Archive of Our Own

It happens like this:
High above the Earth Kingdom, a hand slips.
An airship never resurfaces.
A warrior burns with an apology on his lips.
In a rocky field, the world's hope disappears in the rubble.
And in the heart of the Fire Nation, exhausted but victorious, a boy and a girl wait for deliverance that will never come.

___

"Left. Then one more left, then the second door," he rasps, voice crackling, while doing his best not to collapse and drag Katara down with him. Her left hand rests cool and firm against his abdomen, splayed wide pinky to thumb, not quite covering the purpling wound.

It’s fascinating in its destruction. The lightning left tendrils that branch out like a web across his torso, over his ribs, up his sternum. It's certainly much prettier than his other familial scar. Two down-- all he needs now is a strike from Uncle and he'll have hit the trifecta.

The thought amuses him but he doesn't think Katara will laugh. Maybe smell of burnt flesh was making him delirious.

"Careful," Katara says, lowering him onto soft blankets. She looks around the lavish, crimson room. "Where are we, anyway?"

"My room. Or what used to be my room," he says, reaching for a pillow to prop under his head. He'd never had many personal effects but the room seems sterile even despite that, as if someone had come to wash away all trace of him. Katara swats his hand away and grabs the pillow for him, easing him forward to settle it behind his head.

She scrambles up on the opposite end of the bed, sitting criss-cross alongside him, hands glowing over his raw torso. She keeps close watch on the inflamed, raw skin and the rise and fall of his chest but avoids his face.

“Now what?” she asks.

The million gold piece question.

The hallways of the palace are eerily quiet and tension is a pall in the air. The Fire Sages had skittered away when Katara pulled him to his feet. He’d seen not a single hint of a servant. In all his years this place had never been so quiet. 

“Maybe we should leave.”

“What?”

It’s fair for her to be incredulous, they’d fought so hard to get here. But an unease he associates with his father has been creeping in since he saw Azula’s unhinged look. 

“Until we know for sure...”

“Zuko,” she says, exasperated. “You can’t move. I’m doing my best but you have an open wound on your chest. You won the Agni Kai, the sages saw. This is your birthright.”

She insists it with a conviction he’s jealous of. 

"Then maybe you should take Appa..."

"Stop it!" she says, angry now as she finally meets his gaze, eyes blazing. "I'm not leaving you behind," she fires the words at him and they hurt when they hit their mark— a deep ache so bad it almost feels like relief— for reasons his pain addled brain can't process right now. They feel like a premonition and maybe he's spent too much time with Aang, jumping to omens and premonitions. A beat passes and her voice drops softer.

"You saved my life. Let me help you."

It's an admonishment and a plea all at once. He wants to argue they debt is already been repaid, she’d saved his life right back. But honestly he’s so damn tired.

He sighs, relaxing further into the pillows. He'd never admit it to the group but he'd missed the creature comforts of being royalty. He nods his assent and drifts to sleep under gentle hands.

He dreams of his coronation.

___

She wakes to a nightmare. It’s well past midday and the high sun shines through the crack in the velvet curtains, bathing the red room in shades of orange.

Her neck hurts from falling asleep upright against the headboard and rough hands are pulling her from the soft bed. When she tries to call from her water skin, not a single muscle responds.

She yells and swears a streak that would shock her father as she sees a flash of dingy pink hovering around Zuko, striking his pressure points and improbably, apologizing as she does so.

"Leave him alone!" Katara hollers.

No one answers her, not the circus girl or the masked guards, save for the one to her right who cuffs her so hard on the back of the head her vision swims.

"Zuzu, honestly, a girl goes to prison over her misplaced affection for you and you repay her by jumping in bed with a peasant?"

Katara can't even process the absurdity of the statement because her blood's run cold at the voice issuing it.

"Of course she already knew you were a traitor so she won't be so shocked, I suppose."

Zuko doesn't struggle much against the hands that drag him by his biceps to the floor, either too incapacitated or weak to fight them off. His robe falls open and she can see where he'd begun to bleed through his bandages. Azula notices too, eyes flicking almost imperceptibly to the dressings.

Zuko's knees buckle soon as his feet hit the ground and he kneels involuntarily before his sister, keeled over if it weren't for the guards nearly yanking his arms from their sockets. He looks frustrated and anxious but not exactly surprised.

Azula is dressed in fine robes and her uneven hair is pulled into something resembling a topknot but the wild expression in her eyes is the same as she'd worn the day before.

"You lost, Azula," Zuko says mildly, as if they were having a conversation about the weather. As if they hadn't been stripped of their bending by a flexible freak who has the gall to act teary eyed while cowering at Azula's side. As if the girl in question hadn't tried to kill them 24 hours prior (and countless times before that). "Dishonorably, I might add."

"Yes well, that may be true but Father still likes me more than you. You know that, of course. I think my seat will be just fine when he gets home."

She might as well have stabbed Katara in the heart. "You're lying!" she shouts, unable to help the choked noise that escapes her, earning her another blow that makes her head spin. Zuko notices the strike this time and wrestles ineffectually against his captors, sagging back with a grimace after a brief moment’s exertion. Azula watches him carefully and then spins on her heel to face her, a wide grin spreading across her face.

"Oh I'm not lying this time, peasant. The Avatar is well and truly dead. For real, Zuko, Father won't have to bear your deception again."

Zuko gapes momentarily, looking ready to argue the point— she'd been the one to fail last time, thanks to Katara and the spirits—-but he sets his mouth in a thin line instead.

"So what? You're here to finish us off?"

He asks the question casually and Katara is this close to an absolute breakdown. Agreeing to fight Azula was one thing but being involved in this demented family dynamic was quite another. Such nonchalance about murdering their siblings. 

Not to mention there's the very real fear that that is exactly Azula's plan. Or Ozai's, when he returns. It's nearly to crazy to comprehend the idea that at freshly fifteen someone her own age wants her dead, much less a grown adult. But then again, apparently Ozai had no qualms about killing a thirteen year old who wouldn't have even returned the favor given a chance.

She's so deep into her spiral, trying to comprehend that magnitude of evil, that she scarcely notices the guards lifting her to a standing position and almost misses the princess's curt answer to her brother’s blasè question.

"No."

She can't tell from the tone or Zuko's face whether that's a definitive no or a 'not yet' no. There's no comfort in either.

___

The prison is dark and damp and cool and not somewhere you keep a waterbender. It's nothing like the dry horror Hama had described.

Of course water isn't really her issue right now, chained to the floor like an animal and chi points struck like clockwork to keep her subdued. She wonders faintly whether too many hits could permanently damage her bending. 

She tries not to focus on it too much, with moderate success. It hovers around her 4th concern, after (order varying with her mood) the very real worry about her possible imminent execution; fighting between disbelief and grief over her family and friends; and of course, an abundance of stress over Zuko —both his current well being and, also, his possible imminent execution.  At the very least he seems to be locked away in the same prison as her. The pained groans that floated down the hallway the first few days were a familiar tenor, a silver lining and horror show neatly wrapped together.

After a week, a mean looking woman cuts her hair. Cuts is a generous term-- the woman gathers it in a bunch and roughly slashes a knife through it. It barely reaches her chin and the beads from her hair loopies fall and clink on the floor. The sound is thunderous and she watches in outrage as the old broad crushes them beneath her heels.

She lunges for her, not caring about the knife or the fact that her bending is gone. She should have cared more about the chains-- they pull taut and she falls face first.

"So uncivilized," the brutal hairdresser spits, closing the cell as she hurries out.

She can't help the pained howl that claws its way out, breaking the dogged self imposed silence she'd adopted since they thrown her into the dark. Somewhere, down the hall, a cell door rattles and a voice that sounds like comfort yells indistinguishably. She rolls onto her side, blood gushing from her nose. She thinks it may be broken. The blood is staining the floor and her clothes and if she could just bend. 

Without her healing, her only option is old fashioned.

The crack her nose makes as she shoves it back into place makes her want to vomit or pass out or maybe both and she lets out another pained shout.

More rattling, somewhere to her right, faint but there. The indistinct voice begins to coalesce into something resembling sentences, one clearer than others:

"Leave her alone!"

___

Azula puts him in Uncle's cell because of course she does. He almost taunts her- Uncle had escaped after all but Zuko still doesn't know how and he hasn't quite cracked why she's chosen this particular psychological torture.

He wishes, not for the first time since it happened, that the lightning had done it's job. 

Uncle would quietly chastise him for the thought. Katara wouldn’t be so subtle and the thought of her anger— the quick, familiar kind she’d directed at everyone in the group at least once— is enough to push the wish to the recesses of his mind. 

His entire body aches and it only takes a few days for fever to set in. He hasn't looked at his bandages, afraid of what's underneath. His sister hasn't sent anyone either, except for Ty Lee to poke and prod at him, as if he was capable of moving much anyway.

He ignores the acrobat's presence for over a week, finally snapping halfway through the second as she hovers over him with puppy dog eyes and jabs him repeatedly to perpetuate his miserable emptiness. Fire is the sole element benders create from within, as much a part of them as the blood in their veins and air in their lungs, and his blocked chi makes him feel hollow and cold inside.

"How's my aura now?" he snarls, sweating through his infection.

"I'm so sorry Zuko!" she whimpers, hitting softly at a spot on his neck.

"No you're not, you're Azula's little pet. Always have been," he spits. He's being cruel, delivering for blows to distract from his own pain. It’s not working particularly well.

Ty Lee bursts into tears and he frowns deeper, turning his back toward her. The effort causes pain to shoot through his abdomen from hip to collarbone. He gasps shakily.

"I'm sorry Zuko!" she sobs, "Azula says if I don't then Mai will, Mai—" she chokes, breaking down again. Zuko glances over his shoulder, absorbing the girl for the first time. Her clothes are pink, but dirty and worn and her hair is greasy. Surely not someone living in the lap of luxury.

A feeling like remorse pokes at his conscious but his pain and anger is still to hot for it to break through. He turns resolutely toward the wall. Ty Lee sobs harder.

“It’s your fault! She’s in prison because of you!” The accusation stings when it lands and he can hear the pain in Ty Lee’s voice. She’s not just offended on Mai’s behalf, she’s offended on her own and truthfully, Zuko had always wondered...

“You thought you had the moral high ground when you left but it just made everything worse! Did you ever think of that?! Did you think of anyone besides yourself?”

Ty Lee’s voice cracks at the end of her pitchy wail, undercutting her anger. He had thought about it of course, he’d done what he thought was best for Mai. He left because he could only save the people he cared about, and his country, if he first saved the world.

That had been the idea anyway.

“And we’re all in the same place now!”

He wants to point out that no, they aren’t. Anger pushes out the pity again. Because she is collaborating with his sister, whatever her motivation, and he is powerless behind bars, rendered useless by her narrow fingers.

“You really think Azula is going to uphold her end of the deal?” He asks. Because he’d already felt guilt over Mai. He’d began mourning her the moment they left Boiling Rock. He’s not so naive to believe for second that Azula would such a betrayal go unpunished, no matter what she says. There would be consequences. 

(Ironic, given Azula’s own unfamiliarity with them.)

The cell creaks behind him as he parses his reasoning and when he turns around, Ty Lee is gone without an answer.

___

She wakes one morning and the world around her feels a little brighter. She can feel the moisture in the air; her blood sings for the leftover tin of water from the previous day; the steady droplets falling a hands width from the right edge of her cell, in the same direction Zuko must be, sound musical.

She ignores the loud grumbling of her stomach, reaching out with a hand and lets the cool encasement of water wash over her. It's the most peace she's felt since their last days on Ember Island, before Aang disappeared. The sun in its golden hour low on the horizon, warming her and Suki's backs as they floated in the ocean, watching Aang and Toph face off in a sandcastle competition while Sokka and Zuko argued lightly over the best way cook komodo chicken— over open flame (Zuko) or buried in hot coals (Sokka).

The moment is cut short by flying stone hands pinning her own to the floor.

“You didn’t seriously think I’d surround you with water without conditions now did you?”

Azula melts from the shadows. She’s resplendent in the Fire Lord’s robes; the five pronged crown gleams in her hair. The mania is gone from her eyes— or at least, replaced with the usual sharp cunning Katara associates with her. A Dai Li agent haunts Azula’s shadow, keeping a careful eye on Katara the way one does a feral animal. Maybe the hairdresser had been spending rumors.

Katara keeps her chin up, despite the mockery of prostration the earth cuffs have forced her into. Azula doesn’t pay much mind to her regardless, happy to continue her impromptu soliloquy.

“And poor Ty Lee deserves a break wouldn’t you agree? Between you and my brother that’s a lot of time spent here and yes, she deserves the penance for her transgressions but I wouldn’t wish my brother on my worst enemy,” she says with a bored wave of her hand. Azula looks down at Katara as if this were a friendly chat, the same bored detachment Zuko had spoken her with in his bedroom. Was the ability to be so blase in stressful situations a royalty thing? “C’mon tell me, how many diatribes on his honor did your little group endure?”

Katara stares resolutely beyond the other girl. 

Azula tsks, as if her silence were an answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. “Anyway, as I was saying Ty Lee simply doesn’t have the time so yes, no more chi blocking. We won’t even chain to the walls, though obviously the door has to stay locked. You can do whatever you please within these walls. That is of course, except bending,” the girl says with satisfied smirk, pleased at the punchline to her own joke.

“Or what?” Katara snaps, quickly getting sick of beating around the bush. “You’ll kill me?”

Azula laughs, high pitched and contrived. “Is that what you’re hoping? To go meet the rest of your band of heroes?”

The words ‘heroes’ lands heavy, lathered in sarcasm.

It’s bait, she reminds herself. Her conscience  sounds like Zuko’s voice and that would be hysterical in its own right if she weren’t trying to hold it together. She breathes deeply and listens to him, clamping her mouth painfully shut.

"If you try to so much as move a puddle, much less escape, it won't be you who pays the consequences," Azula says, leaning until her face is nearly touching the bars of the cell. Katara's lip twitches and she leans in toward Azula as far as her wrists will allow.

"If you try to bend," Azula repeats, noting the fury in her narrowed eyes, "I will kill him. And if he so much as lights a match, I will kill you. So for his sake, I hope you're half as honorable as he claims to be. His only ally betraying him— that'd might break Zuzu irreparably. Even more than anything I could do."

Katara the voice warns— Zuko warns. Hypocrite, she thinks. Perhaps anyone else would have been better as the voice of her conscience. She bites.

"You don't know anything about honor! You're a coward!"

"Is that so?" Azula asks, a wide smile full of teeth spreading across her face.

"You know I won Azula," Katara says, spitting the girl's given name. The Dai Li agent starts at the lack of honorific, stopped by a delicate raised hand. "Me and my 'peasant bending' beat you. Face me, a rematch- an Agni Kai and I'll beat you again," Katara promises, voice steeled and low.

Azula laughs, the high pitched mockery that grates her nerves and backs away, waving off her earthbender with another flick of her wrist. 

"You're hilarious, peasant," she says, voice lingering in the dark hallway. Katara scrambles to the cell door, rattling the bars.

"Coward!" she yells into the emptiness. "You're a coward! I challenge you to a rematch!"

"Katara! Stop!" her conscience yells back, voice echoing through the corridor. She ignores it.

"Fight me, Azula!"

___

He pushes his chest out, allowing warmth to flood through him. He can hear Azula tapping her foot impatiently.

"You won't believe my denials anyway so I don't know what else you want me to say, Azula."

His sister huffs, "You could be a little more grateful for my gift."

"You're right, thank you sister dearest for threatening my friend's life rather than my own."

He spares a glance over his shoulder, watching Azula's lips purse in displeasure. She rolls her eyes and snaps at her guard to follow her away.

He smiles to himself, relaxing his hands and opening his palms to receive the last of the streams of sunlight that manage to break through the narrow grate in the space above his cell.

He's still imprisoned, still defeated but feels lighter despite everything. Then again, it's easy to make any loss feel like a win when you decide to not care about the game anymore.

___

She'd vacillated between anger and fear from the moment she'd been tossed in her cell, buffeted between waves of emotion. Occasionally grief would pull her below the surface but never for long— a waterbender cannot drown.

But after Azula's threat the pressing fear abates and the anger turns down to a simmer.

Which would be good except it leaves her feeling adrift. Listless. Surrounded by water she cannot drink, supported by the sea but constantly punished by the sun, unknown dangers lurking in the dark below.

Boredom had turned her into quite the poet. Sokka would love that.

She tries to talk to Zuko once, shouting into the darkness and hearing his faint reply, a tinny echo in the emptiness. She imagines the sound moving down the corridor like the small birds that perched on the roofs in Ba Sing Se, flitting nimbly from perch to perch so quickly they looked like they were bouncing. It was like watching Aang walk, feet barely on the ground. 

___

"I'm feeling nostalgic today, peasant, aren't you?"

No, she thinks. Not particularly.

Katara guesses it's been six months. She's tried to keep count but time on her emotional raft is as slippery as the mush they feed her. It must be the rainy season though, because the temperature has dropped significantly and her increasingly raggedy Water Tribe clothes were wildly insufficient at keeping the chill away. She thinks it's ironic, to be adorned in her people's clothes but freezing. But she refused the red prison garb on principle and doesn't plan on backing down now. The guards couldn't be bothered to fight her on it.

Azula has only visited twice, the first time to threaten them both, the second to brag to Zuko about imprisoning an infant, loudly and pointedly. But today Katara is the one with the misfortune to win an audience with the Fire Lord.

“Here for that rematch?” Katara asks, rising languidly to turn and meet the Azula's eyes. If she’s not supposed to bend her element, no such restrictions were placed on embodying it.

Azula snorts, not even dignifying her with a full laugh and Katara scowls, crossing her arms across her body.

"Then what do you want?" she snaps, "I was enjoying the monotony better than your company."

"Aren't you clever?" Azula drawls. "You could be nicer to me you know, I brought you a gift."

Katara grunts as she goes lurching to the wall, rough earth cuffs pining her there as the door to the cell clanks open and a guard deposits a sack of a human at her feet.

"Zuko." Katara breathes. His hair is matted to his face and he looks, improbably, paler with shiny bruises of varying color across his knuckles and a fresh one high on his cheekbone. A shiny burn in the unmistakble shape of a hand wraps around his bicep. The prison garb hangs loosely on his frame and he looks as rough as she feels. 

Azula catches her gaze and smirks as the cell door slams shut and Katara stumbles when her wrists are freed. 

"Now don't forget our deal," she cautions as Katara gently rolls Zuko onto his back, assessing his injuries.

"What did you do to him?" she demands, anger spiking while feeling for a pulse. Azula rolls her eyes.

"Honestly, you're being dramatic. It's Ty Lee's handiwork," she says. Outrage boils but Azula cuts her off before she can voice it. "For transport purposes only, it's much more efficient don't be prissy."

Katara very much doubts that but bites her tongue, settling for steely glare at the other girl.

Azula holds her gaze unflinching before clapping her hands together loudly.

"Well, you two kids have fun! I'll see you," she pauses, laughing lightly at her own joke even before she makes it, "At some point."

Katara waits until she disappears from sight in a sweep of black fabric and sits back against the cool stone of her cell, dragging Zuko's limp body with far too much ease. He's far thinner than any boy of seventeen should be. Resting his head against her leg, she covers him with the thin membrane of fabric that passes for a blanket. She gently brushes his hair from his face and sets her head back against the wall.

She tries to rest, screwing her eyes shut as if she can force sleep though sheer determination. But she can't shake the montage of terror behind her eyelids. Zuko writhing, body crackling with electricity, just out of reach.  Azula’s crazed flame-filled cries. The ham-fisted guard yanking her from bed. Zuko, on his knees, bandages bloody.

She shudders. Her eyes ache but the memories are worse than the exhaustion.

So she sits vigil over him. She'd let her guard down once before and he'd been taken from her. This time she won’t let him out of her reach until he wakes.

___

When he comes back into consciousness he notices the warmth against his face and the dull ache in his chest. 

He stiffens when he realizes the warmth is a person, slowly cracking his eyes open.

Katara comes into focus and she looks—terrible.

She's drawn, curly hair short and knotted around her face. Her lips are cracked and deep circles line her eyes, though based on the vigilance with which she's watching the door of the cell he wonders if that could at least be partially remedied.

She startles slightly when she looks down and realizes he's awake. She lifts his head gently, helping him to a sitting position and it's deja vu— him flat on his back in the courtyard, opening his eyes to see blue ones staring back at him with deep concern.

She settles him against the wall with the same gentleness she'd helped him into bed with months before and immediately scoots further away. He can't help the disappointment; not for lack of warmth— he can create his own heat— but for the first compassionate touch in months. Maybe it's just another positive of his defection turned negative in prison— after a formal, unaffectionate upbringing, once you get used to the effusive group hugs and the easy familiarity of their interactions, it's hard to be devoid of it.

___

"How long have we been here?" she asks one morning, interrupting his meditation. He drops his hands, knowing whatever serenity he had is about to be washed away. He peers over his shoulder.

She took over the sleeping mat when he woke first, which was most mornings. They shared it as a pillow during the night, whatever good that did them. Their guard had laughed at him when he tried to convince him to bring them the one from his old cell.
But even though the floor was hard, the mat filthy and the situation dire sometimes in his dreams he could almost imagine sleeping next to her all those months ago, curled in Appa's soft fur. All that was missing was Toph aggressively burrowing into his back, tucking her freezing feet under his legs in the middle of the night and insisting "shh, heater" when he tried to object.

"Earth to Zuko!"

Katara was snapping in his general direction and he rotated sheepishly to face her. She didn't ask him what he was thinking of, clearly lost in thought somewhere happier than the cell they shared. It was an unspoken agreement between them, a way to keep a modicum their sanity and their privacy in the situation where both were running low.

"I asked, how long have we been here?" Katara repeats, enunciating each word for him. He chucks a small pebble in her direction, leftover from the earth cuffs the Dai Li like to use, that she dodges neatly, popping back up like one of those punching dummies Lieutenant Ji set up in the unused brig of their ship.

"Here together? Or since the comet?"

"The comet," she says carefully, almost surprised by the two options.

"Eight months, ten days and some odd hours."

Now surprise is definitely visible on her face. "Time starts to get pretty meaningless after years on a boat. It became a habit," he explains, moving so he can point to the corner of the eastern wall where he'd resumed his count after he came to in her lap. He's marked a new day each time he meditates.

Disappointment creases her brow, clearly prompted by something beyond his secretarial skills. He keeps his expression neutral, but open. Available, but not asking.

A long silence passes before she breaks it again.

"My birthday was last month," she offers bitterly. "Sixteen is a big deal in the South. It's like," she waves her hands searching for a word, "you're officially an adult I guess. I mean most of us already would be helping the grown-ups with tasks and chores and hunts even but it's this big official ceremony, with the whole tribe."

Zuko nods. In the Fire Nation all islands used to have different traditions but now it's nearly universally seventeen, the age of conscription. Except for the Royal Family of course— any Crown Prince or Princess is supposed to have a coming of age ceremony when they turn 10, to help solidify their authority should they become Fire Lord early. When Lu Ten died, he should've had his own. But his father kept pushing it back, claiming he was too young.

Now he realizes his father just never wanted him as an heir. He wonders if Azula ever had hers.

"How would you have celebrated?" he asks. No need to mull over every reason his father hates him.

"We grow our hair long," she says, self consciously touching her short strands and Zuko thinks of how it used to fly behind her while she fought. Had she hoped she'd be back in the South Pole well before her birthday? Now it seems like a naive hope, but who was he to judge? He’d personally sought to destroy the world for an even more far fetched hope. 

Katara's voice is soft as she continues talking, imagining a day that will never come. "Gran Gran would brush out my hair 100 times and then all the women would help plait it, strand by strand, one at a time, with the Elders' blessing. It's meant to be a show of acceptance into the tribe." Katara pauses, grinning broadly. "But more importantly there'd be a big party after."

All in all it sounds far better than the ceremony he never got, sitting still and quiet for hours with Fire Sages blessing and praying over him as the embodiment of Agni himself.
"You're still a member of the tribe, even without the fanfare," he says, trying to fill the silence. Katara shoots him an amused look.

"Of course I am," she says. He may have well as called the sky blue. "I always will be."

___

She knows Azula has ulterior motives, unceremoniously throwing her and Zuko back together. But if she ignores that inconvenient fact she can almost say she's happy.

Almost.

She's still caged, the guards are still casually cruel, her world is still in ashes at her feet, and even without all that she's never been someone who forgives and forgets easily.

But now she has Zuko— a physical reality instead of the dim voice in the distance from the first portion of her stay. 

Can't leave you behind if you don't leave my sight.

He's a good companion, comfortable in long stretches of silence and even a decent conversationalist when it’s a topic he cares for (an important caveat, though he'll bravely bumble through areas outside his expertise. It's endearing.)

She's tried to imagine being locked up with anyone else, and Suki is the only other one she thinks she could deal with without losing her mind.

(Toph? Six hours, tops. Sokka, in a confined space? A day. Aang? Spirits save him, but maybe a month at most.)

They settle into a routine the same way they did on Ember Island. It'd almost be domestic, except for the whole prison thing. 

“If you guys are done playing house we’re waiting to start!”

“Honestly I don’t know how you guys survived before we got here,” Zuko said exasperated, gesturing between Suki and himself as he set down food.

“We had Katara!” Sokka said automatically, trailing off as he caught sight of his girlfriend's expression. 

“She’s your sister not your maid,” Suki chided, offering Katara a smile and a warm slice of bread. 

“No,” Toph agreed. “Maids don’t have a temper like sugar queen.”

Katara sacrificed a piece of bread to chuck at the younger girl’s head.

“Katara’s like glue!” Aang said, smiling brightly, looking at her reverentially the way she both loved and feared. “She holds us all together!”

There’s not much left for Katara to hold together; her and Zuko are less glue than gravity, held together by pressure. But it works, like the great stone mansions in the Earth Kingdom built without clay or concrete yet solid and unyielding. 

He wakes early and she sleeps in. She stays up late and he falls asleep early. They take their two meals together and he doesn't argue when she claims fullness and forces her extras on him. 

(And when he does the same some times, she pretends not to notice, eating her additional portions without comment).

What they don’t do is fight. They can’t fight, they realize the first time frustration rises and they sulk in their corners until the stupid argument subsides. It’s too big a risk for frost to crawl along the metal bars or the torches to flare angrily. Fire and water are volatile elements in the best of circumstances and her and Zuko are temperamental people. Two sides of the same emotional coin, according to Toph.

Instead they relive happier moments in the comfort of darkness and ignore the recent past. She teaches him how to braid, Water Tribe style, and soon enough her short hair is plaited as elaborately as his. He teaches her silly games his crew used to play on his ship to pass the time ("I was too grumpy to join in") and after extensive coaxing, the lyrics to one Fire Nation sailing song. 

Zuko, it turns out, has a more than decent singing voice. She can only imagine what Sokka would do with this information.

It reignites an ember of hope she thought had long gone out. It's not hope for a specific future, the one they’d nursed as Appa flew them to the capital, but the universal kind, the kind simply meant to keep you alive.

The dangerous, foolish kind.

___

It's raining and when it rains, their cell leaks. And when that happens, Zuko gets even grumpier than normal.

"Maybe this is karma, for everything I've done wrong," he mutters, angrily watching the steady drip from his corner. She can only assume he's talk about an existential 'this' and not the rain.

"Seems silly that karma would punish you for the right decision," Katara says, doodling with the water pooling by the door. The symbols of the four nations evolves into more familiar patterns— the Kyoshi Warriors makeup, her brother's warpaint, the designs Gran Gran sews onto her parka.

Zuko doesn't say anything and Katara looks up, washing away her drawings with her hand— flat against the stone, not gently flicking above it.

"You're seriously whining about the rain?!"

Zuko crosses his arms, scowling, and the phrase 'angry ponytail prince' comes to mind.

“Maybe I just don’t want to get sick!” he claims defensively. Katara rolls her eyes, laying down in her puddle to prove her point. The water slowly seeping into her clothes is almost as good as bending (not really, but she's learned sometimes it's kinder to lie to herself)

“It’s warm out, Zuko. The water is warm, see?" she says, patting the ground next to her. "A cold is not even near the top of things you should worry about.”

Zuko just grumbles and pulls their blanket more tightly around him.

___

Katara is wrong about the cold. Though admittedly, he is a terrible patient.

“You got fried from the inside out and weren’t this difficult!”

“Injuries are different than illness”

“I agree but that doesn’t mean you have to be a baby about it”

“My birthday, my rules,” Zuko says, repressing a violent shiver. 

"Some birthday," she huffs. She rolls over, clinging to him like a koala-monkey, face buried in his back and arms tight around his chest. He relaxes fractionally. "Tui and La you're even more of a sauna than normal."

“I didn’t ask for your help.”

“Tough. I wasn’t going to let you be completely miserable all night. Just be happy I’m not making you suck on frogs,” she snaps back, making a disgusted noise at the memory. It's crazy for him to think if he hadn't been in a pissing match with Zhao, he never would've freed Aang and Aang never would've found those damn frogs. 

Of course in that scenario, Zhao would've claimed credit for capturing the Avatar and he'd probably still be exiled at sea with Uncle, angry and alone as ever. Even sick as a dog, imprisoned by his own family, he can't imagine that alternative would be better than reality.

“Katara?”

“Mmm?”

“Thank you.”

“It's what friends do, Zuko.

___

She hums, satisfied by the explanation as she finishes the hardtack.

"What would you start with?"

“What?”

“If you had the misfortune to fight me again.”

"In an actual fight? Not a spar? Fire whips probably, for versatility. Get in a solid leg sweep."

And then I would get on my hands and knees and beg for your mercy.

"That's easily deflected by an ice wall. And water whips are nimbler."

"In your opinion."

"In my knowledge,” she corrects haughtily. “Plus I could easily ice the floor, you lose your balance, I take the opportunity to toss some daggers in your direction."

"If there's anything I'm good at it's defense."

"And stealing my techniques."

"Technically, Uncle borrowed waterbending techniques. And then he taught them to me,” he teases. “Plus your whole counterattack assumes there's plenty of water. Firebending is better that way."

"There's always water, if you know where to look,” she says, meeting his gaze steadily. Not a threat but a reminder. 

___

Impossibly, she’s drowning. The water is fighting her, dragging her down, not obeying her commands, tossing her in the current farther and farther from the body floating lifeless near the surface...

“Katara! Katara! Wake up,” a voice hisses through the water.

She gasps, thrashing as she wakes with a scream caught in her throat. Bony hands grasp her shoulders and when she blinks, Zuko’s eyes are the only light that break through the darkness.

“You were yelling again, the guards were getting annoyed, I didn’t want a repeat of last time,” he whispers.

The last time, when the sharp faced crow of a woman who work the evening shift planted her baton across her jaw so hard her entire face looked as though it molting, a sickly yellow green for weeks. Zuko could barely look at her, somehow guilty, as if her nightmares were his fault.

(on the contrary, he's the only good thing left in her life)

“No, you were right. Thank you,” she says hoarsely.

“Was it Aang again? Do you want to talk about it?” he asks softly, head propped on his bent arm, his other hand still gentle on her shoulder.

“No, not really.”

Zuko nods in understanding, rolling over to give her space.

She lays flat on her back, arms crossed protectively across her chest. At the beginning she avoided nightmares by avoiding sleep until her body was so exhausted it couldn’t muster the energy to dream. Now, she was lulled by Zuko’s steady breathing each night, a weakness and her fortitude all at once.

“Zuko?” She breathes into the darkness, expecting silence.

“Yeah?” is the exhausted response.

“Can I...?”

Her voice feels small and shaky. If Zuko is surprised by her change of heart, he keeps it to himself, simply shifting to open his arms.

"You're okay," he promises sleepily. It's a lie, but she lets herself believe it anyway, wrapping her arms tightly around his own and letting her heart slow until unconsciousness claims victory.

___

They get three meals instead of two, filled with real komodo chicken and rice instead of porridge. There's even the smallest glasses of plum wine.

"The Phoenix King wishes you a happy victory day," the guard says with a toothy smile. The calendar carved into the cell's corner stares at him mockingly.

One year to the day of his defeat. And his father's triumph.

The trays accumulate throughout the day, each brought boastful guard. Zuko and Katara sit against the far wall, eyeing them angrily. Eating the rich food seems like admitting defeat all over again to a battle they already lost.

But on the other hand, they both could really use the meals.

"Sokka would say food is food," he says after the last meals are deposited. 

"It's meat though, Aang never ate meat. We could be just honoring him right?" she asks, doubt coloring the question. Her stomach rumbles, as if rejecting her point. His own joins in chorus.

In the end, hunger beats out pride. They eat until they're uncomfortable in silence, sitting back to back as if avoiding one another could hide their collective shame.

"They wouldn't want us to starve," Katara ventures later. He eyes the empty trays stacked by the metal bars. "They'd want us to live."

___

___

It’s oppressively humid.

She hasn't been able to sleep since Zuko woke, even after moving onto the abject comfort of the mat. Breathing alone is enough to cause rivulets of sweat to pour down her temple.

Zuko is meditating and Katara is secretly pleased they're restricted from bending. The last thing they need in the cell right now is an open flame. 

It's still early but the sun has risen high enough to cascade through the crack in the ceiling, illuminating Zuko by the cell door. She can make out the knobs of his spine on his bare back. They'd both discarded their sweat soaked tunics the day before, the heat making her desperate enough to sleep solely in her wrappings, even if that meant enduring the vulgar jeering of the night guards and the Zuko's indignation on her behalf.

Sighing she drags herself from the mat.

“Can I meditate with you?”

Zuko's raises his eyebrows but pats the space next to him that she sinks into. He offers her a light smile, the first from either of them since the anniversary of the comet. Her meditation motivation is mostly to try and ignore the sticky heat but Zuko's smile is an added bonus.

She mimics his position, tucking her legs under one another. She closes her eyes and breathes deep and slow they way she's watched Zuko do and places her wrists on her knees.

He snorts, lightly but teasing and she opens one eye to glare.

He adjusts her hands, narrow fingers light on her pulse point as he coaxes them to flatten and she shivers. She's not sure if she imagines how the tips of his ears redden but he persists in his adjustments. Her neck raised, palms flat and shoulders back. It feels like supplication, which might be the point but the vulnerability throws her off all the same. She tries for his sake.

"Now," Zuko says, settling back in next to her. Their knees just touch but she doesn't want to move away, despite the heat. "Now you breathe."

___

___

"I asked Tui and La to watch over your mother. I meant to ask you but our friends outside didn't seem too keen on conversation," she says. "You don't think she'd mind? Being guided by Water Tribe spirits?"

Zuko smiles warmly over his make-shift pai sho tiles, crafted from scraps of her threadbare tunic. She'd torn the white tunic trim into new wrappings, fashioned blue cloth beads for her steadily growing hair, and braided the remaining fabric into matching bracelets, one for each of them. She'd finally surrendered to wearing the red prison top she'd stored under her mat for months but still clung to the blue bottoms.

"I think she'd be honored," Zuko says, routing her on the board with a final tile, his gentle smile growing to a self-satisfied smirk. She groans. This was the fourth match in a row she'd lost and Zuko was more insufferable with each successive win.

As if you wouldn't gloat too.

"Another game?"

"It's not like there's much else to do," she quips. 

She wouldn't have denied him even if there was.

___

She shakes out her wrist, rubbing it where it had collided with Zuko's elbow. It will leave a bruise, no doubt, joining the collection on her legs. 

Zuko leans on his knees, panting slightly. Their stamina had improved with their improvised bending practice, though not by much. 

Katara doesn't give him room to catch his breath, launching herself at him and aiming for his legs. The gentle dancing of earlier sparring iterations had devolved into pure hand to hand combat. It's foolish when she can't heal but usually it only left them bruised and worn. Plus it doubled as an excellent distraction from their normal drudgery, with the added bonus of Katara saving face during pai sho.

Zuko catches her attack effortlessly. He turns her back to his chest, twisting her leading arm back with one hand and resting his other forearm against her neck, a gentle chokehold.

 He's had proper training, on top of several inches on her. But Katara had grown up with Sokka, and isn't afraid to play dirty which tends to even the playing field. 

(Strategic advantage, he used to call it, sitting on her chest with his arms crossed until she gave up or mom pulled them apart, exasperated)

"Just yield, Katara," Zuko says bemused, breath warm against her ear. She suppresses a shiver, acutely aware of his proximity. She considers taking advantage of it as her first play to escape his hold but then she'll have to deal with a properly embarrassed prince for the rest of the evening and that seems taxing.

Instead she smacks her head back against his chin, hard enough to hurt but soft enough to avoid serious injury.

Zuko stumbles back, surprised. "Ow, shit, what was that for?" he asks, rubbing his jaw.

"I didn't want to yield," she says innocently, shrugging. He rolls his eyes. 

"Try it again," he challenges.

She acquiesces, launching herself at him again, this time landing a better grip around his shoulders. When he moves to break her hold, she sticks a foot behind his heel.

He loses his balance forward instead of back and she braces herself for the impact. Her hip hits the hard ground first. Zuko's hand cushions her head from splitting open on the stone floor but the rest of him lands clumsily on top of her with a grunt.

"Ow."

"Didn't you tell me Azula doesn't need help hurting us?" he asks sarcastically, carefully disentangling himself from her. He flushes spectacularly at a misplaced hand. Which, honestly, as if they don't spend every moment day and night in uncomfortable proximity.

"I miscalculated," she coughs, air rushing back into her lungs as he rolls off of her.

"This is worth two weeks of Pai Sho."

"What? No!"

"Two weeks, Katara!"

___

You can't set water aflame, that's what she'd told him. But the platform is distressingly familiar and makes his scar prickle. The smell of burning flesh overwhelms him. He's never forgot the smell, or the screams, or the looming presence of a depraved man and he's as helpless to stop it now as he was then.

Leave her alone! he tries to yell but his voice is hoarse and the screams have stopped which can only mean one thing.

"Shhh," she whispers, "It's okay."

The voice is close and comforting, smoothing out the rough edges of his fear and pulling him slowly from the terror. When he opens his eyes he knows it'll be blue ones staring back at him, waiting patiently until he quits hyperventilating, touch familiar as she opens her arms for him. They were past the point of bravado in the face of nightmares-- she would scream and he would shake and they both would surrender to the need for reassurance when reality punched through.

He’s mostly awake now but Katara still murmurs softly to him.

“Your name is Zuko, you’re eighteen years old and you’re Fire Nation royalty. You saved my life. We’re in prison but you’re safe okay? I got you. I need you to trust me, okay?”

His mantra, made to mirror the one he improvised for her the night she clawed his face while he shook her awake. Your name is Katara, you’re sixteen years old, you’re the pride of the Southern Water Tribe. You saved my life. You’re a powerful waterbender but you can’t use it right now okay? I need you to trust me.”

He squeezes Katara’s wrist gently, blinking away the last of the nightmare, letting calm wash over him in the darkness. He can see the contours of a smile in the dark shadows.

His comfort is fleeting. Torchlight casts shadows along the hallway and the drumming of boots closes in. Katara doesn’t move from his side.

"How sweet."

His sister's voice is saccharine. and Katara tightens her arms around him as Azula's pointy toed boots appear in his vision. He blinks furiously but his reality is morphing back into a nightmare he cannot wake from. Dread is heavy on his soul as the cell creaks open and Katara feels it too, shaking imperceptibly under his hands. This is different than the usual callousness of the guards or Azula’s vague threats.

They're flanked by expressionless Fire Nation soldiers, outfitted in the shiny pointed armor of the Fire Lord's person retinue and a resolute Ty Lee; It feels like the plays their mother used to take him to on Ember Island, the dragon slowly opening its maw wide to snap up the bad guys.

(except they're the good guys-- they failed but they're good)

Azula smirks and snaps her fingers and everyone moves at once. 

Ty Lee strikes the space between his neck and shoulder and the vice grip he had on Katara a moment before slips away.

They don’t block her chi, but the guards manhandle her, yanking until her hold on him breaks, and drag her kicking and hollering away.

“Leave her alone!” he yells hoarsely, reaching with the only arm he still has feeling in. A guard stomps his hand, striking his temple with a baton. Stars swim in his vision.

“Zuko! Don’t touch him!”

“Leave her alone!” 

“You thrice damned bitch! Face me yourself, you coward!” 

Azula smirks silently throughout the ordeal, closing the cell with a click.

As abruptly as he was deposited before Katara months before, she’s gone. 

___

“You,” she snarls at the hairdresser, who looks nearly as unhappy to be here as Katara herself. 

She glares up at the woman, refusing to rise from where she sits hunched on the ground. The older woman raps her on the shoulder with the handle of her long knife-- a command, clearly-- but Katara just tucks her bound wrists to her chest, curling in on herself more.

___

Alone in a place familiar only from a tale of caution from a deviant woman. Alone in a harshly lit cell with air so dry it's suffocating. The only water she can feel is the blood thrumming though her veins, a rhythmic reminder and taunt-- you're alive. There's no sound except her own shaky breath; she hadn't heard so much as a squeak as they dragged her further into the prison complex. The walls around her are solid and thick and the only opening is a slot in the base of the door.

She screams in frustration until her throat is raw and the tears run dry. She wait, masochistically, for a guard to come swear at her, baton swinging. But her cries fall on deaf ears and pull the vice in her chest tighter and tighter until she's gasping.

She's alone and so insignificant that it's not even worth punishing her.

She was never a dangerous prisoner in Azula's eyes-- she was leverage.

___

It doesn’t take much time to start to mend their wounds. Of course, it starts with them tearing them back open first.

___

When her tears ran dry she had the wherewithal to continue Zuko's calendar in the corner of her arid box.

___

Ty Lee has the infuriating apologetic look he hates on her face when her and Azula come to visit. She sulks into Azula's shadow, directly outside Mai's cell. 

"Zuzu," his sister greets him.

"Azula."

"I've considered that I've been too harsh with you," she says with the same treacly voice she uses to mean the exact opposite. He snorts. Azula raises a thin brow. "You don't believe me?"

He would pay a pretty penny to see Mai's face right now. He bets its some reflection of his own. Azula snaps her fingers and a set of Fire Nation guards drag a body down the hallway between them. 

Katara hands limply in their grasp, limbs slack but eyes alert, inhaling sharply when she sees him. He pushes down the strangled noise threatening to escape him and fists his hands, looking past his sister to glare furiously at Ty Lee, who at least has the decency to look away. He looks her over, assessing for injuries in the low lightly beyond her blocked chi. Nothing sticks out beside her gauntness. She'd been thin before-- they both were, their sustenance is not particularly sustaining-- but now she looks downright skeletal.

"We remember the house rules, don't we?" Azula asks.

"Screw you, Azula," Katara grits out, glaring at her.  His relief at seeing her is blunted by the darkness in her eyes, like the depths of the ocean. The way she watches Azula is beyond anger.

Her handlers yank her higher at the insult, smoke curling in rivulets from their hands. Katara bites her lip.

"Azula, stop."

Azula whips around to face Mai's cell. Ty Lee shrinks back, expecting violence but Azula only shoots verbal barbs. "Mai, your opinion is neither wanted or needed. All that's needed, is our rebellious pair's understanding. So I'll ask again," Azula says, turning back to face. "Do we remember the rules?"

"Yes! Agni, Azula, quit it," he snaps. The faint smell of burning flesh reaches his nose.

"Yes." Katara grumbles.

The guards unlock the cell across from him and his heart sinks. He'd believed, hoped maybe, that she'd be placed with him again. Where he could tend her burns and stroke her hair and make sure she's okay. 

Instead they throw her carelessly into the smaller cell and without use of her arms her head smacks against the floor. Katara groans, blood trailing from her nose.

Azula bends down to look at her.

"Anything else? You were all tough words earlier."

Katara spits at her, blood and saliva landing at her feet. "Fight me," she says flatly. Azula smiles, satisfied.

"Keep dreaming, peasant."

___

"You have to stop challenging Azula," he tells her wearily, when she reassures him that she's fine for the hundredth time. She'd set her nose when she regained feeling in her arms and the raw scorched skin on her arms isn't deep. She still has ten fingers and ten toes and her chi is flowing properly again-- it could have been worse.

"Why not?" she asks, weaving her fingers through the bars of her cell. Bars feel like a luxury compared to slick steel walls. She can just make out Zuko to the right in the low light, sitting at the edge of his own cell. Mai is invisible, somewhere in the shadowed part of her own cell but Katara knows she's listening.

"I just don't want you to give her an excuse," he says, letting implication do the heavy lifting. "Besides I don't even know if you can fight an Agni Kai." 

"I don't see why not?" she says, unable to keep the edge from her voice. 

"You're a waterbender, dummy."

"You know eavesdropping is rude, Mai."

"It's not like there's anything else to do in this place."

"Katara, Mai quit it!" Zuko says, exasperated. Katara bites her tongue for his sake. They're adults, or nearly anyway, he shouldn't need to referee between his ex-girlfriend and his... between his ex and her, his prison buddy.

"It's not about bending. An Agni Kai is a serious thing," he says soberly. "It's matter of honor." 

She laughs and Mai makes a bothered noise in the back of her throat. Katara ignores her. "We both know she cheated, it's not like she has any honor left." 

"I'm serious, Katara!" Zuko snaps. She raises her hands, rankled. Before she'd been taken away they rarely snapped at each other. They talked things out, or at worst, gave one another the silent treatment until they'd calmed down or a meal came. 

"Okay, then explain it to me."

Zuko looks at her and then sideways, to Mai's cell. She had spoken up for Katara briefly but she's not convinced Mai isn't a plant or a spy by Azula to keep eyes on them and Zuko's hesitance only adds to her suspicions. But Mai surprises again her by speaking first.

"I don't know what happened between you two and Azula but it was only an Agni Kai in the broadest sense possible."

Zuko sighs, "She's right, Katara. A proper Agni Kai is more of a spectacle of respectability."

"How else do you maim a child in front of the entire country?" Mai asks darkly. Zuko sighs but doesn't correct her. She remembers the feel of his scar under her hand and shudders. 

"What possible outcome is there Katara? What happens if she says yes?"

His voice is strained and he watches her with the same wariness and concern that he has since she was thrown in this cell. He rarely retreats into the shadows of his own space, always near the bars under the glow of torchlight where she can see him.

He looks tired, defeated even. Katara shoulders sink. 

"I-- I don't know."

___

This is what Katara expects.

She expects to be left alone, save for jeering guards and sporadic punishment for non-crimes. She expects to settle back into her and Zuko's comfortable routine, despite the two walls of bars and narrow hallway separating them. She expects to eventually, well, not trust but accept, Mai. Zuko is more than enough but for both their sake's a new person to talk to wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

Not that the gloomy girl is the most talkative but who knows, maybe prison changed her too.

She expects to continue her practice in the dead of night, out of sight of prying eyes.

She expects to keep her foolish hopes for rescue or escape to herself and surprise Zuko when the time comes. And she's hoping that moment comes later than sooner, when she has a chance to properly get a read on the other girl because she'll be hard pressed to justify leaving her behind.

What Katara doesn't expect is for those hopes and expectations to be dashed so quickly.

Azula returns a week after she left them. 

None of them have anything to say when she walks in with false cheer, no guards visible, just Ty Lee haunting her side as usual. Azula frowns, turning on her heel to take them all in before settling on Katara.

"What? No questions today?" she asks. Katara rolls her eyes, refocusing her attention on her cold porridge. It tastes more dusty than normal.

"C'mon peasant, I thought we had a good thing going here? I almost look forward to your silly little demands."

Katara sighs. "I demand an Agni Kai," she says monotonously through a mouthful porridge. 

Azula's smile is all teeth.

"Okay."

She looks up so sharply she nearly gives herself whiplash. Ty Lee looks surprised, Mai perturbed. Zuko looks both shocked and furious, jaw working like he wants to object on her behalf but knows better.

Her heart pounds in her ears. Two years, five months, six days. Countless indignities. And finally, finally a chance for justice. Not revenge or closure, she tells herself, eyes fixed on Zuko's. Justice, for both of them.

She'd told Zuko and Mai that she didn't know what she'd do if Azula accepted her challenge. But now that the moment has come the answer is clear. 

She'll win. Again.

"You can have your rematch in three day's time, peasant."

___

"Please don't do this."

"You're not going to change my mind."

"This isn't an Agni Kai, it's a public execution!"

"Do you have so little faith in me?"

"This isn't about faith! This isn't bravery, it's foolishness! They will never, never let you win, even if you beat her." He can't hide the bitterness in his voice, the first hand knowledge of how this game is played. "You will be made an example of. And I won't be there--"

To save you. The unfinished statement drops like lead.

"Then let me save myself for once."

He desperately switches tactics, reaching ineffectually through the bars of his cell. 

"You swore you wouldn't leave me behind."

She turns to him, finally, expression hard in the low light. She doesn't look like a seventeen year old should, no matter how high she holds her chin behind the bars of her own cell. She's wiry and sallow where his sister strong and well fed. 

And very possibly, insane.

(Right now, he's not sure if he's talking about his sister or the proud girl in front of him.)

"You have to trust me."

You said yourself you don't know. There's not a plan to trust.

He begs instead. "Katara, please."

It's the end of conversation. She folds in on herself, eyes shut breathing steady, meditating like he showed her. He wants to rage at her, wishes he was close enough to shake her or maybe hold her close and cry. Her stubbornness alone could stop a komodo rhino in it's tracks and she's already gone and set her feet.

___

Mai is sitting at the front of her cell, watching her like an eagle hawk. It makes her feel self conscious and it's starting to piss her off.

"He's right you know."

"Yes," Katara admits. Mai arches an eyebrow.

"But you're still going to do it?" Mai continues, intrigued. Katara glares. 

"Yes, I wouldn't expect you to know what it's like."

"What? To fight for a lost cause?" she asks pointedly. Katara prickles, offended. Mai rolls her eyes. "It was a lost cause, we're the proof. I'm trying to relate okay? I get it, sometimes what needs to be done is beyond our control. Some injustices demand a reckoning, even if it's a dumb idea."

Katara thinks it's the most she'd heard the dark haired girl say since she's been here. "Is that your idea of a pep talk?"

Mai snorts. "I just hope you have more luck than me"

"I don't need luck," Katara insists, watching the rise and fall of Zuko's chest in the dim light. Mai purses her lips. 

"No, I suppose you don't."

___

It happens like this:
On the same altar where they were abandoned,
A girl burns bright enough for an entire world sacrificed for small men's pride.
And a boy lets tide pull him under to drown alongside her.

___

His first thought is she looks beautiful.

They've dressed her in silver and blues lest anyone forget she's Water Tribe. But the cloth is cut for firebenders, not waterbenders, and is sure to restrict her movement. It heightens his already sky high anxiety.

She's neat and clean-- the appearance of an honorable opponent the Fire Lord has deigned to grant an audience. Zuko knows the intent isn't honor at all, but rather perpetuate an air of respectability around the event about to unfold. An execution, his mind pounds over and over. The upper crust of Fire Nation have been raised sufficiently bloodthirsty, so long as there is a proper mirage over it all.

The savages can't govern themselves.

The airbenders were preparing for war.

The Earth Kingdom needs Agni's light and guidance.

The Crown Prince shouldn't have spoken against his father.

Katara's strides are long and sure as she's guided into the arena, flanked by Dai Li agents. Her jaw is clenched and chin raised, the picture of defiance. Her mother's necklace, long hidden, dangles at her throat. Her hair is long enough to dust her shoulders but the front is pulled back into a tight, short ponytail at the crown of her head, flanked by thin braids.

"Ugh! It's not a ponytail, Zuko! It's a warrior's wolf tail! I'm the warrior! This is my wolf tail!" Sokka insisted.

"Are wolves supposed to be scary? Aren't they just big dogs?" Toph asked, smirking. Sokka threw his hands in frustration.

"They'll sneak up on you in the snow and work together to rip your throat out before you even know what's happened," Katara said seriously, face illuminated eerily by the fire. "Our warriors are the pack, and they defend our tribe just as fiercely as southern wolves."  Sokka smiled at his sister, appeased.

The crowd hollers at her as she makes her way into the arena, eyes scanning the crowd, widening when they meet his. He'd told her he wouldn't be here but Azula apparently had other plans. His wrists are bound in manacles that chafe against his skin. They'd pulled him rather abruptly from his cell, hours after they'd taken Katara and Mai, who's more subtly restrained and seated to Ty Lee's right at the foot of Azula's empty seat. 

Azula is already waiting at the center of the platform but Katara stops at the short steps leading up to it. She moves past the entrance to the pit, coming to stand in front, the crouch, to his eye level.

Katara's voice is a whisper but it rises above the din of the arena."I need you to believe in me," she says softly. He does, he does. He knows she's a force to be reckoned with but these aren't normal circumstances. How can she say that when she's about to enter a noose of her own making? They're going to kill you, he thinks, at the same time forcing a weak smile to his lips..

"Wait!" he says as she starts to pull away. The Dai Li are getting restless but he doesn't care, rolling the braided blue fabric he's worn as a bracelet for a year off his wrist. He slides it onto her arm, up around her narrow bicep. "Now you're ready."

She squeezes his hands reassuringly and the murmurs of the crowd seep back into his consciousness. They're none too kind, confused and uncomfortable by the familiarity between a peasant and the former crown prince in front of the graciousness of the Fire Lord. It's ruining the illusion-- all manners of sin can be masked by propriety, ritual, or tradition after all. 

It’s laughable, the demand for propriety when they had locked away children so long they’d emerged on the other side on the cusp of adulthood.

Katara lingers before him, gently running a thumb over rough skin of his scar. It feels like a goodbye.

A horrible thought enters his head that that's her intention. To succumb to an unwinnable fight in a blaze of glory and righteousness and revenge. He wants to vomit.

You stupid, brave, idiot.

The crowd has lost all sense of subtlety, getting louder every moment she stands before him, gasping and jeering at her. At them.

Damn you, all.

He can't even begin to explain his actions other than he is terrified out of his skull. He grabs her wrist, pulling her close enough to feel her breath on his lips. "No one left behind," he whispers, heart pounding in his ears. She smiles in a way he thinks is meant to reassure him but he's too afraid for it to break through. 

And then she presses her lips to his. 

It's awkward and clumsy and it shatters his heart on the floor.

The crowd loses it.

The Dai Li agent runs out of patience and yanks her back by the collar. Azula is smirking at the scene he's made. Her blue eyes remain fixed on his as she stumbles up the steps and he hopes beyond hope she understands the guilty plea in his eyes.

Don't give up, stay with me. ( Better to suffer together than die alone.)

It's too late to change course now but he prays anyway, whatever good that'd done him in the past.

___

Zuko had told her traditional Agni Kai were fought at sundown but now the sun is high overhead, beating down on the arena. A typically, sweltering Fire Nation afternoon. It's the farthest from the moon's rise or fall, from any advantage Katara could have and gives Azula every edge. As if she didn't already have enough.

Her bluster is fading fast and she fidgets with the faded blue fabric Zuko had placed on her arm. 

She doesn't not think of Zuko's lips on hers, the messy desperation of the way he'd kissed her back.

He's right, you know.

She trains her eyes on Azula, on the crowd, on the procession of the Fire Sages toward them. Anywhere but Zuko and his begging eyes.

Azula finally accepting her challenge had seemed like finally seeing land, a reward after being tossed in the open ocean. But it's occurring to her now (too late, far too late) that it had all been an illusion. She's still adrift. Anger and fear are still crashing over her raft.

Grief is still waiting to pull her under.

But waterbenders can't drown, right?

She only has one chance to test that theory.

She steels herself to spare Zuko a glance as the crowd roars for the last figure entering the arena's stands. His face is blank as he looks past her to the newcomer and she follows his gaze. She notices the opulent armor first, then the resemblance to his children. The same ink black hair, the same sharp face.

Ozai has arrived.

Mai's words clamor to the forefront of her mind, Zuko's pleas fading to background noise.

Some injustices demand a reckoning, even if it's a dumb idea.

Katara, please.

Please.

Please.

___

A teacup of water has been placed on the ground so she has to bow to retrieve it.

Katara raises the water, threading it between her fingers like a needle. It drifts between liquid and solid and she surreptitiously shakes a hand, sucking her thumb. 

The fire sage is still droning on, to Azula’s obvious dismay. She’s tapping her foot impatiently, impervious to their father’s severe glare. He hadn't seen his father since he'd nearly shot him full of lightning. Ozai doesn't spare Zuko a glance, even though Azula had him trussed up like a hunting prize, on display as a warning; prison cloth against nobility's finery, scars on display from head to hip. Disgraced, damaged, docile. He wonders if his father notices the extra demeaning effort Azula has put in. If he had he wouldn't like it-- an easily defeated enemy is of no import. Only the most ferocious beasts are worthy of bragging rights.

What had Azula told Ozai about their defeat?

Katara closes her eyes, ignoring the sage's benedictions, drawing her thumb to her forehead and Azula twitches, expecting a pre-emptive attack. But when she pulls it away there’s no flying icicles, just a small bloody crescent in the center of her forehead. 

He knows the mark must have meaning, for her or waterbenders as a whole, though he’s unsure what. 

Noblewomen nearest him make a sound of disgust. Peasant. Heathen. Savage. But Katara looks peaceful, expression placid as she meets the High Sage’s bow, smirking at his unsettled expression.

The platform is cleared and Katara reanimates her modest orb.

His father waves Azula on, disinterested. 

Zuko can't get the sound of his own heart pounding out of his head.

__

"Bad move, peasant," Azula hisses, arrogance disappearing. Katara ducks and rolls from the barrage of blue flame Azula looses in her direction. She hops to her feet, wobbling slightly on the edge of the dueling platform. She reaches and fuses the water from the ice needles laying on the ground behind Azula, already melted in the midday sun. The small ball knocks the Fire Lord in the back of the head, throwing her off balance enough that her next arc of flame goes high and wide. Katara takes her opportunity, pulling from her one advantage in this rigged battle.

A sweltering Fire Nation afternoon births a full wall of water, just in time to block the next bombardment of flaming balls.

The crowd gasps collectively, murmuring loudly about where the water had come from. Katara splashes some of her reserve on the platform, freezing it slick beneath Azula's feet. The other girl leaps nimby out of the way, flipping to send a double footed kick at Katara, who slides past on a banked wall of ice, pulling more water for her runway from the sweat pooling on the audience's foreheads.

Azula may be lacking the added power of the comet this time around but she's more collected, fighting her way toward Katara with narrow shots that force her onto the defensive, ice shields flying before her face. Azula smirks, winding up for a larger shot and Katara sets her feet, liquefying her icy defenses.

The blue flame corkscrews toward her and Katara strikes with the heel of her hand, water stretching out like a dome around her and pushing forward across the platform, knocking Azula flat on her ass. A collective gasp rises from the crowd.

Katara spares a glance at Zuko, who has a ghost of a smile of his face despite his deeply furrowed brow. But it quickly falls away and Katara hears the crackling before she sees it, whipping back to watch Azula leap to her feet, energy building at her fingertips eyes narrowed at Katara and her brother.

Katara's breath catches in her throat.

Zuko's wrists are shackled, in metal besides. Katara's gathered water is mostly splattered on the platform and wouldn't stop the electricity no matter which direction Azula shot.

Azula starts rotating her arms, the movement familiar from the courtyard years before. Out of time. Katara stops thinking, gives herself over to instinct and raises her hands.

___

Time stops, along with his sister and his father.

Screams and shouts of shock wind though the crowd until it sputters out and arena falls silent, everyone watching with fascination and confusion as the Fire Lord and Phoenix King struggle against themselves.

No one has ever seen this, Zuko realizes. Bloodbending. No one knew waterbenders could do this.

Except him of course.
He hadn't forgotten about it, the way the Southern Raiders captain bent and contorted and the only chorus in his head had been Thank Agni I'm on your side now. He certainly hadn't forgotten how ferocious a fighter Katara was, nor how skilled a bender but the reminder is magnificent 

Guards are primed but motionless, unsure how to attack something they can't comprehend. Katara looks over her shoulder to him, her second direct acknowledgement since she appeared.

"Would you now? Knowing everything?"

The words are thunderous. His father speaks before he can formulate a response.

"What could we expect except such dishonorable fighting from a peasant? You're alone, little witch. The Avatar is dead. Your people--"

Katara turns her head slowly to look at his, eyes narrowed and fathomless in their hatred, far beyond any wrath she'd directed at Azula. She interrupts his monologue with a snapping motion and his father falls on the gilded platform like a puppet with his strings cut.

More screams ring through the crowd and servants rush to his side, turning over a lifeless body. Katara turns back to Azula with cool disaffection. She wears it neatly, this cold and calculating persona that's nothing like the girl he knows. He can't tear his eyes from his father's body, though he's more surprised than sorry. Did she lie to him, when he asked if she had a plan? He wonders if this was her goal all along, this white lotus gambit, from the first challenge she issued Azula. Or did she just see an opportunity and take it?

Katara is looking at him again, face placid but eyes still a storm, waiting for an answer. The question never was about his father after all-- that decision had been made long ago in front of a melon on a stick. It was always about Azula.

Azula howls, still under Katara's control—that much she makes clear as guards take a step in— forcing the Fire Lord to her knees before her people, her head writhing. 

"Would you now?" she asks again. Her arms have begun the shake from the stress of holding Azula, muscles too-well defined rippling under her skin, exhausted from the unusual exertion. She could have cut her down a thousand times over, has plenty of reason to send Azula to join their father. But she still wants him to decide. He settles on an answer, in his mind and his heart.

Suddenly, Azula collapses on the stone, gasping whiles Katara heaves, scrambling, Zuko thinks, to regain her hold on his sister. She reaches out toward him and his manacles crack under the force of ice.

And then all hell breaks loose.

___

It happens like this:
In the heart of the Fire Nation, a boy and a girl finally find deliverance.