Chapter Text
“This is it Katara. Are you ready to face him?”
Zuko's words settle in her bones.
For nine years Katara has waited. For this exact moment. For this chance. Nine years. Each and every day spent wondering who this monster is. Where he is. What he is doing. How he can stand to breathe – how he can dare to live – after what he did.
And now she is here… she finds that none of it matters.
Katara doesn’t care who he is, or where he’s been hiding like a coward these past nine years. She doesn’t care what he’s been doing with his stolen time. The only thing she cares about is ending his miserable existence. Slowly. She wants to see the terror in his eyes as she kills him, as she makes him suffer. She needs to know that he will die feeling as scared and helpless as her mother had. As scared and helpless as he had made Katara feel on the icy tundra of her home when she was only eight years old.
She is not that scared little girl anymore.
No.
Now – Oh – Now she is a grown woman. And she is filled with unending wrath nine years in the making; fierce enough to shatter worlds.
Katara lifts the lid on the fury she keeps buried so carefully – masked behind layers of kindness, softness, sweetness. Her perfect facade. The girl she lets the world think she is. If only they could see the foulness that lurks beneath it all. They wouldn’t think so highly of her then.
She flings her arms forward, sending a powerful wave of water at the metal door before her, not bothering to control the guttural, animalistic noise that tears from her throat as she does; a shattered scream from the dark and broken recesses within her that will never be fixed.
The door flies from its hinges, crumpled, as easily as a pair of wings ripped from the back of a moth.
Zuko immediately steps in front of her, deflecting two fireballs before sending one of his own towards the lone figure in the room.
Him.
A rushing fills Katara’s ears, deafening her to the rest of the world, and all her senses hone in on the man in black. Her feet are rooted in the doorway. She can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t breathe. She is eight years old, and her mother is begging her to run but all she can do is stand and stare. Loose hairs tickle her face, stirred by the Antarctic wind.
No.
Stirred by the heat: Rolling flames filling the bridge of the Fire Nation warship they currently stand on.
“Who are you?”
At once Katara snaps back into herself. The man’s voice. Pinched. Nasal. Not at all like the voice that haunts her dreams and wrenches her sweating and sobbing from sleep so often.
“You don’t remember her? You will soon. Trust me.”
No. No. It has to be him. There is no other alternative. She can’t— won’t accept it. They have come so far. She has come too far. This has to end today.
It’s all too easy to reach out with her bending and clasp onto his life force. Too easy to twist his arms into unnatural angles and buckle his legs. To have him bow – cower – before her. His body yields to her will with a mere thought.
His helmet skitters across the floor.
Katara walks towards him, her steps even and unhurried; a predator toying with its prey.
Only vaguely does she register how Zuko’s eyes widen as she passes.
She looks down her nose at the trembling man at her feet, whimpering and fruitlessly attempting to stand, his face obscured by a dark, limp ponytail. She feels the frantic beat of his heart as if she were truly holding it in her palm – the wretched organ desperately battling the command she holds over his blood. Even so, it feels as though it is her heart that is trapped in an ever tightening vice, being steadily crushed beneath the weight of her primal hatred. She feels as though she is burning from the inside out; consumed by pure, undiluted pain and rage from which she will never stop burning until she is nothing more than ash on the wind.
She doesn’t want to know.
She has to know.
Katara curls her fingers, and the man screeches as his neck snaps backwards, finally revealing a face twisted with pain and anger. His eyes meet hers.
And the fire within her winks out, leaving only a vast, gaping hollowness.
It’s not him.
He’s not the man.
From behind her, a scuffle of footsteps and struggling limbs, and an unfamiliar voice, "Release the Commander or I’ll slit his throat.”
She’s drowning. Falling into the yawning abyss that has opened up inside her with nothing to hold onto. Her fingers scrabble for purchase as she spirals. Katara stares and stares at the man before her, still writhing within her blood-reign, as though staring will make any damn difference. As if by staring hard enough she can will it – can change him into the man who took her mother from her.
“I won’t ask again, Waterbender.”
Katara turns. Every movement like wading through treacle. Each thought slow and fuzzy. Another man in black. Huge. Tall. Standing behind Zuko, twisting both his arms up behind him, and pressing a wicked, serrated blade against his throat.
Now that the guard has her attention, he sneers, and presses his knife harder against Zuko’s neck for emphasis. Katara drags her gaze to meet Zuko’s. His yellow eyes blaze with tenacious fire. Stubborn as an Ox, even in the face of death.
How does he keep burning? After everything? His will is ceaseless and unerring and bright. He burns like an inferno and she hates and envies him for it.
Katara releases the man at her back, allowing his pulsing blood to slip from her control. She hears the Commander collapse forward onto the gunmetal floor with a dull clang, inhaling a lungful of air in a great rattling gasp.
Her own voice sounds vague and distant, drowned out by the roaring vacuum of her mind, “I did what you asked. Now let him go.”
The guard’s mouth twists into a vile mockery of a smile, and he presses the blade deeper against his captive’s throat. The black material of Zuko’s face covering snags and rips on the edge of the knife, and Katara catches a flash of pale skin beneath, puckering against the pressure of the metal.
A thin line of crimson wells up beneath the steel.
And her world flips and sharpens from dull vacancy to blinding panic.
Suddenly the universe becomes too fast, too loud, too bright. All the hours of training, of centring her mind and body, completely vanishes, leaving her useless and floundering. Alone. Frozen.
Once more the scared little girl she swore never again to be.
Arms encircle her from behind, slamming her back against a solid chest, her wrists pinned to her sides with bone crushing force. The Commander. She had turned her back to him. How could she have been so stupid?
Zuko lurches forward, forgetting about the blade at his neck and almost slitting his own throat in the process. Always so reckless.
“Let her go!” He yells, thrashing against his own captor, apparently no longer content to remain sedate.
It’s all too much. Too much to process at once and Katara feels herself being crushed under the weight of it all. She can’t breathe. She tries over and over to suck air into her lungs but all she can manage is a shallow pant, each precious breath barely hitting the back of her throat before her body forces it back out again. She can hear her name – called over and over by the boy with the yellow eyes. The world spins and she doesn’t know which way is up. So she bucks wildly, thrashing against the man behind her, against the world. Dully, she feels her head connect with something gristly, followed by a crunch and a hiss of pain. There are phantom hands inside her chest, squeezing her lungs and heart and she knows they won’t stop until all that remains is dust, sifting through those fingers to pile on the unforgiving metal beneath her boots.
She is going to die. This is what it feels like to die. This is what her mother had felt when she died, alone in her own home, with only Fire Nation scum for company.
The temperature plummets.
“What is she doing?”
She is back on the ice. Running to find her father. To find anyone. Snow whips at her face like a thousand tiny knives and her little legs battle the drifts. She can see sunlight refracting in the brilliant crystal flakes as they flurry around her.
“She’s whipping up a blizzard.”
“Knock her out.”
“Katara!”
She knows she is too late. She knows and still she runs. Doesn’t stop. Doesn’t look behind her. Not once. She doesn’t want to see. Doesn’t want to hear. She’s a coward.
“I said knock her out!”
Katara resurfaces.
Consciousness greets her with little more than sluggish confusion. All she knows is the pounding in her head and the sting of cold metal at her cheek. She groans; the sound rubbing against the walls of her throat like grit.
Behind her – a sharp intake of breath and a rattle of metal.
“Katara? Katara, are you okay?”
She knows that raspy voice…
Her tongue peels from the roof of her mouth. “Zuko? Where—”
The Southern Raiders.
It all comes crashing back with painful clarity.
Slowly, Katara sits up and takes in her surroundings: A small room, encased on all sides by dank, cold metal. The only reprieve in the monotonous steel is a single, solid metal door set into the wall on her left. Two flickering lanterns, bolted either side of the door frame, are the only source of light in the murky room.
Zuko is shackled opposite her. Thick manacles clamped around each wrist, with a chain running from each cuff to feed through adjacent holes in the wall behind him. Katara doesn’t need to look to know she is in the same position. Can tell simply by the weight at her wrists. Zuko moves towards her as much as his chains allow. The guards have removed both their face coverings, so she’s able to witness his expression as it battles between concern for her and outrage for the position they find themselves in.
“Are you okay?”
Katara ignores his question. “What happened?” she asks instead, digging her fingers into her scalp as if she could claw the pain straight from her head.
“I don’t know. You— There was ice and snow everywhere. They knocked you out, restrained me, then hauled us both down here. You’ve been out for a couple of hours.”
A couple of hours. Her brain whirrs, picking through all the information until it snags upon the vital moment in which everything had crumbled apart. The Commander’s face. His eyes.
“Are you okay?” Zuko repeats for the third time.
She resents his concern.
“No Zuko. I am not okay.” Katara grits, voice lethally low. She stares resolutely at the grey metal between her boots, and something horrible and dark begins to twists and roil inside her. “It wasn’t him. Your information was bullshit.”
A small clink of metal betrays his flinch. It feeds the rot inside her.
“We came all this way for nothing. And now I will never have a chance to find my mother's killer because you couldn’t keep track of your surroundings.”
A beat of silence.
“You’re blaming me for this?”
“Yes!” The single word explodes from Katara as she snaps her head up, teeth bared like a wild animal. Zuko recoils, hurt and confusion flashing across his features for a half-second before they twist into the familiar anger that is always waiting just below the surface with him.
“Excuse me for getting distracted by whatever the hell that freakish stunt was back there. How were you controlling that guy?!”
Katara’s arms snap out behind her as she lunges forwards and abruptly reaches the end of her chains length. The monstrous rage that exists within her rears its ugly head.
“Don’t you dare call me a freak!” She screams, “I should never have agreed to go anywhere with you.”
“I was just trying to help—”
“Well next time don’t bother. You always make everything worse – you’re a useless son of a bitch.”
Katara spits the final word with all the venom she can muster, and the fire in Zuko’s eyes burns white hot in response. He strains against his chains, pointing one shaking finger at her.
“Don’t you dare!—” he bellows, spittle flying.
The dark thing inside her relishes the exposed nerve. Craves his pain and anger as company for her own. She needs this – needs to scream and rage and claw at the world. At the Fire Nation. At him.
They snarl at each other, both straining at the ends of their chains like feral dogs, separated by four-feet of empty space.
“If you hate me so much then why not just let them slit my throat back there?” Zuko hisses, eyes flashing dangerously through the dim.
“Oh, believe me, I weighed my options,” Katara snipes back, poisonously.
“Bitch,” he snarls.
"Go fuck yourself Zuko.”
She spits between his boots, and his nostrils flare in utter rage at her show of disrespect. She turns heel, marches to her side of the cell, and sits with her back to him. Her head throbs in time with her aggravated pulse, and she presses her brow against the cold metal wall. She can sense Zuko behind her, just standing there, boring angry holes into her back with those horrible eyes of his. She ignores him, and before too long he retreats to his own wall with a furious growl and a rattle of chains.
Katara closes her eyes and leans further into the icy, unforgiving metal. She’s exhausted. Every single part of her – body, mind, and soul – feels battered and broken beyond repair. She’s tired of fighting. So tired. Her throat constricts, but she quickly forces away any tears which threaten to make an appearance. She will never – Never – let Zuko see her cry again.
She will not make that same mistake twice.
Katara wakes with a start. Her forehead, painfully numb, rests against a sheet of ice, and for a dazed second she thinks she is back home in the South.
But the reality of her situation rushes back like an avalanche, and her heart sinks beneath the torrent of snow.
She peels her head from the wall, skin sticking to the frigid metal, and groans at the strain in her neck. Never in her life has she felt so stiff and sore. They’ve slept in a lot of awkward and uncomfortable places along their travels, but none can compare to sitting upright in the prison hold of a Fire Nation warship. The bitter cold doesn’t help either. Katara rolls her shoulders and neck to loosen the muscle, before shuffling around in her seat to rest her back against the wall. Zuko is sat in the same position opposite her, awake, tense, and staring at the closed door. The dark smudge beneath his good eye indicates that he’s yet to sleep.
Reluctantly, he meets Katara’s gaze.
They sit in silence, the air between them taut as a bow string. The ship sways almost imperceptibly around them. Katara tracks the steady tick of the muscle in his jaw. Zuko is the most stubborn person she has ever had the displeasure of meeting – and so it gives her great satisfaction when he caves first.
“Sorry for calling you a bitch,” he mumbles, breaking the silence.
Katara stares stonily at him, sucking her teeth in disinterest. She doesn’t care what he calls her. And she certainly doesn’t care for anymore apologies. She’s learnt first hand that his words mean nothing. Nothing but empty promises and lies.
Zuko sighs. “Why do you hate me so much…” His voice tapers to nothing, because he already knows the answer. Even so, it doesn’t stop her from giving it.
“Where would you like me to start?” Katara replies coldly. “When you raided my home and all but destroyed my village? When you manhandled my grandmother? When you chased us across the world without a moment’s peace? How about the time you set literal pirates on us? And all that’s before we even get into how many fire balls you’ve shot at me and my friends. Should I go on?”
“I get the picture.” Zuko growls. “How many times do I need to apologise? To explain that I’ve changed?”
She bristles at his audacity to sound irritated when the evidence of his villainy is clear to anyone with two eyes and half a brain.
"The last time I thought you’d changed, you turned around and betrayed me.”
Zuko blinks.
“…Betrayed us,” she clarifies weakly.
He frowns, “I’ve made many mistakes I’m not proud of—”
“Mistakes?” Katara laughs bitterly, “A mistake is forgetting to respond to a letter. Or cooking with sugar when you meant to use salt. Or trusting someone when you should know better.” She shoots, pointedly. His gaze drops between his boots. Ashamed. Good.
“You didn’t make a mistake,” she continues through grit teeth, “You made a choice. You chose violence and fear, each and every time.”
Zuko’s mouth draws into a thin, bloodless line. He looks up, and quietly regards her with an intensity that makes her feel utterly bare. The anger that had been steadily brewing inside Katara turns to acid in her stomach. It’s as though he sees straight through her supercilious words to the hypocrite she is. Because Katara would choose violence if she could. If she weren’t such a coward. She did choose violence by agreeing to come to this ship in the first place. Had been ready to kill whoever they came across in the bridge to avenge her mother.
Liar. You didn’t do this for her. You did it for yourself. Because you are selfish.
In the distance, steadily approaching, comes the unmistakable click of armoured boots.
Immediately, they are both on their feet, facing the doorway in defensive stances, Zuko’s hands wreathed in crackling flame.
“What are you doing?!” Katara hisses, appalled.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” He replies, looking at her like she’s the stupid one. His flames rise to accentuate his point.
If only she could reach far enough to smack that insulting look off his face.
“Will you just stop and think for once in your life Zuko." She snaps. “We don’t know how many guards there are, or the quickest way to get on deck. We don’t know how to get out of these chains. And we don’t know what’s happened to Appa. We need to bide our time and gather information first.”
“We can figure it out as we go along.”
“It’s too risky.”
“We can take them.”
“I don’t have any water—”
“You’ll have the whole ocean when we get on deck.”
“Zuko listen to me—”
“I’m not willing to go down without a fight—”
“I am not willing to go down at all.” Katara interrupts harshly, her words fizzing between her clenched teeth. “I refuse to die on this ship with you.”
The flames in Zuko's palms gutter and die; snuffed out by the scathing hoarfrost of her words.
A metallic clank reverberates through the cell, as the door unlocks and swings open.
The Commander strides in, two guards trailing behind, clad in the same red and black Fire-Navy armour from the night before, sans helmet. His attention hones straight on Zuko, black eyes flashing with cruel amusement, and a taunting smile playing across his thin lips.
“Aren’t I lucky to have such an honoured guest aboard my humble vessel. It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Prince Zuko.”
Katara’s blood chills at the smarmy greeting. If he’s aware of their identities, then they’re in deeper trouble than she’d previously realised. Zuko’s gaze flits like a hummingbird between the Commander and his two guards – assessing them, keeping track of their every move.
Silently, and most likely in vain, Katara wills him not to do anything stupid.
“Although, perhaps, I should not use such a lofty title to address you. I hear you’ve become a traitor to your motherland.” The Commander croons, stalking a step closer to him. “A shame. Though hardly surprising, given the time you spent under the tutelage of your fat, insubordinate uncle.”
Zuko’s emotions, as always, get the better of him.
With an incoherent cry of rage, he lunges for the Commander. His arms yank backward as he abruptly reaches the limit of his chains, leaving him snapping his teeth at the smug man, unable to close those last few inches.
Katara grimaces. Only Tui and La know how Zuko’s managed to survive so long without so much as a lick of common sense between his ears. He’s too passionate. Forever baring his feelings to the world and damning the consequences – and now his total lack of self preservation is going to be the thing that gets them both killed.
The Commander throws back his head and laughs; a sound like grating, twisting metal. “Like a dog on a leash!” He leans close, until his nose almost touches Zuko’s. “I’m sure your father will be most pleased to hear that I have you in my custody… When I decide to tell him, of course. First, I’d like to have a little fun with the traitor pup myself.”
“You’re sick.”
The words slip out before Katara can stop them. Spirits damn him – barely half a day trapped in a room with Zuko and his bad habits are already rubbing off on her.
The Commander’s focus shifts to her, and he pauses. The energy in the room warps. His eyes rake, and her blood turns viscous in her veins as his small smile turns slimy.
"Speaking of having a little fun…” he murmurs, taking slow, swaggering steps towards her.
One thought – clear and urgent as a warning bell – peals through Katara’s mind: Keep away from this man. She retreats, matching him step for step, trying in vain to maintain distance between them.
“I didn’t get a good look at you last night. With that silly mask on your face, and you bucking against me like a wild little thing.”
Keep away from him.
But the room is small, and she shivers as her spine makes inevitable contact with the wall.
“But I have to say… you certainly are a beauty.”
“If you lay one finger on her!” Zuko roars, straining against his chains with renewed verve. The two guards snicker, and the Commander doesn’t even bother to turn.
"Come now Prince Zuko. You aren’t willing to share your whore? Pity. Not that you have much choice in the matter.”
Katara’s stomach turns leaden, and the taste of bile floods her throat and coats her tongue. The warning bells inside her mind swell to a deafening crescendo.
It happens fast. A flash of orange. Zuko. Drawing back a flaming fist with his sights set on the Commander. Then the flames are gone. And his head snaps back with such force that it sends him careening into the wall.
One of the guards stands over him, shaking out his raw knuckles.
Katara bites her tongue against the instinct to call out his name. She will not give these men any further ammunition.
“Ah-ah,” the Commander chides, finally turning away from her to look down his hooked nose at Zuko – slumped and dazed against the wall. “No bending.”
Slow and unsteady on his feet, Zuko pushes himself up straight, and Katara silently groans at the unmistakable ‘I’m-definitely-about-to-firebend’ expression on his face.
But the Commander quenches his flames before they even have a chance to ignite.
“The next time you firebend, she will be punished on your behalf. Do I make myself clear?”
Zuko’s eyes widen at the threat, and he stills so completely that even his breathing seems to halt.
“There’s a good boy. See? We’re training you already.”
The Commander titters at his own joke. Zuko’s nostrils flare, and his yellow gaze seethes.
“Now, to the matter at hand.” The man angles himself to address them both simultaneously. “My name is Commander Shai, and I preside over the entire Southern Raiders naval fleet.”
He pauses, as though waiting for some kind of acknowledgement. Katara only glares at him, filling the silence with a small, unimpressed sniff.
“I would like to know what you two were doing on my ship last night.”
The question hangs, unanswered, in the air. Commander Shai clasps his hands behind his back; an unconvincing display of patience.
“You both remain in possession of your lives, and are currently enjoying free lodging aboard this vessel. Does my hospitality not warrant an answer to one, simple question?”
Again. Silence.
Shai sighs dramatically. “No matter. We have plenty of time to get acquainted.”
Katara shivers at the cold, black eyes which slither over her body one final time, before the man turns on his heel and strides from the room. Both guards trail in his wake and the door shuts behind them, followed by the unmistakable clank of a deadbolt sliding into place.
Her lungs loosen with a long, heavy exhale. She glances over to Zuko, who has already slunk down the wall into a seated position, his fingers prodding tentatively at the fresh red mark on his cheek. She sucks the inside of her cheek in the uncomfortable silence, trying to bring herself to ask the polite question.
“…Are you alright?” She manages, eventually.
Zuko snorts derisively, not even bothering to look at her. “What do you care.”
His words are petty, but his tone isn’t. It’s coloured with stark dejection.
Katara returns to her own wall and sits. Alright. If this is how things are going to be then she can be honest too. There’s no one here but them. No one she needs to play nice in front of. In some ways it’s a relief not to have to pretend.
“I can’t trust you.” She says simply. He looks at her then, his lips tightening to a thin line.
“The others trust me."
She shakes her head, too wrung out to imbue any anger in her reply. Or really, any emotion at all. “The others weren’t the last ones to ever see their mother alive at the feet of a Fire Nation solider. The others didn’t open up to you in Ba Sing Se to have it all thrown back in their face a moment later.”
Zuko swallows. "I’m sorry,” he rasps.
Katara doesn’t reply. What is there left to say?
She draws her knees up and wraps her arms around them, burying her forehead against her legs. She breathes into her little cocoon, trying to warm herself against the penetrating cold. The ship groans all around them as it sways with the waves. It’s like an itch she can’t scratch – having so much water, so near, with no way to access it. It’s maddening.
She closes her eyes, and wonders how the hell they’re going to get out of here.