damkianna | Fic Post - Imagine The Ocean - Book One: Chapters 11-13/13

Navigation: Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Eleven: The Waterbending Master

"A boat! A boat on the Black Sea!"

Yue turned at the sound of the shout, and watched her father's face go tense.

"Fire Nation?" Father said.

The lookout shook his head, still gasping - he must have run all the way from the outer wall, if the message had been brought in from the lookouts on the ice cliffs. "Doesn't look it," he managed. "Not metal - and it's small. Not much of a warship."

Father considered briefly; but Kanjusuk had not lasted through a hundred years of war by being incautious, and Yue could see the decision as clearly as though it were written on his face, even before he spoke. "Send a war party, enough men to handle a boat twice the size," he said.

Hahn volunteered immediately, as Yue had suspected he might. He was brave, but he was also the kind of person who liked the feeling of being chosen to accomplish things - and, perhaps, the feeling of gloating to those who were not chosen alongside him. It was not his only flaw, but it was one of the ones that grated on her the most; the moment Yue had been told she would marry him, she had begun to maintain a careful list, and this one was near the top.

She did not keep the list because she had any particular plans to try to change him. That was up to him, if he chose to undertake the task. The list was simply the best way she knew of to remind herself to be patient, to forgive, to keep her temper. The things he did most often, she reasoned, were those things which were most a part of himself - those he did least knowingly, and therefore those which yelling at him would help the least.

Sometimes she needed to remind herself of this very, very often.

She couldn't go with the war party herself, of course. But she followed them all the way to the outer wall, and she watched them grow small with distance as they Waterbent their boats away to the southeast. The war party would be the first to know who it was who had come to them; but anyone who happened to be on the outer wall would be the second.

***

Katara leaned back against the stern and grinned up at the sky. They'd been able to take it easy, since Hansing - or at least they'd gotten closer to taking it easy than they had in ages. They hadn't seen Prince Zuko since he'd tried to catch them with the bounty hunter and her shirshu, and even if he was still chasing them, it would be a long time before he'd be able to get his ship around Gungduan. And Zhao - Captain, or maybe Commander, whatever he was now - hadn't gotten near them since the day the Blue Spirit had broken them out of Pohuai.

Which all meant Katara got to make Sokka and Suki row.

"I am definitely getting a blister," Sokka said.

"Row us a couple hundred more miles," Katara said, "and we'll talk," and she couldn't help laughing at his exaggerated glare.

They didn't have even a hundred miles left to go - more like five, or maybe ten at the absolute most. They'd left open ocean behind yesterday, and they were going much more slowly now, weaving their way between ice floes; it was blissfully cold, and Katara had pulled on her parka that morning with a delicious feeling of satisfaction. It wasn't quite like being at home, but it was the closest she'd been in months, and it was wonderful.

She leaned back again and closed her eyes, and by the time Aang said, "Hey, uh, Katara?" she was half asleep.

"What, now Sokka's got two blisters?" she said, reluctantly dragging her head upright; and then the first warrior yelled just as her eyes came open.

The boats must have been behind the two nearest floes, waiting until they'd rowed to just the right spot before they'd swept out and trapped them. They were utterly different from the Earth Kingdom boat, and even from the ships Father and the warriors of the south had taken when they'd sailed to the north: flat-bellied, with almost no draft at all, and the only things that marked bow from stern were prow-like decorations on each side that curved up like waves.

About half of the warriors had pikes, and the rest, Katara saw, were Waterbending, driving the boats forward with the motions of their arms and bodies - she could have just about jumped for joy, except for the part where they were clearly intent on attacking.

The first boat came up abreast of them, and the shouting warrior swung his pike at Suki, who ducked smooth as water and then slammed her oar into his chest; his shout turned into a yelp of pain, and he tumbled back onto the flat boat, grimacing. Sokka moved to swing his oar around at the same moment Katara yanked a broad stream of water up out of the ocean, and somebody cried, "Wait!" a second before she knocked one of the Waterbenders off the boat with it.

The warriors drew back a little at the cry, which had come from the second boat, and Sokka lowered his oar again; Katara let the water fall back into the sea. She wasn't going to let them kill her, but the whole point of this journey had been to find her a Waterbending teacher, not to make an enemy out of every Waterbender in the north.

"They're Water Tribe," said the man who had called for a halt, and pointed at Sokka with his pike. "Aren't you?"

"Southern," Sokka confirmed. He hesitated for a second, glancing at Katara, and she shook her head minutely. They could explain about the Avatar thing later, when nobody had their weaponry out and she could find a way to demonstrate that wouldn't drown anyone by accident.

"This one isn't," another one said, making a prodding motion toward Suki. His pike didn't actually touch her, though - Katara noticed she was still holding her oar like it was a spear, and had to struggle to hide a smile.

"She's our friend," Sokka said immediately. "From the Earth Kingdoms. She's no threat to you - I mean, unless you try to hit her with something again, but that would be a mistake."

The guy Suki had knocked back had struggled up again, sputtering, and now he cried, "They attacked us!"

"Not without some reason," the man who had called for a halt said, and then tapped his pike against the side of the boat for a second, thinking. "They are three people in a boat, two of them Water Tribe - not a likely invasion force, I think. We will take them back to Chief Arnook. It has been a long time since we have seen anyone from the Southern Tribe; he'll want to give you a proper welcome."

*

The warrior hadn't been kidding; once they were inside the massive ice walls of Kanjusuk, almost everyone they encountered wore a smile.

Chief Arnook was a craggy-faced man who didn't look like he made a habit of giving people proper welcomes, but once they had introduced themselves, he clapped Katara and Sokka on the back, and smiled himself. "We had feared that you might all be gone," he explained. "It has been a long time since we have seen or heard any sign of the Southern Tribe. We thought the warriors who came to the aid of the Earth Kingdoms a few years past might have been the last of you."

It was obvious, walking through Kanjusuk, that it was a Water Tribe city, and the home of many Waterbenders; there was water everywhere, in canals that crisscrossed the city and waterfalls that flowed down over the ice. Even the great gathering space where Chief Arnook held their welcoming feast was decorated with a massive fountain, and Katara felt herself breathing easily at last. She had worried so often that she would find no one to teach her - even, occasionally, that Kanjusuk had been captured, melted to nothing, while they were still on their way north. But now that they were here, her worries had dissolved like so much smoke. There was no way she'd be unable to find a master Waterbender here.

They sat next to Chief Arnook, on his left; his wife, Ukalah, sat on his right, along with the warrior who had brought them back, who was named Tuteguk. Katara sat on the end - or at least it was the end until just before the feast drumming began, when a pretty girl with pure white hair knelt down next to her.

"I am Chief Arnook's daughter," she said, "Yue," and flashed Katara a quick smile; but the drums started pounding before Katara could reply.

It was astounding, to be surrounded by such a towering city of ice, rows and rows and rows of people robed in blue and white, with the thunder of drums in the air. Their village must have been like this, once; Mother had told them that it had been a great city before the Fire Nation raiders came, but Katara had never quite been able to picture it before.

At last, the drums rumbled to a halt, and Chief Arnook stood up. "Tonight," he said, "we celebrate the arrival of our brother and sister from the Southern Water Tribe. They have traveled a very long way to visit us; let us make their time here worth the effort!"

Amid the cheering and shouting that followed, Aang drifted a little way into Yue's arm, and hooked a thumb over his shoulder at her. "If anybody knows who can teach you," he said, "it's bound to be her - ask!"

Katara shot him a quelling glance, and then had to yank on a smile when Yue turned to look at her curiously. "Um," she said, articulately, and searched for somewhere to start. "It's - it's not actually only a visit," she tried at last.

Yue grinned, and then laughed outright. "Well, no, we didn't quite think so," she said. "It's a very long way to travel, just to say hello, and it must have been very dangerous."

"It was," Katara said, briefly somber. "We need to find a Waterbending teacher - a master. There's no one like that left in the South; that's why we had to come here."

Yue eyed her, pale eyebrows arching. "You crossed half the world in the middle of a war to find yourselves a teacher?" she said.

"I told you, there aren't any left in the South," Katara said, but even she could tell the words had come out sounding sort of defensive. "And the war's been going on a hundred years already. We couldn't just sit around waiting for it to end - who knows how long that would take?"

"That's not going to do it," Aang murmured in her ear, and, sure enough, Yue's expression was tipping toward a frown. "Tell her you'll explain later."

"You're right," Katara said, "there is another reason; but I can't tell you what it is, not right now. You do have someone who's mastered Waterbending, though, don't you?"

Yue looked at her suspiciously a moment longer, and then nodded. "Yugoda is a master healer," she said, indicating a gray-haired woman with a serene face.

"And what about regular bending?" Katara said.

"You mean for fighting?" Yue gave her a brief, uncertain glance; but then she looked past Katara, to where Sokka was already stuffing his face, and her expression cleared. "There are several," she said, "but Master Pakku is the best of them. You can see for yourself in a moment - Father's arranged for him and some of his best students to perform for us." And, sure enough, the man she had gestured toward was standing up and climbing toward the dais in front of the fountain, three other men coming up alongside him.

Katara had no idea what to expect - she had never done anything like this at home herself, and the last Waterbender before her had been in Gran-Gran's generation, and long gone by the time Katara could remember. But they did more than just a bending sequence: it was a dance, perfectly coordinated, water streaming through the air in loops and spheres with an ebb and flow like the ocean. The benders had clearly practiced it many times, and they handed water off to each other like they were passing a bowl of rice, so simple and smooth it was sometimes hard to tell who was bending what.

It was beautiful; and when it was over, Katara turned to grin at Aang and then laughed aloud, not caring how odd she might look. She'd certainly recognized some of the simpler portions from practicing with the scroll, but there was so much she still had left to learn. She couldn't wait to get started.

***

Mizan let Zhao board, because there was no way to get out of it, with his flagship looming alongside and his sub-admiral's rank insignia gleaming; but she didn't have to be happy about it, and she let her expression get as unfriendly as it wanted to be.

"Sub-Admiral," she said, when he set foot on the deck, and pressed two knuckles into an only partly-open palm, an insultingly vague approximation of a proper salute.

He let his lip curl up, lazy and smug, and said nothing for a long moment, turning to casually survey the deck of the ship. "Mm, not much," he said, as though to himself, "but I suppose it will do."

"Will do for what?" General Iroh said. He had been near the bridge when the explosion had occurred, but not inside, and had therefore only been a little bit singed around the edges; the side of his arm had been faintly blistered, but it had been a small matter to have it cleaned and wrapped.

"Ah, General," Zhao said, and saluted - quite a bit more politely than Mizan had saluted him, though still not appropriately deferent, Mizan thought. "I see you escaped this unfortunate accident," and he gestured loosely to the still-blackened observation deck, "unscathed. It would have been a terrible shame if your nephew had dragged you down yet further with him." Zhao made a fair show out of glancing around the deck, and Mizan did her very best not to roll her eyes. "I do not see him here."

"You do not," Iroh agreed. "My nephew never had the best luck."

"What an unfortunate loss," Zhao said, eyes gleaming, and then pulled a roll of papers from his belt. "In that case, I claim this vessel on behalf of the Fire Lord, and order you to join my fleet at once. The fleet launches from our outpost on Min Zai Island tomorrow; and then we sail for the great city of the north."

***

Master Pakku had a vast practice arena, a wide walled space in the northwest of the city, near the great palace where Chief Arnook's family lived. They timed their approach carefully; Katara didn't want to interrupt anything if she could help it. There was a boys' class just letting out as they came down the avenue, and she waited for the last student to scurry out before she slipped inside herself, Sokka and Suki at her heels.

"Master Pakku," she said, and bowed, carefully low. "We've been hoping that you might be able to teach Waterbending-"

"Of course, of course," Master Pakku interrupted, waving a hand imperiously. "I'd be only too glad, boy; no need to make your sister ask for you."

Katara paused, still only partway recovered from the bow, and stared at him: he was smiling down at Sokka in a faintly paternal sort of way, clearly conscious of his own graciousness, and not looking at her at all.

"What?" Sokka said, sounding about as bewildered as Katara felt. "Me? No, I - no, it's her. She's the bendy one. I'm still working on the fans," and he tapped the handle of one, like that explained everything.

"She?" Master Pakku said, frowning, and then glanced at Katara; for the briefest moment, he looked simply unsettled, and then, peculiarly, he started to smile. "Oh - yes, I see, very amusing," he said, and clapped Sokka on the shoulder.

Katara felt something in her gut begin to roil, and straightened the rest of the way up, shoulders back and feet braced, like she was about to swing a club.

"I'm afraid you don't understand," Suki said from Katara's other side, polite but crisp. "Katara is the Waterbender seeking to be taught."

"You speak out of turn, girl," Master Pakku said dismissively, and Katara could see an angry flush rise into Suki's face; she put a hand on one of her fans, and glanced sideways at Katara, almost warningly.

"Master Pakku," Katara said, "you seem to have misunderstood. I am a Waterbender. You didn't let me finish, before. We'd been hoping that you might be able to teach Waterbending - to me."

Master Pakku shifted his weight, unsettled again, and his eyes flicked over their faces, from Sokka's to Katara's to Suki's. Whatever he saw there must have been enough to confirm that they were not, in fact, trying to play a trick on him, and he made a sharp noise with his nose and shook his head once. "Enough of this," he said, "you waste my time. You've come to the wrong place - you are looking for Yugoda."

"I am not," Katara said, frustration rising like a spring tide. "Yue told me, at the feast; Yugoda is a healer. I know she'll also have many things to teach me, but I have to master Waterbending."

Master Pakku snorted. "Impossible," he said, cool and sharp and utterly certain. "You can't."

Katara clenched her fists, and forced herself to take a deep breath. "Why not?"

Master Pakku looked ridiculously startled, like he hadn't been expecting her to ask, and then barked out half a laugh. "You're a girl," he said, as though it should have been obvious, "you can't be taught. Women cannot master Waterbending, it is impossible, and we do not teach them to try. They are capable of healing, sometimes with very great skill; but that is all."

"The Avatar," Katara began, and Master Pakku's mouth flattened.

"The Avatar is a spirit, reincarnated many times," he said. "It is true that the Avatar is sometimes reborn in a woman's body, but the Avatar is a man equally often - Avatars retain skills from their past lives that other women do not have."

Katara stared at him, utterly unable to reply. She had been planning to tell him who she was, though she hadn't known how she would prove it to him; surely even if he wouldn't teach other girls, he might be convinced to teach her, though learning from him was going to leave a very bad taste in her mouth. But even if he agreed, she could see, he wouldn't be teaching her- in his mind, he would only be reminding some man who had also been the Avatar of things he already knew.

She swallowed. Her responsibility was too great for her to allow herself to balk. She had to try, at the very least. "I am the Avatar," she said.

One side of Master Pakku's mouth curled up. "Oh, are you," he said, patronizing, like he was speaking to a confused child.

"I am," Katara insisted. "The last Avatar was an Air Nomad, a boy named Aang, and he was frozen away in the ice until the week I was born. It was Kyoshi before that, from the southern islands; she fought Chin the Conqueror, and killed him, when she split the islands away from the south coast. Before that-" She racked her brain for a moment, until the name came to her. "Before that, the Avatar was from here. Kuruk, that was his name. That was back when the Water Tribes still held the great festivals, when we traveled back and forth between the poles, and celebrated together every two years-"

"Enough," Master Pakku said. "I am a master of Waterbending, not of history or legends. If Chief Arnook determines that your claim is valid, and orders me, then I will teach you what I know, even though it may be wasted; but not before. In times of trial and desperation, tradition is what tells us who we are, and I will not throw ours aside because you can recite a list of names to me."

Katara stared at him for a long moment - not even glaring, just looking, and feeling like her face might as well have been carved of ice. She made herself bow to him again, though this time it was a perfunctory tilt of the shoulders; and then she stormed back out of the training arena, eyes watering fiercely, and hoped someday she'd have the chance to punch him in the head.

*

"It's probably for the best," Suki said quietly, when they were climbing the steps of the palace. The angry color had left her face, and she looked pensive, now, instead of upset. "We couldn't have argued him into it right there in five minutes, and if Chief Arnook orders him, he won't be able to get out of it."

Sokka shook his head, expression somewhere between irritation and puzzlement. "I wish he'd been there the day those Fire Nation soldiers cracked my head open," he said. "I'd like to see him break an iceberg by himself."

"It's not true, you know," Aang said, and Katara paused reluctantly in the entrance hall, motioning to Sokka and Suki to be quiet for a moment. "What he said," Aang added, when she made no reply. "That's not how it works. You can tell, can't you, when other Avatars are - are showing up in you? It's not all the time; it's barely any of the time. And they're all different people, too. It's not like some kind of ancient body-hopping spirit replaces everything you are - it's more complicated than that."

"I float," Katara said. "I don't know how to Airbend. I cracked the plaza in Jindao, even though I can't Earthbend so much as a pebble."

"But every Avatar has to learn mastery all over again before they can do any of that on purpose," Aang said, drifting a little closer. "I'd know; I never made it to fully-realized, remember? If it were the way he said it was, then I'd probably have killed Ozai when I was two days old without even breaking a sweat." He shook his head firmly, and then reached out, shimmering blue fingers almost close enough to brush her cheek - if they had been tangible. "That's not how it works," he said again, and this time she believed it.

She sighed, and scrubbed her hands roughly over her face - she hadn't quite started crying, but her eyes were wet with trapped tears of frustration, and her skin felt hot beneath her fingers. "I know," she muttered, and turned toward the wall, pressing her palms against the ice for a moment to cool them before she put them back on her cheeks. "It's just so infuriating."

"What is?" Yue said, somewhere behind her.

***

Yin watched the Dragon of the West sip his tea, and tried not to look as utterly awed as she felt.

The fleet had gathered at Min Zai Island as ordered, and Zhao was practically floating with the force of his delight; that the ship that had once carried the former prince had appeared as he had demanded had only made his satisfaction sweeter.

Yin had never met the prince before, and it now appeared that she never would. How Zhao had mustered up the gall to blow up the son of the Fire Lord, exile though he might have been, she wasn't sure, but she wished she had known sooner, and found a way to stop it. The rumors concerning the exiled prince had been widely variable, to be sure. But about a third said Prince Zuko had been a reasonably intelligent boy; not unkind, though perhaps obsessively concerned with his father's opinion, even after it must have been clear to him. And even if the less kind remainder had also been the more accurate, no sixteen-year-old boy deserved to be blown up. The workings of Zhao's mind baffled her often; but she was rarely as glad that she couldn't understand him as she had been this week.

"I would be only too pleased to offer you my advice," General Iroh said, after a long slow swallow of his tea.

"Really," Zhao said. "And here I thought you might be inclined to be somewhat less than helpful, given the loss of your charge in that unfortunate explosion."

Yin thought she saw a muscle in the general's face twitch; but then he smiled, and waved a hand forgivingly. "Well, these things happen," he said. "I looked after the boy as well as I could - but it was my brother's wish, not mine. He hoped to keep his options open. After all, a feeble heir is better than none at all. He knew well the dangers of the loss of one's children."

"Ah, yes, of course," Zhao said, nodding. "And so he should, with so clear an example before him. Crushed by Earthbenders during the siege, wasn't he, your boy?"

Yin managed to keep her discomfort from showing as anything more than a slight flinch. Lu Ten's death had been mourned throughout the Fire Nation, and by no one more than his father, with his mother already gone; Zhao was striking an open wound with a blacksmith's hammer.

General Iroh's eyes were grim over the edge of his teacup for the barest moment, but when he lowered it, there were still traces of a smile around his mouth. Clearly battles of arms were not the general's only area of expertise. "Something like that," he said, very light, and poured his companion some tea, topping off her cup a breath below the brim without even looking away from Zhao's face.

His companion, Yin noticed, did not quite have General Iroh's skill in controlling her features. Her face was faintly bruised on one side, and there was an unpleasantly large cut over one eye; she had managed not to look overtly angry, but her expression was clearly tense, her jaw tight. If she had been a Firebender, Yin suspected, the table probably would have been aflame already.

"I must insist, General, that you sail with me on my flagship - I simply cannot leave you on that pathetic little scow." Zhao's mouth curled into a moue of disgust. "And what good is an advisor if he is a fleet away? It will not do, not at all."

"I would be glad to," General Iroh said heartily; if saying so made him a liar, Yin thought, he was an exceptionally good one. "And you will also accomodate a few of my old officers, I hope? Mizan has been with me for years - I might as well leave my head behind, if she cannot accompany me."

"Of course, of course," Zhao said. "Bring your ship alongside, and you will have as much time as you need to move your things."

General Iroh beamed, and lifted his cup - whatever he had wanted to hear, it seemed he had heard it, though Yin wasn't sure what it had been. Mizan looked ... well, not precisely satisfied; but she let out a slow breath, and when General Iroh touched her wrist lightly with his free hand, she grudgingly raised her own tea, and drank a diplomatic mouthful. "It will be our pleasure," General Iroh said.

"And ours," Yin said, before the pause could turn uncomfortable; Zhao was smiling again, with that odd, distant slant to his gaze, his mind somewhere else entirely.

***

"-and I don't have time for this," Katara said, "I need to learn it - from someone who'll teach me all of it, everything, not someone who's going to need an order from the chief just to consider it."

Yue blinked, and Katara realized abruptly that she had almost been yelling outright, by the end. But before she could even start to apologize, Yue spoke. "You said that before, at the feast - that you needed a teacher. And you traveled halfway around the world to find one; but you still haven't told me why."

Katara bit her lip, and glanced over at Aang. He shrugged his shoulders, looking sheepish. "You told Master Pakku," he said, "and you don't even like him."

"Yeah, but by that point, I think it was also going to bother me less if he thought I was crazy," Katara said aloud, and then, before Yue could ask, held out a hand. "I'm the Avatar. That, right there? That was me talking to the last Avatar. He's a ghost now, he follows me around."

"... I see," Yue said, clearly too polite to let herself sound more than faintly dubious.

Katara sighed, but before she could come up with something else to try, Yue held up her own hand.

"If I'm understanding you correctly," she said, "and you aren't out of your mind, the former Avatar would be able to hear me if I were to, say, walk over there and whisper something to myself?"

"He would," Katara said.

Yue turned and strode further into the chief's palace, across the width of the entry hall and a few steps down the corridor; Aang floated after her like he was attached to her with a leash. He waited next to her for only a moment, head cocked, before he drifted back, smiling. "She said she hopes you really are the Avatar," he reported dutifully, and Katara's heart lifted a little, involuntarily, just to hear the sentiment.

Yue stopped in front of her with a questioning look, and Katara grinned. "You hope I really am the Avatar," she said, and Yue let out a sharp breath and bit her lip.

"And you really are," she said, and let out an almost incredulous laugh. "You really are," she repeated, sobering, and then hesitated. "Then I - have something to show you," she said.

***

Zuko shuffled as far back against the ship's rib as he could, and sighed.

It was hot down here - he was near the boilers, and a deck above - and very dark. They'd gone over the plan half a dozen times, in the hours after they had found Zhao's explosives on the bridge; Uncle had told him exactly how to get where he was and how unlikely it was that anyone else would come down, and he knew Mizan would come for him as soon as she got a chance. But he still felt startlingly uncertain, and very alone.

But he had to admit that everything had gone well so far. Granted, the explosives had gone off a little sooner than they'd been expecting. But Uncle had managed to bring them close to Zhao's flagship, enough that it had taken only a moment to sneak across the gap when no one was looking. And he might have a large helping of peculiarities, but Uncle's memory was excellent when he wanted it to be - he'd been exactly right about the layout of the massive battleship. Besides, the heat might be uncomfortable, but it was certainly drying Zuko's clothes out quickly.

He was on the edge of sleep when he heard the sound of boots shuffling over metal, and he listened to it for a moment, not understanding, before he realized what it was and jerked fully awake. He pushed himself up into a crouch and drew one sword a few inches out of its sheath; and then a very familiar voice said, "Sir? Is that you?"

Zuko let out the breath he'd been holding and slid his sword home again, and pulled heat up to his palm until a tiny flame popped into being. "Mizan."

"Sir," she said. "Thank you for the light."

"Your face," Zuko said, a little startled. He had been preparing belowdecks when the explosives had gone off, and had stayed there until he'd snuck across to Zhao's ship, just to ensure that no one saw him. He hadn't seen her since before the explosion.

"It happens, sir, when things blow up right next to you," she said, matter-of-fact, fingers drifting up toward the ugly cut over her eye. "You should see my back, it's a very striking shade of purple."

"I'll take your word for it," Zuko said, instead of giving in to the urge to ask whether she was all right - it would be a stupid question, when she was standing right in front of him.

"You ruin all my fun, sir," she said.

Zuko waved this away. "Is everything - working out?"

"For the record," Mizan said, "I still think this is a terrible plan, and no good will come of it; and if either of you end up hurt, I'm leaving you with Zhao and taking the ship. But yes, sir, everything's working out. The general's with Zhao right now, and we should be moving-"

The deck gave a sudden shudder under their feet, and there were a series of clangs from a deck down, like boiler doors swinging open; metal groaned all around them as the ship lurched into motion.

"-any minute now," Mizan finished, and raised her eyebrows at him.

***

Yue led them further into the palace, up a wide and curving flight of stairs and off to the west, to an open-ended room with a balcony that overlooked the rest of Kanjusuk. She paused for a moment, listening; but Suki couldn't hear anything but their own breathing, and, sure enough, after a moment Yue turned to Katara.

"Show me something you already know," she said.

Katara shot her a curious look, but obediently uncapped her pouch of bending water, and Suki automatically took a step back to give her space.

"Good thinking," Sokka murmured, "it's a little cold for an accidental dousing," and followed her away.

Katara started off with something simple - Suki didn't know the name for it, or even whether there was a name for it, but she recognized it just from watching Katara practice. A long, flowing move, that made the water curl back around Katara's shoulders and then flung it forward.

She was doing it a little more slowly than usual, but it was still going to end with water slung toward Yue. Katara was planning to catch it first, Suki figured, and pull it back - but she never got a chance to worry about it.

The second the water had rounded Katara's far shoulder and started forward, Yue whirled, planted her feet in a bending stance, and drew her hands back and away - she caught the water, guided it around and over her own head with undeniable grace, and sent it swirling back at Katara.

Katara yelped, obviously startled, and dodged out of the way; and the water struck the wall behind her and splashed down to pool on the floor.

"Wait, you bend?" Katara said.

Yue grinned, a little shyly, and shifted her feet again - she pulled the water up from the floor before it could soak Katara's feet, in two separate streams, and curled them both around Katara's waist and back into her bending pouch. "I wouldn't call myself a master," she began hesitantly, and Sokka laughed.

"Yeah, but that's just because you're too polite to," he said. "But how'd you learn to do that, if they don't teach girls?"

"I've always had a talent for it," Yue admitted. "And I did go to Yugoda's classes, until she ran out of things to teach me. My parents say it's because I have the spirit of the moon in me - they gave me my name because the moon spirit saved my life when I was born. That's why my hair is white. And-" She hesitated, looking a little sheepish, and threw a glance over her shoulder at the balcony. "Well, you can see a lot of the city from up here."

Suki turned to the balcony, already calculating - they had left and joined up with the main avenue, and crossed just one canal before they turned to climb the palace stairs - and, sure enough, when she looked over the rail, Master Pakku's practice arena was only a short way away. They couldn't see down into it from here, not quite; but the chief's palace was tall, and a floor or two up, Suki bet you could look right in, and still be close enough to see most of the details.

She laughed, delighted, and when she turned around, Katara was looking at Yue like she was trying to decide whether it would be inappropriate to grab the chief's daughter and swing her around in a circle.

***

Chief Arnook had declared a whole week of feasting in honor of their arrival, so that evening, they were back in the great gathering space with the fountain, kneeling before the long head table. Food had never tasted so good, Katara thought happily, and did her best not to giggle. It was startlingly difficult; at midday, she had been expecting to just about cry herself to sleep, but now she felt almost giddy. Yue had bashfully confessed that she had been spying on Master Pakku's classes for almost six full years, and Katara was willing to bet that she was at the same level as Master Pakku's best students, at the very least, and perhaps even Master Pakku himself. And a willing teacher was worth a dozen years of experience.

By the end of the meal, she was full and happy and very pleased with the world at large - and not at all expecting Master Pakku to stand up.

"Chief Arnook," he said, loudly enough that it echoed a little. "A matter has been brought to my attention, one which I feel you should hear of."

She should have known - Master Pakku was the sort to want to corner her, to make the matter public just so that he could see everyone agree with him. Why should he speak to Chief Arnook alone when he could have an audience? Katara glanced at Yue, a little apprehensive. She shouldn't expose Yue's ability, not this way; it was a terrible repayment for Yue's generosity, to tell half the city something she'd been hiding for years.

But Yue was looking down at her hands, not back at Katara.

"Concerning what?" Chief Arnook said.

"Our visitors from the south," Master Pakku said, bowing the bare minimum in their general direction. "The girl came to me asking for lessons in Waterbending."

Katara was expecting something uncomfortably dramatic - yelling, maybe, or for people to turn their backs, or start throwing food. But there was only a wave of murmurs, a crowd of confused and curious expressions. Katara remembered the look on Master Pakku's face at first, like he thought they were only kidding him, and swallowed.

Chief Arnook turned to her, eyebrows raised. "Is this so?"

Katara made herself stand up, the excellent meal suddenly sitting like a stone in her belly. "It is," she said, voice only wavering a little. "I did ask."

"You are a Waterbender?" said Tuteguk, from Chief Arnook's other side.

"You saw me do it," Katara said, "you must have - I pulled someone off one of your ships with it."

"We thought it was the boy," Tuteguk said to Chief Arnook hurriedly, "he moved at the same time-"

Sokka threw his hands in the air, exasperated. "I was just swinging my oar around; seriously, people, I can't bend-"

"Enough!" Chief Arnook said, bringing a fist down on the high table. "What did she say, Master Pakku?"

Master Pakku waited a long moment, until all eyes were on him. "She said I must," he said at last, scornful, "because she was the Avatar."

More than just murmurs swept the gathering this time; to Katara, it looked like there was approximately an even split between people who were outraged by her presumption and people who simply looked disbelieving.

"Hey," Sokka said, audible over the din only because he was still sitting right next to her feet, and wrapped a hand around her knee. "You are. Bust the place up if you have to. You are."

Katara looked at him for a moment, and then beyond him to Suki, who nodded decisively, and above her, at Aang, who was smiling reassuringly. She turned back to look at Chief Arnook, tipped her chin up, and said, "I am."

Chief Arnook stared at her with narrowed eyes, but he motioned for quiet, and the noise died down. The stillness only lasted a moment before Yue suddenly rose up between them, getting to her feet. "She is," she said, clear-voiced and confident.

Her father looked at her, startled, and then at Master Pakku. "You sound as though you do not believe her," he said neutrally, testing.

"I cannot say," Master Pakku said, but his tone was sharp with disdain. "She spoke to me of things that are long past, of Avatars of legend - impressive enough, I suppose, but I told her it was not for me to determine whether she was truly the one. If she is, and you should wish me to train her, I will abide by your orders; but I will not waste my teachings on a girl without them. That is all."

"And you?" Chief Arnook said to Yue.

"She showed me," Yue said, turning a little; she was still talking to her father, but at this new angle her voice rang out over the gathering like a gong, and the effect was as though she were really speaking to everyone at once. "She speaks to the spirits of past Avatars, and they do as she asks - they tell her things she couldn't know if they were not there. I saw it myself. She is what she says she is." She faced Master Pakku, and, looking at her, Katara was vividly reminded that she was a chief's daughter: she stood tall and imperious, braids like snow draping over her shoulders, her hands tucked in her sleeves. "But no orders are required, Father. She has found another teacher."

"Another teacher?" Master Pakku cried, storming away from his seat and toward the fountain. "Who? Who would agree to do such a thing?"

"I would," Yue said.

***

Master Pakku gaped at her, and Yue had to fight a sudden hysterical urge to smile.

"You would?" Father said incredulously, and over his shoulder, Yue could see Mother staring at her. "What do you mean?"

"The Avatar has asked me to teach her," Yue said, careful to repeat Katara's proper title with the reverence it deserved, "and I have agreed."

"To teach her what?" Master Pakku spat.

Yue looked at him, standing alone and incredulous in front of the fountain, and then over, at all the other startled faces that were turned toward her. Hahn apparently couldn't decide whether he was angry or didn't believe a word of it; Chunyuak and Miktakit were staring at her, open-mouthed, like she had grown a second head; and Tuteguk's jaw was just about in his lap. Yugoda alone only looked resigned, and maybe a little wry, like part of her had been expecting this. And, come to think of it, she had told Yue many times that her talents might lie beyond healing, so perhaps that was not far from the truth.

Yue thought about it for a moment, and decided. If Master Pakku wanted a point to be made here, it would only be polite of her to oblige. So she said nothing; only slid a foot out behind her, dropped her hands into position, and sent a hunk of the ice that formed the high table flying at him. It wasn't quite as smooth as she would have liked - the dishes rattled audibly - but still serviceable.

He was still staring at her, but he lifted his hands reflexively, and the ice sheared in two and skidded past him. By the time one piece had shattered against the lip of the fountain, he had set his feet in a stance, and half the water in the fountain bed was rushing toward her face.

She slid through the gap she had made in the table, and pulled the ice beneath her feet into a snaking path, skimming down it until she reached the base of the slope, on a level with Master Pakku. She coaxed the water he had hurled at her into a controlled curve, and froze it into place just in time - he had used the spare seconds to bend the pieces of her original chunk of ice back at her, and they hit the wall she'd made with a clatter.

When the last of the broken ice was skittering away, she melted her wall again, drawing it effortlessly back into motion - a quick forward curve of her hands, and it leapt at Master Pakku.

He scowled, and thrust his hands up abruptly; the ice beneath his feet pitched and rose, lifting him nearly as high as the spray of water from the fountain, and Yue split her stream in two before she could lose any of it splashing against Master Pakku's impromptu pedestal. Half, she brought curling back into a sphere, for a moment's safekeeping; the other half, she froze into a great boulder of ice, and she flung it at the column Master Pakku had raised with an authoritative sweep of her arm.

The column groaned, cracks splintering through it, and Master Pakku drew up a ramp of ice and leapt to it a moment before pieces of the column began tumbling into the fountain. They were lucky the feasting space was so big, Yue thought, or they would already probably have clipped a few people with the shards of ice flying around. She caught a few of the larger chunks of the column even as they fell, and sent them hurtling toward Master Pakku; he managed to yank the largest of them sideways into a shield, and the others broke against it and showered down like hail.

He was coming down the ramp in a neatly-controlled slide, but she knew better than to let him reach the bottom unimpeded, and she spun her remaining sphere of water out into a wide blade to knock him aside with. But he slid from the end of the ramp just as she swung it toward him, and he froze the end and cracked it apart, sending a dozen long spears of ice back at her.

She braced herself to turn them aside - and then Father shouted, "Stop!", so she leaned back and let them fly overhead instead, to bury themselves, quivering, in the side of the raised path she had bent to take her away from the high table.

It felt like she had just finished a full hour of practice, her heart pounding and her hands tingling with energy; but it must have been less than a minute. All three of their visitors were on their feet, and Father was kneeling with one arm upraised, looking down at her like she was a stranger.

The expression on his face made something in her chest go sickeningly tight; but she tucked her trembling hands back into her sleeves, and bowed to him. "As the chief commands," she said.

"You little-"

"Enough," Father said, and Master Pakku subsided, though he was still glaring at her like he wanted to drown her. Father gazed at her a moment longer, and then turned to Katara. "It is clear that my daughter believes, and by the ways of the Northern Tribe, she is an adult; I cannot presume to know the truth from the little I have seen, but neither can I forbid her from teaching you what she knows if she chooses to do so." He hesitated, and then spoke again. "I understand your reservations, Master Pakku, and I share some of them. You have served Kanjusuk well. But you also cannot stop my daughter from doing as she wishes in this. And even if you could, consider: she seeks to teach the Avatar. If this girl is indeed who she says she is, Yue does the world a great service; and if she is not, then she will gain what skills she can, which does us no harm."

Master Pakku stood without speaking for a long moment, and then, finally, dipped his head. "As the chief commands," he said, and Yue could tell that he meant it, despite the ugly undertone to his voice. He was a man who rarely changed his ways - he would not teach Katara without being ordered to, but he also would not lie to his chief.

Yue let out a quick breath, and the tension behind her ribs eased. She could tell the noise had risen again, people rising from their seats and murmuring incredulously to one another; but she heard it without listening to it, and it sounded about as intelligible to her as the chuckling sound of a stream of water.

"Yue," someone said, low but close by, and took her hand.

It was Mother; she had come down from the high table in the hubbub. Yue looked up into her face, and swallowed.

"I am not pleased that you lied to us," Mother said - but very gently, and the expression on her face was not angry. "And I do not know whether good or ill will come of your skills. But you spoke and acted this evening because you believed, and because what you believed meant it was necessary. That is no small thing, Yue; there are many who cannot say they have done the same. You are a brave girl - a brave woman," Mother corrected herself, and smoothed a fond hand along the fall of Yue's hair. "Whatever comes of these things, I am proud to say that."

"Thank you, Mother," Yue said, and threw her arms around Mother's neck.

***

Yin glanced across the deck, and frowned. She'd thought that perhaps she hadn't been looking in the right place; but not only was Mizan not next to General Iroh, she was not on deck at all.

"Something wrong, Lieutenant?" Zhao said.

It was a fine day - as far north as they already were, the sun was low even at midday, but the sky ahead of them was clear and blue. He had had a table set up on the main deck of the flagship, and spread out his maps and charts there. He had no up-to-date maps of Kanjusuk - Fire Nation scouts sent out into the North Pole rarely returned alive - but what he did have was better than nothing. He and General Iroh had been poring over them for half the day, discussing options for breaching the great ice walls of the Water Tribe city.

General Iroh's expression did not change a jot, but Yin felt nevertheless that there was a certain intensity to his gaze when he looked at her. It was inconceivable that he could have failed to notice his officer's absence, when he had been so specific in requesting that she be allowed to stay on board. He had to know where she was; and he had not mentioned it to Zhao. Had he - probably rightly - feared that a request for full freedom of movement for her might be denied? Or was he trying to keep Zhao's attention away from her entirely?

Either way, Yin thought, there was no particular reason why she should suddenly start being helpful to Zhao today. "Nothing, sir," she said. "My apologies. My mind was elsewhere."

Zhao smiled; this whole invasion venture was making him almost cheerful. "Of course, of course," he said, "I understand. It is indeed a thrilling prospect, to battle Kanjusuk; I am distracted by it myself."

More like obsessed, Yin thought. "Exactly so, sir," she said.

Zhao turned back to the maps, mouth still faintly upturned; but General Iroh looked at her a moment longer, and then, so barely she might have been imagining it, dipped his chin in a nod.

The Avatar had turned so many things upside down, Yin thought, restraining a sigh. She had done a series of increasingly insane things, and Kishen had not betrayed her for a single one of them, though she still didn't know why; a strange soldier in a spirit mask had saved the Avatar the one time she had been unable to do it herself; and now the Dragon of the West was tacitly thanking her for keeping secrets from her commanding officer - who still technically required her respect, boorish madman though he might be.

"If you will excuse me, sir," she said, "I'll take a moment to survey the deck."

Zhao waved her away, the vast majority of his attention focused on the walls sketched out on the page in front of him, and Yin bowed and stepped away.

As she passed the ship's midsection, Kishen caught her eye; he was standing by the rail, looking across the deck, and when he saw her, he followed her back to the starboard-side stern. He didn't say anything, and neither did she. But it was a comfort to simply have him standing there. Looking back off the stern of the flagship, the view was of dozens of battleships, red banners flapping, and coal-smoke rising in a great dark cloud. Even a legion of ostrich horses could not help her this time; but with Kishen at her shoulder, she felt a little less insignificant in the face of it all - a little less alone.

Chapter Twelve: The Battle for the North

"Close," Yue said - but she was using the politely encouraging tone that meant Katara was missing something yet again. Katara sighed and let her arms drop, the water that had been hovering beside her tumbling down to pool on the floor.

"What is it this time?"

"It's only a little - off," Yue said, apologetic.

They had been working together for a week and a half now, and Katara could tell that she was already immensely better than she had been before. But it was just as obvious that she still wasn't a master, and every time she flubbed a move and then had to watch Yue demonstrate it again, graceful and easy, she felt like she might never get there.

"You remember what I told you about jing?" Yue said.

"The potential directions of energy," Katara recited, "and the battle strategies they correspond to. Positive jing is outward motion, advancement, attack; negative jing is inward motion, defense or evasion. Neutral jing is stillness - waiting for the right moment. Waterbending is about ebb and flow, transitioning between positive jing and negative and back again. I remember it, I just can't-" She motioned helplessly.

"Just remembering it isn't everything," Yue said gently, "or everyone would be a master Waterbender in about five minutes." She drew the pool of water up and made it sway beside her, back and forth, with an easy repetitive movement of her hands. "It's like the ocean. Like the legend says - the first Waterbenders learned by watching the moon and the tides, the push and the pull. It won't always be as obvious as this," and Yue let the water slide back to the floor, "but it will always be the guiding principle, the heart of the pattern."

Gran-Gran had told Katara the same legend many times, and she remembered watching Master Pakku and his students perform, remembered seeing the tide-like shift in their motions even before she had any idea there was such a thing as jing. She knew that was what Yue meant; she sighed again, but the swell of frustration had subsided. She still wasn't sure how to pull the same pattern into her own bending, but at least she knew Yue wasn't making things up just to thwart her.

"Time for a rest," Yue said authoritatively, and lifted the water back into her bending pouch. Katara had helped her make it, since there was no way Master Pakku would, and she wore it openly around the city now, the same way the men did. Of course, it seemed perfectly reasonable to Katara, and she might well have forgotten that it was even unusual if it weren't for the way people stared at it when they walked around in the city.

They were practicing in the chief's palace - the same floor Yue had taken them to when she'd first showed them that she could Waterbend - since there was no way they'd be able to work in the same arena where Master Pakku taught. Aang practiced with them sometimes, but he liked to explore the city more. Which wasn't surprising; Katara knew it had to be hard for him, to watch with them and perform the motions alongside them, and move nothing. There was no way it was fun to be constantly reminded that you were technically dead.

Yue sat down, leaning sideways against the balcony rail, and Katara followed suit, glancing over at her thoughtfully. She'd fought Master Pakku so well, and she was always so graceful and composed while they were practicing - Katara sometimes forgot she was Sokka's age. "What does Hahn think?" Yue had mentioned her betrothed a few times, though usually pretty briefly.

"I don't know," Yue admitted. "I haven't spoken to him since."

"In a week and a half?" Katara said.

Yue shot her a look, somewhere between quelling and regretful. "I will marry him," she said, "and without complaint, because it will strengthen our people. His clan only came to shelter in the city last year, because the Fire Nation raided their hunting route; it has been a difficult adjustment for everyone, but a marriage will make our true unity clear." She shrugged one shoulder. "But that doesn't mean we ... talk often." She looked out at the city, and then suddenly smiled. "But my mother is pleased with me."

"She is?"

"I told her what you did - getting the former Avatar to listen to me, and tell you what I said," Yue said. "She believes you are who you say you are now, and she's glad there's someone to teach you, someone who wants to."

"Believe me, so am I," Katara said, grinning, and reached over to squeeze Yue's wrist. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't offered."

"Probably cracked an ice floe over Master Pakku's head," Yue said, and giggled. "You looked mad enough to, when you came back to the palace."

"Actually, I feel sort of reassured, now that you bring him up," Katara said. "I mean, if he can master give-and-take, then so can I."

"Of course you can," Yue said, and got to her feet again. "Come on, try again right now, while you're still thinking about it."

Katara made a face, but obediently stood up, and made herself keep thinking about push and pull, moon and ocean - Yue and Hahn, herself and Master Pakku.

She couldn't have pinpointed the difference if her life depended on it, but she could tell it was there as soon as she drew the water from her pouch and started the sequence. There was more sway somehow; she was letting the energy build and fall the way it wanted to, instead of fighting to press it forward all the time, or holding it back.

She lost the rhythm of it partway through, and let the water drop, making a face. But Yue was grinning, and clapped her on the shoulder happily. "That was much better," she said, genuinely encouraging this time. "Now do it again."

Katara raised her arms, took a deep breath, and bent.

***

"Yes, again," Suki said, and raised her fans.

"But I'm tired," Sokka said mournfully, holding his own pair up like a shield. "Come on, have some pity. I still have all those bruises from yesterday."

"And you earned them, you're getting so much better," Suki said. "You could totally give ten-year-old me a run for her money now."

"... That helps," Sokka said, expression flat, and then, after a long beat, let himself crack a smile. "Come on, it's a nice day and we're on a three-hundred-foot ice wall looking over the ocean. Let's sit back and relax."

Suki made a face at him so he'd know just how reluctant she was, and then shoved her fans into her belt and hurriedly pulled her mittens on. Maybe she'd been working him a little harder than usual, but when they were sparring was just about the only time she felt warm. Yue had lent her a parka, of course, but it was still incredibly cold. She didn't know how a whole city of people could live in a place like this.

Sokka sat down on the parapet easily, even though it was made of ice. If she asked him about it, she bet he'd say it was the tiger sealskin pants, but she had a pair on, too, and she still didn't want to sit on ice.

But there was nowhere else to sit; so she did, and then, on a whim, scooted closer, until they were touching almost all the way from shoulders to knees.

"Uh," Sokka said.

Suki let herself grin a little. "It's really, really cold here," she said.

"Yeah," Sokka said immediately, "it, uh. Yeah."

She chuckled and shook her head at the same time, and let her shoulder relax a little further into Sokka. Maybe she had a bit of an ulterior motive, but he really was pretty warm. "You're so articulate," she said, still smiling, and looked at him; he was staring back at her, wide-eyed. "I like that."

"You do," Sokka repeated cautiously, and shifted his knee over, testing, like he was expecting her to jump up and run away.

Suki beamed at him, and then turned to look back out over the city. "I do," she said.

***

It only took about five minutes after that for Katara and Yue to come strolling along the walltop, and Sokka had to admit he was a little grateful for it - something about being alone with Suki was suddenly making it really difficult for him to form complete sentences.

Suki saw them first, and grinned, waving a hand in greeting. "Aren't you guys supposed to be practicing?" she called out.

"We're taking a break!" Katara said. They came closer, and Sokka waited for Suki to shift away; but she didn't move an inch, and something in his chest turned over unsteadily.

Katara came to a stop a few feet away, Yue only a step behind, and raised her eyebrows at him, one side of her mouth twitching up. But she didn't say anything about it, so he didn't either - he just rubbed a hand over the nape of his neck and cleared his throat. "So," he said instead, "are you a master yet?"

Katara shrugged. "I'm closer than I was last week," she said, a little ruefully, and Yue elbowed her.

"Ignore her, she's doing wonderfully," Yue said. "She was already very good, and she's only getting better."

Katara made a face and shook her head, but there was a tiny pleased smile threatening to break free from the corners of her mouth, and Sokka grinned at her unrepentantly. It had torn at her so much, to feel like she didn't know what she was doing when lives were depending on her - it was a relief to see her looking so happy with herself.

Suki laughed next to him, the vibration thrumming through his shoulder, and then suddenly twitched back. "Oh - I thought it was a bug," she said, and lifted her mittened hand.

"What, some kind of cold-hardy ice bug?" Sokka said, and then went still. It wasn't quite a snowflake that was resting on Suki's palm - it was tinged a deep gray-black. He met Katara's eyes, which had gone suddenly grave, and they both looked out over the ocean, because they knew what that meant.

Really, they were lucky - the wind was blowing just the right direction to give them early warning. There were no ships on the horizon, not yet, but there was a low dark cloud; Sokka had thought before that it only meant a storm, but now it was obvious.

"What is it?" Suki said, her free hand tight on his shoulder.

"Fire Nation ships," Sokka said, "a fleet. This happened at home - the coal-smoke made it snow black."

"They've come for me," Katara said, every trace of a smile wiped from her face; but Yue caught at her arm.

"They've come for us," she said firmly, "and thanks to you, we'll have time to prepare."

***

Mizan had never been much of a tea drinker, but her ambivalence was rapidly transforming into hatred - General Iroh seemed to pour her a cup every time she turned around, like he thought plying her with it would keep her from yelling at Zhao.

To be fair, it actually sort of had so far; it was distracting, trying to figure out how to get rid of it without being insulting. Still, if she got handed one more brimming cup of ginseng she hadn't asked for, she was going to take the teapot and throw it at Iroh's head.

Well, no, probably she wouldn't. But she might throw it at Zhao's.

There was a reason she had never officially made an especially high rank, even before she'd been shunted onto the vessel designated to ferry Zuko off into exile, and it wasn't because she was a poor fighter or a poor sailor. She didn't see the point in insults so veiled no one could see them, and it was no good being smart enough to notice that people were acting like idiots if you couldn't also tell them so.

And it worked well, on Zuko's ship; after the things they had been through sailing the far reaches of the world for three full years - nearly four, now - formality and diplomacy were something of a lost cause. She was polite to Zuko and Iroh, certainly, but she was also used to letting them know exactly what she thought and why she thought it. Apparently, Mizan thought darkly, exile had been her ideal career path.

"It must bother you," she said aloud.

The lieutenant leaning against the rail an armslength away straightened up, and blinked. "What must bother me?" she said.

"Him," Mizan said, tilting her head to indicate Zhao. He was standing off in front of the bridge, poring over his charts, and occasionally pausing to yell at people.

The lieutenant's eyes flicked from Mizan to Zhao and back. "I couldn't say," she said delicately.

A resounding yes if Mizan had ever heard one. "And you just - put up with it?"

The lieutenant pursed her lips, glancing across the deck again. "Hypothetically speaking," she said, "if I happened to be under the command of an officer with whom I perenially disagreed, I might find there were ways to compensate. Usually," she added, looking back at the lines of ships to stern. "Such an officer's focus might, hypothetically, be quite narrow. He - if the officer were, for the sake of example, a man - might see mostly what he wished to see. 'When you are sad, nothing looks cheerful.'" The lieutenant's mouth quirked. "Hypothetically, I might find myself taking refuge in works of philosophy."

Clearly, she was naturally even-tempered - not a trait to which Mizan could lay claim. Still, Mizan couldn't argue that it hadn't worked for her; she was the one on the flagship of an imperial fleet because she belonged there, not because her ship had been halfway blown up and then pressed into service. "Your hypothetical officer is lucky. You're a more loyal lieutenant than I would be, under the same circumstances."

The lieutenant turned her face away and coughed, an oddly laugh-like sound. "I'm not sure that's the way I'd put it," she said, when she had recovered; and then she slanted a glance at Mizan, and leaned a little closer. "For example, if I had noticed an honored guest's companion went missing a few times a day, I might have forgotten to mention it to him. Hypothetically."

Mizan stared at her. "Hypothetically," she repeated.

The lieutenant smiled, very faintly.

"What's your name again?"

"Yin," the lieutenant said.

"Yin," Mizan echoed. "From the eastern islands, then?"

Lieutenant Yin had opened her mouth to reply when a lookout cried, "The walls!" and they both turned automatically to look out across the water. "The walls of Kanjusuk!" he shouted again. And, sure enough, there was a distinct regularity to the furthest edge of the ice cliffs, if Mizan squinted.

Lieutenant Yin shot her a grim look. "Time for you to go missing again, I'm guessing," she said.

"And you'd be right," Mizan said, turning away. Zuko was going to want to know they were almost there. At least when they got there, she thought, General Iroh might stop trying to drown her in tea.

***

The sound of the great warning drums rolled over the city like thunder, and by the time they had come down from the wall and reached the great public hall of the palace, it was full of people, all murmuring worriedly to each other. It had been a long time since the last attack by the Fire Nation - but not so long that anyone had forgotten the stories.

Father pounded his pike against the ice, and the drums rumbled to a halt, the whole hall going still. "The day we have feared for so long has arrived," he said, face somber as he looked out at them. "The Fire Nation is once again at our doorstep. I will not deceive you: the Fire Nation is a powerful foe, and many lives will be lost in the coming days. I mourn to think that even one of the faces before me now will not grace my eyes again; but those who vanish from our halls will never vanish from our hearts. We will remember." He paused, and, for a moment, the hall was absolutely silent.

Then Mother stepped up beside him. "We call upon the great spirits in our hour of need," she said, and in the quiet of the hall, her voice was clear and audible even though she had barely raised it. "Tui and La, Moon and Ocean, our teachers and companions, be with us."

A moment ago, Yue would've said Father's expression could not have gotten any more grave; but it did. "Among our battle plans, there is a mission whose success might save us all - but only those who volunteer may go. There are many reasons a man might choose to stay on a safer path, and no one need feel ashamed for any of them."

Tuteguk stepped forward immediately; so did Hahn, Yue saw. Mother held the bowl of paint, and Father daubed each of their foreheads in turn with three waving lines.

"I'll go," Sokka said next to her. Katara clutched his arm, mouth open; but at the look on his face, she closed it again, and simply squeezed his elbow. They weren't far from the dais, and it took him only a few steps before he was standing in front of Father.

Yue thought later that she must have somehow known it was coming, because she turned to look at Suki before the girl had even moved at all. But move she did, and before anyone had time to object, she was waiting calmly by Father's elbow.

Father stared at her, and she looked back evenly, not petulant or arrogant, only sure of herself. His fingers were hovering in the air between them, wet with fresh war-paint, and he hesitated for a long moment.

"You can't be serious," Hahn said loudly, and Yue stifled the urge to sigh.

Suki didn't look at him - didn't even acknowledge that he had spoken. She kept her eyes on Father, and waited.

Father glanced at Hahn, but said nothing; he looked again at Suki, and then, startlingly, at Yue. And then he drew in a breath, and set his fingers to Suki's forehead. "We cannot turn away any aid, certainly not when it is so generously offered," he said, sliding his fingers toward the bridge of Suki's nose to form the appropriate lines. When he was finished, Suki moved away, joining the line of volunteers next to Sokka.

The pause grew long, and for a moment Yue thought that perhaps no one else would step up, the perceived shame of volunteering after a woman too great to bear. But Miktakit's oldest brother, Kilurak, bit his lip and climbed to the dais; the skin of his cheeks showed a faint red flush, but he held still for the lines Father marked on his forehead, and then went and stood next to Suki, and left only a handswidth between them.

*

In the end, there were nine volunteers - there might have been more, but Father stopped after Utanut, saying the mission was one of stealth, and more warriors would only hinder it, however skilled they might be. Tuteguk led them toward the palace, and Suki shot Yue and Katara one last smile before they hurried away.

"We also hope to thin their numbers before they reach us," Father said, when it was quiet again and he had wiped his fingers clean of paint. He turned to Yue; she was fairly certain she was the only one aside from Mother who could have detected the faint traces of uncertainty in his face. "Here, also, our need is dire-"

"Do not do this," Master Pakku said, almost a groan. "Is our shame not great enough already?"

Mother took a step forward, anger etched deeply on her face. "Our need is greater," she said, very even. "And there is no shame in accepting the assistance of the Avatar. My daughter is an accomplished bender - surely that has been demonstrated beyond a doubt. And our sister from the south grows more skilled daily." Mother paused, eyes narrowing. "Tell me, Pakku: if you dangled from a cliff's edge, would you refuse a helping hand because I, not my husband, offered it to you?"

Master Pakku's mouth thinned, and he made no answer.

"You heard of the ships from the south, as we all did," Mother said. "You were told of the women who sailed on them-"

"Ah, yes, it has done wonders for the Southern Tribe, having their women fight," Master Pakku spat, and turned his gaze along the dais until he found Katara. "Tell me, then: how many of you are left, now?"

Katara's eyes went hard. "I wouldn't be alive today, if it weren't for my mother's skill with a knife," she said. "She gutted the soldiers who came to kill me when I was a child. Three of whom were women. Tell me, then: have you forgotten that those wonders were done to us by the Fire Nation, whose women are captains and generals?"

"Oh, a fine argument," Master Pakku said, "yes; let us do as the Fire Nation does, we could ask for no better model of righteousness."

"Today is not a day for philosophy," Father said, wry, before Katara could snap back. "If my daughter's defense of her home and people should give me the urge to invade the Earth Kingdoms, you must trust me to suppress it for a time. All our Waterbenders must go to hinder the coming of their fleet - all. I will not devote less than my full strength to the preservation of this city, and neither will my daughter; if you feel you cannot say the same, Master Pakku, tell me so."

Master Pakku stared at him for a long moment, and then, reluctantly, tipped his head the barest degree. "They must follow my orders," he said, "I cannot do with less."

"Their orders must be just," Father countered, but he caught Yue's eye, and she nodded in response. She would do as Master Pakku said, in a battle with the fate of the city at stake; and so would Katara, Yue was certain, even if she wasn't going to like doing it very much.

Master Pakku's lips pinched in distaste, but he bowed. "To the boats, then," he said.

***

Tuteguk led them around to the side of the palace, into a moderately large room that had clearly been put together with military mission preparations in mind; Suki was intending to take a good look around, but Hahn rounded on her the moment she crossed the threshold.

She'd never spoken to him herself, but Yue had pointed him out a few times - never, Suki had noticed, with an especially warm expression on her face. She suspected she was about to learn why.

"Just what do you think you're playing at?"

"Playing at?" Suki looked a little more carefully at his face. "You - you're that boy I hit with my oar, aren't you? How long did the bruise last?"

Hahn's scowl darkened.

"Probably a while," Sokka said, "if it was anything like the ones I get from you."

"You fight her?" one of the other warriors said, incredulous.

"Yeah, of course I do," Sokka said breezily. "When I've got a club, we're probably about even; but I've won twice with the fans, so far."

"One and a half times," Suki allowed.

Hahn snorted. "Fans?" he said, and gave Sokka a disdainful look. "I'm starting to think we shouldn't let either of them fight."

"Is that so," Suki said, already crouched low; and when he turned to look for her, she swung a leg around in a wide arc and knocked his feet out from under him.

To his credit, he was fast; he didn't flail in surprise, only twisted to catch himself on his forearm, and then sprang back up. She considered pulling out her fans - but he was unarmed, and he'd be angry enough if she beat him as it was.

So she used her hands and feet instead. He was decent at blocking, but slower than Sokka had been, even at the beginning, and he kept forgetting to keep track of her legs - of course, if he was used to fighting with the pike the Northern Tribe seemed to favor, Suki thought, then he didn't usually have to. Still, it was a respectable thirty seconds before she managed to pin him down with a knee on his chest and lay a forearm across his throat.

"Satisfied yet?" she said.

He tried to shove her off, somewhat less than effectively; she waited it out, and then pressed her arm down just a little harder.

"You did better than I did the first time, if that helps," Sokka said from above her, grin wide in the corner of her eye.

Hahn blew out a breath, and grudgingly dropped his hands to the floor. "Enough," he said.

She let go of him and stood up, brushing loose hair out of her face. "Everybody else happy, or do I have to fight the other six of you, too?"

"You could not beat us all," Tuteguk said.

"No, probably not," Suki admitted. "But neither could he," and she nodded to Hahn, who was still picking himself up off the floor. "Probably none of you could beat seven in a row without a rest, so obviously that's not the qualification I'm lacking."

"No qualification is required," Chief Arnook said from the doorway, "except your willingness to help us."

He had an excellent stern glare; Suki almost ducked her head in the face of it, even though he wasn't directing it at her.

"Now, if we are finished with this, I will explain the purpose of your mission," he said.

Chief Arnook kept speaking; but she missed the first part, because Sokka leaned over to murmur in her ear. "Just so you know," he said, "that was totally beautiful," and Suki was hard-pressed not to grin.

***

The mission was simple enough, at least in the abstract: find the flagship, get on it, find the fleet commander, and kill whoever it was. And it made decent sense - somebody had to coordinate the attack, and if that person were suddenly dead, it would be a pretty unpleasant blow.

It was the uniforms Sokka couldn't handle. Although, in retrospect, he should have found a better way to let Chief Arnook know it. Laughing out loud had been kind of impolite.

Chief Arnook raised an eyebrow. "You have a suggestion, perhaps?" he said, very dryly.

Sokka held up his hands defensively, but Suki elbowed him - obviously, she'd noticed it, too. "Well, sort of," he said. "It's just that your uniforms are all wrong. And I mean all wrong." He stepped forward and reached out to flick the shoulderpiece of the uniform Chief Arnook was hefting. "Fire Nation uniforms don't have these points on the shoulders anymore. And the buckles are different. The helmet-" He made a face. "Totally off. Where did you even get these?"

"They were captured, in the last great battle in the city," Chief Arnook said. "The northern raiders who plague those clans who still wander the ice wear other uniforms, nothing like the navy - so we have saved these."

"Okay, and when was that?" Sokka said, exceedingly patient.

"When my father was young," Chief Arnook admitted. "At least seventy years' time."

"I knew it," Sokka said. Nobody ever seemed to think about these things but him. "Look, unless the plan is to make them think they're having visions of the spirits of their ancestors, we need to make some serious changes to those."

"How can we know you're telling the truth?" Hahn snapped.

"Um, hello?" Sokka said. "I'm going on this mission, too - if I screw this up, I get just as dead as you do."

Chief Arnook bowed his head in acknowledgement. "A fair point," he said. "Very well. Tell us what to do."

***

Zuko took a deep breath and stared down at the frothing wake below him.

This part of the plan had been about the same since the beginning - and the part Mizan had disparaged the most, because, as she put it, after Zuko paddled through the choppy arctic water to the edge of the giant ice cliffs, all he had to do was find a way to get inside walls that had kept the Fire Nation out over the course of a full century of war.

And he remembered every point he had made in reply - how else did she expect him to get in, anyway? He had no uniform, and on a flagship in motion, one going missing would likely prompt a thorough search.

It was just that he had been a deck over the boiler for a week and a half, and the water looked awfully cold.

"Your bending can warm you, Prince Zuko," Uncle said, like he had heard Zuko thinking. "It may save your life - do not forget."

"I won't, Uncle," Zuko said.

"And keep low, those clothes will only help you hide once you are on the ice."

"I know, Uncle," Zuko said.

"And be-" Uncle paused, swallowing. "Be careful, Zuko, please. Forgive an old man's self-delusion: I have often thought of you-"

"Uncle, you don't have to-"

"Please," Uncle Iroh said, very low, and Zuko closed his mouth. "I have often thought of you as another son to me. I cannot lose two."

Zuko cleared his throat, closing his eyes. It was terribly distracting when Uncle got maudlin; the annoyance of it was making Zuko's chest clench. "You won't," he said. Weakness, almost certainly, but there was no one to see it but Uncle; so he let himself turn and clasp Uncle's arm above the elbow. "I'll come back. With the Avatar," he added. It would not do to lose sight of his goal, not when he was once again so close.

Uncle helped him lower himself in the little canoe - his own, he had brought it with him to the ship, so its absence would not be noticed - and when it finally settled into the water, he undid the ties. Uncle would haul the ropes back up and return them to their proper places, and, with any luck, no one would know any of this had happened. Not until it was too late.

The chop of the water actually helped him, in a certain sense: it was far harder to paddle than it might have been on a less windy day, but he was not the only small patch of white near the ship, with all the froth. He let the canoe move with the waves, instead of simply paddling straight away from the ship, until he had safely reached the edge of the fleet. It truly was an impressive force, and if he had not known who commanded it, he might have been proud to see such a fine array of Fire Nation ships mustered.

The ice cliffs near Kanjusuk were not uniformly sheer and even. There were nooks and crannies; ice floes that once had been free but had frozen on; slopes that had melted into a slant some sunny day and refrozen that way.

They were, however, uniformly infested with turtle seals, and Zuko had to literally sweep the ice clear to get out of the canoe, shoving honking turtle seals aside with the end of his paddle.

He hauled the canoe up onto the ice with him, and melted part of the nearest cliffside away until he could fit the canoe into it - it would be hidden, there, and unless the turtle seals banded together to throw it into the sea, it would be safe from wind and water until he returned for it.

He had to shove more of them out of the way to get a good look along the ice wall at the city in the distance; four were irritated enough to slide grumpily into the ocean, and two more hurried away down a hole in the ice.

A hole in the ice. Zuko turned back around in time to see a third dive. None of them came back up - there had to be another end.

Zuko hesitated. There was a degree of depth that did not frighten him, because he could always melt the ice above him away; but too deep, and he would not be able to rise above the level of the water before his breath was gone. So close, he reminded himself firmly, and inhaled.

***

"As your advisor," General Iroh said, "let me advise you, Sub-Admiral: it would be unwise to continue our advance after sundown."

Yin closed her eyes in relief. Someone had had to say it, and she had been hoping it wouldn't be her; she had been walking a tightrope with Zhao for so long, she hadn't been looking forward to giving herself a good shove.

They had done well today, coming in close to the city with no great mishaps, the largest of the free icebergs carefully avoided. The Northern Tribe's chief had sent Waterbenders out to slow them, and they had, to some degree; but perhaps thirty ships constituted no great loss to a mind like Zhao's, and certainly not when the fleet numbered in the hundreds. But this late in the year, and as far north as they were, the sun was close to down already, and the moon near full - not exactly ideal conditions for an attack on a city full of Waterbenders.

But now that the general had broached the subject, she thought, it would be unbecoming not to tell Zhao that she agreed wholeheartedly. "Sir," she said, "the general is entirely correct-"

"Yes, yes, of course he is," Zhao said, so affably that Yin could feel her eyes widening; and then, even more disturbingly, he laughed. "He is, though he does not yet fully understand why. There is a greater plan at work, General, more than simple battle tactics. As it happens, however, your advice suits both, for the moment."

Yin thought it unlikely that Zhao could have managed to sound more ominous to her ears if he had been trying, though it was possible the man had unplumbed depths. She glanced at General Iroh; it was obvious that he felt a similar sense of foreboding, but then Zhao turned to him and the expression smoothed away like it had never been there, wariness replaced neatly by a look of polite inquiry.

"Perhaps I will tell you the tale tonight," Zhao said, still jovial, "and you'll see just what I mean."

***

Katara took the hand Sokka offered, and let him pull her off the boat - she had never bent for so long before, except perhaps during their long escape to Shinsotsu, and her arms and legs were having a fair amount of trouble doing what she asked them to. Yue was still too graceful to wobble on her way off; but she did sit down as soon as they were on level ground, and Katara followed suit gratefully, Aang drifting down beside her.

Sokka and Suki looked at them hopefully; Katara glanced at Yue, and saw her own exhaustion mirrored on Yue's face. "We did the best we could," she said quietly, scrubbing a hand across her forehead. And it was true, they had - even Master Pakku had not complained about their progress. But they'd still only made the barest dent. Katara made a face. Calling it a dent might even have been a little bit too generous. "There are just so many of them."

"You mean dozens," Suki said, "or-"

"Hundreds," Yue said. "Perhaps even a thousand - I doubt we could see them all from where we were."

"We got close to the flagship once," Katara said. "It's Zhao."

She closed her eyes after she said it, and tipped her head forward, letting the silence grow. She'd been so stupid, thinking that getting to Kanjusuk would solve all her problems - she should have known it would never be that simple. She wondered grimly how Zhao had done it. Had he told the Fire Lord she was here, or had he just taken the fleet and come for her on his own authority?

Someone's hand came down on her wrist, and she looked up - it was Yue. "Even if he is here because of you," Yue said, "they would have come for us one day. And I, at least, am glad that if they had to come, they did it on a day when the Avatar is with us." She paused, and something in her face came suddenly alight. "Yes - of course," she said, "why didn't I think of it sooner?"

"Of what?" Katara said.

"The spirits," Yue said. "There is a place in the city where they hear our voices most clearly. You are the Avatar, they might hear you best - perhaps you could even pass across the border of worlds, in such a place. You could find them, and bring them here to help us."

Katara started to shake her head, but Aang had jumped up beside her. "I could help you meditate," he said, "the monks trained all of us to do it for hours and hours. It couldn't hurt anything - don't you think we should at least try?"

When he put it like that, Katara thought, it was hard to argue with him. "All right," she said. "Show me where it is."

Sokka and Suki leapt up to follow them, but before they had gone more than a handful of steps, the city drums pounded out three rolling beats. "The mission," Sokka said, looking torn. "It's leaving at first dark."

"Go, go," Katara said, shoving at his shoulder. "No spirit would come to me while you were around anyway, you're so loud."

"For a reincarnation of an ancient symbol of balance, you're really hilarious," Sokka said, and punched her affectionately in the arm. "Don't break the spirit world while we're gone."

He grabbed Suki's hand, and they sprinted off together toward the side of the palace.

"Come on," Yue said, tugging Katara up the steps. "Quickly!"

***

The Fire Nation armor might have been fixed to look appropriately new, but it showed its age in a dozen other small ways, and it was a struggle to get the musty plating to stay in place. It felt odd, too, to go to battle wearing red, and with her face covered by a helmet instead of paint - her forehead felt far too light without her headdress.

It was almost as strange to look at the Fire Nation soldier next to her, and have the faceplate slide away to reveal Sokka. "Seventy-year-old Fire Nation army sweat," he said, making a face. "Fantastic."

Because there were only nine of them, they needed a single boat, and Chief Arnook had had one prepared, stained almost black so that it would blend in with the water, which was dark as pitch now that the sun had set.

It didn't take long to find the fleet's flagship - Suki knew the Fire Nation didn't always see much point in subtlety, but the banners that hung from the bridge were almost twice as wide as usual, and the deck fairly blazed with light.

They came up near the stern, and the four among them who could Waterbend made short work of the sentries on the lower rear deck, without making much more noise than ordinary waves against the hull. It was easy enough to pass through the rest of the ship, disguised as they were - it might have helped if they had been able to plan their route beforehand, but even as it was, they only took two or three wrong turns.

They reached the main deck still nine strong, and paused by the bridge to regroup - and it was a lucky thing they did, or they might never have heard Zhao.

"Indeed," he said loudly, and Suki flattened herself against the wall reflexively. But it seemed to be the middle of a shift, everyone on the deck settled at their posts; and Zhao had apparently been going on in this vein for quite some time, because no one so much as looked over. "The library itself. Damned curious thing - I've never been able to find it again, no matter where I look. But then I suppose I found everything I needed the first time through."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said a careful voice, "but what exactly was it you found?"

The sound of it was distinctly familiar - Suki hadn't talked to her as much as Katara had, and had only the faint memory from Jindao to guide her, but she was fairly certain that it was Lieutenant Yin, purported liberator of ostrich horses.

"Nothing less," Zhao said, clearly relishing every syllable, "than the location of the moon and ocean spirits."

They all knew better than to gasp aloud, but Suki's shoulder was pressed up next to Sokka's, and she could feel him draw a sharp breath.

"Both reside in the mortal world," Zhao continued, "but it is the moon spirit which most draws my interest. The ocean does not concern me; but the moon inspires the power of Waterbenders. My search through the library enlightened me as to its form, and with that knowledge in hand, it will be a simple matter to destroy it." He laughed. "Peculiar, is it not, to think that a spirit of such power would choose to chain itself to a body so easy to kill?"

"Illuminating, I think," said a third voice, another man's, very warily. "That the moon and ocean spirits should care so deeply for the mortal world as to become a part of it, despite the risks, speaks of a love that should not be underestimated."

"Love," Zhao said, tone amused. "The greatest weakness of all, if it brings even the spirits low."

"Sir, surely you cannot intend to - to kill the moon?" Lieutenant Yin sounded almost exactly the way Suki felt: like the idea was so anathema she could barely put it into words.

"On the contrary, Lieutenant, you have grasped the idea precisely." Zhao chuckled. "We have withdrawn from our attack, as you both advised - and as the Water Tribe undoubtedly expected. The full moon tonight gives them great strength, and they will not be on their guard until the morning. Of course, when we move into the city, even in the middle of the night it will not take long for them to muster their forces against us, and it will be a difficult battle. But once the moon is dead, their powers will leave them, and the city will be ours."

"What are we waiting for?" Hahn hissed. "Let's kill him and be done with it!"

Sokka dropped low next to Suki, and inched back into the corridor. "We have to tell Chief Arnook," he argued. "There's two other people in there - what if they shout an alarm before we can kill them, too? We're on a flagship in the middle of the fleet; if we all die, who's going to warn the city?"

"If everybody in there dies, that'll be the end of it!" Hahn snapped.

"We do not know that," Tuteguk murmured. "What if he has already given orders to another group of soldiers - made it a secret mission, like ours? We cannot be certain."

"If none of you are going to-"

Suki was already shuffling back, but she had lost him in the dark - she'd needed him to say one more thing before she could aim well enough to crack a fan against the back of his skull. He dropped like a rock; but she'd touched Sokka's shoulder on her way past, and Sokka caught him before his body could thump against the deck.

"Girl, what are you-"

"Look," Suki whispered, before Tuteguk could finish, "I know Chief Arnook ordered us to complete this task. But the situation's different now - we know something he didn't know when he sent us out here. We can split up, take the boat back to warn the city and kill Zhao at the same time; but that means leaving some of us to die on this ship, and I don't like that. We can all go back. Or we can all fight Zhao. What we couldn't have done was let this idiot run in there by himself and get all of us killed."

Her eyes were starting to adjust to the dark, now that she was further from the lit window of the bridge, and she met each warrior's eyes in turn. "So. Time to choose."

***

Yue took them back behind the palace, about as close to the wild ice as it was possible to get, and showed them a small door set into the wall. "We call it the Spirit Oasis," she said, and pushed the door open.

The air that billowed from behind it was oddly warm - not the blazing heat of a Fire Nation boiler, but more like a gently exhaled breath than the usual chill wind of the north.
Katara edged inside, Aang following through the wall to her left, and almost immediately pulled her parka off; the peculiar warmth of the place was even more obvious on the other side of the wall. There was a lake in front of her, with a circle of grass in the middle that somehow managed not to look out of place. Yue led her along a path of ice, and across one of the two small bridges to the island of green - there was another pool in the middle, this one moon-round, and a gate on the far side of it.

"This is amazing," Katara said, utterly sincere.

Yue smiled. "We are told it is where the spirits live," she said. "This is where my parents took me, when I was a baby. They held me in the water and begged for my life, and after a moment, my hair turned white, and I cried for the first time."

"I can believe it," Katara said, kneeling down and dipping a hand reverently into the water. It was warm to the touch, and seemed different: smoother, perhaps. It was like the essence of water, somehow more watery than water itself. She glanced across the pool, smiling - there were even fish in it. "If there's anywhere I can get to the spirit world, this is it."

*

"Deep breaths. But not too deep. And even - don't hold them or anything, but make them long."

Katara pressed her lips together tightly, so that nothing unkind could escape, and tried to take a not-too-deep, even, long-but-unheld breath.

At first, it had been a pleasure to sit down on the soft grass and close her eyes; but Aang insisted on utter stillness, and the longer she sat there, the more irritations she could feel. Something was poking her in the ankle, and one of the seams of her shirt was itching fiercely. There was something wrong with her hair, too - one of the beads had snared a strand somehow, and it was starting to hurt.

"Aang-"

"Transcend it," Aang intoned over her shoulder.

Katara clenched her teeth.

Aang drifted forward until he was looking her in the eye, and grinned at her, just a touch ruefully. "Monk Gyatso used to tell me that all the time. He made me do this while I was sitting on tree roots, once, and right when I almost had it, he threw a fruit pie at my head." He shook his head at the memory. "I was so angry - I waited a whole week to get him back, and when I did, he just opened his eyes, scooped some of the filling off his face, and ate it."

Katara smiled despite herself.

"I'm sorry," Aang said, a little abashed, "I meant it to help. But you can do it; really, I should stop talking, and you shouldn't try so hard. Just - transcend."

"But how can I if I'm doing it wrong?" Katara said.

"The only way to do it wrong," Aang said, "is not to try."

"Monk Gyatso tell you that, too?" she asked.

Aang beamed.

Katara sighed, and unfolded herself for a minute, scratching her shoulder and readjusting her hair. And then she tucked her legs back together and brought her hands into position, sucked in a breath, closed her eyes, and made herself let go.

*

She had no idea how long it took - probably half the reason it had worked at all, she thought, was because she'd stopped worrying about the passage of time. But when she opened her eyes again, she was sitting on a round wooden platform, beneath a gate that looked just like the one she'd left behind in the Spirit Oasis; and Aang was next to her.

He looked incredibly different when he wasn't blue all over - it was like looking at a stranger, until he turned and grinned at her. His arrow tattoos were actually blue, his skin relatively pale, and his clothes were warm shades of red and yellow; his knees were actually touching the platform, his trousers creasing against the wood instead of just curving through it.

Somehow, she was still surprised when her fingers actually met his shoulder.

"Katara," he said, laughing, and threw his arms around her neck; she remembered every time she'd ever wished she could touch him, and clung back.

"Okay, enough of this, we're here for a reason," she said after a long moment, squeezing his shoulder one more time before she let go.

"Right, right," Aang said, "time to find some spirits."

The platform was in the middle of a swamp - a spirit-swamp, Katara reminded herself, but somehow the fact that it was spirit-water didn't make it any less slimy when she dipped a foot in.

"Watch your step," someone called.

It only took a moment to figure out who; aside from a tall white bird glaring at them with suspicious eyes from a few yards away, the only figure around that wasn't a tree was seated on a little island not far away. Island was a generous word - a hillock, more like, that rose unevenly out of the muck of the swamp.

"It's a monkey," Aang said as they splashed laboriously closer, and indeed it was, brown-skinned and white-furred, and dressed like a monk. Its eyes were closed, and it was seated in a meditative position - but it cracked one eye open as they neared it, peering out, and then hurriedly closed it again.

"Excuse me," Katara said, "but are you the one who said that?"

The monkey cracked an eye open again. "Can't you see I'm trying to concentrate?" it demanded.

"We can," Katara said, "and we won't go away and leave you to it until you answer our questions."

"I was just warning you," the monkey huffed. "Old Manyu gets bored these days, you never know what she might do next."

"Never mind that," Aang said. "Do you know where the moon and the ocean live? We need to find them."

The monkey pursed its lips. "Psh - you've already got all the help you need for that," he said. "Now go away and stop bothering me!"

"All the help we need-" Katara started, annoyed, and then there was a sudden whoosh behind her, and Aang whirled around.

"Appa!" he said.

The sky bison groaned, landing in the swamp with a splash. It was enormous - wild herds still flew over the pole now and then, but Katara had never seen one so close up.

"Hey, buddy," Aang said fondly, scratching around the creature's nose, and then leapt up, a rush of air lifting him over the curve of the bison's head. "Come on, Katara! Appa must know where we need to go."

The bison - Appa - had a saddle on his back, with a wide, low-hanging lip; Katara splashed around his side until she could grab it. He heaved a deep breath, and she almost backed away and told Aang to go without her. But he whuffed it back out without so much as snapping at her, and she pulled herself up without a single mishap. "This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me," she said.

"The absolute strangest?" Aang said.

"... One of the strangest," Katara amended.

Aang laughed, and stroked the fur over one of the bison's eyes affectionately. "Yip-yip, Appa!" he said, and the bison rumbled somewhere deep in his chest and launched himself into the air.

***

Yue glanced at the sky. It had been at least an hour since Katara's eyes had suddenly opened and begun to glow blue-white; now her body was still and vacant in the middle of the Spirit Oasis, and the moon was starting to rise higher.

It was quiet, here, and it would have been unsettling to stand alone in the night with Katara's empty body if the Spirit Oasis hadn't been what it was. But the whole place exuded a strange sort of peace. Even the turtle seals bobbing in the water beyond the island seemed to feel it, paddling quietly instead of honking and fighting the way they so often did.
Yue smiled at them. Master Pakku probably would have been horrified to see wild animals swimming freely so near the sacred water; but somehow Yue doubted that the spirits themselves minded the company.

She watched them for a moment, and then frowned. There was an odd glow beneath them, too red to be a reflection of the moon caught in the water - far too red, red like fire.

Yue stood warily; the glow was growing brighter, and now there was something pale in the water, but it was no reflection.

***

Zuko burst up through the surface of the water, gasping. The turtle seals had found an impressive complex of caves beneath the ice, and several times along the way he had been able to walk upright past vast rivers of water. But this last tunnel had been long, and the end too narrow for his shoulders; he had had to melt the ice away with his bending before he could pass through it, and his vision had been flickering at the edges during the last few moments.

But he was alive. He was a decent swimmer - by necessity, or Azula would probably have drowned him a dozen times over by now - but not exceptional; so he didn't bother trying to drift and wipe his face at the same time. He turned and struck out for whatever ice wall behind him the tunnel had come from, and clung to a convenient edge while he rubbed the water from his eyes. He bent, too - only a little, enough to send energy coursing to the tips of his fingers and toes, enough to make his chilly skin steam a little. The cold had been unrelenting, but Uncle had been right: Firebending warmed like nothing else.

He turned, then, and it took him a moment to understand what he was looking at. The grass caught his eye first - incongruous, to see such a thing amidst the ice of the north, and he was still wondering at it when he realized the girl sitting on the grass was none other than the Avatar.

Her eyes were open, shining with that hard pale light he remembered from Kyoshi Island, and the plaza in Jindao; but she wasn't moving, not even a twitch. She was simply sitting there, hands in loose fists with the knuckles lined up, and even though she was clearly still breathing, something about her posture or the blank look on her face spoke of absence.

"Who are you?" someone said, sharp and wary, and the sound made Zuko yank his gaze from the Avatar.

There was another girl on the grass, though this one was standing, and her hair was as white as ice. She was dressed in the blue and white of the Water Tribes, and she was standing in a bending stance by the Avatar's side, eyeing him suspiciously.

"I am here for the Avatar," Zuko snapped. "Stand aside, and there will be no need for me to harm you."

***

Yue stared at him. A single Firebender, alone in the deepest heart of the city late on the night of a full moon, and he was threatening her?

She peered at him a little more closely. Long hair in a tail, but many people wore their hair so; the scar, though, identified him. Katara, Sokka, and Suki had told her at great length of their exhausting journey through the Earth Kingdoms - and of the exiled prince who had chased them. A scar like a flame over his eye, they'd said.

He pulled himself up onto the path of ice that edged the oasis, and before she could even reply, he punched a handful of flame at her face. She yanked at the water without even having to think about it, and the fire fizzled out before it came anywhere near her.

"So you have some skill," the prince sneered, and took the three long strides that brought him to the side of the bridge, throwing another gout of fire with every step.

Yue blocked them all, one after the other, and when he set foot on the first plank of the bridge, she raised a great wave and shoved it toward him, knocking him back against the ice. "Some," she said, as he climbed to his feet again, sputtering.

"You dare-" he began, bringing his arms up again.

She drew a rope of water high before he could finish either the sentence or the move, and knocked his hands aside; he yanked them in toward himself before she could freeze them together, but she was already coiling another pool of water around his feet, and she froze him up to the thigh before he could bring his arms to bear again.

A sharp thrust of her hands, and the ice carried him backwards, skidding, until his shoulders struck the wall. A broad circle of flame burst from his palms, but she pulled another wave up from the lake and doused it before it could grow. It was the work of a moment to tug the ice of the wall forward around him, until the only part of him not encased in ice was his head.

"I will kill you," he snarled, and a red-orange glow began to burn around his hands and feet. But she made the ice-melt freeze around him again, easy as clenching her fist, and here and now, in the Spirit Oasis with the full moon shining, he could not match her power.

"Perhaps you will," she said, "but not tonight." She swayed through the sequence a few more times, thickening the fist of ice that held him, and then risked a glance over her shoulder. But the prince had had no accomplices; Katara was still safe behind her, glowing eyes staring unseeingly at the far wall of the Oasis, as though nothing of interest were happening at all.

She took a step toward the other bridge - if she could only get to the door, she could find someone to take the prince away while she guarded Katara - and almost slipped, ice shuddering faintly under her feet, as a great clang of metal echoed overhead.

No, she thought, and pulled at the ice almost convulsively. She rode the sudden arc of it up and over the prince's head until she passed the slant of the palace roof, and could see the great dark ships at the city wall with her own eyes.

Chapter Thirteen: The Ocean Awakened

Traveling through the spirit world was unspeakably strange. The rules were all different - or, perhaps more accurately, there were no rules. Things changed on a whim. The sky went from cloudy to a pure summery blue, and then to a startling grass-green; they left the swamp behind for a forest of jewel-toned trees that glinted like ice, and then flatlands creased with steaming crevasses that glowed faintly, and then a sudden desert of distinctly purple sand.

But Appa seemed to know where he was going, though Katara couldn't tell how. There was a sun - or a light in the sky, at least - but it didn't seem to be traveling in a straight line.

"Do you know where he's taking us?" she said.

Aang shrugged, wholly unconcerned. "No idea," he said, "but it's Appa. He wouldn't take us somewhere dangerous. Well, not unless that was where we had to go, that is."

"That's so reassuring," Katara said.

Aang stuck his tongue out at her; and then suddenly his eyes slid past her, his brow creasing in concentration, which made for a hilarious expression until he pulled his tongue back in and spoke. "Do you see that?"

Katara turned, following his gaze over her shoulder, and squinted. They were over another forest, though this one was of massive leafless trees the height of mountains, and the sky was a murky sea of low, yellow-tinged clouds. There was a particularly large billow of cloud behind her; she certainly could see it, and she was about to turn around and tell Aang so when she realized that there was a face in it.

Or, more accurately, a face forming out of it, chin and brow and cheekbones slowly shaping themselves from the mist. And a familiar face, too, though it took Katara a long moment to place it.

"Yangchen," she said, when the name finally came to her; and the mouth of the cloud-face bent into the barest shadow of a smile.

"Avatar," Yangchen replied, cool and echoing. "You seek the moon and ocean, do you not?"

"Yes," Katara said. "Is that where Appa's taking us - to see the moon and ocean?"

"Moon and Ocean are ancient spirits," Yangchen said, "and they traveled to the mortal world long ago. Your bison is clever: he takes you to the nearest of the spirits old enough to remember such things. But it will not be easy for you to obtain the answers you seek from Koh."

"Koh?" Aang said.

"The face-stealer, he is also called," Yangchen said, and the expression on her cloud-face turned very grave. "This is not the first time the Avatar has met him. Of the youngest of us, Kuruk knows him best; but Kuruk will not venture here." She paused. It was not quite a hesitation, Yangchen was too deliberate for that; but perhaps a moment of consideration. "Koh has done things that should not have been done, but he is not evil. It is his nature, to take faces; he cannot be other than what he is."

"To take faces?" Katara said, exchanging a nervous glance with Aang. That didn't sound good.

"This is what I have come to tell you," Yangchen said. "When you stand before Koh, you must have no expression - no matter what he says, or what face he wears. The tiniest smile, the briefest grimace of discomfort, and he will steal your face."

Katara bit her lip. She could hunt and fight and argue and Waterbend; but expressionlessness wasn't one of her notable skills. Perhaps if she were very, very angry, she would be able to do it. But right now, she was only uncertain, and a little bit afraid. She looked up at Yangchen, who gazed back impassively. "I'm not going to be able to do it," she said, and then paused, not sure how to make the suggestion without sounding presumptuous. "But I think you could. Can you - help me?"

Yangchen looked at her measuringly for a long moment, and then nodded, very slightly. "It would be my honor to assist you, Avatar," she said, and closed her eyes.

The cloud Yangchen's face was shaped from had been the same mud-yellow as all the rest, but as Yangchen concentrated, it began to glimmer with a very familiar shade of blue light. The blue intensified rapidly, and then all at once swirled out and away from the cloud, and Yangchen's features abruptly melted away, the mist that had formed them dissolving like smoke. The blue light dimmed, and then Katara's vision suddenly went blue-white; and when it cleared, the light that had been Yangchen was gone.

"Your eyes did that thing," Aang said, and then, "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yes," Katara said. It was easy to tell that Yangchen was with her, now; she felt different - older, and somehow quieter on the inside. Everything was muted. Or, no, not muted, but tempered, by a sense of deep patience - deep acceptance. Things were as they were. It was their way.

"... Are you sure?" Aang said.

Katara felt herself smile, very slightly. "I am," she said, and that was Yangchen's formal tone in her voice, she could hear it. "We have come to the land where Koh dwells."

They were still among the giant trees; but Appa was angling down toward the massive gnarling roots of one of them, the dull yellow mist twining around them like hands as they dropped lower. He landed with a scrape, six massive feet against bark that had to be at least a few feet thick, and Katara slid from the saddle like she had been riding sky bison all her life. "Easy, clever one," she murmured, stroking Appa's side absently.

There was a hole at the base of the trunk - a cave, Katara might have called it, except it was in a tree instead of a rock face. "That is where he lives," she told Aang, and held up a hand when he moved as though to leap from Appa's neck. "You should stay here."

"Katara," Aang said, sounding confused and unhappy; when she turned to look at him, he was staring at her uncertainly.

"I am still here," she said, and then paused; that hadn't come out right. She tried again. "I - need to let her be me, for a while." She let that deep feeling of Yangchen rise to the surface, and it was more Yangchen than Katara who smiled at him next. "Be at ease, Avatar," she said. "I will be careful. You have been a fine guide, and will be again; and you do our people proud with your care. But it is my time now."

Aang's face clouded briefly, but he nodded, and when she stepped forward into the dark of the treetrunk, he stayed there, waiting, behind her.

***

The crunch of the ship's prow against the ice reverberated through Yin from her boots to her helmet, and she couldn't help but grimace - no harm in it, after all, because with the helmet on, no one could see it anyway.

It was a ridiculous plan, arrogant and self-serving and oblivious to potential cost; exactly the kind of thing she should be expecting from Zhao by now, she thought grimly. Quite a trick of destiny, that a man like Zhao should be the one to find the legendary library of Wan Shi Tong. A repository of knowledge like no other, filled with vast and wonderful secrets long forgotten - and he stayed only long enough to learn how to murder spirits, and considered the time as well spent as could possibly be wished.

Another volley of fireballs hissed by overhead, the orange glow jarring against the moonlit ice, and landed with a crash in the city. Yin could see them come down; Zhao had a team of Firebenders at the flagship's prow, and they were melting a tunnel through the city wall that grew wider with every passing moment.

"It is enough!" Zhao shouted, and slapped a hand against Yin's shoulder. "Come, Lieutenant. My victory is close at hand."

"And what a victory it will be," Yin said, hand tight on the hilt of her sword. This was not going to be a good night.

She turned and nodded to Kishen, and he called for her soldiers to ready themselves; and then Zhao yelled wordlessly and led them through the wall.

*

The chaos on the other side might have been unbelievable, if Yin hadn't been in battle before - Zhao could not have stood being anywhere but at the center of the wall, and the space they charged into lay between a battalion of Waterbenders and a crowd of warriors with pikes and painted faces. The tanks were already rolling out of the ship behind them, but six Waterbenders at once clenched their fists and stretched their arms toward the sky, and the ice of the wall heaved up and crushed the third tank against the mouth of the tunnel. Lieutenant Anshi's, it must have been, because she turned and shouted for a team of Firebenders, and sent a blast of fire at the ice herself.

Yin swept forward and closed with a pikeman before he could gut her; he blocked her first strike neatly with the haft of his weapon, but he was unprepared for the way she kicked him in the side of the thigh, armored boot swinging heavily, and he dropped to one knee, eyes startled. He swung the pike out, and she had to duck back a step to avoid it - but the moment the blade had whistled past, she darted back in, swung her elbow up, and trapped the haft against her side, shoving her sword up under the man's chin at the same time.

He squared his jaw, preparing himself; but she wasn't going to kill him if she could help it. She ducked her head in close, and hissed, "Where are the spirits?"

"... What?" the man said.

Yin dug her sword in a little further. "The spirits," she said. "They're here - where are they?" She didn't even know what she would do, if he told her - cut Zhao off before he could get there? Find a Water Tribe captain and explain everything? - but at least she might know what to expect.

But the man's face showed only confusion, and she was fairly certain he wasn't pretending. "The legends say they dwell with us," he said, "but not - perhaps you seek the sacred waters?"

"Yes, fine, okay," Yin said, "where are those?"

"The chief's palace," the man said, "the heart of the city - there is a passage back-"

"Great," Yin said, and pulled the sword away so that she could slam the pommel into his head. The chief's palace - that wasn't going to be an easy place to get to; but even as she thought it, she turned, and Zhao was already pushing forward across the nearest canal. "One day," she murmured to herself, "I will know everything ahead of time," and she let the man slide to the ground and hurried after Zhao.

***

Koh's lair was not as inhospitable as it seemed at first glance; the entrance might be narrow and dark, but it led to a flight of broad stairs. Old ones, for they were no longer level - the stairs at the Western Air Temple had also come to be so, in time - and a tangle of roots had begun to grow across them. Besides, Koh's reasons for easing the way into his home were not reassuring thoughts to ponder. Still, it was simpler than climbing would have been.

There was a rustle overhead, and Katara wanted to startle; but Yangchen did not let her look away from where she was placing her feet. It did not suit the dignity of the Avatar to trip.

Soon enough, they came to level ground, and Katara looked up. "Koh," she said quietly into the dark, and did not so much as twitch when a great pale face appeared out of the gloom.

Someone who had worn a mask, perhaps, or face-paint. A clever attempt; but Koh was a spirit, not a human, and could not be tricked by such things. "Avatar," said a hissing voice from between blood-red lips, and the white cheeks widened in a smile. "It has been some time since I have seen you last. Five hundred years? Eight hundred? Human measures are so inadequate; I can never remember."

"I am not here to kill you, Koh," Katara said, to the mustached man's face that slid into view next. "Not this time."

"Oh?" Koh said. "Not even a little?"

The mustached man vanished with a scowl, and the next face was a girl's - a young woman's, more like, dark-eyed and lovely. Katara found her eyes moving over it like she had looked at it a thousand times, a thousand upon a thousand: there was the scar by the brow, only visible if you were looking for it; and there, the single, uneven dimple, as the young woman's face smiled. Katara had traced that dimple a hundred times, she was certain of it - had mocked it, secretly adored it, kissed it-

Yangchen surely felt the great, drowning grief as clearly as Katara did; but it only lasted for a moment, transmuted by Yangchen into a terrible quiet sadness, and Katara's expression remained blank. "Not even a little," she said, very evenly.

Koh stayed in front of her for a long moment, peering curiously out of the young woman; and then her face slid away, replaced with a stern-eyed owl hawk. "Avatar, my old friend, you have become so dull," he said.

"I am not here to entertain you, either," Katara said. "I seek knowledge of Moon and Ocean - their help is needed to save a people far from here."

"Ah, yes, Tui and La - push and pull, a pretty pair," Koh said. The owl hawk gave way to a plump young boy. "Amusing, that you should ask; they need your help much more than you do theirs."

There was a burst of startlement - Yangchen was just as surprised to hear Koh say that as Katara was, but Katara's face stayed still. Yangchen had faced many things in her time, had negotiated with emperors and generals; to cover surprise and pretend foreknowledge was a trick she had learned early on. "Do they," she said.

"Oh, they do," Koh said, a trickle of glee working its way into his tone, and the plump boy became a monkey, fanged mouth open in a silent laugh. "Someone's going to kill them, if you don't hurry up and go back where you came from."

"How can I save them?"

"Go back where you came from," Koh repeated, a hint of impatience in his voice. "That bison of yours will take you back to the place where you passed through. Go back. Moon and Ocean are there, waiting for you; if you are quick, they will be saved."

Koh did things that should not have been done, but he also told the truth; that, too, was his nature. "Thank you," Katara said, bowing formally.

"No need, Avatar," Koh said, graciousness a thin veneer over the cool menace that filled his voice. The white mask-face slid back into place. "I will see you again someday; perhaps you will repay the favor."

***

Yue watched another volley of fireballs crash into her home, and then shook herself. The Fire Nation soldiers were moving quickly, pressing forward, as though they hoped a flood of superior numbers might serve to outweigh the power of Waterbenders under a full moon. The sounds of fighting were coming closer every moment, and if they made it all the way here, Katara needed to be kept safe until she could come back from the spirit world.

Yue made the ice lower her back down. The Fire Nation prince was still frozen to the wall, watching her with narrowed eyes; he would not escape, at least not in the next thirty seconds.

She had fought him on the open end of the Oasis island - but Katara's body sat on the other side of the pool, beneath the gate, and behind the gate grew a thick stand of bamboo, impossible to see past.

There was no other choice: she had to keep the Avatar safe as best she could, even if it meant she died herself. Hopefully, Katara could find her body again even if it wasn't in the same place she'd left it.

Yue hurried around the pool and curled her arms around Katara's at the shoulder. The pounding of feet sounded impossibly loud - how could the Fire Nation have come so far already? She pulled; Katara draped back limply in her arms, and her eyes slid shut.

Not a good sign - but Yue thought there was still some blue leaking between her lashes, and there was no time to reconsider. She had managed to tow Katara almost around the end of the bamboo stand when the door was flung open.

She turned and pulled up a wave, without even looking; but Kilurak caught it before it could topple, and smoothed it back down.

"Yue, whoa, it's just us," Sokka said, and then glanced across the Oasis. "Hey, hang on, is that the crazy prince guy? What's been going on back here, anyway?"

"Katara is in the spirit world," Yue said. "The prince came for her, but I fought him. What are you doing here?"

"We - cut our mission short," Tuteguk said, from behind Sokka. "The Fire Nation admiral plans to kill the moon; we have come to stop him."

"Kill the moon?" Yue said. "And he's coming here? I don't understand."

Tuteguk hesitated, looking at her with trepidation. "It is the greatest secret of our tribe," he said. "Only the chief and his top advisors are ever told of it. You and Hahn would have been told, too, when it was time-" He broke off, and glanced over his shoulder: a great gout of fire burst up on the other side of the Oasis wall, far too close for comfort. "Quickly," he said, "we must finish hiding the Avatar; if she does not come back from the spirit world before the Fire Nation admiral arrives, she must be kept away from the fighting."

It was much easier going, with five people to lift Katara instead of just one; and she was safely behind the bamboo grove when Yue heard the door swing open again. "Yes, this will be a proud day indeed for the Fire Nation," someone said, and laughed.

***

"I was very pleased to think that you were dead," Zhao continued, still chuckling a little. "But to find you here - frozen to the wall, no less - in the place where I will fulfill my destiny? Better than I could ever have imagined."

Zuko pressed his mouth flat and said nothing, tipping his chin up defiantly. It was satisfying, in a way - if nothing else, he had managed the ruse successfully for as long as it had been up to him. It did not make up for being defeated by some random Waterbender girl mere feet away from the Avatar; but it seemed to be Zuko's fate, to be humiliated whenever he came near his only goal.

At least he wasn't the only one. Zhao stood not thirty yards from the Avatar and didn't know it, because she had been carefully and thoroughly hidden behind a bush. Zuko fought the urge to laugh. Uncle was there, too, standing behind Zhao with a sober look on his face; he would appreciate the situation, if he knew the true depth of it. And Mizan was beside him - she would rub Zhao's face in it forever, Zuko thought.

"Come now, who was it?" Zhao said. "Your dishonor is already all-encompassing, you cannot shame yourself further."

"Stop this, Zhao," Uncle said - quietly, but there was a touch of iron in it.

Zhao laughed. "You disapprove - of course you do," he said. "I should have known you were lying about him. You always were too fond of the boy."

"Stop all of this," Uncle said. "Turn around, now, and walk out of this place. You must not do this thing."

"Must not?" Zhao said. He rounded on Uncle, as though to threaten him - wasted effort, of course, for Uncle stared up at him impassively and did not move an inch, but Zhao seemed not to care. "The very world is within my grasp. This is everything we have been working toward for a hundred years, and I - I - have the power to bring it to pass. I will not let that slip away from me." He chuckled again. "Is this what happened to you at Ba Sing Se, General? Did you come within seconds of victory, and turn from it like a coward?"

"I came to understand that the victory I sought was not worth the price," Uncle said, almost gently. "The balance of the spirits touches all things - and you would destroy that for the sake of not even a war, but a single battle?"

"Ah, yes, the balance," Zhao said, sneering. "I have heard about your sacred journey to the spirit world - not all of us can be so enlightened, General Iroh. I am no Waterbender; the moon does not govern me, and I owe it no allegiance, no protection." He shook his head. "Sometimes I am sorry that your son is dead, because it seems he took the best of you with him when he went." Zhao turned back around and smirked at Zuko. "You are two of a kind, in your weakness. Watch closely, exile: I will show you true strength. Perhaps this time the lesson will sink in."

***

Zuko looked unimpressed - and even before, Mizan could tell by his expression that he knew something. Something he wasn't telling Zhao, and she wanted to smile at him for it, even though nothing was going the way it was supposed to.

His plan might have been stupid, but up until now, it had also been working. Clearly Zuko had managed to find a way through the part of the plan Mizan had disparaged the most - he was inside the city, after all, even if somebody had found him and wrapped him in ice after.

Perhaps that was the secret he was keeping: if whoever had frozen him in were still around, it might be a bit of a nasty surprise for Zhao.

She glanced behind her, and hoped it had taken a few dozen Waterbenders. Zhao had brought that lieutenant, Yin, and a handful of his better soldiers besides; Yin might not fight for him with all her will, but it was a long way from a few lies of omission to outright betrayal. Mizan had only talked to the woman for five minutes; it might be possible to persuade her, or it might not, but there was no way for Mizan to tell.

Frustrating, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

Zhao grinned at Zuko, and then strode forward. The path along the ice was narrow, but the bridge to the little island of greenery was wide, and Zhao paraded along the middle of it like he was three men abreast, and not one.

"Zhao," General Iroh said, moving as though to catch Zhao's arm - but Zhao stepped away and into the pool.

It was small, circular, and by the height it came to on Zhao's thighs, moderately deep. There were fish in it - koi, Mizan thought. They were large, certainly, and pretty; Mizan could see only two, one black and one white, circling each other playfully. What she could not see was a good reason for Zhao to be staring down at them like they were made out of living gold.

"For the glory of the Fire Nation," he said, hushed and almost reverent, and then he darted a hand into the pool, and drew the white fish out of the water.

In the split second it took for the full moon to dim sharply in the sky behind her, Mizan put it together, and cursed herself for a fool.

***

Suki was peering out from behind the bamboo and wishing Tuteguk had thought to fill them in a little earlier, and Yue's sudden tumble took her completely by surprise. It was only good luck that she happened to jerk backward, and caught Yue against her shoulder before the other girl could hurt herself - or make a loud sound, which would be almost as bad.

"Help me lay her down," she hissed at Sokka, and, looking as startled as she felt, he complied.

Yue had clearly realized that she needed to stay quiet, even through whatever had suddenly drawn her strength away; her eyes and mouth were squeezed shut, and she was clinging to the grass like she felt she might slide off the earth sideways. Suki reached out to touch her hands, and immediately had to fight the urge to pull back - her fingers felt like ice.

"Yue?" Sokka said, careful to keep his voice low.

"Tui," Yue murmured, and her brow furrowed in what was not quite an expression of pain.

Suki glanced over at the bamboo - she'd moved, from here she couldn't see anything, but she knew what was on the other side. "Now," she said, "now, we have to stop him right now," and she pulled her fans from her belt and threw herself around the bamboo.

Zhao was standing in the pool, and as she rounded the edge of the stand, he held the white koi high and began to laugh. "You see," he said triumphantly, turning to the old man behind him. "They are helpless - would the spirits not have struck me down already, if they could?" He grinned up at the fish, and steam began to rise from his hand - and then a faint crackling sound came to Suki's ears, and the koi's scales began to blister and curl as it thrashed in Zhao's grip.

In the sky, the face of the moon was suddenly flooded with red. Somewhere behind Suki, Yue screamed, breathless with agony; and then Zhao stopped laughing abruptly, and looked down at his chest. The bloody point of a sword was protruding from it - no, through it, Suki realized. Through it, from behind.

"Perhaps they cannot," Lieutenant Yin said, very calm. "But I can."

***

Her hand was shaking a little, which was stupid - she had done it, and there was no undoing it, no point to uncertainty now. Still, it was steady enough; so she made herself grip her sword's hilt a little tighter, and very carefully pulled it back out of Zhao.

She would die for this, almost undoubtedly. She was as good as dead already. But the moment had come, and she had recognized it for what it was. In Jindao, she had asked the spirits to intervene, and they had; now, they required her aid - they could not have asked more clearly if the fish had looked her in the eye and spoken aloud - and she could not have refused to give it.

"You," Zhao said, and faltered back against the lip of the pool. The moon spirit slid from his hand and onto the grass, still shuddering in pain; and Zhao gazed up at her like he had never seen her before in his life.

"Me," Yin agreed quietly.

Kishen was standing at her elbow, and she suspected their interests were aligned, for the moment; but the other twelve soldiers Zhao had brought were staring at her. When the startlement wore off, Yin was fairly certain they would be less than pleased with her.

But perhaps she was not entirely doomed. It was the friends of the Avatar who had burst out from behind the bamboo a moment ago - or two of them, at least. Yin remembered the girl with the iron fans vividly, and one of the boys had a particularly familiar face. She was not precisely expecting them to leap to her defense, but however much they disliked her, surely they had to dislike Zhao's more loyal soldiers more.

***

The lieutenant raised her sword, still stained with Zhao's blood, barely in time to catch the blade one of the other Fire Nation soldiers swung at her. Sokka didn't even think about it before he rushed across the grass and kicked the feet out from under the one who was coming up behind her.

If he had thought about it, he reasoned later, he would have done exactly the same thing. She'd already saved them two or three times now, which was enough that he was willing to forgive her for having held a sword against a guy's throat for thirty seconds that one time; and she'd also just maybe saved the moon, which was worth a lot of points all by itself. Granted, the fish was still scorched and flopping helplessly, but Yue had stopped screaming, and as long as it wasn't dead, there had to be something they could do.

So he stopped the woman who was coming at the lieutenant with a glaive, knocking her back against the wall and leaving a long slice along her arm. Much as he might have complained at the time, he was grateful for all the grueling practice now; he still wasn't as skilled as Suki, but the fans were starting to feel good, natural, like extensions of his arms instead of awkward sharp things he couldn't stop dropping. He flared them at the woman as she came at him again, and almost wished he had some red-and-white warpaint to put on - or maybe some green battle skirts.

Suki was only a moment behind him, knocking down the next guy who tried to rush the lieutenant with a sharp strike to the ribs; and Kilurak reached out with his bending and threw a dozen spears of ice at the rest of them.

The funny blue light almost got Sokka's head chopped off, because he knew that color - that color meant wacky Avatar things - and he turned to stare at it and gave another guy a clear shot at the side of his neck. But he caught the blow against one of his fan handles before it could land, and a second later, Katara burst out from behind the bamboo and plunged into the spirit pool.

***

She'd worked out that it had something to do with the Spirit Oasis almost the moment she'd stepped out of Koh's lair and let Yangchen drift out of her - but she didn't figure out that it was the fish until she stepped out from behind the bamboo and saw the half-scalded koi on the grass, and Zhao still gasping and reaching toward it, with blood soaking down the front of his uniform. She remembered smiling at the pair of koi, thinking how nice it was, how fitting, to have such a spiritual place be full of life; she kind of wanted to kick herself, now.

The water was pleasantly warm and came up to her hip, and for a moment she could think of nothing but the last time she'd stood in a deep pool - that arrow sliding into her shoulder, and Sokka shouting.

"Hurry!" Aang said behind her, and she remembered herself and took another step through the water.

The black koi was still there, swimming in frenzied circles - except it wasn't quite all black, there was a white spot on its head. A glowing white spot; with a blue tinge, blue like the water, because the water was glowing, too. Everything was, so brightly Katara couldn't see a thing.

YOU, said La, somewhere closer than her ears - because that was who it was, she knew it. YOU HAVE THE HEALING GIFT, AVATAR. YOU CAN CHOOSE WHAT WILL BE. CHOOSE WITH ME.

She closed her eyes against the light, and took a deep breath. There could be only one answer. She lifted her arms. YES, she said, and became the ocean.

***

Light filled the pool, and rippled across the water like foam, so bright that it almost hurt Suki's eyes to look at it; and then a moment later the pool went dark, though the water around the island was still blazing.

"Katara-" Sokka said, starting forward, and she caught his arm.

"She's not there anymore," she said.

And Katara wasn't - the pool was empty, even though they had all seen her step into it just a moment ago.

The light was flowing away behind them, building, water piling up like someone was bending it, except Kilurak's hands were still, hanging at his sides as he stared; and Suki was fairly certain Yue wasn't doing it. The water billowed up above them, so high they couldn't see the chief's palace past it, and even under the angry red light of the injured moon, it was fiercely blue.

It made a shape - to call it fish-like made it sound smaller, lesser than it was; and more mundane than it could ever be, considering it was a spirit walking the earth in a body made of water and light. In the center of its chest, the light formed a great sphere. And in the middle of the sphere, Katara floated, eyes burning blue and braid drifting around her shoulders.

TUI, La said, and the tone of its voice was not so much a sound as it was simply the feeling of grief rippling through the air. Suki didn't think she could have moved if her life depended on it; but she felt certain that if she had been able to touch her cheeks, her hands would have come away wet.

Katara spread her arms wide, hands open, and the light gathered beneath her fingers like she had called it by name. The pool water drew up into an arm, and curled gently around the twitching koi on the bank, lifting it into the air; and Katara turned her palms toward it, the light following the motion.

"She's fixing it," Sokka murmured, hushed. "Fixing it - like she healed my arms, before."

It was true; the water around the koi was glowing, and then the koi itself, scales pearl-smooth and glistening like Zhao had never laid a finger on them. Behind them, the moon blazed back to white; La tipped its head back, and the laugh it let out was like every wonderful thing that had ever happened to Suki in her life, all bound up in an instant.

And then it let Tui slide back into the pool and gazed down at them, and Suki felt her throat go dry.

"I am so glad I'm not Fire Nation right now," Sokka said.

***

The wall of water swept toward them, and past them, as the spirit of the ocean moved by; in a moment, the three armed soldiers Yin had been facing were gone, only empty air and wet grass left where they had been. Zhao was gone, too, even the blood washed away from the edge of the pool by the great rush of water.

Yin stared, and then, belatedly, lowered her sword. The friends of the Avatar were untouched, but that, she had expected. General Iroh remained also, gazing after the spirit with awe clear on his face; and Prince Zuko, evidently alive, was still pinned to the wall by the ice.

"We cannot stay to marvel," General Iroh said, sounding half as though he were trying to convince himself. He turned to her, and touched her elbow. "There are many soldiers in the city, and many ships still on the water - we must go, and quickly, if we are to have any of them survive."

"Of course," Yin said, automatic. There would be time to appreciate the wonder of it later; but right now, they had to get back to the ship.

***

Shida faltered; the light had changed again, from sickly red back to white, and her eyes were having trouble adjusting after the warm dimness.

A most peculiar thing - she knew how the moon could sometimes shine copper, how it could redden in the smoke of wildfires, but this had been something else altogether. Still, in the moment, it had seemed like good fortune: she had been facing a pair of Waterbenders, and when the moon had dulled, the wave they'd been aiming at her had tumbled from their grasp. And Shida did not argue with good fortune.

But the moon was back, now; and the remaining Waterbender, the one she hadn't stabbed yet, drew a slab of ice from the ground with renewed vigor.

She sheathed her sword and met the ice with a bloom of fire from both palms, melting a gap in it before the Waterbender could strike her with it. He moved as though to shove the ice aside and pull up a new wave from the canal - and then they both staggered as the ground shook.

"What was that?" the Waterbender said, almost conversational in the grip of the unity provided by confusion; and they both turned toward the palace at the same time.

There was a great creature made of light, tall enough for its head to tower over the great palace. Something about the shape of it made Shida think of a fish, but it was not quite so neatly formed; its limbs fell somewhere between arms and fins in appearance, and it had neither legs nor tail - it simply flowed over the palace wall, unending, the water before it chased with light. The city flooded everywhere it went, water rising and spilling over like every canal had become a fresh spring.

It was beautiful. Shida simply stared at it for a long moment; and then there was a sound, low and long and rumbling as thunder, and she realized abruptly that the flooding was drawing nearer.

She had followed the two Waterbenders up to the end of one of the ice bridges over a canal, and she had an excellent view of the nearest city plaza, tanks grinding across it and at least a full battalion of Fire Nation soldiers holding it. It had been captured while the moon was dull, and though the Waterbenders had now turned back, their power returned, they had not yet managed to retake it.

The water swept across it like a tidal wave as the great creature came nearer. An oddly selective tidal wave: Fire Nation tanks were lifted like children's playthings, hurled into the air by the first impact of the flood before they fell into the water and disappeared from view; red-armored soldiers screamed and cowered before the wave came upon them and dragged them away; and yet the Waterbenders stood untouched. A faint pale light curved around them, like a crescent moon; and the water bent to either side and let them be.

It was an awe-inspiring sight; Shida had traveled many places during her time in the navy, and had never seen the like.

"Surrender," said the Waterbender - Shida had almost forgotten he was there. "Surrender now, before it comes for you."

Shida eyed the cresting waves in the plaza, the bubbling water rising at the end of the canal. She wanted to serve the Fire Lord - but she could not do it if she drowned.

Her sword was already sheathed, but she let her fists drop to her sides, let the heat that had been building in her hands slide away; and the water foamed high beneath her, scored with light, but did not pull her down.

***

"Yue? Yue!"

Yue blinked, and sat up.

"Yue," Sokka said, relieved. "Are you all right?"

Yue's fingers ached as she straightened them - she remembered falling, remembered sticking her hands out to what she'd thought was the side and having her palms hit grass. It had seemed like the only strength left in her was in her fingers, and she had hung on with dedication; with her eyes closed and her legs numb, the grass against her hands had been the only thing left in the world.

The pain had been astounding. She had fallen in the winter ocean once when she was a child, and the cold of the water had been so fierce it had felt almost like her skin was burning - this had been exactly like that, except worse, because her mother could not fish her out of this and wrap her in blankets after.

But it was gone now, like it had never been, and she felt strangely invigorated - renewed.

"I'm fine," she said. "Better than fine." She glanced around: she was still behind the bamboo in the Oasis, but something had clearly happened in between. There was blood on the edges of Suki's fans, and Kilurak's shirt was torn. "What happened?"

"Well, let's see," Sokka said. "Zhao came to kill the moon, but this woman we know in the Fire Nation who helps us out sometimes stabbed him in the back - literally - and then Katara woke up and the ocean grabbed her and turned into a giant angry fish, and now they're out there beating Zhao's fleet like a rug." He turned to Suki. "Did I leave anything out?"

"No, I think you got everything," Suki said, amused. "Are you sure you're all right, Yue?"

"Yes," Yue said, and stood up to prove it.

She could see that Sokka had been telling the truth as soon as she rounded the bamboo; the great figure of La towered over the city, glowing brilliantly under the full moon, and at its heart there was a bright round light - Katara, undoubtedly. The prince she had frozen to the wall was gone; obviously melted free, judging by the twisted ice that remained where he had been. But unless he had become several hundred feet tall, Katara was safely out of his reach.

*

From the steps of the chief's palace, they could see much more clearly. The Fire Nation had advanced far into the city, but not for long; the water that surged around La had dumped tanks onto roofs and into canals, and the Waterbenders who had fallen back when the moon had dimmed were alive with power now.

La raised its arms, and a wave rose in answer from the sea, taller than the walls, taller even than the ice cliffs, so high that it dwarfed the great ships of the Fire Nation. It crashed upon the fleet like the tide on a toy boat, capsizing dozens and sending the rest skimming out to sea, and Yue could hear a ripple of sound cross the city, the cacophony of victorious cheers.

La curled in upon itself, then, outlines dissolving, and Yue's heart leapt into her throat. But a long arm of water came curving in a great arc over the city, all the way to the avenue below them; and when it fell apart, water splattering down and winding away into the canals, it left Katara behind.

***

"Hurry!" Yin shouted, motioning desperately to the man in the bridge even as she vaulted over the rail.

They were already moving away from the wall as quickly as they could; she had been one of the last to make it on before the ship had pulled away. She'd done the best she could - they'd had to sprint through the streets to make it to the wall in time, but Yin had shouted orders as she went. Zhao valued - had valued - their equipment intensely, but it was sheer foolishness to try to save the tanks. They were maneuverable, but not particularly fast, and she had screamed at least six times at different groups of soldiers to leave them behind and run for the wall.

They had not all made it; even now, as they pulled further out to sea, she could hear the pleading shouts behind her. But she could not afford to go back for them - she probably wouldn't even be able to, now, with the hump of a wave rising in front of the wall.

Just as she had thought. You could not anger the ocean and expect to sail away on a placid sea.

The great figure of the spirit was raising its arms, now, concentrating every bit of its considerable power on the task before it, and the wave was rising in answer, no longer a hump but a mountain.

And the ship - the ship was turning, the city swinging from bow toward port before her eyes. She turned and sprinted for the bridge. "Give me that," she said, and when the man gripping the wheel made as though to protest, she punched him as hard as she could and took the wheel when he stumbled back.

He was clearly an idiot. The chance that they would survive might be miniscule no matter what; but it was no chance at all if the wave struck them side-on, they would capsize in a moment. That their bow still pointed toward Kanjusuk meant nothing - if they lived, they would have all the time in the world to turn around. He had been a fool to try to correct it now.

She swung the wheel back, and was rewarded with a groan of metal; she could not see the city anymore, only the towering breadth of the wave, but there was no time left to do anything but hope the turn had been about right. She was halfway through the door, hurrying back to order the deck clear, when the wave finally curled over them and came down.

For a moment, she thought someone had taken away the moon again, and then she realized the wave had blocked it out. The ship tipped beneath her, climbing the wave's foot, and there was a moment of perfect stillness: she knelt, half on the wall, and looked above her at the deck as it stretched toward the sky; and then the water struck her like a hammer.

She was lucky; she did not break her back against the corner of the wall, and the doorframe gave her something to cling to. The water was searingly cold, and it seemed like barely a moment before she could not feel her hands, but she forced herself to keep her mouth closed and hang on.

For a long minute, she had no idea what might be happening to the ship - she could discern no up or down, only the direction the water was trying to rip her toward, and her lungs were starting to burn. But then the current changed, the flood pulling at her instead of pushing, and a moment later her head broke the surface as the worst of the water retreated.

Her fingers failed her, then, and she let them; the water towed her out onto the deck before it slid away over the side, and she coughed twice and then sucked in the best lungful of air she had ever breathed.

The wave had carried them quite some distance - when she tipped her head up, the city was tiny in the distance, and the water between was scattered with iron keels pointing toward the sky, and wide metal hulls bobbing helplessly on their sides.

"Lieutenant," someone said - Kishen, she realized, a moment before he came into view overhead and helped her sit up. He must have been somewhere higher than she was; his uniform was dripping, but his face and hair looked dry.

"Is the formality really necessary, under the circumstances?" she said, shaking out her sleeves.

"I would say more so than usual, sir," he said. "Your orders?"

She blinked, and tilted her head back so she could stare at him properly.

"Perhaps you have not been told, sir," he said. "Sub-Admiral Zhao is nowhere to be found - lost in the city, perhaps." He had a nicely speculative tone, for someone who had been standing right behind her when she ran a sword through Zhao's back. "At the moment, you are certainly the highest-ranked officer on deck, and, after that wave, perhaps on the entire ship. Your orders?"

Yin forced her mouth to close. He was right.

If she truly was in command of what was left of the fleet, it was time she stood up, instead of lolling on the deck like a newborn turtle duck; so she made her legs support her, and shoved her wet hair out of her face. They had to start the pumps, of course; it was entirely possible that soldiers belowdecks were drowning even now, simply because the water had nowhere to go. "The pumps," she said. "Pass along the order - anyone who can stand is to start working the pumps. Send someone to check the damage; I doubt all the boiler bays were sealed properly, there wasn't enough time."

He saluted, and turned sharply - but he only made it a step before she caught at his arm.

"Sir?"

"Get some soldiers who Firebend up to the deck, too," she said. "If General Iroh's ship made it through that, I want to know about it."

***

For a moment, Katara couldn't remember how to move; she lay on the ice and gazed up at the night sky, and wondered vaguely how she had gotten so short. It wasn't that she hadn't been herself - she had been herself and La at the same time, awareness encompassing both the Water Tribe girl and the vastness of the ocean. And somewhere in there, she'd gotten used to being two hundred feet tall.

She watched the stars twinkle - until they suddenly weren't anymore, because Sokka's face was in the way, Aang hovering anxiously next to him.

"Katara!" Sokka said, and she realized belatedly that it was at least the fourth time. When La had spoken to her, she hadn't heard it with her ears; it was strange to use them again.

"Sokka," she said, and he yanked her up off the ice and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

"You were just lying there, it looked like you were dead," he said; it was muffled by her neck, but he sounded almost angry.

"Well, I'm not," Katara said, patting him a little floppily. Having joints was so peculiar - how had she never noticed before?

Someone came up behind her and squeezed her shoulder - Suki, Katara thought. "We're glad to hear it," Suki said gently.

They both helped her stand up. Really, she thought, she was doing very well: she wasn't even damp, despite the fact that she had technically been suspended in a lake's worth of walking water, and her legs were functional, if a little wobbly.

Yue had been waiting behind them a respectful distance, hands over her mouth; but as soon as Katara was up and had turned around, she rushed forward, relieved and smiling, to grip Katara's hands. "You saved the city," she said, "it was incredible." She laughed. "I'm going to feel so presumptuous, teaching Waterbending to someone who was the ocean."

"I'm not the ocean anymore," Katara said, "I'm still going to need the help."

*

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Master Pakku said, sounding anything but afraid. "She and the spirit of the ocean saved us? How did she know?"

"We may guard our secret from our own people," Yue said, "but we cannot guard it from the spirits themselves. She traveled to the spirit world, and was told where to find Tui and La; when she came back, she healed Tui, and rose with La to drive the ships away."

They had moved inside the chief's palace - Chief Arnook had sent away the small crowd that had begun to gather, ordering them to begin some basic repairs to the walls, and his wife had ushered them all back up the steps.

Katara admired Yue's ability to keep her tone patient; Katara would probably have started yelling five minutes ago.

"We owe her a debt of gratitude, then," Ukalah said, a little pointedly. "Without her aid, the moon would now be dead, and our city fallen."

"I'm not sure-"

Sokka rolled his eyes and elbowed her. "Come on, it's totally true."

"No, but - they don't owe me anything," Katara said. "I'm - I'm the Avatar." It had never sounded truer to her than it did right now. "It's my duty, my entire purpose, to protect people, to preserve the balance. It would be like thanking Suki for being a Warrior of Kyoshi, or Yue for being a Waterbender, or - or you, for being annoying."

"Oh, ha ha," Sokka muttered; but Yue was beaming at her, and Chief Arnook had started to smile.

"You are far too gracious, Avatar," Ukalah said, dipping her head in a tiny bow.

"Indeed," said Master Pakku, voice tinged faintly with sarcasm; but he didn't argue with the title, and a moment later, he dipped his head in a very slight nod.

***

Zuko glared back over the stern rail at the city, already tiny with distance, and let the metal heat under his hands.

They were safe, true; they had been safer than most, in fact, because before the invasion had even begun, Mizan had sent along orders for Zuko's ship to stay to the side. Out of the line of fire, in case Zhao should use the battle as an opportunity to destroy it once and for all - and, as it had turned out, also mostly out of the way of the giant wave. The deck had been swamped, but only up to Zuko's calves, and there had not been much damage.

"I realize you must feel disheartened, Prince Zuko," Uncle said from behind him.

Sometimes Uncle's powers of perception were just astonishing. The rail, Zuko noticed absently, was starting to glow faintly red where he touched it.

Uncle stepped up beside him and looked at him silently, and Zuko abruptly felt more tired than angry; the rail cooled again, and he let his hands drop to his sides.

"But all is not lost," Uncle said gently. "Sub-Admiral Zhao is gone, and the Avatar safely out of his grasp-"

"And ours," Zuko said.

"We, unlike Zhao, will have many opportunities to determine the course of the future." Uncle touched Zuko's elbow. "All is not lost," he repeated.

"And who is to say that traitorous lieutenant of his will not take up where he left off?" Zuko demanded. "Perhaps that is why she killed him - who would give the glory of capturing the Avatar away when they could instead take it for themselves?"

"You've never talked to her, your highness," Mizan said, a little sharp, and Zuko turned; she was standing a few feet back, arms crossed over her chest, giving him that look that said the only reason he hadn't hit the water was because she might hurt her back heaving him over the rail. "You watched her from around a corner once, and the rest of the time, you were pretending to be dead."

"And you spent hours chatting with her over tea?" Zuko said, dubious.

Mizan pursed her lips, unfazed. "We spoke," she said. "I can promise you, your highness: following in Zhao's footsteps is the last thing she aspires to."

"She is right, nephew," Uncle said. "The lieutenant knew we had hidden something from Sub-Admiral Zhao, but she did not betray us."

"And she wants to talk to us," Mizan added.

"... What?"

Mizan raised her eyebrows, and nodded at something behind them, expression carefully blank.

Zuko turned, and was met with the sight of the great flagship itself, easing gradually closer to their starboard side; there were Firebenders at the bow, and even as he watched, they repeated the signal that must have caught Mizan's attention: a flame rising and falling, the sign for truce. It only took one bender to make - the other two were moving a larger tongue of fire in a circle, calling any other ships who had survived the wave to gather.

"I strongly urge you to accept the offer, your highness," Mizan said. She'd been calling him that through the whole conversation; he knew what that meant.

He glanced at Uncle Iroh.

"You are right to be cautious, Prince Zuko," Uncle said diplomatically, "and perhaps we will find that she means us harm. But from what I have seen of her, she is an honorable woman; she would not call a truce and allow us safe passage to her ship only to ambush us once we set foot on deck."

"Yes, of course; she'll only attack us after," Zuko said skeptically. Uncle had seen her in Jindao, the same way he had - how could he assert that such a woman had honor?

"You never know," Mizan said, placid. "She might give us a head start."

The flagship was coming closer, the Firebenders' faces clearer; if they ran, Zuko knew, there was nothing to stop the woman from aiming her catapults at them and letting fly. "Very well," he said. "We'll wait for them."

"Yes, sir," Mizan said, and bowed.

End of Book One. Click here to continue to the Book Two master post.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

pleonasm

Thank you for linking this story on

white_lotus. The best way I can think of to describe it is by saying that it was satisfying in all of the best ways. All of the canon characters felt very much like themselves. I was thrilled to see Suki traveling with them, and the OCs were well-developed and interesting. Iroh was also a treat. This AU you have built is interesting and fascinating, and I greatly look forward to reading more of it someday.

damkianna

Thanks so much for reading it. :) Thank you! I'm so glad - with an AU like this, characterization is always an especially big worry, so that is really great to hear. And I'm also glad the OCs worked for you, given that they ended up taking up quite a bit of space. :D Thank you again, and I hope you enjoy the rest just as much!

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

nor so wide as a church door

Fic Post - Imagine The Ocean - Book One: Chapters 11-13/13

Fic Post - Imagine The Ocean - Book One: Chapters 11-13/13

no subject

no subject

Profile

October 2022

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags