scraps of the tale from various places, things Zuko had morosely implied at one point or another, speculations from people in the Fire Nation—but Katara has told Ursa the whole tale of her own experiences related to leaving her own nation that first time. And she is curious to know the same of Ursa, or at least about some of it.
This is how she learns the reason for the strange blankness that had come over Ursa’s face when Katara asked about the crab’s eye.
“The poison didn’t work quite as well as I expected it to,” says Ursa delicately, “So I had to take… other measures. It was relatively painless in the end. More than he deserved.” She looks Katara in the eye. “I would have done anything. I would have assassinated a thousand fathers-in-law, a thousand Firelords. I don’t regret it.” Her eyes soften a little, and she looks back out at the sea, the night air whipping loose strands of her hair around. “If you had children, you would understand.”
Katara thinks of her mother. “I think I do understand,” she says quietly, and allows herself to hope that perhaps her mother wouldn’t be so distressed by Katara’s gender after all.
“I never thought that there would be any reason for me to leave that island,” Ursa continues quietly. “I knew that Ozai would never give up power unless he was dead, and by the time that happened I probably would be as well. I had to stay away, for Zuko’s sake. So when the ocean started getting hard to navigate, I thought it must be fate. I believed I would die there.”
She lowers her gaze, watching the ship cut through the slate-grey waves. “I never thought I would see my children again.”
They pass right by the Southern Air Temple, and the Southern Water Tribe not far south of it, and Katara feels a pang of homesickness. He’s been gone for many months. How long has it been since he last saw Aang, or his dad, or Gran-Gran?
Too long.
Ursa watches everything they pass with quiet amazement, and Katara often finds her on deck at the railing, carefully scrutinizing the ships they pass and the shoreline when they’re close to land, or silently analyzing the bustle of ports when they change ships. Eight years back, Ba Sing Se was still the Impenetrable City, and the thought of so much movement out of it was unthinkable; yet, they passed scores of refugees streaming out as they hurriedly traveled away from Yu Fei and as they boarded ships western bound. Eight years back, the Fire Nation navy had patrolled the waters around the islands religiously; yet, as they approach, they see no military activity, only Earth Kingdom ships now moving about the edges of their own waters unmolested. Eight years back, it would have been impossible to take an Earth Kingdom ship directly to the Fire Nation; and yet, there they are, dropped off at the same island where Katara met Mai, Ty Lee, and Lihon all those months ago, accompanied off the ship by people Katara’s almost sure are actually a group of more daring Earth Kingdom tourists.
The world has changed, and it isn’t until Katara sees Ursa’s plain shock that he’s reminded again how much he has actually changed with it.
It is early evening, and the landscape of the city is beginning to be bejeweled with lights, but they take no time to take in the Caldera and how it has evolved over the near decade since Ursa last saw it. Ursa is silent and white lipped as they hurry on to the palace, and Katara doesn’t press her.
They reach the first guards. “Please tell the Firelord,” Katara tells him, having to look up at the man and refusing to be intimidated as he frowns down at him, “that Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe has arrived. And I’ve brought someone very important.”
The man snorts. “Yeah, we get that a lot. You helped defeat the princess in Agni Kai, friend of the Avatar, you demand entrance and access to the palace’s best sake, yada yada yada.” He raises his eyebrows. “You didn’t even try. She hasn’t been near this city for months. And I’m pretty sure the actual Master Katara’s got long hair, in a braided thingy.” He twirls his finger near the back of his head and snorts. “Get lost, kid.”
Katara is just about to boil over with anger when Ursa gently pushes him aside, stepping up in front of the man and matching him inch for inch.
“What exactly makes you think that you have the authority to refuse entrance to the Firelord’s friend?” she says coolly, looking down her nose at him.
The man falters a little. “U-Uh, who are you supposed to be? The Avatar himself? Heh heh, heh…”
Ursa’s eyes flash. “Allow us entrance,” she says, her voice dripping with dismissive scorn.
“Now, look, lady, I can’t just go letting people in whenever they want,” says the guard, shuffling his feet a little. “It’s a security risk.”
“Security, is it?” says Ursa. “Then explain to me why you refuse to admit my young friend here due to a simple haircut. Sheer incompetence, I think, is more likely the problem here.”
The man gives Katara a sidelong glance, a little more considering this time. Katara can see sweat beading on his brow. “Well—I guess you do look a little bit like her…”
“What do you want me to do, freeze you to a wall?” says Katara, crossing his arms.
He caves, but Katara doesn’t think his relief at seeing them go is anywhere near the relief they feel at finally being close.
They encounter Sokka first, as they barrel down the hallway on the way to the Firelord’s chambers.
“Katara!” He drops the papers he was holding, his eyes wide, and then rubs his eyes hard before taking another look at him. “You’re here? What—who is this?”
Your future mother-in-law, in a perfect world, most likely, thinks Katara, but out loud he puffs out, “Zuko’s mother,” as he skids to a stop.
“What?” He stands shocked into stillness for a moment, heedless of the dropped papers. “Hey, wait!” He grabs Katara’s arm as he tries to slide away, his eyes darting to his face, his hair. “What—how did you—” He glances at Ursa in disbelief, then back at Katara. “You’ve come back different.”
“You must be Sokka,” says Ursa, but her face is nearly white. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
He stares at her, then looks back at Katara, and then down at his dropped papers, and says softly, “What the fuck?”
“Sokka,” says Katara impatiently, pushing his hand off his arm, “I have a lot to tell you. And I promise I will. But right now, there’s no time. Where’s Zuko?”
“He’s down there,” says Sokka, blinking, pointing down the hall. They were going the right way, then.
Katara and Ursa rush down the hall, and he pauses for a moment before hastening after them.
Katara stops short before the door. There are no guards. He hears rather than sees Ursa and Sokka pull up behind him, and quickly he turns, taking a step backwards, away to the side of the door. This is not for him to do.
Ursa steps forward. Her posture is tense, a thousand different emotions warring on her face. She hesitates. Her hand hovers over the knob for a second or two. She settles her hand on the knob, and twists slowly.
The door swings open silently.
Inside, Zuko, seated at a desk, looks up with a warm smile. “There you are! I was wondering what was taking yo—” He stops.
Ten seconds pass.
He stands up, and the chair tips over with a gentle thump behind him. He takes two steps towards the door and pauses, wavering.
“Mom?” His voice cracks.
“Zuko,” she breathes, and rushes forward to throw her arms around him.
“But you always seemed like—so girly! And so…You always acted like you were a girl. You always said you were a girl. You never seemed like...”
“Sometimes people are wrong, Sokka,” says Katara quietly. “I was wrong about myself.” It’s a simple response, and she doesn’t mention the sleepless nights, the self doubt, the fear that she was betraying the values of equality for women that she’d fought so hard for. She’s made her peace with all of that now.
The conversation pauses as Sokka takes this in.
“So let me get this straight,” he says after a long moment.
Katara snorts a little.
Sokka looks at her as if worried for her sanity.
“You said ‘straight,’” says Katara. “I-It was just funny, because I—and you—Never mind.” She clamps her mouth shut. Better to let Sokka tell her about that in his own time.
Sokka stares at her for a solid five seconds before the realization hits him. “You’re making—You’re making gay jokes?” he says incredulously. “My sister is making gay jokes? Uh. Brother?”
“Sister, today,” Katara reminds him. “Or sibling.”
“Okay. My sister-sibling is making gay jokes,” Sokka repeats disbelievingly. He shakes his head. “Katara, that might be the closest you’ve ever come to saying something funny in your life.”
Katara glares at him, he laughs, and Katara can’t help it—she laughs too. And Katara feels deep in her heart that they’ll be okay, that she’ll be okay.
Sokka’s laughter trails off naturally, and he knits his brows, hesitating. “...So...I’m still a little confused...run this by me one more time?”
Katara takes in a deep breath through her nose. “Well,” she says, looking at him sidelong, “It’s like...There are people who like guys and girls, aren’t there?”
His eyes go wide. “Uh—w-well, yeah…”
“It’s like that, but I feel like both. Sometimes people can feel more than one kind of thing. Don’t you think?”
Sokka nods slowly, comprehension dawning in his eyes. “All right. I get it, I think.” He sighs, then says quietly, almost to himself, “So much has happened these past few days.”
“I know,” says Katara equally quietly. “I just needed you to know.”
He looks back at her, his eyes wide, and then softening in sympathy. “I know, Katara. I know. It’s okay.”
Katara goes to Sokka’s embassy quarters to find him later that night, unable to sleep and seeking company, only to be told that he’s not there, that he hasn’t slept there consistently for months. Katara has a strong suspicion of where exactly he is.
It looks as if Sokka will, indeed, not be leaving this city anytime soon. Good thing Katara is ready to fill in while he’s gone.
Zuko, Sokka, and Ursa see him off at the docks.
When they get close, Katara almost thinks the ship he’s on has taken a wrong turn. These buildings, that wall—could they really have erected those just in the time he’s been gone?
“This is the Southern Water Tribe?” calls Katara to the first mate.
“Unless you know of another settlement this far south,” she says with a shrug.
As they get closer, Katara can see that the outline looks a little like the village he’s known all his life. It looks like they’ve rebuilt part of the wall, with a few buildings peeking out over it. And that structure there sure seems like a revamped version of Sokka’s little watchtower. And is that—is that a street?
“Katara,” says his father with relief, meeting him as he comes off the boat with a tight hug. “I am so glad to see you home.”
“Dad,” says Katara into his shoulder. For a minute that’s all he can say as they cling to each other. “What is all this?” he asks finally as they pull apart. There are people bustling around that he doesn’t recognize.
“Soon after you left,” says Hakoda, “ships from the Northern Water Tribe finally arrived. We’ve all been hard at work reconstructing the place. Soon you won’t even recognize it.” He turns to survey the village proudly. “What do you think?”
“I think I already don’t recognize it,” says Katara, “but it looks amazing.” However, he finds he’s less surprised than he thought he might be.
There are things left to do—unpack, of course, notify Aang that he’s finally back, find and greet his grandmother—but Katara finds himself itching to go, to learn how to build the place taller and prouder. Katara wants to be part of it, to help coax it back into the flourishing city-state he’s only heard about in stories, chief or not.
It’s a daunting task, but he’s ready.