Chapter Text
It was a junky little steamer, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and pirates loved junk.
They struck when the fat waning moon was still high, sparkling off the sea. Katara brought their little ship up from the depths alongside and raised it up on a mighty platform of ice to put their decks at a level for boarding. The wave of their emergence shook the steamer like a can of bees - but that hardly mattered when Sokka swung aboard and Toph dropped off his back. All the soldiers who came running half-dressed onto the deck wound up trapped, bound with strips of steel torn from the very vessel they sought to defend.
“Surrender, ya scabby seal-dogs!” Toph cried, striking a pose and really hamming up the drama. “Or I’ll paint this tub with yer stinkin’ guts before I sink ‘er!”
Most of the time, as soon as Toph broke out the metalbending, the fight was pretty much over. Suki was quick, so she could usually knock out a couple of soldiers before they realized how incredibly out-classed they were. Sokka had drawn his sword and found himself without an opponent so many times now that he usually just posed with it while he demanded surrender. Which was a shame - because it was such a nice sword.
Katara, always watching everybody’s backs, locked the ships together with thick bonds of ice and boarded last to come down hard on any remaining resistance. Tonight, though, she was still on the deck of their vessel, reassuring their new swab that nobody was going to get seriously hurt.
“She doesn’t mean it about the guts, Aang,” she said with a shrug and a crooked smile. “Toph just misses those earthbender tournaments she was telling you about. Remember, we do this to feed our villages through the winter. The Fire Nation can afford to be plundered a little after everything they’ve taken from us.”
This last she said with the faintest measure more steel. But the little monk didn’t notice. He only smiled trustingly up at her, his lemur clinging to his head with a grip on his bandanna.
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” he growled, a kid fully sold on the game.
“And what’s the rule?”
“No airbending - yarr!”
Katara grinned. “Great, now let’s go loot the boots off these guys.”
She took a few running steps and surfed the short distance up to the other ship’s deck, landing in a ready crouch with a tight stream of water looped through the air around her. There was no sound as Aang alighted behind her, but even if there had been, she would not have noticed.
Most of the time, these fights ended quickly. Firebenders weren’t at their best at night to start with. Soldiers rushed out, found themselves overwhelmed, and surrendered. The captain made an appearance and perhaps fought briefly, perhaps tried to rally his crew, but ultimately admitted defeat and gave up the goods.
But tonight was apparently a special night, because when Katara landed aboard the steamer, there was one firebender shouting and persistently unleashing all manner of fury in a three-on-one match against her friends.
He didn’t wear a uniform or even a shirt, just a pair of loose sleep pants as if he’d fallen from his bed into battle. And he seemed entirely ready for that battle, based on the way he spun and leapt and kicked unrelentingly in the air, dodging a chunk of metal from Toph even as he kept Suki and Sokka back with athletic moves and bright crests of flame.
Katara noticed at once that he didn’t look like a regular Fire Nation officer. His bared torso was all taut muscle - not that that was unusual, as many officers maintained their conditioning, it was more just... interesting. Drew the eye. No, it was his hair that marked him as peculiar. It was grown long past his shoulders and it fell loose and very straight around his scarred, snarling face. Most officers only kept their hair long enough for their military topknot. It might have occurred to Katara to wonder just what kind of captain this was, but presently, she was more interested in putting a stop to him.
Her water whip cut the air with only a chilling hiss for warning.
.
.
Zuko woke when he flopped hard off the edge of his bed onto the floor. A floor, he quickly realized through the fading disorientation of sleep, that was still swaying from some massive disturbance. He scrambled to his feet and craned his head to get a look out the wide, high window.
On the deck below, something was going on in the dark - but the strange ice that jutted up around his ship shone brilliant and deadly in the moonlight.
“Uncle!” he shouted as he slammed through his door into the hallway. “Uncle Iroh! We’re under attack!”
The old man was already emerging from his quarters, rubbing his bleary eyes. “What, did we hit something?”
“They have a waterbender,” Zuko snarled on his way to the stairs. “It must be pirates.”
“Pirates!” Iroh exclaimed, following at a sedate trot. “How terribly exciting!”
Zuko had leapt far enough down the stairs that he could pretend not to hear that last bit. Uncle had grown increasingly... whiny in recent years. He complained largely of the boredom of their life at sea, constantly trying to get Zuko to do something - anything else.
Hey, maybe we take a little break from searching for the Avatar and visit the colonies! I know a most pleasant spa where the masseuses could work the tension out of a stone. I think it might really change your perspective on things, my nephew. A man needs to release his tension every now and then, you know?
It was insufferable and uncomfortable and Zuko always dismissed the notion and stormed off to scan the horizon... but the old man had a point about the tedium. Zuko had circled the globe in his hunt for the Avatar - and then did it again, and again, until what he was doing was less hunting for the Avatar and more hunting for any kind of purpose or meaning in his life.
Because the Avatar was never going to return. That much had become obvious over the course of seven years spent searching ruins and sniffing out half-baked stories. What had not become obvious was what Zuko could possibly do instead, what other path to honor might remain open to him.
He was confident, however, that such a path would not be found in some thinly-veiled whorehouse in the colonies.
In truth, Zuko was no longer entirely sure he wanted to capture the Avatar even if one did appear. The chance to return home to his scheming, ruthless family no longer inspired in him the driving desperation he had felt when his banishment began. His sister was set to inherit the crown, presumably in half a century when Ozai succumbed to the inevitable fate of the terminally evil-and-wealthy and died peacefully in his sleep.
Meanwhile, Zuko had grown into a man in exile. A bitter and angry yet philosophical man deeply schooled in the arts of firebending, Pai Sho, and longing. Because what else was there to do?
Except, thankfully, finally, thrash a pack of pirates?
The only warning Zuko had about what awaited him on the deck was Lieutenant Jee, hanging by a strap of steel that had certainly not been affixed to the exterior door last night. “Prince Zuko,” he gasped against the pressure of the band, “it’s a metalbender.”
“Impossible,” Zuko managed - but the evidence was there before his eyes.
Beyond the open door, a girlish voice was cackling.
Zuko hurriedly kicked the restraint off his Lieutenant so the man fell free to the deck, then sent him off to rally the rest of the crew. “And get my uncle down here. Now!”
Then, bold and furious, Prince Zuko leapt out the door and reignited the lost fight.
The cackler turned out to be the metalbender, a muscular but petite girl - a teenager - whose smirk and hard postures bespoke unshakable confidence. At the instant of his appearance - almost as if she had sensed him coming and was waiting to do it - she moved through a sequence and ripped a sheet of the deck out from under Zuko’s bare feet. Or she would have, if he hadn’t hurled himself forward into a flip and come down in a roaring kick that crashed down a huge gout of flames. The metalbender blocked with another chunk of the deck.
“Stop tearing holes in my ship!” Zuko shouted, punching more blasts at her to try and flush her out of her shelter. While she was under cover, he blasted the restraints off a couple of his firebenders, then quickly went back on the offensive to cover their rise and return to combat.
“Get a real ship!” the little punk shouted from behind her shield. She shot a chunk of steel at him and he was forced to dodge even though she couldn’t possibly have seen him to aim. “This clunker’s more rust and barnacles than metal anyways!”
“Rrah!”
“Finally!” A lean man with a sword darted in to beset one of the freed firebenders. Zuko didn’t see the fight, but he saw the moment his soldier toppled over the gunwale with a cry. The swordsman grinned and shouted back toward the rigging of the pirate vessel Zuko only then realized was locked in alongside - that’s what all the ice was for. “Katara, you’re missing it! Captain’s out-! Woah!”
He went staggering back from the low arc of flame Zuko kicked in his direction. Zuko turned his whole attention back to bearing down with a sustained blaze on his first opponent. The metalbender was strong, but her technique was a little slow and, if Zuko hit her shield with enough heat, he suspected she might-
“Ow!” She tumbled out of the way, holding one hand close to her chest. “Why you bilge-sucking biscuit-burner! I’m gonna mash you good for that one!”
It happened as if in slow motion. Zuko had drawn back for a knock-out blow and was initiating the punch, but from the corner of his eye, he saw a golden flash and another figure moving rapidly toward him. He redirected his punch but was too late to do more than block the fan that had been about to strike him in the side of the head. The pale, painted face of a Kyoshi Warrior was suddenly there, looming like a specter out of the night.
She was much faster than the metalbender, and came at him with a lightning-quick sequence of jabs and slashes with her fans. For a moment, Zuko was hard-pressed to evade her attacks. She drove him a few steps until he stumbled over one of the torn places in the deck and went sprawling on his back. The warrior darted in-
-but Zuko wheeled his legs around in a dazzling circle of fire that sent her leaping back, blocking with those fans. He rode the kick to his feet and took the offensive, laying down a hard, quick series of blasts that had her backing up toward the pirate vessel, where the metalbender was one-handedly locking the last of his firebenders back down.
Zuko might have been annoyed, had he not been so busy almost getting skewered. The lean guy with the sword came up from his flank. If he had led with a stab, he might have ended the fight right there, but he tried to brain his enemy with the flat of his blade instead.
Zuko didn’t give it much thought as he ducked, darted in close to grab the guy’s sword-hand, and, with a grip on the front of his vaguely Water Tribey pirate jacket, pitched him bodily at the warrior. She was charging him with her fans out to either side and barely managed to dodge out of the way as the lean guy came hurtling past.
“Waugh-!”
Zuko kicked fire to keep her diverted and simultaneously ducked out of the way of another chunk of his ship that came hurtling toward him. He was about to press the advantage when a hissing sound cut the air, he felt a hard jolt of impact, and pain bloomed from his left pectoral like he’d been stung by a buzzard-wasp. He fell a couple steps back and took in this new opponent.
“The waterbender,” he growled, momentarily stunned.
She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Zuko had seen some waterbenders at the North Pole - distant figures who moved in sync and were all about the same vaguely mannish shape bundled up in their furry parkas.
The waterbender before him now was very obviously a woman, and also very obviously beautiful.
Her hair was tied back on top in a feminine style and decorated with a few blue beads, but the rest of it hung wild and wind-teased, a thicket Zuko sensed he could easily become lost in. Also dangerously enticing was the curvaceous grace of her body as she drew her water back into a ready position. Her features were rounded, sweet, pretty, with large eyes dark as the sea by night and soft-looking lips that tugged upward in a wicked smirk.
If it weren’t for that smirk, Zuko might have forgotten she was also a pirate and attacking his ship.
It was no more than a few heartbeats and a flick of his eyes, scanning an opponent before fixing on her smirking face. Yet even that much lit a stubborn ember in his gut and slowed his mind.
“All we want are your supplies and valuables,” she said, exposing teeth bright and deadly as her ice. “Surrender and we’ll have mercy and let you and your crew keep your miserable lives. Fight-” Those lips stayed ever so slightly parted, still faintly smirking as she paused on the word - and that had Zuko’s heart pounding all the harder. “-and I promise you, I’ll win.”
“We’ll see who comes out on top, thief,” he spat, and then bore down on her with a fresh burst of energy.
For a desperate few seconds, he expected the other pirates to move in on him as well, but they stood back near the gunwale where the swordsman had tumbled, ready and attentive, but clearly just there for the show now that the waterbender had arrived.
And it was a show. She handily quenched and diverted his every strike, swinging her defenses effortlessly into tripping streams and blasts that knocked him back with their force even when he managed to block. Zuko had never fought a waterbender before, and he was clearly at a disadvantage in this fight in no small part because this particular waterbender obviously knew just how to break a firebender’s root. He also didn’t have enough power to fully match her - not at night - but Zuko fought on, fought harder.
He was head-and-shoulders bigger than her, so he knew he had physical strength she didn’t. That was the way to win. He closed the distance between them until they were fighting from just arm’s length away. Any second, she would falter and give him an opening and he would use sheer muscle and speed to subdue her.
Then, the waterbender would be his hostage. Anticipation and smug satisfaction prickled down his spine at the thought. He would grip her with her back pressed to his chest, he decided, with one arm perhaps just beneath her breasts so that he might accidentally feel their weight if she chose to struggle-
Although that was perhaps not... entirely honorable...
...but she was a pirate and was here to rob and possibly kill him!
...not that her attempted crimes would justify being... enjoyed by a man against her will...
The fantasy shriveled back to something more utilitarian.
Her waist then. He would loop his arm around that trim waist and hold her tight to his chest and he would probably like it, but not too much.
And to still her, he would cradle a flame just near enough to her cheek to warm her smooth skin; he would force the other pirates to free his men and get off his ship. Only once they had sailed clear would he release her. She was a waterbender, after all, and wouldn’t have any trouble getting back to her own ship.
So it would be alright to hold this fierce, fine woman against his chest for... just a little longer than entirely necessary.
It was perhaps because Zuko was running all this through the back of his mind that he missed his chance. He made a grab for the lapel of her short jacket, but it slipped teasingly through his fingers. The very tip of his middle finger brushed her tunic, felt the soft warmth underneath. He caught the briefest glimpse of her smirking at him again.
Then she dragged all the water she had been gathering on the deck as she fought him and raised him up in a blast of ice, pinning him hard against the wall of the observation tower.
“Oouh!” he grunted at the impact. For an instant, all he saw was stars. Then they cleared and all he saw was her, grinning coolly up at him, perching her dainty hands on her hips.
“Looks like I’m on top, firebender. Order a surrender. Unless,” she pouted mockingly, “you’re not actually in command of this ship.”
“Rrh!” He bared his teeth at her and began breathing as deep as he could against the restraining ice, working up his heat to try and blast free. “A prince of the Fire Nation never surrenders! Especially not to jumped-up peasants and filthy brigands!”
Her eyes sparkled in sudden delight. The metalbender snickered a little nastily.
“A prince? Oh, we are gonna ransom you so hard...”
The swordsman rubbed his hands together. “Ooh hoo hoo! Jackpot! I knew all that long pretty hair had to be some kind of status symbol.”
“What long pretty hair? He’s got long pretty hair?”
“Yup. Like some kind of inky waterfall of manliness.” He raised one suspicious - jealous? - eyebrow. “He must condition it a lot. It’s almost too glossy.”
“He’s also got a big scar,” the warrior added more quietly, “on his face.”
The metalbender paused and, as if unable to hold it back, uttered a begrudging little, “That’s pretty rad.”
Zuko hardly heard any of this commentary about his appearance because he was absorbing the implication, noticing the way she never turned her head to look at things so much as to listen. “You’re blind? What kind of sideshow is this?”
“The butt-kicking kind,” she grinned toothily at him, but Zuko kept going.
“A blind earthbender, a girl with fans, a swordsman who doesn’t know how to use the sharp side of the sword, and-”
“Hey! That was a non-lethal maneuver and you’re welcome.”
But Zuko’s glare fell on the fourth pirate standing among them... though the term ‘pirate’ seemed especially laughable for him. Certainly, he was dressed up in the same assortment of worn and patched textiles and mixed armor parts, but he didn’t fit in at all. For one thing, he was a child, and he was dramatically smaller than the rest of them. For another, he was smiling cheerfully back at Zuko with absolutely no menace - as if this was all just a grand game.
“-what even are you?” Zuko demanded with a curled lip.
“I be the rarest bender of all,” the kid declared at once-
Zuko didn’t really notice how all the pirates tensed. He was too focused on the kid, who raised a fist in the air before him and struck an overly piratey pose.
“-an arr-bender!”
Zuko stared back with a distasteful twist of his lips. “A clown. Perfect.”
“Don’t talk to our swab,” the waterbender commanded.
Zuko’s focus returned to her in a snap. She was watching him with - he realized suddenly - a fiercely hungry yet disgusted look. As if he’d become both deplorable and delectable in equal measure. As if she could already taste the sordid profit of his ransom.
Or as if she perhaps had some other sordid use for him in mind...
Zuko’s heart was suddenly in his throat and his good ear grew hot. That... couldn’t be right. It had to be the promise of money. That was it.
“Your royal highness is at our mercy,” she went on, smug and confident. “And unless you want to watch your ship sink with your crew still trapped aboard, you’ll be ordering that surrender now.”
Zuko glowered, breathed deeper, and felt the ice starting to yield to his heat. “I have a better idea. You make your little friend fix the damage she’s done to my vessel and then take your troupe of fools back to whatever backwater spat you out, and I won’t be forced to apprehend you and deliver you to port authorities to face justice for your crimes.”
The pirates shared a stupid little chuckle at that.
“You actually think you could apprehend me? Maybe you missed it, but my victory was pretty decisive just now.”
She folded her arms over her chest and, even through the layers of her jacket and tunic, he could see how her breasts pressed delectably together. Sumptuous. It was all Zuko could do to keep meeting her eye.
“Then again,” she went on snidely, “I guess it was over kind of quickly, wasn’t it? Maybe you really did miss it. So much for that famous firebender stamina, huh?”
Zuko snarled at her, having lost his focus on the ice entirely. “Laugh while you can, harpy. You beat me under the moon. When the sun rises, you’ll find me a harder opponent by far.”
The metalbender snickered, but Zuko didn’t really hear her over the waterbender.
“If you’re really that desperate for a rematch, I’ll take the time to put you on your ass again-” She gave him that mocking pout again and he realized how it plumped her little lips even more. The look of it from above was positively indecent. “-but the sun won’t rise for a few hours! And by then you’ll be shackled in my brig, helpless as a baby moose-lion with a hurt paw...”
And she reached up with one hand to stroke a callused finger down the underside of his jaw. Zuko froze, his good ear swiftly going hot enough to sting. The touch terminated in a firm pinch of his chin as she held him just where she wanted him, face down-turned to stare straight into those large eyes that flashed in the moonlight.
“But aren’t you a determined little thing,” she taunted in a low, amused voice.
Internally, Zuko sputtered and crackled, so excited and confused and offended he wasn’t sure how best to lash out. Her touch inflamed him. Her condescension incensed him and teased him with the prospect of escape, of resuming their fight and teaching her just how determined he really was-
-and just how little he really wasn’t.
Outwardly, he scowled and jerked his face up out of her grasp so he could look down his nose at her properly. “Unhand me! How dare you lay your dirty hands on a royal scion, pirate scum!”
“I’ll lay my hands wherever I please,” she smirked - though said hand returned to her hip at present, “especially on things that belong to me. Which, until I get my price from the Fire Lord, includes you.”
Her claim was a scorching tether, reeling him in-
-but Zuko knew it was pretty unlikely that his father would raise a finger or drop a copper to see him out of this situation.
Not that he needed help!
(The aching, vacuous wound throbbed in his chest.)
He would escape on his own!
The ice around him finally melted down enough to fully free his lungs and Zuko blasted the rest of it away with a roar. He had about half a second to savor the waterbender’s startled eyes, her pretty parted lips as he began to drop toward her.
Then steel curled around him like tentacles and slung him right back against the wall.
“Uff!”
“She said maybe later, you cinder-spitting strumpet!” The metalbender was grinning, all too delighted.
Zuko snarled and struggled almost mindlessly in his thwarted rage, but unlike the ice, the steel didn’t give at all. He breathed a plume of fire, driving the waterbender back regardless. She watched him not with fear but with bright, excited eyes. An annoying, insulting challenge that demanded Zuko answer fiercely, fight her, impress upon her the very-seriousness of the threat he posed-
“Incoming, seven,” the metalbender suddenly said. “Looks like they’re the last.”
“Are you sure, Toph?” the warrior asked, frowning thoughtfully.
The swordsman seemed to immediately pick up on what troubled her. “Yeah. That’s an awfully small crew, even for a little ship like this-”
Zuko raged harder against his restraints but the pirates were no longer paying attention to him. They could not have guessed the insult of it, the way his crew had been cut back over the years.
“Hey, I just know what the metal says. And the metal says seven and no more.”
They spread out on the deck, the waterbender shepherding the kid-swab back behind her before pulling up another stream. Zuko watched her with seething resentment - most especially her comforting smile for the kid and the way that jacket splayed open over her tunic-covered breasts when she sank into her ready stance.
She was so... feminine. The other girls were still clearly girls - women, whatever - but the waterbender was soft in a way they were not. Not just her body-
(but also, yes, especially that body)
=but her mannerisms, her grace. She could have easily been any of the thousand village girls Zuko had seen in passing - looking after the children, glancing at the young men and imagining which of them she might like to take for a husband...
...and yet she was also this fierce bender, this force that sought to dominate him, him, a prince of the Fire Nation...
...determined little thing...
The fucking nerve.
She caught his stare and tipped her head to the side, raising one eyebrow.
Well, if she wanted to match arrogance for arrogance, daring for daring, she was about to find herself woefully out of her depth. Zuko gave her a smirk of his own, then drew a great breath and bellowed.
“Look out, Uncle! They know you’re coming!”
He knew from long experience that his voice was loud enough to carry pretty far through this ship. He had thought that perhaps, with advance warning, the formerly great Dragon of the West would devise a strategy that might counter his loss of the element of surprise. He did not anticipate Iroh’s muffled response, though.
“We surrender!”
“What?” Zuko choked. “Uncle! No, we don’t!”
But the old man was already leading out the remaining crew, all their hands raised and unarmed. Admittedly, they weren’t the sort of elite fighting force that might have turned the tide in any case. The navigators, the medic, the cook, and the engineer were all among them.
“Lieutenant Jee,” Zuko barked. “What are you doing?”
Bringing up the rear, the lieutenant turned - and looked up - to meet his eye with an expression of almost apologetic bewilderment. “Sorry, sir. They’ve got us beat.”
“A wise leader can acknowledge when a direct contest is unlikely to end in victory,” Iroh said, casting Zuko a sly glance back over his shoulder.
Zuko heard the unspoken echo of past lessons. Maybe they couldn’t overcome these opponents head-on, but there were other ways to attain victory. He bit back his furious protests and waited.
Iroh, hardly pausing, glanced around the deck at the pinned-down soldiers and the pirates who stood at the ready. “We are clearly outmatched and have been taken completely by surprise. What is it you want, so that we might resolve this peacefully?”
“The usual stuff,” the swordsman shrugged. “Food, medical supplies, undisclosed booty.”
“And we’re taking your prince,” the metalbender grinned, “for ransom. And so Katara can pound him in the rematch he’s so thirsty for.”
Katara. Zuko watched her through narrowed eyes as the syllables of her name beat through his head.
Only, she wasn’t smirking at him now. She was peering at his uncle, and her voice was firm but almost reassuring.
“You and your crew may go free,” she said, “but we’re going to sink your ship. We don’t allow Fire Nation battleships to sail these waters freely.”
“What?” Zuko shouted - and was summarily ignored.
“Technically,” Iroh said with a raised finger, “this is not a battleship, but an old-model voyager. Perhaps you might consider making an exception?”
It was closer to begging than Zuko would have allowed himself to get, even though the ship was kind of his life. It was his transportation, his training ground, his home-
(His prison.)
-His father was not going to give him another ship. He was certainly not going to pay a hefty ransom and then give Zuko a new ship. And that would leave Zuko to, what, wander the Earth Kingdom on foot through largely still contested territory?
But despite the tang of desperation that thought inspired, Zuko had no trouble at all tossing those notions aside. The waterbender, Katara, was shaking her head. She almost did look sorry. Almost.
“Your nation has spread war and hate and grief across the entire world. You don’t get to ask for exceptions from us.”
Zuko scoffed loudly, disgusted. “You want to be a pirate and still take the moral high ground? This is ludicrous!”
When she looked at him now, she did not look sorry at all. She wasn’t smirking, either. She was mad.
“Hey! We’re good pirates, alright? We’ve never once targeted anyone helpless or stolen from anyone who couldn’t afford it. We strictly rob Fire Nation vessels because you’re the aggressors! You’re waging this war and you feel like you have the right to invade traditional Water Tribe territory. As far as the scale of relative morality goes, I’m way up here-” She indicated a place above her head and then, with her other hand, pointed at the deck. “-and princes out on pleasure cruises to survey their conquests are waaay down there.”
“How dare you! You don’t even know what you’re talking about!”
Iroh cut through the argument with his reasonable calm. “Differences in opinion notwithstanding, your terms are not entirely unreasonable-”
Zuko sputtered in disbelief.
“-however, I would urge you to reconsider your choice of hostage. My nephew is... perhaps not the most lucrative candidate for ransom.”
This was objectively true, but hearing his uncle say the words stabbed Zuko through the heart nonetheless. Yet Iroh did not so much as pause.
“I am.”
.
.
“Uncle, no!”
Katara could tell from the widening of those asymmetrical yellow eyes and the tenor of the Fire Prince’s voice that he genuinely loved this old man. It might have been sweet, that affection for his elder relation, had it not been coming from what was obviously one of the worst people on the planet.
“I am Iroh, a venerated general,” the old man went on without a glance at the prince, “and the Fire Lord’s only brother. He is sure to pay handsomely for my safe return. You should ransom me and let my nephew take his ship and leave.”
“River boat,” Sokka corrected. “Because we’re sinking the ship.”
That aged face bowed slightly in acceptance. Katara could not read the careful mask of his lined features.
“Toph,” Suki asked, never taking her eyes from the enemies before her. “What do you think?”
Toph was frowning, gripping the gunwale behind her with her unburned hand. Katara could see how red that burned palm was where it hovered near her belly. Not blistering yet, and not scorched, but it must hurt terribly. Healing had to wait, though.
“He’s...” Toph’s unseeing eyes narrowed like what she was getting was confusing, but then her expression relaxed and she smirked very faintly. “A little truth, a little lies. But who cares? Why don’t we just ransom them both?”
“Good thinking,” Sokka said with a spreading smile. “Double ransom! I love it almost twice as much!”
The old man, Iroh’s eyes were flicking between them, taking them in with shrewd cunning. They paused on Aang and finally came to rest on Katara. “Is one of you the captain,” he asked mildly, “or is this some kind of collective or something?”
“There’s no captain,” Katara said quickly before Sokka could launch into his twelve-point lecture on why he should be in charge. “We don’t need a captain to come to a consensus.” She looked back at Sokka and Suki. “Double ransom works for me. Suki?”
Suki went on watching the old man closely. “I don’t like the idea of two firebenders in the brig. Twice as much trouble if they get loose.”
“Well,” Aang weighed in carefully, still finding his feet in the group dynamic, “the Fire Nation - I mean, you know, historically - highly values honor and an honor-bound oath is generally considered unbreakable...”
“Nice!” Sokka turned a wide, knowing grin on the two firebenders in question. “Swear on your honor that you won’t try to escape.”
“No,” the prince sneered. “How stupid do you think we are?”
“I swear on my honor that I will not attempt to escape,” the old man said.
“Uncle!”
Toph grinned. “Oh, he means that. What are you gonna do, Prince Pretty-hair? Let this old guy get taken hostage on his own?”
“Don’t call me that! It’s Prince Zuko, you uncultured little boor!”
“Actually, Toph’s a boar,” Sokka corrected, delighting in his own clever wordplay and peering around at the rest of them with a ‘get it?’ look. “As in flying? As in Bei Fong?”
Aang laughed. “Good one, Sokka!”
“She’s almost too cultured to be a pirate,” Sokka went on smugly, “but we gave her special permission because she’s so cool.”
“Yeah,” Toph said and spat on the deck. “I’m a fancy lady just like you.”
“Rraugh!”
Katara watched the prince roar out dazzling flames that briefly drove back the night and lit up his furious face and the strong column of his throat and his pale, muscular chest between the bands of steel that held him. He really was cut like a statue, his body a weapon well-honed for combat.
She wasn’t, like, attracted to him or anything; he was evil and he represented everything she hated and sought to fight in the world... but the sight of him - the hot spark of his element in combination with the precise, powerful movement of his body - was... kind of exciting.
And watching him get teased into a fury was amusing, too.
Abruptly, Katara realized the old man was watching her. Whatever he saw on her unguarded face, it must have been telling. His eyes were a little wide in surprise that swiftly morphed into a sort of contained delight. Before Katara could become fully embarrassed, Iroh spun around to peer up at his nephew with wide, guileless eyes, holding out his hands beseechingly.
“Prince Zuko, you must see reason! Surely you will not leave me to suffer alone at the hands of these dastardly scoundrels!”
The prince broke from his rage to gape at his uncle in stunned incredulity. Then he huffed and rolled his eyes and ground out words through his clenched teeth. “No..! Uncle, I wouldn’t leave you, but-”
“Then you must swear on your honor to not attempt an escape,” the old man cried, clutching his hands to his chest. “After all, we will only be held captive by these ruthless criminals for the time it takes the ransom demand to be answered.”
There was something in the prince’s eyes. Confusion, reluctance, hurt. “The Fire Lord-”
“I know, my nephew,” he said more gently. “His response is sure to come quickly. I have no doubt we will be free again in a matter of days.”
Katara glanced at Toph and found her squinting, still reading the conversation. Whatever subtext was passing between the two firebenders, she wasn’t picking up on any outright lies. But still, it was kind of a weird exchange.
“Perhaps,” the old man went on, “if we cooperate, these ruffians will not subject us to any cruel misuse.” Slowly, he turned a speculative eye back on them - and paused on Katara in particular. “But who can say with pirates?”
Katara screwed up her face and shrugged combatively back at him as if to say What did I do?
“Tch. They’re hardly pirates at all,” the prince muttered testily.
He followed his uncle’s stare though and Katara felt again the prickling warm wash of his scrutiny.
Katara was very familiar with lustful stares. She had blushed under the eyes of a great many boys and men in her long journey with Sokka and then Suki and, later, Toph. She had explored and pruned attraction into friendship with so many steady Earth Kingdom boys. She had watched desire fade from the eyes of Northern tribesmen when she so much as hinted at her ambitions. She had endured predatory assessments that came at the front end of a fight and wilted away by the end. (The heat snuffed right out of most firebenders when they realized she was the stronger bender.)
Not this firebender, though. Even when she beat him, he wasn’t beaten. Not really. He simply refused to be done. So annoying.
So exciting.
The way this prince, Zuko, looked at her... it was subtly different from any of those other men or boys who came before. His eyes didn’t linger obviously on her body. He didn’t undress her with his eyes. He didn’t lick his lips or hitch a brow or smirk knowingly or secretly stroke his stalk of grass with his tongue. There was almost no sign at all that there was desire there. But Katara could feel it when his yellow eyes fixed on her and narrowed. It was just there, like seething coals tucked under swaddles of ash in the cook pit, ready and hungry and waiting to be stoked... should an inferno become desired.
“Fine.” Prince Zuko said it with a hard, sardonic quirk of his lips, as if this was all some pointless exercise, the end result of which he already knew. “I swear on my honor I won’t try to escape.”
Katara, for reasons she hadn’t entirely hammered out yet, smirked.